He stood an instant in thought, looking at its neat complication of mechanism and then raised it slowly till the small round of the muzzle returned his look. His face clenched in desperate resolution. But he did not pull the trigger. At the critical moment, his eye caught the lamp, burning brazenly on the wall. He went over and turned it out.
"Now," he said, and raised the revolver again.
CHAPTER XIX
Upon that surprising morning when Mr. Samson, taking his early constitutional, was a witness to the cloud that rode across the sun and presently let go its burden of wet to fall upon the startled earth in slashing, roaring sheets of rain, there stood luggage in the hall, strapped, locked, and ready for transport.
"Gad!" said Mr. Samson, breathless in the front door and backing from the splashes of wet that leaped on the railing of the stoep and drove inwards. "They 'll have a wet ride."
He flicked at spots of water on the glossy surface of his gray coat and watched the rain drive across and hide the Karoo like a steel-hued fog. The noise of it, after months of sun and stillness, was distracting; it threshed vehemently with uproar and power, in the extravagant fashion of those latitudes. It was the signal that the weather had broken, justifying at length Mrs. Jakes' conversational gambit.
She came from the breakfast-room while he watched, with the wind from the open door romping in her thin skirts, and stood beside him to look out. They exchanged good mornings.
"Is n't it wet?" said Mrs. Jakes resourcefully. "But I dare say it 's good for the country."
"Rather," agreed Mr. Samson. "It 'll be all green before you know it. But damp for the travelers—what?"
"They will have the hood on the cart," replied Mrs. Jakes.