Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes | Page 7

cared to admit.
III
All this that takes so long to describe became apparent to me in a few
seconds. What I had always despised ascended the throne.
But with the finding of Bassett's cottage, as a sign-post close to home,
my former sang-froid, my stupidity, would doubtless return, and my
relief was therefore considerable when at length a faint gleam of light
appeared through the mist, against which the square dark shadow of the
chimney-line pointed upwards. After all, I had not strayed so very far
out of the way. Now I could definitely ascertain where I was wrong.
Quickening my pace, I scrambled over a broken stone wall, and almost
ran across the open bit of grass to the door. One moment the black
outline of the cottage was there in front of me, and the next, when I
stood actually against it--there was nothing! I laughed to think how
utterly I had been deceived. Yet not utterly, for as I groped back again
over the wall, the cottage loomed up a little to the left, with its windows
lighted and friendly, and I had only been mistaken in my angle of
approach after all. Yet again, as I hurried to the door, the mist drove
past and thickened a second time--and the cottage was not where I had
seen it!
My confusion increased a lot after that. I scrambled about in all
directions, rather foolishly hurried, and over countless stone walls it
seemed, and completely dazed as to the true points of the compass.
Then suddenly, just when a kind of despair came over me, the cottage
stood there solidly before my eyes, and I found myself not two feet
from the door. Was ever mist before so deceptive? And there, just
behind it, I made out the row of pines like a dark wave breaking
through the night. I sniffed the wet resinous odour with joy, and a
genuine thrill ran through me as I saw the unmistakable yellow light of
the windows. At last I was near home and my troubles would soon be

over.
A cloud of birds rose with shrill cries off the roof and whirled into the
darkness when I knocked with my stick on the door, and human voices,
I was almost certain, mingled somewhere with them, though it was
impossible to tell whether they were within the cottage or outside. It all
sounded confusedly with a rush of air like a little whirlwind, and I
stood there rather alarmed at the clamour of my knocking. By way, too,
of further proof that my imagination had awakened, the significance of
that knocking at the door set something vibrating within me that most
surely had never vibrated before, so that I suddenly realized with what
atmosphere of mystical suggestion is the mere act of knocking
surrounded--knocking at a door--both for him who knocks, wondering
what shall be revealed on opening, and for him who stands within,
waiting for the summons of the knocker. I only know that I hesitated a
lot before making up my mind to knock a second time.
And, anyhow, what happened subsequently came in a sort of haze.
Words and memory both failed me when I try to record it truthfully, so
that even the faces are difficult to visualise again, the words almost
impossible to hear.
Before I knew it the door was open and before I could frame the words
of my first brief question, I was within the threshold, and the door was
shut behind me.
I had expected the little dark and narrow hallway of a cottage,
oppressive of air and odour, but instead I came straight into a room that
was full of light and full of--people. And the air tasted like the air about
a mountain-top.
To the end I never saw what produced the light, nor understood how so
many men and women found space to move comfortably to and fro,
and pass each other as they did, within the confines of those four walls.
An uncomfortable sense of having intruded upon some private
gathering was, I think, my first emotion; though how the
poverty-stricken country-side could have produced such an assemblage
puzzled me beyond belief. And my second emotion--if there was any

division at all in the wave of wonder that fairly drenched me--was
feeling a sort of glory in the presence of such an atmosphere of
splendid and vital youth. Everything vibrated, quivered, shook about
me, and I almost felt myself as an aged and decrepit man by
comparison.
I know my heart gave a great fiery leap as I saw them, for the faces that
met me were fine, vigourous, and comely, while burning everywhere
through their ripe maturity shone the ardours of youth and a kind of
deathless enthusiasm.