They spent the afternoon in the low coverts about the Toft, and the evening in the billiard-room, sitting forlornly over whiskey-and-soda. A peculiar throbbing silence and mystery seemed to hang about the house. Stanistreet was depressed and hardly spoke, while Tyson vainly tried to hide his nervousness under a fictitious jocularity. He looked eagerly for the night, by which time he had concluded that all anxiety would be ended. But when ten o'clock came and he found that nothing more nor less than a long night-watch was required of him, his nerves revolted.
"I wonder how long this business is going to last? I wish to God I'd never stayed." He leaned back against the chimney-piece, grinding his heels on the fender in his irritation. "I was a fool not to get away in the morning when I had the chance."
He looked up and saw Stanistreet regarding him with a curiously critical expression. Louis did not look very like sitting up all night; his lean face was haggard already.
"I say, Stanistreet, it's awfully good of you to stop like this. I'm confoundedly sorry I asked you to. I don't know how we're going to get through the night." He cast a glance at the billiard-table. "Pity we can't knock the balls about a bit—but you see they'd hear us, and she might think it a little cold-blooded."
"My dear fellow, I'm ready to sit up with you till any time in the morning, and I never felt less like billiards in my life."
"Then there's nothing for it that I can see but a mighty smoke—it'll soothe our nerves any way. And a mighty drink—we shall need it, you bet."
He rang the bell, lit his first cigar, and settled himself for his watch. His irritation was still sullenly fermenting; for not only was he going to spend a disagreeable night, but he had been most inconsiderately balked of a pleasant one.
"It's inconceivable," said he, "the things women expect you to do. If I could do her the smallest good by stopping I wouldn't complain. But I can't see her, can't go near her, can't do her the least bit of good in the world—I would be better out of the way, in fact—and yet I have to stick here, fretting myself into a fever. If I didn't do it I should be an unfeeling, heartless, disgusting brute. See? That's the way they reason."
Presently, under the soothing influence of the cigar, he settled down into some semblance of his former self. He talked almost as well as usual, touching on such light local topics as Miss Batchelor and the new Parish Council; he told Mrs. Nevill's barrister story with variations, and that landed him in a discussion of his plans. "I very much doubt whether I shall die a country gentleman after all. It isn't the life for me. That old man's respectability was ideal—transcendental—it's too much for me. I don't know why he left it to me. Sheer cussedness, I suppose. It would have been just like him if he had left me his immortality, on the condition that I should spend it at Drayton Parva. I couldn't stand that. I don't even know if I can stand another year of it. I shall be dragged to the center again some of these days. It must come. As it is, I'm a rag of a human moth fluttering round the lamps of town."
"Fate," said Stanistreet.