The head man took the horse reluctantly and Hervey passed into the house.
For a long time he stood at the open window watching the storm. How it raged over the valley! The rain came down in one steady, hissing deluge, and the hills echoed and re-echoed with the crashing thunder. The blinding lightning shot athwart the lowering sky till the nerves of the watcher fairly jumped at each successive flash. And he realized what a blessing the deluge of rain was in that world of resinous timber. What might have been the consequences had the storm preceded the rain? Hardened as he was to such things, even Hervey shuddered to think.
Wild as was the outlook, the waiting man’s thoughts were in keeping with his surroundings, for more relentless they could not well have been. Iredale’s 229 money-bags should surely be opened for him that night before he returned home. He would levy a heavy toll for his silence.
His great dark eyes, so indicative of the unrestrained nature which was his, burned with deep, cruel fires as he gazed out upon the scene. There was a profoundness, a capacity for hellishness in their expression which scarcely belonged to a sanely-balanced mind. It was inconceivable that he could be of the same flesh and blood as his sister, and yet there was no doubt about it. Perhaps some unusually sagacious observer would have been less hard to convince. Hervey was bad, bad all through. Prudence was good. Swayed by emotion the girl might have displayed some strange, hidden, unsuspected passionate depths, as witness her feelings at her dying lover’s bedside. Her rage at the moment when she realized that he had been murdered was indescribable. The hysterical sweep of passion which had moved her at that moment had been capable of tragic impulse, the consequences of which one could hardly have estimated. But her nature was thoroughly good. Under some sudden stress of emotion, which for the moment upset the balance of reason, a faint resemblance to the brother might be obtained. But while Hervey’s motives would be bad, hers would have for their primary cause a purpose based upon righteousness. The man needed no incentive to sway his dispositions. He had let go his hold upon the saving rock, now he floated willingly upon the tide of his evil disposition. He preferred the broad road to Hell to the narrow path of Righteousness. It may not always have been so.
The storm abated with the suddenness of its kind. During Hervey’s long wait Chintz did not leave him entirely alone. Several times, on some trivial pretext the little man visited the sitting-room. And his object was plainly to keep an eye upon his master’s unbidden guest. At last there came a clatter of galloping hoofs splashing through the underlay of the forest, and presently Iredale pulled up at the door.
Hervey watched the rancher dismount. And his survey was in the nature of taking the man’s moral measure. He looked at the familiar features which he had come to know so well; the easy, confident movements which usually characterized Iredale; the steady glance, the quiet undisturbed expression of his strong face. The watching man saw nothing unusual in his appearance, nothing to give him any clue; but Hervey was not a keen observer. Only the most apparent change would have been seen by him; the subtler indications of a disturbed mind were beyond his ken. Iredale seemed to be merely the Iredale he knew, and as he watched his lips parted with a sucking sound such as the gourmand might make in contemplating a succulent dish.
Iredale came in. Hervey met him at the door of the sitting-room, and his greeting was cordial, even effusive.
“How are you, George? I knew you were to be back to-day. Jolly glad you’ve returned. Quite missed you, you know. By Jove! what a storm. Wet?”
“A bit; nothing to speak of. They told me at the farm you were over here.”