Grandfather Legg lifted a lean hand and jerked his thumb expressively in the direction of Sweetbriar Lane.
“Rebecca,” said he, “Rebecca be yon.”
David stepped back from the window and stood a moment paralysed. The eager excitement of a few moments before left him all in a minute and he became suddenly cold. Rebecca was out at this hour—Rebecca had gone a-walkin’ in Sweetbriar Lane with another man. That dream which told him she craved for him was but a mockery.
After a pause he began to walk rapidly away in the direction indicated by the old man. He would see for himself; he would find Rebecca and tax her with her infidelity; he would—here he drew in his breath and clenched his hands—he would reckon with the other fellow.
Now the lane lay before him, winding upwards between its shadowy hedges silent and deserted. His steps rang sharply on the frozen surface; deep shadows lay beneath the hedgerows but the path itself gleamed silvery white in the moonlight. Up, up—there was never a soul in sight—if Grandfather Legg spoke truth Rebecca must have wandered on a long way with that new sweetheart of hers. He pressed forward with what speed he might, he would come upon them sooner or later and then!
Yonder at the turn of the lane, the outline of the lychgate was visible, and, topping the churchyard wall the dark heads of a group of cypresses; his eyes wandered absently over them, insensibly taking note of how bravely the frost-encased needles gleamed; the hoar lay thick on the ancient tiles of the lychgate roof too, and even edged the time-worn pillars which supported it. As he brought his absent gaze down to these pillars he saw a face peep out at him from behind one. The moonlight fell full upon it and he recognised at once that it was Rebecca’s. Very small and pale it looked, and yet it wore a smile, tender and a little sad.
David with an inarticulate cry rushed towards her. But before he could reach it the little figure came gliding forth from its ambush and went fluttering up the path before him as it had so often done in former days. She paused every now and then to turn round with the arch smile which he knew so well, and to beckon, but she spoke no word, and her feet fell so lightly on the stony track that they made no sound. She wore a cotton dress familiar to David, and no wrap of any kind in spite of the cold; her fair hair, too, glistened in the silvery light unshaded by a hat.
“Rebecca! Rebecca!” cried David, lumbering in pursuit of her, a prey to such a tumult of emotions that he almost wept. “Rebecca, come back, love. I came because ye did call me. Ye must have a word to say to me sure. Ye’ll never go for to treat me so foolish now I have come all this way to see ye.”
But the little figure only waved its arms for all response and went gliding on—on, always out of reach, now lost to sight at the turn of the lane, now in obedience to some such freakish impulse as had often roused his ire long ago, darting behind a clump of bushes, now peering down at him from the top of a high bank. Always tantalising, always elusive, but his own Rebecca for all that—his Rebecca who had never given a thought to any other man. She would surely soon tire of her play and run to his arms.
Here were the Downs at last, and Rebecca, as though in answer to his yearning, paused, turning towards him and beckoning. For a moment he saw her thus almost as he had seen her in his dream, save that the light which bathed her slight figure was not the noonday glow of his fancy but the ethereal radiance of the winter’s night, and that no word passed her smiling lips. As he gazed upon her the dream powerlessness came upon him, his feet remained rooted to the ground, his arms hung useless by his side, he tried to call her name aloud but his tongue clove to his palate. Only a moment did this nightmare-like oppression endure and then, with a cry, he rushed towards the spot where she had stood—but Rebecca had vanished.