II
The Second Stranger
I SAT straight up in bed, blinking at the light and its holder. Half-asleep though I was, I got an impression of my visitor. An ascetic-looking, clean-shaven man, with a big, well-shaped nose, and firm thin lips, which, in unison with a pair of keen, observant eyes, could, as I found out later, assume various expressions, changing from intense disagreeableness to peculiar sweetness. Just then eyes and lips were quite agreeable—in fact, their owner laughed gently.
“All right, young master!” he said, in a voice as sweet and mellow as his smile. “Fall to your sleep again—I only just wanted to see what strange bird we’d got in our roost.”
He laughed again and made for the door. I found my voice.
“Mr. Parslewe?” I asked interrogatively.
“At your service, sir,” he answered, with a sort of mock politeness. “James Parslewe.”
“I hope I’m not” I began.
“Are you warm enough?” he inquired, suddenly stepping back to the bedside and laying a hand on its coverings. “It’s a gey cold night, and I’m thinking you’re not of these parts.”
“Oh, I’m warm enough indeed, thank you,” I assured him. “Couldn’t be more comfortable, sir.”
“Then go to sleep again,” he commanded, with another of his half-jesting, half-cynical laughs. “You’re heartily welcome to my ancient roof.”
He went away then, quietly closing the door behind him, and I obeyed his behest and fell asleep again. Nor did I awake until the old man that I had seen by the kitchen fire the night before appeared in my room, bringing me hot water, shaving tackle, tea. He drew back curtains and blinds, and I saw that the sky was still grey and heavy.
“More snow in the night?” I asked him.
He started, as if unused to being spoken to, and nodded his old head.
“Aye, there’ll have been a deal more snow, master,” he answered. “Many feet deep it is all round the house.”
I got up, drank the tea, made as careful a toilet as I could, and eventually went off to the room in the tower wherein I had spent the evening with my youthful hostess. It was so far untenanted, but there was a great fire of logs blazing in the big open hearth, and the breakfast table was laid before it; from the adjacent kitchen came highly appetizing odours. I warmed myself at the hearth, looking round; now, in the morning light, dull though it was, I could see the room better. It was easy to get from it an idea of its owner’s tastes—the beautiful old furniture, the panelling, the arrangement of the cabinets and their contents, all showed the inclination and love of the collector, who was also a good judge of what he collected. There were many things of great interest in that room—one struck me particularly, perhaps because the fire flames kept glinting sharply on its burnished front. This was a small copper box, a thing some six or seven inches square, which stood in the middle of the ancient sideboard, one out of many curious articles placed there. I could see, from where I stood, that it was a bit of unusually good work, and I presently went closer and took it into my hands. Anything worked in old brass or copper had always appealed to me; this quaint little coffer, or chest, beautifully elegant in its severe simplicity, took my fancy. It was a plain thing throughout, except that on the lid was engraven a coat-of-arms, and on the scroll beneath it a legend—
Thatte I please I wylle.
I had just replaced the copper box and was turning away wondering what these words signified when I caught sight of something which I had certainly not expected to see. There, hung in two panels above the sideboard, obscured in shadow the previous evening but plain enough now, as they faced the big window, hung two small pictures of my own, water-colour sketches of scenery in Teesdale which I had shown at the Royal Academy a year before and had subsequently sold to a Bond Street dealer. I was looking at them when Miss Durham came in, followed by the old woman and the breakfast dishes.
Miss Durham and I shook hands solemnly. Then we both smiled, and eventually laughed. She nodded at a door in the corner of the room.
“Mr. Parslewe came after all,” she said.
“I’m aware of it,” said I. “He came to see me—some time or other.”
“No?” she exclaimed. “What for?”
“Wanted to know if I’d enough blankets, I think,” I answered.
“Oh, I hope you had!” she said. “Had you? But how”
Just then the door in the corner opened and my host entered. I saw then that he was a rather tall, loose-limbed man of probably fifty-five to sixty, with a remarkably intellectual face, sphinx-like in expression, and as I have already said, capable of looking almost fiendishly disagreeable or meltingly sweet. It was sweet enough now as he came forward, offering me his hand with old-fashioned courtesy.
“Good morning, master!” he cooed—no other word expresses his suavity of tone. “I trust you slept well and refreshingly after all your privations.”
“My privations, sir, had been of short duration, and their recompense full,” I replied, imitating his half-chaffing tone. “I slept excellently well, thank you.”
“Why, that’s a blessing!” he said, rubbing his hands. “So did I!”
“It was very unkind of you, though, Jimmie, to wake up a guest in the middle of the night,” said Miss Durham. “How inconsiderate!”
Mr. Parslewe motioned me to the breakfast table with a bow and a wave of his delicately fingered hand, and favoured his ward and myself with one of his sweetest smiles.
“Well, I don’t know, my dear,” he retorted. “He might have been a burglar!—you never can tell.”
He laughed, with full enjoyment, at his own joke, and bent towards me as he handed me a plate.
“I was sorry I woke you!” he said, still smiling. “I was enjoying looking at you. I thought I’d never seen such a refreshingly innocent young mortal in my life! In fact, I was just thinking of fetching Madrasia to look at you when you woke.”
He laughed more than ever at this, and I glanced from him to his ward.
“Don’t mind him!” she said. “That’s his way. He possesses a curious form of humour—a very twisted form sometimes. You’re a queer man, Jimmie, aren’t you? And I gave you such a splendid character last night!—said that you’d have been furious if I hadn’t insisted on bringing Mr. Craye in, and lots more—didn’t I, Mr. Craye?”
“Well, I’d certainly rather see him sitting there alive, eating his bacon, than dig him out of the snow, dead,” remarked Mr. Parslewe, good-humouredly. “But Craye, now—do you happen to be related to Craye, the landscape painter?”
“I am Craye, the landscape painter, Mr. Parslewe,” I replied. “That’s why I’m in this neighbourhood. I was looking out all yesterday for a likely subject.”
His face lighted up with genuine pleasure, and he stretched out his hand across the table and shook mine heartily.
“Man!” he exclaimed, “I’m delighted to have you in my house! You’re a clever young fellow; I’ve admired your work ever since I was first privileged to see it. And bought it. too; there’s two water-colours of yours behind you there, and”
“I’ve seen them,” said I.
“And I’ve two more upstairs in my study,” he continued. “Aye, well, I’m greatly pleased! And you’re staying in these parts?”
“I came to the hotel at Wooler three days ago, just to look round the Cheviots,” I answered.
“Any definite time?” he asked.
“No,” said I. “I’m my own master as to that.”
“Then when old Edie can get through the snow, we’ll just send across to Wooler for your things, and you’ll consider this house yours, Mr. Craye,” he said, with a nod of his head which implied that he would take no refusal. “Your very obedient servant, sir, as long as you like to stop in it!”
“There!” exclaimed Miss Durham; “I knew you’d get on together like a house on fire! But perhaps Mr. Craye thinks he might be dull?”
“Mr. Craye thinks nothing of the sort,” I retorted hastily. “He’s overwhelmed on all sides. You’re extremely kind, Mr. Parslewe; your sense of hospitality is princely.”
“Pooh, pooh!” he said. “We’ll just be glad. And there’s no need to be dull, my girl, when you’re about!” he added, nodding at his ward. “A lively damsel, this, Craye; the air of the hills is in her blood!”
“Miss Durham, sir, is, I am sure, one of those admirable hostesses who could never let a guest be anything but happy,” I said, with a glance towards the object of my compliment. “And,” I added, more seriously, “I should be very ungrateful not to accept your kind invitation. I won’t let you get tired of me.”
“Mr. Craye thinks he could paint a picture of the house, with the hills for a background, Jimmie,” remarked Miss Durham. “You’d buy that, wouldn’t you?”
“Hoots, toots! We’ll see, woman, we’ll see!” answered Mr. Parslewe. “There’s finer subjects than this old place, but you’ll not see them to-day, my lad,” he added, turning to me. “The snow’s thick and deep all round our walls, and what you’ll see of the land for the next twenty-four hours, and maybe more, ’ll be from the top of our tower. And a grand observation post it is, too!”
He took me up the tower after breakfast was over. From the leads at its battlemented head there was a wonderful view of the surrounding country; he indicated the chief features as we stood there, looking out on the snow-clad expanse. And I saw then what I had not been able to see the night before, that this place, Kelpieshaw, was absolutely isolated; as far as I could see, on any side, there was not even a shepherd’s hut or gamekeeper’s lodge in view.
“You love solitude, Mr. Parslewe,” I remarked as I looked about me. “This, surely, is solitude!”
“Aye, it is!” he agreed. “And it suits me. What’s more to the purpose, it suits my ward—up to now, anyway. When I brought her from India, where she was born, I looked about for a likely place in this district. We came across this—half-ruinous it was then. I bought it, did it up, furnished it, got a lot of things here that I’d left stored in London when I first went to India, many a year ago, and settled down. The girl loves it—and so do I.”
He gave me one of his half-serious, half-sardonic smiles, and we went down the stair again, and into a big room, a floor above the parlour, wherein he kept his books and his collections. It was something of a cross between a museum and a library, and I could see that he was remarkably proud of the things in it. I saw, too, that my host was a man of means—only a well-to-do man could have afforded to bring together the things that he had there. Like all antiquaries he began to point out to me his chief treasures, and to talk about them, and finding that I had some knowledge of such things, to dig into old chests and presses in order to unearth others. Once, while he was thus engaged, I was looking at some small volumes bound in old calf which were ranged in one of the recesses; once more, on the side of one of these, in faded gilt, I came across the arms and legend which I had noticed on the copper box in the room below; he looked up from his task to find me regarding it.
“An odd motto that, Mr. Parslewe,” I observed. “I noticed it on your old copper chest, or coffer, downstairs, ‘That I please, I will!’ What does it mean?” He laughed satirically.
“I should say it means that the folk who sported it were pretty much inclined to have their own way, my lad!” he answered. “Whether they got it or not is another question. Now, here’s a fifteenth-century Book of Hours, with the illuminations as fresh as when they were done. Look you there for a bit of fine work!”
I had meant to ask him whose coat-of-arms and whose legend it was that had excited my curiosity, but I saw that the subject either possessed no interest for him or that he didn’t want to be questioned about it, and I turned to what he was showing me. We spent most of that morning examining his collection, and we got on together admirably. Still, I was not sorry when Miss Durham appeared and insisted on dragging me away from him to go out with her into the courtyard to inspect her horse, her dogs, and other live creatures. The old man had cleared much of the courtyard of snow, but beyond its walls the drifts were deep. From the gate I looked across them with a certain amount of impatience—I wanted to see more of the country, and I had notions that Miss Durham might not be unwilling to act as guide to it.
“Don’t think you’re going to be a prisoner for very long,” she suddenly remarked, interpreting my silent contemplation of the vast waste of whiteness. “At this time of the year the snow goes quickly. You needn’t be surprised if you find it vanished when you wake to-morrow, thick as it is.”
“If it is, and we can get out, you’ll show me some of your favourite scenes?” I suggested. “I could make a sketch or two.”
“Of course!” she assented. “There’s a lovely bit along the road towards Roddam. I’ll take you there as soon as the snow’s gone; you’ll be ravished with it!”
We had three days’ wait for that, and during that time, as if they felt themselves bound to compensate me for the delay, my host and hostess did all they could to amuse and interest me, though, to tell the truth, I was interested enough in them personally, and needed no other diversion. Mr. Parslewe was certainly a character, full of eccentricities, with a strong sense of humour, and a mordant wit; he had evidently seen much of men and of the world, and his comments on things in general were as interesting as they were amusing. I made out, however, that his knowledge of our own country and our own period was considerably out of date; he appeared to know little of present-day affairs, though he had a fine old store of anecdotes of a previous generation. But a chance remark of his accounted for this.
“I left England for India and the East when I was twenty-one,” he said to me one evening in casual conversation, “and I never saw its shores again until I’d turned fifty. And now that I’m back—and some years, too—I don’t want to see any more of it than I can see from the top of my dear old tower! Here I am, and here I stick!”
I wondered if he meant his young and pretty ward to stick there, too—but those were early days to put the question to him. Still, by that time I had fallen in love with Madrasia; it would have been a most unheard-of thing if I hadn’t! And already I meant to move all the powers that are in heaven and earth to win her—for which reason I was devoutly thankful when, on the fourth day of my stay, winter suddenly disappeared as if by magic, and springtide again asserted itself and flooded the hills and valleys with warmth and sunshine. For then she and I got out of the old house, leaving Mr. Parslewe with his books and papers, and began to wander abroad, improving our acquaintance—very pleasantly and successfully. There had been a comforting air of romance about our meeting which, I think, appealed to both of us; it was still there, making an atmosphere around us, and now the elements of a most puzzling and curious mystery were to be added to it.
Those elements were first introduced by a man who came along the road leading from Wooperton and Roddam, and chanced to find Madrasia and myself sitting on a shelf of rock by its side, I doing a bit of perfunctory sketching, and she watching me. He was a tourist-looking sort of man; that is to say, he wore the sort of garments affected by tourists; otherwise, I should have said that he was perhaps a commercial traveller, or a well-to-do tradesman who loved country walks—a biggish, well-fed, florid-faced man, shrewd of eye, and, as we presently discovered, very polite—too polite—of manner. He regarded us closely as he came up, and when he was abreast of us, he stopped in the centre of the road and lifted his cap; it was the latest thing in head-gear of that sort, and he raised it with something of a flourish.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, with a deprecating, ingratiating smile. “Can you tell me if, somewhere in this neighbourhood, there is a house called Kelpieshaw?”
It was Madrasia who answered—promptly.
“Two miles ahead, along the valley,” she said. “Can’t miss it.”
The man bowed, and smiled again; a little too obsequiously, I thought.
“The residence of, I believe—er, Mr. Parslewe?” he suggested. “Mr. James Parslewe.”
“Mr. Parslewe lives there,” assented Madrasia. “Want him?”
He smiled again—enigmatically this time.
“I hope to have the pleasure of waiting upon Mr. Parslewe—and of finding him at home,” he answered. “Er—Mr. Parslewe, I believe—perhaps you are acquainted with him?—is a gentleman learned in—er, antiquities—and that sort of thing?”
“He is a bit inclined that way,” replied Madrasia, almost flippantly. “Are you?”
He waved his hand, shelving away from us.
“A neophyte—a mere neophyte,” he said, still smiling. “A—er, learner!”
He strode off up the valley: we looked after him meditatively.
“Don’t like the looks of that person,” said Madrasia, suddenly.
“Neither do I—though I don’t know why,” I answered. “Case of Dr. Fell, I suppose. Bit too given to smiling readily, eh?”
“Oily!” said Madrasia. “Wonder who he is—and what he’s after?”
“Doesn’t look like a dry-as-dust antiquary, anyhow,” I remarked.
But whatever the man looked like, we found him with Parslewe when we went home—one on each side of the parlour fire. And Parslewe introduced him, unceremoniously—Mr. Pawley.