Midnight is a Place Read Online Free PDF

heard? Leave it alone! Stay—you may light another candle. Then come here."
    Lucas found a candle, set it in place of the stub, and lit new from old. As the yellow flame grew taller, he noticed with part of his mind that the carpet on Sir Randolph's study floor was of the very same brown and gold pattern as the one he had seen an hour ago on the floor of the pressing room.
    "Well—have you been down there? Have you been over the Mill?" Sir Randolph demanded as the light was placed in front of him. The strength of his voice seemed to rise and fall with a variability like that of wind or the sea. He leaned forward abruptly and drank, splashing some of the contents of his tumbler onto the leather top of the desk.
    "Yes, sir."
    "Understand it?"
    "Not—not altogether, sir—" Lucas began.
    "Be quiet then! I don't want to hear about it. Don't—want—hear 'bout it," he repeated in a kind of snarling singsong, though Lucas had not ventured to speak. "Jus' learn 'bout it—that's all. You are to go there every day until you do understan' 'bout it—every day—that's what you have t'do."
    "May—may I go now, sir?" Lucas was confused and alarmed by his guardian's manner, which seemed half angry, half absent, as if his attention were directed to matters far away in the distant past.
    Sir Randolph was gazing at the new candle dreamily. In the dim light little could be seen of his deeply-lined face but the outline of the hooked nose, heavy eyelids, and thin mouth, of which the lower lip was set somewhat behind the upper one, making his profile even more like that of a bird of prey. Although not much above sixty, Sir Randolph could have been taken for a man ten or fifteen years older than that. Troubles, and his own nature, had aged him early.
    "Go? No! Who said you could go? Stand still—don't fidget." Sir Randolph's head lifted sharply. He took off his worn black-velvet smoking cap and looked into it as if he hoped to find a memorandum written inside. "
I'll
tell you when you may go, and it isn't yet. 'Was something else I had to say t'you."
    He fell into a brown study again.
    Lucas waited nervously.
    "Ah—know what it was—yes." Sir Randolph roused himself again. "Fellow said you'd been complaining of loneliness. Wanted comp'ny—something of th'sort—" His next words sank into a mutter, but "puling milksop" seemed to be detectable among them.
    "Loneliness? Sir—I never—" Lucas began, very much startled. Whom could Sir Randolph have meant by that "fellow"—surely not Mr. Oakapple to whom Lucas had never spoken of his longing for a friend or companion of his own age?
    "Quiet, boy! I don't fesh—fetch you here t'entertain me, do I? Deuce knows you don't do that. Where was I? Yes, comp'ny. Well, now you've got comp'ny, due t'that fellow's int'ference. Company you have got. So don' let me hear word'f any
more
complaints, d'unnerstan'?"
    "I have company? What company, sir?" Lucas was completely puzzled.
    "Turned up today's evening. Old Gourd been seeing t'arrange
ments. Oak Chamber. So no more moaning, no more grouching, hear? Now,
go
—d'think I want you staring at me with that cheese-faced look all evening? You put me in mind—can't stand it. No matter. But
¿he
was beautiful," he muttered to himself; then looked up at Lucas and said, "Get out of my sight."
    "May I—may I go to the Oak Chamber?"
    "Oh, certainly—go an' play billiards t'll cockcrow if you wish, don' let me detain you," snarled Sir Randolph, dragging savagely at his crimson wool bellpull. "Skate, play marbles, ride the farmhorses, break the windows, pull the whole
house
down—only clear out of here!"
    Lucas waited no longer. Leaving his guardian muttering, cursing, and hauling on the crimson rope, he slipped out of the room and sped along the passage in the direction of the Oak Chamber, from which he had seen Mrs. Gourd emerging earlier that evening.
    It did briefly cross his mind