They came in on a swoop of wind
which seemed to carry everything before it. I heard a loud laugh,
coarsened by drink, and the tipsy exclamation of a voice I knew:
"There! shut the door, can't you, before it's blown from its
hinges? You'll find everything jolly here. Wine, lights, solitude
in which to finish our game and a roaring good opportunity to
sleep afterwards. No servants, no porters, not a soul to disturb
us. This is my house and it's a corker. I might be away for a year
and"--here there was the crackling of a match--"I've only to use
my night-key to find everything a man wants right to my hand."
The answer I failed to catch. I was simply paralysed by terror.
Should their way lay through the drawing-room! My clay, my tools
were all lying there, and my unfinished model. Mr. Spencer was not
an unkind man, but he was very drunk, and I had heard that whisky
makes a brute of the most good-natured. He would trample on my
work; perhaps he would destroy my tools and then hunt the house
till he found me. I did not know what to expect; meantime, lights
began to flame up; the room where I stood was no longer a safe
refuge, and creeping like a cat, I began to move towards the
closet door. Suddenly I made a dart for it; the two men, trampling
heavily on the marble floor of the hall were coming my way. I
could hear their rude talk--rude to me, though one of them called
himself a gentleman. As the door of the room opened to admit them,
I succeeded in shutting that of the closet into which I had flung
myself,--or almost so.
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