CHAPTER IV.
REYNOLD'S REGRET.
With the passing of that gleam of moonlight it seemed to Reynold Harding that Mitchelhurst Place disappeared finally into the abyss that waits for all created things. Where the house, in its curious ghastly whiteness, had stood a moment earlier, was now nothing but baffling gloom, and the very gate vanished into the shadows, as if there were no need of any substantial barrier between him and the lost vision. The scene had closed with dramatic suddenness, and he felt that the play was played out, but how long he stood staring at the dusky curtain he did not know.
At last he turned, and made his way down the dim road. The bewildering obscurity seemed to press upon his sight, and he quickened his pace to gain the corner where his glance might rest on the scattered lamps of Mitchelhurst Street—little flames shuddering and struggling in the gale. He had gone about half the distance to his lodgings, when he saw two advancing eyes of fire at the end of the street. Nearer and nearer they came, but, owing to the clamour of the wind, the noise of wheels was inaudible till the carriage was close upon him where he paused on the sidewalk. Then for a moment there was a gleam of light upon the road, and in it appeared, as in a kind of magic-lantern picture, a sorry-looking grey horse, travelling reluctantly beyond his stable at the inn, a shabby driver, buttoned closely against the wind, with his hat pulled low on his brows, a flashing of revolving wheels, and the black silhouette of the Mitchelhurst fly. Harding looked after it till he saw the lamp shine for a moment, with sudden brightness, as the carriage turned, and then go out. After this fashion was Mr. Hayes, too, lost in the darkness which had swallowed everything else, and Reynold's gaze conveyed a not unkindly farewell.
The night gathered and deepened in the village, and the great starless dome bent its vaulted gloom over the half-dozen lights which glimmered on cottages and cabbage plots. Now and again a dog would bark, or the wind would pass with a wilder wail, and the sign of the Rothwell Arms would creak discordantly. The people to whom that little hollow was the world, lay close and safe in their houses, wakened, perhaps, by the gale to hope that no tiles would fall, and no damage be done in the gardens, listening drowsily for awhile, and then turning in their beds to sleep again.
It was not till the moon was low in the west that it broke once more through the clouds, and, peering in at a small uncurtained window, revealed the white face of a man who sat by it, with drooping head and listless hands. He was not asleep, but he did not move. With that same glance the moon espied St. Michael in the lancet window, sedulously trampling on his little dragon, while the old clock above his head recorded the passing of the hours with a labour of slow strokes. Those two, and those two only, did the moon see in all Mitchelhurst, and then vanished again and left them, till the wind went down, and the day came slowly over the grey fields, with a deluge of autumnal rain.
Mrs. Simmonds was sorry to lose her lodger, and sorry that the weather should be so bad, and that he should look so pale. She busied herself about his breakfast, and brought him the local paper with the air of a successful prophet.
"I told you there'd be another to-day, sir," she said as she laid it down, "and here it is!" Reynold briefly acknowledged the attention, but he never touched it. "So set as he was upon that other one!" said Mrs. Simmonds later to her husband.
Simmonds suggested that he might have found something that specially interested him in the other paper, somebody dead and leaving money, may be, or somebody mysteriously disappeared, or something—he looked as if he'd had a shock of some sort. But Mrs. Simmonds was inclined to think that he was most likely upset by the thought of his railway journey. She knew it was all she could do to swallow a bit, if she were going anywhere, with all her packing on her mind, and very likely the gentleman was of the same way of feeling. As to a shock, he hadn't got any shock out of the paper, she knew. He might have had some bad news in the letters Miss Strange brought him, for he told her with his own lips that they were very important, and that was why she came with them herself.
"You see, the old gentleman was out," said Mrs. Simmonds, "so I suppose she didn't know what to do."
"I shouldn't think the old gentleman would be best pleased," said Simmonds.