I have learned a good deal about Sir Brooke’s character since Mrs. B. began her raids with a Macbethean knocking and a stage whisper. His chief trait seems to be utter fickleness of memory, his next that something, or lack of something, which makes able-bodied women like Mrs. B. call men “dear” with “poor” prefixed. He is near-sighted, liable to vertigo philanthropic, and a nuisance.
I said Macbethean knocking—I suppose that proves I’m a little highly-strung myself. Certainly she caused a warm, douche-like sensation to pass clear over my scalp to the nape of my neck. We have had an evening which would make the staidest—
I have a severe mind to draw a line through these pages and begin anew. This isn’t what I intended at all. My candles are bearded now, and I haven’t scratched my subject. I repent and reform this very instant. I am going to try to put down things in order, as they have unfolded themselves in the course of one of the most amazing days I, or any human being, ever lived through.
Yet first (before taking my way back to the hilltop where I wandered this afternoon, never having so much as heard of Highglen House!) while the spirit is urgent and the clutch of sense is keen, I’ll transcribe the maddening events of the half-hour just past. Before I forget—but shall I ever forget?
There they were in the Hall of the Moth, civilizees of assorted temperaments, ignoring their alarms, submerging their differences, and levelling their intellects in the fascination of a card game. How “instructive and amusing” had been my introduction by Pendleton to each of them in this very Hall scarcely more than an hour before! Save for Alberta, that luscious wife of his, I had never laid eyes on one of them previous to this evening.
Straight on my entering the Hall, Pendleton had cavalierly handed me around from person to person.
First he revealed me to his wife, who set down her cards and rose with one of the gladdest smiles I have ever seen. She was tall and gracious. Her face, surrounded by its lustre of close-clipped, wavy hair, was a joy to look at, being both pearly-clear and firm, like an exquisite lily-petal of classic marble.
“Alfred! We hear that you have been raiding Aidenn Forest.”
“Please!” I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it anything so forcible as—”
But already Pendleton had presented me to Mrs. Belvoir. I withdrew my hand from its clasp of Alberta’s and took the cold fingers of the colourless man’s wife. What thoughts lay behind those brooding lids and that close-lipped mouth? Her face had a wavering indistinctness, like a face seen under flowing water.