There is a peculiar and subtle and quite indefinable pleasure that comes to a man when the woman he loves first writes to him. Soever curt, soever banal the letter, there is no matter. It is something from Her to him; something altogether private and secret; something She has set down for him to read; something not to be shared with a sordid world.
Anthony lost himself in this sea of subtle delight, varying joy with outbursts against himself for having exhibited such boorishness and for being so insanely, so youthfully in love. “For, after all,” he told himself, “I haven’t known her for a week yet. I’ve spoken with her not a dozen times. I am clearly a fool!”
Unpleasant thoughts broke in upon him. He looked at his watch; then jumped to his feet and made his way upstairs to his rooms. He reached them mopping his forehead. He could not remember a day in England so oppressive.
He took his hat and turned to leave the room. As he did so a rush of wind swept in through the open window, and a long, low angry mutter of thunder came to his ears. Then, with a rush, came the rain; great sheets of it, glistening in the half-dusk.
Anthony put on a mackintosh, substituted a cap for the hat, and left the inn. He did not take his car. Even as he turned out of the yard into the cobbled street, the thunder changed from rumble to sharp, staccato reports, and three jagged swords of lightning tore the black of the sky.
Anthony strode on, hands thrust deep into pockets, chin burrowed into the upturned collar of the trench-coat. Incredibly almost, the volume of rain increased and increased.
2
Mr. Poole the butler—Anthony once said that he sounded like a game of Happy Families—was in a state of nervous agitation verging upon breakdown. The events of the past few days had shaken him, for some time an old man aged beyond his years, to such extent that he would not, he was sure, “ever be the same man again.”
He sat in the little room opposite that which had been the master’s study. He shivered with age, vague fears, and fervent distaste for the storm whose rain beat upon the windows, whose sudden furies of wind shook the old house, whose flashes of lightning played such havoc with the nerves.
Mr. Poole was alone. Miss Hoode had retired. Sir Arthur was reading in the billiard-room at the other end of the house. Belford was on three days’ holiday, his wife, it seemed, being an invalid. The other servants were certainly either in bed or huddled together moaning as women will at the violence of the storm.