It was half-an-hour later when Bumpett slipped unnoticed out of Price’s door into the darkness. He had left his new acquaintance in an advanced state of intoxication among the revellers, where his varying moods of confidence and pugnacity were beginning to make him something of a nuisance. But the stranger had spoken truth and the old man had heard the same from the lips of his friends.
It was not only rage at the thought of George’s good luck, though, that was boiling in him, which drove him along at such a pace, it was the far more disturbing knowledge of Rhys Walters’ innocence. He resolved to go to the cottage without an hour’s delay, and by threats or bribes to compel him to leave the country. He would, if all else failed, tell him that his hiding-place was known to the police and press on him any assistance to escape that his money or ingenuity could command.
He had been living in daily dread of his unprofitable servant’s indiscretion, and since the experience of the man with the dark lantern had appeared in the local newspaper, he would have given much to know him clear of England. And now, if Walters’ own folly should bring him to discovery, and he should learn that he was innocent of Vaughan’s death, the consequences might be dreadful. He would have to suffer for his share in the Rebecca riot, but having done so he might one day return to his own, damaged, perhaps, but with the stain of blood-guiltiness off his hands, and live on the very scene of his—Bumpett’s—activities, a constant embarrassment and menace. It was not likely that he would denounce malpractices in which he had been involved, for the same drag would act on him as on the Pig-driver’s other subordinates, namely, their liability to suffer side by side with their master. Sheep-stealing, though no longer a capital offence, was punished heavily, and sane men do not usually open the prison doors for themselves. But, of late, there had been that about Rhys which forbade him to judge him as he would have judged another man. He felt that it was desperately urgent.
When he was clear of the village and beginning to ascend towards the mountain he found it no easy matter to get forward; there was not a star in the sky, and a damp mist, which, though he knew it not, was enwrapping the higher country towards which he pressed, became thicker at every step. The lane leading to the old cart track was scarcely less deserted than itself, and his feet struck against heaps of loose stones which the autumn rains had rolled here and there into shelving heaps. He put his hand up to his face and cursed to meet the wet on it. It was one of those nights so frequent in winter, a repetition of the one through which Rhys had once felt his way to the Dipping-Pool.
By the time he reached the cottage the enveloping fog was so thick that he would not venture to trust himself upon the plank crossing the water, but waded through, though the cold touch on his ankles made him gasp. He groped round the end of the house till he found himself among the gooseberry bushes of the garden. It was impossible to see anything, and he could only guess at their position as he stumbled along, pricking himself against the stems. When he came to one growing by the wall he pushed it aside, guided by a faint light which came out of the hole in the masonry behind it. From the little shine he gathered that Rhys had not gone out and was in the cellar below. He put his mouth to the aperture and called down it.
After two or three vain attempts to make himself heard, the Pig-driver could distinguish steps moving in the cellar.
“’Tis me—Bumpett!” he cried. “Go you round to the door and let me in.”
As he stood waiting for Walters to turn the key, he told himself that he would not depart again without the young man’s consent to leave; but he wondered how he should manage the matter, for there seemed to be nothing in the world by which he could keep a hold over him. It must be done somehow, that was all he knew.
It was quite dark in the upper part of the house as he entered and followed Walters down the ladder. There was a light standing on a piece of furniture, and Bumpett sat down by it on a broken chair and looked up at his companion. He had seen him continually at short intervals during the last six months, and the alteration in him had not hitherto struck him as it would have struck a stranger. But, all at once, in the wretched light, as the two confronted each other, the Pig-driver saw through the veil of custom which had blinded him to the ghastliness of the change in Rhys. A feeling akin to horror took him by the throat as he sat and looked into the haggard face with the black shadows thrown upwards by the candle lying upon it. Not that it was pity or concern that moved him—he cared little enough for anything that affected the man before him—but even he, coarse, sordid, callous as he was, could feel that Rhys Walters had gone beyond the reach of fear or hope, joy or malice, and that the grey waters of despair divided him from the power of aught else but some one influence which was working within him. Nothing could help or harm him any more. The soul that looked out of his sunken eyes was one pertaining no longer to the ordinary world of human beings with its hates and loves, its ambitions and griefs; it was something which had gone far off into a dominion of one idea.
“What do you want?” asked Walters, laying his hand on the improvised table and bringing his face into the circle of light.