Quite a nice little debauch of expectation, only—she did not come. He waited on, desirous, impatient, hungry; and at last, it must be said, cross. The touch of her hand, her lips, had never seemed so indispensable to him; but he would not cheapen the virtues of his own by carrying them back to market to a coquette. If she wanted them, she knew where to find them. As for him, he was quite placid and content; in proof of which he threw away his cigar-butt, and began pacing with a noisy recklessness up and down.
That did not conjure her to him, but it seemed to evoke occasional responsive rustlings, or the fancy of them, which would bring his heart into his throat. They were only the stirring of woodland things, it seemed. He got very angry, resentful, cruel in his thoughts. The moon, the bubble of light, rose higher and higher—to the very surface of night, where it floated a little, and then burst. At least, so it seemed; for, all of a sudden, where it had been was a black cloud, and drops began to patter on the leaves. Then Richard realized all in a moment that his tryst had failed, that the moonlight was quenched, and that it was beginning to rain. With a naughty word or two, he braced up his loins, left the wood, and descended towards the house.
As he went down, he heard the stable clock strike twelve. He startled, and strode faster, faster, until he was fairly scuttling. It was in vain. The Tregarthens were early people, and, even before he reached the house, he knew that its every window was blind and black. The whole family was abed, and he was shut out into the night.
Twice, and vainly, he made the entire round of the building, seeking for any loophole to enter by. The rain by then was pelting, yet he did not dare raise a clatter on the front door, for fear he should be pistolled from a window. The inmates knew nothing of his absence, and the Squire held, for a Democritus, strong views on the subject of undisturbed repose.
Coming to the porch again from his second circuit, and putting a hand to rest upon one of its columns, he jumped, as if he had touched a charged battery, to see a figure standing motionless in the shadow.
“Hullo!” he gasped, in the sudden shock; then rallying, muttered out in a fury at his own weakness, “Who the devil are you?”
Some faint gleam of moonshine, weltering through the flood, enlightened him even as he spoke.
“Why, if it ain’t the butler!” he said.
It was the butler. The figure admitted it in a curt word. Le Shore had already, on the occasions of his two dinners at “Tregarthen,” noticed this man, and had taken a quite violent exception in his own conscience to his manner and appearance. He thought he had never known a leading trust bestowed upon one whose face so expressed the very moral of acquisitiveness, whose conduct was marked by such an uncouth inurbanity. Here, if there was any value in biology, was Bill Sikes in broadcloth.
The tone of the fellow’s answer grated confoundedly on him—he hardly knew why.