Not much, you will say, to wake a chap up – rather less than the little crash with which the log immediately fell among the embers. But the remark held all the temper I had been expecting in Christine: into the words she was putting, I knew, a whole desperate situation and she was getting from them the fierce relief that a flash of wit can give. Whatever she felt Guthrie to be in two minds about was something that was vital to her.
And after this I remember, as they say, nothing more. We sat for some time longer, Sybil and myself waiting for bed and Guthrie and Christine waiting for I don’t know what – but certainly something as immediate as a step in the corridor or a cry in the night. But by half-past ten the charm of the mysterious had waned and I was glad when we were reconducted up the great staircase to our rooms.
I spare you details of the horror of the night – the more willingly as Mrs Hardcastle has just put her head into the room and said: ‘Won’t you be wanting your breakfast?’ The rats had certainly wanted their supper, as had a variety of lesser vermin too: meditate the discomposing effect of these before you judge hardly of my disjointed notes on Castle Erchany. I slept for a couple of hours or so and was awakened perhaps by a rat taking an exploratory nibble at my toe, perhaps merely by the owls in the snow-laden ivy by my window. Normally I rather dote on owls, but the owlishness of the Erchany variety is something overpowering. I counted several varieties, all hooting depression or despair, and at least one the note of which was strange to me – a high long-drawn-out too-ee that really froze the blood. The dogs threw in a howl from time to time; it was hard not to believe they were wolves – or werewolves, it might be – in the spell of the enchanter. And, always, there was the wind. In still weather Erchany must be full of whisperings: in a storm it is full of great voices, crying words and phrases one just can’t catch. Perhaps after all I shall get away this morning, and to Edinburgh later in the day, and to town by an early train tomorrow.
Believe it, Diana, that the most heroical efforts will be made by your lover
NOEL.
2
Christmas Eve at night
No go. Infuriatingly, I am hung up by blizzard for all the world like an Antarctic explorer a march short of his depot. The village – Kinkeig – is just a short Antarctic march away – nine miles or thereabouts – but the conditions are hopeless: the posts that serve to mark the track in common snowfalls will be most of them buried; a great wind and a steady fall between them surround one with a dizzying curtain of white the moment one steps beyond the door; and every hour the drifts must be becoming deeper and, I suppose, more dangerous. Even our prodigious Tammas – the Erchany odd lad, that is, who turns out to be a sort of low-grade moron (a nice finish, surely, to the amenities of the castle) – even Tammas is halted by this storm. So I must resign myself – Diana, maiden and mistress of the months and stars! – to your spending Christmas ignorant, alarmed and furious. That’s the worst of being so closely netted round by civilization; it’s hard to imagine a person dropping tolerably comfortably through and out of it without disaster suffered. I haven’t broken a limb – or anything more than a nice young lady’s baby car – and I haven’t been put in gaol; I’ve simply got myself nine miles from the nearest telephone in a spot of dirty weather.
And I’m bored. After all my lucubrations in the small hours this is something of an anti-climax, but the mystery of Erchany fades away rather – as you might expect – in the light of common day. My host was the linchpin of my imaginings and today he has remained invisible, sending civil messages that he is a little unwell. Perhaps the caviare was too much for him; I don’t believe somehow that caviare is a regular part of the Erchany diet. You know it was a mysterious supper. I believe the Erchany equivalent of the fatted calf would be a spot of stewed rabbit – and why even stew the rabbit without a prodigal son? Because Sybil may be all unknowing a prodigal second cousin thrice removed? Surely not. Or in honour of the favourite great-nephew of the deplorable Horatio? Surely, again, not.
We have been left to ourselves rather, Sybil and I. Christine has presided at two meals – simple enough this time – and vanished away on the plea of vaguely described duties. After breakfast she took us up to a long sort of gallery-place, full of dead Guthries and still-born theology, and invited us with downright malice to choose a book; after luncheon she bowed us into a billiard room, whisked a dust-cloth off the identical table, one must believe, with which Noah beguiled the tedious hour, and said: All American women played? Tricks gaily and fantastically performed; the devil or an angel has entered into Christine today; she has put her fears – if I wasn’t imagining them – behind her. And still she is beautiful.
So Sybil and I played billiards. There are no cues, one of the pockets is missing, and a fair part of the cloth has gone to nourish generations of moths; still, wrapped in our overcoats, we have played a sort of billiards and rather enjoyed it. Mrs Hardcastle brought us two large cups of villainous tea and stood for about half an hour listening to the click of the balls as if it were something as good as a wireless set. We have even had some conversation with her – thanks to the initiative of Sybil, who suspected the old soul might want a gossip.
‘Do you have much company at Erchany, Mrs Hardcastle?’
Mrs Hardcastle looked bewildered. ‘You’re saying, Miss?’
‘Do you have many visitors?’
Syllable by syllable Mrs Hardcastle digested this. Then she shook her head with decision. ‘The laird’s over narrow.’ She nodded with a sort of gloomy satisfaction. ‘There are few in these parts nearer-going than Guthrie of Erchany.’
This was hardly a theme we could with propriety pursue – though Mrs Hardcastle had rather the air of regarding it as a main asset of the establishment. And Sybil was just casting round for another theme when the old person sank her voice to an eager whisper and said: ‘It’s the rats!’
‘The rats, Mrs Hardcastle?’
‘The Guthries have ever had black imaginings. He thinks the rats are fair eating him up – him and all his substance. He’s that near- going as he is because he thinks he’s fighting the rats. If you please – there will be plenty of places with no rats – islands and such?’
We made embarrassed affirmative noises.
‘They should get him away to an island. I told the doctors that when they came. He’d sleep of nights then and be fine, poor gentleman.’
Sybil said awkwardly: ‘You think Mr Guthrie is very worried by the rats?’
Again Mrs Hardcastle gave her vigorous, senile nod. ‘And he won’t spend his silver on the poison for them. He says he prefers his wee penknife.’
So many bloodthirsty persons in the Scottish ballads perform unlikely feats of slaughter with their wee penknives that I suspected here a little literary joke of the laird’s. But Mrs Hardcastle went on seriously: ‘Real skilly he is at the throwing of it. And right loudly the creatures squeal.’
Unedifying revelations these, I thought, of the perversion of sporting instinct in the country gentry: Mrs Hardcastle’s confidences were making me distinctly uncomfortable. But Sybil was interested. ‘He goes about spearing the rats?’
‘Just that. And now it’s a hatchet. Sharpening and sharpening it yesterday he was in the court. And cried out at me right fearsome: “To settle accounts with a great rat, Mrs Hardcastle!” I wish he’d settle accounts with them all. I wish there were no rats. They squeal inside my head at night.’
A cheery old soul. Sybil said rather feebly: ‘Couldn’t Mr Hardcastle get rid of them?’