The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 1 of 3. Dowling Richard
the moment the door was shut, he took up the claret-jug, poured the contents over his right hand to cleanse it from the contamination of that touch, and then walked hastily up and down the room, waving his hand through the air until it dried.
"A thousand isn't much to secure him. But will it secure him? That is the question. Yes, I think it will. I think the coast is now clear. With prudence and patience I can do all now," he whispered to himself, with his left hand on his forehead. "Wat Grey, you've had a close shave. Nothing could have been closer. Had you pulled that trigger all would have been lost. Now you have a clear stage, and must let things take their course. The old man can't live for ever; and until he dies you must keep quiet and repress all indication of the direction in which your hopes lie. Maud does not dream of this."
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
James, the servant, entered, holding a slip of paper in his hand.
"What is it, James?" asked the master.
"That man that's gone out, sir, said he forgot to give his address, and as you might want it he asked me to take it up to you."
Mr. Grey was standing by the low gasalier as the servant handed him the piece of paper.
Mr. Grey took the address in his right hand; as he did so the purblind footman sprang back a pace.
"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Grey with an amused smile.
"Ex – excuse – me – sir," the man faltered, "but your hand – "
"Well, what about it?"
"It's all over blood!"
"What! What do you say?" shouted the master, in a tone of dismay. "Do you want a thousand too?"
"Indeed, no, sir; and I beg pardon; but do look at your hand."
Mr. Grey held up his hand, examined it, and then burst out into a loud shout of laughter. When he could speak he cried:
"You charming idiot! You will kill me with your droll ways. That dirty wretch who went out touched my hand. I had no water near me, so I poured some claret over my hand and forgot to wipe it."
He approached James and held out his hand, saying, "Look." Then added, in a tone of solemn amusement: "James, there was once a man who died of laughing at seeing an ass eat. I do think I shall die of laughing at hearing a donkey talk. Bring me the coffee. Go."
And as the servant was leaving the room, Mr. Grey broke out into a laugh of quiet self-congratulation on the fact of his possessing such a wonderful source of amusement in his servant, James.
CHAPTER III
THE MANOR HOUSE
The house occupied by Mr. Grey was very old. It had been the Manor House, and was still called the Manor House, or the Manor, although it had long ago ceased to be the property of the original owner's descendants. For years before Mr. Grey bought it the house had been uninhabited.
It bore a bad name – why, no one could tell. The fortunes of the lords of the manor had gradually mouldered away, and the old house had been allowed to fall into decay and dilapidation.
During the time it was shut up people spoke of it as a kind of phantom house; some regarded it as a myth, and others treated it with a superstitious respect as a thing which might exercise an evil influence over those who fell under the shadow of its displeasure.
Sunken deeply from the road, surrounded by a wild tangle of rugged oaks, its grounds girt with walls ten feet high, there were few points open to the public from which a glimpse of it could be caught, and no spot from which a full view could be obtained.
Boys had scaled the walls and penetrated into the tangled mazes of the neglected undergrowth. But the briars and brambles and bushes were too rough even for boys, and they came away soon.
No boy of Daneford – and there were high-hearted, brave, adventurous boys there – could say he had penetrated as far as the house. Although those who had once been boys of Daneford had faced the enemies of their country in every clime, by day and by night, on land and sea, and although the boys of that city, at the time spoken of, were made of as stout stuff and inspired by as gallant hearts as the boys who had fought and fallen in Spain, India, America, Belgium, Egypt, where you will, not one of all of them would dare, alone and by night, to break through that jungle, and penetrate to that house.
The soil of the Manor Park was low and full of rich juices, and fertile with long rest, so the vegetation beneath the gnarled boughs of the interlacing oaks could hold the moisture well when the sun was hot, and from that ground to the sun they never saw clearly rose huge green and red and yellow slimy weeds among the brambles and the shrubs.
From the nests of many generations of birds which had built in those distorted trees seeds of all things that grow on this land had fallen, and taken root and prospered in the rich ground of the sultry glens and caverns formed by the scraggy arms and foliage of the oaks; year after year this disorderly growth had burst up out of the fat, greasy soil in unwholesome profusion, unclean luxury, and had rotted down again into the over-lush earth. So that the spring-root and ground-fruit, and all manner of green things, jostled and crushed one another, and the weaker were strangled and eaten up by the stronger.
Thousands of birds yearly built in the trees of the Manor Park; for here came no guns to kill or scare, no boys to pilfer the eggs or young ones; and this republic of birds overhead was a source of great profit to the soil below.
Often birds fell from the trees dead of cold in the winter nights, and when the sun shone out the industrious mole came and buried them decently, and their bones were of service to the soil.
The mole, too, was useful in another way, for he turned up the clay now and then, here and there, and opened avenues into the earth for water burdened with fructifying juices.
And here, too, was that ever-active sexton of the vegetable world, the fungus. In the vast winds of the winters, when the oaks gored one another, and tore off the fangs of their antlers, great boughs fell with shrieks to the earth. Later the sexton fungus crept over to the shattered limbs and lodged on them, and ate them up silently and slowly, and then the fungus itself melted into the earth.
Here were worms of enormous growth, and frogs and toads, and snails and lizards, and all other kinds of slimy insects and reptiles, and the boys said snakes, but snakes were put forward in excuse of fear on the part of the boys. There were no hares, no rabbits, no deer, no cows, no sheep, no goats, nor any of the gentle creatures that put grass and green things to uses profitable to man.
Here in those vaults of sickly twilight vegetable nature held high saturnalia, undisturbed save by the seasons and worms and snails and caterpillars and slugs. This was not a prosperous field, a prudent grove, a stately wood, a discreet garden; it was a robber's cave of the green world, in which the plunder of all the fields lay heaped without design, for no good or useful end.
At night the darkness was thick and hot in these blind alleys and inexplorable aisles. When the foot was put down something slipped beneath it, a greasy branch, a viscous fruit, a reptile, or the fat stalk of some large-leafed ground-plant.
The trunks of the trees and the branches of the shrubs were damp with gelatinous dews. If there was a moon, something might always be seen sliding silently through the grass or leaves and pulpy roots.
Strange and depressing odours of decay came stealthily upon the sense now and then, and filled the mind with hints of unutterable fears. If in the branches above a sleeping bird chirped or fluttered, it seemed as though the last bird left was stealing away from the fearful place. The fat reptiles that glided and slipped in the ghostly moonlight were fleeing, and leaving you alone to behold some spectacle, encounter some fate, too repulsive for the contemplation of reason.
Within this belt of rank vegetation and oaks the Manor House stood. The house had a plain stone front with small narrow windows, three on each side of the main door. At the rear was a large paved courtyard, with a pump and horse-trough in the middle.
The chief building consisted of a ground-floor, on which were the reception-rooms; a first floor of bedrooms; and a second floor, the windows of which were dormar,