He slipped away into the darkness, but only to do what he had done on the previous evening after making arrangements with old Maggs. He climbed the hill north of the pond, not so much in the hope of seeing Rosie or any one else, as to haunt the scenes so closely associated with his spiritual downfall.
It was a languorous, luscious night, with the scent of new-mown hay mingling with that of gardens. If there was any breeze it was lightly from the east, bringing that mitigation of the heat traditional to the week following Independence Day. As there was no moon, the stars had their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the southern horizon, with Antares throwing out a fire like the red rays in a diamond. Beneath it the city flung up a yellow glow that might have been the smoke of a distant conflagration, while from the hilltop the suburbs were a-sparkle. As, standing in the road, Claude looked through the open gateway down over the slope of land, the hothouse roofs and the distant levels of the pond gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance like the sheen of ancient tarnished crystal.
The house was dark. It was dark and dead. It was dark and dead and haunted. Everything was haunted; everything was dark. Even the furnace chimney looming straight and black against the stars was plumeless. But in the silence and stillness there was something that drew him on. He crossed the road and went a few paces within the gate. He had not ventured so far on the previous evening, and during the day he had dared no more than to look upward from the boulevard below, after that pilgrimage to Duck Rock on which William Sweetapple had surprised him. Now in the darkness and quietness he stood, not searching so much as dreaming. He was dreaming of Rosie, dreaming of her with a kind of cheer. After all, he would be bringing joy to her as well as getting peace of spirit for himself. It wouldn't be so hard. She would meet him as she used to meet him here, as she used to let him come and visit her, and then the atonement would be made. The process would be simple, and he should become a man again.
The conviction was so sweet that he lingered to enjoy it, penetrating a few steps farther into the spacious dimness of the yard. It was the first minute of inward ease he had known since he had turned his back on it. Now that he was once more on the spot, the Claude who was a devil-of-a-fellow, something of a sport, but a decent chap all the same, began again to run with red blood where there had been nothing but a whining, shriveling apostate. It was like rejuvenescence, like a re-creation.
Suddenly something moved. It moved at first in the shadow of the house, and then out in the starlit spaces. It moved stealthily and creepily and with a grotesque swiftness. Its action seemed irregular and uncertain, like that of some night-marauding animal, till Claude perceived that it was stalking him. He waited long enough to get a view that was almost clear of a crouching attitude, the crouching attitude of a beast when it means to spring, whereupon he turned and fled.
That is, he turned and walked away swiftly. He would have run had it not been for his renascent self-respect. He couldn't bring himself to run from poor old Fay even though his nerves were tingling. He tried to reassure himself by saying that it was no more than a repetition of that dogging to which he had been subjected before, and that it would discontinue once he was off the premises.
But when he turned to glance over his shoulder it seemed to him that the sinister footsteps glided after him. That, he reasoned, might have been no more than fancy. The arc-lights were rare on this rather lonely road, and the enormous shadows they flung lent themselves to the startling of sick imaginations. Nevertheless, as he walked Claude continued to look back over his shoulder, always with renewed impressions of a creepy thing trying to track him down. Having entered the obscurity of their own driveway, he broke at last into a light, soundless trot which was not slackened till he reached the relative protection of the door.
But by morning he had regained a measure of tranquillity. Knowing what he had to do, he was resolved to do it promptly. With sunlight and summer and the sense of being home again to brace him up, the Claude who was a devil-of-a-fellow seemed in a fair way to be reborn. Waiting after breakfast only long enough to be discreet, he took his way up the hill again.
He was confident by this time, and the more so because of his being beyond the need of concealments. There would be no more shrinking into the odorous depths of the hothouse, or hesitancies, or equivocations. He would walk up and avow himself—to father and mother as well as to Rosie. The hero in him was coming to his own at last.