The Moon Rock (Thriller Novel). Arthur J. Rees
longer,” replied his master in a mild tone.
“It is, perhaps, a dreary spot to you, but not to me—no, never to me. The last link in my long search has been found here—hidden away in this little out-of-the-way Cornish place. Think of that, Thalassa! I shall be Lord Turrald.”
“I don’t see what good it will do you,” retorted the man austerely. “You’ve spent a mint of money over it. I suppose that’s your own affair, though. But what’s to come next? That’s what I want to know.”
“When I leave Cornwall—”
“You mean we, don’t you?” Thalassa interrupted.
“Of course I mean you as well as myself,” Robert Turold replied almost humbly. “I should be sorry to part with you, Thalassa, you must be well aware of that. It is my intention to purchase a portion of the family estate at Great Missenden, which is at present in the market, and spend the remainder of my life in the place which once belonged to my ancestors. That has been the dream of my life, and I shall soon be able to carry it out.”
A silence fell between them upon this statement, and Robert Turold’s eyes turned towards his papers again. But Thalassa stood watching him, as though he had something on his mind still. He brought it out abruptly—
“And what about your daughter?”
“My daughter is going to London with my sister for a prolonged visit,” said Robert Turold hurriedly. “She needs womanly training and other advantages which I, in my preoccupations, have been unable to bestow upon her. It is greatly to her advantage to go.”
Robert Turold gave this explanation with averted face, in a tone which sounded almost apologetic. The relative positions between them seemed curiously reversed. It was as though Thalassa were the master, and the other the man.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” Thalassa turned a cautious yet penetrating eye upon his master. “Well, she’s your own daughter, so I suppose you know what’s the best for her.” He spoke indifferently, but there was an odd note in his voice. He picked up his tray, and carelessly added: “For my part I shall be glad to get out of Cornwall. It’s a savage place, only fit for savages and seagulls. There’s the wind rising again.”
A violent gust shook the house, and rattled the window-panes of the room. It was the eyrie in which the deceased artist had painted his pictures, with two large windows which looked over the cliff. Again the gale sprang at the house, and smote the windows with spectral blows. Downstairs, a door slammed sharply.
“Damn the wind!” exclaimed Thalassa peevishly. “There’s no keeping it out. I’m going downstairs to lock up now. You’ll have your supper up here, I suppose?”
“Yes. I have a lot of work to do before I go to bed.”
Thalassa left the room without further speech, and Robert Turold began rummaging among his papers with a hand which trembled slightly. The table was littered with parchments, old books, and some sheets of newly written foolscap. He picked up his pen and plunged it into a brass inkstand, then paused in thought. His face was perturbed and uneasy. It may be that he was reviewing the events of the day, wondering, perhaps, whether he had paid too high a price for the attainment of his ambition. For it he had sacrificed his daughter and the woman who now slept in the churchyard near by, indifferent to it all. Nothing could restore to him the secret he had divulged that afternoon.
A shade of apprehension deepened on his downcast face. Then he frowned impatiently, and plunged into his writing again.
CHAPTER VII
On leaving his master’s room Thalassa went swiftly downstairs and disappeared into some remote back region of the lonely old house. He had other duties to perform before his day’s work was finished. There was wood to be chopped, coal to be brought in, water to be drawn. Nearly an hour elapsed before he reappeared, candle in hand, and entered the kitchen.
A little woman with a furtive face, sharp nose, and blinking eyes was seated at one end of the kitchen table with playing-cards spread out in front of her. She looked up at the sound of the opening door, and fear crept into her eyes. She was Thalassa’s wife, but the relationship was so completely ignored by Thalassa that other people were apt to forget its existence. The couple did the work of Flint House between them, but apart from that common interest Thalassa gave his wife very little of his attention, leading a solitary morose life, eating and sleeping alone, and holding no converse with her apart from what was necessary for the management of the house.
How he had ever come to bend his neck to the matrimonial yoke was one of those mysteries which must be accounted a triumph for the pursuing sex—a tribute to the fearlessness of woman in the ardour of the chase. On no other hypothesis was it possible to understand how such a feeble specimen of womanhood had been able to bring down such an untoward specimen of the masculine brute. Outwardly, Thalassa had more kinship with a pirate than a husband. There was that in his swart eagle visage and moody eyes which suggested lawless cruises, untrammelled adventure, and the fierce wooing of brown women by tropic seas rather than the dull routine of married life. As a husband he was an anomaly like a caged macaw in a spinster’s drawing-room.
Mrs. Thalassa’s victory had ended with bringing him down, and she soon had cause to regret her temerity in marrying him. Thalassa repaid the indignity of capture by a course of treatment which had long since subdued his wife to a state of perpetual fear of him—a fear which deepened into speechless shaking horror when he stormed out at her in one of his black rages. Some women would have taken to drink, others to religion. Mrs. Thalassa sought consolation in two packs of diminutive and dog-eared cards. Her shattered spirit found something inexpressibly soothing in the intricacies of patience: in the patchwork of colour, the array of sequences, the sudden discovery of an overlooked move, the dear triumph of a hard-won game.
It was thus she was occupied now, shuffling, cutting, and laying out her rows with quick nervous movements of her worn little hands. She glanced once more at her husband as he entered, and then bent over her cards again.
The night had descended blackly, and the wind moaned eerily round the old house. Thalassa sat in a straight-backed wooden chair listening to the wind and rain raging outside, and occasionally glancing at his wife, who remained absorbed in her patience. Half an hour passed in silence, broken only by the rattling of rain on the window, and the loud ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. Suddenly the bell of Robert Turold’s room rang loudly in its place behind the kitchen door.
It was one of the old wired bells, and it sprang backwards and forwards so violently under the impulse of the unseen pull that the other bells ranged alongside responded to the vibration by oscillating in sympathy.
Thalassa watched them moodily until the sound ceased. He then left the kitchen with deliberate tread, and stalked upstairs.
The door of his master’s study was closed. He opened it without troubling to knock, but started back in astonishment at the sight which met his eyes. Robert Turold was crouching by the table like a beaten dog, whimpering and shaking with fear. He sprang to his feet as Thalassa entered, and advanced towards him.
“Thank God you’ve come, Thalassa,” he cried.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Thalassa sternly.
“He’s come back, Thalassa—he’s come back.”
“He? Who?”
“You know whom I mean well enough. It was—” His voice sank suddenly, and he whispered a name in the man’s ear.
Thalassa’s brown cheek paled slightly, but he answered quickly and roughly—
“What nonsense are you talking now? How can he have come back? How often must I tell you that he is dead?”
“You mean that you thought he was dead, Thalassa. But he is alive.”