Chapter One
Garroch
OUTSIDE the railway station at Llantrug, the Garroch horse-drawn coach -- known locally as the bus -- was waiting for the arrival of the evening train. It was only twice a week that this coach came to town, giving the inhabitants of that remote part of South Wales an opportunity of reaching the world beyond their peninsula. They came in by the early bus, did their marketing and other business in Llantrug, and returned by it in the evening, arriving at the end of their long drive between nine and ten o'clock at night.
The inside of the bus was already filled with country people returning to their homes in Garroch -- women with large market-baskets, farmers with good-natured, sunburned faces, girls who had been to see the fashions and buy their new hats, and children taken into town by their parents as a wonderful treat to see the shops and the trams and the bustle of Llantrug.
But the bus never started until the evening train from England arrived, and the Garroch people had to wait, patiently or impatiently as the case might be, because today the train was an hour late. The driver stood by the horses and looked wearily from time to time in the direction of the expected train. Again and again he had turned round with a disappointed air, but at length, with satisfaction he put his head inside the coach and announced: "She's coming!"
A sigh of relief escaped from the long-suffering passengers when they heard this welcome news, and now all looked out to discover whether anyone bound for Garroch had arrived by the train. In a few minutes a porter appeared with a heavily laden truck of luggage.
"All that?" exclaimed the driver.
"Yes, and more to follow," said the man. "And four passengers."
At this moment two of the passengers appeared, and the country people inside eyed them curiously. They saw an older gentleman wearing spectacles and a long gray overcoat, and with him a young lady who they concluded was his daughter. Most of the luggage appeared to belong to them, for the gentleman was scanning it anxiously, counting each package as it was taken off the truck.
"Five, six, seven. I thought there were eight, Doris," he said.
"Yes, there were eight, father. It's your portmanteau that's missing."
The gentleman went off in search of it, followed by the porter. While they were away, the two other passengers came up. One was a short, sickly-looking man with thin lips and sharp features, aged thirty-five or thereabouts, who looked as if he had seen the bleak side of life and had not much chance of seeing any other. He had evidently been into Garroch before, for he greeted the driver as an old friend, and nodded familiarly to several of those inside the bus.
The fourth passenger was a tall young man, more than six feet high, in a long, light overcoat. His luggage consisted of several extraordinary packages sewn up in canvas, and two portmanteaus, evidently new and unused before, on which were inscribed the initials N. S. F.
The man had light brown hair, gray eyes, regular features, and a distinctly handsome face; but as the young lady who was standing near the coach and waiting for her father glanced at him, she thought she had never in her life seen a more melancholy expression. And yet the next moment, when he was speaking to the driver and helping him to adjust some of the packages on the top of the bus, he smiled at some remark that was made, and she immediately wondered at herself for having thought him melancholy, and decided that his was the merriest face she had ever seen. But the brightness was only a passing gleam, like a ray of sunshine streaming through a rent in a storm cloud. For the melancholy returned immediately and seemed more firmly settled than before.
It took some time to pack the luggage and find places for the four passengers. None of them wished to go inside, for which the Garroch people were devoutly thankful as they were already tightly wedged into their places. The two younger men climbed onto the box, and the father and daughter were helped by the driver to mount to the seat behind. It was a relief to everyone when all was ready and they were actually off. Then the tongues inside the bus were busy, for the Garroch people all knew each other and had plenty of interests in common; but there was not much conversation between the outside passengers. The driver was a reserved man, and beyond answering an occasional question from the middle-aged man who sat next him, he took no notice of the passengers.
The old gentleman on the back seat brought a newspaper from his pocket and began to read it as soon as they had left the streets of the town behind, while the girl amused herself by looking at the scenery through which they were passing, and occasionally glancing at her fellow passengers. As for the young man, he spoke to no one.
They had been driving for some miles when they came to an extensive common covered with bracken and gorse, and now and again with patches of purple heather. It was a breezy, pleasant place, far removed from the noxious smoke of the town. The sun was getting low in the sky as they crossed it, and the light was becoming mellow and golden.
The common seemed full of life. Flocks of geese were wandering over the heather; crows and jackdaws were strutting about on the short grass; countless small birds were sitting on the furze bushes, and larks were singing their lullaby overhead.
The girl, whom her father had called Doris, had come from Birmingham, and the freshness and beauty of the scene charmed her beyond measure. The stillness of the place -- a silence broken only by the cries of the birds and the rumbling of the coach wheels -- came as a delightful change from the din and the racket of town life. The clear sky, the lovely tints of tree and fern and hedgerow were wonderfully refreshing to her, after gazing for months on the smoky atmosphere and begrimed vegetation of the Black Country. It would be a pleasure to live, even for a time, she thought, in such a beautiful, peaceful world as this.
It was only when the large, lumbering coach was getting to the far side of the common and leaving its wildness behind, that the long silence was broken by another voice than that of the birds. It was the young man in the light overcoat who broke it.
He turned to the driver, and said, "What sort of hotel is there at Hildick?"
The driver and the man next him exchanged glances and laughed.
"Hotel? In Hildick?" said the driver. "You'll have to look far enough, and long enough, before you find an hotel there. There isn't such a thing, sir!"
"Well, inn, public house, anything you like," said the young man.
"There isn't such a thing," echoed the thin-lipped passenger. "It's plain to see you haven't been to Hildick."
"Well, it's to be hoped I can get a bed somewhere," answered the young man. Then he relapsed into silence.
After some minutes the man next to him looked at the driver, and said, "What about the Bank?"
"There is a bank?" said the young man in surprise.
The driver seemed to think this an excellent joke, for he chuckled to himself as he answered, "A bank? Yes, sir, but there's never any money in it!"
"Any room?" asked the middle-aged man.
"No, full up," answered the driver.
The sun had now set, and the sunset tints were colouring the sky in front of them. To the left they could see the gray sea, dull and cheerless; to the right, wooded hills, and quiet valleys in which the evening mists were gathering.
They passed through several villages, and by many a lone cottage and solitary farmhouse. As the night came on, the load behind the horses became lighter, for one by one the Garroch people inside the bus reached their destination and departed, shouting goodnight to those left behind.
The road was a good one, well made and maintained, but Doris thought she had never seen one more hilly. It was like a switchback in its construction. At one moment the tired horses were toiling with their load up a sharp ascent, at the next they were going steeply downhill with the heavy bus almost on their backs. Every now and then these hills were so long and difficult that everyone turned out of the bus to walk to the top.
It was on one of these occasions that Doris spoke to her tall fellow passenger for the first time. The young girl's father had found such difficulty in ge
tting down from his high seat and afterwards in climbing up to it again, that the driver advised him to stay where he was. But Doris was eager to walk, not only for the sake of the tired horses, but also because she was weary of sitting still on her high seat, and longed for a little exercise. It was then that the young man came forward to help her to dismount, and gave her his firm hand as she made the final leap from the wheel. Doris thanked him, and for some time they walked on together in silence a little ahead of the coach. It was almost dark, and a heavy black cloud was driving up from the sea. Then suddenly the rain came, driving across the open country in a heavy pelting shower.
"Let me get your coat," he said. And without waiting for an answer he ran back to the bus for it.
On his return Doris felt that after his kindness to her she ought not to let the silence continue, but he seemed little inclined for conversation. His answers were short and abrupt, and he spoke sometimes as if he was hardly conscious that he was speaking at all. Behind them came the horses, toiling patiently up the long hill.
It was just as they drew near the top of it that he suddenly turned to her and asked, "Are you going to Hildick?"
"Yes, we are going there for about six weeks," she answered.
Nothing more passed between them, and when they once more had to walk, downhill this time, and over a muddy, heavy road, he strode on alone and spoke to no one.
Doris thought she had seldom come across anyone so unsociable as this man. "And yet he looks as if he ought to be so different," she said to herself.
The curt driver announced, when they were once more taking their seats at the bottom of the hill, that they were in Hildick Bay, and that they would soon be there -- meaning by "there," at the end of their long drive.
What the road was like it was impossible to see, for it was too dark to distinguish anything, and the rain still continued to fall heavily.
The thin-lipped man remarked that it would be a wild night at sea, but beyond a grunt from the driver no one took any notice of what he said. They were cold and wet, tired and hungry, and were longing above all things for the bus to reach its destination.
The long drive came to an end at last, for about a quarter of an hour later the coach drew up at the door of the little post office at Hildick.
A crowd of villagers had collected, in spite of the wind and the rain, to await the arrival of the well-known coach. Some of them were expecting parcels from Llantrug, others had come to meet friends who had been to the town, some were there merely to keep in touch with the outside world.
Doris and her father were going to a lodging some little distance up the road, and the coach was going also to take their luggage.
"Where can I get a bed?" asked the tall young man to the driver, as his packages were lifted down from the roof of the coach.
"Can't say," he answered. "Every place is probably full up. Perhaps they can tell you in there."
He pointed with his whip in the direction of the post office. It was a little general shop with a tiny square window in which some of its wares were exhibited, and with a small counter at one end of it where the post office business was transacted.
The young man went inside, but quickly came out again. "They can't tell me of any place," he said. "Can none of you help me?" he asked, turning to the crowd. "I've got my tent here," pointing to the large packages lying on the ground, "but I can't get it up until morning."
"Here, Rupert, can't you put him up at your place?" said an old man who was standing by the horses. "Your folks haven't come yet, have they?"
A tall, good-looking man stepped forward. He had dark hair and eyes, and a healthy sunburned face. "If you like to come with me, sir," he said, "I'll see what we can do for you. I'll get them to take your bags in here for the night."
After a little discussion he returned and helped the driver carry in the canvas bundles and the tent pole inside the shop. Then as the coach drove away he picked up one of the new portmanteaus and led the way. The young man picked up the other portmanteau and followed him into the darkness.
As they passed under the light of the post office window, the first man looked at the luggage label which was tied to the handle of the portmanteau he was carrying:
FORESTER
LLANTRUG
VIA G.W.R.
"Forester; a good name that," he said to himself as he walked in front of the stranger up the steep hill. "I wonder if it belongs to a good sort of man."
The visitor did not say much to enlighten him on the subject, and Rupert glanced behind him from time to time, trying to discover what he was like, and wondering somewhat anxiously what his father would say when he told him he had brought a stranger to stay with them for the night.
At length, after climbing the hill for some way, Rupert stopped before a white gate and put down the portmanteau for a moment while he opened it.
"Where are we going?" asked the young man.
"To the castle, sir," said his guide.
"The castle? Whose castle?"
"Our castle." He said it with a touch of justifiable pride in his voice. "We've lived in it about four hundred years. Father and son, father and son for four hundred years. There has always been a Norris at the castle since Henry VII was king."
"Does it belong to you?"
"No, not to own it, but we've rented it all the time. All the land, right away along the top of the hill on to the sea, is ours. You can see the old tombs of the Norris family in the church if you like. I often wonder what they were like, those old chaps whose names are there. See, that's the castle, sir, among the trees on the hill."
The rain had stopped, and at this moment the full moon came out from behind a cloud. Forester looked up and saw in the moonlight one of the finest ruins he had ever beheld. High castle walls towered into the sky. A square keep stood out before him in which he could count the windows of six different levels. The whole place looked solemn and weird in the moonlight.
"This is the back way in," said Rupert. "It's the shortest."
They climbed a narrow stone stile and passed through the mysterious-looking ruins. A shrill cry made Forester jump as he followed his guide. But it was only an owl, flying out of the ivy hanging from the high ruined wall which they were passing on their right. Several bats were whirling round overhead. They seemed in keeping with the place in which they lived, for the day of the old castle was surely over and its night had begun.
In a few moments, however, the scene changed. They came to a part of the castle still inhabited and which had never been allowed to fall into ruin. From a large window the bright light of fire and lamp was illuminating the darkness outside. Forester was almost dazzled as he came in from the gloom of the ruins.
Rupert led the way into the large farm kitchen which was the picture of cleanliness and comfort. He was too tired and depressed to do more than glance at it, so he waited for his new-found friend to introduce him to its occupants.
These were three in number. Sitting on a dark oak settle by the great open fire was an old man, spreading his hands to the warm blaze of the logs. In an ancient high-backed chair opposite him was Leonard, a boy of ten, leaning over a book which he was reading by the light of the fire, while his mother, a woman of about thirty with light hair and a gentle refined face, who was introduced as Mary, was busily engaged in laying the supper table.
"You're late, Rupert," said the old man as he entered.
"Yes, father, the coach was late. Left Llantrug late. The London train was an hour behind time. I've got the parcel you wanted, and I've brought a gentleman with me."
They all looked up at these words, and glanced at Forester who was standing in the doorway, and whom they had clearly not noticed before.
"He has come to camp out, and has brought his tent with him," Rupert explained. "But, of course, he can't put it up tonight, and he can't find a bed in the village anywhere. They're all full up. So I thought perhaps we could put him up tonight. It's a wild kind of night to be wandering about in
a strange place."
"I'm sure if you can give me a bed I shall be most grateful," said the young man, coming forward into the light. "I had no idea there was no inn here. Any place will do. The barn if you like. I'm not at all particular."
The old man and his daughter-in-law exchanged glances. To take in a stranger at that time of night, of whom they knew absolutely nothing, seemed to them to be a somewhat risky proceeding.
The stranger saw their hesitation, and putting his hand in his pocket drew out a card case, and taking a card from it handed it to Mrs. Norris. She took it to the light to read it.