On the dusty, shady highroad courage returned to me, and I walked ahead at a good pace. I did want very strongly to reach that bridge again before dark. I would not trust my letter to the rural delivery box near “The Pines” lane. I was determined to mail it at the post-office, and to be sure that it went out by the evening mail. I was successful, addressed the blank envelope, and slipped it in, bought Mrs. Brane's hat, and, hurrying home, found myself in time for five o'clock tea. I had met with no misadventure of any kind; not even a shadow had fallen on my path; but I was as tired as though I had been through every terror that had tormented my imagination. I went to bed that night and slept well.
The four days that followed the mailing of my letter were as still as the proverbial lull before the storm. We all went quietly about our lives. Whatever mutiny was hidden in the souls of Henry and his female accomplice smouldered there without explosion. Sara, indeed, was sullen, and obeyed my orders with an air of resentment. Paul Dabney seemed to be immersed in study. It looked to me sometimes as though every one in the house was waiting, as breathlessly and secretly as I was, for the meeting with that unknown Servant of the Eternal Eye. Certainly it was curious that on the very Wednesday morning Mrs. Brane should have decided to send Gregory, the old horse, to Pine Cone, for a new pair of shoes, and that she should herself have suggested my going with George for a little outing. Her face was perfectly innocent, but I could not refrain from asking her, “What made you think of sending me, Mrs. Brane?”
She gave me a knowing, teasing little look. “Somebody takes a great interest in your health, proud Maisie,” she said.
Paul Dabney! I was not a little startled by the opportuneness of his interest. It was, to say the least, a trifle odd that he should want me to drive to Pine Cone on the very morning of my appointment. I was half minded to refuse to drive with George, then decided that this refusal would only serve to point any suspicion that Paul Dabney might be entertaining of me, so I agreed meekly to the arrangement and set off in due time seated in the brake-cart by George's substantial side. He was undoubtedly a comfort to me, and I kept him chattering all the way. He had lost the air of bravado he had shown on our first drive together, for “The Pines” had been, to all appearances, a place of supreme tranquillity since Robbie's death. His talk was all of the country-side, a string of complaints. The roads needed mending, the fences were down, “government don't do nothin' fer this yere po' place.” He pointed out a tall, ragged, dead pine near a turn in the road, I remember, and groaned, “Jes a tech to send that tree plum oveh yeah on the top of us-all, missy.” This complaint was one of a hundred and stuck in my mind because of later happenings.
We jogged into Pine Cone at eleven, and I occupied myself variously till the hour of the appointment, when, with a sickish feeling of nervous suspense, I forced my steps towards the drug-store. I went in through the fly-screen door, and passed the soda-water fountain and the counters where stale candy and coarse calicoes beckoned for a purchaser, and I went on between green rep, tasseled portières to the damp, dark, inner room where the marble-topped tables, vacant of food, seemed to attract, by some mysterious promise, a swarm of dull and sluggish flies whose mournful buzzing filled the stagnant air.
There was one person in the ice-cream parlor—a man. I moved doubtfully towards him, and he lifted his head. This head was a replica of the pre-Raphaelite figures of Christ, a long, oval, high-browed countenance, with smooth, long, yellow hair parted in the middle of the brow, with oblong eyes, a long nose, a mouth drooping exaggeratedly at the corners, and a very long, silky, yellow beard, also parted in the middle and hanging in two rippling points almost to his waist. He was dressed in a rusty black suit, the very long sleeves of which hung down quite over his hands.
At sight of me he turned pale, rose, the dolorous mouth drooping more extremely. “Madame,” he said in the lisping, clumsy speech of those whose supply of teeth falls short of lingual demands, “is as prompt as the justice of Heaven.” And he bowed and cringed painfully.
I sat down opposite to him, and gave the languid, pimply-faced youth who came an order for two plates of ice-cream. I was horribly embarrassed and confused, but by a mighty effort I maintained an air of self-possession. The priest—I should have known him for a renegade priest anywhere—sat meekly with his hidden hands resting on the table before him, and his great, smooth lids pulled down over his eyes. Once he looked up for an instant.
“Madame preserves her youth,” he lisped, “as though she had lived upon the blood of babes.” And he ran the tip of his tongue over his lips.
This horrible speech was, no doubt, exactly suited to the taste of my counterpart. I knew that I was expected to laugh, and I dragged my lips across my teeth in imitation of the ghastly smile. It passed muster.