Important business had taken Sidney to Liverpool, and it had been arranged that instead of returning to Apley, he should go across to Brackenburn and meet the rest of the Christmas party there. Traveling was a good deal impeded by a severe snowstorm, and he was disappointed, though not surprised, to find that the London train was very much behind time, when he reached the country station nearest to Brackenburn. Leaving the carriage and brake to bring the large party coming up from the south, Sidney hired a light spring cart, which would make its way more quickly and easily along the encumbered roads. The early night had already fallen; and a few breaks in the drifting clouds, through which the stars shone by twos and threes, seemed to foretell a cessation in the storm.
The full moon was shining through one of these rifts when he reached the forecourt of the old house, and its silvery light fell on all the gables, and touched every tossing spray of ivy glistering with the freshly fallen snow. But instead of the cheerful lights shining in every window, all the front of the house was in darkness. Within the wide porch a deep drift almost barred the approach to the door. There was something ominous in the deathlike silence and darkness of this place, to which he had been traveling with the expectation of entering it surrounded by all whom he loved most. There stole over him a sense of loneliness, such as all of us feel at times, when the utter solitude of the life within us, the isolation of each one's spirit, presses consciously and with deep awe upon us. No words could say how precious Margaret was to him; but even she could never enter into the secret and mysterious house of his soul.
A glimmer in a distant window at last answered to the driver's noisy and repeated ringing of the great bell; and the door was opened, Mary Goldsmith appearing with a face of terror.
"Oh, Mr. Martin!" she cried in a tremulous voice, "they're lost in the snow. They've never come back. Andrew and Martin are lost in the snow!"
For a moment it seemed as if her words forbade his entrance; and he stood motionless on the threshold looking from her to the whiteness of the scene behind him.
"Come in, come in," she said impatiently, "and tells us what we must do. All the men are gone to the station, and only the old gardener's left. They went out hours ago, Andrew and Martin, and never came back. They'd have been home before nightfall if they hadn't lost themselves."
Sidney entered the hall, leaving the heavy door ajar, and in a minute or two a long drift of snow stretched across the polished floor, blown in by the rising wind.
"Has nobody gone in search of them?" asked Sidney.
"Nay!" said Mary, crying, "there's only me, and Selina, and the maids; and it's such a dizzy storm. We lost our way only going along the garden walks. We couldn't see a yard before us. But we've lighted up all the windows at the back, looking over the moor. Only I'm afraid they can't be seen far off through the driving snow."
The wind had risen again almost to a gale, and roared round the solitary house, shaking every door and casement, and beating the long ivy tendrils against the windowpanes. Sidney could see nothing even of the storm for the sheet of ice and snow covering the outside of the windows. Andrew old, and Martin ailing in health, out on the moors, in this tempest! He looked into Mary's terror-stricken face with an expression of intense anxiety.