“He looks rare and poorly, sir. He was past here in his carriage to-day. Huddled up in a corner of it, as if he was cold; or else hadn’t the strength to sit up. Her ladyship was inside with him.”
“There’s no porter about, I suppose?”
“He has been gone this two hours, sir. I’d offer to carry your luggage myself, but I shall have the up-express by in half an hour. I shut up for the night then.”
“I would not trouble you for so trifling a matter, at this hour, were you at liberty,” replied Thomas Godolphin.
He took up his portmanteau himself: a thing not much larger than what the French would call a petit sac-de-nuit, containing little besides a clean shirt and his shaving-tackle: and started, bending his steps not along the road, but across it to the stile.
“I wouldn’t take the field way to-night, sir, if I were you,” said the man from the station door. “The road is safest.”
“Why is it?” asked Thomas Godolphin.
“There’s a nasty bit by the field way, a quarter of a mile before you come to Bray’s. Anybody, not knowing it well, might take the wrong turning, and go, head first, into the dam.”
“But I do know it well,” said Thomas Godolphin. “And the night is light enough to distinguish the turnings.”
The station-master looked up at the skies—figuratively speaking, for he could see nothing but fog. A light, hazy mist; not a dark one; which seemed likely to turn to rain. He said no more, except a “Good night, sir:” and Thomas Godolphin walked on, hesitating for a moment between the two roads, and then turning decisively to that of the fields, as if some hidden impulse impelled him. Perhaps it did so.