"My aunt will be down presently şimdi, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed sakin, serinkanlı, kendinden emin young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with katlanmak me."
Framton Nuttel endeavoured çalışmak to say the correct something which should duly flatter pohpohlamak the niece of the moment without unduly discounting fazlaca düşünmemek the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted şüphelenmek more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve sinir cure ilaç; çare which he was supposed to be undergoing çekmek.
"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate göç etmek to this rural retreat gerileme; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping yüz buruşturma. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division bölüm.
"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient yeterli silent communion paylaşma.
"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory bölgenin papazevi, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct belirgin regret üzüntü.
"Then you know practically gerçekte nothing about my aunt?"pursued devam etmek the self-possessed young lady.
"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed dul state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine erkeksi habitation oturma; mesken.
"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."
"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful sessiz sakin country spot tragedies seemed out of place yersiz.
"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece,indicating işaret etmek a large French window that opened on to a lawn çimenlik.
"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"
"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor kır to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed yutmak in a treacherous hain piece of bog bataklık. It had been that dreadful korkunç wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered iyileşmek. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly kekeleyerek human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel uzun ve sarkık kulaklı bir köpek that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk akşam karanlığı. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease kızdırmak her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy ürpertici; sürünen feeling that they will all walk in through that window - "
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.
"She has been very interesting," said Framton.
"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes bataklık today, so they'll make a fine mess pislik over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk erkek kısmı, isn't it?"
She rattled çok konuşmak on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity azlık of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment parça of her attention, and her eyes were constantly devamlı strayed gezinmek past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence tesadüf that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary yıldönümü.
"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence yokluk of mental excitement, and avoidance kaçınma of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured çalışma under the tolerably iyice widespread yaygın delusion hayal that total strangers and chance acquaintances (i.) tanıdık are hungry for the least detail of one's ailment rahatsızlık and infirmities zaaf, their cause and cure. "On the matter diet beslenme düzeni of they are not so much in agreement," he continued.
"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn esneme at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened canlanmak into alert atik attention - but not to what Framton was saying.
"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy çamurlu up to the eyes!"
Framton shivered ürpermek slightly belli belirsiz and turned towards the niece with a look intended niyetlenmek to convey iletmek sympathetic duygudaş comprehension anlama. The child was staring gözlerini dikmek out through the open window with a dazed şaşmış horror korku in her eyes. In a chill soğuk shock of nameless fear Framton swung dönmek round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures şahıs were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened yük taşıma with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.Noiselessly sessizce they neared the house, and then a hoarse boğuk young voice chanted tekrarlayıp durmak out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel çakıl ve kumlu yol drive, and the front gate were dimly loş noted stages in his headlong retreat gerileme. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge çit to avoid imminent yakın collision çatışma.
"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted kaçmak out as we came up?"
"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed kendini atmak off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."
"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug kazmak grave with the creatures snarling hırlamak and grinning sırıtma and just foaming köpürmek above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."
Romance at short notice was her speciality.