Beaumaroy Home from the Wars Page 12

  CHAPTER XII

  THE SECRET OF THE TOWER

  The scene presented by the interior of the Tower, when Beaumaroy softlyopened the door and signed to Doctor Mary to step forward and look, wasindeed a strange one, a ridiculous yet pathetic mockery of grandeur.

  The building was a circular one, rising to a height of some thirty-fivefeet and having a diameter of about ten. Up to about twelve feet fromthe floor its walls were draped with red and purple stuffs of coarsematerial; above them the bare bricks and the rafters of the roof showednaked. In the middle of the floor--with their backs to the door at whichMary and her companion stood--were set two small arm-chairs of plain andcheap make. Facing them, on a rough dais about three feet high and withtwo steps leading up to it, stood a large and deep carved oakenarm-chair. It too was upholstered in purple, and above and around itwere a canopy and curtains of the same colour. This strange erection wasset with its back to the one window--that which Mr. Saffron had causedto be boarded up, soon after he entered into occupation. The place waslighted by candles--two tall standards of an ecclesiastical pattern, oneon either side of the great chair or throne, and each holding six largecandles, all of which were now alight and about half consumed. On thethrone, his spare wasted figure set far back in the recesses of its deepcushioned seat and his feet resting on a high hassock, sat old Mr.Saffron; in his right hand he grasped a sceptre, obviously a theatrical"property," but a handsome one, of black wood with gilt ornamentation;his left arm he held close against his side. His eyes were turned uptowards the roof; his lips were moving as though he were talking, but nosound came.

  Such was Doctor Mary's first impression of the scene; but the nextmoment she took in another feature of it, not less remarkable. To theleft of the throne, to her right as she stood in the doorway facing it,there was a fireplace; an empty grate, though the night was cold.Immediately in front of it was--unmistakably--the excavation in thefloor which Mr. Penrose had described at the Christmas dinner-party atOld Place--six feet in length by three in breadth, and about four feetdeep. Against the wall, close by, stood a sheet of cast iron, whichevidently served to cover and conceal the aperture; by it was throwndown, in careless disorder, a strip of the same dull red baize ascovered the rest of the floor of the Tower. By the side of the sheet andthe piece of carpet there was an old brown leather bag.

  Tradition--and Mr. Penrose--had told the truth. Here without doubt wasCaptain Duggle's grave, the grave he had caused to be dug for himself,but which--be the reason what it might--his body had never occupied. Yetthe tomb was not entirely empty. The floor of it was strewn withgold--to what depth Mary could not tell, but it was covered with goldensovereigns; there must be thousands of them. They gleamed under thelight of the candles.

  Mary turned startled, inquiring, apprehensive eyes on Beaumaroy. Hepressed her arm gently, and whispered:

  "I'll tell you presently. Come in. He'll notice us, I expect, in aminute. Mind you curtsey when he sees you!" He led her in, pulling thedoor to after him, and placed her and himself in front of the two smallarm-chairs opposite Mr. Saffron's throne.

  Beaumaroy removed his hand from her arm but she caught his wrist in oneof hers and stood there, holding on to him, breathing quickly, her eyesnow set on the figure on the throne.

  The old man's lips had ceased to move; his eyes had closed; he lay backin the deep seat, inert, looking half dead, very pale and waxen in theface. For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almostwithout signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him. Maryglanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in that half-humorous,half-compassionate smile; there was no hint of impatience in hisbearing.

  At last Mr. Saffron opened his eyes and saw them; there was intelligencein his look, though his body did not move. Mary was conscious of a lowbow from Beaumaroy; she remembered the caution he had given her, andherself made a deep curtsey; the old man made a slight inclination ofhis handsome white head. Then, after another long pause, a movementpassed over his body--excepting his left arm. She saw that he was tryingto rise from his seat, but that he had barely the strength to achievehis purpose. But he persisted in his effort, and in the end rose slowlyand tremulously to his feet.

  Then, utterly without warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of thathigh, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through theceiling of the parlour, he began to address them--if indeed it were theywhom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of princes, marshal'sadmirals, or trembling sheep-like recruits. It was difficult to hearthe words, hopeless to make out the sense. It was a farrago of nonsense,part of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confusedreminiscences of the published speeches of the man he aped, all strungtogether on some invisible thread of insane reasoning, delivered with amad vehemence and intensity that shook and seemed to rend his feebleframe.

  "We must stop him, we must stop him," Mary suddenly whispered. "He'llkill himself if he goes on like this!"

  "I've never been able to stop him," Beaumaroy whispered back. "Hush! Ifhe hears us speaking, he'll be furious and carry on worse."

  The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves on Beaumaroy--of Mary he tookno heed. He pointed at Beaumaroy with his sceptre, and from him to thegleaming gold in Captain Duggle's grave. A streak of coherency, a strandof mad logic, now ran through his hurtling words; the money was there,Beaumaroy was to take it--to-day, to-day!--to take it to Morocco, toraise the tribes, to set Africa aflame. He was to scatter it--broadcast,broadcast! There was no end to it--don't spare it! "There's millions,millions of it!" he shouted, and achieved a weird wild majesty in afinal cry, "God with us!"

  Then he fell--tumbled back in utter collapse into the recesses of thegreat chair. His sceptre fell from his nerveless hand and rolled downthe steps of the dais; the impetus it gathered carried it, rollingstill, across the floor to the edge of the open pit; for an instant itlay poised on the edge, and then fell with a jangle of sound on thecarpet of golden coins that lined Captain Duggle's grave.

  "Quick! Get my bag--I left it in the passage," whispered Mary, as shestarted forward, up the dais, to the old man's side. "And brandy, ifyou've got it," she called after Beaumaroy, as he turned to the door todo her bidding.

  Beaumaroy was gone no more than a minute. When he came back, with thebag hitched under his arm, a decanter of brandy in one hand and a glassin the other, Mary was leaning over the throne, with her arm round theold man. His eyes were open, but he was inert and motionless. Beaumaroypoured out some brandy, and gave it into Mary's free hand. But when Mr.Saffron saw Beaumaroy by his side, he gave a sudden twist of his body,wrenched himself away from Mary's arm, and flung himself on his trustedfriend. "Hector, I'm in danger! They're after me! They'll shut me up!"

  Beaumaroy put his strong arms about the frail old body. "Oh no, sir, ohno!" he said in low, comforting, half-bantering tones. "That's the oldfoolishness, sir, if I may say so. You're perfectly safe with me. Youought to trust me by now, sir, really you ought."

  "You'll swear--you'll swear it's all right, Hector?"

  "Right as rain, sir," Beaumaroy assured him cheerfully.

  Very feebly the old man moved his right hand towards the open grave."Plenty--plenty! All yours, Hector! For--for the Cause--God's with us!"His head fell forward on Beaumaroy's breast; for an instant again heraised it, and looked in the face of his friend. A smile came on hislips. "I know I can trust you. I'm safe with you, Hector." His head fellforward again; his whole body was relaxed; he gave a sigh of peace.Beaumaroy lifted him in his arms and very gently set him back in hisgreat chair, placing his feet again on the high footstool.

  "I think it's all over," he said, and Mary saw tears in his eyes.

  Then Mary herself collapsed; she sank down on the dais and broke intoweeping. It had all been so pitiful--and somehow so terrible. Her quicktumultuous sobbing sounded through the place which the vibrations of theold man's voice had lately filled.

  She felt Beaumaroy's hand on her shoulder. "You must make sure," hesaid, in
a low voice. "You must make your examination."

  With trembling hands she did it--she forced herself to it, Beaumaroyaiding her. There was no doubt. Life had left the body which reason hadleft long before. His weakened heart had not endured the last strain ofmad excitement. The old man was dead.

  Her face showed Beaumaroy the result of her examination, if he had everdoubted of it. She looked at him, then made a motion of her hand towardsthe body. "We must--we must----" she stammered, the tears still rollingdown her cheeks.

  "Presently," he said. "There's plenty of time. You're not fit to do thatnow--and no more am I, to tell the truth. We'll rest for half an hour,and then get him upstairs, and--and do the rest. Come with me!" He puthis hand lightly within her arm. "He will rest quietly on his throne fora little while. He's not afraid any more. He's at rest."

  Still with his arm in Mary's, he bent forward and kissed the old man onthe forehead. "I shall miss you, old friend," he said. Then, with gentleinsistence, he led Mary away. They left the old man, propped up by thehigh stool on which his feet rested, seated far back in the great chair,hard by Captain Duggle's grave, where the sceptre lay on a carpet ofgold. The tall candles burnt on either side of his throne, imparting afar-off semblance of ceremonial state.

  Thus died, unmarried, in the seventy-first year of his age, AloysiusWilliam Saffron, formerly of Exeter, Surveyor and Auctioneer. He hadrun, on the whole, a creditable course; starting from small beginnings,and belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for anysolid merit, he had built up a good practice; he had made money and putit by; he enjoyed a good name for financial probity. But he was held tobe a vain, fussy, self-important, peacocky fellow; very self-centredalso and (as Beaumaroy had indicated) impatient of the family and socialobligations which most men recognize, even though often unwillingly. Asthe years gathered upon his head, these characteristics wereintensified. On the occasion of some trifling set-back in business--arival cut him out in a certain negotiation--he threw up everything anddisappeared from his native town. Thenceforward nothing was heard of himthere, save that he wrote occasionally to his cousin, Sophia Radbolt,and her husband, both of whom he most cordially hated, whose claims tohis notice, regard, or assistance he had, of late years at least, hotlyresented. Yet he wrote to them--wrote them vaunting and magniloquentletters, hinting darkly of great doings and great riches. In spite oftheir opinion of him, the Radbolts came to believe perhaps half of whathe said; he was old and without other ties; their thirst for his moneywas greedy. Undoubtedly the Radbolts would dearly have loved to get holdof him and--somehow--hold him fast.

  When he came to Tower Cottage--it was in the first year of the war--hewas precariously sane; it was only gradually that his fundamental andconstitutional vices and foibles turned to a morbid growth. First cameintensified hatred and suspicion of the Radbolts--they were after himand his money! Then, through hidden processes of mental distortion,there grew the conviction that he was of high importance, a great man,the object of great conspiracies, in which the odious Radbolts were butinstruments. It was, no doubt, the course of public events, culminatingin the Great War, which gave to his mania its special turn, to hisdelusion its monstrous (but, as Doctor Mary was aware, by no meansunprecedented) character. By the time of his meeting with Beaumaroy thedelusion was complete; through all the second half of 1918 hefollowed--so far as his mind could now follow anything rationally--inhis own person and fortunes the fate of the man whom he believed himselfto be, appropriating the hopes, the fears, the imagined ambitions, thephysical infirmity, of that self-created other self.

  But he wrapped it all in deep secrecy, for, as the conviction of histrue identity grew complete, his fears were multiplied. Radbolts indeed!The whole of Christendom--Principalities and Powers--were on his track.They would shut him up--kill him perhaps! Cunningly he hid hissecret--save what could not be entirely hidden, the physical deformity.But he hid it with his shawl; he never ate out of his own house; thecombination knife-and-fork was kept sedulously hidden. Only to Beaumaroydid he reveal the hidden thing; and later, on Beaumaroy's persuasion, helet into the portentous secret one faithful servant--Beaumaroy'sunsavoury retainer, Sergeant Hooper.

  He never accepted Hooper as more than a distasteful necessity--somebodymust wait on him and do him menial service--not feared indeed, forsurely such a dog would not dare to be false, but cordially disliked.Beaumaroy won him from the beginning. Whom he conceived him to beBeaumaroy himself never knew, but he opened his heart to himunreservedly. Of him he had no suspicion; to him he looked for safetyand for the realization of his cherished dreams. Beaumaroy soothed histerrors and humoured him in all things--what was the good of doinganything else? asked Beaumaroy's philosophy. He loved Beaumaroy far morethan he had loved anybody except himself in all his life. At the end,through the wild tangle of mad imaginings, there ran this golden threadof human affection; it gave the old man hours of peace, sometimes almostof sanity.

  So he came to his death, directly indeed of a long-standing organicdisease, yet veritably self-destroyed. And so he sat now dead, amidsthis shabby parody of splendour. He had done with thrones; he had evendone with Tower Cottage--unless indeed his pale shade were to holdnocturnal converse with the robust and flamboyant ghost of CaptainDuggle; the one vaunting his unreal vanished greatness, mouthingorations and mimicking pomp; the other telling, in language garnishedwith strange and horrible oaths, of those dark and lurid terrors whichonce had driven him from this very place, leaving it ablaze behind. Astrange couple they would make, and strange would be their conversation!

  Yet the tenement which had housed the old man's deranged spirit, emptyas now it was--aye, emptier than Duggle's tomb--was still to be witnessof one more earthly scene and unwittingly bear part in it.