“Oh, go it, Uncle Seward. Butter seems to be getting cheap,” said Melian, equably. “We are getting more than we can do with, Violet. Eh—what?”
“Now what would you children like to do with yourselves this morning?” asked Mervyn, when the laugh had subsided.
“We were going to show Violet how to catch some fish. Old Joe has been digging out worms, and he’s coming with us to bait. You know, Violet, the part I can’t stick about this bait fishing is the worm part of it, so I take Joe to do that, and look the other way while he does it. There are some good perch in Plane Pond, but the big ones will hardly ever bite. The smaller ones you can get plenty of, but the pounders won’t come to the scratch, like the ‘oldest oyster’ in the Walrus and the Carpenter.”
“All right, then,” said her uncle. “You two will be quite happy on your own, and I’ve got some letters to write. I haven’t often, which is one of the compensating advantages of being a lonely man. So shout up Joe when you want him.”
He saw them start off presently; bright, happy, laughing. He did not go with them as far as the boat house, which nestled in the thick, wooded bank of the great pond near the further end of the same. John Seward Mervyn had a good deal on his mind that radiant cloudless morning of late spring, while all the woods were ringing with birdsong, and the sweet, young, clear voices of his niece and guest died fainter and fainter away among the solemn tree boles.
Two cyclists skimmed along the sluice-road, taking the next steep acclivity with all the rush they could get out of their headlong free wheel down the steeper, and somewhat dangerously winding, hill before. They looked to the right at the pond, and to the left at Heath Hover. One seemed half inclined to stop and dismount to take in the picturesque effect of it, but did not. Then a waggon loaded up with floury millsacks rumbled by, and then another cyclist, a motor one this time, and the spitting throb of his abominable engine and the reek of petrol seemed to hang on the glorious, radiant, spring air like a corroding cloud, long after their producer was out of sight. But there seemed an unusual amount of traffic on that not much used road to-day, thought Mervyn—and then he fell to wondering what if the shine of that mysterious disc deposited at the top of the sluice path, had caught the eye of any of these? Well, that was not his affair, he thought, grimly, but—something more might have been heard of it. And the thought brought back something of that awful heart-numbed blood-freezing moment, when he had descried Melian coming down the path, holding that symbol in her bare hand.
How had it got there—there where she had found it? It? Yes, but—had it? To set this doubt at rest—not much “rest” about it, he told himself with a mirthless ironical laugh—he had been glad to see the last of these bright young presences for an hour or two. Old Judy he could hear now clattering about with pots and pans and firestoking implements in the kitchen. He was entirely alone—at last.
He went upstairs. The landings, uneven and cranky with age, gave and creaked beneath his tread. The long narrow passage which led to the disused part of the house was darkened with dust and cobwebs on the neglected casements, and as he went along, he was drawing on that same old pair of gloves. He passed several doors, then turned the handle of one. It opened into a mouldy room, partly stacked with ancient and worm-eaten furniture. He moved aside an old sideboard, which seemed to manifest an inclination to fall to pieces in the process. Between it and the wall something gleamed at him, something white and shining. He bent down as though to touch it, then changed his mind.
“Good! That’s there,” he said to himself. “Now for the other, if it is there?”
He went out again and shut the door, removing the gloves as he threaded the passage; and putting them in his pocket, he went to the front door and out. The fresh open air—yes, that was life—the pure sweet breath of wood and water, the joyous song of birds. Afar down the long pond, came another joyous sound, that of rippling laughter. It came from the boat, wafted over the water—wondrous sound conductor—and although nearly half a mile away he could distinguish Melian’s clear note from that of her friend. Lightheartedness, silvery lightheadedness, running side by side, parallel with tragedy! A strange world! Then he dived into a close woodland path which led down at a steep angle below the house.