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As we left the Hall, the theatrical stable-clock was just striking one. The moon must have been nearly at the full, but I could not guess its position behind the even murk of cloud that muffled the whole face of the sky. Yet, it was not very dark. The broad masses of the garden through which Jervaise led me, were visible as a greater blackness superimposed on a fainter background.
Every lovely impulse of the night must have fled dismayed, back into the peace and beauty of the wood; and I was more than half inclined to follow. Until that appalling racket was set loose I had been regarding this midnight visit to the farm as a natural and enticing adventure, altogether in keeping with the dramatic movement preluded by the chime of the stable-clock.
But I don't think I would give all my money to the hospitals, if I were you. Not without thinking it over a bit, first. Wait until we get to Canada and see how we get on." "You don't trust my impulses," I said. She laughed. "Wait till to-morrow anyway," she replied. And as she spoke I heard far away, across the Park, the sound of the stable-clock at the Hall, striking twelve.
Frank tried to browbeat me but very firm that nothing had got to happen; no engagement or running away or anything. She was to come home and I was to go back to Canada they'd pay my fare and so on..." "And you?" "Me? I just stuck to it we were going to get married, and Mr. Frank tried to threaten me till the old man stopped him, and then I came out." "Did you wind up the stable-clock?" I put in.
I commented automatically, and cursed myself for having conveyed a warmth of interest I certainly did not feel. "She's so enthusiastic, isn't she? Brenda, I mean," Miss Tattersall went on, and as I listened I compared her to the stable-clock. She, too, was a persistent outrage, a hindrance to whatever it was that I was waiting for. Mrs.
Unpainted shutters, cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand. The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles, like curtains.
"I won't tease you with questions, Anne," she said, gently. "Come up stairs and rest in my room. You're not fit to travel, love. I'll take care that nobody comes near us." The stable-clock at Windygates struck the quarter to two. Anne raised herself in the chair with a start. "What time was that?" she asked. Blanche told her. "I can't stay," she said.
I must have been on that lawn for more than an hour, and my thoughts had covered much ground that is not appropriate to this narrative, when I was roused to a recognition of the fact that my brief freedom was passing and that I was taking no advantage of any opportunity it might afford me. The thing that suddenly stirred me to a new activity was the sound of the stable-clock striking twelve.
The girls had only time for one game of tennis, when the stable-clock, chiming half-past six, reminded Ingred that if she wished to do her preparation that evening she must rush back to the hotel. She bade Bess a reluctant good-by. "You'll come and see me again?" asked the latter. "Rather! And I'll send thought-waves to animate my portrait, and let it talk for me in my absence," laughed Ingred.
The hall-door was open it was always so at that house; the moon was flaring in at the long old windows, and throwing ghastly chequers upon the floors; and the stars were looking in on the other side, in the blue of the yawning window over the great stair: from it you could see the old stable-clock, with the letters glistening on it still.
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