Burton returned to Belle Harbour and King’s Street just two weeks
later to a day. It was dusk when he stepped on the station platform,
and starlit darkness when, followed by a tattered and grinning little
darky bearing his luggage, he reached his lodgings. His first act
was to throw open the bowed shutters and look out upon the Enchanted
Garden. It was a dark expanse of bush and hedge, with here and there
an uncertain fleck of gray where the wan light from the sky caught a
white blossom. Beyond, the house was empty of light. Something--what
he scarcely knew--in the aspect of house and garden oppressed him; had
he believed in premonitions he would have accepted that as one of ill
augury. He turned away with a shrug of impatience and lighted his lamp.
[Illustration]
In the morning he leaped out of bed and again thrust aside the blinds.
His heart sank. The Enchanted Garden was still below him; but it looked
unmistakably neglected and uninhabited. Most of the roses were through
blooming for the while and what blossoms there were seemed faded and
imperfect. The blinds in the rear of the Castle were all tightly
closed; the hammock was gone from the porch; the vines looked dusty. In
a sudden panic of alarm Burton strode to the hall and called loudly for
Bob.
[Illustration]
“Have those people in that house over there gone away?” he demanded
when the darky appeared.
“Which house is dat, sah?”
“There, idiot--beyond the rose-garden! Have they gone?”
“Oh, yessah; they gone; been gone a week, I reckon.”