Chapter 2

The stranger
lifted his hat and bowed grotesquely. The rector returned this
compliment, after a more dignified manner, and they approached, making
old-fashioned salutes at every step.

“The learned and distinguished Doctor Berry?” said the stranger,
holding out his hand, and laughing with what beyond the wall might
have appeared to be unreasonable mirth.

The scholar laughed also as he replied, shaking the hand offered him
in conscious tune to the persistent music in his brain.

“My lawyer has told me about you. I am Henry Reed, the owner and
master of the Strath. It pleases me that you should have used my
garden. I trust that the inspiration of the place has benefited you.”

It was the first occasion on which Dr. Berry had spoken to a
fellow-being in the garden. He could not rid himself of the fantastic
idea that he and the man before him were characters of a comedy
playing the parts which had been assigned to them.

“I assure you I have found this place a veritable wonder-world,” he
replied. “It has made another man of me--”

“The Strath has made you a dreamer,” broke in the owner sharply. “Men
who dream perform nothing. What an overpowering atmosphere is here!”
he went on, removing his hat and laughing again. “I can scarcely
breathe. Only a few minutes ago I entered upon this property of mine,
a tired and solemn man, and now I am as merry as a clown. Do the bees
always buzz so musically? Are the flowers always sending forth this
fragrance? Ah, you laugh at me.”

“I laughed in spite of myself,” the rector answered. “No, the music is
not always soft, as it is this evening. When the wind changes, and the
sky becomes dark, and the clouds fall low, you shall perceive a
difference.”

“The place is haunted,” the owner shouted.

“Not so,” said the rector happily. “There is nothing here which could
terrify a child. Like us the Strath has its moods. Sometimes it is
happy, and often it is sorrowful. It must either laugh or groan. And
now you will change it all,” he went on bitterly. “You will restore
the house, dig up the garden, prune the orchard, mow the lawns, gravel
the paths, and lay the Strath out like a dead body.”

Again the owner laughed. “Let me set your mind at ease,” he cried,
turning himself as though he would address the house. “Even if I
desired to destroy this picture I could not, for I am a poor man, and
the expense of restoration is beyond my means. I have come to live
here, but I beg you to use my garden as you have done in the past. And
now shall we enter the house?”

Very gladly the rector accepted the invitation. He had often pushed
aside the creepers, to stare at the windows, heavily obscured with
dirt and blinded by close-fastened shutters, longing to visit the
rooms which were in darkness beyond. He passed with the owner of the
Strath towards the bridge which spanned the black water; and as they
walked they went on laughing.

“Will the bridge bear us?” questioned the master, testing the damp
green wood with a nervous foot.

“Let me cross first to convince you,” said the scholar.

Reed’s mood changed when they stood beside the door; and it was with
signs of fear he produced a key, a feather, and a small bottle of oil.
“The light is fading rapidly,” he muttered as he lubricated the lock.
“And I have brought no lamp.”

“There may be candles inside the house,” the rector murmured, although
he had no good reason for saying so.

The bolt crawled back with a scream, and wood dust rained upon their
heads as the door creaked open. They passed side by side into the
dampness of the hall, while the master muttered, “This house has not
been entered for a hundred years.”

“So it is furnished, as I have seen it in my dreams,” the rector
murmured.

Their feet sank into the dust, which in places had drifted to a depth
of several inches. Stairs, carpets, and pictures were coated and
muffled; a mildewed growth shewed in patches on the walls; a stunted
nightshade struggled around a quaint eight-legged table, its roots
sucking nutriment from the damp rottenness of the wood. A circle of
fungi occupied the centre of the hall, and some bats flickered up and
down the stairway.

“My inheritance,” said Reed, shivering as he ploughed his fingers
through the silky dust.

“The garden is your inheritance,” replied his companion. “That is the
soul of the Strath. This is the dry body.”

Walking as he spoke to a door, before which a moth-eaten curtain hung
in shreds, he sought for the handle and pushed inward. The door gave
unwillingly, pressing the dust into a high ridge, and the rector
groped forward holding a lighted match above his head. Their eyes
encountered no repulsive sight; and yet they hesitated before making
an entry, because the past was brought before them, and it is the
custom of men to waver when they open a tomb.

They looked into a dining-room and saw a long table, decked out with
plate and glass, with what had been flowers and fruit, and decanters
caked with wine; around the table chairs were grouped, or pushed
aside, as their former occupants had left them. They beheld the
concluding course of a dinner one hundred years old, as the long dead
diners had left it, interrupted and startled by the arrival of ill
news.

“I will go in and open the shutters,” said the rector firmly.

“You hear nothing?” muttered the owner. “Nothing?”

“There is nothing to hear, except the chirping of the birds.”

“I thought I heard footsteps, and a woman’s voice.”

“No,” said the scholar. “There will be no tragedy while this weather
lasts.” He went on hurriedly, feeling Reed’s eyes upon him, “Your
imagination is playing with you. You think you hear voices of the men
and women who have dined. They are not here. Their bodies are as the
dust which lies upon their table and their chairs.”

Lighting another match he passed in, and leaning over the table dug
out the wicks of the candles and lighted one after another, until he
had converted each of the seven-branched candlesticks into a row of
stars. Then he turned and beheld Reed at his side, staring up and
down, sweeping the cloth with his great beard.

“You are my guest,” he laughed with a hollow note. “In the face of
your knowledge of this place I had almost forgotten that I am master
here. Will you sit down at my table and taste my old wine?”

“Let us have air,” said the rector.

Unfastening the shutters he drew them back, and immediately a tawny
glow mingled with the candle-light. The windows were encrusted with
dirt, and black ivy stems were matted against the glass. The iron
window catch was rotten and snapped when the rector tried to force it
back. He strained at the casement, but the hinge remained immovable.

Reed stood beside the table, fingering one article after another. That
heap of dust had been once a flower, that was an orange shrivelled to
the size of a walnut; here was a snuff-box standing open, there a
half-smoked pipe leaning against a box which still contained bon-bons.
Near him a glass had been overturned in the days when it was the
custom of men to drink hard, and when he cleared away the dust with
the flat of his hand he could distinguish the stain of wine upon the
yellow cloth. He picked up a lady’s glove, black and full of holes,
and bringing it to his face detected the faint fragrance of her who
had dropped it. Another pile of dust resolved itself into a powder
puff, and yet another became a scrap of paper. These had presumably
been dropped together. Reed unfolded the paper, shook it, and holding
it near the candles read as much as he could decipher aloud:--

“I will wait near the sun-dial until you come. Do not wear a mask.
Dear, do not tempt fate by even thinking of a mask here.… to father,
if there be a storm this night… Thomas flogging a horse, and I felt no
pity… This atmosphere is… to rejoin my ship… Nelson against the
French. I shall not be at dinner.… later on.”

“What does it mean?” cried the rector, as he stumbled towards the
table.

“I cannot trace the signature,” muttered Reed. “It means, doctor,” he
went on, “that the Strath is controlled by some unholy influence which
has kept it empty all these years.”

“No,” cried Dr. Berry fervently. “That is not true. Consider how safe,
and happy we are. Neither you nor I suffer the slightest sense of
fear. Hardly a day has passed and not found me in the garden during
these past thirty years, and I am a wiser man than when I came. It is
true I have felt at times the influence which that dead hand suggests.
But it has done me no harm.”

“It has aged and saddened you,” said Reed curtly. “It has caused you
to forget how a man should live.”

“The Strath has been my happiness, my pleasure, as well as my
inspiration,” said the scholar, clutching the back of a chair, and
scarcely noticing when it broke away in his hands. “You will admit as
much when you read my translations and restorations of Sappho. No
unholy influence could have prompted me to that work. Knowledge has
come to me while walking through the garden, amid the fragrance of the
flowers, the song of the insects, the music in the air--”

The master of the Strath interrupted with a shout of discovery.
Following the guidance of his hand the rector saw a dark face grinning
at them from the opposite wall, over the glow of candles and the tawny
light from the half sealed window, through the grime that a hundred
years had placed upon it.

Dr. Berry hurried forward, mounted a chair, and removed from the wall
what proved to be merely a grotesque ornament, a brown mask, with the
leering mouth, great nose, grinning eye-sockets, and arched brows of
comedy. The mask was made of wood, stained a deep brown, and inside
cut upon the surface appeared the words, “Copied at Nuremberg by Jos.
Falk.”

An impulse, which could not be controlled, seized both men, and they
laughed until the old house rang.

ACT I.

Scene I.--SATIRIC

Bah! I do hate bainting and boetry.--_King George II_.

The influence changed, as was usual at the approach of darkness. The
power compelling them forth became irresistible. It was a new
sensation for the scholar, but his sensitive nature suggested that the
resentful force was directed against his companion, and not against
himself. He extinguished the candles and walked lingeringly to the
hall door, following Reed who had escaped into the twilight of the
garden, having no desire to explore further that night. Nor had the
owner any intention then of sleeping in the house. He had indeed when
proposing it to himself forgotten that every room would be buried deep
in dirt. When the scholar joined him with a hospitable invitation to
the rectory he accepted gladly. They passed together towards the iron
gates.

A few country folk had assembled upon the road, to discuss that great
event the opening of the gates of the Strath. One man stood leaning
upon an iron bar, which he had used at Reed’s request to force those
gates apart. Their voices ceased when the rector was seen wading
through the grass, and gnarled hands went up to pull gravely at the
brims of dilapidated and picturesque headgear.

After having engaged two men for the next day, to wrench open doors
and windows, to cut away the creepers, and to clear the interior from
its accumulated dirt, Reed secured the chain, locked the padlock with
his own hands, and giving a good night to the rustics turned away. For
a hundred yards not a word was spoken, then Reed pulled himself
upright, and brushed the dust from his heavy beard.

“It’s all nonsense,” he said roughly, and his companion shrank at the
change in the stranger’s voice and manner. “It’s sheer folly to
suppose that the Strath is different from any other old place, apart,
of course, from the fact that it has not been inhabited within the
recollection of living man. I’m just thinking I may have made a fool
of myself when we were in that garden, Professor. I don’t know what
possessed me. I’m a practical man, level-headed as the best of ’em
ordinarily, but in there I felt--well, I’m not much of a talker, and
hang me if I can explain it, but I felt as if I had taken a little
more drink than I could manage. I might have been playing a part. Ah,
that’s it! I might have been an actor, spouting words that some other
fellow had written down for me.”

“You need not explain,” said the rector gently. “I can enter into your
feelings.”

“Well, I’m going to change all that,” went on Reed. “I’ll clean the
place out from cellar to attic, sell off the old stuff, get in some
decent furniture, tear down the creepers, cut the garden up, sell the
hay for what it is worth, and get the place into as good shape as I
can afford. I mean to start a small poultry farm and make a bit that
way. I come from America, Professor, and I’m not afraid of work. Lucky
I’m not, for I reckon it will take all my time to get that garden into
anything like order this summer.”

The rector shuddered. The stranger had chanced indeed now that the
influence of the Strath had loosened its hold upon him.

“You said you would not alter the place,” he reminded him quietly.

“Did I say so?” Reed answered with a hoarse laugh. “Well, I must have
been crazy. I’m not in a position to spend money, but I’ll soon show
you what one pair of hands can do. Before autumn you won’t recognise
the rotten old property. I shall start with the house to-morrow, and
when that is clean I’ll root up the bushes, drain the moat, and go for
in fruit and poultry.”

“The Strath will not let you,” the rector cried.

“What’s that?” said Reed.

“You are not strong enough to fight the place,” replied the rector
boldly.

Reed regarded his companion with open-mouthed astonishment, and
presently his beard began to wag with laughter. “’Scuse me,
Professor,” he said. “Hope you haven’t got the idea into your head
that it is not legal for a man to make his own house habitable? I tell
you what it is,” he went on in his blunt fashion. “You have lived out
of the world too long, and have roamed around that old wilderness of
mine until you have picked up some queer notions. Wait until I show
you how to breed turkeys.”

Then Dr. Berry realised that he hated this little bearded man who had
come to destroy his happiness. He wished with all his heart he had met
him in the first instance outside the Strath and there discovered his
true character. Had that happened he would assuredly never have
invited him to the rectory. Gazing ahead at the wooden spire of his
little church he said quickly:

“There is the rectory. You see I am a very near neighbour. I have
always been accustomed to enter your garden by the churchyard, through
that gate which you see yonder in the wall.”

Reed shrugged his shoulders, and, muttering into his beard, followed
his host into the cool house.

A very plain supper was the evening meal at Thorlund rectory; and
afterwards the poet sat in his garden to dream upon matters which were
too great for him. That evening he brought two chairs upon the lawn.
When they were seated Reed plunged at once into business and asked the
rector if he could recommend a suitable housekeeper and a man with
some knowledge of poultry. “Poultry and poetry sound a bit alike, eh,
Professor?” he said jocosely. “But there’s a heap more money in my
line than in yours.”

The rector shrank from the jest as from a blow. He answered the
questions of his thick-skinned guest as fully as he could. Then,
prompted by curiosity, he asked Reed how long the Strath had been in
his family, and why it had remained desolate for so long.

The other pulled at his pipe with a frown, as though resenting the
other’s natural desire for information. At last he put up his hand,
stroked his beard, expectorated--again Dr. Berry shrank from him--and
said:

“I don’t know much about yonder place. The Strath was owned in the
first place by a family called Hooper. You can see their arms carved
upon a stone over the entrance. They held the property until the
middle of the eighteenth century. The owner was then a baronet who
lived there alone. He was a pretty bad lot, I’ve been told, and was
hanged at last for murdering his servant.”

“There was another and more serious charge against him, according to
the opinion of a time when gentlemen were permitted to use their
servants like dogs,” the rector interposed. “Sir John was certainly
hanged, but it was for highway robbery. Local tradition declares that
the rope which was used for his execution is now used for ringing the
single bell of Thorlund church. If this statement were to be proved I
should certainly have the rope removed. But I do not consider that it
has been proved.”

“You know more about the Strath than I do. Perhaps you can tell me how
it came by its queer-sounding name?” said Reed; and he raised his pipe
to his mouth as a hint that the rector might proceed.

“About the name there is nothing remarkable,” came the answer. “Strath
is a gaelic word signifying a broad valley. For a time, I have no
doubt, the whole of this neighbourhood was known as the Strath; though
glen, also a gaelic word and meaning a narrow valley, would have been
more accurate nomenclature, as you may see for yourself by ascending
one of the hills and looking down. There is an ancient, although
undated, document among the parish records which alludes to the
village of Strath hard by King’s Moor. The name of Thorlund, which
means the sacred grove of Thor or the Thunder God, was at some later
date attached to the hamlet, the name of Strath being retained by the
manor house alone. But to return to the Hoopers. According to oral
tradition, which I have generally found reliable, Sir John became a
notorious highwayman after his wife’s death. It is said he had one
child, a daughter who lived with him at the Strath, but whose name is
not mentioned in the register of deaths. It is also said that he
treated her most cruelly. Indeed, if report concerning him be true,
Sir John was altogether bad, a robber and a drunkard in his country
life, and when in town a habitual frequenter of the gaming houses
which at that time were plentiful in the neighbourhood of St. James’s.
Probably his midnight escapades upon the road were instituted to
obtain money for the payment of debts thus contracted. One night Sir
John was tracked to his house after a more daring venture than usual;
his reeking mare was found in the stable; his body servant, one Thomas
Reed, was discovered in the saloon mortally wounded, the baronet
believing, it is supposed, that the man had informed upon him. The old
fox had fled, having escaped by crawling out of an attic window and
letting himself down the side of the house by means of the creepers,
but he was found that same night hiding in a hollow tree. In due
course he was hanged. What happened to the daughter I have never been
able to discover.”

“I suppose you want to know how we came into the property. You will
have guessed I am a descendant of the murdered servant,” said Reed.
“Well, I’ll tell you. The Strath doesn’t legally belong to me. It is,
or it was, Crown property. But as by some oversight, the Crown never
seized it, the Reeds did. They were on the spot, you see, and when
they saw the place was abandoned they thought they would have
compensation for Thomas’s murder, and so they stepped in. They were
never turned out, and no questions were asked. But the Reeds were only
village folk, and couldn’t afford to occupy the place. So they let it
to a man named Biron who had spent most of his life in Germany. When
he gave it up the Strath was taken by a family called Branscombe who
for some reason left suddenly. It would be the last dinner party of
the Branscombes that is still set out in that dining-room. Since their
time not a soul--” he paused, then added with a grin, “I should say
not a body, has entered the place until this evening.”

“But what have the Reeds been doing all these years?” asked the
rector.

“They emigrated. My grandfather took no interest in the place. My
father sent over enough money every year to satisfy the local rates,
always hoping he would make enough to enable him to retire and come
back and play the gentleman. The old man died twelve years ago at the
age of eighty, and I went on with the business until it was ruined by
a trust. Then I realised, and shipped back with the notion of spending
the rest of my life at the Strath.”

“Were there no attempts made to let the property?”

“Not for the last fifty years,” Reed answered. “After the Branscombes
left, and why they did so before their time I can’t tell you, the
place had a bad reputation, and no one would go near it. But I have
come at last,” he went on in his coarse voice which sounded
unpleasantly through the garden. “I’ll soon clear away all that
unhealthy nonsense. We Americans don’t hold with the conservatism of
this old country, which makes everybody tumble into a trade error or a
crazy belief one after the other, like sheep following the bell-wether
through a hole in the fence. I’m not a gentleman in your sense, and I
don’t pretend to be. I’m a practical man, the great-grandson of a farm
labourer, and a free-thinker from my youth. I don’t believe in what
you call occult influences, and if I can’t take up my quarters at the
Strath and do what I like with the place I’ll eat my hat. And now,
Professor,” Reed concluded in his familiar manner, “what do you say to
a small glass of whisky?”

The rector rose without a word, and went into the house to find the
bottle of spirits which he kept for use in an emergency; but while he
groped in the cupboard there was a mist upon his eyes, and his usually
gentle spirit was shaken with disgust and anger as he murmured, “He
shall not lay a hand upon that garden. I hate the man. He has
inherited my Paradise, and would take it from me and make it a
desert.”

Early in the morning the visitor left for the Strath, entering the
grounds by the gate in the churchyard, and the rector did not see him
again until evening. He did not receive any invitation to accompany
the master in these explorations; and the key, his property for the
past thirty years, had been taken away. During the afternoon he walked
along the front, noticed that the iron gates were ajar, and breathed
more easily when he saw the long grass still waving in the wind.
Returning, he fell in with one of the men in Reed’s employ, who
touched his hat and would have walked on; but the rector stopped him
and enquired what he had done.

“Opened the doors and windows in yonder, Sir,” said the man. “Some of
they frames were that rotten they broke like paper. I scraped the dirt
from the panes, and cut off nigh a truck-load of ivy to let in the
light. But I ain’t going in there again, Sir.”

The rector asked for an explanation.

“Well, Sir, it’s what they’ve always said about the Strath,” the man
went on, “It ain’t healthy in there. I don’t know whether ’tis because
such a powerful lot of strong-smelling plants grow there, or what it
is, Sir, but I do know a man can’t help making a fool of hisself when
he’s there. I was a-laughing and a-singing while I worked, and feeling
just as though I was tipsy, though, as you know, I’m a sober man, Sir,
and when I looked inside there was this Mr. Reed laughing at summat
like to hurt hisself, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me, Sir, but
I saw him join ’ands with Bill Vyner, and them two danced round the
room, kicking up the dust awful. They seemed to be fair enjoying of
themselves, Sir, but now I come to think quiet-like it was a horrid
kind of sight, though I liked it well enough at the time, and stood in
the door whistling a tune for them to dance to. You see, Sir, it ain’t
proper for a gentleman like Mr. Reed to be so familiar with such as me
and Bill. And Bill says he ain’t going there no more neither.”

Dr. Berry resumed his walk with a dreamy smile upon his handsome face.
His sensitive mouth quivered as he repeated the famous satire of
Archilochus addressed to his own soul. “Nature does not change,” he
murmured. “The lampoons of Archilochus caused the daughters of
Lycambes to hang themselves for shame. How will the influence of the
Strath use Henry Reed?”

It was twilight when the man came to the rectory, sullen and
discontented. He had little information to give, and when the doctor
enquired whether the work of restoration had begun he curtly replied,
“Not yet,” and went on to ask whether he might spend another night
under the parsonage roof.

“I will try him,” said the rector to himself when they had supped; and
going to his study he extracted from a drawer his little manuscript
book of translations. “I will see if this man has a soul which can
respond to the unseen world. If so there is a chance for him; if not
the Strath must conquer.”

He came out upon the lawn where his guest was chewing the stem of his
pipe restlessly.

“Allow me to read you a translation of mine,” he said; then seating
himself a little behind his guest he read the description of peaceful
night written by Alcman the Lydian slave and poet, who lived and sang
a hundred years before Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall for
the lord of Babylon.

As the poet concluded, dropping his musical voice to a whisper over
the last iambic, he drew forward, watching and excited, his own spirit
thrilled by the magic of those lines. Reed appeared to be abstracted;
with wild hope the scholar put out his hand and touched him.

“Oh, done?” muttered the bearded man. “Queer, fellows should waste
their time writing that stuff, ain’t it? Suppose they’re good for
nothing else though. I was thinking while you were talking that what
my place wants is better air. It’s too much shut in, you see, and no
one can live without lots of fresh air. I shall cut down the elms
along the road. It will be all profit to me, as the timber is big, and
ought to sell at a good price. Have you any idea what figure elm is
fetching now?”

The rector groaned as he pushed the book of treasures into his pocket.
He had been prepared to follow up any success he might have gained by
reciting a song of Arion, who, the legends say, was brought into
Taenarum on the backs of dolphins. But his test had failed. The man
beside him was base earth, with a mind impervious to the world’s
music.

“Will you permit me to say something?” he asked nervously.

Reed swung his head round, and his small eyes twinkled maliciously.

“Whatever you like, Professor. I can guess what it is. You want me to
spare those trees. Well, I tell you right now they must go.”

“I do not ask you to spare the trees,” said Dr. Berry earnestly. “The
genius of the place can take care of them. I am going to entreat you
to save yourself.”

“What?” ejaculated Reed. He frowned and crumpled his beard. “What
foolery in this?” he muttered testily.

“You will not understand me,” the scholar went on. “You laugh at my
warnings. Remember I have studied the Strath for thirty years. It has
been kind to me, and more than kind, because there is sympathy between
us. We are both dreamers. I have been the sole character of its drama
all these years. I have tried to be its friend, and it has regarded me
as such.