Mr. Marx's Secret Part 10

"Well, it sounded to me very much like the moan of a man in pain," I explained, looking half fearfully around. "Of course, it might have been a hare, but it was wonderfully like a human voice. Listen! Can't you hear something now?" I cried, laying my hand upon his arm.

We stood close together in silence, listening intently. A faint wind had sprung up, and was sighing mournfully through the trees, which were soaked and weighed down by the heavy rain. Drip, drip, drip. At every sigh of the breeze a little shower of rain-drops fell pattering on to the soddened leaves and the melancholy music was resumed.

It was altogether very depressing and I was palpably s.h.i.+vering.

"I can hear nothing," he said, with chattering teeth. "It must have been your fancy, or a hare squealing, perhaps."

"I suppose so," I admitted, glad enough to be forced into this conclusion.

"I wouldn't say anything about it at the lodge," he remarked, preparing to depart. "Anderson is as nervous as a cat already."

"All right, I won't. Good night."

"You're not frightened, are you?" he asked. "If you like, I'll walk down to the lodge with you."

"Not in the least, thanks," I answered, a little indignantly. "I thought that noise was queer, that's all. Good night."

I walked swiftly away, listening all the time, but hearing no unusual sound. In a few minutes I reached the gates and found Anderson waiting about outside. He let me through at once.

"May I go in here for a minute?" I asked, pointing to the room in which I had been kept waiting on my way up to the Castle. "I have a message to give you from Mr. Ravenor."

"Certainly, sir," he answered, opening the door. I stepped inside, half expecting to see the man whom Mr. Ravenor had refused to receive; but it was quite empty.

"So Mr. Richards has decided not to wait, after all?" I remarked, looking round. "He was wise. I'm sure Mr. Ravenor wouldn't have seen him."

"Yes, sir," the man answered; "he slipped out without leaving any message or anything, while I had gone across the way for some coal. I was a bit taken aback when I returned and found the place empty, for he'd been swearing ever so a minute or two before that he'd see Mr. Ravenor, or stop here for ever."

"He can't have gone on up to the Castle, can he?" I asked, looking around.

The man shook his head confidently.

"Impossible, sir! The gates were locked and the keys in my pocket, and there are no windows to this room, you see, on the Castle side."

"But there is a door," I said, pointing to the upper end of the apartment.

"Go and look at it, sir," Anderson answered, smiling.

I did so and examined it closely. There were no bolts, but it was fastened with a particularly strong patent lock.

"Who keeps the key?" I inquired.

"Mr. Ravenor, sir. I haven't got one at all. You were saying something about a message?"

"Yes. Mr. Ravenor was annoyed with you for letting Lady Silchester through, but he has decided to overlook it this time. You need not go up to the Castle for your money."

The man was evidently pleased.

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, sir," he said warmly. "That's good news and no mistake. It isn't a place that one would care to lose."

"Well, good night, Anderson. Oh, I say," I added, turning back on a sudden impulse, "how long is it since Mr. Marx was here?"

Anderson looked puzzled.

"Mr. Marx, sir! Why, I haven't seen him all day!"

"What!" I exclaimed.

"I haven't seen him all day. He hasn't been here," the man repeated.

I stood still, breathless, full of swiftly rising but vague suspicions.

"Not seen him to-day! Why, I met him in the avenue just now," I declared.

"I daresay, sir," the man remarked quietly. "He often walks down this way. In fact, he does most evenings before dinner. Queer sort he is, and no mistake."

The man's words changed the current of my thoughts, and my half-conceived suspicions faded away almost before they had gathered shape. I made some trifling remark and started homewards.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CLOUD BETWEEN US.

It was late when I reached home and, from the darkness in all the windows, I concluded that my mother and the one country domestic who comprised our little household had already retired. My hand was raised to rap at the closed door, when it occurred to me that I might just as well effect an entrance without disturbing anyone. Our sitting-room window opened on to the front garden in which I stood and was seldom fastened, so I stole softly over the sodden gra.s.s and pressed the sash upwards. It yielded easily to my touch and, gently raising myself on to the low stone window-sill, I vaulted into the room.

At first I thought it was, as I had expected to find it, empty. But it was not so. Through the open window by which I had just entered the moonlight was streaming in, casting long, fantastic rays upon the well-worn carpet and across the quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned furniture and on the white tablecloth, on which my homely evening meal had been left prepared. But my eyes never rested for a moment on any of these familiar objects, scarcely even noticed them, for another and a stranger sight held me spellbound. At the farther end of the room, where the shadows hung darkest and the moonbeams but feebly penetrated, was the kneeling figure of a woman.

Her perfectly black dress threw the ghastly hue of her strained, wild face into startling prominence, and her slender arms were stretched pa.s.sionately upwards in a gesture full of intense dramatic pathos. Her eyes were fixed upon a small ebony crucifix which hung against the wall, and the words were bursting from her white, trembling lips, but whether of prayer or confession, I could not, or, rather, would not, hear, for I closed my eyes and the sound of her voice reached me only in an indistinct moan. It was a sight which has lived in my memory and will never fade.

Since that awful night in Rothland Wood, my mother's behaviour towards me had been a source of constant and painful wonder. She had become an enigma, and an enigma which I somehow felt that it would be well for me not to attempt to solve.

But even at the times when my loveless surroundings and her coldness had plunged me into the lowest depths of depression, it had never been an altogether hopeless state, for somehow I had always felt that her coldness was not the coldness of indifference, but rather an effort of will, and that a time would come when she would cast it off and be to me again the mother of my earlier recollections. But the change was long in coming.

She was a devout Roman Catholic--a religion in which I had not been brought up--and in all weathers and at all times of the year, she paid long and frequent visits to the monastery chapel over the hills. But to see her as she was now was a revelation to me. I had seen her pray before, but never like this. She had always seemed to me more of a martyr than a sinner and her prayers more the prayers of reverent devotion than of pa.s.sionate supplication. But her att.i.tude at this moment, her wild, haggard face, and imploring eyes, were full of revelation to me. Another possible explanation of her lonely, joyless life and deep religious devotion flashed in upon me. Might it not be the dreary expiation, the hard penance of her church meted out for sin?

Half fearing to disturb her, I remained for a brief while silent, but, as the minutes went on, the sight of her agony was too much for me and I cried out to her:

"Mother, I am here. I did not know that you were up! I came in through the window!"

At the first sound of my appealing tones her face changed, as though frozen suddenly from pa.s.sionate expressiveness to cold marble. Slowly she rose to her feet and confronted me.

"Mother, are you in trouble?" I said softly, moving nearer to her; "cannot I share your sorrow? Cannot I comfort you? Why am I shut out of your life so? Tell me this great trouble of yours and let me share it."

For many years I had longed to say these words to her, but the cold impressiveness of her manner had checked them often upon my lips and thrust them back to my aching heart. Now, when a great sorrow filled her face with a softer light and loosened for a moment its hard, rigid lines, I dared to yield to the impulse which I had so often felt--and, alas! in vain--in vain!

Keener agony, deeper disappointment, I have never felt. Coldness and indifference had been hard to bear, but what came now was worse. She shrank back from me--shrank back, with her hands outstretched towards me and her head averted.