night as on something unnatural. They sat still orstarted up abruptly, and paced the great garden in long detours, so thatit seemed that no three of them were together at a time, and none knewwho would be his companion; yet their rambling remained within the samedim and mazy space. They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; thesewere very brief, and yet they felt as if the whole sitting, strolling,or occasional speaking had been parts of a single dream.
Paynter woke once, and found Ashe sitting opposite him at a tableotherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end like the redeye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke, in his steady voice, Paynterwas positively afraid of him. He answered at random and nodded again;when he again woke the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him wasthe bald, pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly somethingominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles. And yet thevanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away, for he turned at thatinstant and strolled back to the table. With a jerk Paynter realizedthat his nightmare was but a trick of sleep or sleeplessness, and spokein his natural voice, but rather loud.
"So you've joined us again; where's Treherne?"
"Oh, still revolving, I suppose, like a polar bear under those trees onthe cliff," replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, "looking at whatan older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better) poetcalled the wine-dark sea. It really has a sort of purple shade; look atit."
Paynter looked; he saw the wine-dark sea and the fantastic trees thatfringed it, but he did not see the poet; the cloister was already emptyof its restless monk.
"Gone somewhere else," he said, with futility far from characteristic."He'll be back here presently. This is an interesting vigil, but avigil loses some of its intensity when you can't keep awake. Ah! Here'sTreherne; so we're all mustered, as the politician said when Mr. Colmancame late for dinner. No, the doctor's off again. How restless we allare!" The poet had drawn near, his feet were falling soft on the grass,and was gazing at them with a singular attentiveness.
"It will soon be over," he said.
"What?" snapped Ashe very abruptly.
"The night, of course," replied Treherne in a motionless manner. "Thedarkest hour has passed."
"Didn't some other minor poet remark," inquired Paynter flippantly,"that the darkest hour before the dawn--? My God, what was that? It waslike a scream."
"It was a scream," replied the poet. "The scream of a peacock."
Ashe stood up, his strong pale face against his red hair, and saidfuriously: "What the devil do you mean?"
"Oh, perfectly natural causes, as Dr. Brown would say," repliedTreherne. "Didn't the Squire tell us the trees had a shrill note oftheir own when the wind blew? The wind's beating up again from the sea;I shouldn't wonder if there was a storm before dawn."
Dawn indeed came gradually with a growing noise of wind, and the purplesea began to boil about the dark volcanic cliffs. The first change inthe sky showed itself only in the shapes of the wood and the singlestems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against aglimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees.In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentineand even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolvingas in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion ofdreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams hetoiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales, each filled with the samestress and noise of sea and sea wind; and above and outside all othervoices the wailing of the Trees of Pride.
When he woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on woodand garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparativecommon sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertlyto his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawnin similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what theywere expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences,comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of thateccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconsciousfear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hourfollowed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasionalbird. The Squire, like most men of his type, was an early riser, and itwas not likely that he would in this case sleep late; it was much morelikely, in the excitement in which he had left them, that he would notsleep at all. Yet it was clear that he must be sleeping, perhaps by somereaction from a strain. By the time the sun was high in heaven Ashe thelawyer, turning to the others, spoke abruptly and to the point.
"Shall we go into the wood now?" asked Paynter, and almost seemed tohesitate.
"I will go in," said Treherne simply. Then, drawing up his dark head inanswer to their glances, he added:
"No, do not trouble yourselves. It is never the believer who is afraid."
For the second time they saw a man mount the white curling path anddisappear into the gray tangled wood, but this time they did not have towait long to see him again.
A few minutes later he reappeared in the woodland gateway, and cameslowly toward them across the grass. He stopped before the doctor, whostood nearest, and said something. It was repeated to the others, andwent round the ring with low cries of incredulity. The others plungedinto the wood and returned wildly, and were seen speaking to othersagain who gathered from the house; the wild wireless telegraphy which isthe education of countryside communities spread it farther and fartherbefore the fact itself was fully realized; and before nightfall aquarter of the county knew that Squire Vane had vanished like a burstbubble.
Widely as the wild story was repeated, and patiently as it was pondered,it was long before there was even the beginning of a sequel to it. Inthe interval Paynter had politely removed himself from the house ofmourning, or rather of questioning, but only so far as the village inn;for Barbara Vane was glad of the traveler's experience and sympathy, inaddition to that afforded her by the lawyer and doctor as old friends ofthe family. Even Treherne was not discouraged from his occasional visitswith a view to helping the hunt for the lost man. The five held manycounsels round the old garden table, at which the unhappy master ofthe house had dined for the last time; and Barbara wore her old mask ofstone, if it was now a more tragic mask. She had shown no passion afterthe first morning of discovery, when she had broken forth once, speakingstrangely enough in the view of some of her hearers.
She had come slowly out of the house, to which her own or some oneelse's wisdom had relegated her during the night of the wager; and itwas clear from her face that somebody had told her the truth; Miles, thebutler, stood on the steps behind her; and it was probably he.
"Do not be much distressed, Miss Vane," said Doctor Brown, in a low andrather uncertain voice. "The search in the wood has hardly begun. I amconvinced we shall find--something quite simple."
"The doctor is right," said Ashe, in his firm tones; "I myself--"
"The doctor is not right," said the girl, turning a white face on thespeaker, "I know better. The poet is right. The poet is always right.Oh, he has been here from the beginning of the world, and seen wondersand terrors that are all round our path, and only hiding behind a bushor a stone. You and your doctoring and your science--why, you have onlybeen here for a few fumbling generations; and you can't conquer evenyour own enemies of the flesh. Oh, forgive me, Doctor, I know you dosplendidly; but the fever comes in the village, and the people die anddie for all that. And now it's my poor father. God help us all! The onlything left is to believe in God; for we can't help believing in devils."And she left them, still walking quite slowly, but in such a fashionthat no one could go after her.
The spring had already begun to ripen into summer, and spread a greentent from the tree over the garden table, when the American visitor,sitting there with his two professional companions, broke the silence bysaying what had long been in his mind.
"Well," he said, "I suppose whatever we may think it wise to say, wehave all begun to think of a possible conclusion. It can't be put verydelicately anyhow; but, after all, there's a ve
ry necessary businessside to it. What are we going to do about poor Vane's affairs, apartfrom himself? I suppose you know," he added, in a low voice to thelawyer, "whether he made a will?"
"He left everything to his daughter unconditionally," replied Ashe. "Butnothing can be done with it. There's no proof whatever that he's dead.""No legal proof?" remarked Paynter dryly. A wrinkle of irritation hadappeared in the big bald brow of Doctor Brown; and he made an impatientmovement.
"Of course he's dead," he said. "What's the sense of all this legalfuss? We were watching this side of the wood, weren't we? A man couldn'thave flown off those high cliffs over the sea; he could