Over the telephone, Hamer had offered to motor Lancaster to the “Duke,” and the latter had accepted, adding that he would walk to Watters by the short cut. Driving home from Witham, his mind had been so deep in ruts of law that he scarcely noticed the increasing violence of the sinking day, but when he left the house again about seven o’clock he was appalled by its gathered strength. He wished now that he had asked Hamer to send the car round, but the Lane would soon take him, and he would be sheltered under the tall hedges. Knowing the road so well, he carried no light, and consequently stumbled into Dandy in the pelting dark, feeling her way home in a state of abject misery. To his astonished questioning she made answer in a voice very close on tears, and she was more than a little cross. She had had a trying experience, and even her beautiful temper had snapped under the strain.
“I’ve been losing myself!” she explained, conscious of sopping boots, clinging skirts, rat-tail hair and tingling fingers, from which she had long since cast away ruined gloves. He could not see her here, but he would certainly see her in the hall at Watters, and though, out of all heaven and earth and any other stray universe, he was the one and only person she wanted, she naturally used him as the whipping-boy of her pent-up wrath and distress.
“I’ve come from Wild Duck. Harriet had gone to Witham—perhaps you saw her—so I went over to have lunch with Wiggie, and as I knew the car would be out again to-night, I said I’d walk back. It’s not so far, and I meant to be home long before dark. However, Harriet was late in coming in, and I didn’t like to leave Cyril alone with Stubbs (the nurse was resting, and Stubbs talks him to death), so tea was over before I got away. It was still light, then, but very wet and blowing hard, so Harriet told Stubbs to see me home, and we started off, but we hadn’t got far before he announced that he wanted to call at Rakestraw. He’d got it into his head that it would do Wiggie good to go out in a bath-chair, with himself to push, and he knew they had a bath-chair at Rakestraw, which he meant to borrow. I asked him if he couldn’t go some other time, but he said no. No time like the present was his motto. It had been his father’s motto. In fact, it was in the family. Always in the family. I said that Wiggie might not care about a bath-chair, but that, if he did, Father would hire him the latest pattern from Manchester, but he wouldn’t hear of that; and when finally I suggested that he should go chair-hunting by himself and let me go home, he wouldn’t hear of that, either. He said that, coming from a town, I must naturally know all about bath-chair charges, and he would want me to tell him what to pay if he couldn’t get it borrowed. If I wouldn’t help, he’d have to call for advice at the ‘White Lion,’ so for Harriet’s sake I went. The Rakestraw people dug the chair out of the barn, and said they’d be delighted to lend it, and Stubbs was so overjoyed that he started practising on it at once, with Newby’s daughter as passenger. He’d evidently forgotten all about me, so when I was thoroughly tired and chilled to the bone I slipped out, hoping he’d go on practising until I was safely away. Unfortunately, I took the wrong turning and had to ask the road, as I didn’t dare to go back. A boy told me to keep on up the ginnel, and I’d strike a gate opening on to the main road, so I rushed on without taking much notice where I was going, until I’d lost the farm and everything else as well. It was getting dark, by then, and every bush looked exactly like every other bush, and I suppose I went on walking round them, as I never found the gate at all. I ginnelled and ginnelled and ginnelled and ginnelled, but nothing ever ended anywhere. I found all sorts of glades and walls and little woods and streams I’d never seen or dreamed of before, and that I’m perfectly sure are not there at all in the daytime, but there was no way out. I felt just as if I were bewitched, and all the bushes seemed like little stunted men jeering and leering; and when it got quite dark I was properly lost altogether. I was just getting ready to die and deciding what I meant to say about Stubbs at the Judgment, when young Newby ginnelled up and found me. He’d thought he’d seen me wandering about earlier, and was anxious in case I was really lost, so hunted me up. He wanted to bring me home, but I knew he’d to get down to the ‘Duke’ by eight o’clock, so I wouldn’t let him. He’d only just gone when you caught me up. They’ll be out of their minds about me at Watters, and I shall probably die there if not in the ginnel; but even if I don’t, I mean to file that Judgment Bill against Stubbs!”
It was certainly quieter in the Lane, so that Lanty was able to catch most of her troubled story, and though he sympathised warmly, and reviled Stubbs heartily, he could not help laughing, too, and when he laughed she felt hurt, and wetter than ever.
“I’m frightened of your horrid country!” she said miserably. “I’m sure there was something queer about it to-night, anyhow. I felt as if it were playing cat and mouse with me, and watching me run round and round and yet never out of reach. Don’t laugh! It laughed at me, too—I could hear it—and the wind set all the bushes catching and clawing at me as I passed. Young Newby says it’s going to be the worst storm for years, and that he’s very glad he’s farming inland—not on the bay. He says that, after midnight, if it keeps on, the marsh will be holding to its hair!”
A chill not of the striving elements came over Lancaster. For the first time he thought of Brack since Hamer’s call on the wire. Where was he to-night? He had prophesied this storm, and prayed over it. Was his madness really about to be justified? He would know by the time he got down to the “Duke.” If Brack was there he needn’t worry, though of course he wasn’t doing anything so absurd. But if he wasn’t there? Bluecaster too; not a sign of him all day. Well, to-morrow he would laugh at all this! In the meantime, he heard Dandy speaking again. He had made no answer to her last words, but had merely gone on splashing beside her without offering to help her, probably with his head full of some stupid farm-person she had never heard of. She thought him more unkind with every minute that passed.
“It will be dreadful at Watters to-night, if the wind keeps up!” she went on presently. “I shall lie awake all the time, and shiver and shake. Watters just purrs in a wind! You’d think it liked to feel its joints cracking and its slates flying and the big trees threatening it on all sides. It isn’t frightened an atom, but I am. I never remember being frightened at Halsted. I wish we were back there. I used to think I was getting to love the country, but now I’m almost sure I hate it!”
In her vehemence she stumbled into the side, and when he had picked her out again they could see, grown accustomed to the dark, the straining blackness of a giant tree beyond the still, black break in the hedge.
They could hear it groaning, too, above the storm, and, in the sense of fearful battle and pain, felt it as the impotent writhing of a soul in hell. In this his Lane, where the magic set his fancy at full play, Lancaster wondered what the soul really felt, the impotent, lost soul? As Dandy had said, there were strange things abroad to-night.