Hans Frost by Hugh Walpole

Author:Hugh Walpole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror & Supernatural Fiction
Publisher: epubBooks Classics
Published: 2014-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter VII

Return

Hans jumped out of the car, let himself in with his key, and stood in the hall looking about him as though he were seeing it for the first time. The house was silent and bathed in sunshine. The chauffeur came quietly past him and then vanished up the stairs. Not a sound. Not a creature.

How long was it since he had been alone in the house like this? Oh, but years and years! Not a sound. Not a creature. The sunshine lay in pools and splashes of colour on the gleaming boards and the dark rugs. The deep mezzotints of the eighteenth–century ladies and gentlemen lay back on the pale, creamy walls with a gesture of proud resignation. He had not noticed them for years. Not a sound in the house. He did not move; the luxury of this was so great. And they would not return for several days. The car would go back to–night. To–day at least he would have the glorious free afternoon, the magnificent liberated evening. He sighed deeply. Yes, this was wonderful.

There was a sound on the stairs. Looking up he saw that Martha was coming down. She had started her descent in her usual, casual, indifferent fashion, slowly, with grand superiority. She saw him. She stopped. Then, most miraculous of dogs, seeing that he had his finger on his lip, she checked her shrill bark of welcome, but forgetting everything now, save her eagerness to welcome him, hurriedly pattered across the hall, and was leaping up at him, pushing at his trousers with her short legs, shoving her cold, long nose into the cup of his hand, biting in an extravagance of joy and pleasure his fingers, licking the thick gold signet ring that was for her one of his especial properties, and especially her own affair.

He sat down, there and then, on the little chair under the portrait of Madame de Sévigné (whose letters were surely less brilliant than people supposed them), took Martha into his lap, and stroked the sleek warm head with a luxury of pleasure. She gave a little humming sigh of pleasure, laid her head on his arm, and fell instantly asleep. He sat on basking in the sun. The clocks about the house struck the hour; his eye wandered from rug to rug, from picture to picture. He nodded his head as though to say: "Yes, I've never seen any of you before. I apologize. I won't forget you again."

At last he rose. The library was demanding him. He got up slowly, stood Martha (who had doubtless been dreaming glories of putting other dogs in their places) on her legs, and savouring every moment of his independence, mounted the stairs.

The sunlight, the silence went with him. Why should not life be always like this? Even as he turned the last stair it seemed to him that the One–eyed Commander came out to meet him. Yes, that was how he would be inside the house now, standing,

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