And then, as the time wore on, came the note of dread, of chill threatening. The sun slipped out of sight, the sky sulked. When she began to cross the second stretch of common, a light, delicate powdery mist hung over the shriveled heather. The common drew away—brown, bare, heavy with foreboding.
The autumn flaying of the turf was in progress. She saw the bare, blue-black patches, like the skin of a dark cat. Through the mist she saw the stolid figure of a man. He was leaning his body against a turfing iron. A cart, half full of square turfs, was at his elbow.
The mist grew thicker at every step. The one note of comfort and warmth came from the smithy, round which was an angry red flare, and from which came the steady clink of iron on iron.
The afternoon grew cold. The chill, delicate powder-mist was eating into her. She was lightly clad. When first she went to Beaufort Street she had bought herself some cheap, necessary clothing out of the few pounds in her purse. This was an afternoon for furs. The mist rose and rose. The voice of a woman who plodded by with a top-heavy perambulator, the cry of the wretched, chilled baby inside, were the only dull sounds in the eerie, pure-white thickness.
Her hair was wet on her face, moisture stood in minute pearls on the velvet collar of her cloth coat. Higher and higher, thicker and thicker, rose the delicate, eating mist! She was chin high in it. A couple of cows, a tethered goat, a long white string of geese, were queerly-shaped wraiths. The world was white: a wet, ghostly, silent world. There was a threat at every step; each corner, each clump of dripping bush formed to her nervous fancy some sinister ambush.
Her spirits fell. Once she absolutely stopped, half-crying, with cold and misery. She was disposed to go back. It was still a long way to Folly Corner, and the terrifying mist was triumphant.
She came at last to the cottage at the edge of the oak-scrub copse, the thatched and plastered cottage under the great oak trees. She remembered it so well, remembered the hot August day when she had walked to Folly Corner for the first time, and had thrown herself on the moss-grown turf under the burning sun. She strained her eyes to see the wide green glades, the clumps of primrose leaves, the tangled brambles, the great tropical growing thistles. She knew exactly what should be there at that season, but she saw nothing save the fire of a bush of haws. The cottage, which had stood empty on that August day, was now tenanted. She approached, her chilled limbs moving creakily. She slowly skirted that cottage, preferring to tread the soddened grass just for the sake of being near somebody. The world was deserted; she could no longer hear one single sound. She was the last desperate soul left outside.
The languid flame of a small fire fell across the tiny casement with its ragged curtain of brownish white net. She went up close. She could see the gray beams across the plaster, see the plumy Irish yew standing straight by the yellow, weather-stained wall. The door was half open. She saw the flagged floor exuding moisture, saw one poor chair; a bare brown dresser, on which stood a coarse crock or so. She saw the mere hint of a table, with turned legs which winked feebly in the light. At the deadened sound of her feet there was a heavy clumping across the flags. An old face, the malevolent, evil face of a man, hung in the shadow. She saw the dull, golden fustian of his torn coat, saw his gnarled, filthy hand close round the jamb of the door and shut it. She likened him to an evil spirit. He was a bad omen. It was nonsense, of course; yes, she knew it was nonsense. The man was only Chalcraft. But the mist made everything ghostly, demoniacal.
She hadn’t far to go now. She imagined it, she knew every detail, she knew just how it would all look on that particular day—the white wicket-gate dirty and dripping with water, the umbrella yew in a fairy wreath of fog, the great brown pond, with the muddy wheel-tracks zigzagging away from it and the marks of many hoofs in the yellow mud at its edge. The garden beds would be weedy; vivid green here and there with patches of self-sown plants. No doubt, in her absence, Gainah and Daborn had easefully lapsed back to the old way—weeds all the winter and a grand forking in the spring. She pictured the long windows, running away each side of the house door. Inside, Gainah’s red geraniums would still be fitfully blooming. She remembered the sentinel poplars at the gate, the raised brick path leading to the door. She remembered the outbuildings, the untidy muck-yard—all, all.
It was here. Twenty more paces would bring her to the pond. She took them tremblingly, things becoming practical now that she was steadily creeping beneath the warm, wide shadow of the place. The mist must surely be thicker than ever. She could not see the poplars; yet how was it that she had been able to see the Irish yew outside Chalcraft’s cottage?