I sat down immediately. I felt too unnerved to remain standing. I was giving way utterly to an imaginative horror that seemed to threaten my reason. In vain I tried to pull myself together. My body was in a cold sweat. All mastery of my nerves seemed gone.
I do not know how long I remained there, but I was aroused by the entrance of the butler. He glanced towards me in some obvious surprise, and this astonishment of a servant acted upon me almost like a scourge. I sprang up hastily.
“Tell the groom to saddle the mare,” I said. “I am going for a ride immediately.”
Air, action, were what I needed to drive this stupor away. I must get away from this house of tears. I must be alone. I must wrestle with myself, regain my courage, kill the coward in me.
I threw myself upon the mare, and rode out at a gallop towards the moors of Eskdale along the lonely country roads.
All day I rode, and all day I thought of that dark house, of that white creature awaiting my return, peering from the windows, perhaps, listening for my horse’s hoofs on the gravel, keeping still the long vigil of vengeance.
My imagination sickened, fainted, as my wearied horse stumbled along the shadowy roads. My terror was too great now to be physical. It was a terror purely of the spirit, and indescribable.
To sleep with that white thing that waited me! To lie in the dark by it! To know that it was there, close to me!
If it killed me, what matter? It was to live and to be near it, with it, that appalled me.
The lights of the house gleamed out through the trees. I heard the sound of the river.