"I hardly knew him myself," said I. "He must be daft! I never thought to hear a grown man go on like that."

"And such a man!" cried Uvo. "It's not the talk so much as the talker that surprises me; and by the way, how well he talked, for him! He was less of a bore than I've ever known him; there was pa.s.sion in the fellow, confound him! Red blood in that lump of road metal! He's not only sorry for himself. He's simply heartbroken about the girl. But this maggot of morbid introspection has got into his brain and----how did it get there, Gilly? It's no place for the little brute. What brain is there to feed it? What has he ever done, in all his dull days, to make that harmless mind a breeding-ground for every sort of degenerate idea? In mine they'd grow like mustard and cress. I'd feel just like that if I were engaged to the very nicest girl; the nicer she was, the worse I'd get; but then I'm a degenerate dog in any case. Oh, yes, I am, Gilly. But here's as faithful a hound as ever licked his lady's hand.

Where's he got it from? Who's the poisoner?"

"I'm glad you ask," said I. "I was afraid you'd say you knew."

"Meaning my old man of the soil?"

"I made sure you'd put it on him."

Uvo laughed heartily.

"You don't know as much about him as I do, Gilly! He was the last old scoundrel to worry because he didn't love a woman as much as she deserved. It was quite the other way about, I can a.s.sure you."

"Yes; but what about those almost murderous inclinations?"

"I thought of them. But they only came on after our good friend had shaken this demoralising dust off his feet. As long as he stuck to Witching Hill he was as sound as a marriage bell! It's dead against my doctrine, Gillon, but I'm delighted to find that you share my disappointment."

"And I to hear you own it is one, Uvo!"

"There's another thing, now we're on the subject," he continued, for we had not been on it for weeks and months. "It seems that over at Hampton Court there's a portrait of my ign.o.ble kinsman, by one Kneller. I only heard of it the other day, and I was rather wondering if you could get away to spin over with me and look him up. It needn't necessarily involve contentious topics, and we might lunch at the Mitre in that window looking down stream. But it ought to be to-morrow, if you could manage it, because the galleries don't open on Friday, and on Sat.u.r.days they're always crowded."

I could not manage it very well. I was supposed to spend my day on the Estate, and, though there was little doing thus early in the year, it might be the end of me if my Mr. Muskett came back before his usual time and did not find me at my post. And I was no longer indifferent as to the length of my days at Witching Hill. But I resolved to risk them for the man who had made the place what it was to me--a garden of friends--however otherwise he might people and spoil it for himself.

We started at my luncheon hour, which could not in any case count against me, and quite early in the afternoon we reckoned to be back. It was a very keen bright day, worthier of General January than his chief-of-staff. Ruts and puddles were firmly frozen; our bicycle bells rang out with a pleasing brilliance. In Bushey Park the black chestnuts stamped their filigree tops against a windless radiance. Under the trees a russet carpet still waited for March winds to take it up. The Diana pond was skinned with ice; G.o.ddess and golden nymphs caught every scintillation of cold sunlight as we trundled past. In a fine glow we entered the palace and climbed to the grim old galleries.

"Talk about haunted houses!" said Uvo Delavoye. "If our patron sinner takes such a fatherly interest in the humble material at his disposal, what about that gay dog Henry and the good ladies in these apartments? I should be sorry to trust living neck to what's left of the old lady-killer." It was the famous Holbein which had set him off. "But I say, Gilly, here's a far worse face than his. It may be my rude forefather; by Jove, and so it is!"

And he took off his cap with unction to a handsome, sinister creature, in a brown flowing wig and raiment as fine as any on the walls. There was a staggering peac.o.c.k-blue surtout, lined with silk of an orange scarlet, the wide sleeves turned up with the same; and a creamy cascade of lace fell from the throat over a long cinnamon waistcoat piped with silk; for you could swear to the material at sight, and the colours might have been laid on that week. They lit up the gloomy chamber, and the eyes in the periwigged head lit them up. The dark eyes at my side were not more live and liquid than the painted pair. Not that Uvo's were cynical, voluptuous, or sly; but like these they reminded me of deep waters hidden from the sun. I refrained from comment on a resemblance that went no further. I was glad I alone had seen how far it went.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A handsome, sinister creature, in a brown flowing wig and raiment as fine as any on the walls.]

"Thank goodness those lips and nostrils don't sprout on our branch!" Uvo had put up his eyebrows in a humorous way of his. "We must keep a weather eye open for the evil that they did living after them on Witching Hill! You may well stare at his hands; they probably weren't his at all, but done from a model. I hope the old Turk hadn't quite such a ladylike----"

He stopped short, as I knew he would when he saw what I was pointing out to him; for I had not been staring at the effeminate hand affectedly composed on the corner of a table, but at the enamelled ring painted like a miniature on the little finger.

"Good Lord!" cried Delavoye. "That's the very ring we saw last night!"

It was at least a perfect counterfeit; the narrow stem, the high, projecting, oval bezel--the white peac.o.c.k enamelled on a crimson ground--one and all were there, as the painters of that period loved to put such things in.

"It must be the same, Gilly! There couldn't be two such utter oddities!"

"It looks like it, certainly; but how did Miss Hemming get hold of it?"

"Easily enough; she ferrets out all the old curiosity shops in the district, and didn't Berridge tell us she bought his ring in one?

Obviously it's been lying there for the last century and a bit. Bear in mind that this bad old lot wasn't worth a bob towards the end; then you must see the whole thing's so plain, there's only one thing plainer."

"What's that?"

"The entire cause and origin of Guy Berridge's pangs and fears about his engagement. He never had one or the other before Christmas--when he got his ring. They've made his life a Hades ever since, every day of it and every hour of every day, except sometimes in the morning when he was getting up. Why not then? Because he took off his ring when he went to his bath! I'll go so far as to remind you that his only calm and rational moments last night were while you and I were looking at this ring and it was off his finger!"

Delavoye's strong excitement was attracting the attention of the old soldierly attendant near the window, and in a vague way that veteran attracted mine. I glanced past him, out and down into the formal grounds. Yew and cedar seemed unreal to me in the wintry sunlight; almost I wondered whether I was dreaming in my turn, and where on earth I was. It was as though a touch of the fantastic had rested for a moment even on my hard head. But I very soon shook it off, and mocked the vanquished weakness with a laugh.

"Yes, my dear fellow, that's all very well. But----"

"None of your blooming 'buts'!" cried Uvo, with almost delirious levity.

"I should have thought this instance was concrete enough even for you.

But we'll talk about it at the Mitre and consider what to do."

In that talk I joined, into those considerations I entered, without arguing at all. It did not commit me to a single article of a repugnant creed, but neither on the other hand did it impair the excellence of Delavoye's company at a hurried feast which still stands out in my recollection. I remember the long red wall of Hampton Court as the one warm feature of the hard-bitten landscape. I remember red wine in our gla.s.ses, a tinge of colour in the dusky face that leant toward mine, and a wondrous flow of eager talk, delightful as long as one did not take it too seriously. My own att.i.tude I recapture most securely in Uvo's accusation that I smiled and smiled and was a sceptic. It was one of those characteristic remarks that stick for no other reason. Uvo Delavoye was not in those days at all widely read; but he had a large circle of quotations which were not altogether unfamiliar to me, and I eventually realised that he knew his _Hamlet_ almost off by heart.

But as yet poor Berridge's "pangs and fears" was original Delavoye to my ruder culture; and the next time I saw him, on the Friday night, the pangs seemed keener and the fears even more enervating than before.

Again he sat with us in Uvo's room; but he was oftener on his legs, striding up and down, muttering and gesticulating as he strode. In the end Uvo took a strong line with him. I was waiting for it. He had conceived the scheme at Hampton Court, and I was curious to see how it would be received.

"This can't go on, Berridge! I'll see you through--to the bitter end!"

Uvo was not an actor, yet here was a magnificent piece of acting, because it was more than half sincere.

"Will you really, Delavoye?" cried the accountant, shrinking a little from his luck.

"Rather! I'm not going to let you go stark mad under my nose. Give me that ring."

"My--_her_--ring?"

"Of course; it's your engagement ring, isn't it? And it's your duty, to yourself and her and everybody else, to break off that engagement with as little further delay as possible."

"But are you sure, Delavoye?"

"Certain. Give it to me."

"It seems such a frightful thing to do!"

"We'll see about that. Thank you; now you're your own man again."

And now I really did begin to open my eyes; for no sooner had the unfortunate accountant parted with his ring, than his ebbing affections rushed back in a miraculous flood, and he was begging for it again in five minutes, vowing that he had been mad but now was sane, and looking more himself into the bargain. But Delavoye was adamant to these hysterical entreaties. He plied Berridge with his own previous arguments against the marriage, and once at least he struck a responsive chord from those frayed nerves.

"n.o.body but yourself," he pointed out, "ever said you didn't love her; but see what love makes of you! Can you dream of marriage in such a state? Is it fair to the girl, until you've really reconsidered the whole matter and learnt your own mind once for all? Could she be happy?

Would she be--it was your own suggestion--but are you sure she would be even safe?"

Berridge wrung his hands in new despair; yes, he had forgotten that!

Those awful instincts were the one unalterably awful feature. Not that he felt them still; but to recollect them as genuine impulses, or at best as irresistible thoughts, was to freeze his self-distrust into a cureless cancer.

"I was forgetting all that," he moaned. "And yet here in my pocket is the very book those hopeless lines are from. I bought it at Stoneham's this morning. It's the most peculiar poem I ever read. I can't quite make it out. But that bit was clear enough. Only hear how it goes on!"

And in a school-childish singsong, with no expression but that involuntarily imparted by his quavering voice, he read twelve lines aloud--

"Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of l.u.s.t, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because----"

He shuddered horribly--