A blusterous wind that fluttered the skirts of my long, caped coat, that filled the night with stir and tumult and flaws of sudden rain; a wind that whirled black masses of ragged cloud across a lowering heaven lit by a pallid moon that peeped stealthily and vanished, to peep again.
And glancing from desolate, wind-swept streets to flying cloud-wrack, I judged there was worse to come and knew a strange, unnatural joy therefore, as I bent my head to buffeting wind and reined the fiery animal I bestrode to less furious pace.
We crossed the river at London Bridge, a dark horror of moving waters swirling here and there in the ineffectual beam of lamp or lanthorn; on past gloomy streets and narrow courts where dim forms jostled, and ever and always the blusterous wind rioting 'twixt heaven and earth, booming in chimneys, moaning in dark corners, rattling windows, clapping-to crazy shutters and setting signboards a-swing on scolding hinges.
On and on through this ever-growing turbulence, while Wildfire tossed proud head, snorted defiance upon the elements, and bored eagerly upon the bit. But once the great city was behind us, I gave him his will and away we went headlong into the wind, the clatter of his galloping hoofs drowned in the universal uproar. But fast as he sped, the demon of doubt and suspicion and growing dread kept pace, and for once, riding Wildfire, I forgot Wildfire and all else save the hell within me.
A black-bodied chaise picked out in yellow!
And now came the rain to lash me and I bared my head the better to feel it. Before me in the swirling dark were twinkling lights lurching rapidly nearer, and down upon me loomed a stagecoach, a mountainous shape that flitted by me like a phantom. A phantom? The very night seemed peopled by phantoms; I sped past phantom wains and waggons, piled high with phantom loads, that moved with no sound of hoofs or wheels; spectral horsemen flitted by, soundless; in the shadow of hissing hedgerow and raving, wind-tossed trees crawled miserable, nebulous shapes, seen but to be lost again, swallowed in the howling murk.
Rushing wind and lashing rain; pale gleams of a fitful moon to show swaying trees that tossed wild arms to heaven, and a splashing quag below, mud and wind-swept pools, all lost again in the swirling dark. And buffeted thus, beaten by rain, smitten by unseen things, gasping in the wind's fierce gusts, my one thought was:
A black-bodied chaise with red wheels—Captain Danby!
How long I galloped at this wild and reckless pace I do not know, but little by little I became aware that the rain had ceased, the clouds were rent asunder and the moon looked down, pale and remote, upon a desolate countryside very ghostly and unreal and wholly unfamiliar. Before me was a winding road fringed with dripping, sombre trees and reining Wildfire to a standstill, I found that the wind had greatly abated its fury. But though the storm was over, the storm within me raged fierce as ever; therefore, heedless of where the morning found me, I spurred Wildfire forward and rode with slackened rein, leaving him to take me where he would.
A black-bodied chaise—What should bring Diana in company with such brutal satyr as Captain Danby?