“Is this Rege’s way?” said Ralph. “It’s an odd thing for him surely--going out to walk now. He never would wet his feet any more than a cat. What is he doing out at night in the dark, a damp night, bad for his throat. Does my mother know?”
“Oh,” said Lucy, with a curious confusion; “why shouldn’t he go now, if he likes! It isn’t cold, it’s not so very damp, and Reginald’s an Englishman, and isn’t afraid of a bit of damp or a wet road. You are so hard to please. You are finding fault with everybody, Raaf.”
“Am I?” he said. “Perhaps I am. I’ve grown a brute, being so much away.”
“Oh, Raaf, I didn’t mean that. Reginald has--his own ways. Don’t you know, we never ask what he means, mother and I. He always means just what’s the right thing, don’t you know. It is a very nice time to--to take a _giro_; look how the sky’s beginning to break there out of the clouds. I always like an evening walk; so did mother when she was strong enough. And then Reginald has such a feeling for art. He always says the village is so pretty with the lights in the windows, and the sweep of the fresh air on the common--and--and all that.”
She gave him a little anxious look, but she could not see the expression of his face in the darkness, any more than he could see what a wistful and wondering look was in her eyes. Bertram, looking on, formed his own conclusions, which were as little right as a stranger’s conclusions upon a drama of family life suddenly brought before his eyes generally are. He thought that this correct and immaculate Mr. Wradisley had tastes known to his family, or at least to the ladies of his family, which were not so spotless as he appeared to be; or that there was something going on at this particular moment which contradicted the law of propriety and good order which was his nature. Was it a village amour? Was it some secret hanging over the house? There was a little agitation, he thought, in Lucy, and surprise in the brother, who was a stranger to all the ways of his own family, and evidently had a half-hostile feeling toward his elder. But the conversation became more easy as they went along, emerging from under the shadow of the trees and crossing the openings of the park. The great house came in sight as they went on, a solid mass amid all its surrounding of shrubbery and flower gardens, with the distance stretching clear on one side, and lights in many windows. It looked a centre of life and substantial, steadfast security, as if it might last out all the changes of fortune, and could never be affected by those vicissitudes which pull down one and set up another. Bertram could fancy that it had stood like a rock while many tempests swept the country. The individual might come and go, but this habitation was that of the race. And it was absurd to think that the little surprise of meeting its master on his way into the village late on an October evening, could have anything to do with the happiness of the family or its security. Bertram said to himself that his nerves were a little shaken to-night, he could not tell how. It was perhaps because of something visionary in this way of walking about an unknown place in the dark, and hearing of so many people like shadows moving in a world undiscovered. The old doctor, for example, whose image was so clear before his companion, that he could almost think he saw him, so clear that even to himself, a stranger, that old man had almost appeared; but more than anything else because of the child who, caught in her most sportive mood, had suddenly grown quiet in his arms, and given him that look, with eyes unknown, which he too could have sworn he knew. There were strange things in his own life that gave him cause to think. Was it not this that made him conscious of mystery and some disturbing influence in the family which he did not know, but which had received him as if he had been an absent brother too?