Judge bowed again.
"I think we shall not see one another again," proceeded Isbel. "I will take this opportunity of saying good-bye. It has been a very…broken friendship."
Without waiting for any further speech from him, she started slowly to mount the lawn, having no definite plans for getting back to Brighton, but feeling that she would gain her bearings better from the house in the first place. She did not rust herself to retrace the route by which she had come. The thick, white, rolling vapours shut her in, as in a prison…Judge, standing there in brilliant sunshine and an atmosphere which showed everything as clear-cut and painted, saw her one moment, and failed to see her the next. She had disappeared before his eyes. He made a gesture of dismay, and began in hot haste to scramble up the hillside obliquely, in the direction of the sleeping musician.
Isbel heard a long, low, scraping sound, like the slow drawing of a bow across the low string of a deep-toned viol. It was succeeded by silence.
She was by this time close up to the house, and she looked towards it, but was unable to understand where she had come to. It was a different building. As well as could be distinguished through the mist, it was constructed entirely of unpainted timber, from top to bottom; the roof was flat, without gables, and there appeared to be four storeys. Then the fog shut out the vision again.
A strange warmth was running through her body. All her other sensations seemed to be merged in the recollection that she was a woman…Fever was abroad in the air, and her blood grew hotter and hotter…
That musical noise returned, but now the note was low, fierce, passionate, exactly resembling a deep, forced human cry of love-pain…
Everything happened in a single second. Between twin periods of fog and gloom, came one flash of summer sunlight. It entered upon her with the abrupt unexpectedness of a stroke, and before she realised where she was, or what had happened to her, it had departed again leaving her stunned and terrified. Meanwhile, this is what she seemed to see. She was standing in sunshine again, on that bare hill, gazing at the distant forest, across the valley. The sky was cloudless. She was nearly at the top of the hill, and the house had vanished…She recollected everything, but could settle to nothing. Her mood was one of unutterable excitement and reckless audacity; she appeared to herself to be laughing and sobbing under her breath…
Henry and that other man were facing each other on the hillside, a little way below her. The man was tall and stout, and, in his bright-coloured, archaic garments, cut an extraordinary figure. He held his instrument against his chest, and was in the act of drawing his bow across it-the note she had heard had not yet come to an end. His back was turned towards her, so that she could not see his face, but Henry, who was standing erect and motionless beyond, was looking right into it, and, from his expression, it was as though he were beholding some appalling vision!…She screamed and ran towards him, calling him by name. Before she had taken three steps, however, the musician jerked his whole force savagely into his bow-arm, and she was brought up with a violent shock. Such sharp brutality of passion she had never heard expressed by any sound…The sunlight grew suddenly hotter and darker, the landscape appeared to close rapidly in upon her, some catastrophe was impending; her blood was boiling and freezing…
At that moment it seemed to her that yonder strange man was the centre around which everything in the landscape was moving, and that she herself was no more than his dream!…
And then Henry's face was crossed by an expression of sickness; he changed colour; she caught a faint groan, and directly afterwards he sank helplessly to the ground, where he continued lying quite still…she stood paralysed, staring in horror…
The sunlight vanished instantaneously. Everything was grey and cold again, the sky was leaden; she saw nothing but driving rain-mists…She rubbed her eyes with her knuckes, wondering what had occurred, how she came to be standing there, as in a dream, why she felt so sick and troubled?…
Then she quietly fainted where she stood.
Chapter XX MARSHALL'S JOURNEY
On arriving at Lloyd's at ten o'clock on the same morning, Marshall found among his letters a typewritten envelope of uncommercial size and shape. Out of curiosity, he opened it the first. The communication enclosed was typed on small, feminine notepaper, and was neither addressed nor signed. It was, in fact, anonymous. Before reading it, he turned again to the envelope, to inspect the postmark. It was stamped Worthing. The only person he could think of as staying at Worthing was Judge.
He read the following words:
"If Mr. Stokes is interested to know how Miss L-spends her time during his temporary absences, it might be as well for him to inquire at Runhill court. There is every reason to believe that she will be there to-morrow (Friday) morning before lunch, for the third time this week, and he may consider the matter of sufficient importance to justify his presence there on the same occasion. Should it not be before lunch, it may be after. It is believed that there are rooms in the house which are not easy to discover."
Marshall carefully folded the letter, and deposited it in his pocket-cast. Then he sat back, and began to slowly pass his hand over his eyes and forehead.
His first impulse was to ignore the whole business, destroy the note, and say nothing about it to Isbel or anyone else. To start testing the accuracy of a charge, of which, naturally, he did not believe a single word, would be equivalent to admitting that there might be a possibility of truth in it, and that would be a ghastly insult to Isbel…
But then there was the question of libel. Some ill-disposed person-probably a woman-was evidently bent on mischief, and it was doubtful how far she would go if no counter-action was taken. The thing obviously was to find out, in the first place, who wrote the letter. The police were out of the question, and private inquiry agents were not much better; he did not intend to have her name bandied about by these professional gentlemen. She herself was the only one who might be ale to throw light on the business. He would show her the letter that same evening when he went down to Brighton, and they would talk it over together. A person who was prepared to go to that criminal length did not spring out of empty space-Isbel would have a tolerable idea who it was, and why she, or he, had done it…
Of course, spite was at the bottom of it. But what he could not quite see through was the explicit character of the charge. Where was the sense of quoting time and place, when the writer must be aware that any action taken on the statement would expose the whole damned lie? Probably it was a bit of low cunning. It was thought that he would not take action, an that the poison would continue to rankle in his mind…That seemed all right as far as he could see. And in that case he was not at all sure that it might not be good policy to make the move he was not expected to make. Of course, before going to Runhill, to see what game was on foot, he would look Isbel up at Brighton, and very likely take her with him.
He made hurried arrangements with his deputy to carry on during his absence, and immediately afterwards left for Victoria.
It was not long after noon when he arrived at the Gondy Hotel. Mrs. Moor gave an exclamation of surprise when she saw him.
"Good gracious, Marshall!-what can this mean?"
He told a story of having met a man…"Where's Isbel?" he added quickly.