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Page 83
"It being a rainy evening and everyone indoors playing games and
what not,"--Keggs was amiably tolerant of the recreations of the
aristocracy--"you would experience little chance of a hinterruption,
were you to proceed to the lane outside the heast entrance of the
castle grounds and wait there. You will find in the field at the
roadside a small disused barn only a short way from the gates, where
you would be sheltered from the rain. In the meantime, I would
hinform 'er ladyship of your movements, and no doubt it would be
possible for 'er to slip off."
"It sounds all right."
"It is all right, sir. The chances of a hinterruption may be said
to be reduced to a minimum. Shall we say in one hour's time?"
"Very well."
"Then I will wish you good evening, sir. Thank you, sir. I am glad
to 'ave been of assistance."
He withdrew as he had come, with a large impressiveness. The room
seemed very empty without him. George, with trembling fingers,
began to put on a pair of thick boots.
For some minutes after he had set foot outside the door of the
cottage, George was inclined to revile the weather for having
played him false. On this evening of all evenings, he felt, the
elements should, so to speak, have rallied round and done their
bit. The air should have been soft and clear and scented: there
should have been an afterglow of sunset in the sky to light him on
his way. Instead, the air was full of that peculiar smell of
hopeless dampness which comes at the end of a wet English day. The
sky was leaden. The rain hissed down in a steady flow, whispering
of mud and desolation, making a dreary morass of the lane through
which he tramped. A curious sense of foreboding came upon George.
It was as if some voice of the night had murmured maliciously in
his ear a hint of troubles to come. He felt oddly nervous, as he
entered the barn.
The barn was both dark and dismal. In one of the dark corners an
intermittent dripping betrayed the presence of a gap in its ancient
roof. A rat scurried across the floor. The dripping stopped and
began again. George struck a match and looked at his watch. He was
early. Another ten minutes must elapse before he could hope for her
arrival. He sat down on a broken wagon which lay on its side
against one of the walls.
Depression returned. It was impossible to fight against it in this
beast of a barn. The place was like a sepulchre. No one but a fool
of a butler would have suggested it as a trysting-place. He
wondered irritably why places like this were allowed to get into
this condition. If people wanted a barn earnestly enough to take
the trouble of building one, why was it not worth while to keep the
thing in proper repair? Waste and futility! That was what it was.
That was what everything was, if you came down to it. Sitting here,
for instance, was a futile waste of time. She wouldn't come. There
were a dozen reasons why she should not come. So what was the use
of his courting rheumatism by waiting in this morgue of dead
agricultural ambitions? None whatever--George went on waiting.
And what an awful place to expect her to come to, if by some miracle
she did come--where she would be stifled by the smell of mouldy hay,
damped by raindrops and--reflected George gloomily as there was
another scurry and scutter along the unseen floor--gnawed by rats.
You could not expect a delicately-nurtured girl, accustomed to all
the comforts of a home, to be bright and sunny with a platoon of
rats crawling all over her. . . .
The grey oblong that was the doorway suddenly darkened.
"Mr. Bevan!"
George sprang up. At the sound of her voice every nerve in his body
danced in mad exhilaration. He was another man. Depression fell
from him like a garment. He perceived that he had misjudged all
sorts of things. The evening, for instance, was a splendid
evening--not one of those awful dry, baking evenings which make you
feel you can't breathe, but pleasantly moist and full of a
delightfully musical patter of rain. And the barn! He had been all
wrong about the barn. It was a great little place, comfortable,
airy, and cheerful. What could be more invigorating than that smell
of hay? Even the rats, he felt, must be pretty decent rats, when
you came to know them.
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