But he refused. He wanted the quiet ride home in the night for thought.
“Jogging along in the air will do me good—thanks all the same! I am tired—you’re right, there—but I’m as strong as an ox and can stand anything. I don’t usually behave like this, even after a rent-audit! I’m dreadfully sorry if I upset you. I expect the glare of the lights hypnotised me on top of the landlord’s punch! You won’t trust yourself to me again, if I’m going to see visions in your company.”
She gave him her hand a second time through the window, and he looked down at it in his own. “It is like Hamer’s!” he said curiously, marking the resemblance in miniature, small, but square and strong. She withdrew it with a shade of embarrassment.
“Yes, I know, but what made you think of it, now? I’m proud of it—dear old Dad! You’ll start at once, won’t you?—and do keep your wits about you on that lonely road!”
At the top of the hill he pulled up for a last look down into the little blaze of life below him, throwing its brilliance over the pile of the church and the looming canopies of the trees. The lights still circled madly, the music still crashed, but they had no power over him, now. What was it that had used them to the forcing of that terrible moment? Vague words of Brack’s about clairvoyance drifted back into his mind. He had laughed with Bluecaster over a mental picture of Brack evoking spirits. Was he responsible for that tortured nightmare? Perhaps he had really been trying to tell him something; or was it just hypnotic reaction from that theory of his, obsessing him to madness? For himself, he could do nothing, now. Even if he had believed it, he could not doom the Lugg on the strength of a prophecy—after a rent-dinner, too! And he did not believe it. His faith stayed where it was.
He quickened his horse along the silent highway, the healing of the night gathering him into quiet; and, as he rode, there went with him the pressure of the hand that was so like Hamer’s, cool and firm and blessedly kind.
CHAPTER XV
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
It was a very dreamlike day on which Lup left Ninekyrkes, turning his back upon the marsh and all that had filled his life hitherto. He made no round of good-byes, no flurry of preparation, but when the time came, he went, just as he would go at the end of his day on a further journey yet. He would “bide still and die light,” as taught the unhurrying philosophy of Wiggie’s song.
Not even for Francey had he a farewell; yet she had her moment with him, all unknown. Lifting her blind in the first showing of dawn, she saw him standing on the sea-wall, looking over the bay. He was still in his rough clothes, and the dull shade of the worn stuff was one with the colourless growth of the breaking day. He stood perfectly still, his hands dropped at his sides, his head a little bent, more like a symbol than a breathing human. On either side of him a shadowy wraith of a sheepdog lay crouched with pricked ears, as if watching for an invisible flock to come shouldering out of the dim space beneath. They had scarcely left him a moment during the last few days, clinging like burrs, and all the last night they had whimpered and wept, until in desperation he rose and called them out. Francey knelt at the window with her black hair looped on either side of her pale face, and saw the day come up to the feet of her parting love.
He was going, and by a finger she could have held him, but something kept her back that did not seem part of her at all. If she had but known it, the tragedy that was coming was in her hands to force or to withhold; but she did not know. The question was still purely personal, still hung on the one point, whether or not her real happiness lay in the primitive figure on the bank. There were tears in her eyes as she thought of the coming dawns when she might look to find him there and all in vain, but she was prepared to shed them. He would leave desolation behind him, but it would pass. She knew that she was able to let him go, and while she realised that she would not keep him.