Walter Besant
Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day
CHAPTER XIII
ARMOREL'S INHERITANCE
'You are now the mistress, dearie,' said Dorcas. 'It is time that you should learn what that means.'
It was the morning after the funeral – the Day of Accession – the beginning of the new reign.
'Why, Dorcas, it makes no difference, does it? There are still the flowers and the house and everything.'
'Yes – there's everything.' The old woman nodded her head meaningly. 'Oh! yes – there is everything. Oh! you don't know – you don't suspect – nobody knows – what a surprise is in store for you!'
'What surprise, Dorcas?'
'You've never been into her room except to see her lying dead. It's your room now. You can go in whenever you like. Always the master or the mistress has slept in that room. When her father-in-law died she took the room. And she's slept in it ever since. And no one, except me and Chessun to clean up and sweep and dust, has ever been in that room since. And now it's yours.'
'Well, Dorcas, it may be mine; but I shall go on sleeping in my own room.'
'Then keep it locked – keep it locked up – day and night. There's nobody in Samson to dread – but keep it locked! As for sleeping in it, time enough, perhaps, when you come to marry. But keep it locked – '
'Why, Dorcas, what is in it?'
'I am seventy-five years old and past,' Dorcas went on. 'I was fifteen when I came to the house, and here I've been ever since. Not one of the grandchildren nor the great-grandchildren ever came in here. No one ever knew what is kept here.'
'What is it, then?' Armorel asked again.
'She used to come here alone, by daylight, regularly once a month. She locked the door when she came in. No one ever knew what she was doing, and no one ever asked. One day she forgot to lock the door, and by accident I opened it, and saw what she was doing.'
'What was she doing?'
'She'd opened all the cupboards and boxes, and she'd spread out all the things, and was counting, and – no, no – you may guess, when you have looked for yourself, what she was doing. I shut the door softly, and she never knew that I'd looked in upon her. She might have been overseen from the orchard, but no one ever went in there except to gather the fruit. To make safe, however, I've put up a muslin blind now, because Peter might take it into his head – boys go everywhere peering and prying. Nobody knows what I saw. I never even told Justinian. Men blab, you see: they get together, and they drink – then they blab. You can never trust a man with a secret. How long would it be before Peter would let it out if he knew? Once over at Hugh Town, drinking at a bar, and all the world would know in half an hour. No, no; the secret was hers: it was mine as well – but that was an accident – she never knew that: now it will be yours and mine. And we will tell nobody – nobody at all.'
'Where shall I find this wonderful secret, Dorcas?'
'Wherever you look, dearie. Oh! the room is full of things. There can't be such another room in all the world. It's crammed with things. Look everywhere. If they knew, all the young lords and princes would be at your feet, Armorel, because you are so rich. Best keep it secret, though, and get richer.'
'I so rich? Dorcas, you are joking!'
'No – you shall look and find out. Not that you will understand at first – because, how should you know the value of things? Here's her bunch of keys. She always carried them in her pocket, and at night she kept them under her pillows – and there I found them, sure enough, when she was cold and dead. Take them, child. I never told her secret – no – not even to my own husband. Take the keys, child. They are yours – your own. You can open everything: you can look at everything: you can do what you like with everything. It's your inheritance. But tell no one,' she repeated, earnestly. 'Oh! my dear, let it remain a secret. Don't let anyone see you when you come in here. Lock the door, as she did – and keep it locked.'
The old woman led Armorel by the hand to the door of the room where there was to be found the Great Surprise. She opened it, placed a bunch of keys in her hand, pushed her in and closed it behind her, whispering, 'Lock it, and keep it locked.'
The girl turned the key obediently, wondering what would happen next.
The room was on the ground floor, looking out upon the orchard, with a northern aspect, so that the sun could only shine in for a small portion of the year, during the summer months. The apple-trees were now in blossom, the white pink and flowers bright in the sunshine contrasting with the grey lichen which wrapped every branch and hung down like ribbons. The room was the oldest part of the house, the only remaining portion of an earlier house: it was low and small: the fireplace had never been modernised: it stood wide open, with its dogs and its broad chimney: the window was of three narrow lights, one of which could be opened: all were still provided with the old diamond panes in their leaden setting. Armorel observed the muslin blind put up by Dorcas to keep out prying eyes. In dull and cloudy days the room would be gloomy. As it was, even with the bright sunshine out of doors, the air seemed cold and oppressive – perhaps from the fresh association of Death. Armorel shivered as she looked about her.
The greater part of the room was taken up by a large bed. In the old lady's time it had curtains and a head, and things at the four corners like the plumes of a hearse, but in faded crimson. Then it looked splendid. Now, the bed had been stripped: curtains and plumes and all were gone, and only the skeleton bed left, with its four great solid posts and its upper beams, and its feather bed lying exposed, with the bare pillow-cases upon the mattress. But the bedstead was magnificent without its trappings, because it was made of mahogany black with age: they no longer make such bedsteads. There was also a table – an old black table – with massive legs; but there was nothing on it.
Between door and wall there was a row of pegs, with a chair beneath them. Now, by some freak of chance, when Dorcas and Chessun hung up the ancient dame's things for the last time – her great bonnet, and the cap of many ribbons within it, and her silk dress – they arranged them so as to present a most extraordinary presentment of the venerable lady herself – much elongated and without any face: she seemed to be sitting in the chair below the pegs, dressed as usual, and nodding her great bonnet, but pulled out to eight or ten feet in length. Armorel caught the ghostly similitude and started, trembling. It seemed as if in a moment the wrinkled old face, with the hawk-like nose and the keen eyes, would come back to the bonnet and the cap. She was so much startled that she turned the bonnet round. And then the figure seemed watching with the shoulders. This was uncanny, but it was not so terrible as the faceless form.
Beside the fireplace was a cupboard – one of those huge cupboards which one only finds in the old houses. Armorel tried the door, but it was locked. Against the wall stood a chest of drawers, brass-bound, massive. She tried the handles, but every lock was fast. Under the window stood an old sea-chest. It was a very big sea-chest. One would judge, from its rich carvings and its ornamental ironwork, that it was probably the sea-chest of an admiral at least – perhaps that of Admiral Hernando Mureno, Armorel's ancestor, if such was his rank in the navy of his Catholic Majesty. The sight of this sea-chest caused the girl to shiver with the fear of expectation. Nobody contemplates the absolutely unknown without a certain fear. It contained, she was certain, the things that Dorcas had seen, of which she would not speak. The chest seemed to drag her: it cried, 'Open me. Look inside me – see what I have got to show you.'
Then she remembered, as one in a dream, hearing people talk. Words long forgotten came back to her. 'Twas in Hugh Town, whither she went across to school when she was as yet a little girl. 'What have the Roseveans' – thus and thus said the voice – 'done with all their money? They've never spent anything: they've gone on saving and saving. Some day we shall find out what became of it.' Was she going to find out what had become of it?
The old lady, in her most lucid moments, had never dropped the least hint of any inheritance, except that disagreeable necessity of getting drowned on account of the unfortunate Robert Fletcher. And that was not an inheritance to gladden the heart. Yet there was an inheritance. It was here, in this room. And she was locked in alone, in order that she, herself unseen by any, might discover what it was.
Baron Bluebeard's last wife – she who afterwards, as a beautiful, rich, and lively young widow, set so many hearts aflame – was not more curious than Armorel. Nor was she, in the course of her investigations, more afraid than Armorel. The girl looked nervously about the room, so ghostly and so full of shadow. All old rooms have their ghosts, but some of them have so many that one is not afraid of them. There is a sense of companionship in a crowd of ghosts. This room had only one – that of the woman who had grown old in it – who had spent nearly eighty years in it. All the old ghosts had grown tired of this monotonous room, gone away and left the place to her. Armorel not only 'believed in ghosts' – many of us accord to these shadows a shadowy, theoretical belief – she actually knew that ghosts do sometimes appear. Dorcas had seen many – Chessun herself, while not going actually that length, threw out hints. She herself had often, too, gone to look for them. Now she glanced nervously where the 'things' were hanging, expecting to see the ancestral figure reappear, shoulders move, the bonnet and cap turn round, the old, old face within them, ready to warn, to admonish, and to guide. If this had happened, it would have seemed to Armorel nothing but what was natural and in the regular course of things looked for. But, outside, the sun shone on the white apple-blossom. No one is very much afraid of ghosts in the sunshine.
She encouraged herself with this reflection, and began with unlocking the chest of drawers. The lower drawers, when they were opened, contained nothing but the 'things' of her great-great-grandmother. Among them was a box roughly made – a boy's box made with a jack-knife: it contained a gold watch with a French name upon it – a very old watch, with a representation of the Annunciation in low relief on the gold face. There were also in the box two or three gold chains and sundry rings and trinkets. Armorel took them out and laid them on the table. They were, she said to herself, part of her inheritance. Was this the Great Surprise spoken of by Dorcas? She tried the two upper drawers. They were locked, but she easily found the right key, and opened them. She found that they were filled with lace; they were crammed with lace. There were packets of lace tied up tight, rolls of lace, cardboards with lace wound round and round – an immense quantity of lace was lying in these drawers. As for its value, Armorel knew nothing. Nor did she even ask herself what the value might be. She only unrolled one or two packets, and wondered vaguely what in the world she should do with so much lace. And she wished it was not so yellow. Yet the packets she unrolled contained Valenciennes – some of it half a yard wide, precious almost beyond price. Armorel knew, however, very well how it had got there, and what it meant. The descendant of so many brave runners was not ignorant that lace, velvet, silk and satin, brandy and claret, all came from the French coast with which her gallant forefathers were so familiar before the Preventive Service interfered. This, then, was left from the smuggling times. They had not sold all. They had kept enough, in fact, to stock half a dozen West-End shops, to adorn the trousseau of fifty Princesses. And here the stuff had lain undisturbed since – well, perhaps, since the unfortunate visit of Mr. Robert Fletcher.
'My inheritance, so far,' said Armorel, 'is a pile of yellow lace and a gold watch and chain and some trinkets. Is this the Great Surprise?' But she looked at the sea-chest. Something more must be there.
Next she turned to the cupboard. It was locked and double-locked. But she found the key. The cupboard was one of those great receptacles common in the oldest houses, almost rooms in themselves, but dark rooms, where mediæval housekeepers kept their stores. In those days, housekeeping on a respectable scale meant the continual maintenance of immense stores. All the things which now we get from shops as we want them were then laid in store long before they were wanted. Outside the country town there were no shops; and, even in London itself, people did not run to the shop every day. The men had great quantities of shirts – three clean shirts a day was the allowance of a solid city man under good Queen Anne – a city man who respected himself: the women had a corresponding quantity of flowered petticoats. Wine was by no means the only thing laid down for future years. All these accumulations helped to give solidity to the appearance of life. When a woman thought of her cupboards filled with fine linen and a man of his cellars filled with wine, the uncertainty and brevity of life alleged by the Preacher seemed not to concern them. It would be absurd to lay down a great bin of good port if one was not going to live long enough to drink it. The fashion, therefore, has its advantages.
Armorel threw open the door and looked in. The place was so dark that she was obliged to light a candle in order to examine the shelves running round the sides of the cupboard. There was a strange smell in the place, which, perhaps, had not been opened for a long time. Bales of some kind lay upon the upper shelves. Armorel took down two and opened them. They contained silk – strong, rich silk. She rolled them up and put them back. On a lower shelf was a most singular collection. In the front row were one – two – no fewer than six punch-bowls, all of silver except one, and that was of silver gilt. This must be the Great Surprise. Armorel took them all out and placed them on the table. For the most part they showed signs of having been used with freedom – one has heard of an empty punch-bowl being kicked about the place as a conclusion to the feast. But six punch-bowls! 'They came,' said Armorel, 'from the wrecks.' Behind the punch-bowls were silver candlesticks, silver snuffers, silver cups, silver tankards – some with coats-of-arms, some with names engraven. There was also a great silver ship, one of those galleons in silver which formerly adorned Royal banquets. All these Armorel took out and arranged upon the table. Among them was a tall hour-glass mounted in silver. Armorel set the sand running again, after many years. On the floor there were packets and bundles tied up and rolled together. Armorel opened one of them, and, finding that it contained a packet of gold lace and a pair of gold epaulettes, she left them undisturbed. And standing against the wall, stacked behind the bundles of gold lace, were swords – dozens of swords. What could she do with swords? Well, then, now, at last, she had found the Great Surprise. But still the sea-chest seemed to drag her and to call to her: 'Open me! Open me! See what I have got for you!'
'So far, then,' she said, 'I have inherited a pile of lace; a gold watch, rings, and chains; six punch-bowls, twenty-four silver candlesticks, twelve silver cups, four great tankards, a silver ship, I know not how many old swords, and a bundle of gold lace. I wonder if these things make a person rich?'
If so, great wealth does not satisfy the soul. This was certain, because Armorel really felt no richer than before. Yet the array of punch-bowls was truly imposing, and the silver candlesticks, the snuffers, the tankards, the cups, and the ship, though they sadly wanted the brush and the chamois leather, with a pinch of 'whitenin',' were worthy of a College Plate-Room. One might surely feel a little elation at the thought of owning all this silver, even if one did not understand its intrinsic value. But, like the effect of champagne, such elation would quickly wear off.
Next, Armorel remembered the secret cupboard at the head of the bed. Her own bed had its secret recess at the head – every respectable bedstead used formerly to have them. Where else could money be hidden away safely? To be sure, everybody knew this hiding-place, but everybody pretended not to know. It was an open secret, like the concealed drawer in a schoolboy's desk. Our forefathers were full of such secrets that everybody knew. The stocking in the teapot: the receptacle under the hearthstone: the hidden compartment in the cabinet: the secret room: the secret staircase: the recess in the head of the bed – these were all secrets that everybody knew and everybody respected. I think that even the burglar respected these conventions. Armorel knew how to open the panel – she found the spring and it flew open, rustily, as if it had not been opened for a great many years. Behind the panel was a recess eighteen inches long and about nine inches deep. And here stood a Black Jack – nothing less than a Black Jack; a quart Jack, not a Leather Jack, but a tankard made of tin and painted with hunting scenes something like an Etruscan vase, or perhaps more like a Brown George. Why should anyone want to hide away a Black Jack? This quart pot, however, held something better than stingo – even stronger: it was half-filled with foreign money. Here were moidores, doubloons, ducats, pieces-of-eight, Louis d'ors, Spanish pillar dollars, sequins, gold coins from India – nothing at all in the pot less than a hundred years old. Armorel took out a handful and looked at them. Well, gold coins do look like money. She began to feel really rich. She had a quart tankard half-full of gold coins. She added the Black Jack to the other treasures on the table. All this foreign money must have come out of the wrecks. And, since it was all so old, out of wrecks that had happened before the memory even of the Ancient Lady. This, then, was perhaps the Great Surprise.
But there remained the sea-chest under the window, and again, when Armorel looked upon it, the chest continued to call to her, 'Open me! Open me! See what I have for you!'
Armorel found the key which unlocked it, and threw open the lid. Within, there was the deep tray which belongs to every sea-chest. This was filled with a quantity of uninteresting brown canvas bags. She wanted to see what was below, and tried to lift the tray, but it was too heavy. Then, still regarding the bags as of no account, she took one out. It was heavy, and when she lifted it there was a clink as of coin. It was tied tightly at the mouth with a piece of string. She opened it. Within there were gold coins. She took out a handful: they were all sovereigns, some of them worn, some quite new and fresh from the Mint. She poured out the whole contents of the bag on the table. Why, it was actually full of golden sovereigns. Nothing else in the bag. All golden sovereigns! And there were five hundred of them. She counted them. Five hundred pounds! She had never, it is true, thought much about money – but – five hundred pounds! It seemed an amazing sum. Five hundred pounds! And all in a single bag. And such a little bag as this. She put back the money and tied up the bag.
Then she took out another bag. This was as big as the first, and heavier. It was full of guineas – Armorel counted them. There were also five hundred of them. Some of them were so old that they bore the impression of the elephant, and therefore belonged to the seventeenth century. But most of them belonged to the eighteenth century, and bore the heads of the three first Georges. Five hundred guineas – and never before had Armorel seen a guinea! Well, she thought, that made a thousand pounds. She took up another bag and opened it. That, too, weighed as much and was full of gold. And another, and yet another. They were all full of gold. And now she knew what Dorcas meant – this – nothing but this – was the Great Surprise! Not the punch-bowls, or the lace, or the bales of silk, but these bags full of gold constituted her wealth. She understood money, you see: lace and silk were beyond her. This was her inheritance!
Consider: the Roseveans, from father to son, had been from time immemorial wreckers, smugglers, and pilots. They were also farmers. On their little farm they grew nearly enough to support their simple lives. They had pigs and poultry; they had milch cows; they had a few sheep; they kept geese, pigeons, ducks; they made their own beer and their own cordials and strong waters; they made their own linen; they were unto themselves millers, tinkers, carpenters, cabinet-makers, builders, and thatchers. They grew their own salads and vegetables, and if they wanted any fruit they grew that as well. Oats and barley they grew, clover and hay. I believe that on Samson wheat has never been grown – indeed, there are only eighty acres in all. There was left, therefore, little to buy. Coals, wood for fuel and for carpentering, things in iron, crockery, tools, cloth clothes, flannel, flour, and sometimes a little beef – what else did they want? As for fish, they had only to catch as much as they wanted. Tea, coffee, sugar, and so forth came in with later civilisation, when small ale, possets, and hypsy died out.
In order to provide these small deficiencies they were pilots, to begin with. This trade brought in a steady income. They also sent out boats, filled with fresh vegetables, to meet the homeward-bound East Indiamen. And they were also, like the rest of the artless islanders, wreckers and smugglers. In the former capacity they occasionally acquired an extraordinary quantity of odd and valuable things. In the latter profession they made at times, and until the Peace and the Preventive Service put an end to the business, a really fine income.
Then, on Samson, they continued to live after the patriarchal fashion and in the old simplicity. Each Captain Rosevean in turn was the chieftain or sheik. To him his family brought all that they earned or found. The sea-chest took it all. For three hundred years, at least, this sea-chest received everything and gave up nothing. Nobody ever took anything out of it: nobody looked into it: nobody knew, until Ursula counted the money and made bags for it, what there was in the chest. Nobody ever asked if they were rich or how rich they were.
There was no bank on Samson: there is not even now a bank in the Scilly archipelago at all: nobody understood any other way of saving money than the good old fashion of putting it by in a bag. On Samson there never were thieves, even when as many as fifty people lived on the island. Therefore the Captain Rosevean of the time, though he knew not how much was saved, nor did he ever inquire, laid the last additions to the pile in the tray of the old sea-chest with the rest, and, having locked it up, dropped the key in his pocket, and went about his business in perfect confidence, never thinking either that it might be stolen, or that he might count up his hoard, proceed to enjoy it, and alter his simple way of life. Every Captain Rosevean in succession added to that hoard every year; not one among them all thought of spending it or taking anything from it. He added to it. Nobody ever counted it until the reign of Ursula. It was she who made the little brown bags of canvas: she, usurping the place of Family Chief or Sheik, took from her sons and grandsons all the money that they made. They gave it over to her keeping – she was the Family Bank. And, like her predecessors in that room, she told no one of the hoard.
Most of the bags contained guineas of George I., George II., and George III., down to the year 1816, when the Mint left off coining guineas. A few contained sovereigns of later date; but the family savings since that year had been small and uncertain. The really fat time – the prosperous time – when the money poured in, was during the long war which lasted for nearly five-and-twenty years.
There were actually forty of these bags. Armorel laid them out upon the table and counted them. Forty! And each bag to all appearance, for she only counted two, contained five hundred guineas or pounds. Forty times five hundred – that makes twenty thousand pounds, if all were sovereigns! There are, I am told, a few young ladies in this country who have as much as twenty thousand pounds for their dot. There are also a great many young ladies in France, and an amazing multitude, whom no man may number, in the United States of America, who have as much. But I am quite sure that not one of these heiresses, except Armorel herself, has ever actually gazed upon her fortune in a concrete form – tangible – to be counted – to be weighed – to be admired. It is a pity that they cannot do this, if only because they would then see for themselves what a very small pile of gold a fortune of twenty thousand pounds actually makes. This would make them humble. Armorel stood looking at the table thus laden with bewildered eyes.
'I have got,' she murmured, 'twenty thousand sovereigns and guineas at least: I have got a painted pot full of old money. I have got six punch-bowls, a great silver ship, a large number of silver candlesticks and cups: I have got a silver-mounted hour-glass' – its sand was now nearly run – 'I have got a great quantity of lace and silk. I suppose all this does make riches. Whatever shall I do with it? Shall I give it to the poor? or shall I put it back into the box and leave it there? But perhaps there is something else in the box.'
The chest, in fact, continued to call aloud to be examined. Even while Armorel looked at her glittering treasures spread out upon the table she felt herself drawn towards the chest. There was more in it. There was another Surprise waiting for her – even a greater Surprise, perhaps, than that of the bags of gold. 'Search me!' cried the chest. 'Search me! Look into the innermost recesses of me: explore my contents to the very bottom: let nothing escape your eyes.'
Armorel knelt down before the chest and took out the tray. It was empty now, and she could lift it easily.
Beneath the tray there was a most miscellaneous collection of things.
They lay in layers, separated and divided – Ursula's hand was here – by silk handkerchiefs of the good old kind – the bandanna, now gone out of fashion.
First Armorel took out and laid on the floor a layer of silver spoons, silver ladles, even silver dishes, all of antique appearance and for the most part stamped with a crest or a coat-of-arms: for in the old days if a man was Armiger he loved to place his shield on everything; to look at it and glory in it: to let others see it and envy it.
Then she found a layer of watches. There were gold watches and silver watches; the latter of all kinds, down to the veritable turnip. The glasses were broken of nearly all, and, if one had examined, the works would have been found rusted with the sea-water which had got in. What were they worth now? Perhaps the value of the cases and of the jewels with which the works were set, and more with one or two, where miniatures adorned the back and jewels were set in the face. Armorel turned with impatience from the watches to the gold chains, which lay beside them. There were yards of gold chain: gold chains of all kinds, from the heavy English make to the dainty interlaced Venetian and thread-like Trichinopoly; there were silver chains also – massive silver chains, made for some extinct office-bearer, perhaps bo's'n on the Admiral's ship of the Great Armada. Armorel drew up some of the chains and played with them, tying them round her wrists and letting them slip through her fingers – the pretty delicate things, which spoke of wealth almost as loudly as the bags of guineas.
She laid them aside, and took up a silk handkerchief containing a small collection of miniatures. They were almost all portraits of women: young and pretty women: ladies on land whose faces warmed the hearts and fired the memories of men at sea. The miniatures had hung round the necks of some and had lain in the sea-chests of others, whose bones had long since melted to nothing in the salt sea depths, while those of their mistresses had turned to dust beneath the aisle of some village church, their memory long since forgotten, and their very name trampled out by the feet of the rustics.
Armorel laid aside these pictures – they were very pretty, but she would look at them again another time.
The next parcel was a much larger one. It consisted of snuff-boxes. There were dozens of snuff-boxes: one or two of gold: one or two silver-gilt: some silver. In the lids of some were pictures, some most beautifully and delicately executed; some of subjects which Armorel did not understand – and why, she thought, should painters draw people without proper clothes? Venus and the Graces and the Nymphs, in whom our eighteenth-century ancestors took such huge delight, were to this young person merely people. The snuff-boxes were very well in their way, but Armorel had no inclination to look at them again.
Then she found in a handkerchief, the four corners of which were loosely tied together, a great quantity of rings. There were rings of every kind – the official ring or the ring of office, the signet-ring, the ring with the shield, the ring with the name of a ship, the ring with the name of a regiment, mourning-rings, wedding-rings, betrothal-rings, rings with posies, cramp-rings with the names of the Magi on them – but their power was gone – gimmal-rings, rings episcopal, rings barbaric, mediæval, and modern, rings set with every kind of precious stone – there were hundreds of rings. All drowned sailors used to have rings on their fingers.
Armorel began to get tired of all these treasures. Beneath them, however, at the bottom of the box, lay piled together a mass of curios. They were stowed away for the most part in small boxes, of foreign make and appearance: ivory boxes: carved wood boxes. They consisted of all kinds of things, such as gold and silver buckles, brooches, painted fans, jewel-hilted daggers, crystal tubes of attar of roses, and knives of curious construction. The girl sighed: she would look over them at another time. They would, perhaps, add something to the inheritance, but for the moment she was satisfied. She had seen enough. She was putting back a dagger whose jewelled handle flashed in the unaccustomed light, when she saw, lying half hidden among this pile of curious things, the corner of a chagreen case. This attracted her curiosity, and she took it out. The chagreen had been green in colour, but was now very much discoloured. It had been fastened by a silver clasp, but this was broken: a small leather strap was attached to two corners. Armorel expected to find another bag of money. But this did not contain gold. It was lighter than the canvas bags. As she took it into her hands she remembered the bag of Robert Fletcher. Yes. The leathern strap of this case had been cut through. She held in her hands – she was certain – the abominable Thing that had brought so much trouble on the family. Again the room felt ghostly: she heard voices whispering: the voices of all those who had been drowned: the voices of the women who had mourned for them: the voice of the old lady who was herself a witness of the crime. They all whispered together in her ears: 'Armorel, you must find him. You must give it back to him.'
