Told in a French Garden | Page 9

and have him see if any of the
servants are up?"
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and laughed heartily.
"See here, dear girl," he said, "you and I are a pair of healthy people.
We have happened to hear a noise which we can't explain. Be sure that
there is rational explanation. You're not afraid?"
"Well, no, I really am not," she declared, "but you cannot deny that it is
strange. Did you hear it last night?"
"Go on, now, with your cross-examination," he said. "Let's go to sleep.
At any rate the exhibition is over for to-night."
The fourth night they did not speak in the night any more than they had
in the daytime. But the next day they had a long conversation, the gist
of which was this: That they had bought the place, that except for
fifteen minutes at midnight, the place was ideal. They were both
level-headed, neither believed in anything super-natural. Were they to
be driven out of such a place by so harmless a thing as an unexplained
noise? They could get used to it. After a bit it would no more wake
them up,--such was the force of habit--than the ticking of the clock. To
all this they both agreed, and the matter was dropped.
For ten days they did not mention it, but in all those ten days a sort of
crescendo of emotion was going on in her. At first she began to think of

it as soon as bed-time approached; then she felt it intruding on her
thoughts at the dinner table; then she was unable to sleep for an hour or
two after the fifteen minutes had passed, and, finally, one night, she
fled into his room to find him wide awake, just before dawn, and to
confess that the shadow of midnight was stretched before and after until
it was almost a black circle round the twenty-four hours.
She knew it was absurd. She had no intention of being driven out of
such a lovely place--BUT--
"See here, dear," he said. "Let's break our rule. We neither of us want
company, but let's, at least, have a big week ender, and perhaps we can
prove to ourselves that our nerves are wrong. One thing is sure, if you
are going to get pale over it, I'll burn the blooming house down before
we'll live in it."
"But you mind it yourself?"
"Not a bit!"
"But you are awake."
"Of course I am, because I know that you are."
"Do you mean to say that if I slept you wouldn't notice it?"
"On my honor--I should not."
"You are a comfort," she ejaculated. "I shall go right to sleep." And off
she went, and did go to sleep.
All the same, in the morning, he insisted on the house-party.
"Let me see our list," he said. "Let us have no students of occult; no
men who dabble in laboratory spiritualism; just nice, live, healthy
people who never heard of such things--if possible. You can find
them."
"You see, dear," she explained, "it would not trouble me if I heard it

and you did not--but--"
"Oh, fudge!" he laughed. "Just now I should be sure to hear anything
you did, I suppose."
"You old darling," she replied, "then I don't care for it a bit."
"All the same we'll have the house-party."
So the following Saturday every room in the house was occupied.
At midnight they were all gathered in the long drawing room opening
on the colonnade, and, when the hour sounded, some one was singing.
The host and hostess heard the running horses, as usual, and they were
conscious that one or two people turned a listening ear, but evidently
no one saw anything strange in it, and no comment was made. It was
after one when they all went up to their rooms, so that evening passed
off all right.
But on Sunday night two of the younger guests had gone to sit on the
front terrace, and the older people were walking, in the moonlight, in
the garden at the back. The sweet little girl, who was having her hand
held, got up properly when she heard the carriage coming, and went to
the edge of the terrace to see who was arriving at midnight. She had a
fit of nerves as the invisible vehicle and its running horses seemed
about to ride over her. She ran in, trembling with fear, to tell the tale,
and of course every one laughed at her, and the matter would have been
dropped, if it had not happened that, just at that moment a very pale
gentleman came stumbling out of the house with the statement that he
wanted a conveyance "to take him back to