Chapter Six
The Strange Man
THE NEXT morning Forester was awakened, not by the rain beating mercilessly on his tent, but by cheerful voices outside it.
"Get up, you lazy fellow!"
"What are you doing, snoring away this fine morning?"
He jumped up, opened the tent door, and found Jack and Don Mainwaring outside.
"We're going to bathe," said Jack. "Come along, it will be glorious this morning."
"And hurry up," said Don, "for the tide is just on the turn."
"Well, give a fellow time to dress," said Forester, laughing. "Come in and sit down. I've only one chair, but one of you can sit on the bed."
Forester was soon ready, and with bathing towels thrown over their shoulders the three young men set off for the shore. They had not gone far when Forester stopped.
"Wait a minute," he said, "I've forgotten my cans. I must leave them at the castle, and get water and milk on my way back."
"Rubbish and nonsense!" said Don. "You're not going to do any such thing. Fancy climbing this hill after bathing, and before you've had any breakfast! Mother is expecting you at the Bank. She told us to bring you."
Forester, as usual, protested strongly, but it was a case of two against one, and the Mainwaring brothers got their way.
When they arrived at the castle they saw a curious looking man standing near it, gazing at the back windows of the farmhouse. He was tall, powerfully built with a red face, coarse features, a heavy moustache, and a most unpleasant expression on his face.
He was dressed in a flannel shirt, an old brown suit which seemed too small for him -- for it was short in the sleeves, and the trousers did not reach his boots -- a brilliant red tie, and a panama hat. But the most remarkable thing about this man was his hair, which was red in color, and was hanging over his neck and almost touched his shoulders. He was carrying a large flat book in one hand and a camp stool in the other.
"Whoever in the world is that?" said Jack, as they caught sight of him.
The man looked up quickly on hearing footsteps coming along the road, and immediately walked on. But they came on him again, staring up at the great gateway and examining the coat of arms emblazoned above it. He turned round as they came up.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he said. "Fine old castle this."
They gave him a civil answer and passed on.
"Depend on it, that's the artist," said Forester, "and he wears his hair long to make himself look gifted."
He then told the brothers about the antiquarian, and how he had announced that an artist friend of his was coming to make sketches of Hildick Castle.
As they went down the hill into the village they saw three young men in front of them, also making for the shore, carrying towels and bathing gear.
"The Sinclairs, who have just arrived at the castle, I expect," said Forester.
Don proposed that they should speak to them at once, as they would be always coming across them on the shore. So they hurried on, and soon caught up with them. They told them that they also were going to bathe and asked them to join them. The eldest Sinclair, Val, appeared to Forester to be almost twenty. He had fair hair, blue eyes, and a pleasant open countenance. The second brother Dick, who was about a year younger, had curly black hair; while the third, Billy, was a heavily-built lad of seventeen.
The six young men became the best of friends before the bathe was over, and agreed to repeat the early morning dip every day when the tide was favourable. They also unanimously decided to waive all ceremony, and call each other by their Christian names. From this time forward they all formed one party on the shore, and wherever Jack and Don Mainwaring and Norman Forester went, the brothers Val, Dick and Billy Sinclair went with them.
After breakfast at the Bank, Forester returned with his friends to the shore, and spent the day lounging on the sand, climbing over the rocks, exploring the many winding paths in the woods which came down to the water's edge, and sitting in the heat of the day chatting with Mab, Dolly and Doris.
Then in the evening, when it was growing cooler, they had a long walk inland. They went to an old castle about two miles away, standing close to the Llantrug road, which they had passed as they came to Hildick in the old bus.
As they came back they made their way through the sand dunes to the shore, and walked home across the firm, hard sand. The tide was just going out, and the shore was strewn with fairy-like sea urchins. Some of the white shells were empty and tenantless, and they picked them up and threw them into the waves, and watched them float away with the tide.
Jack and Don Mainwaring's sisters, Mab and Dolly, were the life of the party. As they walked along, they decided that some night they would light a fire on the shore, cook their own supper there, and eat it by the light of the flames. Val, Dick and Billy Sinclair fell in with the plan at once, and they settled to have this al fresco picnic some night in the following week.
Doris Somerville was quieter than her cousins, although she enjoyed a joke just as much as they did. But the Mainwaring sisters were just at the age when girls are simply brimming over with animal spirits. Every hill they saw they wanted to climb, every stream that ran down to the sea they must jump. There seemed to be no end to their energy or their strength.
Doris was older, and she had known trouble. Her mother had died two years before, and ever since then, though she was once again merry and bright, yet still she bore the marks of sorrow and was therefore full of sympathy with others.
Ever since she had travelled with him on the coach, Doris had felt sure, by a kind of empathy which those who suffer have with one another, that Norman Forester, as well as herself, had seen the shadow as well as the sunshine of life.
All through the day he had been as full of fun and jokes as his companions, but now when the younger ones had run to climb the fourth sand dune that they had come to, she and Forester fell behind on the shore and agreed that they were tired and would sit down until the others came back.
Then it was that Doris noticed the unhappy expression returning to his face, which seemed to say that life had little brightness in store for him. She glanced at him once or twice as he picked up a pebble and threw it into the water, but she did not like to be the first to break the silence. Of what was he thinking, as he gazed across the sea, with that grim expression on his face? His first words gave her no clue to his thoughts.
"Where's Jack?" he asked. "He hasn't come with us this evening."
"No, he's looking at his sermon. You know he is to preach here tomorrow."
The merry smile broke out again on Forester's face as he answered her. "Fancy Jack a parson!" he said. "Here he is in flannels and tennis shirt, looking exactly as he did when we all worshipped him on the cricket ground. And now I am to believe that he is a fully-fledged parson, and is going to get up in a pulpit tomorrow to talk to us about our sins!"
"Have you ever heard Jack preach?" asked Doris.
"No, never. What sort of preacher is he?"
Doris did not answer this question at once. Then she said, "I think when you do hear him, you will forget all about Jack, and only think about his message."
"His message?"
"Yes, from God," she said.
Then she changed the subject, and said, "You look better already for coming to Hildick, Doctor Forester. Isn't it a glorious little place?"
"Yes," he said, "it is indeed!" Then he laughed. "But I'm not leading the kind of life I meant to live here."
"What sort of life was that?"
"Why, I brought my tent and I was going to camp out far away from everybody, and I did not mean to speak to a soul all the time I was here."
"Why? Oh, don't tell me, if you would rather not," she said, noticing the young doctor color at the question.
"But I will tell you," he said. "It was because I had been a fool. Not a nice admission for a man to have to make, is it? I was utterly disgusted with the world and with everybody in it, and I meant to have done
with it all -- at least for a time."
"Isn't that rather a sweeping condemnation?" said Doris.
"Well, perhaps it is, but when you've trusted somebody, and that person deceives you, and you find out you've made a big mistake, what then? Why, then it's best to run away from everyone. That's what I think. What's the good of making other people miserable by your company?"
Forester thought he would never forget to his dying day the look of sympathy in the clear, honest eyes that were turned to him for a moment. But at that moment the others were seen coming back, and Doris said nothing but, "Thank you."
Forester wondered what she meant by that. What had he done for her, or given to her, that she should thank him? He had given her a tiny bit of his confidence, that was all. Could it be that, for which she was grateful?