The Watchers: A Novel

by A. E. W. Mason

This is the story which my acquaintance repeated to me as we sat in the "Groom Porters."

"And Clutterbuck refused to meddle in the matter," said I. "Poor lad!"

I was thinking of Dick, but my companion mistook my meaning, for he glanced thoughtfully at me for a second.

"I think you are very right to pity him," he said; "although, Mr. Berkeley, if you will pardon me, I am a trifle surprised to hear that sentiment from you. It is indeed a sodden, pitiful, miserable dog's life that Clutterbuck leads. To pass the morning over his toilette, to loiter through the afternoon in a boudoir, and to dispose of the evening so that he may be drunk before midnight! He would be much better taking the good air into his lungs and setting his wits to unknot that tangle amongst those islands in the sea. But I have overstayed my time. If you can persuade him to that, you will be doing him no small service;" and politely taking his leave, he went out of the room.

I sat for some while longer in the corner. I could not pretend that he had spoken anything but truth, but I found his words none the less bitter on that account. A pitiful dog's life for Lieutenant Clutterbuck, who was at the most twenty-four years of age! What, then, was it for me, who had seven years the better of Lieutenant Clutterbuck, or rather, I should say, seven years the worse? I was thirty-one that very month, and Clutterbuck's sodden, pitiful life had been mine for the last seven years. An utter disgust took hold of me as I repeated over and over to myself my strange friend's words. I looked at the green cloth and the yellow candles, and the wolfish faces about the cloth. The candles had grown soft with the heat of the night, and were bent out of their shape, so that the grease dropped in great blots upon the cloth, and the air was close with an odour of stale punch. I got up from my corner and went out into the street, and stood by the water in St. James's Park, If only some such summons had come to me when I was twenty-four as had now come to Clutterbuck!--well, very likely I should have turned a deaf ear to it, even as he had done! And--and, at all events, I was thirty-one and the summons had not come to me, and there was an end of the matter. To-morrow I should go back to the green cloth and not trouble my head about the grease blots; but to-night, since Clutterbuck was twenty-four, I would try to do him that small service of which the stranger spoke, and so setting out at a round pace I made my way to Clutterbuck's lodging.

CHAPTER III

[OF THE MAGICAL INFLUENCE OF A MAP]

I did not, however, find Lieutenant Clutterbuck that night. He was out of reach, and likely to remain so for some while to come. He had left his lodgings at mid-day and taken his body-servant with him, and his landlady had no knowledge of his whereabouts. I thought it probable, however, that some of his friends might have that knowledge, and I thereupon hurried to those haunts where of an evening he was an habitual visitor. The "Hercules Pillars" in Piccadilly, the "Cocoa Tree" in St. James's Street, the "Spring Gardens" at Vauxhall, "Barton's" in King Street, the "Spread Eagle" in Covent Garden,--I hurried from one to the other of these places, and though I came upon many of Clutterbuck's intimates, not one of them was a whit better informed than myself. I returned to my lodging late and more disheartened than I could have believed possible in a matter wherein I had no particular concern. And, indeed, it was not so much any conjecture as to what strange tragical events might be happening about that watched and solitary house in Tresco which troubled me, or even pity for the girl maddened by her fears, or regret that I had not been able to do Clutterbuck that slight service which I purposed. But I took out the map of the Great West Road, and thought of the lad Parmiter trudging along it, doing a day's work here among the fields, begging a lift there upon a waggon and slowly working his way down into the West. I had a very clear picture of him before my eyes. The day was breaking, I remember, and I blew out the candles and looked out of the window down the street. The pavement was more silent at that hour than those country roads on which he might now be walking, or that hedge under which he might be shaking the dew from off his clothes. For there the thrush would be calling to the blackbird with an infinite bustle and noise, and the fields of corn would be whispering to the fields of wheat.

I came back again to my map, and while the light broadened, followed Parmiter from the outset of his journey, through Knightsbridge, along the Thames, between the pine-trees of Hampshire, past Whitchurch, and into the county of Devon. The road was unwound before my eyes like a tape. I saw it slant upwards to the brow of a hill, and dip into the cup of a valley; here through a boskage of green I saw a flash of silver where the river ran; there between flat green fields it lay, a broad white line geometrically straight to the gate of a city; it curved amongst the churches and houses, but never lost itself in that labyrinth, aiming with every wind and turn at that other gate, from which it leaped free at last to the hills. And always on the road I saw Dick Parmiter, drunk with fatigue, tottering and stumbling down to the West.

For awhile he occupied that road alone; but in the end I saw another traveller a long way behind--a man on horseback, who spurred out from London and rode with the speed of the wind. For a little I watched that rider, curious only to discern how far he travelled, and whether he would pass Dick Parmiter; then, as I saw him drawing nearer and nearer, devouring the miles which lay between, it came upon me slowly that he was riding not to pass but to overtake; and at once the fancy flashed across me that this was Clutterbuck. I gazed at my map upon the table as one might gaze into a magician's globe. It was no longer a map; it was the road itself imprisoned in hedges, sunlit, and chequered with the shadows of trees. I could see the horseman, I could see the dust spirting up from beneath his horse's hoofs like smoke from a gun-barrel. Only his hat was pushed down upon his brows because of the wind made by the speed of his galloping, so that I could not see his face. But it was Clutterbuck I had no doubt. Whither had he gone from his lodging? Now I was convinced that I knew. There had been no need of my night's wanderings from tavern to tavern, had I but looked at my map before. It was Clutterbuck without a doubt. At some bend of the road he would turn in his saddle to look backwards, and I should recognise his face. It was Lieutenant Clutterbuck, taking the good air into his lungs with a vengeance. He vanished into a forest, but beyond the forest the road dipped down a bank of grass and lay open to the eye. I should see him in a second race out, his body bent over his horse's neck to save him from the swinging boughs. I could have clapped my hands with sheer pleasure. I wished that my voice could have reached out to Parmiter, tramping wearily so far beyond; in my excitement, I believed that it would, and before I knew what I did, I cried out aloud: