WHEN Norman Forester looked round the ancient room in which he was to spend the night, he felt as though he was in a dream. The great bed with its four elaborately carved posts, the old engravings in their antique frames, the deep window showing the thickness and massive strength of the castle walls, the great oak beams overhead -- all reminded him of stories he had read of bygone ages.
Surely here he would find what he wanted, what he had come from his busy life in London to seek -- oblivion, as far as his own past was concerned. Surely that chapter of his life, which was now closed for ever, would become a forgotten chapter here.
He felt tired and in need of rest, and he went to bed determined to sleep. But sleep seemed far away. A noisy clock in the corridor outside struck the hours in a fussy, imperious way, as if it demanded attention from all who were within hearing distance.
But it needed no clock to keep the young doctor awake. Ghosts of the past kept flitting through his brain. Dark shadows which he tried to chase away seemed to pursue him. Here these ghosts were to be laid; here those shadows were to be dispelled; here that closed chapter was to be buried for ever. So he fought long and hard with the phantoms of the past until the assertive clock near his bedroom door announced that it was two o'clock.
It was soon after this that Doctor Forester's thoughts were diverted by the sound of quiet footsteps overhead. Someone seemed to be moving stealthily about, just over his bed. He wondered who slept there. The farmhands, perhaps. He had seen no staircase going higher than the one he had ascended the night before, but perhaps it was hidden by the curtain hanging across the end of the corridor.
The footsteps ceased after a time, and he became more drowsy. But he was conscious of the sound of a slight cough. He heard it from time to time, and he fancied, when he was sufficiently roused to think about it at all, that it sounded from somewhere overhead.
By degrees the long night wore away, and with earliest dawn the whole place seemed astir. Pigs grunted under his window; cocks crowed on the wall close by. The lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, all the countless noises of the farmyard fell on his ear. As the sunshine streamed in at his window he jumped out of bed, feeling that the ghosts of the night had departed, and that the new chapter of his life had begun.
Breakfast was ready in the old kitchen when the doctor went down. The fragrant odour of freshly made coffee and the appetizing sound of ham frizzling on the fire made him feel disposed for it. Old Mr. Norris was sitting on the high-backed wooden settle, and holding his hands to the fire just as he had done the evening before. He looked, Forester thought, as if he might have sat there all night without moving.
Rupert Norris and his wife Mary had been up almost as soon as the sun. The cows had been milked, and the chickens, geese, and ducks fed. The farmhands had long finished their breakfast and gone out to feed the pigs and the cattle, and take the cows back to the pasture. Now the children, three in number, were sitting patiently round the table waiting for the meal to begin. Leonard, the boy Forester had seen the night before, was the eldest, and there were twin girls, six years old, born on May Day and named in consequence, he was told with pride, Hawthorn and May.
The old man came to the table and invited the doctor to take a seat beside him, and asked a blessing on their food. But just as the coffee was being poured out there came an interruption. It took the form of a sharp rap on the outer door. Leonard got up at once, at a word from his mother, and opened the door. Without waiting for an invitation, the man who had knocked walked straight into the kitchen as if he were an expected guest. To Forester's great surprise he saw that it was the man who had travelled with him from Llantrug the day before, and who had sat between the driver and himself on the box.
The visitor shook the father and son warmly by the hand, kissed the little girls, and laid his hand affectionately on Leonard's shoulder, while he spoke to his mother and tendered his apologies to her for the intrusion at that early hour. Then, suddenly recognizing the doctor, he claimed him also as an old acquaintance, and seemed determined to be on the best and most friendly terms with the whole party.
The old man, in his usual courteous manner, invited him to join them at their morning meal, and the stranger, evidently gratified by the attention, accepted the offer readily and sat down at the table between the two little girls. As he helped himself from the dish of smoking ham and poured some of the thick cream into his cup, he seemed, Forester thought, to make himself very much at home. Yet he could not help fancying that old Mr. Norris regarded him with a certain amount of distrust.
"What brings you to these parts again?" the old man asked presently.
"What brings me?" said the visitor. "I wonder you ask that, Mr. Norris! What brings the many others who visit Hildick from time to time? What will bring our friend here, now that he has found out the beauties of the place? Why, sir, you may not know it, but this bay of yours is a perfect gem of beauty. Can you wonder that we poor citizens of smoky towns return to it as often as we can?"
Apparently old Mr. Norris had no answer to give to this natural explanation of his visitor's reappearance, and he relapsed into silence, leaving the conversation to his son and the man who had just joined them.
Forester, being little inclined to take part in the talk that was going on, had ample leisure to notice his fellow-traveller. He was sitting opposite to him, and he could see him much better than he had been able to do when he was close to him on the box-seat of the coach. He noticed the thin lips and long pale face which gave the man a sickly appearance, but it was another feature which made the most impression on the doctor. He thought he had never seen such restless, inquisitive eyes as those of the stranger. There was an eager, grasping expression in them which struck Forester as most peculiar.
Whether he was talking to Rupert Norris, or listening to the conversation of the children, or eating the good farm fare, at all times those eyes were busy. Sometimes he was gazing at the oak beams overhead, sometimes at the dresser with its pewter dishes; sometimes he was glancing up the oak staircase, or looking inquisitively behind him as Mrs. Norris went to the old bed place to bring something from the spacious cupboard. He caught Forester's eye on one of these peering expeditions, and at once made some kind of apology.
"I am afraid your friend here thinks I am Paul Pry," he said, turning to old Mr. Norris, "but I do so dearly love old places and old things. I feel that I haven't half seen your old castle yet. Does any of that wainscoting slide back, I wonder?"
"No, sir, nothing of the kind. I've tried it many a time -- ay, and my father before me, and my grandfather and great-grandfather before him. It's all solid woodwork, and has no secret cupboard or hidden chambers. They would have been found, long before I was born, had they been there."
Soon after this, Rupert rose from the table to go to his work on the farm, and the visitor, after finding out in which direction he was going, asked if he might have the pleasure of accompanying him as he also was going that way. He wished them good morning and walked as far as the outer door, when as if it was an afterthought he turned back to ask a question.
"Mrs. Norris," he said, "I had no idea you had so much room to spare in the castle. I see you have been able to give this gentleman a bed. I wonder if you could do the same for a friend of mine who is coming by the coach tonight."
"No, sir," said the old man; "we have no room at all. Mary will tell you so. We will be full up tomorrow. We have a large party coming in."
"But," said the man, "I never expected you to take my friend in here, I mean in this part of the castle. I know all your best rooms are let through the summer, but he's only a rough-and-ready fellow. Any shakedown will do for him. Why, in some of these outbuildings, in one of these rooms over the gateway, surely you could stow him away. He intended to camp out and got the loan of a tent, but it has never turned up. The friend who was going to lend it wanted it at the last moment, for something or other, I forget what. But he has got his camp bed and mattress, and all that sort of
thing. He would be in clover in one of those old rooms up there."
"Up where, sir?" asked the old man quickly.
"Why, where I see windows at the side of the gateway, and up in the roof over these rooms you live in. There must be some place up there."
"Rupert," called the old man to his son who was waiting in the castle courtyard, "come here. I want you. Here's this gentleman wants us to let a friend of his have a room somewhere in the old ruins. There is no place, Rupert, I say, where it would be convenient for him to go."
Rupert obviously took his cue from his father, and answered, rather reluctantly Forester thought, that there was indeed no place where the friend could be accommodated.
The two men went out together. The old gentleman gave a sigh of relief as the door closed behind them, and then invited the doctor to sit in the chimney-corner and have a chat with him before going out.
The month was August, but the air was chilly after the rain of the night before, and a wind blew from over the sea.
"Who is that man?" asked Forester.
"That's more than I can tell you, sir," said the old man. "He calls himself an antiquarian. Not a very paying business, I would imagine, by the look of his coat, but perhaps he wears it out poking about among rubbish in old places."
"Where does he come from?"
"Birmingham, he says. We saw him first in the Easter holidays. He lodged at the post office, and he came poking about the old castle all the time he was here. I went round the ruins with him once, and showed him all about, but he was too inquisitive for me. He wanted to be here, there, and everywhere. He poked and peered about, and kept on telling me he was an antiquarian until I was sick of the very word. He got round my son Rupert somehow. Rupert thought I had no right to be suspicious of him, and he let him see a lot more of the castle than I had patience to show him. Did he take him to the loft, Mary, do you know?"
"No, father, I don't think so. They went inside that part of the castle, into your tool house, I believe, but I don't think Rupert took him upstairs to the loft."
"Where is the loft?" Forester asked.
"Why, it's over where you slept last night, sir. It's a long room, as long as the corridor you walked down, and as wide as our bedrooms and the corridor put together, but with nothing but rafters and tiles overhead. It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. We keep the apples up there when we strip the orchard in the autumn. We shall be getting some of them stored soon. They're fast ripening on the south side of the trees."
"Who sleeps up there now?"
"No one," said the old man, "nor no one ever has in my time, no, nor in my father's either. It's too hot or too cold according to the time of year, and it's an awful place to be on a windy night. You'd almost be blown out of bed if you slept up there."
"I thought I heard footsteps overhead last night," Forester explained.
"Impossible, sir, it couldn't be footsteps. Rats, maybe, or mice."
"But there was a cough too," said the doctor. "Rats don't cough -- at least, I never heard them"
"But pigs do," said Mr. Norris, "and the old sow has a terrible bad cough."
"But she wasn't in the loft over my head," suggested Forester.
"In the loft, bless you, no, sir! But noises are deceptive in a strange place, and the sties are not far away. I heard her myself last night. Rupert will have to see to her when he comes in."
Forester did not press the subject, although he was not at all convinced by what the old man said. He went on to make inquiries as to the best place for him to pitch his tent. He found that the shore was out of the question, for the lord of the manor allowed no tents to be erected there; but Mr. Norris told him that he was welcome to put up his tent in any place he chose on the castle farm.
"Go as far as you like along the top of the headland. It all belongs to the castle, right away down to the rocks on the shore. You can't go wrong, anyhow, if you go in that direction."
Then the doctor inquired how he could get help in bringing the tent up the hill, and in setting it in its place.
"Why, Maxie will help you, to be sure," old Mr. Norris replied, "and be glad of the job too. He has a bit of a donkey and an old cart. He'll bring your tent up all right. Folks say Maxie's a little gone in the upper storey. Maybe he is, but he's strong enough and capable enough if you don't drive him too fast. Give him his time, and he's all right. We often use his help in hay time or harvest time. Oh yes, Maxie will do it right enough. But there's no need to hurry, sir. Mary, I'm sure, will say the same. If you can put up with us for another night, why, we can put up with you. Our visitors don't come until tomorrow evening, and so if you'll stop here until then, you and Maxie can get the tent up at your leisure."
Mary heartily seconded her father-in-law's invitation, and Forester, when he saw that they really wished it, readily assented.
Seeing that there was now no hurry about pitching the tent, the doctor determined to spend the morning in getting some idea of his new surroundings. He opened the door leading into the castle courtyard, and started on his voyage of discovery.
The mysterious gloom of the night before had vanished with the owls and the bats, and the sun was shining in a cloudless sky. For the first time Norman Forester was able to see distinctly the ruins of the old castle. He found himself in a square courtyard, and between the pavestones the grass of ages had grown so thickly that little of the original stones could be seen. On his right was a high ruined wall, in which were quaint mullioned windows hung with festoons of ivy.
On his left was the ancient gateway with the stone escutcheon over it, emblazoned with the coat of arms of old Sir John Mandeville, the lord of Hildick Castle. In front of him the courtyard wall had been entirely demolished, and he looked on a glorious view of hill and dale and wood, while down in the valley he could just distinguish the little village of Hildick nestling among the trees.
Before going down the hill and finding his way to the shore, Norman Forester determined to walk round the ruined castle. The old man had invited him to go wherever he liked, but apologized to him for not accompanying him, as he was not feeling well that morning and was unable to walk far.
He found the ruins were much more extensive than he had imagined the night before. The walls of the whole of the principal part of the castle were standing, but the roof was gone, and the floors of the different rooms had fallen in. He looked up from the heap of rubbish below which was covered with brambles, nettles, and long grass, and tried to picture to himself what the castle had been like in the days of its glory.
The great window of the banqueting hall through which in bygone days the sunlight had streamed on many a festive scene; the wide fireplaces with the comfortable seats in the chimney-corner, where on the cold winter evenings the family had gathered round the cheerful blaze of the great wood fire; the lower floors with their smaller windows where the castle servants had had their apartments; the small turret whence the lord of the castle and his guests had gazed on the beauties of Hildick Bay -- all these spoke to him of what had been in the past.
But now the mullioned window of the banqueting-hall had partly fallen away; ivy was hanging over the walls; the fireplaces were the homes of birds; the seats in the chimney-corner were covered with ferns and moss; the servants' hall was turned into a henhouse; the stone steps of the staircase were crumbling away; the turret was the dwelling-place of bats. It was the same everywhere -- ruin and decay were written on the whole place.
The large pigeon cote, built at the same time as the castle itself, had been taken possession of by cackling hens which had made the deep pigeon-holes into nests where they could lay their eggs. The great keep, where the armed men of the castle had been quartered, had become the home of ferrets which were hung in cages on the walls. The guardroom over the gateway, from which, through a wide groove in the floor, large stones could be hurled on the head of an approaching foe, was shut up and filled with rubbish.
The castle had been grand in its day, and was
beautiful even in its decay; yet in Forester's present frame of mind it affected him with a strange feeling of sadness which he could hardly restrain. He knew he was an imaginative man by nature, and as he wandered through the deserted ruins it seemed to him that he heard, in them, dismal echoes of his own feelings.
He had been the owner of a castle, too. A fair and pleasing castle it had appeared to him, busy with life and home comfort, well guarded from the approach of danger and from the storms of adversity. But he had seen that castle fall and crumble away. Although it was only a castle in the air, great had been the fall of it. And now, after wandering among its ruins he had to remind himself that he had come to Hildick to forget it all; to clear away, if possible, the old stones and begin his life anew -- a wiser though sadder man.
Yet here, at the outset, the old castle at Hildick acted as a reminder of what he had come to forget.