THE SHADOW IN THE ROOM
Sylvia raised her hand suddenly, enjoining silence, and turned back into
the room. She had heard a door slam violently within the house; and now
from the hall voices rose. Her father and Walter Hine were coming up
early to-night from the library, and it seemed in anger. At all events
Walter Hine was angry. His voice rang up the stairway shrill and violent.
"Why do you keep it from me? I will have it, I tell you. I am not a
child," and an oath or two garnished the sentences.
Sylvia heard her father reply with the patronage which never failed to
sting the vanity of his companion, which was the surest means to provoke
a quarrel, if a quarrel he desired.
"Go to bed, Wallie! Leave such things to Archie Parminter! You are
too young."
His voice was friendly, but a little louder than he generally used, so
that Sylvia clearly distinguished every word; so clearly indeed, that had
he wished her to hear, thus he would have spoken. She heard the two men
mount the stairs, Hine still protesting with the violence which had grown
on him of late; Garratt Skinner seeking apparently to calm him, and
apparently oblivious that every word he spoke inflamed Walter Hine the
more. She had a fear there would be blows--blows struck, of course, by
Hine. She knew the reason of the quarrel. Her father was depriving Hine
of his drug. They passed up-stairs, however, and on the landing above she
heard their doors close. Then coming back to the window she made a sign
to Chayne, slipped a cloak about her shoulders and stole quietly down the
dark stairs to the door. She unlocked the door gently and went out to her
lover. Upon the threshold she hesitated, chilled by a fear as to how he
would greet her. But he turned to her and in the moonlight she saw his
face and read it. There was no anger there. She ran toward him.
"Oh, my dear," she cried, in a low, trembling voice, and his arms
enclosed her. As she felt them hold her to him, and knew indeed that it
was he, her lover, whose lips bent down to hers, there broke from her a
long sigh of such relief and such great uplifting happiness as comes but
seldom, perhaps no more than once, in the life of any man or woman. Her
voice sank to a whisper, and yet was very clear and, to the man who heard
it, sweet as never music was.
"Oh, my dear, my dear! You have come then?" and she stroked his face, and
her hands clung about his neck to make very sure.
"Were you afraid that I wouldn't come, Sylvia?" he asked, with a low,
quiet laugh.
She lifted her face into the moonlight, so that he saw at once the tears
bright in her eyes and the smile trembling upon her lips.
"No," she said, "I rather thought that you would come," and she laughed
as she spoke. Or did she sob? He could hardly tell, so near she was to
both. "Oh, but I could not be sure! I wrote with so much unkindness," and
her eyes dropped from his in shame.
"Hush!" he said, and he held her close.
"Have you forgiven me? Oh, please forgive me!"
"Long since," said he.
But Sylvia was not reassured.
"Ah, but you won't forget," she said, ruefully. "One can forgive, but one
can't forget what one forgives," and then since, even in her remorse,
hope was uppermost with her that night, she cried, "Oh, Hilary, do you
think you ever will forget what I wrote to you?"
And again Chayne laughed quietly at her fears.
"What does it matter what you wrote a week ago, since to-night we are
here, you and I--together, in the moonlight, for all the world to see
that we are lovers."
She drew him quickly aside into the shadow of the wall.
"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 passed.
"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 space 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 passed 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 attitudes, 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
grass. 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.