Antony Gray,--Gardener.

by Leslie Moore.

PROLOGUE

March had come in like a lion, raging, turbulent. Throughout the day the wind had torn spitefully at the yet bare branches of the great elms in the park; it had rushed in insensate fury round the walls of the big grey house; it had driven the rain lashing against the windows. It had sent the few remaining leaves of the old year scudding up the drive; it had littered the lawns with fragments of broken twigs; it had beaten yellow and purple crocuses prostrate to the brown earth.

Against the distant rocky coast the sea had boomed like the m.u.f.fled thunder of guns; it had flung itself upon the beach, dragging the stones back with it in each receding wave, their grinding adding to the crash of the waters. Nature had been in her wildest mood, a thing of mad fury.

With sundown a calm had fallen. The wind, tired of its onslaught, had sunk suddenly to rest. Only the sea beat and moaned sullenly against the cliffs, as if unwilling to subdue its anger. Yet, for all that, a note of fatigue had entered its voice.

An old man was sitting in the library of the big grey house. A shaded reading lamp stood on a small table near his elbow. The light was thrown upon an open book lying near it, and on the carved arms of the oak chair in which the man was sitting. It shone clearly on his bloodless old hands, on his parchment-like face, and white hair. A log fire was burning in a great open hearth on his right. For the rest, the room was a place of shadows, deepening to gloom in the distant corners, a gloom emphasized by the one small circle of brilliant light, and the red glow of the fire.

Book-cases reached from floor to ceiling the whole length of two walls, and between the three thickly curtained windows of the third. In the fourth wall were the fireplace and the door.

There was no sound to break the silence. The figure in the oak chair sat motionless. He might have been carved out of stone, for any sign of life he gave. He looked like stone,--white and black marble very finely sculptured,--white marble in head and hands, black marble in the piercing eyes, the long satin dressing-gown, the oak of the big chair. Even his eyes seemed stone-like, motionless, and fixed thoughtfully on s.p.a.ce.

To those perceptive of "atmosphere" there is a subtle difference in silence. There is the silence of woods, the silence of plains, the silence of death, the silence of sleep, and the silence of wakefulness.

This silence was the last named. It was a silence alert, alive, yet very still.

A slight movement in the room, so slight as to be almost imperceptible, roused him to the present. Life sprang to his eyes, puzzled, questioning; his body motionless, they turned towards the middle window of the three, from whence the movement appeared to have come. It was not repeated. The old utter silence lay upon the place; yet Nicholas Danver kept his eyes upon the curtain.

The minutes pa.s.sed. Then once more came that almost imperceptible movement.

Nicholas Danver's well-bred old voice broke the silence.

"Why not come into the room?" it suggested quietly. There was a gleam of ironical humour in his eyes.

The curtains swung apart, and a man came from between them. He stood blinking towards the light.

"How did you know I was there, sir?" came the gruff inquiry.

"I didn't know," said Nicholas, accurately truthful. "I merely guessed."

There was a pause.

"Well?" said Nicholas watching the man keenly. "By the way, I suppose you know I am entirely at your mercy. I could ring this bell," he indicated an electric b.u.t.ton attached to the arm of his chair, "but I suppose it would be at least three minutes before any one came. Yes," he continued thoughtfully, "allowing for the distance from the servants' quarters, I should say it would be at least three minutes. You could get through a fair amount of business in three minutes. Was it the candlesticks you wanted?" He looked towards a pair of solid silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. "They are c.u.mbersome, you know. Or the miniatures? There are three Cosways and four Engleharts. I should recommend the miniatures."

"I wanted to see you," said the man bluntly.

"Indeed!" Nicholas's white eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch above his keen old eyes. "An unusual hour for a visit, and--an unusual entrance, if I might make the suggestion."

"There'd never have been a chance of seeing you if I had come any other way." There was a hint of bitterness in the words.

Nicholas looked straight at him.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Job Grantley," was the reply. "I live down by the Lower Acre."

"Ah! One of my tenants."

"Yes, sir, one of your tenants."

"And--?" suggested Nicholas urbanely.

"I'm to turn out of my cottage to-morrow," said the man briefly.

"Indeed!" The pupils of Nicholas's eyes contracted. "May I ask why that information should be of interest to me?"

"It's of no interest to you, sir, and we know it. You never hear a word of what happens outside this house."

"Mr. Spencer Curtis conducts my business," said Nicholas politely.

"We know that too, sir, and we know the way it is conducted. It's an iron hand, and a heart like flint. It's pay or go, and not an hour's grace."

"You can hardly expect him to give you my cottages rent free," suggested Nicholas suavely.

The man winced.

"No, sir. But where a few weeks would make all the difference to a man, where it's a matter of a few shillings standing between home and the roadside--" he broke off.

Nicholas was silent.

"I thought perhaps a word to you, sir," went on the man half wistfully.

"We're to go to-morrow if I can't pay, and I can't. A couple of weeks might have made all the difference. It was for the wife I came, sneaking up here like a thief. She's lost two little ones; they never but opened their eyes on the world to shut them again. I'm glad on it now. But women aren't made that way. There's another coming. She's not strong. I doubt but the shock'll not take her and the little one too. Better for them both if it does. A man can face odds, and remake his life if he is a man--" he stopped.

Still there was silence.

"I was a fool to come," said the man drearily. "'Twas the weather did it in the end. I'd gone mad-like listening to the wind and rain, and thinking of her and the child that was to be--" again he stopped.

Nicholas was watching him from under the penthouse of his eyebrows.

Suddenly he spoke.

"How soon could you pay your rent?" he demanded.

"In a fortnight most like, sir. Three weeks for certain."

"Have you told Mr. Curtis that?"

"I have, sir. But it's the tick of time, or out you go."

"Have you ever been behindhand before?"

"No, sir."