Scarhaven Keep by J. S. Fletcher (best value ebook reader TXT) 📕

young men Copplestone on arriving at what he called manhood (by which he meant the age of twenty-one years), had drawn up for himself a code of ethics, wherein he had mentally scheduled certain things to be done and certain things not to be done. One of the things which he had firmly resolved never to do was to take any notice of an anonymous letter. Here was an anonymous letter, and with it a conflict between his principles and his inclinations. In five minutes he learnt that cut-and-dried codes are no good when the hard facts of everyday life have to be faced and that expediency is a factor in human existence which has its moral values. In plain English, he made up his mind to visit Hobkin’s Hole next morning and find out who the unknown correspondent was.

He was half tempted to go round to the cottage and show the queer scrawl to Audrey Greyle, of whom, having passed six delightful hours in her company⁠—he was beginning to think much more than was good for him, unless he intended to begin thinking of her always. But he was still young enough to have a spice of bashfulness about him, and he did not want to seem too pushing or forward. Again, it seemed to him that the anonymous letter conveyed, in some subtle fashion, a hint that it was to be regarded as sacred and secret, and Copplestone had a strong sense of honour. He knew that Mrs. Wooler was femininely curious to hear all about that letter, but he took care not to mention it to her. Instead he quietly consulted an ordnance map of the district which hung framed and glazed in the hall of the inn, and discovering that Hobkin’s Hole was marked on it as being something or other a mile or two out of Scarhaven on the inland side, he set out in its direction next morning after breakfast, without a word to anyone as to where he was going. And that he might not be entirely defenceless he carried Peter Chatfield’s oaken staff with him⁠—that would certainly serve to crack any ordinary skull, if need arose for measure of defence.

The road which Copplestone followed out of the village soon turned off into the heart of the moorlands that lay, rising and falling in irregular undulations, between the sea and the hills. He was quickly out of sight of Scarhaven, and in the midst of a solitude. All round him stretched wide expanses of heather and gorse, broken up by great masses of rock: from a rise in the road he looked about him and saw no sign of a human habitation and heard nothing but the rush of the wind across the moors and the plaintive cry of the seabirds flapping their way to the cultivated land beyond the barrier of hills. And from that point he saw no sign of any fall or depression in the landscape to suggest the place which he sought. But at the next turn he found himself at the mouth of a narrow ravine, which cut deep into the heart of the hill, and was dark and sombre enough to seem a likely place for secret meetings, if for nothing more serious and sinister. It wound away from a little bridge which carried the road over a brawling stream; along the side of that stream were faint indications of a path which might have been made by human feet, but was more likely to have been trodden out by the mountain sheep. This path was quickly obscured by dwarf oaks and alder bushes, which completely roofed in the narrow valley, and about everything hung a suggestion of solitude that would have caused any timid or suspicious soul to have turned back. But Copplestone was neither timid nor suspicious, and he was already intensely curious about this adventure; wherefore, grasping Peter Chatfield’s oaken cudgel firmly in his right hand, he jumped over the bridge and followed the narrow path into the gloom of the trees.

He soon found that the valley resolved itself into a narrow and rocky defile. The stream, level at first, soon came tumbling down amongst huge boulders; the path disappeared; out of the oaks and alder high cliffs of limestones began to lift themselves. The morning was unusually dark and grey, even for October, and as leaves, brown and sere though they were, still clustered thickly on the trees, Copplestone quickly found himself in a gloom that would have made a nervous person frightened. He also found that his forward progress became increasingly difficult. At the foot of a tall cliff which suddenly rose up before him he was obliged to pause; on that side of the stream it seemed impossible to go further. But as he hesitated, peering here and there under the branches of the dwarf oaks, he heard a voice, so suddenly, that he started in spite of himself.

“Guv’nor!”

Copplestone looked around and saw nothing. Then came a low laugh, as if the unseen person was enjoying his perplexity.

“Look overhead, guv’nor,” said the voice. “Look aloft!”

Copplestone glanced upward, and saw a man’s head and face, framed in a screen of bushes which grew on a shelf of the limestone cliff. The head was crowned by a much worn fur cap; the face, very brown and seamed and wrinkled, was ornamented by a short, well-blackened clay pipe, from the bowl of which a wisp of blue smoke curled upward. And as he grew accustomed to the gloom he was aware of a pair of shrewd, twinkling eyes, and a set of very white teeth which gleamed like an animal’s.

“Hullo!” said Copplestone. “Come out of that!”

The white teeth showed themselves still more; their owner laughed again.

“You come up, guv’nor,” he said. “There’s a natural staircase round the corner. Come up and make yourself at home. I’ve a nice little parlour here, and a matter of refreshment in it, too.”

“Not till you show yourself,” answered Copplestone.