On his part,
although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense
of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation
to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a
melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last
received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so
carefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse
it, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, with
her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire,
with little thought of what that visit was to entail. My uncle’s estate was situated where the arable land of the plains
begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are
characteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in the
waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of
the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed
by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to
be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The
road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills,
and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate
fortifications, some circular and some square, but all on a scale which
has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them
Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this
particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have
never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth,
olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli. Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into
the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust
represents the man who once laboured under the sun. It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle’s residence
of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its
surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by
a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive. A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air was
full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of
trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of
the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular
wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which were
criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery
light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of
the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my
uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make
my host’s acquaintance. He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn
had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow
of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose
and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister
marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with
something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst. At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it
was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from
under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this
outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all
the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world. For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a
man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one’s attention. His figure
was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away his coat dangled
straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and bony
shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could not
take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But his
eyes—those peering light-blue eyes—they were the most arrestive of any
of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it the
ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which I
read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were masterful,
and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his eyes, but
instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed and
crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has taken
the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one
glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was
stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to
sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment—a
false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to
realize the look which I read in his eyes. My uncle’s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour
or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable
dinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy,
quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come
round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and
wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find
themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the
end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and
love, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have come
as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert
woman, with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a
certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a mutual
love in their glances, I read also a mutual horror, and recognized in
her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I detected in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was a forced
note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness which told me
that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me. We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left
the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable
effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which
started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them
that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had,
like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded
by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research
Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in
a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing,
but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a
remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a
look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady
Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.