Part 16 (1/2)
The soft chime of a clock downstairs sounded the pa.s.sing of another hour. Its murmuring echo died to a silence unbroken by any sound save that of the summer breeze playing about the eaves and towers of the house.
Minutes pa.s.sed. His thoughts blurred into the gathering shadows of sleep.
Of a sudden he was awake, his eyes staring into the dark, his whole body nervously, acutely, on the alert. He had heard a cry--of a nightjar--but so strange and eerie that it made him hold his breath.
The call was repeated. An owl answered with a creepy cry of alarm.
Selwyn muttered impatiently at the trick played upon him by his nerves, and turning over, was about to settle again to slumber, when he heard a door softly opening. Light footsteps pa.s.sed in the hall, stopping at each creaking board as though suspicious that some one might hear; then their sound was lost in the thick carpet of the stairway.
For a minute there was complete silence. He heard from below the cautious opening of the side-door leading to the lawn.
Wondering what mischief was on foot, he rose from his bed, and peering through the window, tried to penetrate the gloom. A sullen sky kept the stars imprisoned behind deep banks of clouds, and only the trees, by reason of their solid blackness, were discernible in the darkness of the night. Slipping on a dressing-gown, he stealthily left his room, and creeping downstairs, found the open door. Emerging on the lawn, he looked quickly about.
Beneath a near-by tree he saw a woman in white, and the figure of a man pleading for something. Suddenly Selwyn saw the woman take some article from around her neck and hand it to the man. The fellow took it, and seemed to be turning away, when, with a suppressed sob, she caught him in her arms, murmuring incoherent endearments through her tears.
The black scudding clouds left the sky-clear for a moment overhead--and Selwyn felt a contraction of pain in his heart.
The woman was Elise, and the man--her brother d.i.c.k.
CHAPTER X.
GATHERING SHADOWS.
I.
Breakfast at Roselawn was a studiously inconsequential meal. Places were set as usual by the servants, but the viands and the paraphernalia necessary for their preparation were placed on a separate table in the alcove by the great window overlooking the lawn. Having performed this duty, the servants did nothing more; but one could not help feeling that they were just outside the door, like a group of prompters, ready to render instantaneous a.s.sistance should the amateurs falter.
Lord Durwent made a kindly and efficient supervisor of the commissariat table, and--there was no question of it--could boil an egg with any one in the county. And the guests plying between the source of supply and the breakfast-table proper created a vagabondish camping-out air of geniality that did much to dispel the natural stiffness of the morning intercourse. As the meal had no formal opening, every one arrived at any time during the breakfast period, and though constant apologies were offered for the frequent interruptions to Lord Durwent's own meal, it could be seen that his enjoyment of buffet proprietors.h.i.+p was almost a professional one.
Lady Durwent's part in the function was to supervise the coffee, and ask each guest how he or she had slept, expressing regret that the night had not been cooler, warmer, calmer, or fresher, according to the polite customs of social dialogue at breakfast.
At nine-fifteen the papers used to arrive from the village, always causing a flutter of excitement. The sense of solitude at Roselawn made the outside world something so remote and apart that there was genuine curiosity to discover what the deuce it had been doing with itself during the house-party's retreat.
Lord Durwent read the _Morning Post_ as a sort of 'prairie oyster' or 'bromo-seltzer.' It settled him. There was something about that journal's editorial page and its dignified treatment of events that made Roselawn seem the embodiment of British principle. Being a man who prided himself on a catholicity of view-point, he also subscribed to the _Daily Mail_--that frivolous young thing that has as many editions as a _debutante_ has frocks, and by its super-delicate apparatus at Carmelite House can detect a popular clamour before it is louder than a kitten's miaow.
As a concession to the ladies of the household, he took, in addition, the _Daily Sketch_ and the _Daily Mirror_, those two energetic ill.u.s.trated papers, which, benefiting from the remarkable geographical fact that every place of consequence in England is exactly two hours from London, are able to offer photos of riders in Rotten How, bathers at Brighton, rowers at Oxford, and foreign monarchs walking at Windsor, the very morning after all these remarkable persons have astonished the world by riding, bathing, rowing, or walking.
But to Lord Durwent these papers and the _Daily Mail_ were but interludes. The _Morning Post_ was the real business of life, and after reading through its solid columns of type, he enjoyed the sensation of somehow having done something for his country.
II.
It was just before the arrival of the morning papers that Selwyn descended to the dining-room. Helping himself to porridge, he answered Lady Durwent's polite conventional questions.
'And _how_ did you sleep?' asked his hostess, putting into the inquiry that artistic personal touch which made it seem as if this were the first time she had asked the question, and he the first guest to whom it had been propounded.
'Lady Durwent,' he answered, smiling, 'I haven't the faintest idea.'
'Then,' said his hostess, triumphantly explaining the obvious, 'you must have slept well.'