There was fog everywhere, Four Winds was shrouded in it. The sea sobbed and moaned, in a forlorn way. Moore´s house was quiet and dark. Leslie Moore, walked in her kingdom, alone, but this was not the marble-palace of her youthful dreams, just a crumbling farm. Not even the ticking of the old cupboard clock could be heard. Dick was gone, he had been up at the Light with Captain Jim all day.
Leslie's gaze stopped at a rusty hook on the parlor ceiling.
She climbed onto the narrow chair, striped hems swinging lightly around her graceful ankles, and stroked it, its sharp dimensions, it wasn't a hook but a door. A door, to timelessness, a door through which so many had passed before. Leslie caressed the hook, its sharp point feeling pleasant, safe, almost like a embrace from a loved one. She didn't have that either, unlike some. Loneliness and lack of love cut, they burned.
Leslie felt her mood swing like a pendulum. And she felt how that very same morbid-streak of Westian strain tried to take hold of her. Only Leslie couldn't fight anymore, not anymore. Her strength was almost exhausted. She had carried her burden, her crown of suffering upon her brow, since she was twelve years old. Everyone were gone.
Desperate, frantic Leslie's dark blue gaze wandered around the room, the familiar furniture, and her gaze stopped at the striped cap. Legs shaking, Leslie dismounted and walked over to the cap and picked it up. It was Dick's cap, he must have left it behind, as he quite often did. Striped sailor-cap, with blue-grey stripes, tattered and old. Softly, carefully, Leslie touched caressed the cap, like she hadn't done to Dick, not in years. It existed. She wasn't completely alone. Embarrassed, in burning agony of self-loathing that burned her throat Leslie carefully placed the cap in its usual place where Dick could find it, on the little coat rack.
Coat hooks, and hooks, ropes everywhere. Doors and windows. There were many possibilities.
With a shudder, Leslie sat down at the small table, and rested her golden head on her hands.
It was hard for her to breathe, panic burning through her consciousness.
The cry finally broke out.
Leslie cried, cried. The tears came out, all the tears she had been holding inside.
Carlo's steps were heard and Leslie could distantly feel Carlo press his muzzle against her knee, but unlike usual Leslie was unable to react. The cutting, excruciating burning pain did not subside. Leslie cried, full of the old dark despair that had no cure.
Anne Blythe retreated quietly into the shadows of the veranda, seeing that scene, Leslie regal, proud Leslie in that moment of abandonment of utter desperate despair and sorrow, the depth of which Anne could not measure, but she knew steadfastly, instinctively, that she could not enter that house for a friendly visit, as she had intended, while going cross-lot road towards this gloomy house all shrouded in willows. Leslie's wild desperation and even at this moment her beauty enchanted, captivated Anne as she walked thoughtfully in the yard of the Moore house.
The light of the lamp flickered in the fog, and Anne stopped, unsure. The familiar figure of Captain Jim came to meet her and next to him stood another large man, handsome, if bloated, with peculiar colored eyes, whose gaze was vague, unsettling.
Captain Jim said calmly, "Mistress Blythe, well-met. I'll just take Dick in, and then I'll escort you to your own hearth-fire. You mustn't walk alone this evening, if you do, you might walk off a cliff into the sea, as I know has happened about forty years ago on a night as foggy as this."
Hearing footsteps and Captain Jim's voice from the hall, Leslie got up and went to the kitchen, washed her face and put the old left-overs from yesterday in the oven - a potato meat casserole.
Dick stood in the parlour, and twirled his cap in his hand, and then slowly put it on his head. He took one step towards Leslie and a fixed look flashed in his eyes momentarily as he mumbled, in fractured baritone, "Pretty, pretty, sad, tears, why?"
Leslie felt the old terror momentarily tighten its grip on her soul as she saw Dick looming before her.
Carlo growled.
Dick turned slowly, and walked towards his room, humming in toneless way, the same old note, which had no sense, or reason.