At length all seemed abed.
She extinguished one of the candles and took up her cloak. As she put it on before the pale mirror she saw that her white face and high-piled hair showed by the light of the remaining candle like the face of a ghost; and she shivered. But that was the last tribute to weakness. Her nature, bold to recklessness, asserted itself now the moment for action was come. She set the candle on the floor and shaded it so that its light might not be seen. Then, taking the chair in her hands she stepped into the dark passage, and closed the door behind her. The close, heavy smell of the house assailed her as she listened; but all was still, and she raised the sash of the window. She passed the chair through the aperture and leaning far out that it might not strike the wall lowered it gently. She felt it touch the ground and settle on its legs. Then she climbed over the sill and let herself down until her feet rested on the chair. She made certain that she could draw herself in again, then she sprang lightly to the ground.
The chair cracked as her weight left it, and for a moment she crouched motionless against the wall. But she had little to fear. Snow had not yet fallen, but it was in the air and the night was as dark as pitch. She could not see a yard and when she moved, she had not gone two steps from the wall before it vanished, and all that remained to her was some notion of its position. Above, below, around was a darkness that could be felt. Still, she found the garden-gate with a little difficulty, and she passed into the road, and turned to the left. She knew that if she walked in that direction she must come to the place—a furlong away—where the Troutbeck lane ran up from the lake-side.
But the blackness was such that lake and hill were all one, and she had to go warily, now feeling for the bank on her left, now for the ditch on her right. Not a star showed, and only in one place a patch of lighter sky broke the darkness and enabled her to discern the shapes of the trees as she passed under them. It was a night when any deed might be done, any mischief executed beside that lonely water; and no eye see it. But she tried not to think of this. She tried not to think of the tracts of lonely hill that stretched their long arms on her left, or of the deep, black water that lurked on her right. And she had compassed more than a hundred yards when a faint sound, as of following feet, caught her ear.
She halted, and shook the hood back from her ears. She listened. She fancied that she heard the pattering cease, and she peered into the darkness, striving to embody the thing that followed. But she could see nothing, she could now hear nothing. She had her handkerchief in her hand, and as she stood, peering and listening, she wiped the wind-borne moisture from her face.
Still she heard nothing, and she turned and set off again. But her thoughts were with her follower, and she had not taken three steps before she ran against the bank, and hardly saved herself from a fall.
She felt that with a little more she would lose her head, and, astray in the boundless night, not know which direction to take. She must pull herself together. She must go on. And she went on. But twice she had the sickening assurance that something was moving at her heels. Nor, but for the thought which by-and-by occurred to her, that her follower might be the person she came to meet, could she have kept to her purpose.
She came at length, trembling and clutching her hood about her, to the foot of the lane. She knew the place by the colder, moister air that swept her face, as well as by the lapping of the water on the strand. For the road ran very near the lake at this point. It was a mooring-place for two or three boats, belonging for the most part to Troutbeck; and she could hear a loose oar in one of the unseen craft roll over with a hollow sound. But no one moved in the darkness, or spoke, or came to her; and with parted lips, striving to control herself, she halted, leaning with one hand against the angle of the bank. Then—she could not be mistaken—she heard her follower halt.
Thirty seconds—it seemed an age—she was silent, and forced herself to listen, straining her ears. Then she could control herself no longer.
“Is it you?” she whispered, her voice strained and uncertain, “I am here.”