“Oh, a walk. Well, all right. Where shall we go? I know, I will take you where you’ve never been before.”
It was October and already the lamps were lighted in the streets; they studded the bridge like fairy lanterns for a fairy path to that world of woods and stealthy lanes and open country where the wind rustled the gorse bushes on the other side. Below, at the water’s edge, more lamps stood like sentinels, here and there, straight and lonely, fulfilling their task, and as Charles and Henrietta watched, the terraces of Radstowe became illuminated by an unseen hand. Over everything there was a suggestion of enchantment: lovers, strolling by, were romantic in their silence; a faint hoot from some steamer was like a laugh.
“It will be dark over there, won’t it?” Henrietta asked.
“Frightfully. We’ll cut across the fields.”
“Sales Hall? What for? To see that miserable fellow? We’re not going near Sales Hall.”
“But in the winter,” she said hopefully, “I should think they shut them up at night, poor things.”
They said no more. Their path edged those woods which in their turn edged the gorge; but here and there the trees spread themselves more freely and, through the darkness, Henrietta had glimpses of furtive little paths, of dips and hollows. A small pool, thick with early fallen leaves, had hardly a foot of gleaming surface with which to gaze like an unwinking eye at the emerging stars. But this skirting of the wood came to an end and there stretched before their feet, which made the only sound in the quiet night, a broad white road where the arched gateway of a distant house looked like the fragment of a temple.
“I like this,” Henrietta said; “I feel safe.”
“Not for long,” Charles replied sternly. He opened a gate and through a little coppice they reached a fence. “You’ll have to climb it.” The broad fields on the other side were as dark as water and as still. It was surprising, when she jumped down, to find she did not sink, to find that she and Charles could walk steadily on this blackness, cut here and there by the deeper blackness of a hedge. There were no cows, but sheep stumbled up and bleated at their approach, and for some time the tinkling of the bell-wether’s bell accompanied them like music.
