Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground.
A peculiarity was observable beneath her.A green field spread itself on each side of the hedge,one belonging to the glebe,the other being a part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining.On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath,the distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards long;it terminated abruptly at each end.
A footpath,suddenly beginning and suddenly ending,coming from nowhere and leading nowhere,she had never seen before.
Yes,she had,on second thoughts.She had seen exactly such a path trodden in the front of barracks by the sentry.
And this recollection explained the origin of the path here.Her father had trodden it by pacing up and down,as she had once seen him doing.
Sitting on the hedge as she sat now,her eyes commanded a view of both sides of it.And a few minutes later,Elfride looked over to the manor side.
Here was another sentry path.It was like the first in length,and it began and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its neighbour,but it was thinner,and less distinct.
Two reasons existed for the difference.This one might have been trodden by a similar weight of tread to the other,exercised a less number of times;or it might have been walked just as frequently,but by lighter feet.
Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard,had he been passing at the time,might have considered the latter alternative as the more probable.Elfride thought otherwise,so far as she thought at all.But her own great To-Morrow was now imminent;all thoughts inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners of her brain,previously to being banished altogether.
Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her undertaking.All her definite perceptions thereon,when the emotion accompanying them was abstracted,amounted to no more than these:
Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St.Launces.
Say half an hour at the Falcon to change my dress.
Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth.
Say an hour to spare before twelve oclock.
Total time from leaving Endelstow till twelve oclock,five hours.
Therefore I shall have to start at seven.
No surprise or sense of unwontedness entered the minds of the servants at her early ride.The monotony of life we associate with people of small incomes in districts out of the sound of the railway whistle,has one exception,which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about the great centres of population--that is,in travelling.Every journey there is more or less an adventure;adventurous hours are necessarily chosen for the most commonplace outing.Miss Elfride had to leave early--that was all.
Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home something--something found,or something bought.If she trotted to town or village,her burden was books.If to hills,woods,or the seashore,it was wonderful mosses,abnormal twigs,a handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed.
Once,in muddy weather,when Pansy was walking with her down the street of Castle Boterel,on a fair-day,a packet in front of her and a packet under her arm,an accident befell the packets,and they slipped down.On one side of her,three volumes of fiction lay kissing the mud;on the other numerous skeins of polychromatic wools lay absorbing it.Unpleasant women smiled through windows at the mishap,the men all looked round,and a boy,who was minding a ginger-bread stall whilst the owner had gone to get drunk,laughed loudly.The blue eyes turned to sapphires,and the cheeks crimsoned with vexation.
After that misadventure she set her wits to work,and was ingenious enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle,by which a great deal could be safely carried thereon,in a small compass.Here she now spread out and fastened a plain dark walking-dress and a few other trifles of apparel.Worm opened the gate for her,and she vanished away.
