Baltazar was not long in carrying out what, in bitter self-colloquy, he called his Flambardian campaign. He deliberately absented himself from his work in the Mundham office and gave up all his time to Sorio. He now encouraged this latter in all his most dangerous manias, constantly leading the conversation round to what he knew were exciting and agitating topics and bringing him back again and again to especial points of irritation and annoyance.
The days quickly passed, however, and Adrian, though in a strange and restless mood, had still, in no public manner, given evidence of insanity, and short, of course, of some such public manifestation, his treacherous friend’s plan of having him put under restraint, fell to the ground.
Meanwhile, Nance’s preparations for her marriage and for their entrance into their new home advanced towards completion. It was within three days of the date decided upon for their wedding when Nance, who had had less time recently at her disposal for watching her sister’s moods, came suddenly to the conclusion, as, on a wild and stormy afternoon, she led her home from the church, that something was seriously wrong. At first, as they left the churchyard and began making their way towards the bridge, she thought the gloom of the evening was a sufficient reason for Linda’s despairing silence, but as they advanced, with the wind beating in their faces and the roar of the sea coming to them over the dunes, she came to the conclusion that the cause lay deeper.
But that night—it was the twenty-eighth of October—was certainly desolate enough to be the cause of any human being’s depression. The sun was sinking as the sisters started for their walk home. A blood-red streak, jagged and livid, like the mutilated back of some bleeding monster, lay low down over the fens. The wind wailed in the poplars, whistled through the reeds, and sighed in long melancholy gasps like the sobbing of some unhappy earth-spirit across the dykes and the ditches. One by one a few flickering lamps appeared among the houses of the town as the girls drew near the river, but the long wavering lines of light thrown by these across the meadows only increased the general gloom.
“Don’t let’s cross at once,” said Linda suddenly, when they reached the bridge. “Let’s walk along the bank—just a little way! I feel excited and queer to-night. I’ve been in the church so long. Please let’s stay out a little.”
Nance thought it better to agree to the child’s caprice; though the river-bank at that particular hour was dark with a strange melancholy. They left the road and walked slowly along the tow-path in the direction away from the town. A group of cattle standing huddled together near the path, rushed off into the middle of the field.
The waters of the Loon were high—the tide flowing sea-ward—and here and there from the windows of some scattered houses on the opposite bank, faint lights were reflected upon the river’s surface. A strong smell of seaweed and brackish mud came up to them from the dark stream.
“What secrets,” said Linda suddenly, “this old Loon could tell, if it could speak! I call it a haunted river.”
Nance’s only reply to this was to pull her sister’s cloak more tightly round her shoulders.
“I don’t mean in the sense of having drowned so many people,” Linda went on, “I mean in the sense of being half-human itself.”