Read Online The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan - Free Book Online Page A

tea thirstily. The tiny cup seemed almost too great a weight for the mighty hand to raise. He turned to me with the ghost of a smile.
    â€œThat dog pays tribute to our success,” he said. “The animal has instinct and the man reason, and on those terms they live together. Let a man attain instinct and the animal will flee from him. I have noted it before.”
    Some neighbours came to dinner, so we made a big party, and the silent conclave passed unnoticed, though Sally’s partner must have wondered what had become of her famous sparkle, for she was the palest and mutest of spectres. I felt myself an observer set at a distance not only from the ordinary members of the party but from our coterie—which proves that I must have been less under Moe’s spell than my companions. For example, I could not only watch with complete detachment the behaviour of the cheerful young people, and listen to George Lamington’s talk of his new Lancia, but I could observe from without Sally’s absent-mindedness and stammered apologies, and Goodeve’s look of unhappy expectation, and Charles Ottery’s air of one struggling with something on the edge of memory, and Tavanger’s dry lips—the man drank pints of water. One thing I noticed. They clearly hated those outside our group. Sally would shrug her shoulders as if unbearably tried, and Mayot looked murderously now and then at Evelyn, and Charles Ottery, who sat next to Pamela Brune, regarded her with hard eyes. I was conscious of something of the same sort myself, for most of my fellows had come to look to me like chattering mannikins. They bored me, but I did not feel for them the overwhelming distaste which was only too apparent in the other members of the group. Their attitude was the opposite of Miranda’s cry—

    â€œO brave new world
    That has such people in’t.”
    I doubt if they thought the world brave, and for certain they had no illusion about its inhabitants.
    It was a very hot night, and I went out beyond the terrace to sniff the fragrance of Sally’s rock garden. As I sat dangling my legs over the parapet I felt a hand on my arm, and turned to find Pamela Brune.
    â€œCome for a walk, Uncle Ned,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
    She slipped her arm through mine, and we went down the long alley between yews at the end of the Dutch garden. I felt her arm tremble, and when she spoke it was in a voice which she strove to make composed.
    â€œWhat has happened to you all?” she asked. “I thought this Whitsuntide was going to be such fun, and it began well—and now everybody is behaving so oddly, Sally hasn’t smiled for two days, and Reggie is more half-witted than ever, and you look most of the time as if you were dropping off to sleep.”
    â€œI am pretty tired,” I replied.
    â€œOh yes, I know,” she said impatiently. “There are excuses for you—and for Sally perhaps, for she has been overdoing it badly . . . But there is a perfect epidemic of bad manners abroad. Tonight at dinner I could have boxed Charles Ottery’s ears. He was horribly rude.”
    â€œYou haven’t been very kind to him,” I said lamely.
    She withdrew her hand.
    â€œWhat do you mean? I have always been civil . . . and he has been very, very unkind to me . . . I hate him. I’ll never speak to him again.”
    Pamela fled from me down the shadowed alley like a nymph surprised by Pan, and I knew that she fled that I might not see her tears.
    Later that night we had our last conference with Moe, for next morning at seven in my sitting room we were to meet for the final adventure. It was a short conference, and all he seemed to do was to tighten the cords with which he had bound us. I felt his influence more sharply than ever, but I was not in such perfect thraldom as the others, for with a little fragment of my mind I could still observe and think objectively . . .
    I