Ah, yes, it must all have been a dream. Wandering out of the great city, fearful of pursuit, with no definite aim or hopes save that of forgetting and of being forgot, she had strayed half unconsciously towards the old landmarks—towards the only spot in the world where she had known a happy and peaceful time. What impulse had brought her thither she could scarcely divine; it was an instinct that sometimes brings the bird to its deserted nest, the hare to its long-abandoned form. She herself quite knew that it was hopeless. She knew that the little household at Grayfleet had been desolate for years; and that the only surviving member of it, if indeed he still survived, was Luke Peartree, after whose whereabouts unavailing inquiries had been made again and again. After Madeline Hazelmere was sent to France she had heard nothing of her uncle; then her great trouble had come, and in its shadow, while it lasted, all else was forgotten; but once more, after her return to England, she had tried to discover poor Uncle Luke’s whereabouts—always in vain.
Turning her back at last on the sullen sunset, the woman wandered slowly along the narrow road which wound and wound for miles and miles, seaward, through the marshes. In the near distance on her right hand moved great sails, tall masts, smoking funnels, going and coming with a strange silentness; for the river was there, sunk so low down in its muddy bed that the traffic moving upon it had this curious appearance, as of ghostly objects moving to and fro, in silhouette, upon the solid earth.
She walked on and on still as if in a dream, and still with the sense of a suffocating taint. The sun sank into the sombre cloud of the distant city; darkness descended upon and rose from the marshes, save where here and there a roadside pool flashed duskily; and still she walked on.
The moon rose large and yellow out of the far-off sea, and the air became full of a visible and delicate dimness. So dense was the stillness, so sad the darkening prospect all around, that now, more than ever, the woman seemed walking in a dead world, a world of weariful dreams.
At last she reached another village, lying close down by the riverside. It was a small place, strongly saturated with brackish moisture, and much frequented by forlorn seagulls of a ragged species, too lazy and disreputable to earn a decent living out at sea. Here, in a peasant woman’s house, she procured a bed, or rather a ‘shake-down’ before the kitchen fire. The woman, a childless widow, stolid with ill fortune, dazed with a life of wretchedness, asked no questions, and seemed to note little difference between this delicate-skinned white-handed wanderer and tramps of the common sort.
Early next morning she was away again, in broken aimless flight.
But it was at last evident that the physical frame of this woman was unable to bear the strain put upon it by her impatient and apparently indomitable spirit. Her walk was weary and unsure, and very often she paused to rest; her breath came and went heavily; and in a word, her trembling frame and aching limbs betokened that her strength was failing fast.
About midday a country fellow, driving a light farm cart, passed her, looked back, paused, drove on again, paused once more, and finally waited till she came up; then, after looking at her curiously from head to foot, accosted her as follows:—
‘Missis! Be you a-going to Seachester?’
She did not know the name, but scarcely knowing what she did she answered in the affirmative.