Without heeding her astounded look, I ran up to my room, took down my cloth cloak, drew it around me, and drawing the hood over my head, I hastened down stairs to the garden. As I passed underneath the verandah, the voice of Mrs. Langton seemed to call me back, but the wind drowned her words, and I ran fast along the avenue. I had soon reached the iron gate; I took down the key, opened the door, and entered the lane. As 1 turned my back on Poplar Lodge, I caught a last glimpse of it rising against a dark sky, with a faint speck of light glimmering from the drawing-room window.
No other light shone on my path; the sun had set bright and glorious, the evening had set in clear and serene; but a sudden eclipse had come; one vast gloom shrouded sky and earth; I never saw summer night like this for intense, for dreary darkness. I knew the way well; I walked straight on, swiftly and without pause, meeting no obstacles, fearing none, like one who passes through vacant space.
Once I thought I heard a voice calling on me faintly in the distance behind; but I heeded it not, I did not answer, I did not look round; I went on as in a dream. Raised beyond the body by the passion of my grief, I felt not the ground beneath my feet; all I felt was that the wind as it swept by me with a low rushing sound, seemed to bear me on through that sombre and melancholy night, as a spirit to its viewless home. At length, the air became of a dead stillness; it was as if I had suddenly entered a silent and sultry region in which there was no breathing and no life. I stopped short; I looked round to see that I had not mistaken the way; a streak of fiery lightning passed through the darkness of the sky; for a moment I caught sight of an open space, in which I stood, and saw before me two long lanes diverging from a half ruined gateway, and vanishing into depths of gloom whence seemed to come forth the peal of far thunder that died away in low faint echoes.
I knew the spot well; I had not missed the right path; I was half way on my journey.
But as if this first flash had only been a signal, the brooding storm now broke forth. Before it fled at once the silence and the gloom of the hour. A low, wild murmur ran along the ground, then rose and lost itself in the wide and desolate hollow of the night; trees tossed about their dark boughs, and groaned lamentably like vexed spirits. As the sound of a loosened flood came the rushing rain, the wind rose ever deepening in its roar; and above all rolled the full thunder, louder than the deafening voice of battle, whilst, cleft with many a swift and silent flash, the dark sky opened like a sea of living fire, below which stretched a long, low moving shore of livid clouds.
I stood still and looked; not with fear—to love and fear for what we love, is to be raised beyond all dread—but I felt dazzled with the ceaseless lightning, and dizzy with the tumult of the tempest; the heavy rain beat full in my face and blinded me; the strong gale rose against me in all its might. I could not move on; I could not turn back, seek shelter, or proceed; for a moment I yielded to the burst of the storm, and let the elements wreak their fury on my bowed head. But a thought stronger than even their power, more fearful than their wildest wrath, was on me. I drew down my hood, wrapped my cloak closer around me, and again went on drenched with the pouring rain, and often arrested, but never driven back by the impetuous blast.
The storm was violent and brief. Soon the wind fell; the rain grew less heavy; the lightning less frequent and vivid; the thunder slowly retreated; the sky cleared, and melted into soft clouds, behind which, for the first time, shone the watery moon. She looked down on me with a wan and troubled face, boding sorrow; her dim light filled the path I now followed; on either side, like gloomy giants, rose the dark trees; the rain had ceased, but as I passed swiftly beneath the dripping boughs, they seemed shaken by an invisible hand to dash their chill dew-drops in my face. The smell of the wet earth rose strong on the humid air; in the ditch by me, I heard water flowing with a low, gurgling sound, and every now and then I came across a shallow pool lit with a pale and trembling moonbeam.
The storm had not terrified me, but now my courage sank. This chill calm after the fury of the tempest; this sound of water faintly flowing, following on tumult so loud, seemed to me to speak of sorrow, death and utter desolation. The nearer I drew to the end of my journey, the more my heart failed me. As I turned down into the lane that led home, the church-clock struck twelve; every stroke sounded like a funeral knell on my ear; then a dog began to howl plaintively. I turned cold and sick—as a child, I had heard that this was a token of death. Oh! with what slow and weary steps, I drew near that door towards which I had hastened through all the anger of the storm, and which my heart now dreaded to reach. As I stood by it, my limbs trembled, my very flesh quivered, my blood seemed to have ceased to flow, my heart to beat, cold dew-drops gathered and stood on my brow, and something, an inward struggle, an agony without a name rose to my lips, and made one gasp for breath, but could not pass them. Twice I stretched out my hand to ring, and twice it fell powerless. I sank down on my knees; I uttered a passionate prayer: I asked—what will not the heart ask for?—for an impossible boon. "Even if he is to die. Oh God, do not let him die; even though he shall be dead, do not let him be dead!"
I rose and rang. "Now," I thought, "I shall know it all at once in the face of Kate or Jane, whichever it may be that opens to me." I nerved myself to meet that look, as I heard a door opening within, then a step on the wet gravel, and caught a glimmer of light through the chinks of the door. I heard it unbarred and unbolted, then it opened partly; and standing on the threshold with the light of the upraised lamp in his face, I saw Cornelius.