Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Young men -- Fiction
When he got out at Stamford, the rain had ceased, but the sky was
menacing and overcast. He stood for a moment on the platform, again
reluctant to ask questions, but there was no help for it this time.
He stopped a grocer’s boy, and asked him where Wygatt Road was. The
boy told him. “But it’s a long way,” he added.
Ross didn’t care how long it was. This was the first suburban town he
had seen, and it charmed him. Such a prosperous, orderly, lively town!
He thought that he might like to live here.
Dusk was closing in early this dismal day; it was almost dark before
he reached the hill he had to climb. The street lights came on, and
through the windows of houses he could see shaded lamps and the
shadows of people, comfortable rooms, bright little glimpses of
domestic life. Past him, along the road, went an endless stream of
motor cars, with a rush and a glare of light; he scarcely realized
that he was in the country until he came to the top of the hill, and
saw before him a signpost marked “Wygatt Road.”
He turned down here, and was at once in another world. It was dark,
and very, very quiet; no motors passed him, no lights shone out; he
walked on, quite alone, under tall old trees, to which clung a few
leaves, trembling in every gust of wind. Overhead, ragged black clouds
flew across the darkening sky; the night was coming fast.
And now he began to think about his extraordinary errand, now he began
to think that he had been a fool to come. But it did not occur to him
to turn back. He never did that. He was sorry he had begun a foolish
thing, but, now that he had begun, he would carry on. If it took him
all night, if it took him a week, he would find “Day’s End,” and do
what he had set out to do.
There was no one to ask questions of here; no human being, no house in
sight.
On one side of him was a belt of woodland, on the other an iron fence
which appeared to run on interminably. Well, he also would go on
interminably, and if “Day’s End” was on Wygatt Road, he would
certainly come to it in the course of time.
He did. There was a break in the fence at last, made by a gateway
between stone pillars, and here he saw, by the light of a match,
“Day’s End,” in gilt letters. He opened the gate and went in; a long
driveway stretched before him, tree lined; he went up it briskly.
He saw nothing, and heard nothing, but he had a vague impression that
the grounds through which he passed were somber and forbidding, and he
expected to see a house in keeping with this notion, an old, sinister
house, suitable for people in “terrible trouble.”
It was not like that, though. A turn in the driveway brought him in
sight of a long façade of lighted windows, and a large, substantial,
matter-of-fact house—which made him feel more of a fool than ever.
Yet, still he went on, mounted the steps of a brick terrace, and rang
the doorbell.
The door was opened promptly by a pale and disagreeable young
housemaid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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