第4章 A STREET IN ANGLEBURY - A HEATH NEAR IT - INSIDE T

Into this large pond, which the duck had been making towards from the beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight.

The excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to see the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting for the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so intent that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near the edge of the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode. Whenever the duck was under the necessity of showing its head to breathe, the other bird would dart towards it, invariably too late, however; for the diver was far too experienced in the rough humour of the buzzard family at this game to come up twice near the same spot, unaccountably emerging from opposite sides of the pool in succession, and bobbing again by the time its adversary reached each place, so that at length the hawk gave up the contest and flew away, a satanic moodiness being almost perceptible in the motion of its wings.

The young lady now looked around her for the first time, and began to perceive that she had run a long distance--very much further than she had originally intended to come. Her eyes had been so long fixed upon the hawk, as it soared against the bright and mottled field of sky, that on regarding the heather and plain again it was as if she had returned to a half-forgotten region after an absence, and the whole prospect was darkened to one uniform shade of approaching night. She began at once to retrace her steps, but having been indiscriminately wheeling round the pond to get a good view of the performance, and having followed no path thither, she found the proper direction of her journey to be a matter of some uncertainty.

'Surely,' she said to herself, 'I faced the north at starting:' and yet on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did not approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town. Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till the evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.

Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, and it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was coming towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was as yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the 'Red Lion,' and when he came close she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained by their being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack that he carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, like herself, was staying or had been staying at the 'Red Lion,' she said, 'Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?'

'It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,' said the tourist--the same who had been criticized by the two old men.

At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady's person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again fence with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.

'Mr. Julian!' she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected with the light of other days.

'Ah, Mrs. Petherwin!--Yes, I am Mr. Julian--though that can matter very little, I should think, after all these years, and what has passed.'

No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued unconcernedly, 'Shall I put you in the path--it is just here?'

'If you please.'

'Come with me, then.'

She walked in silence at his heels, not a word passing between them all the way: the only noises which came from the two were the brushing of her dress and his gaiters against the heather, or the smart rap of a stray flint against his boot.

They had now reached a little knoll, and he turned abruptly: 'That is Anglebury--just where you see those lights. The path down there is the one you must follow; it leads round the hill yonder and directly into the town.'

'Thank you,' she murmured, and found that he had never removed his eyes from her since speaking, keeping them fixed with mathematical exactness upon one point in her face. She moved a little to go on her way; he moved a little less--to go on his.

'Good-night,' said Mr. Julian.

The moment, upon the very face of it, was critical; and yet it was one of those which have to wait for a future before they acquire a definite character as good or bad.

Thus much would have been obvious to any outsider; it may have been doubly so to Ethelberta, for she gave back more than she had got, replying, 'Good-bye--if you are going to say no more.'

Then in struck Mr. Julian: 'What can I say? You are nothing to me.

. . . I could forgive a woman doing anything for spite, except marrying for spite.'

'The connection of that with our present meeting does not appear, unless it refers to what you have done. It does not refer to me.'

'I am not married: you are.'

She did not contradict him, as she might have done. 'Christopher,' she said at last, 'this is how it is: you knew too much of me to respect me, and too little to pity me. A half knowledge of another's life mostly does injustice to the life half known.'

'Then since circumstances forbid my knowing you more, I must do my best to know you less, and elevate my opinion of your nature by forgetting what it consists in,' he said in a voice from which all feeling was polished away.

'If I did not know that bitterness had more to do with those words than judgment, I--should be--bitter too! You never knew half about me; you only knew me as a governess; you little think what my beginnings were.'