“My darling!” said the Dean. “He’s a good old man, very deserving, and has recently taken the pledge.”
“He’s a modified teetotaler!” said his wife to Mr. Darlington, patting her husband’s arm. “You see what Dickie’s coming to. If it goes on he will soon be a modified Dean.”
It was past seven when they finished talking about Rosamund and Dion, when Mr. Darlington at length tore himself delicately away from their delightful company, and, warmly wrapped in an overcoat lined with unostentatious sable, set out on the short walk to Canon Wilton’s house. To reach the Canon’s house he had to pass through the Dark Entry and skirt the garden wall of Little Cloisters.
Now, as he came out of the Dark Entry and stepped into the passage-way, which led by the wall and the old house into the great open space of green lawns and elm trees round which the dwellings of the canons showed their lighted windows to the darkness of the November evening, he was stopped by a terrible sound. It came to him from the garden of Little Cloisters. It was short, sharp and piercing, so piercing that for an instant he felt as if literally it had torn the flesh of his body. He had never before heard any sound at all like it; but, when he was able to think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from an animal. He shuddered. Always temperamentally averse from any fierce demonstrations of feeling, always instinctively restrained, careful and intelligently conventional, he was painfully startled and moved by this terrible outcry which could only have been caused by intense agony. As he believed that the cry had come from an animal, he naturally supposed that the agony which had caused it was physical. He was a very humane man, and as soon as he had mastered the feeling of cold horror which had for a moment held him rigid, he hastened on to the door of Little Cloisters and pulled the bell. After a pause which seemed to him long the door was opened by Annie, Rosamund’s parlor-maid. She presented to Mr. Darlington’s peering gaze a face full of ignorance and fear.
“What is the matter?” he asked, in a hesitating voice.
“Sir?” said Annie.
“What has happened in the garden?”
“Nothing, sir, that I know of. I have been in the house.” She paused, then added, with a sort of timorous defiance: “I’m not one as would listen, sir.”
“Then you didn’t hear it?”
“Hear what, sir?”