Part 7

“‘My dear Owen,--My mind is quite made up; though I know the sort of legal long-winded things you will say against it; I know especially one thing a leathery old lawyer like you is bound to say; but as a matter of fact even you can’t say it in a case like this, because the timber came from the other end of the county and had nothing whatever to do with him or any of his flunkeys and sycophants. Besides, I did it all myself with a little assistance I’ll tell you about later; and even in these days I should be surprised to hear _that_ sort of assistance could be anything but a man’s own affair. I defy you and all your parchments to maintain that _it_ comes under the Game Laws. You won’t mind me talking like this; I know jolly well you’d think you were acting as a friend; but I think the time has come to speak plainly.’”

“Quite right,” said the Colonel.

“Yes,” said young Pierce, with a rather vague expression, “I’m glad he feels that the time has come to speak plainly.”

“Quite so,” observed the lawyer drily; “he continues as follows:

“‘I’ve got a lot to tell you about the new arrangement, which works much better even than I hoped. I was afraid at first it would really be an encumbrance, as you know it’s always supposed to be. But there are more things, and all the rest of it, and God fulfils himself, and so on and so on. It gives one quite a weird Asiatic feeling sometimes.’”

“Yes,” said the Colonel, “it does.”

“What does?” asked Pierce, sitting up suddenly, like one who can bear no more.

“You are not used to the epistolary method,” said Hood indulgently; “you haven’t got into the swing of the style. It goes on:

“‘Of course, he’s a big pot down here, and all sorts of skunks are afraid of him and pretend to boycott me. Nobody could expect anything else of those pineapple people, but I confess I was surprised at Parkinson. Sally of course is as sound as ever; but she goes to Scotland a good deal and you can’t blame her. Sometimes I’m left pretty severely alone, but I’m not downhearted; you’ll probably laugh if I tell you that Snowdrop is really a very intelligent companion.’”

“I confess I am long past laughter,” said Hilary Pierce sadly; “but I rather wish I knew who Snowdrop is.”

“Child, I suppose,” said the Colonel shortly.

“Yes; I suppose it must be a child,” said Pierce. “Has he any children?”

“No,” said the Colonel. “Bachelor.”

“I believe he was in love with a lady in those parts and never married in consequence,” said Hood. “It would be quite on the lines of fiction and film-drama if Snowdrop were the daughter of the lady, when she had married Another. But there seems to be something more about Snowdrop, that little sunbeam in the house:

“‘Snowdrop tries to enter into our ways, as they always do; but, of course, it would be a little awkward if she played tricks. How alarmed they would all be if she took it into her head to walk about on two legs, like everybody else.’”

“Nonsense!” ejaculated Colonel Crane. “Can’t be a child--talking about it walking about on two legs.”

“After all,” said Pierce thoughtfully, “a little girl does walk about on two legs.”

“Bit startling if she walked about on three,” said Crane.

“If my learned brother will allow me,” said Hood, in his forensic manner, “would he describe the fact of a little girl walking on two legs as alarming?”

“A little girl is always alarming,” replied Pierce.

“I’ve come to the conclusion myself,” went on Hood, “that Snowdrop must be a pony. It seems a likely enough name for a pony. I thought at first it was a dog or a cat but alarming seems a strong word even for a dog or a cat sitting up to beg. But a pony on its hind legs might be a little alarming, especially when you’re riding it. Only I can’t fit this view in with the next sentence: ‘I’ve taught her to reach down the things I want.’”

“Lord!” cried Pierce. “It’s a monkey!”

“That,” replied Hood, “had occurred to me as possibly explaining the weird Asiatic atmosphere. But a monkey on two legs is even less unusual than a dog on two legs. Moreover, the reference to Asiatic mystery seems really to refer to something else and not to any animal at all. For he ends up by saying: ‘I feel now as if my mind were moving in much larger and more ancient spaces of time or eternity; and as if what I thought at first was an oriental atmosphere was only an atmosphere of the orient in the sense of dayspring and the dawn. It has nothing to do with the stagnant occultism of decayed Indian cults; it is something that unites a real innocence with the immensities, a power as of the mountains with the purity of snow. This vision does not violate my own religion, but rather reinforces it; but I cannot help feeling that I have larger views. I hope in two senses to preach liberty in these parts. So I may live to falsify the proverb after all.’

“That,” added Hood, folding up the letter, “is the only sentence in the whole thing that conveys anything to my mind. As it happens, we have all three of us lived to falsify proverbs.”

Hilary Pierce had risen to his feet with the restless action that went best with his alert figure. “Yes,” he said; “I suppose we can all three of us say we have lived for adventures, or had some curious ones anyhow. And to tell you the truth, the adventure feeling has come on me very strong this very minute. I’ve got the detective fever about that parson of yours. I should like to get at the meaning of that letter, as if it were a cipher about buried treasure.”

Then he added more gravely: “And if, as I gather, your clerical friend is really a friend worth having, I do seriously advise you to keep an eye on him just now. Writing letters upside-down is all very well, and I shouldn’t be alarmed about that. Lots of people think they’ve explained things in previous letters they never wrote. I don’t think it matters who Snowdrop is, or what sort of children or animals he chooses to be fond of. That’s all being eccentric in the good old English fashion, like poetical tinkers and mad squires. You’re both of you eccentric in that sort of way, and it’s one of the things I like about you. But just because I naturally knock about more among the new people, I see something of the new eccentricities. And believe me, they’re not half so nice as the old ones. I’m a student of scientific aviation, which is a new thing itself, and I like it. But there’s a sort of spiritual aviation that I don’t like at all.”

“Sorry,” observed Crane. “Really no notion of what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you haven’t,” answered Pierce with engaging candour; “that’s another thing I like about you. But I don’t like the way your clerical friend talks about new visions and larger religions and light and liberty from the East. I’ve heard a good many people talk like that, and they were mountebanks or the dupes of mountebanks. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s a long shot even with the long bow we used to talk about. It’s a pretty wild guess even in this rather wild business. But I have a creepy sort of feeling that if you went down to his house and private parlour to see Snowdrop, you’d be surprised at what you saw.”

“What should we see?” asked the Colonel, staring.

“You’d see nothing at all,” replied the young man.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean,” replied Pierce, “that you’d find Mr. White talking to somebody who didn’t seem to be there.”

* * * * *

Hilary Pierce, fired by his detective fever, made a good many more inquiries about the Rev. Wilding White, both of his two old friends and elsewhere.

One long legal conversation with Owen Hood did indeed put him in possession of the legal outline of certain matters, which might be said to throw a light on some parts of the strange letter, and which might in time even be made to throw a light on the rest. White was the vicar of a parish lying deep in the western parts of Somersetshire, where the principal landowner was a certain Lord Arlington. And in this case there had been a quarrel between the squire and the parson, of a more revolutionary sort than is common in the case of parsons. The clergyman intensely resented that irony or anomaly which has caused so much discontent among tenants in Ireland and throughout the world; the fact that improvements or constructive work actually done by the tenant only pass into the possession of the landlord. He had considerably improved a house that he himself rented from the squire, but in some kind of crisis of defiance or renunciation, he had quitted this more official residence bag and baggage, and built himself a sort of wooden lodge or bungalow on a small hill or mound that rose amid woods on the extreme edge of the same grounds. This quarrel about the claim of the tenant to his own work was evidently the meaning of certain phrases in the letter--such as the timber coming from the other end of the county, the sort of work being a man’s own affair, and the general allusion to somebody’s flunkeys or sycophants who attempted to boycott the discontented tenant. But it was not quite clear whether the allusions to a new arrangement, and how it worked, referred to the bungalow or to the other and more elusive mystery of the presence of Snowdrop.

One phrase in the letter he found to have been repeated in many places and to many persons without becoming altogether clear in the process. It was the sentence that ran: “I was afraid at first it would really be an encumbrance, as you know it’s always supposed to be.” Both Colonel Crane and Owen Hood, and also several other persons whom he met later in his investigations, were agreed in saying that Mr. White had used some expression indicating that he had entangled himself with something troublesome or at least useless; something that he did not want. None of them could remember the exact words he had used; but all could state in general terms that it referred to some sort of negative nuisance or barren responsibility. This could hardly refer to Snowdrop, of whom he always wrote in terms of tenderness as if she were a baby or a kitten. It seemed hard to believe it could refer to the house he had built entirely to suit himself. It seemed as if there must be some third thing in his muddled existence, which loomed vaguely in the background through the vapour of his confused correspondence.

Colonel Crane snapped his fingers with a mild irritation in trying to recall a trifle. “He said it was a--you know, I’ve forgotten the word--a botheration or embarrassment. But then he’s always in a state of botheration and embarrassment. I didn’t tell you, by the way, that I had a letter from him too. Came the day after I heard yours. Shorter, and perhaps a little plainer.” And he handed the letter to Hood, who read it out slowly:

“‘I never knew the old British populace, here in Avalon itself, could be so broken down by squires and sneaking lawyers. Nobody dared help me move my house again; said it was illegal and they were afraid of the police. But Snowdrop helped, and we carted it all away in two or three journeys; took it right clean off the old fool’s land altogether this time. I fancy the old fool will have to admit there are things in this world he wasn’t prepared to believe in.’”

“But look here,” began Hood as if impulsively, and then stopped and spoke more slowly and carefully. “I don’t understand this; I think it’s extremely odd. I don’t mean odd for an ordinary person, but odd for an odd person; odd for this odd person. I know White better than either of you can, and I can tell you that, though he tells a tale anyhow, the tale is always true. He’s rather precise and pedantic when you do come to the facts; these litigious quarrelsome people often are. He would do extraordinary things, but he wouldn’t make them out more extraordinary than they were. I mean he’s the sort of man who might break all the squire’s windows, but he wouldn’t say he’d broken six when he’d broken five. I’ve always found when I’d got to the meaning of those mad letters that it was quite true. But how can this be true? How could Snowdrop, whatever she is, have moved a whole house, or old White either?”

“I suppose you know what I think,” said Pierce. “I told you that Snowdrop, whatever else she is, is invisible. I’m certain your friend has gone Spiritualist, and Snowdrop is the name of a spirit, or a control, or whatever they call it. The spirit would say, of course, that it was mere child’s play to throw the house from one end of the county to the other. But if this unfortunate gentleman believes himself to have been thrown, house and all, in that fashion, I’m very much afraid he’s begun really to suffer from delusions.”

The faces of the two older men looked suddenly much older, perhaps for the first time they looked old. The young man seeing their dolorous expression was warmed and fired to speak quickly.

“Look here,” he said hastily, “I’ll go down there myself and find out what I can for you. I’ll go this afternoon.”

“Train journey takes ages,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “Other end of nowhere. Told me yourself you had an appointment at the Air Ministry to-morrow.”

“Be there in no time,” replied Pierce cheerfully. “I’ll fly down.”

And there was something in the lightness and youth of his vanishing gesture that seemed really like Icarus spurning the earth, the first man to mount upon wings.

Perhaps this literally flying figure shone the more vividly in their memories because, when they saw it again, it was in a subtle sense changed. When the other two next saw Hilary Pierce on the steps of the Air Ministry, they were conscious that his manner was a little quieter, but his wild eye rather wilder than usual. They adjourned to a neighbouring restaurant and talked of trivialities while luncheon was served; but the Colonel, who was a keen observer, was sure that Pierce had suffered some sort of shock, or at least some sort of check. While they were considering what to say Pierce himself said abruptly, staring at a mustard-pot on the table:

“What do you think about spirits?”

“Never touch ’em,” said the Colonel. “Sound port never hurt anybody.”

“I mean the other sort,” said Pierce. “Things like ghosts and all that.”

“I don’t know,” said Owen Hood. “The Greek for it is agnosticism. The Latin for it is ignorance. But have you really been dealing with ghosts and spirits down at poor White’s parsonage?”

“I don’t know,” said Pierce gravely.

“You don’t mean you really think you saw something!” cried Hood sharply.

“There goes the agnostic!” said Pierce with a rather weary smile. “The minute the agnostic hears a bit of real agnosticism he shrieks out that it’s superstition. I say I don’t know whether it was a spirit. I also say I don’t know what the devil else it was if it wasn’t. In plain words, I went down to that place convinced that poor White had got some sort of delusions. Now I wonder whether it’s I that have got the delusions.”

He paused a moment and then went on in a more collected manner:

“But I’d better tell you all about it. To begin with, I don’t admit it as an explanation, but it’s only fair to allow for it as a fact--that all that part of the world seems to be full of that sort of thing. You know how the glamour of Glastonbury lies over all that land and the lost tomb of King Arthur and time when he shall return and the prophecies of Merlin and all the rest. To begin with, the village they call Ponder’s End ought to be called World’s End; it gives one the impression of being somewhere west of the sunset. And then the parsonage is quite a long way west of the parish, in large neglected grounds fading into pathless woods and hills; I mean the old empty rectory that our wild friend has evacuated. It stood there a cold empty shell of flat classical architecture, as hollow as one of those classical temples they used to stick up in country seats. But White must have done some sort of parish work there, for I found a great big empty shed in the grounds--that sort of thing that’s used for a schoolroom or drill-hall or what not. But not a sign of him or his work can be seen there now. I’ve said it’s a long way west of the village that you come at last to the old house. Well, it’s a long way west of that that you come to the new house--if you come to it at all. As for me, I came and I came not, as in some old riddle of Merlin. But you shall hear.

“I had come down about sunset in a meadow near Ponder’s End, and I did the rest of the journey on foot, for I wanted to see things in detail. This was already difficult as it was growing dusk, and I began to fear I should find nothing of importance before nightfall. I had asked a question or two of the villagers about the vicar and his new self-made vicarage. They were very reticent about the former, but I gathered that the latter stood at the extreme edge of his original grounds on a hill rising out of a thicket of wood. In the increasing darkness it was difficult to find the place, but I came on it at last, in a place where a fringe of forest ran along under the low brows of a line of rugged cliffs, such as sometimes break the curves of great downlands. I seemed to be descending a thickly wooded slope, with a sea of tree-tops below me, and out of that sea, like an island, rose the dome of the isolated hill; and I could faintly see the building on it, darker against the dark-clouded sky. For a moment a faint line of light from the masked moon showed me a little more of its shape, which seemed singularly simple and airy in its design. Against that pallid gleam stood four strong columns, with the bulk of building apparently lifted above them; but it produced a queer impression, as if this Christian priest had built for his final home a heathen temple of the winds. As I leaned forward, peering at it, I overbalanced myself and slid rapidly down the steep thicket into the darkest entrails of the wood. From there I could see nothing of the pillared house or temple or whatever it was on the hill; the thick woods had swallowed me up literally like a sea, and I groped for what must have been nearly half an hour amid tangled roots and low branches, in that double darkness of night and shadow, before I found my feet slipping on the opposite slope and began to climb the hill on the top of which the temple stood. It was very difficult climbing, of course, through a network of briars and branching trees, and it was some little time afterwards that I burst through the last screen of foliage and came out upon the bare hill-top.

“Yes; upon the bare hill-top. Rank grasses grew on it, and the wind blew them about like hair on a head; but for any trace of anything else, that green dome was as bare as a skull. There was no sign or shadow of the building I had seen there a little time before; it had vanished like a fairy palace. A broad track broken through the woods seemed to lead up to it, so far as I could make out in that obscurity; but there was no trace of the building to which it led. And when I saw that, I gave up. Something told me I should find out no more; perhaps I had some shaken sense that there were things past finding out. I retraced my steps, descending the hill as best I might; but when I was again swallowed up in that leafy sea, something happened that, for an instant, turned me cold as stone. An unearthly noise, like long hooting laughter, rang out in vast volume over the forest and rose to the stars. It was no noise to which I could put a name; it was certainly no noise I had ever heard before; it bore some sort of resemblance to the neighing of a horse immensely magnified; yet it might have been half human, and there was triumph in it and derision.

“I will tell you one more thing I learnt before I left those parts. I left them at once, partly because I really had an appointment early this morning, as I told you; partly also, I think, because I felt you had the right to know at once what sort of things were to be faced. I was alarmed when I thought your friend was tormented with imaginary bogies; I am not less alarmed if he had got mixed up with real ones. Anyhow, before I left that village I had told one man what I had seen, and he told me he had seen it also. But he had seen it actually moving, in dusk turning to dark; the whole great house, with its high columns, moving across the fields like a great ship sailing on land.”

Owen Hood sat up suddenly, with awakened eyes, and struck the table.

“Look here,” he cried, with a new ring in his voice, “we must all go down to Ponder’s End and bring this business to a finish.”

“Do you think you will bring it to a finish?” asked Pierce gloomily; “or can you tell what sort of a finish?”

“Yes,” replied Hood resolutely. “I think I can finish it, and I think I know what the finish will be. The truth is, my friend, I think I understand the whole thing now. And as I told you before, Wilding White, so far from being deluded by imaginary bogies, is a gentleman very exact in his statements. In this matter he has been very exact. That has been the whole mystery about him--that he has been very much too exact.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” asked Pierce.

“I mean,” said the lawyer, “that I have suddenly remembered the phrase he used. It was very exact; it was dull, literal truth. But I can be exact, too, at times, and just now I should like to look at a time-table.”

* * * * *

They found the village of Ponder’s End in a condition as comically incongruous as could well be with the mystical experiences of Mr. Hilary Pierce. When we talk of such places as sleepy, we forget that they are very wide-awake about their own affairs, and especially on their own festive occasions. Piccadilly Circus looks much the same on Christmas Day or any other; but the marketplace of a country town or village looks very different on the day of a fair or bazaar. And Hilary Pierce, who had first come down there to find in a wood at midnight the riddle that he thought worthy of Merlin, came down the second time to find himself plunged suddenly into the middle of the bustling bathos of a jumble sale. It was one of those bazaars to provide bargains for the poor, at which all sorts of odds and ends are sold off. But it was treated as a sort of fête, and highly-coloured posters and handbills announced its nature on every side. The bustle seemed to be dominated by a tall dark lady of distinguished appearance, whom Owen Hood, rather to the surprise of his companions, hailed as an old acquaintance and managed to draw aside for a private talk. She had appeared to have her hands full at the bazaar; nevertheless, her talk with Hood was rather a long one. Pierce only heard the last words of it:

“Oh, he promised he was bringing something for the sale. I assure you he always keeps his word.”

All Hood said when he rejoined his companion was: “That’s the lady White was going to marry. I think I know now why things went wrong, and I hope they may go right. But there seems to be another bother. You see that clump of clod-hopping policemen over there, inspector and all. It seems they’re waiting for White. Say he’s broken the law in taking his house off the land, and that he has always eluded them. I hope there won’t be a scene when he turns up.”

If this was Mr. Hood’s hope, it was ill-founded and destined to disappointment. A scene was but a faint description of what was in store for that hopeful gentleman. Within ten minutes the greater part of the company were in a world in which the sun and moon seemed to have turned topsy-turvy and the last limit of unlikelihood had been reached. Pierce had imagined he was very near that limit of the imagination when he groped after the vanishing temple in the dark forest. But nothing he had seen in that darkness and solitude was so fantastic as what he saw next in broad daylight in a crowd.