The train arrived at Slumberleigh at last, and he got out, and shivered as the driving wind swept across the platform. It surprised him that there was a wind, although at every station down the line he had seen people straining against it. He gave up his ticket mechanically, and walked aimlessly away into the darkness, turning with momentary curiosity to watch the train hurry on again, a pillar of fire by night, as it had been a pillar of smoke by day.
He passed the blinking station inn, forgetting that he had put up his dog-cart there to await his return, and, hardly knowing what he did, took from long habit the turn for Vandon.
It was a wild night. The wind was driving the clouds across the moon at a tremendous rate, and sweeping at each gust flights of spectre leaves from the swaying trees. It caught him in the open of the bare high-road, and would not let him go. It opposed him, and buffeted him at every turn; but he held listlessly on his way. His feet took him, and he let them take him whither they would. They led him stumbling along the dim road, the dust of which was just visible like a gray mist before him, until he reached the bridge by the mill. There his feet stopped of their own accord, and he went and leaned against the low stone-wall, looking down at the sudden glimpses of pale hurried water and trembling reed.
The moon came out full and strong in temporary victory, and made black shadows behind the idle millwheel and open mill-race, and black shadows, black as death, under the bridge itself. Dare leaned over the wall to watch the mysterious water and shadow run beneath. As he looked, he saw the reflection of a man in the water watching him. He shook his fist savagely at it, and it shook its fist amid a wavering of broken light and shadow back at him. But it did not go away; it remained watching him. There was something strange and unfamiliar about the river to-night. It had a voice, too, which allured and repelled him—a voice at the sound of which the grim despair within him stirred ominously at first, and then began slowly to rise up gaunt and terrible; began to move stealthily, but with ever-increasing swiftness through the deserted chambers of his heart.
No strong abiding principle was there to do battle with the enemy. The minor feelings, sensibilities, emotions, amiable impulses, those courtiers of our prosperous days, had all forsaken him and fled. Dare's house in his hour of need was left unto him desolate.
And the river spoke in a guilty whisper, which yet the quarrel of the wind and the trees could not drown, of deep places farther down, where the people were never found, people who—But there were shallows, too, he remembered, shallow places among the stones where the trout were. If anybody were drowned, Dare thought, gazing down at the pale shifting moon in the water, he would be found there, perhaps, or at any rate, his hat—he took his hat off, and held it tightly clinched in both his hands—his hat would tell the tale.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Charles left Slumberleigh Hall a few hours later than Dare had done, but only to go back to Atherstone. He could not leave the neighborhood. This burning fever of suspense would be unbearable at any other place, and in any case he must return by Saturday, the day on which he had promised to meet Raymond. His hand was really slightly injured, and he made the most of it. He kept it bound up, telegraphed to put off his next shooting engagement on the strength of it, and returned to Atherstone, even though he was aware that Lady Mary had arrived there the day before, on her way home to her house in London.
Ralph and Evelyn were accustomed to sudden and erratic movements on the part of Charles, and to Molly he was a sort of archangel, who might arrive out of space at any moment, untrammelled by such details as distance, trains, time, or tide. But to Lady Mary his arrival was a significant fact, and his impatient refusal to have his hand investigated was another. Her cold gray eyes watched him narrowly, and, conscious that they did so, he kept out of her way as much as possible, and devoted himself to Molly more than ever.