But she recoiled from what she saw in the sitting-room. The lamp burned calmly and steadily upon its ledge. But the chairs were mostly overturned. The curtain was torn down, and flapped in the gusts through the window, which stood open towards the canal. Kate's Bible lay fluttering its leaves on the tiles of the fireplace. The floor was stained with the mud of many confused footmarks. A scrap of lace from Kate's sleeve hung on a nail by the window. But in all the rooms of the house in the street of Zaandpoort there was no sign of the girl herself. She had completely vanished.
Pale to the lips, and scarce knowing what they did, Will Gordon and his wife sat down at opposite sides of the table, and stared blankly at each other without speech or understanding.
[CHAPTER XV]
A NIGHT OF STORM
I will now tell the thing which happened to Kate in the house in Zaandpoort Street that stormy night when for an hour she was left alone.
When Maisie went out, Kate heard the outer door shut with a crash as the wind rushed in. The flames swirled up the wide chimney in the sitting-room, whereupon she rose and drew the curtain across the inner door. Then she went to the wood-box and piled fresh fagots about the great back-log, which had grown red and smouldering. For a long time after she had finished she knelt looking at the cheerful blaze. She sighed deeply, as if her thoughts had not been of the same complexion. Then she rose and went to the window which looked out upon the canal. It was her favorite musing-place. She leaned her brow against the half-drawn dimity curtain, and watched the rain thresh the waters till they gleamed gray-white in the sparkle of the lights along the canal bank. A vague unrest and uncertainty filled her soul.
"Wat, Wat!" she whispered, half to herself. "What would I not give if I might speak to you to-night—only tell you that I would never be hasty or angry with you again!"
And she set her hand upon her side as though she had been suddenly stricken by a pain of some grievous sort. Yet not a pang of sharp agony, but only a dull, empty ache, lonely and hungry, was abiding there.
"How he must hate me!" she said. "It was my fault that he went away in anger. He would never have gone to that place had we not first been cruel to him here."