The House of the Whispering Pines

To have reared a towering scheme
Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew;
But—

A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.

The moon rode high; but ominous clouds were rushing towards it—clouds
heavy with snow. I watched these clouds as I drove recklessly,
desperately, over the winter roads. I had just missed the desire of my
life, the one precious treasure which I coveted with my whole
undisciplined heart, and not being what you call a man of
self-restraint, I was chafed by my defeat far beyond the bounds I have
usually set for myself.

The moon—with the wild skurry of clouds hastening to blot it out of
sight—seemed to mirror the chaos threatening my better impulses; and,
idly keeping it in view, I rode on, hardly conscious of my course till
the rapid recurrence of several well-known landmarks warned me that I
had taken the longest route home, and that in another moment I should be
skirting the grounds of The Whispering Pines, our country clubhouse.
I
had taken? Let me rather say, my horse; for he and I had traversed this
road many times together, and he had no means of knowing that the season
was over and the club-house closed. I did not think of it myself at the
moment, and was recklessly questioning whether I should not drive in and
end my disappointment in a wild carouse, when, the great stack of
chimneys coming suddenly into view against the broad disk of the still
unclouded moon, I perceived a thin trail of smoke soaring up from their
midst and realised, with a shock, that there should be no such sign of
life in a house I myself had closed, locked, and barred that very day.

I was the president of the club and felt responsible. Pausing only long
enough to make sure that I had yielded to no delusion, and that fire of
some kind was burning on one of the club-house's deserted hearths, I
turned in at the lower gateway. For reasons which I need not now state,
there were no bells attached to my cutter and consequently my approach
was noiseless. I was careful that it should be so, also careful to stop
short of the front door and leave my horse and sleigh in the black depths
of the pine-grove pressing up to the walls on either side. I was sure
that all was not as it should be inside these walls, but, as God lives, I
had no idea what was amiss or how deeply my own destiny was involved in
the step I was about to take.

Our club-house stands, as it may be necessary to remind you, on a knoll
thickly wooded with the ancient trees I have mentioned. These trees—all
pines and of a growth unusual and of an aspect well-nigh hoary—extend
only to the rear end of the house, where a wide stretch of gently
undulating ground opens at once upon the eye, suggesting to all lovers of
golf the admirable use to which it is put from early spring to latest
fall. Now, links, as well as parterres and driveways, are lying under an
even blanket of winter snow, and even the building, with its picturesque
gables and rows of be-diamonded windows, is well-nigh indistinguishable
in the shadows cast by the heavy pines, which soar above it and twist
their limbs over its roof and about its forsaken corners, with a moan and
a whisper always desolate to the sensitive ear, but from this night on,
simply appalling.

No other building stood within a half-mile in any direction. It was
veritably a country club, gay and full of life in the season, but
isolated and lonesome beyond description after winter had set in and
buried flower and leaf under a wide waste of untrodden snow.

I felt this isolation as I stepped from the edge of the trees and
prepared to cross the few feet of open space leading to the main door.
The sudden darkness instantly enveloping me, as the clouds, whose
advancing mass I had been watching, made their final rush upon the moon,
added its physical shock to this inner sense of desolation, and, in some
moods, I should have paused and thought twice before attempting the door,
behind which lurked the unknown with its naturally accompanying
suggestion of peril. But rage and disappointment, working hotly within
me, had left no space for fear. Rather rejoicing in the doubtfulness of
the adventure, I pushed my way over the snow until my feet struck the
steps. Here, instinct caused me to stop and glance quickly up and down
the building either way. Not a gleam of light met my eye from the
smallest scintillating pane. Was the house as soundless as it was dark?

I listened but heard nothing. I listened again and still heard nothing.
Then I proceeded boldly up the steps and laid my hand on the door.

It was unlatched and yielded to my touch. Light or no light, sound or no
sound there was some one within. The fire which had sent its attenuated
streak of smoke up into the moonlit air, was burning yet on one of the
many hearths within, and before it I should presently see—

Whom?

What?

The question scarcely interested me.

Nevertheless I proceeded to enter and close the door carefully behind me.
As I did so, I cast an involuntary glance without. The sky was inky and a
few wandering flakes of the now rapidly advancing storm came whirling in,
biting my cheeks and stinging my forehead.

Once inside, I stopped short, possibly to listen again, possibly to
assure myself as to what I had best do next. The silence was profound.
Not a sound disturbed the great, empty building. My own footfall, as I
stirred, seemed to wake extraordinary echoes. I had moved but a few
steps, yet to my heightened senses, the noise seemed loud enough to wake
the dead. Instinctively I stopped and stood stock-still. There was no
answering cessation of movement. Darkness, silence everywhere. Yet not
quite absolute darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the place, I found
it possible to discern the outlines of the windows and locate the stairs
and the arches where the side halls opened. I was even able to pick out
the exact spot where the great antlers spread themselves above the
hatrack, and presently the rack itself came into view, with its row of
empty pegs, yesterday so full, to-day quite empty. That rack interested
me,—I hardly knew why,—and regardless of the noise I made, I crossed
over to it and ran my hand along the wall underneath. The result was
startling. A man's coat and hat hung from one of the pegs.

I knew my business as president of this club. I also knew that no one
should be in the house at this time—that no one could be in it on any
honest errand. Some secret and sinister business must be at the bottom of
this mysterious intrusion immediately after the place had been shut for
the winter. Would this hat and coat identify the intruder? I would strike
a light and see. But this involved difficulties. The gas had been turned
off that very morning and I had no matches in my pocket. But I remembered
where they could be found. I had seen them when I passed through the
kitchen earlier in the day. They were very accessible from the end of the
hall where I stood. I had but to feel my way through a passage or two and
I should come to the kitchen door.

I began to move that way, and presently came creeping back, with a
match-box half full of matches in my hand. But I did not strike one then.
I had just made a move to do so, when the unmistakable sound of a door
opening somewhere in the house made me draw back into as quiet and dark a
place as I could find. This lay in the rear and at the right of the
staircase, and as the sound had appeared to come from above, it was the
most natural retreat that offered. And a good one I found it.

I had hardly taken up my stand when the darkness above gave way to a
faint glimmer, and a step became audible coming from some one of the
many small rooms in the second story, but so slowly and with such
evident hesitation that my imagination had ample time to work and fill
my mind with varying anticipations, each more disconcerting than the
last. Now I seemed to be listening to the movements of an intoxicated
man seeking an issue out of strange quarters, then to the wary approach
of one who had his own reasons for dread and was as conscious of my
presence as I was of his.

But the light, steadily increasing with each lagging but surely advancing
step, soon gave the lie to this latter supposition, since no sane man,
afraid of an ambush, would be likely to offer such odds to the one lying
in wait for him, as his own face illumined by a flaming candle, and I was
yielding to the bewilderment of the moment when the uncertain step paused
and a sob came faintly to my ears, wrung from lips so stiff with human
anguish that my fears took on new shape and the event a significance
which in my present mood of personal suffering and preoccupation was
anything but welcome. Indeed, I was coward enough to contemplate flight
and might in another moment have yielded to the unworthy impulse if the
sound of a second sigh had not struck shudderingly on my ear, followed by
the renewal of the step and the almost immediate appearance on the stairs
of a young girl holding a candle in one hand and shielding her left cheek
with the other.

Life offers few such shocks to any man, whatever his story or whatever
his temperament. I had been prepared by the sob I had heard to see a
woman, but not this woman. Nothing could have prepared me for an
encounter with this woman anywhere that night, after what had passed
between us and the wreck she had made of my life. But here! in a place so
remote and desolate I had hesitated to enter it myself! What was I to
think? How was I to reconcile so inconceivable a fact with what I knew of
her in the past, with what I hoped from her in the future.