As Luke Andersen approached this familiar spot he observed with a certain vague irritation the well-known figure of one of his most recent Nevilton enchantresses. The girl was no other, in fact, than that shy companion of Annie Bristow who had been amusing herself with them in the Fountain Square on the occasion of Mr. Clavering’s ill-timed intervention. At this moment she was sauntering negligently along, on a high-raised path of narrow paved flag-stones, such paths being a peculiarity of Hullaway, due to the prevalence of heavy autumn floods.
The girl was evidently bound for the glove-factory, for she swung a large bundle as she walked, resting it idly every now and then, on any available wall or rail or close-cut hedge, along which she passed. She was an attractive figure, tall, willowy, and lithe, and she walked in that lingering, swaying voluptuous manner which gives to the movements of maidens of her type a sort of provocative challenge. Luke, advancing along the road behind her, caught himself admiring, in spite of his intense preoccupation, the alluring swing of her walk and the captivating lines of her graceful person.
The moment was approaching that he had so fantastically dreaded, the moment of his first glance at Hullaway Great Pond. He was already relieved to see no signs of anything unusual in the air of the place,—but the imaged vision of his brother’s drowned body still hovered before him, and that fatal “I’ll never forgive you for this!” still rang in his ears.
His mind all this while was working with extraordinary rapidity and he was fully conscious of the grotesque irrelevance of this lapse into the ingrained habit of wanton admiration. Quickly, in a flash of lightning, he reviewed all his amorous adventures and his frivolous philanderings. How empty, how bleak, how impossible, all such pleasures seemed, without the dark stooping figure of this companion of his soul as their taciturn background! He looked at Phyllis Santon with a sudden savage resolution, and made a quaint sort of vow in the depths of his heart.
“I’ll never speak to the wench again or look at her again,” he said to himself, “if I find Daddy Jim safe and sound, and if he forgives me!”
He hurried past her, almost at a run, and arrived at the centre of Hullaway. There was the Great Pond, with its low white-washed stone parapet. There were the ancient elm-trees and the stocks. There also were the white-pinafored infants playing in the hollow aperture of the oldest among the trees. But the slimy surface of the water was utterly undisturbed save by two or three assiduous ducks who at intervals plunged beneath it.
He drew an immense sigh of relief and glanced casually round. Phyllis had not failed to perceive him. With a shy little friendly smile she advanced towards him. His vow was already in some danger. He waved her a hasty greeting but did not take her hand.
“You’d better put yourself into the stocks,” he said, covering with a smile the brutality of his neglect, “until I come back! I have to find James.”
Leaving her standing in mute consternation, he rushed off to the churchyard on the further side of the little common. There was a certain spot here, under the shelter of the Manor wall, where Luke and his brother had spent several delicious afternoons, moralizing upon the quaint epitaphs around them, and smoking cigarettes. Luke felt as if he were almost sure to find James stretched out at length before a certain old tombstone whose queer appeal to the casual intruder had always especially attracted him. Both brothers had a philosophical mania for these sepulchral places, and the Hullaway grave-yard was even more congenial to their spirit than the Nevilton one, perhaps because this latter was so dominatingly possessed by their own dead.
Luke entered the enclosure through a wide-open wooden gate and glanced quickly round him. There was the Manor wall, as mellow and sheltering as ever, even on such a day of clouds. There was their favourite tombstone, with its long inscription to the defunct seignorial house. But of James Andersen there was not the remotest sign.