Obediently she turned and left him alone with the sick man. As soon as the door was shut behind her the doctor left the bedside and went to the narrow, mullioned casement.
For a long time he stood there, gazing with unseeing eyes across the waste of grey, heaving water to the distant mainland coast. His thoughts ran round and round in his head like ferrets in a cage. The curse? Nonsense! He was a doctor — a man of science — nothing existed for him save that which he could see and touch, measure and analyse with his eyes and hands. This — this old wives’ tale — was the veriest nonsense: a bogey to frighten disobedient children with. And yet — here, on this lonely island, within the very walls of the Abbey itself, things seemed not quite as they had seemed to him in his spotless, shining surgery but yesterday.
He set his hands on the worn stone embrasure of the casement, and the contact brought him a brief, crushing vision of the enormous mass of masonry within which he stood: pier, wall, and buttress; arch, tower, and crenellated battlement — all imbued with that spirit of antiquity which makes man seem so ephemeral a creature. And this place, above all other, left with a legacy from that forgotten past beyond all human understanding — or so the legend ran.
The dreadful screaming of the sick man, so lately silenced, still rang in his ears. What had been the words? A quotation, evidently from some book, thrown up by the subconscious in delirium.
“During his lifetime, the curse, from a formless cloud of evil, grew into a monstrous thing having material shape, which at length overthrew his dominion and destroyed him. And now it dwells in the bowels of the abbey rock…”
Fantastic, of course, albeit interesting folk-lore, no doubt, in its proper place. But the proper place emphatically was not here, on that very rock. The doctor strove to turn his mind from the subject, but the old man’s last cry beat remorselessly upon his unwilling memory:
“It’s after me, Doctor! Save me! Save me!” And then such a scream as might have sickened Bedlam, until the drug cut it short in his throat.
Bah! Nonsense! Since when have doctors taken seriously the delirious ravings of their patients? That way lay madness. With something of an effort he took his hands from the cold stone and turned from the window and the grateful light of day to the dim, vaulted chamber and his unconscious patient.
II
Young Anthony Lovell helped himself to one of his friend’s cigarettes with the air of a man making a great effort. John Hamilton smiled slightly as he watched him.
“What’s the matter, Tony?” he asked. “Life getting you down?”
“Oh, I’m bored, John, bored to tears. There’s nothing doing in London tonight.”
“I can’t think why you stay here at all, Tony, when you could be at that superb place of yours in Cornwall.”
“What, Kestrel? I loathe the place. It would suit you, John, but it’s too beastly lonely for me. Do you know, we only keep three servants at the Abbey — a housekeeper, her husband, and one maid. Three, mark you, to run a place which would take thirty to do the thing properly.”
“But your father lives there.”
“Well, he’s getting on, you know, and likes it, or says he does. Personally, I don’t think he’s any keener than I am; but it has a sort of fascination for him. Perhaps that’s why I keep away; it might grow on me too.”
“And why not?” Hamilton leaned forward eagerly. “It’s not as if you kept any style here. You don’t use your Town house — ”
“That mausoleum? Never. It won’t do, John; it simply will not do. You can’t bully me into living up to tradition. I’m quite satisfied with my life as it is.”
“But I’m not! Can you give me the least reason for your existence? Oh, you’re a good fellow, and all that sort of thing, and amuse your own little set, no doubt. But that’s not enough. Either take your proper place here in Town, as your father’s heir, or go to Kestrel, and live as God meant you to.”
Tony did not reply to his friend’s outburst, but sat staring at the glowing filaments of the electric fire, his forgotten cigarette sending up a steady tendril of smoke in the warm air. He looked oddly out of place, with his immaculate evening kit, in the workmanlike study of Hamilton’s flat. Behind him a desk, with typewriter and heap of manuscript, proclaimed its owner’s trade in unmistakable terms, although the near-by bookcase betrayed a poetic taste seemingly at variance with freelance journalism. The truth was that Hamilton, albeit a poet at heart, could not afford to give his art full rein, and eked out a very modest private income with the less romantic literary work.
When the silence had become almost oppressive Hamilton spoke again:
“Forgive me, Tony, if I said too much. But I’m your friend, and it hurts me to see you wasting Heaven-sent opportunities like this.”
The other looked up with a start.
“Sorry, old man. I was day-dreaming. Don’t apologize. Everything you said was true, and very much to the point. But don’t deceive yourself about our traditions: we have none — to be proud of. The Lovells have been either bad or indifferent since they first owned Kestrel. You’ve heard the tale, of course?”
“Everyone has, more or less. A family curse, or something, wasn’t it? You don’t mean to say you believe in it, Tony?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t, and sometimes — I wonder. Kestrel’s queer, John, very queer. You’ve never been there, have you?”
“Once I saw it from the coast. I must say it impressed me then. That rocky island, with the Abbey crouching on its back, jutting so starkly from the sea. Rather grim, it looked, with the sun setting right behind it.”
“And rather grim it is, John — sunset, sunrise, or high noon. We were never wanted there, and now we’re bound to it, whether we like or no.”
“Tell me the story, Tony. But have another drink first.”
Tony nodded, and his friend charged their empty glasses from the decanter at his elbow. Then he waited, watching that young face across the table, with its fine brow and delicate nose, marred only by a mouth ever so slightly irresolute, now set in an unwonted grimness as its owner marshaled his thoughts. Without looking at Hamilton he plunged into his tale.
“About the middle of the thirteenth century an order of Cistercian monks settled on Kestrel, and built the Abbey. There is a rather peculiar legend in those parts that there had been a castle on the island before — the Wizard Merlin’s castle, to be exact, for it is said to be the last remnant of Lyonesse left above the sea.
“Be that as it may, the good monks flourished for nearly three hundred years, until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1532. Then Henry VIII presented it to one of his boon companions, the first Sir Anthony Lovell, my unfortunate ancestor.
“He went along and rousted out the brethren with scant ceremony, and scantier respect for their cloth. There was, I believe, some pretty dirty work done — sacrilege, you know — one of the monks murdered at the altar. The Abbot was, rather naturally, annoyed, and, as was customary in those days, proceeded to curse Sir Anthony, going into the fullest details of how Kestrel would ruin him, and his family, body and soul.
“At which Sir Anthony, never an easy-going fellow, from all accounts, killed the wretched Abbot on the spot. A general massacre began, from which only six of the monks escaped, by boat, to France.
“I imagine that my tactless ancestor was rather shaken when he sobered up and realized what he’d done, but he was a tough nut, and didn’t care to show that he was badly frightened. He swore that it would take more than old-wives’ tales to scare him off his rightful property, and proceeded to adapt the Abbey to his own uses, fortifying it, and turning the chapel into a dining-hall.