Nance compelled herself to smile at this sally but her hands itched to snatch the whip and hasten the pony’s speed. They arrived at last at the New Bridge and Nance wondered whether the Doctor would be really amenable to her wishes or whether he would press her to visit his study again. But he drove on without a word, over the Loon, and westward again on the further side of it straight in the direction of Dyke House.
As they drew near the place Nance’s heart began to beat furiously and she cast about in her mind for some excuse to prevent her companion taking her any further. He seemed to read her thoughts for, with almost supernatural tact, he drew up when they were within a few hundred yards of the garden gate.
“I won’t come in if you don’t mind,” he said. “I have several patients to see before supper and I want to take Mrs. Sodderly her water-mint.”
Nance jumped quickly out of the cart and thanked him profusely.
“You’re looking dreadfully white,” he remarked, as he bade her good-bye. “Oh, wait a moment, I must give you a few of these.”
He carefully removed his hat and once more the aromatic odour spread itself on the air.
“There!” he said, handing her two or three damp-rooted stems with purplish-green leaves. She took them mechanically and was still holding them in her hands when she arrived with pale lips and drawn, white face, at the entrance to the Doorm dwelling.
All was quiet in the garden and not a sound of any living thing issued from the house. With miserable uncertainty she advanced to the door, catching sight, as she did so, of her own garden tools left lying on the weedy border and some newly planted and now sadly drooping verbenas fading by their side. She blamed herself even at that moment for having, in her excitement at going to meet Sorio, forgotten to water these things. She resolved—at the back of her mind—that she would pull up every weed in the place before she had done with it.
Never before had she realized the peculiar desolation of Dyke House. With its closed windows and smokeless chimneys it looked as if it might have been deserted for a hundred years. She entered and standing in the empty hall listened intently. Not a sound! Except for a remote ticking and the buzzing of a blue bottle fly in the parlour windows, all was hushed as the inside of a tomb. There came over her as she stood there an indescribable sense of loneliness. She felt as though all the inhabitants of the earth had been annihilated and she only left—she and the brainless ticking of clocks in forsaken houses.
She ran hurriedly up the staircase and entered the room she shared with Linda. The child’s neatly made little bed with the embroidered night-dress cover lying on the pillow, struck her with a passion of maternal feeling.