‘Where?’ she answered. ‘Ask his master for that. I’m ne’er in the goodman’s confidence.’
‘His master!’
‘Ay, his master and ours—bondslaves to his will. A may come and go, and do with us as a lists. Be his purpose dark or light, in blindness are we sworn to him, to see naught and follow at his call.’
‘May come—my Uncle!’ exclaimed the boy, all astounded: ‘has he been here, then?’
‘Been and gone,’ answered the old woman. ‘Came like a thief in the night, to steal nothing but away again.’
‘And took Clerivault with him?’
‘Took feather-head—ay, as a man in love with Folly might pluck and put a pasque-flower behind his ear. They’re long ridden off together.’
Brion heard in dismay. His superstitious tremors of the night had owed, then, to woefuller presage than any imagined hauntings. To lose his friend, thus, without warning, without a word! it was grievous. Something swelled in his breast. How could Clerivault have left him so? And yet he might have had no choice. Who was he to cross the will of that dark masterful spirit who controlled his destinies? It must have been his Uncle, the boy was now convinced, who had come into his room in the night, and looked down upon him. The thought thrilled him, half awfully, half glowingly. He pictured his own unconscious face, and that other, white and austere, bent above it—and the silent entry and the silent withdrawal. Why? Why had his Uncle arrived thus in the night, and as obscurely vanished, leaving no trace of his visit but that dreaming memory? And yet it was a memory he would not be without. He stood staring at the old woman.
‘I am in the dark,’ he said.
Her eyes, like two round stones, were set fixedly on his.