And Francey would be there, dancing in and out----
He stumbled a little. The hiccoughs were definitely sobs, hard-drawn,
shaking him from head to foot. It was his birthday. And at the bottom
of the hill, hidden in evening mist, the big dark house waited for him.
4
There was light showing in the dining-room window, so that he knew his
father had come home. At that all his sorrow and sense of a grievous
wrong done to him was swallowed up in abject physical terror. Even
later in life, when things had shrunk into reasonable proportions, it
was difficult for him to see his father as others had seen him, as an
unhappy not unlovable man, gifted with an erratic genius which had been
perverted into an amazing facility for living on other people's money,
and cursed with the temper of a maniac. To Robert Stonehouse his
father was from first to last the personification of nightmare.
He stood now in the deep shadow of the porch, trying to make up his
mind to ring the bell. His legs and arms had become ice-cold and
refused to move. There did not seem to be anything alive in him except
his heart, which was beating all over him, in his throat and head and
body, with a hundred terrible little hammers. He thought of the Prince
in the story which Christine had read aloud to him. The Prince, who
was a fine and dashing fellow, had gone straight to the black enchanted
cave where the dragon lived, and had thumped on the door with the hilt
of his gold sword and shouted: "Open, Sesame!" And when the door
opened, he had gone straight in, without turning a hair, and slain the
dragon and rescued the Princess.
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