Lindsay looked at him suspiciously but he seemed not ill-pleased. He lay down again and turned over with his back to the young man.
The shutters were not closed nor the blinds pulled down and Bob was afraid of rousing Lindsay by moving about, so he sat quite still till the breathing in the bed told him that his godfather was asleep. The hands of the clock ticking on the mantelpiece were hard on eleven when he rose and went downstairs, priding himself a little on the success of his methods. He had just time to find his place in his book when a violent bell-ringing woke the house.
He heard Lyall run upstairs and he sat still, waiting. In another moment the man was down again.
‘You’ll need to go back, sir,’ said he. ‘The Colonel wants ye.’
Bob ran up.
‘Why did you go?’ cried Lindsay. ‘Stay here. You said you would stay! That damned fellow, Lyall, will drive me mad with his doctors. Don’t let him in!’
Bob looked at the harsh face and white whiskers of the solitary, uncouth old man in the bed. He pitied him, not so much because he was ill, but because of his rough, forlorn detachment from the humanities.
‘It’s late, you know, sir,’ said he, ‘but I’ll get my mattress and sleep on the floor. I will stay, certainly.’
The idea seemed to quiet Lindsay and he fell asleep; now and then he tossed his heavy body from one side to another, but Bob made up his shakedown bed and got into it without interruption and was soon lost in the healthy slumber of youth. He was roused from it a short time later by something which was not a noise but which had made appeal to some suspended sense of his own. He sat up.
There was no moon, but the starless night had not the solidity of deep darkness. The unshuttered window gave him his bearings when he looked round wondering, as the sleeper in a strange bed so often wonders, where he could possibly be, though its grey square was almost blocked out by a figure before it. Lindsay had got out of bed and was standing, just as he stood when his godson first entered Pitriven, colossal and still, against the pane.
Bob struck a match quickly and Lindsay turned as the candle-flame rose up.
‘Put it out!’ he said fiercely. ‘I tell you, put it out! Do you want the whole parish to see in?’
‘Come back,’ begged Bob, ‘for heaven’s sake go back into your bed – why, you will perish with cold standing there.’
He was on his feet and half-way to the window.
‘Do you hear me?’ roared Lindsay. ‘Put out that damned candle!’
Bob obeyed and then went and laid his hand on Lindsay’s sleeve. Though the old man was not cold his teeth were chattering.
He shook him off.
‘Look at that,’ he said, pointing into the night outside.
‘Go to bed, sir – please go to bed,’ said Bob again.
‘But look!’ cried Lindsay, taking him by the shoulder.
The young man strained his eyes. The windows looked straight across the cleft of the den towards the spot where the kirk stood high upon the farther bank. The indication of a dark mass was just visible, like a pyramid thrusting into the sky, which Bob knew must be the crowded yews round Annie Cargill’s grave.
‘Do you see the light?’ asked Lindsay.
‘Where?’ said Bob, peering out, ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Are you blind, boy?’ cried Lindsay – ‘it’s there by the foot of the trees, and she’s there too! She’s old now – old – old. Not like she was then!’
Bob turned colder. The young gardener’s words came back to him. ‘She’s no bonnie noo,’ he had said, ‘she’s been lyin’ there owre lang.’ It had seemed to him a grim speech, but its suggestion then had been of mere physical horror. His godfather’s words conveyed a spiritual one.
‘By the trees,’ he said. ‘Which trees?’
‘Good God, can’t you see it, you young fool?
There’s a little dim light – at the foot – in the gap.’
Bob was silent. He knew exactly which place Lindsay meant.
‘It’s there!’ cried the other again – ‘beside her – round her!’
He seemed to be terribly excited, and Bob, who felt the burning fever of the hand gripping his shoulder, longed to get him back between his sheets. He was quite certain that he was delirious.
‘Yes, I see it now,’ he said, lying, but hoping to quiet him, ‘perhaps it is a bit of glass or a shining stone.’
He knew how senseless his words were, but they were the first that came into his head.
‘The stone’s in there,’ said Lindsay, ‘in among the trees. But they won’t hide it – they won’t hide her!’
‘I know,’ said Bob; ‘come, sir, you must rest.’
‘Rest? I can’t rest. She knows that. She has known it for years. Ah, she’s old now, you see, and bitter. Older – every year older—’
Bob tried to draw him away. To his surprise the other made no resistance. Lindsay lay down and he covered him carefully. He put on a coat that was hanging in the room and sat down by the bed; he wondered dismally if this miserable night would ever end. It was past one o’clock and he resolved that he would send for a doctor the moment the house was stirring. He dared not leave Lindsay and he dared not ring the bell for Lyall, lest he should upset him further. In about half an hour he rose and crept into his shakedown to sleep, for the old man was quiet.
All the rest of his days Bob wondered what would have happened if he had kept awake. How far might he have seen into the mysteries of those fringes of spiritual life that surround humanity, and how far listened to the echoes that come floating in broken notes from the hidden conflict of good and evil?
A faint light was breaking outside when consciousness came to him with the knowledge that he was half frozen. His limbs were aching from the way in which he had huddled himself together. A strong draught was sweeping into the room and when he lit the candle he found that the door was wide open. He leaped up and shut it, and then went softly to see whether Lindsay slept.
The bedclothes were thrown back and the bed was empty.
He dressed hurriedly and ran out into the passage. Lindsay’s clothes, which had been lying on a chair at the foot of the fourposter, had disappeared with their owner. When he reached the hall the air blew strong against his face, for the front door stood wide and a chill wind that was rising with morning was heaving the boughs outside. No wonder that he had shivered on the floor. On the inner side of the smoking-room door the setter was whining and snuffling. He turned the handle and looked in, vainly hoping that he might find Lindsay, and the dog rushed out past him, through the house door and into the December morning, with his nose on the ground. He watched him as he shot away towards the den of Pitriven, and followed, running.
A wooden gate led to the bridge that spanned the den, and here the setter paused, crying, till Bob came up with him. As the gate swung behind them the dog rushed on before, up the flight of steps that ascended to the kitchen garden.
Bob knew quite well where he and his dumb comrade were going, and his heart sank with each step that took them nearer to their goal. But he was a courageous youth, in spite of his spiritual misgivings, and it would have been impossible to him to leave anyone in the lurch. Nevertheless, he remembered, with instinctive thankfulness, that the outer door of the garden would be locked and that he must rouse the gardener in the bothy if he wished to get through it.
The bothy was