Eltonsbrody by Edgar Mittelholzer

Author:Edgar Mittelholzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2017-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

12

The night was quiet.

I didn’t sleep as restfully as I should have liked, but I did sleep. Once, at about one o’clock, I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor, but when I went out with my electric torch and investigated, I found the corridor empty. On another occasion I was certain I caught faint thudding sounds in the doctor’s old room, but when I sat up and listened I heard nothing, so had to come to the conclusion that I must have been dreaming.

When I opened my eyes finally the following morning there were yellowish wisps of cirrus in a pale-blue, watery sky. It was early—my watch said twenty to six—and rain seemed to have fallen not long before, for the trees dripped slowly and with a sound of contented wetness. I kept staring idly at the sky through one of the western windows, and was aware of the smell of leaves and earth in the air, and could hear the peep-peep of the chickens from the poultry-runs and the occasional squawk of a hen or the gobble of a turkey—all peaceful, innocuous noises that had a plaintive, coaxing quality so that the temptation to linger in bed in pleasant drowsiness was almost irresistible. Even the wind seemed to have fallen to a low humming, and once, when I heard a mule-cart—probably laden with canes—moving past along the road with a leisured swish and clatter, a weighty, detached lumbering, I had to shut my eyes, thinking what a lulling sound it was—what a rustic, sleepy sound. It seemed to deaden thoughts of activity and disarm the mind.

However, I was determined to rise early and go down to Bathsheba for a dip in the sea, hence refused to allow enticements of any kind to baulk me.

As on previous occasions during the past few days, I went down past Shepherd’s Rest House, and plunged in at a point far from that low, squat rock shaped like a leaning monster with its belly eaten away, and which seems to be reaching out at something in the dark-green roaring waves—a something visible only to its time-clouded, inscrutable eyes.

I must have been ten minutes in the water, which kept buffeting me about and threatening to smash my ribs against the hard, pebbly beach, when on emerging and about to get ready for the next powerful roller, I happened to glance towards the rock-monster and see someone standing beside it staring out to sea. It was a woman, but before I could focus my gaze properly I was lifted off my feet and smothered in a green welter of foam and water.

Emerged again, I looked and saw that it was Mrs. Scaife. She had Walter and Patrick with her on leash. Before the next wave attacked me I saw her bend and release the animals. They went bounding and barking up and down the beach in a gay burst of energy.

Her presence here did not surprise me, for she had mentioned that she sometimes took walks down to the beach with the dogs in the morning; the habit was an old one, she had said.

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