The Heath Hover Mystery Part 12

She did look, and thoroughly agreed. They were walking down the frozen surface of the pond as on a broad highway. The gossamer branches of the leafless trees shone in the sunlight, picked out in myriad frosted, scintillating patterns of indescribable delicacy against the cloudless blue of the winter sky, and, in between, the dark foliage of firs. Now and then a slide of snow from these, dislodged by the focussed rays of the midday sun, thudded to the ground, with a ghostly break upon the silence of the woodland. But the air--crisp, invigorating--Melian's cheeks were aglow with it, and the blue eyes, thus framed, shone forth in all the animation begotten of the scene and surroundings. Mervyn stared, in whole-souled admiration, likewise wonderment.

"Well done, my 'flu' convalescent," he cried, dropping an arm round her shoulders. "You've come to the right sort of hospital and no mistake."

"Yes, I have indeed," she answered, becoming suddenly grave, as she thought of the all pervading murk and the blackened vista of chimney stacks. Then, as they gained the broad end of the pond, and she climbed lightly over the fence on to the road that ran along the top of the sluice--"What an awfully picturesque old place Heath Hover looks from here, Uncle Seward. By the way, it's a curious name. What does it come from?"

"Ah--ah! An enquiring mind? I suppose that goes on all fours with the love of old stones--eh? Heath I take it is after the surroundings.

When you get up beyond these woods you're on heathery slopes, which glow red in summer, so I suppose they called it after that; the other in local parlance is something coldish or damp, and this house is situated that way in all conscience. So there you are."

"How ripping, I would like to see that same red glow."

"Well, and you will," he answered. "But you'll have to wait for it, like for everything else. And summer's none too near just now."

They were halfway down the path from the sluice by now. Melian had halted to take in the view, her eyes wide open and fairly revelling in it. Mervyn did not fail to notice that one foot rested on the largish round stone which covered something--which const.i.tuted the tombstone of--_something_. And then, whether it was that the stone was slippery with the frost, her footing suddenly failed, and she would have fallen, had he not caught her in a firm grasp.

"Steady up, child," he laughed, as he set her on her feet again. "Why you haven't got your ice legs even yet, although we've walked down that long frozen pond."

She laughed too. But the coincidence struck him. Why on earth should that have been the one stone of all those around, on which she should have chanced to trip? It was significant. Further, as they resumed their way, he noticed that the stone had been displaced, though ever so little. Even that circ.u.mstance sent an uneasy chill through him. It had been firm enough before. Could the frost have loosened it? Or-- could any other agency? And then came the sound of approaching footsteps on the road above.

"Good-day, sir," and the pa.s.sing man saluted, respectfully enough.

"Sharp, middlin' weather, this, sir?"

"It is," he answered, with a genial nod, and the man pa.s.sed on.

"You remember what I told you about being under police surveillance," he said as they entered the house--old Judy could be dimly heard grumbling at her ancient proprietor through the back of the kitchen door.

"Yes," answered the girl wonderingly.

"Well that was one of Nashby's pickets."

"What? That old yokel who just pa.s.sed?"

Mervyn nodded, with a whimsical smile on his face.

"But what in the world does he think he's going to discover?"

"Ah, exactly. Well, that's his job, not mine. Only he's wasting a precious lot of valuable time."

All the same the speaker was just a trifle--and unaccountably--disposed to uneasiness. What a curious coincidence it was, for instance, that his niece should have suddenly slipped and so nearly fallen, headlong, on that very stone that custodied this infernal thing! Then again, that the plain clothes man, with his unmistakable imprint of Scotland Yard, and his transparent affectation of local speech and dialect, should have happened upon the spot at the very moment of that coincidence! There was nothing in coincidence. Coincidence spelt accident:--sheer accident. Still, this one set John Seward Mervyn thinking--thinking more than a bit.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE SHADOW IN THE PLACE.

A fortnight had gone since Melian's arrival at Heath Hover, and she had picked up to such an extent that both she and her uncle found it difficult to realise that she had been seriously ill at all. He took her for drives, always carefully wrapped up, and she had revelled in the beauties of the surrounding country, winter as it was--the wide vistas of field and wood, and the line of downs, sometimes near, sometimes far, stretching east and west as far as the eye could travel. But he absolutely refused, with a bracing st.u.r.diness, to allow any practical incursions into the domain of archaeology.

"That will keep," he declared. "Old stones spell damp. You've got to steer clear of that for some time to come."

Then, as she got stronger, they had walked too, and the breezy, open uplands, contrasting with fragrant wood, did their share of the tonic.

But this was not to last. A damp, muggy thaw set in, and the trees and hedges wept, the day through, under the unbroken murk of a wholly depressing sky; and you wanted very thick boots for underfoot purposes.

Mervyn began to look anxiously at his charge.

"I'm afraid you'll be getting awfully fed up with this, dear," he said one morning, when the thin drizzle and the drip-drip from bare, leafless bough and twig seemed rather more depressing than ordinarily. "What can be done for you? Frankly I'm too poor to take you away to a more suns.h.i.+ny climate--or I would, like a shot. For my part I'm used to this sort of thing, and it doesn't 'get upon' me any. There was a time when it would have, but that time's gone. But for you--why it's devilish rough."

Then Melian had rea.s.sured him--had abundantly rea.s.sured him. She didn't find it heavy, she declared--not she. Why, on top of her experience of bearleading a brace of utterly uninteresting and unengaging children-- and being at the beck and call of their detestable underbred mother, this was ideal. And she somehow or other managed to convey that her sense of the improvement was not merely a material one. Did they not get on splendidly together? Had they not any number of ideas in common--those they had not, only serving to create variety by giving rise to more or less spirited but always jocose arguments? Rough on her? Dull for her? It was nothing of the sort, she declared with unambiguous emphasis. And the fascination of the open country, even with the weeping woodlands and soggy, miry underfoot, was coming more and more over her, she further declared. And her uncle was hugely gratified, more so than he cared to realise. This bright young presence lightening his lonely existence from morn till night--how on earth would he be able to do without it again? Those long rambles, not by himself now, beset as they had been with uncheering thoughts of the past and a less cheering vista of the future; the now cosy snug evenings by his own fireside, with the after-dinner pipe, listening to the girl's bright talk and entering into her ideas while the lamplight gleamed upon her golden head and animated eyes--and she herself made up such a picture sitting framed in the big armchair opposite--the little black fluffy kitten curled up on her lap. Of a truth life held something yet for him after all, if only this were going to last. But now he said:

"How about getting that nice girl you were chumming with--and she must be a nice girl from the way she wrote about you--down here to stop with you a bit, dear? Make a kind of relief from me, you know. Always stewed up from morning till night with an old fogey--the same old fogey at that--can't be altogether lively."

"Violet? She couldn't come, if she wanted to ever so," was the answer.

"She's entirely dependent on her job--and, as it was, her people cut up rusty if she chucked it for a day or two when I was ill. What beasts people are--aren't they. Uncle Seward?"

"We shan't quarrel on that question," answered Mervyn, sending out a long puff of smoke, and meditatively watching it resolve itself into very perfect rings in mid air. "A very large proportion are, and that just the proportion which could best afford not to be. Doesn't she ever get any time off then? Holidays?"

"She'll get about four days off at Easter time. It would be jolly to get her down here then, poor old Violet. She does work, and she's a good sort. It's precious lucky I had her to go to when I did."

"Precious lucky for me too."

"Look here, Uncle Seward," said the girl, gravely. "Don't talk any more about old fogeys and it being heavy and slow for me, and all that. I don't want to be disrespectful, but it's--er--it's bosh."

Mervyn burst into a wholehearted laugh. The answer, and, above all, the look which accompanied it, the tone in which it was made, relieved him beyond measure.

"Is it? Very well, little one. We won't talk any more--bosh. How's that?"

"'That' is. So we won't. Yes, we'll get her down here at Easter,"--and then the girl broke off suddenly and looked graver still.

"Listen to me, Uncle Seward, and how I am running on," she said. "Any one would think I had come here to live, instead of for a rest until I can find another job. And Easter is a long way off, and--"

"And? What then?" he interrupted. "Of course you have come here to live. Do you think I'm going to let you go wasting your young life bearleading a lot of abominable brats while I've got a shack that'll hold the two of us? Well, I'm not, then. How's _that_?"

Melian looked embarra.s.sed, and felt it.

"Uncle Seward," she urged at last. "You said you were--poor--more than once. Well, is it likely I'm going to sponge on you for all time? It's delightful to be here with you, while I'm picking up again, but--"

"'But',"--and again he interrupted. "My dear child, I see through it all. You are going on the tack of the up-to-date girl, wanting to be independent. There's a sort of grandiloquent, comforting smack about that good old word 'independent,' isn't there? Well, you can be just as independent as you like here. You can take entire charge. You can order me about as you want to--I don't say I shall obey, mind--but I shan't complain. Well, if you go bearleading some woman's cubs they won't do the first, and they'll do the last _ad lib_. Now then. Which is the lesser evil?"

Melian laughed outright. That was so exactly his brusque and to the point way of putting things. He went on, now very gently.

"I am getting an old man now, child, and I have led a very lonely life.

In my old age it promises to be lonelier still. You are alone too. Is it mere chance that brings us together? But if you think you have a mission, may it not conceivably be one to look after the old instead of the young. So now--there you are."

The voice was even, matter-of-fact sounding. But underlying it was a note of feeling--of real pathos.

"When I emphasised the fact of being poor," the speaker went on, "I meant that I was in no position to indulge in luxuries, or outside jollification, like going abroad, for instance, to escape English winters, and so on. But you can see for yourself how this show is run, and that there's plenty of everything and no stint, and what's warm and snug and comfy for one is for two. That's where the 'poverty' begins and ends."

The girl got up and came over to him.

"Uncle Seward, I will stay with you as long as ever you want me," she said gravely, placing her hands upon his shoulders.

"Hurrah! This old shack's going to look up now," he cried. "I'll see if I can't beat up some one young about the country side, to make things livelier for you, dear. And then, when it gets warmer and springlike, we'll have such romps all over the country. Why these rotten old gargoyles with their noses rubbed off--you'll soon know them all by heart, be able to write a book about them, and all that sort of thing.