The Vanished Messenger Part 18

"The only remaining member of my family," Mr. Fentolin remarked, indicating his nephew. "Gerald, you will be pleased, I know, to meet Mr. Hamel. Mr. Hamel has been a great traveller. Long before you can remember, his father used to paint wonderful pictures of this coast."

Gerald shook hands with his visitor. His face, for a moment, lighted up.

He was looking pale, though, and singularly sullen and dejected.

"There are two of your father's pictures in the modern side of the gallery up-stairs," he remarked, a little diffidently. "They are great favourites with everybody here."

They all went in to dinner together. Meekins, who had appeared silently, had glided unnoticed behind his master's chair and wheeled it across the hall.

"A partie carree to-night," Mr. Fentolin declared. "I have a resident doctor here, a very delightful person, who often dines with us, but to-night I thought not. Five is an awkward number. I want to get to know you better, Mr. Hamel, and quickly. I want you, too, to make friends with my niece and nephew. Mr. Hamel's father," he went on, addressing the two latter, "and your father were great friends. By-the-by, have I told you both exactly why Mr. Hamel is a guest here to-night--why he came to these parts at all? No? Listen, then. He came to take possession of the Tower. The worst of it is that it belongs to him, too. His father bought it from your father more years ago than we should care to talk about. I have really been a trespa.s.ser all this time."

They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the dining-room. The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table seemed to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness. The gloomy faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the walls were almost invisible. The servants themselves, standing a little outside the halo of light, were like shadows pa.s.sing swiftly and noiselessly back and forth. At the far end of the room was an organ, and to the left a little balcony, built out as though for an orchestra. Hamel looked about him almost in wonderment. There was something curiously impressive in the size of the apartment and its emptiness.

"A trespa.s.ser," Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyegla.s.s, "that is what I have been, without a doubt."

"But for your interest and consequent trespa.s.s," Hamel remarked, "I should probably have found the roof off and the whole place in ruins."

"Instead of which you found the door locked against you," Mr. Fentolin pointed out. "Well, we shall see. I might, at any rate, have lost the opportunity of entertaining you here this evening. I am particularly glad to have an opportunity of making you known to my niece and nephew.

I think you will agree with me that here are two young people who are highly to be commended. I cannot offer them a cheerful life here. There is little society, no gaiety, no sort of excitement. Yet they never leave me. They seem to have no other interest in life but to be always at my beck and call. A case, Mr. Hamel, of really touching devotion. If anything could reconcile me to my miserable condition, it would be the kindness and consideration of those by whom I am surrounded."

Hamel murmured a few words of cordial agreement. Yet he found himself, in a sense, embarra.s.sed. Gerald was looking down upon his plate and his face was hidden. Esther's features had suddenly become stony and expressionless. Hamel felt instinctively that something was wrong.

"There are compensations," Mr. Fentolin continued, with the air of one enjoying speech, "which find their way into even the gloomiest of lives.

As I lie on my back, hour after hour, I feel all the more conscious of this. The world is a school of compensations, Mr. Hamel. The interests--the mental interests, I mean--of unfortunate people like myself, come to possess in time a peculiar significance and to yield a peculiar pleasure. I have hobbies, Mr. Hamel. I frankly admit it.

Without my hobbies, I shudder to think what might become of me. I might become a selfish, cruel, misanthropical person. Hobbies are indeed a great thing."

The brother and sister sat still in stony silence. Hamel, looking across the little table with its glittering load of cut gla.s.s and silver and scarlet flowers, caught something in Esther's eyes, so rarely expressive of any emotion whatever, which puzzled him. He looked swiftly back at his host. Mr. Fentolin's face, at that moment, was like a beautiful cameo. His expression was one of gentle benevolence.

"Let me be quite frank with you," Mr. Fentolin murmured. "My occupation of the Tower is one of these hobbies. I love to sit there within a few yards of the sea and watch the tide come in. I catch something of the spirit, I think, which caught your father, Mr. Hamel, and kept him a prisoner here. In my small way I, too, paint while I am down there, paint and dream. These things may not appeal to you, but you must remember that there are few things left to me in life, and that those, therefore, which I can make use of, are dear to me. Gerald, you are silent to-night. How is it that you say nothing?"

"I am tired, sir," the boy answered quietly.

Mr. Fentolin nodded gravely.

"It is inexcusable of me," he declared smoothly, "to have forgotten even for a moment. My nephew, Mr. Hamel," he went on, "had quite an exciting experience last night--or rather a series of experiences. He was first of all in a railway accident, and then, for the sake of a poor fellow who was with him and who was badly hurt, he motored back here in the grey hours of the morning and ran, they tell me, considerable risk of being drowned on the marshes. A very wonderful and praiseworthy adventure, I consider it. I trust that our friend up-stairs, when he recovers, will be properly grateful."

Gerald rose to his feet precipitately. The service of dinner was almost concluded, and he muttered something which sounded like an excuse. Mr.

Fentolin, however, stretched out his hand and motioned him to resume his seat.

"My dear Gerald!" he exclaimed reprovingly. "You would leave us so abruptly? Before your sister, too! What will Mr. Hamel think of our country ways? Pray resume your seat."

For a moment the boy stood quite still, then he slowly subsided into his chair. Mr. Fentolin pa.s.sed around a decanter of wine which had been placed upon the table by the butler. The servants had now left the room.

"You must excuse my nephew, if you please, Mr. Hamel," he begged.

"Gerald has a boy's curious aversion to praise in any form. I am looking forward to hearing your verdict upon my port. The collection of wine and pictures was a hobby of my grandfather's, for which we, his descendants, can never be sufficiently grateful."

Hamel praised his wine, as indeed he had every reason to, but for a few moments the smooth conversation of his host fell upon deaf ears. He looked from the boy's face, pale and wrinkled as though with some sort of suppressed pain, to the girl's still, stony expression. This was indeed a house of mysteries! There was something here incomprehensible, some thing about the relations of these three and their knowledge of one another, utterly baffling. It was the queerest household, surely, into which any stranger had ever been precipitated.

"The planting of trees and the laying down of port are two virtues in our ancestors which have never been properly appreciated," Mr. Fentolin continued. "Let us, at any rate, free ourselves from the reproach of ingrat.i.tude so far as regards my grandfather--Gerald Fentolin--to whom I believe we are indebted for this wine. We will drink--"

Mr. Fentolin broke off in the middle of his sentence. The august calm of the great house had been suddenly broken. From up-stairs came the tumult of raised voices, the slamming of a door, the falling of something heavy upon the floor. Mr. Fentolin listened with a grim change in his expression. His smile had departed, his lower lip was thrust out, his eyebrows met. He raised the little whistle which hung from his chain. At that moment, however, the door was opened. Doctor Sarson appeared.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Fentolin," he said, "but our patient is becoming a little difficult. The concussion has left him, as I feared it might, in a state of nervous excitability. He insists upon an interview with you."

Mr. Fentolin backed his little chair from the table. The doctor came over and laid his hand upon the handle.

"You will, I am sure, excuse me for a few moments, Mr. Hamel," his host begged. "My niece and nephew will do their best to entertain you. Now, Sarson, I am ready."

Mr. Fentolin glided across the dim, empty s.p.a.ces of the splendid apartment, followed by the doctor; a ghostly little procession it seemed. The door was closed behind them. For a few moments a curious silence ensued. Gerald remained tense and apparently suffering from some sort of suppressed emotion. Esther for the first time moved in her place. She leaned towards Hamel. Her lips were slowly parted, her eyes sought the door as though in terror. Her voice, although save for themselves there was no one else in the whole of that great apartment, had sunk to the lowest of whispers.

"Are you a brave man, Mr. Hamel?" she asked.

He was staggered but he answered her promptly.

"I believe so."

"Don't give up the Tower--just yet. That is what--he has brought you here for. He wants you to give it up and go back. Don't!"

The earnestness of her words was unmistakable. Hamel felt the thrill of coming events.

"Why not?"

"Don't ask me," she begged. "Only if you are brave, if you have feeling for others, keep the Tower, if it be for only a week. Hus.h.!.+"

The door had been noiselessly opened. The doctor appeared and advanced to the table with a grave little bow.

"Mr. Fentolin," he said, "has been kind enough to suggest that I take a gla.s.s of wine with you. My presence is not needed up-stairs. Mr. Hamel,"

he added, "I am glad, sir, to make your acquaintance. I have for a long time been a great admirer of your father's work."

He took his place at the head of the table and, filling his gla.s.s, bowed towards Hamel. Once more Gerald and his sister relapsed almost automatically into an indifferent and cultivated silence. Hamel found civility towards the newcomer difficult. Unconsciously his att.i.tude became that of the other two. He resented the intrusion. He found himself regarding the advent of Doctor Sarson as possessing some secondary significance. It was almost as though Mr. Fentolin preferred not to leave him alone with his niece and nephew.

Nevertheless, his voice, when he spoke, was clear and firm.

CHAPTER XIV

Mr. Fentolin, on leaving the dining-room, steered his chair with great precision through the open, wrought-iron doors of a small lift at the further end of the hall, which Doctor Sarson, who stepped in with him, promptly directed to the second floor. Here they made their way to the room in which Mr. Dunster was lying. Doctor Sarson opened the door and looked in. Almost immediately he stood at one side, out of sight of Mr.

Dunster, and nodded to Mr. Fentolin.

"If there is any trouble," he whispered, "send for me. I am better away, for the present. My presence only excites him."

Mr. Fentolin nodded.

"You are right," he said. "Go down into the dining-room. I am not sure about that fellow Hamel, and Gerald is in a queer temper. Stay with them. See that they are not alone."

The doctor silently withdrew, and Mr. Fentolin promptly glided past him into the room. Mr. John P. Dunster, in his night clothes, was sitting on the side of the bed. Standing within a few feet of him, watching him all the time with the subtle intentness of a cat watching a mouse, stood Meekins. Mr. Dunster's head was still bound, although the bandage had slipped a little, apparently in some struggle. His face was chalklike, and he was breathing quickly.