For a moment he was appalled by the spectacle. But it was only for a moment! Recalling his manhood and her weakness, he stopped, and bracing his foot against a stone, with a graceful flourish of his la.s.so around his head, threw it in the air. It uncoiled slowly, sped forward with unerring precision, and missed! With the single cry of "Saved!" the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms! He held her closely until the color came back to her pale face. Then he quietly disentangled the la.s.so from his legs.
"Where am I?" she said faintly.
"In the same place," he replied, slowly but firmly. "But," he added, "you have changed!"
She had, indeed, even to her dress. It was now of a vivid brick red, and so much longer in the skirt that it seemed to make her taller. Only her hat remained the same.
"Yes," she said, in a low, reflective voice and a disregard of her previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes with an eloquent lucidity, "I have changed, Paul! I feel myself changing at those words you uttered to Jane. There are moments in a woman"s life that man knows nothing of; moments bitter and cruel, sweet and merciful, that change her whole being; moments in which the simple girl becomes a worldly woman; moments in which the slow procession of her years is never noted--except by another woman! Moments that change her outlook on the world and her relations to it--and her husband"s relations! Moments when the maid becomes a wife, the wife a widow, the widow a re-married woman, by a simple, swift illumination of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a single word--a look--an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost--inductions lead nowhere.
Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable. I mean," she corrected herself hurriedly--"You know what I mean! If you have not felt it you have read it!"
"I have," he said thoughtfully. "We have both read it in the same novel.
She is a fine writer."
"Ye-e-s." She hesitated with that slight resentment of praise of another woman so delightful in her s.e.x. "But you have forgotten the Moo Cow!"
and she pointed to where the distracted animal was careering across the lawn towards the garden.
"You are right," he said, "the incident is not yet closed. Let us pursue it."
They both pursued it. Discarding the useless la.s.so, he had recourse to a few well-aimed epithets. The infuriated animal swerved and made directly towards a small fountain in the centre of the garden. In attempting to clear it, it fell directly into the deep cup-like basin and remained helplessly fixed, with its fore-legs projecting uneasily beyond the rim.
"Let us leave it there," she said, "and forget it--and all that has gone before. Believe me," she added, with a faint sigh, "it is best. Our paths diverge from this moment. I go to the summer-house, and you go to the Hall, where my father is expecting you." He would have detained her a moment longer, but she glided away and was gone.
Left to himself again, that slight sense of bewilderment which had clouded his mind for the last hour began to clear away; his singular encounter with the girls strangely enough affected him less strongly than his brief and unsatisfactory interview with his uncle. For, after all, he was his host, and upon him depended his stay at Hawthorn Hall.
The mysterious and slighting allusions of his cousins to the old man"s eccentricities also piqued his curiosity. Why had they sneered at his description of the contents of the package he carried--and what did it really contain? He did not reflect that it was none of his business,--people in his situation seldom do,--and he eagerly hurried towards the Hall. But he found in his preoccupation he had taken the wrong turning in the path, and that he was now close to the wall which bounded and overlooked the highway. Here a singular spectacle presented itself. A cyclist covered with dust was seated in the middle of the road, trying to restore circulation to his bruised and injured leg by chafing it with his hands, while beside him lay his damaged bicycle. He had evidently met with an accident. In an instant Paul had climbed the wall and was at his side.
"Can I offer you any a.s.sistance?" he asked eagerly.
"Thanks--no! I"ve come a beastly cropper over something or other on this road, and I"m only bruised, though the machine has suffered worse,"
replied the stranger, in a fresh, cheery voice. He was a good-looking fellow of about Paul"s own age, and the young American"s heart went out towards him.
"How did it happen?" asked Paul.
"That"s what puzzles me," said the stranger. "I was getting out of the way of a queer old chap in the road, and I ran over something that seemed only an old scroll of paper; but the shock was so great that I was thrown, and I fancy I was for a few moments unconscious. Yet I cannot see any other obstruction in the road, and there"s only that bit of paper." He pointed to the paper,--a half-crushed roll of ordinary foolscap, showing the mark of the bicycle upon it.
A strange idea came into Paul"s mind. He picked up the paper and examined it closely. Besides the mark already indicated, it showed two sharp creases about nine inches long, and another exactly at the point of the impact of the bicycle. Taking a folded two-foot rule from his pocket, he carefully measured these parallel creases and made an exhaustive geometrical calculation with his pencil on the paper. The stranger watched him with awed and admiring interest. Rising, he again carefully examined the road, and was finally rewarded by the discovery of a sharp indentation in the dust, which, on measurement and comparison with the creases in the paper and the calculations he had just made, proved to be identical.
"There was a solid body in that paper," said Paul quietly; "a parallelogram exactly nine inches long and three wide."
"I say! you"re wonderfully clever, don"t you know," said the stranger, with unaffected wonder. "I see it all--a brick."
Paul smiled gently and shook his head. "That is the hasty inference of an inexperienced observer. You will observe at the point of impact of your wheel the parallel crease is CURVED, as from the yielding of the resisting substances, and not BROKEN, as it would be by the crumbling of a brick."
"I say, you"re awfully detective, don"t you know! just like that fellow--what"s his name?" said the stranger admiringly.
The words recalled Paul to himself. Why was he acting like a detective?
and what was he seeking to discover? Nevertheless, he felt impelled to continue. "And that queer old chap whom you met--why didn"t he help you?"
"Because I pa.s.sed him before I ran into the--the parallelogram, and I suppose he didn"t know what happened behind him?"
"Did he have anything in his hand?"
"Can"t say."
"And you say you were unconscious afterwards?"
"Yes!"
"Long enough for the culprit to remove the princ.i.p.al evidence of his crime?"
"Come! I say, really you are--you know you are!"
"Have you any secret enemy?"
"No."
"And you don"t know Mr. Bunker, the man who owns this vast estate?"
"Not at all. I"m from Upper Tooting."
"Good afternoon," said Paul abruptly, and turned away.
It struck him afterwards that his action might have seemed uncivil, and even inhuman, to the bruised cyclist, who could hardly walk. But it was getting late, and he was still far from the Hall, which, oddly enough, seemed to be no longer visible from the road. He wandered on for some time, half convinced that he had pa.s.sed the lodge gates, yet hoping to find some other entrance to the domain. Dusk was falling; the rounded outlines of the park trees beyond the wall were solid ma.s.ses of shadow.
The full moon, presently rising, restored them again to symmetry, and at last he, to his relief, came upon the ma.s.sive gateway. Two lions ramped in stone on the side pillars. He thought it strange that he had not noticed the gateway on his previous entrance, but he remembered that he was fully preoccupied with the advancing figure of his uncle. In a few minutes the Hall itself appeared, and here again he was surprised that he had overlooked before its n.o.ble proportions and picturesque outline.
Its broad terraces, dazzlingly white in the moonlight; its long line of mullioned windows, suffused with a warm red glow from within, made it look like part of a wintry landscape--and suggested a Christmas card.
The venerable ivy that hid the ravages time had made in its walls looked like black carving. His heart swelled with strange emotions as he gazed at his ancestral hall. How many of his blood had lived and died there; how many had gone forth from that great porch to distant lands! He tried to think of his father--a little child--peeping between the bal.u.s.trades of that terrace. He tried to think of it, and perhaps would have succeeded had it not occurred to him that it was a known fact that his uncle had bought the estate and house of an impoverished n.o.bleman only the year before. Yet--he could not tell why--he seemed to feel higher and n.o.bler for that trial.
The terrace was deserted, and so quiet that as he ascended to it his footsteps seemed to echo from the walls. When he reached the portals, the great oaken door swung noiselessly on its hinges--opened by some unseen but waiting servitor--and admitted him to a lofty hall, dark with hangings and family portraits, but warmed by a red carpet the whole length of its stone floor. For a moment he waited for the servant to show him to the drawing-room or his uncle"s study. But no one appeared.
Believing this to be a part of the characteristic simplicity of the Quaker household, he boldly entered the first door, and found himself in a brilliantly lit and perfectly empty drawing-room. The same experience met him with the other rooms on that floor--the dining-room displaying an already set, exquisitely furnished and decorated table, with chairs for twenty guests! He mechanically ascended the wide oaken staircase that led to the corridor of bedrooms above a central salon. Here he found only the same solitude. Bedroom doors yielded to his touch, only to show the same brilliantly lit vacancy. He presently came upon one room which seemed to give unmistakable signs of HIS OWN occupancy.
Surely there stood his own dressing-case on the table! and his own evening clothes carefully laid out on another, as if fresh from a valet"s hands. He stepped hastily into the corridor--there was no one there; he rang the bell--there was no response! But he noticed that there was a jug of hot water in his basin, and he began dressing mechanically.
There was little doubt that he was in a haunted house, but this did not particularly disturb him. Indeed, he found himself wondering if it could be logically called a haunted house--unless he himself was haunting it, for there seemed to be no other there. Perhaps the apparitions would come later, when he was dressed. Clearly it was not his uncle"s house--and yet, as he had never been inside his uncle"s house, he reflected that he ought not to be positive.
He finished dressing and sat down in an armchair with a kind of thoughtful expectancy. But presently his curiosity became impatient of the silence and mystery, and he ventured once more to explore the house.
Opening his bedroom door, he found himself again upon the deserted corridor, but this time he could distinctly hear a buzz of voices from the drawing-room below. a.s.sured that he was near a solution of the mystery, he rapidly descended the broad staircase and made his way to the open door of the drawing-room. But although the sound of voices increased as he advanced, when he entered the room, to his utter astonishment, it was as empty as before.
Yet, in spite of his bewilderment and confusion, he was able to follow one of the voices, which, in its peculiar distinctness and half-perfunctory tone, he concluded must belong to the host of the invisible a.s.sembly.
"Ah," said the voice, greeting some unseen visitor, "so glad you have come. Afraid your engagements just now would keep you away." Then the voice dropped to a lower and more confidential tone. "You must take down Lady Dartman, but you will have Miss Morecamp--a clever girl--on the other side of you. Ah, Sir George! So good of you to come. All well at the Priory? So glad to hear it." (Lower and more confidentially.) "You know Mrs. Monkston. You"ll sit by her. A little cut up by her husband losing his seat. Try to amuse her."
Emboldened by desperation, Paul turned in the direction of the voice.
"I am Paul Bunker," he said hesitatingly. "I"m afraid you"ll think me intrusive, but I was looking for my uncle, and"--
"Intrusive, my dear boy! The son of my near neighbor in the country intrusive? Really, now, I like that! Grace!" (the voice turned in another direction) "here is the American nephew of our neighbor Bunker at Widdlestone, who thinks he is "a stranger.""
"We all knew of your expected arrival at Widdlestone--it was so good of you to waive ceremony and join us," said a well-bred feminine voice, which Paul at once a.s.sumed to belong to the hostess. "But I must find some one for your dinner partner. Mary" (here her voice was likewise turned away), "this is Mr. Bunker, the nephew of an old friend and neighbor in Upshire;" (the voice again turned to him), "you will take Miss Morecamp in. My dear" (once again averted), "I must find some one else to console poor dear Lord Billingtree with." Here the hostess"s voice was drowned by fresh arrivals.
Bewildered and confused as he was, standing in this empty desert of a drawing-room, yet encompa.s.sed on every side by human voices, so marvelous was the power of suggestion, he seemed to almost feel the impact of the invisible crowd. He was trying desperately to realize his situation when a singularly fascinating voice at his elbow unexpectedly a.s.sisted him. It was evidently his dinner partner.
"I suppose you must be tired after your journey. When did you arrive?"