Here the towering, well-lighted tram from Barryport sailed majestically up, with a long-drawn growl, ending in a heavy clang and thin shriek as the powerful brakes gripped, bringing it to a stop.
"All right. I may take it for settled, then. I have your promise. Really I am awfully obliged to you. Don't let me make you miss your tram, though. Hi! conductor, steady a minute. Colonel Haig's going with you.—Thanks, Colonel, good-night," Challoner cried, all in a breath, without giving the hustled, harried, almost apoplectic ex-warrior time to utter a syllable good or bad.
"Had him neatly," he said to himself, as he turned once more into the stillness and twilight of the woods. "He can't back out—daren't back out. Their swagger, aristocratic, d——-your-impudence Stourmouth Club taken by assault!"
And again he laughed, but this time the coarse quality of the sound failed to jar him. On the contrary, he rather relished its stridency. He was winning all along the line, so he could afford—for a little while here alone under the snow-laden fir-trees in the deepening dusk—to be himself.
In the hall at Heatherleigh his man-servant—a thin, yellowish, gentle, anxious-looking person, who played the part of shuttlecock to the battledores of his strong master and of a commanding wife, ten years his senior—met him.
"Mr. Pewsey is waiting for you in the smoke-room, sir," he said, while helping Challoner off with the pepper-and-salt-mixture overcoat. "And Mrs. Spencer, sir, called to leave this note. She said there was no answer, but I was to be sure and give it to you directly you came in."
Challoner took the note, and stopped for a minute under the hanging, colored-glass gas-lantern to read it. It was written in a large, showy, yet tentative hand, on highly scented mauve paper with a white border to it, and ran thus:
"B. gone to Mary church to dine and sleep. Alone. Come round if you can after dinner. Want you. Quite safe. Love. GWYNNIE."
Challoner rolled the small scented sheet into a ball and tossed it viciously on to the fire, watching till the flame licked it up.
"No, there's no answer. Quite true, Mrs. Gwynnie—even even less answer than you suppose or will in the least bit like," he said, between his teeth.