They went upstairs earlier than usual, chiefly because they felt more comfortable when the windows below were fastened. William, coming last with the candle, took the added precaution of turning the key in the door at the foot of the stairs; and Griselda, though she made no remark, heard the click of the lock with a secret throb of relief. Upstairs they began by a little pretence of undressing—and then Griselda, with her hair down her back, sat close to William, with his coat off, and they held hands and talked in undertones in the intervals of listening for a footstep. The footstep never came; but it was not until close upon midnight that—knowing the early habits of the former tenants of the farm—they gave up all hope of hearing it and began to discuss their plans for the following day, on the presumption that they must leave the cottage and remove their luggage alone. Such unaided removal meant an earlier uprising than they had counted on—since if Madame did not prepare their breakfast they needs must prepare it themselves; and this misfortune realized, they decided to sit up no longer. They went to bed, but left the candle burning—as they said to each other, lest one of the Peys family should knock them up during the night. Neither slept much, partly from nervous uneasiness and partly from fear of oversleeping; but if they had guessed what a day would bring forth, neither would have slept at all.
VI
They had left their bedroom windows uncurtained, that the morning light might waken them, and they were hardly later than the August sun in opening their eyes on the world. Though they had slept but little, and by snatches, they turned out of bed without regret; the flood of sunlight brought warmth into their hearts and the shadowy horror of the night before was lifted with the mists of the valley; but all the same the place, once only faintly mysterious, was now actively malicious and distasteful, was tainted with a lurking dread. Thus to their pleasure at the thought of noise and London was added relief at the prospect of escape from a solitude grown fearful since yesterday. They dressed with haste and rising spirits; and it was with undisguised joy that they collected their few possessions and stuffed them into their holdalls.
William, whose toilet and preparations for the journey were completed in advance of his wife’s, descended first to the kitchen, where, in the continued and regretted absence of their housekeeper, he struggled valiantly with the making of breakfast while Griselda finished her packing. The meal so prepared fell short of complete success; coffee as brewed by William was not the same beverage as coffee prepared by Madame Peys, nor were its tepid attractions enhanced by the absence of their usual and plentiful ration of milk. Thanks to the defection of the Peys family, they were not only milkless but eggless; and such remains of bread and butter as they could find in the cupboard were the only accompaniment to William’s suggestion of coffee. In the circumstances there was but little temptation to risk the loss of the Brussels train by lingering over the table and less than five minutes sufficed for their simple meal. Having despatched it, they strapped their holdalls and stepped out briskly on their way to the station and home—the sun still low on the eastward ridge of the valley and the dew still heavy on the grass. They hardly turned to look back at the cottage, so glad were they to leave it behind them; and in the elation of their spirits they sped down the path with a quite unnecessary haste. They were escaping from nature and solitude, and their hearts sang cheerily of Bloomsbury.
When they rounded the bend in the path that brought them within sight of the farm their first thought was that the missing family had returned; for outside the gate were three horses, standing riderless and with heads near together. There was something reassuring in the sight of the beasts as they stood in the sunlight shifting and flicking their tails, something that gave the lie to the terrors of the night before; the presence of horses betokened the presence of men, and the presence of men dissipated the sense of mystery that had brooded over an empty house with a nameless grave in its garden. Griselda drew a comfortable breath of relief as she supposed they had time to call in and settle the last week’s bill with Madame Peys.
“I do wish,” she pondered regretfully, “that I could understand what she says. I must say I should like to know what the explanation is—about that grave … I suppose they’ve come back to fetch away the rest of the furniture, and things—those aren’t their horses, though!”
“No,” William assented, considering the sleek strong beasts, “they have only got carthorses … I wonder. …”
A man stepped suddenly out from behind the shifting horses—so suddenly that they both started. He had been standing by the gate with the bridles gathered in his hand, hidden by his charges from William and Griselda as they had been hidden from him. When, hearing their voices, he stepped into sight, he stood with his heels together, very erect and staring at them—a young man squarely and sturdily built, with under his helmet a reddish face and a budding black moustache. He was clad in a tight-fitting greyish uniform, and a sword hung by his side. He stared and the pair stared back at him—curiously but not quite so openly.
“It’s a soldier,” Griselda commented—adding, like William, “I wonder—” They both wondered so much that they hesitated and slackened their pace; the presence of a military man but complicated the problem of the farm. Coupled with the absence of the Peys family, it revived their suspicions of the night before, their suspicions of crime and
