“They’re all out,” he said; “sister, Sallie, and boy; but these were in the oven, so we won’t wait. I hope you haven’t been very much bored.”
Lawford dropped his hands from his face and smiled. “I have been looking at the water,” he said.
“My sister’s favorite occupation; she sits for hours and hours, with not even a book for an apology, staring down into the black old roaring pot. It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you’d be surprised how quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it’s even less distracting than sheer silence. You don’t know, after all, what on earth sheer silence means—even at Widderstone. But one can just realize a water-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it’s not articulate.” He handed Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and self-consciousness, lifting his eyebrows slightly as he turned.
Lawford found himself listening out of a peculiar stillness of mind to the voice of this suave and rather inscrutable acquaintance. “The curious thing is, do you know,” he began rather nervously, “that though I must have passed your gate at least twice in the last few months, I have never noticed it before, never even caught the sound of the water.”
“No, that’s the best of it; nobody ever does. We are just buried alive. We have lived here for years, and scarcely know a soul—not even our own, perhaps. Why on earth should one? Acquaintances, after all, are little else than a bad habit.”
“But then, what about me?” said Lawford.
“But that’s just it,” said Herbert. “I said acquaintances; that’s just exactly what I’m going to prove—what very old friends we are. You’ve no idea! It really is rather queer.” He took up his cup and sauntered over to the window.
Lawford eyed him vacantly for a moment, and, following rather his own curious thoughts than seeking any light on this somewhat vague explanation, again broke the silence. “It’s odd, I suppose, but this house affects me much in the same way as Widderstone does. I’m not particularly fanciful—at least, I used not to be. But sitting here I seem, I hope it isn’t a very frantic remark, it seems as though, if only my ears would let me, I should hear—well, voices. It’s just what you said about the silence. I suppose it’s the age of the place; it is very old?”
“Pretty old, I suppose; it’s worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery enough in all conscience; and the damp doesn’t exactly foster it. It’s a queer old shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old local stuff I have. And of course there’s a ghost.”
“A ghost?” echoed Lawford, looking up.
XII
“What’s in a name?” laughed Herbert. “But it really is a queer show-up of human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that’s all.” His back was turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping his tea between his sentences. “He comes in—oh, it’s a positive fact, for I’ve seen him myself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him as one would a tramp in one’s orchard.” He cast a candid glance over his shoulder. “First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes cautiously on—a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with big hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature, he begins his precious search—shelves, drawers that are not here, cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no end, and quite methodically too, until he reaches the window. Then he stops, looks back, narrows his foxy lids, listens—quite perceptibly, you know, a kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to open this corner bookcase here, as if it were a door and goes out along what I suppose might at some time have been an outside gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy, the house extended once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quite deliberately, treading the air as lightly as Botticelli’s angels, until, however far you lean out of the window, you can’t follow him any further. And then—and this is the bit that takes one’s fancy—when you have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been doing when the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat, with bolting eyes awaiting developments, just according to your school of thought, or of nerves, the creature comes back—comes back; and with what looks uncommonly like a lighted candle in his hand. That really is a thrill, I assure you.”
“But you’ve seen this—you’ve really seen this yourself?”
“Oh yes, twice,” replied Herbert cheerfully. “And my sister, quite by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window here, and go shuffling along, midair, across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes’ concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back again—the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.”
“And then?”
“Ah, then,” said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanning the book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned with lifted teapot, and refilled his visitor’s cup; “then, wherever you are—I mean,” he added, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, “wherever the chance inmate of the room happens to be, he
