Outside, he thought, “Did she get the better of me? If this sort of thing goes on, I shall lose the sense of how to be master in my house.”
Stung by the thought, he threw open the door once more and looked in.
“He’ll come round in a minute,” he said hardly. “Listen to me. I shall sleep out to-night. You can——”
He broke off suddenly; paused a moment in indecision—then tip-toed gently away.
The girl’s face had been drowned in tears as she bent over her brother.
He passed to the neglected stables, and was fain to saddle his own horse and lead him forth and mount in the weed-choked yard.
He rode down by way of the long slumberous drive. Its whole course was matted with woodland moss, smooth as green felt; and thereon the beeches, staking their aftermath of glory, flung golden counters softly, as if on a card-table. At the half-ruined lodge he paused, and dwelt upon its desolation curiously. Ivy, like a cluster of swarming snakes, held the writhed chimneys in a death-grip, and had fractured the spine of the gabled roof. The ribs of the structure showed through gaping rents, like those in a stranded ship. Not a melancholy window-place but gaped a black mouth, full of broken splints of teeth and dead sticks of sashes. The whole building seemed sunk into the moss and leafiness that engirdled it.
He went out through the iron gate, and spurred along the road that was yet unfamiliar to him. The air was at once soft and keen as the taste of olives, and as such stimulated his new appetite for Nature.
Life seems never so desirable as in typical days of autumn, when the year rallies of its disease and makes a brave effort to renew its thoughtless morning with a few withering leaves. Of all the motley months, none is so pathetic as October in its likeness to an aging lady, striving to salve by gentleness the unhealed wounds inflicted of her earlier pugnacity.
Mr. Tuke’s spirits rose as he advanced. He seemed already in touch with the world again—a butterfly of the second brood emerged from a buried larva. He met a few clowns, and acknowledged their salutations brightly. His voice rose and cracked in snatches of romantic song, and he greeted with pleasure whatever landmarks he remembered.