“I’ll go,” said Wat, half sullen in the repetition, in the sudden perception that burst upon him once again from outside with all its train of ready-made thoughts—that if he lingered, if he delayed, it might be too late, and Penton would still be his—that there was no duty laid upon him to go at all, contrary to his interests, contrary to all his desires that—that—He gave a little stamp with his foot and repeated, doggedly, “I said I’d go. I’m ready. To bring Rochford and the papers, to bring my father; that’s what I’ve got to do.”
“That is what Mrs. Penton does not venture to ask of you.”
“Oh, boy,” cried Alicia, lifting up her hands, “go, go! It is not for me, it is for my father. I don’t know what he means to do, but he can not rest till it is done. He can’t die, do you know what I mean? It is on his mind, and he can’t get free—for the love of Heaven go!”
“This moment,” Walter said.
CHAPTER XXI.
A NIGHT DRIVE.
Walter Penton found himself facing the penetrating wind of the December morning which was in its stillness and blackness the dead of night, before he had fully realized what was happening. A number of keen perceptions indeed had flashed across his mind, yet it felt like nothing so much as the continuation of a dream when, enveloped in an atmosphere of sound, the horse’s hoofs clanging upon the frosty road, the wheels grinding, the harness jingling, all doubled in clamor by the surrounding stillness, he was carried along between black, half-visible hedge-rows, under dark bare trees, swaying in the wind, through shut-up silent villages, and the death-like slumber of the wide country, bound hard in frost and sleep. A groom less awake than himself, shivering and excited, but speechless, and affording him no sense of human companionship, was by his side, driving mechanically, but at the highest speed, along a road which to unaccustomed eyes was invisible. The scene was a very strange one after the intoxicating dream of the evening, with all its phantasmagoria of light and praise, and confused delight and pride. The blackness before him was as heavy as the preliminary vision had been dazzling; the air blew keen, cutting the very breath which rose in white wreaths like smoke from his lips. Where was he rushing? carried along by a movement which was not his own, an unwilling agent, acting in spite of himself. Sir Walter’s old head, crowned with white locks, looking upon him with so much genial approbation, Mrs. Russell Penton’s drawn and rigid countenance, the disturbed face of her husband, the plump simplicity of little Mab, a sort of floating rosy cherub among all these older countenances, seemed to flit before him in the mists; the music echoed, the lights glowed; and then came the darkness, the ring of the hoofs and wheels, the stinging freshness of the cold air, and all dark, motionless, silent around. He was in a vision still. The German poem in which the lady is carried off behind the black horseman, tramp, tramp across the land, splash, splash across the sea, seemed to ring in his ears through his dream. He was preternaturally awake and aware of everything, yet his eyes were in a mist of semi-consciousness, and all the half-visible veiled sights about him seemed like the vague and flying landscape of uneasy fever-journeys. The cold, which half stupefied him, by some strange process only intensified these sensations; his companion and he never exchanged a word. He was not acquainted even with the lie of the roads, the ascents and descents, or of what houses those were which looked through the darkness from time to time surrounded by spectral trees. After awhile an overwhelming desire for sleep seized him. He had visions of the bed, all white and in order, which he had left behind; of the chair by the fire which he had been roused out of; of his own room at home, all silent, cold, waiting for him. If only he could make a spring out of this moving, jingling thing, out of the stinging of the air, and get into the quiet and warmth and sleep!
When the groom spoke Walter woke up again, broad awake from what must have been a doze. “Shall we go to the Hook or to Mr. Rochford’s first, sir?” the man asked. Walter started bolt upright, and came to himself. They were clashing through his own village, and a moment later he would have passed without seeing the white blinds at the windows of Crockford’s cottage which shone through the gloom. He waved his hand in the direction of his home, thinking that to give his father the benefit of a warning was worth the trouble before he went on. He took the reins into his own hands, knowing the steep descent toward the house, which was ticklish even in daylight, and this touch of practical necessity brought him to his full senses, and for the first time dispersed the mists. He perceived now fully what he was doing. As the horse’s steps sunk half stumbling down the invisible abyss of the way, Walter felt, with a tingling of his ears and a sinking of his heart, that he also was dropping from the brilliant mount of possibility which he had been ascending with delighted feet. It had seemed as if all the decisions of fate might be reversed, as if he were to be the arbiter of his own fortune, as if—And now it was his hand that was to seal his own fate. Such thoughts and questionings, such rebellions against a duty which is not to be escaped, may go on while one is executing that very duty without any practical effect. Walter pushed on all the time as well as the difficulties of the path would allow. He dashed into the little domain at the Hook with an energy that made the still air tingle, feeling as if he were himself inside, and starting to the shock of the sudden awakening in the midst of the darkness. The groom, who had opened the gate, ran on and gave peal after peal to the bell, and presently the house, which had stood so dead and dark in the midst of the spectral trees, awoke with a start. One or two windows were opened simultaneously. “Who is there?” cried Mr. Penton, in a bass tone, while a sudden wavering treble with terror in it shrieked out, “Oh, it’s Wat, it’s Wat!” and “Something has happened to Ally!” with a cry that penetrated the night.
“Father,” said Wat, “nothing is the matter with either of us. Sir Walter’s very ill. I’m going to fetch Rochford and the papers. You have to come too, to sign. Be ready when I come back.”
“Rochford and the papers! To sign! What do you mean: In the middle of the night!”
And here there came a white figure to the window, crying “Ally—are you sure, are you sure, Wat, all’s right with Ally?” through the midst of the question and reply.