The day was dark and still, life dragging heavily, as it does in September days, yet not without a sombre beauty. Masses of firs here and there relieved the monotony of foliage, and the gorse spread a burnish of gold on broken ground. In the road it was duller. Mud prevailed, and withering grasses coarsely fringed the mud, while autumn had not yet flaunted its yellows and reds to hide decay. Wareham, generally quick to notice nature, walked on unheeding.
Reaching the town at last, it struck him as usual, as an ugly expression of man, varying between squalor and dull respectability, bare brick and slate in rows. The station was uglier, but more attractive in spite of blackness, something of magic still lingering about the sharp bright lines, the rushing monsters that whizz along them, the flaming eyes that glow in the night. Wareham turned towards it.
He was too early. The London express was not due for ten minutes, and he went off to execute Sir Michael’s errand, promising to return later. It had been market morning, and farmers and farmers’ wives yet lingered in the streets, enjoying weekly greetings. One or two carriages drove about, and Wareham noticed the Ormsleigh brougham at the door of a shop. He went to the post-office, and stayed to send off a couple of telegrams in answer to the letters he found there. Then he walked round by the church, for the pleasure of looking at the noble lines of its tower, and, having by this time completely exhausted Venom’s patience, betook himself again to the station.
Newspaper in pocket, he started for home. As dusk approached, the day cleared, and, facing the west as he walked, he noticed signs of preparation in the heavens, as if a pageant might presently disclose itself. The road was inextricably connected with thoughts of Hugh: as boys they had often ridden home under the oaks, and the absence of change in immaterial things is no less oppressive than its presence in material. Hugh’s vitality was so amazing that it was next to impossible to think of his life having gone out from among them.
He was still a little distance from Firleigh when, with a curve of road beyond him, sounds reached his ears, remote, yet carrying something in them which hurried him forward. Venom in front was plainly puzzled; he had halted, and was considering matters with cocked ears and head on one side. A few moments brought Wareham within sight and quickened his steps to a run, for evidently there had been an accident.
The brougham, which he had recognised as belonging to Lord Ormsleigh, was reclining angularly against the hedge, the horses were disengaged and held by a hatless groom, while a couple of other men, one of them the coachman, had apparently just succeeded in extricating two figures from imprisonment in the overturned carriage. It caused Wareham not the smallest astonishment to recognise in one of them Anne Dalrymple. He was by her side the next moment.
“Tell me that you are not hurt!”
Anne, who was very pale, showed more amazement.
“Mr Wareham! Have you sprung out of the earth?”
“Good fortune brought me here. My question first, please.”