I was the prey of this particular, not at all
unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping
to look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to follow
the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers,
arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I
took up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the
piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although
I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host
had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember it
perfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of the
drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself.
He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was
something in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He was
extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very
pale.
"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted
hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that
looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its
twisted, pointing branches.
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