Part 2

“Good morning, master!” he cooed--no other word expresses his suavity of tone. “I trust you slept well and refreshingly after all your privations.”

“My privations, sir, had been of short duration, and their recompense full,” I replied, imitating his half-chaffing tone. “I slept excellently well, thank you.”

“Why, that’s a blessing!” he said, rubbing his hands. “So did I!”

“It was very unkind of you, though, Jimmie, to wake up a guest in the middle of the night,” said Miss Durham. “How inconsiderate!”

Mr. Parslewe motioned me to the breakfast table with a bow and a wave of his delicately fingered hand, and favoured his ward and myself with one of his sweetest smiles.

“Well, I don’t know, my dear,” he retorted. “He might have been a burglar!--you never can tell.”

He laughed, with full enjoyment, at his own joke, and bent towards me as he handed me a plate.

“I was sorry I woke you!” he said, still smiling. “I was enjoying looking at you. I thought I’d never seen such a refreshingly innocent young mortal in my life! In fact, I was just thinking of fetching Madrasia to look at you when you woke.”

He laughed more than ever at this, and I glanced from him to his ward.

“Don’t mind him!” she said. “That’s his way. He possesses a curious form of humour--a very twisted form sometimes. You’re a queer man, Jimmie, aren’t you? And I gave you such a splendid character last night!--said that you’d have been furious if I hadn’t insisted on bringing Mr. Craye in, and lots more--didn’t I, Mr. Craye?”

“Well, I’d certainly rather see him sitting there alive, eating his bacon, than dig him out of the snow, dead,” remarked Mr. Parslewe, good-humouredly. “But Craye, now--do you happen to be related to Craye, the landscape painter?”

“I am Craye, the landscape painter, Mr. Parslewe,” I replied. “That’s why I’m in this neighbourhood. I was looking out all yesterday for a likely subject.”

His face lighted up with genuine pleasure, and he stretched out his hand across the table and shook mine heartily.

“Man!” he exclaimed, “I’m delighted to have you in my house! You’re a clever young fellow; I’ve admired your work ever since I was first privileged to see it. And bought it, too; there’s two water-colours of yours behind you there, and----”

“I’ve seen them,” said I.

“And I’ve two more upstairs in my study,” he continued. “Aye, well, I’m greatly pleased! And you’re staying in these parts?”

“I came to the hotel at Wooler three days ago, just to look round the Cheviots,” I answered.

“Any definite time?” he asked.

“No,” said I. “I’m my own master as to that.”

“Then when old Edie can get through the snow, we’ll just send across to Wooler for your things, and you’ll consider this house yours, Mr. Craye,” he said, with a nod of his head which implied that he would take no refusal. “Your very obedient servant, sir, as long as you like to stop in it!”

“There!” exclaimed Miss Durham; “I knew you’d get on together like a house on fire! But perhaps Mr. Craye thinks he might be dull?”

“Mr. Craye thinks nothing of the sort,” I retorted hastily. “He’s overwhelmed on all sides. You’re extremely kind, Mr. Parslewe; your sense of hospitality is princely.”

“Pooh, pooh!” he said. “We’ll just be glad. And there’s no need to be dull, my girl, when you’re about!” he added, nodding at his ward. “A lively damsel, this, Craye; the air of the hills is in her blood!”

“Miss Durham, sir, is, I am sure, one of those admirable hostesses who could never let a guest be anything but happy,” I said, with a glance towards the object of my compliment. “And,” I added, more seriously, “I should be very ungrateful not to accept your kind invitation. I won’t let you get tired of me.”

“Mr. Craye thinks he could paint a picture of the house, with the hills for a background, Jimmie,” remarked Miss Durham. “You’d buy that, wouldn’t you?”

“Hoots, toots! We’ll see, woman, we’ll see!” answered Mr. Parslewe. “There’s finer subjects than this old place, but you’ll not see them to-day, my lad,” he added, turning to me. “The snow’s thick and deep all round our walls, and what you’ll see of the land for the next twenty-four hours, and maybe more, ’ll be from the top of our tower. And a grand observation post it is, too!”

He took me up the tower after breakfast was over. From the leads at its battlemented head there was a wonderful view of the surrounding country; he indicated the chief features as we stood there, looking out on the snow-clad expanse. And I saw then what I had not been able to see the night before, that this place, Kelpieshaw, was absolutely isolated; as far as I could see, on any side, there was not even a shepherd’s hut or gamekeeper’s lodge in view.

“You love solitude, Mr. Parslewe,” I remarked as I looked about me. “This, surely, is solitude!”

“Aye, it is!” he agreed. “And it suits me. What’s more to the purpose, it suits my ward--up to now, anyway. When I brought her from India, where she was born, I looked about for a likely place in this district. We came across this--half-ruinous it was then. I bought it, did it up, furnished it, got a lot of things here that I’d left stored in London when I first went to India, many a year ago, and settled down. The girl loves it--and so do I.”

He gave me one of his half-serious, half-sardonic smiles, and we went down the stair again, and into a big room, a floor above the parlour, wherein he kept his books and his collections. It was something of a cross between a museum and a library, and I could see that he was remarkably proud of the things in it. I saw, too, that my host was a man of means--only a well-to-do man could have afforded to bring together the things that he had there. Like all antiquaries he began to point out to me his chief treasures, and to talk about them, and finding that I had some knowledge of such things, to dig into old chests and presses in order to unearth others. Once, while he was thus engaged, I was looking at some small volumes bound in old calf which were ranged in one of the recesses; once more, on the side of one of these, in faded gilt, I came across the arms and legend which I had noticed on the copper box in the room below; he looked up from his task to find me regarding it.

“An odd motto that, Mr. Parslewe,” I observed. “I noticed it on your old copper chest, or coffer, downstairs, ‘That I please, I will!’ What does it mean?” He laughed satirically.

“I should say it means that the folk who sported it were pretty much inclined to have their own way, my lad!” he answered. “Whether they got it or not is another question. Now, here’s a fifteenth-century Book of Hours, with the illuminations as fresh as when they were done. Look you there for a bit of fine work!”

I had meant to ask him whose coat-of-arms and whose legend it was that had excited my curiosity, but I saw that the subject either possessed no interest for him or that he didn’t want to be questioned about it, and I turned to what he was showing me. We spent most of that morning examining his collection, and we got on together admirably. Still, I was not sorry when Miss Durham appeared and insisted on dragging me away from him to go out with her into the courtyard to inspect her horse, her dogs, and other live creatures. The old man had cleared much of the courtyard of snow, but beyond its walls the drifts were deep. From the gate I looked across them with a certain amount of impatience--I wanted to see more of the country, and I had notions that Miss Durham might not be unwilling to act as guide to it.

“Don’t think you’re going to be a prisoner for very long,” she suddenly remarked, interpreting my silent contemplation of the vast waste of whiteness. “At this time of the year the snow goes quickly. You needn’t be surprised if you find it vanished when you wake to-morrow, thick as it is.”

“If it is, and we can get out, you’ll show me some of your favourite scenes?” I suggested. “I could make a sketch or two.”

“Of course!” she assented. “There’s a lovely bit along the road towards Roddam. I’ll take you there as soon as the snow’s gone; you’ll be ravished with it!”

We had three days’ wait for that, and during that time, as if they felt themselves bound to compensate me for the delay, my host and hostess did all they could to amuse and interest me, though, to tell the truth, I was interested enough in them personally, and needed no other diversion. Mr. Parslewe was certainly a character, full of eccentricities, with a strong sense of humour, and a mordant wit; he had evidently seen much of men and of the world, and his comments on things in general were as interesting as they were amusing. I made out, however, that his knowledge of our own country and our own period was considerably out of date; he appeared to know little of present-day affairs, though he had a fine old store of anecdotes of a previous generation. But a chance remark of his accounted for this.

“I left England for India and the East when I was twenty-one,” he said to me one evening in casual conversation, “and I never saw its shores again until I’d turned fifty. And now that I’m back--and some years, too--I don’t want to see any more of it than I can see from the top of my dear old tower! Here I am, and here I stick!”

I wondered if he meant his young and pretty ward to stick there, too--but those were early days to put the question to him. Still, by that time I had fallen in love with Madrasia; it would have been a most unheard-of thing if I hadn’t! And already I meant to move all the powers that are in heaven and earth to win her--for which reason I was devoutly thankful when, on the fourth day of my stay, winter suddenly disappeared as if by magic, and springtide again asserted itself and flooded the hills and valleys with warmth and sunshine. For then she and I got out of the old house, leaving Mr. Parslewe with his books and papers, and began to wander abroad, improving our acquaintance--very pleasantly and successfully. There had been a comforting air of romance about our meeting which, I think, appealed to both of us; it was still there, making an atmosphere around us, and now the elements of a most puzzling and curious mystery were to be added to it.

Those elements were first introduced by a man who came along the road leading from Wooperton and Roddam, and chanced to find Madrasia and myself sitting on a shelf of rock by its side, I doing a bit of perfunctory sketching, and she watching me. He was a tourist-looking sort of man; that is to say, he wore the sort of garments affected by tourists; otherwise, I should have said that he was perhaps a commercial traveller, or a well-to-do tradesman who loved country walks--a biggish, well-fed, florid-faced man, shrewd of eye, and, as we presently discovered, very polite--too polite--of manner. He regarded us closely as he came up, and when he was abreast of us, he stopped in the centre of the road and lifted his cap; it was the latest thing in head-gear of that sort, and he raised it with something of a flourish.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, with a deprecating, ingratiating smile. “Can you tell me if, somewhere in this neighbourhood, there is a house called Kelpieshaw?”

It was Madrasia who answered--promptly.

“Two miles ahead, along the valley,” she said. “Can’t miss it.”

The man bowed, and smiled again; a little too obsequiously, I thought.

“The residence of, I believe--er, Mr. Parslewe?” he suggested. “Mr. James Parslewe.”

“Mr. Parslewe lives there,” assented Madrasia. “Want him?”

He smiled again--enigmatically this time.

“I hope to have the pleasure of waiting upon Mr. Parslewe--and of finding him at home,” he answered. “Er--Mr. Parslewe, I believe--perhaps you are acquainted with him?--is a gentleman learned in--er, antiquities--and that sort of thing?”

“He is a bit inclined that way,” replied Madrasia, almost flippantly. “Are you?”

He waved his hand, shelving away from us.

“A neophyte--a mere neophyte,” he said, still smiling. “A--er, learner!”

He strode off up the valley: we looked after him meditatively.

“Don’t like the looks of that person,” said Madrasia, suddenly.

“Neither do I--though I don’t know why,” I answered. “Case of Dr. Fell, I suppose. Bit too given to smiling readily, eh?”

“Oily!” said Madrasia. “Wonder who he is--and what he’s after?”

“Doesn’t look like a dry-as-dust antiquary, anyhow,” I remarked.

But whatever the man looked like, we found him with Parslewe when we went home--one on each side of the parlour fire. And Parslewe introduced him, unceremoniously--Mr. Pawley.

III

_Copper_

Mr. Pawley, who looked very comfortable in an easy chair, with a glass of whisky and soda conveniently at hand, smiled upon us as if we were old acquaintances. He was clearly one of those gentlemen who speedily make themselves at home anywhere, and, as it presently appeared, are by no means backward in the art of finding things out. Indeed, he at once began to put leading questions.

“Your daughter, I presume, sir?” he suggested, with a glance at Madrasia.

“Not a bit of it!” answered Parslewe, in his most off-hand manner. “My ward.”

“Dear me, sir! now I could have thought that I saw a distinct family resemblance,” said Mr. Pawley. “This young gentleman, perhaps----”

“Visitor of mine,” replied Parslewe. “Mr. Craye--a well-known artist.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” murmured Mr. Pawley. “I observed that you were doing something in your line when I saw you and Miss--I didn’t catch the young lady’s name, I think--Miss----?”

“Durham!” said Parslewe. “Durham!”

“Just so, sir--Miss Durham. Ah!--and a very pleasant country this is, Mr. Craye, for your form of art--and very delightful quarters, I’m sure,” added Mr. Pawley, with a bow towards our host. “And you were saying, Mr. Parslewe----?”

Madrasia, with an odd glance at me, went out of the room, and Parslewe, who, I thought, already looked bored to death by his visitor, turned to him.

“I was saying that if you’re really interested in that sort of thing--barrows and stone circles and so on, I’m scarcely the man to come to,” he said. “My tastes lie more chiefly in books. If you’re going to stay in the district a while, I can give you a list of titles of books--local and otherwise--that you can read up. I think you’d find all of them in the various libraries at Newcastle.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Parslewe, I’m sure,” replied Mr. Pawley. “I should value that, sir.”

Parslewe rose from his chair and left the room. I heard him climb the stair to his library on the next floor of the tower. Mr. Pawley looked at me. It was a peculiarly scrutinising, appraising glance--it gave me an idea that the man was wondering how much he could get out of me in the way of information.

“A very clever and learned gentleman, Mr. Parslewe,” he observed. “Uncommon!”

“I agree!” said I.

“Makes a man like me--just beginning to take an interest in these things, do you see--feel that he knows--ah, nothing!” he said.

“I quite understand you,” I assented.

“And what a--yes, you might call it--wealth of curiosities he’s gathered about him,” he continued. “Odds and ends of all sorts. Now, there’s an object that’s attracted my attention--a very pretty article!”

He rose suddenly, and walking across to the sideboard, picked up the copper box, holding it to the light, and examining it with exaggerated admiration.

“Beautiful bit of work, Mr.--Craye, I think--beautiful!” he said, unctuously. “Not made yesterday, that, sir. Old coat-of-arms, you see, and a motto. Um! You don’t happen to know whose family coat-of-arms that is, Mr. Craye?”

“No, I don’t,” said I. “Do you?”

“No, sir, no! as I remarked--when I saw you and the young lady down the road--I’m a learner, a novice, a neophyte, Mr. Craye,” he replied. “Fine coat-of-arms, though, that--and a peculiar motto. Now what would you take those words to signify, Mr. Craye?”

Before I could reply, we heard Parslewe coming back, and Mr. Pawley hastily put down the copper box and retreated to his chair, for all the world as if he had been caught or been about to be caught in the act of stealing something.

“These antiquaries!” he murmured, with a cautioning wink at me, “I know ’em!--they don’t like their treasures handled. Precious! Old pots--worth sixpence to some people--worth their weight in gold, to them. Just so!”

Parslewe came into the room with a sheet of notepaper in his hand; Mr. Pawley received it with gratitude as exaggerated as his admiration of the copper box. And presently he said that he must now be moving; I am sure it was with a desire to speed his departure that Parslewe offered to show him down the stair and to point out a short cut across the moor. So they vanished, and when Parslewe came back the tea-tray had just been brought in and Madrasia was busy at it. She turned on her guardian as he entered.

“Jimmie!” she exclaimed. “Who on earth was that creature?”

Parslewe laughed as he dropped into his favourite chair.

“No more idea than you have, my dear!” he answered. “Introduced himself as a humble fellow-labourer in the same field, in which--so he said--I’m a past master. Said he was holidaying in the neighbourhood, and had heard of me, so ventured to call and see me. Wanted to know if there were any objects worthy of his attention round about here--sepulchral things and so on. The odd thing,” continued Parslewe, with one of his sardonic laughs, “the very odd thing was that I never saw a man who looked less like an antiquary in my life!”

“Or talked less like one, I should think,” suggested Madrasia.

“Oh, he’d picked up a few cant phrases, somewhere or other,” observed Parslewe.

“He told me that he’d turned to this sort of thing, as he called it, for a hobby--a man, he observed, with the air of one uttering a hitherto-undiscovered truth, must have something to do. Ha-hah-hah!”

“He seems to have amused you, anyway,” remarked Madrasia.

“Aye!--why not?” assented Parslewe. “Of course he did; I thought he looked much more at home with a glass in his hand and a pipe in his mouth than he would amongst either books or barrows.”

“Well, really, I wondered whatever brought him here!” said Madrasia. “A neophyte, indeed!--in loud tweeds and a glaring necktie. I thought he was a sporting publican out for a walk.”

I did not say what I thought. The fact was I had some queer suspicions about Mr. Pawley. I had noticed his odd, shrewd, examining glances; he looked to me like a man who has an object, a mission; who is spying out the land; endeavouring to get at a discovery. That he had some purpose in view I was sure, but I said nothing to Parslewe and Madrasia. Just then we had a more pertinent and interesting matter to discuss.

Parslewe wanted me to stay there a while and to paint a landscape for him. He had a favourite view, near the house, and was keenly anxious that somebody should do justice to it--moreover, he wanted the picture to be painted in the freshness of springtide, though my own private inclination would have led me to paint it in the autumn. And he had offered me a handsome price for it, agreeing, too, that I should be allowed to submit it for the next Royal Academy exhibition. I was by no means unwilling to accept his offer, for apart from the advantages of the commission, the work meant spending at least a month or six weeks at Kelpieshaw--in the society of Madrasia. And I had already fallen in love with Madrasia.

We settled the affair of the picture over that tea-table. I decided to start on it at once, and the first thing then was to get a suitable canvas. Parslewe said I should be sure to find one in Newcastle, and I arranged to journey there next day, seek out an artist’s colourman, and buy what I wanted. On this errand I was in Newcastle about noon on the following morning, and the first person I saw there was our recent visitor, the somewhat mysterious Mr. Pawley.

Mr. Pawley did not see me. I caught sight of him by accident, but, having seen him, I made it my business to watch him a little. He stood at the exit of one of the arrival platforms, and he was absorbed in looking for somebody or other. An express came in from the south; its passengers began to stream through the exit; presently Mr. Pawley--who was still attired as when I had last seen him--removed his cap and bowed with sincere obsequiousness. The object of his reverence was an elderly, big-framed, very consequential-looking man, whose large face was ornamented by a pair of old-fashioned whiskers, and who, in my opinion, had family solicitor written big all over himself and his attire, from his silk hat to his stout-soled, gaitered, square-toed boots. That he was a person of much greater importance than Mr. Pawley was very evident from the fact that he replied to Mr. Pawley’s obsequious greeting with a mere condescending nod, and at once resigned into his hands a Gladstone bag and a travelling rug. There was an interchange of brief remarks between the two--then they marched across the platform to the hotel and vanished within its portals, the large man going first, and Mr. Pawley playing porter behind.

My curiosity had been aroused so keenly by that time that I had some absurd notion of following Pawley and the white-whiskered person into the hotel, just to see if I could find out a little more about their mutual relation. But on reflection I went off about my own business. Having some knowledge of Newcastle, I walked up town to a certain restaurant of which I knew and highly approved; there I lunched and idled an hour away afterwards. After that I set out in quest of a firm whose name Parslewe had given me. Its manager had not got a canvas of the precise size I wanted, but he promised to make me one by noon of the following day, and I accordingly decided to stay in Newcastle for the night, and, later, went to the hotel at the station to book a room. In the smoking-room there, writing letters, was the white-whiskered person. Pawley was not with him. Nor was Pawley with him when, after dinner that evening, he came into the smoking-room again and took a chair close by my own in a comfortable corner. But now he was not alone; he came in company with a younger man, a middle-aged, sharp-eyed individual whom I also set down as having some connection with the law.

These two men had evidently just dined; a waiter brought them coffee and liqueurs; the elder man produced a cigar-case and offered it to his companion. They began to talk; sometimes quite audibly, at others, sinking their voices to whisperings. But they had scarcely lighted their cigars before a word or two from the white-whiskered man made me prick my ears.

“Without doubt!” he said. “Without any doubt, the copper box--its presence there--the coat-of-arms--the odd legend on the scroll--is a most valuable piece of evidence! As soon as I heard of it----”

He bent nearer to his companion, and for a minute or two I failed to catch what he was saying. Out of my eye-corners, however, I could see that the younger man was listening, attentively and approvingly; from time to time he nodded his head as if in assent. Eventually he spoke.

“And you say that Pawley, in his opinion, took him to be of about that age?” he asked.

“That, of course, has to be considered.”

“Pawley is an observant fellow,” remarked the elder man. “I have employed Pawley on several occasions, and with excellent results. I can trust Pawley’s estimate of the age. It fits in exactly!”

The younger man regarded his cigar thoughtfully for a while.

“Odd!” he said at last. “Very odd! But I should say it is so!”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt of it,” answered the white-whiskered person. “At any rate, I am not going to travel all this way, and back again, without making sure. I shall not be deceived!” he added with strong emphasis on the personal pronoun, accompanied by a complacent chuckle. “Even a point-blank denial would not satisfy me! No dust will be thrown in my eyes!”