CHAPTER IV

THE FACE IN THE THICKET

When the three friends arrived at the inn it was full to the door. Rogers, wigless again, caught sight of Warrender over the heads of the crowd, and came from behind the counter, edging his way outwards through the press of villagers.

"Missus have got the rooms shipshape, sir," he said. "She's a rare woman for making a man comfortable."

"I'm sure she is," returned Warrender, "and I'm only sorry we shan't know it by personal experience. The fact is, we're going to camp on No Man's Island; there's plenty of time before sunset to fix ourselves up."

"She'll be main sorry, that she will," said the innkeeper, pocketing the two half-crowns Warrender handed him. "No Man's Island, did 'ee say? Maybe you haven't heard what folk do tell?"

"We have heard something, but I dare say it's just talk, you know. Anyhow, we're going to try it, and we'll let you know in the morning how we get on."

"Now, Rogers--drat the man!" cried his wife's voice from behind. She came out into the porch, flourishing his wig. "How many times have I told 'ee I won't have 'ee showing yourself without your hair? If you do be a great baby, there's no need for 'ee to look like one."

Rogers meekly allowed her to adjust the wig, explaining meanwhile the intention of the expected guests. She received the news with disappointment and concern.

"I hope nothing ill will come o't," she said. "Fists bain't no mortal use against spirits; 'twould be like hitting the wind. Howsomever, the young will always go their own gait. 'Tis the way o' the world." She went back into the inn.

"That furriner chap was hurt more in his temper than his framework," said Rogers. "And knowing what furriners be, I'd keep my weather eye open. There's too many of 'em in these parts."

"I understand they're servants of Mr. Pratt; they should be fairly respectable."

"Ay, that's where 'tis. A gentleman must do as he likes, and we haven't got nothing to say to't. But we think the more. And I own I was fair cut up when my sister Molly married the cook; a little Swiss feller he is."

"We saw him up at the post office a while ago; the shopwoman inquired after your sister, I remember."

"And well she might. I never see the girl nowadays; girl, I say, but she's gone thirty, old enough to know better. By all accounts Rod's uncommon clever at the vittles, and the crew down yonder be living on the fat of the land, while the skipper's a-dandering round in furren parts."

"Mr. Pratt's away from home, then?"

"Ay sure. He haven't been seen a good while, and 'tis just like him to go off sudden-like. You'd expect he'd be tired of it at his time o' life, but 'tis once a wanderer, always a wanderer. Well, the evening's getting on, so I won't keep 'ee. Good luck, sir."

Warrender rejoined his companions, who had taken over the boat from the ferryman, and they were soon floating down on the current. They took the narrow channel on the left of the island which they had avoided on the way up, and found it less difficult to navigate than it had appeared at the other end. The dusk was deepening beneath the trees, but in a few minutes they discovered a wide open space that offered more accommodation than they needed. Running the boat close to the shore, they sprang to land, moored to a tree overhanging the stream, and set to work with a will to make their preparations for the night.

The clearing was carpeted with long grass, damp from yesterday's rain, and encircled by dense undergrowth, thicket, and bramble. They pitched the tent in the centre, beat down a stretch of grass in front of it on which to place the stove and the bulk of their impedimenta, and by the time that darkness enwrapped them had everything in order. The moon, almost at full circle, had risen early, and soon, peering over the tree-tops on the mainland, flung her silver sheen into the enclosure, whitening the tent to a snowy brilliance and throwing into strong relief the massed foliage beyond. A light breeze set the leaves quivering with a murmurous rustle. The hour and the scene made an appeal to Pratt's sentimental soul too strong to be resisted. Opening one of the folding chairs, he lay back in it with crossed legs, gazed up into the serene, star-flecked heavens, and began with gentle touches of his strings to serenade the moon.

Warrender, having slipped on his overalls, kindled a lamp and went down to tinker with his engine. Unmusical Armstrong, always accused by Pratt of being "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils," sauntered, hands in pockets, across the clearing. Elbowing his way through the undergrowth he found, after some fifty or sixty yards, that the vegetation thinned. The lesser shrubs gave way to trees, which grew close together, but with a regularity that suggested planting on a definite plan. Pursuing his way, he came by and by to a more spacious clearing than the one he had quitted; and on the left, in the midst of what had evidently been at one time a small garden, he saw the shell of a two-storeyed cottage. The walls were covered with creepers growing in rank disorder; the windows gaped, empty of glass; the doorless entrance shaped a rectangle of blackness; and bare rafters, shaggy with unpruned ivy, drew parallel lines upon the inky gloom of half the upper storey. Ruins, in daylight merely picturesque, take a new beauty in the cold radiance of the moon, but present at the same time an image of all that is desolate and forlorn. Practical, unemotional as Armstrong was, he thrilled to the impression of vacuity and abandonment, and stood for a while at gaze, as though unwilling to disturb the loneliness.

Presently, however, he stepped lightly across the unmown lawn, and the moss-grown path beyond, and, entering the doorway, struck a match and looked around. From the narrow hall--strewn with fragments of brick and mortar, broken tiles, heaps of plaster, and here and there spotted with fungi--sprang the staircase, whole as to the stairs, but showing gaps in the banisters. Curling strips of torn discoloured paper hung from the walls. The match went out; through the open roof the stars glimmered. Deciding to defer exploration till daylight, lest a tile or brick should fall on his head, or the staircase give way under him, Armstrong turned to go out. As he did so he was aware of a low moaning sound, such as a person inside a house may hear when a high wind soughs under the eaves. It rose and fell in cadences eerily mournful, as though the spirit of solitude itself were lonely and in pain. Armstrong shivered and sought the doorway, and as he felt how gentle was the breeze he met, he wondered at its having power enough to produce such sounds. The moaning ceased; he listened for a moment or two; it did not recur, though the zephyr had not sensibly dropped. Puzzled, he started to retrace his way to the camp. At the farther side of the clearing the melancholy sound once more broke upon his car. Almost involuntarily he wheeled round to look back at the cottage; then, impatient with himself, turned again to quit the scene.

His feeling, which was neither awe nor timorousness, but rather a vague discomfort, left him as soon as his active faculties were again in play. Pushing his way through the undergrowth, he was inclined to deride his unwonted susceptibility. All at once, however, without sound or any other physical fact to account for it, he was seized with the fancy that some one was behind him. Does every human being move in the midst of an invisible, intangible aura, that acts as a sixth sense? Whatever the truth may be, certain it is that we have all, at one time or another, been conscious of the proximity of some bodily presence, which neither sight nor sound nor touch has revealed.

Armstrong swung quickly round, and started, for there in the thicket, within a dozen yards of him, a shaft of moonlight struck upon a face, pallid amidst the green. It disappeared in a flash.

"Who's there?" called Armstrong, sharply; then impulsively started forward, parting the foliage.

There was no answer, nobody to be seen. Indeed, within a yard of him the thicket was so dense, so closely overarched by loftier trees, that no ray of moonshine percolated into its pitchy blackness.

Holding the branches apart, peering into the gloom, he listened. Overhead the leaves softly rustled; within the thicket there was not a murmur. He let the branches swing back; stood for a few moments irresolute; then, with an impatient jerk of the shoulders, strode away towards the camp.

Armstrong was not what the pathologist would call a nervous subject. His physical courage had never been questioned; in his healthy life of work and play his moral courage had never been called upon; his lack of imagination had saved him from the tremors and terrors that prey upon the more highly strung.

To find himself mentally disturbed was a novel experience; it filled him with a sense of humiliation and self-contempt; it enraged him. Thoughts of Pratt's mocking glee when the tale should be told made him squirm. "I say, the old bean's seen a spook"--he could hear the light, ringing tones of Pratt's voice, see the bubbling merriment in his large, round eyes. "I swear it _was_ a face!" he angrily told himself. "Dashed if I don't come in daylight and hunt for the fellow--some tramp, I expect, who finds a lodging gratis in the ruins."

By the time he reached the camp he had made up his mind to say nothing about the incident. Emerging into the silent clearing, he saw Pratt and Warrender side by side on their chairs, fast asleep, the latter with folded arms and head on breast, the former holding his banjo across his knees, his face, the image of placid happiness, upturned to the sky. Apparently the swish of Armstrong's boots through the long grass penetrated to the slumbering consciousness of the sleepers. Warrender lifted his head, unclosed his eyes for a moment, muttered "Hallo!" and slept again. Pratt, without moving, looked lazily through half-shut eyelids.

"'O moon of my delight, who know'st no wane!'" he murmured. "Well, old bean, seen the spook?"

"Rot!" growled Armstrong.

"I believe you have!" cried Pratt, starting up, his face kindling. "What's she like?"

"Ass!"

"Well, what _did_ you see? You don't, as a rule, snap for nothing. I'll say that for you. Only cats will scratch you for love. What's upset the apple-cart?"

"I saw the ruined cottage, if you want to know--a ghastly rotten hole. I'm dead tired--I'm going to turn in."

"All right, old chap; you shall have a lullaby." He struck an arpeggio.

"Sing me to sleep, the shadows fall; Let me forget the world and all; Lone is my heart, the day is long; Would it were come to evensong! Sing me to sleep, your hand in mine----"

Armstrong had fled into the tent.

"I say, Warrender," murmured Pratt, nudging the somnolent form at his side, "something's put the old sport in a regular bait."

"Eh?" returned Warrender, drowsily.

"Armstrong's got the pip. Never knew him like this. Something's curdled the milk."

"Well, it's time to turn in," said Warrender, rising and stretching himself. "He'll be all right in the morning. Good-night."

"Same to you. I suppose I must follow you, but it's so jolly under this heavenly moon."

And Warrender, undressing within the tent, smiled as he heard the lingerer's pleasant voice.

"Dark is life's shore, love, life is so deep: Leave me no more, but sing me to sleep."