Part 32 (2/2)
”I accept it,” said Sybil with a trembling voice and rather pale, ”in remembrance of a friend.” She held forth her hand to Egremont, who retained it for an instant, and then bending very low, pressed it to his lips. As with an agitated heart, he hastily crossed the threshold of the cottage, something seemed to hold him back. He turned round. The bloodhound had seized him by the coat and looked up to him with an expression of affectionate remonstrance against his departure. Egremont bent down, caressed Harold and released himself from his grasp.
When Egremont left the cottage, he found the country enveloped in a thick white mist, so that had it not been for some huge black shadows which he recognized as the crests of trees, it would have been very difficult to discriminate the earth from the sky, and the mist thickening as he advanced, even these fallacious landmarks threatened to disappear. He had to walk to Mowbray to catch a night train for London.
Every moment was valuable, but the unexpected and increasing obscurity rendered his progress slow and even perilous. The contiguity to the river made every step important. He had according to his calculations proceeded nearly as far as his old residence, and notwithstanding the careless courage of youth and the annoyance of relinquis.h.i.+ng a project, intolerable at that season of life, was meditating the expediency of renouncing that night the attempt on Mowbray and of gaining his former quarters for shelter. He stopped, as he had stopped several times before, to calculate rather than to observe. The mist was so thick that he could not see his own extended hand. It was not the first time that it had occurred to him that some one or something was hovering about his course.
”Who is there?” exclaimed Egremont. But no one answered.
He moved on a little, but very slowly. He felt a.s.sured that his ear caught a contiguous step. He repeated his interrogatory in a louder tone, but it obtained no response. Again he stopped. Suddenly he was seized; an iron grasp a.s.sailed his throat, a hand of steel griped his arm. The unexpected onset hurried him on. The sound of waters a.s.sured him that he was approaching the precipitous bank of that part of the river which, from a ledge of pointed rocks, here formed rapids. Vigorous and desperate, Egremont plunged like some strong animal on whom a beast of prey had made a fatal spring. His feet clung to the earth as if they were held by some magnetic power. With his disengaged arm he grappled with his mysterious and unseen foe.
At this moment he heard the deep bay of a hound.
”Harold!” he exclaimed. The dog, invisible, sprang forward and seized upon his a.s.sailant. So violent was the impulse that Egremont staggered and fell, but he fell freed from his dark enemy. Stunned and exhausted, some moments elapsed before he was entirely himself. The wind had suddenly changed; a violent gust had partially dispelled the mist; the outline of the landscape was in many places visible. Beneath him were the rapids of the Mowe, over which a watery moon threw a faint, flickering light. Egremont was lying on its precipitous bank; and Harold panting was leaning over him and looking in his face, and sometimes licking him with that tongue which, though not gifted with speech, had spoken so seasonably in the moment of danger.
END OF THE THIRD BOOK
BOOK IV
Book 4 Chapter 1
”Are you going down to the house, Egerton?” enquired Mr Berners at Brookes, of a brother M.P., about four o'clock in the early part of the spring of 1839.
”The moment I have sealed this letter; we will walk down together, if you like!” and in a few minutes they left the club.
”Our fellows are in a sort of fright about this Jamaica bill,” said Mr Egerton in an undertone, as if he were afraid a pa.s.ser-by might overhear him. ”Don't say anything about it, but there's a screw loose.”
”The deuce! But how do you mean?”
”They say the Rads are going to throw us over.”
”Talk, talk. They have threatened this half-a-dozen times. Smoke, sir; it will end in smoke.”
”I hope it may; but I know, in great confidence mind you, that Lord John was saying something about it yesterday.”
”That may be; I believe our fellows are heartily sick of the business, and perhaps would be glad of an excuse to break up the government: but we must not have Peel in; nothing could prevent a dissolution.”
”Their fellows go about and say that Peel would not dissolve if he came in.”
”Trust him!”
”He has had enough of dissolutions they say.”
”Why, after all they have not done him much harm. Even --34 was a hit.”
”Whoever dissolves,” said Mr Egerton, ”I don't think there will be much of a majority either way in our time.”
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