And all at once, puzzled to fit some kind of a key to the fellow's strange conduct, what enmity or what design he could have against him, the Spawer's mind harked back to the two letters he had received this night, and to the enigmatical epistle of the girl, and in a flash he knew his man.
But though he knew him, whatever the recognition might serve him in despatching theories of robbery and violence, it served him little for enlightenment. Added, indeed, to his perplexity, instead of subtracting from it. For what object had caused this man to follow him—him, his poor, crushed, and trampled antagonist—to the sea to-night? Had he not injured him enough, but that he must needs track him in this despicable fashion, and play spy upon his doings? All the hatred and unreasoning disregard that the unsuccessful have for the successful rose up within him at the discovery. Of the schoolmaster's virtues he knew nothing; sought to know nothing. It was enough for him that to this man he was indebted for his soul's humiliation; that this sinister-looking figure had supplanted him for occupation of the dearest territory in the world; and he rejoiced with a cruel and unhallowed joy that this, his vanquisher, had been given over thus into his hand.
Ten to one, were he only to make no sound, he could succeed in eluding discovery, for the fellow showed no aptitude in search, but success of this sort was not what he desired. He had been contemptibly dogged for some purpose or other, and he would have full revenge of the man's shame. Very quietly he stepped out of his shelter and showed his tall figure in the moonlight.
"You appear to be looking for something," he said.
At the sound of his voice, the man spun round eagerly on his heel, as though his first emotion had been of pure incredulous joy that his quarry was not lost to him. Shame succeeded upon that, to think of what the Spawer had been a witness, and his forward impulse was checked momentarily into a falling back on the heel that had urged him. Then, just as quickly, anger succeeded upon shame. Those chance words, uttered so carelessly, but with such a frigid tone of scorn—as though the Spawer in mind towered above him like an Alpine summit, and his lofty contempt was snow-capped—roused his wrath to desperation.
"You know what I am looking for," he said hoarsely, and advanced with both hands up at his coat-collar.
Could the Spawer have had but one glimpse into the surging hot mind of the man at this moment, and seen of what wild charges he stood accused, he might have turned the sword of his words into a ploughshare, and tilled honestly for enlightenment. But in his own mind it was he who had been wronged. And besides that, the fierce, unexpressed hostility of love was between them. Even had there not been this present cause of quarrel to kindle anger, they would have been rampant for the fray like two rein-bucks.
"I know what you are looking for?" he asked, and his voice moved contemptuously away from the suggestion as he might himself have moved (so the schoolmaster thought) from the contaminating touch of an unclean beggar. A clear, well-pitched, musical voice it was—so different from the schoolmaster's hoarse, toneless utterance—and its very superiority, seeming now to take conscious pride in itself, stirred up the listening man's worst hatred. In birth, in station, in presence, in voice, in possessions, and in love, this tall, insufferable figure prevailed. "You make a mistake..." he heard it say to him. "I know nothing at all about you, except that you have been dogging my footsteps for this last quarter of an hour. I know that. If you have anything to add to it, I am ready to hear you."
The lean, shabby figure of the schoolmaster flinched visibly in the moonlight at each fresh phrase, as if it had been a whip-lash that his antagonist was curling about him. With both hands clenched at his coat-collar, he seemed almost to be hanging on to resolution against a groan.
"Yes," he blurted out fiercely at last, releasing his hands at the same moment from this occupation, and crying out his confession like a wild triumph of delinquency; "I have been following you. You may know it."