“Who was it he went after?”
Thair looked at her. For a moment he hesitated. Then, “Yes, it was she,” he said. “Now then”—to the man—“lively!”
The carriage spun over the coast road. Its wheels flew, halos now of mud, now of water. The span were at their sharpest trot, but to Florence they seemed to crawl.
The fog was all around, over, eddying like smoke among the trees. Somewhere under its oblivion breakers were rolling in with sullen voices and heavy, crashing fall upon the sand.
She leaned forward, peering into the gray blur before. She was conscious only of interminable mist and one person it held away from her. She watched Thair’s pink coat moving like a will-o’-the-wisp. Now it stopped. Thair shouted to the driver. The victoria turned, dipped under the trees, passed between two gate-posts. She saw long grass under the wheels. The carriage rocked over broken ground. The horses were at a canter. Through a second gate, with a lurch, one wheel thumping over the bars half drawn aside. They were in the fields, with the ocean’s hoarse voice dwindled to a whisper that was “Hush!” while her heart, audible to her in the deep silence, drummed “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Then above the melancholy sea she heard the sharp chopping of the pack. Cruel sound! It made her shiver. Then a hallo. Gray shapes moved in the fog like shadows on a sheet. One was close to the carriage, a woman crying. Then Holden’s voice saying to Thair, “Quicker than we hoped”; then, beside the carriage, exclaiming, “Florence!”
Her name was on his lips for the first time. She did not hear it.
“Where is he?” she said.
“Wait here,” Holden answered, and rode ahead.
The carriage stopped. She sprang out and ran forward a few steps—paused. She saw two men coming toward her, carrying something between them. Nearer, she saw it was a man. He hung dead weight, head fallen back, arms hanging, hands trailing in the long, wet grass. Behind, like a following dog, came a tall bare-headed girl. It seemed unreal, a play scene, till she saw the injured man’s face, dead white, with a dark streak across the mouth that lengthened it out into a horrible smile.
“Over here,” Florence said to the coachman. Her voice was lost in her throat, but he obeyed the beckoning hand. She was back in the carriage. The men were lifting up the burden her hands reached for.