The Haunting of Low Fennel Part 19

"Oh, Hollow Grange--yes! I know where Hollow Grange is, but I was unaware that it was reputed to be haunted."

"Ah," replied the other, pityingly, "you're new to these parts; I see that the minute I set eyes on you. Maybe you was wounded in France, and you're down here to get well, like?"

"Quite so. Your deductive reasoning is admirable."

"Ah," said the sage, chuckling with self-appreciation, "I ain't lived in these here parts for nigh on seventy-five years without learning to use my eyes, I ain't. For seventy-four years and seven months," he added proudly, "I ain't been outside this here county where I was born, and I can use my eyes, I can; I know a thing I do, when I see it. Maybe it was providence, as you might say, what brought you to the _Threshers_ to-day."

"Quite possibly," Dillon admitted.

"He was just such another as you," continued the old man with apparent irrelevance. "You don't happen to be stopping at Hainingham Vicarage?"

"No," replied Dillon.

"Ah! he was stopping at Hainingham Vicarage and he'd been wounded in France. How he got to know Dr. Ka.s.simere I can't tell you; not at parson's, anyway. Parson won't never speak to him. Only last Sunday week he preached agin him; not in so many words, but I could see his drift.

He spoke about them heathen women livin' on an island--sort of female Robinson Crusoes, I make 'em out, I do--as saves poor s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors from the sea and strangles of 'em ash.o.r.e."

Dillon glanced hard at the voluble old man.

"The sirens?" he suggested, conscious of a sudden hot surging about his heart.

"Ah, that's the women I mean."

"But where is the connection?"

"Ah, you're new to these parts, you are. That Dr. Ka.s.simere he keeps a siren down in Hollow Grange. They see her--these here strangers (same as the s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors parson told about)--and it's all up with 'em."

Dillon stifled a laugh, in which anger would have mingled with contempt.

To think that in the twentieth century a man of science was like to meet with the fate of Dr. Dee in the days of Elizabeth! Truly there were dark spots in England. But could he credit the statement of this benighted elder that a modern clergyman had actually drawn an a.n.a.logy between Phryne Devant and the sirens? It was unbelievable.

"What was the unhappy fate," he asked, masking his intolerance, "of the young man staying at the Vicarage?"

"The same as them afore him," came the startling reply; "for he warn't the first, and maybe"--with a shrewd glance of the rheumy old eyes--"he won't be the last. Them sirens has the powers of darkness. I know, 'cause I've seen one--her at the Grange; and though I'm an old man, nigh on seventy-five, I'll never forget her face, I won't, and the way she smiled at me!"

"But," persisted Dillon, patiently, "what became of this particular young man, the one who was staying at the Vicarage?"

The ancient sage leant forward in his chair and tapped the speaker upon the knee with the stem of his clay pipe.

"Ask them as knows," he said, with impressive solemnity. "n.o.body else can tell you!"

And, having permitted an indiscreet laugh to escape him, not another word on the subject could Dillon induce the old man to utter, he strictly confining himself, in his ruffled dignity, to the climatic conditions and the crops.

When Dillon, finally, set out upon the four-mile walk back to the Grange, he realised, with annoyance, that the senile imaginings of his bar-parlour acquaintance lingered in his mind. That Dr. Ka.s.simere dwelt outside the social life of the county he had speedily learnt; but for this he had been prepared. That he might possibly be, not a recluse, but a pariah, was a new point of view. Trivial things, to which hitherto he had paid scant attention, began to marshal themselves as evidence. The two village "helpers," he knew, received extravagant wages, because, as Phryne had confessed, they had "found it almost impossible to get girls to stay." Why?

Of the earlier guest, or guests, who had succ.u.mbed to the siren lure of Phryne, he had heard no mention. Why? Save at meal-times he rarely saw his host, who frankly left him to the society of Phryne. Again--why? Dr.

Ka.s.simere, in his jealously locked laboratory, was at work day and night upon his experiments. What were these experiments? What was the nature of the doctor's studies?

He had now been for nearly three weeks at Hollow Grange, and never had Dr. Ka.s.simere spoken of his work. And Phryne? The sudden, new thought of Phryne was so strange, so wonderful and overwhelming, that it reacted physically; and he pulled up short in the middle of a field-path, as though some palpable obstacle blocked the way.

Why had he set out alone that day, when all other days had been spent in the girl's company? He had deliberately sought solitude--because of Phryne; because he wanted to think calmly, judicially, to arraign himself before his own judgment, remote from the witchery of her presence. He had tried to render his mind a void, wherein should linger not one fragrant memory of her delicate beauty and charm, so that he might return unbiased to his judgment. He had returned; he was judged.

He loved Phryne madly, insanely. His future, his life, lay in the hollow of her hands.

IV

"Yes," admitted Phryne, "it is true. There were two of them."

"And"--Dillon hesitated--"were they in love with you?"

"Of course," said Phryne, navely.

"But you----"

Phryne shook her curly head.

"I rather liked the French boy, but I do not believe anything that a Frenchman says to a girl; and Harry, the other, was handsome, but so silly...."

"So you did not love either of them?"

"Of course not."

"But," said Dillon, and impulsively he swept her into his arms, "you are going to love me."

One quick upward glance she gave, but instantly lowered her eyes and withheld her bewitching face from him.

"Am I?" she whispered. "You are so conceited."

But as she spoke the words he kissed her, and she surrendered sweetly, nestling her head against his shoulder for a moment. Then, leaping back, bright-eyed and blus.h.i.+ng, she turned and ran like a startled fawn across the terrace and into the house.

He saw no more of her until dinner-time, and spent the interval in a kind of suspended consciousness that was new and perturbing. Within him life pulsed at delirious speed, but the universe seemed to have slowed upon its course so that each hour became as two. Throughout dinner, Phryne was deliciously shy to the point of embarra.s.sment; and Dillon, who several times surprised the bird-eyes of Dr. Ka.s.simere studying the girl's face, detained his host, and being a young man of orderly mind, formally asked his consent to an engagement.

The doctor's joy was seemingly so unfeigned that Dillon almost liked him for a moment. He placed no obstacle in the path of the suitor for his adopted daughter's hand, graciously expressing every confidence in the future. His joy was genuine enough, Dillon determined; but from what source did it actually spring? The Thoth-like eyes were exultant, and all the old mistrust poured back in a wave upon the younger man. Was this distrust becoming an obsession? Why should he eternally be seeking an ulterior motive for every act in this man's life?

He went to look for Phryne, and found her in the spot where he had first seen her, p.r.o.ne in a nest of cus.h.i.+ons. She sprang up as he entered the room, and glanced at him in that new way which set his heart leaping....

And because of the magic of her presence, it was not until later, when he stood alone in his own room, that he could order the facts gleaned from her.

There was some grain of truth in the story of the ancient gossip at the _Threshers_ after all. A young French lieutenant of artillery had received an invitation to spend a leave at Hollow Grange. His Gallic soul had been fired by Phryne's beauty, and although his advances had been met with rebuff, he had asked Dr. Ka.s.simere's permission to pay his court to the girl. On the same evening he had departed hurriedly, and Phryne had supposed, since the doctor never referred to him again, that he had been sent about his business. Then came a strange letter, which Phryne had shown to Dillon. Its tone throughout was of pa.s.sionate anger, and one pa.s.sage recurred again and again to Dillon's mind. "I would give my life for you gladly," it read, "but my soul belongs to G.o.d...."

Phryne had counted him demented and Dr. Ka.s.simere had agreed with her.

But there was Harry Waynwright, the nephew of the vicar of St. Peter's at Hainingham. An accidental meeting with Phryne had led to a courtesy call--and the inevitable. It had all the seeming of a case of love-sickness, and the unhappy youth grew seriously ill. From pestering her daily he changed his tactics to studiously avoiding her, until, meeting her in the village one morning, he greeted her with, "I can't do it, Phryne! tell him I can't do it. He can rely upon my word; but I'm going away to try to forget!"

Dr. Ka.s.simere had professed entire ignorance of the meaning of the words. A faint shadow had crossed Phryne's face as she spoke of these matters, but, as a result of her extraordinary beauty, she was somewhat callous where languis.h.i.+ng admirers were concerned, and she had dismissed the gloomy twain with a shrug of her charming shoulders.

"Mad!" she had said. "It seems my fate always to meet mad-men!"

The night silence had descended again upon Hollow Grange, disturbed only by the mournful cry of the owl and the almost imperceptible note of the bat. But to the nervous alertness of Dillon, a deep unrest seemed to stir within the house; yet--an unrest not physical but spiritual; it was as the shadow of a sleepless watcher--a shadow creeping over his soul.