The green-shuttered door of the kitchen was open, as I had left it last night, and, turning up the broken flagging, the house seemed so beseechingly friendly that I was half-ashamed of my mood of hatred. I was even willing to believe that the trouble was with me, instead of with the house. It was not its fault that hateful mysteries had attached themselves to it with the grafting on of the captain’s wing. Probably the old house resented the secret room and the apparitions as much as I did, for in its youth it had been highly respected, holding its head above all the other houses on the cape. I felt the same sort of pity for it that I had for myself after my recent experience on the beach.
“We’re both old ruins,” I said to the House of the Five Pines. “We ought to stick together.”
Everything within was just as I had left it, the door of the closet downstairs locked and the one upstairs nailed. I felt like a deserter all the time I packed my trunk. With tears in my eyes and a heavy pain in my heart, I went out of the front door, which Jasper and I had opened so hopefully, and closed it after me.
On the flagging was the boy from the telegraph-office, snapping a yellow envelope at the tall grass as he loitered along.
“Is that for me?” I ripped it open before I paused to sign.
Don’t give up house. Am returning Saturday morning. Wait.
Jasper.
And this was Friday! Our trains would pass each other.
Well, if I were out of my mind, as I more than half-suspected, one night more or less would not make any difference. A sanatorium was very much like a jail. I put my hat and bag inside the door and wandered off to think it over. This might be my last day of freedom.