He slid off the gate as he spoke and strode into the centre of the road.
The moon, temporarily unveiled, revealed as wet a landscape as one could possibly imagine. Everything dripped water—bushes, trees, ferns, grass, hats, clothes—whilst every rut of the road, every particle of soil, shone wet in the moon’s rays. A deep, settled calm permeated the atmosphere. It was the stillness of night and moisture combined.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you coming?” Brown asked impatiently.
“One moment,” Reynolds replied. “I believe I heard footsteps. Hark! I thought so, they’re coming this way! Someone else lost their train, perhaps.”
Brown listened, and he, too, distinctly heard the sound of footsteps—high-heeled shoes walking along with a sharp, springy action, as if the road were absolutely hard and dry.
“A woman!” he ejaculated. “Odd hour for a woman to be out here.”
Brown laughed. “Pooh!” he said. “Women are afraid of nothing nowadays except old age. Hullo! Here she comes!”
As he spoke the figure of a woman—slight and supple, and apparently young—shot into view, and came rapidly towards them.
Her dress, though quaint and pretty, was not particularly striking; but her feet, clad in patent leather shoes, with buckles that shone brightly in the moonlight, were oddly conspicuous, in spite of the fact that they were small and partially hidden ’neath a skirt which was long and frilled, and not at all in accordance with the present fashion. Something about her prevented both men from speaking, and they involuntarily moved nearer to one another as she approached. On and on she came, tripping along, and never varying her pace. Now in a zone of moonlight, now in the dark belt of shadows from the firs and larches, she drew nearer and nearer. Through the hedge, Brown could dimly perceive the figure of a cow, immensely magnified, standing dumb and motionless, apparently lost, like he was, in spellbound observation. The silence kept on intensifying. Not a breath of air, not a leaf stirring, not a sound from Reynolds, who stood with arms folded like a statue; only the subdued trickle, trickle of the spring, and the hard tap, tap, tap of the flashing, sparkling shoes.
At last the woman was abreast of them. They shrank back and back, pressing farther and farther into the hedge, so close that the sharp twigs and brambles scratched their faces and tore their clothes. She passed. Down, down, down, still tripping daintily, until the sepulchral blackness of the dip swallowed her up. They could still hear her tap, tap, tap; and for some seconds neither spoke. Then Reynolds, releasing his clothes from the thorns, muttered huskily: “At last I’ve seen a ghost, and I always scoffed at them.”