He touched his lips to the book, afterwards wrapping it carefully, and writing Natalia's name across the paper. Not now, but some day far off, she would understand what it had represented to him.
Then sitting down before the table and putting the two candles close together, he poured out the whole of his tortured soul, his disappointment, the worldly success which was to him so damning a bitterness, his utter hopelessness—all this he wrote to his mother in a letter which was never to reach her.
A subdued rustling in the trees roused him with the certainty that the time had come for him to be on his way. Blowing out the candles and locking the door of the little room that had sheltered him for many months, for the last time, he went through the grove to the gate. There he paused and let his eyes rest for a moment on the old mansion of the Spaniards.
The fragile, crescent moon was already lowering towards the distant lowlands, and in its vague light the house was softly outlined among the magnolias. Even then, as he had often felt before when looking at this scene in the stillness of the night, Sargent felt a strange spell of mystery and fatefulness creep over him. There was something ghostly in the white house accentuated by the gloom of the grove and the inclosing hedge of Cherokee roses, so filled with white dream flowers.
Against his will his thoughts drifted into fancies of Natalia's future. He could see her going away to distant lands, beautiful and wealthy and courted, and coming back perhaps to spend the happiness of her life in this perfect setting. And, as always with his thoughts, the subject of them became visible before him. He saw the beautiful, vivid little face looking at him with the dependence and yearning for sympathy which had first riveted the chains of his love. He saw the thin, delicate features, the oval contour, the unusual softness of skin, almost olive about the eyes and very white and fair on the temples, and the black lashes and the velvety shadows beneath the eyes, that gave that world-old expression when she smiled.
While he gazed before him, dwelling on each memory of the little girl he was leaving for ever, he saw her eyes grow slowly bloodshot, then almost imperceptibly her skin seemed to deaden and the ghastly red of clotted blood obliterated the likeness, leaving in its place the mangled face of Jacob Phelps. Digging the spurs into his horse, Sargent tore down the road towards the town, at a breakneck speed.
Judge Houston was waiting at his door, calm and very pale. Together he and Sargent walked to the tavern, without speaking a word beyond the greetings. It was still quite dark, and as they neared the hostelry the windows of the club room shone bright, and from within came the sounds of noisy merriment.
"Will you tell Captain Mentdrop I am here, Judge?" Sargent said, when they stood outside the door. "I should rather not go in there." He shuddered at the thought of more congratulations about the yesterday.
Standing outside alone, he heard a loud burst of laughter—Jervais', then the Captain's; afterwards a silence as the two parties came out at the same time, Captain Mentdrop and Jervais leading the way, walking arm in arm.
"Hello, Sargent, you're there, are you—and Judge Houston,—my compliments, sir."