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Leaving me in mid-road, feeling myself a brute, he went straight to his own hut. After that incident, he gave us no further anxiety and kept an iron grip on his impatience. With me, anger had given place to contrition. He remained much by himself until the night, when our messengers were expected. Then he came across to my quarters, where Father Holland and I were keyed up to the highest pitch.
And now, out of the smear of flying dust, loomed a lurching black shape; gigantic, terrible. It was coming straight toward the car; still almost in mid-road. Behind, less distinct, appeared running men. And a shot was fired. Somebody had run indoors for a pistol, before joining the chase.
Round the bend in the road, as then, he heard approaching hoof beats. He marveled that his heart should beat so high merely for the advent of Lady Natalie. In the indulgence of his dream, the suggested thuds presaged the coming of Trusia. He sat immovably upon his horse in mid-road, waiting. Every sense was aquiver, every nerve on edge. A black horse swept into view as it first had in his fancy.
Different generations have different ways of taking their pleasure, and the youth of King Charles's day were alternately bullies on the street and dandies at the feet of my lady disdainful. At the approach of the shouting, night-watchmen threw down their lanterns and took to their heels. Street-sweeps tossed their brooms in mid-road with cries of "The Scowerers! The Scowerers!"
"Oh yes, of course; safe journeys are rare enough in these parts. I'm obliged to you for the thought. You are very civil, sir. Good-bye." Yet neither he nor I gathered bridle to wheel our horses, but sat there in mid-road, looking at each other. "My name is Mount," he said at length; "let me guess yours. No, sir! don't tell me.
A great hackney-coach nigh mired in mud as it lumbered through mid-road. And M. Picot's hound came sniffing hungrily to me. A glare of light shot aslant the dark. Softly the door of Rebecca's house opened. A frail figure was silhouetted against the light. The wick above snuffed out. The figure drew in without a single look, leaving the door ajar.
Sign-boards creaked and swung to every puff of wind. Great hackney-coaches, sunk at the waist like those old gallipot boats of ours, went ploughing past through the mud of mid-road, with bepowdered footmen clinging behind and saucy coachmen perched in front.
He walked in the snow of the mid-road, facing the wind, steeped in that sense of keener being which a word may pour in the veins until the body flows with it. The third generation; the next of kin, that which stirred in him was a satisfaction almost physical that his family was promised its future. As he went he was unconscious, as he was always unconscious, of the little street.
"And hold yourself up," he continued. "That coxcomb of a marquis always trailing his dignity in the dust of mid-road to worry with a common dog like La Chesnaye pish! Hold your self-respect in the chest of your jacket, man! 'Tis the slouching nag that loses the race! Hold yourself up!" His words seemed hard sense plain spoken. "And let your feet travel on," he added. "In and up and on!"
One Slav saw death beckon him, so fell, wild-eyed, to the ground, his neck spurting a fountain of blood. The other, too paralyzed with terror to fight or flee, stood irresolutely in the mid-road, his ugly face twitching with an idiotic grin. Carter, hell in his heart, rode fiercely against his horse. The Cossack raised a futile blade.
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