I
Jack Dillon came to Hollow Grange on a thunderous black evening when an
ebony cloud crested the hill-top above, and, catching the upflung rays
of sunset, glowed redly like the pall of Avalon in the torchlight.
Through the dense ranks of firs cloaking the slopes a breeze, presaging
the coming storm, whispered evilly, and here in the hollow the birds
were still.
The man who had driven him from the station glanced at him, with a
curiosity thinly veiled.
"What about your things, sir?" he inquired.
Dillon stared rather blankly at the ivy-covered lodge, which, if
appearances were to be trusted, was unoccupied.
"Wait a moment; I will ring," he said curtly; for this furtive
curiosity, so ill concealed, had manifested itself in the manner of the
taxi-driver from the moment that Dillon had directed him to drive to
Hollow Grange.
He pushed open the gate and tugged at the iron ring which was suspended
from the wall of the lodge. A discordant clangour rewarded his efforts,
the cracked note of a bell that spoke from somewhere high up in the
building, that seemed to be buffeted to and fro from fir to fir, until
it died away, mournfully, in some place of shadows far up the slope. In
the voice of the bell there was something furtive, something akin to the
half-veiled curiosity in the eyes of the man who stood watching him;
something fearful, too, in both, as though man and bell would whisper:
"Return! Beware of disturbing the dwellers in this place."
But Dillon angrily recalled himself to the realities. He felt that
these ghostly imaginings were born of the Boche-maltreated flesh, were
products of lowered tone; that he would have perceived no query in the
glance of the taxi-driver and heard no monkish whisper in the clang of
the bell had he been fit, had he been fully recovered from the effects
of his wound. Monkish whisper? Yes, that was it--his mind had supplied,
automatically, an aptly descriptive term: the cracked bell spoke with
the voice of ancient monasteries, had in it the hush of cloisters and
the sigh of renunciation.
"Hang it all!" muttered Dillon. "This won't do."
A second time he awoke the ghostly bell-voice, but nothing responded to
its call; man, bird, and beast had seemingly deserted Hollow Grange. He
was conscious of a sudden nervous irritation, as he turned brusquely and
met the inquiring glance of the taxi-man.
"I have arrived before I was expected," he said. "If you will put my
things in the porch here I will go up to the house and get a servant to
fetch them. They will be safe enough in the meantime."
His own words increased his irritability; for were they not in the
nature of an apology on behalf of his silent and unseen host? Were they
not a concession to that nameless query in the man's stare? Moreover,
deep within his own consciousness, some vague thing was stirring; so
that, the man dismissed and promptly departing, Dillon stood glancing
from the little stack of baggage in the lodge porch up the gloomy,
narrow, and over-arched drive, indignantly aware that he also carried
a question in his eyes.
The throb of the motor mounting the steep, winding lane grew dim and
more dim until it was borne away entirely upon the fitful breeze.
Faintly he detected the lowing of cattle in some distant pasture; the
ranks of firs whispered secretly one to another, and the pall above the
hills grew blacker and began to extend over the valley.
Amid that ominous stillness of nature he began to ascend the cone-strewn
path. Evidently enough, the extensive grounds had been neglected for
years, and that few pedestrians, and fewer vehicles, ever sought Hollow
Grange was demonstrated by the presence of luxuriant weeds in the
carriage way. Having proceeded for some distance, until the sheer
hillside seemed to loom over him like the wall of a tower, Dillon
paused, peering about in the ever-growing darkness. He was aware of
a physical chill; certainly no ray of sunlight ever penetrated to
this tunnel through the firs. Could he have mistaken the path and be
proceeding, not toward the house, but away from it and into the midnight
of the woods mantling the hills?
There was something uncomfortable in that reflection; momentarily
he knew a childish fear of the darkening woods, and walked forward
rapidly, self-assertively. Ten paces brought him to one of the many
bends in the winding road--and there, far ahead, as though out of some
cavern in the very hillside, a yellow light shone.
He pressed on with greater assurance until the house became visible. Now
he perceived that he had indeed strayed from the carriage-sweep in some
way, for the path that he was following terminated at the foot of a
short flight of moss-covered brick steps. He mounted the steps and found
himself at the bottom of a terrace. The main entrance was far to his
left and separated from the terrace by a neglected lawn. That portion
of the place was Hanoverian and ugly, whilst the wing nearest to him
was Tudor and picturesque. Excepting the yellow light shining out from
a sunken window almost at his feet, no illuminations were visible about
the house, although the brewing storm had already plunged the hollow
into premature night.
Indeed, there was no sign of occupancy about the strange-looking
mansion, which might have hidden forgotten for centuries in the
horseshoe of the hills. He had sought for rest and quiet; here he should
find them. The stillness of the place was of that sort which almost
seems to be palpable; that can be seen and felt. A humid chill arose
apparently from the terrace, with its stone pavings outlined in moss,
crept up from the wilderness below and down from the fir-woods above.
A thought struggled to assume form in his mind. There was something
reminiscent about this house of the woods, this silent house which
struck no chord of human companionship, in which was no warmth of life
or love. Suddenly, the thought leapt into complete being.
This was the palace of the sleeping beauty to which he had penetrated.
It was the fairy-tale dear to childhood which had been struggling for
expression in his mind ever since he had emerged from the trees on to
the desolate terrace. With the departure of the station cab had gone the
last link with to-day, and now he was translated to the goblin realm of
fable.
He had crossed the terrace and the lawn, and stood looking through an
open French window into a room that evidently adjoined the hall. A
great still darkness had come, and on a little table in the room a
reading-lamp was burning. It had a quaint, mosaic shade which shut in
much of the light, but threw a luminous patch directly on a heap of
cushions strewn upon the floor. Face downward in this silken nest, her
chin resting upon her hands and her elfin curly brown hair tousled
bewitchingly, lay a girl so audaciously pretty that Dillon hesitated to
accept the evidence of his eyes.
The crunching of a piece of gravel beneath his foot led to the awakening
of the sleeping beauty. She raised her head quickly and then started
upright, a lithe, divinely petite figure in a green velvet dress, having
short fur-trimmed sleeves that displayed her pretty arms. For an instant
it was a startled nymph that confronted him; then a distracting dimple
appeared in one fair cheek, and:
"Oh! how you frightened me!" said the girl, speaking with a slight
French accent which the visitor found wholly entrancing. "You must be
Jack Dillon? I am Phryné."
Dillon bowed.
"How I envy Hyperides!" he said.
A blush quickly stained the lovely face of Phryné, and the roguish eyes
were lowered, whereby the penitent Dillon, who had jested in the not
uncommon belief that a pretty girl is necessarily brainless, knew that
the story of the wonder-woman of Thespiæ was familiar to her modern
namesake.
"I am afraid," declared Phryné, with a return of her mischievous
composure, "that you are very wicked."
Dillon, who counted himself a man of the world, was temporarily at a
loss for a suitable rejoinder. The cause of his hesitancy was twofold.
In the first place he had reached the age of disillusionment, whereat a
man ceases to believe that a perfectly lovely woman exists in the flesh,
and in the second place he had found such a fabulous being in a house of
gloom and silence to which, a few moments ago, he had deeply regretted
having come.
His father, who had accepted the invitation from an old college friend
on his son's behalf, had made no mention of a Phryné, whereas Phryné
clearly took herself for granted and evidently knew all about Jack
Dillon. The latter experienced a volcanic change of sentiment; Hollow
Grange was metamorphosed, and assumed magically the guise of a Golden
House, an Emperor's pleasure palace, a fair, old-world casket holding
this lovely jewel. But who was she?--and in what spirit should he
receive her bewildering coquetries?
"I trust," he said, looking into the laughing eyes, "that you will learn
to know me better."
Phryné curtsied mockingly.
"You have either too much confidence in your own character or not enough
in my wisdom," she said.
Dillon stepped into the room, and, stooping, took up a book which lay
open upon the floor. It was a French edition of _The Golden Ass_ of
Apuleius.
The hollow was illuminated by a blinding flash of lightning, and
Phryné's musical laughter was drowned in the thunder that boomed and
crashed in deepening peals over the hills. In a sudden tropical torrent
the rain descended, as Dr. Kassimere entered the room.