Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series», sayfa 5

“Do they visit you still?”

“No. At least, they have changed in character. Ever since the night that he seems to have been really lost, the 19th of October. How you look at me, Johnny!”

“You speak so strangely.”

“The subject is strange. I was at Worcester, you know, at Mary West’s, and we thought he had come. That night I had the pleasantest dream. We were no longer seeking for him; all the anxiety, the distress of that was gone. We saw him; he seemed to be with us—though yet at a distance. When I awoke, I said in my happiness, ‘Ah, those sad dreams will visit me no more, now he is found.’ I thought he was, you see. Since then, though the dreams continue, he is never lost in them. I see him always; we are often talking, though we are never very close together. I will be indoors, perhaps, and he outside in the garden; or maybe I am toiling up a steep hill and he stands higher up. I seem to be always going towards him and he to be waiting for me. And though I never quite reach him, they are happy dreams. It will not be very long first now.”

I knew what she meant—and had nothing to say to it.

“Perhaps it may be as well, Johnny,” she went on in speculative thought. “God does all things for the best.”

“Perhaps what may be as well?”

“That he should never have come back to marry me. I do not suppose I should have lived long in any case; I am too much like mamma. And to have been left a widower—perhaps—no, it is best as it is.”

“You don’t give yourself a chance of getting better, Ellin—cherishing these gloomy views.”

“Gloomy! They are not gloomy. I am as happy as I can be. I often picture to myself the glories of the world I am hastening to; the lovely flowers, the trees that overshadow the banks of the pure crystal river, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the beautiful golden light shed around us by God and the Lamb. Oh, Johnny, what a rest it will be after the weary sorrow here—and the weakness—and the pain!”

“But you should not wish to leave us before your time.”

“I do not wish it; it is God who is taking me. I think if I had a wish it would be to stay here as long as papa stays. For I know what my death will be to him. And what it will be to you all,” she generously added, holding out her hands to me, as the tears filled her eyes.

I held them for a minute in mine. Ellin took up her parasol, preparatory to moving away; but laid it down again.

“Johnny, tell me—I have often thought I should like to ask you—what do you think could have become of William? Have you ever picked up an idea, however faint, of anything that could tend to solve the mystery?”

It was a hard question to answer, and she saw my hesitation.

“I cannot admit that I have, Ellin. When looking at the affair in one light, I whisper to myself, ‘It might have been this way;’ when looking at it in another, I say, ‘It might have been that.’ Difficulties and contradictions encompass it on all sides. One impediment to elucidation was the length of time that elapsed before we began the search in earnest. Had we known from the first that he was really lost, and gone to work then, we might have had a better chance.”

Ellin nodded assent. “Marianne Ashton still maintains that it was William she saw that day at the railway-station.”

“I know she does. She always will maintain it.”

“Has it ever struck you, Johnny, in how rather remarkable a way any proof that it was he, or not he, seems to have been withheld?”

“Well, we could not get at any positive proof, one way or the other.”

“But I mean that proof seems to have been withheld,” repeated Ellin. “Take, to begin with, the traveller’s luggage: but for its being lost (and we do not know that it was ever found), the name, sure to have been on it, would have told whether its owner was William Brook, or not. Then take Marianne Ashton: had she gained the platform but a few seconds earlier, she would have met the traveller face to face, avoiding all possibility of mistake either way. Next take the meeting of the two gigs that evening when Gregory West was returning from Spetchley. Gregory, a stranger to Worcester until recently, did not know William Brook; but had Philip West himself gone to Spetchley—as he ought to have done—he would have known him. Again, had Philip’s groom, Brian, been there, he would have known him: he comes from this neighbourhood, you know. Brian was going with the gig that afternoon, but just as it was starting Philip got a message from a client living at Lower Wick, and he had to send Brian with the answer, so Gregory went alone. You must see how very near proof was in all these moments, yet it was withheld.”

Of course I saw it. And there was yet another instance: Had the Squire only pulled up when we passed the gig in Dip Lane, instead of driving on like the wind, we should have had proof that it was, or was not, Brook.

“If it was he,” breathed Ellin, “it must have been that night he died. He would not, else, keep away from Timberdale.”

My voice dropped to a lower key than hers. “Ellin! Do you really think it was he with St. George?”

“Oh, I cannot say that. If any such thought intrudes itself, I drive it away. I do not like St. George, but I would not be unjust to him.”

“I thought St. George was one of your prime favourites.”

“He was never that. He used to be very kind to me, especially after William went away, and I liked him for it. But latterly I have taken a most unreasonable dislike to him—and really without any justifiable cause. He worries me—but it is not that.”

“Worries you!”

“In pressing me to be his wife,” she sighed. “Of course I ought to be grateful: he tells me, he tells papa, that with a new life and new scenes, which he would carry me to, my health might be re-established. Poor papa! Only the other day he said to me, ‘My dear, don’t you think you might bring yourself to try it,’ and I was so silly as to burst into tears. The tears came into papa’s eyes too, and he promised never to suggest it to me again.”

The tears were trickling down her cheeks, now as she spoke. “What a world of crosses and contradiction it is!” she cried, smiling through them as she rose. “And, Johnny, all this is between ourselves, remember.”

Yes, it was between ourselves. We strolled across the churchyard to a tomb that stood in a corner facing the western sun. It was of white marble, aromatic shrubs encircling it within ornamental railings, and an inscription on it to her who lay beneath—“Maria, the beloved wife of John Delorane.”

Ellin lingered on through the frosts of winter. Except that she grew thinner and weaker and her cheeks brighter, there really did not seem to be much the matter. Darbyshire saw her every day, other medical men occasionally, but they could not save her. When the snowdrops were peeping from the ground, and the violets nestled in their mossy shelters, and the trees and hedges began to show signs of budding, tokens of the renewal of life after the death of winter, Ellin passed away to that other life, where there is no death and the flowers bloom for ever. And another inscription was added to the white tombstone in the churchyard—“Ellin Maria, the only child of John and Maria Delorane.”

“You should have seen St. George at the funeral,” said Tom Coney to us, as we turned aside after church one hot summer’s day to look at the new name on grave, for we were away from Crabb Cot when she died. “His face was green; yes, green—hold your tongue, Johnny!—green, not yellow; and his eyes had the queerest look. You were right, Todhetley; you used to say, you know, that St. George was wild after poor Ellin.”

“Positive of it,” affirmed Tod.

“And he can’t bear the place now she’s gone out of it,” continued Tom Coney. “Report says that he means to throw up his post and his prospects, and run away for good.”

“Not likely,” dissented Tod, tossing his head. “A strong man like St. George does not die of love nowadays, or put himself out of good things, either. You have been reading romances, Coney.”

But Tom Coney was right. When the summer was on the wane St. George bade a final adieu to Timberdale. And if it was his love for Ellin, or her death, that drove him away, he made no mention of it. He told Timberdale that he was growing tired of work and meant to travel. As he had a good income, Timberdale agreed that it was only natural he should grow tired of work and want to travel. So he said adieu, and departed: and Mr. Delorane speedily engaged another head-clerk in his place, who was to become his partner later.

St. George wrote to Sir. Delorane from Jamaica, to which place he steamed first, to take a look at his cousins. The letter contained a few words about William Brook. St. George had been instituting inquiries, and he said that, by what he could learn, it was certainly William Brook who was drowned in Kingston harbour the day before he ought to have sailed for England in the Dart. He, St. George, felt perfectly assured of this fact, and also that if any man had sailed in the Idalia under Brook’s name, it must have been an impostor who had nefariously substituted himself. St. George added that he was going “farther afield,” possibly to California: he would write again from thence if he arrived without mishap.

No other letter ever came from him. So whether the sea swallowed him up, as, according to his report, it had swallowed his rival, none could tell. But it would take better evidence than that, to convince us William Brook had not come home in the Idalia.

And that is all I have to tell. I know you will deem it most unsatisfactory. Was it William Brook in the gig, or was it not? We found no trace of him after that stormy night: we have found none to this day. And, whether that was he, or was not he, what became of him? Questions never, as I believe, to be solved in this life.

There was a peculiar absence of proof every way, as Ellin remarked; nothing but doubt on all sides. Going over the matter with Darbyshire the other evening, when, as I have already told you, he suggested that I should relate it, we could not, either of us, see daylight through it, any more than we saw it at the time of its occurrence.

There was the certainty (yes, I say so) that Brook landed at Liverpool the evening of the 18th of October; he would no doubt start for home the morning of the 19th, by rail, which would take him through Birmingham to Worcester; there was also what the shopwoman in Bold Street said, though hers might be called negative testimony, as well as the lady’s in the train. There was Mrs. James Ashton’s positive belief that she saw him arrive that afternoon at Worcester by the Birmingham train, shake hands with St. George and talk with him: and there was our recognition of him an hour or two later in St. George’s gig in Dip Lane–

“Hold there, Johnny,” cried Darbyshire, taking his long clay pipe from his mouth to interrupt me as I went over the items. “You should say supposed recognition.”

“Yes, of course. Well, all that points to its having been Brook: you must see that, Mr. Darbyshire. But, if it was in truth he, there’s a great deal that seems inexplicable. Why did he set off to walk from Worcester to Timberdale—and on such a night!—why not have gone on by rail? It is incredible.”

“Nay, lad, we are told he—that is, the traveller—set off to walk to Evesham. St. George says he put him down in Dip Lane; and Lockett, you know, saw somebody, that seems to answer the description, turn from the lanes into the Evesham road.”

I was silent, thinking out my thoughts. Or, rather, not daring to think them out. Darbyshire put his pipe in the fender and went on.

“If it was Brook and no stranger that St. George met at Worcester Station, the only possible theory I can form on that point is this, Johnny: that St. George then proposed to drive him home. He may have said to him, ‘You walk on, and I will get my gig and overtake you directly:’ it is a lame theory, you may say, lad, but it is the only one I can discern, and I have thought of the matter more than you suppose. St. George started for home earlier than he had meant to start, and this may have been the reason: though he says it was because he saw it was going to be so wild a night. Why they should not have gone in company to the Hare-and-Hounds, and started thence, in the gig together, is another question.”

“Unless Brook, being done up, wished not to show himself at Worcester that day—to get on at once to Timberdale.”

Darbyshire nodded: the thought, I am sure, was not strange to him. “The most weighty question of all remains yet, lad: If St. George took up Brook in his gig, what did he do with him? He would not want to be put down in Dip Lane to walk to Evesham.”

He caught up his churchwarden pipe, relighted it at the fire, and puffed away in silence. Presently I spoke again.

“Mr. Darbyshire, I do not like St. George. I never did. You may not believe me, perhaps, but the first time I ever saw his face—I was a little fellow—I drew back startled. There was something in its expression which frightened me.”

“One of your unreasonable dislikes, Johnny?”

“Are they unreasonable? But I have not taken many such dislikes in my life as that one was. Perhaps I might say any such.”

“St. George was liked by most people.”

“I know he was. Any way, my dislike remained with me. I never spoke of it; no, not even to Tod.”

“Liking him or disliking him has nothing to do with the main question—what became of Brook. There were the letters too, sent by the traveller in answer to St. George’s advertisements.”

“Yes, there were the letters. But—did it ever occur to you to notice that not one word was said in those letters, or one new fact given, that we had not heard before? They bore out St. George’s statement, but they afforded no proof that his statement was true.”

“That is, Mr. Johnny, you would insinuate, putting it genteelly, that St. George fabricated the answers himself.”

“No, not that he did, only that there was nothing in the letters to render it impossible that he did.”

“After having fabricated the pretty little tale that it was a stranger he picked up, and what the stranger said to him, and all the rest of it, eh, Johnny?”

“Well”—I hesitated—“as to the letters, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable thing that the traveller could not let even one person see him in private, to hear his personal testimony: say Mr. Delorane, or a member of the Brook family. The Squire went hot over it: he asked St. George whether the fellow thought men of honour carried handcuffs in their pockets. Again, the stranger said he should be at liberty to come forward later, but he never has come.”

Darbyshire smoked on. “I’d give this full of gold,” he broke the silence with, touching the big bowl of the clay pipe, “to know where Brook vanished to.”

My restless fingers had strayed to his old leaden tobacco jar, on the table by me, pressing down its heavy lid and lifting it again. When I next spoke he might have thought the words came out of the tobacco, they were so low.

“Do you think St. George had a grudge against Brook, Mr. Darbyshire?—that he wished him out of the way?”

Darbyshire gave me a look through the wreathing smoke.

“Speak out, lad. What have you on your mind?”

“St. George said, you know, that he stopped the gig in Dip Lane at the turning which would lead to Evesham, for Brook—I mean the traveller—to get out. But I thought I heard it stop before that. I was almost sure of it.”

“Stop where?”

“Just about opposite the gap in the hedge; hardly even quite as far as that. We had not reached the turning to Evesham ourselves when I heard this. The gig seemed to come to a sudden standstill. I said so to Tod at the time.”

“Well?”

“Why should he have stopped just at the gap?”

“How can I tell, lad?”

“I suppose he could not have damaged Brook? Struck him a blow to stun him—or—or anything of that?”

“And if he had? If he (let us put it so) killed him, Johnny, what did he do with—what was left of him? What could he do with it?”

Darbyshire paused in his smoking. I played unconsciously with the jar. He was looking at me, waiting to be answered.

“I suppose—if that pond had been dragged—Dip Pond—if it were to be dragged now—that—that—nothing would be found–”

“Hush, lad,” struck in Darbyshire, all hastily. “Walls have ears, people tell us: and we must not even whisper grave charges without sufficient grounds; grounds that we could substantiate.”

True: and of course he did right to stop me.

But we cannot stay rebellious thought: and no end of gruesome ideas connected with that night in Dip Lane steal creepingly at times into my mind. If I am not mistaken they steal also into Darbyshire’s.

All the same they may be but phantoms of the imagination, and St. George may have been a truthful, an innocent man. You must decide for yourselves, if you can, on which side the weight of evidence seems to lie. I have told you the story as it happened, and I cannot clear up for you what has never yet been cleared for Timberdale. It remains an unsolved mystery.

SANDSTONE TORR

I

What I am going to tell of took place before my time. But we shall get down to that by-and-by, for I had a good deal to do with the upshot when it came.

About a mile from the Manor, on the way to the Court (which at that time belonged to my father) stood a very old house built of grey stone, and called Sandstone Torr: “Torr,” as every one knew, being a corruption of Tower. It was in a rather wild and solitary spot, much shut in by trees. A narrow lane led to it from the highway, the only road by which a carriage could get up to it: but in taking the field way between the Court and Dyke Manor, over stiles and across a running rivulet or two, you had to pass it close. Sandstone Torr was a rambling, high, and ugly old building, once belonging to the Druids, or some ancient race of that kind, and said to have been mighty and important in its day. The points chiefly remarkable about it now were its age, its lonesome grey walls, covered with lichen, and an amazingly lofty tower, that rose up from the middle of the house and went tapering off at the top like an aspiring sugar loaf.

Sandstone Torr belonged to the Radcliffes. Its occupier was Paul Radcliffe, who had inherited it from his father. He was a rather unsociable man, and seemed to find his sole occupation in farming what little land lay around the Torr and belonged to it. He might have mixed with the gentry of the county, as far as descent went, for the Radcliffes could trace themselves back for ages—up to the Druids, I think, the same as the house: but he did not appear to care about it. Who his wife had been no one knew. He brought her home one day from London, and she kept herself as close as he did, or closer. She was dead now, and old Radcliffe lived in the Torr with his only son, and a man and maid servant.

Well, in those days there came to stay at Dyke Manor a clergyman, named Elliot, with his daughter Selina. Squire Todhetley was a youngish man then, and he and his mother lived at the Manor together. Mr. Elliot was out of health. He had been overworked for the past twenty years in the poor London parish of which he was curate; and old Mrs. Todhetley asked them to come down for a bit of a change. Change indeed it brought to Mr. Elliot. He died there. His illness, whatever it was, took a sudden and rapid stride onwards, and before he had been at Dyke Manor three weeks he was dead.

Selina Elliot—we have heard the Squire say it many a time—was the sweetest-looking girl that ever the sun shone on. She was homeless now. The best prospect before her was that of going out as governess. The Elliots were of good descent, and Selina had been thoroughly well educated; but of money she had just none. Old Mrs. Todhetley bid her not be in any hurry; she was welcome to stay as long as she liked at Dyke Manor. So Selina stayed. It was summer weather then, and she was out and about in the open air all day long: a slight girl, in deep mourning, with a shrinking air that was natural to her.

One afternoon she came in, her bright face all aglow, and her shy eyes eager. Soft brown eyes they were, that had always a sadness in them. I—a little shaver—can remember that, when I knew her in later years. As she sat down on the stool at Mrs. Todhetley’s feet, she took off her black straw hat, and began to play nervously with its crape ends.

“My dear, you seem to be in a heat,” said Mrs. Todhetley; a stout old lady, who sat all day long in her easy-chair.

“Yes, I ran home fast,” said Selina.

“Home from whence? Where have you been?”

“I was—near the Torr,” replied Selina, with hesitation.

“Near the Torr, child! That’s a long way for you to go strolling alone.”

“The wild roses in the hedges there are so lovely,” pleaded Selina. “That’s why I took to go there at first.”

“Took to go there!” repeated the old lady, thinking it an odd phrase. “Do you see anything of the Torr people? I hope you’ve not been making intimate with young Stephen Radcliffe,” she added, a thought darting into her mind.

“Stephen? that’s the son. No, I never saw him. I think he is away from home.”

“That’s well. He is by all accounts but a churlish lout of a fellow.”

Selina Elliot bent her timid face over the hat, smoothing its ribbons with her restless fingers. She was evidently ill at ease. Glancing up presently, she saw the old lady was shutting her eyes for a doze: and that hastened her communication.

“I—I want to tell you something, please, ma’am. But—I don’t like to begin.” And, with that, Selina burst into unexpected tears, and the alarmed old lady looked up.

“Why, what ails you, child? Are you hurt? Has a wasp been at you?”

“Oh no,” said Selina, brushing the tears away with fingers that trembled all over. “I—if you please—I think I am going to live at the Torr.”

The old lady wondered whether Selina was dreaming. “At the Torr!” said she. “There are no children at the Torr. They don’t want a governess at the Torr.”

“I am going there to be with Mr. Radcliffe,” spoke Selina, in her throat, as if she meant to choke.

“To be with old Radcliffe! Why, the child’s gone cranky! Paul Radcliffe don’t need a governess.”

“He wants to marry me.”

“Mercy upon us!” cried the old lady, lifting both hands in her amazement. And Selina burst into tears again.

Yes, it was true. Paul Radcliffe, who was fifty years of age, if a day, and had a son over twenty, had been proposing marriage to that bright young girl! They had met in the fields often, it turned out, and Mr. Radcliffe had been making his hay while the sun shone. Every one went on at her.

“It would be better to go into a prison than into that gloomy Sandstone Torr—a young girl like you, Selina,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “It would be sheer madness.”

“Why, you’d never go and sacrifice yourself to that old man!” cried the Squire, who was just as outspoken and impulsive and good-hearted then as in these latter years. “He ought to be ashamed of himself. It would be like June and December.”

But all they said was of no use in the end. It was not that Selina, poor girl, was in love with Mr. Radcliffe—one could as well have fancied her in love with the grizzly old bear, just then exhibiting himself at Church Dykely in a travelling caravan. But it was her position. Without money, without a home, without a resource of any kind for the future, save that of teaching for her bread, the prospect of becoming mistress of Sandstone Torr was something fascinating.

“I do so dislike the thought of spending my whole life in teaching!” she pleaded in apology, the bitter tears streaming down her face. “You cannot tell what it is to feel dependent.”

“I’d rather sweep chimneys than marry Paul Radcliffe if I were a pretty young girl like you,” stormed the old lady.

“Since papa died you don’t know what the feeling has been,” sobbed Selina. “Many a night have I lain awake with the misery of knowing that I had no claim to a place in the wide world.”

“I am sure you are welcome to stay here,” said the Squire.

“Yes; as long as I am here myself,” added his mother. “After that—well, I suppose it wouldn’t be proper for you to stay.”

“You are all kindness; I shall never meet with such friends again; and I know that I am welcome to stay as long as I like,” she answered in the saddest of tones. “But the time of my departure must come sometime; and though the world lies before me, there is no refuge for me in it. It is very good of Mr. Radcliffe to offer to make me his wife and to give me a home at the Torr.”

“Oh, is it, though!” retorted the Squire. “Trust him for knowing on which side his bread’s buttered.”

“He is of good descent; he has a large income–”

“Six hundred a-year,” interrupted the Squire, slightingly.

“Yes, I am aware that it cannot appear much to you,” she meekly said; “but to me it seems unbounded. And that is apart from the house and land.”

“The house and land must both go to Stephen.”

“Mr. Radcliffe told me that.”

“As to the land, it’s only a few acres; nothing to speak of,” went on the Squire. “I’d as soon boast of my gooseberry bushes. And he can leave all his money to Stephen if he likes. In my opinion, the chances are that he will.”

“He says he shall always behave fairly by me,” spoke poor Selina.

“Why, you’d have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!” put in the old lady. “And I don’t like him—that Stephen Radcliffe. He’s no better than he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf almost to death.”

Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but tractable as you please. Only—she had no homestead on the face of the earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth, it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable descent—and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and, above all, he had a fairly good income.

It was rather curious that the dread of this girl’s life, the one dread above all other dreads, was that of poverty. In the earlier days of her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the parson’s pay was just seventy pounds a-year, they had had such a terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the child’s mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and weaker, and perished slowly away for the want of those comforts that money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot’s stipend was increased later: but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her; and her choice was made.

Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, so to say, in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than old enough to be Selina’s father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs. Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her standing in the county.

Sandstone Torr, dull and gloomy, and buried amidst its trees, was enough to put a lively man in mind of a prison. You entered it by a sort of closed-in porch, the outer door of which was always chained back in the daytime. The inner door opened into a long, narrow passage, and that again to a circular stone hall with a heavy ceiling, just like a large dark watch-box. Four or five doors led off from it to different passages and rooms. This same kind of round place was on all the landings, shut in just as the hall was, and with no light, except what might be afforded from the doors of the passages or rooms leading to it. It was the foundation of the tower, and the house was built round it. All the walls were of immense thickness: the rooms were low, and had beams running across most of them. But the rooms were many in number, and the place altogether had a massive, grand air, telling of its past importance. It had one senseless point in it—there was no entrance to the tower. The tower had neither staircase nor door of access. People said what a grand view might be obtained if you could only get to the top of it, or even get up to look through the small slits of windows in its walls. But the builder had forgotten the staircase, and there it ended.

Mr. Radcliffe took his wife straight home from the church-door. Selina had never before been inside the Torr, and the gloominess of its aspect struck upon her unpleasantly. Leading her down the long passage into the circular hall, he opened one of its doors, and she found herself in a sitting-room. The furniture was good but heavy; the Turkey carpet was nearly colourless with age, but soft to the feet; the window looked out only upon trees. A man-servant, who had admitted them, followed them in, asking his master if he had any orders.

“Send Holt here,” said Mr. Radcliffe. “This is the parlour, Selina.”

A thin, respectable woman of middle age made her appearance. She looked with curiosity at the young lady her master had brought in: at her wedding-dress of grey silk, at the pretty face blushing under the white straw bonnet.

“Mrs. Radcliffe, Holt. Show your mistress her rooms.”

The woman curtsied, and led the way through another passage to the stairs; and into a bedroom and sitting-room above, that opened into one another.

“I’ve aired ’em well, ma’am,” were the first words she said. “They’ve never been used since the late mistress’s time, for master has slept in a little chamber near Master Stephen’s. But he’s coming back here now.”

“Is this the drawing-room?” asked Selina, observing that the furniture, though faded, was prettier and lighter than that in the room downstairs.

“Dear no, ma’am! The drawing-room is below and on t’other side of the house entirely. It’s never gone into from one month’s end to another. Master and Mr. Stephen uses nothing but the parlour. We call this the Pine Room.”

“The Pine Room!” echoed Selina. “Why?”

“Because it looks out on them pines, I suppose,” replied Holt.

Selina looked from the window, and saw a row of dark pines waving before the higher trees behind them. The view beyond was completely shut in by these trees; they were very close to the house: it almost seemed as though a long arm might have touched them from where she stood. Anything more dull than this aspect could not well be found. Selina leaned from the window to look below: and saw a gravel-path with some grass on either side it, but no flowers.