The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House of the Whispering Pines, by Anna Katharine Green

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Title: The House of the Whispering Pines

Author: Anna Katharine Green

Release Date: November 14, 2003 [eBook #10083]

Language: English

Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE WHISPERING PINES***

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THE HOUSE OF THE WHISPERING PINES

By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

1910

Author of

"The Leavenworth Case," "That Affair Next Door," "One of My Sons," etc.

"Mazes intricate,
Eccentric, interwov'd, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem".

Milton

CONTENTS

BOOK I

SMOKE

I.—THE HESITATING STEP

II.—IT WAS SHE—SHE INDEED!

III.—"OPEN!"

IV.—THE ODD CANDLESTICK

V.—A SCRAP OF PAPER

VI.—COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS

VII.—CLIFTON ACCEPTS MY CASE

VIII.—A CHANCE! I TAKE IT

BOOK II

SWEETWATER TO THE FRONT

IX.—"WE KNOW OF No SUCH LETTER"

X.—"I CAN HELP YOU"

XI.—IN THE COACH HOUSE

XII.—"LILA—LILA!"

XIII.—"WHAT WE WANT IS HERE"

XIV.—THE MOTIONLESS FIGURE

XV.—HELEN SURPRISES SWEETWATER

XVI.—62 CUTHBERT ROAD

XVII.—"MUST I TELL THESE THINGS?"

XVIII.—ON IT WAS WRITTEN—

XIX.—"IT'S NOT WHAT YOU WILL FIND"

BOOK III

HIDDEN SURPRISES

XX.—-"HE OR YOU! THERE IS NO THIRD"

XXI.—CARMEL AWAKES

XXII.—-"BREAK IN THE GLASS!"

XXIII.—AT TEN INSTEAD OF TWELVE

XXIV.—ALL THIS STOOD

XXV.—"I AM INNOCENT"

XXVI.—THE SYLLABLE OF DOOM

XXVII.—EXPECTANCY

XXVIII.—"WHERE Is MY BROTHER?"

BOOK IV

WHAT THE PINES WHISPERED

XXIX.—"I REMEMBERED THE ROOM"

XXX.—"CHOOSE"

XXXI.—"WERE HER HANDS CROSSED THEN?"

XXXII.—AND I HAD SAID NOTHING!

XXXIII.—THE ARROW OF DEATH

XXXIV.—"STEADY!"

XXXV.—"As IF IT WERE A MECCA"

XXXVI.—THE SURCHARGED MOMENT

BOOK ONE

SMOKE

I

THE HESITATING STEP

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