第45章

"This won't do!" said Barbara, pulling herself together. "Imustn't get frightened, whatever I do! Major Okewood is very well capable of defending himself. What's happened is that the man has been called away and the servants have taken advantage of his absence to go out! Barbara, my dear, you'll just have to foot it back to the station without your tea!"She turned her back on the door and torch in hand, plunged resolutely into the fog-bank. The mist was bewilderingly thick.

Still, by going slow and always keeping the gravel under her feet, she reached the front gate and turned out on the road.

Here the mist was worse than ever. She had not taken four paces before she had lost all sense of her direction. The gate, the railways, were gone. She was groping in a clinging pall of fog.

Her torch was worse than useless. It only illuminated swirling swathes of mist and confused her, so she switched it out. In vain she looked about her, trying to pick up some landmark to guide her. There was no light, no tree, no house visible, nothing but the dank, ghostly mist.

To some temperaments, Nature has no terrors. Barbara, to whose imagination an empty house at dusk had suggested all kinds of unimaginable fears, was not in the least frightened by the fog.

She only hoped devoutly that a motor-car or a trap would not come along behind and run her down for she was obliged to keep to the road; the hard surface beneath her feet was her only guide.

She smiled over her predicament as she made her way along. She frequently found herself going off the road, more than once into patches of water, with the result that in a few minutes her feet were sopping. Still she forged ahead, with many vain halts to reconnoitre while the fog, instead of lifting, seemed to thicken with every step she took.

By this time she knew she was completely lost. Coming from the station there had been, she remembered, a cross-roads with a sign-board set up on a grass patch, about a quarter of a mile from the Mill House. She expected every minute to come upon this fork; again and again she swerved out to the left from her line of march groping for the sign-post with her hands but she never encountered it.

Few sounds came to break in upon the oppressive silence of the mist. Once or twice Barbara heard a train roaring along in the distance and, at one of her halts, her ear caught the high rising note of a motor engine a long way off. Except for these occasional reminders of the proximity of human beings. she felt she must be on a desert island instead of less than two score miles from London.

Her wrist watch showed her that she had walked for an hour when she heard a dog barking somewhere on the left of the road.

Presently, she saw a blurred patch of radiance apparently on the ground in front of her. So deceptive are lights seen through a fog that she was quite taken aback suddenly to come upon a long low house with a great beam of light streaming out of the door.

The house was approached by a little bridge across a broad ditch.

By the bridge stood a tall, massive post upon which a sign squeaked softly as it swayed to and fro. The inn was built round three sides of a square, the left-hand side being the house itself, the centre, the kitchen, and the right-hand side a tumble-down stable and some sheds.

The welcome blaze of light coming from the open door was very welcome to Barbara after her, long journey through the mist. She dragged her wet and weary feet across the little bridge and went up to the inn-door.

She stood for a moment at the entrance dazzled by the effect of the light on her eyes, which were smarting with the fog. She found herself looking into a long, narrow, taproom, smelling of stale beer and tobacco fumes, and lit by oil lamps suspended in wire frames from the raftered ceiling. The windows were curtained in cheerful red rep and the place was pleasantly warmed by a stove in one corner. By the stove was a small door apparently leading into the bar, for beside it was a window through which Barbara caught a glimpse of beer-engines and rows of bottles.

Opposite the doorway in which she stood was another door leading probably to the back of the house. Down the centre of the room ran a long table.

The tap-room was empty when Barbara entered but as she sat down at the table, the door opposite opened, and a short, foreign-looking woman came out. She stepped dead on seeing the girl: Her face seemed familiar to Barbara.