Chapter I

Mr Packer dangled the heavy bunch of keys for a moment before laying it
on the table.

‘Four years is a long time to be away,’ he said.

His voice was so drily polite that Charles Moray could not fail to be
aware that in the eyes of his solicitor four years’ absence, and a
consequent neglect of all the business arising out of his father’s death
and his own succession, was a dereliction. An only son who succeeded to
a large estate had no business to walk the uttermost parts of the earth.
He should step into his place as a citizen, stand for Parliament in the
constituency represented by three generations of his family, and—settle
down.

Charles picked up the bunch of keys, looked at them with an odd fleeting
frown, and put them in his pocket.

‘You won’t be going to the house tonight, I suppose,’ said Mr Packer.

‘No. I’m staying at The Luxe. I just thought I’d look in and get the
keys.’

‘I asked because I believe—in fact I know—that the caretaker Lattery,
is out. He is always out on Thursday evening. I am aware of the fact,
because it is his practice to call at this office for his wages; he
comes very punctually at five o’clock. And I thought that if you had any
intention of calling at the house, his absence might surprise you.’

‘No, I shan’t go round there tonight,’ said Charles. He glanced at his
watch. ‘Haven’t time—Millar’s dining with me. I expect you remember
him.’

Mr Packer remembered Mr Millar; not, apparently, with enthusiasm.

Charles got up.

‘Well. I’ll be round in the morning. I can sign anything you want me to
then. I hope I haven’t kept you. I’d no idea it was so late.’

He walked back to The Luxe in the dusk of the October evening—dampish,
coldish—a gloomy, depressing sort of climate to welcome a man who has
had four years of tropical sunshine.

Charles sniffed the cold wet air and found it good. It was surprisingly
good to be at home again. The rage and pain which had driven him out of
England four years ago were gone, burnt to the ash of forgetfulness by
the very fierceness of their own flame. He could think of Margaret
Langton now without either pain or anger. She was married of course; a
girl doesn’t turn a man down like that on the very eve of their wedding
unless there’s another man. No, Margaret must be married. Very likely
they would meet. He told himself that it would be quite an interesting
meeting for them both.

At The Luxe a telegram from Archie Millar—‘Awfully sorry. My Aunt
Elizabeth has wired for me. She does it once a month or so. Hard luck
she hit on tonight. Cheerio. Archie.’

Charles ate his dinner alone. During the soup he regretted Archie
Millar, but with the fish the regret passed. He did not want Archie or
Archie’s company; he did not want to go to a theatre or do a show; he
wanted vehemently and insistently to go to the house which was now his
own house, and to go to it whilst it stood empty of everything except
its memories. He didn’t want to hear Lattery’s account of his
stewardship, or to listen to Mrs Lattery deploring the way that the damp
got into things. ‘No matter what you do, sir, or how much you air—and
I’m sure I’m such a one for airing as never was.’ Her high-pitched,
querulous voice rang sharply in his ears. No, he didn’t want to talk to
Mrs Lattery. But he wanted to see the house.

His impatience grew as he walked westward facing a soft wind that was
full of rain. The house drew him. And why not? His great-grandfather had
built it; his grandfather and his father had been born there; he himself
had been born there—four generations of them—four generations of
memories. And the house stood empty, waiting for him to come to it.

A hundred years ago Thorney Lane was a real lane, whose hedgerows were
thick with thorn that blossomed white as milk in May and set its dark
red haws for birds to peck at in October. It was a paved walk now,
running from one busy thoroughfare to another, with wooden posts set
across it at either end to show that it was for the use of foot
passengers only. When Mr Archibald Moray built his big house the
thoroughfares were country roads.

Half-way up Thorney Lane a narrow alley separated the houses which
looked on to Thornhill Square from the houses of the more modern George
Street. The old lane had wandered pleasantly between high banks where
the alley ran straight between high brick walls. No. 1 Thornhill Square
was the corner house.

Charles Moray, walking up Thorney Lane turned to the right and proceeded
for about a dozen yards along the alley-way. He stopped in front of the
door in the brick wall and took out the bunch of keys which Mr Packer
had given him. This key, at least, he thought he could find in the dark.
How many times had he and Margaret walked the narrow alley in the
twilight, in the dusk, in the dark?

He wondered if the Pelhams were still at 12 George Street, and if Freddy
Pelham had learned any new stories in the last four years—Freddy and
his interminable pointless tales about nothing! Even when he had been at
the height of his love for Margaret it had been hard work to put up with
Margaret’s stepfather. Well, he wouldn’t have to laugh at Freddy’s
stories now.

He ran his fingers over the keys until they touched the one he wanted;
it had a nick in it half-way down the shaft. He let the other keys fall
away from it and put out his left hand to feel for the keyhole. His
fingers touched the cold, wet wood and slid down on to colder iron.
Under the pressure of his hand the door moved. He pushed, and it swung.
There was no need for him to use his key on a door that had stood not
only unlocked but unlatched. Lattery had grown slack indeed if he made a
practice of going out by the back way and leaving the door ajar.

It was very dark in the garden. The high brick wall cut off the last
glimmer of the lamp which was supposed to light Thorney Lane and the
alley that ran into it.

Charles walked down the flagged path with as much assurance as if he had
had daylight to show him what only his mind was showing him now. Here
the thorn tree, a seedling eighty years ago, dropped from some survivor
of the old hedge. Next, lavender bushes, sweet in the dark as he brushed
them by. The garden was of a good size, and had been larger before his
grandfather built out a ballroom upon what had once been a formal
terrace.

Charles passed the long dark windows with slender fluted columns between
them. It was inevitable that he should think of the June night which had
seen every window brilliant, open to the soft summer dusk. The dancers
had only to step out from between the pillars and descend two marble
steps to find themselves amongst flowers.

He frowned and walked on; then threw up his head and stopped. What was
that June evening to him now, that he should shirk the remembrance of
it? If the past had any ghosts, it was better to look them in the face
and bid them begone for ever. The June night rose vividly. The last
hours of his engagement to Margaret rose; he saw himself and her; her
father, proud and pleased; Margaret in white and silver, radiant and for
once beautiful. He could have sworn that the radiance and the beauty
flowed from some lamp of joy within; and, with their wedding day only a
week ahead, he had not doubted what flame burned high in that lamp of
joy. Yet next day she had sent him back his ring.

Charles stared at the dark windows. What a fool he had been! His
incredulity was the measure of his folly. He could not believe
Margaret’s own words in her own writing—not till the telephone had
failed him; not till he had forced an entrance into the Pelhams’ house,
only to hear that Margaret had left town; not till he read in every
newspaper the cold announcement that ‘the marriage arranged between Mr
Charles Moray and Miss Margaret Langton will not take place’.

Did he accept the facts? It is not a pleasant thing to be jilted.
Charles Moray flung out of England in as bitter a rage as the galling
humiliation warranted. He had never had to think of money in his life:
if he wanted to travel he could travel. His father made no demur. India
first, and Tibet; then China—the hidden, difficult, dangerous China
which only a few Europeans know. Then in Peking he fell in with Justin
Parr, and Parr persuaded him into an enthusiasm for the unexplored
tracts of South America.

He was still hesitating, when his father died suddenly; and there being
nothing to come home for, he set off with Parr on a voyage of adventure
with a secret unacknowledged lure, the hope of forgetting Margaret.

Charles looked steadily at these ghosts of his and saw them vanish into
the dark, thin air. He was immensely pleased with himself for having
faced them, and it was with a glow of self-approbation that he came to
the end of the flagged path and groped for the handle of the garden
door.

The glow changed to one of anger. This door was open too. He began to
have serious thoughts of celebrating his return by sacking Lattery. He
stepped into a passage. It ran a few feet and ended in a swing door
which gave upon the hall. There was a light here; not one of the hanging
lamps which could flood the whole place, but a small, discreet shaded
affair set away in a corner.

There is something very melancholy about a big empty house. Charles
looked at the light and wondered if this house was really empty. It
ought to have felt empty. But it didn’t. And he ought, perhaps, to have
felt melancholy. Instead, he was experiencing a certain elated feeling
which was partly expectancy, and partly the instinct that scents
adventure. He went up the stairs and turned into the right-hand
corridor. This floor was in darkness. A faint glow came up from the well
of the stairs and made the gloom visible. He had his hand on the switch
which controlled the light, when he paused and after a moment let his
hand fall again.

At the end of the corridor two doors faced each other. The right-hand
door was invisible in the darkness, but across the threshold of the
left-hand door lay a faint pencilling of light.

Charles looked at this pencilling, and told himself that Mrs Lattery was
in the room. All the same he walked softly, and when he reached the door
he stood still, listening. And as he stood, he heard one man speak and
another answer him.

Moving quite noiselessly, he stepped backwards until he could touch the
opposite door; then, putting his hand behind him, he turned the handle,
passed into the dark room, and closed the door again.

The room into which he had come was the one which had been his mother’s
bedroom. The room opposite was her sitting-room, and between the two,
across the end of the corridor, there ran a windowless cupboard—a
delightful place for a child to play in. He could remember his mother’s
dresses hanging there, silken, lavender scented, whispering when you
touched them. She died when he was ten; and then there were no more
dresses hanging there.

Charles opened the door very softly. The seven feet of black emptiness
gave out a cold, musty smell—Mrs Lattery had not done very much of her
boasted airing here. He went forward into the blackness until his
fingers touched the panelling on the far side of it. Long ago there had
been a door here too; but it had been shut up to make more space for Mrs
Moray’s dresses. The keyhole had been filled and the handle removed.

Charles had regretted the keyhole. It had figured in his games, and he
could still remember the thrill with which he had discovered a peep-hole
which replaced it handsomely. Four feet from the floor on the extreme
edge of the panelling a knot hole had been filled with glue and sawdust
stained to match the wood of the door. With infinite patience the little
boy of nine had loosened the filling until it could be withdrawn at will
like a cork. It was the memory of this peep-hole which brought him into
the cupboard now. An unlatched gate, and an open door, and men’s
voices—these things seemed to require an explanation.

He knelt down, felt for the knot-hole, and gently, cautiously, pulled
out the plug that filled it.