the reverend charles brabazon, magnetic vicar of the adjacent village, had as strong a personality as one could wish to encounter in real life. he did what he liked with a congregation largely composed of the motley worldlings of witching hill. small solicitors and west-end tradesmen, bank officials, outside brokers, first-class clerks in government offices, they had not a sunday soul to call their own, these hard-headed holders of season tickets to waterloo.
throughout the summer they flocked to church when their hearts were on the river; in the depths of winter they got up for early celebration on the one morning when they might have lain abed. their most obsequious devotions did not temper the preacher's truculence, any more than his strongest onslaught discouraged their good works. they gave of their substance at his every call, and were even more lavish on their own initiative. thus, in my second summer at witching hill, the vicarage was practically rebuilt out of the pockets of parishioners; and we had no difficulty in providing a furnished substitute on the favourite woodland side of mulcaster park.
great was the jealousy in witching hill road, but futile the fluttering of our queen anne dovecots; for we saw very little more of the vicar for having him in our midst. he was always either immured in his study, or else hurrying to or from some service or parochial engagement; and although he had a delightful roadside manner, and the same fine smile for high and low, he would stop to speak to neither on his way. out of church, in fact, mr. brabazon preserved a wise aloofness which only served to emphasise the fierce intimacy of his pulpit utterances, and combined with his contempt of popularity to render him by far the most popular figure in the neighbourhood.
it goes without saying that this remarkable man was a high churchman and a celibate. his house was kept, and his social short-comings made good, by two misses brabazon, each as unlike him as possible in her own way. miss ruth, who was younger, added to her brother's energy a sympathetic charm and a really good voice which made her the darling of the parish hall and humbler edifices. miss julia's activities were more sedentary and domestic, as perhaps became the least juvenile of the trio, and so it was that i saw most of her. we had a whole day together over the inventory, and it was miss julia who interviewed me about everything else connected with the house. she was never short with me on those occasions, never ungracious or (what is worse) unduly gracious, but she had always a pleasant word, and nearly always an innocent little joke as well. innocence and jocosity were two of her leading characteristics; another was a genuine but ingenuous literary faculty. this she exercised in editing the parish magazine, and supplying it with moral serials which occasionally reached volume form under the auspices of the religious tract society.
on an evening late in april, when the cuckoo was wound up in the wood behind mulcaster park, and most of the beds in front were flowering for the first time, a gaunt figure came to the gate of the temporary vicarage and beckoned to me passing on the other side of the road. it was miss julia, and i found her looking gently humorous and knowing across the gate.
"the trees are coming out so beautifully," she began, "in the grounds behind these gardens. i was wondering if it would be possible to procure a permit to go over them, mr. gillon."
"do you mean for yourself, miss brabazon?"
"well, yes, as a matter of fact i do."
as she spoke i could not but notice that she glanced ever so slightly towards the house behind her, and that her voice had fallen to a murmur, while a mottled colouring appeared between the lines of her guileless visage.
"i'm afraid i can't do anything," i said. "but the vicar could, miss brabazon!" i added with conviction. "a line from him to sir christopher stainsby——"
i stopped because miss julia shook her head so decidedly.
"that would never do, mr. gillon. sir christopher is such a very rabid dissenter."
"so i have heard," i admitted, thinking rather of what i had seen. "but i don't believe he's as narrow as you think."
"i couldn't trouble the vicar about it, in any case," said miss brabazon, hurriedly. "i shouldn't even like him to know that i had troubled you, mr. gillon. he's such a severe critic that i never tell him what i'm writing until it's finished."
"then you are writing something about witching hill house, miss brabazon?"
"i was thinking of it. i haven't begun. but i never saw any place that i felt such a desire to write about. the old house in the old woods, say a hundred years ago! don't you think it an ideal scene for a story, mr. gillon?"
"it depends on the story you want to tell," said i, sententiously.
a strange light was burning in the weak eyes of miss julia. it might almost have been a flicker of the divine fire. but now she dropped her worn eyelids, and gazed into the road with the dreamy cunning of the born creator.
"i should have quite a plot," she decided. "it would be ... yes, it would be about some extraordinary person who lived in there, in the wood and the house, only of course ages and ages ago. i think i should make him—in fact i'm quite sure he would be—a very wicked person, though of course he'd have to come all right in the end."
"you must be thinking of the man who really did live there."
"who was that?"
"the infamous lord mulcaster."
"really, mr. gillon? i don't think i ever heard of him. of course i know the present family by name; aren't these delavoyes connected with them in some way?"
i explained the connection as i knew it, which was not very thoroughly. but i unfortunately said enough to cause a rapid fall in poor miss julia's mottled countenance.
"then i must give up the idea of that story. they would think i meant their ancestor, and that would never do. i'm sorry, because i never felt so inclined to write anything before. but i'm very glad you told me, mr. gillon."
"but they wouldn't mind a bit, miss brabazon! they're not in the least sensitive about him," i assured her.
"i couldn't think of it," replied miss julia, haughtily. "it would be in the very worst of taste."
"but uvo would love it. he's full of the old villain. he might help you if you'd let him. he's at the british museum at this moment, getting deeper and deeper into what he calls the family mire."
"i happen to see him coming down the road," observed miss julia, dryly. "i must really beg that you will not refer to the subject again, mr. gillon."
but in her voice and manner there was a hesitating reluctance that emboldened me to use my own judgment about that, especially when uvo delavoye (whose mother and sister were keen brabazonians) himself introduced the topic on joining us, with a gratuitous remark about his "unfilial excavations in bloomsbury."
"i've opened up a new lazar-house this very day," he informed us, with shining eyes, when miss julia had shown an interest in spite of herself.
"by the way," i cut in, "don't you think it would all make magnificent material for a novel, uvo?"
"if you could find anybody to publish it!" he answered, laughing.
"you wouldn't mind if he was put into a book—and the place as well?"
"i wouldn't, if nobody else didn't! why? who's thinking of doing us the honour?"
dear miss julia coughed and laughed with delicious coyness. my liberty had been condoned.
"was it you, miss brabazon?" cried uvo, straightening his face with the nerve that never failed him at a climax.
"well, it was and it wasn't," she replied, exceeding slyly. "i did think i should like to write a little story about witching hill house, and put in rather a bad character; at least he would begin by being rather undesirable, perhaps. but i was forgetting that the place had been in your family, mr. delavoye. i certainly never knew, until mr. gillon told me, that one of the lords mulcaster had been—er—perhaps—no better than he ought to have been."
"to put it mildly," said delavoye, with smiling face and shrieking eyes. "you may paint the bad old hat as black as mine, miss brabazon, and still turn him out a saint compared with the villain of the case i've been reading up to-day. so you really needn't worry about anybody's susceptibilities. lay on the local colour inches deep! you won't make the place as red as the old gentleman painted it in blood and wine!"
"really, mr. delavoye!" cried miss julia, jocosely shocked. "you mustn't forget that my story would only appear in our parish magazine—unless the r.t.s. took it afterwards."
"my rude forefather in a religious tract!"
"of course i should quite reform him in the end."
"you'd have your work cut out, miss brabazon."
"i ought to begin with you, you know!" said miss julia, shaking a facetious finger in uvo's face. "i'm afraid you're rather an irreverent young man, and i don't know what the vicar would say if he heard us." she threw another deliciously guilty glance towards the house. "but if you really mean what you say, and you're sure mrs. delavoye and your sister won't mind either——"
"mind!" he interrupted. "forgive me, miss brabazon, but how could they be sensitive about the last head but five of a branch of the family which doesn't even recognise our existence?"
"very well, then! i'll take you at your word, and the—the blood and thunder," whispered miss julia, as though they were bad words, "be on your own head, mr. delavoye!"
thereafter, in a quivering silence, uvo took me home with him, and straight up into his own room, where he first shut door and window without a word. never since have i heard man laugh quite so loud and long as he did then.
"but you don't see the point!" he arrogated through his tears, because i made rather less noise.
"what is it, then?"
"i told you i'd opened up a new sink to-day?"
"you said something of the sort."
"it was a sink of fresh iniquity. i came across it in an old collection of trials; it isn't as much as mentioned in any memoir of the old reprobate, nor yet in the many annals of witching hill. yet he once figured in one of the most disgraceful cases on record."
the case was all that, as delavoye summed it up for my benefit. the arch-villain of the piece was of course his scandalous progenitor, aided and abetted by a quite unspeakable crew. there was a sorely distressed heroine in humble life—a poor little milliner from shoreditch—but because it was all too true, there had been no humble hero to wreak poetic vengeance on the miscreant.
"not a nursery story, i grant you! but there were some good touches in the version i struck," said delavoye, producing his museum note-book. "one or two i couldn't help taking down. 'in obedience to the custom of the times,' for instance, 'the young lord proceeded to perform the grand tour; and it is reported that having sailed from naples to constantinople, he there imbibed so great an admiration for the manners of the turks, that on his return to england in 1766, he caused an outlying portion of his family mansion to be taken down, and to be rebuilt in the form of a harem.'"
"rot!"
"i took it down word for word. i've often wondered how the turkish pavilion got its name; now we know all about it, and why it had a tunnel connecting it with the house."
"poor little milliner!"
"i believe you, gilly. listen to this, when she was a prisoner in his town house, before they spirited her out here—'looking out of the window at about eight o'clock, she observed a young woman passing, to whom she threw out her handkerchief, which was then heavy with tears, intending to attract her attention and send to her father for assistance.'"
"because the handkerchief was marked?"
"and so heavy with her tears that she could throw it like a tennis-ball!"
the note-book was put away. there was an end also of our hilarity.
"and this dear old girl," said uvo, with affectionate disrespect, "thinks she's a fit and proper writer to cope with that immortal skunk! false sextus in a parish magazine! proud tarquin done really proud at last!"
it was on the tip of my tongue to make it quite clear to uvo that miss julia had not wittingly proposed to write about his ancestor at all; that apparently she had never heard of his existence before that evening, and that it was her own original idea to make witching hill house the haunt of some purely imaginary scoundrel. but i knew my uvo well enough by this time to hold my tongue, and at least postpone the tiresome discussion of a rather stale point on which we were never likely to agree.
but i stayed to supper at no. 7; and uvo kept me till the small hours, listening to further details of his last researches, and to the farrago of acute conjecture, gay reminiscence and vivid hearsay which his reading invariably inspired. it was base subject-metal that did not gain a certain bright refinement in his fiery mind, or fall from his lips with a lively ring; and that night he was at his best about things which have an opposite effect on many young men. it must have been after one when i left him. i saw the light go out behind the cheap stained glass in the front door, and i heard uvo going upstairs as i departed. the next and only other light i passed, in the houses on that side of the road, was at the top of the one which was now the vicarage. thence also came an only sound; it was the continuous crackle of a typewriter, through the open window of the room which i knew miss julia had appropriated as her own.
that end of the estate had by this time a full team of tenants, whereas i had two sets of painters and paperhangers to keep up to the mark in witching hill road. this rather came between me and my friends in mulcaster park, especially as my mr. muskett lived in their road, and his house had eyes and a tongue. so it happened that i saw no more of miss julia brabazon until she paid me a queer little visit at my office one afternoon about five o'clock. she was out of breath, and her flurried manner quickened my ear to the sound of her brother's bells ringing in the distance for week-day evensong.
"i thought i'd like to have one word with you, mr. gillon, about my story," she panted, with a guilty shrinking from the sheet of glass behind her. "it will be finished in a few days now, i'm thankful to say. i've been so hard at work upon it, you can't think!"
"oh, yes, i can," said i; for there seemed to be many more lines on the simple, eager countenance; the drollery had gone out of it, and its heightened colouring had an unhealthy, bluish tinge.
"i'm afraid i have been burning the midnight oil a little," she admitted with a sort of coy bravado. "but there seems so much to do during the day, and everything is so quiet at night, unless it's that wretched typewriter of mine! but i muffle the bell, and luckily my brother and sister are sound sleepers."
"you must be keen, miss brabazon, to turn night into day."
"keen? i never enjoyed writing half so much. it's no effort; the story simply writes itself. i don't feel as if it were a story at all, but something that i see and hear and have just got to get down as fast as ever i can! i feel as if i really knew that old monster we were talking about the other day. sometimes he quite frightens me. and that's why i've come to you, mr. gillon. i almost fear i'm making him too great a horror after all!"
it was impossible not to smile. "that would be a difficult matter, from all i hear, miss brabazon."
"i meant from the point of view of his descendants in general, and these dear delavoyes in particular. rather than hurt their feelings, mr. gillon, i need hardly tell you i'd destroy my story in a minute."
"that would be a thousand pities," said i, honestly thinking of her wasted time.
"i'm not so sure," said miss julia, doubtfully. "i sometimes think, when i read the newspapers, that there are bad people enough in the world without digging up more from their graves. yet at other times i don't feel as if i were doing that either. it's more as though this wicked old wretch had come to life of his own accord and insisted on being written about. i seem to feel him almost at my elbow, forcing me to write down i don't know what."
"but that sounds like inspiration!" i exclaimed, impressed by the good faith patent in the tired, ingenuous, serio-comic face.
"i don't know what it is," replied miss julia, "or whether i'm writing sense or nonsense. i never like to look next day. i only know that at the time i quite frighten myself and—make as big a fool of myself as though i were in my poor heroine's shoes—which is so absurd!" she laughed uneasily, her colour slightly heightened. "but i only meant to ask you, mr. gillon, whether you honestly and truly think that the delavoyes won't mind? you see, he really was their ancestor, and i do make him a most odious creature."
"but i don't suppose you give his real name?"
"oh, dear, no. that would never do. i call him the duke of doehampton, and the story is called 'his graceless grace.' isn't it a good title, mr. gillon?"
i lied like a man, but was still honest enough to add that i thought it even better as a disguise. "i feel sure, miss brabazon, that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily," i took it upon myself to assert; but indeed her title alone would have reassured me, had i for a moment shared her conscientious qualms.
"i am so glad you think so," said miss julia, visibly relieved. "still, i shall not offer the story anywhere until mr. delavoye has seen or heard every word of it."
"i thought it was for your own parish magazine?"
miss julia at last obliged me with her most facetious and most confidential smile.
"i am not tied down to the parish magazine," said she. "there are higher fields. i am not certain that 'his graceless grace' is altogether suited to the young—the young parishioner, mr. gillon! i must read it over and see. and—yes—i shall invite mr. delavoye to come and hear it, before i decide to send it anywhere at all."
the reading actually took place on an evening in may, when the vicar had accompanied his younger sister up to exeter hall; and at the last moment i also received a verbal invitation, delivered and inspired by that rascal uvo, who declared that i had let him in for the infliction and must bear my share. more justly, he argued that the pair of us might succeed in keeping each other awake, whereas one alone would infallibly disgrace himself; and we had solemnly agreed upon a system of watch-and-watch, by the alternate quarter-of-an-hour, before we presented ourselves at the temporary vicarage after supper.
miss julia received us in stiff silk that supplied a sort of sibilant obbligato to a nervous welcome; and her voice maintained a secretive pitch, even when the maid had served coffee and shut the door behind her, lending a surreptitious air to the proceedings before they could be said to have begun. it was impossible not to wonder what the vicar would have said to see his elderly sister discoursing profane fiction to a pair of heathens who seldom set foot inside his church.
he would scarcely have listened with our resignation; for poor miss julia read as badly as she wrote, and never was story opened with clumsier ineptitude than hers. we had sheet upon typewritten sheet about the early life and virtuous vicissitudes of some deplorably dull young female in the east end of london; and in my case slumber was imminent when the noble villain made his entry in the cinnamon waistcoat of the picture at hampton court. at that i tried to catch uvo's eye, but it was already fixed upon the reader's face with an intensity which soon attracted her attention.
"isn't that your idea of him, mr. delavoye?" asked miss julia, apprehensively.
"well, yes, it is; but it was sir godfrey kneller's first," said uvo, laughing. "so you took the trouble to go all the way over there to study his portrait, miss brabazon?"
"what portrait? all the way over where, mr. delavoye?"
uvo entered into particulars which left the lady's face a convincing blank. she had seen no portrait; it was years since she had been through the galleries at hampton court, and then without a catalogue. uvo seemed to experience so much difficulty in crediting this disclaimer, that i asked whether cinnamon had not been a favourite colour with the bloods of the eighteenth century. on his assent the reading proceeded in a slightly altered voice, in which i thought i detected a note of not unnatural umbrage.
but far greater coincidences were in store, and those of such a character that it was certainly difficult to believe that they were anything of the sort. considered as an attempt at dramatic narrative, the story was, of course, beneath criticism. it was all redundant description, gratuitous explanations, facetious turns to serious sentences, and declared intentions which entirely spoilt the effect of their due fulfilment. bored to extinction with the heroine, who only became interesting on the villain's advent, as his predestined prey, we thenceforth heard no more of her until his antecedents had been set forth in solid slabs of the pluperfect tense. these dwelt with stolid solemnity upon the distinctions and debaucheries of his university career, and then all at once on the effect of subsequent travel upon a cynical yet impressionable mind. in an instant both of us were attending, and even i guessed what was coming, and what had happened. probably by half-forgotten hearsay, our dear good lady had tapped the same muddy stream as uvo delavoye, and some of the mud had silted into a mind too innocent to appreciate its quality.
"debased and degraded by the wicked splendours of barbaric courts, the unprincipled young nobleman had decided not only to 'do in turkey as the turkeys did,' but to initiate the heathen institution of polygamy among his own broad acres on his return to england, home, and only too much beauty!... poor, innocent, confiding millicent; little did she dream, when he asked her to be his, that he only meant 'one of the many'; that the place awaiting her was but her niche in the seraglio which he had wickedly had built, in a corner of his stately grounds, on some eastern model."
delavoye looked at me without a trace of amusement, but rather in alarmed recognition of the weirdly sustained parallel between rascal fact and foolish fiction. but as yet we had only scratched the thin ice of the situation; soon we were almost shuddering from our knowledge of the depths below.
the unhappy heroine had repulsed the advances of the villain in the story as in the actual case; in both she was from the same locality (where, however, our vicar had held his last curacy); in both, enticed into his lordship's coach and driven off at a great rate to his london mansion, where the first phase of her harrowing adventures ensued. so innocently were these described that we must have roared over them by ourselves; but there was no temptation to smile under the rosy droll nose of poor miss julia, by this time warmed to her work, and reeling off her own interminable periods with pathetic zest. yet even her jocose and sidelong style could no longer conceal an interest which had become more dramatic than she was aware. just as it first had taken charge of her pen, so her story had now gained undisputed command of the poor lady's lips; and she was actually reading it far better than at first, as if subconsciously stimulated by our rapt attention, though mercifully ignorant of its uncomfortable quality. i speak only for myself, and it may be that as a very young man i took the whole business more seriously than i should to-day. but i must own there were some beads upon my forehead when delavoye relieved the tension by jumping to his feet in unrestrained excitement.
"i'm glad you like that," said miss julia, with a pleased smile, "because i thought it was good myself. her handkerchief would have her name on it, you see; and she was able to throw it out of the window like a stone, at the feet of the first passer-by, because it was so heavy with her tears. of course she hoped the person who picked it up would see the name and——"
"of course!" cried uvo, cavalierly. "it was an excellent idea—i always thought so."
miss julia eyed him with a puzzled smirk.
"how could you always think a thing i've only just invented?" she asked acutely.
"well, you see, it's happened in real life before to-day," he faltered, seeing his mistake.
"like a good deal of my story, it appears?"
"like something in every story that was ever written. truth, you know——"
"quite so, mr. delavoye! but i saw you looking at mr. gillon a minute ago as though something else was familiar to you both. and i should just like to know what it was."
"i'm sure i've forgotten, miss brabazon."
"it wasn't the part about the—the turkish building in the grounds—i suppose?"
"yes," said uvo, turning honest in desperation.
"and where am i supposed to have read about that?"
"i'm quite certain you never read it at all, miss brabazon!"
now miss julia had lost neither her temper nor her smile, and she had not been more severe on delavoye than his unsatisfactory manner invited. but the obvious sincerity of his last answer appeased her pique, and she leant forward in sudden curiosity.
"then there is a book about him, mr. delavoye?"
"not exactly a book."
"i know!" she cried. "it's the case you'd been reading the other night—isn't it?"
"perhaps it is."
"was he actually tried—that lord mulcaster?"
the wretched uvo groaned and nodded.
"what for, mr. delavoye?"
"his life!" exclaimed uvo, moistening his lips. miss julia beamed and puckered with excitement.
"how very dreadful, to be sure! and had he actually committed a murder?"
"i've no doubt he had," said uvo, eagerly. "i wouldn't put anything past him, as they say; but in those days it wasn't necessary to take life in order to forfeit your own. there were lots of other capital offences. the mere kidnapping of the young lady, exactly as you describe it——"
"but did he really do such a thing?" demanded miss julia.
and her obviously genuine amazement redoubled mine.
"exactly as you have described it," repeated delavoye. "he travelled in the east, commenced bluebeard on his return, fished his fatima like yours out of some little shop down shoreditch way, and even drove her to your own expedient of turning her tears to account!"
and he dared to give me another look—shot with triumph—while miss julia supported an invidious position as best she might.
"wait a bit!" said i, stepping in at last. "i thought i gathered from you the other day, miss brabazon, that you felt the reality of your story intensely?"
"i did indeed, mr. gillon."
"it distressed you very much?"
"i might have been going through the whole thing."
"it—it even moved you to tears?"
"i should be ashamed to say how many."
"i daresay," i pursued, smiling with all my might, "that even your handkerchief was heavy with them, miss brabazon?"
"it was!"
"then so much for the origin of that idea! it would have occurred to anybody under similar circumstances."
miss julia gave me the smile i wanted. i felt i had gone up in her estimation, and sent delavoye down. but i had reckoned without his genius for taking a dilemma by the horns.
"this is an old quarrel between gillon and me, miss brabazon. i hold that all witching hill is more or less influenced by the wicked old wizard of the place. mr. gillon says it's all my eye, and simply will not let belief take hold of him. yet your turkish building actually existed within a few feet of where we're sitting now; and suppose the very leaves on the trees still whisper about it to those who have ears to hear; suppose you've taken the whole thing down almost at dictation! i don't know how your story goes on, miss brabazon——"
"no more do i," said miss brabazon, manifestly impressed and not at all offended by his theory. "it's a queer thing—i never should have thought of such a thing myself—but i certainly did dash it all off as if somebody was telling me what to say, and at such a rate that my mind's still a blank from one page to the next."
she picked the script out of her lap, and we watched her bewildered face as it puckered to a frown over the rustling sheets.
"i shouldn't wonder," said delavoye a little hastily, "if his next effort wasn't to subvert her religious beliefs."
"to make game of them!" assented miss julia in scandalised undertones. "'the demoniacal duke now set himself to deface and destroy the beauty of holiness, to cast away the armour of light, and to put upon him the true colours of an aristocratic atheist of the deepest dye.'"
"exactly what he did," murmured uvo, with another look at me. it was not a look of triumph unalloyed; it was at least as full of vivid apprehension.
"i shall cross that out," said miss julia decidedly. "i don't know what i was thinking of to write anything like that. it really makes me almost afraid to go on."
uvo shot out a prompt and eager hand.
"will you let me take it away to finish by myself, miss brabazon?"
"i don't think i can. i must look and see if there's anything more like that."
"but it isn't your fault if there is. you've simply been inspired to write the truth."
"but i feel almost ashamed."
and the typewritten sheets rustled more than ever as she raised them once more. but delavoye jumped up and stood over her with a stiff lip.
"miss brabazon, you really must let me read the rest of it to myself!"
"i must see first whether i can let anybody."
"let me see instead!"
heaven knows how she construed his wheedling eagerness! there was a moment when they both had hold of the ms., when i felt that my friend was going too far, that his obstinate persistence could not fail to be resented as a liberty. but it was just at such moments that there was a smack of greatness about uvo delavoye; given the stimulus, he could carry a thing off with a high hand and the light touch of a born leader; and so it must have been that he had miss julia coyly giggling when i fully expected her to stamp her foot.
"you talk about our curiosity," she rallied him. "you men are just as bad!"
"i have a right to be curious," returned uvo, in a tone that surprised me as much as hers. "you forget that your villain was once the head of our clan, and that so far the fact is quite unmistakable."
"but that's just what i can't understand!"
"yet the fact remains, miss brabazon, and i think it ought to count."
"my dear young man, that's my only excuse for this very infliction!" cried miss julia, with invincible jocosity. "if you'd rather it were destroyed, i shall be quite ready to destroy it, as mr. gillon knows. but i should like you to hear the whole of it first."
"and i could judge so much better if i read the rest to myself!"
and still he held his corner of the ms., and she hers with an equal tenacity, which i believe to have been partly reflex and instinctive, but otherwise due to the discovery that she had written quite serenely about a blasphemer and an atheist, and not for a moment to any other qualm or apprehension whatsoever. and then as i watched them their eyes looked past me with one accord; the sheaf of fastened sheets fluttered to the ground between them; and i turned to behold the vicar standing grim and gaunt upon the threshold, with a much younger and still more scandalised face peeping over his shoulder.
"i didn't know that you were entertaining company," observed the vicar, bowing coldly to us youths. "are you aware that it's nearly midnight?"
miss julia said she never could have believed it, but that she must have lost all sense of time, as she had been reading something to us.
"i'm sure that was very kind, and has been much appreciated," said the vicar, with his polar smile. "i suppose this was what you were reading?"
and he was swooping down on the ms., but delavoye was quicker; and quicker yet than either hand was the foot interposed like lightning by the vicar.
"you'll allow me?" he said, and so picked the crumpled sheets from under it. uvo bowed, and the other returned the courtesy with ironic interest.
in quivering tones miss julia began, "it's only something i've been——"
"considering for the parish magazine," ejaculated uvo. "miss brabazon did me the honour of consulting me about it."
"and may i ask your responsibility for the parish magazine, mr. delavoye?"
"it's a story," continued uvo, ignoring the question and looking hard at miss julia—"a local story, evidently written for local publication, the scene being laid here at witching hill house. the principal character is the very black sheep of my family who once lived there."
"i'm aware of the relationship," said the vicar, dryly unimpressed.
"it's not one that we boast about; hence miss brabazon's kindness in trying to ascertain whether my people or i were likely to object to its publication."
"well," said the vicar, "i'm quite sure that neither you nor your people would have any objection to miss brabazon's getting to bed by midnight."
he returned to the door, which he held wide open with urbane frigidity. "now, julia, if you'll set us an example."
and at the door he remained when the bewildered lady, delivered from an embarrassment that she could not appreciate, and committed to a subterfuge in which she could see no point, had flown none the less readily, with a hectic simper and a whistle of silk.
"now, gentlemen," continued the vicar, "it's nearly midnight, as i've said more than once."
"i was to take the story with me, to finish it by myself," explained uvo, with the smile of a budding ambassador.
"oh, very well," rejoined the vicar, shutting the door. "then we must keep each other a minute longer. i happen myself to constitute the final court of appeal in all matters connected with the parish magazine. moreover, mr. delavoye, i'm a little curious to see the kind of composition that merits a midnight discussion between my sister and two young men whose acquaintance i myself have had so little opportunity of cultivating."
he dropped into a chair, merely waving to us to do the same; and delavoye did; but i remained standing, with my eyes on the reader's face, and i saw him begin where miss julia had left off and the ms. had fallen open. i could not be mistaken about that; there was the mark of his own boot upon the page; but the vicar read it without wincing at the passage which his sister had declared her intention of crossing out. his brows took a supercilious lift; his cold eyes may have grown a little harder as they read; and yet once or twice they lightened with a human relish—an icy twinkle—a gleam at least of something i had not thought to see in mr. brabazon. perhaps i did not really see it now. if you look long enough at the sphinx itself, in the end it will yield some semblance of an answering look. and i never took my eyes from the vicar's granite features, as typewritten sheet after sheet was turned so softly by his iron hand, that it might have been some doctrinal pamphleteer who claimed his cool attention.
when he had finished he rose very quietly and put the whole ms. behind the grate. then i remembered that delavoye also was in the room, and i signalled to him because the vicar was stooping over the well-laid grate and striking matches. but delavoye only shook his head, and sat where he was when mr. brabazon turned and surveyed us both, with the firewood crackling behind his clerical tails.
"sorry to disappoint you, mr. delavoye," said he; "but i think you will agree that this is a case for the exercise of my powers in connection with our little magazine. the stupendous production now perishing in the flames was of course intended as a practical joke at our expense."
"and i never saw it!" cried uvo, scrambling to his feet. "of course, if you come to think of it, that's the whole and only explanation—isn't it, gillon? a little dig at the delavoyes as well, by the way!"
"chiefly at us, i imagine," said the vicar dryly. "i rather suspect that the very style of writing is an attempt at personal caricature. the taste is execrable all through. but that is only to be expected of the anonymous lampooner."
"was there really no name to it, mr. brabazon?"
the question was asked for information, but uvo's tone was that of righteous disgust.
"no name at all. and one sheet of type-writing is exactly like another. my sister had not read it all herself, i gather?"
"evidently not. and she only read the first half to us."
"thank goodness for that!" cried the vicar, off his guard. "the whole impertinence," he ran on more confidentially, "is so paltry, so vulgar, so egregiously badly done! it's all beneath contempt, and i shall not descend to the perpetrator's level by attempting to discover who he is. neither shall i permit the matter to be mentioned again in my household. and as gentlemen i look to you both to resist the ventilation of a most ungentlemanly hoax."
but the promise that we freely gave did not preclude us from returning at once to no. 7, and there and then concocting a letter to miss julia, which i slipped into the letter-box of the makeshift vicarage as the birds were waking in the wood behind mulcaster park.
it was simply to say that uvo was after all afraid that his kith and kin really might resent the publication of her thrilling but painful tale of their common ancestor; and therefore he had taken miss brabazon at her word, and the ms. was no more. its destruction was really demanded by the inexplicable fact that the story was the true story of a discreditable case in which the infamous lord mulcaster had actually figured; and the further fact that miss brabazon had nevertheless invented it, so far as she personally was aware, would have constituted another and still more interesting case for the psychical research society, but for the aforesaid objections to its publication in any shape or form.
all this made a document difficult to draw up, and none too convincing when drawn; but that was partly because the collaborators were already divided over every feature of the extraordinary affair, which indeed afforded food for argument for many a day to come. but in the meantime our dear miss julia accepted sentence and execution with a gentle and even a jocose resignation which made us both miserable. we did not even know that there had been any real occasion for the holocaust for which we claimed responsibility, or to what extent or lengths the unconscious plagiarism had proceeded. delavoye, of course, took the view that coincided with his precious theory, whereas i argued from mr. brabazon's coolness that we had heard the worst.
but the vicar always was cool out of the pulpit; and it was almost a pity that we rewarded his moderation by going to church the next sunday, for i never shall forget his ferocious sermon on the modern purveyor of pernicious literature. he might have been raving from bitter experience, as delavoye of course declared he was. but there is one redeeming point in my recollection of his tirade. and that is a vivid and consoling vision of the elder miss brabazon, listening with a rapt and unconscious serenity to every burning word.
