But she
said nothing, and thought perhaps uncle had a peculiar way of fainting
of his own, as he always was a man to have his own way of doing
everything. So she just waited in the road, and he went ahead and
slipped into the public, and aunt says she thought she saw a little
figure rise out of the dusk and slip in after him, but she couldn't be
sure. And when uncle came out he looked red instead of purple, and said
he felt much better; and so they went home quietly together, and nothing
more was said. You see, uncle had said nothing about the whistling, and
aunt had been so frightened that she didn't dare speak, for fear they
might be both shot. 'She wasn't thinking anything more about it, when two Sundays afterwards
the very same thing happened just as it had before. This time aunt
plucked up a spirit, and asked uncle what it could be. And what do you
think he said? "Birds, my dear, birds." Of course aunt said to him that
no bird that ever flew with wings made a noise like that: sly, and low,
with pauses in between; and then he said that many rare sorts of birds
lived in North Middlesex and Hertfordshire. "Nonsense, Robert," said
aunt, "how can you talk so, considering it has followed us all the way,
for a mile or more?" And then uncle told her that some birds were so
attached to man that they would follow one about for miles sometimes; he
said he had just been reading about a bird like that in a book of
travels. And do you know that when they got home he actually showed her
a piece in the "Hertfordshire Naturalist" which they took in to oblige a
friend of theirs, all about rare birds found in the neighbourhood, all
the most outlandish names, aunt says, that she had never heard or
thought of, and uncle had the impudence to say that it must have been a
Purple Sandpiper, which, the paper said, had "a low shrill note,
constantly repeated." And then he took down a book of Siberian Travels
from the bookcase and showed her a page which told how a man was
followed by a bird all day long through a forest. And that's what Aunt
Marian says vexes her more than anything almost; to think that he should
be so artful and ready with those books, twisting them to his own wicked
ends. But, at the time, when she was out walking, she simply couldn't
make out what he meant by talking about birds in that random, silly sort
of way, so unlike him, and they went on, that horrible whistling
following them, she looking straight ahead and walking fast, really
feeling more huffy and put out than frightened. And when they got to the
next stile, she got over and turned round, and "lo and behold," as she
says, there was no Uncle Robert to be seen! She felt herself go quite
white with alarm, thinking of that whistle, and making sure he'd been
spirited away or snatched in some way or another, and she had just
screamed out "Robert" like a mad woman, when he came quite slowly round
the corner, as cool as a cucumber, holding something in his hand. He
said there were some flowers he could never pass, and when aunt saw that
he had got a dandelion torn up by the roots, she felt as if her head
were going round.' Mary's story was suddenly interrupted. For ten minutes Darnell had been
writhing in his chair, suffering tortures in his anxiety to avoid
wounding his wife's feelings, but the episode of the dandelion was too
much for him, and he burst into a long, wild shriek of laughter,
aggravated by suppression into the semblance of a Red Indian's
war-whoop. Alice, who was washing-up in the scullery, dropped some three
shillings' worth of china, and the neighbours ran out into their gardens
wondering if it were murder. Mary gazed reproachfully at her husband. 'How can you be so unfeeling, Edward?' she said, at length, when
Darnell had passed into the feebleness of exhaustion. 'If you had seen
the tears rolling down poor Aunt Marian's cheeks as she told me, I don't
think you would have laughed. I didn't think you were so hard-hearted.' 'My dear Mary,' said Darnell, faintly, through sobs and catching of the
breath, 'I am awfully sorry. I know it's very sad, really, and I'm not
unfeeling; but it is such an odd tale, now, isn't it? The Sandpiper, you
know, and then the dandelion!' His face twitched and he ground his teeth together. Mary looked gravely
at him for a moment, and then she put her hands to her face, and Darnell
could see that she also shook with merriment. 'I am as bad as you,' she said, at last. 'I never thought of it in that
way. I'm glad I didn't, or I should have laughed in Aunt Marian's face,
and I wouldn't have done that for the world. Poor old thing; she cried
as if her heart would break. I met her at Victoria, as she asked me, and
we had some soup at a confectioner's. I could scarcely touch it; her
tears kept dropping into the plate all the time; and then we went to the
waiting-room at the station, and she cried there terribly.' 'Well,' said Darnell, 'what happened next? I won't laugh any more.' 'No, we mustn't; it's much too horrible for a joke. Well, of course aunt
went home and wondered and wondered what could be the matter, and tried
to think it out, but, as she says, she could make nothing of it. She
began to be afraid that uncle's brain was giving way through overwork,
as he had stopped in the City (as he said) up to all hours lately, and
he had to go to Yorkshire (wicked old story-teller! ), about some very
tiresome business connected with his leases. But then she reflected that
however queer he might be getting, even his queerness couldn't make
whistles in the air, though, as she said, he was always a wonderful man. So she had to give that up; and then she wondered if there were anything
the matter with her, as she had read about people who heard noises when
there was really nothing at all. But that wouldn't do either, because
though it might account for the whistling, it wouldn't account for the
dandelion or the Sandpiper, or for fainting fits that turned purple, or
any of uncle's queerness. So aunt said she could think of nothing but to
read the Bible every day from the beginning, and by the time she got
into Chronicles she felt rather better, especially as nothing had
happened for three or four Sundays. She noticed uncle seemed
absent-minded, and not as nice to her as he might be, but she put that
down to too much work, as he never came home before the last train, and
had a hansom twice all the way, getting there between three and four in
the morning. Still, she felt it was no good bothering her head over what
couldn't be made out or explained anyway, and she was just settling
down, when one Sunday evening it began all over again, and worse things
happened. The whistling followed them just as it did before, and poor
aunt set her teeth and said nothing to uncle, as she knew he would only
tell her stories, and they were walking on, not saying a word, when
something made her look back, and there was a horrible boy with red
hair, peeping through the hedge just behind, and grinning.