The Four Corners of the World Part 17

She coloured a little with pleasure, and her eyes and her voice softened together.

"I am very glad," she answered. "One takes a great deal. It is pleasant to give something in return."

Dorman Royle and Ina Fayle were duly married towards the end of the month, and began their life together in the house which Groome had lent them.

It stood on the top of a hill amongst bare uplands above the valley of the Thames, in a garden of roses and green lawns. But the house was new, and the trees about it small and of Groome's own planting, so that every whisper of wind became a breeze up there, and whistled about the windows. On the other hand, if the wind was still there was nowhere a place more quiet, and the slightest sound which would never have been heard in a street rang out loud with the presumption of a boast. Especially this was so at night. The roar of the great trains racing down to the west cleft the air like thunder; yet your eyes could only see far away down in the river-valley, a tiny line of bright lights winking amongst the trees. In this spot they stayed for a week, and then Ina showed her husband a telegram summoning her to the bedside of her mother.

"It's not very serious, as you see," she said. "But she wants me, and I think that for a day or two I must go."

She went the next morning. Dorman Royle was left alone, and was thoroughly bored until late on the night before Ina's return. It was, in fact, not far from twelve o'clock when Royle began to be interested. He was sitting in the library when he heard very distinctly through the open window a metallic click. The sound was unmistakable. Somewhere in the garden a gate had been opened and allowed to swing back. What he had heard was the latch catching in the socket. He was interested in his book, and for a moment paid no heed to the sound. But after a second or two he began to wonder who at this hour in that lonely garden had opened a gate. He sat up and listened but the sound was not repeated. He was inclined to think, clear and distinct though the sound had been, that he had imagined it, when his eyes fell upon Ina's black spaniel. He could no longer believe in any delusion of his senses. For the dog had heard the sound too. He had been lying curled up on the varnished boards at the edge of the room, his black, s.h.i.+ning coat making him invisible to a careless glance. Now he was sitting up, his ears c.o.c.ked and his eyes upon the window with the extraordinary intentness which dogs display.

Dorman Royle rose from his chair.

"Come," he said, in a whisper, but the spaniel did not move. He sat with his nose raised and the lip of the lower jaw trembling, and his eyes still fixed upon the window. Royle walked softly to the door of the room. It opened on to a hall paved with black and white stone which took up the middle part of the house. Upon his right a door opened on to the drive, on his left another led out to a loggia and a terrace. Royle opened this second door and called again in a whisper to the spaniel:

"Come, Duke! Seek him out!"

This time the dog obeyed, running swiftly past his legs into the open air. Royle followed. It was a bright, moonlit night, the stars hardly visible in the clear sky. Royle looked out across the broad valley to the forest-covered Chilterus, misty in the distance. Not a breath of wind was stirring; the trees stood as though they had been metal.

Three brick steps led from the terrace to the tennis-lawn. On the opposite side of the tennis-lawn a small gate opened on to a paddock It was this gate which had opened and swung to. But there was no one now on the lawn or in the paddock, and no tree stood near which could shade an intruder. Royle looked at the dog. He stood upon the edge of the terrace staring out over the lawn; Royle knew him to be a good house-dog, yet now not a growl escaped him. He stood waiting to leap forward--yes, but waiting also for a friendly call from a familiar voice before he leapt forward; and as Royle realised that a strange thought came to him. He had been lonely these last days; hardly a moment had pa.s.sed but he had been conscious of the absence of Ina; hardly a moment when his heart had not ached for her and called her back. What if he had succeeded? He played with the question as he stood there in the quiet moonlight upon the paved terrace. It was she who had sped across the paddock twelve hours before her time and opened the gate. She had come so eagerly that she had not troubled to close it. She had let it swing sharply to behind her. She was here now, at his side. He reached out a hand to touch her, and take hers; and suddenly he became aware that he was no longer playing with a fancy--that he believed it. She was really here, close to him. He could not see her--no. But that was his fault. There was too much dross in Dorman Royle as yet for so supreme a gift. But that would follow--follow with the greater knowledge of her which their life together would bring.

"Come, Duke," he said, and he went back into the house and sat late in the smoking-room, filled with the wonder of this new, strange life that was to be his. A month ago and now! He measured the difference of stature between the Dorman Royle of those days and the Dorman Royle of to-day, and he was sunk in humility and grat.i.tude. But a few hours later that night his mood changed. He waked up in the dark, and, between sleep and consciousness, was aware of some regular, measured movement in the room. In a moment he became wide awake, and understood what had aroused him. The spaniel, lying on the coverlet at the foot of the bed, was thumping with his tail--just as if someone he loved was by him, fondling him. Royle sat up; the bed shook and creaked under him, but the dog paid no heed at all. He went on wagging his tail in the silence and darkness of the room. Someone must be there, and suddenly Royle cried aloud, impetuously, so that he was surprised to hear his own voice:

"Ina! Ina!" and he listened, with his arms outstretched.

But no answer came at all. It seemed that he had rashly broken a spell. For the dog became still. Royle struck a match and lighted the candle by his bed, straining his eyes to the corners of the room. But there was no one visible.

He blew out the candle and lay down again, and the darkness blotted out all the room. But he could not sleep; and--and--he was very careful not to move. It was not fear which kept him still--though fear came later---but a thrilling expectation. He was on the threshold of a new world. He had been made conscious of it already; now he was to enter it--to see. But he saw nothing. Only in a little while the spaniel's tail began once more to thump gently and regularly upon the bed. It was just as if the dog had waited for him to go to sleep before it once more resumed its invisible communion. This time he spoke to the dog.

"Duke!" he whispered, and he struck a match. The spaniel was lying upon his belly, his neck stretched out, his jaws resting upon his paws. "Duke, what is it?"

The animal raised its head and turned a little to one side. The human voice could not have said more clearly:

"What's the matter? You are interrupting us."

The match burned out between his forefinger and thumb. Royle did not light another. He laid himself down again. But the pleasant fancy born in him upon the moonlit terrace had gone altogether from his thoughts.

There was something to him rather sinister in the notion of the dog waiting for him to go to sleep and then, without moving from its place--so certain it was of the neighbourhood of some unseen being to whom it gave allegiance--resuming a strange companions.h.i.+p. He no longer thought of Ina--Ina as the visitor. He began to wonder how the dog had come to her, who had owned it before her. He plunged into vague and uncomfortable surmises. No doubt the darkness, the silence of the night, and his own sleeplessness had their effects. He lay in a strange exaltation of spirit, which deepened slowly and gradually into fear. Yes, he was afraid now. He had a sense of danger, all the more alarming because it was reasonless. There were low breathings about his bed; now some one bent over him, now a hand lightly touched the coverlet. He, the most unimpressionable of men, rejoiced when a grey beam of light shot through a c.h.i.n.k of the curtain and spread like a fan into the room. He turned over on his side and slept until the sun was high.

In the clear light of a July morning Royle's thoughts took on a more sober colour. None the less, he made a cautious inquiry or two that day from the gardener, and from the shops in the village. The answer in each case was the same.

"The house had no history, no traditions. It had only been built ten years back. There was nothing but a field then where the house now stood. Even the trees had been planted at the time the house was built."

Indeed, the a.s.surance was hardly needed; for the house was new and bright as a hospital. There was hardly a dark corner anywhere, certainly nowhere a harbour for dark thoughts. Royle began to revert to his original fancy; and when that evening his wife returned, he asked her:

"Last night, just before midnight--what were you doing?"

They were together in a small library upon the first floor, a room with big windows opening upon the side of the house. The night was hot and the windows stood open, and close to one of them at a little table Ina was writing a letter. She looked up with a smile.

"Last night--just before midnight? I was asleep."

"Are you sure?"

Some note of urgency in his voice made her smile waver. It disappeared altogether as she gazed at him.

"Of course," she answered, slowly, "I am sure;" and then, after a little pause and with a slight but a noticeable hesitation, she added: "Why do you ask?"

Dorman Royle crossed over to her side and most unwisely told her:

"Because at midnight the gate into the paddock was opened and swung to without any hand to touch it. I had been thinking of you, Ina--wanting you--and I wondered."

He spoke half in jest, but there was no jesting reply. For a little while, indeed, Ina did not answer him at all. He was standing just a step behind her as she sat at the table in the window, so that he could not see her face. But her body stiffened.

"It must have been a delusion," she said, and he walked forward and sat down in a chair by the table facing her.

"If so, it was a delusion which the dog shared."

She did not change her att.i.tude; she did not stir. From head to foot she sat as though carved in stone. Nor did her face tell him anything.

It became a mask; it seemed to him that she forced all expression out of it, by some miracle of self-command. But her eyes shone more than usually big, more than usually luminous; and they held their secret too, if they had a secret to hold. Then she leaned forward and touched his sleeve.

"Tell me!" she said, and she had trouble to find her voice; and, having found it, she could not keep it steady.

"I am sorry, Ina," he said. "You are frightened. I should not have said a word."

"But you have," she replied. "Now I must know the rest."

He told her all that there was to tell. Reduced to the simple terms of narrative, the story sounded, even to him, thin and unconvincing.

There was so little of fact and event, so much of suggestion and vague emotion. But his recollection was still vivid, and something of the queer terror which he had felt as he had lain in the darkness was expressed in his aspect and in the vibrations of his voice. So, at all events, he judged. For he had almost expected her to laugh at the solemnity of his manner, and yet Ina did not so much as smile. She listened without even astonishment, paying close heed to every word, now and then nodding her head in a.s.sent, but never interrupting. He was vaguely reminded of clients listening to his advice in some grave crisis of their affairs. But when he had finished she made no comment.

She just sat still and rigid, gazing at him with baffling and inscrutable eyes.

Dorman Royle rose. "So it wasn't you, Ina, who returned last night?"

he said.

"No," she answered, in a voice which was low, but now quite clear and steady. "I slept soundly last night--much more soundly than I usually do."

"That's strange," said Royle.

"I don't think so," Ina answered. "I think it follows. _I was let alone_. Yes, that's all of a piece with your story, don't you see?"

Dorman Royle sprang up, and at his abrupt movement his wife's face flashed into life and fear.

"What are you saying?" he cried, and she shrank as if she realised now what a dangerous phrase she had allowed her lips to utter.

"Nothing, nothing!" she exclaimed, and she set herself obstinately to her letter.

Royle looked at the clock.

"It's late," he said. "I'll take the dog out for a run."

He went downstairs and out at the front of the house. To-night the air was mistier, and the moon sailed through a fleece of clouds. Royle walked to a gate on the edge of the hill. It may have been a quarter of an hour before he whistled to the dog and turned back to the house.

From the gate to the house was perhaps a hundred yards, and as he walked back first one, then another, of the windows of the library upon the first floor came within his view. These windows stood wide open to the night, and showed him, as in a miniature, this and that corner of the room, the bookcases, the lamps upon the tables, and the top-rails of the chair-backs, small but very clear. The one window which he could not as yet see at all was that in which his wife sat.