The Mystery of the Ravenspurs. Fred M. White
the gleam of the hall lantern shone upon the face of a man whose features were strangely seamed and scarred. It seemed as if the whole of his visage had been scored and carved in criss-cross lines until not one inch of uncontaminated flesh remained.
His eyes were closed; he came forward with fumbling, outstretched hands, as if searching for some familiar object. The features were expressionless, but this might have been the result of those cruel scars. But the whole aspect of the man spoke of dogged, almost pathetic, determination.
“You look strange and yet familiar to me,” said Ravenspur. “Who are you, and whence do you come?”
“I know you,” the stranger replied in a strangled whisper. “I could recognise your voice anywhere. You are my father.”
“And you are Ralph, Ralph, come back again!”
There was horror, indignation, surprise in the cry. The words rang loud and clear, so loud and clear that they reached the dining-hall and brought the rest of the party hurrying out into the hall.
Vera came forward with swift, elastic stride. With a glance of shuddering pity at the scarred face she laid a hand on Ravenspur’s arm.
“My dream,” she whispered. “It may be the hand of God. Oh, let him stay!”
“There is no place here for Ralph Ravenspur,” the old man cried.
The outcast still fumbled his way forward. A sudden light of intelligence flashed over Gordon as he looked curiously at his brother.
“I think, sir,” he said, “that my brother is suffering from some great affliction. Ralph what is it? Why do you feel for things in that way?”
“I must,” the wanderer replied. “I know every inch of the castle. I could find my way in the darkest night over every nook and corner. Father, I have come back to you. I was only to come back to you if I were in sore need or if I were deeply afflicted. Look at me! Does my face tell you nothing?”
“Your face is—is dreadful. And as for your eyes, I cannot see them.”
“You cannot see them,” Ralph said in that dreadful, thrilling, strangled whisper, “because I have no sight; because I am blind.”
Without a word Ravenspur caught his unhappy son by the hand and led him to the dining-hall, the family following in awed silence.
III - THE CRY IN THE NIGHT
The close clutch of the silence lay over the castle like the restless horror that it was. The caressing drowsiness of healthy slumber was never for the hapless Ravenspurs now. They clung round the Ingle-nook till the last moment; they parted with a sigh and a shudder, knowing that the morrow might find one face missing, one voice silenced for ever.
Marion alone was really cheerful; her smiling face, her gentle courage were as the cool breath of the north wind to the others. But for her they would have gone mad with the haunting horror long since.
She was one of the last to go. She still sat pensive in the ingle, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes gazing with fascinated astonishment at Ralph Ravenspur.
In some strange, half-defined fashion it seemed to her that she had seen a face scarred and barred like that before. And in the same vague way the face reminded her of her native India.
It was a strong face, despite the blight that suffering had laid upon it. The lips were firm and straight, the sightless eyes seemed to be seeking for something, hunting as a blind wolf might have done. The long, slim, damp fingers twitched convulsively, feeling upwards and around as if in search of something.
Marion shuddered as she imagined those hooks of steel pressed about her throat choking the life out of her.
“Where are you going to sleep?” Ravenspur asked abruptly.
“In my old room,” Ralph replied. “Nobody need trouble about me. I can find my way about the castle as well as if I had my eyes. After all I have endured, a blanket on the floor will be a couch of down.”
“You are not afraid of the family terror?”
Ralph laughed. He laughed hard down in his throat, chuckling horribly.
“I am afraid of nothing,” he said; “If you only knew what I know you would not wish to live. I tell you I would sit and see my right arm burnt off with slow fire if I could wipe out the things I have seen in the last five years! I heard of the family fetish at Bombay, and that was why I came home. I prefer a slumbering hell to a roaring one.”
He spoke as if half to himself. His words were enigmas to the interested listeners; yet, wild as they seemed, they were cool and collected.
“Some day you shall tell us your adventures,” Ravenspur said not unkindly, “how you lost your sight, and whence came those strange disfigurements.”
“That you will never know,” Ralph replied. “Ah! there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our narrow and specious philosophy. There are some things it is impossible to speak of, and my trouble is one of them. Only to one man could I mention it, and whether he is alive or dead I do not know.”
Marion rose. The strangely-uttered words made her feel slightly hysterical. She bent over Ravenspur and kissed him fondly. Moved by a strong impulse of pity, she would have done the same by her uncle Ralph, but that he seemed to divine her presence and her intention. The long, slim hands went up.
“You must not kiss me, my child,” he said. “I am not fit to be touched by pure lips like yours. Good-night.”
Marion turned away, chilled and disappointed. She wondered why Ralph spoke like that, why he shuddered at her approach as if she had been an unclean thing. But in that house of singular happenings one strange matter more or less was nothing.
“The light of my eyes,” Ravenspur murmured. “After Vera, the creature I love best on earth. What should we do without her?”
“What, indeed?” Ralph said quietly. “I cannot see, but I can feel what she is to all of you. Good-night, father, and thank you.”
Ravenspur strode off with a not unkindly nod. As a matter of fact, he was more moved by the return of the wanderer and his evident sufferings and misfortunes than he cared to confess. He brooded over these strange things till at length he lapsed into troubled and uneasy slumber.
The intense gripping silence deepened. Ralph Ravenspur still sat in the ingle with his face bent upon the glowing logs as if he could see, and as if he were seeking for some inspiration in the sparkling crocus flame.
Then without making the slightest noise, he crept across the hall, feeling his way along with his fingertips to the landing above.
He had made no idle boast. He knew every inch of the castle. Like a cat he crept to his room, and there, merely discarding his coat and boots, he took a blanket from the bed.
Into the corridor he stepped and then, lying down under the hangings of Cordova leather, wrapped himself up cocoon fashion in his blanket and dropped into a sound sleep. The mournful silence brooded, the rats scratched behind the oaken panelled walls.
Then out of the throat of the darkness came a stifled cry. It was the fighting rattle made by the strong man suddenly deprived of the power to breathe.
Again it came, and this time more loudly, with a ring of despair in it. In the dead silence it seemed to fill the whole house, but the walls were thick, and beyond the corridor there was no cognisance of anything being in the least wrong.
But the man in the blanket against the arras heard it, and struggled to his feet. A long period of vivid personal danger had sharpened his senses. His knowledge of woodcraft enabled him to locate the cry to a yard.
“My father,” he whispered. “I am only