CHAPTER VI
ODD STORY OF CAPTAIN DUGGLE!
Christmas Day, 1918, was a merry feast, and nowhere merrier than at OldPlace. There was a house-party and, for dinner on the day itself, alocal contingent as well: Miss Wall, the Irechesters, Mr. Penrose, andDoctor Mary. Mr. Beaumaroy also had been invited by Mrs. Naylor; sheconsidered him an interesting man and felt pity for the obvious tediumof his situation; but he had not felt able to leave his old friend.Doctor Mary's Paying Guest was of the house-party, not merely a dinnerguest. She was asked over to spend three days and went, accompanied byJeanne, who by this time was crying much less; crying was no longer thecue; her mistress, and not merely stern Doctor Mary, had plainly shownher that. Gertie Naylor had invited Cynthia to help her in entertainingthe subalterns, though Gertie was really quite equal to that taskherself; there were only three of them, and if a pretty girl is notequal to three subalterns--well, what are we coming to in England? And,as it turned out, Miss Gertie had to deal with them all--sometimescollectively, sometimes one by one--practically unassisted. Cynthia wasotherwise engaged. Gertie complained neither of the cause nor of itsconsequence.
The drink--or drugs--hypothesis was exploded, and Miss Wall'sspeculations set at rest, with a quite comforting solatium of romanticand unhappy interest--"a nice titbit for the old cat," as Mr. Naylorunkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richersympathy than Doctor Mary's common sense afforded; out of this need therevelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with thenarrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimatefriends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, shecould not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, oldNaylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite forthe fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer--all thesewere at her service, all enlisted in the effort to make her forget, andlive and laugh again. Her heart responded; she found herself becominghappy at a rate which made her positively ashamed. No wonder tactfulJeanne discovered that the cue was changed!
Fastidious old Naylor regarded his wife with the affection of habit andwith a little disdain for the ordinariness of her virtues--not to sayof the mind which they adorned. His daughter was to him a precious toy,on which he tried jokes, played tricks, and lavished gifts, for the joyof seeing the prettiness of her reactions to his treatment. It neveroccurred to him to think that his toy might be broken; fond as he was,his feeling for her lacked the apprehensiveness of the deepest love. Buthe idolized his son, and in this case neither without fear nor withoutunderstanding. For four years now he had feared for him bitterly: forhis body, for his life. At every waking hour his inner cry had been evenas David's, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son!" For atevery moment of those four years it might be that his son was even thendead. That terror, endured under a cool and almost off-hand demeanour,was past; but he feared for his son still. Of all who went to the war asCrusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went,so--obviously--he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all hisillusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities,about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations,stronger in his mind than ever. How could he get through life withoutbeing too sore hurt and wounded, without being cut to the very quick byhis inevitable discoveries? Old Naylor did not see how it was to bedone, or even hoped for; but the right kind of wife was unquestionablythe best chance.
He had cast a speculative eye on Cynthia Walford--Irechester had caughthim at it--but, as he observed her more, she did not altogether satisfyhim. Alec needed someone more stable, stronger, someone in a senseprotective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed throughhis thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself,remember that she was--or might be made--an attractive young woman;and--yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window--without,however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities ofmind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence.But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was togive, not to seek, protection and support.
Of Cynthia's woeful experience Alec had spoken to his father once only."It makes me mad to think the fellow who did that wore a Britishuniform!"
How unreasonable! Since by all the laws of average, when millions of menare wearing a uniform, there must be some rogues in it. But it wasAlec's way to hold himself responsible for the whole of His Majesty'sForces. Their honour was his; for their misdeeds he must in his ownperson make reparation. "That fellow Beaumaroy may have lost hisconscience, but my boy seems to have acquired five million," the old mangrumbled to himself--a grumble full of pride.
The father might analyse; with Alec it was all impulse--the impulse tosoothe, to obliterate, to atone. The girl had been sore hurt; with theacuteness of sympathy he divined that she felt herself in a way soiledand stained by contact with unworthiness and by a too easy acceptance ofit. All that must be swept out of her heart, out of her very memory, ifit could be.
Doctor Mary saw what was happening, and with a little pang to which shewould not have liked to own. She had set love affairs, and all thenotions connected therewith, behind her; but she had idealized AlecNaylor a little; and she thought Cynthia, in homely phrase, "hardly goodenough." Was it not rather perverse that the very fact of having been alittle goose should help her to win so rare a swan?
"You're taking my patient out of my hands, Captain Alec!" she said tohim jokingly. "And you're devoting great attention to the case."
He flushed. "She seems to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "Sheseems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was"Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now--in affection, with a touchof chaff.)
_O sancta simplicitas!_ Mary longed to say that Cynthia was a veryordinary child. Like to talk to him, indeed! Of course she did; and touse her girl's weapons on him; and to wonder, in an almost awestruckdelight, at their effect on this dazzling hero. Well, the guilelessnessof heroes!
So mused Mary, on the unprofessional side of her mind, as she watched,that Christmas-tide, Captain Alec's delicate, sensitively indirect anddelayed approach towards the ripe fruit that hung so ready to his hand."Part of his chivalry to assume she can't think of him yet!" Mary washalf impatient, half reluctantly admiring; not an uncommon mixture offeeling for the extreme forms of virtue to produce. In the net result,however, her mental image of Alec lost something of its heroicproportions.
But professionally (the distinction must not be pushed too far, she wasnot built in water-tight compartments) Tower Cottage remainedobstinately in the centre of her thoughts; and, connected with it, therearose a puzzle over Dr. Irechester's demeanour. She had taken advantageof Beaumaroy's permission--though rather doubtful whether she was doingright, for she was still inexperienced in niceties of etiquette--andsent on the letter, with a frank note explaining her own feelings andthe reason which had caused her to pay her visit to Mr. Saffron. Butthough Irechester was quite friendly when they met at Old Place beforedinner, and talked freely to her during a rather prolonged period ofwaiting (Captain Alec and Cynthia, Gertie and two subalterns were verylate, having apparently forgotten dinner in more refined delights), hemade no reference to the letters, nor to Tower Cottage or its inmates.Mary herself was too shy to break the ice, but wondered at his silence,and the more because the matter evidently had not gone out of his mind.For, after dinner, when the port had gone round once and the properhealths been honoured, he said across the table to Mr. Penrose:
"We were talking the other day of the Tower--on the heath, you know, byold Saffron's cottage--and none of us knew its history. You know allabout Inkston from time out o' mind. Have you got any story about it?"
Mr. Penrose practised as a solicitor in London, but lived in a littleold house near the Irechesters' in the village street, and devoted hisleisure to the antiquities and topography of the neighbourhood; his lorewas plentiful and curious, if not important. He was a small, neat oldfellow,
with white whiskers of the antique cut, a thin voice, and a drycackling laugh.
"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening,if you're in the mood to hear it."
The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fellon the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authorityan erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for thetale dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's earlymanhood.
A seafaring man had suddenly appeared, out of space, as it were, atInkston, and taken the cottage. He carried with him a strong smell ofrum and tobacco, and gave it to be understood that his name was CaptainDuggle. He was no beauty, and his behaviour was worse than his looks. Tothat quiet village, in those quiet strait-laced times, he was a horrorand a portent. He not only drank prodigiously--that, being in characterand also a source of local profit, might have passed with mildcensure--but he swore and blasphemed horribly, spurning the parson,mocking at Revelation, even at the Deity Himself. The Devil was hisfriend, he said. A most terrible fellow, this Captain Duggle. Inkston'shair stood on end, and no wonder!
"No doubt they shivered with delight over it all," commented Mr. Naylor.
Captain Duggle lived all by himself--well, what God-fearing Christian,male or female, would be found to live with him?--came and wentmysteriously and capriciously, always full of money, and at leastequally full of drink. What he did with himself nobody knew, but evillegends gathered about him. Terrified wayfarers, passing the cottage bynight, took oath that they had heard more than one voice!
"This is proper Christmas!" a subaltern interjected into Gertie's ear.
Mr. Penrose, with an air of gratification, continued his narrative.
"The story goes on to tell," he said, "of a final interview with thevillage clergyman, in which that reverend man, as in duty bound,solemnly told Captain Duggle that, however much he might curse, andblaspheme, and drink, and--er--do all the other things that the Captaindid" (Obviously here Mr. Penrose felt hampered by the presence ofladies), "yet Death, Judgment, and Churchyard waited for him at last.Whereupon the Captain, emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation,which no one ever dared to repeat and which consequently is lost totradition, declared that the first he'd never feared, the second wasparson's gabble, and as to the third, never should his dead toes benearer any church than for the last forty years his living feet hadbeen! If so be as he wasn't drowned at sea, he'd make a grave forhimself!"
Mr. Penrose paused, sipped port wine, and resumed.
"And so, no doubt, he did, building the Tower for that purpose. Bybribes and threats he got two men to work for him. One was the uncle ofmy informant. But though he built that Tower, and inside it dug hisgrave, he never lay there, being, as things turned out, carried off bythe Devil. Oh, yes, there was no doubt! He went home one night--aSaturday--very drunk, as usual. On the Sunday night a belatedwayfarer--possibly also drunk--heard wild shrieks and saw a strange redglow through the window of the Tower--now, by the way, boarded up. Andno doubt he'd have smelt brimstone if the wind hadn't set the wrong way!Anyhow Captain Duggle was never seen again by mortal eyes--at Inkston,at all events. After a time the landlord of the cottage screwed up hiscourage to resume possession--the Captain had only a lease of it, thoughhe built the Tower at his own charges, and, I believe, without anypermission, the landlord being much too frightened to interfere withhim. He found everything in a sad mess there, while in the Tower itselfevery blessed stick had been burnt up. So the story looks prettyplausible."
"And the grave?" This question came eagerly from at least three of thecompany.
"In front of the fireplace there was a big oblong hole--six feet bythree feet by four--planks at the bottom, the sides roughly lined withbrick. Captain Duggle's grave; but he wasn't in it!"
"But what really became of him, Mr. Penrose?" cried Cynthia.
"The Rising Generation is very sceptical," said old Naylor. "You, ofcourse, Penrose, believe the story?"
"I do," said Mr. Penrose composedly. "I believe that a devil carried himoff--and that its name was _delirium tremens_. We can guess--can't we,Irechester?--why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terrorinto the darkness. Where to? Was he drowned at sea, or did he take hislife, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole? Nobody knows. But thegrave he dug is there in the Tower--unless it's been filled up since oldSaffron has lived there."
"Why in the world wasn't it filled up before?" asked Alec Naylor, with alaugh. "People lived in the cottage, didn't they?"
"I've visited the cottage often," Irechester interposed, "when variouspeople had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used."
"It never was, I'm sure; and as for the grave--well, Alec, in countryparts, to this day, you'd be thought a bold man if you filled up agrave that your neighbour had dug for himself--and such a neighbour asCaptain Duggle! He might take it into his head some night to visit it,and if he found it filled up there'd be trouble--nasty trouble!" Hislaugh cackled out rather uncomfortably. Gertie shivered, and one of thesubalterns gulped down his port.
"Old Saffron's a man of education, I believe. No doubt he pays no heedto such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up," said Naylor.
"As to that I don't know. Perhaps you do, Irechester? He's your patient,isn't he?"
Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary. Before he replied to thequestion he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly. "I'veattended him on one or two occasions, but I've never seen the inside ofthe Tower. So I don't know either."
"Oh, but I'm curious! I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy," cried Cynthia.
The ironical character of Irechester's smile grew more pronounced, andhis voice was at its driest: "Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, MissWalford. As far as asking goes, there's no difficulty."
A pause followed this pointed remark, on which nobody seemed disposed tocomment. Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.
But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood withIrechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole TowerCottage business. Well, the first point she could soon settle--or try tosettle, anyhow.
With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was madeup, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; herresolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himselfisolated for the moment from everybody except Mary.
"You got my letter, Dr. Irechester? I--I rather expected an answer."
"Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct," he repliedsuavely, "that I thought my answer could wait till I met you hereto-day, as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing." He lookedher full in the eyes. "You were placed--placed, my dear colleague--in aposition in which you had no alternative."
"I thought so, Dr. Irechester, but----"
"Oh yes, clearly! I'm far from making any complaint." He gave her acourteous little bow, but it was one which plainly closed the subject.Indeed he passed by her and joined a group that had gathered on thehearthrug, leaving her alone.
So she stood for a moment, oppressed by a growing uneasiness. Irechestersaid nothing, but surely meant something of import? He mocked her, butnot idly or out of wantonness. He seemed almost to warn her. What couldthere be to warn her about? He had laid an odd emphasis on the word"placed"; he had repeated it. Who had "placed" her there? Mr. Saffron?Or Mr.----?
Alec Naylor broke in on her uneasy meditation. "It's a clinking night,Doctor Mary," he observed. "Do you mind if I walk Miss Walfordhome--instead of her going with you in your car, you know? It's only acouple of miles and----"
"Do you think your leg can stand it?"
He laughed. "I'll cut the thing off, if it dares to make anyobjection!"