THE MOON ROCK

By

ARTHUR J. REES

1922







    "There is no help for all these things are so,
     And all the world is bitter as a tear,
     And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
  _She would not know._"

                                --Swinburne







CHAPTER I


The voice of the clergyman intoned the last sad hope of humanity, the
final prayer was said, and the mourners turned away, leaving Mrs. Turold
to take her rest in a bleak Cornish churchyard among strangers, far from
the place of her birth and kindred.

The fact would not have troubled her if she had known. In life she had
been a nonentity; in death she was not less. At least she could now mix
with her betters without reproach, free (in the all-enveloping silence)
from the fear of betraying her humble origin. Debrett's Peerage was
unimportant in the grave; breaches of social etiquette passed unnoticed
there; the wagging of malicious tongues was stopped by dust.

Her husband lingered at the grave-side after the others had departed. As
he stood staring into the open grave, regardless of a lurking grave-digger
waiting to fill it, he looked like a man whose part in the drama of life
was Care. There was no hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull
sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of
one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife
fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of one
immersed in anxious thought.

The mourners, who had just left the churchyard, awaited him by a rude
stone cross near the entrance to the church. There were six--four men, a
woman, and a girl. In the road close by stood the motor-car which had
brought them to the churchyard in the wake of the hearse, glistening
incongruously in the grey Cornish setting of moorland and sea.

The girl stood a little apart from the others. She was the daughter of the
dead woman, but her head was turned away from the churchyard, and her
sorrowful glance dwelt on the distant sea. The contour of her small face
was perfect as a flower or gem, and colourless except for vivid scarlet
lips and dark eyes gleaming beneath delicate dark brows. She was very
young--not more than twenty--but in the soft lines of her beauty there was
a suggestion of character beyond her years. Her face was dreamy and
wayward, and almost gipsy in type. There was something rather
disconcerting in the contrast between her air of inexperienced youth and
the sombre intensity of her dark eyes, which seemed mature and
disillusioned, like those of an older person. The slim lines of her figure
had the lissome development of a girl who spent her days out of doors.

She stood there motionless, apparently lost in meditation, indifferent to
the bitter wind which was driving across the moors with insistent force.

"Put this on, Sisily."

Sisily turned with a start. Her aunt, a large stout woman muffled in heavy
furs, was standing behind her, holding a wrap in her hand.

"You'll catch your death of cold, child, standing here in this thin
dress," the elder lady continued. "Why didn't you wear your coat? You'd be
warmer sitting in the car. It's really very selfish of Robert, keeping us
all waiting in this dreadful wind!" She shivered, and drew her furs
closer. "Why doesn't he come away? As if it could do any good!"

As she spoke the tall form of Robert Turold was seen approaching through
the rank grass and mouldering tombstones with a quick stride. He emerged
from the churchyard gate with a stern and moody face.

"Let us get home," he said, and his words were more of a command than
request.

He walked across the road to the car with his sister and daughter. The men
by the cross followed. They were his brother, his brother's son, his
sister's husband, and the local doctor, whose name was Ravenshaw. With a
clang and a hoot the car started on the return journey. The winding
cobbled street of the churchtown was soon left behind for a road which
struck across the lonely moors to the sea. Through the moors and stony
hills the car sped until it drew near a solitary house perched on the edge
of the dark cliffs high above the tumbling waters of the yeasty sea which
foamed at their base.

The car stopped by the gate where the moor road ended. The mourners
alighted and entered the gate. Their approach was observed from within,
for as they neared the house the front door was opened by an elderly
man-servant with a brown and hawk-beaked face.

Walking rapidly ahead Robert Turold led the way into a front sitting-room
lighted by a window overlooking the sea. There was an air of purpose in
his movements, but an appearance of strain in his careworn face and
twitching lips. He glanced at the others in a preoccupied way, but started
perceptibly as his eye fell upon his daughter.

"There is no need for you to remain, Sisily," he said in a harsh dry
voice.

Sisily turned away without speaking. Her cousin Charles jumped up to open
the door, and the two exchanged a glance as she went out. The young man
then returned to his seat near the window. Robert Turold was speaking
emphatically to Dr. Ravenshaw, answering some objection which the doctor
had raised.

"... No, no, Ravenshaw--I want you to be present. You will oblige me by
remaining. I will go upstairs and get the documents. I shall not keep you
long. Thalassa, serve refreshments."

He left the room quickly, as though to avoid further argument. The elderly
serving-man busied himself by setting out decanters and glasses, then went
out like one who considered his duty done, leaving the company to wait on
themselves.




CHAPTER II


The group in the room sat in silence with an air of stiff expectation. The
members of the family knew they were not assembled to pay respect to the
memory of the woman who had just been buried. Her husband had regarded her
as a drag upon him, and did not consider her removal an occasion for the
display of hypocritical grief. Rather was it to be regarded as an act of
timely intervention on the part of Death, who for once had not acted as
marplot in human affairs.

They were there to listen to the story of the triumph of the head of the
family, Robert Turold. Most families have some common source of interest
and pride. It may be a famous son, a renowned ancestor, a faded heirloom,
even a musical daughter. The pride of the Turold family rested on the
belief that they were of noble blood--the lineal inheritors of a great
English title which had fallen into abeyance hundreds of years before.

Robert Turold had not been content to boast of his nobility and die a
commoner like his father and grandfather before him. His intense pride
demanded more than that. As a boy he had pored over the crabbed parchments
in the family deed-box which indicated but did not record the family
descent, and he had vowed to devote his life to prove the descent and
restore the ancient title of Turrald of Missenden to the Turolds of which
he was the head.

There was not much to go upon when he commenced the labour of thirty
years--merely a few old documents, a family tradition, and the similarity
of name. And the Turolds were poor. Money, and a great deal of it, was
needed for the search, in the first instance, of the unbroken line of
descent, and for the maintenance of the title afterwards if the claim was
completely established. But Robert Turold was not to be deterred by
obstacles, however great. He was a man with a single idea, and such men
are hard to baulk in the long run.

He left England in early manhood and remained away for some years. His
family understood that he had gone to seek a fortune in the wilds of the
earth. He reappeared--a saturnine silent man--as suddenly as he had gone
away. In his wanderings he had gained a fortune but partly lost the use of
one eye. The partial loss of an eye did not matter much in a country like
England, where most people have two eyes and very little money, and
therefore pay more respect to wealth than vision.

Robert Turold invested his money, and then set to work upon his great
ambition with the fierce restlessness which characterized all his
proceedings in life. He married shortly after his return. He soon came to
the conclusion that his marriage was a great mistake--the greatest mistake
of his life. His wife had borne him two girls. The first died in infancy,
and some years later Sisily was born. His regrets increased with the birth
of a second daughter. He wanted a son to succeed him in the title--when he
gained it. Time passed, and he became enraged. His anger crushed the timid
woman who shared his strange lot. His dominating temperament and moody
pride were too much for her gentle soul. She became desperately afraid of
him and his stern ways, of that monomania which kept them wandering
through the country searching for links in a [pedigree] which had to be
traced back for hundreds of years before Robert Turold could grasp his
heart's desire.

When She died in the house on the cliffs where they had come six months
before, Robert Turold had accomplished the task to which his life had been
devoted. Some weeks before he had summoned his brother from London to
disclose his future plans. The brothers had not met for many years, but
Austin was quick to obey when he learnt that a fortune and a title were at
stake. The sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton, had reached
Cornwall two days before the funeral. They were to take Sisily back to
London with them. It was Robert Turold's intention to part with his
daughter and place her in his sister's charge. For a reason he had not yet
divulged, Sisily was to have no place in his brilliant future. He disliked
his daughter. Her sex was a fatal bar to his regard. He had heaped so many
reproaches on her mother for bringing another girl into the world that the
poor woman had descended to the grave with a confused idea that she was to
blame.

Sisily had a strange nature, reticent, yet tender. She had loved her
mother passionately, and feared and hated her father because he had
treated his wife so harshly. She had been the witness of it all--from her
earliest childhood to the moment when the unhappy woman had died with her
eyes fixed on her husband's implacable face, but holding fast to her
daughter's hand, as though she wanted to carry the pressure of those
loving fingers into the grave.

A clock on the mantel-piece ticked loudly. But it was the only sound which
disturbed the quietness of the room. The representatives of the family
eyed one another with guarded indifference. Circumstances had kept them
apart for many years, and they now met almost as strangers.

Mrs. Pendleton sat on a sofa with her husband. She was a notable outline
of a woman, large and massive, with a shrewd capable face and a
middle-class mind. She lived, when at home, in the rarefied atmosphere of
Golders Green, in a red house with a red-tiled roof, one of a streetful
similarly afflicted, where she kept two maids and had a weekly reception
day. She was childless, but she disdained to carry a pet dog as
compensation for barrenness. Her husband was a meagre shrimp of a
stockbroker under his wife's control, who golfed on Sundays and played
auction bridge at his club twice a week with cyclic regularity. He and his
wife had little in common except the habit of living together, which had
made them acquainted with each other's ways.

Mrs. Pendleton had not seen either of her brothers for a long time. Robert
had been too engrossed in digging into the past for the skeletons of his
ancestors to do more than write intermittent letters to the living members
of his family, acquainting them with the progress of his search. Austin
Turold, Robert's younger brother, had spent a portion of his life in India
and had but recently returned. He had gone there more than twenty years
before to fill a Government post, taking with him his young wife, but
leaving his son at school in England for some years. His wife had
languished and died beneath an Indian sun, but her husband had become
acclimatized, and remained until his time was up and he was free to return
to England with a pension. His sister and he met on the previous day for
the first time since he had left England for India, and Mrs. Pendleton had
some difficulty in identifying the elderly and testy Anglo-Indian with the
handsome young brother who had bade her farewell so many years before.
And, she had even more difficulty in recognizing the fair-haired little
boy of that time in the good-looking but rather moody-faced young man who
at the present moment was seated near the window, staring out of it.

The fifth member of the party was Dr. Ravenshaw, who practised in the
churchtown where Mrs. Turold had been buried, and had attended her in her
illness.

But he had not been asked to share in the family council on that account.
His presence was due to his intimacy with Robert Turold, which had
commenced soon after the latter's arrival in Cornwall. The claimant for a
title had found in the churchtown doctor an antiquarian after his own
heart, whose wide knowledge of Cornish antiquities had assisted in the
discovery of the last piece of evidence necessary to establish his claim.

Dr. Ravenshaw sat a little apart from the other, a thickset grey figure of
a man, with eyes reddened as though by excessive reading, and usually
protected by glasses, which just then he had removed in order to polish
them with his handkerchief. In age he was sixty or more. His thick grey
beard was mingled with white, and the heavy moustache which drooped over
his mouth was quite white. He presented a common-place figure in his rough
worn tweeds and heavy boots, but he was a man of intelligence in spite of
his unassuming exterior. He lived alone, cared for by a single servant,
and he covered on foot a scattered practice among the fishing population
of that part of the coast. His knowledge of Cornish antiquities and
heraldic lore had won him the confidence of Robert Turold, and his
kindness to Mrs. Turold in her illness had gained him the gratitude of her
daughter Sisily.

It was Austin Turold who caused a diversion in this group of lay figures
by walking to the table and helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. Austin
bore very little resemblance to his grim and dominant elder brother. He
had a slight frail figure, very carefully dressed, and one of those
thin-lipped faces which seem, to wear a perpetual sneer of superiority
over commoner humanity. The movements of his white hands, the inflection
of his voice, the double eyeglass which dangled from his vest by a ribbon
of black silk, revealed the type of human being which considers itself
something rarer and finer than its fellows. The thin face, narrow white
forehead, and high-bridged nose might have belonged to an Oxford don or
fashionable preacher, but, apart from these features, Austin Turold had
nothing in common with such earnest souls. By temperament he was a
dilettante and cynic, who affected not to take life seriously. His axiom
of faith was that a good liver was the one thing in life worth having, and
a far more potent factor in human affairs than conscience. He had at one
time regarded his brother Robert as a fool and visionary, but had seen fit
to change that opinion latterly.

He paused in the act of raising his glass to his lips, and looked over the
silent company as though seeking a convivial companion. His son was still
staring out of the window. The little stockbroker, seated on the sofa
beside his large wife, made a deprecating movement of his eyebrows, as
though entreating not to be asked. Austin's cold glance roved to Dr.
Ravenshaw.

"Doctor," he said, "let me give you a whisky-and-soda."

Doctor Ravenshaw shook his head. "I have a patient to visit before dark,"
he said, "a lady. I do not care to carry the smell of spirits into a
sick-room."

"But this is a special occasion, Ravenshaw," persisted the other. "We do
not restore a title every day."

"Austin!" The voice of Mrs. Pendleton sounded from the sofa in shocked
protest.

"What's the matter?" said Austin, pausing in the act of pouring some
whisky into a glass.

"It would be exceedingly improper to drink a toast at such a moment."

"What's the matter with the moment?"

"The day, then. Just when we have buried poor Alice." Mrs. Pendleton had
not seen her brother's wife for ten years before her death, but she had no
difficulty in bringing tears to her eyes at the recollection of her. She
dried her eyes with her handkerchief, and added in a different tone: "I
fancy Robert is coming."

A heavy step was heard descending the stairs. Austin drained his glass,
and Dr. Ravenshaw adjusted his spectacles as Robert Turold entered the
room.




CHAPTER III


With parchments and papers deep on the table before him, Robert Turold
plunged into the history of his life's task. The long hand of the
mantelpiece clock slipped with a stealthy movement past the twelve as he
commenced, as though determined not to be taken by surprise, but to keep
abreast of him.

An hour passed, but Robert Turold kept steadily on. His hearers displayed
symptoms of boredom like people detained in church beyond the usual time.
Humanity is interested in achievement, but not in the manner of its
accomplishment. And Robert's brother and sister knew much of his story by
heart. It had formed the sole theme of his letters to them for many years
past. Mrs. Pendleton's thoughts wandered to afternoon tea. Her husband
nodded with closed eyes, and recovered himself with convulsive starts.
Austin Turold fixed his glance on the ceiling, where a solitary fly was
cleaning its wings with its legs. From the window Charles Turold presented
an immobile profile. Only Dr. Ravenshaw seemed to listen with an interest
which never flagged.

Yet it was a story well worth hearing, that record of indomitable
pertinacity which had refused to be baulked by years or rebuffs. Men have
acquired titles more easily. That was apparent as Robert Turold related
the history of his long and patient investigation; of scents which had led
nowhere; of threads which had broken in his hand; of fruitless burrowings
into the graves of past generations. These disappointments had lengthened
the search, but they had never, baffled the searcher nor broken his faith.

The story began in the fourteenth century, when the second Edward had
summoned his trusty retainer Robert Turrald from his quiet home in leafy
Buckinghamshire to sit in Parliament as a baron, and by that act of kingly
grace ennobled him and his heirs forever. Successive holders of the title
were summoned to Parliament in their turn until the reign of the seventh
Henry, when one succeeded whose wife brought him three daughters, but no
sons. At his death the title went into abeyance among this plurality of
girls. In peerage law they were his coheirs, and the inheritance could not
descend because not one of them had an exclusive right to it. The
daughters entered a convent and followed their parents to the grave within
a few years, the Crown resumed the estate, and the title had remained in
abeyance ever since.

But the last Lord Turrald had a brother Simon, a roystering blade and
lawless adventurer, who disappeared some years before his elder brother's
death. Little was known of him except that he was supposed to have closed
a brawling career on the field of Bosworth, when Richard the Crookback was
killed and the short-lived dynasty of York ended.

The Turolds' family deed-box told a different story. There was a
manuscript in monkish hand, setting forth, "in the name of God, Amen," the
secret history of Simon, as divulged by him on his deathbed for the
information of his two sons. In this confession he claimed kinship with
the last Lord Turrald of Great Missenden. But he had not dared to claim
the title and rich estates on his brother's death, because he was a
proscribed man. He had been a Yorkist, and had fought for Richard. That
might have been forgiven him if he had not unhorsed his future king at
Bosworth and almost succeeded in slaughtering him with his own reckless
hands. So he had fled, and had remained in obscurity and a safe
hiding-place after his brother's death, preferring his head without a
title to a title without a head.

On this document, unsigned and undated, with nothing to indicate the place
of its origin, the Turold family based its claim of descent from the
baronial Turralds of Great Missenden. But the Turold history was a
chequered one. Their branch was nomadic, without territorial ties or
wealth, without continuance of chronology. They could not trace their own
genealogy back for two hundred years. There was a great gap of missing
generations which had never been filled in. It was not even known how the
document had come into their possession. Simon's two sons and their
descendants had vanished into unknown graves, leaving no trace. But the
family clung fast to their belief that they were the lineal descendants of
the Turralds of Buckinghamshire.

It had remained for Robert Turold to prove it. His father and grandfather
had bragged of it, had fabricated family trees over their cups, and glowed
with pride over their noble blood, but had let it go at that. Robert was a
man of different mould. In his hands, the slender supposition had been
turned into certainty. By immense labour and research he built a bridge
from the first Turold of whom any record existed, backwards across the
dark gap of the past. He traced the wanderings of his ancestors through
different generations and different counties to Robert Turold, who
established himself in Suffolk forty years after the last Lord Turrald was
laid to rest in his family vault in the village church of Great Missenden.

The construction of this portion of his family tree occupied Robert Turold
for ten years. There were scattered records to be collected, forgotten
wills to be sought in county offices, parochial registers to be searched
for births and deaths. A nomadic family has no traditions; Robert Turold
had to trace his back to the darkness of the Middle Ages. It was a notable
feat to trace the wanderings of an obscure family back so far as he did,
but even then he seemed as far away from the attainment of his desire as
ever. There remained a gap of forty years. To establish his claim to the
title he had to prove that the Turolds sprang from the younger brother of
the last Lord Turrald, who had allowed the title to lapse for fear of
losing his head if he came forward to claim it.

It did not seem a great gap to bridge after following a wandering scent
through four centuries, but the paltry forty years almost beat Robert
Turold, and cost him five years additional search. It was a lucky chance,
no more, which finally led him to Cornwall, but it was the hand of
Providence (he said so) which directed his footsteps to the churchtown in
which Dr. Ravenshaw lived. It was there he discovered the connecting link
in the signature of a single witness on a noble charter which granted to
the monks of St. Nicholas "all wreck of sea which might happen in the
Scilly Isles except whales." To the eye of Robert Turold's faith the
illegible scrawl on this faded scroll formed the magic name of Simon
Turrald.

For once, faith was justified by its works. The signature was indeed Simon
Turrald's; not the younger brother of the last Lord Turrald, but Simon's
son.

Bit by bit, Robert Turold succeeded in fitting together the last pieces of
the puzzle which had eluded him for so long. Simon Turrald, the brother,
had fled to Cornwall, where he had married a Cornishwoman who had brought
him two sons. The elder, Simon, had taken religious vows, and established
a priory at St. Fair, a branch of the great priory of St. Germain. The
holy fathers of the order had long since vanished from this earth to reap
the reward of their goodness (it is to be hoped) in another world, but the
remains of the priory still stood on a barren headland near Cape Cornwall.
And there was a tomb in St. Fair church, behind the altar, marked by a
blue slab, with an indent formerly filled by a recumbent figure. On the
blue slab was a partly obliterated inscription in monkish Latin, which
yielded its secret to him, and divulged that the remains beneath were
those of Father Simon of St. Fair.

With this important discovery to help him, Robert Turold had very little
difficulty in completing the particulars of the family genealogy. Further
search of the churchtown records brought to light that Simon's other son,
Robert, left Cornwall as a young man, and after some years of wandering
had settled in Suffolk. Father Simon, of course, died without family, but
Robert married, the family name came to be spelt "Turold," and thus was
founded that branch of the family of which the last Robert Turold was now
the head. The family tree was complete.

Such was the substance of Robert Turold's life quest, and the story had
occupied two hours in telling.

"I have petitioned the King's most excellent majesty to terminate the
abeyance in my favour and declare that I am entitled to the peerage," he
concluded. "I have no doubt that my claim will be admitted. I have set out
the facts with great care, and in considerable detail. I have traced a
clear line of descent back to Simon Turrald, younger brother of the last
baron, and there are no coheirs in existence. Ours is the last surviving
branch, or it would, perhaps, be better if I said that Austin and myself,
and Austin's son, are the only male members of the family. It is a
difficult matter to give effectual proof of a long pedigree, but my lawyer
has not the least doubt that the House of Lords will admit the validity of
my claim, and will terminate the abeyance in my favour. The Attorney
General has inspected my proofs, and I am to appear before the Committee
for Privileges next week. In a few weeks at the outside, allowing for the
worst of law's delays, I shall be Lord Turrald."

Robert Turold's whole bearing was transfigured as he made this
announcement. His sound eye gleamed, his shrunken form seemed to expand
and fill, and his harsh sallow features took on an expression which was
almost ecstatic. It was his great moment, the moment for which he had
lived for twenty years, and it compensated him for all his worry, delayed
expectation, fruitless labour, and the bitter taste of the waters of
despair.

"I shall be Turrald of Great Missenden," he said, and again the expression
of his face showed what the words meant to him.

"Bob! So you've actually succeeded after all!" Mrs. Pendleton stepped
quickly across to her brother as he sat regarding his audience from behind
his pile of documents. It was like a sister, at that moment, to slip back
to the juvenile name and kiss his elderly face with tears in her eyes.
Robert Turold received the caress unmoved, and she went back to the sofa.
