A Son of Perdition: An Occult Romance

"He is supposed to be in love with me," said Alice, puzzled. "You know how he has bothered me, Julian."

"Oh, yes, I know. But there is Rose Penwin, you know, that fisherman's pretty daughter."

Alice turned to look at him in astonishment. "What about her?"

"Señor Narvaez has taken an unaccountable admiration for her since you departed for London."

"Unaccountable!" Miss Enistor's lip curled. "There is nothing unaccountable in any man admiring a pretty girl, and Rose is more than pretty!"

"She is," said Hardwick calmly. "Pretty is not the word to apply to a beautiful and stately woman such as Rose Penwin is."

"Brunhild or Brynhild – what do you call that Norse goddess you said you so admired until you met me?"

"I never admired any Norse goddess," said Hardwick, laughing. "I simply quoted Brynhild as a type. Yes, Rose Penwin is of that type, but I am not in love with her."

"Don Pablo is?"

"So I am given to understand from village gossip. You know I chatter frequently to the fishermen and their wives. Well, Don Pablo has been paying great attention to Rose; giving her presents and – "

"Does she accept his attentions?" interrupted Miss Enistor, astonished.

"Yes and no. She does in a way, as she wants to make Job Trevel jealous!"

"Job Trevel," said Alice thoughtfully; "to be sure! He is my foster-brother, Julian, as I told you how Dame Trevel brought me up. But I thought it was understood that Rose was to marry Job."

"Too thoroughly understood," said Julian dryly. "It seems that Job is so certain of Rose that he does not trouble to pay her those pretty attentions which a lover should. Thus, to make him jealous, Rose pretends to accept the attentions of Don Pablo."

"That old mummy. He can't even feel love."

"No! I agree with you there, and I am puzzled to know what his game is. Why should an old man of eighty run after a girl of nineteen?"

"He ran after me and bothered me enough, as you know," said Alice in a thoughtful manner. "He must be mad. Yet I do not think a madman would or could exercise such an influence over my father. However, Job can scarcely be jealous of Señor Narvaez, who might be Rose's great-grandfather."

"He is jealous, however. Don Pablo is wealthy and Rose likes pretty things, you know. She may not love the old reprobate: she could not. All the same the prospect of unlimited money – "

"Oh, nonsense!" broke in Alice vigorously, "she would not be so wicked. If I see anything of her treating Job badly I shall speak to her. I am very fond of my foster-brother even though he has a bad temper."

"All the worse for Don Pablo if he has," said Hardwick significantly. "Rose is playing with fire. Love on one hand, wealth on the other: which will she choose, do you think? I assure you, Alice, that there are the elements of a tragedy in these things."

"It may be all imagination on your part," said the girl after a pause, "and in any case, if Don Pablo now admires Rose, he will leave me alone, and my father will have no excuse to forbid my marrying Douglas."

Julian wrinkled his brow disapprovingly. "Isn't that a selfish way of looking at the matter?"

"It is! It is!" acknowledged Alice with sudden compunction. "Love does make one selfish, Julian."

"Yet love should have the opposite effect, my dear girl. You usually have such a high standard that it seems strange you should fall short of it in this way. But you have been with Amy, and although she is my own sister, even a short time in her company does harm. She is not bad – I don't mean that, Alice: but Amy is excessively selfish and she seems to have contaminated you in some way."

Alice grew scarlet, as never before had Julian dared to speak to her in this reproving style. Yet she felt that he was right, and took no offence. "I am glad you have said what you have said, Julian. I should not have spoken as I did. It was narrow and selfish, as you say. I must think of others even if love for Douglas fills my heart. I shall see Dame Trevel and Job and in some way I shall learn the truth. You may be sure that I shall do what I can to put matters right between Rose and Job."

Hardwick patted her hand. "That is spoken like the trump you are, Alice, my dear. I knew that you were not thinking of what you were saying. As you are in love, there is some excuse – "

"No! No! Don't weaken your good advice, Julian. There is no excuse for one to fall short of one's standard. Your warning has done me good. You are a dear kind boy, and if I had not met Douglas – "

"You would have loved me," ended Hardwick, smiling. "No, dear, don't deceive yourself. If we had married we should have been comrades, but never man and wife in the true spiritual sense. The marriage made in heaven is the only true marriage. You said something of that sort when you refused me. How entirely right you were, Alice!"

The girl looked at him with a whimsical look in her eyes and wondered at his simplicity. "What a child you are, Julian. Nine women out of ten would take offence at such a cool assurance that your love for me has perished."

"Probably," returned Julian composedly, "nine women out of ten are dogs in the manger, but you, my dear Alice, are the tenth. I shall be glad to see Montrose. Tell me all about him."

"That is difficult," said Miss Enistor absently, "let me think for a moment."

Julian could not see why it should be difficult for a young girl in the first delicious phase of a perfect passion to talk to an intimate friend, such as he truly was, of her feelings. But he did not understand what was passing in Alice's mind. Her wooing was of so unusual a character, and had so much to do with psychic matters concerning which Hardwick knew nothing, that it was hard to explain the swift love which had drawn her and Douglas together. For one moment she hesitated, and the next decided not to speak. Julian would not understand, and she evaded a direct answer to his question by a truly feminine subterfuge. "I would rather you judged Douglas for yourself without looking at him through my eyes. He will be here in a few days and then you can give me your opinion."

"Well," said Julian in his usual stolid way, "perhaps you are right!" after which calm acceptance of the situation he became silent.

While the two young people had been talking, the car had pursued its way towards Tremore steadily and swiftly. Along the winding white roads it glided, with the spreading no-man's-land of purple heather on either side. How Alice loved it all; the vast moorlands sprinkled with grey blocks of granite; the tumbled steepness of black cliffs; the far-stretching spaces of the gleaming ocean and the life-giving winds that breathed across the limitless lands. For the moment she wondered how she had ever endured the narrow, muffling London streets, with their twice-breathed airs and garish lights. Like a thing of life the great car swung untiringly along, and the landscape widened out at every turn of the road. She felt as though she had come out of a stifling cavern into a spacious world, and flung out her hands in ecstatic greeting to the majesty of Nature. Reborn through love into a wider consciousness, the girl's seeing and hearing now embraced an appreciation of much to which she had been formerly deaf and blind. Sound seemed sweeter, colour more vivid and life dearer. There was a feeling of spring in the autumnal air, and Alice felt that she wished to dance and sing and generally rejoice out of sheer lightheartedness.

"I am made one with Nature," she exclaimed, thrilling to the beauty of land and sea. "Doesn't Shelley say something like that in 'Adonais'?"

"I never read poetry," replied Julian stolidly. "To my mind poets only say in many words what a journalist says in few."

"What a pagan sentiment," cried Miss Enistor gaily, "and how untrue. Oh, there is Tremore!"

Assuredly it was, and the grey house looked more sinister than ever in the pale sunshine. It placed its dark spell on Alice, for as the motor-car breasted the hill, her gay spirits left her and she became as pale as hitherto she had been rosy. With wonderment and regret Julian saw again the wan girl who had left for London weeks before, and anxiously inquired if she felt ill.

"No," said Alice, rousing herself with an effort from the lethargy which had fallen on her. "I feel quite well, but less full of vitality than when I arrived at Perchton. It is the idea of Tremore, I think," she shuddered. "You know what a gloomy house it is."

"Montrose will dispel the gloom when he arrives," suggested Hardwick.

Alice brightened. "Oh, I am sure he will. But how nice of you to say that. You are not a bit jealous."

"I believe you are annoyed because I am not, my dear girl," laughed the artist.

"Julian, how can you say such a thing?" she replied absently; then added in a markedly irrelevant manner, "I hope father will be glad to see me."

Mr. Enistor may have been glad, but he certainly did not appear at the door to show his gladness. Alice's boxes were taken into the house, and Julian departed in the car, declining to enter, on the plea that father and daughter would have much to say to one another. Alice did not seek to stay him. She felt chilled by the absence of welcome and the sombre atmosphere of the big house. The beaten space of ground upon which it stood seemed to isolate it from the warm laughing world of vivid life, and she entered with the feeling that she was descending into a vault. Nor did the greeting of her father tend to dissipate this impression of dismay. He received her in the library with a cold kiss and without rising from his chair.

"Well, Alice, how are you?" He looked at her keenly as she stood by the table, white and frozen into silence. "Your stay in town does not appear to have done you much good."

"Oh, I feel all right," said the girl, with an effort to be her true self.

"You don't look all right," snapped Enistor, rather disappointed. "After all the money you have spent you certainly should have a more healthy appearance. H'm! I think I understand," he paused a moment, then added bitingly, "your new lover has disappointed you. Is that it?"

"No!" Alice roused herself to offer a protest. "Douglas is all that I can wish, father."

"I hope for your sake that he is all I can wish. If he isn't I shall certainly not allow you to marry him. There is always Don Pablo to – "

At this speech Alice did wake up and a colour flushed her cheeks. "Don Pablo, if I am to believe Julian, has fallen in love with Rose Penwin."