And that fiendish cat that has driven Maryvale mad and that his bullets could not harm!
Worse and worse!
I shall now dress in tramping kit and doze until dawn.[¹]
¹ I have postponed until now a note which should have been inserted some pages ago, but which would then have interrupted the narrative. References to the song of the nightingale in this chapter and elsewhere in this diary demonstrate, as I think, the innocent romanticism of Mr. Bannerlee. Neither he nor Mr. Maryvale appears to have possessed a rudimentary knowledge of birds. Nightingales, to be sure, visit Radnorshire, and the old ones do not leave until autumn, but of course their descant ceases in June, when the task of feeding the young becomes absorbing. Unquestionably, the bird these gentlemen listened to was the song-thrush, which (as is well known) resumes its singing in October, when the now-silent nightingale has departed from the land. (V. Markham.)
XV.
The Rainbow
October 5. 10.18 P.M.
I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cullen had insisted on sentinelling outside Maryvale’s apartment during the night; now the guardsman slept industriously, his head reclining in the angle of the doorpost, the rest of him curled up, his jaws alarmingly open.
Not disturbing him, I descended to the first storey, where I placed my note under Crofts’ door, and continued down. My previous night’s experience had taught me how to find the food supply readily, and I stocked my pockets with concentrated nutriment. Letting myself out by the front entrance, I turned to the left and directed my steps toward the kitchen demesne betwixt House and stables.
I was in luck. Twenty yards of fairly stout clothes-line were mine for the taking.
With the rope bent over my arm, I hastened past the dinner-room windows toward the cypresses that marked the first point on any journey up the Vale. Then I stopped dead.