Running Water Part 29

"Are you afraid we should be seen?" he asked.

"No, but afraid we may be interrupted," she replied, with a clear trill of laughter which showed to her lover that her fears had pa.s.sed.

"The whole village is asleep, Sylvia," he said in a whisper; and as he spoke a blind was lifted in an upper story of the house, a window was flung wide, and the light streamed out from it into the moonlit air and spread over their heads like a great, yellow fan. Walter Hine leaned his elbows on the sill and looked out.

Sylvia moved deeper into the shadow.

"He cannot see us," said Chayne, with a smile, and he set his arm about her waist; and so they stood very quietly.

The house was built a few yards back from the road, and on each side of it the high wall of the garden curved in toward it, making thus an open graveled s.p.a.ce in front of its windows. Sylvia and her lover stood at one of the corners where the wall curved in; the shadow reached out beyond their feet and lay upon the white road in a black triangle; they could hardly be seen from any window of the house, and certainly they could not be recognized. But on the other hand they could see. From behind Walter Hine the light streamed out clear. The ceiling of the room was visible and the shadow of the lamp upon it, and even the top part of the door in the far corner.

"We will wait until he turns back into the room," Sylvia whispered; and for a little while they stood and watched. Then she felt Chayne's arm tighten about her and hold her still.

"Do you see?" he cried, in a low, quick voice. "Sylvia, do you see?"

"What?"

"The door. Look! Behind him! The door!" And Sylvia, looking as he bade her, started, and barely stifled the cry which rose to her lips. For behind Walter Hine, the door in the far corner of the room was opening--very slowly, very stealthily, as though the hand which opened it feared to be detected. So noiselessly had the latch been loosed that Walter Hine did not so much as turn his head. Nor did he turn it now. He heard nothing. He leaned from the window with his elbows on the sill, and behind him the gap between the door and the wall grew wider and wider.

The door opened into the room and toward the window, so that the two people in the shadow below could see nothing of the intruder. But the secrecy of his coming had something sinister and most alarming. Sylvia joined her hands above her lover's arm, holding her breath.

"Shout to him!" she whispered. "Cry out that there's danger."

"Not yet!" said Chayne, with his eyes fixed upon the lighted room; and then, in spite of herself, a low and startled cry broke from Sylvia's lips. A great shadow had been suddenly flung upon the ceiling of the room, the shadow of a man, bloated and made monstrous by the light. The intruder had entered the room; and with so much stealth that his presence was only noticed by the two who watched in the road below. But even they could not see who the intruder was, they only saw the shadow on the ceiling.

Walter Hine, however, heard Sylvia's cry, faint though it was. He leaned forward from the window and peered down.

"Now!" said Sylvia. "Now!"

But Chayne did not answer. He was watching with an extraordinary suspense. He seemed not to hear. And on the ceiling the shadow moved, and changed its shape, now dwindling, now growing larger again, now disappearing altogether as though the intruder stooped below the level of the lamp; and once there was flung on the white plaster the huge image of an arm which had something in its hand. Was the arm poised above the lamp, on the point of smashing it with the thing it held? Chayne waited, with a cry upon his lips, expecting each moment that the room would be plunged in darkness. But the cry was not uttered, the arm was withdrawn.

It had not been raised to smash the lamp, the thing which the hand held was for some other purpose. And once more the shadow appeared moving and changing as the intruder crept nearer to the window. Sylvia stood motionless. She had thought to cry out, now she was fascinated. A spell of terror constrained her to silence. And then, suddenly, behind Walter Hine there stood out clearly in the light the head and shoulders of Garratt Skinner.

"My father," said Sylvia, in relief. Her clasp upon Chayne's arm relaxed; her terror pa.s.sed from her. In the revulsion of her feelings she laughed quietly at her past fear. Chayne looked quickly and curiously at her.

Then as quickly he looked again to the window. Both men in the room were now lit up by the yellow light; their att.i.tudes, their figures were very clear but small, like marionettes upon the stage of some tiny theater.

Chayne watched them with no less suspense now that he knew who the intruder was. Unlike Sylvia he had betrayed no surprise when he had seen Garratt Skinner's head and shoulders rise into view behind Walter Hine; and unlike Sylvia, he did not relax his vigilance. Suddenly Garratt Skinner stepped forward, very quickly, very silently. With one step he was close behind his friend; and then just as he was about to move again--it seemed to Sylvia that he was raising his arm, perhaps to touch his friend upon the shoulder--Chayne whistled--whistled sharply, shrilly and with a kind of urgency which Sylvia did not understand.

Walter Hine leaned forward out of the window. That was quite natural. But on the other hand Garratt Skinner did nothing of the kind. To Sylvia's surprise he stepped back, and almost out of sight. Very likely he thought that he was out of sight. But to the watchers in the road his head was just visible. He was peering over Walter Hine's shoulder.

Again Chayne whistled and, not content with whistling, he cried out in a feigned bucolic accent:

"I see you."

At once Garratt Skinner's head disappeared altogether.

Walter Hine peered down into the darkness whence the whistle came, curving his hands above his forehead to shut out the light behind him; and behind him once more the shadow appeared upon the ceiling and the wall. A third time Chayne whistled; and Walter Hine cried out:

"What is it?"

And behind him the shadow vanished from the ceiling and the door began to close, softly and stealthily, just as softly and stealthily as it had been opened.

Again, Hine cried out:

"Who's there? What is it?"

And Chayne laughed aloud derisively, as though he were some yokel practising a joke. Hine turned back into the room. The room was empty, but the door was unlatched. He disappeared from the window, and the watchers below saw the door slammed to, heard the sound of the slamming and then another sound, the sound of a key turning in the lock.

It seemed almost that Chayne had been listening for that sound. For he turned at once to Sylvia.

"We puzzled them fairly, didn't we?" he said, with a smile. But the smile somehow seemed hardly real, and his face was very white.

"It's the moonlight," he explained. "Come!"

They walked quietly through the silent village where the thick eaves of the cottages threw their black shadows on the white moonlit road, past the mill and the running water, to a gate which opened on the down.

They unlatched the gate noiselessly and climbed the bare slope of gra.s.s. Half way up Chayne turned and looked down upon the house. There was no longer any light in any window. He turned to Sylvia and slipped his arm through hers.

"Come close," said he, and now there was no doubt the smile was real.

"Shall we keep step, do you think?"

"If we go always like this, we might," said Sylvia, with a smile.

"At times there will be a step to be cut, no doubt," said he.

"You once said that I could stand firm while the step was being cut," she answered. Always at the back of both their minds, evident from time to time in some such phrase as this, was the thought of the mountain upon which their friendship had been sealed. Friendship had become love here in the quiet Dorsetshire village, but in both their thoughts it had another background--ice-slope and rock-spire and the bright sun over all.

CHAPTER XX

ON THE DOWN

Sylvia led the way to a little hollow just beneath the ridge of the downs, a sheltered spot open to the sea. On the three other sides bushes grew about it and dry branches and leaves deeply carpeted the floor. Here they rested and were silent. Upon Sylvia's troubled heart there had fallen a mantle of deep peace. The strife, the fears, the torturing questions had become dim like the small griefs of childhood. Even the incident of the lighted window vexed her not at all.

"Hilary," she said softly, lingering on the name, since to frame it and utter it and hear her lips speaking it greatly pleased her, "Hilary," and her hand sought his, and finding it she was content.

It was a warm night of August. Overhead the moon sailed in a cloudless summer sky, drowning the stars. To the right, far below, the lamps of Weymouth curved about the sh.o.r.e; and in front the great bay shimmered like a jewel. Seven miles across it the ma.s.sive bluff of Portland pushed into the sea; and even those rugged cliffs were subdued to the beauty of the night. Beneath them the riding-lights shone steady upon the masts of the battle ships. Sylvia looked out upon the scene with an overflowing heart. Often she had gazed on it before, and she marveled now how quickly she had turned aside. Her eyes were now susceptible to beauty as they had never been. There was a glory upon land and sea, a throbbing tenderness in the warm air of which she had not known till now. It seemed to her that she had lived until this night in a prison. Once the doors had been set ajar for a little while--just for a night and a day in the quiet of the High Alps. But only now had they been opened wide. Only to-night had she pa.s.sed through and looked forth with an unhindered vision upon the world; and she discovered it to be a place of wonders and sweet magic.

"They were true, then," she said, with a smile on her lips.

"Of what do you speak?" asked Chayne.

"My dreams," Sylvia answered, knowing that she was justified of them.

"For I have come awake into the land of my dreams, and I know it at last to be a real land, even to the sound of running water."

For from the hollow at her feet the music of the mill stream rose to her ears through the still night, very clear and with a murmur of laughter.

Sylvia looked down toward it. She saw it flashing like a riband of silver in the garden of the dark quiet house. There was no breath of wind in that garden, and all the great trees were still. She saw the intricate pattern of their boughs traced upon the lawn in black and silver.

"In that house I was born," she said softly, "to the noise of that stream. I am very glad to know that in that house, too, my great happiness has come to me."