"There's this much about it, John," Stephen continued. "The woman played that part night after night—played it to the life, mind you. She made her reputation in it. That's the woman we unknowingly let sleep beneath this roof! The barn is the place for her and her sort!"
John's clenched fists were held firmly to his sides. His eyes were blazing.
"That's enough, Stephen!" he cried.
"No, it's not enough!" was the fierce reply. "The truth's been burning in my heart long enough. It's better out. You want to find her a guest at Raynham Castle, do you?—Raynham Castle, where never a decent woman crosses the threshold! If she goes there, she goes as his mistress. Well?"
An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the back door, passed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled moonlight lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble; up the rough ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard.
He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of unwreaked passion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he had escaped the miasma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions of his brother's, so far as they concerned himself and his life during the last few months.
Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his whole outlook upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people, his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo of her half-mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears.
He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages, the bailiff's house, the whole little colony around which his life seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward which he had looked so many nights at this hour.
Across the viaduct there came a blaze of streaming light, a serpentlike trail, a faintly heard whistle—the Scottish Express on its way southward toward London. His eyes followed it out of sight. He found himself thinking of the passengers who would wake the next morning in London. He felt himself suddenly acutely conscious of his isolation. Was there not something almost monastic in the seclusion which had become a passion with Stephen, and which had its grip, too, upon him—a waste of life, a burying of talents?
He rose to his feet. The half-formed purpose of weeks held him now, definite and secure. He knew that this pilgrimage of his to the hilltop, his rapt contemplation of the little panorama which had become so dear to him, was in a sense valedictory.