The man bowed, and left the room quietly, yet Hodsoll had the curious impression that he caught an extremely ugly look just as he was going out. ‘What on earth’s the matter with the fellow?’ he asked himself. ‘Is he afraid he won’t get a tip when I leave. And he certainly won’t if he bothers me like this. Ugh! I’m beginning to hate the sight of him,’ and he unbuttoned his waistcoat impatiently. ‘Why, he must have been up here in the dark, because the light certainly wasn’t burning until I turned it on. Well, that’s odd.’
The next morning Canon Spenlow noticed that his guest was looking far from well, but an inquiry only elicited the information that he had passed a restless night, and as he saw that further questioning began to irritate he refrained from pressing the matter. He was somewhat agreeably surprised, however, to find that Dr Hodsoll would not listen to his suggestion of staying away from the Morning Service at the Cathedral. In fact he showed himself eager to attend, and at the luncheon table he spoke with a show of sympathy and understanding which he had never expressed before of the comfort and consolation those who hold the Christian faith derive from common worship and the beauty of an ordered liturgy.
That afternoon, the Canon being otherwise engaged, Dr Hodsoll, when Evensong was over, decided to take a stroll through the meadows which lined the river’s bank. Although unenclosed, these had for the extent of nearly half a mile been turned into a public garden from which one passed almost insensibly into the open country and lanes which lay beyond. There were seats, and thick hedges which formed a kind of natural wall, and howbeit just about tea-time on a Sunday afternoon the meadows were almost empty, later in the evening when dusk began to fall and the stars crept out they would be dotted with trysting couples, since the Meads had for generations been the recognized rendezvous of every Silchester lass who was ‘walking out’ with her young man.
Feeling tired, after a few turns Dr Hodsoll sat down upon a bench which had been placed in a natural arbour, facing the view which for all its familiarity never lost its charm—the old huddled roofs of the city, the Cathedral towers, the sedgy banks with the stream gently flowing between. He had not been seated many minutes when he felt a sense of extreme uneasiness and disquiet; he shuddered violently as though some horrible thing was near and, as he afterwards declared, he was filled with the apprehension that a wild beast lurked in ambush ready to leap out and tear him piecemeal. In vain he tried to concentrate his thoughts on other things, books, a monograph he was contemplating, a forthcoming visit to Buxton, to call commonsense to his aid. At last unable to endure the tension longer he jumped to his feet almost to ward off a blow, and as he half-turned he saw staring at him through the bushes with an expression so evil and malevolent that even now the very memory has cost him more than one sleepless night, a dead-white face in which the great dark eyes blazed like hot coals of fire. The face was instantly withdrawn. In fact it vanished so swiftly that if he had not recognized it he might have believed it was mere imagination, a trick and play of light and shadow among the leaves. He returned to the house considerably shaken and then, I think, that he must first have suspected who the servant was.
The next incident which seems worthy of record took place about ten o’clock that same evening when without so much as a preliminary knock or a word of warning the door of the housekeeper’s room burst open, and Lucy Parkins, the Canon’s upper housemaid, rushed in and almost collapsed at Mrs Bailey’s feet. That extremely correct and punctilious lady, who was reading her Chapter before the fire and sipping a glass of mulled claret preparatory to retiring to bed, arose stately from her chair, every fold of her black satin dress rustling in stern displeasure. ‘What can be the meaning of this, Parkins?’ she began in freezing tones. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ and then, for she saw that the girl was white with terror and sobbing hysterically, she added more quickly, ‘What is it, you stupid girl, what has happened?’
‘Oh, Mrs Bailey, ma’am,’ exclaimed Parkins, ‘I am so frightened. I don’t know what to do. Indeed I don’t.’
‘Frightened? Shut that door at once, and tell me all about it.’ Then seeing the girl was shaking and shivering, Mrs Bailey closed the door, and pushed her into a chair. From her own private cupboard she administered a small glass of brandy, and when she saw the colour coming back into her cheeks, she sharply commanded: ‘Stop that yammering now and tell me what’s frightened you.’
The upshot of Parkins’ story was that she had come in at ten o’clock as usual after her Sunday evening out, and in the passage leading to the kitchen a strange man had brushed by her and looked at her horribly, he was just horrible, as she expressed it, and she had felt so terrified that she made for the shelter of Mrs Bailey’s room as a haven of safety. No amount of questioning and cross-examining on the housekeeper’s part could shake her story.
‘It’s all those silly films. Wicked, I call it, allowing those places to be open on a Sunday night and filling the girls’ and the young men’s heads with trash, as though there wasn’t enough badness in the world already,’ indignantly declared the ruffled matron, somewhat more perturbed and puzzled than she cared to admit, for Lucy Parkins had always been a most staid and sensible worker. It transpired too that so far from having spent the evening at the cinema, she had been to supper at the house of her uncle, a small shopkeeper of eminent respectability. Eventually Mr Watson the butler was summoned from his pantry to hear the tale, and although evidently not believing in Parkins’ strange man, he undertook to go round the lower regions of the house to make sure all windows were closed and that no burglar was lurking in a cupboard or behind a door to issue forth in the night and cut all their throats. A clean bill of safety being returned, Parkins was dismissed to her bedroom, which was fortunately shared by the second maid, ‘for sleep in the room alone tonight, I would not, no, not if anyone was to pay me thousands,’ she pathetically declared.
‘Now, stop that nonsense, and get to bed, you want a good night’s rest, Lucy,’ was Mr Watson’s unsympathetic reply.
‘All the same it’s funny, I must say, Mr Watson,’ remarked Mrs Bailey, gazing after the departing Parkins, ‘I’ve never known her took like this before, and she’s a good worker too.’
‘Bilious, Mrs Bailey, bilious. That’s what it is, depend upon it.’
‘Well, I hope to goodness we’re not going to have her in bed tomorrow, with this new gentleman coming, and all. I half wish I’d made her take a dose of salts or a pill.’
Had Dr Hodsoll confided his suspicions to Canon Spenlow I am of opinion that his story would have been received with a far greater understanding and sympathy than he imagined, but the fact remains that fearing to look a fool; he chose rather to suffer, and there can be no doubt that he suffered very acutely on that Sunday night. Although actually the servant did not reappear—he believed he caught a glimpse of him once, a shadowy figure, at the end of a corridor—he felt that he was being closely watched and that if he was off his guard for a moment, there would come a pounce. That the Canon guessed something was amiss is evident from the reluctance with which Hodsoll said goodnight, and the earnestness with which he asked for his friend’s prayers.
The next morning in the course of his walk round Silchester, Dr Hodsoll turned into the Adam and Eve, the oldest hostelry in the city and one much frequented and admired by tourists. He drank no less than four glasses of their famous brown sherry, but the waiter remarked that although at first he seemed inclined to loiter he left very abruptly upon the entrance of another customer, and what was more curious the newcomer seemed to have followed him out immediately. Perhaps he had come there to seek him, at any rate he did not wait to be served.