No one answered. And when she had waited awhile glaring into the night where she had last heard the footsteps she shuddered violently. For a space she could not speak, she leant against the bank.
Then, “Is it you?” she whispered desperately, turning her face this way and that. “Speak if it is! Speak! For God’s sake, speak to me!”
No one answered, but out of the gloom came the low creep of the wind among the reeds, and the melancholy lapping of the water on the stones. Once more the oar in the boat rolled over with a hollow coffin-like echo. And from a distance another sound, the flap and beat of a sail as the rudder was put over, came off the surface of the lake. But she did not heed this. It was with the darkness about her, it was with the skulking thing a pace or two from her, it was with the arms stretched out to clutch her, it was with the fear that was beginning to stifle her as the thick night stifled her, that she was concerned.
Once more, striving fiercely to combat her fear, to steady her voice, she spoke.
“If you do not answer,” she cried unsteadily, “I shall go back! You hear? I shall go back!”
Still no answer. And on that, because a frightened woman is capable of anything, and especially of the thing which is the least to be expected, she flung herself forward with her hands outstretched and tried to grapple with the thing that terrified her. She caught nothing: all that she felt was a warm breath on her cheek. She recoiled then as quickly as she had advanced. Unfortunately her skirt brushed something as she fell back and the contact, slight as it was, drew a low shriek from her. She leant panting against the bank, crouching like a thing at bay. The beating of her heart seemed to choke her, the gloom to stretch out arms about her. The touch of a moth on her cheek would have drawn a shriek. And on the lake—but near the shore now, a bowshot from where she crouched, the sail of the unseen boat flapped against the mast and began to descend. The light of a shaded lanthorn beamed for an instant on the dark surface of the water, then vanished.
She did not see the lanthorn, she did not see the boat, for she was glaring in the other direction, the direction in which she had heard the footsteps. All her senses were concentrated on the thing close to her. But some reflection of the light, glancing off the water, did reveal a thing—a dim uncertain something—man or woman, dead or alive, standing close to her, beside her: and with a shriek she sprang from the thing, whatever it was, gave way to blind panic, and fled. For some thirty yards she kept the road. Then she struck the bank and fell, violently bruising herself. But she felt nothing. In a moment she was on her feet again and running on, running on blindly, madly. She fancied feet behind her, and a hand stretched out to seize her hair; and in terror, that terror which she had kept at bay so long and so bravely, she ran on at random, until she found herself, she knew not how, clinging with both hands to the wicket-gate of the garden. A faint light in one of the windows of the inn had directed her to it.
She stood then, still trembling in every limb, but drawing courage from the neighbourhood of living things. And as well as her laboured breathing would let her, she listened. But presently she caught the stealthy trip-trip of feet along the road, and in a quick return of terror she opened the gate and slipped into the garden. She had the presence of mind to close the gate after and without noise. But that done, woman’s nerves could bear no more. Her knees were shaking under her, as she groped her way to her window, and felt for the chair which she had left beneath it.
The chair was gone. Impossible! She could not have found the right window; that was it. She felt with her hands along the wall, felt farther. But there was no chair—anywhere. She had made no mistake. Some one had removed the chair.
Strange to say, the moment she was sure of that, the fear which had driven her in headlong panic from the water-side left her. She thought no more of her stealthy attendant. Her one care now was to get in—to get in and still to keep secret the fact that she had been out! She had trembled like a leaf a few moments before, in fear of the shapeless thing that crouched beside her in the night. Now, with no more than the garden-fence between her and it, she feared it no more than a feather. She regained her ordinary plane, and foresaw all the suspicion, all the inconvenience, to which her position, if she could not re-enter, must subject her. And the smaller, the immediate fear expelled the greater and more remote.