Part 56 (1/2)
He slackened the reins, and away he went to Craig Fernie. Counting by years, the pony was twenty, and the pony's driver was seventy. Counting by vivacity and spirit, two of the most youthful characters in Scotland had got together that afternoon in the same chaise.
An hour more wore itself slowly out; and nothing had pa.s.sed Arnold on the cross-roads but a few stray foot-pa.s.sengers, a heavy wagon, and a gig with an old woman in it. He rose again from the heather, weary of inaction, and resolved to walk backward and forward, within view of his post, for a change. At the second turn, when his face happened to be set toward the open heath, he noticed another foot-pa.s.senger--apparently a man--far away in the empty distance. Was the person coming toward him?
He advanced a little. The stranger was doubtless advancing too, so rapidly did his figure now reveal itself, beyond all doubt, as the figure of a man. A few minutes more and Arnold fancied he recognized it.
Yet a little longer, and he was quite sure. There was no mistaking the lithe strength and grace of _that_ man, and the smooth easy swiftness with which he covered his ground. It was the hero of the coming foot-race. It was Geoffrey on his way back to Windygates House.
Arnold hurried forward to meet him. Geoffrey stood still, poising himself on his stick, and let the other come up.
”Have you heard what has happened at the house?” asked Arnold.
He instinctively checked the next question as it rose to his lips.
There was a settled defiance in the expression of Geoffrey's face, which Arnold was quite at a loss to understand. He looked like a man who had made up his mind to confront any thing that could happen, and to contradict any body who spoke to him.
”Something seems to have annoyed you?” said Arnold.
”What's up at the house?” returned Geoffrey, with his loudest voice and his hardest look.
”Miss Silvester has been at the house.”
”Who saw her?”
”n.o.body but Blanche.”
”Well?”
”Well, she was miserably weak and ill, so ill that she fainted, poor thing, in the library. Blanche brought her to.”
”And what then?”
”We were all at lunch at the time. Blanche left the library, to speak privately to her uncle. When she went back Miss Silvester was gone, and nothing has been seen of her since.”
”A row at the house?”
”n.o.body knows of it at the house, except Blanche--”
”And you? And how many besides?”
”And Sir Patrick. n.o.body else.”
”n.o.body else? Any thing more?”
Arnold remembered his promise to keep the investigation then on foot a secret from every body. Geoffrey's manner made him--unconsciously to himself--readier than he might otherwise have been to consider Geoffrey as included in the general prohibition.
”Nothing more,” he answered.
Geoffrey dug the point of his stick deep into the soft, sandy ground.
He looked at the stick, then suddenly pulled it out of the ground and looked at Arnold. ”Good-afternoon!” he said, and went on his way again by himself.
Arnold followed, and stopped him. For a moment the two men looked at each other without a word pa.s.sing on either side. Arnold spoke first.