3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)
It was one of those hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladiesremain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness, whenclerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people appear inthe street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when bricklayers,slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed and drink beer, whenducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at their own family game, orspread out one wing after another in the slower enjoyment of letting thedelicious moisture penetrate to their innermost down. The smoke from theflues of Sandbourne had barely strength enough to emerge into thedrizzling rain, and hung down the sides of each chimney-pot like thestreamer of a becalmed ship; and a troop of rats might have rattled downthe pipes from roof to basement with less noise than did the water thatday.
On the broad moor beyond the town, where Christopher's meetings with theteacher had so regularly occurred, were a stream and some large pools;and beside one of these, near some hatches and a weir, stood a littlesquare building, not much larger inside than the Lord Mayor's coach. Itwas known simply as 'The Weir House.' On this wet afternoon, which wasthe one following the day of Christopher's last lesson over the plain, anearly invisible smoke came from the puny chimney of the hut. Though thedoor was closed, sounds of chatting and mirth fizzed from the interior,and would have told anybody who had come near--which nobody did--that theusually empty shell was tenanted to-day.
The scene within was a large fire in a fireplace to which the whole floorof the house was no more than a hearthstone. The occupants were twogentlemanly persons, in shooting costume, who had been traversing themoor for miles in search of wild duck and teal, a waterman, and a smallspaniel. In the corner stood their guns, and two or three wild mallards,which represented the scanty product of their morning's labour, theiridescent necks of the dead birds replying to every flicker of the fire.The two sportsmen were smoking, and their man was mostly occupyinghimself in poking and stirring the fire with a stick: all three appearedto be pretty well wetted.
One of the gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating studyof four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to asmall square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked outupon the dreary prospect before him. The wide concave of cloud, of themonotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood over the levelfrom horizon to horizon; beneath it, reflecting its wan lustre, was theglazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past adirecting-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regularground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till itvanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools wereoccasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a fewbushes, these forming the only obstructions to a view otherwise unbroken.
The sportsman's attention was attracted by a figure in a state of gradualenlargement as it approached along the road.
'I should think that if pleasure can't tempt a native out of doors to-day, business will never force him out,' he observed. 'There is, for thefirst time, somebody coming along the road.'
'If business don't drag him out pleasure'll never tempt en, is more likeour nater in these parts, sir,' said the man, who was looking into thefire.
The conversation showed no vitality, and down it dropped dead as before,the man who was standing up continuing to gaze into the moisture. Whathad at first appeared as an epicene shape the decreasing space resolvedinto a cloaked female under an umbrella: she now relaxed her pace, till,reaching the directing-post where the road branched into two, she pausedand looked about her. Instead of coming further she slowly retraced hersteps for about a hundred yards.
'That's an appointment,' said the first speaker, as he removed the cigarfrom his lips; 'and by the lords, what a day and place for an appointmentwith a woman!'
'What's an appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with aTussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his forehead, sothat his upper eyelids appeared to possess the uncommon quality oftallness.
'Look out here, and you'll see. By that directing-post, where the tworoads meet. As a man devoted to art, Ladywell, who has had the honour ofbeing hung higher up on the Academy walls than any other living painter,you should take out your sketch-book and dash off the scene.'
Where nothing particular is going on, one incident makes a drama; and,interested in that proportion, the art-sportsman puts up his eyeglass (aform he adhered to before firing at game that had risen, by whichmerciful arrangement the bird got safe off), placed his face beside hiscompanion's, and also peered through the opening. The youngpupil-teacher--for she was the object of their scrutiny--re-approachedthe spot whereon she had been accustomed for the last many weeks of herjourney home to meet Christopher, now for the first time missing, andagain she seemed reluctant to pass the hand-post, for that marked thepoint where the chance of seeing him ended. She glided backwards asbefore, this time keeping her face still to the front, as if trying topersuade the world at large, and her own shamefacedness, that she had notyet approached the place at all.
'Query, how long will she wait for him (for it is a man to a certainty)?'resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several minutes ofsilence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost to viewbehind some bushes. 'Will she reappear?' The smoking went on, and upshe came into open ground as before, and walked by.
'I wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather? Thereshe is again,' said the young man called Ladywell.
'Some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value seton her by her follower, small as that appears to be. Now we may get anidea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment, for, dependupon it, the time when she first came--about five minutes ago--was thetime he should have been there. It is now getting on towards five--half-past four was doubtless the time mentioned.'
'She's not come o' purpose: 'tis her way home from school every day,'said the waterman.
'An experiment on woman's endurance and patience under neglect. Two toone against her staying a quarter of an hour.'
'The same odds against her not staying till five would be nearerprobability. What's half-an-hour to a girl in love?'
'On a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to anyfireside man, woman, or beast in Christendom--minutes that can be felt,like the Egyptian plague of darkness. Now, little girl, go home: he isnot worth it.'
Twenty minutes passed, and the girl returned miserably to the hand-post,still to wander back to her retreat behind the sedge, and lead any chancecomer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had not yet reachedthis ultimate point beyond which a meeting with Christopher wasimpossible.
'Now you'll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and thenoff she goes with a broken heart.'
All three now looked through the hole to test the truth of theprognostication. The hour of five completed itself on their watches; thegirl again came forward. And then the three in ambuscade could see herpull out her handkerchief and place it to her eyes.
'She's grieving now because he has not come. Poor little woman, what abrute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a broken vow in aman, as I infer from a thousand instances in experience, romance, andhistory. Don't open the door till she is gone, Ladywell; it will onlydisturb her.'
As they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-clockstrike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched into thediverging path. This lingering for Christopher's arrival had, as isknown, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an assignation thanlay in his regular walk along the plain at that time every Monday,Wednesday, and Friday of the six previous weeks. It must be said that hewas very far indeed from divining that his injudicious peace-offering ofthe flowers had stirred into life such a wearing, anxious, hopeful,despairing solicitude as this, which had been latent for some time duringhis constant meetings with the little str
anger.
She vanished in the mist towards the left, and the loiterers in the hutbegan to move and open the door, remarking, 'Now then for Wyndway House,a change of clothes, and a dinner.'