The House of Whispers

by William Le Queux

"But, dear dad, I much prefer to remain with you and help you," she protested. "Yesterday the Professor sent you five more bronze matrices of ecclesiastical seals. We haven't yet examined them."

"We'll do so to-night, dear," he said. "You go out to-day. I'll amuse myself all right. Perhaps I'll go for a little walk."

Therefore the girl had, against her inclination, joined the luncheon-party, where foremost of all to have her little attentions was a rather foppish young stockbroker named Girdlestone, who had been up there shooting the previous year, and had on that occasion flirted with her furiously.

During her absence her father tried to resume his knitting—an occupation which he had long ago been compelled to resort to in order to employ his time; but he soon put it down with a sigh, rose, and taking his soft brown felt-hat and stout stick, tapped his way along through the great hall and out into the park.

He felt the warmth upon his cheek as he passed slowly along down the broad drive. "Ah," he murmured to himself, "if only I could once again see God's sunlight! If I could only see the greenery of nature and the face of my darling child!" and he sighed brokenly, and went on, his chin sunk upon his breast, a despairing, hopeless man. Surely no figure more pathetic than his could be found in the whole of Scotland. Upon him had been showered honour, great wealth, all indeed that makes life worth living, and yet, deprived of sight, he existed in that world of darkness, deceived and plotted against by all about him. His grey countenance was hard and thoughtful as he passed slowly along tapping the ground before him, for he was thinking—ever thinking—of the declaration of his French visitor. He had been betrayed. But by whom?

His thoughts were wandering back to those days when he could see—those well-remembered days when he had held the House in silence by his brilliant oratory, and when the papers next day had leading articles concerning his speeches. He recollected his time-mellowed old club in St. James's Street—Boodle's—of which he had been so fond. Then came his affliction. The thought of it all struck him suddenly; and, clenching his hands, he murmured some inarticulate words through his teeth. They sounded strangely like a threat. Next instant, however, he laughed bitterly to himself the dry, harsh laugh of a man into whose very soul the iron had entered.

In the distance he could hear the shots of his guests, those men who accepted his hospitality, and who among themselves agreed that he was "a terrible bore, poor old fellow!" They came up there—with perhaps two exceptions—to eat his dinners, drink his choice wines, and shoot his birds, but begrudged him more than ten minutes or so of their company each day. In the billiard-room of an evening, as he sat upon one of the long lounges, they would perhaps deign to chat with him; but, alas! he knew that he was only as a wet blanket to his wife's guests, hence he kept himself so much to the library—his own domain.

That night he spent half-an-hour in the billiard-room in order to hear what sport they had had, but very soon escaped, and with Gabrielle returned again to the library to fulfil his promise and examine the seal-matrices which the Professor had sent.

To where they sat came bursts of boisterous laughter and of the waltz-music of the pianola in the hall, for in the shooting season the echoes of the fine mansion were awakened by the merriment of as gay a crowd as any who assembled in the Highlands.

Sir Henry heard it. The sounds jarred upon his nerves. Mirth such as theirs was debarred him for ever, and he had now become gloomy and misanthropic. He sat fingering those big oval matrices of bronze, listening to Gabrielle's voice deciphering the inscriptions, and explaining what was meant and what was possibly their history. One which Sir Henry declared to be the gem of them all bore the manus Dei for device, and was the seal of Archbishop Richard (1174-84). Several documents bearing impressions of this seal were, he said, preserved at Canterbury and in the British Museum, but here the actual seal itself had come to light.