‘What was the charge?’
Surely the woman must notice the treacherous quiver of his voice! Her answer seemed to be delayed for an eternity.
‘The charge, m’sieur?—He was a spy!’
‘Ah!’
Quality sank down upon a bristly horsehair chair, the crocheted antimacassar slipping down behind his back. He looked around him with eyes of sick loathing. The clicking sound of madame’s needles maddened him; he had watched the incessant flash of steel for so many long-drawn-out evenings of strain.
The flawed mirror, set above the marble console table, reflected the room, duplicating the gilt clock on the mantelshelf and the pallid waxen fruit, cherished under crystal shades. Presently, however, the hateful vision blurred and faded away, and the home-sick man saw, in its stead, the picture that was engraved upon his mind.
Somewhere, far away from this place of thunder, bloodshed, and cold fears—geographical facts non-existent—was an isle that rocked gently, like an ark of safety, on the grey-green seas. And tucked away, within its very heart, approached only by grass-grown ruts, was a long, grey house. Sentinelled by age-old oaks, there brooded over it the very spirit of security and peace.
Again he sat in his own familiar study, surrounded by the good company of his books, while the fire burned red in the grate and his old hound dozed upon the rug at his feet. This was his proper place—his own milieu—of which he thought by day and dreamed by night.
His longings to escape magnified these nightly dreams into passions. He was always trying to get home. He took abortive railway journeys, when the train broke down and changed into inadequate rubbish, leaving him stranded in unfriendly country. Sometimes he boarded a steamer, which ploughed its way through fields and streets, ever seeking a far-receded sea. These nightmares were varied by the nerve-racking experience of ceaseless preparations for a journey, which ended in the poignant pang of reaching the station only to see the express dash through, its lighted windows merging into one golden streak.
Often, too, he tried to fly home—even as a bird—swooping from his bedroom window in vain essay at flight, and sinking lower into the darkness at each impotent stroke.