The White People And Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen

Author:Arthur Machen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Classics, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781101552681
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

III

It might have been different in the evening, and Darnell had matured a plan by which he hoped to gain much. He intended to ask his wife if she would mind having only one gas, and that a good deal lowered, on the pretext that his eyes were tired with work; he thought many things might happen if the room were dimly lit, and the window opened, so that they could sit and watch the night, and listen to the rustling murmur of the tree on the lawn. But his plans were made in vain, for when he got to the garden gate his wife, in tears, came forth to meet him.

“Oh, Edward,” she began, “such a dreadful thing has happened! I never liked him much, but I didn’t think he would ever do such awful things.”

“What do you mean? Who are you talking about? What has happened? Is it Alice’s young man?”

“No, no. But come in, dear. I can see that woman opposite watching us: she’s always on the look out.”

“Now, what is it?” said Darnell, as they sat down to tea. “Tell me, quick! You’ve quite frightened me.”

“I don’t know how to begin, or where to start. Aunt Marian has thought that there was something queer for weeks. And then she found—oh, well, the long and short of it is that Uncle Robert has been carrying on dreadfully with some horrid girl, and aunt has found out everything!”

“Lord! you don’t say so! The old rascal! Why, he must be nearer seventy than sixty!”

“He’s just sixty-five; and the money he has given her—”

The first shock of surprise over, Darnell turned resolutely to his mince.

“We’ll have it all out after tea,” he said; “I am not going to have my meals spoilt by that old fool of a Nixon. Fill up my cup, will you, dear?”

“Excellent mince this,” he went on, calmly. “A little lemon juice and a bit of ham in it? I thought there was something extra. Alice all right to-day? That’s good. I expect she’s getting over all that nonsense.”

He went on calmly chattering in a manner that astonished Mrs. Darnell, who felt that by the fall of Uncle Robert the natural order had been inverted, and had scarcely touched food since the intelligence had arrived by the second post. She had started out to keep the appointment her aunt had made early in the morning, and had spent most of the day in a first-class waiting-room at Victoria Station, where she had heard all the story.

“Now,” said Darnell, when the table had been cleared, “tell us all about it. How long has it been going on?”

“Aunt thinks now, from little things she remembers, that it must have been going on for a year at least. She says there has been a horrid kind of mystery about uncle’s behaviour for a long time, and her nerves were quite shaken, as she thought he must be involved with Anarchists, or something dreadful of the sort.”

“What on earth made

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.