It was just that time in an autumn day when the light is fading out of
the sky. The thick, heavy mists that the cold air encourages were rolling
in chill and heavy from the river and leveling the hollow places in the
land. The clouds were still a claret colored purple in the west, but in
another few minutes that color would be gone. The shapes around us were
fast losing their distinctiveness, and their outlines were becoming more
and more a matter for the memory, and not the eye. And it seems to me
that I never knew the air to seem more fresh and sweet.
We had broken into a sharp gallop down the rutted lane. The house, gaunt
and spectral, and bleaker and more forbidding than the darkening sky,
was behind us, and ahead were the broad level meadows, checkered with
little clumps of willow and cedars, as meadows are that lie near the
salt marshes. I had feared we might be intercepted at our gate, but I
was mistaken. We had swerved to the left and were thudding down the
level road, when an exclamation from Mademoiselle made me turn in my
saddle. My look must have been a somewhat blank interrogation, for
Mademoiselle was laughing.
"To think," she cried, "I should have said you resembled your mother!
Where are we going, Monsieur?"
But I think she knew without my answering, for she laughed again, and I
did not entirely blame her. It was pleasant enough to leave our house
behind. It was pleasant to feel the bite of the salt wind, and to see the
trees and the rocks by the roadside slip past us, gaunt and spectral in
the evening. I knew the road well enough, which was fortunate, even when
we turned off the beaten track over a trail which was hardly as good as a
foot path. I was forced to reduce our pace to a walk, but I was confident
that it did not make much difference. Once on the path, the farm was not
half a mile distant, just behind a ridge of rocks that was studded by a
stunted undergrowth of wind beaten oak. I knew the place. I could already
picture the gaping black windows, the broken, sagging ridge pole, and the
crumbling chimney. For years the wind had blown sighing through its
deserted rooms, while the rain rotted the planking. It was not strange
that its owners had left it, for I can imagine no more mournful or
desolate spot. Our own house, three miles away, was its nearest neighbor,
and scarcely a congenial one. Around it was nothing but rain sogged
meadows that scarcely rose above the salt marshes that ran to the dunes
where the Atlantic was beating.
As I stared grimly ahead, I could picture her there behind me, the wind
whipping the color to her cheeks and playing with her hair, her eyes
bright and gay in the half-light. Save for the steady plodding of the
horse, it was very still. I fancied that she had leaned nearer, that her
shoulder was touching mine, that I could feel her breath on my cheek.
Then she spoke, and her voice was almost a whisper.
"It was good of you to take me with you," she said.
"Surely, Mademoiselle," I replied, "You did not think that I would
leave you?"
"I should, if I had been you," she answered, "I was rude to you,
Monsieur, and unjust to you this morning. You see I did not know."
"You did not know?"
"That the son would be as brave and as resourceful as the father. You
are, Monsieur, and yet you are different."
"Yes," I said.
"And I am glad, glad," said Mademoiselle.
"And I am sorry you are glad," I said.
"You are sorry?"
"Perhaps, Mademoiselle," I replied with a tinge of bitterness I could not
suppress, "if I had seen more of the world, if my clothes were in better
taste, and my manners less abrupt--you would feel differently. I wonder.
But let us be silent, for we are almost there."
As we drew near, making our way through damp thickets, a sense of
uneasiness came over me. Somehow I feared we might be too late, though I
knew that this was hardly possible. I feared, and yet I knew well enough
it was written somewhere that we should meet once more. With six men
after him he would not have ridden straight to the place. We should meet,
and it would be different from our other meetings. I wished that it was
light enough to see his face.
At a turn of the path I reined up and listened. It was very still.
Already the light had gone out of the sky, and little was left of the
land about us, save varying tones of black. Had he gone?
I cautiously dismounted. In a minute we should see. In a minute--Then
Mademoiselle interrupted me, and I was both astonished and irritated, for
my nerves were more on edge than I cared to have them. She was right. She
was never overwrought.
"We are there?" she inquired.
"Softly, Mademoiselle," I cautioned her. "If you will dismount, you can
see the place. It is not three hundred feet beyond the thicket. So! You
will admit it is not much to look at. If you will hold the horse's head,
I will go forward."
I did not listen to an objection that she was framing, but slipped
hastily through the trees. As the ugly mass of the house took a more
certain shape before me, I felt my pulse beat more rapidly, and not
entirely through elation. Even today when I look at a place that men have
built and then abandoned, something of the same feeling comes over me,
but not as strongly as it did that evening. It was another matter that
made me hesitate. From the shadow of the doorway I heard a sound which
was too much like the raising of a pistol hammer not to make me remember
that a sword was all I carried.
"There is no need to cock that pistol," I said, in a tone which I hoped
sounded more confident than my state of mind. I halted, but there was no
answer and no further sound.
"I said," I repeated, raising my voice, "there is no need to cock that
pistol. It is a friend of Captain Shelton who is speaking."
"So," said a voice in careful, precise English. "Walk three paces
forward, if you please, and slowly, v-e-r-y slowly. Now. You are a friend
of the captain?"
"In a sense," I replied. "I am his son. I have come to you with a
message."
"So," said the voice again, and I saw that a man was seated before me on
the stone that had served as a doorstep, a man who was balancing a pistol
in the palm of his hand.
"I fear I have been rude," he said, "but I find this place--what shall I
say?--annoying. Your voices are alike, and I know he has a son. You say
you bring a message?"