Devil's Tor Read online

  "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."

  "I don't scoff," said Drapier. "Indeed, I've spent too much of my life amongst mountains not to be well acquainted with their weird influence. It's one of the multitude of things a townsman remains ignorant of. I really think I do begin to approach you."

  He had in mind how prolonged lingerings in solitary high places were wont to conjure up the phantom voices and sudden irrational panics. A nervous young girl would be peculiarly sensitive to the combination of loneliness, silence, wild Nature, skies, and altitude. Of course she would dream. The frame and content of her dreaming signified nothing. Only, she seemed to have a preference for this particular height for her rambles, and was that chance, or did it express a quality in the place? He was quite curious to see the Tor. She might even possess the second-sight, which was an authentic psychic gift. In the Scotch Highlands it still survived, while in the black- wintered, troll-ridden Norway of old it must have been so common as almost to pass notice. The whole family regarded Ingrid as the typical Norse Colborne.

  The more she spoke with him, the more puzzling and interesting he was finding her, and that coldness he had fancied in her seemed already like a misunderstanding of half-acquaintance, she had so opened herself to him during the walk. Her conversation had the ideality and originality of a man's. There was something to give him pause in nearly every one of her utterances.

  He admired the dignity of her light motions and the graceful sweep of her long slender limbs, as she went forward over the uneven ground. He also admired the fineness and colour, of palest gold, of the curling fall of her otherwise smooth hair, clinging to her nape to emphasise its purity of whiteness. In the remembered oval of her face the features for delicacy and length had surely attained the precise focus of beauty, between mere prettiness on the one hand and unpleasing strength on the other. Her long mouth was strange and lovely; it might be passionate, but he could not imagine her sexual. Her grey-blue eyes, in their perfect orbits, were the hardest of all to decipher. Superficially they struck one as tranquil, quiet and simple, but then something waiting in them began to appear, and at last one might suspect that they were essentially not in the present at all. They might be the eyes of a prophetess, going about her every-day jobs. It gave a marvellous latent power to the whole face.

  And her true nature was so very much a paradox to him. Such a fair, clever and favoured young only daughter of a well-to-do household might far too easily be spoilt; and Ingrid appeared unspoilt. Her amiability at all times and unquestioning obedience to the practical suggestions of the others in the same house were even quite extraordinary for any girl. She also helped her mother in everything as a dutiful and feminine-souled home-staying daughter should. She did it all seemingly without effort or self-conflict, yet it could not be her character. Probably she was content to conserve her strength for the later bigger things of life; and perhaps that explained the quiet inward expectation of her eyes.

  Biologically singular it was to note how she had reverted to the pure Nordic type, which had totally skipped her mother above her in the direct line; while Dick Fleming, the father, a capital good fellow, had been a true-blue Britisher. Ingrid's race was in her complexion, the fairest and most unblemished ever seen. Certainly the moist, cool, fragrant Dartmoor winds and mists must have been kind to it, still no mere Saxon blonde could have possessed such a skin even to start with. It was the legacy of long ages of snow and ice. She was twenty-two, and, chit-chat apart, must soon think seriously of marriage.

  Helga, her mother, was his first-cousin. Her wedded life had been of the shortest, for Dick, her husband (a small, nimble, fresh-complexioned chap with a pointed little beard; Drapier had met him) had broken his neck in the hunting-field when Ingrid was still hardly out of her alphabet. Ever since, Helga had kept house for Magnus Colborne, her uncle and his, who presumably would leave mother and daughter all his worldly goods when he should depart. And he was already past seventy, and to all appearance going fast downhill. No doubt Helga had something of her own put by, but it was quite understandable why she should prefer a soft home with this temporary sacrifice of independence to a grind-along on insufficient means. Already she was the virtual mistress of the place. No one could grudge Helga Fleming the highest good fortune.

  A sudden hail-shower began, slackened awhile, then without warning descended as a tropical sheet of hissing white rain, instantaneously drenching them through and through. Ingrid stopped, turned to laugh at Hugh, flung the wet from the locks over her ears, and, with a gay exclamation he failed to catch, started again to run up the hill, only a few yards of which could be seen in front of them. It was like the end of the world. To hasten their panic, a fierce blaze of violet light flashed out from the sky just above, illuminating the rain and the moor with its enduring flicker; then, before it ceased, there sounded a sharp, sickening, tearing noise, as of cloth being violently rent, followed immediately by a deafening and appalling crash which left them aghast. The rain affected them as if full of electricity, while Drapier fancied that he detected the smell of singeing. Perhaps a part of the turf had been struck and burned. When the downpour had moderated somewhat, a cool breeze seemed to spring up, but it was deceptive, the air continued as close and oppressive as before. The storm, far from having exhausted itself, had hardly yet begun.

  For company's sake they now pressed forward side-by-side. "We're not likely to get a nearer one than that," Drapier encouraged his cousin.

  "Did it stop you too?"

  "It was certainly a vivid moment."

  "And I suppose you are going to overwhelm me for dragging you out here!"

  "Not at all, for I was a party."

  "No, you were complaisant, I was perverse, and some demon in me has led us both by the noses. However, why worry? We can't get any wetter, so let's take our ease now."

  He accommodated himself to her reduced step, and almost at once Ingrid pointed her finger ahead.

  "There's Devil's Tor."

  Chapter II

  UNDER THE DEVIL'S HEAD

  The rain had nearly ceased, but the immense lowering black clouds above augured nothing good. The moor immediately around was intensely green and purple. On the left, across the valley, the hills rose dark and uncoloured, but with all their details very clear. Where they terminated, however, (the end of a mighty buttress set in the lowland plain, sloping downwards to the sea), a magic picture was afforded of the soft distant landscape, all localised rain-showers and areas of shadow, wisps of moor-mist, and isolated shafts of sunlight emphasising the fields and woods from behind gold-rimmed cumulus vapour masses. The heart of the storm was crawling up ominously from the south-east, across the heights which recommenced still further to the left, directly behind them.

  Just as Ingrid pointed and spoke, a dazzling fork suspended itself in mid-sky straight ahead, enduring without change like a phenomenon while they could count. Its lower extremity was behind a rocky peak of no great height, but so singular in shape and of such sinister unrelieved blackness that Drapier as he sighted it, involuntarily
came to a standstill.

  The hill rose up sharply no more than a few hundred yards away, just round the shoulder of the slope they were traversing. It was a steep, imperfectly-symmetrical sugar-loaf, with a truncated top, carrying an upright granite mass that had become strangely weathered into the rude form of a human or inhuman, head, supported by a narrower neck-stem. The rock, which had been segmented presumably by exposure to the elements during countless ages, was about thirty feet high and projected from the perpendicular at a dangerous-looking angle. The overhanging side was that which contained the so-styled Devil's face. Seen in profile from where they stood it appeared a true gargoyle. The nose shot forward, the mouth was a deep black cleft between two flat layers of granite, while the one cavernous eye visible was represented by a circular hollow in the rock, showing where water was accustomed to accumulate. It was a grinning and unpleasant natural statue carved by time and accident, which seemed all the while to be meditating a plunge to earth.

  Some seconds after the lightning had vanished, there came a long crackling cannonade in the sky, ending in a loose and hollow roar, as though a mighty load of solid matter were being discharged from above. Manifestly the storm was now all round them. The rain commenced to descend again heavily.

  "At least you've now seen it at its characteristic best," laughed Ingrid, as they resumed the way. "That fork surely completed the picture like a positive improvisation of genius. For five seconds it was a real Witches' Heath—and now alas! never can it be the same to me again. Hereafter it will always lack that never-to-be-repeated coup de théâtre!'

  Her cousin remarked how her spirits were risen with their experience.

  "But its name seems quite intelligible from the shape of that pile, without adducing the more fantastic derivation," he suggested thoughtfully.

  "I suppose so."

  "But you stick to your intuition of a strangeness there?"

  "I must."

  ''Of course you have run up against nothing tangible?"

  "No, Hugh. It is all feelings." She was grave again. "No doubt you will go on believing with all the rest that that monument is natural, even after I have assured you that I'm sure it is artificial. But it is my firm faith."