Such a state of affairs was unparalleled. The earlier arrivals were two engineers on survey, and a lady travelling alone. Mr. Brande looked excessively blank, he would have to rig up some kind of shelter in the verandah, for they had not brought tents, and whilst he was conferring with Nuddoo, Honor strolled away with her violin. She liked to play in solitary places—where all kinds of musical vagaries, and occasionally her own compositions, were unheard by mortal ears.
She climbed the long sloping hill at the back of the bungalow, and sitting down below a great clump of bamboos and elephant grass, began to play soft melancholy music, that seemed to have exquisite words.
She played away dreamily for quite three-quarters of an hour, now stopping to fill her eyes with the landscape—the rolling hills, the glitter of the sunset on a distant deep-set mountain tarn, the faint far-away line of the plains.
At length it was time to be going; one star was out, and a thin silver moon had sailed into the sky. She played as a final “Home, Sweet Home,” a tribute to Merry Meetings and its inmates. As the last note died away, her trained and sensitive ear caught a faint sound in the tall grass and jungle behind her. Was it the sound of a human sigh? She started and glanced round. Just in time to see a thin hand withdrawn and the grass quiver all over, as something—somebody—crept stealthily away. Every scrap of colour had sunk from Honor’s face, as she stood gazing into the still gently waving grass. No; she had not the nerve to make a search. Common sense whispered, why should she?
The place was extremely lonely, isolated, silent; there was already, or was it imagination, a weird and ghostly look about the hills and woods. In another moment Miss Gordon, violinist and coward, was running down hill towards the smoke of the bungalow, as fast as her pretty feet could carry her—and that was at a surprisingly rapid pace.
She arrived breathless, just as the lamps were being carried into their room; but, for a wonder, she kept her adventure to herself. It might have been all fancy—and she knew Uncle P.’s stolid way of taking things to pieces!
Uncle Pelham did not contemplate a night passed in an open verandah with much pleasure. He was somewhat subject to chills, and the keen mountain air had a searching effect on his rheumatic bones. Mrs. Brande had suggested his sending in a polite note to their fellow-travellers and asking for a share of their quarters.
“They can only say ‘No,’” she urged encouragingly.
“I do not like to run the chance of their only saying ‘No,’” was the somewhat tart answer.
“I am certain they will be only too glad to oblige a man in your position, P. What is a corner of a bed-room, after all? and I have a notion that I have met one of them somewhere—the one with the pale face and the fishing-basket. It was down at Ŏrai. Don’t you remember him, P.—a very stupid young man?”