The House of Hidden Treasure: a novel

Front matter

1Rc\v \Uovels for 1893 Six shillings each Dreamers of the Ghetto By I. Zangwill A Champion in the Seventies By E. A. Barnett The Lake of Wine By Bernard Capes The Open Boat By Stephen Crane King Circumstance By Edwin Pugh The Dull Miss Archinard By Anne D. Sedgwick The Scourge-Stick By Mrs. Campbell-Praed The Londoners By Robert Hichens The War of the Worlds By H. G. Wells The Nigger of the ' Narcissus By Joseph Conrad The Minister of State By J. A. Steuart The Triumph of Death By Gabriele D'Annunzio LONDON : W. HEINEMANN 2i Bedford Street, W.C. a IRovel By Maxwell Gray Author of 'The Silence of Dean Maitland,' 'The Last Sentence' 'In the Heart of the Storm ' etc. etc. ' C*est aimi que Dieu forge une ame! MANUEL. London William Heinemann The Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne Treaty^ and is not to Be imported into the United States of America.

Prologue

A.D. 187-

Chapter I

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff d bosom of the perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart. '—Macbeth. This house of many memories was of uncertain but assured anti quity, standing, it was conjectured, on the site of a much larger building, or series of buildings, some portions of which had entirely vanished, while others had been rebuilt or added at different epochs ; some dated from the thirteenth century, the latest additions were Jacobean. Yet it was not large ; what survived after so many vicissitudes might indeed be called a house of remnants. It had been burnt more than once by the French, besieged more than once, had sheltered Cavaliers in a Roundhead siege, and been a refuge for White or Red Rose.

Tradition gave it a secret sliding panel ; but, if the panel remained, the secret of the spring was lost. Ghosts it possessed in abundance, according to Barling folk, who unanimously decided to avoid it after dark. Being to let in the days of the former Lord Wotton, that is, in the thirties, it remained untenanted for years, owing to this ghostly repute; it might, but for the advent of the Dorriens, have so remained until this very day — this very enlightened, hypercivilised day at the close of the century, a day so perfectly informed, so thoroughly schooled, as to have lost faith in virtue, honour, and truth ; in decency, authority, and government ; so surfeited with fairy tales of science, and rich in the long result of time, as to believe in nothing — save only steam, bacteria, natural selection, natural appetites, money, and ghosts.

Especially in that de praved and demoralised class of ghost which, on parting with its body, parts also with its grammar, self-respect, and dignity, and conveys vulgar and foolish observations to ghosts still clothed A with flesh and the decencies of life, by knocking furniture about. Needless to say that the house beneath the down harboured none but the best class of ghosts, the ancient, ortho dox, aristocratic spirits, composed of shadow or moonlight, clothed in armour or brocade, and occupied only in the most dismal and dignified pursuits — weeping, wailing, wringing of hands, clanking of armour and fetters. These, while scorning the seclusion and shadows of table-covers and human legs, are still afraid of cock crow and the first streak of dawn, like fairies and goblins. This old-established ghost, though guilty of such solecisms as carrying the head under the arm, and of the discourtesy of entering people's bed-chambers uninvited at night, is never ungrammatical, much less vulgar.

If all spirits were permitted and inclined to revisit those glimpses of the moon beneath which their brief earthly parts were enacted, the house would indeed have been populous in ghosts. Whether those of the Rose factions would care to see the York and Lancaster roses blooming in the sweet old garden is doubtful • how the different centuries would mix, problematical. Puritan and Anglican, Lollard and Independent, monk and Whitefieldite, recluse and deaconess, nun and Biblewoman, cardinal and elder, how would these harmonise? Would the mailed thirteenth century knight understand the speech or thoughts— or their absence— of his descendant, the guardsman of to-day ? A house of many memories must be haunted, a house so ancient must echo with long-stilled laughter and long-hushed weeping, for gotten benisons and extinct execrations; a house thus overpowered with the fulness of past life permits no full, strenuous life of to-day.

Aged, outspent lives, weary and broken ones, may take refuge in it, and there rest a while before the long rest of the grave ; a house of remnants, it may harbour remnants of human life • a house of memories, it may shelter those whose lives are only memories. A fit home for a student or a dreamer, such a house is out of harmony with youth, hope, and joy; seeing what life is in its essence, at the highest heart-throb, a house so palpitating with the past might fitly be styled a house of forgotten dreams. And a pleasanter, fitter place to dream in could scarcely be found. Whether because of the partial ruin of the house, whether because they had outgrown it, or because the ancient town had surged up in plebeian insolence, and too closely approached its patrician seclusion, the Garennes had long since built themselves another, statelier home some seven miles away beyond the down ridge, in the umbrage and beauty of oak and beech and musicmurmuring pine.

New Court this was at first called, later Newcourt Place ; thus the former home became the Old House, and thus it was styled by Barling folk generally. Into the Old House, widows, old maidens, younger sons, and family failures had crept from time to time at pleasure of the head of the family. None of these family offshoots remaining in the days of the former Lord Wotton, the third earl, he let the old house at Barling, where upon the insulted patrician ghosts asserted themselves with such vigour on finding their abode hired out to strangers, that they were permitted the entire use of it for many years. For Maurice Bertram it had no terrors, no associations, no memories that were not entirely delightful. Full of romance and poetry, it was to him an embodied fairy tale. Sweet and subtle fragrance pervaded it in his memory, faint odours of lavender and dried roses.

There is no fragrance to match that of old roses ; the fragrance of their bloom is coarse by comparison with that subtle, spiritual, pathetic scent. All the happiness his orphan childhood had known was associated with that house ; he had dreamed of it by day and by night, longed for it, pictured it, until, when he stood a grown man before its heavy doorway and regarded its steep, low-browed roof and leaning gable-end, he scarcely knew it again ; yet it was unchanged. His cousins, the rector's sturdy sons, had taken care to instruct him in the ghostliness of its inmates. To do them justice, though they invented a good half of what they told him, not one of them would have passed it alone after dark. It fascinated him, while his blood froze at the stories of its ghosts. Coming off the down into drowsy old Barling, a tiny borough that fell asleep a hundred years ago, and seldom even turned in the slumber of its grass-grown street, a chalky lane led past the south front of the Old House, which stood well back in a sunny walled garden, looking placidly up the vale beneath a down, and across grassy marshes to the sea.

A high iron gate, never opened, and rusting on its briar-grown hinges, permitted a glimpse of the south front up a broad grass walk, bordered with flowers and espalier fruit-trees, to the door, over the porch of which was a sundial of rare and beautiful iron-work. The front was timbered, the first story overhung the ground floor, and was supported on wooden pillars, clasped by roses and creepers. On one far-off summer forenoon, Bertram, then a child of seven, was peeping through the iron gate with fascinated gaze, his two small brown fists grasping the rusty bars, his great blue eyes wide with desire to enter the charmed forbidden precincts of the tangled garden, when a skilful and well-directed kick from his eldest cousin Stanley, a public schoolboy of fifteen, who had undertaken to ' make a man ' of Maurice, dissipated the child's dreams of magicians, enchantments, and dragon-guarded treasure, and made him limp quickly, with quivering lip and choked-back whimper, round the corner of the walled garden and into the quiet street.

Here garden-wall and house-wall joined and stood flush with the pavement, beneath the level of which the house had sunk so far that steps led down, instead of up, to its door. Of this Stanley Parker was well aware ; and, perceiving that the heavy, iron-studded door stood ajar, and that Maurice, walking well in front, was still rapt in contemplation of the ancient house, the pleasant fancy of kicking the boy down the steps against the door occurred to him. He instantly acted upon it with a sudden rush forward, that shot Bertram, like a living cannon-ball, against the yielding door and into the middle of the room into which it directly opened, to the loud and delighted laughter of Dick and Hugh, the twelveand ten-year-old brothers of the sublime Stanley, laughter quickly stilled by a sound fraternal cuff on each boy's ear, which enjoined them to imitate their elder's instant flight down the street and round the first corner, leading to their own domains.

Maurice had enjoyed ex quisite shudders over an illustrated Foxe's Martyrs ; he compared the anguish of his unceremonious entrance, his loss of conscious ness, and subsequent pleasant awakening, to the sensations of those tortured saints. The ancient oaken door was hard, the iron-work binding and studding it harder ; Bertram's head, luckily protected by a thick mat of curly yellow hair, piteously soft by comparison. He felt as if he had come all at once in contact with the whole hard, round world, which cracked loudly and vanished in splinters of fire, him self with it. After what seemed a long time, a consciousness of pain returned, and his eyes opened. He found himself laid on a large old-fashioned sofa, in the cushions of which his small bruised body was almost lost. He looked up at a low ceiling, crossed by heavy black beams, then out on the sunny street through a wide, low, mullioned window, and past the half-open oaken door.

The room was panelled and hung with oil paint ings ; Henry the Eighth, jovial and hard, in his ruff and feathered cap, looked disparagingly down upon him ; also a Tudor lady with ringed hands stiffly upheld, so as to display every articulation and contour without perspective. An oak table was in the middle of the room, a pot of flowers on the deep window-seat, a large pot of green boughs in the broad fireplace, near which a high-backed settle made a sheltered corner. Over him bent a woman's face, pitying, tender, with deep, soft eyes ; gentle hands were laying cool, wet bandages on his head, a bowl of water on a stool near was tinged with blood ; an exquisite cool fragrance seemed to pervade everything, and protect him even from the hard disparagement of Henry the Eighth's too well-known gaze, painfully suggestive of geography and arithmetic to follow.

A figure by the window in a widow's dress turned in a high-backed chair and spoke. ' Is the injury serious, Grace ? ' she said, in a deep woman's voice. ' No, mother ; he has recovered consciousness," a lighter voice replied. ' We must keep him very quiet, and send him home in the cool of the evening.' These words repeated themselves over and over in his brain, until he heard the grey-haired lady in the window presently speak of writing to the rectory to say why the boy was kept at the house. ' ' And I earnestly trust that young Parker will receive the severe chastisement his cowardly violence merits,' she added, in mea sured tones. Then Maurice shook off his languor and sat up. ' Oh, please, please, don't tell ! ' he cried ; ' he '11 think I 've split on him. Besides, he does kick so beastly hard.' 'Schoolboy honour, dear mother.

Might you not say "an accident " ? It was I who saw the kicking from behind the boys in the street; you only saw the poor little fellow fall into the house, you know.' ' Please say a accident ! ' implored Maurice. ' I certainly will,' replied the elder lady. ' He must not be agitated, Grace, you see. Are you related to Mr. Parker, my dear?' ' If you please, I 'm his nephew. Cousin Stanley has to make a man of me. It takes an awful lot of knocks to make a man of a fellow. But I shan't never be anything but a squinnying kid if they don't knock me about,' he explained, while a note was being penned in stately and formal phrase, and read aloud to his satis faction. Then he lay back, calm and happy, and fell asleep. This room, used partly as a hall, partly as a dining-room, led into the actual hall, where they dined that day, and into which the porch and many rooms opened, and whence an uncarpeted oak staircase led to the first floor.

Sunlight fell through the porch, flower scents entered by it, in a corner of the hall was a tall, carved oaken clock, the steady, monotonous tick of which lulled the boy when he woke into a drowsy languor, and was ever after as the heart-beat of happiness to him. The peace of that long, sweet summer day in the cool, silent house ; the rest, not only from kicks and knocks and every kind of bodily torture, but from sneers and jeers and constant petty tyranny ! Only to be quiet and unmolested till bedtime was heaven to this small victim of schoolboy savagery. In the meantime Uncle Matt, carving mutton at luncheon in the Parsonage, took no notice of the small gap at table ; the plates went round in order, accompanied by desultory conversa tion of elders. Stanley kicked Hugh, and Hugh kicked Dick under the table, in token that the absence was unobserved.

Uncle Matt paused, hot and thirsty, and drank before carving his own portion. Then, perceiving two plates remaining before him, he glanced round to see who had been overlooked in the carving ; and there, in place of the small face and yellow hair he was used to see rising above the white cloth, was vacancy. ' Where is Maurice ? ' he asked in a tone of irritation. ' Why, where is Maurice ? ' his wife echoed ; ' how very tire some that child is ! ' ' Hullo ! what 's up with Maria ? ' cried Stanley, looking round with affected surprise at the empty place. ' You fellows seen the dear girl this morning ? ' ' Was that Maria we saw in the gooseberry bed after break fast?' asked Hugh innocently. 'No wonder the sweet girl can't show to dinner.' The father of four sons and three daughters looked at Stanley, Hugh, and Dick, and knew there was mischief afoot ; also that those fine, frank fellows were lying, yet he did not count them liars ; he was aware that schoolboy ethics permit many kinds of lies, especially to elders. ' Nothing like school to take the nonsense out of boys and form their characters,' was a favourite axiom of his. ' You are in charge of Maurice, Stanley,' he said abruptly ; ' find him at once.' ' My dear,' expostulated his wife, ' Stanley is not a nursemaid.

Do let the boy dine.' ' Ach ! Mr. Stanley ! ' cried the German governess, ' this is not just. We did see you — Lucy, do cease to pince me ! — we did see you all tree with ze little Maurice walk out zis morning.' Father, mother, and children all looked angrily at her. Stanley swore beneath his breath. ' Nasty, spiteful tell-tale ! ' murmured the little girls. ' Beastly sneak ! ' the boys. ' Really, Fraulein, I think you must be mistaken,' remonstrated Mrs. Parker, suddenly remembering to have seen the four boys set off together with a towel to bathe, and inwardly execrating what she termed foreigners' want of tact. ' Ach ! Gott ! No,' persisted the too candid Fraulein ; ' Lucy did call ze dogue back, Ethel did tell Maurice to not s-queal.' The peace of this Christian household was thus sadly im perilled when the boy called in from the street by Mrs. Dorrien arrived with her note, which Mr. Parker read in serious disquiet, and then handed to his wife, who said something about respon sibility and other people's children. ' These good ladies would die of fright if they spent one day with our children, dear old fusses,' she added in conclusion. ' I suppose Maurice roared, and they thought him half killed.' ' Maria can roar,' observed Stanley with a thoughtful air. ' Not when unconscious, sir,' returned his father sternly. ' Go to the study and wait there till I come.

You, Dick, go to your room, and Hugh to the schoolroom.' When Mr. Parker, immediately after luncheon, visited these places of detention in succession, he took a hunting-crop in his hand. This he wielded in a manner that surprised his sons — even Dick, who had prudently utilised the leisure intended for meditation on his sins by putting on three pairs of trousers and several woollen jerseys. The boys' surprise was mingled with another feeling that led to a serious consultation between them later in the day, as to the manner in which these emotions were to be conveyed to Maurice upon his return, which occurred before they went to bed, and of which they were not aware until they retired to their own rest. ' Pray, Maria dear, did you spend a happy day ? ' was Stanley's falsetto greeting to the unfortunate child, half asleep in the room he shared with his cousins.

Whereupon Maurice replied in ecstasy, cheerfully sitting up in bed to tell his tale, and ending by saying he rather hoped Stanley would kick him into the Old House again to-morrow. ' Do you, my sweet girl ? ' returned Stanley, in the same facetious falsetto ; ' but darling Maria must learn not to wag its little tell tale tongue again. Maria need not go to sleep any more to night. She must be kept cool and quiet, so out she goes ! A cool and airy situation, darling ! ' With that, in spite of piteous protestations of innocence, the boy was taken from his bed and pushed through the window, a small, shivering, white figure in the thin summer darkness. 'Good-night, darling,' crooned the three tyrants in falsetto, carefully hasping the window, and retiring with derisive gestures to their respective couches, where they soon slept the deep sleep commonly ascribed to innocence.

The boys' room was a long chamber under the roof, with dormer windows, in and out of which they were accustomed to climb. When ejected and locked out, Maurice found himself standing on a ledge a foot deep, protected only by a piece of turned-up lead that held rain from the eaves below. Holding on to the tiled roof of the window, he was a spectacle to his cousins as they rapidly undressed, that only delighted them while it amused him not at all ; therefore, seeing no probability of a speedy release, he moved cautiously, feeling in the glimmering darkness for a foothold, round to the angle made by the spring of the window from the roof, and found that the lead was con tinued just far enough to give him precarious foothold. Here he turned, facing the gulf of darkness sheer beneath him. The night was soft and balmy, every leaf still as if carven, the tiles warm with the heat of many hours' summer sunshine, the roof slope was good to rest on ; after all, the situation was not with out charm.

It was unusual, even romantic, to sleep on a roof. A boy who had passed a night in his shirt on a roof without crying could never be called a milksop. Everybody in the house — Uncle Matt, Aunt Em, and all — was comfortably tucked up in a mere bed, prosaically sleeping ; he, Maurice, waked and watched alone. He was a warder on a castle wall, a sailor on a masthead, the mailed guardian of enchanted treasure, anything but a wee, weary boy of seven in a nightshirt, with a bruised body and a bandaged head, perched on a parsonage roof alone in the dark. Folding his small, thin arms, he frowned defiance at an amiable cow peacefully cropping dewy grass in the meadow, just as a sudden fan of glimmering radiance faded from the foliage beneath him ; it was Uncle Matt's light going out ; Uncle Matt might sleep peacefully to-night— his house was guarded.

Maurice wondered what would happen if his feet slipped from the narrow lead guard and he fell over the two-storied house to the gravel drive below ? One big crunch, as when a cat eats a mouse • nothing more. Then the funeral of a small boy and hanging of a big one. The pleasantness of the latter prospect was marred by the consideration that he would not be able to see Stanley hanged. He sighed, and felt the ache of his wounded head at this. What numbers of stars, like swarms and swarms of shining bees ; were they really windows for angels to look out of? One star fell — or was it an angel carrying a new baby down to earth ? — no ; for it fell into that band of faintly-gleaming sea, the breath and low murmur of which stole over the marsh-lands to the Parsonage. It was growing darker and colder ; flocks and flocks of stars kept stealing out from behind the others.

It was very, very silent, very lonely, his lip was quivering ; but he was not going to cry — oh, no ! He could rouse the house easily by shouting, but that would be sneakish. Surely Stanley would open the window soon. But Stanley was fast, fast asleep. He was a fine, handsome lad, and lay carelessly with his arms thrown out, his crisp hair drooping on his temple, a placid smile on his ruddy face ; the other boys slept as sweetly ; they looked like three angels in their deep slumber ; while the tiny lad crouched in the angle of the roof with bandaged head and bruised thin limbs — limbs only just losing the chubbiness of infancy — was more like some imp of darkness or wicked hobgoblin, rightly shut out in the cold. A faint moan came from one boy as he turned in his sleep and pressed upon a purple weal in his flesh ; the three lads were marked all over with yesterday's whip and each other's knocks and kicks, and little they cared for either, being far too well accustomed to violence.

Even tiny Maurice was becoming in different to blows and bruises ; he felt that he could but be killed, and his tremendous crash into the Old House yesterday had actually sent him to sleep. The Old House lay higher than the Parsonage ; he had seen its lights go out ; Miss Dorrien little knew where he was. This reflection, curiously enough, made a lump come in his throat. The church clock struck one, the chill grew and made him shiver ; no, he was not going to cry ; perhaps that beast Stanley might come out and see the tears he dashed off with his sleeve. How delightful that day had been ! They had asked him to come again, those two dear, sweet ladies. There would always be something pleasant now, however wretched he might be. He recalled it all dreamily, shutting his tired, wet eyes. Dinner in the hall, looking on the sunny garden.

The two ladies and himself; their pleasant, quiet, soft voices, gentle movements; no noisy boys and girls, no wrangling, no chiding, no savage kicks and pinches under the table, nothing spilt. Such fare ! Instead of common meat and pudding, such as people had every day, to THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN TREASURE milk and home-baked bread, dark and delicious, with butter and fresh ripe fruit ; no meat, nothing heating, because he had to be kept cool. Salad and honey. Then the afternoon peace on a sofa with a leaf of white currants, like pearls, to amuse him, and later, a story read out to him, and music, soft music played on a guitar. Tea in the garden in the cool shadows of walnut-trees ; time told by the sundial, a thing new to him, and all explained. 'Miss Dorrien, Uncle Matt says you've seen better days.

When was there better days van vis ? ' . ' When you are older, Maurice, you will not repeat anything you hear said. Would you like to go and see the bees ? ' ' Miss Dorrien, is it true vat vere 's great heaps of gold under ve house ? And did Oliver Cromwell frow the keys of the Secret Chamber away ? And who sleeps in ve Tapestry Room ? And will you marry me when I 'm grown up ? ' These ladies were usually, in the pictures his after-memory called up, busied in making pot-pourri, the rose-leaves for which he helped collect, or sewing grains of lavender in muslin bags ; unless they were in the withdrawing-room, a large sunny room on the first floor, wainscoted in white and gold, with a chimney piece carved with armorial bearings, and trophies of arms, and a fireplace fitted with blue-and-white tiles, bearing the story of David.

The room was a marvel of faded, threadbare splendour, its strips of carpet mere webs, its curtains colourless with time. Its long, low, mullioned window, with its cushioned window-seat looking on the garden, towards the never-opened iron gate, was a place to dream golden dreams in. It often held a very little boy in its cosiest corner, with his legs tucked under him, his elbow on the window-sill, his head on his hand, his eyes wide with wonder, while the ladies touched the worn, thin-toned harpsichord, the guitar, or the harp, sometimes singly, sometimes together, sometimes with singing, sometimes without, and the child's soul wandered blissfully away in a paradise of music and marvel. Faded splendour, faded, sorrow-stricken ladies, worn voices, old songs and aged instruments, broken-stringed, yet opening the gates of a world of beauty and glamour to one young creature, basking in the eternal youth of sunshine and of summer growth in garden and orchard !

The boy's tongue had been loosed that first day at tea under the walnut-trees ; all fear of the two ladies had vanished then and for ever. He prattled on as he never dared at the Parsonage, told them his little history, how he had come to Barling last Easter. He was younger then ; he cried in the first days ; but Stanley thrashed him, so he had to' leave off. He used to live with his grandfather and Mrs. Munn ; his grand father sat in a chair all day long; his head always shook. Mrs. Munn was scarcely ever cross ; she wore a black cap and spectacles. ' Have you a grandfather, Miss Dorrien ? and does his head shake ? ' Miss Dorrien started, and looked at her mother, who answered for her — ' My daughter has a grandfather. He is called Sir Geoffrey Harbord. His head never shakes. Where does your grandfather live, Maurice ? ' 'He lives in heaven now.

He lived at home then. Mrs. Dorrien, do ghosts come every night and talk to you and wing veir hands ? ' ' Every night, and all night long, ay, and every day, she replied in a low, moaning voice, gazing away and away into a world of dreams. ' They speak, oh yes ! they speak, and they wring their hands, they wail, they weep. Ghosts and shadows, shadows and ghosts, dreams, dreams, dreams. Veiled and shrouded, dim and bright, sweet and sad. All, all is phantasm. We are phantoms, we are shades ; the very dust is peopled with us and ours, even the motes in the sunbeam — phantoms, dreams, dust.' Her voice had slipped into a monotonous chant, her head swayed from side to side ; the boy gazed at her with open eyes and mouth. The daughter diverted his attention. ' Look, Maurice,' she said, pointing to the sky, across the blue spaces of which gulls were sailing on curved soft wings to the sea, 'they are going home to their nests in the sea-cliffs.' 'Miss Dorrien,' was Maurice's last observation before they reached the Parsonage, whither she took him at dusk ; ' I 've been looking for ve crack all day, and I can't see it nowhere.' ' What crack, where, Maurice ? ' ' In Mrs. Dorrien.

Aunt Emily said she was cracked, but I can't see any crack.' ' Never look for cracks, Maurice. Besides, there is none there. It is a mistake,' replied a voice deepened by deep sadness. ' Good night, Maurice. God bless you ! ' added the childless woman to the motherless child. Golden memories of that golden day kept the tears from his eyes ; but they also lulled him to perilous drowsiness ; his head nodded forward, he jerked it back and shivered in the growing dullness. Something sprang out of the darkness right upon him ; he gave one shrill, soon-smothered shriek, and was answered by the familiar mew of his friend Tim, the grey cat. Darkness was thinning now, cocks were crowing, harvest fields glimmering with more and more certainty, the sea taking a pallid gleam the damp chill growing sharper.