3. SANDBOURNE MOOR (continued)
It was one of those hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladies
remain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness,
when clerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people
appear in the street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when
bricklayers, slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed
and drink beer, when ducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at
their own family game, or spread out one wing after another in the
slower enjoyment of letting the delicious moisture penetrate to
their innermost down. The smoke from the flues of Sandbourne had
barely strength enough to emerge into the drizzling rain, and hung
down the sides of each chimney-pot like the streamer of a becalmed
ship; and a troop of rats might have rattled down the pipes from
roof to basement with less noise than did the water that day.
On the broad moor beyond the town, where Christopher's meetings with
the teacher had so regularly occurred, were a stream and some large
pools; and beside one of these, near some hatches and a weir, stood
a little square building, not much larger inside than the Lord
Mayor's coach. It was known simply as 'The Weir House.' On this
wet afternoon, which was the one following the day of Christopher's
last lesson over the plain, a nearly invisible smoke came from the
puny chimney of the hut. Though the door was closed, sounds of
chatting and mirth fizzed from the interior, and would have told
anybody who had come near--which nobody did--that the usually empty
shell was tenanted to-day.
The scene within was a large fire in a fireplace to which the whole
floor of the house was no more than a hearthstone. The occupants
were two gentlemanly persons, in shooting costume, who had been
traversing the moor for miles in search of wild duck and teal, a
waterman, and a small spaniel. In the corner stood their guns, and
two or three wild mallards, which represented the scanty product of
their morning's labour, the iridescent necks of the dead birds
replying to every flicker of the fire. The two sportsmen were
smoking, and their man was mostly occupying himself in poking and
stirring the fire with a stick: all three appeared to be pretty
well wetted.
One of the gentlemen, by way of varying the not very exhilarating
study of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye,
turned to a small square hole which admitted light and air to the
hut, and looked out upon the dreary prospect before him. The wide
concave of cloud, of the monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an
unbroken hood over the level from horizon to horizon; beneath it,
reflecting its wan lustre, was the glazed high-road which stretched,
hedgeless and ditchless, past a directing-post where another road
joined it, and on to the less regular ground beyond, lying like a
riband unrolled across the scene, till it vanished over the
furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were occasional tall
sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few bushes, these
forming the only obstructions to a view otherwise unbroken.
The sportsman's attention was attracted by a figure in a state of
gradual enlargement 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 the first time, somebody coming along the road.'
'If business don't drag him out pleasure'll never tempt en, is more
like our nater in these parts, sir,' said the man, who was looking
into the fire.
The conversation showed no vitality, and down it dropped dead as
before, the man who was standing up continuing to gaze into the
moisture. What had at first appeared as an epicene shape the
decreasing space resolved into a cloaked female under an umbrella:
she now relaxed her pace, till, reaching the directing-post where
the road branched into two, she paused and looked about her.
Instead of coming further she slowly retraced her steps for about a
hundred yards.
'That's an appointment,' said the first speaker, as he removed the
cigar from his lips; 'and by the lords, what a day and place for an
appointment with a woman!'
'What's an appointment?' inquired his friend, a town young man, with
a Tussaud complexion and well-pencilled brows half way up his
forehead, so that his upper eyelids appeared to possess the uncommon
quality of tallness.
'Look out here, and you'll see. By that directing-post, where the
two roads meet. As a man devoted to art, Ladywell, who has had the
honour of being 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 (a form he adhered to before firing at game that had risen,
by which merciful arrangement the bird got safe off), placed his
face beside his companion's, and also peered through the opening.
The young pupil-teacher--for she was the object of their scrutiny--
re-approached the spot whereon she had been accustomed for the last
many weeks of her journey home to meet Christopher, now for the
first time missing, and again she seemed reluctant to pass the hand-
post, for that marked the point where the chance of seeing him
ended. She glided backwards as before, this time keeping her face
still to the front, as if trying to persuade the world at large, and
her own shamefacedness, that she had not yet 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 of silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became
lost to view behind some bushes. 'Will she reappear?' The smoking
went on, and up she came into open ground as before, and walked by.
'I wonder who the girl is, to come to such a place in this weather?
There she is again,' said the young man called Ladywell.
'Some cottage lass, not yet old enough to make the most of the value
set on her by her follower, small as that appears to be. Now we may
get an idea of the hour named by the fellow for the appointment,
for, depend upon it, the time when she first came--about five
minutes ago--was the time 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
to one against her staying a quarter of an hour.'
'The same odds against her not staying till five would be nearer
probability. What's half-an-hour to a girl in love?'
'On a moorland in wet weather it is thirty perceptible minutes to
any fireside man, woman, or beast in Christendom--minutes that can
be felt, like the Egyptian plague of darkness. Now, little girl, go
home: he is not 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 chance comer from the opposite quarter to believe that she had
not yet reached this ultimate point beyond which a meeting with
Christopher was impossible.
'Now you'll find that she means to wait the complete half-hour, and
then off she goes with a broken heart.'
All three now looked through the hole to test the truth of the
prognostication. The hour of five completed itself on their
watches; the girl again came forward. And then the three in
ambuscade could see her pull out her handkerchief and place it to
her eyes.
'She's grieving now because he has not come. Poor little woman,
what a brute he must be; for a broken heart in a woman means a
broken vow in a man, as I infer from a thousand instances in
experience, romance, and history. Don't open the door till she is
gone, Ladywell; it will only disturb her.'
As they had guessed, the pupil-teacher, hearing the distant town-
clock strike the hour, gave way to her fancy no longer, and launched
into the diverging path. This lingering for Christopher's arrival
had, as is known, been founded on nothing more of the nature of an
assignation than lay 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 he was very far indeed from divining that his
injudicious peace-offering of the flowers had stirred into life such
a wearing, anxious, hopeful, despairing solicitude as this, which
had been latent for some time during his constant meetings with the
little stranger.
She vanished in the mist towards the left, and the loiterers in the
hut began to move and open the door, remarking, 'Now then for
Wyndway House, a change of clothes, and a dinner.'
