The stillness was broken by Miles, the butler, who dropped and broke one of the plates he carried. He stood looking after his master with his long, angular chin thrust out, looking yel-lower where it caught the yellow light of the lamp below.
His face was thus sharply in shadow, but Paynter fancied for a moment it was convulsed by some passion passing surprise.
But the face was quite as usual when it turned, and Paynter realized that a night of fancies had begun, like the cross purposes of the "Midsummer Night's Dream."
The wood of the strange trees, toward which the Squire was walking, lay so far forward on the headland, which ultimately almost overhung the sea, that it could be approached by only one path, which shone clearly like a silver ribbon in the twilight.
The ribbon ran along the edge of the cliff, where the single row of deformed trees ran beside it all the way, and eventually plunged into the closer mass of trees by one natural gateway, a mere gap in the wood, looking dark, like a lion's mouth.
What became of the path inside could not be seen, but it doubtless led round the hidden roots of the great central trees.
The Squire was already within a yard or two of this dark entry when his daughter rose from the table and took a step or two after him as if to call him back.
Treherne had also risen, and stood as if dazed at the effect of his idle defiance. When Barbara moved he seemed to recover himself, and stepping after her, said something which Paynter did not hear.
He said it casually and even distantly enough, but it clearly suggested something to her mind; for, after a moment's thought, she nodded and walked back, not toward the table, but apparently toward the house.
Paynter looked after her with a momentary curiosity, and when he turned again the Squire had vanished into the hole in the wood.
"He's gone," said Treherne, with a clang of finality in his tones, like the slamming of a door.
"Well, suppose he has?" cried the lawyer, roused at the voice.
"The Squire can go into his own wood, I suppose!
What the devil's all the fuss about, Mr. Paynter? Don't tell me you think there's any harm in that plantation of sticks."
"No, I don't," said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lighting a cigar. "But I shall stop here till he comes out."
"Very well," said Ashe shortly, "I'll stop with you, if only to see the end of this farce."
The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted one of the American's cigars. If Treherne had been attending to the matter he might have noted, with his sardonic superstition, a curious fact--that, while all three men were tacitly condemning themselves to stay out all night if necessary, all, by one blank omission or oblivion, assumed that it was impossible to follow their host into the wood just in front of them. But Treherne, though still in the garden, had wandered away from the garden table, and was pacing along the single line of trees against the dark sea.
They had in their regular interstices, showing the sea as through a series of windows, something of the look of the ghost or skeleton of a cloister, and he, having thrown his coat once more over his neck, like a cape, passed to and fro like the ghost of some not very sane monk.
All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for the rest of their lives on that night as on something unnatural.
They sat still or started up abruptly, and paced the great garden in long detours, so that it seemed that no three of them were together at a time, and none knew who would be his companion; yet their rambling remained within the same dim and mazy space.
They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; these were 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 table otherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end like the red eye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke, in his steady voice, Paynter was positively afraid of him.
He answered at random and nodded again; when he again woke the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him was the bald, pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly something ominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles.
And yet the vanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away, for he turned at that instant and strolled back to the table.
With a jerk Paynter realized that his nightmare was but a trick of sleep or sleeplessness, and spoke in 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 on the cliff," replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, "looking at what an older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better) poet called the wine-dark sea. It really has a sort of purple shade; look at it."
Paynter looked; he saw the wine-dark sea and the fantastic trees that fringed it, but he did not see the poet; the cloister was already empty of 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 a vigil loses some of its intensity when you can't keep awake. Ah! Here's Treherne; so we're all mustered, as the politician said when Mr. Colman came late for dinner.
No, the doctor's off again. how restless we all are!"
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.
"The darkest 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 was like 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 said furiously: "What the devil do you mean?"
