XI

Going down Bycars Lane amid the soft wandering airs of the September night, Rachel had the delicious and exciting sensation of being unyoked, of being at liberty for a space to obey the strong, free common sense of youth instead of conforming to the outworn and tiresome code of another age.  Mrs. Maldon’s was certainly a house that put a strain on the nerves.  It did not occur to Rachel that she was doing aught but a very natural and proper thing.  The non-appearance of Louis Fores was causing disquiet, and her simple aim was to shorten the period of anxiety.  Nor did it occur to her that she was impulsive.  Something had to be done, and she had done something.  Not much longer could she have borne the suspense.  All that day she had lived forward towards supper-time, when Louis Fores would appear.  Over and over again she had lived right through the moment of opening the front door for him at a little before seven o’clock.  The moments between seven o’clock and a quarter past had been a crescendo of torment, intolerable at last.  His lateness was inexplicable, and he was so close to that not to look for him would have been ridiculous.

She was apprehensive, and yet she was obscurely happy in her fears.  The large, inviting, dangerous universe was about her—­she had escaped from the confining shelter of the house.  And the night was about her.  It was not necessary for her to wear three coats, like the gross Batchgrew, in order to protect herself from the night!  She could go forth into it with no precaution.  She was young.  Her vigorous and confident body might challenge perils.

When she had proceeded a hundred yards she stopped and turned to look back at the cluster of houses collectively called Bycars.

The distinctive bow-window of Mrs. Maldon’s shone yellow.  Within the sacred room was still the old lady, sitting expectant, and trying to interest herself in the paper.  Strange thought!

Bycars Lane led in a north-easterly direction over the broad hill whose ridge separates the lane from the moorlands honeycombed with coal and iron mines.  Above the ridge showed the fire and vapour of the first mining villages, on the way to Red Cow, proof that not all colliers were yet on strike.  And above that pyrotechny hung the moon.  The municipal park, of which Bycars Lane was the north-western boundary, lay in mysterious and forbidden groves behind its spiked red wall and locked gates, and beyond it a bright tram-car was leaping down from lamp to lamp of Moorthorne Road towards the town.  Between the masses of the ragged hedge on the north side of the lane there was the thin gleam of Bycars Pool, lost in a vague, unoccupied region of shawdrucks and dirty pasture—­the rendezvous of skaters when the frost held, Louis Fores had told her, and she had heard from another source that he skated divinely.  She could believe it, too.