And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day
Went glooming down in wet and weariness;
But under her black brows a swarthy one
Laugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,
Our one white day of Innocence hath past,
Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.”
—Tennyson.
At nine o’clock that evening Barnabas Rosenblatt, working around the mill stables, was startled at the sudden appearance of Gregory, who passed him without speaking, as he went hurriedly into the stall and brought out his horse. The day had been followed by a night of brilliant moonlight, and Barnabas saw, as distinctly as if it had been day, that his face, usually firm and composed, was drawn and haggard to a degree. He started to speak to him, but an imperious gesture of Gregory silenced him. Without a word Barnabas therefore assisted him in saddling the horse, and then stood perplexed as he watched him gallop away down the valley in the moonlight.
Straight on through a narrow bridle-path which led by a short cut through the stretch of oak wood to the little hamlet of Spalding, Gregory galloped. He had reached the outskirts of the woods, and was in sight of the level meadows and the cluster of lights of the village beyond, when he suddenly perceived the figure of a man on foot approaching him from the direction of Spalding. A few steps more, and Gregory saw, with surprise and strange perturbation, that it was Keith Burgess. He reined up his horse and stood motionless, until Keith had reached him, and called out a greeting as he stood in the path, looking a pigmy beside the Titanic proportions of the horse and rider. The moonlight showed Keith more thin and wan than ever. He had returned to Fraternia once before this spring, in March, but, after a week, had been glad to go back to Baltimore, with some rather vague commission. His return at this time was wholly unexpected, even by Anna.
Keith had long since come to stand to Gregory for something like a concrete embodiment of his many disappointments and vexations, by reason of his lukewarm participation in his own purposes, his ineffective labours, and his continual draft upon Anna’s sympathies. As Gregory looked down upon him, thrown at this moment so unexpectedly in his path, a singular hardness toward the man came upon him, for he was hard beset by passion; and while he meant to have no mercy upon himself, he was not in the mood to have mercy upon another man, least of all, perhaps, upon Keith.