Eustace and the overseer were sitting on the _stoep_ smoking a final
pipe together before going to bed. It was getting on for midnight and,
save these two, the household had long since retired.
Tempted by the beauty of the night they sat, well wrapped up, for it was
winter. But the whole firmament was ablaze with stars, and the broad
nebulous path of the Milky Way shone forth like the phosphoric trail in
the wake of a steamer. The conversation between the two had turned upon
the fate of Tom Carhayes.
"I suppose we shall soon know now what his end really was," the overseer
was saying. "Kafirs are as close as death over matters of that kind
while the war is actually going on. But they are sure to talk
afterwards, and some of them are bound to know."
"Yes. And but for this administration business it might be just as well
for us not to know," answered Eustace. "Depend upon it, whatever it is,
it will be something more than ghastly, poor fellow. Tom made a great
mistake in going to settle in Kafirland at all. He'd have done much
better here."
"I suppose there isn't the faintest shadow of a chance that he may still
be alive, Mr Milne?"
The remark was an unfortunate one. Cool-headed as he was, it awoke in
Eustace a vague stirring of uneasiness--chiming in, as it did, with the
misgivings which would sometimes pass through his own mind.
"Not a shadow of a chance, I should say," he replied, after a slight
pause.
Bentley, too, began to realise that the remark was not a happy one--for
of course he could not all this time have been blind to the state of
affairs. He felt confused and relapsed into silence--puffing vigorously
at his pipe.
The silence was broken--broken in a startling manner. A terrified
scream fell upon their ears--not very loud, but breathing unmistakable
tones of mortal fear. Both men sprang to their feet.
"Heavens!" cried the overseer. "That's Mrs Carhayes--"
But the other said not a word. In about a half a dozen steps he was
through the sitting room and had gained the door which opened out of it.
This was Eanswyth's bedroom, whence the terrified cry had proceeded.
"What is wrong, Eanswyth?" he cried, tapping at the door.
It opened immediately. She stood there wrapped in a long loose dressing
gown, the wealth of her splendid hair falling in masses. But her face
was white as death, and the large eyes were dilated with such a pitiable
expression of fear and distress, as he certainly had never beheld there.
"What is it, my darling? What has frightened you so?" he said tenderly,
moved to the core by this extraordinary manifestation of pitiable
terror.
She gave a quick flurried look over her shoulder. Then clutching his
hands--and he noticed that hers were trembling and as cold as ice--she
gasped:
"Eustace--I have seen--him!"
"Who--in Heaven's name?"
"Tom."
"Darling, you must have dreamt it. You have been allowing your thoughts
to run too much on the subject and--"
"No. It was no dream. I have not even been to bed yet," she
interrupted, speaking hurriedly. "I was sitting there, at the table,
reading one of my little books. I just happened to look up and--O
Eustace"--with a violent shudder--"I saw _his_ face staring in at the
window just as plainly as I can see you now."
Eustace followed her cowering glance. The window, black and
uncurtained, looked out upon the _veldt_. There were shutters, but they
were hardly ever closed. His first thought, having dismissed the
nightmare theory, was that some loafer was hanging about, and seeing the
lighted window had climbed up to look in. He said as much.
"No. It was _him_," she interrupted decisively. "There was no
mistaking him. If it were the last word I breathed I should still say
so. What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean?" she repeated in tones
of the utmost distress.
"Hush, hush, my dearest! Remember, Bentley will hear, and--"
"_There he is again_!"
The words broke forth in a shriek. Quickly Eustace glanced at the
window. The squares of glass, black against the outer night, showed
nothing in the shape of a human countenance. A large moth buzzed
against them, and that was all.
Her terror was so genuine, as with blanched face and starting eyes she
glared upon the black glass, that ever so slight a thrill of
superstitious dread shot through him in spite of himself.
"Quick!" she gasped. "Quick! Go and look all round the house! I am
not frightened to remain alone. Mr Bentley will stay with me. Go,
quick!"
The overseer, who had judiciously kept in the background, now came
forward.
"Certainly, Mrs Carhayes. Better come into this room and sit down for
a bit. Why, you must have been mistaken," he went on, cheerily placing
a chair at the sitting room fire, and kicking up the nearly dead logs.
"Nobody could get up at your window. Why, its about fifteen feet from
the ground and there's nothing lying about for them to step on. Not
even a monkey could climb up there--though--wait. I did hear once of a
case where a baboon, a wild one out of the _veldt_, climbed up on to the
roof of a house and swung himself right into a room. I don't say I
believe it, though. It's a little too much of a Dutchman's yarn to be
readily swallowed."
Thus the good-natured fellow rambled on, intent on cheering her up and
diverting her thoughts. The rooms occupied by himself and his family
were at the other end of the house and opened outside on the _stoep_,
hence the sound of her terrified shriek had not reached them.
Eustace, on investigation intent, had slipped round the outside of the
house with the stealth and rapidity of a savage. But, as he had
expected, there was no sign of the presence of any living thing. He put
his ear to the ground and listened long and intently. Not a sound. No
stealthy footfall broke the silence of the night.
But as he crouched there in the darkness, with every nerve, every
faculty at the highest tension, a horrible thought came upon him. What
if Carhayes had really escaped--was really alive? Why should he not
avow himself openly--why come prowling around like a midnight assassin?
And then the answer suggested itself. Might it not be that his mind,
unhinged by the experiences of his captivity, was filled with the one
idea--to exact a deadly vengeance upon the wife who had so soon
forgotten him? Such things had been, and to this man, watching there in
the darkness, the idea was horrible enough.
Stay! There was one way of placing the matter beyond all doubt. He
remembered that the soil beneath Eanswyth's window was loose dust--a
trifle scratched about by the fowls, but would give forth the print of a
human foot with almost the distinctness of snow.
Quickly he moved to the spot. Striking a wax vesta, and then another,
he peered eagerly at the ground. The atmosphere was quite still, and
the matches flamed like a torch. His heart beat and his pulses
quickened as he carefully examined the ground--then a feeling of intense
relief came upon him. _There was no sign of a human footprint_.
No living thing could have stood under that window, much less climbed up
to it, without leaving its traces. There were no traces; ergo, no
living thing had been there, and he did not believe in ghosts. The
whole affair had been a hallucination on the part of Eanswyth. This was
bad, in that it seemed to point to a weak state of health or an
overloaded mind. But it was nothing like so bad as the awful misfortune
involved by the reality would have been--at any rate, to him.
He did not believe in ghosts, but the idea crossed his mind that so far
as from allaying Eanswyth's fears, the utter impossibility of any living
being having approached her window without leaving spoor in the sandy,
impressionable soil, would have rather the opposite tendency. Once the
idea got firmly rooted in her mind that the dead had appeared to her
there was no foreseeing the limits of the gravity of the results. And
she had been rather depressed of late. Very anxiously he re-entered the
house to report the utter futility of his search.
"At all events we'll soon make it impossible for you to get another
_schrek_ in the same way, Mrs Carhayes," said the overseer cheerily.
"We'll fasten the shutters up."
It was long before the distressed, scared look faded from her eyes.
"Eustace," she said--Bentley having judiciously left them together for a
while--"When _you_ were--when I thought you dead--I wearied Heaven with
prayers to allow me one glimpse of you again. I had no fear then, but
now--O God! it is _his_ spirit that I have seen."
He tried to soothe her, to reassure her, and in a measure succeeded. At
last, to the surprise of himself and the overseer, she seemed to shake
off her terror as suddenly as it had assailed her. She was very
foolish, she declared. She would go to bed now, and not keep them up
all night in that selfish manner. And she actually did--refusing all
offers on the part of Eustace or the overseer to remain in the sitting
room in order to be within call, or to patrol around the house for the
rest of the night.
"No," she said, "I am ashamed of myself already. The shutters are
fastened up and I shall keep plenty of light burning. I feel quite safe
now."
It was late next morning when Eanswyth appeared. Thoroughly refreshed
by a long, sound sleep, she had quite forgotten her fears. Only as
darkness drew on again a restless uneasiness came over her, but again
she seemed to throw it off with an effort. She seemed to have the
faculty of pulling herself together by an effort of will--even as she
had done that night beside the broken-down buggy, while listening for
the approaching footsteps of their savage enemies in the darkness. To
Eustace's relief, however, nothing occurred to revive her uneasiness.
But he himself, in his turn, was destined to receive a rude shock.