Devil's Tor (2 page)

The girl's quiet intensity reduced Drapier to gravity and silence. After a few moments he sought to round off the debate by affirming simply:

"However it may be, we can't get back into the egg."

"No doubt I have been born in the wrong age," returned Ingrid. "Yet to be born out of one's right age gives another angle; and, I imagine, more depth."

"You are certainly a new kind of girl to me."

To that she made no answer; and already regretted having disclosed so much of her spirit to one not framed to comprehend it. So both now held their peace, and during the respite which followed they quitted the road for the moor.

Ascending the sharp slope obliquely in a westerly direction, they had the parched peaty soil under their feet. Ingrid found without difficulty the narrow track through the broom and heather she was looking for, and it was plain that she was a competent guide, though the height for which they were making still kept out of sight. Drapier's long sinewy legs measured the ground behind her like a pair of compasses, without effort. Busy with her thoughts, she had unconsciously put on speed, until her breathlessness forced her to slacken again.

The evening had grown darker, as though twilight were already falling, and at the very instant that she halted altogether, to recover herself while facing Hugh and taking a survey of the country behind, a flash of lightning stabbed the sky, perhaps a couple of miles away, over the hills to the south-east beyond the road they had left. After an interval, a long roll of thunder succeeded. The sky overhead seemed to gather together. Ingrid regarded her cousin with narrowed eyes, to ascertain how he reacted to the warning.

"There's something awfully mysterious and grand about approaching darkness," she halfsoliloquised, when the sound had quite died down. "My favourite goddess in Greek mythology is Nyx—Night—the daughter of Chaos, and by that very relationship so much nearer to the terrible beginning of things than the bright Olympian deities. Had I been a wealthy Athenian woman in classical times, I'd have dedicated a magnificent temple to Nyx. And it should have had a score of great chambers leading from one into the other until the very heart was reached; and the outermost chamber should have been gloomy, and the next darker still, and so on until the absolute interior should have been pitchy night itself. And there, in that night, I would have sacrificed, without lamps, candles or torches."

Drapier's wonder at his cousin increased.

"You read a lot?" he asked.

"In the early fables. They are my Scripture."

"For their poetry?"

"No, they're so deep and full of symbolic meaning."

She went on. "I honestly can't warm to a single God; the conception seems to me so hollow. Perhaps it runs in the family. I was glancing through one of Uncle's books the other day, and came across a passage where he insists that the notion of a separate divinity for each phase of human experience, besides accounting for a host of contradictions in life that the Jews and Arabs discreetly shelved, has also an infinitely more respectable origin than that of a sole Creator, Despot and Judge first making a world, then commanding it to be despised; first making men and women, then punishing them for their defects. The old conquering Aryans—the Greeks and the men of the North—arrived with their freedom-loving intellects at the gods. The pitiless, mercenary Semites, with their tribal instincts and subordination of every fine feeling to the passion for gain, temporal or eternal, they arrived at the one God, from whom all favours were to be expected, on the express condition of obedience. Then further on he expands the statement—but I'm boring you?"

"No, please finish."

Ingrid was vaguely annoyed and perplexed by her own unintended loquacity. She hardly ever unburdened her mind so freely, and especially to this man, of all persons, she would have believed it impossible. She hated to think that he might be regarding all her words as a display of learning. She must be fey. Indeed, underneath all, a very indistinct presentiment was troubling her that something might immediately be going to happen in her life, to interrupt the smooth uneventfulness of its course hitherto. Her voice therefore was lowered to a new tone of dullness and anxiety as she scamped the rest of what she had to say.

"He maintains that the mental tendency to reduce all the natural and supernatural particulars of the universe to a single Principle is identical with the tendency to
possess.
The mind is single, therefore whatever it is thoroughly to understand must be single too; but to understand and to possess are the same. So this double tendency is essentially appropriate to the Semitic genius. Whereas a multiplicity of gods can
not
be understood or explained by the human intellect; consequently is never to be possessed, but must be freely and grandly accepted by the generous soul as a mighty overarching fact existing for its own sake, not for the sake of humanity. And all this was well-known to the Greeks, and the Aryan Brahmins, and the northern peoples of Europe. I'm afraid I can't fill in the idea any better than that. You should read Uncle Magnus for yourself."

"The theory seems rather to ignore Christianity, which, in the present state of the world, it isn't very easy to ignore. However, as you say, I must read his books some time."

"Though perhaps there would be little in them for you."

"I'm too fast stuck in the old views?"

"It is for you to say. But what I mean is that—well, probably climbing needle-rocks in the Himalayas, and crossing rotten bridges over foaming torrents, would be more in your line than pondering abstruse theological and metaphysical problems. I intend nothing unkind."

"I expect you're right, allowing for the exaggeration."

"Then why have you come home? What is there in England for a man like you?"

"One has to come home sometimes."

"I fail to see why, unless for business reasons. You've no ties here."

But Drapier, no longer replying, stood resting his hand heavily on the crook of his stick, squarely facing the direction of the storm, his whole attitude that of a simple, thoughtful, impressed man, in no haste to remove himself from the spectacle of awe and beauty, but also on that very account indisposed to proceed with a discussion of petty personal affairs. Ingrid nevertheless watched him curiously for a moment, as though she were not wholly satisfied with that fixity of absent regard as a substitute for speech.

"Shall we walk on?" she asked then, not choosing to press him, but feeling more and more sure that he must have brought down with him some disagreeable business that up to the present he had not found the courage to present.

"Yes, we had better."

As they resumed their advance, with Ingrid still in front, another flash crossed the sky, very much more vivid than the last had been, and the interval between it and the associated muffled crash of thunder was noticeably briefer. Drapier saw his cousin glance sideways down at her bare neck, as if doubtfully. He gnawed at the end of his moustache.

"I fear your mother will be feeling wretchedly uneasy about you, though."

"It won't look so bad from the windows of a house." She did not turn further round for that cool answer.

"What do you say, shall we scamper back?" he tempted her. "We may still have time before the worst comes on."

"We have less than a mile now, and shall probably get wet through either way."

"All right! though candidly I think we're behaving like a pair of lunatics. Just look at the sky behind you now!"

"I saw it before."

"As long as you acknowledge it for a caprice."

"It is only one of your Asiatic expeditions in miniature. You seek your dangers on the grand scale, I have to snatch mine when and how I can. Why should you grudge me reality for once?"

"Women have certainly changed. And I am sufficiently old-fashioned and out of the swim to be continually surprised by the fact. You must pardon me if I have seemed to wish to patronise you."

"I believe the present generation of girls is different. My own inspiration hardly comes from anything in the air of to-day. I detest sports, and haven't the least desire to ape men."

"What are your interests?"

Still without turning round to him, she gave a light shrug. "Walking, reading, and dreaming, I think."

"Yet you will marry."

"I may," she returned, half-smiling, though he could not see that, "but it will be a special sort of man."

"I wonder if you will allow me to inquire what sort?"

"Someone who can understand my queernesses, I suppose—and who has compensating queernesses of his own."

"Are you so queer?"

"My own impression is that I am little else than a bundle of intuitions, Hugh."

"Of what nature?"

"I am dreadfully passive. I fancy I may be mediumistic."

Why was he so anxious to keep the conversation turned upon herself? Somehow this walk had quite finally converted her to her mother's obsession that he was in financial difficulties, and had come to borrow a sum from Uncle Magnus. The latter, of course, was suspecting nothing; he disliked Hugh too much to take any notice of his embarrassment of manner. But the worry of the affair was miserably harassing her mother, while Ingrid herself was already growing steadily more indignant with Hugh for keeping them so on the rack. It was lamentable that he had not as much moral courage as physical. Now, having him alone to herself, away from everybody and all possible interruptions, she felt that she would like to encourage him to a confession; and perhaps, if the talk led anywhere near it, she would still venture it, though nothing of the sort had been in her mind even a short half-hour ago. Only, she could not lead the talk to it, for that was a manner of hypocrisy outside her range. She was too lacking in the arts of the world.

Then she found that she was doing it, independently of her volition, for, tired of having her own life challenged, she was now challenging his.

"And when will you marry, Hugh?"

"I? Never now. I've left it too long."

"Far older men than you get married. But perhaps you've an antipathy to women?"

"I don't know. I have sometimes thought that I have, but then again I have realised that it is not antipathy so much as ignorance. My mode of life has deprived me of the necessary experience of women. They put fear into me. I except your mother and yourself."

"I imagine we are your nearest?

"Absolutely."

"Apart from marriage, women make very good friends, Hugh. Mother likes you. Why are you so reticent with her? She is sure you have something on your mind."

Drapier was silent and reflective for a moment or two, wrinkling his forehead.

"Did she say so?" he asked.

"I have no authority to speak on her behalf." Ingrid halted and faced round. "However, since I've begun the topic I may as well end it, so that it need never be referred to again between us. She is privately rather distressed about this visit of yours. She's afraid you are going to worry Uncle over some business proposal or other. The prospect is seriously disturbing her, because during the last year he has become very much frailer. The doctor has advised us both to spare him all we can. You do understand?"

"I suspected something of the kind. I am glad you told me—though, for your reassurance, I am definitely not down here on any financial business whatsoever."

"Then I'm glad I spoke, too. Mother will be immensely relieved."

"I'll have a chat with her."

Ingrid turned once more, and the advance proceeded. She fell into dubiousness. Why should he want to chat with her mother, when the bare statement to herself would have sufficed? Also the qualification 'financial' was quite remarkable. It could mean only that he had other business to discuss, not concerning money. What could it possibly be? He had not been near them for twenty vears, so why should he suddenly take it into his head to invade their Dartmoor privacy?  …

A terrific blue fork lit up the sky, appearing almost immediately overhead, though the deafening peal of thunder that succeeded it was still tardy. A few heavy drops fell, but soon ceased, and Nature again seemed to wait. A little breeze sprang up, but the air remained disagreeably hot and close. The evening grew darker and darker. The long hillside they mounted offered not the least cover, and they instinctively hastened their footsteps.

"We shall see Devil's Tor across the valley a few yards further on," announced Ingrid, always in front.

"Whence its name, by the way?"

"The pile on top has a more or less definite resemblance to a diabolical face."

"It has no history?"

"I've never been able to discover that it has. Though in my own mind I'm sure it has had one, and perhaps a very extraordinary one."

"Why, what do you go upon?"

"Experiences valid for myself alone, Hugh. Fancies. I often come here by myself, just for the sake of dreaming strange dreams."

"And what do such dreams tell you?"

"That the hill was known very anciently. First there must have been the stone age men, who perhaps offered magic sacrifices and worked wonders on it. Then there followed the Britons of the centuries immediately before Christ—peatmen, foresters, and the like—to whom the traditions of a haunting had been handed down, and who gave it the name of an evil spirit. And afterwards arrived the English-speaking Saxons, who inherited the traditions, but translated the name to that of the only evil spirit in their christianised cosmogony. Perhaps now you will begin to understand the queer extravagance of some of my intuitions."

"I find the imagination quite a reasonable one, if it goes no further."

"If I, a decently-educated girl of this sophisticated twentieth century, can sense uncanny presences on Devil's Tor, wouldn't it be far easier for the primitive moormen, having the sun and wind and stars in their bones, and their intelligences still uncorrupted by the ready-made wisdom of the books and the parrot-cries of the crowd? Maybe our inadequate modern occult faculties no more than represent some atrophied sixth sense, then rich and splendid. I mean, just as there have been mammoths, mastodons, megatheriums, so there may have been seers. And those seeing men must have had human predecessors as mentally remote from them as they themselves are from us. That kind of journey back staggers one."