House had been built ten years ago by Captain Joseph Trevelyan, R.N., on the occasion of his retirement from the Navy. He was a man of substance, and he had always had a great hankering to live on Dartmoor. He had placed his choice on the tiny hamlet of Sittaford. It was not in a valley like most of the villages and farms, but perched right on the shoulder of the moor under the shadow of Sittaford Beacon. He had purchased a large tract of ground, had built a comfortable house with its own electric light plant and an electric pump to save labour in pumping water. Then, as a speculation, he had built six small bungalows, each in its quarter acre of ground, along the lane.
The first of these, the one at his very gates, had been allotted to his old friend and crony, John Burnaby—the others had by degrees been sold, there being still a few people who from choice or necessity like to live right out of the world. The village itself consisted of three picturesque but dilapidated cottages, a forge and a combined post office and sweet shop. The nearest town was Exhampton, six miles away, a steady descent which necessitated the sign, ‘Motorists engage your lowest gear’, so familiar on the Dartmoor roads.
Captain Trevelyan, as has been said, was a man of substance. In spite of this—or perhaps because of it—he was a man who was inordinately fond of money. At the end of October a house agent in Exhampton wrote to him asking if he would consider letting Sittaford House. A tenant had made inquiries concerning it, wishing to rent it for the winter.
Captain Trevelyan’s first impulse was to refuse, his second to demand further information. The tenant in question proved to be a Mrs Willett, a widow with one daughter. She had recently arrived from South Africa and wanted a house on Dartmoor for the winter.
‘Damn it all, the woman must be mad,’ said Captain Trevelyan. ‘Eh, Burnaby, don’t you think so?’
Burnaby did think so, and said so as forcibly as his friend had done.
‘Anyway, you don’t want to let,’ he said. ‘Let the fool woman go somewhere else if she wants to freeze. Coming from South Africa too!’
But at this point Captain Trevelyan’s money complex asserted itself. Not once in a hundred times would you get a chance of letting your house in mid-winter. He demanded what rent the tenant was willing to pay.
An offer of twelve guineas a week clinched matters. Captain Trevelyan went into Exhampton, rented a small house on the outskirts at two guineas a week, and handed over Sittaford House to Mrs Willett, half the rent to be paid in advance.
‘A fool and her money are soon parted,’ he growled.
But Burnaby was thinking this afternoon as he scanned Mrs Willett covertly, that she did not look a fool. She was a tall woman with a rather silly manner—but her physiognomy was shrewd rather than foolish. She was inclined to overdress, had a distinct Colonial accent, and seemed perfectly content with the transaction. She was clearly very well off and that—as Burnaby had reflected more than once—really made the whole affair more odd. She was not the kind of woman one would credit with a passion for solitude.
As a neighbour she had proved almost embarrassingly friendly. Invitations to Sittaford House were rained on everybody. Captain Trevelyan was constantly urged to ‘Treat the house as though we hadn’t rented it.’ Trevelyan, however, was not fond of women. Report went that he had been jilted in his youth. He persistently refused all invitations.
Two months had passed since the installation of the Willetts and the first wonder at their arrival had passed away.
Burnaby, naturally a silent man, continued to study his hostess, oblivious to any need for small talk. Liked to make herself out a fool, but wasn’t really. So he summed up the situation. His glance shifted to Violet Willett. Pretty girl—scraggy, of course—they all were nowadays. What was the good of a woman if she didn’t look like a woman? Papers said curves were coming back. About time too.
He roused himself to the necessity of conversation.
‘We were afraid at first that you wouldn’t be able to come,’ said Mrs Willett. ‘You said so, you remember. We were so pleased when you said that after all you would.’
‘Friday,’ said Major Burnaby, with an air of being explicit.
Mrs Willett looked puzzled.
‘Friday?’
‘Every Friday go to Trevelyan’s. Tuesday he comes to me. Both of us done it for years.’
‘Oh! I see. Of course, living so near—’
‘Kind of habit.’
‘But do you still keep it up? I mean now that he is living in Exhampton—’
‘Pity to break a habit,’ said Major Burnaby. ‘We’d both of us miss those evenings.’
‘You go in for competitions, don’t you?’ asked Violet. ‘Acrostics and crosswords and all those things.’
Burnaby nodded.
‘I do crosswords. Trevelyan does acrostics. We each stick to our own line of country. I won three books last month in a crossword competition,’ he volunteered.
‘Oh! really. How nice. Were they interesting books?’
‘Don’t know. Haven’t read them. Looked pretty hopeless.’
‘It’s the winning them that matters, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Willett vaguely.
‘How do you get to Exhampton?’ asked Violet. ‘You haven’t got a car.’
‘Walk.’
‘What? Not really? Six miles.’
‘Good exercise. What’s twelve miles? Keeps a man fit. Great thing to be fit.’
‘Fancy! Twelve miles. But both you and Captain Trevelyan were great athletes, weren’t you?’
‘Used to go to Switzerland together. Winter sports in winter, climbing in summer. Wonderful man on ice, Trevelyan. Both too old for that sort of thing nowadays.’
‘You won the Army Racquets Championship, too, didn’t you?’ asked Violet.
The Major blushed like a girl.
‘Who told you that?’ he mumbled.
‘Captain Trevelyan.’
‘Joe should hold his tongue,’ said Burnaby. ‘He talks too much. What’s the weather like now?’
Respecting his embarrassment, Violet followed him to the window. They drew the curtain aside and looked out over the desolate scene.
‘More snow coming,’ said Burnaby. ‘A pretty heavy fall too, I should say.’
‘Oh! how thrilling,’ said Violet. ‘I do think snow is so romantic. I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It isn’t romantic when the pipes freeze, you foolish child,’ said her mother.
‘Have you lived all your life in South Africa, Miss Willett?’ asked Major Burnaby.
Some of the girl’s animation dropped away from her. She seemed almost constrained in her manner as she answered.
‘Yes—this is the first time I’ve ever been away. It’s all most frightfully thrilling.’
Thrilling to be shut away like this in a remote moorland village? Funny ideas. He couldn’t get the hang of these people.
The door opened and the parlourmaid announced:
‘Mr Rycroft and Mr Garfield.’
There entered a little elderly, dried-up man and a fresh-coloured, boyish young man. The latter spoke first.
‘I brought him along, Mrs Willett. Said I wouldn’t let him be buried in a snowdrift. Ha, ha. I say, this all looks simply marvellous. Yule logs burning.’
‘As he says, my young friend very kindly piloted me here,’ said Mr Rycroft