The Reverend Charles Brabazon, magnetic Vicar of the adjacent Village, had as strong a personality as one could wish to encounter in real life. He did what he liked with a congregation largely composed of the motley worldlings of Witching Hill. Small solicitors1 and west-end tradesmen, bank officials, outside brokers2, first-class clerks in Government offices, they had not a Sunday soul to call their own, these hard-headed holders3 of season tickets to Waterloo.
Throughout the summer they flocked to church when their hearts were on the river; in the depths of winter they got up for early celebration on the one morning when they might have lain abed. Their most obsequious4 devotions did not temper the preacher's truculence5, any more than his strongest onslaught discouraged their good works. They gave of their substance at his every call, and were even more lavish6 on their own initiative. Thus, in my second summer at Witching Hill, the Vicarage was practically rebuilt out of the pockets of parishioners; and we had no difficulty in providing a furnished substitute on the favourite woodland side of Mulcaster Park.
Great was the jealousy7 in Witching Hill Road, but futile8 the fluttering of our Queen Anne dovecots; for we saw very little more of the Vicar for having him in our midst. He was always either immured9 in his study, or else hurrying to or from some service or parochial engagement; and although he had a delightful10 roadside manner, and the same fine smile for high and low, he would stop to speak to neither on his way. Out of church, in fact, Mr. Brabazon preserved a wise aloofness11 which only served to emphasise12 the fierce intimacy13 of his pulpit utterances14, and combined with his contempt of popularity to render him by far the most popular figure in the neighbourhood.
It goes without saying that this remarkable15 man was a High Churchman and a celibate16. His house was kept, and his social short-comings made good, by two Misses Brabazon, each as unlike him as possible in her own way. Miss Ruth, who was younger, added to her brother's energy a sympathetic charm and a really good voice which made her the darling of the Parish Hall and humbler edifices18. Miss Julia's activities were more sedentary and domestic, as perhaps became the least juvenile19 of the trio, and so it was that I saw most of her. We had a whole day together over the inventory20, and it was Miss Julia who interviewed me about everything else connected with the house. She was never short with me on those occasions, never ungracious or (what is worse) unduly21 gracious, but she had always a pleasant word, and nearly always an innocent little joke as well. Innocence22 and jocosity23 were two of her leading characteristics; another was a genuine but ingenuous24 literary faculty25. This she exercised in editing the Parish Magazine, and supplying it with moral serials26 which occasionally reached volume form under the auspices27 of the Religious Tract28 Society.
On an evening late in April, when the cuckoo was wound up in the wood behind Mulcaster Park, and most of the beds in front were flowering for the first time, a gaunt figure came to the gate of the temporary vicarage and beckoned29 to me passing on the other side of the road. It was Miss Julia, and I found her looking gently humorous and knowing across the gate.
"The trees are coming out so beautifully," she began, "in the grounds behind these gardens. I was wondering if it would be possible to procure32 a permit to go over them, Mr. Gillon."
"Do you mean for yourself, Miss Brabazon?"
"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do."
As she spoke33 I could not but notice that she glanced ever so slightly towards the house behind her, and that her voice had fallen to a murmur34, while a mottled colouring appeared between the lines of her guileless visage.
"I'm afraid I can't do anything," I said. "But the Vicar could, Miss Brabazon!" I added with conviction. "A line from him to Sir Christopher Stainsby——"
I stopped because Miss Julia shook her head so decidedly.
"That would never do, Mr. Gillon. Sir Christopher is such a very rabid Dissenter36."
"So I have heard," I admitted, thinking rather of what I had seen. "But I don't believe he's as narrow as you think."
"I couldn't trouble the Vicar about it, in any case," said Miss Brabazon, hurriedly. "I shouldn't even like him to know that I had troubled you, Mr. Gillon. He's such a severe critic that I never tell him what I'm writing until it's finished."
"Then you are writing something about Witching Hill House, Miss Brabazon?"
"I was thinking of it. I haven't begun. But I never saw any place that I felt such a desire to write about. The old house in the old woods, say a hundred years ago! Don't you think it an ideal scene for a story, Mr. Gillon?"
"It depends on the story you want to tell," said I, sententiously.
A strange light was burning in the weak eyes of Miss Julia. It might almost have been a flicker37 of the divine fire. But now she dropped her worn eyelids38, and gazed into the road with the dreamy cunning of the born creator.
"I should have quite a plot," she decided35. "It would be ... yes, it would be about some extraordinary person who lived in there, in the wood and the house, only of course ages and ages ago. I think I should make him—in fact I'm quite sure he would be—a very wicked person, though of course he'd have to come all right in the end."
"You must be thinking of the man who really did live there."
"Who was that?"
"The infamous39 Lord Mulcaster."
"Really, Mr. Gillon? I don't think I ever heard of him. Of course I know the present family by name; aren't these Delavoyes connected with them in some way?"
I explained the connection as I knew it, which was not very thoroughly40. But I unfortunately said enough to cause a rapid fall in poor Miss Julia's mottled countenance41.
"Then I must give up the idea of that story. They would think I meant their ancestor, and that would never do. I'm sorry, because I never felt so inclined to write anything before. But I'm very glad you told me, Mr. Gillon."
"But they wouldn't mind a bit, Miss Brabazon! They're not in the least sensitive about him," I assured her.
"I couldn't think of it," replied Miss Julia, haughtily42. "It would be in the very worst of taste."
"But Uvo would love it. He's full of the old villain43. He might help you if you'd let him. He's at the British Museum at this moment, getting deeper and deeper into what he calls the family mire44."
"I happen to see him coming down the road," observed Miss Julia, dryly. "I must really beg that you will not refer to the subject again, Mr. Gillon."
But in her voice and manner there was a hesitating reluctance45 that emboldened46 me to use my own judgment47 about that, especially when Uvo Delavoye (whose mother and sister were keen Brabazonians) himself introduced the topic on joining us, with a gratuitous48 remark about his "unfilial excavations49 in Bloomsbury."
"I've opened up a new lazar-house this very day," he informed us, with shining eyes, when Miss Julia had shown an interest in spite of herself.
"By the way," I cut in, "don't you think it would all make magnificent material for a novel, Uvo?"
"If you could find anybody to publish it!" he answered, laughing.
"You wouldn't mind if he was put into a book—and the place as well?"
"I wouldn't, if nobody else didn't! Why? Who's thinking of doing us the honour?"
Dear Miss Julia coughed and laughed with delicious coyness. My liberty had been condoned50.
"Was it you, Miss Brabazon?" cried Uvo, straightening his face with the nerve that never failed him at a climax51.
"Well, it was and it wasn't," she replied, exceeding slyly. "I did think I should like to write a little story about Witching Hill House, and put in rather a bad character; at least he would begin by being rather undesirable52, perhaps. But I was forgetting that the place had been in your family, Mr. Delavoye. I certainly never knew, until Mr. Gillon told me, that one of the Lords Mulcaster had been—er—perhaps—no better than he ought to have been."
"To put it mildly," said Delavoye, with smiling face and shrieking53 eyes. "You may paint the bad old hat as black as mine, Miss Brabazon, and still turn him out a saint compared with the villain of the case I've been reading up to-day. So you really needn't worry about anybody's susceptibilities. Lay on the local colour inches deep! You won't make the place as red as the old gentleman painted it in blood and wine!"
"Really, Mr. Delavoye!" cried Miss Julia, jocosely55 shocked. "You mustn't forget that my story would only appear in our Parish Magazine—unless the R.T.S. took it afterwards."
"My rude forefather56 in a Religious Tract!"
"Of course I should quite reform him in the end."
"You'd have your work cut out, Miss Brabazon."
"I ought to begin with you, you know!" said Miss Julia, shaking a facetious57 finger in Uvo's face. "I'm afraid you're rather an irreverent young man, and I don't know what the Vicar would say if he heard us." She threw another deliciously guilty glance towards the house. "But if you really mean what you say, and you're sure Mrs. Delavoye and your sister won't mind either——"
"Mind!" he interrupted. "Forgive me, Miss Brabazon, but how could they be sensitive about the last head but five of a branch of the family which doesn't even recognise our existence?"
"Very well, then! I'll take you at your word, and the—the blood and thunder," whispered Miss Julia, as though they were bad words, "be on your own head, Mr. Delavoye!"
Thereafter, in a quivering silence, Uvo took me home with him, and straight up into his own room, where he first shut door and window without a word. Never since have I heard man laugh quite so loud and long as he did then.
"But you don't see the point!" he arrogated58 through his tears, because I made rather less noise.
"What is it, then?"
"I told you I'd opened up a new sink to-day?"
"You said something of the sort."
"It was a sink of fresh iniquity59. I came across it in an old collection of trials; it isn't as much as mentioned in any memoir60 of the old reprobate61, nor yet in the many annals of Witching Hill. Yet he once figured in one of the most disgraceful cases on record."
The case was all that, as Delavoye summed it up for my benefit. The arch-villain of the piece was of course his scandalous progenitor62, aided and abetted63 by a quite unspeakable crew. There was a sorely distressed64 heroine in humble17 life—a poor little milliner from Shoreditch—but because it was all too true, there had been no humble hero to wreak65 poetic66 vengeance67 on the miscreant68.
"Not a nursery story, I grant you! But there were some good touches in the version I struck," said Delavoye, producing his museum note-book. "One or two I couldn't help taking down. 'In obedience69 to the custom of the times,' for instance, 'the young lord proceeded to perform the grand tour; and it is reported that having sailed from Naples to Constantinople, he there imbibed70 so great an admiration71 for the manners of the Turks, that on his return to England in 1766, he caused an outlying portion of his family mansion72 to be taken down, and to be rebuilt in the form of a harem.'"
"Rot!"
"I took it down word for word. I've often wondered how the Turkish Pavilion got its name; now we know all about it, and why it had a tunnel connecting it with the house."
"Poor little milliner!"
"I believe you, Gilly. Listen to this, when she was a prisoner in his town house, before they spirited her out here—'Looking out of the window at about eight o'clock, she observed a young woman passing, to whom she threw out her handkerchief, which was then heavy with tears, intending to attract her attention and send to her father for assistance.'"
"Because the handkerchief was marked?"
"And so heavy with her tears that she could throw it like a tennis-ball!"
The note-book was put away. There was an end also of our hilarity73.
"And this dear old girl," said Uvo, with affectionate disrespect, "thinks she's a fit and proper writer to cope with that immortal74 skunk75! False Sextus in a parish magazine! Proud Tarquin done really proud at last!"
It was on the tip of my tongue to make it quite clear to Uvo that Miss Julia had not wittingly proposed to write about his ancestor at all; that apparently76 she had never heard of his existence before that evening, and that it was her own original idea to make Witching Hill House the haunt of some purely77 imaginary scoundrel. But I knew my Uvo well enough by this time to hold my tongue, and at least postpone78 the tiresome79 discussion of a rather stale point on which we were never likely to agree.
But I stayed to supper at No. 7; and Uvo kept me till the small hours, listening to further details of his last researches, and to the farrago of acute conjecture80, gay reminiscence and vivid hearsay81 which his reading invariably inspired. It was base subject-metal that did not gain a certain bright refinement82 in his fiery83 mind, or fall from his lips with a lively ring; and that night he was at his best about things which have an opposite effect on many young men. It must have been after one when I left him. I saw the light go out behind the cheap stained glass in the front door, and I heard Uvo going upstairs as I departed. The next and only other light I passed, in the houses on that side of the road, was at the top of the one which was now the Vicarage. Thence also came an only sound; it was the continuous crackle of a typewriter, through the open window of the room which I knew Miss Julia had appropriated as her own.
That end of the Estate had by this time a full team of tenants84, whereas I had two sets of painters and paperhangers to keep up to the mark in Witching Hill Road. This rather came between me and my friends in Mulcaster Park, especially as my Mr. Muskett lived in their road, and his house had eyes and a tongue. So it happened that I saw no more of Miss Julia Brabazon until she paid me a queer little visit at my office one afternoon about five o'clock. She was out of breath, and her flurried manner quickened my ear to the sound of her brother's bells ringing in the distance for week-day evensong.
"I thought I'd like to have one word with you, Mr. Gillon, about my story," she panted, with a guilty shrinking from the sheet of glass behind her. "It will be finished in a few days now, I'm thankful to say. I've been so hard at work upon it, you can't think!"
"Oh, yes, I can," said I; for there seemed to be many more lines on the simple, eager countenance; the drollery85 had gone out of it, and its heightened colouring had an unhealthy, bluish tinge87.
"I'm afraid I have been burning the midnight oil a little," she admitted with a sort of coy bravado88. "But there seems so much to do during the day, and everything is so quiet at night, unless it's that wretched typewriter of mine! But I muffle90 the bell, and luckily my brother and sister are sound sleepers91."
"You must be keen, Miss Brabazon, to turn night into day."
"Keen? I never enjoyed writing half so much. It's no effort; the story simply writes itself. I don't feel as if it were a story at all, but something that I see and hear and have just got to get down as fast as ever I can! I feel as if I really knew that old monster we were talking about the other day. Sometimes he quite frightens me. And that's why I've come to you, Mr. Gillon. I almost fear I'm making him too great a horror after all!"
It was impossible not to smile. "That would be a difficult matter, from all I hear, Miss Brabazon."
"I meant from the point of view of his descendants in general, and these dear Delavoyes in particular. Rather than hurt their feelings, Mr. Gillon, I need hardly tell you I'd destroy my story in a minute."
"That would be a thousand pities," said I, honestly thinking of her wasted time.
"I'm not so sure," said Miss Julia, doubtfully. "I sometimes think, when I read the newspapers, that there are bad people enough in the world without digging up more from their graves. Yet at other times I don't feel as if I were doing that either. It's more as though this wicked old wretch89 had come to life of his own accord and insisted on being written about. I seem to feel him almost at my elbow, forcing me to write down I don't know what."
"But that sounds like inspiration!" I exclaimed, impressed by the good faith patent in the tired, ingenuous, serio-comic face.
"I don't know what it is," replied Miss Julia, "or whether I'm writing sense or nonsense. I never like to look next day. I only know that at the time I quite frighten myself and—make as big a fool of myself as though I were in my poor heroine's shoes—which is so absurd!" She laughed uneasily, her colour slightly heightened. "But I only meant to ask you, Mr. Gillon, whether you honestly and truly think that the Delavoyes won't mind? You see, he really was their ancestor, and I do make him a most odious93 creature."
"But I don't suppose you give his real name?"
"Oh, dear, no. That would never do. I call him the Duke of Doehampton, and the story is called 'His Graceless Grace.' Isn't it a good title, Mr. Gillon?"
I lied like a man, but was still honest enough to add that I thought it even better as a disguise. "I feel sure, Miss Brabazon, that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily," I took it upon myself to assert; but indeed her title alone would have reassured94 me, had I for a moment shared her conscientious95 qualms96.
"I am so glad you think so," said Miss Julia, visibly relieved. "Still, I shall not offer the story anywhere until Mr. Delavoye has seen or heard every word of it."
"I thought it was for your own Parish Magazine?"
Miss Julia at last obliged me with her most facetious and most confidential97 smile.
"I am not tied down to the Parish Magazine," said she. "There are higher fields. I am not certain that 'His Graceless Grace' is altogether suited to the young—the young parishioner, Mr. Gillon! I must read it over and see. And—yes—I shall invite Mr. Delavoye to come and hear it, before I decide to send it anywhere at all."
The reading actually took place on an evening in May, when the Vicar had accompanied his younger sister up to Exeter Hall; and at the last moment I also received a verbal invitation, delivered and inspired by that rascal98 Uvo, who declared that I had let him in for the infliction99 and must bear my share. More justly, he argued that the pair of us might succeed in keeping each other awake, whereas one alone would infallibly disgrace himself; and we had solemnly agreed upon a system of watch-and-watch, by the alternate quarter-of-an-hour, before we presented ourselves at the temporary vicarage after supper.
Miss Julia received us in stiff silk that supplied a sort of sibilant obbligato to a nervous welcome; and her voice maintained a secretive pitch, even when the maid had served coffee and shut the door behind her, lending a surreptitious air to the proceedings100 before they could be said to have begun. It was impossible not to wonder what the Vicar would have said to see his elderly sister discoursing101 profane102 fiction to a pair of heathens who seldom set foot inside his church.
He would scarcely have listened with our resignation; for poor Miss Julia read as badly as she wrote, and never was story opened with clumsier ineptitude103 than hers. We had sheet upon typewritten sheet about the early life and virtuous104 vicissitudes105 of some deplorably dull young female in the east end of London; and in my case slumber106 was imminent107 when the noble villain made his entry in the cinnamon waistcoat of the picture at Hampton Court. At that I tried to catch Uvo's eye, but it was already fixed108 upon the reader's face with an intensity109 which soon attracted her attention.
"Isn't that your idea of him, Mr. Delavoye?" asked Miss Julia,
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