A Monk of Cruta

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

He held my hand tightly, and drew me towards the window. "Never mind the curtains! We will go out; out over the moor."

He was feverishly impatient to be gone, but I held him back. "Your clothes!" I reminded him. "And you have no hat!"

He looked down doubtfully at his disordered evening dress, and then released my hands. "Wait for me, here," he begged. "Promise that you will not go away; that nothing shall make you go."

I promised.

"See! I shall lock the door," he continued, as he reached the threshold. "No one can come in and disturb you!"

"Please to have some tea and a bath!" I begged. "I do not mind waiting. You will be ill, if you do not mind."

He was gone about half an hour. Once, some one came and tried the door, but I took no notice. At last I heard the key turn in the lock, and he entered. "Did you think that I was long?" he asked, coming up to me with a smile.

I shook my head; my eyes were full of tears, and there was a lump in my throat. I could not speak. He had changed all his clothes, and was carefully dressed in a brown tweed shooting suit and gaiters, but the correctness and order of his external appearance seemed only to emphasize the ravages which one single night's suffering had wrought upon his strong, handsome face. Hard, cruel lines had furrowed their way across his forehead, and under his eyes were deep black marks. His bronze cheeks were white and sunken, and a bright red spot burned on one of them. But it was a change of which the details could give no idea. His face had caught the inflection of his inward agony, and retained it. It was there, if not for the world to see, at any rate terribly evident to me, to those who loved him.

He was quite calm now, however. It was as though the fires of suffering had burnt themselves out, leaving behind them a silent, charred desolation. He took my arm, and together we left the room, passing through the high French windows and along an open terrace until we reached the gardens. We turned down a broad walk bordered by high yew hedges, at the bottom of which was a little gate leading into the park. The air was fragrant with the perfume of violets, and early stocks and hyacinths, mingled every now and then with a more delicate perfume from the greenhouses on the other side of the red-brick wall. How beautiful it all seemed, in that sweet, dancing sunlight!—the songs of the birds, the blossoming fruit-trees, and pink-budded chestnuts, the scents which floated about on the soft west breeze, and the constant humming of bees and other winged insects. Only in England could there have been so sudden a change from the grey mists and leaden skies of yesterday. Even in that moment of extreme tension I could not help an exclamation of admiration as we came to an end of the gravelled walk, and Paul held open for me a little iron gate.