CHAPTER XXXIV
THE SHADOW OF THE RIVER
It wanted an hour of dawn when Evelyn quitted the lonely house. She had given no instructions to the driver, nor did he appear to expect any. In truth, his orders were very far from being in accordance with the old gypsy's promise. A deed of blood had been done and the daylight would discover it. The woman who could tell something of the story would tell it at once if liberty were given her. So said those who entrapped her ... and, desiring to withhold liberty as long as might be, they sent the carriage westward, away toward Harrow and the villages.
Evelyn herself did not suspect this; nor would it have alarmed her had she done so. As one awakened from a dream of death, she tried to shut the picture of the house from her heavy eyes, to drown the cries she had heard, to forget the humiliations. Dark and lonely as the way was, the black shapes of the trees seemed emblems of her liberty; the silent houses so many tokens of the world regained. She cared not where or why, so long as she might breathe the sweet air and tell herself that God's mercy had saved her. For Gavin would she live—her whole life should be spent in quest of the man she loved; of one who seemed to call her even from the darkness. And of Gavin were her thoughts when the carriage stopped at last and the driver bade her descend.
She perceived him to be an African, of pleasant face and starlike eyes. To all her questions, however, he did but shake his head and show grinning teeth which would as well become a snarl as laughter, she thought. It was dawn then, and there were gray mists drifting above the hedges. They had stopped in a lane and nothing human was in sight.
"Very sorry, missy—go back now. No far to go, master says so."
"Where are we, where have you brought me?" she asked, obeying him in some fear.
He answered her, still grinning:
"You get back to London, quick, missee. Master says so. Dis am his carriage. Verry sorry, missy."
She perceived that he played a part and would contend with him no more. Still nodding his black head and showing his white teeth, he turned the carriage about and disappeared down the lane. When the rolling sound of the wheels had quite died away, Evelyn began to walk along the lane in that which she believed to be the direction of London. The mists lifted as the sun began to warm them. She was terribly cold, chilled to the very bone, and exhausted both bodily and mentally; but she pushed on bravely and presently out of the mists a cottage appeared and then another. Yet a hundred yards farther down the lane and she espied some modern villas in the Queen Anne style and after that quite a considerable village lying in the hollow.