Mr. Bannister had spared no trouble over The Man at Arms, and now it
was luxuriously modern Elizabethan, with an old Minstrels' Gallery kept
studiously dusty, and the most splendid old oak and deep fire-places
with electric light cunningly arranged, and baths in every passage.
Of course you paid for this skilful and comfortable romance, but Mr.
Bannister always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to
find a poem by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had
been last in Treliss The Man at Arms had scarcely existed, but he was
now utterly unconscious of it, and stood in the dim square hall talking
to Mr. Bannister like a man in a dream.
He was aware now that he was exhausted with a fatigue that was beyond
anything that he had ever experienced. It was a weariness that was
not, under any conditions, to be resisted. He must lie down--here,
anywhere--now, at once and sleep ... sleep ... sleep.
Mr. Bannister caught him by the arm as he swayed.
“You looked played out, sir.”
“Done up... done up!”
His eyes were closed. Then suddenly he had touched Mr. Bannister's
shoulder. He was looking at a wire letter rack, hanging by the
superintendent's little office. There were some telegrams and many
letters stretched behind the wire netting. One envelope was addressed--
_Miss Norah Monogue,
The Man at Arms Hotel.
Treliss,
Cornwall._
“Miss Monogue ... Miss Monogue ... have you any one here called Miss
Monogue?”
“Yes, sir--been here some weeks. Poor lady, she's very ill I'm afraid.
Something to do with her heart--strained it in some way. Seemed much
better ... but the last few days....”
Peter stumbled upstairs to his room.
II
Some clock was striking five when he awoke and looking vaguely about
his room saw, by the light, that it must be late afternoon. He must have
slept for a day and a night. As he lay back on his bed his first moments
of consciousness were filled with a pleasant sense of rest and ease. He
remembered nothing ... he only knew that in the air there was the breath
of flowers and that through the open window there floated up to him a
song, a murmur of the sea, a rattle of little carts.
He looked about his room. On a distant wall there was a
photograph--“Dunotter Rocks, from the East.” Then he remembered.
He flung the bed-clothes off him and hurried to dress. He must go up to
Scaw House at once, at once, at once. Not another moment must be wasted.
His hands trembled as he put on his clothes and when he came downstairs
he was dishevelled and untidy. He had eaten nothing for many hours but
food now would have choked him. He hurried out of the hotel.
The town must have had many recollections to offer him had he observed
it but he passed through it, looking neither to the right nor the left,
brushing people aside, striding with great steps up the steep cobbled
street that leads out of the town, on to the Sea Road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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