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Updated: June 23, 2025
Ronnie's rough tweed suit and shooting boots, were a curious contrast to the satin knee-breeches, silken hose, and diamond shoe-buckles he remembered in his vision; yet his manner of holding the 'cello, assumed without conscious thought, and the positions of his knees and feet, were so precisely those of that quaint old-time figure, that Ronnie never doubted that when he raised the bow and his fingers bit into the strings, the flood of harmony would be the same.
And even as he looked, Helen's arm fell to her side; he saw her turn, lift the Infant off Ronnie's breast; and, bending over him, draw his head on to her lap. Dick turned from the mirror. The scene in the room was identical with the reflection, in all points save one. The Florentine chair was under Ronnie. It had fallen with him. Its back was broken.
"Take 'em home in your car," Nora said in a penetrating whisper. "Dead the other way," was Ronnie's too patent excuse. "It's only a couple of miles through the Park, you know," Olive Jervaise put in. "You might easily run them over to the vicarage and be back again in twenty minutes." "By Jove; yes. So I might," Ronnie acknowledged. "That is, if I may really come back, Miss Jervaise.
However, if he's all right, no harm's done." He dropped into Ronnie's chair, and rumpled his hair still further with his hands. "I must try to explain," he said. Then he lifted a rather white, very grubby face to Helen's. His lips twitched. "I'm dry," he said; and dropped his face into his hands. Helen rang the bell.
She had always considered Ronnie's major a rather formidable person. She knew that Ronnie stood in awe of him, though she had always found him kind. They had not gone five yards when he stopped. "You are limping. What is it?" She murmured something about the stones. "You had better ride," he decided briefly. "Rupert will carry you like a lamb. Ready? How's that?"
The quarry of the English language was of course a public property, but it was disconcerting to have one's own particular barrow-load of sentence- building material carried off before one's eyes. The Canon's impressive homily on Ronnie's gift and its possibilities had to be hastily whittled down to a weakly acquiescent, "Quite so, quite so."
The man who had stalked across the lawn, leaving her without a touch or look, held it in the hollow of his hand. A dog-cart clattered up to the portico. Men's voices sounded in the hall. Tramping feet hurried along the corridor. Then Billy's excited young voice cried, "May we come in?" followed by Ronnie's deeper tones, "If we shall not be in the way?"
You don't want to be credited with a haunted room at the Grange, neither do we want Ronnie's name mixed up with psychical phenomena. Now I will give you this man's opinion and explanation, exactly as he gave it to me. Only, remember, I pass it on as his. I do not necessarily endorse it.
Not until he had lifted his friend from the floor did Dr. Dick see the panelled fleur-de-lis of Florence, nor the crimson and gold of the embossed leather seat. As he and Helen together loosed Ronnie's collar and tie, she whispered: "Did you see?" "This is no time for staring into mirrors," said Dr. Dick, crossly. "I saw that I need a good wash; and you, some sal-volatile!
Ronnie thought it well to explain further. "As a matter of fact, my friend," he said, "I have come from Central Africa, where I have been sitting round camp-fires, in company with asps and cockatrices, and other interesting creatures. I am writing a book about it the best thing I have done yet." The inspector had read and enjoyed all Ronnie's books. He smiled uneasily.
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