The Mystery of Cloomber | Page 9

that he does--though perhaps
in this matter he may be a little too exacting."
"You must surely find it very lonely," said I. "Couldn't you manage to
slip down at times and have a smoke with me? That house over yonder
is Branksome."
"Indeed, you are very kind," he answered, with sparkling eyes. "I
should dearly like to run over now and again. With the exception of

Israel Stakes, our old coachman and gardener, I have not a soul that I
can speak to."
"And your sister--she must feel it even more," said I, thinking in my
heart that my new acquaintance made rather too much of his own
troubles and too little of those of his companion.
"Yes; poor Gabriel feels it, no doubt," he answered carelessly, "but it's
a more unnatural thing for a young man of my age to be cooped up in
this way than for a woman. Look at me, now. I am three-and-twenty
next March, and yet I have never been to a university, nor to a school
for that matter. I am as complete an ignoramus as any of these
clodhoppers. It seems strange to you, no doubt, and yet it is so. Now,
don't you think I deserve a better fate?"
He stopped as he spoke, and faced round to me, throwing his palms
forward in appeal.
As I looked at him, with the sun shining upon his face, he certainly did
seem a strange bird to be cooped up in such a cage. Tall and muscular,
with a keen, dark face, and sharp, finely cut features, he might have
stepped out of a canvas of Murillo or Velasquez. There were latent
energy and power in his firm-set mouth, his square eyebrows, and the
whole pose of his elastic, well-knit figure.
"There is the learning to be got from books and the learning to be got
from experience," said I sententiously. "If you have less of your share
of the one, perhaps you have more of the other. I cannot believe you
have spent all your life in mere idleness and pleasure."
"Pleasure!" he cried. "Pleasure! Look at this!" He pulled off his hat, and
I saw that his black hair was all decked and dashed with streaks of grey.
"Do you imagine that this came from pleasure?" he asked, with a bitter
laugh.
"You must have had some great shock," I said, astonished at the sight,
"some terrible illness in your youth. Or perhaps it arises from a more
chronic cause--a constant gnawing anxiety. I have known men as young

as you whose hair was as grey."
"Poor brutes!" he muttered. "I pity them."
"If you can manage to slip down to Branksome at times," I said,
"perhaps you could bring Miss Heatherstone with you. I know that my
father and my sister would be delighted to see her, and a change, if only
for an hour or two, might do her good."
"It would be rather hard for us both to get away together," he answered,
"However, if I see a chance I shall bring her down. It might be
managed some afternoon perhaps, for the old man indulges in a siesta
occasionally."
We had reached the head of the winding lane which branches off from
the high road and leads to the laird's house, so my companion pulled
up.
"I must go back," he said abruptly, "or they will miss me. It's very kind
of you, West, to take this interest in us. I am very grateful to you, and
so will Gabriel be when she hears of your kind invitation. It's a real
heaping of coals of fire after that infernal placard of my father's."
He shook my hand and set off down the road, but he came running after
me presently, calling me to stop.
"I was just thinking," he said, "that you must consider us a great
mystery up there at Cloomber. I dare say you have come to look upon it
as a private lunatic asylum, and I can't blame you. If you are interested
in the matter, I feel it is unfriendly upon my part not to satisfy your
curiosity, but I have promised my father to be silent about it. And
indeed if I were to tell you all that I know you might not be very much
the wiser after all. I would have you understand this, however--that my
father is as sane as you or I, and that he has very good reasons for
living the life which he does. I may add that his wish to remain
secluded does not arise from any unworthy or dishonourable motives,
but merely from the instinct of self-preservation."

"He is in danger, then?" I ejaculated.
"Yes; he is in constant danger."
"But why does he not apply