It still wanted a quarter of an hour to lunch time, and Harry went indoors to finish up. Geoffrey, however, remained outside, and, as soon as Harry was gone, began playing a very curious and original game by himself. This consisted in stalking Mr. Francis, and was played in the following manner: He hurried over the grass to the entrance of the path where they had last seen him, and followed cautiously from bush to bush. Soon he had the sound of the flute again to guide him, but after a little, hearing that it was getting louder, he retired on his own steps, and from the shade of certain rhododendrons observed the cheery old gentleman coming back again along the path he had taken. Mr. Francis passed not thirty yards from the stalker; then the music ceased, and he crossed the lawn in the direction of the two kiosks. At that a sudden nameless thrill of horror took hold of Geoffrey, and creeping after him till both kiosks had cleared the angle of the house, he observed his doings with a fascinated attention.
Mr. Francis went first to the ice house and turned the handle of the door, but apparently found it locked. He stood there a few seconds, flute in hand, and, taking off his Panama hat, passed a handkerchief over his forehead, for the day was very warm. Then it would seem that the open windows of the summerhouse caught his eye, and in turn trying that door, he found it open. He did not, however, enter, but merely held the door open, standing on the threshold. Then he turned, and rather slowly—for the grass, maybe, was slippery from a long drought—began to descend again toward the house. Geoffrey, on his part, made a wide circuit through the shrubbery, and emerged on to the gravel in front of the house just as Mr. Francis entered. The latter saw him, but apparently had no word for him, and on the moment the bell for lunch rang.
Their meals usually were merry and talkative: lunch to-day, perhaps, only proved the rule, for it was eminently silent. Geoffrey was gloomy and preoccupied, his mind in an endless tangle of indecision, shocked, horrified, yet ever telling himself that this nightmare of a morning could not be true. Harry also, his nerves still on edge with the experience of the last hour, was inclined to brevity of question and answer; while the brisk cheerfulness of Mr. Francis, which as a rule would cover the paucity of two, seemed replaced by a kind of dreamy tenderness; he sighed, ate little; it was as if his mind dwelt on some regret of what might have been. Perhaps the weather was in part responsible for this marked decay of elasticity, for the clear warmth of the morning had given place to a dead sultriness of heat; the atmosphere had grown heavy and full of thunder. At last, as they rose from a very silent meal—
"I went up to the summerhouse this morning, Uncle Francis," said Harry, with the air of a man who had thought carefully over what he was going to say. "It wants putting in order, for it is damp and very cobwebby, as you warned me. But it would be worth while to do it; there is a charming view from the windows. I shall send a couple of servants up to clean it, and make it a bit more habitable."
"Do, dear boy, do," said Mr. Francis. "Dear old place, dear old place! Your father used to be so fond of it!"
The threatening of a storm grew every moment more imminent, and the two young men, who had intended to ride over the downs, decided to postpone their expedition. They stood together at the window of the smoking room, watching the awful and mysterious mobilization of cloud, the hard black edges of thunder, ragged as if bitten off some immense pall, coming up against what wind there was, and rising higher every moment toward the zenith, ready to topple and break. Once a scribble of light, some illegible, gigantic autograph was traced against the blackness, and the gongs of thunder, as yet remote, testified its authenticity. Before long a few large drops of rain jumped like frogs on the gravel path below the windows, and a hot local eddy of unaccountable wind, like a grappling iron let down from the moving vapours above, scoured across the lawn, stirring and rattling the dry-leaved laurels in the shrubbery, and expunging as it passed the reflections on the lake. It died away; the little breeze there had been drooped like a broken wing; the willows by the water were motionless as in a picture; a candle on the lawn would have burned with as steady a flame as in a glass shade within a sealed room. The fast-fading light was coppery in colour, and the darkness came on apace as the great bank of congested cloud shouldered its way over the sky, but, despite the gloom, there was a great precision of outline in hill and tree.
Harry turned from the window.
"We shall have to light the lamps," he said. "It is impossible to see indoors. Really, it looks like the day of judgment! Shall we have a game of billiards, Geoff?"
As he spoke, the door was opened with hurried stealth, and Mr. Francis, pale and strangely shrunken to the appearance, came in.
"Ah! here you are," he said; "I was afraid you had gone out, and that I was alone. Is it not horrible? We are going to have a terrific storm. What a relief to find you here! I—I should have been so anxious if you had been out in this!"