E. W. Hornung

“ A middle-aged man was hobbling towards us in the thinning stream of homing citizens. He did not look one of them; he wore light clothes and a straw hat which he did not remove in accosting my companions; and I thought that he looked both hot and cross as he leant hard upon a serviceable stick.
"Gossiping at the gate, as usual!" he cried, with a kind of rasping raillery. "Even Mr. Delavoye won't thank you for keeping him standing on this villainous asphalt till his feet sink in."
"That would have been one for you, Gilly, in the old days," said Uvo. "Captain Ricardo—Mr. Gillon." ”

“ And now I too heard the voices; they were on the other side of the temple wall; and this side was laved with moonlight, so that the edges of the crumbling stucco made seams of pitch, and Ricardo's shadow crouched upon the wall for a little age before his bent person showed against it.
Now he was at one end of the wall, peeping round, listening, instead of showing himself like a man. My blood froze at his miserable tactics. I had seen men keep cover under heavy fire with less precaution than this wretch showed in spying on his guilty wife ”

“ Ricardo had sat the other day, that she was sitting there again. The other voice came from various places. And to me the picture of Uvo Delavoye, tramping up and down in the moonlight as he talked, was as plain as though there had been no old wall between us.
"I know you have a thin time of it. But so has he!"
That was almost the first thing I heard. It made an immediate difference in my feeling towards the other eavesdropper. But I still watched his hands.
"Sitting on top of a cricket pavilion," said the other voice, "all day long!"
"It takes him out of himself. ”

“ I thought Uvo had stopped in his stride to ask the question. I knew those hands clutched the hunting crop tighter at the answer. I saw the knuckles whiten in the moonlight.
"Because we're taking a bit of a risk," resumed Uvo, finishing further off than he began.
"Oh, no, we're not. Besides, what does it matter? I simply had to speak to you—and you know what happened the other morning. Mornings are the worst of all for people seeing you." ”

“ And suddenly I was flattering myself that the man by my side shared my intuitive confidence and approval. He was no longer a man of stone; he had come to life again. Those hands of his were not fiercely frozen to the crop, but turning it gently round and round. Then they stopped. Then they moved with the man's whole body. He was looking the other way, almost in the direction by which he and I had approached the temple. And as I looked, too, there were footsteps in the grass, Mrs. Ricardo passed close by us with downcast eyes, and so back into the wood, with Uvo at arm's length on the far side. ”

“ I'm not sure that Gilly himself—that unbelieving dog—didn't get nearer the mark on the night he was nearly burned to death. But, if it's my own ghost, all the more reason to lay it; and, if it isn't, those other poor brutes were helpless in their ignorance, but I haven't their excuse!"
"I believe every word of it," said the poor soul with a sob. "When we came here I thought we should be—well, happy enough in our way. But we haven't had a day's happiness. You, you have given me the only happiness I've ever had here, and now...."
"No; it's been the other way about," interrupted Uvo, sadly. ”

“ Delavoye's friends don't know about Witching Hill oughtn't to be worth knowing!" said Mrs. Ricardo. "I mean what he really knows, not what he makes up, Mr. Gillon. I hear you don't believe in all that any more than I do. But he does seem to have read everything that was ever written about the place. He says this was certainly the Temple of Bacchus in the good old days."
"I don't quite see where Bacchus comes in," said I, thinking that Uvo and Mrs. Ricardo must be friends indeed. ”

“ Yet it seemed natural enough that we should talk about Uvo Delavoye, as I sat on another of the broken columns and lit a cigarette at Mrs. Ricardo's suggestion. Uvo was one of those people who are the first of bonds between their friends, a fruitful subject, a most human interest in common. ”

“ I was still busy wondering whether, or where, I could have seen her before.
"It's quite possible," said Uvo, when I had wondered aloud. "I wouldn't give her away if it weren't an open secret here. But Witching Hill hasn't called on Mrs. Ricardo since it found out that she was once on the stage."
"Good Lord!"
"There's another reason, to give the neighbours their due. Ricardo has insulted most of them to their faces. A bit of gossip got about, and instead of ignoring it he limped out on the war-path, cutting half the Estate and damning the other half in heaps." ”

“ There were no changes that I could see, except in myself as I caught sight of myself in my old office window. The creepers might have made a modest stride on the Queen Anne houses; brick and tile were perhaps a mellower red; and more tenants appeared to be growing better roses in their front gardens. ”

“ It's you men who keep on thinking and thinking of what other people are going to think!"
"We sometimes have to think for two," said Uvo—just a little less steadily, to my ear.
"You don't see that I'm absolutely desperate, mewed up with a man who doesn't care a rap for me!" ”

“ The low voice trembled, but now hers was lower still, and I at least lost most of her answer ... "if you really cared for me ... to take me away from a man who never did!" That much I heard, and this: "But you're no better! You don't know what it is to—care!"
That brought an outburst, but not from the man beside me. He might have been turned into part of the Ionic pillar. It was Uvo who talked, and I for one who listened without another thought of the infamy of listening. I was not there to listen to anybody, but to keep an eye on Ricardo ”

“ Now he had wedged himself in the heavy shadow between the wall and the one whole pillar at right angles to the wall; now he was looking as well as listening. And now I was in his old place, now I was at his very elbow, eavesdropping myself in my watch and ward over the other eavesdropper. ”

“ And there was one bird to be heard, giving its own glory to the glorious night. But I was not long alive to the heavenly song, or to the beauty of the moonlit wood.
I had entered by way of a spare site a little higher up than the Delavoyes', who, unlike some of their newer neighbours, had not a garden gate into the wood. I had penetrated some score yards into the pitch and silver of leafy tree and open space when I became aware that someone else had entered still higher up, and that our courses were converging. I thought for a moment that it might be Uvo ”