Another month had passed, and the end of August had nearly come,when Mr Haredale stood alone in the mail-coach office at Bristol.
Although but a few weeks had intervened since his conversation withEdward Chester and his niece, in the locksmith"s house, and he hadmade no change, in the mean time, in his accustomed style of dress,his appearance was greatly altered. He looked much older, and morecare-worn. Agitation and anxiety of mind scatter wrinkles and greyhairs with no unsparing hand; but deeper traces follow on thesilent uprooting of old habits, and severing of dear, familiarties. The affections may not be so easily wounded as the passions,but their hurts are deeper, and more lasting. He was now asolitary man, and the heart within him was dreary and lonesome.
He was not the less alone for having spent so many years inseclusion and retirement. This was no better preparation than around of social cheerfulness: perhaps it even increased thekeenness of his sensibility. He had been so dependent upon her forcompanionship and love; she had come to be so much a part andparcel of his existence; they had had so many cares and thoughts incommon, which no one else had shared; that losing her was beginninglife anew, and being required to summon up the hope and elasticityof youth, amid the doubts, distrusts, and weakened energies ofage.
The effort he had made to part from her with seeming cheerfulnessand hope--and they had parted only yesterday--left him the moredepressed. With these feelings, he was about to revisit London forthe last time, and look once more upon the walls of their old home,before turning his back upon it, for ever.
The journey was a very different one, in those days, from what thepresent generation find it; but it came to an end, as the longestjourney will, and he stood again in the streets of the metropolis.
He lay at the inn where the coach stopped, and resolved, before hewent to bed, that he would make his arrival known to no one; wouldspend but another night in London; and would spare himself the pangof parting, even with the honest locksmith.
Such conditions of the mind as that to which he was a prey when helay down to rest, are favourable to the growth of disorderedfancies, and uneasy visions. He knew this, even in the horror withwhich he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window todispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, whichhad not been, as it were, the witness of his dream. But it was nota new terror of the night; it had been present to him before, inmany shapes; it had haunted him in bygone times, and visited his pillow again and again. If it had been but an ugly object, achildish spectre, haunting his sleep, its return, in its old form,might have awakened a momentary sensation of fear, which, almost inthe act of waking, would have passed away. This disquiet,however, lingered about him, and would yield to nothing. When heclosed his eyes again, he felt it hovering near; as he slowly sunkinto a slumber, he was conscious of its gathering strength andpurpose, and gradually assuming its recent shape; when he sprang upfrom his bed, the same phantom vanished from his heated brain, andleft him filled with a dread against which reason and wakingthought were powerless.
The sun was up, before he could shake it off. He rose late, butnot refreshed, and remained within doors all that day. He had afancy for paying his last visit to the old spot in the evening, forhe had been accustomed to walk there at that season, and desired tosee it under the aspect that was most familiar to him. At such anhour as would afford him time to reach it a little before sunset,he left the inn, and turned into the busy street.
He had not gone far, and was thoughtfully making his way among thenoisy crowd, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and, turning,recognised one of the waiters from the inn, who begged his pardon, but he had left his sword behind him.
"Why have you brought it to me?" he asked, stretching out his hand,and yet not taking it from the man, but looking at him in adisturbed and agitated manner.
The man was sorry to have disobliged him, and would carry it backagain. The gentleman had said that he was going a little way intothe country, and that he might not return until late. The roadswere not very safe for single travellers after dark; and, since theriots, gentlemen had been more careful than ever, not to trustthemselves unarmed in lonely places. "We thought you were astranger, sir," he added, "and that you might believe our roads tobe better than they are; but perhaps you know them well, and carryfire-arms--"
He took the sword, and putting it up at his side, thanked the man,and resumed his walk.
It was long remembered that he did this in a manner so strange, andwith such a trembling hand, that the messenger stood looking afterhis retreating figure, doubtful whether he ought not to follow, andwatch him. It was long remembered that he had been heard pacing his bedroom in the dead of the night; that the attendants hadmentioned to each other in the morning, how fevered and how pale helooked; and that when this man went back to the inn, he told afellow-servant that what he had observed in this short interviewlay very heavy on his mind, and that he feared the gentlemanintended to destroy himself, and would never come back alive.
With a half-consciousness that his manner had attracted the man"sattention (remembering the expression of his face when theyparted), Mr Haredale quickened his steps; and arriving at a standof coaches, bargained with the driver of the best to carry him sofar on his road as the point where the footway struck across thefields, and to await his return at a house of entertainment whichwas within a stone"s-throw of that place. Arriving there in duecourse, he alighted and pursued his way on foot.