Tracks in the Snow

some disappointment, or both. About that time an aunt of his died and left him the house, Grenvile Combe, at Long Wilton, in which a good deal of his boyhood had been spent. He came there, as I have said, soon after my own arrival, and stayed on, not, as it seemed to me, from any settled plan. There he passed much of his time in long country rambles (he had been, I believe, a keen sportsman, and had now become a keen naturalist), much of it in various studies, chiefly philosophic or psychological. He was writing a book on certain questions of psychology, or, perhaps I should say, preparing to write it, for the book did not seem to me to progress. My wife and I were convinced that he had a love story, but we gathered no hint of what it may have been. He was forty-three when he died.

This is, I think, all that I need now set down as to the personality of the murdered man. But I cannot forbear to add that, while his interrupted career and his somewhat desultory pursuits appeared inadequate to the reputation which he had somehow gained for ability, he certainly gave me the impression of preserving an uncompromisingly high standard, a keenly if fitfully penetrating mind and a latent capacity for decisive action. As I write these words it occurs to me that he would be living now if this impression of mine had not been shared by a much cleverer man than I.

On the 28th my wife was away from home, and I had supper at Grenvile Combe, going there about seven o’clock. There were three other guests at supper, James Callaghan, C.I.E., William Vane-Cartwright, and one Melchior Thalberg. Callaghan was an old schoolfellow of Peters, and the two, though for years they must have seen each other seldom, appeared to have always kept up some sort of friendship. I knew Callaghan well by this time, for he had been staying three weeks at Grenvile Combe, and he was easy to know, or rather easy to get on with. I should say that I liked the man, but that I am seldom sure whether I like an Irishman, and that my wife, a far shrewder judge than I, could not bear him. He was a great, big-chested Irishman, of the fair-haired, fresh-coloured type, with light blue eyes. A weatherworn and battered countenance (contrasting with the youthful erectness and agility of his figure), close-cut whiskers and a heavy greyish moustache, a great scar across one cheekbone and a massive jaw, gave him at first a formidable appearance. The next moment this might seem to be belied by something mobile about his mouth and the softness of his full voice; but still he bore the aspect of a man prone to physical violence. He was plausible; very friendly (was it, one asked, a peculiarly loyal sort of friendliness or just the reverse); a copious talker by fits and starts, with a great wealth of picturesque observation⁠—or invention. Like most of my Irish acquaintance he kept one in doubt whether he would take an exceptionally high or an exceptionally low view of any matter; unlike, as I think, most Irishmen, he was the possessor of real imaginative power. He had (as I gathered from his abundant anecdotes) been at one time in the Army and later in the Indian Civil Service. In that service he seemed to have been concerned with the suppression of crime, and to have been lately upon the Northwest Frontier. He was, as I then thought, at home on leave, but, as I have since learned, he had retired. Some notable exploit or escapade of his had procured him the decoration which he wore on every suitable and many unsuitable occasions, but it had also convinced superior authorities that he must on the first opportunity be shelved.

Vane-Cartwright, with nothing so distinctive in his appearance, was obviously a more remarkable man. Something indescribable about him would, I think, if I had heard nothing of him, have made me pick him out as a man of much quiet power. He was in the City, a merchant (whatever that large term may mean) who had formerly had something to do with the far East, and now had considerable dealings with Italy. He had acquired, I knew, quickly but with no whisper of dishonour, very great wealth; and he was about, as I gathered from some remark of Peters, to marry a very charming young lady, Miss Denison, who was then absent on the Riviera. He had about a fortnight before come down to the new hotel in our village for golf, and had then accidentally met Peters who was walking with me. I understood that he had been a little junior to Peters at Oxford, and had since been acquainted with him somewhere in the East. Peters had asked him to dinner at his house, where Callaghan was already staying. I had heard Peters tell him that if he came to those parts again he must stay with him. I had not noted the answer, but was not surprised afterwards to find that Vane-Cartwright, who had returned to London the day after I first met him, had since come back rather suddenly, and this time to stay with Peters. He now struck me as a cultured man, very different from Peters in all else but resembling him in the curious range and variety of his knowledge, reserved and as a rule silent but incisive when he did speak.

Thalberg, though not the most interesting of the company, contributed, as a matter of fact, the most to my enjoyment on that occasion. I tried hard some days later to recall my impressions of that evening, of which every petty incident should by rights have been engraven on my memory, but the recollection, which, so to speak, put all the rest out, was that of songs by Schubert and Schumann which Thalberg sang.