The whole plain, subject, in autumn and winter, to devastating floods, was really a sort of inlet or estuary of the great Somersetshire marshes, lying further west, which are collectively known as Sedgemoor.
Gladys could not refrain from giving vent to a slight movement of instinctive reluctance, when she saw how close the night was upon them, and how long the road seemed, but she submissively suppressed any word of protest, when, with a silent touch upon her arm, her companion led her forward, down the shadowy incline.
Their figures were still visible—two dark isolated forms upon the pale roadway—when, hot and panting, Mr. Clavering arrived at the same hill-top. With a sigh of profound relief he recognized that he had not lost his fugitives. The only question was, where were they going, and for what purpose? He remained for several minutes gloomy and watchful at his post of observation.
They were now nearly half a mile across the plain, and their receding figures had already begun to grow indistinct in the twilight, when Mr. Clavering saw them suddenly leave the road and debouch to the left. “Ah!” he muttered to himself, “They’re going home by Hullaway Chase!”
This Hullaway Chase was a rough tract of pasturage a little to the east of the level flats, and raised slightly above them. From its southern extremity a long narrow lane, skirting the outlying cottages of the village, led straight across the intervening uplands to Nevilton Park. It was clearly towards this lane, by a not much frequented foot-path over the ditches, that Gladys and Luke were proceeding.
To anyone as well acquainted as Clavering was with the general outline of the country the route that the lovers—or whatever their curious relation justifies us in calling them—must needs take, to return to Nevilton, was now as clearly marked as if it were indicated on a map.
“Curse him!” muttered the priest, “I hope he’s not going to drown her in those brooks!”
He let his gaze wander across the level expanse at his feet. How could he get close to them, he wondered, so as to catch even a stray sentence or two of what they were saying.
His passion had reached such a point of insanity that he longed to be transformed into one of those dark-winged rooks that now in a thin melancholy line were flying over their heads, so that he might swoop down above them and follow them—follow them—every step of the way! He was like a man drawn to the edge of a precipice and magnetized by the very danger of the abyss. To be near them, to listen to what they said,—the craving for that possessed him with a fixed and obstinate hunger!
Suddenly he shook his cane in the air and almost leaped for joy. He remembered the existence, at the spot where the lane they were seeking began, of a large dilapidated barn, used, by the yeoman-farmer to whom the Chase belonged, as a rough store-house for cattle-food. The spot was so attractive a resting-place for persons tired with walking, that it seemed as though it would be a strange chance indeed if the two wanderers did not take advantage of it. The point was, could he forestall them and arrive there first?