Darkness at Pemberley by T. H. White

Author:T. H. White [White, T. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Project Gutenberg Canada
Published: 2018-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

"It's only some soot from the chimney," said Buller guiltily. "You'll have to have your chimneys swept, Miss Darcy, if we're going to keep sane." The tense atmosphere gave place to one of slight hysteria.

"My dear!" said Elizabeth. "Actually they've just been swept. I did my spring cleaning early when I heard you were coming to stay." She giggled weakly. Wilder began to whistle the Spring Song and they all laughed—nobody knew why.

*****

The mellow old brickwork and peaceful scenery of Pemberley seemed to take on an air of menace and exhaustion under these new conditions. The three men became secretly tiresome to one another. Charles began to find the continued presence of one or another of them a memento mori. Elizabeth could have screamed when, for the hundredth time, she came upon the white moustache of Kingdom discreetly hovering just outside her range of occupation. It was not that there was any antipathy between the members of the beleaguered garrison, but that each reminded the other, simply by his presence, of an unpleasant doubt. The silence was sinister with possibilities.

Buller, when it was the surgeon's turn for duty upstairs, could bear it no longer. He went in search of Elizabeth.

"Here," he said, "I can't stand this. Let's go for a drive or something. I don't think anything can happen during the day in any case. We're not really needed here, and we owe our nerves a rest."

"Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere, so it be out of this whispering."

*****

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