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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Starvecrow Farm, by Stanley J. Weyman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Starvecrow Farm
+
+Author: Stanley J. Weyman
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2012 [eBook #39138]
+[Most recently updated: June 15, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Bowen
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STARVECROW FARM ***
+
+
+
+
+STARVECROW FARM
+
+By STANLEY J. WEYMAN.
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF. A Romance. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Crown
+8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE. A Romance. With four Illustrations. Crown
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+A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE. Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne, Sieur de
+Marsac. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+UNDER THE RED ROBE. With twelve full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
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+
+MY LADY ROTHA. A Romance of the Thirty Years’ War. With eight
+Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A MINISTER OF FRANCE. With thirty-six
+Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.
+
+THE MAN IN BLACK. With twelve Illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.00.
+
+SHREWSBURY. A Romance. With twenty-four Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
+$1.50.
+
+THE RED COCKADE. A Novel. With 48 Illustrations by R. Caton Woodville.
+Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+THE CASTLE INN. A Novel. With six full-page Illustrations by Walter
+Appleton Clark. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+SOPHIA. A Romance. With twelve full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo,
+$1.50.
+
+COUNT HANNIBAL. A Romance of the Court of France. With Frontispiece.
+Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+IN KINGS’ BYWAYS. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+THE ABBESS OF VLAYE. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
+
+New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.
+
+
+
+
+STARVECROW
+FARM
+
+BY
+
+STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+_Author of “A Gentleman of France” “The Abbess of Vlaye,”
+“Count Hannibal,” “The Castle Inn,” “The Red
+Cockade,” “Under the Red Robe,” etc., etc_.
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+
+91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+LONDON AND BOMBAY
+1905
+
+Copyright, 1904, by
+
+STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+ CHAPTER I. Across the Quicksands.
+ CHAPTER II. A Red Waistcoat.
+ CHAPTER III. A Wedding Morning.
+ CHAPTER IV. Two to One.
+ CHAPTER V. A Jezebel.
+ CHAPTER VI. The Inquiry.
+ CHAPTER VII. Captain Anthony Clyne.
+ CHAPTER VIII. Starvecrow Farm.
+ CHAPTER IX. Punishment.
+ CHAPTER X. Henrietta in Naxos.
+ CHAPTER XI. Captain Clyne’s Plan.
+ CHAPTER XII. The Old Love.
+ CHAPTER XIII. A Jealous Woman.
+ CHAPTER XIV. The Letter.
+ CHAPTER XV. The Answer.
+ CHAPTER XVI. A Night Adventure.
+ CHAPTER XVII. The Edge of the Storm.
+ CHAPTER XVIII. Mr. Joseph Nadin.
+ CHAPTER XIX. At the Farm.
+ CHAPTER XX. Proof Positive.
+ CHAPTER XXI. Cousin Meets Cousin.
+ CHAPTER XXII. Mr. Sutton’s New Rôle.
+ CHAPTER XXIII. In Kendal Gaol.
+ CHAPTER XXIV. The Rôle Continued.
+ CHAPTER XXV. Prison Experiences.
+ CHAPTER XXVI. A Reconciliation.
+ CHAPTER XXVII. Bishop Caught Napping.
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. The Golden Ship.
+ CHAPTER XXIX. The Dark Maid.
+ CHAPTER XXX. Bess’s Triumph.
+ CHAPTER XXXI. A Strange Bedroom.
+ CHAPTER XXXII. The Search.
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. The Smugglers’ Oven.
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. In Tyson’s Kitchen.
+ CHAPTER XXXV. Through The Wood.
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. Two of a Race.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+They paid off the Guide under the walls of the old Priory Church at
+Cartmel.
+
+“I give you a last chance,” he said.
+
+He neither cared nor saw who it was whom he had jostled.
+
+The face was Stewart’s!
+
+... he touched his brow with his whip handle.
+
+... every head was uncovered as Clyne . . . rode to the door.
+
+In ten minutes the road twinkled with lights.
+
+She was leaning against the side of the window.
+
+
+
+
+STARVECROW FARM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+ACROSS THE QUICKSANDS
+
+
+A head appeared at either window of the postchaise. Henrietta looked
+forward. Her lover looked back.
+
+The postchaise had nearly cleared the sands. Behind it the low line of
+Lancashire coast was fading from sight. Before it the long green hill
+of Cartmel had risen so high and drawn so near as to hide the Furness
+fells. On the left, seaward, a waste of sullen shallows and quaking
+sands still stretched to infinity—a thing to shudder at. But the savage
+head of Warton Crag, that for a full hour had guarded the travellers’
+right, had given place to the gentler outlines of Armside Knot. The
+dreaded Lancashire Channels had been passed in safety, and the mounted
+guide, whose task it was to lead wayfarers over these syrtes, and who
+enjoyed as guerdon the life-rent of a snug farm under Cark, no longer
+eyed the west with anxiety, but plashed in stolid silence towards his
+evening meal.
+
+And all was well. But the margin of safety had not been large—the
+postboys’ boots still dripped, and the floor of the carriage was damp.
+Seaward the pale line of the tide, which would presently sweep in one
+foaming wave across the flat, and in an instant cover it half a foot
+deep, was fretting abreast the point. Ten minutes later had been too
+late; and the face of Henrietta’s lover, whom a few hours and a Scotch
+minister were to make her husband, betrayed his knowledge of the fact.
+He looked backward and westward over the dreary flat; and fascinated,
+seized, possessed by the scene, he shuddered—perhaps at his own
+thoughts. He would fain have bidden the postboys hasten, but he was
+ashamed to give the order before her. Halfway across he had set down
+the uneasiness he could not hide to the fear of pursuit, to the fear of
+separation. But he could no longer do this; for it was plain to a child
+that neither horse nor man would cross Cartmel sands until the tide
+that was beginning to run had ebbed again.
+
+And Henrietta looked forward. The dull grey line of coast, quickly
+passing into the invisible, on which she turned her back, stood for her
+past; the sun-kissed peaks and blue distances of Furness, which her
+fancy still mirrored, though the Cartmel shore now hid them, stood for
+the future. To those heights, beautified by haze and distance, her
+heart went out, finding in them the true image of the coming life, the
+true foretype of those joys, tender and mysterious, to which she was
+hastening. The past, which she was abandoning, she knew: a cold home in
+the house of an unfeeling sister-in-law and a brother who when he was
+not hunting was tipsy—that, and the prospect of an unlovely marriage
+with a man who—horror!—had had one wife already, stood for the past.
+The future she did not know; but hope painted it from her brightest
+palette, and the girl’s eyes filled, her lips quivered, her heart
+strained towards the sympathy and love that were henceforth to be
+hers—towards the happiness which she had set out to seek, and that now
+for certain could not escape her. As the postchaise lumbered heavily up
+the rough-paved groyne that led from the sands she shook from head to
+foot. At last her feet were set upon the land beautiful. And save for
+the compact which her self-respect had imposed upon her companion, she
+must have given way, she must have opened all her heart, thrown herself
+upon his breast and wept tears of tender anticipation.
+
+She controlled herself. As it happened, they drew in their heads at the
+same time, and his eyes—they were handsome eyes—met hers.
+
+“Dearest!” he said.
+
+“We are safe now?”
+
+“Safe from pursuit. But I am not safe.”
+
+“Not safe?”
+
+“From your cruelty.”
+
+His voice was velvet; and he sought to take her hand.
+
+But she withheld it.
+
+“No, sir,” she said, though her look was tender. “Remember our compact.
+You are quite sure that they will pursue us along the great road?”
+
+“Yes, as far as Kendal. There they will learn that we are not before
+them—that we have somewhere turned aside. And they will turn back.”
+
+“But suppose that they drive on to Carlisle—where we rejoin the north
+road.”
+
+“They will not,” he replied confidently. He had regained the plausible
+air which he had lost while the terror of the sands was upon him. “And
+if you fear that,” he continued, “there is the other plan, and I think
+the better one. To-morrow at noon the packet leaves Whitehaven for
+Scotland, The wind is fair, and by six in the afternoon we may be
+ashore, and an hour later you will be mine!” And again he sought to
+draw her into his arms.
+
+But she repelled him.
+
+“In either case,” she said, her brow slightly puckered, “we must halt
+to-night at the inn of which you spoke.”
+
+“The inn on Windermere—yes. And we can decide there, sweet, whether we
+go by land or sea; whether we will rejoin the north road at Carlisle or
+cross from Whitehaven to”—he hesitated an instant—“to Dumfries.”
+
+She was romantic to the pitch of a day which valued sensibility more
+highly than sense, and which had begun to read the poetry of Byron
+without ceasing to read the _Mysteries of Udolpho_; and she was
+courageous to the point of folly. Even now laughter gleamed under her
+long lashes, and the bubblings of irresponsible youth were never very
+far from her lips. Still, with much folly, with vast recklessness and
+an infinitude of ignorance, she was yet no fool—though a hundred times
+a day she said foolish things. In the present circumstances respect for
+herself rather than distrust of her lover taught her that she stood on
+slippery ways and instilled a measure of sobriety.
+
+“At the inn,” she said, “you will put me in charge of the landlady.”
+And looking through the window, she carolled a verse of a song as
+irrelevant as snow in summer.
+
+“But——” he paused.
+
+“There is a landlady, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, but——”
+
+“You will do what I say to-day,” she replied firmly—and now the fine
+curves of her lips were pressed together, and she hummed no more—“if
+you wish me to obey you to-morrow.”
+
+“Dearest, you know——”
+
+But she cut him short. “Please to say that it shall be so,” she said.
+
+He swore that he would obey her then and always. And bursting again
+into song as the carriage climbed the hill, she flung from her the mood
+that had for a moment possessed her, and was a child again. She made
+gay faces at him, each more tantalising than the other; gave him look
+for look, each more tender than the other; and with the tips of her
+dainty fingers blew him kisses in exchange for his. Her helmet-shaped
+bonnet, with its huge plume of feathers, lay in her lap. The heavy
+coils of her fair, almost flaxen, hair were given to view, and under
+the fire of his flatteries the delicacy of colouring—for pallor it
+could scarcely be called—which so often accompanies very light hair,
+and was the sole defect of her beauty, gave place to blushes that fired
+his blood.
+
+But he knew something of her spirit. He knew that she had it in her to
+turn back even now. He knew that he might cajole, but could never
+browbeat her. And he restrained himself the more easily, as, in spite
+of the passion and eloquence—some called it vapouring—which made him a
+hero where thousands listened, he gave her credit for the stronger
+nature. He held her childishness, her frivolity, her _naïveté_, in
+contempt. Yet he could not shake off his fear of what she might do—when
+she knew.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] They paid off the Guide under the walls of the old
+Priory Church at Cartmel
+
+
+They paid off the guide under the walls of the old priory church at
+Cartmel, with the children of the village crowding about the doors of
+the chaise; then with a fresh team they started up the valley that
+leads to the foot of Windermere lake. But now the November day was
+beginning to draw in. The fell on their right took gloomier shape; on
+their left a brook sopped its way through low marsh-covered fields; and
+here and there the leafless limbs of trees pointed to the grey. And
+first one and then the other, with the shrill cries of moor-birds in
+their ears, and the fading landscape before their eyes, fell silent.
+Then, had they been as other lovers, had she stood more safely, or he
+been single-hearted, he had taken her in his arms and held her close,
+and comforted her, and the dusk within had been but the frame and
+set-off to their love.
+
+But as it was he feared to make overtures, and they sat each in a
+corner until, in sheer dread of the effect which reflection might have
+on her, he asked her if she feared pursuit; adding, “Depend upon it,
+darling, you need not; Sir Charles will not give a thought to this
+road.”
+
+She drummed thoughtfully with her fingers on the pane.
+
+“I am not afraid of my brother,” she said.
+
+“Then of whom?”
+
+“Of Anthony,” she answered, and corrected herself hurriedly—“of Captain
+Clyne, I mean. He will think of this road.”
+
+“But he will not have had the news before noon,” Stewart answered. “It
+is eighteen miles from your brother’s to the Old Hall. And besides, I
+thought that he did not love you.”
+
+“He does not,” she rejoined, “but he loves himself. He loves his pride.
+And this will hit both—hard! I am not quite sure,” she continued very
+slowly and thoughtfully, “that I am not a little sorry for him. He made
+so certain, you see. He thought all arranged. A week to-day was the day
+fixed, and—yes,” impetuously, “I am sorry for him, though I hated him
+yesterday.”
+
+Stewart was silent a moment.
+
+“I hate him to-day,” he said.
+
+“Why?”
+
+His eyes sparkled.
+
+“I hate all his kind,” he said. “They are hard as stones, stiff as
+oaks, cruel as—as their own laws! A man is no man to them, unless he is
+of”—he paused almost imperceptibly—“our class! A law is no law to them
+unless they administer it! They see men die of starvation at their
+gates, but all is right, all is just, all is for the best, as long as
+they govern!”
+
+“I don’t think you know him,” she said, somewhat stiffly.
+
+“Oh, I know him!”
+
+“But——”
+
+“Oh, I know him!” he repeated, the faint note of protest in her voice
+serving to excite him. “He was at Manchester. There were a hundred
+thousand men out of work—starving, seeing their wives starve, seeing
+their children starve. And they came to Manchester and met. And he was
+there, and he was one of those who signed the order for the soldiers to
+ride them down—men, women, and children, without arms, and packed so
+closely that they could not flee!”
+
+“Well,” she said pertly, “you would not have us all murdered in our
+beds?”
+
+He opened his mouth, and he shut it again. He knew that he had been a
+fool. He knew that he had gone near to betraying himself. She was
+nineteen, and thoughtless; she had been bred in the class he hated; she
+had never heard any political doctrines save those which that class,
+the governing class, held; and though twice or thrice he had essayed
+faintly to imbue her with his notions of liberty and equality and
+fraternity, and had pictured her with the red cap of freedom perched on
+her flaxen head, the only liberty in which he had been able to interest
+her had been her own!
+
+By-and-by, in different conditions, she might be more amenable, should
+he then think it worth while to convert her. For the present his
+eloquence was stayed in midstream. Yet he could not be altogether
+silent, for he was a man to whom words were very dear.
+
+“Well,” he said in a lower tone, “there is something in that, sweet.
+But I know worse of him than that. You may think it right to transport
+a man for seven years for poaching a hare——”
+
+“They should not poach,” she said lightly, “and they would not be
+transported!”
+
+“But you will think differently of flogging a man to death!”
+
+Her face flushed.
+
+“I don’t believe it!” she cried.
+
+“On his ship in Plymouth Harbour they will tell you differently.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!” she replied, with passion. And then, “How horrid
+you are!” she continued. “And it is nearly dark! Why do you talk of
+such things? You are jealous of him—that is what you are!”
+
+He saw the wisdom of sliding back into their old relations, and he
+seized the opportunity her words offered.
+
+“Yes,” he murmured, “I am jealous of him. And why not? I am jealous of
+the wind that caresses your cheek, of the carpet that feels your tread,
+of the star that peeps in at your window! I am jealous of all who come
+near you, or speak to you, or look at you!”
+
+“Are you really?”—in a tone of childish delight. “As jealous as that?”
+
+He swore it with many phrases.
+
+“And you will be so always?” she sighed softly, leaning towards him.
+“Always—Alan?”
+
+“To eternity!” he answered. And emboldened by her melting mood, he
+would have taken her hand, and perhaps more than her hand, but at that
+moment the lights of the inn at Newby Bridge flashed on them suddenly,
+the roar of the water as it rushed over the weirs surprised their ears,
+the postboys cracked their whips, and the carriage bounded and rattled
+over the steep pitch of the narrow bridge. A second or two later it
+came to a stand before the inn amid a crowd of helpers and stable lads,
+whose lanthorns dazzled the travellers’ eyes.
+
+They stayed only to change horses, then were away again. But the halt
+sufficed to cool his courage; and as they pounded on monotonously
+through the night, the darkness and the dim distances of river and
+lake—for they were approaching the shores of Windermere—produced their
+natural effect on Henrietta’s feelings. She had been travelling since
+early morning cooped and cramped within the narrow chaise; she had
+spent the previous night in a fever of suspense and restlessness. Now,
+though slowly, the gloom, the dark outlines of the woods, and that
+sense of loneliness which seizes upon all who are flung for the first
+time among strange surroundings, began to tell upon the spirits even of
+nineteen. She did not admit the fact to herself—she would have died
+before she confessed it to another; but disillusion had begun its
+subtle task.
+
+Here were all the things for which she had panted—the dear, delightful
+things of which she had dreamed: the whirl of the postchaise through
+the night, the crack of the whips, the cries of the postboys, the
+lighted inns, the dripping woods, the fear of pursuit, the presence of
+her lover! And already they were growing flat. Already the savour was
+escaping from them. There were tears in her heart, tears very near her
+eyes.
+
+He could have taken her hand then, and more than her hand. For suddenly
+she recognised, with a feeling nearer terror than her flighty nature
+had ever experienced before, her complete dependence on him. Henceforth
+love, comfort, kindness, companionship—all must come from him. She had
+flung from her every stay but his, every hand but his. He was become
+her all, her world. And could she trust him? Not only with her
+honour—she never dreamed of doubting that—but could she trust him
+afterwards? To be kind to her, to be good to her, to be generous to
+her? Thoughtless, inexperienced, giddy as she was, Henrietta trembled.
+A pitiful sob rose in her throat. It needed but little, very little,
+and she had cast herself in abandonment on her lover’s breast and there
+wept out her fears and her doubts.
+
+But he had also his anxieties, and he let the moment pass by him
+unmarked. He had reasons, other and more urgent than those he had given
+her, for taking this road and for staying the night in a place whence
+Whitehaven and Carlisle were equally accessible; and those reasons had
+seemed good enough in the day when the fear of pursuit had swayed him.
+They seemed less pertinent now. He began to wish that he had taken
+another road, pursued another course. And he was deep in a brown study,
+in which love had no part, when an exclamation, at once of surprise and
+admiration, recalled him to the present.
+
+They had topped a bare shoulder and come suddenly in sight of Lake
+Windermere. The moon had not long risen above the hills on their right,
+the water lay on their left; below them stretched a long pale mirror,
+whose borrowed light, passing over the dark woods which framed it,
+faintly lit and explored the stupendous fells and mountains that rose
+beyond. To Stewart it was no unfamiliar or noteworthy sight; and his
+eyes, after a passing glance of approval, turned to the road below them
+and marked with secret anxiety the spot where two or three lights
+indicated their halting-place.
+
+But to Henrietta the sight, as unexpected as it was beautiful, appealed
+in a manner never to be forgotten. She held her breath, and slowly her
+eyes filled. Half subdued by fatigue and darkness, half awake to the
+dangers and possibilities of her situation, she was in the mood most
+fit to be moved by the tender melancholy of the scene. She was feeling
+a craving for something—for something to comfort her, for something to
+reassure her, for something on which to lean in the absence of all the
+common things of life: and there broke on her the mystic beauty of this
+moonlit lake, and it melted her. Her heart, hitherto untouched, awoke.
+The compact which she had made with her lover stood for naught. The
+tears running down her face, she turned to him, she held out her hands
+to him.
+
+“Kiss me!” she murmured. “And say—say you will be good to me! I have
+only you now!—only you!—only you!”
+
+He caught her in his arms and kissed her rapturously; and the embrace
+was ardent enough to send the scarlet surging to her temples, to set
+her heart throbbing. But the chaise was in the very act of drawing up
+at the door of the inn; and it may be doubted if he tasted the full
+sweetness of the occasion. A face looked in at the carriage window, on
+the side farther from the lake appeared a bowing landlord, a voice
+inquired, “Horses on?” The postchaise stopped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+A RED WAISTCOAT
+
+
+Cheerful lights shining from the open doorway and the red-curtained
+windows of the inn, illumined the road immediately before it; and if
+these and the change in all the surroundings did not at once dispel the
+loneliness at Henrietta’s heart, at least they drove the tears from her
+eyes and the blushes from her cheeks. The cold moonlight, the
+unchanging face of nature, had sobered and frightened her; the warmth
+of fire and candle, the sound of voices, and the low, homely front of
+the house, with its two projecting gables, reassured her. The forlorn
+child who had flung herself into her lover’s arms not forty seconds
+before was not to be recognised in the girl who alighted slowly and
+with gay self-possession, took in the scene at a glance, and won the
+hearts of ostler and stableboy by her ease and her fresh young beauty.
+She was bare-headed, and her high-dressed hair, a little disordered by
+the journey, gleamed in the lanthorn-light. Her eyes were like stars.
+The landlord of the inn—known for twenty miles round as “Long Tom
+Gilson”—saw at a glance that the missus’s tongue would run on her. He
+wished that he might not be credited with his hundred-and-thirty-first
+conquest!
+
+The thought, however, did not stand between him and his duty. “Sharp,
+Sam,” he cried briskly. “Fire in Mr. Rogers’s room.” Then to his
+guests: “Late? No, sir, not at all. This way, ma’am. All will be ready
+in a twinkling.”
+
+But Henrietta stood smiling.
+
+“Thank you,” she answered pleasantly, her clear young voice slightly
+raised. “But I wished to be placed in the landlady’s charge. Is she
+here?”
+
+Gilson turned toward the doorway, which his wife’s portly form fitted
+pretty tightly.
+
+“Here, missus,” he cried, “the young lady wants you.”
+
+But Mrs. Gilson was a woman who was not wont to be hurried and before
+she reached the side of the carriage Stewart interposed; more roughly
+and more hurriedly than seemed discreet in the circumstances.
+
+“Let us go in, and settle that afterwards,” he said.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yes,” he retorted. And he grasped the girl’s arm tightly. His voice
+was low, but insistent. “Let us go in.”
+
+But the girl only vouchsafed him a look, half wondering, half
+indignant. She turned to the landlady.
+
+“I am tired, and need no supper,” she said. “Will you take me into a
+room, if you please, where I can rest at once, as we go on early
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Certainly,” the landlady answered. She was a burly, red-faced,
+heavy-browed woman. “But you have come some way, ma’am. Will you not
+take supper with the gentleman?”
+
+“No.”
+
+He interposed.
+
+“At least let us go in!” he repeated pettishly. And there was an
+agitation in his tone and manner not easy to explain, except on the
+supposition that in some way she had thwarted him. “We do not want to
+spend the night on the road, I suppose?”
+
+She did not reply. But none the less, as she followed Mrs. Gilson to
+the door, was she wondering what ailed him. She was unsuspicious by
+nature, and she would not entertain the thought that he wished her to
+act otherwise than she was acting. What was it then? Save for a burly
+man in a red waistcoat who stood in a lighted doorway farther along the
+front of the inn, and seemed to be watching their movements with lazy
+interest, there were only the people of the inn present. And the
+red-waistcoated man could hardly be in pursuit of them, for, for
+certain, he was a stranger. Then what was it?
+
+She might have turned and asked her lover; but she was offended and she
+would not stoop. And before she thought better of it—or worse—she had
+crossed the threshold. A warmer air, an odour of spices and lemons and
+old rum, met her. On the left of the low-browed passage a half-open
+door offered a glimpse of shining glass and ruddy firelight; there was
+Mrs. Gilson’s snuggery, sometimes called the coach office. On the right
+a room with a long table spoke of coaching meals and a groaning board.
+From beyond these, from the penetralia of kitchen and pantry, came
+faint indications of plenty and the spit.
+
+A chambermaid was waiting at the foot of the narrow staircase to go
+before them with lights; but the landlady took the candles herself, and
+dismissed the woman with a single turn of the eye. A habit of obedience
+to Mrs. Gilson was the one habit of the inn, the one common ground on
+which all, from Tom Gilson to the smallest strapper in the stable, came
+together.
+
+The landlady went ponderously up before her guest and opened the door
+of a dimity-hung chamber. It was small and simple, but of the cleanest.
+Hid in it were rosemary and lavender; and the leafless branches of a
+rose-tree whipped the diamond panes of the low, broad window. Mrs.
+Gilson lighted the two wax candles—“waxes” in those days formed part of
+every bill but the bagman’s. Then she turned and looked at the girl
+with deliberate disapproval.
+
+“You will take nothing, ma’am, to eat?” she said.
+
+“No, thank you,” Henrietta answered. And then, resenting the woman’s
+look, “I may as well tell you,” she continued, holding her head high,
+“that we have eloped, and are going to be married to-morrow. That is
+why I wished to be put in your charge.”
+
+The landlady, with her great face frowning, continued to look at the
+girl, and for a moment did not answer.
+
+At length, “You’ve run away,” she said, “from your friends?”
+
+Henrietta nodded loftily.
+
+“From a distance, I take it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well,” Mrs. Gilson rejoined, her face continuing to express growing
+disapproval, “there’s a stock of fools near and far. And if I did my
+duty, young lady, there’d be one who would likely be thankful all her
+life.” She took the snuffers and slowly and carefully snuffed the two
+candles. “If I did my duty, I’d lock you up and keep you safe till your
+friends came for you.”
+
+“You are insolent,” the girl cried, flaming up.
+
+“That depends,” Mrs. Gilson retorted, with the utmost coolness. “Fine
+feathers make fine birds. You may be my lady, or my lady’s maid. Men
+are such fools—all’s of the best that’s red and white. But I’m not so
+easy.”
+
+Henrietta raised her chin a little higher.
+
+“Be good enough to leave the room!” she said.
+
+But the stout woman held her ground.
+
+“Not before I’ve said what I have to say,” she answered. “It is one
+thing, and one thing only, hinders me doing what I ought to do, and
+what if you were my girl I’d wish another to do. And that is—your
+friends may not want you back. And then, to be married tomorrow is like
+enough the best you can do for yourself! And the sooner the better!”
+
+Henrietta’s face turned scarlet, and she stamped on the floor.
+
+“You are a wicked, insolent woman!” she said. “You do not know your
+place, nor mine. How dare you say such things to me? How dare you? Did
+you hear me bid you leave the room?”
+
+“Hoity-toity!”
+
+“Yes, at once!”
+
+“Very good,” Mrs. Gilson replied ponderously—“very good! But you may
+find worse friends than me. And maybe one of them is downstairs now.”
+
+“You hateful woman!” the girl cried; and had a glimpse of the
+landlady’s red, frowning face as the woman turned for a last look in
+the doorway. Then the door closed, and she was left alone—alone with
+her thoughts.
+
+Her face burned, her neck tingled. She was very, very angry, and a
+little frightened. This was a scene in her elopement which anticipation
+had not pictured. It humiliated her—and scared her. To-morrow, no
+doubt, all would be well; all would be cheerfulness, tenderness,
+sunshine; all would be on the right basis. But in the meantime the
+sense of forlornness which had attacked her in the chaise returned on
+her as her anger cooled, and with renewed strength. Her world, the
+world of her whole life up to daybreak of this day, was gone forever.
+In its place she had only this bare room with its small-paned casement
+and its dimity hangings and its clean scent. Of course _he_ was below,
+and he was the world to her, and would make up a hundredfold what she
+had resigned for him. But he was below, he was absent; and meantime her
+ear and her heart ached for a tender word, a kind voice, a look of
+love. At least, she thought, he might have come under her window, and
+whistled the air that had been the dear signal for their meetings. Or
+he might have stood a while and chatted with her, and shown her that he
+was not offended. The severest prude, even that dreadful woman who had
+insulted her, could not object to that!
+
+But he did not come. Of course he was supping—what things men were! And
+then, out of sheer loneliness, her eyes filled, and her thoughts of him
+grew tender and more humble. She dwelt on him no longer as her
+conquest, her admirer, the prize of her bow and spear, subject to her
+lightest whim and her most foolish caprice; but as her all, the one to
+whom she must cling and on whom she must depend. She thought of him as
+for a brief while she had thought of him in the chaise. And she
+wondered with a chill of fear if she would be left after marriage as
+she was left now. She had heard of such things, but in the pride of her
+beauty, and his subjection, she had not thought that they could happen
+to her. Now—— But instead of dwelling on a possibility which frightened
+her, she vowed to be very good to him—good and tender and loyal, and a
+true wife. They were resolutions that a trifling temptation, an hour’s
+neglect or a cross word, might have overcome. But they were honest,
+they were sincere, they were made in the soberest moment that her young
+life had ever known; and they marked a step in development, a point in
+that progress from girlhood to womanhood which so few hours might see
+complete.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson had returned to her snuggery, wearing a face
+that, had the lemons and other comforts about her included cream, must
+have turned it sour. That snuggery, it may be, still exists in the
+older part of the Low Wood Inn. In that event it should have a value.
+For to it Mr. Samuel Rogers, the rich London banker, would sometimes
+condescend from his apartments in the south gable; and with him Mr.
+Kirkpatrick Sharp, a particular gentleman who sniffed a little at the
+rum; or Sir James Mackintosh, who, rumour had it, enjoyed some
+reputation in London as a writer. At times, too, Mr. Southey, Poet
+Laureate elsewhere, but here Squire of Greta Hall, would stop on his
+way to visit his neighbour at Storrs—no such shorthorns in the world as
+Mr. Bolton’s at Storrs; and not seldom he brought with him a London
+gentleman, Mr. Brougham, whose vanity in opposing the Lowther interest
+at the late election had almost petrified Mrs. Gilson. Mr. Brougham
+called himself a Whig, but Mrs. Gilson held him little better than a
+Radical—a kind of cattle seldom seen in those days outside the dock of
+an assize court. Or sometimes the visitor was that queer,
+half-moithered Mr. Wordsworth at Rydal; or Mr. Wilson of Elleray with
+his great voice and his homespun jacket. He had a sort of name too; but
+if he did anything better than he fished, the head ostler was a
+Dutchman!
+
+The visits of these great people, however—not that Mrs. Gilson blenched
+before them, she blenched before nobody short of Lord Lonsdale—had
+place in the summer. To-night the landlady’s sanctum, instead of its
+complement of favourite guests gathered to stare at Mr. Southey’s last
+order for “Horses on!” boasted but a single tenant. Even he sat where
+the landlady did not at once see him; and it was not until she had cast
+a log on the dogs with a violence which betrayed her feelings that he
+announced his presence by a cough.
+
+“There’s the sign of a good house,” he said with approval. “Never
+unprepared!—never unprepared! Come late, come early—coach, chaise, or
+gig—it is all one to a good house.”
+
+“Umph!”
+
+“It is a pleasure to sit by”—he waved his pipe with unction—“and to see
+a thing done properly!”
+
+“Ay, it’s a pleasure to many to sit by,” the landlady answered with
+withering sarcasm. “It’s an easy way of making a living—especially if
+you are waiting for what doesn’t come. Put a red waistcoat on old Sam
+the postboy, and he’d sit by and see as well as another!”
+
+The man in the red waistcoat chuckled.
+
+“I’m glad they don’t take you into council at Bow Street, ma’am!” he
+said.
+
+“They might do worse.”
+
+“They might do better,” he rejoined. “They might take you into the
+force! I warrant”—with a look of respectful admiration—“if they did
+there’s little would escape you. Now that young lady?” He indicated the
+upper regions with his pipe. “Postboys say she came from Lancaster. But
+from where before that?”
+
+“Wherever she’s from, she did not tell me!” Mrs. Gilson snapped.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“And what is more, if she had, I shouldn’t tell you.”
+
+“Oh, come, come, ma’am!” Mr. Bishop was mildly shocked. “Oh, come,
+ma’am! That is not like you. Think of the King and his royal
+prerogative!”
+
+“Fiddlesticks!”
+
+Mr. Bishop looked quite staggered.
+
+“You don’t mean it,” he said—“you don’t indeed. You would not have the
+Radicals and Jacobins ramping over the country, shooting honest men in
+their shops and burning and ravaging, and—and generally playing the
+devil?”
+
+“I suppose you think it is you that stops them?”
+
+“No, ma’am, no,” with a modest smile. “I don’t stop them. I leave that
+to the yeomanry—old England’s bulwark and their country’s pride! But
+when the yeomanry ’ve done their part, I take them, and the law passes
+upon them. And when they have been hung or transported and an example
+made, then you sleep comfortably in your beds. That is what I do. And I
+think I may say that next to Mr. Nadin of Manchester, who is the
+greatest man in our line out of London, I have done as much in that way
+as another.”
+
+Mrs. Gilson sniffed contemptuously.
+
+“Well,” she said, “if you have never done more than you’ve done since
+you’ve been here, it’s a wonder the roof’s on! Though what you expected
+to do, except keep a whole skin, passes me! There’s the _Chronicle_ in
+today, and such talks of riots at Glasgow and Paisley, and such
+meetings here and alarms there, it is a wonder to me”—with
+sarcasm—“they can do without you! To judge by what I hear, Lancashire
+way is just a kettle of troubles and boiling over, and bread that price
+everybody is wanting to take the old King’s crown off his head.”
+
+“And his head off his body, ma’am!” Mr. Bishop added solemnly.
+
+“So that it’s little good you and your yeomanry seem to have done at
+Manchester, except get yourselves abused!”
+
+“Ma’am, the King’s crown is on his head,” Mr. Bishop retorted, “and his
+head is on his body!”
+
+“Well? Not that his head is much good to him, poor mad gentleman!”
+
+“And King Louis, ma’am, years ago—what of him? The King of France,
+ma’am? Crown gone, head gone—all gone! And why? Because there was not a
+good blow struck in time, ma’am! Because, poor, foolish foreigner, he
+had no yeomanry and no Bow Street, ma’am! But the Government, the
+British Government, is wiser. They are brave men—brave noblemen, I
+should say,” Mr. Bishop amended with respect,—“but with treason and
+misprision of treason stalking the land, with the lower orders, that
+should behave themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,
+turned to ramping, roaring Jacobins seeking whom they may devour, and
+whose machine they may break, my lords would not sleep in their
+beds—no, not they, brave men as they are—if it were not for the
+yeomanry and the runners.” He had to pause for breath.
+
+Mrs. Gilson coughed dryly.
+
+“Leather’s a fine thing,” she said, “if you believe the cobbler.”
+
+“Well,” Mr. Bishop answered, nodding his head confidently, “it’s so far
+true you’d do ill without it.”
+
+But Mrs. Gilson was equal to the situation.
+
+“Ay, underfoot,” she said. “But everything in its place. My man, he be
+mad upon tod-hunting; but I never knew him go to Manchester ’Change to
+seek one.”
+
+“No?” Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm’s length, and smiled at it
+mysteriously. “Yet I’ve seen one there,” he continued, “or in such
+another place.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Common Garden, London.”
+
+“It was in a box, then.”
+
+“It was, ma’am,” Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphasis. “It was in
+a box—‘safe bind, safe find,’ ma’am. That’s the motto of my line, and
+that was it precisely! More by token it’s not outside the bounds of
+possibility you may see”—he glanced towards the door as he knocked his
+pipe against his top-boot—“one of my tods in a box before morning.”
+
+Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She never
+stooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was no
+mistaking the ring of triumph in the runner’s tone; yet of all the
+unlikely things within the landlady’s range none seemed more unlikely
+than that he should flush his game there. She had asked herself more
+than once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaise changed
+horses, no rider passed or bagman halted, without running the gauntlet
+of his eye. For in that country of lake and mountain were neither riots
+nor meetings; and though Lancashire lay near, the echoes of strife
+sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands. Mills might be
+burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling in Bolland and
+Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, all England might
+be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Corbett’s Twopenny Register
+and Orator Hunt’s declamations—but neither the glare nor the noise had
+much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop’s presence there seemed
+superfluous therefore; seemed—— But before she could come to the end of
+her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared, demanding four pennyworth
+of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr. Rogers’s room; and when she was
+serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge in incredulity.
+
+“A man must talk if he can’t do,” she said—“if he’s to live.”
+
+Mr. Bishop smiled, and patted his buckskin breeches with confidence.
+
+“You’ll believe ma’am,” he said, “when you see him walk into the coach
+with the handcuffs on his wrists.”
+
+“Ay, I shall!”
+
+The innuendo in the landlady’s tone was so plain that her husband, who
+had entered while she was rinsing the noggin in which she had measured
+the gin, chuckled audibly. She turned an awful stare on him, and he
+collapsed. The Bow Street runner was less amenable to discipline.
+
+“You sent the lad, Tom?” he asked.
+
+The landlord nodded, with an apprehensive eye on his wife.
+
+“He should be back”—Mr. Bishop consulted a huge silver watch—“by
+eleven.”
+
+“Ay, sure.”
+
+“Where has he gone?” Mrs. Gilson asked, with an ominous face.
+
+She seldom interfered in stable matters; but if she chose, it was
+understood that no department was outside her survey.
+
+“Only to Kendal with a message for me,” Bishop answered.
+
+“At this time of the night?”
+
+“Ma’am”—Mr. Bishop rose and tapped his red waistcoat with meaning,
+almost with dignity—“the King has need of him. The King—God bless and
+restore him to health—will pay, and handsomely. For the why and the
+wherefore he has gone, his majesty’s gracious prerogative is to say
+nothing”—with a smile. “That is the rule in Bow Street, and for this
+time we’ll make it the rule under Bow Fell, if you please. Moreover,
+what he took I wrote, ma’am, and as he cannot read and I sent it to one
+who will give it to another, his majesty will enjoy his prerogative as
+he should!”
+
+There was a spark in Mrs. Gilson’s eye. Fortunately the runner saw it,
+and before she could retort he slipped out, leaving the storm to break
+about her husband’s head. Some who had known Mr. Gilson in old days
+wondered how he bore his life, and why he did not hang himself—Mrs.
+Gilson’s tongue was so famous. And more said he had reason to hang
+himself. Only a few, and they the wisest, noted that he who had once
+been Long Tom Gilson grew fat and rosy; and these quoted a proverb
+about the wind and the shorn lamb. One—it was Bishop himself, but he
+had known them no more than three weeks—said nothing when the question
+was raised, but tapped his nose and winked, and looked at Long Tom as
+if he did not pity him overmuch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+A WEDDING MORNING
+
+
+In one particular at least the Bow Street runner was right. The
+Government which ruled England in that year, 1819, was made up of brave
+men; whether they were wise men or great men, or far-seeing men, is
+another question. The peace which followed Waterloo had been welcomed
+with enthusiasm. Men supposed that it would put an end to the enormous
+taxation and the strain which the nation had borne so gallantly during
+twenty years of war. The goddess of prosperity, with her wings of
+silver and her feathers of gold, was to bless a people which had long
+known only paper money. In a twinkling every trade was to flourish,
+every class to be more comfortable, every man to have work and wage,
+plenty and no taxes.
+
+Instead, there ensued a period of want and misery almost without a
+parallel. During the war the country had been self-supporting, wheat
+had risen, land suitable and unsuitable had been enclosed and tilled.
+Bread had been dear but work had been plentiful. Now, at the prospect
+of open ports, wheat fell, land was left derelict, farmers were ruined,
+labourers in thousands went on the rates. Nor among the whirling looms
+of Lancashire or the furnaces of Staffordshire were things better.
+Government orders ceased with the war, while the exhausted Continent
+was too poor to buy. Here also thousands were cast out of work.
+
+The cause of the country’s misfortunes might be this or that. Whatever
+it was, the working classes suffered greater hardships than at any time
+during the war; and finding no anxiety to sympathise in a Parliament
+which represented their betters, began to form—ominous sign—clubs, and
+clubs within clubs, and to seek redress by unlawful means. An open
+rising broke out in the Fen country, and there was fighting at
+Littleport and Ely. There were riots at Spa Fields in London, where
+murder was committed; and there were riots again, which almost amounted
+to a rebellion, in Derbyshire. At Stock-port and in Birmingham immense
+mob meetings took place. In the northern counties the sky was reddened
+night after night by incendiary fires. In the Midlands looms were
+broken and furnaces extinguished. In Lancashire and Yorkshire the air
+was sullen with strikes and secret plottings, and spies, and cold and
+famine.
+
+In the year 1819 things came to a kind of head. There was a meeting at
+Manchester in August. It was such a meeting as had never been seen in
+England. There were sixty thousand at it, there were eighty thousand,
+there were ninety thousand—some said one, some said the other. It was
+so large, at any rate, that it was difficult to say that it was not
+dangerous; and beyond doubt many there would have snatched at the least
+chance of rapine. Be that as it may, the magistrates, in the face of so
+great a concourse, lost their heads. They ordered a small force of
+yeomanry to disperse the gathering. The yeomanry became entangled—a
+second charge was needful: the multitude fled every way. In ten minutes
+the ground was clear; but six lives were lost and seventy persons were
+injured.
+
+At once all England was cleft into parties—that which upheld the
+charge, and that which condemned it. Feelings which had been confined
+to the lower orders spread to the upper; and while from this date the
+section which was to pass the Reform Bill took new shape, underground
+more desperate enterprises were breeding. Undismayed the people met at
+Paisley and at Glasgow, and at each place there were collisions with
+the soldiery.
+
+Mr. Bishop had grounds, therefore, for his opinion of the Government of
+which he shared the favour with the yeomanry—their country’s bulwark
+and its pride. But it is a far cry to Windermere, and no offset from
+the storm which was convulsing Lancashire stirred the face of the lake
+when Henrietta opened her window next morning and looked out on the day
+which was to change all for her. The air was still, the water grey and
+smooth, no gleam of sun showed. Yet the general aspect was mild; and
+would have been cheerful, if the more distant prospect which for the
+first time broke upon Henrietta’s eyes had not raised it and her
+thoughts to the sublime. Beyond the water, above the green slopes and
+wooded knobs which fringed the lake, rose, ridge behind ridge, a wall
+of mountains. It stretched from the Peak of Coniston on the left, by
+the long snow-flecked screes of Bow Fell, to the icy points of the
+Langdales on the right—a new world, remote, clear, beautiful, and
+still: so still, so remote, that it seemed to preach a sermon—to calm
+the hurry of her morning thoughts, and the tumult of youth within her.
+She stood awhile in awe. But her hair was about her shoulders, she was
+only half-dressed; and by-and-by, when her first surprise waned, she
+bethought herself that _he_ might be below, and she drew back from the
+window with a blush. What more likely, what more loverlike, than that
+he should be below? Waiting—on this morning which was to crown his
+hopes—for the first sight of her face, the first opening of her
+lattice, the gleam of her white arm on the sill? Had it been summer,
+and had the rose-tree which framed the window been in bloom, what joy
+to drop with trembling fingers a bud to him, and to know that he would
+treasure it all his life—her last maiden gift! And he? Surely he would
+have sent her an armful to await her rising, that as she dressed she
+might plunge her face into their perfume, and silently plighting her
+troth to him, renew the pure resolves which she had made in the night
+hours!
+
+But when she peeped out shyly, telling herself that she was foolish to
+blush, and that the time for blushing was past, she failed to discover
+him. There was a girl—handsome after a dark fashion—seated on a low
+wall on the farther side of the road; and a group of four or five men
+were standing in front of the inn door, talking in excited tones.
+Conceivably he might be one of the men, for she could hear them better
+than she could see them—the door being a good deal to one side. But
+when she had cautiously opened her window and put out her head—her hair
+by this time being dressed—he was not among them.
+
+She was drawing in her head, uncertain whether to pout or not, when her
+eyes met those of the young woman on the wall; and the latter smiled.
+Possibly she had noted the direction of Henrietta’s glance, and drawn
+her inference. At any rate, her smile was so marked and so malicious
+that Henrietta felt her cheek grow hot, and lost no time in drawing
+back and closing the window.
+
+“What a horrid girl!” she exclaimed.
+
+Still, after the first flush of annoyance, she would have thought no
+more of it—would indeed have laughed at herself for her fancy—if Mrs.
+Gilson’s strident voice had not at that moment brought the girl to her
+feet.
+
+“Bess! Bess Hinkson!” the landlady cried, apparently from the doorway.
+“Hast come with the milk? Then come right in and let me have it? What
+are you gaping at there, you gaby? What has’t to do with thee? I do
+think”—with venom—“the world is full of fools!”
+
+The girl with a sullen air took up a milk-pail that stood beside her;
+she wore the short linsey petticoat of the rustic of that day, and a
+homespun bodice. Her hair, brilliantly black, and as thick as a horse’s
+mane, was covered only by a handkerchief knotted under her chin.
+
+“Bess Hinkson? What a horrid name!” Henrietta muttered as she watched
+her cross the road. She did not dream that she would ever see the girl
+again: the more as the men’s voices—she was nearly ready to
+descend—fixed her attention next. She caught a word, then listened.
+
+“The devil’s in it if he’s not gone Whitehaven way!” one said. “That’s
+how he’s gone! Through Carlisle, say you? Not he!”
+
+“But without a horse? He’d no horse.”
+
+“And what if he’d not?” the first speaker retorted, with the impatience
+of superior intellect. “It’s Tuesday, the day of the Man packet-boat,
+and he’d be away in her.”
+
+“But the packet don’t leave Whitehaven till noon,” a third struck in.
+“And they’ll be there and nab him before that. S’help me, he has not
+gone Whitehaven way!”
+
+“Maybe he’d take a boat?”
+
+“He’d lack the time”—with scorn.
+
+“He’s took a boat here,” another maintained. “That’s what he has done.
+He’s took a boat here and gone down in the dark to Newby Bridge.”
+
+“But there’s not a boat gone!” another speaker retorted in triumph.
+“What do you say to that?”
+
+So far Henrietta’s ear followed the argument; but her mind lagged at
+the point where the matter touched her.
+
+“The Man packet-boat?” she thought, as she tied the last ribbon at her
+neck and looked sideways at her appearance in the squat, filmy mirror.
+“That must be the boat to the Isle of Man. It leaves Whitehaven the
+same day as the Scotch boat, then. Perhaps there is but one, and it
+goes on to the Isle of Man. And I shall go by it. And then—and then——”
+
+A knock at the door severed the thread, and drove the unwonted languor
+from her eyes. She cast a last look at her reflection in the glass, and
+turned herself about that she might review her back-hair. Then she
+swept the table with her eye, and began to stuff this and that into her
+bandbox. The knock was repeated.
+
+“I am coming,” she cried. She cast one very last look round the room,
+and, certain that she had left nothing, took up her bonnet and a shawl
+which she had used for a wrap over her riding-dress. She crossed the
+room towards the door. As she raised her hand to the latch, a smile
+lurked in the dimples of her cheeks. There was a gleam of fun in her
+eyes; the lighter side of her was uppermost again.
+
+It was not her lover, however, who stood waiting outside, but Modest
+Ann—she went commonly by that name—the waiting-maid of the inn, who was
+said to mould herself on her mistress and to be only a trifle less
+formidable when roused. The two were something alike, for the maid was
+buxom and florid; and fame told of battles between them whence no
+ordinary woman, no ordinary tongue, no mortal save Mrs. Gilson, could
+have issued victorious. Fame had it also that Modest Ann remained after
+her defeat only by reason of an attachment, held by most to be
+hopeless, to the head ostler. And for certain, severe as she was, she
+permitted some liberty of speech on the subject.
+
+Henrietta, however, did not know that here was another slave of love;
+and her face fell.
+
+“Is Mr. Stewart waiting?” she asked.
+
+“No, miss,” the woman answered, civilly enough, but staring as if she
+could never see enough of her. “But Mrs. Gilson will be glad if you’ll
+speak to her.”
+
+Henrietta raised her eyebrows. It was on the tip of her tongue to
+answer, “Then let her come to me!” But she remembered that these people
+did not know who she was—knew indeed nothing of her. And she answered
+instead: “I will come. Where is she?”
+
+“This way, miss. I’ll show you the way.”
+
+Henrietta wondered, as the woman conducted her along several low-ceiled
+passages, and up and down odd stairs, and past windows which disclosed
+the hill rising immediately at the back of the house, what the landlady
+wanted.
+
+“She is an odious woman!” she thought, with impatience. “How horrid she
+was to me last night! If ever there was a bully, she is one! And this
+creature looks not much better!”
+
+Modest Ann, turning her head at the moment, belied the ill opinion by
+pointing out a step in a dark corner.
+
+“There is a stair here, miss,” she said. “Take care.”
+
+“Thank you,” Henrietta answered in her clear, girlish voice. “Is Mr.
+Stewart with Mrs.—— What’s her name?”
+
+“Mrs. Gilson? No, miss.”
+
+And pausing, the woman opened a door, and made way for Henrietta to
+enter.
+
+At that instant—and strange to say, not before—a dreadful suspicion
+leapt up in the girl’s brain. What if her brother had followed her, and
+was there? Or worse still, Captain Clyne? What if she were summoned to
+be confronted with them and to be taken home in shameful durance, after
+the fashion of a naughty child that had behaved badly and was in
+disgrace? The fire sprang to her eyes, her cheeks burnt. It was too
+late to retreat; but her pretty head went up in the air, and her look
+as she entered spoke flat rebellion. She swept the room with a glance
+of flame.
+
+However, there was no one to be burned up: no brother, no slighted,
+abandoned suitor. In the room, a good-sized, pleasant room, looking on
+the lake, were only Mrs. Gilson, who stood beside the table, which was
+laid for breakfast, and a strange man. The man was gazing from the
+window, but he turned abruptly, disclosing a red waistcoat, as her eye
+fell on him. She looked from one to the other in great surprise, in
+growing surprise. What did the man there?
+
+“Where is Mr. Stewart?” she asked, her frigid tone expressing her
+feelings. “Is he not here?”
+
+Mrs. Gilson seemed about to answer, but the man forestalled her.
+
+“No, miss,” he said, “he is not.”
+
+“Where is he?”
+
+She asked the question with undisguised sharpness.
+
+Mr. Bishop nodded like a man well pleased.
+
+“That is the point, miss,” he answered—“precisely. Where is he?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+TWO TO ONE
+
+
+Henrietta, high-spirited and thoughtless, was more prone to anger than
+to fear, to resentment than to patience. But all find something
+formidable in the unknown; and the presence of this man who spoke with
+so much aplomb, and referred to her lover as if he had some concern in
+him, was enough to inspire her with fear and set her on her guard.
+Nevertheless, she could not quite check the first impulse to
+resentment; the man’s very presence was a liberty, and her tone when
+she spoke betrayed her sense of this.
+
+“I have no doubt,” she said, “that Mr. Stewart can be found if you wish
+to see him.” She turned to Mrs. Gilson. “Be good enough,” she said, “to
+send some one in search of him.”
+
+“I have done that already,” the man Bishop answered.
+
+The landlady, who did not move, seemed tongue-tied. But she did not
+take her eyes off the girl.
+
+Henrietta frowned. She threw her bonnet and shawl on a side-table.
+
+“Be good enough to send again, then,” she said, turning and speaking in
+the indifferent tone of one who was wont to have her orders obeyed. “He
+is probably within call. The chaise is ordered for ten.”
+
+Bishop advanced a step and tapped the palm of one hand with the fingers
+of the other.
+
+“That is the point, miss!” he said impressively. “You’ve hit it. The
+chaise is ordered for ten. It is nine now, within a minute—and the
+gentleman cannot be found.”
+
+“Cannot be found?” she echoed, in astonishment at his familiarity.
+“Cannot be found?” She turned imperiously to Mrs. Gilson. “What does
+this person mean?” she said. And her tone was brave. But the colour
+came and went in her cheeks, and the first flutter of alarm darkened
+her eyes.
+
+The landlady found her voice.
+
+“He means,” she said bluntly, “that he did not sleep in his bed last
+night.”
+
+“Mr. Stewart?”
+
+“The gentleman who came with you.”
+
+“Oh, but,” Henrietta cried, “you must be jesting?” She would not, she
+could not, give way to the doubt that assailed her.
+
+“It is no jest,” Bishop answered gravely, and with something like pity
+in his voice. For the girl looked very fair and very young, and wore
+her dignity prettily. “It is no jest, miss, believe me. But perhaps we
+could read the riddle—we should know more, at any rate—if you were to
+tell us from what part you came yesterday.”
+
+But she had her wits about her, and she was not going to tell them
+that! No, no! Moreover, on the instant she had a thought—that this was
+no jest, but a trick, a cruel, cowardly trick, to draw from her the
+knowledge which they wanted, and which she must not give! Beyond doubt
+that was it; she snatched thankfully at the notion. This odious woman,
+taking advantage of Stewart’s momentary absence, had called in the man,
+and thought to bully her, a young girl in a strange place, out of the
+information which she had wished to get the night before.
+
+The impertinents! But she would be a match for them.
+
+“That is my affair,” she said.
+
+“But——”
+
+“And will remain so!” she continued warmly. “For the rest, I am
+inclined to think that this is a trap of some sort! If so, you may be
+sure that Mr. Stewart will know how to resent it, and any impertinence
+offered to me. You”—she turned suddenly upon Mrs. Gilson—“you ought to
+be ashamed of yourself!”
+
+Mrs. Gilson nodded oracularly.
+
+“I am ashamed of somebody,” she said.
+
+The girl thought that she was gaining the advantage.
+
+“Then at once,” she said, “let Mr. Stewart know that I am waiting for
+him. Do you hear, madam?” she stamped the floor with her foot, and
+looked the pretty fury to the life. “And see that this person leaves
+the room. Good-morning, sir. You will hear from Mr. Stewart what I
+think of your intrusion.”
+
+Bishop opened his mouth to reply. But he caught Mrs. Gilson’s eye; and
+by a look, such a look as appalled even the Bow Street runner’s stout
+heart, she indicated the door. After a second of hesitation he passed
+out meekly.
+
+When he was gone, “Very good, miss,” the landlady said in the tone of
+one who restrained her temper with difficulty—“very good. But if you’re
+to be ready you’d best eat your breakfast—if, that is, it is good
+enough for you!” she added. And with a very grim face she swept from
+the room and left Henrietta in possession of the field.
+
+The girl sprang to the window and looked up and down the road. She had
+the same view of the mild autumn morning, of the grey lake and distant
+range of hills which had calmed her thoughts an hour earlier. But the
+beauty of the scene availed nothing now. She was flushed with
+vexation—impatient, resentful. Where was he? He was not in sight. Then
+where could he be? And why did he leave her? Did he think that he need
+no longer press his suit, that the need for _pettis soins_ and
+attentions was over? Oh, but she would show him! And in a moment all
+the feelings of the petted, spoiled girl were up in arms.
+
+“They are horrid!” she cried, angry tears in her eyes. “It’s an
+outrage—a perfect outrage! And he is no better. How dare he leave me,
+this morning of all mornings?”
+
+On which there might have stolen into her mind—so monstrous did his
+neglect seem—a doubt, a suspicion; the doubt and the suspicion which
+she repelled a few minutes earlier. But, as she turned, her eyes fell
+on the breakfast-table; and vexation was not proof against a healthy
+appetite.
+
+“I will show him,” she thought resentfully, “that I am not so dependent
+on him as he thinks. I shall not wait—I shall take my breakfast. That
+odious woman was right for once.”
+
+And she sat down in the seat placed for her. But as quickly she was up
+again, and at the oval glass over the mantel—where Samuel Rogers had
+often viewed his cadaverous face—to inspect herself and be sure that
+she was looking her best, so that _his_ despair, when he came and found
+her cold and distant, would be the deeper. Soon satisfied, she
+returned, smiling dangerously, to her seat; and this time she fell-to
+upon the eggs and girdle-cakes, and the home-cured ham, and the tea at
+ten shillings a pound. The room had a window to the lake and a second
+window which looked to the south and was not far from the first. Though
+low-ceiled, it was of a fair size, with a sunk cupboard, with glazed
+upper doors, on each side of the fireplace, and cushioned seats in the
+window-places. In a recess near the door—the room was full of
+corners—were book-shelves; and on the other side of the door stood a
+tall clock with a very pale face. The furniture was covered with some
+warm red stuff, well worn; and an air of that snug comfort which was
+valued by Englishmen of the day pervaded all, and went well with the
+scent of the China tea.
+
+But neither tea nor comfort, nor the cheerful blaze on the hearth,
+could long hold Henrietta’s thoughts; nor resentment repress her
+anxiety. Presently she began to listen after every mouthful: her fork
+was as often suspended as at work. Her pretty face grew troubled and
+her brow more deeply puckered, until her wandering eye fell on the
+clock, and she saw that the slowly jerking hand was on the verge of the
+half-hour.
+
+Then she sprang up, honestly frightened. She flew to the window that
+looked on the lake and peered out anxiously; thence to the side window,
+but she got no glimpse of him. She came back distracted to the table
+and stood pressing her hands to her eyes. What if they were right, and
+he had not slept in his bed? What if something had happened to him? But
+that was impossible! Impossible! Things did not happen on such mornings
+as this! On wedding mornings! Yet if that were the case, and they had
+sent for her that they might break it to her—and then their hearts,
+even that woman’s heart, had failed them? What—what then?
+
+She was trying to repel the thought when she fancied that she heard a
+sound at the door, and with a gasp of relief she looked up. If he had
+entered at that moment, she would have flung herself into his arms and
+forgiven all and forgotten all. But he did not enter, and her heart
+sank again, and lower. She went slowly to the door and listened, and
+found that the sound which she had heard was caused by the whispering
+of persons outside.
+
+She summoned her pride to her aid then. She opened the door to its full
+extent and walked back to the table, and turning, waited haughtily for
+them to enter. But to speak, to command her voice, was harder, and it
+was all she could do to murmur,
+
+“Something has happened to him”—her lip fluttered ominously—“and you
+have come to tell me?”
+
+“Nothing that I know of,” Bishop answered cheerfully. He and the
+landlady had walked in and closed the door behind them. “Nothing at
+all.”
+
+“No?” She could hardly believe him.
+
+“Not the least thing in life, miss,” he repeated. “He’s alive and well
+for what I know—alive and well!”
+
+She sat down on a chair that stood beside her, and the colour flowed
+back to her cheeks. She laughed weakly.
+
+“I was afraid that something had happened,” she murmured.
+
+“No,” Mr. Bishop answered, more seriously, “it’s not that. It’s not
+that, miss. But all the same it’s trouble. Now if you were to tell me,”
+he continued, leaning forward persuasively, “where you come from, I
+need have hardly a word with you. I can see you’re a lady; your friends
+will come; and, s’help me, in six months you’ll have your matie again,
+and not know it happened!
+
+“I shall not tell you,” she said.
+
+The officer shook his head, surprised by her firmness.
+
+“Come now, miss—be advised,” he urged. “Be reasonable. Just think for
+once that others may know better than you, and save me the
+trouble—that’s a good young lady.”
+
+But the wheedling appeal, the familiar tone, grated on her. Her
+fingers, tapping on the table, betrayed impatience as well as alarm.
+
+“I do not understand you,” she said, with some return of her former
+distance. “If nothing has happened to Mr. Stewart, I do not understand
+what you can have to say to me, nor why you are here.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Well, miss,” he said, “if you must have it, you must. I’m bound to say
+you are not a young lady to take a hint.”
+
+That frightened her.
+
+“If nothing has happened to him——” she murmured, and looked from one to
+the other; from Mr. Bishop’s smug face to the landlady’s stolid visage.
+
+“It’s not what has happened to him,” the runner answered bluntly. “It
+is what is likely to happen to him.”
+
+He drew from his pocket as he spoke a large leather case, unstrapped
+it, and put the strap, which would have handily spliced a cart-trace of
+these days, between his teeth. Then he carefully selected from the mass
+of papers which the case contained a single letter. It was written, as
+the letters of that day were written, on three sides of a square sheet
+of coarsish paper. The fourth side served for envelope—that is, it bore
+the address and seal. But Bishop was careful to fold the letter in such
+a way that these and the greater part of the writing were hidden. He
+proffered the paper, so arranged, to Henrietta.
+
+“D’you know the handwriting,” he asked, “of that letter, miss?”
+
+She had watched his actions with fascinated eyes, and could not think,
+could not imagine, whither they tended. She was really frightened now.
+But her mettle was high; she had the nerves of youth, and she hid her
+dismay. The hand with which she took the letter was steady as a rock,
+the manner with which she looked at it composed; but no sooner had her
+eyes fallen on the writing than she uttered an exclamation, and the
+colour rose to her cheeks.
+
+“How did you get this?” she cried.
+
+“No, miss, no,” the runner answered. “One at a time. The question is,
+Do you know the fist? The handwriting, I mean. But I see you do.”
+
+“It is Mr. Stewart’s,” she answered.
+
+He glanced at Mrs. Gilson as if to bespeak her attention.
+
+“Just so,” he said. “It is Mr. Stewart’s. And I warrant you have others
+like it, and could prove the fact if it were needed. No—don’t read it,
+miss, if you please,” he continued. “You can tell me without that
+whether the gentleman has any friends in these parts.”
+
+“None.”
+
+“That you know of?”
+
+“I never heard of any,” she answered. Her astonishment was so great
+that she did not now think of refusing to answer. And besides, here was
+his handwriting. And why did he not come? The clock was on the point of
+striking; at this hour, at this minute, they should have been leaving
+the door of the inn.
+
+“No, miss,” Bishop answered, exchanging a look with the landlady. “Just
+so, you’ve never heard of any. Then one more question, if you please.
+You are going north, to Scotland, to be married to-day? Now which way,
+I wonder?”
+
+She frowned at him in silence. She began to see his drift.
+
+“By Keswick and Carlisle?” he continued, watching her face. “Or by
+Kendal and Penrith? Or by Cockermouth and Whitehaven? But no. There’s
+only the Isle of Man packet out of Whitehaven.”
+
+“It goes on to Dumfries,” she said. The words escaped her in spite of
+herself.
+
+He smiled as he shook his head.
+
+“No,” he said; “it’d be a very long way round if it did. But Mr.
+Stewart told you that, did he? I see he did. Well, you’ve had an
+escape, miss. That’s all I can say.”
+
+The colour rose to her very brow, but her eyes met his boldly.
+
+“How?” she said. “What do you mean?”
+
+“How?” he repeated. “If you knew, miss, who the man was—your Mr.
+Stewart—you’d know how—and what you have escaped!”
+
+“Who he was?” she muttered.
+
+“Ay, who he was!” he retorted. “I can tell you this at least, young
+lady,” he added bluntly, “he’s the man that’s very badly
+wanted—uncommonly badly wanted!”—with a grin—“in more places than one,
+but nowhere more than where he came from.”
+
+“Wanted?” she said, the colour fading in her cheek. “For what? What do
+you mean?”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“That is what I asked.”
+
+His face was a picture of importance and solemnity. He looked at the
+landlady as much as to say, “See how I will prostrate her!” But nothing
+indicated his sense of the avowal he was going to make so much as the
+fact that instead of raising his voice he lowered it.
+
+“You shall have the answer, miss, though I thought to spare you,” he
+said. “He’s wanted for being an uncommon desperate villain, I am sorry
+to say. For treason, and misprision of treason, and conspiracy. Ay, but
+that’s the man you’ve come away with,” shaking his head solemnly. “He’s
+wanted for bloody conspiracy—ay, it is so indeed—equal to any Guy
+Fawkes, against my lord the King, his crown and dignity! Seven
+indictments—and not mere counts, miss—have been found against him, and
+those who were with him, and him the worst! And when he’s taken, as
+he’s sure to be taken by-and-by, he’ll suffer!” And Mr. Bishop nodded
+portentously.
+
+Her face was quite white now.
+
+“Mr. Stewart?” she gasped.
+
+“You call him Stewart,” the runner replied coolly. “I call him
+Walterson—Walterson the younger. But he has passed by a capful of
+names. Anyway, he’s wanted for the business in Spa Fields in ’16, and
+half a dozen things besides!”
+
+The colour returned to Henrietta’s cheeks with a rush. Her fine eyes
+glowed, her lips parted.
+
+“A conspirator!” she murmured. “A conspirator!” She fondled the word as
+if it had been “love” or “kisses.” “I suppose, then,” she continued,
+with a sidelong look at Bishop, “if he were taken he would lose his
+life?”
+
+“Sure as eggs!”
+
+Henrietta drew a deep breath; and with the same sidelong look:
+
+“He would be beheaded—in the Tower?”
+
+The runner laughed with much enjoyment.
+
+“Lord save your innocent heart, miss,” he said—“no! He would just hang
+outside Newgate.”
+
+She shuddered violently at that. The glow of eye and cheek faded, and
+tears rose instead. She walked to a window, and with her back to them
+dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Then she turned.
+
+“Is that all?” she said.
+
+“Good God!” Bishop cried. He stared, nonplussed. “Is that all?” he
+said. “Would you have more?”
+
+“Neither more nor less,” she answered—between tears and smiles, if his
+astonished eyes did not deceive him. “For now I know—I know why he left
+me, why he is not here.”
+
+“Good lord!”
+
+“If you thought, sir,” she continued, drawing herself up and speaking
+with indignation, “that because he was in danger, because he was
+proscribed, because a price was set on his head, I should desert him,
+and betray him, and sell his secrets to you—I, his wife—you were indeed
+mistaken!”
+
+“But damme!” Mr. Bishop cried in amazement almost too great for words,
+“you are not his wife!”
+
+“In the sight of Heaven,” she answered firmly, “I am!” She was shaking
+with excitement. “In the sight of Heaven I am!” she repeated solemnly.
+And so real was the feeling that she forgot for the moment the
+situation in which her lover’s flight had left her. She forgot herself,
+forgot all but the danger that menaced him, and the resolution that
+never, never, never should it part her from him.
+
+Mr. Bishop would fain have answered fittingly, and to that end sought
+words. But he found none strong enough.
+
+“Well, I am dashed!” was all he could find to say. “I _am_ dashed!”
+Then—the thing was too much for one—he sought support in Mrs. Gilson’s
+eye. “There, ma’am,” he said vehemently, extending one hand, “I ask
+you! You are a woman of sense! I ask you! Did you ever? Did you ever,
+out of London or in London?”
+
+The landlady’s answer was as downright as it was unwelcome.
+
+“I never see such a fool!” she said, “if that’s what you mean. And
+you”—with scorn—“to call yourself a Bow Street man! Bow Street? Bah!”
+
+Mr. Bishop opened his mouth.
+
+“A parish constable’s a Solomon to you!” she continued, before he could
+speak.
+
+His face was purple, his surprise ludicrous.
+
+“To me?” he ejaculated incredulously. “S’help me, ma’am, you are mad,
+or I am! What have I done?”
+
+“It’s not what you’ve done!” Mrs. Gilson answered grimly. “It’s what
+you’ve left undone! Oh, you gaby!” she continued, with unction. “You
+poor creature! You bag of goose-feathers! D’you know no more of women
+than that? Why, I’ve kept my mouth shut the last ten blessed minutes
+for nothing else but to see what a fool you’d make of yourself! And for
+certain it was not for nothing!”
+
+Henrietta tapped the table.
+
+“Perhaps when you’ve done,” she said, with tragic dignity, “you will
+both be good enough to leave the room. I desire to be alone.”
+
+Her eyes were like stars. In her voice was an odd mixture of elation
+and alarm.
+
+Mrs. Gilson turned on the instant and engaged her.
+
+“Don’t talk nonsense!” she said. “Desire to be alone indeed! You
+deserve to be alone, miss, with bread and water, and the lock on the
+door! Oh, you may stare! But do you do now what he should have made you
+do a half-hour ago! And then you’ll feel a little less like a play
+actress! Alone indeed! Read that letter and tell me then what you think
+of yourself!”
+
+Henrietta’s eyes sparkled with anger, but she fought hard for her
+dignity.
+
+“I am not used to impertinence,” she said. “You forget yourself!”
+
+“Read,” Mrs. Gilson retorted, “and say what you like then. You’ll have
+little stomach for saying anything,” she added in an undertone, “or I’m
+a Dutchman!”
+
+Henrietta saw nothing for it but to read under protest, and she did so
+with a smile of contempt. In the circumstances it seemed the easier
+course. But alas! as she read, her pretty, angry face changed. She had
+that extreme delicacy of complexion which betrays the least ebb and
+flow of feeling: and in turn perplexity, wonder, resentment, all were
+painted there, and vividly. She looked up.
+
+“To whom was this written?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
+
+Mrs. Gilson was pitiless.
+
+“Look at the beginning!” she answered.
+
+The girl turned back mechanically, and read that which she had read
+before. But then with surprise; now with dread.
+
+“Who is—Sally?” she muttered.
+
+Despite herself, her voice seemed to fail her on the word. And she
+dared not meet their eyes.
+
+“Who’s Sally?” Mrs. Gilson repeated briskly. “Why, his wife, to be
+sure! Who should she be?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+A JEZEBEL
+
+
+There was a loud drumming in Henrietta’s ears, and a dimness before her
+eyes. In the midst of this a voice, which she would not have known for
+her own, cried loudly and clearly, “No!” And again, more violently,
+“No!”
+
+“But it is ‘Yes’!” the landlady answered coolly. “Why not? D’you
+think”—with rough contempt—“he’s the first man that’s lied to a woman?
+or you’re the first woman that’s believed a rascal? She’s his wife
+right enough, my girl”—comfortably. “Don’t he ask after his children?
+If you’ll turn to the bottom of the second page you’ll see for
+yourself! Oh, quite the family man, he is!”
+
+The girl’s hand shook like ash-leaves in a light breeze; the paper
+rustled in her grasp. But she had regained command of herself—she came
+of a stiff, proud stock, and the very brusqueness of the landlady
+helped her; and she read word after word and line after line of the
+letter. She passed from the bottom of the second sheet to the head of
+the third, and so to the end. But so slowly, so laboriously that it was
+plain that her mind was busy reading between the lines—was busy
+comparing, sifting, remembering.
+
+To Bishop’s credit be it said, he kept his eyes off the girl. But at
+last he spoke.
+
+“I’d that letter from his wife’s hand,” he said. “They are married
+right enough—in Hounslow Church, miss. She lives there, two doors from
+the ‘George’ posting-house, where folks change horses between London
+and Windsor. She was a waiting-maid in the coffee-room, and ’twas a
+rise for her. But she’s not seen him for three years—reason, he’s been
+in hiding—nor had a penny from him. Now she’s got it he’s taken up with
+some woman hereabouts, and she put me on the scent. He’s a fine gift of
+the gab, but for all that his father’s naught but a little apothecary,
+and as smooth a rogue and as big a Radical, one as the other! I wish to
+goodness,” the runner continued, suddenly reminded of his loss, “I’d
+took him last night when he came in! But——”
+
+“That’ll do!” Mrs. Gilson said, cutting him short, as if he were a tap
+she had turned on for her own purposes. “You can go now!”
+
+“But——”
+
+“Did you hear me, man? Go!” the landlady thundered. And a glance of her
+eye was sufficient to bring the runner to heel like a scolded hound.
+“Go, and shut the door after you,” she continued, with sharpness. “I’ll
+have no eavesdropping in my house, prerogative or no prerogative!”
+
+When he was gone she showed a single spark of mercy. She went to the
+fire and proceeded to mend it noisily, as if it were the one thing in
+the world to be attended to. She put on wood, and swept the hearth, and
+made a to-do with it. True, the respite was short; a minute or two at
+most. But when the landlady had done, and turned her attention to the
+girl, Henrietta had moved to the window, so that only her back was
+visible. Even then, for quite a long minute Mrs. Gilson stood, with
+arms akimbo and pursed lips, reading the lines of the girl’s figure and
+considering her, as if even her rugged bosom knew pity. And in the end
+it was Henrietta who spoke—humbly, alas! now, and in a voice almost
+inaudible.
+
+“Will you leave me, please?” she said.
+
+“I will,” Mrs. Gilson answered gruffly. “But on one understanding,
+miss—and I’ll have it plain. It must be all over. If you are satisfied
+he is a rascal—he has four children—well and good. But I’ll have no
+goings on with such in my house, and no making two bites of a cherry!
+Here’s a bit of paper I’ll put on the table.”
+
+“I am satisfied,” Henrietta whispered.
+
+Under the woman’s blunt words she shook as under blows.
+
+But Mrs. Gilson seemed to pay little heed to her feelings.
+
+“Very good, very good!” she answered. “But I’ll leave the paper all the
+same. It’s but a bit of a handbill that fool of a runner brought with
+him, but ’twill show you what kind of a poor thing your Joe was. Just a
+spouter, that got drunk on his own words and shot a poor inoffensive
+gentleman in a shop! Shame on him for a little dirty murder, if ever
+there was one.”
+
+“Oh, please go! please go!” Henrietta wailed.
+
+“Very well. But there’s the paper. And do you begin to think”—removing
+with housewifely hand a half-eaten dish of eggs from the table, and
+deftly poising on the same arm a large ham—“do you begin to think like
+a grown, sensible woman what you’d best do. The shortest folly’s
+soonest over! That’s my opinion.”
+
+And with that she opened the door, and, heavily laden, made her way
+downstairs.
+
+The girl turned and stood looking at the room, and her face was wofully
+changed. It was white and pinched, and full of strained wonder, as if
+she asked herself if she were indeed herself, and if it could really be
+to her that this thing had happened. She looked older by years, she
+looked almost plain. But in her eyes was a latent fierceness. An
+observer might have guessed that her pride suffered more sharply than
+her heart. Possibly she had never loved the man with half the fervour
+with which she now hated him.
+
+And that was true, though the change was sudden; ay, and though
+Henrietta did not know it, nor would have admitted it. She suffered
+notwithstanding, and horribly. For, besides pride, there were other
+things that lay wounded and bleeding: her happy-go-lucky nature that
+had trusted lightly, and would be slow to trust again; her girlish
+hopes and dreams; and the foolish fancy that had passed for love, and
+in a single day, an hour, a minute, might have become love. And one
+other thing—the bloom of her innocence. For though she had escaped, she
+had come too near the fire not to fear it henceforth, and bear with her
+the smell of singeing.
+
+As she thought of that, of her peril and her narrow escape, and
+reflected how near she had come to utter shipwreck, her face lost its
+piteous look, and grew harder, and sharper, and sterner; so that the
+wealth of bright hair, that was her glory, crowned it only too
+brilliantly, only too youthfully. She saw how he had fooled her to the
+top of her bent; how he had played on her romantic tastes and her silly
+desire for secrecy. A low-born creature, an agitator, hiding from the
+consequences of a cowardly crime, he had happened upon her in his
+twilight walks, desired her—for an amusement, turned her head with
+inflated phrases, dazzled her inexperience with hints of the world and
+his greatness in it. And she—she had thought herself wiser than all
+about her, as she had thought him preferable to the legitimate lover
+assigned to her by her family. And she had brought herself to this!
+This was the end!
+
+Or no, not the end. The game, for what it was worth, was over. But the
+candle-money remained to be paid. Goldsmith’s stanzas had still their
+vogue; mothers quoted them to their daughters. Henrietta knew that when
+lovely woman stoops to folly, even to folly of a lighter dye—when she
+learns, though not too late, that men betray, there is a penalty to be
+paid. The world is censorious, was censorious then, and apt to draw
+from very small evidence a very dark inference. Henrietta’s face,
+flaming suddenly from brow to neck, proved her vivid remembrance of
+this. Had she not called herself—the words burned her—“his wife in the
+sight of Heaven”? And now she must go back—if they would receive her—go
+back and face those whom she had left so lightly, face the lover whom
+she had flouted and betrayed, meet the smirks of the men and the sneers
+of the women, and the thoughts of both! Go back to blush before the
+servants, and hear from the lips of that grim prude, her sister-in-law,
+many things, both true and untrue!
+
+The loss of the tender future, of the rosy anticipations in which she
+had lived for weeks as in a fairy palace—she could bear this! And the
+rough awakening from the maiden dream which she had taken for love—she
+must bear that too, though it left her world cold as the sheet of grey
+water before her, and repellent as the bald, rugged screes that frowned
+above it. She would bear the heartsickness, the loneliness, the pain
+that treachery inflicts on innocence; but the shame of the
+home-coming—if they would receive her, which she doubted—the coarse
+taunts and stinging innuendoes, the nods, the shrugs, the winks—these
+she could not face. Anything, anything were better, if anything she
+could find—deserted, flung aside, homeless as she was.
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson, descending with a sour face, had come upon a
+couple of maids listening at the foot of the stairs. She had made sharp
+work of them, sending them packing with fleas in their ears. But they
+proved to be only the _avant-couriers_ of scandal. Below were the
+Troutbeck apothecary and a dozen gossips, whom the news had brought
+over the hill; and hangers-on without number. All, however, had no
+better fate with Mrs. Gilson; not the parish constable of Bowness,
+whose staff went for little, nor even Mr. Bishop, that great man out of
+doors, at whose slightest nod ostlers ran and helpers bowed; he smiled
+superior, indeed, but he had the wisdom to withdraw. In two minutes, in
+truth, there remained of the buzzing crowd only the old curate of
+Troutbeck supping small beer with a toast in it. And he, it was said,
+knew better than any the length of the landlady’s foot.
+
+But this was merely to move the centre of ferment to the inn-yard. Here
+the news that the house had sheltered a man for whose capture the
+Government offered six hundred guineas, bred wild excitement. He had
+vanished, it was true, like a child of the mist. But he might be found
+again. Meantime the rustics gaped on the runner with saucer eyes, or
+flew hither and thither at his beck. And Radicals being at a discount
+in the Lowther country, and six hundred guineas a sum for which old
+Hinkson the miser would have bartered his soul, some spat on their
+hands and swore what they would do if they met the devil; while others,
+who were not apt at thinking, retired into corners and with knitted
+brows and hands plunged into breeches pockets conjured up a map of the
+world about Windermere.
+
+It should be borne in mind that at this time police were
+unknown—outside London. There were parish constables; but where these
+were not cobblers, which was strangely often the case, they were men
+past work, appointed to save the rates. If a man’s pocket were picked,
+therefore, or his stack fired, his daughter abducted, or his mare
+stolen, he had only himself and his friends to look to. He must follow
+the offender, confront him, seize him, carry him to the gaol. He must
+do all himself. Naturally, if he were a timid man or unpopular, the
+rogue went free; and sometimes went free again and again until he
+became the terror of the country-side. A fact which enables us to
+understand the terrors of lonely houses in those days, and explains the
+repugnance to life in solitary places which is traditional in some
+parts of England.
+
+On the other hand, where the crime was known and outrageous, it became
+every man’s business. It was every man’s duty to join the hue and cry:
+if he did not take part in it he was a bad neighbour. Mr. Bishop,
+therefore, did not lack helpers. On the first discovery of Walterson’s
+flight, which the officer had made a little after daybreak, he had sent
+horsemen to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, and a boat to Newby
+Bridge. The nearer shore and the woods on the point below the bishop’s
+house—some called it Landoff House—were well beaten, and the alarm was
+given in Bowness on the one hand and in Ambleside on the other. The
+general voice had it that the man had got away early in the night to
+Whitehaven. But some stated that a pedlar had met him, on foot and
+alone, crossing the Kirkstone Pass at daybreak; and others, that he had
+been viewed skulking under a haystack near Troutbeck Bridge. That a
+beautiful girl, his companion, had been seized, and was under lock and
+key in the house, was whispered by some, but denied by more.
+Nevertheless, the report won its way, so that there were few moments
+when the chatterers who buzzed about the runner had not an eye on the
+upper windows and a voice ready to proclaim their discoveries.
+
+Even those who believed the story, however, were far from having a true
+picture of poor Henrietta. With some she passed for a London Jezebel;
+locked up, it was whispered, with a bottle of gin to keep her quiet
+until the chaise was ready to take her to gaol. Others pictured her as
+the frenzied leader of one of the women’s clubs which had lately sprung
+up in Lancashire, and of which the principal aim, according to the
+Tories, was to copy the French fish-fags and march one day to Windsor
+to drag the old king, blind and mad as he was, to the scaffold. Others
+spoke of a casual light-o’-love picked up at Lancaster, but a rare
+piece of goods for looks; which seemed a pity, and one of those
+tragedies of the law that were beginning to prick men’s
+consciences—since there was little doubt that the baggage, poor lass,
+would hang with her tempter.
+
+A word or two of these whisperings reached Mrs. Gilson’s ears. But she
+only sniffed her contempt, or, showing herself for a moment at the
+door, chilled by the coldness of her eye the general enthusiasm. Then,
+woe betide the servant whom she chanced to espy among the idlers. If a
+man, he was glad to hide himself in the stable; if a woman, she was
+very likely to go back to her work with a smarting cheek. Even the
+Troutbeck apothecary, a roistering blade who was making a day of it,
+kept a wary eye on the door, and, if he could, slipped round the corner
+when she appeared.
+
+But Juno herself had her moments of failure, and no mortals are exempt
+from them. About four in the afternoon Mrs. Gilson got a shock. Modest
+Ann, her face redder than usual, came to her and whispered in her ear.
+In five seconds the landlady’s face was also redder than usual, and her
+frown was something to see. She rose.
+
+“I don’t believe it!” she answered. “You are daft, woman, to think of
+such a thing!”
+
+“It’s true, missus, as I stand here!” Ann declared.
+
+“To Kendal gaol? To-night!”
+
+“That very thing! And her”—with angry fervour—“scarce more than a
+child, as you may say!”
+
+“Old enough to make a fool of herself!” Mrs. Gilson retorted
+spitefully. “But I don’t believe it!” she added. “You’ve heard amiss,
+my girl!”
+
+“Well, you’ll see,” the woman answered. “’Twill be soon settled. The
+justice is crossing the road now, and that Bishop with him; and that
+little wizened chap of a clerk that makes up the Salutation books. And
+the man that keeps the gaol at Appleby: they’ve been waiting for
+him—he’s to take her. And there’s a chaise ordered to be ready if it’s
+wanted. It’s true, as I stand here!”
+
+Mrs. Gilson’s form swelled until it was a wonder the whalebone stood.
+But in those days things were of good British make.
+
+“A chaise?” she said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“There’s no chaise,” the landlady answered firmly, “goes from here on
+that errand!”
+
+Modest Ann knew that when her mistress spoke in that tone the thing was
+as good as done. But the waiting-maid, whose heart, for all her temper,
+was softer than her features, at which Jim the ostler was supposed to
+boggle, was not greatly comforted.
+
+“They’ll only send to the Salutation,” she said despondently.
+
+“Let them send!” the landlady replied. And taking off her apron, she
+prepared to face the enemy. “They’ll talk to me before they do!”
+
+But Ann, great as was her belief in her mistress, shook her head.
+
+“What can you do against the law?” she muttered. “I wish that Bishop
+may never eat another morsel of hot victuals as long as he lives! Gravy
+with the joint? Never while I am serving!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE INQUIRY
+
+
+“Who is there?”
+
+Henrietta lifted her tear-stained face from the pillow and awaited the
+answer. Three hours earlier, her head aching, her heart full, uncertain
+what to do or what would follow, she had fled from the commotion below,
+and, locking herself in her bedroom, had lain down with her misery. It
+was something to find in the apathy of prostration a brief respite; it
+was something to close her eyes and lie quite still. For a while she
+might keep her door locked, might nurse her wretchedness, might evade
+rude looks and curious questions, might postpone decision.
+
+For the pride that had sustained her in the morning had failed, as the
+day wore on. Solitude and the lack of food—she had refused to eat at
+midday—had worn down her spirit. At last tears had come, and
+plentifully—and repentance. She did not say that the fault was her own,
+but she knew it, she admitted it. The man had behaved to her wickedly,
+treacherously, horribly; but she had brought it on herself. He had laid
+the snare in vain had she not stooped to deceit—had she not consented
+to mislead her friends, to meet him secretly, to listen to him with as
+little heed of propriety as if she had been Sue at the forge, or Bess
+in the still-room. Her own vanity, her own folly, had brought her to
+the very verge of ruin; and with shame she owned that there was more in
+the old saws with which her sister-in-law had deafened her than her
+inexperience had imagined. But the discovery came late. She was
+smirched. And what—what was she to do? Where could she go to avoid the
+full penalty—the taunts, the shame, the disgrace that awaited her in
+the old home?—even if the old home were still open to her.
+
+Meanwhile she got no answer. And “Who is there?” she repeated wearily.
+
+The reply came muffled through the door.
+
+“You are wanted downstairs, lady.”
+
+She rose languidly. Perhaps the time was come. Perhaps her brother was
+here, had followed, traced, and found her. For the moment she was all
+but indifferent. To-morrow she would suffer, and sorely; but to-day she
+had fallen too low. She went slowly to the door and opened it.
+
+Ann stood in the passage.
+
+“They want you downstairs, miss,” she said.
+
+The girl saw that the woman looked queerly at her, but she was prepared
+for such looks. Unconsciously she had steeled herself to bear them.
+“Very well,” she returned, and did not ask who wanted her. But she went
+back to her table, dabbed her eyes with cold water, and smoothed her
+hair and her neck-ribbon—she had pride enough for that. Then she went
+to the door. The woman was still outside, still staring.
+
+“I did not know that you were waiting,” Henrietta said, faintly
+surprised. “I know my way down.”
+
+“I was to come with you, miss.”
+
+“Where are they, then?”
+
+“They are where you were this morning,” the woman answered. “This way,
+if you please.”
+
+Henrietta followed listlessly, and fancied in the sullenness of her
+apathy that she was proof against aught that could happen. But when she
+had descended the stairs and neared the door of Mr. Rogers’s room—which
+was in a dusky passage—she found herself, to her astonishment, brushing
+past a row of people, who flattened themselves against the wall to let
+her pass. Their eyes and their hard breathing—perhaps because she was
+amongst them before she saw them—impressed her so disagreeably that her
+heart fluttered, and she paused. For an imperceptible instant she was
+on the point of turning and going back. But, fortunately, at that
+moment the door opened wide, Ann stood aside, and Mrs. Gilson showed
+herself. She beckoned to the girl to enter.
+
+“Come in, miss,” she said gruffly, as Henrietta complied. “Here’s some
+gentlemen want to ask you a question or two.”
+
+Henrietta saw two persons with their faces turned towards her seated
+behind a table, which bore ink and paper and one or two calf-bound
+books. Behind these were three or four other persons standing; and
+beside the door close to her were as many more, also on their feet. But
+nowhere could she see the dreaded face of her brother, or, indeed, any
+face that she knew. And after advancing firmly enough into the room,
+she stopped, and, turning, looked uncertainly at Mrs. Gilson.
+
+“There must be some mistake,” she murmured. “I have come into the——”
+
+“Wrong room, miss?”—the speaker was Bishop, who was one of the three or
+four who stood behind the two at the table. “No, there’s no mistake,
+miss,” he continued, with exaggerated cheerfulness. “It’s just a
+formality. Only just a formality. These gentlemen wish to ask you one
+or two questions.”
+
+The colour rose to her cheeks.
+
+“To ask me?” she repeated, with a slight ring of hauteur in her voice.
+
+“Just so,” Bishop answered. “It will be all right, I am sure. But
+attend to this gentleman, if you please, and answer his questions.”
+
+He indicated with his finger the one seated before him.
+
+The girl, half angry, half frightened, lowered her eyes and met those
+of the person at the table. Apparently her aspect had checked the
+exordium he had prepared; for instead of addressing her in the tones
+which were wont to fill the justice-room at Ambleside, Mr. Hornyold,
+rector and magistrate, sat back in his chair, and stared at her in
+silence. It was evident that his astonishment was great. He was a
+portly man, and tall, about forty years old, and, after his fashion,
+handsome. He had well-formed features and a mobile smile; but his face
+was masterful—overmasterful, some thought; and his eyes were hard, when
+a sly look did not soften, without much improving, their expression.
+The girl before him was young, adorably fresh, above all, beautiful;
+and the smile of the man peeped from under the mask of the justice. He
+stared at her, and she at him, and perhaps of the two he was the more
+taken aback. At any rate, it was Henrietta who broke the silence.
+
+“I do not understand,” she said, with ill-suppressed indignation, “why
+I am here. Are you sure that there is no mistake?”
+
+He found his voice then.
+
+“Quite sure,” he said drily. And he laid down the pen with which he had
+been toying while he stared at her. He sat a little more erect in his
+chair. “There is no mistake,” he continued, “though for your sake,
+young woman, I wish I could think there was. I wish I could think there
+was,” he repeated in a more indulgent tone, “since you seem, at any
+rate, a more respectable person than I expected to see.”
+
+“Sir!”
+
+The girl’s eyes opened wide. Her face was scarlet.
+
+He leaned forward.
+
+“Come, my girl,” he said—and his familiar tone struck her, as it were,
+in the face,—never had such a tone been used to her before! “Let us
+have no nonsense. You will not improve your case that way. Let me tell
+you, we are accustomed to all sorts here. You must speak when you are
+told to speak, and be silent when you are bid, and in the meantime
+listen to me! Listen to me, I say!” staying by an imperious nod the
+angry remonstrance that was on her lips. “And remember where you are,
+if you wish to be well treated. If you are sensible and tell the truth,
+some other course will be found than that which, it is to be feared,
+must end this business.”
+
+“But by what right,” Henrietta cried, striving to command both her rage
+and her fear—“by what right——”
+
+“Am I about to question you?”—with a smirk of humour and a glance at
+the audience. “By the right of the law, young woman, which I would have
+you know is of some account here, however it may stand in Lancashire.”
+
+“The law?” she stammered. And she looked round terrified. “Why? Why?
+What have I done?” she cried pathetically.
+
+For a moment all was dark before her.
+
+He laughed slyly.
+
+“That’s to be seen,” he said. “No hanging matter,” he continued
+humorously, “I hope. And as it’s good law that everybody’s
+innocent—that’s so, Mr. Dobbie, is it not?”—he addressed the
+clerk—“until he’s found to be guilty, let somebody set the young woman
+a chair.”
+
+“I can stand!” she cried.
+
+“Nay, you sit down!” muttered a gruff voice in her ear. And a hand—it
+was Mrs. Gilson’s—pressed her down in the chair. “And you answer
+straight out,” the woman continued coolly, in defiance of the
+scandalised look which Mr. Dobbie, the clerk, cast upon her, “and
+there’s not one of ’em can do you any harm.”
+
+The magistrate nodded.
+
+“That’s true,” he said tolerantly, “always supposing that you’ve done
+no wrong, my girl—no wrong beyond getting into bad company, as I trust
+will turn out to be the case. Now, Mr. Dobbie, take down her answers.
+What’s your name, my girl, first?”
+
+Henrietta looked at him steadily; she was trying to place herself in
+these new conditions. Something like composure was coming back to her
+flushed and frightened face. She reflected; and having reflected, she
+was silent.
+
+He fancied that she had not heard, or did not understand.
+
+“Your name, young woman,” he repeated, “and your last place of abode?
+Speak up! And don’t be afraid.”
+
+But she did not answer.
+
+He frowned.
+
+“Come, come,” he said. “Did you hear me? Where is your home, and what
+do you call yourself? You are not the man’s wife, I know. We know as
+much as that, you see, so you may as well be frank.”
+
+“What is the charge against me?” She spoke slowly, and her face was now
+set and stubborn. “Of what am I accused?”
+
+Mr. Hornyold’s face turned a brick red. He did not rule three parishes
+through three curates, reserving to himself only the disciplinary
+powers he was now exercising, to be thwarted by a run-the-country girl;
+who, in spite of her looks, was, ten to one, no better than the
+imprudent wenches the overseers were continually bringing before him.
+He knew at least the company she kept. He raised his voice.
+
+“I am not here to answer your questions!” he said, bending his brows.
+“But you mine! You mine!” he repeated, rapping the table sharply. “Do
+you hear? Now, you will at once tell me——”
+
+He broke off. The clerk had touched his sleeve and was whispering in
+his ear. He frowned impatiently, but listened. And after a moment he
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Very well,” he said. “Tell her!”
+
+The clerk, a shabby man with a scratch wig and a little glass
+ink-bottle at his buttonhole, raised his eyes, and looking at her over
+his glasses, spoke:
+
+“You are not yet charged,” he said; “but if you cannot give a
+satisfactory account of yourself you will be charged with receiving,
+harbouring, and assisting one William Walterson the younger, otherwise
+Stewart, otherwise Malins, against whom indictments for various
+felonies and treason felonies have been found. And with aiding and
+abetting the escape of the said William Walterson, in whose company you
+have been found. And with being accessory after the fact to various
+felonies——”
+
+“To murder!” said Mr. Hornyold, cutting him short emphatically. “To
+murder! amongst other things. That is the charge, if you must know it.
+So now”—he rapped the table sharply—“answer at once, and the truth.
+What is your name? And where was your last place of abode?”
+
+But Henrietta, if she were willing to answer, could not. At the sound
+of that dreadful word “murder!”—they hanged lightly, so lightly in
+those days!—the colour had fled from her face. The darkness that had
+confused her a while before hid all. She kept her seat, she even
+retained her erect posture; but the hands which she raised before her
+as if to ward off something groped idly in the air.
+
+Murder! No wonder that she lost consciousness for a moment, or that
+Hornyold, secretly relishing her beauty, thought that he had found the
+weapon that would soon bring her to her knees! or that the little
+audience by the door, listening awestruck, held their breath. The
+wonder was that only one of them judged from the girl’s gesture that
+she was fainting. Only one acted. Mrs. Gilson stepped forward and shook
+her roughly by the shoulder.
+
+“Words break no bones!” the landlady said without ceremony—and not
+without an angry look at the clerk, who raised his pen as if he would
+interpose. “Don’t you make a fool of yourself. But do you tell them
+what they want to know. And your friends will settle with them. Murder,
+indeed! Pack of boddles!”
+
+“Very good advice,” said the magistrate, smiling indulgently. “But——”
+
+“But you must not interfere!” snapped the clerk—who kept the books of
+the Salutation in Ambleside and not of the Low Wood Inn.
+
+“Haven’t you sense to see the girl is fainting?” the landlady replied
+wrathfully.
+
+“Oh, well——”
+
+“I am better now,” Henrietta said bravely. And she drew a deep breath.
+A little colour—induced perhaps by Hornyold’s unsparing gaze—was coming
+back to her cheeks. “Would you—can I have a glass of water?” she
+murmured.
+
+Mrs. Gilson was bustling to the door to give the order when it opened,
+and Mr. Bishop, who had gone to it a moment before, took in a glass of
+wine, and, secretly pleased that he had anticipated the need, handed it
+to her. Mrs. Gilson took it with a grunt of distrust, and made the girl
+swallow it; while the magistrate waited and watched, and thought that
+he had never seen a young woman who was so handsome, pale or red,
+fainting or fierce. And so fresh! so admirably, astonishingly fresh for
+the companion of such a man. A good many thoughts of various kinds
+flitted through his mind as he watched her, marking now the luxuriance
+of her fair hair, now the white chin, small but firm, and now the
+faint, faint freckles that, like clots in cream, only added to the
+delicacy of her complexion. He waited without impatience until the girl
+had drunk the wine, and when he spoke it was in a tone approaching the
+paternal.
+
+“Now, my dear,” he said, “you are going to be a good girl and sensible,
+I am sure. We don’t want to send you to prison to herd with people with
+whom, to judge from your appearance, you have not been wont to mix. And
+therefore we give you this opportunity—there’s no need we should, you
+know—of telling us who you are, and whence you come, and what you know;
+that if it appears that you have fallen into this man’s company in
+ignorance, and not knowing what manner of man he was, we may prevent
+this charge appearing, and instead of committing you to Appleby, place
+you here or elsewhere under bond to appear. Which, in a case so serious
+as this, is not a course we could adopt were you not so very young,
+and,” with a humorous look at the group by the door, “so very
+good-looking! So now be a good girl and don’t be afraid, but tell me at
+once who you are, and where you joined this man.”
+
+“If I do not,” Henrietta said, looking at him with clear eyes, “must I
+go to prison?”
+
+“Appleby gaol,” said the clerk, glancing over his glasses.
+
+“Then you must send me there,” she replied, a little faintly. “For I
+cannot tell you.”
+
+“Don’t be a fool!” growled Mrs. Gilson in her ear.
+
+“I cannot tell you,” Henrietta repeated more firmly.
+
+Mr. Hornyold stared. He was growing angry, for he was not accustomed to
+be set at naught. After their fashion they all stared.
+
+“Come, come, my dear,” the runner remonstrated smoothly. “If you don’t
+tell us, we shall think there’s more behind.”
+
+She did not answer.
+
+“And that being so, it’s only a matter of time to learn what it is,”
+the runner continued cunningly. “Tell us now and save time, because we
+are sure to get to know. Young women as pretty as you are not hard to
+trace.”
+
+But she shook her head. And the face Bishop called pretty was stubborn.
+The group by the door, marking for future gossip every particular of
+her appearance, the stuff of her riding-habit, the fineness of her
+linen, the set of her head, made certain that she was no common
+trollope. They wondered what would happen to her, and hoped, the more
+tender-hearted, that there would be no scene, and no hysterics to end
+it.
+
+The clerk raised his pen in the air. “Understand,” he said, “you will
+be remanded to Appleby gaol—it’s no very comfortable place, I can tell
+you—and later, you will be brought up again and committed, I’ve very
+little doubt, to take your trial on these charges. If the principal
+offender be taken, as he is likely to be taken before the day is out,
+you’ll be tried with him. But it is not necessary. Now do you
+understand?” he continued, speaking slowly. “And are you still
+determined to give no evidence—showing how you came to be with this
+man?”
+
+Henrietta’s eyes were full of trouble. She shivered.
+
+“Where shall I be tried?” she muttered in an unsteady voice.
+
+“Appleby,” the clerk said curtly. “Or in His Majesty’s Bench at
+Westminster! Now think, before it is too late.”
+
+“It is too late,” she answered in a low tone, “I cannot help it now.”
+
+The magistrate leant forward. What a fool the girl was! If she went to
+Appleby he would see no more of her, save for an hour or two when she
+was brought up again before being committed. Whereas, if she spoke and
+they made her a witness, she might be lodged somewhere in the
+neighbourhood under surveillance. And she was so handsome and so
+young—the little fool!—he would not be sorry to see more of her.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] “I give you a last chance,” he said.
+
+
+“I give you a last chance,” he said.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+The magistrate shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Then make the committal out!” he said. “There’s enough to justify it.”
+It was some satisfaction to think that locked up with half a dozen
+sluts at Appleby she would soon be sorry for herself. “Make it out!” he
+repeated.
+
+If the hysterics did not come now he was very much mistaken if they did
+not come later, when the gaol doors were shut on her. She was evidently
+of respectable condition; a curate’s daughter, perhaps, figged out by
+the man who had deceived her, or a lady’s lady, spoiled by her
+mistress, and taught ideas above her station. On such, the gaol, with
+its company and its hardships, fell severely. It would soon, he
+fancied, bring her to her senses.
+
+The clerk dipped his pen in the ink, and after casting a last glance at
+the girl to see if she would still yield, began to write. She watched
+him with fascinated eyes, watched him in a kind of stupor. The thought
+throbbed loudly and more loudly in her head, “What will become of me?
+What will become of me?” Meanwhile the silence was broken only by the
+squeaking of the pen and a single angry “Lord’s sakes!” which fell from
+the landlady. The others awaited the end with whatever of pity, or
+interest, or greedy excitement came natural to them. They were within,
+and others were without; and they had a delicious sense of privilege.
+They would have much to tell: For one does not every day see a pretty
+girl, young, and tenderly nurtured, as this girl seemed to be, and a
+lady to the eye, committed to the common gaol on a charge of
+murder—murder, and treason felony, was it, they called it? Treason
+felony! That meant hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord’s sakes,
+indeed; poor thing, how would she bear it? And though it is likely that
+some among them—Mrs. Gilson for one—didn’t think it would come to this,
+there was a frown on the landlady’s brow that would have done honour to
+the Lord Chancellor Eldon himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+CAPTAIN ANTHONY CLYNE
+
+
+Mr. Bishop of Bow Street alone watched the clerk’s pen with a look of
+doubt. He had his own views about the girl. But he did not interfere,
+and his discontent with the posture of affairs was only made clear when
+a knock came at the door. Then he was at the door, and had raised the
+latch before those who were nearest could open.
+
+“Have you got him?” he asked eagerly. And he thrust his head into the
+passage.
+
+Even Henrietta turned to catch the answer, her lips parting. Her breath
+seemed to stop. The clerk held his pen. The magistrate by a gesture
+exacted silence.
+
+“No, but——”
+
+“No?” the runner cried in chagrin.
+
+“No!” The voice sounded something peremptory. “Certainly not. But I
+want to see—ahem!—yes, Mr. Hornyold. At once!”
+
+Henrietta, at the first word of the answer, had turned again. She had
+turned so far that she now had her back full to the door, and her face
+to the farthest corner. But it was not the same Henrietta, nor the same
+face. She sat rigid, stiff, turned to stone; she was scarlet from hair
+to neck-ribbon. Her very eyes burned, her shoulders burned. And her
+eyes were wild with insupportable shame. To be found thus! To be found
+thus, and by him! Better, far better the gaol, and all it meant!
+
+Meanwhile the magistrate, after a brief demur and a little whispering
+and the appearance of a paper with a name on it, rose. He went out. A
+moment later his clerk was summoned, and he went out. Bishop had gone
+out first of all. Those who were left and who had nothing better to do
+than to stare at the girl’s back, whispered together, or bade one
+another listen and hear what was afoot outside. Presently these were
+joined by one or two of the boldest in the passage, who muttered
+hurriedly what they knew, or sought information, or stared with double
+power at the girl’s back. But Henrietta sat motionless, with the same
+hot blush on her cheeks and the same misery in her eyes.
+
+Presently Mrs. Gilson was summoned, and she went out. The others, freed
+from the constraint of her presence, talked a little louder and a
+little more freely. And wonder grew. The two village constables, who
+remained and who felt themselves responsible, looked important, and one
+cried “Silence” a time or two, as if the court were sitting. The other
+explained the law, of which he knew as much as a Swedish turnip, on the
+subject of treason felony. But mixing it up with the _Habeas Corpus_
+which was then suspended, he was tripped up by a neighbour before he
+could reach the minutiæ of the punishment. Which otherwise must have
+had much interest for the prisoner.
+
+At length the door opened, the other constable cried, “Silence! Silence
+in the court!” And there entered—the landlady.
+
+The surprise of the little knot of people at the back of the room was
+great but short-lived.
+
+Mrs. Gilson turned about and surveyed them with her arms akimbo and her
+lower lip thrust out. “You can all just go!” she said. “And the sooner
+the better! And if ever I catch you”—to the more successful of the
+constables, on whose feet her eye had that moment alighted—“up my
+stairs with those dirty clogs, Peter Harrison, I’ll clout you! Now, off
+you go! Do you think I keep carpets for loons like you?”
+
+“But—the prisoner?” gasped Peter, clutching at his fast-departing
+glory. “The prisoner, missus?”
+
+“The goose!” the landlady retorted with indescribable scorn. “Go you
+down and see what the other ganders think of it. And leave me to mind
+my business! I’ll see to the prisoner.” And she saw them all out and
+closed the door.
+
+When the room was clear she tapped Henrietta on the shoulder. “There’s
+no gaol for you,” she said bluntly. “Though it is not yourself you’ve
+got to thank for it. They’ve put you in my charge and you’re to stay
+here, and I’m to answer for you. So you’ll just say straight out if
+you’ll stay, or if you’ll run.”
+
+Had the girl burst into tears the landlady had found it reasonable.
+Instead, “Where is he?” Henrietta whispered. She did not even turn her
+head.
+
+“Didn’t you hear,” Mrs. Gilson retorted, “that he had not been taken?”
+
+“I mean—I mean——”
+
+“Ah!” Mrs. Gilson exclaimed, a little enlightened. “You mean the
+gentleman that was here, and spoke for you? Yes, you are right, it’s
+him you’ve to thank. Well, he’s gone to Whitehaven, but he’ll see you
+tomorrow.”
+
+Henrietta sighed.
+
+“In the meantime,” Mrs. Gilson continued, “you’ll give me your word
+you’ll not run. Gilson is bound for you in fifty pounds to show you
+when you’re wanted. And as fifty pounds is fifty pounds, and a mint of
+money, I’d as soon turn the key on you as not. Girls that run once, run
+easy,” the landlady added severely.
+
+“I will not run away,” Henrietta said meekly—more meekly perhaps than
+she had ever spoken in her life. “And—and I am much obliged to you, and
+thankful to you,” in a very small voice. “Will you please to let me go
+to my room, and you can lock me in?”
+
+She had risen from her seat, and though she did not turn to the
+landlady, she stole, shamed and askance, a look at her. Her lip
+trembled, her head hung. And Mrs. Gilson, on her side, seemed for a
+moment on the verge of some unwonted demonstration; she stood awkward
+and large, and perhaps from sheer clumsiness avoided even while she
+appeared to invite the other’s look. But nothing happened until the two
+passed out, Henrietta first, like a prisoner, and Mrs. Gilson stiffly
+following.
+
+Then there were half a dozen persons waiting to stare in the passage,
+and the way Mrs. Gilson’s tongue fell loose was a warning. In two
+seconds, only one held her ground: the same dark girl with the
+gipsy-like features whose mocking smile had annoyed Henrietta as she
+dressed that morning. Ah, me! what ages ago that morning seemed!
+
+To judge from Mrs. Gilson’s indignation, this girl was the last who
+should have stood.
+
+“Don’t you black-look me!” the landlady cried. “But pack! D’you hear,
+impudence, pack! Or not one drop of milk do I take from your old
+skinflint of a father! And he’ll drub you finely, if he’s not too old
+and silly—till you smile on the other side of your face! I’d like to
+know what’s taken you to-day to push yourself among your betters!”
+
+“No harm,” the girl muttered. She had retreated, scowling, half-way
+down the stairs.
+
+“And no good, either!” the landlady retorted. “Get you gone, or I’ll
+make your ears ring after another fashion!”
+
+Henrietta heard no more. She had shrunk from the uproar and fled
+quickly to her room. With a bursting heart and a new humility she drew
+the key from the wards of the lock and set it on the outside,
+hoping—though the hope was slender—to avoid further words with the
+landlady. The hope came nearer fulfilment, however, than she expected;
+for Mrs. Gilson, after panting upstairs, only cried through the door
+that she would send her up supper, and then went down again—perhaps
+with a view to catching Bess Hinkson in a fresh trespass.
+
+Bess was gone, however. But adventures are for the brave, and not ten
+minutes passed before the landlady was at issue with a fresh adversary.
+She found the coach-office full, so full that it overflowed into the
+hall. Modest Ann, called this way and that, had need of four hands to
+meet the demands made upon her; so furious were the calls for the
+lemons and rum and Old Geneva, the grateful perfume of which greeted
+Mrs. Gilson as she descended. Alas, something else greeted her: and
+that was a voice, never a favourite with her, but now raised in accents
+particularly distasteful. Tyson, the Troutbeck apothecary—a flashy,
+hard-faced young man in pepper-and-salt, and Bedford cords—had seized
+the command and the ear of the company in the coach-office, and was
+roasting Long Tom Gilson upon his own hearth.
+
+“Not know who she is?” he was saying in the bullying tone which made
+him hated of the pauper class. “You don’t ask me to believe that, Tom?
+Come! Come!”
+
+“It’s what I say,” Gilson answered.
+
+He sat opposite the other, his hands on his knees, his face red and
+sulky. He did not like to be baited.
+
+“And you go bail for her?” Tyson cried. “You have gone bail for her?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And don’t know her name?”
+
+“Well—no.”
+
+The doctor sat back in his chair, his glass in his hand, and looked
+round for approbation.
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “what do you think of that for a dalesman?”
+
+“Well, it wasn’t long-headed, Tom,” said one unwillingly. “Not to call
+long-headed, so to speak,” with north-country caution. “I’d not go bail
+myself, not for nobody I’d not know.”
+
+“No,” several agreed. “No, no!”
+
+“No, but——”
+
+“But what, Tom, what?” the doctor asked, waiting in his positive
+fashion for the other to plunge deeper into the mire.
+
+“Captain Clyne, that I do know,” Gilson continued, “it was he said ‘Do
+it!’ And he said something to the Rector, I don’t doubt, for he was
+agreeable.”
+
+“But he did not go bail for her?” the apothecary suggested maliciously.
+
+“No,” Tom answered, breathing hard. “But for reason she was not there,
+but here. Anyway,” he continued, somewhat anxious to shift the subject,
+“he said it and I done it, and I’d do it again for Captain Clyne. I
+tell you he’s not a man as it’s easy to say ‘No’ to, Mr. Tyson. As
+these Radicals i’ Lancashire ha’ found out, ’od rot ’em! He’s that
+active among ’em, he’s never a letter, I’m told, but has a coffin drawn
+on it, and yeomanry in his house down beyond both day and night, I
+hear!”
+
+“I heard,” said one, “in Cartmel market, he was to be married next
+week.”
+
+“Ay,” said the doctor jocosely, “but not to the young lady as Tom is
+bail for! I tell you, Tom, he’s been making a fool of you just to keep
+this bit of evidence against the Radicals in his hands.”
+
+“Why not send her to Appleby gaol, then?” Tom retorted, with a fair
+show of sense.
+
+“Because he knows you’ll cosset her here, and he thinks to loose her
+tongue that way! They can gaol her after, if this don’t answer.”
+
+“Oh, indeed!”
+
+“Ay, while you run the risk! If it’s not that, what’s he doing here?”
+
+“Why should he not be here?” Gilson asked slowly. “Hasn’t he the old
+house in Furness, not two miles from Newby Bridge! And his mother a
+Furness woman. I do hear that the boy’s to be brought there for safety
+till the shires are quieter. And maybe it’s that brings Captain Anthony
+here.”
+
+“But what has that to do with the young woman you’re going bail for?”
+the doctor retorted. “Go bail, Tom, for a wench you don’t know, and
+that’ll jump the moon one of these fine nights! I tell you, man, I
+never heard the like! Never! Go bail for a girl you don’t know!”
+
+“And I tell you,” cried a voice that made the glasses ring, “I have
+heard the like! And I’ll give you the man, my lad!” And Mrs. Gilson,
+putting aside the two who blocked the doorway, confronted the offending
+Tyson with a look comparable only to that of Dr. Keats of Eaton when he
+rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll give you the name, my lad!” she repeated.
+
+“Well,” the doctor answered, though he was manifestly taken aback, “you
+must confess, Mrs. Gilson——”
+
+“Nay, I’ll confess nothing!” the landlady retorted. “What need, when
+you’re the man? Not give bail for a woman you don’t know? Much you knew
+of Madge Peters when you made her your wife! And wasn’t that going bail
+for her? Ay, and bail that you’ll find it hard to get out of, my man,
+though you may wish to! For the matter of that, it’s small blame to
+her, whatever comes of it!” Mrs. Gilson continued, setting her arms
+akimbo. “If all I hear of your goings-on is true! What do you think
+she’s doing, ill and sick at home, while you’re hanging about old
+Hinkson’s? Ay, you may look black, but tell me what Bess Hinkson’s
+doing about my place all this day? I never saw her here twice in a day
+in all my life before, and——”
+
+“What do you mean?” Tyson cried violently. To hear a thing which he
+thought no one suspected brought up thus before a roomful of men! He
+looked black as thunder at his accuser.
+
+“I mean no harm of your wife,” the terrible landlady answered;
+something—perhaps this roasting of her husband on his own hearth—had
+roused her beyond the ordinary. “None, my gentleman, and I know none.
+But if you want no harm said of her, show yourself a bit less at
+Hinkson’s. And a bit less in my house. And a bit more in your own! And
+the harm will be less likely to happen!”
+
+“I’ll never cross your doorstep again!” Tyson roared.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] He neither cared nor saw who it was whom he had
+jostled
+
+
+And stumbling to his feet he cast off one or two who in their well
+meaning would have stayed him. He made for the door. But he was not to
+escape without further collision. On the threshold he ran plump against
+a person who was entering, cursed the newcomer heartily, and without a
+look pushed violently by him and was gone.
+
+He neither cared nor saw who it was whom he had jostled. But the
+company saw, and some rose to their feet in consternation, while
+others, carried their hands to their heads. There was an involuntary
+movement of respect which the new comer acknowledged by touching his
+hat. He had the air of one who knew how to behave to his inferiors; but
+the air, also, of one who never forgot that they were his inferiors.
+
+“Your friend seems in a hurry,” he said. His face was not a face that
+easily betrayed emotion, but he looked tired.
+
+“Beg your honour’s pardon, I am sure,” Gilson answered. “Something’s
+put him out, and he did not see you, sir.”
+
+Mrs. Gilson muttered that a pig could have seen. But her words were
+lost in the respectful murmur which made the company sharers in the
+landlord’s apology.
+
+Not that for the most part they knew the strange gentleman. But there
+is a habit of authority which once gained becomes a part of the man.
+And Anthony Clyne had this. He retained wherever he went some shadow of
+the quarter-deck manner. He had served under Nelson, and under Exmouth;
+but he had resisted, as a glance at his neat, trim figure proved, that
+coarsening influence which spoiled for Pall Mall too many of the
+sea-dogs of the great war. Like his famous leader, he had left an arm
+in the cockpit; and the empty sleeve which he wore pinned to the lappel
+of his coat added, if possible, to the dignity of the upright carriage
+and the lean, shaven face. The death of his elder brother had given him
+the family place, a seat in the House, a chair at White’s, and an
+income handsome for his day. And he looked all this and more; so that
+such a company as now eyed him with respect judged him a very perfect
+gentleman, if a little distant.
+
+But from Clyne Old Hall, where he lived, he could see on the horizon
+the smoke of toiling cities; and in those cities there were hundreds
+who hated his cold proud face, and thousands who cursed his name. Not
+that he was a bad man or a tyrant, or himself ground the faces of the
+poor. But discipline was his watchword, and reform his bugbear. To
+palter with reform, to listen to a word about the rights of the masses,
+was to his mind to parley with anarchy. That governors and governed
+could be the same appeared to his mind as absurd as that His Majesty’s
+ships could be commanded from the forecastle. All for the people and
+nothing by the people was his political maxim, and one amply meeting,
+as he believed, all eventualities. Lately he had had it carved on a
+mantel-piece, and the prattle of his only child, as the club-footed boy
+spelled it out syllable by syllable, was music to his ears.
+
+Whoever wavered, therefore, whoever gave to the violence of those
+times, he stood firm. And he made others stand. It was his honest
+belief that a little timely severity—in other words, a whiff of
+grape-shot—would have nipped the French Revolution in the bud; and
+while he owned that the lower orders were suffering and times were bad,
+that bread was dear and work wanting, he was for quelling the least
+disorder with the utmost rigour of the law.
+
+Such was the man who accepted with a curt nod Tom Gilson’s apology.
+Then “Have you a room ready?” he asked.
+
+“The fire is still burning in Mr. Rogers’s room,” Mrs. Gilson answered,
+smoothing at once her apron and her brow. “And it’ll not be used again
+to-night. But I thought that you had gone on, sir, to Whitehaven.”
+
+“I shall go on to-morrow,” he answered, frowning slightly.
+
+“I’ll show your honour the way,” Tom Gilson said.
+
+“Very good,” he answered. “And dinner, ma’am, as soon as possible.”
+
+“To be sure, sir.” And “This way, your honour.” And taking two candles
+Gilson went out before Captain Clyne, and with greater ceremony than
+would be used in these days, lighted him along the passage and up the
+stairs to Mr. Rogers’s room in the south wing.
+
+The fire had sunk somewhat low, but the room which had witnessed so
+many emotions in the last twenty-four hours made no sign. The table had
+been cleared. The glass fronts of the cupboards shone dully; only a
+chair or two stood here or there out of place. That was all. But had
+Henrietta, when she descended to breakfast that morning, foreseen who
+would fill her chair before night, who would dine at her table and
+brood with stern unseeing eyes on the black-framed prints, for whom the
+pale-faced clock would tick off depressing seconds, what—what would she
+have thought? And how would she have faced her future?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+STARVECROW FARM
+
+
+The company at Mrs. Gilson’s, impressed by the appearance of a
+gentleman of Captain Clyne’s position, scarce gave a second thought to
+the doctor’s retreat. But to Tyson, striding homewards through the mud
+and darkness, the insult he had suffered and the feeble part he had
+played filled the world. For him the inn-parlour still cackled at his
+expense. He saw himself the butt of the evening, the butt of many
+evenings. He was a vain, ill-conditioned man, who among choice spirits
+would have boasted of his philandering. But not the less he hated to be
+brought to book before those whom he deemed his inferiors. He could not
+deny that the landlady had trounced him, and black bile whelmed all his
+better feelings as he climbed the steep track behind the inn. “D——d
+shrew!” he growled, “D——d shrew!” and breathing hard, as much in rage
+as with exertion, he stood an instant to look back and shake his fist
+before he plunged into the darkness of the wooded dell through which
+the path ascended.
+
+Two or three faint lights marked the position of the inn a couple of
+fields below him. Beyond it the pale surface of the lake reflected a
+dim radiance, bestowed on it through some rift in the clouds invisible
+from where he stood. A far-away dog barked, a curlew screamed on the
+hill above him, the steady fall of a pair of oars in the rowlocks rose
+from the lake. The immensity of the night closed all in; and on the
+thoughtful might have laid a burden of melancholy.
+
+But Tyson thought of his wrongs, not of the night, and with a curse he
+turned and plunged into the wood, following a path impossible for a
+stranger. As it was he stumbled over roots, the saplings whipped him
+smartly, a low bough struck off his hat, and when he came to the stream
+which whirled through the bottom of the dingle he had much ado to find
+the plank bridge. But at length he emerged from the wood, gained the
+road, and mounted the steep shoulder that divided the Low Wood hamlet
+from the vale of Troutbeck.
+
+Where his road topped the ridge the gaunt outline of a tall, narrow
+building rose in the gloom. It resembled a sentry-box commanding either
+valley. It was set back some twenty paces from the road with half a
+dozen ragged fir trees intervening; and on its lower side—but the night
+hid them—some mean farm-buildings clung to the steep. With the wind
+soughing among the firs and rustling through the scanty grass, the
+place on that bleak shoulder seemed lonely even at night. But in the
+day its ugliness and barrenness were a proverb. They called it
+“Starvecrow Farm.”
+
+Nevertheless, Tyson paused at the gate, and with an irresolute oath
+looked over it.
+
+“Cursed shrew!” he said, for the third time. “What business is it of
+hers if I choose to amuse myself?”
+
+And with his heart hardened, he flung the gate wide, and entered. He
+had not gone two paces before he leapt back, startled by the fierce
+snarl of a dog, that, unseen, flung itself to the end of its chain.
+Disappointed in its spring, it began to bay.
+
+The doctor’s fright was only momentary.
+
+“What, Turk!” he cried. “What are you doing here? What the blazes are
+you doing here? Down, you brute, down!”
+
+The dog knew his voice, ceased to bark, and began to whimper. Tyson
+entered, and assured that the watchdog knew him, kicked it brutally
+from his path. Then he groped his way between the trees, stumbled down
+three broken steps at the corner of the house, and passing round the
+building reached the door which was on the further side from the road.
+He tried it, but it was fastened. He knocked on it.
+
+A slip-shod foot dragged across a stone floor. A high cracked voice
+asked, “Who’s there?”
+
+“I! Tyson!” the doctor answered impatiently. “Who should it be at this
+hour?”
+
+“Is’t you, doctor?”
+
+“Yes, yes!”
+
+“Who’s wi’ ye?”
+
+“No one, you old fool! Who should there be?”
+
+A key creaked in the lock, and the great bar was withdrawn; but slowly,
+as it seemed to the apothecary, and reluctantly. He entered and the
+door was barred behind him.
+
+“Where’s Bess?” he asked.
+
+The bent creeping figure that had admitted him replied that she was
+“somewheres about, somewheres about.” After which, strangely clad in a
+kind of bedgown and nightcap, it trailed back to the settle beside the
+turf and wood fire, which furnished both light and warmth. The fire,
+indeed, was the one generous thing the room contained. All else was
+sordid and pinched and mean. The once-whitened walls were stained, the
+rafters were smoked in a dozen places, the long dresser—for the room
+was large, though low—was cracked and ill-furnished, a brick supported
+one leg of the table. Even in the deep hearth-place, where was such
+comfort as the place could boast, a couple of logs served for stools
+and a frowsy blanket gave a squalid look to the settle.
+
+Tyson stood on the hearth with his back to the fire, and eyed the room
+with a scowl of disgust. The old man, bent double over a stick which he
+was notching, breathed loudly and laboriously.
+
+“What folly is this about the dog?” Tyson asked contemptuously.
+
+The old man looked up, cunning in his eyes.
+
+“Ask her,” he said.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+The miser bending over his task seemed to be taken with a fit of silent
+laughter.
+
+“It’s the still sow sups the brose,” he said. “And I’m still! I’m
+still.”
+
+“What are you doing?” Tyson growled.
+
+“Nothing much! Nothing much! You’ve not,” looking up with greed in his
+eyes, “an old letter-back to spare?”
+
+Tyson seldom came to the house unfurnished with one. He had long known
+that Hinkson belonged to the class of misers who, if they can get a
+thing for nothing, are as well pleased with a scrap of paper, a length
+of string, or a mouldy crust, as with a crown-piece. The poor land
+about the house, which with difficulty supported three or four cows, on
+the produce of which the Hinksons lived, might have been made
+profitable at the cost of some labour and a little money. But labour
+and money were withheld. And Tyson often doubted if the miser’s store
+were as large as rumour had it, or even if there were a store at all.
+
+“Not that,” he would add, “large or small, some one won’t cut his
+throat for it one day!”
+
+He produced the old letter, and after showing it, held it behind him.
+
+“What of the dog now?” he said.
+
+“Na, na, I’ll not speak for that!”
+
+“Then you won’t have it!”
+
+But the old fellow only cackled superior.
+
+“What’s—what’s—a pound-note a week? Is’t four pound a month?”
+
+“Ay!” the doctor answered. “It is. That’s money, my lad!”
+
+“Ay!”
+
+The old man hugged himself, and rocked to and fro in an ecstasy.
+
+“That’s money! And four pound a month,” he consulted the stick he was
+notching, “is forty-eight pound a year?”
+
+“And four to it,” Tyson answered. “Who’s paying you that?”
+
+“Na, na!”
+
+“And what’s it to do with the dog?”
+
+Hinkson looked knavish but frightened.
+
+“Hist!” he said. “Here’s Bess. I’d use to wallop her, but now——”
+
+“She wallops you,” the visitor muttered. “That’s the ticket, I expect.”
+
+The girl entered by the mean staircase door and nodded to him coolly.
+
+“I supposed it was you,” she said slightingly.
+
+And for the hundredth or two-hundredth time he felt with rage that he
+was in the presence of a stronger nature than his own. He could treat
+the old man, whose greed had survived his other passions, and almost
+his faculties, pretty much as he pleased. But though he had sauntered
+through the gate a score of times with the intention of treating Bess
+as he had treated more than one village girl who pleased him, he had
+never re-crossed the threshold without a sense not only of defeat, but
+of inferiority. He came to strut, he remained to kneel.
+
+He fought against that feeling now, calling his temper to his aid.
+
+“What folly is this about the dog?” he asked.
+
+“Father thinks,” she replied demurely, “that if thieves come it can be
+heard better at the gate.”
+
+“Heard? I should think it could be heard in Bowness!”
+
+“Just so.”
+
+“But your father——”
+
+“Father!” sharply, “go to bed!” And then to the visitor, “Give him a
+ha’penny,” she muttered. “He won’t go without!”
+
+“But I don’t care——”
+
+“I don’t care either—which of you goes!” she retorted. “But one of you
+goes.”
+
+Sullenly he produced a copper and put it in the old man’s quivering
+hand—not for the first time by several. Hinkson gripped it, and closing
+his hand upon it as if he feared it would be taken from him, he hobbled
+away, and disappeared behind the dingy hangings of the box-bed.
+
+“And now what’s the mystery?” Tyson asked, seating himself on one of
+the stools.
+
+“There is none,” she answered, standing before him where the firelight
+fell on her dark face and gipsy beauty. “Call it a whim if you like.
+Perhaps I don’t want my lads to come in till I’ve raddled my cheeks! Or
+perhaps”—flippantly—“Oh, any ‘perhaps’ you like!”
+
+“I know no lad you have but me,” he said.
+
+“I don’t know one,” she answered, seating herself on the settle, and
+bending forward with her elbows on her knees and her face between her
+hands. It was a common pose with her. “When I’ve a lad I want a man!”
+she continued—“a man!”
+
+“Don’t you call me a man?” he answered, his eyes taking their fill of
+her face.
+
+“Of a sort.” she rejoined disdainfully. “Of a sort. Good enough for
+here. But I shan’t live all my life here! D’you ever think what a
+God-forsaken corner this is, Tyson? Why, man, we are like mice in a
+dark cupboard, and know as much of the world!”
+
+“What’s the world to us?” he asked. Her words and her ways were often a
+little beyond him.
+
+“That’s it!” she answered, in a tone of contemptuous raillery. “What’s
+the world to us? We are here and not there. We must curtsey to parson
+and bob to curate, and mind our manners with the overseers! We must be
+proud if Madam inquires after our conduct, but we must not fancy that
+we are the same flesh and blood as she is! Ah, when I meet her,” with
+sudden passion, “and she looks at me to see if I am clean, I—do you
+know what I think of? Do you know what I dream of? Do you know what I
+hope”—she snapped her strong white teeth together—“ay, hope to see?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“What they saw twenty years ago in France—her white neck under the
+knife! That was what happened to her and her like there, I am told, and
+I wish it could happen here! And I’d knit, as girls knitted there, and
+counted the heads that fell into the baskets! When that time comes
+Madam won’t look to see if I am clean!”
+
+He looked at her uncomfortably. He did not understand her.
+
+“How the devil do you come to know these things?” he exclaimed. It was
+not the first time she had opened to him in this strain—not the first
+by several. And the sharp edge was gone from his astonishment. But she
+was not the less a riddle to him and a perplexity—a Sphinx, at once
+alluring and terrifying. “Who told you of them? What makes you think of
+them?” he repeated.
+
+“Do you never think of them?” she retorted, leaning forward and fixing
+her eyes on his. “Do you never wonder why all the good things are for a
+few, and for the rest—a crust? Why the rector dines at the squire’s
+table and you dine in the steward’s room? Why the parson gives you a
+finger and thinks he stoops, and his ladies treat you as if you were
+dirt—only the apothecary? Why you are in one class and they in another
+till the end of time?”
+
+“D——n them!” he muttered, his face a dull red. She knew how to touch
+him on the raw.
+
+“Do you never think of those things?” she asked.
+
+“Well,” he said, taking her up sullenly, “if I do?”
+
+She rocked herself back on the settle and looked across at him out of
+half-closed eyes.
+
+“Then—if you do think,” she answered slowly, “it is to be seen if you
+are a man.”
+
+“A man?”
+
+“Ay, a man! A man! For if you think of these things, if you stand face
+to face with them, and do nothing, you are no man! And no lad for me!”
+lightly. “You are well matched as it is then. Just a match and no more
+for your white-faced, helpless dumpling of a wife!”
+
+“It is all very well,” he muttered, “to talk!”
+
+“Ay, but presently we shall do as well as talk! Out in the world they
+are doing now! They are beginning to do. But here—what do you know in
+this cupboard? No more than the mice.”
+
+“Fine talk!” he retorted, stung by her contempt. “But you talk without
+knowing. There have been parsons and squires from the beginning, and
+there will be parsons and squires to the end. You may talk until you
+are black in the face, Bess, but you won’t alter that!”
+
+“Ay, talk!” she retorted drily. “You may talk. But if you do—as they
+did in France twenty years gone. Where are their squires and parsons
+now? The end came quick enough there, when it came.”
+
+“I don’t know much about that,” he growled.
+
+“Ay, but I do.”
+
+“But how the devil do you?” he answered, in some irritation, but more
+wonder. “How do you?” And he looked round the bare, sordid kitchen. The
+fire, shooting warm tongues up the black cavernous chimney, made the
+one spot of comfort that was visible.
+
+“Never you mind!” she answered, with a mysterious and tantalising
+smile. “I do. And by-and-by, if we’ve the spirit of a mouse, things
+will happen here! Down yonder—I see it all—there are thousands and tens
+of thousands starving. And stacks burning. And mobs marching, and men
+drilling, and more things happening than you dream of! And all that
+means that by-and-by I shall be knitting while Madam and Miss and that
+proud-faced, slim-necked chit at the inn, who faced us all down
+to-day——”
+
+“Why,” he struck in, in fresh surprise, “what has she done to you now?”
+
+“That’s my business, never you mind! Only, by-and-by, they will all
+smile on the wrong side of their face!”
+
+He stared morosely into the fire. And she watched him, her long lashes
+veiling a sly and impish amusement. If he dreamed that she loved him,
+if he fancied her a victim of his bow and spear, he strangely, most
+strangely, misread her. And a sudden turn, a single quick glance should
+have informed him. For as the flames by turns lit her face and left it
+to darkness, they wrought it to many expressions; but never to
+kindness.
+
+“There’s many I’d like to see brought down a piece,” he muttered at
+last. “Many, many. And I’m as fond of my share of good things as most.
+But it’s all talk, there’s nought to be done! Nor ever will be! There
+have been parsons and squires from the beginning.”
+
+“Would you do it,” she asked softly, “if there were anything to be
+done?”
+
+“Try me.”
+
+“I doubt it. And that’s why you are no lad for me.”
+
+He rose to his feet in a temper at that. He turned his back on the
+fire.
+
+“What’s the use of getting on this every time!” he cried. And he took
+up his hat. “I’m weary of it. I’m off. I don’t know that I shall come
+back again. What’s the use?” with a side-long glance at her dark,
+handsome face and curving figure which the firelight threw into
+prominence.
+
+“If there were anything to do,” she asked, as if he had never spoken,
+never answered the question, “would you do it?” And she smiled at him,
+her head thrown back, her red lips parted, her eyes tempting.
+
+“You know I would if——” He paused.
+
+“There were some one to be won by it?”
+
+He nodded, his eyes kindling.
+
+“Well——”
+
+No more. For as she spoke the word, and he bent forward, something
+heavy fell on the floor overhead; and she sat up straight. Her eyes,
+grown suddenly hard and small—perhaps with fright—held Tyson’s eyes.
+
+“What’s that?” he cried, frowning suspiciously. “There’s nobody
+upstairs?”
+
+“Father’s in bed,” she said. She held up a finger for silence.
+
+“And there’s nobody else in the house?”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Who should there be?” she said. “It’s the cat, I suppose.”
+
+“You’d better let me see,” he rejoined. And he took a step towards the
+staircase door.
+
+“No need,” she answered listlessly, after listening anew. “I’m not
+afraid. The cat is not here; it must have been the cat. I’ll go up when
+you are gone, and see.”
+
+“It’s not safe,” he grumbled, still inclined to go. “You two alone
+here, and the old man said to be as rich as a lord!”
+
+“Ay, said to be,” she answered, smiling “As you said you were going ten
+minutes ago, and you are not gone yet. But——” she rose with a yawn,
+partly real and partly forced, “you must go now, my lad.”
+
+“But why?” he answered. “When we were just beginning to understand one
+another.”
+
+“Why?” she answered pertly. “Because father wants to sleep. Because
+your wife will scratch my eyes out if you don’t. Because I am not going
+to say another word to-night—whatever I may say to-morrow. And
+because—it’s my will, my lad. That’s all.”
+
+He muttered his discontent, swinging his hat in his hand, and making
+eyes at her. But she kept him at arm’s length, and after a moment’s
+argument she drove him to the door.
+
+“All the same,” he said, when he stood outside, “you had better let me
+look upstairs.”
+
+But she laughed.
+
+“I dare say you’d like it!” she said; and she shut the door in his face
+and he heard the great bar that secured it shot into its socket in the
+thickness of the wall. In a temper not much better than that in which
+he had left the inn, he groped his way round the house, and up the
+three steps at the corner of the building. He swore at the dog that it
+might know who came, and so he passed into the road. Once he looked
+back at the house, but all was dark. The windows looked the other way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+PUNISHMENT
+
+
+Anthony Clyne came to a stand before her, and lifted his hat.
+
+“I understand,” he said, without letting his eyes meet hers—he was
+stiffness itself, but perhaps he too had his emotions—“that you
+preferred to see me here rather than indoors?”
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta answered. And the girl thanked heaven that though the
+beating of her heart had nearly choked her a moment before, her tone
+was as hard and uncompromising as his. He could not guess, he never
+should guess, what strain she put on nerve and will that she might not
+quail before him; nor how often, with her quivering face hidden in the
+pillow, she had told herself, before rising, that it was for once only,
+once only, and that then she need never see again the man she had
+wronged.
+
+“I do not know,” he continued slowly, “whether you have anything to
+say?”
+
+“Nothing,” she answered. They were standing on the Ambleside road, a
+short furlong from the inn. Leafless trees climbed the hill-side above
+them; and a rough slope, unfenced and strewn with boulders and dying
+bracken, ran down from their feet to the lake.
+
+“Then,” he rejoined, with a scarcely perceptible hardening of the
+mouth, “I had best say as briefly as possible what I am come to say.”
+
+“If you please,” she said. Hitherto she had faced him regally. Now she
+averted her eyes ever so slightly, and placed herself so that she
+looked across the water that gleamed pale under the morning mist.
+
+Yet, even with her eyes turned from him, he did not find it easy to say
+what he must say. And for a few seconds he was silent. At last “I do
+not wish to upbraid you,” he began in a voice somewhat lower in tone.
+“You have done a very foolish and a very wicked, wicked thing, and one
+which cannot be undone in the eyes of the world. That is for all to
+see. You have left your home and your friends and your family under
+circumstances——”
+
+She turned her full face to him suddenly.
+
+“Have they,” she said, “empowered you to speak to me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“They do not wish to see me themselves?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Nor perhaps—wish me to return to them?”
+
+“No.”
+
+She nodded as she looked away again; in sheer defiance, he supposed. He
+did not guess that she did it to mask the irrepressible shiver which
+the news caused her.
+
+He thought her, on the contrary, utterly unrepentant, and it hardened
+him to speak more austerely, to give his feelings freer vent.
+
+“Had you done this thing with a gentleman,” he said, “there had been,
+however heartless and foolish the act, some hope that the matter might
+be set straight. And some excuse for yourself; since a man of our class
+might have dazzled you by the possession of qualities which the person
+you chose could not have. But an elopement with a needy adventurer,
+without breeding, parts, or honesty—a criminal, and wedded already——”
+
+“If he were not wedded already,” she said, “I had been with him now!”
+
+His face grew a shade more severe, but otherwise he did not heed the
+taunt.
+
+“Such an—an act,” he said, “unfits you in your brother’s eyes to return
+to his home.” He paused an instant. “Or to the family you have
+disgraced. I am bound—I have no option, to tell you this.”
+
+“You say it as from them?”
+
+“I do. I have said indeed less than they bade me say. And not more, I
+believe on my honour, than the occasion requires. A young gentlewoman,”
+he continued bitterly, “brought up in the country with every care,
+sheltered from every temptation, with friends, with home, with every
+comfort and luxury, and about to be married to a gentleman in her own
+rank in life, meets secretly, clandestinely, shamefully a man, the
+lowest of the low, on a par in refinement with her own servants, but
+less worthy! She deceives with him her friends, her family, her
+relatives! If”—with some emotion—“I have overstated one of these
+things, God forgive me!”
+
+“Pray go on!” she said, with her face averted. And thinking that she
+was utterly hardened, utterly without heart, thinking that her outward
+calm spelled callousness, and that she felt nothing, he did continue.
+
+“Can she,” he said, “who has been so deceitful herself, complain if the
+man deceives her? She has chosen a worthless creature before her family
+and her friends? Is she not richly served if he treats her after his
+own nature and her example? If, after stooping to the lawless level of
+such a poor thing, she finds herself involved in his penalties, and her
+name a scandal and a shame to her family!”
+
+“Is that all?” she asked. But not a quiver of the voice, not a tremour
+of the shoulders, betrayed what she was feeling, what she suffered, how
+fiercely the brand was burning into her soul.
+
+“That is all they bade me say,” he replied in a calmer and more gentle
+tone. “And that they would make arrangements—such arrangements as may
+be possible for your future. But they would not take you back.”
+
+“And now—what on your own account?” she asked, almost flippantly.
+“Something, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, answering her slowly, and with a steady look of
+condemnation. For in all honesty the girl’s attitude shocked and
+astonished him. “I have something to say on my own account. Something.
+But it is difficult to say it.”
+
+She turned to him and raised her eyebrows.
+
+“Really!” she said. “You seem to speak so easily.”
+
+He did not remark how white, even against the pale shimmer of the lake,
+was the face that mocked him; and her heartlessness seemed dreadful to
+him.
+
+“I wish,” he said, “to say only one thing on my own account.”
+
+“There is only one thing you must not say,” she retorted, turning on
+him without warning and speaking with concentrated passion. “I have
+been, it may be, as foolish as you say. I am only nineteen. I may have
+been, I don’t know about that, very wicked—as wicked as you say. And
+what I have done in my folly and in my—you call it wickedness—may be a
+disgrace to my family. But I have done nothing, nothing, sir,”—she
+raised her head proudly—“to disgrace myself personally. Do you believe
+that?”
+
+And then he did notice how white she was.
+
+“If you tell me that, I do believe it,” he said gravely.
+
+“You must believe it,” she rejoined with sudden vehemence. “Or you
+wrong me more cruelly than I have wronged you!”
+
+“I do believe it,” he said, conquered for the time by a new emotion.
+
+“Then now I will hear you,” she answered, her tone sinking again. “I
+will hear what you wish to say. Not that it will bend me. I have
+injured you. I own it, and am sorry for it on your account. On my own I
+am unhappy, but I had been more unhappy had I married you. You have
+been frank, let me be frank,” she continued, her eyes alight, her tone
+almost imperious. “You sought not a wife, but a mother for your child!
+A woman, a little better bred than a nurse, to whom you could entrust
+the one being, the only being, you love, with less chance of its
+contamination,” she laughed icily, “by the lower orders! If you had any
+other motive in choosing me it was that I was your second cousin, of
+your own respectable family, and you did not derogate. But you forgot
+that I was young and a woman, as you were a man. You said no word of
+love to me, you begged for no favour; when you entered a room, you
+sought my eye no more than another’s, you had no more softness for me
+than for another! If you courted me at all it was before others, and if
+you talked to me at all it was from the height of wise dullness, and
+about things I did not understand and things I hated! Until,” she
+continued viciously, “at last I hated you! What could be more natural?
+What did you expect?”
+
+A little colour had stolen into his face under the lash of her
+reproaches. He tried to seem indifferent, but he could not. His tone
+was forced and constrained when he answered.
+
+“You have strange ideas,” he said.
+
+“And you have but two!” she riposted. “Politics and your boy! I cared,”
+with concentrated bitterness, “for neither!”
+
+That stung him to anger and retort.
+
+“I can imagine it,” he said. “Your likings appear to be on a different
+plane.”
+
+“They are at least not confined to fifty families!” she rejoined. “I do
+not think myself divine,” she continued with feverish irony, “and all
+below me clay! I do not think because I and all about me are dull and
+stupid that all the world is dull and stupid, talking eternally
+about”—and she deliberately mocked his tone—“‘the licence of the
+press!’ and ‘the imminence of anarchy!’ To talk,” with supreme scorn,
+“of the licence of the press and the imminence of anarchy to a girl of
+nineteen! It was at least to make the way very smooth for another!”
+
+He looked at her in silence, frowning. Her frankness was an outrage on
+his dignity—and he, of all men, loved his dignity. But it surprised him
+at least as much as it shocked him. He remembered the girl sometimes
+silly, sometimes demure, to whom he had cast the handkerchief; and he
+had not been more astonished if a sheep had stood up and barked at him.
+He was here, prepared to meet a frightened, weeping, shamefaced child,
+imploring pardon, imploring mediation; and he found this! He was here
+to upbraid, and she scolded him. She marked with unerring eye the
+joints in his armour, and with her venomous woman’s tongue she planted
+darts that he knew would rankle—rankle long after she was gone and he
+was alone. And a faint glimpse of the truth broke on him. Was it
+possible that he had misread the girl; whom he had deemed
+characterless, when she was not shy? Was it possible that he had
+under-valued her and slighted her? Was it possible that, while he had
+been judging her and talking down to her, she had been judging him and
+laughing in her sleeve?
+
+The thought was not pleasant to a proud nature. And there was another
+thing he had to weigh. If she were so different in fact from the
+conception he had formed of her, the course which had occurred to him
+as the best, and which he was going to propose for her, might not be
+the best.
+
+But he put that from him. A name for firmness at times compels a man to
+obstinacy. It was so now. He set his jaw more stiffly, and—
+
+“Will you hear me now?” he asked.
+
+“If there is anything more to be said,” she replied. She spoke wearily
+over her shoulder.
+
+“I think there is,” he rejoined stubbornly, “one thing. It will not
+keep you long. It refers to your future. There is a course which I
+think may be taken and may be advantageous to you.”
+
+“If,” she cried impetuously, “it is to take me back to those——”
+
+“On the contrary,” he replied. He was not unwilling to wound one who
+had shown herself so unexpectedly capable of offence. “That is quite
+past,” he continued. “There is no longer any question of that. And even
+the course I suggest is not without its disadvantages. It may not, at
+first sight, be more acceptable to you than returning to your home. But
+I trust you have learnt a lesson, and will now be guided.” After saying
+which he coughed and hesitated, and at length, after twice pulling up
+his cravat, “I think,” he said—“the matter is somewhat delicate—that I
+had better write what I have in my mind.”
+
+Under the dead weight of depression which had succeeded to passion,
+curiosity stirred faintly in her. But—
+
+“As you please,” she said.
+
+“The more,” he continued stiffly, “as in the immediate present there is
+nothing to be done. And therefore there is no haste. Until this”—he
+made a wry face, the thing was so hateful to him—“this inquiry is at an
+end, and you are free to leave, nothing but preliminaries can be dealt
+with; those settled, however, I think there should be no delay. But you
+shall hear from me within the week.”
+
+“Very well.” And after a slight pause, “That is all?”
+
+“That is all, I think.”
+
+Yet he did not go. And she continued to stand with her shoulder turned
+towards him. He was a man of strong prejudices, and the habit of
+command had rendered him in some degree callous. But he was neither
+unkind by nature, nor, in spite of the story Walterson had told of him,
+inhuman in practice. To leave a young girl thus, to leave her without a
+word of leave-taking or regret, seemed even to him, now it came to the
+point, barbarous. The road stretched lonely on either side of them, the
+woods were brown and sad and almost leafless, the lake below them
+mirrored the unchanging grey above, or lost itself in dreary mist. And
+he remembered her in surroundings so different! He remembered how she
+had been reared, by whom encircled, amid what plenitude! And though he
+did not guess that the slender figure standing thus mute and forlorn
+would haunt him by night and by day for weeks to come, and harry and
+torment him with dumb reproaches—he still had not the heart to go
+without one gentler word.
+
+And so “No, there is one thing,” he said, his voice shaking very
+slightly, “I would like to add—I would like you to know. It is that
+after next week I shall be at Rysby in Cartmel—Rysby Hall—for about a
+month. It is not more than two miles from the foot of the lake, and if
+you are still here and need advice——”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+“——or help, I would like you to know that I am there.”
+
+“That I may apply to you?” she said without turning her head.
+
+He could not tell whether at last there were tears in her voice, or
+whether she were merely drawing him on to flout him.
+
+“I meant that,” he said coldly.
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+Certainly there was a queer sound in her voice.
+
+He paused awkwardly.
+
+“There is nothing more, I think?” he said.
+
+“Nothing, thank you.”
+
+“Very well,” he returned. “Then you will hear from me upon the matter I
+mentioned—in a day or two. Good-bye.”
+
+He went then—awkwardly, slowly. He felt himself, in spite of his
+arguments, in spite of his anger, in spite of the wrong which she had
+done him, and the disgrace which she brought on his name,—he felt
+himself something of a cur. She was little more than a child, little
+more than a child; and he had not understood her! Even now he had no
+notion how often that plea would ring in his ears, and harass him and
+keep him wakeful. And Henrietta? She had told herself before the
+interview that with it the worst would be over. But as she heard his
+firm tread pass slowly away, down the road, and grow fainter and
+fainter, the pride that had supported her under his eyes sank low. A
+sense of her loneliness, so cruel that it wrung her heart, so cruel
+that she could have run after him and begged him to punish her, to
+punish her as he pleased, if he would not leave her deserted, gripped
+her throat and brought salt tears to her eyes. The excitement was over,
+the flatness remained; the failure, and the grey skies and leaden water
+and dying bracken. And she was alone; alone for always. She had defied
+him, she had defied them all, she had told him that whatever happened
+she would not go back, she would not be taken back. But she knew now
+that she had lied. And she crossed the road, her step unsteady, and
+stumbled blindly up the woodland path above the road, until she came to
+a place where she knew that she was hidden. There she flung herself
+down on her face and cried passionately, stifling her sobs in the green
+damp moss. She had done wrong. She had done cruel wrong to him. But she
+was only nineteen, and she was being punished! She was being punished!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+HENRIETTA IN NAXOS
+
+
+Youth feels, let the adult say what he pleases, more deeply than middle
+age. It suffers and enjoys with a poignancy unknown in later life. But
+in revenge it is cast down more lightly, and uplifted with less reason.
+The mature have seen so many sunny mornings grow to tearful noons, so
+many days of stress close in peace, that their moods are not to the
+same degree at the mercy of passing accidents. It is with the young, on
+the other hand, as with the tender shoots; they raise their heads to
+meet the April sun, as naturally they droop in the harsh east wind. And
+Henrietta had been more than girl, certainly more than nineteen, if she
+had not owned the influence of the scene and the morning that lapped
+her about when she next set foot beyond the threshold of the inn.
+
+She had spent in the meantime three days at which memory shuddered.
+Alone in her room, shrinking from every eye, turning her back on the
+woman who waited on her, she had found her pride insufficient to
+support her. Solitude is a medium which exaggerates all objects, and
+the longer Henrietta brooded over her past folly and her present
+disgrace, the more intolerable these grew to the vision.
+
+Fortunately, if Modest Ann’s heart bled for her, Mrs. Gilson viewed her
+misfortunes with a saner and less sensitive eye. She saw that if the
+girl were left longer to herself her health would fail. Already, she
+remarked, the child looked two years older—looked a woman. So on the
+fourth morning Mrs. Gilson burst in on her, found her moping at the
+window with her eyes on the lake, and forthwith, after her fashion, she
+treated her to a piece of her mind.
+
+“See here, young miss,” she said bluntly, “I’ll have nobody ill in my
+house! Much more making themselves ill! In three days Bishop’s to be
+back, and they’ll want you, like enough. And a pale, peaking face won’t
+help you, but rather the other way with men, such fools as they be! You
+get your gear and go out.”
+
+Henrietta said meekly that she would do so.
+
+“There’s a basket I want to send to Tyson’s,” the landlady went on.
+“She’s ailing. It’s a flea’s load, but I suppose,” sticking her arms
+akimbo and looking straight at the girl, “you’re too much of a lady to
+carry it.”
+
+“I’ll take it very willingly,” Henrietta said. And she rose with a
+spark of something approaching interest in her eyes.
+
+“Well, I’ve nobody else,” said cunning Mrs. Gilson. “And I don’t
+suppose you’ll run from me, ’twixt here and there. And she’s a poor
+thing. She’s going to have a babby, and couldn’t be more lonely if she
+was in Patterdale.” And she described the way, adding that if Henrietta
+kept the road no one would meddle with her at that hour of the morning.
+
+The girl found her head-covering, and, submitting with a good grace to
+the basket, she set forth. As she emerged from the inn—for three days
+she had not been out—she cast a half-shamed, half-defiant look this way
+and that. But only Modest Ann was watching her from a window; and if
+ever St. Martin procured for the faithful a summer day, _intempestive_
+as the chroniclers have it, this was that day. A warm sun glowed in the
+brown hollows of the wood, and turned the dying fern to flame, and
+spread the sheen of velvet over green hill-side and grey crag. A mild
+west wind enlivened the surface of the lake with the sparkle of
+innumerable wavelets, and all that had for days been lead seemed turned
+to silver. The air was brisk and clear; in a heaven of their own, very
+far off, the great peaks glittered and shone. The higher Henrietta
+climbed above the inn-roofs, and the cares that centred there, the
+lighter, in spite of herself—how could it be otherwise with that scene
+of beauty stretched before her?—rose her heart.
+
+Half a dozen times as she mounted the hill she paused to view the scene
+through the tender mist of her own unhappiness. But every time she
+stood, the rare fleck of cloud gliding across the blue, or the dancing
+ripple of the water below, appealed to her, and caused her thoughts to
+wander; and youth and hope spoke more loudly. She was young. Surely at
+her age an error was not irreparable. Surely things would take a turn.
+For even now she was less unhappy, less ashamed.
+
+When she came to the summit of the shoulder, the bare gauntness of
+Hinkson’s farm, which resisted even the beauty of sunshine, caused her
+a momentary chill. The dog raved at her from the wind-swept litter of
+the yard. The blind gable-end scowled through the firs. Behind lay the
+squalid out-buildings, roofless and empty. She hurried by—not without a
+backward glance. She crossed the ridge, and almost immediately saw in a
+cup of the hills below her—so directly below her that roofs and yards
+and pig-styes lay mapped out under her eye—another farm. On three sides
+the smooth hill-turf sloped steeply to the walls. On the fourth, where
+a stream, which had its source beside the farm, found vent, a wood
+choked the descending gorge and hid the vale and the lake below.
+
+Deep-seated in its green bowl, the house was as lonely in position as
+the house on the shoulder, but after a warmer and more sheltered
+fashion. Conceivably peace and plenty, comfort and happiness might
+nestle in it. Yet the nearer Henrietta descended to it, leaving the
+world of space and view, the more a sense of stillness and isolation
+and almost of danger, pressed upon her. No sound of farm life, no
+cheery clank of horse-gear, no human voice broke the silence of the
+hills. Only a few hens scratched in the fold-yard.
+
+She struck on the half-open door, and a pair of pattens clanked across
+the kitchen flags. A clownish, dull-faced woman with drugget petticoats
+showed herself.
+
+“I’ve come to see Mrs. Tyson,” Henrietta said. “She’s in the house?”
+
+“Oh, ay.”
+
+“Can I see her?”
+
+“Oh, ay.”
+
+“Then——”
+
+“She’s on the settle.” As she spoke the woman stood aside, but
+continued to stare as if her curiosity grudged the loss of a moment.
+
+The kitchen, or house place—in those days the rough work of a farmhouse
+was done in the scullery—was spacious and clean, though sparsely and
+massively furnished. The flag floor was outlined in white squares, and
+the space about the fire was made more private by a tall settle which
+flanked the chimney corner and averted the draught. These appearances
+foretold a red-armed bustling house-wife. But they were belied by the
+pale plump face framed in untidy hair, which half in fright and half in
+bewilderment peered at her over the arm of the settle. It was a face
+that had been pretty after a feeble fashion no more than twelve months
+back: now it bore the mark of strain and trouble. And when it was not
+peevish it was frightened. Certainly it was no longer pretty.
+
+The owner of the face got slowly to her feet “Is it me you want?” she
+said, her tone spiritless.
+
+“If you are Mrs. Tyson,” Henrietta answered gently.
+
+“Yes, I am.”
+
+“I have brought you some things Mrs. Gilson of the inn wished to send
+you.”
+
+“I am obliged to you,” with stiff shyness.
+
+“And if you do not mind,” Henrietta continued frankly, “I will rest a
+little. If I do not trouble you.”
+
+“No, I’m mostly alone,” the young woman answered, slowly and
+apathetically. And she bade the servant set a chair for the visitor.
+That done, she despatched the woman with the basket to the larder.
+
+Then “I’m mostly alone,” she repeated. And this time her voice
+quivered, and her eyes met the other woman’s eyes.
+
+“But,” Henrietta said, smiling, “you have your husband.”
+
+“He’s often away,” wearily. “He’s often away; by day and night. He’s a
+doctor.”
+
+“But your servant? You have her?”
+
+“She goes home, nights. And then——” with a spasm of the querulous face
+that had been pretty no more than a year before, “the hours are long
+when you are alone. You don’t know,” timidly reaching out a hand as if
+she would touch Henrietta’s frock—but withdrawing it quickly, “what it
+is to be alone, miss, all night in such a house as this.”
+
+“No, and no one should be!” Henrietta answered.
+
+She glanced round the great silent kitchen and tried to fancy what the
+house would be like of nights; when darkness settled down on the hollow
+in the hills, and the wood cut it off from the world below; and when,
+whatever threatened, whatever came, whatever face of terror peered
+through the dark-paned window, whatever sound, weird or startling, rent
+the silence of the distant rooms, this helpless woman must face it
+alone!
+
+She shuddered.
+
+“But you are not alone all night?” she said.
+
+“No, but——” in a whisper, “often until after midnight, miss. And
+once—all night.”
+
+Henrietta restrained the words that rose to her lips.
+
+“Ah, well,” she said, “you’ll have your baby by-and-by.”
+
+“Ay, if it lives,” the other woman answered moodily—“if it lives. And,”
+she continued in a whisper, with her scared eyes on Henrietta’s face,
+and her hand on her wrist, “if I live, miss.”
+
+“Oh, but you must not think of that!” the girl protested cheerfully.
+“Of course you will live.”
+
+“I’ve mostly nought to do but think,” Tyson’s wife answered. “And I
+think queer things—I think queer things. Sometimes”—tightening her hold
+on Henrietta’s arm to stay her shocked remonstrance—“that he does not
+wish me to live. He’s at the house on the shoulder—Hinkson’s, the one
+you passed—most nights. There’s a girl there. And yesterday he said if
+I was lonely she should come and bide here while I laid up, and she’d
+be company for me. But”—in a wavering tone that was almost a wail—“I’m
+afraid!—I’m afraid.”
+
+“Afraid?” Henrietta repeated, trembling a little in sympathy, and
+drawing a little nearer the other. “Of what?”
+
+“Of her!” the woman muttered, averting her eyes that she might watch
+the door. “Of Bess. She’s gypsy blood, and it’s blood that sticks at
+nothing. And she’d be glad I was gone. She’d have him then. I know! She
+made a sign at me one day when my back was turned, but I saw it. And it
+was not for good. Besides——”
+
+“Oh, but indeed,” Henrietta protested, “indeed, you must not think of
+these things. You are not well, and you have fancies.”
+
+Mrs. Tyson shook her head.
+
+“You’d have fancies,” in a gloomy tone, “if you lived in this house.”
+
+“It is only because you are so much alone in it,” the girl protested.
+
+“That’s not all,” with a shudder. The woman leant forward and spoke low
+with her eyes glued to the door. “That’s not all. You don’t know,
+nobody knows. Nobody knows—that’s alive! But once, after I came to live
+here, when I complained that he was out so much and was not treating me
+well, he took and showed me—he took and showed me——”
+
+“What?” Henrietta spoke as lightly as she could. “What did he show
+you?” For the woman had broken off, and with her eyes closed seemed to
+be on the point of fainting.
+
+“Nothing—nothing,” Mrs. Tyson said, recovering herself with a sudden
+gasp. “And here’s the basket, miss. Meg lives down below. Shall she
+carry the basket to Mrs. Gilson’s? It is not fitting a young lady like
+you should carry it.”
+
+“Oh, no; I will take it,” Henrietta answered, with as careless an air
+as she could muster.
+
+And after a moment’s awkward hesitation, under the eyes of the dull
+serving-maid, she rose. She would gladly have stayed and heard more;
+for her pity and curiosity were alike vividly roused. But it was plain
+that for the present she could neither act upon the one nor assuage the
+other. She read a plea for silence in the eyes of the weak, frightened
+woman; and having said that probably Mrs. Gilson would be sending her
+that way again before long, she took her leave.
+
+Wondering much. For the low-ceiled kitchen, with its shadowy
+chimney-corner and its low-browed windows, had another look for her
+now; and the stillness of the house another meaning. All might be the
+fancy of a nervous, brooding woman. And yet there was something. And,
+something or nothing, there were unhappiness and fear and cruelty in
+this quiet work. As she climbed the track that led again to the lip of
+the basin, and to sunshine and brisk air and freedom, she had less pity
+for herself, she thought less of herself. She might have lain at the
+mercy of a careless, faithless husband, who played on her fears and
+mocked her appeals. She, when in her early unbroken days she
+complained, might have been taken and scared by—heaven knew what!
+
+She was still thinking with indignation of the woman’s plight when she
+gained the road. A hundred paces brought her to Hinkson’s. And there,
+standing under the firs at the corner of the house, and looking over
+her shoulder as if she had turned, in the act of entering, to see who
+passed, was the dark girl; the same whose insolent smile had annoyed
+her on the morning of her arrival, before she knew what was in store
+for her.
+
+Their eyes met. Again Henrietta’s face, to her intense vexation,
+flamed. Then the dog sprang up and raved at her, and she passed on down
+the road. But she was troubled. She was vexed with herself for losing
+countenance, and still more angry with the girl whose mocking smile had
+so strange a power to wound her.
+
+“That must be the creature we have been discussing,” she thought. “Odd
+that I should meet her, and still more odd that I should have seen her
+before! I don’t wonder that the woman fears her! But why does she look
+at me, of all people, after that fashion?”
+
+She told herself that it was her fancy, and trying to forget the
+matter, she tripped on down the road. Presently, before her cheeks or
+her temper were quite cool, she saw that she was going to meet some
+one—a man who was slowly mounting the hill on horseback. A moment later
+she made out that the rider who was approaching was Mr. Hornyold, and
+her face grew hot again. The meeting was humiliating. She wished
+herself anywhere else. But at the worst she could bow coldly and pass
+by.
+
+She reckoned without the justice, who was wont to say that when he wore
+a cassock he was a parson, and when he wore his top-boots he was a
+gentleman. He recognised her with a subdued “View halloa!” and pulled
+up as she drew near. He slid from his saddle—with an agility his bulk
+did not promise—and barred the way.
+
+With a grin and an over-gallant salute, “Dear, dear, dear,” he said.
+“Isn’t this out of bounds, young lady? Outside the rules of the bench,
+eh? What’d Mother Gilson be saying if she saw you here?”
+
+“I have been on an errand for her,” Henrietta replied, in her coldest
+tone.
+
+But she had to stop. The road was narrow, and he had, as by accident,
+put his horse across it.
+
+“An errand?” he said, smiling more broadly, “as far as this? She is
+very trusting! More trusting than I should be with a young lady of your
+appearance, who twist all the men round your finger.”
+
+Henrietta’s eyes sparkled.
+
+“I am returning to her,” she said, “and I am late. Please to let me
+pass.”
+
+“To be sure I will,” he said. But instead of moving aside he drew a
+pace nearer; so that between himself, the horse, and the bank, she was
+hemmed in. “To be sure, young lady!” he continued. “But that is not
+quite the tone to take with the powers that be! We are gentle as
+sucking doves—to pretty young women—while we are pleased; and ready to
+stretch a point, as we did the other day, for our friend Clyne, who was
+so deuced mysterious about the matter. But we must have our _quid pro
+quo_, eh? Come, a kiss! Just one. There are only the birds to see and
+the hedges to tell, and I’ll warrant”—the leer more plain in his
+eyes—“you are not always so particular.”
+
+Henrietta was not frightened, but she was angry and savage.
+
+“Do you know who I am?” she cried, for the moment forgetting herself in
+her passion.
+
+“No!” he answered, before she could say more. “That is just what I
+don’t know, my girl. I have taken you on trust and you are pretty
+enough! But I know Clyne, and he is interested in you. And his taste is
+good enough for me!”
+
+“Let me pass!” she cried.
+
+He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly
+behind the horse’s heels and stood free. Hornyold wheeled about, and
+with an oath:
+
+“You sly baggage!” he cried. “You are not going to escape so easily!
+You——”
+
+There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance
+beyond her, was a stranger. The sight was so little to be expected in
+that solitary place, he had been so sure that they were alone and the
+girl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. The
+stranger came slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised
+his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling
+magistrate and the indignant girl.
+
+“Good morning,” he said, addressing her. “If I am not inopportune, I
+have a letter for you from Captain Clyne.”
+
+“Then be good enough,” she answered, “first to take me out of the
+company of this person.” And she turned her shoulder on the justice,
+and taking the stranger with her—almost in his own despite—she sailed
+off; and, a very picture of outraged dignity, swept down the road.
+
+Mr. Hornyold glared after her, his bridle on his arm. And his face was
+red with fury. Seldom had he been so served.
+
+“A parson, by heaven!” he said. “A regular Methody, too, by his
+niminy-piminy get-up! Who is he, I wonder, and what in the name of
+mischief brought him here just at that moment? Ten to one she was
+looking to meet him, and that was why she played the prude, the little
+cat! To be sure. But I’ll be even with her—in Appleby gaol or out! As
+for him, I’ve never set eyes on him. And I’ve a good notion to have him
+taken up and lodged in the lock-up. Any way, I’ll set the runners on
+him. Not much spirit in him by the look of him! But she’s a spit-fire!”
+
+Mr. Hornyold had been so long accustomed to consider the girls of the
+village fair sport, that he was considerably put out. True, Henrietta
+was not a village girl. She was something more, and a mystery; nor
+least a mystery in her relations with Captain Clyne, a man whom the
+justice admitted to be more important than himself. But she was in
+trouble, she was under a cloud, she was smirched with suspicion; she
+was certainly no better than she should be. And not experience only,
+but all the coarser instincts of the man forbade him to believe in such
+a woman’s “No.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+CAPTAIN CLYNE’S PLAN
+
+
+For a full hundred yards Henrietta walked on with her head in the air,
+too angry to accost or even to look at her companion; who, on his part,
+tripped meekly beside her. Then a sense of the absurdity of the
+position—of his position rather than her own, for she had whirled him
+off whether he would or no—overcame her. And she laughed.
+
+“Was ever anything so ridiculous?” she cried. And she looked at him
+askance and something ashamed. The quick movement which had enabled her
+to escape had loosened the thick mass of her fair hair, and this, with
+her flushed cheeks and kindled eyes, showed her so handsome that it was
+well the impetuous justice was no longer with her.
+
+The stranger was apparently less impressionable.
+
+“I am glad,” he said primly, “that my coming was so opportune.”
+
+“Oh! I was not afraid of him,” Henrietta answered, tossing her head.
+
+“No?” he rejoined. “Indeed. Still, I am glad that I came so
+opportunely.”
+
+He was a neat, trim man in black, of a pale complexion, and with the
+small features and the sharp nose that indicate at once timidity and
+obstinacy; the nose that in the case of the late Right Honourable
+William Pitt, whom he was proud to resemble, meant something more. But
+for a pair of bright eyes he had been wholly mean, and wholly
+insignificant; and Henrietta saw nothing in him either formidable or
+attractive. She had a notion that she had seen him somewhere; but it
+was a vague notion, and how he came to be here or commissioned to her
+she could no more conjecture than if he had risen from the ground.
+
+“You are a stranger here?” she said at last, after more than one
+side-long glance.
+
+“Yes, I descended from the coach an hour ago.”
+
+“And came in search of me?”
+
+“Precisely,” he replied. “Being empowered to do so,” he continued, with
+a slight but formal bow, “by Captain Anthony Clyne, to whom I have the
+honour—my name is Sutton—of being related in the capacity of chaplain.”
+
+She coloured more violently with shame than before with anger: and all
+her troubles came back to her. Probably this man knew all; knew what
+she had done and what had happened to her. It was cruel—oh, it was
+cruel to send him! For a moment she could not collect her thoughts or
+master her voice. But at last,
+
+“Oh!” she said confusedly. “I see. A lovely view from here, is it not?”
+
+“Yes, to be sure,” he replied, with the same precision with which he
+had spoken before. “I ought to have noticed it.”
+
+“And you bring me a letter?”
+
+“It was Captain Clyne’s wish that I——” he hesitated, and was plainly
+embarrassed—“that I should, in fact, offer my company for a day or two.
+While you are under the care of the good woman at the inn.”
+
+She turned her face towards him, and regarded him with a mixture of
+surprise and distaste. Then,
+
+“Indeed?” she said coldly. “In what capacity, if you please?”
+
+But the words said, she felt her cheeks grow hot. They thought so ill
+of her, she had so misbehaved herself, that a duenna was not enough; a
+clergyman must be sent to lecture her. By-and-by he would talk
+goody-goody to her, such as they talked to Lucy in _The Fairchild
+Family!_ Save that she was grown up and Lucy was not!
+
+“But it does not matter,” she continued hurriedly, and before he could
+answer, “I am obliged to you, but Mrs. Gilson is quite able to take
+care of me.”
+
+“And yet I came very opportunely—just now,” he said. “I am glad I came
+so opportunely.”
+
+Reminded of the insolence to which her loneliness had exposed her,
+Henrietta felt her cheek grow hot again.
+
+“Oh,” she said, “I did not need you! But I thought you said you brought
+a letter?”
+
+“I have a letter. But I beg leave—to postpone its delivery for a day or
+two.”
+
+“How?” in astonishment. “If it is for me?”
+
+“By Captain Clyne’s directions,” he answered.
+
+She stopped short and faced him, rebellion in her eyes.
+
+“Then why,” she said proudly, “seek me out now if this letter is not to
+be delivered at once?”
+
+“That, too, is by his order,” Mr. Sutton explained in the same tone.
+“And pardon me for saying,” he continued, with a meaning cough, “that I
+have seen enough to be assured of Captain Clyne’s forethought. Apart
+from which, in Lancashire, at any rate, the times are so troubled, the
+roads so unsafe, the common people so outrageous, that for a young lady
+to walk out alone is not safe.”
+
+“He should have sent a servant, then!” she answered sharply.
+
+A faint colour rose to the chaplain’s cheeks.
+
+“He thought me more trustworthy, perhaps,” he said meekly. “And it is
+possible he was under the impression that my company might be more
+acceptable.”
+
+“If I may be plain,” she answered tartly, “I am in no mood for a
+stranger’s company.”
+
+“And yet,” he said, with a gleam of appeal in his eyes, “I would fain
+hope to make myself acceptable.”
+
+She gave him no direct answer; only,
+
+“I cannot understand, I really cannot understand,” she said, “of what
+he was thinking. You had better give me the letter now, sir. I may find
+something in that which may explain.”
+
+But he only cast down his eyes.
+
+“I am afraid,” he said, “that I must not disobey the directions which
+Captain Clyne laid upon me.”
+
+“Very good,” she retorted; “that is as you please. Only—our paths
+separate here. The road we are on will take you to the inn—you cannot
+miss it. My path lies this way.”
+
+And with a stiff little bow she laid her hand on the gate which gave
+entrance to the field-path; the same path that led down through the
+coppice to the back of the Low Wood inn. She passed through.
+
+He hesitated an instant, then he also turned in at the gate. And as she
+halted, eyeing him in displeasure—
+
+“I really cannot let you stray from the high-road alone,” he said. “You
+will pardon me, I am sure, if I seem intrusive. But it is not safe. I
+have seen enough,” with a smirk, “to know that—that beauty unattended
+goes in danger amid these lovely”—he waved his hand in kindly patronage
+of the lake—“these lovely, but wild surroundings.”
+
+“You mean,” she answered, with a dangerous light in her eyes, “that you
+will force your company on me, sir? Whether I will or no?”
+
+“Not force, no! No! No! But I must, I can only do as I am ordered. I
+should not presume of myself,” he continued, with a touch of real
+humility—“even to offer my company. I should not look so high. I should
+think such an honour above me. But I was led to believe——”
+
+“By Captain Clyne?”
+
+“Yes, that—that, in fact, you were willing to make what amends you
+could for the injury done to him. And that, if only for that reason, I
+might expect a more favourable reception at your hands.”
+
+“But why, sir?—why?” she cried, cut to the quick. To suffer this man,
+this stranger, to talk to her of making amends!” What good will it do
+to Captain Clyne if I receive you ever so favourably?”
+
+He looked at her humbly, with appeal in his eyes.
+
+“If you would deign to wait,” he said, and he wiped his forehead, “I
+think I could make that more clear to you afterwards.”
+
+But very naturally his persistence offended her. That word amends, too,
+stuck in her throat. Her pride, made restive by her encounter with
+Hornyold, was up in arms.
+
+“I shall not wait a moment,” she said. “Not a moment! Understand, sir,
+that if you accompany me against my will, my first act on reaching the
+inn will be to complain to the landlady, and seek her protection.”
+
+“Surely not against Captain Clyne’s pleni—plenipotentiary?” he murmured
+abjectly. “Surely not!”
+
+“I do not know what a pleni-plenipotentiary is,” she retorted. “But if
+you follow me, you follow at your peril!”
+
+And she turned her back on him, and plunged downwards through the wood.
+She did not deign to look behind; but her ears told her that he was not
+following. For the rest, all the beauty of the wood, shot through with
+golden lights, all the cool loveliness of the dell, with its emerald
+mosses and flash of jewelled wings, were lost upon her now, so sore was
+she and so profoundly humiliated. Twice in one morning she had been
+insulted. Twice in one hour had a man shown her that he held her fair
+game. Were they right, then, who preached that outside the sanctum of
+home no girl was safe? Or was it her story, her conduct, her disgrace,
+known to all for miles round, that robbed her of the right to respect?
+
+Either way she was unhappy, frightened, nay, shocked; and she longed to
+be within doors, where she need not restrain herself. Too proud to
+confide in Mrs. Gilson, she longed none the less for some one to whom
+she could unburden herself. Was she to go through the world exposed to
+such scenes? Must she be daily and hourly on her guard against rude
+insult, or more odious gallantries? And if these things befell her in
+this quiet spot, what must she expect in the world, deserted as she was
+by all those who would once have protected her?
+
+She looked to gain her room without further unpleasantness; for the
+path she followed led her to the back door, and she could enter that
+way. But she was not to be so fortunate. In the yard, awaiting her with
+his hat in his hand and the flush of haste on his pallid face, was Mr.
+Sutton.
+
+Poor Henrietta! she ground her small teeth together in her rage, and
+her face was scarlet. But her mind was made up. If Mr. Sutton counted
+on her being worse than her word she would show him his mistake.
+
+“I shall send for the landlady,” she said; and beckoning to a
+stable-help who was crossing the yard with a bucket, “Fetch Mrs.
+Gilson,” she said. “Tell her——”
+
+“One moment!” Mr. Sutton interposed with meek firmness. “I am going to
+give you the letter. It will explain all, and I hope justify my
+conduct, which I cannot believe to have been offensive.”
+
+“That is a matter of opinion,” Henrietta said loftily. She held out her
+hand. “The letter, sir, if you please.”
+
+“One favour, I beg,” he said, with a gesture that deprecated her
+impatience. He waved the groom out of hearing. “This is not a fit place
+for you or”—with a return of dignity—“for the business on which I am
+here. Do me the favour of seeing me within or of walking a few yards
+with me. There is a seat by the lake, if you will not admit me to your
+apartments.”
+
+She frowned at him. But she saw the wisdom of concluding the matter,
+and she led the way into the road and turned to the right. Immediately,
+however, she remembered that the Ambleside road would lead her to the
+spot where Captain Clyne had taken leave of her, and she turned and
+walked the other way until she came to the place where the Troutbeck
+lane diverged. There she stood.
+
+“The letter, if you please,” she said. She spoke with the contemptuous
+hardness which youth, seldom considerate of others’ feelings, is prone
+to display.
+
+He held it an instant in his hand as if he could not bear to part with
+it. But at last, with a dismal look and an abject sentence or two, he
+gave it up.
+
+“I beg you, I implore you,” he muttered as she took it, “to announce no
+hasty decision. To believe that I am something more and better than you
+think me now. And that ill as I have set myself before you, I would
+fain labour to show myself more—more worthy!”
+
+The words were so strange, his manner was so puzzling, that they
+pierced the armour of her dislike. She paused, staring at him.
+
+“Worthy!” she exclaimed. “Worthy of what?”
+
+“The letter——”
+
+“Yes, the letter will tell me.”
+
+And with a haughty air she broke the seal. As she read she turned
+herself from him, so that he saw little more of her face than her
+firmly moulded chin. But when she had carried her eyes some way down
+the sheet he noticed that her hands began to shake.
+
+“Henrietta,” so Captain Clyne began,—“for to add any term of endearment
+were either too little or too much—I have thought long and painfully,
+as becomes one who expected to be by this time your husband, on the
+situation in which you have placed yourself by an escapade, the
+consequences of which, whatever action be taken, must be permanently
+detrimental. Of these, as they touch myself, I say nothing, the object
+of these lines being to indicate a way by which I trust your honour and
+character may be redeemed. The bearer, whom I know for a man of merit
+and respectability, saw you by chance on the occasion of your visit to
+my house, and, as I learned by a word indiscreetly dropped, admired
+you. He has been admitted to the secret of your adventure, and is
+willing, without more and upon my representation of the facts of the
+case, to make you his wife and to give you the shelter of his name.
+After long thought I can devise no better course, whereby, innocent of
+aught but folly, as I believe you to be, the honour of the family can
+be preserved. Still, I would not suggest or advise the step were I not
+sure that Mr. Sutton, though beneath us by extraction, is a person of
+parts and worth in whose hands your future will be safe, while his
+material prosperity shall be my care. I have advised him to take such
+opportunities as offer of commending himself to you before delivering
+this note. Gladly would I counsel you to take the advice of your
+brother and his wife were I not aware how bitter is their resentment
+and how complete their estrangement. I, on the other hand, whose right
+to advise you may question—— But it were idle to say more than that I
+forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven. Nor will your interests ever be
+indifferent to
+
+“Your kinsman,
+
+“Anthony Clyne.”
+
+Mr. Sutton noted the growing tremour of the hands which held the
+paper—he could hear it rustle. And his face, usually so pallid,
+flushed. Into the greyness of a life that had been happier if the
+chaplain had possessed less of those parts for which Captain Clyne
+commended him, had burst this vision of a bride, young, beautiful, and
+brilliant; a daughter of that world which thought him honoured by the
+temporary possession of a single finger, or the gift of a careless nod.
+Who could blame him if he succumbed? Aladdin, on the point of marriage
+with the daughter of the Sultan, bent to no greater temptation; nor any
+barber or calendar of them all, when on the verge of a like match. He
+had seen Henrietta once only, he had viewed her then as a thing of
+grace and refinement meet only for his master. At the prospect of
+possessing her, such scruples as rose in his mind faded quickly. He
+told himself that he would be foolish indeed if he did not carry the
+matter through with a bold face; or if for fear of a few hard words, or
+a pouting beauty, he yielded up the opportunity of a life.
+
+On the hill he had proved himself equal to the call. Not so now. He had
+pictured the girl taking the news in many ways, in scorn, in anger,
+with shallow coquetry, or in dull resignation. But he had never
+anticipated the way in which she did take it. When she had read the
+letter to the end she turned her back on him and bent her head.
+
+“Oh!” she cried; and broke into weeping—not passionate nor bitter, he
+was prepared for that—but the soft and helpless weeping of a broken
+thing.
+
+That they, that Anthony Clyne, above all, should do this to her! That
+he should think of her as a chattel to be handed from one to another, a
+girl so light that all men were the same to her, if they were men! That
+they, that he should hold her so cheap, deem her so smirched by what
+had passed, misread her so vilely as to think that she had fallen to
+this! That with indifference she would give herself to any man, no
+matter to whom, if she could that way keep her name and hold up her
+head!
+
+It hurt her horribly. Nay, for the time it broke her down. The mid-day
+coach swept by to the inn door, and the parson, standing beside her,
+ashamed of himself and conscious of the passengers’ curious glances,
+wished himself anywhere else. But she was wounded too sorely to care
+who saw or who heard; and she wept openly though quietly until the
+first sharpness of the pain was blunted. Then he thought, as her
+sobbing grew less vehement, that his time was come, that he might yet
+be heard. And he murmured that he was grieved, he was sorely grieved.
+
+“So am I!” she said, dabbing her eyes with her wet handkerchief. She
+sobbed out the words so humbly, so weakly, that he was encouraged.
+
+“Then may I—may I return presently?” he murmured, with a nervous cough.
+“You must stand in need of advice? And—and by some one near you? When
+you are more composed perhaps? Yes. Not that there is any hurry,” he
+added quickly, frightened by a movement of her shoulders. “Not at all.
+I’ll not say another word now! By-and-by, by-and-by, dear young lady,
+you will be more composed. To-morrow, if you prefer it, or even the
+next day. I shall wait, and I shall be here.”
+
+She gave her eyes a last dab and turned.
+
+“I do not blame you,” she said, her voice broken by a sob. “You did not
+know me. But you must go back—you must go back to him at once and tell
+him that I—that he has punished me as sharply as he could wish.” She
+dabbed her face again. “I do not know what I shall think of him
+presently, but I—— Oh, oh!” with a fresh burst of tears, “that he
+should do this to me!—that he should do this!”
+
+He did not know her, as she said; and, small blame to him, he misread
+her. Because she neither stormed nor sneered, but only wept in this
+heart-broken fashion, like a child cowed by a beating, he fancied that
+the task before him was not above his powers. He thought her plastic, a
+creature easily moulded; and that already she was bending herself to
+the fate proposed for her. And in soothing tones, for he was genuinely
+sorry for her, “There, there, my dear young lady,” he said, “I know it
+is something hard. It is hard. But in a little while, a very little
+while, I trust, it will seem less hard. And there is time before us.
+Time to become acquainted, time to gain knowledge of one another.
+Plenty of time! There is no hurry.”
+
+She lowered her handkerchief from her eyes and looked at him, over it,
+as if, without understanding, she thanked him for his sympathy. With
+her tear-washed eyelashes and rumpled hair and neck-ribbon she looked
+more childish, she seemed to him less formidable. He took heart of
+grace to go on.
+
+“Captain Clyne shall be told what you feel about it,” he said, thinking
+to soothe and humour her. “He shall be told all in good time. And
+everything I can say and anything I can do to lighten the burden and
+meet your wishes——”
+
+“You?”
+
+“——I shall do, be sure!”
+
+He was beginning to feel his feet, and he spoke earnestly. He spoke, to
+do him justice, with feeling.
+
+“Your happiness,” he said, “will be the one, at any rate the first, and
+main object of my life. As time goes on I hope and believe that you
+will find a recompense in the service and devotion of a life, although
+a humble life; and always I will be patient. I will wait, my dear young
+lady, in good hope.”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+The tone of the two words shook Mr. Sutton unpleasantly. He reddened.
+But with an effort,
+
+“In what hope?” he answered, embarrassed by the sudden rigidity of her
+face. “In the hope,” with a feeble smile, “that in no long time—I am
+presumptuous, I know—you will see some merit in me, my dear young lady.
+And will assent to my wishes, my humble, ardent wishes, and those of my
+too-generous patron.”
+
+There were no tears in her eyes now. She seemed to tower above him in
+her indignation.
+
+“Your wishes, you miserable little man?” she cried, with a look which
+pierced his vanity to the quick. “They are nothing to me! Go back to
+your master!”
+
+And before he could rally his forces or speak, she was gone from him
+into the house. He heard a snigger behind the hedge, but by the time he
+had climbed the bank—with a crimson face—there was no one to be seen.
+
+He stood an instant, brooding, with his eyes on the road.
+
+“A common man would give up,” he muttered. “But I shall not! I am no
+common man. I shall not give up.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+THE OLD LOVE
+
+
+Mr. Sutton was a vain man and sensitive, and though he clung to hope,
+Henrietta’s words hurt him to the quick. The name of Chaplain was
+growing obsolete at this time; it was beginning to import unpleasant
+things. With this chaplain in particular his dependence on a patron was
+a sore point; for with some capacity, he lacked, and knew that he
+lacked, that strength of mind which enables a man to hold his own, be
+his position what it may. For an hour, writhing under the reflection
+that even the yokels about him were aware of his discomfiture, he was
+cast down to the very ground. He was inclined to withdraw his hand and
+let the dazzling vision pass.
+
+Then he rallied his forces. He bethought him how abnormal was the
+chance, how celestial the dream, how sweet the rapture of possessing
+the charms that now flouted him. And he took heart of grace. He raised
+his head, he enlisted in the cause all the doggedness of his nature. He
+recalled stories, inaccurately remembered, of Swift and Voltaire and
+Rousseau, all dependants who had loved, and all men of no greater
+capacity, it was possible, than himself. What slights had they not
+encountered, what scornful looks, and biting gibes! But they had
+persisted, having less in their favour than he had; and he would
+persist. And he would triumph as they had triumphed. What matter a
+trifling loss of countenance as he passed by the coach-office, or a
+burning sensation down the spine when those whom he had left tittered
+behind him? He laughed best who laughed last.
+
+For such a chance would never, could never fall to him again. The
+Caliph of Bagdad was dead, and princesses wedded no longer with
+calendars. Was he to toss away the one ticket which the lottery of life
+had dropped in his lap? Surely not. And for scruples—he felt them no
+longer. The girl’s stinging words, her scornful taunt, had silenced the
+small voice that on his way hither had pleaded for her; urging him to
+spare her loneliness, to take no advantage of her defenceless position.
+Bah! If that were all, she could defend herself well.
+
+So Henrietta, when she came downstairs, a little paler and a little
+prouder, and with the devil, that is in all proud women, a little
+nearer to urging her on something, no matter what, that might close a
+humiliating scene, was not long in discovering a humble black presence
+that by turns followed and evaded her. Mr. Sutton did not venture to
+address her directly. To put himself forward was not his _rôle_. But he
+sought to commend himself by self-effacement; or at the most by such
+meek services as opening the door for her without lifting his eyes
+above the hem of her skirt, or placing a thing within reach before she
+learned her need of it. Nevertheless, whenever she left her room she
+caught sight of him; and the consciousness that he was watching her,
+that his eyes were on her back, that if her gown caught in a nail of
+the floor he would be at hand to release it, wore on her nerves. She
+tried to disregard him, she tried to be indifferent to him. But there
+he always was, pale, obstinate, cringing, and waiting. And so great is
+the power of persistence, that she began to fear him.
+
+Between his insidious court and the dread of Mr. Hornyold’s gallantries
+she was uncomfortable as well as wretchedly unhappy. The position
+shamed her. She felt that it was her own conduct which she had to thank
+for their pursuit; and for Anthony Clyne’s more cruel insult, which she
+swore she would never forgive. She knew that in the old life, within
+the fence where she had been reared, no one had ever dared to take a
+liberty with her or dreamed of venturing on a freedom. Now it was so
+different. So different! And she was so lonely! She stood fair game for
+all. Presently even the village louts would nudge one another when she
+passed, or follow her in the hope of they knew not what.
+
+Already, indeed, if she passed the threshold she had a third follower;
+whose motives were scarcely less offensive than the motives of the
+other two. Mr. Bishop had been away for nearly a week scouring the
+roads between Cockermouth and Whitehaven, and Maryport and Carlisle. He
+had drawn, as he hoped, a net round the quarry—if it had not already
+escaped. In particular, he had made sure that trusty men—and by trusty
+men Mr. Bishop meant men who would not refuse to share the reward with
+their superiors—watched the most likely places. These arrangements had
+taken his brown tops and sturdy figure far afield: so that scarce a
+pot-house in all that country was now ignorant of the face of John
+Bishop of Bow Street, scarce a saddle-horse was unversed in his weight.
+Finally he had returned to the centre of his spider’s web, and rather
+than be idle he was giving himself up to stealthy observation of
+Henrietta.
+
+For he had one point in common with Mr. Sutton. While the Low Wood folk
+exhausted themselves in surmises and believed in a day a dozen stories
+of the girl who had dropped so strangely among them, the runner knew
+who she was. Perforce he had been taken into confidence. But thereupon
+his experience of the criminal kind led him astray. He remembered how
+stubbornly she had refused to give her name, to give information, to
+give anything; and he suspected that she knew where Walterson lay hid.
+He thought it more than likely that she was still in relations with
+him. A girl of her breeding, the runner argued, does not give up all
+for a romantic stranger unless she loves him: and once in love, such an
+one sticks at nothing. So he too haunted her footsteps, vanished when
+she came, and appeared when she retreated; and all with an air of
+respect which maddened the victim and puzzled the onlookers.
+
+But for this she had been able to spend these days of loneliness and
+incertitude in wandering among the hills. She was young enough to feel
+confinement irksome, and she yearned for the open and the unexplored.
+She fancied that she would find relief in plunging into the depths of
+woods where, on a still day, the leaves floated singly down to mingle
+with the dying ferns. She thought that in long roaming, with loosened
+hair and wind-swept cheeks, over Wansfell Pike, or to the upper world
+of the Kirkstone or the Hog-back beyond Troutbeck, she might forget, in
+the wilds of nature, her own small woes and private griefs. At least on
+the sheep-trodden heights there would be no one to reproach her, no one
+to fling scorn at her.
+
+And two mornings later she felt that she must go; she must escape from
+the eyes that everywhere beset her. She marked down Mr. Bishop in the
+road before the house, and, safe from him, she slipped out at the back,
+and, almost running, climbed the path that led to the hills. She passed
+through the wood and emerged on the shoulder; and drew a deep breath,
+rejoicing in her freedom. One glance at the lake spread out below
+her—and something still and sullen under a grey sky—and she passed on.
+She had a crust in her pocket, and she would remain abroad all day—for
+it was mild. With the evening she would return footsore and utterly
+weary. And she would sleep.
+
+She was within a few yards of the gate of Hinkson’s farm when she saw
+coming towards her the last man whom she wished to meet—Mr. Hornyold.
+He was walking beside his nag, with the rein on his arm and his eyes on
+the road. His hands were plunged far into the fobs of his breeches, and
+he was studying something so deeply that he did not perceive her.
+
+The memory of their last meeting—on that very spot—was unpleasantly
+fresh in Henrietta’s mind, and the impulse to escape was strong.
+Hinkson’s gate was within reach of her arm, the dog was asleep in the
+kennel; in a twinkling she was within and making for the house. Any
+pretence would do, she thought. She might ask for a cup of water, drink
+it, and return to the road. By that time he would have gone on his way.
+
+She knew that the moment she had passed the corner of the house she was
+safe from observation. And seeing the front so grim, so slatternly, so
+uninviting, she paused. Why go on? Why knock? After giving Hornyold
+time to pass she might slip back to the road without challenging
+notice.
+
+She would have done this, if her eyes, as she hesitated, had not met
+those of a grimy, frowsy scarecrow who seemed to be playing
+hide-and-seek with her from the shelter of the decaying bushes that
+stood for a garden. She saw herself discovered, and not liking the
+creature’s looks, she returned to her first plan. She knocked on the
+half-open door, and receiving no answer, pushed it open and stepped
+in—as she had stepped into cottages in her own village scores of times.
+
+For an instant the aspect of the interior gave her pause; so bare, with
+the northern bareness, so squalid with the wretchedness of poverty, was
+the great dark kitchen. Then, telling herself that it was only the
+sudden transition from the open air and the wide view that gave a
+sinister look to the place, she rapped on the table.
+
+Some one moved overhead, crossed the floor slowly, and began to descend
+the stairs. The door at the foot of the staircase was ajar, and
+Henrietta waited with her eyes fixed on it. She wondered if the step
+belonged to the girl whose bold look had so displeased her; or to a
+man—the tread seemed too heavy for a woman. Then the door was pushed
+open a few inches only, a foot at most. And out of the grey gloom of
+the stairway a face looked at her, and eyes met her eyes.
+
+The face was Stewart’s! Walterson’s!
+
+She did not cry out. She stood petrified, silent, staring. And after a
+whispered oath wrung from him by astonishment, he was mute. He stood,
+peering at her through the half-open door; the dangerous instinct which
+bade him spring upon her and secure her curbed for the moment by his
+ignorance of the conditions. She might have others with her. There
+might be men within hearing. How came she there? And above all, what
+cursed folly had led him to show himself? What madness had drawn him
+forth before he knew who it was, before he had made certain that it was
+Bess’s summons?
+
+
+[Illustration: ] The face was Stewart’s
+
+
+It was she who broke the spell. She turned, and with no uncertainty or
+backward glance she went out slowly and softly, like a blind person,
+passed round the house, and gained the road. Hornyold had gone by and
+was out of sight; but she did not give a thought to him.
+
+The shock was great. She was white to the lips. By instinct she turned
+homewards—wandering abroad on open hills was far from her thoughts now.
+But even so, when she had gone a little way she had to stand and steady
+herself by a gate-post—her knees trembled so violently under her. For
+by intuition she knew that she had escaped a great danger. The wretched
+creature cowering in the gloom of the stairway had not moved hand or
+foot after his eyes met hers; but something in those eyes, a gleam wild
+and murderous, recurred to her memory. And she shuddered.
+
+Presently the first effects of the shock abated and left her free to
+think. She knew then that a grievous thing had happened, and a thing
+which must add much to the weight of unhappiness she had thought
+intolerable an hour before. To begin, the near presence of the man
+revolted her. The last shred of the romance in which she had garbed
+him, the last hue of glamour, were gone; and in the creature whom she
+had espied cowering on the stairs, with the danger-signal lurking in
+his eyes, she saw her old lover as others would see him. How she could
+have been so blind as to invest such a man with virtue, how she could
+have been so foolish as to fancy she loved _that_, passed her
+understanding now! Ay, and filled her with a trembling disgust of
+herself.
+
+Meantime, that was the beginning. Beyond that she foresaw trouble and
+embarrassment without end. If he were taken, he would be tried, and she
+would be called to the witness box, and the story of her infatuation
+would be told. Nay, she would have to tell it herself in face of a
+smiling crowd; and her folly would be in all the journals. True, she
+had had this in prospect from the beginning, and, thinking of it, had
+suffered in the dark hours. But his capture had then been vague and
+doubtful and the full misery of her exposure had not struck her as it
+struck her now, with the picture of that man on the stairs fresh in her
+mind. To have disgraced herself for that!—for that!
+
+She was thinking of this and was still much agitated when she came to
+the spot where the path through the wood diverged from the road. There
+with his hand on the wicket-gate, unseen until she was close upon him,
+stood Mr. Bishop.
+
+He raised his hat and stepped aside, as if the meeting took him by
+surprise, as if he had not been watching her face through a screen of
+briars for the last thirty seconds. But that due paid to politeness,
+the runner’s sharp eyes remained glued to her face.
+
+“Dear me, miss,” he said, in apparent innocence, “nothing has happened,
+I hope! You don’t look yourself! I hope,” respectfully, “that nobody
+has been rude to you.”
+
+“It is nothing,” she made shift to murmur. She turned her face aside.
+And she tried to go by him.
+
+He let her go through the gate, but he kept at her side and scrutinised
+her face with side-long glances. He coughed.
+
+“I am afraid you have heard bad news, miss?” he said.
+
+“No!”
+
+“Oh, perhaps—seen some one who has startled you?”
+
+“I have told you it is nothing,” she answered curtly. “Be good enough
+to leave me.”
+
+But he merely paused an instant in obedience to the gesture of her
+hand, then he resumed his place beside her. In the tone of one who had
+made up his mind to be frank—
+
+“Look here, miss,” he said, “it is better to come to an understanding
+here, where there is nobody to listen. If it is not that somebody has
+been rude to you, I’m clear that you have heard news, or you have seen
+somebody. And it is my business to know the one or the other.”
+
+She stopped.
+
+“I have nothing to do with your business!” she cried.
+
+He made a wry face, and spread out his hands in appeal.
+
+“Won’t you be frank?” he replied. “Come, miss? What is the use of
+fencing with me? Be frank! I want to make things easy for all. Lord,
+miss, you are not the sort, and we two know it, that suffers in these
+things. You’ll come out all right if you’ll be frank. It’s that I’m
+working towards; to put an end to it, and the sooner the better. You
+can’t—a wife and four children, miss, and a radical to boot—you can’t
+think much of him! So why not help instead of hindering?”
+
+“You are impudent!” Henrietta said, with a fine colour in her cheeks.
+“Be good enough to let me pass.”
+
+“If I knew where he was”—with his eyes on her face—“I could make all
+easy. All done, and nothing said, my lady; just ‘from communications
+received,’ no names given, not a word of what has happened up here!
+Lord bless you, what do they care in London—and it is in London he’ll
+be tried—what happens here!”
+
+“Let me pass!” she answered breathlessly.
+
+He was so warm upon the scent he terrified her.
+
+But he did not give way.
+
+“Think, miss,” he said more gravely. “Think! A wife and six children!
+Or was it four? Much he cared for any but himself! I’m sure I’m shocked
+when I think of it!”
+
+“Be silent!” she cried.
+
+“Much he cared what became of you! While Captain Clyne, if you were to
+consult his wishes, miss, I’m sure he’d say——”
+
+“I do not care what he would say!” she retorted passionately, stung at
+last beyond reticence or endurance. “I never wish to hear Captain
+Clyne’s name again: I hate him; do you hear? I hate him! Let me pass!”
+
+Then, whether he would or no, she broke from him. She hurried, panting,
+and with burning cheeks, down the steep path; the briars clutching
+unheeded at her skirts, and stones rolling under her feet. He followed
+at her heels, admiring her spirit; he even tried to engage her again,
+begging her to stop and hear him. But she only pushed on the faster,
+and presently he thought it better to desist, and he let her go.
+
+He stood and wiped his brow, looking after her.
+
+“Lord, what a spirit she has!” he muttered. “A fine swelling figure,
+too, and a sway with her head that makes you feel small! And feet that
+nimble! But all the same, I’m glad she’s not Mrs. Bishop! Take my word
+for it, she’ll be another Mother Gilson—some day.”
+
+While Henrietta hurried on at her best pace, resentment giving way to
+fear and doubt and a hundred perplexities. Betray the man she could
+not, though he deserved nothing at her hands. She was no informer, nor
+would become one. The very idea was repulsive to her. And she had woven
+about this man the fine tissue of a girl’s first fancy; she had looked
+to be his, she had let him kiss her. After that, vile as he was, vilely
+as he had meant by her, it did not lie with her to betray him to death.
+
+But his presence near her was hateful to her, was frightful, was almost
+intolerable. Not a day, not an hour, but she must expect to hear of his
+capture, and know it for the first of a series of ordeals, painful and
+humiliating. She would be confronted with him, she would be asked if
+she knew him, she would be asked this and that; and she would have to
+speak, would have to confess—to those clandestine meetings, to that
+kiss—while he listened, while all listened. The tale that was known as
+yet to few would be published abroad. Her folly would be in every
+mouth, in every journal. The wife and the four children, and she, the
+silly, silly fool whom this mean thing had captivated, taking her as
+easily as any doe in her brother’s park—the world would ring with them!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A JEALOUS WOMAN
+
+
+Meanwhile the man whom she had left in the gloom of the staircase
+waited. The sound of the girl’s tread died away and silence followed.
+But she might be taking the news, she might be gone back to those who
+had sent her. He knew that at any moment the party charged with his
+arrest might appear, and that in a few seconds all would be over. And
+the suspense was intolerable. After enduring it a while he pushed the
+door open, and he crept across the floor of the living-room. He brought
+his haggard face near the casement and peeped cautiously through a
+lower corner. He saw nothing to the purpose. Nothing moved without,
+except the old man, whose rags fluttered an instant among the bushes
+and vanished again. Probably he was dragging up some treasured scrap
+and hiding it anew with as little sane purpose and as much instinct as
+the dog that buries a bone.
+
+The man with the price on his head stole back to the foot of the
+stairs, reassured for the moment; but with his heart still fluttering,
+his cheeks still bloodless. He had had a great fright. He could not yet
+tell what would come of it. But he knew that in the form of the girl
+whom he had tricked and sought to ruin he had seen the gallows very
+near.
+
+He had not quite regained the staircase when the sound of a foot
+approaching the door drove him to shelter in a panic. Bess Hinkson had
+to call twice before he dared to descend or to run the risk of a second
+mistake.
+
+The moment she saw his face she knew that something was wrong.
+
+“What is it?” she asked quickly. “What is the matter, lad?”
+
+“I’ve seen some one,” he answered. “Some one who knew me!” He tried to
+smile, but the smile was a spasm; and suddenly his teeth clicked
+together. “Knew me by G—d!” he said.
+
+“Bishop?”
+
+“No, but—some one.”
+
+Her face cleared.
+
+“What’s took you?” she said. “There is no one else here who knows you.”
+
+“The girl.”
+
+She stared at him. “The girl?” she repeated—and the master-note in her
+voice was no longer fear, but suspicion. “The girl! How came she here?
+And how,” with sudden ferocity, “came she to see you, my lad?”
+
+“I heard her below and thought that it was you.”
+
+“But how came she here?”
+
+“I don’t know,” he answered sullenly, “unless she was sent.”
+
+“I don’t believe you,” Bess answered coarsely. And the jealousy of her
+gipsy blood sparkled in her dark eyes. “She was not sent! But maybe she
+was sent for! Maybe she was sent for!”
+
+“Who was there I could send for her?” he said.
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Nor I!” he answered. He shrugged his shoulders in disgust at her
+folly. To him, in his selfish fear, it seemed incredible folly.
+
+“But you talked with her?”
+
+“Not a word.”
+
+“I say,” Bess repeated with a furious look, “you did! You talked with
+her! I know you did!”
+
+“Have your own way, then,” he answered despairingly, “though may heaven
+strike me dead if there was a word! But she’ll he talking soon—and
+they’ll be here. And she”—with a quavering, passionate rise in his
+voice—“she’ll hang me!”
+
+“She’d best not!” the girl replied, with a gleam of sharp teeth. “I
+hate her as it is. I hate her now! I’d like to kill her! But then——”
+
+“Then?” he retorted, his anger rising as hers sank. “What is the use of
+_then?_ It’s now is the point! Curse You! while you are talking about
+hating her, and what you’ll do, I’ll be taken! They’ll be here and I’ll
+hang!”
+
+“Steady, steady, lad,” she said. The fear had flown from his face to
+hers. “Perhaps she’ll not tell.”
+
+“Why not? Why’ll she not tell?”
+
+She did not reply that love might close the girl’s mouth. But she knew
+that it was possible. Instead:
+
+“Maybe she’ll not,” she repeated. “If she did not come on purpose—and
+then they’d be here by now—it will take her half an hour to go back to
+the inn, and she’ll have to find Bishop, and he’ll have to get a few
+together. We’ve an hour good, and if it were night, you might be clear
+of this and safe at Tyson’s in ten minutes.”
+
+“But now?” he cried, with a gesture of wrathful impatience. “It’s
+daylight, and maybe the house is watched. What am I to do now?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she said. And it was noticeable that she was cool,
+while he was excited to the verge of tears, and was not a mile from
+hysterics. “It was for this I’ve been fooling Tyson—to get a safe
+hiding-place. But if you could get there, I doubt if he is quite ripe.
+I’d like to commit him a bit more before we trust him.”
+
+“Then why play the fool with him?” he answered savagely.
+
+“Because a day or two more and his hiding-hole may be the saving of
+you,” she retorted. “Sho!” shrugging her shoulders in her turn, “the
+game is not played to an end yet! She’ll not tell! She is proud as
+horses, and if she gives you up she’ll have to swear against you. And
+she’ll not stomach that, the little pink and white fool. She’ll keep
+mum, my lad!”
+
+The hand with which he wiped the beads of sweat from his brow shook.
+
+“But it she does tell?” he muttered. “If she does tell?”
+
+She did not answer as she might have answered. She did not remind him
+of those stories of hair-breadth escapes and of coolness in the shadow
+of the gallows, which, as much as his plausible enthusiasm, had won her
+wild heart. She did not hint that his present carriage was hardly at
+one with them. For when women love, their eyes are slow to open, and
+this man had revealed to Bess a new world—a world of rarest
+possibilities, a world in which she and her like were to have justice,
+if not vengeance—a world in which the mighty were to fall from their
+seats, and the poor to be no more flouted by squires’ wives and
+parsons’ daughters! If she did not still think him all golden, if the
+feet and even the legs of clay were beginning to be visible, there was
+glamour about him still. The splendid plans, the world-embracing
+schemes with which he had dazzled her, had shrunk indeed into a
+hole-and-corner effort to save his own skin. But his life was as dear
+to her as to himself; and doubtless, by-and-by, when this troublesome
+crisis was past, the vista would widen. She was content. She was glad
+to put full knowledge from her, glad of any pretext to divert her own
+mind and his.
+
+“Lord, I had forgotten!” she cried, after a gloomy pause, “I’ve a
+letter! There was one at last!” She searched in her clothes for it.
+
+“A letter?” he cried, and stretched out a shaking hand. “Good lord,
+girl, why did you not say so before? This may change all. Thistlewood
+may know a way to get me off. Once in Lancashire, in the crowd, let me
+have a hiding-place and I’m safe! And Thistlewood—he is no cur! He
+sticks at nothing! He is a good man! I was sure he would do something
+if I could get a word to him! Lord, I shall cheat them yet!” He was
+jubilant.
+
+He ripped the letter open. His eyes raced along the lines. The girl,
+who could scarcely read, watched him with admiration, yet with a
+sinking heart. The letter might save him, but it would take him from
+her.
+
+Something between a groan and an oath broke from him. He struck the
+paper with his hand.
+
+“The fool!” he cried. “The fools! They are coming here!”
+
+“They?” she answered, staring in astonishment.
+
+“Thistlewood, Lunt—oh!” with a violent execration—“God knows who!
+Instead of getting me off they are bringing the hunt on me! Lancashire
+is too hot for them, so they are coming here to ruin me. And I’m to
+send a boat for them to-morrow night to Newby Bridge. But, I’ll not!
+I’ll not!” passionately. “You shall not go!”
+
+The girl looked at him dubiously.
+
+“After all,” she said presently, “if Thistlewood is what you say he
+is——”
+
+“He’s a selfish fool! Thinking only of himself!”
+
+“Still, if he and the rest are men—it’ll not be one man, nor two, nor
+five will take you—with them to help you!”
+
+But the thought gave him no comfort.
+
+“Much good that will do!” he answered. And passionately flinging down
+the paper, “I’ll not have them! They must fend for themselves.”
+
+“Do they say why they are coming?” she asked after a pause.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you?” he replied querulously, “because it’s too hot for
+them there! One of the justices, Clyne, if you must know——”
+
+“Clyne!” she ejaculated in astonishment. “Clyne again?”
+
+“Ay!”
+
+“The man—you took the girl from?” she asked in a queer voice.
+
+“The same. He’s the deuce down there. He’ll get his house burnt over
+his head one of these nights! He has sworn an information against them,
+and they swear they’ll have their revenge. But in the meantime they
+must needs come here and blow the gaff on me. Fine revenge!” with
+scorn.
+
+“And they want you to send a boat for them to Newby Bridge?”
+
+“Ay, curse them! I told them I had a boat I could take quietly, and
+come down the lake in the dark. And they say the boat can just as well
+fetch them.”
+
+“To-morrow night?”
+
+“Ay.”
+
+“Well, it can be done,” she said coolly, “if the wind across the lake
+holds. I can steal a boat as I planned for you, and nobody will be the
+wiser. There’s no moon, and the nights are dark; and who’s to trace
+them from Newby Bridge? After all, it’s not from them the danger will
+come, but from the girl.”
+
+He groaned.
+
+“I thought you were sure she wouldn’t tell,” he sneered.
+
+“Well, she has not told yet, or they had been here,” Bess answered.
+“But she may speak—by-and-by.”
+
+“Curse her!”
+
+“And that is why I am not so sorry your folks are coming,” she
+continued, with a queer look at him. “If they’ll help us, we’ll stop
+her mouth. And she’ll not speak now, nor by-and-by.”
+
+He looked up, startled.
+
+“You don’t mean—no!” he cried sharply, “I’ll not have it.”
+
+“Bless her pretty, white fingers!” she murmured.
+
+“I’ll not have her hurt!” he repeated, with vehemence. “I’ve done her
+harm enough.”
+
+“Not so much harm as you would have done her, if you’d had your way!”
+she replied. And her face grew hard. “But now she’s to be sacred, is
+she? Her ladyship’s pretty, white fingers are not to be pinched—if you
+swing for it! Very well! It’s your neck will be pulled, not mine.”
+
+He fidgeted on his stool, but he did not answer. His eyes roved round
+the bare miserable room, with its low ceiling, its deep shadows, and
+its squalor. At last:
+
+“What do you mean?” he asked querulously. “Why can’t you speak plain?”
+
+“I thought I had spoken plain enough,” she replied. “But if she’s not
+to be touched, there’s an end of it.”
+
+“What would you do?”
+
+“What I said—shut her mouth.”
+
+He shuddered and his face, already sallow from long confinement, grew
+greyer.
+
+“No,” he said, “I’ll not do it.”
+
+She laughed in scorn of him.
+
+“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I would get her into our hands, hold
+her fast, stow her somewhere where she’ll not speak! Maybe in Tyson’s
+hiding-hole. She’ll catch a cold, but what of that? ’Twill be no worse
+for her than for you, if you’ve to go there. And the men may be a bit
+rough with her,” Bess continued, with a malignant smile, while her eyes
+scrutinized his face, “I’ll not forbid them, for I don’t love her, and
+I’d like well to see her brought down a bit! But we’ll not squeeze her
+pretty throat, if that is what you had in your mind.”
+
+He shivered.
+
+“I wouldn’t trust you!” he muttered.
+
+She laughed as if he paid her a compliment.
+
+“Wouldn’t you, lad?” she said. “Well, perhaps not. I’d not be sorry to
+spoil her beauty. But the men—men are such fools—’ll be rather for
+kissing than killing!”
+
+“All the same, I don’t like it,” he muttered.
+
+“You’ll like hanging less!” she retorted.
+
+He felt, he knew that he played a sorry part. But it was not he who had
+brought Henrietta to the house, it was fate. It was not his fault that
+she had seen him; it was his misfortune. Could he be expected to
+surrender his life to spare her a little fright, a trifling
+inconvenience, an inconsiderable risk? Why should he? Would she do it
+for him? On the contrary, he recalled the look of horror which she had
+bent on him; she who had so lately laid her head on his shoulder, had
+listened to his blandishments, had thought him perfect. He was vain,
+and that hardened him.
+
+“I don’t see how you’ll do it,” he said slowly.
+
+“Leave that to me,” Bess answered. “Or rather, do what I tell you—and
+the bird will come to the whistle, my lad!”
+
+“What’ll you do?”
+
+She told him, and when she had told him she put before him pen and ink
+and paper; the pen and ink and paper which had been obtained that he
+might write to Thistlewood. But when it came to details and he knew
+what he was to write and what lure to throw out, he flung the pen from
+him. He told her angrily that he would not do it. After all, Henrietta
+had believed in him, had trusted him, had given up all for him.
+
+“I’ll not do it,” he repeated. “I’ll not do it! You want to do the girl
+a mischief!”
+
+She flared up at that.
+
+“Then you’ll hang!” she cried brutally, hurling the words at him. “And,
+thank God, it will be she will hang you! Why, you fool,” she continued
+vehemently, “you were for doing her a worse turn, just to please
+yourself! And not a scruple!”
+
+“No matter,” he answered, thrusting his hands in his pockets and
+looking sullenly before him. “I’ll not do it!”
+
+Her face was dark with anger, and cruel. What is more cruel than
+jealousy?
+
+“And that is your last word?” she cried.
+
+He scowled at the table, aware in his heart that he would yield. For he
+knew—and he resented the knowledge—that he and Bess were changing
+places; that the upper hand which knowledge and experience and a fluent
+tongue had given him was passing to her for whom Nature intended it.
+The weak will was yielding, the strong will was asserting itself. And
+she knew it also; and in her jealousy she was no longer for humouring
+him. Brusquely she pushed together the pen and ink and paper.
+
+“Very good,” she said. “If that is your last word, be it so; I’ve
+done!”
+
+But “Wait!” he protested feebly. “You are so hasty.”
+
+“Wait?” she retorted. “What for? What is the use? Are you going to do
+it?”
+
+He fidgeted on his stool.
+
+“I suppose so,” he muttered at last. “Curse you, you won’t listen to
+what a man says.”
+
+“You are going to do it?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“Then why not say so at once?” she answered. “There, my lad,” she
+continued, thrusting the writing things before him, “short and sweet,
+as nobody knows better how to do it than yourself! Half a dozen lines
+will do the trick as well as twenty.”
+
+To his credit be it said, he threw down the pen more than once,
+sickened by the task which she set him. But she chid, she cajoled, she
+coaxed him; and grimly added the pains she was at to the account of her
+rival. In the end, after a debate upon time and place, in which he was
+all for procrastination—feeling as if in some way that salved his
+conscience—the letter was written and placed in her hands.
+
+Then “What sort is this Thistlewood?” she asked. “A gentleman?”
+
+“You wouldn’t know, one way or the other,” he answered, with
+ill-humour.
+
+“Maybe not,” she replied; “but would you call him one?”
+
+“He’s been an officer, and he’s been to America, and he’s been to
+France. I don’t suppose,” looking round him with currish scorn, “that
+he’s ever been in such a hole as this!”
+
+“But he’s in hiding. Is he married?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She frowned as if the news were unwelcome.
+
+“Ah!” she muttered. And then, “What of the others?”
+
+“Giles and Lunt——”
+
+“Ay.”
+
+“There’s not much they’d stick at,” he replied. “They are low brutes;
+but they are useful. We’ve to do with all sorts in this business.”
+
+“And why not?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Ay! Didn’t you tell me the other day, there was no one so mean, if we
+succeed, he may not rise to the top? nor any one so great he may not
+fall to the bottom?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That’s what I like about it.”
+
+“Well, it’s true, anyway; Henriot”—he was on a favourite topic and
+thought to reinstate himself by long words—“Henriot, who was but a poor
+pike-keeper, came to be general of the National Guard and Master of
+Paris. Tallien, the son of a footman, ruled a province. Ney—you’ve
+heard of Ney?—who began as a cooper, was shot as a Marshal with a score
+of orders on his breast and as much thought of as a king! That’s what
+happens if we succeed.”
+
+“And some came down?” she said, smacking her lips.
+
+“Plenty.”
+
+“And women too?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Ah,” she said slowly, “I wish I had been there.”
+
+Not then, but later, when the letter had passed into her hands, he
+fancied that he saw the drift of her questions. And he had qualms, for
+he was not wholly bad. He was not cruel, and the thought of Henrietta’s
+fate if she fell into the snare terrified him. True, Thistlewood, dark
+and saturnine, a man capable of heroism as well as of crime, was
+something of a gentleman. He might decline to go far. He might elect to
+take the girl’s part. But Giles and Lunt were men of a low type, coarse
+and brutish, apt for any villainy; men who, drawn from the slums of
+Spitalfields, had tried many things before they took up with
+conspiracy, or dubbed themselves patriots. To such, the life of a spy
+was no more than the life of a dog: and the girl’s sex, in place of
+protecting her, might the more expose her to their ruthlessness. If she
+fell into their hands, and Bess, with her infernal jealousy and her
+furious hatred of the class above her, egged them on, swearing that if
+Henrietta had not already informed, she might inform—he shuddered to
+think of the issue. He shuddered to think of what they might be
+capable. He remembered the things that had been done by such men in
+France: things remembered then, forgotten now. And he shuddered anew,
+knowing himself to be a poor weak thing, of no account against odds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE LETTER
+
+
+We left Mr. Bishop standing in the middle of the woodland track and
+following Henrietta with his eyes. He had suspected the girl before;
+his suspicions were now grown to certainties. Her agitation, her alarm
+on meeting him, her refusal to parley, her anxiety to be gone, all—and
+his keen eyes had missed no item of her disorder—all pointed to one
+thing, to her knowledge of her lover’s hiding-place. Doubtless she had
+been to visit him. Probably she had just left him.
+
+“But she’s game, she’s very game,” the runner muttered sagely. “It’s
+breed does it.” And plucking a scrap of green stuff from a briar he
+chewed it thoughtfully, with his eyes on the spot where he had lost the
+last wave of her skirt.
+
+Presently he faced about. “Now where is he?” he asked himself. He
+scanned the path by which she had descended, the briars, the thorns,
+the under-growth. “There’s hiding here,” he thought; “but the nights
+are cold, and it’d kill him in the open. And she’d been on the hill. In
+a shepherd’s hut? Possibly; and it’s a pity I was not after her sooner.
+But we searched the huts. Then there’s Troutbeck? And the farms? But
+how’d he know any one here? Still, I’ll walk up and look about me.
+Strikes me we’ve been looking wide and he’s under our noses—many a hare
+escapes the hounds that way.”
+
+He retraced his steps to the road, and strolled up the hill. His air
+was careless, but his eye took note of everything; and when he came to
+the gate of Starvecrow Farm he stood and looked over it. The bare and
+gloomy aspect of the house and the wide view it commanded impressed
+him. “I don’t wonder they keep a dog,” he thought. “A lonely place as
+ever I saw. Sort of house the pedlar’s murdered in! Regular Red Barn!
+But that black-eyed wench the doctor is gallivanting after comes from
+here. And if all’s true he’s in and out night and day. So the other is
+not like to be here.”
+
+Still, when he had walked a few yards farther he halted. He took
+another look over the fence. He noted the few sombre pines that masked
+the gaunt gable-end, and from them his eye travelled to the ragged
+garden. A while he gazed placidly, the bit of green stuff in his mouth.
+Then he stiffened, pointing like a game dog. Slowly, almost
+imperceptibly, his hand went to the pocket in his skirts, where he
+carried the “barker” without which he never stirred.
+
+On the other side of the breast-high wall, not six paces from him, a
+man was crouching low, trying to hide behind a bush.
+
+Mr. Bishop had a stout heart. He had taken many a man in the midst of
+his cronies in the dark courts about St. Giles’s; and with six hundred
+guineas in view it was not a small danger that would turn him. Yet he
+was alone, and his heart beat a little quicker as he proceeded, with
+his eyes glued to the bush, to climb the wall. The man he was going to
+take had the rope about his neck—he would reck little of taking another
+life. And he might have backers. Possibly, too, there was something in
+the silence of this hill-side—so different from the crowded alleys in
+which he commonly worked—that intimidated the officer.
+
+Yet he did not flinch. He was of the true bull-dog breed. He, no more
+than my Lord Liverpool and my Lord Castlereagh, was to be scared by
+uncertain dangers, or by the fear of those over whom he was set. He
+advanced slowly, and was not more than four yards from the bush, he was
+even poising himself to leap on his quarry, when the man who was hiding
+rose to his feet.
+
+Bishop swore. And some one behind him chuckled. He turned as if he had
+been pricked. And his face was red.
+
+“Going to take old Hinkson?” laughed Tyson, who had come up unseen, and
+been watching his movements.
+
+“I wanted a word with him,” the runner muttered. He tried to speak as
+if he were not embarrassed.
+
+“So I see,” Tyson answered, and pointing with his finger to the pistol,
+he laughed.
+
+Mr. Bishop, with his face a fine port-wine colour, lowered the weapon
+out of sight. Then he laughed, but feebly.
+
+“Has he any sense?” he asked, looking with disgust at the frowsy old
+creature, who mopping and mowing at him was holding out a crooked claw.
+
+“Sense enough to beg for a penny,” Tyson answered.
+
+“He knows enough for that?”
+
+“He’d sell his soul for a shilling.”
+
+The runner hooked out a half-penny—a good fat copper coin, to the
+starveling bronze of these days as Daniel Lambert to a dandy. He put it
+in the old scarecrow’s hand.
+
+“Here’s for trespass,” he said, and turning his back on him he
+recrossed the wall.
+
+“That’ll stop his mouth,” Tyson grinned. “But what are you going to
+give me to stop mine?”
+
+Bishop laughed on the wrong side of his face.
+
+“A bone and a jorum whenever you’ll come and take it,” he said.
+
+“Done with you,” the doctor replied. “Some day, when that old beldame,
+mother Gilson, is out, I’ll claim it. But if you think,” he continued,
+“that your man is this side of the hill you are mistaken, Mr. Bishop.
+I’m up and down this road day and night, and he’d be very clever if he
+kept out of my sight.”
+
+“Ay?”
+
+“You may take my word for that. I’ll lay you a dozen wherever he is,
+he’s not this side.”
+
+The runner nodded. At this moment he was a little out of conceit with
+himself, and he thought that the other might be right. Besides, he
+might spend a week going from farm to farm, and shed to shed and be no
+wiser at the end of it. Yet, the girl knew, he was convinced; and after
+all, that was his way to it. She knew, and he’d to her again and have
+it out of her one way or another. And if she would not speak, he would
+shadow her; he would follow her hour by hour and minute by minute.
+Sooner or later she would be sure to try to see her man, and he would
+nab them both. There were no two ways about it. There was only one way.
+An old hand should have known better than to go wasting time in random
+searchings.
+
+He returned to the inn, more fixed than ever in his notion. With an
+impassive face he told Mrs. Gilson that he must see the young lady.
+
+“She’s come in, I suppose?” he added.
+
+“Ay, she’s come in.”
+
+“Well, you’ll please to tell her I must see her.”
+
+“I fancy _must_ will be your master,” Mrs. Gilson replied, with her
+usual point. “But I’ll tell her.” And she went upstairs.
+
+Henrietta was seated at the window with her back to the door. She did
+not turn.
+
+“Here’s the Bow-Street man,” Mrs. Gilson said, without ceremony. “Wants
+to know if he can see you. Shall I tell him yes, or no, young lady?”
+
+“No, if you please,” Henrietta answered, with a shiver.
+
+Mrs. Gilson went down.
+
+“She says ‘No, on no account,’” she announced, “unless you’ve got a
+warrant. Her room’s her room, she says, and she’ll none of you.”
+
+“Hoity-toity!”
+
+“That’s what she said,” Mrs. Gilson repeated without a blush. “And for
+my part I don’t see why she’s to be persecuted. What with you and that
+sneaking parson, who’s for ever at her skirts, and another that shall
+be nameless——”
+
+“Just so!” said Bishop, nodding.
+
+But whereas he meant Walterson, the good woman meant Mr. Hornyold.
+
+“——her life’s not her own!” the landlady ended.
+
+“Well, she’s to be brought up next Thursday,” the runner replied in
+dudgeon. “And she’ll have to see me then.” And he took a seat near the
+foot of the stairs, more firmly determined than ever that the girl
+should not give him the slip again a second time. “He’s here,” he
+thought. “He’s not a mile from me, I’ll stake my soul on it! And before
+Thursday it’s odds she’ll need to see him, and I’ll nab them!” And he
+began to think out various ways of giving her something which she would
+wish to communicate.
+
+Meanwhile Henrietta, seated at her window in the south gable, gazed
+dolefully out; on the grey expanse of water, which she was beginning to
+hate, on the lofty serrated ridge, which must ever recall humiliating
+memories, on the snow-clad peaks that symbolised the loneliness of her
+life. She would not weep, but her lip quivered. And oh, she thought, it
+was a cruel punishment for that which she had done. In the present she
+was utterly alone: in the future it would be no better. And yet if that
+were all, if loneliness were all, she could bear it. She could make up
+her mind to it. But if not today, to-morrow, and if not to-morrow, the
+day after, the man would be taken. And then she would have to stand
+forth and tell her shameful tale, and all the world, her world, would
+learn with derision what a fool she had been, for what a creature she
+had been ready to give up all, what dross that was which she had taken
+for gold! And that which had been romantic would be ridiculous.
+
+Beside this aching dread the insult which Captain Clyne had put upon
+her lost some of its sting. Yet it smarted at times and rankled,
+driving her into passing rages. She had wronged him, yet, strange to
+say, she hated to think that she had lost his esteem. And perhaps for
+this reason, perhaps because he had shown himself less inhuman at the
+outset than her family, his treatment hurt her to a point she had not
+anticipated, nor could understand.
+
+The one drop of comfort in her cup sprang from a source as unlikely as
+the rock which Moses struck. It came from the flinty bosom of Mrs.
+Gilson. Not that the landlady was outwardly kind; but she was brusquely
+and gruffly inattentive, trusting the girl and leaving her to herself.
+And in secret Henrietta appreciated this. She began to feel a
+dependence on the woman whom she had once dubbed an odious and a
+hateful thing. She read kindness between the lines of her harsh visage,
+and solicitude in the eye that scorned to notice her. She ceased to
+tremble when the voice which flung panic through the Low Wood came
+girding up the stairs. And though no word of acknowledgement passed her
+lips, she was conscious that in other and smoother hands she might have
+fared worse.
+
+The open sympathy of Modest Ann was less welcome. It was even a
+terrible plague at times. For the waiting-maid never came into the
+girl’s presence without full eyes and a sigh, never looked at her save
+as the kind-hearted look at lambs that are faring to the butcher, never
+left her without a gesture that challenged Heaven’s pity. Ann, indeed,
+saw in the young lady the martyr of love. She viewed her as a sharer in
+her own misfortunes; and though she was forty and the girl nineteen,
+she found in her echoes of her own heart-throbs. There was humour in
+this, and, for some, a touch of the pathetic; but not for Henrietta,
+who had a strong sense of the ridiculous and no liking for pity. In her
+ordinary spirits she would have either laughed at the woman or rated
+her. Depressed as she was, she bore with her none too well.
+
+Yet Ann was honestly devoted to her heroine, and continually dreamed of
+some romantic service—such as the waiting-maid in a chap-book performs
+for her mistress. Given the occasion, she would have risen to it, and
+would have cut off her hand before she betrayed the girl’s secrets. But
+her buxom form and square, stolid face did not commend her; they were
+at odds with romance. And Henrietta did not more than suffer her, until
+the afternoon of this day, when it seemed to the girl that she could
+suffer her no longer.
+
+For Ann, coming in with wood for the fire, lingered behind her in a way
+to try a saint. Her sighs filled the air, they were like a furnace;
+until Henrietta turned her head and asked impatiently if she wanted
+something.
+
+“Nothing, miss, nothing,” the woman answered. But she gave the lie to
+her words by laying her finger on her lip and winking. At the same time
+she sought for something in an under-pocket.
+
+Henrietta rose to her feet.
+
+“Nothing!” she repeated. “Then what do you——”
+
+“Nothing, miss,” Ann rejoined loudly. “I’m to make up the fire.” But
+she still sought and still made eyes, and at last, with an exaggeration
+of mystery, found what she wanted. She slipped a letter into
+Henrietta’s hand. “Not a word, miss,” she breathed, with a face of
+rapturous enjoyment. “Take it, miss! Lor’!” she continued in the same
+tone of subdued enthusiasm, “I’d die for you, let alone do this! Even
+missus should not wring it from me with wild horses!”
+
+Henrietta hesitated.
+
+“Who gave it you?” she whispered. “I don’t wish”—she drew back—“I don’t
+wish to receive anything unless I know who sends it.”
+
+“You read it,” Ann answered in an ecstasy of benevolence. “It’s all
+right, trust me for that! Bless your heart, it comes from the right
+place. As you will see when you open it!” And with absurd precaution
+she tip-toed to the fire-place, took up her wood-basket, banged a log
+on the dogs, and went out.
+
+Henrietta waited with the letter hidden in her hand until the door
+closed. Then she looked at the paper and grew pale, and was on the
+verge of tears. Alas! she knew the handwriting. She knew, whether there
+was a right place or not, that this came from the wrong.
+
+“Shall I open it?” she asked herself. “Shall I open it?”
+
+A fortnight before she had opened it without a thought of prudence,
+without a glance at the consequences. But a fortnight, and such a
+fortnight, had taught her much. And to-day she paused. She eyed the
+coarse paper askance—with repugnance, with loathing. True, it could no
+longer harm her. She had seen the man as he was, stripped of his
+disguises. She had read in his face his meanness, his falseness, his
+cowardice. And henceforth his charms and cajoleries, his sweet words
+and lying looks were not for her. But she had to think what might be in
+this letter, and what might come of it, and what she should do. She
+might burn it unread—and perhaps that were the safer course. Or she
+might hand it to the Bow Street runner, or she might open it and read
+it.
+
+Which should she do?
+
+One course she rejected without much thought. To hand the letter to
+Bishop might be to betray the man to Bishop. And she had made up her
+mind not to betray the man.
+
+Should she burn it?
+
+Her reason whispered that that was the right, that that was the wise
+course. But then she would never know what was in the letter; and she
+was a woman and curious. And reason, quickly veering, suggested that to
+burn it was to incur unknown risks and contingencies. It might be
+equivalent to giving the man up. It might—in a word, it opened a world
+of possibilities.
+
+And after all she could still burn the letter when she had read it. She
+would know then what she was doing. And what danger could she incur,
+seeing that she was proof against the man’s lying tongue, and shuddered
+at the thought of contact with him?
+
+She made up her mind. And roughly, hating the task after a fashion, she
+tore the letter open. With hot cheeks—it could not be otherwise, since
+the writing was his, and brought back such memories—she read the
+contents. There was no opening—she was glad of that—and no signature.
+Thus it ran:—
+
+“I have treated you ill, but men are not as women, and I was tempted,
+God knows. I do not ask you to forgive me, but I ask you to save me. I
+am in your hands. If you have the heart to leave me to a violent death,
+all is said. If you have mercy, meet my messenger at ten to-morrow
+evening, where the Troutbeck lane comes down to the lake. As I hope to
+live you run no risk and can suffer no harm. If you are merciful—and
+oh, for God’s sake spare me—put a stone before noon to-morrow on the
+post of the second gate towards Ambleside.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+THE ANSWER
+
+
+When Henrietta had read this letter twice, shivering and drawing in her
+breath as often as she came to the passionate cry for mercy that broke
+its current, she sat gazing at the paper. And her face was rigid. Had
+he made appeal to her affection, to the past, to that which had been
+between them, still more had he assumed that the spell was unbroken and
+her heart was his, her pride had revolted and revolted passionately.
+She had spurned the letter and the writer. And perhaps, when it was too
+late, she had repented.
+
+But that cry, wrung, it seemed, from the man’s heart in his own
+despite, pierced her heart. How could she refuse, if his life hung on
+her act, if by lifting her finger, she could save him without risk to
+herself? The thought of him was repugnant to her, shamed her, filled
+her with contempt of herself. But she had loved him once, or had
+fancied in her folly that she loved him; and he asked for his life. He,
+a man, lay at the mercy of a woman, a girl; how could she refuse? If
+her heart were obdurate, her sex spoke for him.
+
+“And oh! for God’s sake spare me!”
+
+She read the words again and again, and shuddered. If she refused, and
+afterwards when it was too late, when nothing could be done, she
+repented? If when judgment had passed upon him, and the day was come
+and the hour and the minute—and in her brain, though she were one
+hundred miles away, St. Sepulchre’s bell tolled—if she repented then
+how would she bear it?
+
+She would not be able to bear it.
+
+And then other considerations not less powerful, and all pointing in
+the same direction, arose in her mind. If she did this thing, whatever
+it was, the man would escape. He would vanish from the country and from
+her knowledge and ken. There would be an end of him, and the relief
+would be great. Freed from the shameful incubus of his presence she
+would breathe again. She might make a new start then, she might frame
+some plan for her life. She was too young to suppose that she could
+ever be happy after this, or that she would live to smile at these
+troubles. But at least she would not be harassed by continual fears,
+she would not be kept in a panic by the thought of that which every
+hour might bring forth. She would be spared the public trial, the
+ordeal of the witness-box, the shame of open confession. Should she do,
+then, that which he wished? Ay, a thousand times, ay. Her heart cried,
+ay, her mind was made up. And rising, she walked the room in
+excitement. Her pulse beat high, her head was hot, she was in a fever
+to begin, to be doing, to come to an end of the thing and be safe.
+
+But the thing? Her heart sank a little when she turned to that, and
+conned the note again and marked the hour. Ten? The evenings were long
+and dark, and the house was abed by ten. How was she to pass out? Nor
+was that all. What of her position when she had passed out? She shrank
+from the thought of going alone to meet she knew not who in the
+darkness by the lonely edge of the water. There would be no help within
+call at that hour; nor any, if she disappeared, to say which way she
+had gone or how she had met her fate. If aught happened to her she
+would vanish and leave no trace. And they would think perhaps that she
+had fled to him!
+
+The prospect was terrifying. And nine girls out of ten, though of
+ordinary courage, would have shrunk hack. But Henrietta had a
+spirit—too high a spirit or she had not been here!—and she fancied that
+if ever it behoved her to run a risk, it behove her to run one now. And
+that not for the man’s sake only, but for her own. She rose above her
+momentary alarm, therefore, and she asked herself what she had to fear.
+True, when she had met him that morning she had imagined in the gloom
+of the kitchen that she read murder in his eyes. But for an instant
+only; now she laughed at the notion. Safe in her chamber she found it
+absurd: the bizarre creation of her fancy or her timidity, aided by
+some shadow cast athwart his face. And for the matter of that, why
+should he harm her? Her presence at the trysting-place would be his
+surety that she had no mind to betray him; but that on the contrary she
+was willing to help him.
+
+“I will go, I must go,” she thought. “I must go.”
+
+Yet vague alarms troubled her; and she hesitated. If there had been no
+menace in his eyes that morning—the eyes that had so often looked into
+hers and languished on her with a lover’s fondness—why had she fled so
+precipitately? And why had her knees shaken under her? Pshaw, she had
+been taken by surprise. It was repugnance rather than fear which she
+had felt. And because she had been foolish once, and imagined things,
+because she was afraid, like a child, of the dark, because she shrank
+from meeting a stranger after nightfall, surely, surely she was not
+going to let a man perish whom she could save with one of her fingers!
+
+And still, prudence whispered her, asking why he fixed so late an hour.
+Why had he not fixed five or six, if it were only out of respect for
+her? At five it was already dark, yet the world was awake and astir,
+respectable folk were abroad, and help was within call. She would have
+met him without hesitation at five or at six. But there, how stupid she
+was! It was the very fact that the world was astir and awake that made
+an early hour impossible. If she went at five or at six she would be
+followed, her movements would be watched, her companion would be noted.
+The very air would be full of eavesdroppers. She knew that, for the
+fact irritated her hourly and daily. And doubtless he too, hedged about
+by fears and suspicions, knew it.
+
+The lateness of the hour was natural, therefore. Still, it rendered her
+task more difficult. She dared not interfere with the heavy bars that
+secured the two doors which looked on the lake. She would be heard,
+even if the task were not beyond her strength. And to gain the back
+entrance she must thread a labyrinth of passages guarded by wakeful
+dogs and sleeping servants; for servants in those days slept on the
+stairs or in any odd place. She would be detected before she had undone
+a single bolt.
+
+Then what was she to do? Her bedroom was on the second floor, and exit
+by the window was not possible. On which, some, surveying the
+situation, would have sat still, and thought themselves justified. But
+Henrietta was of firmer stuff; and for such where there is a will there
+is a way. Mr. Rogers’s room, of which she had still the use, was on the
+first floor of the south wing and somewhat remote from the main part of
+the house. Outside the door was a sash window which gave light to the
+passage; and owing to the rise of the hill on every side of the house
+save the front, the sill of this window was not more than six feet
+above the garden. She could drop from it with safety. Return was less
+easy, but with the help of a chair, which she could lower before she
+descended, she might manage to climb in again. The feat seemed easy and
+she did not feel afraid. Whether she would feel afraid when the time
+came was another matter.
+
+In the meantime she had to wait, and sleeping ill that night, she had
+many uneasy dreams, and waking before daybreak thought herself into a
+fever. All the dreadful things that might befall her rose before her in
+the liveliest shapes; and long before the house awoke—there is no fear
+like five-o’clock-in-the-morning fear—she had given up the notion. But
+when the dull November day peered in at the bedroom window, and she had
+risen, she was herself again. She chid herself for the childish terrors
+in which she had indulged, and lest she should give way to them again
+she determined to take a decisive step. Long before noon she slipped
+out of the house and turned towards Ambleside.
+
+Unfortunately it was a wet morning, and she feared that her promenade
+in such weather must excite suspicion. Eyes, she was sure, were on her
+before she had gone a dozen paces. To throw watchers off the scent and
+to prove herself careless of espial she would not look back; but when
+she reached the first corner she picked up a stone, and threw it at an
+imaginary object on the edge of the lake. She stood an instant with her
+wet-weather hood drawn about her face as if to mark the effect of her
+shot. Then she picked up another stone and poised it, but did not throw
+it. Instead, she walked on with the stone in her hand. All without
+looking back.
+
+She came to the second gate on the Ambleside road. It was out of sight
+of the inn, and it seemed an easy and an innocent thing to lay the
+stone on the head of the pillar—gate-posts in that country are of
+stone—and to go on her way. But she heard a footstep behind her and
+panic seized her. She felt that nothing in the world would be so
+suspicious, so damning as such an act. She hesitated, and was lost. She
+walked on slowly with the stone in her hand, and the fine rain beating
+in her face.
+
+Her follower, a country clown, passed her. She loitered until he was
+out of sight; then she turned and retraced her steps. A half-minute’s
+walking brought her again to the gate. There was no one in sight and in
+a fever lest at the last some one should take her in the act she set
+the stone on the top of the post, and passed on.
+
+Half-way back to the inn she stopped. What if the stone had not kept
+its place? She had merely thrust out her hand as she passed, and
+deposited the stone without looking. Now she was sure that her ear had
+caught the faint sound which the stone made in striking the sodden
+turf. She turned and walked back.
+
+When she reached the gate she was thankful that she had had that
+thought. The stone had fallen. Fortunately there was no one in sight,
+and it was easy to pick up the first stone that came to hand and
+replace the signal. Then she walked back to the inn, inclined to laugh
+at the proportions to which her simple task had attained in her mind.
+
+She would have laughed after another fashion had she known that her
+movements from beginning to end had been watched by Mr. Sutton. The
+chaplain, ashamed yet pursuing, had sneaked after her when she left the
+inn, hoping that if she went far he might find in some lonely place,
+where she could not escape, an opportunity of pleading his cause. He
+fancied that the lapse of three days, and his patient, mournful
+conduct, might have softened her; to say nothing of the probable effect
+on a young girl of such a life as she was leading—of its solitude, its
+dullness, its weariness.
+
+On seeing her turn, however, he had had no mind to be detected, and he
+had slipped into the wood. From his retreat he had seen her deposit the
+stone: he had seen also her guilty face—it was he, indeed, who had
+removed the stone. He had done so, expecting to find a note under it,
+and he was all but surprised in the act. When she placed the second, he
+was within three paces of her, crouching with a burning face behind the
+wall. The thought of her contempt if she discovered him so appalled him
+that, cold as it was, he sweated with shame; nor was it until she had
+gone some distance that he dared to lift his eyes above the wall. Then
+he saw that she had put another stone on the gate-post.
+
+He took it in his hand and compared it with the one which he still
+held. They were as common stones as any that lay in the road. And there
+was no letter. The conclusion was clear. The stone was a signal. Nor
+could he doubt for whom it was intended. The London officer was right.
+Walterson was in the neighbourhood and she was in communication with
+him. The girl’s infatuation still ruled her.
+
+That hardened him a little in his course of action. But he was not at
+ease, and when some one coughed—slightly but with meaning—while he
+gazed at the stone, he jumped a yard. He stood, with all the blood in
+his body flown to his face. The cough had come from the wood behind
+him; and ten paces from him, peeping over the bush, was Mr. Bishop.
+
+The runner chuckled. “Very well done, reverend sir,” he said. “Very
+well done. You’ve the makings of a very tidy officer about you. I could
+not have done it much neater myself. But now, suppose you leave the
+coast clear, or maybe you’ll be scaring the other party.”
+
+Mr. Sutton, with his face the colour of beetroot—for he was heartily
+ashamed of the part he had been playing—began to stammer an
+explanation.
+
+“I saw the young lady, and didn’t—I couldn’t understand——”
+
+“What the lay was,” Mr. Bishop answered, grinning at the other’s
+discomfiture. “Just so. Same with me. But suppose in the meantime,
+reverend sir,” with unction, “you leave the ground clear for the other
+party? We can talk as well elsewhere as here, and without queering the
+pitch.”
+
+The chaplain swallowed his vexation as well as he could and
+complied—but stiffly. The two made their way back in silence to the gap
+in the wall by which the chaplain had entered. There, having first
+ascertained that the road was clear, they stepped out. By that time Mr.
+Sutton was feeling better. After all, he had been right to follow the
+girl. Left to herself, and a slave to the villain who had fascinated
+her, she might suffer worse things than a friendly espionage. He
+determined to take the bull by the horns. “What do you make of it?” he
+asked, still blushing.
+
+“Queer lay,” Bishop answered drily.
+
+“You understand it, then?”
+
+“Middling well. Gipsy patter that.” He pointed to the stone.
+
+“You think the young lady is communicating—”
+
+“With another party? I do. Leastways I know it. And the party——”
+
+“Is Walterson?”
+
+“Just so,” the runner answered. “Why not? Young ladies are but women,
+after all, reverend sir, and much like other women, only sometimes more
+so. I began, I confess, by being of your way of thinking. The lady is
+so precious snowy and so precious stiff you would not believe ice would
+melt in her mouth. But when I came to think it all over, and remembered
+how she stood by it at first, and would not give her name, nor any clue
+by which we could trace where she came from—so that till Captain Clyne
+turned up I was altogether at a loss—and how she made light of what
+Walterson had done, when it was first told her, and a lot of little
+things like that, I began to see how the land lay, innocent as she
+looks. And after all, come to think of it, if she liked the man well
+enough to go off with him—why should she cut him adrift? When she had,
+so to speak, paid the price for him, your reverence? How does that
+strike you?”
+
+“But Captain Clyne,” Sutton answered slowly, “who knew her well, and
+knows her well——”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“He does not share your opinion. He is under the belief,” the chaplain
+continued, “that her eyes are open. And that she hates the very thought
+of the man, and of the mistake she made. His view is that she is only
+anxious to behave herself.”
+
+Bishop winked. “Ay, but Captain Clyne,” he said, “is in love with her,
+you see.”
+
+Mr. Sutton stared. The colour rose slowly to his cheeks.
+
+“I don’t think so,” he said. “In fact, I may say I know that it is not
+so. He has long given up the remotest idea of the—of the match that was
+projected.”
+
+“May be, may be,” the runner answered lightly. “I don’t say that that
+is not so. But it is just when a man has given up all thought of a
+thing that he thinks of it the most, Mr. Sutton. Anyway, there is the
+stone, and there is the post, and I’ll ask you plain for whom it is
+meant, if it is not meant for Walterson?”
+
+Mr. Sutton nodded. But his thoughts were still engaged with Captain
+Clyne’s feelings. The more he considered the point the more inclined he
+was to think that the runner was right. Clyne’s insistence on the
+girl’s innocence, the extreme bitterness that had once or twice broken
+through his reticence, and an unusual restlessness of manner when he
+had made the remarkable proposal that Mr. Sutton should take his place,
+all pointed that way. And this being so, it was strange how the
+suspicion sharpened the chaplain’s keenness to win the prize. If she
+had still so great a value in the eyes of his patron, how enviable
+would he be if by hook or crook he could gain her! How very enviable!
+And was it not for her own good that he should gain her; even if he
+compassed his end by a little manœuvring, by stooping a little, by
+spying a little? Ay, even, it might be, by frightening her a little. In
+love, as in war, all was fair, and if he did not love her he desired
+her. She was so desirable, so very desirable, he might be forgiven
+somewhat if he stooped to conquer: seeing that if he failed this
+dangerous man held her in his power.
+
+So when Bishop asked for the second time, “Will you help me to keep an
+eye on her? You can do it more easily than I can,” he was ready with
+his answer, though he blushed a little.
+
+“I will stay here and note who passes,” he replied. “Yes, I will do
+that.”
+
+“You can do it with less risk of notice than I can,” the officer
+answered. “And I must get back and keep her in view. It is just
+possible that this is a ruse, and that the man we want is the other
+way.”
+
+“I will remain,” said Mr. Sutton curtly. And he stayed. But he was so
+taken up with this new view of his patron’s feelings that though Bess
+Hinkson rowed along the shore before his eyes, and looked hard at him,
+he never saw her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+A NIGHT ADVENTURE
+
+
+Henrietta sat and listened to the various sounds which told of a
+household on its way to bed; and she held her courage with both hands.
+Slip-shod feet moved along the passages, sleepy voices bade good-night,
+distant doors closed sharply. And still, when she thought all had
+retired, the clatter of pot or pan in the far-off offices proclaimed a
+belated worker. And she had to wait and listen and count the pulsations
+of her heart.
+
+The two wax candles, snuff them as she might, cast but a dull and
+melancholy light. The clock ticked in the silence of the room with
+appalling clearness. Her own movements, when she crept to the door to
+listen, scared her by their stealthiness. It seemed to her that the
+least of the sounds she made must proclaim her vigil. One moment she
+trembled lest the late burning of her light arouse suspicion; the next
+lest the cloak which she had brought in and cast across a chair should
+have put some one on the alert. Or she tormented herself with the fancy
+that the snow with which the evening sky had been heavy would fall
+before she started and betray her footsteps.
+
+Of one thing she tried not to think. She would not dwell on what might
+happen at the meeting-place. She felt that if she let her thoughts run
+on that, she would turn coward, she would not go. And one thing at a
+time, she told herself. There lay her cloak, the window was not three
+paces from her, the chair which she meant to use stood by the door. In
+three minutes she could be outside, in half an hour she might be back.
+But in the meantime, the room was lonesome and creepy, the creak of a
+board made her start, the fall of the wood-ash stopped her breath. Like
+many engaged in secret deeds she made her own mystery and trembled at
+it.
+
+At length all seemed abed.
+
+She extinguished one of the candles and took up her cloak. As she put
+it on before the pale mirror she saw that her white face and high-piled
+hair showed by the light of the remaining candle like the face of a
+ghost; and she shivered. But that was the last tribute to weakness. Her
+nature, bold to recklessness, asserted itself now the moment for action
+was come. She set the candle on the floor and shaded it so that its
+light might not be seen. Then, taking the chair in her hands she
+stepped into the dark passage, and closed the door behind her. The
+close, heavy smell of the house assailed her as she listened; but all
+was still, and she raised the sash of the window. She passed the chair
+through the aperture and leaning far out that it might not strike the
+wall lowered it gently. She felt it touch the ground and settle on its
+legs. Then she climbed over the sill and let herself down until her
+feet rested on the chair. She made certain that she could draw herself
+in again, then she sprang lightly to the ground.
+
+The chair cracked as her weight left it, and for a moment she crouched
+motionless against the wall. But she had little to fear. Snow had not
+yet fallen, but it was in the air and the night was as dark as pitch.
+She could not see a yard and when she moved, she had not gone two steps
+from the wall before it vanished, and all that remained to her was some
+notion of its position. Above, below, around was a darkness that could
+be felt. Still, she found the garden-gate with a little difficulty, and
+she passed into the road, and turned to the left. She knew that if she
+walked in that direction she must come to the place—a furlong
+away—where the Troutbeck lane ran up from the lake-side.
+
+But the blackness was such that lake and hill were all one, and she had
+to go warily, now feeling for the bank on her left, now for the ditch
+on her right. Not a star showed, and only in one place a patch of
+lighter sky broke the darkness and enabled her to discern the shapes of
+the trees as she passed under them. It was a night when any deed might
+be done, any mischief executed beside that lonely water; and no eye see
+it. But she tried not to think of this. She tried not to think of the
+tracts of lonely hill that stretched their long arms on her left, or of
+the deep, black water that lurked on her right. And she had compassed
+more than a hundred yards when a faint sound, as of following feet,
+caught her ear.
+
+She halted, and shook the hood back from her ears. She listened. She
+fancied that she heard the pattering cease, and she peered into the
+darkness, striving to embody the thing that followed. But she could see
+nothing, she could now hear nothing. She had her handkerchief in her
+hand, and as she stood, peering and listening, she wiped the wind-borne
+moisture from her face.
+
+Still she heard nothing, and she turned and set off again. But her
+thoughts were with her follower, and she had not taken three steps
+before she ran against the bank, and hardly saved herself from a fall.
+
+She felt that with a little more she would lose her head, and, astray
+in the boundless night, not know which direction to take. She must pull
+herself together. She must go on. And she went on. But twice she had
+the sickening assurance that something was moving at her heels. Nor,
+but for the thought which by-and-by occurred to her, that her follower
+might be the person she came to meet, could she have kept to her
+purpose.
+
+She came at length, trembling and clutching her hood about her, to the
+foot of the lane. She knew the place by the colder, moister air that
+swept her face, as well as by the lapping of the water on the strand.
+For the road ran very near the lake at this point. It was a
+mooring-place for two or three boats, belonging for the most part to
+Troutbeck; and she could hear a loose oar in one of the unseen craft
+roll over with a hollow sound. But no one moved in the darkness, or
+spoke, or came to her; and with parted lips, striving to control
+herself, she halted, leaning with one hand against the angle of the
+bank. Then—she could not be mistaken—she heard her follower halt.
+
+Thirty seconds—it seemed an age—she was silent, and forced herself to
+listen, straining her ears. Then she could control herself no longer.
+
+“Is it you?” she whispered, her voice strained and uncertain, “I am
+here.”
+
+No one answered. And when she had waited awhile glaring into the night
+where she had last heard the footsteps she shuddered violently. For a
+space she could not speak, she leant against the bank.
+
+Then, “Is it you?” she whispered desperately, turning her face this way
+and that. “Speak if it is! Speak! For God’s sake, speak to me!”
+
+No one answered, but out of the gloom came the low creep of the wind
+among the reeds, and the melancholy lapping of the water on the stones.
+Once more the oar in the boat rolled over with a hollow coffin-like
+echo. And from a distance another sound, the flap and beat of a sail as
+the rudder was put over, came off the surface of the lake. But she did
+not heed this. It was with the darkness about her, it was with the
+skulking thing a pace or two from her, it was with the arms stretched
+out to clutch her, it was with the fear that was beginning to stifle
+her as the thick night stifled her, that she was concerned.
+
+Once more, striving fiercely to combat her fear, to steady her voice,
+she spoke.
+
+“If you do not answer,” she cried unsteadily, “I shall go back! You
+hear? I shall go back!”
+
+Still no answer. And on that, because a frightened woman is capable of
+anything, and especially of the thing which is the least to be
+expected, she flung herself forward with her hands outstretched and
+tried to grapple with the thing that terrified her. She caught nothing:
+all that she felt was a warm breath on her cheek. She recoiled then as
+quickly as she had advanced. Unfortunately her skirt brushed something
+as she fell back and the contact, slight as it was, drew a low shriek
+from her. She leant panting against the bank, crouching like a thing at
+bay. The beating of her heart seemed to choke her, the gloom to stretch
+out arms about her. The touch of a moth on her cheek would have drawn a
+shriek. And on the lake—but near the shore now, a bowshot from where
+she crouched, the sail of the unseen boat flapped against the mast and
+began to descend. The light of a shaded lanthorn beamed for an instant
+on the dark surface of the water, then vanished.
+
+She did not see the lanthorn, she did not see the boat, for she was
+glaring in the other direction, the direction in which she had heard
+the footsteps. All her senses were concentrated on the thing close to
+her. But some reflection of the light, glancing off the water, did
+reveal a thing—a dim uncertain something—man or woman, dead or alive,
+standing close to her, beside her: and with a shriek she sprang from
+the thing, whatever it was, gave way to blind panic, and fled. For some
+thirty yards she kept the road. Then she struck the bank and fell,
+violently bruising herself. But she felt nothing. In a moment she was
+on her feet again and running on, running on blindly, madly. She
+fancied feet behind her, and a hand stretched out to seize her hair;
+and in terror, that terror which she had kept at bay so long and so
+bravely, she ran on at random, until she found herself, she knew not
+how, clinging with both hands to the wicket-gate of the garden. A faint
+light in one of the windows of the inn had directed her to it.
+
+She stood then, still trembling in every limb, but drawing courage from
+the neighbourhood of living things. And as well as her laboured
+breathing would let her, she listened. But presently she caught the
+stealthy trip-trip of feet along the road, and in a quick return of
+terror she opened the gate and slipped into the garden. She had the
+presence of mind to close the gate after and without noise. But that
+done, woman’s nerves could bear no more. Her knees were shaking under
+her, as she groped her way to her window, and felt for the chair which
+she had left beneath it.
+
+The chair was gone. Impossible! She could not have found the right
+window; that was it. She felt with her hands along the wall, felt
+farther. But there was no chair—anywhere. She had made no mistake. Some
+one had removed the chair.
+
+Strange to say, the moment she was sure of that, the fear which had
+driven her in headlong panic from the water-side left her. She thought
+no more of her stealthy attendant. Her one care now was to get in—to
+get in and still to keep secret the fact that she had been out! She had
+trembled like a leaf a few moments before, in fear of the shapeless
+thing that crouched beside her in the night. Now, with no more than the
+garden-fence between her and it, she feared it no more than a feather.
+She regained her ordinary plane, and foresaw all the suspicion, all the
+inconvenience, to which her position, if she could not re-enter, must
+subject her. And the smaller, the immediate fear expelled the greater
+and more remote.
+
+She leant against the wall and tried to think. Who had, who could have
+removed the chair? She could not guess. And thinking only increased her
+eagerness, her anxiety to enter and be safe. She must get in somehow,
+even at a little risk.
+
+She tried to take hold of the sill above her, and so to raise herself
+to the window by sheer strength. But she could not grasp the sill,
+though she could touch it. Still, if she had something in place of the
+chair, if she had something a foot high on which to raise herself she
+could succeed. But what? And how was she to find anything in the dark?
+She peered round, compelling herself to think. Surely she might find
+something. With a single foot of height she was saved. Without that
+foot of height she must rouse the house; and that meant disgrace and
+contumely, and degrading suspicion. Her cheeks burned at the prospect.
+For no story, no explanation would account satisfactorily for her
+absence from the house at such an hour.
+
+She was about to grope her way round the house to the yard at the
+back—where with luck she might find a chicken coop or a stable
+bucket—when five paces from her the latch of the wicket clicked
+sharply. By instinct she flattened herself against the wall; but she
+had scarcely time to feel the sudden leap of her heart before a mild
+voice spoke out of the gloom.
+
+“I’m afraid I have taken your chair,” it murmured, “pray forgive me. I
+am Mr. Sutton, and I—I am very sorry!”
+
+“You followed me!”
+
+“I——”
+
+“You followed me!” Her voice rang imperative with anger. “You followed
+me! You have been spying on me! You!”
+
+“No! No!” he muttered. “I meant only——”
+
+“How dare you! How dare you!” she cried in low fierce tones. “You have
+been spying on me, sir! And you removed the chair that—that I might not
+enter without your help.”
+
+He was silent a moment, standing, though she could not see him, with
+his chin on his breast. Then:
+
+“I confess,” he said in a low tone. “I confess it was so. I spied on
+you.”
+
+“And followed me!”
+
+“Yes,” he admitted it, his hands extended in unseen deprecation, “I
+did.”
+
+“Why?” she cried. “Why, sir?”
+
+“Because——”
+
+“But I do not want to know,” she retorted, cutting him short as she
+remembered the time, and place, “I want to know nothing, to hear
+nothing from you! The chair, sir! The chair, if you do not wish to add
+further outrage to your unmanly conduct. Set me the chair and go!”
+
+“But hear at least,” he pleaded, “why I followed you, Miss Damer.
+Why——”
+
+She stamped her foot on the ground.
+
+“The chair!” she repeated.
+
+He was most anxious to tell her that though other motives had led him
+to spy on her and watch her window, he had followed her out of a pure
+desire to protect her. But her insistence overrode him, silenced him.
+He set the chair under the passage window and murmured submissively
+that it was there.
+
+That was enough for her. She felt for it, found it, and without thought
+of him or word to him, she climbed nimbly in. That done she stooped and
+drew the chair up, and closed the window down upon him and secured it.
+Next, feeling for the door of Mr. Rogers’s room she got rid of the
+chair, and seized her hidden candle and crept out and up the stairs.
+Apparently all the house, save the man who had detected her, slept. But
+she did not dare to pause or prove the fact. She had had her lesson and
+a severe one; and she did not breathe freely until the door of her
+chamber was locked behind her, and she knew herself once more within
+the bounds of the usual and the proper.
+
+Then for a brief while, as she tore off her damp clothes, her thoughts
+ran stormily on Mr. Sutton: nor did she dream, or he, from what things
+he had saved her. The man was a wretch, a spy, a sneak trying to worm
+himself into her confidence. She would box his ears if he threatened
+her or referred to the matter again. And if he told others—she did not
+know what she would not do! For the rest, she had let herself be scared
+by a nothing, by a step, by a sound; and she despised herself for her
+cowardice. But—she had that consolation—she had played her part, she
+had gone to the rendezvous, she had not failed. The fault lay with him
+who should have met her there, and who had not met her.
+
+And so, shivering and chilled—for bedroom fires were not yet, and she
+was worn out with fright and exposure—she hid herself under the heavy
+patchwork quilt and sought comfort in the sleep of exhaustion. It was
+not long in coming, for she suspected no more than she knew. Like the
+purblind insect that creeps upon the crowded pavement and is missed by
+a hundred feet, she discerned neither the dangers which she had so
+narrowly escaped, nor those into which her late action was fated to
+hurry her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+THE EDGE OF THE STORM
+
+
+It was daylight when she awoke; but it had not been daylight long. Yet
+some one was knocking; and knocking loudly at the door of her bedroom.
+She rose on her elbow, and looking at the half-curtained window decided
+that it was eight o’clock, perhaps a little later. But not so much
+later that they need raise the house in waking her.
+
+“Thank you,” she cried petulantly. “That will do! That will do! I am
+awake.” And she laid her head on the pillow again, and closing her
+eyes, sighed deeply. The events of the night were coming back to
+her—and with them her troubles.
+
+But, “Please to open the door, miss!” came the answer in gruff accents.
+“I want to speak to you, by your leave.”
+
+Henrietta sat up, her hair straggling from under the nightcap that
+framed her pretty features. The voice that demanded entrance was Mrs.
+Gilson’s: and even over Henrietta that voice had power. She parleyed no
+longer. She threw a wrap about her, and hastily opened the door.
+
+“What is it?” she asked. “Mrs. Gilson, is it you?”
+
+“Be good enough,” the landlady answered, “to let me come in a minute,
+miss.”
+
+Her peremptory tone astonished Henrietta, who said neither Yes nor No,
+but stood staring. The landlady with little ceremony took leave for
+granted. She entered, went by the girl to the window, and dragging the
+curtains aside, let in the full light. The adventures of the night had
+left Henrietta pale. But at this her colour rose.
+
+“What is it?” she repeated.
+
+“You know best,” Mrs. Gilson answered with more than her usual
+curtness. “Deal of dirt and little profit, I’m afraid, like Brough
+March fair! It’s not enough to be a fool once, it seems! Though I’d
+have thought you’d paid pretty smartly for it. Smart enough to know
+better now, my lass!”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” Henrietta faltered.
+
+“You don’t?” Mrs. Gilson rejoined, and with her arms set akimbo she
+stared severely at the girl, who, in her night-clothes with her cloak
+thrown about her and her colour coming and going, looked both guilty
+and frightened. “I fancy your face knows, if you don’t. Where were you
+last night? Ay, after dark last night, madam? Where were you, I say?”
+
+“After dark?” Henrietta stammered.
+
+“Ay, after dark!” the landlady retorted. “That’s English, isn’t it? But
+never mind. Least said is soonest mended. Where are your shoes?”
+
+“My shoes?”
+
+Mrs. Gilson lost patience, or appeared to lose it.
+
+“That is what I said,” she replied. “You give them to me, and then I’ll
+tell you why I want them. Ah!” catching sight of them and bending her
+stout form to lift them from the floor. “Now, if you want to know what
+is the matter, though I think you know as well as the miller knows who
+beats the meal sack—you come with me! There is no one on this landing.
+Come you, as you are, to the window at the other end. ‘And you’ll know
+fast enough, and why they want your shoes.”
+
+“They?” Henrietta murmured, hanging back and growing more alarmed. It
+was a pity that there was no man there to see how pretty she looked in
+her disorder.
+
+“Ay, they!” the landlady answered. And a keen ear might have detected
+sorrow as well as displeasure in her tone. “There’s many will be poking
+their noses into your affairs now you’ll find—when it’s too late to
+prevent them. But do you come, young woman!” She led the way along the
+landing to a window which looked down on the side-garden. After a brief
+hesitation Henrietta followed, her face grown sullen. Alas! when she
+reached the window it needed but a look to enlighten her.
+
+One of the things, which she had feared the previous day, had come to
+pass! A little snow had fallen while she was absent from the house; so
+very little that she had not noticed it. But it had lain, and on its
+white surface was published this morning in damning characters the
+story of her flittings to and fro. And worse, early as it was, the
+story had readers! Leaning on the garden wicket were two or three men
+discussing the appearances, and pointing and arguing; and forty or
+fifty yards along the road towards Bowness, a man, bent double, was
+tracing the prints of her feet, as if he followed a scent.
+
+It was for that, then, that they wanted her shoes. She understood, and
+her first impulse was to indignation. It was an outrage! An insult!
+
+“What is it to them?” she cried. “How dare they!”
+
+Mrs. Gilson looked keenly at her under her vast bushy eyebrows.
+
+“I’m afraid,” she said, “that you’ll find they’ll dare a mort more than
+that before they’ve done, my girl. And what they want to know they’ll
+learn. These,” coolly lifting the shoes to sight, “are to help them.”
+
+“But why should they—what is it to them if I——” she stopped, unwilling
+to commit herself.
+
+“You listen to me a minute,” the landlady said. “You’ve brought your
+pigs to a poor market, that’s plain: and there is but one thing can
+help you now, and that is a clean breast. Now you make up your mind to
+it! There’s nought else can help you, I say again, and that I tell you!
+It’s no child’s play, this! The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth, as they say at the assizes, is the only thing for you, if
+you don’t want to be sorry for it all the rest of your life.”
+
+She spoke so seriously that Henrietta when she answered took a lower
+tone; though she still protested.
+
+“What is it to any one,” she asked, “if I was out of the house last
+night?”
+
+“It’s little to me,” Mrs. Gilson answered drily. “But it will be much
+to you if you don’t tell the truth. Your own conscience, my girl,
+should speak loud enough.”
+
+“My conscience is clear!” Henrietta cried. But her tone, a little too
+heroic, fitted ill with her appearance.
+
+At any rate Mrs. Gilson, who did not like heroics, thought so. “Then
+the best thing you can do,” she replied tartly, “is to go and dress
+yourself! A clear conscience! Umph! Give me clean hands! And if I were
+you I’d be quite sure about that conscience before I came down to
+answer questions.”
+
+“I shall not come down.”
+
+“Then they’ll come up,” the landlady retorted. “And ’twon’t be more
+pleasant. You’d best think twice about that.”
+
+Henrietta was thinking. Behind the sullen, pretty face she was thinking
+that if she made a clean breast of it, she must betray the man. She
+must say where she had seen him, and why she had gone to meet him. And
+that was the thing which she had resolved not to do—the thing which she
+was still determined not to do. There is a spice of obstinacy in all
+women: an inclination to abide by a line once taken, or an opinion once
+formed. And Henrietta, who was naturally head-strong, and who had run
+some risk the previous night and gone to some trouble that the man
+might escape, was not going to give him up to-day. They had found her
+out, they had driven her to bay. But nothing which they could do would
+wound her half as much as that public ordeal, that confrontation with
+the man, that exhibition of his unworthiness and her folly, which must
+follow his capture. For the man himself, she was so far from loving
+him, that she loathed him, she was ashamed of him. But she was not
+going to betray him. She was not going to turn informer—a name more
+hateful then, when blood-money was common, than now! She who had been
+kissed by him was not going to have his blood on her hands!
+
+Such were her thoughts; to which Mrs. Gilson had no clue. But the
+landlady read recalcitrancy in the girl’s face, and knowing some things
+which Henrietta did not know, and being at no time one to brook
+opposition, she took the girl the wrong way. If she had appealed to her
+better feelings, if she had used that influence with her which rough
+but real kindness had won, it is possible that she might have brought
+Henrietta to reason. But the sight of that sullen, pretty face provoked
+the landlady. She had proof of gross indiscretion, she suspected worse
+things, she thought the girl unworthy. And she spoke more harshly to
+her than she had ever spoken before.
+
+“If you were my girl,” she said grimly, “I’d know what to do with you!
+I’d shake the humours out of you, if I had to shake you from now till
+next week! Ay, I would! And you’d pretty soon come to your senses and
+find your tongue, I warrant! Didn’t you pretend to me and maintain to
+me a week ago and more that you’d done with the scamp?”
+
+“I have done with him!” Henrietta cried, red and angry.
+
+“Ay, as the foot has done with the shoe—till next time!” Mrs. Gilson
+retorted, drawing her simile from the articles in her hand. “For shame.
+For shame, young woman!” severely. “When it was trusting to that I kept
+you here and kept you out of gaol!”
+
+Henrietta had not thought of that side of the case; and the reminder,
+finding a joint in her armour, stung her.
+
+“You don’t know to whom you are talking!” she cried.
+
+“I know that I am talking to a fool!” the landlady retorted. “But
+there,” she continued irefully, “you may talk to a fool till you are
+dead and ’twill still be a fool! So it’s only one bit of advice I’ll
+give you. You dress and come down or you’ll be dragged down! And I
+suppose, though you are not too proud to trapse the roads to meet your
+Joe—ay,” raising her voice as Henrietta turned in a rage, and fled,
+“you may slam the door, you little vixen, for a vixen you are! But
+you’ve heard some of my opinion of you, and you’ll hear more! I’m not
+sure that you’re not a thorough bad ’un!” Mrs. Gilson continued,
+lowering her voice again and speaking to herself—though her words were
+still audible. “That I’m not! But any way there’ll be one here
+by-and-by you’ll have to listen to! And he’ll make your ears burn, my
+lady, or I’m mistaken!”
+
+It was bad enough to hear through the ill-fitting door such words as
+these. It was worse to know that plainer words might be used downstairs
+in the hearing of man and maid. But Henrietta had the sense to know
+that her position would be made worse by avoiding the issue, and pride
+enough to urge her to face it. She hastened to dress herself, though
+her fingers shook with indignation as well as with cold.
+
+It was only when she was nearly ready to descend that she noticed how
+large was the crowd collected before the inn. She could hardly believe
+that her escapade—much as it might interest the police officer—was the
+cause of this. And a chill of apprehension, a thrill of anticipation of
+she knew not what, kept her for a moment standing before the window.
+She had done, she told herself, no harm. She had no real reason to
+fear. And yet she was beginning to fear. Anger was beginning to give
+place to dismay. For it was clear that something out of the common had
+happened; besides the group in the road, three or four persons were
+inspecting the boats drawn up on the foreshore. And on the lake was a
+stir unusual at this season. Half a mile from the shore a boat under
+sail was approaching the landing-place from the direction of Wray
+Woods. It was running fast before the bitter lash of the November wind
+that here and there flecked the grey and melancholy expanse with
+breakers. And round the point from the direction of Ambleside a second
+boat was reaching, with the wind on her quarter. She fancied that the
+men in these boats made signs to those on the shore; and that the
+excitement grew with their report. While she gazed two or three of the
+people in the road walked down to the water. And with a puckered brow,
+and a face a shade paler than usual, she hesitated; wishing that she
+knew what had happened and was sure that the stir had not to do with
+her.
+
+She would have preferred to wait upstairs until the boats arrived. But
+she remembered Mrs. Gilson’s warning. Moreover, she was beginning to
+comprehend—as men do, and women seldom do—that there is a force which
+it is futile to resist—that of the law. Sooner or later she must go
+down. So taking her courage in both hands she opened her door, and
+striving to maintain a dignified air she descended the stairs, and made
+her way past the passage window to Mr. Rogers’s room.
+
+It was empty, and first appearances were reassuring. Her breakfast was
+laid and waiting, the fire was cheerful, the room tended to
+encouragement. But the murmur of excited voices still rose from the
+highway below, and kept her uneasy: and when she went to the
+side-window to view the scene of last night’s evasion, she stamped her
+foot with vexation. For where the tracks of feet were clearest they had
+been covered with old boxes to protect them from the frosty sunshine
+which the day promised; and the precaution smacked so strongly of the
+law and its methods that it had an ill look. Not Robinson Crusoe on his
+desert island had made a more ridiculous fuss about a foot-print or
+two!
+
+She was still knitting her brows over the device when there came a
+knock at the door. She turned and confronted Bishop. The man’s manner
+as he entered was respectful enough, but he had not waited for leave to
+come in. And she had a sickening feeling that he was taking possession
+of her, that he would not leave her again, that from this time she was
+not her own. The gravity of the bluff red face did not lessen this
+feeling. And though she would fain have asked him his business and
+challenged his intrusion she could not find a word.
+
+“I take it, you’d as soon see me alone, miss,” he said. And he closed
+the door behind him, and stood with his hat in his hand. “You’d best go
+on with your breakfast, for you look a bit peaky—you’re a bit shaken, I
+expect, by what has happened. But don’t you be afraid,” with something
+like a wink, “there’s no harm will happen to you if you are sensible.
+Meanwhile I’ll talk to you, by your leave, while you eat. It will save
+time, and time’s much. I suppose,” he continued, as she forced herself
+to take her seat and pour out her tea, “there’s no need to tell you,
+miss, what has happened?”
+
+She would have given much to prevent her hand shaking, and something to
+be able to look him in the face. She did succeed in maintaining outward
+composure; for agitation is more clearly felt than perceived. But she
+could not force the colour to her cheeks, nor compel her tongue to
+utterance. And he let her swallow some tea before he repeated his
+question.
+
+“I suppose there is no need, miss, to tell you what has happened?”
+
+“I do not know”—she murmured—“to what you refer. You must speak more
+plainly.”
+
+“It’s a serious matter,” he said. He appeared to be looking into his
+hat, but he was really watching her over its edge, “A serious matter,
+miss, and I hope you’ll take it as it should be taken. For if it goes
+beyond a point the Lord only can stop it. So if you know, miss, and
+have no need to be told, it’s best for you to be frank. We know a good
+deal.”
+
+The warm tea had given her command of herself.
+
+“If you mean,” she said, “that I was out last night, I was.”
+
+“We know that, of course.”
+
+“You have my shoes,” with a little shrug of contempt.
+
+“Yes, miss, and your footprints!” he answered. “The point on which we
+want information—and the sooner we have it the better—is, where did you
+leave him?”
+
+“Where did I leave—whom?” sharply.
+
+“The person you met.”
+
+“I met no one.”
+
+The runner shook his head gently. And his face grew longer.
+
+“For God’s sake, miss,” he said earnestly, “don’t fence with me. Don’t
+take that line! Believe me, if you do you’ll be sorry. Time’s the
+thing. Tell us now and it may avail. Tell us to-morrow and it may be of
+no use. The harm may be done.”
+
+She stared at him. “But I met no one,” she said.
+
+“There are the footprints, coming and going,” he answered with
+severity. “It is no use to deny them.”
+
+“A man’s—with mine?”
+
+“For certain.”
+
+She looked at him with a startled expression. But gradually her face
+cleared, she smiled.
+
+“Ah,” she said. “Just so. You have the man’s tracks coming and going?
+And mine?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“But are not his tracks as well as mine more faint as they go from the
+house? More clear as they come back to the house? Because snow was
+falling while I was out as well as before I started. So that he as well
+as I went from the house and returned to the house!”
+
+He frowned. “I noticed that,” he said.
+
+“Then,” with a faint ring of amusement in her tone, “you had better
+search the house for him.”
+
+The difficulty had occurred to Mr. Bishop before he entered. But it did
+not fall in with his theory, and like many modern discoverers he had
+set it on one side as a detail which events would explain. Put to him
+crudely it vexed him.
+
+“See here, miss, you’re playing with us,” he said. “And it won’t do.
+Tell us frankly——”
+
+“I will tell you frankly,” she answered, cutting him short with spirit,
+“whose tracks they are. They are Mr. Sutton’s. Now you know. And Mr.
+Sutton is the only person I saw last night. Now you know that too. And
+perhaps you will leave me.” She rose as she finished.
+
+“Mr. Sutton was with you?”
+
+“I have said so. You have my shoes. Get his. What I say is easily
+tested and easily proved.”
+
+She had the pleasure of a little triumph. The runner looked taken aback
+and ashamed of himself. But after the first flush of astonishment he
+did not waste a minute. He turned, opened the door, and disappeared.
+
+Henrietta listened to his departing steps, then with a sigh of relief
+she returned to her breakfast. Her spirits rose. She felt that she had
+exaggerated her troubles; that she had allowed herself to be alarmed
+without cause. The landlady’s rudeness, rather than any real perplexity
+or peril, had imposed on her. Another time she would not be so lightly
+frightened. For, after all, she had done nothing of which even Mr.
+Sutton, if he told the truth, could make much. They might suspect that
+she had stolen out to meet Walterson; but as she had not met him, they
+could prove nothing. They might conclude from it, that he was in the
+neighbourhood; but as Bishop already held that belief, things were left
+where they were before. Except, to be sure, that for some reason she
+had lost the landlady’s favour.
+
+The girl had arrived at this comfortable stage in her reasoning when
+the shuffling of feet along the passage informed her that Bishop was
+returning. Nor Bishop only. He brought with him others, it was clear,
+and among them one heavy man in boots—she caught the harsh ring of a
+spur. Who were they? Why were they coming? Involuntarily she rose to
+her feet, and waited with a quickened heart for their appearance.
+
+The sounds that reached her were not encouraging. One of the men
+stumbled, and growled an oath; and one laughed a vulgar common laugh as
+at some jest in doubtful taste. Then the door opened wide, and with
+little ceremony they followed one another into the room, one, two,
+three.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] ... he touched his brow with his whip handle
+
+
+Bishop first, with his bluff, square face. Then a stranger, a tall
+bulky man, heavy-visaged and bull-dog jawed, with harsh, over-bearing
+eyes. He wore an open horseman’s coat, and under it a broad leather
+belt with pistols; and he touched his brow with his whip-handle in a
+half familiar, half insolent way. After him came the pale, peaky face
+of Mr. Sutton, who looked chap-fallen and ashamed of himself.
+
+The moment all had entered,
+
+“Mr. Chaplain, close the door,” said the stranger in a broad Lancashire
+accent, and with an air of authority. “Now, Bishop, suppose you tell
+the young lady—damme, what’s that?” turning sharply, “Who is it?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+MR. JOSEPH NADIN
+
+
+The words were addressed to Mr. Sutton, who did not seem able to shut
+the door. But the answer came from the other side of the door.
+
+“By your leave,”—the voice, a little breathless, was Mrs. Gilson’s—“I’m
+coming in too.” And she came in at that, and brusquely. “I think you
+are over many men for one woman,” she continued, setting her cap
+straight, and otherwise not a whit discomposed by the men’s attitude.
+“You’ll want me before you are done, you’ll see.”
+
+“Want you?” the strange man answered with sarcasm. “Then when we want
+you we’ll send for you.”
+
+“No you’ll not, Joe Nadin,” she retorted, coolly, as she closed the
+door behind her. “For I’ll be here. What you will be wanting,” with a
+toss of her double chin, “will be wit. But that’s not to be had for the
+sending.”
+
+Nadin—he was the deputy-constable of Manchester, and the most famous
+police officer of that day, a man as warmly commended by the Tory party
+as he was fiercely hated by the Radicals—would have given an angry
+answer. But Bishop was before him.
+
+“Let her be,” he said—with friendly deference. “We may want her, as she
+says. And the young lady is waiting. Now, miss,” he continued,
+addressing Henrietta, who stood at the table trying to hide the
+perturbation which these preliminaries caused her, “I’ve brought Mr.
+Sutton to tell us in your presence what he knows. I doubt it won’t go
+far. So that when we have heard him we shall want a good deal from
+you.”
+
+“Ay, from you, young lady,” the Manchester man struck in, taking the
+word out of the other’s mouth. “It will be your turn then. And what we
+want we must have, or——”
+
+“Or what?” she asked, with an air of dignity that sat strangely on one
+so young. They did not guess how her heart was beating!
+
+“Or ’twill be Appleby gaol!” he answered. “That’s the long and the
+short of it. There’s an end of shilly-shallying! You’ve to make your
+choice, and time’s precious. But the reverend gentleman has first say.
+Speak up, Mr. Chaplain! You followed this young lady last night about
+ten o’clock? Very good. Now what did you see and hear?”
+
+Mr. Sutton looked miserably downcast. But he was on the horns of a
+dilemma, and while he knew that by speaking he forfeited all chance of
+Henrietta’s favour, he knew that he must speak: that he had no choice.
+Obstinate as he could be upon occasion, in the grasp of such a man as
+Nadin he succumbed. He owned that not the circumstances only but the
+man were too strong for him. Yet he made one effort to stand on his own
+legs. “I think Miss Damer would prefer to tell the tale herself,” he
+said, with a spark of dignity. “In that case I have nothing to say.”
+
+“I do not know what you mean,” Henrietta answered, her lip curling. And
+she looked at him as she would have looked at Judas.
+
+“Still,” he murmured, with a side-glance at Nadin, “if you would be
+advised by me——”
+
+“I have nothing to say,” she said curtly.
+
+“Mind you, I’ve told her nothing.” Mrs. Gilson said, intervening in
+time to prevent an outburst on Nadin’s part. “I was bid to get her
+shoes, and I got her shoes. I held my tongue.”
+
+“Then she knows nothing!” the chaplain exclaimed.
+
+“Oh, she knows enough,” Nadin struck in, his harsh, dogmatic nature
+getting the better of him. “If she did not know we should not come to
+her. We know our business. Now, where’s the man hiding? For there the
+boy will be. Where did you leave him, my lass?”
+
+Mr. Sutton, whom circumstances had forced into a part so distasteful,
+saw a chance of helping the girl; and even of reinstating himself in
+some degree in her eyes.
+
+“I can answer that,” he said. “She did not meet him. The young lady
+went to the bottom of Troutbeck Lane, where, I understand, the boat
+came to land. But there was no one there to meet her. And she came back
+without seeing any one. I can vouch for that. And that,” the chaplain
+continued, throwing out his chest, and speaking with dignity, “is all
+that Miss Damer did, and I can speak to it.”
+
+Nadin exploded.
+
+“Don’t tell me that she went to the place for nothing, man!”
+
+“I tell you only what happened,” the chaplain answered, sticking to his
+point. “She saw no one, and spoke to no one.”
+
+“Hang me if I don’t think you are in with her!” Nadin replied in an
+insulting tone. And then turning to Henrietta, “Now then, out with it!
+Where is he?”
+
+But Henrietta, battered by the man’s coarse voice and manner, still
+held her ground.
+
+“If I knew I should not tell you,” she said.
+
+“Then you’ll go to Appleby gaol!”
+
+“And still I shall not tell you.”
+
+“Understand! Understand!” Nadin replied. “I’ve a warrant here granted
+in Lancashire and backed here and in order! A warrant to take him. You
+can see it if you like. Don’t say I took advantage of you. I’m rough,
+but I’m square,” he continued, his broad dialect such that a Southerner
+would not have understood him. “The lads know me, and you’ll know me
+before we’ve done!”
+
+“Then it won’t be for your wisdom!” Mrs. Gilson muttered. And then more
+loudly, “Why don’t you tell her what’s been done? Happen she knows, and
+happen she doesn’t. If she does ’tis all one. If she doesn’t you’re
+talking to deaf ears.”
+
+Nadin shrugged his shoulders and struck his boot with his whip.
+
+“Well,” he said, “an old lass with a long tongue will have her way i’
+Lancashire or where it be! Tell her yourself. But she knows, I
+warrant!”
+
+Mrs. Gilson also thought so, but she was not sure.
+
+“See here, miss,” she said, “you know Captain Clyne’s son?”
+
+Henrietta’s colour rose at the name.
+
+“Of course you do,” the landlady continued, “for if all’s true you are
+some sort of connection. Then you know, Miss, that he’s the apple of
+his father’s eye, and the more for being a lameter?”
+
+Henrietta could not hear Anthony Clyne’s name without agitation;
+without vague apprehensions and a sense of coming evil. Why did they
+bring in the name? And what were they going to tell her about the
+boy—of whom in the old days she had been contemptuously jealous? She
+felt her face burn under the gaze of all those eyes fixed on it. And
+her own eyes sank.
+
+“Well,” she muttered indistinctly, “what of him? What has he to do with
+this?”
+
+“He is missing. He has been stolen.”
+
+“Stolen?”
+
+Her tone was one of sharp surprise.
+
+“He was carried off last night by two men,” Bishop struck in. “His
+nurse was returning to the house near Newby Bridge—hard on nightfall,
+when she met two men on the road. They asked the name of the place,
+heard what it was, and asked who the child was. She told them, and they
+went one way and she another, but before she reached home they overtook
+her, seized her and bound her, and disappeared with the boy. It was
+dusk and she might have lain in the ditch and died. But the servants in
+the house went out when she did not return and found her.” He looked at
+Nadin. “That’s so, isn’t it?”
+
+“Ay, that’s it,” the other answered, nodding. “You’ve got it pat.”
+
+“When she could speak, the alarm was given, they raised the country,
+the men were traced to Newby Bridge. There we know a boat met them and
+took them off. And the point, miss, is not so much where they landed,
+for that we know—’twas at the bottom of Troutbeck Lane!—as where they
+are now.”
+
+She had turned pale and red and pale again, while she listened.
+Astonishment had given place to horror, and resentment to pity. In
+women, even the youngest, there is a secret tenderness for children;
+and the thought of this child, cast lame and helpless into the hands of
+strangers, and exposed, in place of the care to which he had been
+accustomed all his life, to brutality and hardships, pierced the crust
+of jealousy and melted the woman’s heart. Her eyes filled with tears,
+and through the tears indignation burned. For a moment even the insult
+which Anthony Clyne had put upon her was forgotten. She thought only of
+the father’s misery, his suspense, his grief. She yearned to him.
+
+“Oh!” she cried, “the wretches!” And her voice rang bravely. “But—but
+why are you here? Why do you not follow them?”
+
+Nadin’s eyes met Bishop’s. He raised his eyebrows.
+
+“Because, miss,” he said, “we think there’s a shorter way to them.
+Because we think you can tell us where they are if you choose.”
+
+“I can tell you where they are?” she repeated.
+
+“Yes, miss. We believe that you can—if you choose. And you _must_
+choose.”
+
+The girl stared. Then slowly she comprehended. She grasped the fact
+that they addressed the question to her, that they believed that she
+was at one with the men who had done this. And a change as
+characteristic of her nature as it was unexpected by those who watched
+her, swept over her face. Her features quivered, and, even as when
+Anthony Clyne’s proposal wounded her pride to the quick, she turned
+from them, and bowing her head on her hands broke into weeping.
+
+They were all taken aback. They had looked some for one thing, some for
+another; some for rage and scorn, some for sullen denial. No one had
+foreseen this breakdown. Nor was it welcome. Nadin found himself
+checked on the threshold of success, and swore under his breath.
+Bishop, who had broken a lance with her before, and was more or less
+tender-hearted, looked vexed. Mr. Sutton showed open distress—her
+weeping hurt him, and at every quiver of her slight, girlish figure he
+winced. While Mrs. Gilson frowned; perhaps at the clumsiness and
+witlessness of men-folk. But she did not interfere, and the chaplain
+dared not interfere: and Nadin was left to deal with the girl as he
+pleased.
+
+“There, miss,” he said, speaking a little less harshly, “tears mend no
+bones. And there’s one thing clear in this and not to be denied—the men
+who have taken the lad are friends of your friend. And not a doubt he’s
+in it. We’ve traced them to a place not three hundred yards from here.
+They’ve vanished where he vanished, and there’s no need of magic to
+tell that the same hole hides all. I was on the track of the men with a
+warrant—for they are d——d Radicals as ever were!—when they slipped off
+and played this pretty trick by the way. Whether they have kidnapped
+the lad out of revenge, or for a hostage, I’m in the dark. But put-up
+job or not, you are not the young lady to back up such doings. I see
+that with half an eye,” he added cunningly, “and therefore——”
+
+“Have you got it from her?”
+
+Nadin turned with a frown—the interruption came from Mr. Hornyold. The
+justice had just entered, and stood booted, spurred, and pompous on the
+threshold. He carried his heavy riding-whip, and was in all points
+ready for the road.
+
+“No, not yet,” Nadin answered curtly, “but——”
+
+“You’d better; let me try her, then,” the magistrate rejoined, all
+fussiness and importance. “There’s no time to be lost. We’re getting
+together. I’ve a dozen mounted men in the yard, and they are coming in
+from Rydal side. We shall have two score in an hour. We’ll have the
+hills scoured before nightfall, and long before Captain Clyne is here.”
+
+“Quite so, squire,” Nadin replied drily. “But if the young lady will
+tell us where the scoundrel lies we’ll be spared the trouble. Now,
+miss,” he continued, forgetting, under the impetus of Hornyold’s
+manner, the more diplomatic line he had been following, “we’ve a d——d
+clear case against you, and that’s flat. We can trace you to where they
+landed last night, and we know that you were there within a few minutes
+of the time; for we’ve their footsteps from the boat to the wood above
+the road, and your footsteps from the boat to the inn. There is as much
+evidence of aiding and abetting as would transport a dozen men! So do
+you be wise, and tell us straight off what we want.”
+
+But two words had caught her ear.
+
+“Aiding and abetting?” she muttered. And she turned her eyes, still
+bright with tears, upon him. Her flushed face and ruffled hair gave her
+a strangely childish appearance. “Aiding and abetting? Do you mean that
+you think that I—that I had anything to do with taking the child?”
+
+“No, no,” Bishop murmured hurriedly, and cast a warning look at his
+colleague. “No, no, not knowingly.”
+
+“Nay, but that depends,” Nadin persisted obstinately. His fibre was
+coarser, and his perceptions were less acute. It was his habit to gain
+his ends by fear, and he was unwilling to lose the hold he had over
+her. “That depends,” he repeated doggedly. “If you speak and tell us
+all you know, of course not. But if you do not speak, we shall take it
+against you.”
+
+“You will take it,” she cried, “that I—I helped to steal the child?”
+
+“Just so, if you don’t speak,” Nadin repeated, disregarding his
+fellow’s signals. Firmness, he was sure, was all that was needed. Just
+firmness.
+
+She was silent in great agitation. They suspected her! Oh, it was
+wicked, it was vile of them! She would not have touched a hair of the
+child’s head. And they suspected Walterson; but it might be as falsely,
+it must be as falsely. Yet if she gave him up, even if he were innocent
+he would suffer. He would suffer on other charges, and she would have
+his blood on her hands though she had so often, so often, resolved that
+she would not be driven to that!
+
+They asked too much of her. They asked her to betray the man to death
+on the chance—and she did not believe in the chance—that it would
+restore the child to its father. She shuddered as she thought of the
+child, as she thought of Anthony Clyne’s grief; she would willingly
+have done much to help the one and the other. But they asked too much.
+If it were anything short of the man’s life that they asked, she would
+be guided, she would do as they bade her. But this step was
+irrevocable: and she was asked to take it on a chance. Possibly they
+did not themselves believe in the chance. Possibly they made the charge
+for their own purposes, their aim to get the man into their power, the
+blood-money into their purse. She shuddered at that and found the
+dilemma cruel. But she had no doubt which course she must follow. No
+longer did any thought of herself or of the annoyances of his arrest
+weigh with her: thought of the child had outweighed all that. But she
+would not without proof, without clear proof, have the man’s blood on
+her hands.
+
+And regarding them with a pale set face,
+
+“If you have proof,” she said, “that he—Walterson—” she pronounced the
+name with an effort—“was concerned in carrying off the child, I will
+speak.”
+
+“Proof?” Nadin barked.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “If you can satisfy me that he was privy to this—I
+will tell you all I know.”
+
+Nadin exploded.
+
+“Proof?” he cried with violence. “Why, by G—d, was he not at the place
+where we know the men landed? And didn’t you expect to meet him there?
+And at the very hour?”
+
+“He was not there,” she cried.
+
+“But——”
+
+“And I was there,” she continued, “yet I know nothing. I am innocent.”
+
+“Umph! I don’t know!” Nadin growled.
+
+“But I do,” she replied. “If your proof comes only to that—”
+
+“But the men who took the child are old mates of his!”
+
+“How do you know?” she returned. “You did not see them. They may not be
+the men you wished to arrest. But,” scornfully, “I see what kind of
+proof you have, and I shall not tell you.”
+
+“Come, miss,” Bishop said, staying with difficulty Nadin’s furious
+answer. “Come, miss, think! Think again. Think of the child!”
+
+“Oh, sink the child,” the Manchester officer struck in. He had seldom
+been so handled. “Think of yourself!”
+
+“You will send me to prison?” she said.
+
+“By heaven we will!” he answered. And Mr. Hornyold nodded.
+
+“It must be so, then,” she replied with dignity. “I shall not speak. I
+have no right to speak.”
+
+They all cried out on her, Bishop and Mr. Sutton appealing to her,
+Nadin growling oaths, Mr. Hornyold threatening that he would make out
+the warrant that minute. Only the landlady, with her apron rolled round
+her arms, stood grim and silent; a looker-on whose taciturnity
+presently irritated Nadin beyond bearing. “I suppose you think,” he
+said, turning to her, “that you could have handled her better?”
+
+“I couldn’t ha’ handled her worse!” the landlady replied.
+
+“You think yourself a Solomon!” he sneered.
+
+“A girl of ten’s a Solomon to you!” the landlady retorted keenly. “It
+canna be for this, it surely canna be for this, Joe Nadin, that they
+pay you money at Manchester, and that ’tis said you go in risk of your
+life! Why, that Bishop, London chap as he is, is a greybeard beside
+you. He does know that Bluster is a good dog but Softly is better!”
+
+“Well, as I live by bread I’ll have her in the Stone Jug!” he retorted.
+“And then we’ll see!”
+
+“There’s another will see before you!” Mrs. Gilson answered drily. “And
+it strikes me he’s not far off. If you’d left her alone for just an
+hour and seen what his honour Captain Clyne could do with her, you’d
+have shown your sense!” shrugging her shoulders. “Now, I fear you’ve
+spoiled his market, my lad!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+AT THE FARM
+
+
+It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-place
+at Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now on
+Walterson’s brooding face as he stooped over the heat, now on the
+huddled shrunken form that filled the farther side of the hearth. As
+the flames rose and fell, the shadows of the two men danced whimsically
+behind them. At one moment they sprang up, darkening the whole
+smoke-grimed ceiling and seeming to menace the persons who gave them
+birth, at another they sank into mere hop-o’-my-thumbs, lurking in
+ambush behind the furniture. There was no other light in the room; it
+was rarely the old skinflint suffered another. And to-night the
+shutters were closed and barred that even the reflection of the blaze
+might not be seen without and breed suspicion.
+
+The younger man’s face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed not
+only his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear and brooding.
+He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was no longer the
+dandy who had turned a feather-head—for there was little in this place
+to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense had sharpened his
+features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old, and the
+shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longer floated on
+their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritability showed in
+his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silence the old man’s
+crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moody depression. It was
+bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole with an imbecile
+driveller, and to spend long hours without other company. It was worse
+to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, and the peril
+which he had so long and so cleverly evaded yawned for him.
+
+To do Walterson justice, it was not entirely for his own safety that he
+was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened—starting at the
+squeak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of a
+friend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled to
+ruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intention
+he had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not face
+without a shudder what might be happening at this moment by the
+waterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girl escaped
+there, would happen here; when they dragged her through the doorway,
+bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen who dominated
+him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they did they would
+do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight of it. For if
+they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, how loathly a
+figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor and dastardly a thing
+he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will he did and to whose
+vengeance he consented.
+
+The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked with
+terrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was already
+playing, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met her
+look. Passionately he wished—as we all wish in like but smaller
+cases—that he had never seen either of the women, that he had never
+played the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen some
+other direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing was
+useless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, would not
+relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would not convert
+the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. And even while
+he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside, and he stood
+up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on the shutter, informed
+him that the crisis which he had been expecting and dreading, was
+come—was come!
+
+Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, was
+already on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog face
+opened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wall was
+scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thick drugget
+shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall man cloaked and
+booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meaner appearance.
+The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, a
+bundle—Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess with the
+same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure the door
+against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up the chimney,
+the cloaked man addressed him.
+
+“You’re Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we’ve met—once, I think. Well,” he
+spoke in a harsh, peremptory tone—“you’ll be good enough to note,” he
+turned and pointed to the other men, “that I have naught to do with
+this! I’ve neither hand nor part in it! And I’ll ask you to remember
+that.”
+
+Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the man
+with the bundle.
+
+“What is it?” he muttered hoarsely. “I don’t understand.”
+
+“Oh, stow this!” Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which she
+had secured. “The gentleman is very grand and mighty,” shrugging her
+shoulders, “but the thing is done now. And I’ll warrant if good comes
+of it he’ll not be too proud to take his share.”
+
+“Not _I_, girl!” the tall man answered. “Not I!”
+
+He took off as he spoke his cloak and hat, and showed a tall, angular
+figure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long, and
+his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features was
+redeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which was never
+long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speech and
+manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors. And
+not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemed in his
+presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.
+
+His two companions were stout, short-built men of a coarse type. But
+Walterson after a single glance, paid no heed to them. His eyes, his
+thoughts, his attention were all on the bundle. Yet, it was not
+possible, it could not be what he dreaded. It was too small, too small!
+And yet he shuddered.
+
+“What is it?” he asked in uncertain accents.
+
+“The worth of a man’s neck, may be,” one of the two men grunted.
+
+“Oh, curse your may-be’s!” the other who carried the child struck in.
+“It’s a smart bit of justice, master, with no may-be about it! And came
+in our way just when we were ready for it. Let’s look at the kid.”
+
+“The kid?”
+
+Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. He
+looked at Thistlewood.
+
+The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged his square
+shoulders.
+
+“I’ve naught to do with it!” he said. “Ask them!”
+
+“Don’t you know what a kid is?” Giles, one of the two others, retorted,
+with a glance of contempt. “A kinchin! a yelper! It’s Squire Clyne’s,
+if you must know. He’ll learn now what it is to see your children
+trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut with sabres!
+He’s ground the faces of the poor long enough! D——n him, he’s as bad as
+Castlereagh, the devil! But, hallo!” breaking off. “If I don’t think,
+mate, you’ve squeezed his throat a bit too tight!”
+
+He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimate form
+of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thin bloodless
+hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes were half-closed; and
+the tiny face showed so deathly white—among those tanned faces and in
+that grimy place—that it was not wonderful that the man fancied for a
+moment that the child was dead.
+
+But, “Not I!” the one who had carried it answered contemptuously. “It’s
+swooned, like enough. And I’d to stop it shrieking, hadn’t I? Let the
+lass look to it.”
+
+Bess took it but reluctantly—with an ill grace and no look of
+tenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children but
+their own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkled
+water on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Walterson
+found his voice.
+
+“What folly—what cursed folly is this?” he cried, his words vibrating
+with rage. “What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, or
+this d——d folly—that you should bring the hunt upon us? We were snug
+here.”
+
+“And ain’t we snug now?” Lunt, the man who had carried the child,
+asked.
+
+“Snug? We’ll be snug behind bars in twenty-four hours!” Walterson
+rejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, “if that child is Squire
+Clyne’s child!”
+
+“Oh, he’s that right enough, master,” Giles, the other man, struck in.
+A kind of ferocious irony was natural to him.
+
+“Then you’ll have the whole country on us before noon to-morrow!”
+Walterson retorted. “I tell you he’ll follow you and track you and find
+you, if he follows you to hell’s gate! I know the man.”
+
+“So do I,” said Thistlewood coolly. “And I say the same.”
+
+“Yet,” Giles retorted impudently, “you’ve got a neck as well as
+another.”
+
+“You can leave my neck out of the question,” Thistlewood replied. “And
+me!” And he turned his back on them contemptuously.
+
+“Well, you’ve got a neck,” Giles answered, addressing Walterson, who
+was almost hysterical with rage. “And I suppose you have some care for
+it, if he has none!” with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood’s
+direction. “You’d as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, I
+suppose?”
+
+“Sooner,” Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover. “Here,
+let me teach him,” she continued bluntly; the child had begun to murmur
+in a low, painful note. “They came on the kid by chance and snatched
+it, and we’ve put ten miles of water between the place and us.”
+
+“And snow on the ground!” Walterson retorted, pointing to the thin
+powder that still lay white in the folds of her shawl.
+
+“We came up through the wood,” she answered. “Trust us for that! But
+that’s not the point. The point is, that your pink-and-white fancy-girl
+never came. She’d more sense than I thought she had. But you were
+willing to snatch her, my lad. And why is the risk greater with the
+child?”
+
+“But——”
+
+“It’s less,” the girl continued, before he could put his objection into
+words. “It’s less, I tell you, for the child’s more easily tucked away.
+I’ve a place we can put it, where they’ll not find it if they search
+for a twelvemonth!”
+
+“They’ll soon search here,” he said sullenly. “There’s not a house
+they’ll not search if they trace the boat. Nor a bothy on the hills.”
+
+“May be,” she answered confidently. “But when they search you’ll not be
+here, nor the kid. Nor in a bothy!”
+
+“If you are going to trust Tyson——”
+
+“You leave that to me,” she replied, bending her brows.
+
+But he was not to be silenced.
+
+“He’ll sell you!” he cried. “He’ll sell you! He’ll give you fair words
+and you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there’s a
+reward out, and what he’ll suffer if he is found hiding us, and when he
+knows that all the country is up—and for this child they’d hang us on
+the nearest tree—he’ll give us up and you too. Though you do think you
+have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!” he added passionately.
+
+With a dark look, “Stow it, my lad,” she said, as he paused for want of
+breath. “And leave Tyson to me.”
+
+But the men who had listened to the debate looked something startled.
+They glanced at one another, and at last Thistlewood spoke.
+
+“Is this Tyson,” he asked, “the man at whose house you said we should
+be better than here, my girl?”
+
+“That’s him,” Bess answered curtly.
+
+“Well, it seems to me that you ought to tell us a bit more. I don’t
+want to be sold.”
+
+“I am of that way of thinking myself, captain,” Lunt growled. “If the
+man has no finger between the jamb and the door, you can’t be sure that
+he won’t shut it. No, curse me, you can’t! There’s other Olivers
+besides him who has sold a round dozen of us to Government. I’ll slit
+the throat of the first police spy that comes in my way!”
+
+“And yet you trust me!” the girl flung at him, her eyes scornful. To
+her they all, all seemed cowards.
+
+“Ay, but you are a woman,” Giles answered. “And though I’m not saying
+there’s no Polly Peachums, I’ve not come across them. Treat a maid fair
+and she’ll treat you fair, that’s the common way of it. She’ll not
+stretch you, for anything short of another wench. But a man! He’s here
+and there and nowhere.”
+
+“That’s just where this man is,” she answered curtly.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Nowhere.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“He’s cut his lucky. He’s gone to Carlisle to see his brother and keep
+his skin safe—for a week. He’s like a good many more I know,” with a
+glance which embraced every man in the room: “willing to eat but afraid
+to bite.”
+
+“But he has left his house?”
+
+“That’s it.”
+
+“And who’s in it?”
+
+“His wife, no one else. And she’s bedridden with a babby, seven days
+old.”
+
+“What! And no woman with her?”
+
+“There was,” Bess answered, “but there isn’t. I quarrelled with the
+serving-lass this afternoon, and at sunset to-day she was to go. If she
+comes back to-morrow I’ll send her packing with a flea in her ear!”
+
+“But who——”
+
+“Gave me leave to send her?” defiantly. “He did.”
+
+Thistlewood smiled.
+
+“And the wife?” he asked. “What’ll she say?”
+
+“Say? She’d not say boh to a goose if it hissed at her!” Bess answered
+contemptuously. “She’s a pale, fat caterpillar, afraid of her own
+shadow! She’ll whine a bit, for she don’t love me—thinks I’ll poison
+her some fine day for the sake of her man. But she’s upstairs and
+there’s no one, but nor ben, to hear her whine; and at daybreak I’ll be
+there, tending her. Isn’t it the natural thing,” and she smiled darkly,
+“with this the nearest house?”
+
+“Curse me, but you’re a clever lass!” Giles cried. And even Thistlewood
+seemed to feel no pity for the poor woman, left helpless with her babe.
+“I don’t know,” the ruffian continued, “that I’m not almost afraid of
+you myself!”
+
+“And you think that house will not be searched?”
+
+“Why should it be searched?” Bess answered. “Tyson’s well known. And if
+they do search it,” she continued confidently, “there’s a place—it’s
+not of the brightest, but it’ll do, and you must lie there days—that
+they’ll not find if they search till Doomsday!”
+
+Walterson alone eyed her gloomily.
+
+“And what is the child in this?” he said.
+
+“The kid, my lad? Why, everything. You fine gentlemen can’t stay here
+for ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid’ll
+stay here until you’re safe. And if you don’t come safe, he’s a card
+you’ll be glad to have the use of to clear your necks, my lads!”
+
+Thistlewood turned on his heel again.
+
+“I’ll none of it,” he said, dark and haughty. “It’s no gentleman’s
+game, this!”
+
+“Gentleman be hanged!” cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. “Do you
+call”—with temper—“what you were for this morning a gentleman’s game?
+Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table a
+gentleman’s game?”
+
+“It’s our lives against theirs!” Thistlewood answered with a sombre
+glance. “And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breeds
+wrong,” he continued, his voice rising—as if already he spoke in his
+defence. “Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us down at
+Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they must be
+removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head and
+front of offence, the head and front of this damnable system under
+which no man that’s worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man does
+right! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen at
+the top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that find
+the money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearful and
+fond of ease—and that’s nine parts of the country! For myself,”
+extending his arms in a gesture of menace, “I’d as soon cut the throats
+of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I’d cut the throats of so
+many calves! And sooner, by G—d! Sooner! But for messing with children
+I’ll none of it! I’ve said my say.” And he turned again to the fire.
+
+The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed him
+strangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but his
+courage. Here was what she had sighed for—a man! Here was what she
+thought that she had found in Walterson—a man! And Walterson himself
+approved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speak out
+where he with his life at stake dared not. The thing _was_ cruel, _was_
+dastardly. But then—it might save his neck! For the others, they were
+too low, too brutish to be much moved by Thistlewood’s words.
+
+“Ah, but we’ve got necks as well as you!” Giles muttered. “And if we
+risk ’em to please you, we’ll save ’em the way we please!”
+
+Then, “Look at the kid!” Lunt muttered. “He’s hearing too much, and
+picking it up. Stow it for now!”
+
+The girl turned to the child which she had laid on the bed. Thistlewood
+had knocked the fire together, and the blaze, passing by him, fell upon
+the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scene with a look of
+silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more than one. Had the boy
+wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given way to childish panic
+and tried to flee, they had thought nothing of it. They had twitched it
+back, hushed it by blow or threat, and cursed it for a nuisance. But
+this passive terror, this self-restraint at so tender an age, struck
+the men as unnatural, and taken with its small elfish features awoke
+qualms in the more superstitious.
+
+“Curse the child!” said one, staring at it. “I think it’s bewitched!”
+
+“See if it will eat,” said another. “Bewitched children never eat.”
+
+Some bread was fetched and milk put to it—though Bess set nothing by
+such notions—and, “You eat that, do you hear!” the girl said. “Or we’ll
+give you to that old man there,” pointing with an undutiful finger to
+the squalid figure of the old miser. “And he’ll take you to his
+bogey-hole!”
+
+The child shook pitifully, and the fear in its eyes deepened as it
+regarded the loathsome old man. With a sigh that seemed to rend the
+little heart, it took the iron spoon, and strove to swallow. The spoon
+tinkled violently against the bowl.
+
+“I’ll manage him,” Bess said with a look of triumph. “You will see,
+I’ll have him so in two days that he’ll not dare to say who he is, if
+they do find him! You leave him to me, and I’ll sort the little imp!”
+
+Perhaps the child knew that he had fallen among his father’s enemies.
+Perhaps he knew only that in a second his world was overset and he cast
+on the mercy of the ogres he saw about him. As he looked fearfully
+round the gloomy, fire-lit room with its lights and black shadows, a
+single large tear rolled from each eye and fell into the coarse
+earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke. Then he
+went on eating.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+PROOF POSITIVE
+
+
+Anthony Clyne had made no moan, but, both in his pride and his better
+feelings, he had suffered more than the world thought through
+Henrietta’s elopement. He was not in love with the girl whom he had
+chosen for his second wife and the mother of his motherless child. But
+no man likes to be jilted. No man, even the man least in love, can bear
+with indifference or without mortification the slur which the woman’s
+desertion casts on him. At best there are invitations to be cancelled,
+and servants to be informed, and plans to be altered; the condolences
+of some and the smiles of others are to be faced. And many troubles and
+much bitterness. The very boy, the apple of his eye and the core of his
+heart, had to be told—something.
+
+And Anthony Clyne was proud. No man in Lancashire set more by his birth
+and station, or had a stronger sense of his personal dignity; so that
+in doing all these things he suffered. He suffered much. Nor did it end
+with that. His own world knew him, and took care not to provoke him by
+a tactless word or an inquisitive question. But the operatives in his
+neighbourhood, who hated him and feared him, and thanked God for aught
+that hurt him, gibed him openly. Taunts and jests were flung after him
+in the streets of Manchester; and men whose sweethearts had been flung
+down or roughly used on the day of Peterloo inquired after his
+sweetheart as he passed before the mills.
+
+But he made no sign. And no one dreamed that the suffering went farther
+than the man’s pride, or touched his heart. Yet it did. Not that he
+loved the girl; but because she was of his race, and because her own
+branch of the family cast her off, and because the man with whom she
+had fled could do nothing to protect her from the consequences of her
+folly. For these reasons—and a little because of a secret nobility in
+his own character—he suffered vicariously; he felt himself responsible
+for her. And the responsibility seemed more heavy after he had seen
+her; after he had borne away from Windermere the picture of the girl
+left pale and proud and lonely by the lake side.
+
+For her figure haunted him. It rose before him in the most troublesome
+fashion and at the most improper times; at sessions when he sat among
+his peers, or at his dinner-table in the middle of a tirade against the
+radicals and Cobbett. It touched him in the least expected and most
+tender points; awaking the strongest doubts of himself, and his
+conduct, and his wisdom that he had ever entertained. It barbed the
+dart of “It might have been” with the rankling suspicion that he had
+himself to thank for failure. And where at first he had said in his
+haste that she deserved two dozen, he now remembered her defence, and
+added gloomily, “Or I! Or I!” The thought of her fate—as of a thing for
+which he was responsible—thrust itself upon him in season and out of
+season. He could not put her out of his mind, he could not refrain from
+dwelling on her. And thinking in this way he grew every day less
+content with the scheme of life which he had framed for her in his
+first contempt for her. The notion of her union with Mr. Sutton, good,
+worthy man as he deemed the chaplain, now jarred on him unpleasantly.
+And more and more the scheme showed itself in another light than that
+in which he had first viewed it.
+
+Such was his state of mind, unsettled if not unhappy, and harassed if
+not remorseful, when a second thunderclap burst above his head, and in
+a moment destroyed even the memory of these minor troubles. He loved
+his child with the love of the proud and lonely man who loves more
+jealously where others pity, and clings more closely where others look
+askance. A fig for their pity! he cried in his heart. He would so rear
+his child, he would so cherish him, he would so foster his mind, that
+in spite of bodily defect this latest of the Clynes should be also the
+greatest. And while he foresaw this future in the child and loved him
+for the hope, he loved him immeasurably more for his weakness, his
+helplessness, his frailty in the present. All that was strong in the
+man of firm will and stiff prejudice went out to the child in a
+passionate yearning to protect it; to shield it from unfriendly looks,
+even from pity; to cover it from the storms of the world and of life.
+
+Personally a brave man Clyne feared nothing for himself. The hatred in
+which he was held by a certain class came to his ears from time to time
+in threatening murmurs, but though those who knew best were loudest in
+warning, he paid no heed. He continued to do what he held to be his
+duty. Yet if anything had had power to turn him from his path it had
+been fear on his son’s account; it had been the very, very small share
+which the boy must take in his peril. And so, at the first hint he had
+removed the child from the zone of trouble, and sent him to a place
+which he fancied safe; a place which the boy loved, and in the quiet of
+which health as well as safety might be gained. If the name of Clyne
+was hated where spindles whirled and shuttles flew, and men lived their
+lives under a pall of black smoke, it was loved in Cartmel by farmer
+and shepherd alike; and not less by the rude charcoal-burners who plied
+their craft in the depths of the woods about Staveley and Broughton in
+Furness.
+
+On that side he thought himself secure. And so the blow fell with all
+the force of the unexpected. The summons of the panic-stricken servants
+found him in his bed; and it was a man who hardly contained himself,
+who hardly contained his fury and his threats, who without breaking his
+fast rode north. It was a hard-faced, stern man who crossed the sands
+at Cartmel at great risk—but he had known them all his life—and won at
+Carter’s Green the first spark of comfort and hope which he had had
+since rising. Nadin was before him. Nadin was in pursuit,—Nadin, by
+whom all that was Tory in Lancashire swore. Surely an accident so
+opportune, a stroke of mercy and providence so unlikely—for the odds
+against the officer’s presence were immense—could not be unmeant, could
+not be for nothing! It seemed, it must be of good augury! But when
+Clyne reached his house in Cartmel, and the terrified nurse who knew
+the depth of his love for the boy grovelled before him, the household
+had no added hope to give him, no news or clue. And he could but go
+forward. His horse was spent, but they brought him a tenant’s colt, and
+after eating a few mouthfuls he pressed on up the lake side towards
+Bowness, attended by a handful of farmers’ sons who had not followed on
+the first alarm.
+
+Even now, hours after the awakening, and when any moment might end his
+suspense, any turn in the road bring him face to face with the
+issue—good or bad, joy or sorrow—he dared not think of the child. He
+dared not let his mind run on its fear or its suffering, its terrors in
+the villains’ hands, or the hardships which its helplessness might
+bring upon it. To do so were to try his self-control too far. And so he
+thought the more of the men, the more of vengeance, the more of the
+hour which would see him face to face with them, and see them face to
+face with punishment. He rejoiced to think that abduction was one of
+the two hundred crimes which were punishable with death: and he swore
+that if he devoted his life to the capture of these wretches they
+should be taken. And when taken, when they had been dealt with by judge
+and jury, they should be hanged without benefit of clergy. There should
+be no talk of respite. His services to the party had earned so much as
+that—even in these days when radicals were listened to over much, and
+fanatics like Wolseley and Burdett flung their wealth into the wrong
+scale.
+
+At Bowness there was no news except a word from Nadin bidding him ride
+on. And without alighting he pressed on, sternly silent, but with eyes
+that tirelessly searched the bleak, bare fells for some movement, some
+hint of flight or chase. He topped the hill beyond Bowness, and drew
+rein an instant to scan the islets set here and there on the sullen
+water. Then, after marking carefully the three or four boats which were
+afloat, he trotted down through Calgarth woods. And on turning the
+corner that revealed the long gabled house at the Low Wood landing he
+had a gleam of hope. Here at last was something, some stir, some
+adequate movement. In the road were a number of men, twenty or thirty,
+on foot or horseback. A few were standing, others were moving to and
+fro. Half of them carried Brown Besses, blunderbusses, or old
+horse-pistols, and three or four were girt with ancient swords lugged
+for the purpose from bacon-rack or oak chest. The horses of the men
+matched as ill as their arms, being of all heights and all degrees of
+shagginess, and some riders had one spur, and some none. But the troop
+meant business, it was clear, and Anthony Clyne’s heart went out to
+them in gratitude. Hitherto he had ridden through a country-side
+heedless or ignorant of his loss, and of what was afoot; and the tardy
+intelligence, the slow answer, had tried him sorely. Here at last was
+an end of that. As the honest dalesmen, gathered before the inn, hauled
+their hard-mouthed beasts to the edge of the road to make way for him,
+and doffed their hats in silent sympathy, he thanked them with his
+eyes.
+
+In spite of his empty sleeve he was off his horse in a moment.
+
+“Have they learned anything?” he asked, his voice harsh with suppressed
+emotion.
+
+The nearest man began to explain in the slow northern fashion. “No, not
+as yet, your honour. But we shall, no doubt, i’ good time. We know that
+they landed here in a boat.”
+
+“Ay, your honour, have no fear!” cried a second. “We’ll get him back!”
+
+And then Nadin came out.
+
+“This way, if you please, Squire,” he said, touching his arm and
+leading him aside. “We are just starting to scour the hills, but—— “he
+broke off and did not say any more until he had drawn Clyne out of
+earshot.
+
+Then, “It’s certain that they landed here,” he said, turning and facing
+him. “We know that, Squire. And I fancy that they are not far away. The
+holt is somewhere near, for it is here we lost the other fox. I’m
+pretty sure that if we search the hills for a few hours we’ll light on
+them. But that’s the long way. And damme!” vehemently, “there’s a short
+way if we are men and not mice.”
+
+Clyne’s eyes gleamed.
+
+“A short way?” he muttered. In spite of Nadin’s zeal the Manchester
+officer’s manner had more than once disgusted his patron. It had far
+from that effect now. The man might swear and welcome, be familiar, he
+what he pleased, if he would also act! If he would recover the child
+from the cruel hands that held it! His very bluntness and burliness and
+sufficiency gave hope. “A short way?” Clyne repeated.
+
+Nadin struck his great fist into the other palm.
+
+“Ay, a short way!” he answered. “There’s a witness here can tell us all
+we want if she will but speak. I am just from her. A woman who knows
+and can set us on the track if she chooses! And we’ll have but to ride
+to covert and take the fox.”
+
+Clyne laid his hand on the other’s arm.
+
+“Do you mean,” he asked huskily, struggling to keep hope within bounds,
+“that there is some one here—who knows where they are?”
+
+“I do!” Nadin answered with an oath. “And knows where the child is. But
+she’ll not speak.”
+
+“Not speak?”
+
+“No, she’ll not tell. It’s the young lady you were here about before,
+Squire, to be frank with you.”
+
+“Miss Damer?” in a tone of astonishment.
+
+“Ay, Squire, she!” Nadin replied. “She! And the young madam knows, d——n
+her! It’s all one business, you may take it from me! It’s all one gang!
+She was at the place where they landed after dark last night.”
+
+“Impossible!” Clyne cried. “Impossible! I cannot believe you.”
+
+“Ay, but she was. She let herself down from a window when the house had
+gone to bed that she might get there. Ay, Squire, you may look, but she
+did. She did not meet them; she was too soon or too late, we don’t know
+which. But she was there, as sure as I am here! And I suspect—though
+Bishop, who is a bit of a softy, like most of those London men, doesn’t
+agree—that she was in the thing from the beginning, Squire! And planned
+it, may be, but you’d be the best judge of that. Any way, we are agreed
+that she knows now. That is clear as daylight!”
+
+“Knows, and will not tell?” Clyne cried. Such conduct seemed too
+monstrous, too wicked to the man who had strained every nerve to reach
+his child, who had ridden in terror for hours, trembling at the passage
+of every minute, grudging the loss of every second. “Knows, and will
+not tell!” he repeated. “Impossible!”
+
+“It’s not impossible, Squire,” Nadin answered. “We’re clear on it.
+We’re all clear on it.”
+
+“That she knows where the child is?” incredulously. “Where they are
+keeping it?”
+
+“That’s it.”
+
+“And will not say?”
+
+Nadin grinned.
+
+“Not for us,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She may for you. But
+she is stubborn as a mule. I can’t say worse than that. Stubborn as a
+mule, Squire!”
+
+Clyne raised his hand to hide the twitching nostril, the quivering lip
+that betrayed his agitation. But the hand shook. He could not yet
+believe that she was privy to this wickedness. But—but if she only knew
+it now and kept her knowledge to herself—she was, he dared not think
+what she was. A gust of passion took him at the thought, and whitened
+his face to the very lips. He had to turn away that the coarse-grained,
+underbred man beside him might not see too much. And a few seconds went
+by before he could command his voice sufficiently to ask Nadin what
+evidence he had of this—this monstrous charge. “How do you know—I want
+to be clear—how do you know,” he asked, sternly meeting his eyes, “that
+she left the house last night to meet them? That she was there to meet
+them? Have you evidence?” He could not believe that a woman of his
+class, of his race, would do this thing.
+
+“Evidence?” Nadin answered coolly. “Plenty!” And he told the story of
+the foot-prints, and of Mr. Sutton’s experiences in the night; and
+added that one of the child’s woollen mits had been found between the
+bottom-boards of a boat beached at that spot—a boat which bore signs of
+recent use. “If you are not satisfied and would like to see his
+reverence,” he continued, “and question him before you see her—shall I
+send him to you?”
+
+“Ay, send him,” Clyne said with an effort. He had been incredulous, but
+the evidence seemed overwhelming. Yet he struggled, he tried to
+disbelieve. Not because his thoughts still held any tenderness for the
+girl, or he retained any remnant of the troublesome feeling that had
+haunted him; for the shock of the child’s abduction had driven such
+small emotions from his mind. But with the country rising about him,
+amid this gathering of men upon whom he had no claim, but who asked
+nothing better than to be brought face to face with the authors of the
+outrage—with these proofs of public sympathy before his eyes it seemed
+impossible that a woman, a girl, should wantonly set herself on the
+other side, and shield the criminals. It seemed impossible. But then,
+when the first news of her elopement with an unknown stranger had
+reached him, he had thought that impossible! Yet it had turned out to
+be true, and less than the fact; since the man was not only beneath
+her, but a radical and a villain!
+
+“But I will see Sutton,” he muttered, striving to hold his rage in
+check. “I will see Sutton. Perhaps he may be able to explain. Perhaps
+he may be able to put another face on the matter.”
+
+The chaplain would fain have done so; more out of a generous pity for
+the unfortunate girl than out of any lingering hope of ingratiating
+himself with her. But he did not know what to say, except that though
+she had gone to the rendezvous she had not seen nor met any one. He
+laid stress on that, for he had nothing else to plead. But he had to
+allow that her purpose had been to meet some one; and at the weak
+attempt to excuse her Clyne’s rage broke forth.
+
+“She is shameless!” he cried. “Shameless! Can you say after this that
+she has given up all dealings with her lover? Though she passed her
+word and knows him for a married man?”
+
+The chaplain shook his head.
+
+“I cannot,” he said sorrowfully. “I cannot say that. But——”
+
+“She gave her word! Tome. To others.”
+
+“I allow it. But——”
+
+“But what? What?” with hardly restrained rage. “Will you still, sir,
+take her side against the innocent? Against the child, whom she has
+conspired to entrap, to carry off, perhaps to murder?”
+
+“Oh, no, no!” Mr. Sutton cried in unfeigned horror. “That I do not
+believe! I do not believe that for an instant! I allow, I admit,” he
+continued eagerly, “that she has been weak, and that she has madly,
+foolishly permitted this wretch to retain a hold over her.”
+
+“At any rate,” Clyne retorted, his rage at a white heat, “she has lied
+to me!”
+
+“I admit it.”
+
+“And to others!”
+
+The chaplain could only hold out his hands in deprecation.
+
+“You will admit that she has continued to communicate with a man she
+should loathe? A man whom, if she were a modest girl, she would loathe?
+That she has stolen to midnight interviews with him, leaving this house
+as a thief leaves it? That she has cast all modesty from her?”
+
+“Do not, do not be too hard on her!” Sutton cried, his face flushing
+hotly. “Captain Clyne, I beg—I beg you to be merciful.”
+
+“It is she who is hard on herself! But have no fear,” Clyne continued,
+in a voice cold as the winter fells and as pitiless. “I shall give her
+fifteen minutes to come to her senses and behave herself—not as a
+decent woman, I no longer ask that, but as a woman, any woman, the
+lowest, would behave herself, to save a child’s life. And if she
+behaves herself—well. And if not, sir, it is not I who will punish her,
+but the law!”
+
+“She will speak,” the chaplain said. “I think she will speak—for you.”
+
+He was deeply and honestly concerned for the girl: and full of pity for
+her, though he did not understand her.
+
+“But—suppose I saw her first?” he suggested. “Just for a few minutes? I
+could explain.”
+
+“Nothing that I cannot,” Captain Clyne answered grimly. “And for a few
+minutes! Do you not consider,” with a look of suspicion, “that there
+has been delay enough already? And too much! Fifteen minutes,” with a
+recurrence of the bitter laugh, “she shall have, and not one minute
+more, if she were my sister!”
+
+Mr. Sutton’s face turned red again.
+
+“Remember, sir,” he said bravely, “that she was going to be your wife.”
+
+“I do remember it!” Clyne retorted with a withering glance. “And thank
+God for His mercy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+COUSIN MEETS COUSIN
+
+
+Nadin and the others had not left her more than ten minutes when
+Henrietta heard his voice under the window. She was still flushed and
+heated, sore with the things which they had said to her, bruised and
+battered by their vulgarity and bluster. Indignation still burned in
+her; and astonishment that they could not see the case as she saw it.
+The argument in her own mind was clear. They must prove that Walterson
+had committed this new crime, they must prove that if she betrayed the
+man she would save the child—and she would speak. Or she would speak if
+they would undertake to release the man were he not guilty. But short
+of that, no. She would not turn informer against him, whom she had
+chosen in her folly—except to save life. What could be more clear, what
+more fair, what more logical? And was it not monstrous to ask anything
+beyond this?
+
+She had wrought herself in truth to an almost hysterical stubbornness
+on the point. The romantic bent that had led her to the verge of ruin
+still inclined her feelings. Yet when she heard the father’s step
+approaching along the passage, she trembled. She gazed in terror at the
+door. The prospect of the father’s tears, the father’s supplication,
+shook her. She had to say to herself, “I must not tell, I must not! I
+must not!” as if the repetition of the words would strengthen her under
+the torture of his appeal. And when he entered, in the fear of what he
+might say she was before him. She did not look at him, or heed what
+message his face conveyed—or she had been frozen into silence. But in a
+panic she rushed on the subject.
+
+“I am sorry, oh, I am so sorry!” she cried, tears in her voice. “I
+would do it, if I could, I would indeed. But I cannot,” distressfully,
+“I must not! And I beg you to spare me your reproaches.”
+
+“I have none to make to you,” he said.
+
+It was his tone, rather than his words, which cut her like a whip.
+
+“None!” she cried. “Ah, but you blame me? I am sure you do.”
+
+“I do not blame you,” he replied in the same cold tone. “My business
+here has nothing to do with reproaches or with blame. I give you
+fifteen minutes to tell me what you know, and all you know, of the man
+Walterson’s whereabouts. That told, I have no more to say to you.”
+
+She looked at him as one thunderstruck.
+
+“And if I do not do that,” she murmured, “within fifteen minutes? If I
+do not tell you?”
+
+“You will go to Appleby gaol,” he said, in the same passionless tone.
+“To herd with your like, with such women as may be there.” He laid his
+watch on the table, beside his whip and glove; and he looked not at
+her, but at it.
+
+“And you? You will send me?” she answered.
+
+“I?” he replied slowly. “No, I shall merely undo what I did before. My
+coming last time saved you from the fate which your taste for low
+company had earned. This time I stand aside and the result will be the
+same as if I had never come. There is, let me remind you, a minute
+gone.”
+
+She looked at him, her face colourless, but her eyes undaunted. But the
+look was wasted, for he looked only at his watch.
+
+“You are come, then,” she said, her voice shaking a little, “not to
+reproach me, but to insult me! To outrage me!”
+
+“I have no thought of you,” he answered.
+
+The words, the tone, lashed her in the face. Her nostrils quivered.
+
+“You think only of your child!” she cried.
+
+“That is all,” he answered. And then in the same passionless tone, “Do
+not waste time.”
+
+“Do not——”
+
+“Do not waste time!” he repeated. “That is all I have to say to you.”
+
+She stood as one stunned; dazed by his treatment of her; shaken to the
+soul by his relentless, pitiless tone, by his thinly veiled hatred.
+
+He who had before been cold, precise and just was become inhuman,
+implacable, a stone. Presently, “Three minutes are gone,” he said.
+
+“And if I tell you?” she answered in a voice which, though low,
+vibrated with resentment and indignation, “if I tell you what you wish
+to know, what then?”
+
+“I shall save the child—I trust. Certainly I shall save him from
+further suffering.”
+
+“And what of me?”
+
+“You will escape for this time.”
+
+Her breast heaved with the passion she restrained. Her foot tapped the
+floor. Her fingers drummed on the table. Such treatment was not fit
+treatment for a dog, much less for a woman, a gentlewoman! And his
+injustice! How dared he! How dared he! What had she done to deserve it?
+Nothing! No, nothing to deserve this.
+
+Meanwhile he seemed to have eyes only for his watch, laid open on the
+table before him. But he noted the signs, and he fancied that she was
+about to break down, that she was yielding, that in a moment she would
+fall to weeping, perhaps would fall on her knees—and tell him all. A
+faint surprise, therefore, pierced his pitiless composure when, after
+the lapse of a long minute, she spoke in a tone that was comparatively
+calm and decided.
+
+“You have forgotten,” she said slowly, “that I am of your blood! That I
+was to be your wife!”
+
+“It was you who forgot that!” he replied.
+
+She had her riposte ready.
+
+“And wisely!” she answered, “and wisely! How wisely you have proved to
+me to-day—you,”—with scorn equal to his own—“who are willing to
+sacrifice me, a helpless woman, on the mere chance of saving your
+child! Who are willing to send me, a woman of your blood, to prison and
+to shame, to herd—you have said it yourself—with such vile women as
+prisons hold! And that on the mere chance of saving your son! For
+shame, Captain Clyne, for shame!”
+
+“You are wasting time,” he answered. “You have eight minutes.”
+
+“You are determined that I shall go?”
+
+“Or speak.”
+
+“Will you not hear,” she asked slowly, “what I have to say on my side?
+What reason I have for not speaking? What excuse? What extenuation of
+my conduct?”
+
+“No,” he replied. “Your reasons for speaking or not speaking, your
+conduct or misconduct, are nothing to me. I am thinking of my child.”
+
+“And not at all of me?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yet listen,” she said, with something approaching menace in her tone,
+“for you will think of me! You will think of me—presently! When it is
+too late, Captain Clyne, you will remember that I stood before you,
+that I was alone and helpless, and you would not hear my reasons nor my
+excuses. You will remember that I was a girl, abandoned by all, left
+alone among strangers and spies, without friend or adviser.”
+
+“I,” he said, coldly interrupting her, “was willing to advise you. But
+you took your own path. You know that.”
+
+“I know,” she retorted with sudden passion, “that you were willing to
+insult me! That you were willing to set me, because I had committed an
+act of folly, as low as the lowest! So low that all men were the same
+to me! So low that I might be handed like a carter’s daughter who had
+misbehaved herself, to the first man who was willing to cover her
+disgrace. That! that was your way of helping me and advising me!”
+
+“In two minutes,” he said in measured accents, “the time will be up!”
+
+He appeared to be quite unmoved by her reproaches. His manner was as
+cold, as repellant, as harsh as ever. But he was not so entirely
+untouched by her appeal as he wished her to think. For the time,
+indeed, his heart was numbed by anxiety, his breast was rendered
+insensible by the grip of suspense. But the barbed arrows of her
+reproaches stuck and remained. And presently the wounds would smart and
+rankle, troubling his conscience, if not his heart. It is possible that
+he had already a suspicion of this. If so, it only deepened his rage
+and his hostility.
+
+With the same pitiless composure, he repeated:
+
+“In two minutes. There is still time, but no more than time.”
+
+“You have told me that you do not wish to hear my reasons?”
+
+“For silence? I do not.”
+
+“They will not turn you,” her voice shook under the maddening sense of
+his injustice, “whatever they are?”
+
+“No,” he answered, “they will not. And having said that I have said all
+that I propose to say.”
+
+“You condemn me unheard?”
+
+“I condemn you? No, the law will condemn you, if you are condemned.”
+
+“Then I, too,” she answered, with a beating heart—for indignation
+almost choked her—“have said all that I propose to say. All!”
+
+“Think! Think, girl!” he cried.
+
+She was silent.
+
+He closed his watch with a sharp, clicking sound, and put it in his
+fob.
+
+“You will not speak?” he said.
+
+“No!”
+
+Then passion, long restrained, long kept under, swept him away. He took
+a stride forward, and before she guessed what he would be at, he had
+seized her wrist, gripping it cruelly.
+
+“But you shall!—you shall!” he cried. His face full of passion was
+close to hers, he pressed her a pace backwards. “You vixen! Speak now!”
+he cried. “Speak!”
+
+“Let me go!” she cried.
+
+“Speak or I will force it from you. Where is he?”
+
+“I will never speak!” she panted, struggling with him, and trying to
+snatch her arm from him. “I will never speak! You coward! Let me go!”
+
+“Speak or I will break your wrist,” he hissed.
+
+He was hurting her horribly.
+
+But, “Never! Never! Never!” She shrieked the word at him, her face
+white with rage and pain, her eyes blazing. “Never, you coward. You
+coward! Let me go!”
+
+He let her go then—too late remembering himself. He stepped back.
+Breathing hard, she leant against the table, and nursed her bruised
+wrist in the other hand. Her face, an instant before white, now flamed
+with anger. Never, never since she was a little child had she been so
+treated, so handled! Every fibre in her was in revolt. But she did not
+speak. She only, rocking herself slightly to and fro, scathed him with
+her eyes. The coward! The coward!
+
+And he was as yet too angry—though he had remembered himself and
+released her—to feel much shame for what he had done. He was too wrapt
+in the boy and his object to think soberly of anything else. He went,
+his hand shaking a little, his face disordered by the outbreak, to the
+bell and rang it. As he turned again,
+
+“Your ruin be on your own head!” he cried.
+
+And he looked at her, hating her, hating her rebellious bearing.
+
+He saw in her, with her glowing cheeks and eyes bright with fury, the
+murderess of his boy. What else, since, if it was not her plan, she
+covered it? Since, if it was not her deed, she would not stay it? She
+must be one of those feminine monsters, those Brinvilliers, blonde and
+innocent to the eye, whom passion degraded to the lowest! Whom a cursed
+infatuation made suddenly most base, driving them to excesses and
+crimes.
+
+While she, her breast boiling with indignation, her heart bursting with
+the sense of bodily outrage, of bodily pain, forgot the anguish he was
+suffering. She forgot the provocation that had exasperated him to
+madness, that had driven him to violence. She saw in him a cowardly
+bully, a man cruel, without shame or feeling. She fully believed now
+that he had flogged a seaman to death. Why not, since he had so treated
+her? Why not, since it was clear that there was no torture to which he
+would not resort, if he dared, to wring from her the secret he desired?
+
+And a torrent of words, a flood of scathing reproaches and fierce
+home-truths, rose to her lips. But she repressed them. To complain was
+to add to her humiliation, to augment her shame. To protest was to
+stoop lower. And strung to the highest pitch of animosity they remained
+confronting one another in silence, until the door opened and Justice
+Hornyold entered, followed by his clerk. After these Nadin, Bishop, Mr.
+Sutton, and two or three more trooped in until the room was half full
+of people.
+
+It was clear that they had had their orders below, and knew what to
+expect; for all looked grave, and some nervous. Even Hornyold betrayed
+by his air, half sheepish and half pompous, that he was not quite
+comfortable.
+
+“The young lady has not spoken?” he said.
+
+“No,” Clyne answered, breathing quickly. He could not in a moment
+return to his ordinary self. “She refuses to speak.”
+
+“You have laid before her reasons?”
+
+He averted his eyes.
+
+“I have said all I can,” he muttered sullenly. “I have assured myself
+that she is privy to this matter, and I withdraw the informal
+undertaking which I gave a fortnight ago that she should be forthcoming
+if wanted. Unless, therefore, you are satisfied with the landlord’s
+bail—but that is for you.”
+
+Mr. Hornyold shook his head.
+
+“With this new charge advanced?” he said. “No, I am afraid not.
+Certainly not. But perhaps,” looking at her, “the young lady will still
+change her mind. To change the mind”—with a feeble grin—“is a lady’s
+privilege.”
+
+“I shall not tell you anything,” Henrietta said with a catch in her
+breath. She hid her smarting, tingling wrist behind her. She might have
+complained; but not for the world would she have let them know what he
+had done to her, what she had suffered.
+
+Mr. Sutton, who was standing in the background, stepped forward.
+
+“Miss Damer,” he said earnestly, “I beg you, I implore you to think.”
+
+“I have thought,” she answered with stubborn anger. “And if I could
+help him,” she pointed to Clyne, “if I could help him by lifting my
+finger——”
+
+“Oh, dear, dear!” the chaplain cried, appalled by her vehemence. “Don’t
+say that! Don’t say that!”
+
+“What shall I say, then?” she answered—still she remembered herself. “I
+have told you that I know nothing of the abduction of his child. That
+is all I have to say.”
+
+Hornyold shook his sleek head again.
+
+“I am afraid that won’t do,” he said. “What”—consulting Nadin with his
+eye—“what do the officers say?”
+
+Nadin laughed curtly.
+
+“Not by no means, it won’t do!” he said. “What she says is slap up
+against the evidence, sir, and evidence strong enough to hang a man.
+The truth is, your reverence, the young lady has had every chance, and
+all said and done we are losing time. And time is more than money! The
+sooner she is under lock and key the better.”
+
+“You apply that she be committed?” Hornyold asked slowly.
+
+“I do, sir.”
+
+The Justice looked at Bishop.
+
+“Do you join in the application?” he asked.
+
+The officer nodded, but with evident reluctance.
+
+The clerk, who had taken his seat at the corner of the table and laid
+some papers before him, dipped his pen in the inkhorn, which he carried
+at his button-hole. He prepared to write. “On the charge of being
+accessory?” he said in a low voice. “Before or after, Mr. Nadin?”
+
+“Both,” said Nadin.
+
+“After,” said Bishop.
+
+The clerk looked from one to the other, and then began to write; but
+slowly, and as if he wished to leave as long as possible a _locus
+penitentiæ_. It was a feeling shared by all except Captain Clyne. Even
+the Manchester man, hardened as he was by a rude life in the roughest
+of towns, had had jobs more to his taste—and wished it done; while the
+feeling of the greater part was one of pity. The girl was so young, her
+breeding and refinement were so manifest, her courage so high, she
+confronted them so bravely, that they were sensible of something cruel
+in their attitude to her; gathered as they were many to one—and that
+one a woman with no one of her sex beside her. They recoiled from the
+idea of using force to her. And now it was really come to the point of
+imprisoning her, those who had a notion what a prison was disliked it
+most; fearing not only that she might resist removal and cause a
+heart-rending scene, but still more that she had unknown sufferings
+before her.
+
+For the prisons of that day were not the prisons of to-day. There was
+no separation of one class of offenders from another. There were no
+separate cells, there were rarely even separate beds. Girls awaiting
+trial were liable to be locked up with the worst women-felons. Nay, the
+very warders were often old offenders, who had earned their places by
+favour. In small country prisons, conditions were better, but air,
+light, space, and cleanliness were woefully lacking. Something might be
+done, no doubt, to soften the lot of a prisoner of Henrietta’s class;
+but indulgence depended on the whim of the jailor—who at Appleby was a
+blacksmith!—and could be withdrawn as easily as it was granted.
+
+Suddenly the clerk looked up over his glasses. “The full name,” he
+said, “if you please.”
+
+“Henrietta Mary Damer.” It was Clyne who spoke.
+
+The clerk added the name, and rising from his seat offered the pen to
+the magistrate. But Hornyold hesitated. He looked flurried, and
+something startled.
+
+“But should not——” he murmured, “ought we not to communicate with her
+brother—with—Sir Charles? He must be her guardian!”
+
+“Sir Charles,” Clyne answered, “has repudiated all responsibility. It
+would be useless to apply to him. I have seen him. And the matter is a
+criminal matter.”
+
+The girl said nothing, but her colour faded suddenly. And in the eyes
+of one or two she seemed a more pitiful figure, standing alone and
+mute, than before. But for the awe in which they held Clyne, and their
+knowledge of his reason for severity, the chaplain and Long Tom Gilson,
+who was one of those by the door, would have intervened. As it was,
+Hornyold stooped to the table and signed the form—or was signing it
+when the clerk spoke.
+
+“One moment, your reverence,” he said in a low voice. “The debtors’
+quarters at Appleby, where they’d be sure to put the young lady, are as
+good as under water at this time of the year. Kendal’s nearer, she’d be
+better there. And you’ve power to say which it shall be.”
+
+“Kendal, then,” Hornyold assented. The name was altered and he signed
+the committal.
+
+As he rose from the table, constraint fell on one and all. They
+wondered nervously what was to come next; and it was left to Nadin to
+put an end to the scene. “Landlord!” he said, turning to the door, “a
+chaise for Kendal in ten minutes. And send your servant to go with the
+young lady to her room, and get together what she’ll want. You’d best
+take her, Bishop.”
+
+Bishop assented in a low tone, and Gilson went out to give the order.
+Hornyold said something to Clyne and they talked together in low tones
+and with averted faces. Then, still talking, they moved to the door and
+went out without looking towards her. The clerk gathered up his papers,
+handed one to Bishop, and fastened the others together with a piece of
+red tape. That done, he, too, rose and followed the magistrate, making
+her an awkward bow as he passed. Mr. Sutton alone remained, and, pale
+and excited, fidgeted to and fro; he could not bear to stay, and he
+could not bear to leave the girl alone with the officers. Possibly—but
+to do him justice this went for little—he might by staying commend
+himself to her, he might wipe out the awkward impression made by the
+night’s adventure. But Clyne put in his head and called him in a
+peremptory tone; and he had to go with a feeble apologetic glance at
+her. She was left standing by the table, alone with the officers.
+
+For an instant she looked wildly at the door. Then, “May I go to my
+room now?” she asked in a low tone.
+
+“Not alone,” Nadin answered—but civilly, for him. “In a moment the
+woman will be here, and you can go with her. It’s not quite regular,
+but we’ll stretch a point. But you must not be long, miss! You’ll have
+no need,” with a faint grin, “of many frocks, or furbelows, where
+you’re going.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+MR. SUTTON’S NEW RÔLE
+
+
+When the chaise which carried the prisoner to Kendal had left the inn,
+and the search parties had gone their way under leaders who knew the
+country, and the long tail of the last shaggy pony had whisked itself
+out of sight, a dullness exceeding that of November settled down on the
+inn by the lake. The road in front ran, a dull, unbroken ribbon, along
+the water-side; and alone and melancholy the chaplain walked up and
+down, up and down, the last man left. Occasionally Mrs. Gilson appeared
+at the door and looked this way and that; but her eye was sombre and
+her manner did not invite approach or confidence. Occasionally, too,
+Modest Ann’s face was pressed against the window of the coffee-room,
+where she was setting out the long table against evening; but she was
+disguised in tears and temper, and before Mr. Sutton could identify the
+phenomenon, or grasp its meaning, she was gone. The frosty promise of
+the morning had vanished, and in its place leaden clouds dulled sky and
+lake, and hung heavy and black on the scarred forehead of Bow Fell. Mr.
+Sutton looked above and below, and this way and that, and, too restless
+to go in, found no comfort without. He wished that he had gone with the
+searchers, though he knew not a step of the country. He wished that he
+had said more for the girl, and stood up for her more firmly, though to
+do so had been to quarrel with his patron. Above all, he wished that he
+had never seen her, never given way to the temptation to aspire to her,
+never started in pursuit of her—last of all, that he had never stooped
+to spy on her. He was ill content with himself and his work; ill
+content with the world, his patron, everybody, everything. No man was
+ever worse content.
+
+For Nemesis in an unexpected form was overtaking, nay even as he walked
+the road, had overtaken the chaplain. He had come to marry, he remained
+to love; he had come to enjoy, he remained to suffer. He had come,
+dazzled by the girl’s rank and fortune, that rank and that fortune
+which he had thought so much above himself, and to which her beauty
+added so piquant and delicate a charm. And, lo, it was neither her
+rank, nor her fortune, nor her beauty that, as he walked, beat at his
+heart and would be heard, would have entrance; but the girl’s lonely
+plight and her disgrace and her trouble. On a sudden, as he went
+helplessly and aimlessly and unhappily up and down the road, he
+recognised the truth; he knew what was the matter with him. His eyes
+filled, his feelings overcame him—and no man was ever more surprised.
+He had to walk a little way down the road before, out of ken of the
+horse, he dared to wipe the tears from his cheeks. Nor even then could
+he refrain from one or two foolish, unmanly gasps.
+
+“I did not think that I was—such a fool!” he muttered. “Such a fool! I
+didn’t think it!”
+
+When he regained command of himself he found that his feet had borne
+him to the gate-pillar where so much had happened the previous day. To
+the very place where he had surprised Henrietta as she arranged her
+signal, and where she had so nearly surprised him in the act of
+watching her! In his new-born repentance, in his newborn honesty he
+hated the place; he hated it only less than he hated the conduct of
+which it reminded him. And partly out of sentiment, partly out of some
+unowned notion of doing penance, he turned and slowly retraced her
+course to the inn, treading as far as possible where she had trodden.
+When he reached the door he did not go in, but, unwilling to face any
+one, he went on as far as a seat on the foreshore, where he had seen
+her sit. And the sentiment of her presence still forming the
+attraction, he wondered if she had paused there on that morning, or if
+she had gone indoors at once.
+
+He was so unhappy that he did not feel the cold. The thought of her
+warmed him, and he sat for a minute or two, with his eyes on the gloomy
+face of the lake that, towards the farther shore, frowned more darkly
+under the shadow of the woods. He wished that he understood her conduct
+better, that he had the clue to it. He wished that he understood her
+refusal to speak. But right or wrong, she was in trouble and he loved
+her. Ay, right or wrong! For good or ill! Still he sighed, for all was
+very dark. And presently he went to rise.
+
+His eyes in the act fell on a few scraps of paper which lay at his feet
+and showed the whiter for the general gloom. Letters were not so common
+then as now. It was much if one person in five could write. The postage
+on a note sent from the south of England to the north was a shilling;
+the pages were crossed and recrossed, were often read and cherished
+long. Paper, therefore, did not lie abroad, as it lies abroad now; and
+Mr. Sutton—hardly knowing what he did—bent his eyes on the scraps. He
+was long-sighted, and on one morsel a little larger than its
+neighbours, he read the word “gate.”
+
+In other circumstances he would not ten seconds later have known what
+words he had read. But at the moment he had the incident of the
+gate-post in his head—and Henrietta; and he apprehended as in a flash
+that this might be the summons which had called her forth the previous
+night—to her great damage. He conceived that after answering it by
+setting the signal on the gate-post she might have come to this place,
+and before going into the house might have torn up the letter and
+scattered the pieces abroad. If so the secret lay at his feet; and if
+he stooped and took it up, he might help her.
+
+He hung in doubt a few seconds. For he was grown strangely scrupulous.
+But he reflected that he could destroy the evidence if it bore against
+her—he would destroy it! And he gave way. Furtively, but with an eager
+hand, he collected the scraps of paper. There were about a score, the
+size of dice, and discoloured by moisture, strewn here and there round
+the seat. Behind, among the prickly shoots and brown roots of a
+gorse-bush were as many more, as if she had dropped a handful there.
+Another dozen he tracked down, one here, one there, in spots to which
+the wind had carried them. It was unlikely that he had got all, even
+then. But though he searched as narrowly as he dared—even going on his
+knees beside the bush—he could find no more. Doubtless the wind had
+taken toll; and at length, carrying what he had found hidden in his
+hand, he went into the house and sought refuge in his bedroom.
+
+Eagerly, though he had little hope of finding the result to his mind,
+he began to arrange the morsels. He found the task less hard than he
+had anticipated. Guided by the straight edges of the paper, he
+contrived in eight or nine minutes to piece the letter together; to
+such an extent, at any rate, as enabled him to gather its drift. About
+a fifth of the words were missing; and among these missing words were
+the opening phrase, the last two words, and about a score in the body
+of the note. But the gist of the message was clear, its tone and
+feeling survived; and they not only negatived the notion that Henrietta
+was in league with Walterson, but presented in all its strength the
+appeal which his prayer must needs have made to the heart of a romantic
+girl.
+
+“... ed you ill, but men are not as women and I was tempted ... I do
+not ask ... forgive ... I ask you to save me. I am in your hands. If
+you ... the heart to leave me to a ... lent death, all is said. If you
+have mercy meet my ... ger at ten to-mor ... ning ... Troutbeck lane
+comes down to the lake. As I hope to live you run no risk and can
+suffer no harm. If you are merci ... spare me ... put a ... stone,
+before noon to-morrow, on the post of the ... gate....”
+
+Strange to say, Mr. Sutton’s first feeling, when he had assured himself
+of the truth, was an excessive, furious indignation against his patron.
+He forgot, in his pity for the girl, the provocation which Captain
+Clyne had suffered. He forgot the child’s peril and the pressure which
+this had laid on the father’s feelings. He forgot the light in which
+the girl’s stubborn silence had placed her in the eyes of one who
+believed that she could save by a word that which he held more precious
+than his life. The chaplain was a narrow, and in secret a conceited
+man; he had been guilty of some things that ill became his cloth. But
+he had under his cloth a heart that once roused was capable of generous
+passion. And as he stalked up and down the room in a frenzy of love and
+pity and indignation, he longed for the moment which should see him
+face to face with Captain Clyne. The letter once shown, he did not
+conceive that there would be the least difficulty in freeing the girl;
+and he yearned for the return of the search parties. It was past four
+already; in the valley it was growing dusk. Yet if Clyne returned soon
+the girl might be released before night. She might be spared the
+humiliation, it might well be the misery, of a night in prison.
+
+His room looked to the back of the inn; and here where all the
+afternoon had been plucking of ducks and fowls, and slicing of
+flitches—for some of the searchers would need to be fed—lights were
+beginning to shine and a cheerful stir and a warm promise of comfort to
+prevail. From the kitchen, where the jacks were turning, firelight
+streamed across the yard, and pattens clicked, and dogs occasionally
+yelped; and now and again Mrs. Gilson’s voice clacked strenuously. In
+the heat of his feelings Mr. Sutton compared this outlook with the cold
+quarters that held his Henrietta; and tears rose anew as he pictured
+the dank prison yard and the bare stone rooms, and the squalor and the
+company. After that he could not sit still. He could not wait. He must
+be acting. He must tell his discovery to some one, no matter to whom.
+He arranged the letter between the pages of a book and, having arranged
+it, took the book under his arm and ran downstairs. At the door of her
+snuggery he came upon Mrs. Gilson, who had just had words with Modest
+Ann. She eyed him sourly.
+
+“I want to show you something!” he said impetuously, forgetting his
+fear of her. “I have discovered something, ma’am! A thing of the utmost
+importance.”
+
+She grunted.
+
+“If it has to do with the child,” she said grudgingly, “I’ll hear it,
+and thank you.”
+
+“It has naught to do with the child,” he answered bluntly. “It has to
+do with Miss Damer.”
+
+“Then I’ll have naught to do with it!” the landlady retorted with equal
+bluntness, pursing up her lips and speaking as drily as a file. “I’ve
+washed my hands of her.”
+
+“But listen to me!” he replied. “Listen to me, Mrs. Gilson! Here’s a
+young lady——”
+
+“That’s behaved bad from the beginning—bad!” the landlady answered,
+cutting him short. “As bad as woman could! A woman, indeed, would have
+had some heart, and not have left an innocent child in the hands of a
+parcel of murderous villains! No, no, my gentleman, you’ll not persuade
+me. An egg is good or bad, as you find it, and ’tis no good saying that
+the yolk is good when the white is tainted?”
+
+“But see here, ma’am”—he was bursting with indignation—“you are
+entirely wrong! Entirely wrong!”
+
+“Then your reverence had best speak to Captain Clyne, for it’s not my
+business!” Mrs. Gilson retorted crushingly. “I’m no scholar and don’t
+meddle with writings.” And she turned her broad back upon him and the
+book which he proffered her.
+
+Mr. Sutton stood a moment in anger equal to his discomfiture. Then he
+went back slowly to his pacing in the road. After all the woman could
+do nothing, she was nothing. And the search parties would be returning
+soon. For night was falling. The last pale daylight was dying on the
+high fells towards Patterdale; the outlines of the low lands about the
+lake were fading into the blur of night. Here and there a tiny
+rushlight shone out, high up, and marked a hill-farm. Possibly the
+searchers had found the child. In that case, Mr. Sutton’s heart, which
+should have leapt at the thought, only mildly rejoiced; and that,
+rather on account of the favourable turn the discovery might give to
+Henrietta’s affairs, than for his patron’s sake. Not that he was not
+sorry for the child, and sorry for the father; he tried, indeed, to
+feel more sorry. But he was not a man of warm feelings, and his
+sensibilities were selfish. He could not be expected to blossom out in
+a moment in more directions than one. It was something if he had
+learned in the few days he had spent by the lake to think of any other
+than himself.
+
+Had he been more anxious, had it been not he, but the father, who paced
+there in suspense, dwelling on what a moment might bring forth, he had
+been keener to notice things. He had traced, down the shoulder of
+Wansfell, the slow march of a dancing light that marked the descent of
+one of the parties. He had heard afar off the voices of the men, who
+announced from Calgarth that Mrs. Watson’s servants had searched the
+woods as far as Elleray, but without success—these, indeed, were the
+first to come in. Hard on them arrived a band, under Mr. Curwen’s
+bailiff, which had made the tour of the islands—Belle Isle, Lady Holm,
+Thompson’s Holm, and the rest—with the same result; and almost at the
+same moment rode in, with jaded horses, the troop of yeomen who had
+undertaken to traverse the broken country at the head of the lake,
+between the Brathay and the Rotha. Two parties, the Troutbeck
+contingent with which was Captain Clyne, and the riders who had chosen
+Stock Ghyll valley and the Kirkstone, were still out at seven; and as
+the others had met with no success, their return was eagerly awaited.
+For the road between the inn and the lake was astir with life. Ostlers’
+lanthorns twinkled hither and thither, and the place was like a fair. A
+crowd of men, muffled in homespun plaids, blocked the doorway, and
+gabbling over their ale, stared now in one direction, now in the other;
+while the more highly favoured flocked into the snuggery and
+coffee-room and there discussed the chances in stentorian tones. The
+chaplain, with his feelings engaged elsewhere, wondered at the fury of
+some, and the heat of all; and was shocked by their oaths and threats
+of vengeance.
+
+Clyne and his party came in about half-past seven; and as it chanced
+that the Stock Ghyll troop arrived at the same minute, the whole house
+turned out to meet the two, and learn their news. Alas, the downcast
+faces of the riders told it sufficiently; and every head was uncovered
+as Clyne, with stern and moody eyes, rode to the door and dismounted.
+He turned to the throng of faces, and the lanthorn-light falling on his
+features showed them pale and disturbed.
+
+“My friends,” he said, “I thank you. I shall not forget this day. I
+shall never forget this day. I——” and then, though he was a practised
+speaker, he could not say more or go on. He made a gesture, at once
+pathetic and dignified, with his single arm, and turning from them went
+slowly up the stairs with his chin on his breast.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] ... every head was uncovered as Clyne ... rode to the
+door
+
+
+The farmers were Tories to a man. Even Brougham’s silver tongue had
+failed (in the election of the year before) to turn them against the
+Lowthers. They were of the class from whom the yeomanry were drawn, and
+they had scant sympathy with the radical weavers of Rochdale and Bury,
+Bolton and Manchester. Had they caught the villains at this moment,
+they had made short work of them. They watched the slight figure with
+its empty sleeve as it passed into the house, and their looks of
+compassion were exceeded only by their curses loud and deep. And
+pitiful indeed was the tale which those, who were forced to leave,
+carried home to their wives and daughters on the fells.
+
+The chaplain, hovering on the edge of the chattering groups, could not
+come at once at his patron, who had no sooner reached the head of the
+stairs than he was beset by Nadin and others with reports and
+arrangements. But as soon as Clyne had gone wearily to his room to take
+some food before starting afresh—for it was determined to continue the
+search as soon as the moon rose—the chaplain went to him with his book
+under his arm.
+
+He found Clyne seated before the fire, with his chin on his hand and
+his attitude one of the deepest despondency. He had borne up with
+difficulty under the public gaze; he gave way, martinet as he was, the
+moment he was alone. The reflection that the child might have been
+within reach of his voice, yet beyond his help, that it might be crying
+to him even now, and crying in vain, that each hour which exposed it to
+hardship endangered its life—such thoughts harrowed the father’s
+feelings almost beyond endurance. Sutton suspected from his attitude
+that he was praying; and for a moment the chaplain, touched and
+affected, was in two minds about disturbing him. But he, too, had his
+harassing thoughts. His heart, too, burned with pity. And to turn back
+now was to abandon hope—grown forlorn already—of freeing Henrietta that
+evening. He went forward therefore with boldness. He laid his book on
+the table, and finding himself unheeded, cleared his throat.
+
+“I have something here,” he said—and his voice despite himself was
+needlessly stiff and distant—“which I think it my duty, Captain Clyne,
+to show you without delay.”
+
+Clyne turned slowly and rose as he turned.
+
+“To show me?” he muttered.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What is it? You have not”—raising his eyes with a sudden intake of
+breath—“discovered anything? A clue?”
+
+“I have discovered something,” the chaplain answered slowly. “It is a
+clue of a kind.”
+
+A rush of blood darkened Clyne’s face. He held out a shaking hand.
+
+“To where the lad is?” he ejaculated, taking a step forward. “To where
+they have taken him? If it be so, God bless you, Sutton! God bless you!
+God bless you! I’ll never——”
+
+The clergyman cut him short. He was shocked by the other’s intense
+excitement and frightened by the swelling of his features. He stayed
+him by a gesture.
+
+“Nay, nay,” he cried. “I did not mean, sir, to awaken false hopes. Pray
+pardon me. Pray pardon me. It is a clue, but to Miss Damer’s conduct
+this morning! To her conduct throughout. To her reasons for silence.
+Which were not, I am now able to show you, connected with any feeling
+of hostility to you, Captain Clyne, but rather imposed upon her——”
+
+But Clyne’s face had settled into a mask of stone. Only he knew what
+the disappointment was! And at that word, “I care not what they were!”
+he said in a voice incredibly harsh, “or how imposed! If that be all—if
+that is all you are here to tell me——”
+
+“But if it be all, it is all to her!” Sutton retorted, stung in his
+turn. “And most urgent, sir.”
+
+“As to her?”
+
+“As to her. It places her conduct in an entirely different light,
+Captain Clyne, and one which it is your duty to recognise.”
+
+“Have I not said,” Clyne answered with bitter vehemence, “that I wish
+to hear naught of her conduct? Do you know, sir, in what light I regard
+her?”
+
+“I hope in none that—that——”
+
+“As a murderess,” Clyne answered in the same tone of restrained fury.
+“She has conspired against a child! A boy who never harmed her, and now
+never could have harmed her! She is not worthy of the name of woman! I
+thank God that He has helped me to keep her out of my mind as I rode
+to-day. And you—you must needs bring her up again! Know that I loathe
+and detest her, sir, and pray that I may never see her, never hear her
+name again!”
+
+Mr. Sutton raised his hands in horror.
+
+“You are unjust!” he cried. “Indeed, indeed, you are unjust!”
+
+“What is that to you? And who are you to talk to me? Is it your child
+who is missing? Your child who is being tortured, perhaps out of life?
+Who, a cripple, is being dragged at these men’s heels? You? You? What
+have you to do with this?”
+
+The tone was crushing. But the chaplain, too, had his stubborn side,
+and resentment flamed within him as he thought of the girl and her lot.
+“Do I understand then,” he said—he was very pale—“that you refuse to
+hear what I have by chance discovered—in Miss Damer’s favour?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“That you will not, Captain Clyne, even look at this letter—this letter
+which I have found and which exonerates her?”
+
+“Never!” Clyne replied harshly. “Never! And, now you know my mind, go,
+sir, and do not return to this subject! This is no time for trifling,
+nor am I in the mood.”
+
+But the chaplain held his ground, though he was very nervous. And a
+resolution, great and heroic, took shape within him, growing in a
+moment to full size—he knew not how. He raised his meagre figure to its
+full height, and his pale peaky face assumed a dignity which the pulpit
+had never known. “I, too, am in no mood for trifling, Captain Clyne,”
+he said. “But I do not hold this matter trifling. On the contrary, I
+wish you to understand that I think it so important that I consider it
+my duty to press it upon you by every means in my power!”
+
+Clyne looked at him wrathfully, astonished at his presumption. “The
+girl has turned your head,” he said.
+
+The chaplain waived the words aside. “And therefore,” he continued, “if
+you decline, Captain Clyne, to read this letter, or to consider the
+evidence it contains——”
+
+“That I do absolutely! Absolutely!”
+
+“I beg to resign my office,” Mr. Sutton responded, trembling violently.
+“I will no longer—I will no longer serve one, however much I respect
+him, or whatever my obligations to him, who refuses to do justice to
+his own kith and kin, who refuses to stand between a helpless girl and
+wrong! Vile wrong!” And he made a gesture with his hands as if he laid
+something on the table.
+
+If his object was to gain possession of Captain Clyne’s attention he
+succeeded. Clyne looked at him with as much surprise as anger.
+
+“She has certainly turned your head,” he said in a lower tone, “if you
+are not playing a sorry jest, that is. What is it to you, man, if I
+follow my own judgment? What is Miss Damer to you?”
+
+“You offered her to me,” with a trembling approach to sarcasm, “for my
+wife. She is so much to me.”
+
+“But I understood that she would not take you,” Clyne retorted; and now
+he spoke wearily. The surprise of the other’s defiance was beginning to
+wear off. “But, there, perhaps I was mistaken, and then your anxiety
+for her interests is explained.”
+
+“Explain it as you please,” Mr. Sutton answered with fire, “if you will
+read this letter and weigh it.”
+
+“I will not,” Clyne returned, his anger rising anew. “Once for all, I
+will not!”
+
+“Then I resign the chaplaincy I hold, sir.”
+
+“Resign and be d——d!” the naval captain answered. The day had cruelly
+tried his temper.
+
+“Your words to me,” Mr. Sutton retorted furiously, “and your conduct to
+her are of a piece!” And white with passion, his limbs trembling with
+excitement, he strode to the door. He halted on the threshold, bowed
+low, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+IN KENDAL GAOL
+
+
+Bishop, in his corner of the chaise, made his burly person as small as
+he could. He tried his best to hide his brown tops and square-toed
+boots. In her corner Henrietta sat upright, staring rigidly before her.
+For just one moment, as she passed from the house to the carriage,
+under a score of staring eyes, a scarlet flush had risen to her very
+hair, and she had shrunk back. But the colour had faded as quickly as
+it had risen; she had restrained herself, and taken her seat. And now
+the screes of Bow Fell, flecked with snow, were not more cold and hard
+than her face as she gazed at the postilion’s moving back and saw it
+not. She knew that she was down now without hope of rising; that, the
+prison doors once closed on her, their shadow would rest on her always.
+And her heart was numbed by despair. The burning sense of injustice, of
+unfairness, which sears and hardens the human heart more quickly and
+more completely than any other emotion, would awaken presently. But for
+the time she sat stunned and hopeless; dazed and confounded by the
+astonishing thing which had happened to her. To be sent to prison! To
+be sent to herd—she remembered his very words—with such vile creatures
+as prisons hold! To be at the beck and call of such a man as this who
+sat beside her. To have to obey; and to belong no longer to herself,
+but to others! As she thought of all this, and of the ordeal before
+her, fraught with humiliations yet unknown, a hunted look grew in her
+eyes, and for a few minutes she glanced wildly first out of this
+window, then out of that. To prison! She was going to prison!
+
+Fortunately her native courage came to her aid in her extremity. And
+Bishop, who was not blind to her emotion, spoke.
+
+“Don’t you be over-frightened, miss,” he said soothingly. “There’s
+naught to be scared about. I’ll speak to them, and they’ll treat you
+well. Not that a gaol is a comfortable place,” he continued,
+remembering his duty to his employer; “and if you could see your way to
+speaking—even now, miss—I’d take it on me to turn the horses.”
+
+“I have nothing to say,” she answered, with a shudder and an effort—for
+her throat was dry. But the mere act of speaking broke the spell and
+relieved her of some of her fears.
+
+“It’s the little boy I’m thinking of,” Bishop continued in a tone of
+apology. “Captain Clyne thinks the world of him. The world of him! But,
+lord, miss!” abruptly changing his tone, as his eyes alighted on her
+wrist, “what have you done to your arm?”
+
+She hid her wrist quickly, and with her face averted said that it was
+nothing, nothing.
+
+Bishop shook his head sagely.
+
+“I doubt you bruised it getting out of the window,” he said. “Well,
+well, miss; live and learn. Another time you’ll be wiser, I hope; and
+not do such things.”
+
+She did not answer, and the chaise passing by Plumgarth began to
+descend into the wide stony valley. Below them the white-washed walls
+and slated roofs and mills of Kendal could be seen clustering about the
+Castle Bow and the old grey ruin that rises above the Ken river. On
+either hand bleak hills, seamed with grey walls, made up a landscape
+that rose without beauty to a lowering sky. There were few trees, no
+hedges; and somewhere the cracked bell of a drugget factory or a
+dye-works was clanging out a monotonous summons. To Henrietta’s
+eye—fresh from the lake-side verdure—and still more to her heart, the
+northern landscape struck cold and cheerless. It had given her but a
+sorry welcome had she been on her way to seek the hospitality of the
+inn. How much poorer was its welcome when she had no prospect before
+her but the scant comfort and unknown hardships of a gaol!
+
+The chaise did not enter the town, but a furlong short of it turned
+aside and made for a group of windowless buildings, which crowned a
+small eminence a bow-shot from the houses. As the horses drew the
+chaise up the ascent to a heavy stone doorway, Henrietta had time to
+see that the entrance was mean, if strong, and the place as
+unpretending as it was dull. Nevertheless, her heart beat almost to
+suffocation, as she stepped out at a word from Bishop, who had alighted
+at once and knocked at the iron-studded door. With small delay a
+grating was opened, a pale face, marked by high, hollow temples, looked
+out; and some three or four sentences were exchanged. Then the door was
+unlocked and thrown open. Bishop signed to her to enter first and she
+did so—after an imperceptible pause. She found herself in a small
+well-like yard, with the door and window of the prison-lodge on her
+left and dead walls on the other sides.
+
+Two children were playing on the steps of the lodge, and some linen,
+dubiously drying in the cold winter air, hung on a line stretched from
+the window to a holdfast in the opposite wall. Unfortunately, the yard
+had been recently washed, and still ran with water; so that these
+homely uses, and even the bench and pump which stood in a corner,
+failed to impart much cheerfulness to its aspect. Had Henrietta’s heart
+been capable of sinking lower it had certainly done so.
+
+The children stared open-mouthed at her: but not with half as much
+astonishment as the man in shirt sleeves who had admitted her. “Eh,
+sir, but you’ve brought the cage a fine bird,” he said at last. “Your
+servant, miss. Well, well, well!” with surprise. And he scratched his
+head and grinned openly. “Debtors’ side, I suppose?”
+
+“Remand,” Bishop answered with a wink and a meaning shake of the head.
+“Here’s the warrant. All’s right.” And then to Henrietta—“If you’ll sit
+down on that bench, miss, I’ll fix things up for you.”
+
+The girl, her face a little paler than usual, sat down as she was
+bidden, and looked about her. This was not her notion of a prison; for
+here were neither gyves nor dungeons, but just a slatternly, damp
+yard—as like as could be to some small backyard in the out-offices of
+her brother’s house. Nevertheless, the gyves might be waiting for her
+out of sight; and with or without them, the place was horribly
+depressing that winter afternoon. The sky was grey above, the walls
+were grey, the pavement grey. She was almost glad when Bishop and the
+man in shirt-sleeves emerged from the lodge followed by a tall,
+hard-featured woman in a dirty mob-cap. The woman’s arms were bare to
+the elbow, and she carried a jingling bunch of keys. She eyed Henrietta
+with dull dislike.
+
+“That is settled, then,” Bishop said, a little overdoing the
+cheerfulness at which he aimed. “Mother Weighton will see to you, and
+’twill be all right. There are four on the debtors’ side, and you’ll be
+best in the women-felons’, she thinks, since it’s empty, and you’ll
+have it all to yourself.”
+
+Henrietta heaved a deep sigh of relief. “I shall be alone, then?” she
+said. “Oh, thank you.”
+
+“Ay, you’ll be alone,” the woman answered, staring at her. “Very much
+alone! But I’m not sure you’ll thank me, by-and-by. You madams are
+pretty loud for company, I’ve always found, when you’ve had your own a
+bit.” Then, “You don’t mind being locked up in a yard by yourself?” she
+continued, with a close look at the girl’s face and long grey
+riding-dress.
+
+“Oh no, I shall be grateful to you,” Henrietta said eagerly, “if you
+will let me be alone.”
+
+“Ah, well, we’ll see how you like it,” the woman retorted. “Here, Ben,”
+to her husband, “I suppose she is too much of a fine lady to carry her
+band-box—yet awhile. Do you bring it.”
+
+“I am sure,” Bishop said, “the young lady will be grateful for any
+kindness, Mrs. Weighton. I will wait till you’ve lodged her
+comfortably. God bless my soul,” he continued, screwing up his
+features, as he affected to look about him, “I don’t know that one’s
+not as well in as out!”
+
+“Well, there’s no writs nor burglars!” the jailor answered with a grin.
+“And the young folks, male nor female, don’t get into trouble through
+staying out o’ nights. Now, then, missis,” to his wife, “no need to be
+all day over it.”
+
+The woman unlocked a low door in the wall opposite the lodge, but at
+the inner end of the yard; and she signed to Henrietta to enter before
+her. The girl did so, and found herself in a flagged yard about thirty
+feet square. On her right were four mean-looking doors having above
+each a grated aperture. Henrietta eyed these and her heart sank. They
+were only too like the dungeons she had foreseen! But the jailor’s wife
+turned to the opposite side of the yard where were two doors with small
+glazed windows over them. The two sides that remained consisted of high
+walls, surmounted by iron spikes.
+
+“We’ll put you in a day-room as they’re all empty,” the woman grumbled.
+She meant not ill, but she had the unfortunate knack of making all her
+concessions with a bad grace.
+
+Thereupon she unlocked one of the doors, and disclosed a small
+whitewashed room, cold, but passably clean. A rough bench and table
+occupied the middle of the floor, and in a corner stood a clumsy
+spinning-wheel. The floor was of stone, but there was a makeshift
+fireplace, dulled by rust and dirt.
+
+“Get in a bedstead, Ben,” she continued. “I suppose,” looking abruptly
+at Henrietta, “you are not used to chaff, young woman?”
+
+The girl stared.
+
+“I don’t understand, I am afraid,” she faltered.
+
+“You are used to feathers, I dare say?” with a sneer.
+
+“Oh, for a bed?”
+
+“What else?” impatiently. “Good lord, haven’t you your senses? You can
+have your choice. It’s eight-pence for chaff, and a shilling for
+feathers.”
+
+“I don’t mind paying while I’ve money,” Henrietta said humbly. “If
+you’ll please to charge me what is right.”
+
+“Well, it’s cheap enough, lord knows; for since the changes there’s no
+garnish this side. And for the third of the earnings that’s left to us,
+I’d not give fippence a week for all!”
+
+The man had dragged in, while she talked, a kind of wooden trough for
+the bed, and set it in a corner. He had then departed for firing, and
+returned with a shovelful of burning coals, for the room was as cold as
+the grave.
+
+“There’s a pump in the yard,” the woman said, “and a can and basin, but
+you must serve yourself. And there’s a pitcher for drinking. And you
+can have from the cook-shop what you like to order in. You’ll have to
+keep your place clean; but as long as you behave yourself, we’ll treat
+you according. Only let us have no scratching and screaming!” she
+continued. “Tempers don’t pay here, I’ll warn you. And for swoonings we
+just turn the tap on! So do you take notice.” And with a satisfied look
+round, “For the rest, there’s many a young woman that’s not gone wrong
+that’s not so comfortable as you, my girl. And I’d have you know it.”
+
+Henrietta coloured painfully.
+
+“I shall do very well,” she said meekly. “But I’ve not done anything
+wrong.”
+
+“Ay, ay,” the woman answered unconcernedly, “they all say that! That’s
+of course. But I can’t stay talking here. What’d you like for your
+supper? A pint of stout, and a plate of a-la-mode? Or a chop?”
+
+Henrietta reduced the order to tea and a white loaf and butter—if it
+could be got—and asked meekly if she might have something to read.
+
+The _Kendal Chronicle_ was promised. “You’ll have your meal at five,”
+Mother Weighton continued. “And your light must be out at eight, and
+you’ll have to ’tend service in chapel on Sunday. By rule your door
+should be locked at five; but as you’re alone, and the lock’s on the
+yard, I’ll say naught about that. You can have the run of the yard as a
+favour and till another comes in.”
+
+Then with a final look round she went out, her pattens clinked across
+the court, and Henrietta heard the key turned in the outer door.
+
+She stood a moment pressing her hands to her eyes, and trying to
+control herself. At length she uncovered her eyes, and she looked again
+round the whitewashed cell. Yes, it was real. The flagged floor, the
+bench, the table, the odd-looking bed in its wooden trough—all were
+real, hard, bare. And the solitude and the dreary silence, and the
+light that was beginning to fade! The place was far from her crude
+notion of a prison; but in its cold, naked severity it was as far
+outside her previous experience. She was in prison, and this was her
+cell, that was her prison-yard. And she was alone, quite, quite alone.
+
+A sob rose in her throat, and then she laughed a little hysterically,
+as she remembered their way with those who fainted. And sitting limply
+down, she warmed herself at the fire, and dried two or three tears. She
+looked about her again, eyed again the whitewashed walls, and listened.
+The silence was complete; it almost frightened her. And her door had no
+fastening on the inside. That fact moved her in the end to rise, and go
+out and explore the yard, that she might make sure before the light
+failed that no one was locked in with her, that no one lurked behind
+the closed cell doors.
+
+The task was not long. She tried the five doors, and found them all
+locked; she knocked softly on them, and got no answer. The pump, the
+iron basin, a well scrubbed bench, a couple of besoms, and a bucket,
+she had soon reviewed all that the yard held. There was a trap or
+Judas-hole in the outer door, and another, which troubled her, in the
+door of her cell. But on the whole the survey left her reassured and
+more at ease; the place, though cold, bare, and silent, was her own.
+And when her tea and a dip-candle appeared at five she was able to show
+the jailor’s wife a cheerful face.
+
+The woman had heard more of her story by this time, and eyed her with
+greater interest, and less rudely.
+
+“You’ll not be afraid to be alone?” she said. “You’ve no need to be.
+You’re safe enough here.”
+
+“I’m not afraid,” Henrietta answered meekly. “But—couldn’t I have a
+fastening on my door, please?”
+
+“On the inside? Lord, no! But I can lock you in if you like,” with a
+grin.
+
+“Oh no! I did not mean that!”
+
+“Well, then you must just push the table against the door. It’s against
+rules,” with a wink, “but I shan’t be here to see.” And pulling her
+woollen shawl more closely about her, she continued to stare at the
+girl. Presently, “Lord’s sakes!” she said, “it’s a queer world! I
+suppose you never was in a jail before? Never saw the inside of one,
+perhaps?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“It’s something political, I’m told,” snuffing the candle with her
+fingers, and resuming her inquisitive stare.
+
+Henrietta nodded.
+
+“With a man in it, of course! Drat the men! They do a plaguey deal of
+mischief! Many’s the decent lass that’s been transported because of
+them!”
+
+Henrietta’s smile faded suddenly.
+
+“I hope it’s not as bad as that,” she said.
+
+“Well, I don’t know,” scrutinising the girl’s face. “It’s for you to
+say. The officer that brought you—quite the gentleman too—told us it
+was something to do with a murder. But you know best.”
+
+“I hope not!”
+
+“Well, I hope not too! For if it be, it’ll be mighty unpleasant for
+you. It’s not three years since a lad I knew myself was sent across
+seas for just being out at night with a rabbit-net. So it’s easy done
+and soon over! And too late crying when the milk’s spilt.” And once
+more snuffing the candle and telling Henrietta to leave her door open
+until she had crossed the yard, she took herself off. Once more, but
+now with a sick qualm, the girl heard the key turned on her.
+
+“Transportation!” She did not know precisely what it meant; but she
+knew that it meant something very dreadful. “Transportation! Oh, it is
+impossible!” she murmured, “impossible! I have done nothing!”
+
+Yet the word frightened her, the shadow of the thing haunted her. These
+locks and bars, this solitude, this cold routine, was it possible that
+once in their clutch the victim slid on, helpless and numbed—to
+something worse? To-day, deaf to her protests, they had sent her
+here—sent her by a force which seemed outside themselves. And no one
+had intervened in her favour. No one had stepped forward to save her or
+speak for her. Would the same thing befall her again? Would they try
+her in the same impersonal fashion—as if she were a thing, a
+chattel,—and find her guilty, condemn her, and hand her over to brutal
+officials, and—she rose from her bench, shuddering, unable to bear the
+prospect. She had begun the descent, must she sink to the bottom? Was
+it inevitable? Could she no longer help herself? Sick, shivering with
+sudden fear she walked the floor.
+
+“Oh, it is impossible!” she cried, battling against her terror, and
+trying to reassure herself. “It is impossible!” And for the time she
+succeeded by a great effort in throwing off the nightmare.
+
+No one came near her again that evening. And quite early the dip burned
+low, and worn out and tired she went to bed, only partially undressing
+herself. The bedding, though rough and horribly coarse, was clean, and,
+little as she expected it, she fell asleep quickly in the strange
+stillness of the prison.
+
+She slept until an hour or two before dawn. Then she awoke and sat up
+with a child’s cry in her ears. The impression was so real, so vivid
+that the bare walls of the cell seemed to ring with the plaintive
+voice. Quaking and perspiring she listened. She was sure that it was no
+dream; the voice had been too real, too clear; and she wondered in a
+panic what it could be. It was only slowly that she remembered where
+she was and recognised that no child’s cry could reach her there. Nor
+was it until after a long interval that she lay down again.
+
+Even then she was not alone. The image of a little child, lonely,
+friendless, and terrified, stayed with her, crouched by her pillow, sat
+weeping in the dark corners of the cell, haunted her. She tried to
+shake off the delusion, but the attempt was in vain. Conscience, that
+in the dark hours before the dawn subjects all to his sceptre, began to
+torment her. Had she acted rightly? Ought she to have put the child
+first and her romantic notions second? And if any ill happened to
+it—and it was a delicate, puny thing—would it lie at her door?
+
+Remorse began to rack her. She wondered that she had not thought more
+of the child, been wrung with pity for it, sympathised more deeply with
+its fears and its misery. What, beside its plight, was hers? What,
+beside its terrors, were her fears? Thus tormenting herself she lay for
+some time, and was glad when the light stole in and she could rise,
+cold as it was, and set her bed and her cell in order. By the time this
+was done, and she had paced for half an hour up and down to warm
+herself, a girl of eight, the jailor’s child, came with a shovel of
+embers and helped her to light the fire—staring much at her the while.
+
+“Mother said I could help you make your bed,” she began.
+
+Henrietta, with a smile said that she had made it already.
+
+“Mother thought you’d be too fine to make it,” still staring.
+
+“Well, you see I am not.”
+
+“I am glad of that,” the child answered candidly. “For mother said
+you’d have to come to it and to worse, if you were transported, miss.”
+
+Henrietta winced afresh, and looked at the imp less kindly.
+
+“But I’m not going to be transported,” she said positively. “You’re
+talking nonsense.”
+
+“There’s never been any one transported from here.”
+
+“No?” with relief. “Then why should I be?”
+
+“But there was a man hanged three years ago. It was for stealing a
+lamb. They didn’t let me see it.”
+
+“And very right, too.”
+
+“But mother’s promised”—with triumph—“that if you’re transported I
+shall see it!” After which there was silence while the child stared. At
+last, “Are you ready for your breakfast now?”
+
+“Yes,” said poor Henrietta. “But I am not very hungry—you can tell your
+mother.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+THE RÔLE CONTINUED
+
+
+Mr. Sutton slept as ill on the night of his resignation as he had ever
+slept in his life. And many times as he tossed and turned on his bed he
+repented at leisure the step which he had taken in haste. Acting upon
+no previous determination, he had sacrificed in the heat of temper his
+whole professional future. He had staked his all; and he had done no
+good even to the cause he had at heart. The act would not bear thinking
+upon; certainly it would not bear the cold light of early reflection.
+And many, many times as he sighed upon his uneasy pillow did he wish,
+as so many have wished before and since, that he could put back the
+clock. Had he left the room five minutes earlier, had he held his
+tongue, however ungraciously, had he thought before he spoke, he had
+done as much for Henrietta and he had done no harm to himself. And he
+had been as free as he was now, to seek his end by other means.
+
+For he had naught to do now but seek that end. He had not Mr. Pitt’s
+nose in vain: he was nothing if he was not stubborn. And while
+Henrietta might easily have had a more discreet, she could hardly have
+had a more persevering, friend. Amid the wreck of his own fortunes,
+with his professional future laid in ruins about him, he clung
+steadfastly to the notion of righting her, and found in that and in the
+letter in his book, his only stay. At as early an hour as he considered
+decent, he would apply to Mr. Hornyold, lay the evidence before the
+Justice, and press for the girl’s release.
+
+Unfortunately, he lay so long revolving the matter that at daybreak he
+fell asleep. The house was busy and no one gave a thought to him, and
+ten had struck before he came down and shamefacedly asked for his
+breakfast. Mrs. Gilson put it before him, but with a word of girding at
+his laziness; which the good woman could not stomach, when half the
+countryside were on foot searching for the boy, and when the unhappy
+father, after a night in the saddle, had left in a postchaise to follow
+up a clue at Keswick. Blameworthy or not, Mr. Sutton found the delay
+fatal. When he called on Mr. Hornyold, the Justice was not at home. He
+had left the house and would not return until the following day.
+
+Sutton might have anticipated this check, but he had not; and he walked
+back to the inn, plunged to the very lips in despondency. The activity
+of the people about him, their eagerness in the search, their
+enthusiasm, all reflected on him and sank him in his own esteem. Yet if
+he would, he could not share in these things or in these feelings. He
+stood outside them; his sympathies were fixed, obstinately fixed,
+elsewhere. And, alas, in the only direction in which he desired to
+proceed, and in which he discerned a possible issue, he was brought to
+a full stop.
+
+He was in the mood to feel small troubles sorely, and as he neared the
+inn he saw that Mrs. Gilson was standing at the door. It vexed him, for
+he felt that he cut a poor figure in the landlady’s eyes. He knew that
+he seemed to her a sorry thing, slinking idly about the house, while
+others wrought and did. He feared her sharp tongue and vulgar tropes,
+and he made up his mind to pass by the house as if he did not see her.
+He was in the act of doing this, awkwardly and consciously, with his
+eyes averted—when she called to him.
+
+“If you’re looking for Squire Clyne,” she said, in very much the tone
+he expected, “he’s gone these three hours past and some to that!”
+
+“I was not,” he said.
+
+“Oh!” she answered with sarcasm, “I suppose you are looking for the
+boy. You will not find him, I’m afraid, on the King’s highroad!”
+
+“I was not looking for him,” he answered churlishly.
+
+“More shame to you!” Mrs. Gilson cried, with a spark in her eye. “More
+shame to you! For you should be!”
+
+He flamed up at that, after the passionate manner of such men when
+roused. He stopped and faced her, trembling a little.
+
+“And to whom is it a shame,” he cried, “that wicked, foul injustice is
+done? To whom is it a shame that the innocent are sent to herd with the
+guilty? To whom is it a shame—woman!—that when there is good, clear
+evidence put before their eyes, it is not read? Nor used? The boy?”
+vehemently, “the boy? Is he the only one to be considered, and sought
+and saved? Is his case worse than hers? I too say shame!”
+
+Mrs. Gilson stared. “Lord save the man!” she cried, as much astonished
+as if a sheep had turned on her, “with his shames and his whoms! He’s
+as full of words as a Wensleydale of mites! I don’t know what you are
+in the pulpit, your reverence, but on foot and in the road, Mr.
+Brougham was naught to you!”
+
+“He’d not the reason,” the chaplain answered bitterly. And brought down
+by her remark—for his passion was of the shortest—he turned, and was
+moving away, morose and despondent, when the landlady called after him
+a second time, but in a more friendly tone. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps
+some new perception of the man moved her.
+
+“See here, your reverence,” she said. “If you’ve a mind to show me this
+fine evidence of yours, I’m not for saying I’ll not read it. Lord knows
+it’s ill work going about like a hen with an egg she can’t lay. So if
+you’ve a mind to get it off your mind, I’ll send for my glasses, and be
+done with it.”
+
+“Will you?” he replied, his face flushing with the hope of making a
+convert. “Will you? Then there, ma’am, there it is! It’s the letter
+that villain sent to her to draw her to meet him that night. If you
+can’t see from that what terms they were on, and that she had no choice
+but to meet him, I—but read it! Read it!”
+
+She called for her glasses and having placed them on her nose, set the
+nose at such an angle that she could look down it at the page. This was
+Mrs. Gilson’s habit when about to read. But when all was arranged her
+face fell. “Oh dear!” she said, “it’s all bits and scraps, like a
+broken curd! Lord save the man, I can’t read this. I canna make top nor
+tail of it! Here, let me take it inside. Truth is, I’m no scholar in
+the open air.”
+
+The chaplain, trembling with eagerness, set straight three or four bits
+of paper which he had deranged in opening the book. Then, not trusting
+it out of his own hands, he bore the book reverently into the
+landlady’s snuggery, and set it on the table. Mrs. Gilson rearranged
+her nose and glasses, and after gazing helplessly for a few moments at
+the broken screed, caught some thread of sense, clung to it
+desperately, and presently began to murmur disjointed sentences in the
+tone of one who thought aloud.
+
+“Um—um—um—um!”
+
+Had the chaplain been told a fortnight before that he would wait with
+bated breath for an old woman’s opinion of a document, he would have
+laughed at the notion. But so it was; and when a ray of comprehension
+broke the frowning perplexity of Mrs. Gilson’s face, and she muttered,
+“Lord ha’ mercy! The villain!” still more when an April cloud of
+mingled anger and pity softened her massive features—the chaplain’s
+relief was itself a picture.
+
+“A plague on the rascal!” the good woman cried. “He’s put it so as to
+melt a stone, let alone a silly child like that! I don’t know that if
+he’d put it so to me, when I was a lass, I’d have told on him. I don’t
+think I would!”
+
+“It’s plain that she’d no understanding with him!” Mr. Sutton cried
+eagerly. “You can see that, ma’am!”
+
+“Well, I think I can. The villain!”
+
+“It’s quite clear that she had broken with him!”
+
+“It does look so, poor lamb!”
+
+“Poor lamb indeed!” Mr. Sutton replied with feeling. “Poor lamb
+indeed!”
+
+“Yet you’ll remember,” Mrs. Gilson answered—she was nothing if not
+level-headed—“he’d the lad to think of! He’d his boy to think of! I am
+sure my heart bled for him when he went out this morning. I doubt he’d
+not slept a wink, and——”
+
+“Do you think she slept either?” the chaplain asked, something
+bitterly; and his eyes glowed in his pale face. “Do you consider how
+young she is and gently bred, ma’am? And where they’ve sent her, and to
+what?”
+
+“Umph!” the landlady replied, and she rubbed her ponderous cheek with
+the bowl of a punch-ladle, and looked, frowning, at the letter. The
+operation, it was plain, clarified her thoughts; and Mr. Sutton’s
+instinct told him to be mute. For a long minute the distant clatter of
+Modest Ann’s tongue, and the clink of pattens in the yard, were the
+only sounds that broke the lemon-laden silence of the room. Perhaps it
+was the glint of the fire on the rows of polished glass, perhaps the
+sight of her own well-cushioned chair, perhaps only a memory of
+Henrietta’s fair young face and piled-up hair that wrought upon the
+landlady. But whatever the cause she groaned. And then, “He ought to
+see this!” she said. “He surely ought! And dang me, he shall, if he
+leaves the house to-night! After all, two wrongs don’t make a right.
+He’s to Keswick this morning, but an hour after noon he’ll be back to
+learn if there’s news. It’s only here he can get news, and if he has
+not found the lad he’ll be back! And I’ll put it on his plate——”
+
+“God bless you!” cried Mr. Sutton.
+
+“Ay, but I’m not saying he’ll do anything,” the landlady answered
+tartly. “If all’s true the young madam has not behaved so well that
+she’ll be the worse for smarting a bit!”
+
+“She’ll be much obliged to you,” said the chaplain humbly.
+
+“No, she’ll not!” Mrs. Gilson retorted. “Nor to you, don’t you think
+it! She’s a Tartar or I’m mistaken. You’ll be obliged, you mean!” And
+she looked at the parson over her glasses as if she were appraising him
+in a new character.
+
+“I’ve been to Mr. Hornyold,” he said, “but he was out and will not be
+back until to-morrow.”
+
+“Ay, he’s more in his boots than on his knees most days,” the landlady
+answered. “But what I’ve said, I’ll do, that’s flat. And here’s the
+coach, so it’s twelve noon.”
+
+She tugged at the cord of the yard bell, and its loud jangle in a
+twinkling roused the house to activity and the stables to frenzy. The
+fresh team were led jingling and prancing out of the yard, the ostlers
+running beside them. Modest Ann and her underling hastened to show
+themselves on the steps of the inn, and Mrs. Gilson herself passed into
+the passage ready to welcome any visitor of consequence.
+
+Mr. Bishop and two Lancashire officers who had been pushing the quest
+in the Furness district descended from the outside of the coach. But
+they brought no news; and Sutton, as soon as he learned this, did not
+linger with them. The landlady’s offer could not have any immediate
+result, since Clyne was not expected to return before two; and the
+chaplain, to kill time, went out at the back, and climbed the hill. He
+walked until he was tired, and then he turned, and at two made his way
+back to the inn, only to learn that Clyne had not yet arrived. None the
+less, the short day already showed signs of drawing in. There was snow
+in the sky. It hung heavy above Langdale Pikes and over the long ragged
+screes of Bow Fell. White cushions of cloud were piled one on the other
+to the northward, and earth and sky were alike depressing. Weary and
+despondent, Sutton wandered into the house, and sitting down before the
+first fire he found, he fell fast asleep.
+
+He awoke with a confused murmur of voices in his ears. The room was
+dark save for the firelight; and for a few seconds he fancied that he
+was still alone. The men whose talk he heard were in another part of
+the house, and soothed by their babble and barely conscious where he
+was, he was sinking away again when a harsh word and a touch on his
+sleeve awoke him. He sprang up, startled and surprised, and saw that
+Captain Clyne, his face fitfully revealed by the flame, was standing on
+the other side of the hearth. He was in his riding boots and was
+splashed to the waist.
+
+His face was paler than usual, and his pose told of fatigue.
+
+“Awake, man, awake!” he repeated. “Didn’t you hear me?”
+
+“No, I—I was dozing,” the chaplain faltered, as he put back his chair.
+
+“Just so,” Clyne answered drily. “I wish I could sleep. Well, listen
+now. I have been back an hour, and I have read this.” He laid his hand
+on an object on the table, and Sutton with joy saw that the object was
+the book which he had left with Mrs. Gilson. “I am sorry,” Clyne
+continued in a constrained tone, “that I did not read it last evening.
+I was wrong. But—God help me, I think I am almost mad! Anyway I have
+read it now, and I credit it, and I think that—she has been harshly
+treated. And I am here to tell you,” a little more distinctly, “that
+you can arrange the matter to your satisfaction, sir.”
+
+Sutton stared. “Do you mean,” he said, “that I may arrange for her
+release?”
+
+“I have settled that,” Clyne answered. “Mr. Hornyold is not at home,
+but I have seen Mr. Le Fleming, and have given bail for her appearance
+when required; and here is Le Fleming’s order for her release. I have
+ordered a postchaise to be ready and it will be at the door in ten
+minutes.”
+
+“But then—all is done?” the chaplain said.
+
+“Except fetching her back,” Clyne answered. “She must come here. There
+is nowhere else for her to go. But I leave that to you, since her
+release is due to you. I have done her an injustice, and done you one
+too. But God knows,” he continued bitterly, “not without provocation.
+Nor willingly, nor knowingly.”
+
+“I am sure of that,” the chaplain answered meekly.
+
+“Yes. Of course,” Clyne continued, awkwardly, “I shall not consider
+what you said to me as said at all. On the contrary, I am obliged to
+you for doing your duty, Mr. Sutton, whatever the motive.”
+
+“The motive——”
+
+“I do not say,” stiffly, “that the motive was an improper one. Not at
+all. I cannot blame you for following up my own plan.”
+
+“I followed my feelings,” Mr. Sutton replied, with a fresh stirring of
+resentment.
+
+“Exactly. And therefore it seems to me that as she owes her release to
+your exertions, it is right that you should be the one to communicate
+the fact to her, and the one to bring her away.”
+
+The chaplain saw that his patron, persuaded that there was more between
+them than he had supposed, fell back on the old plan; that he was
+willing to give him the opportunity of pushing his suit. And the blood
+rushed to his face. If she could be brought—if she could be brought to
+look favourably on him! Ah, then indeed he was a happy man, and the
+dark night of despondency would be followed by a morn of joy. But with
+the quickness of light his thoughts passed over the various
+occasions—they were very few—on which he had addressed her. And—and an
+odd thing happened. It happened, perhaps, because with the chaplain the
+matter was no longer a question of ambition, but of love. “You have no
+news?” he said.
+
+“None. And Nadin,” with bitterness, “seems to be at the end of his
+resources.”
+
+“Then, Captain Clyne,” Sutton replied impulsively, “there is but one
+way! There is but one thing to be done. It is not I, but you, who must
+bring Miss Damer back. She may still speak, but not for me!”
+
+“And certainly not for me!” Clyne answered, his face flushing at the
+recollection of his violence.
+
+“For you rather than for any one!”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Yes,” the chaplain rejoined firmly. “I do not know how I know it,” he
+continued with dignity, “but I know it. For one thing, I am not blind.
+Miss Damer has never given me a word or a look of encouragement. If she
+thanks me,” he spoke with something like a tear in his eye, “it will be
+much—the kind of thanks you, Captain Clyne, give the servant that
+lacquers your boots, or the dog that fetches your stick. But you—with
+you it will be different.”
+
+“She has no reason to thank me,” Clyne declared.
+
+“Yet she will.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“She will!” Sutton answered fervently—he was determined to carry out
+his impulsive act of unselfishness. “And, thank you or not thank you,
+she may speak. She will speak, when released, if ever! She is one who
+will do nothing under compulsion, nothing under durance. But she will
+do much—for love.”
+
+Clyne looked with astonishment at the chaplain. He, like Mrs. Gilson,
+was appraising him afresh, was finding something new in him, something
+unexpected. “How do you know?” he asked, his cheeks reddening.
+
+There were for certain tears in Mr. Sutton’s eyes now.
+
+“I don’t know how I know,” he said, “but I do. I know! Go and fetch
+her; and I think, I think she will speak.”
+
+Clyne thought otherwise, and had good reason to think otherwise; a
+reason which he was ashamed to tell his chaplain. But in the face of
+his own view he was impressed by Sutton’s belief. The suggestion was at
+least a straw to which he could cling. Failing other means—and the
+ardour of his assistants in the search was beginning to flag—why should
+he not try this? Why should he not, threats failing, throw himself at
+the girl’s feet, abase himself, humble himself, try at least if he
+could not win by prayer and humility what she had refused to force.
+
+It was a plan little to the man’s taste; grievous to his pride. But for
+his son’s sake, for the innocent boy’s sake, he was willing to do even
+this. Moreover, with all his coldness, he had sufficient nobility to
+feel that he owed the girl the fullest amends in his power. He had laid
+hands on her. He had treated her—no matter what the
+provocation—cruelly, improperly, in a manner degrading to her and
+disgraceful to himself. His face flushed as he recalled the scene and
+his violence. Now it was hers to triumph, hers to blame: nor his to
+withhold the opportunity.
+
+“I will go,” he said, after a brief perturbed silence. “I am obliged to
+you for your advice. You think that there is a chance she will speak?”
+
+“I do,” Sutton answered manfully. “I do.” And he said more to the same
+purpose.
+
+But later, when the hot fit ebbed, he wondered at himself. What had
+come over him? Why had he, who had so little while his patron had so
+much, given up his ewe lamb, his one chance? Reason answered, because
+he had no chance and it was wise to make a virtue of necessity. But he
+knew that, a day or two before, he would have snapped his fingers at
+reason, he would have clung to his forlorn hope, he would have made for
+his own advantage by the nearest road. What then had changed him? What
+had caused him to set the girl’s happiness before his own, and
+whispered to him that there was only one way by which, smirched and
+discredited as she was, she whom he loved could reach her happiness? He
+did not answer the question, perhaps he did not know the answer. But
+wandering in the darkness by the lake-side, with the first snowflakes
+falling on his shoulders, he cried again and again, “God bless her! God
+bless her!” with tears running down his pale, insignificant face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+PRISON EXPERIENCES
+
+
+When Henrietta rose on the second morning of her imprisonment, and
+opened her door and looked out, she met with an unpleasant surprise.
+Snow had fallen in the night, and lay almost an inch deep in the yard.
+The sheet of dazzling white cast the dingy spiked wall and the mean
+cell-doors into grey relief. But it was not this contrast, nor the
+memory of childish winters with their pleasures—though that memory took
+her by the throat and promised to choke her—that filled her with
+immediate dismay. It was the difficulty of performing the prison
+duties, of going beyond her door, and refilling her water-pitcher at
+the pump. To cross the yard in sandaled shoes—such as she and the girls
+of that day wore—was to spoil her shoes and wet her feet. Yet she could
+not live without water; the more as she had an instinctive fear of
+losing, under the pressure of hardship, those refinements in which she
+had been bred. At length she was about to venture out at no matter what
+cost, when the door of the yard opened, and the jailor’s wife came
+stumbling through the snow on a pair of pattens. She carried a second
+pair in her hand, and she seemed to be in anything but a pleasant
+humour.
+
+“Here’s a mess!” she said, throwing down the pattens and looking about
+her with disgust. “By rights, you should set to work to clear this
+away, before it’s running all of a thaw into your room. But I dare say
+it will wait till midday—it don’t get much sun here—and my good man
+will come and do it. Anyways, there are some pattens, so that you can
+get about—there’s as good as you have gone on pattens before now! Ay,
+and mopped the floor in them! And by-and-by my girl will bring you some
+fire ’gainst you’re ready for your breakfast.”
+
+“I’m ready whenever the breakfast is ready,” Henrietta answered, as
+cheerfully as she could. She was shivering with cold.
+
+“Ah, well, ah, well, my lass!” the woman answered snappishly, “there’s
+worse troubles in the world than waiting for your breakfast. For the
+Lord’s sake, don’t you get complaining.”
+
+“I wasn’t complaining, indeed!” Henrietta said.
+
+“Think of the doing we’ve had this night!”
+
+“I heard,” the girl answered. And an involuntary shudder escaped her.
+“It was dreadful! dreadful!”
+
+“You’d ha’ thought so,” ungraciously, “if you had had to deal with the
+lad yourself! Never was such a Jack o’ Bedlam! I wonder all our heads
+aren’t broke.”
+
+“Is he often like that?” Henrietta asked.
+
+For she had lain awake many hours of the night, trembling and trying to
+close her ears against the ravings of a madman; who was confined in the
+next yard, and who had suffered an access of mania during the night.
+The prisons of that day served also for madhouses.
+
+“No, but once in the month or so,” the jailor’s wife answered. “And
+often enough, drat him! Doctor says he’ll go off in one of these Bedlam
+fits, and the sooner the better, I say! But I’m wasting my time and
+catching my death, gossipping with you! Anyway, don’t you complain,
+young woman,” severely. “There’s worse off than you!” And she clattered
+abruptly away, and Henrietta was left to patten her road to the pump
+and back, and afterwards to finish her toilette in what shivering
+comfort she might.
+
+For a prisoner, she might not have much of which to complain. But
+though that was not the day of bedroom fires, or rubber water-bottles,
+and luxury stopped at the warming-pan, or the heated brick, there are
+degrees of misery, and this degree was new to her.
+
+However, the woman was better than her word, for in a short time her
+child appeared, painfully bearing at arm’s length a shovelful of live
+embers. And the fire put a new face on things. Breakfast sent in from
+outside followed, and was drawn out to the utmost for the sake of the
+employment which it afforded. For time hung heavy on the girl’s hands.
+She had long exhausted the _Kendal Chronicle_; and a volume of “Sermons
+for Persons under Sentence of Death”—the property of the gaol—she had
+steadfastly refused. Other reading there was none, and she was rather
+gratified than troubled when she espied a thin trickle of water
+stealing under the door. The snow in the yard was melting; and it was
+soon made plain to her that if she did not wish to be flooded she must
+act for herself.
+
+The task was not very congenial to a girl gently bred, and who had all
+her life associated such work with Doll and a mop. But on her first
+entrance into the gaol she had resolved to do, as the lesser of two
+evils, whatever she should be told to do. And the thing might have been
+worse, for there was no one to see her at work. She kilted up her skirt
+and donned the pattens, put on her hood, and taking a broom from the
+corner of the yard began to sweep vigorously, first removing the snow
+from the flags before her door, and then, as the space she had cleared
+grew wider, gathering the snow into a heap at the lower end of the
+yard.
+
+She was soon warm and in the full enjoyment of action. But in no long
+time, as was natural, she tired, and paused to rest and look about her,
+supporting herself by the broom-handle. A robin alighted on a spike on
+the top of the wall, and flirting its tail, eyed her in a friendly way,
+with its head on one side. Then it flew away—it could fly away! And at
+the thought,
+
+“What,” she wondered, “would come of it all? What would be the end for
+her? And had they found the boy?”
+
+Already it seemed to her that she had lain a week, a month in the gaol.
+The people outside must have forgotten her. Would she be forgotten?
+Would they leave her there?
+
+But she would not give way to such thoughts, and she set to work again
+with new energy. Swish! swish! Her hands were growing sore, but she had
+nearly finished the task. She looked complacently at the wide space she
+had cleared, and stooped to pin up one side of her gown which had
+slipped down. Then, swish! swish! with renewed vigour, unconscious that
+the noise of her sweeping drowned the grating of the key in the lock.
+So that she was not aware until a voice struck her ear, that she was no
+longer alone.
+
+Then she wheeled about so sharply that, unused to pattens, she stumbled
+and all but fell. The accident added to her vexation. Her face turned
+red as a beet. For inside the door of the yard, contemplating her with
+a smile at once familiar and unpleasant, stood Mr. Hornyold.
+
+“Dear, dear,” he said, as she glowered at him resentfully, ashamed at
+once of her short skirts and the task that compelled them. “They
+shouldn’t have put you to this! Though I’m sure a prettier sight you’d
+go far to see! But your hands are infinitely too white and soft, my
+dear—much too white and pretty to be spoiled by broom-handles! I must
+speak to Mother Weighton about it.”
+
+“Perhaps if you would kindly go out a moment,” she said with spirit,
+“it were better. I could then put myself in order.”
+
+“Not for the world!” Mr. Hornyold retorted, with something between a
+leer and a wink. “You’re very well as you are!” with a look at her
+ankles. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure, but the contrary.
+I’m told that Lady Jersey at Almack’s shows more, and with a hundred to
+see! So you need not mind. And you could not look nicer if you’d done
+it on purpose.”
+
+With a jerk she disengaged her shoes from the pattens, dropped the
+broom, and made for the door of her room, with such dignity as her
+kilted skirt left her. But before she reached it:
+
+“Steady, my lady,” said Mr. Hornyold in a tone no longer wheedling, but
+harsh and peremptory, “you’re forgetting! You are in gaol, and you’ll
+be pleased to stop when you’re told, and do as you’re told! Don’t you
+be in such a hurry, my dear. I am here to learn if you have any
+complaints.”
+
+“Only of your presence!” she cried, her face burning. “If you have come
+here only to insult me, I have heard enough.”
+
+And having gained her cell in spite of him, she tried to slam the door
+in his face.
+
+But he had had time to approach, and he set the handle of his whip
+between door and jamb, and stopped her.
+
+“I’m not come for that, I tell you, you pretty spitfire,” he said;
+“I’ve come to hear if you have any complaints of your treatment here.”
+
+“I have not!” she cried.
+
+“Come, come,” he rejoined, checking her with a grin, “you must not
+answer the Visiting Justice in that tone. Say, ‘I have none, sir, I
+thank you kindly,’—that’s the proper form, my dear. You’ll know better
+another time. Or”—smiling more broadly as he read the angry refusal in
+her eyes—“we shall have to put you to beat hemp. And that were a pity.
+Those pretty hands would soon lose their softness, and those dainty
+wrists that are not much bigger than my thumbs would be sadly spoiled.
+But we won’t do that,” indulgently. “We are never hard on pretty girls
+as long as they behave themselves.”
+
+She looked round wildly, but there was no escape. She could retreat no
+farther. The man filled the doorway; the room lay open to his insolent
+eyes, and he did not spare to look.
+
+“Neat as a pin!” he said complacently. “Just as it should be. A place
+for everything, and everything in its place. I’ve nothing but praise
+for it. I never thought that it would ever be my lot to commend Miss
+Damer for the neatness of her chamber! But—good Lord!” with surprise,
+“what’s the matter with your wrist, my girl?”
+
+“Nothing,” she said, the angry scarlet of her cheek turning a shade
+deeper.
+
+“Nothing? Oh, but there is!” he returned peremptorily.
+
+“Nothing!” she repeated fiercely. “Nothing! It’s nothing that matters!”
+
+Oh, how she hated the man! How she loathed his red, insolent grin!
+Would he never leave her? Was she to be exposed, day by day, and hour
+by hour, to this horror?
+
+He eyed her shrewdly.
+
+“You haven’t been turning stubborn?” he said, “have you? And they’ve
+had to handle you already? And bring you to your senses? And so they
+have set you to brooming? But Bishop,” with a frown, “gave me no notion
+of that. He said you came like a lamb.”
+
+“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s nothing.” It was not only that she
+was ashamed of the mark on her arm, and shrank from showing it. But his
+leering, insolent face terrified her. Though he was not tipsy, he had
+spent the small hours at a club; and the old port still hummed in his
+brain. “It’s not that,” she repeated firmly, and more quietly, hoping
+to get rid of him.
+
+“Here,” he answered, “let me look at it.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Pooh, nonsense!” he replied, pressing his advantage, and entering the
+cell. “Nonsense, girl, let me look at it.” He stepped nearer, and
+peremptorily held out his hand. He could touch her. She could feel his
+hot breath on her cheek. “There’s no room here for airs and tempers,”
+he continued. “How, if I don’t see it, am I to know that they have not
+been ill-treating you? Show me your wrist, girl.”
+
+But she recoiled from him into the farthest corner, holding her arms
+behind her. Her face was a picture of passionate defiance.
+
+“Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Don’t come near me!”
+
+“You’ve no right to touch me. They have not hurt my wrist. I tell you
+it is nothing. And if you lay a finger on me I will scream!”
+
+“Then,” he said coolly, “they’ll put you in a strait waistcoat, my
+lass, like the madman next door. That’s all! You’re mighty particular,
+but you forget where you are.”
+
+“You forget that I am a gentlewoman!” she cried. She could not retreat
+farther, but she looked at him as if she could have killed him. “Stand
+back, sir, I say!” she continued fiercely. “If you do not——”
+
+“What will you do?” he asked. He enjoyed the situation, but he was not
+sure how far it would be prudent to push it. If he could contrive to
+surprise her wrist it would be odd if he could not snatch a kiss; and
+it was his experience—in his parish—that once fairly kissed, young
+women came off the high horse, and proved amenable. “What’ll you do,”
+he continued facetiously, “you silly little prude?”
+
+“Do?” she panted.
+
+“Ay, Miss Dainty Damer, what’ll you do?” with a feigned movement as if
+to seize her. “You’re not on the highway now, you know! Nor free on
+bail! Nor is there a parson here!”
+
+There he stopped—a faint, faint sound had fallen on his ear. He looked
+behind him, and stepped back as if a string drew him. And his face
+changed marvellously. In the doorway stood, hat in hand, the last
+person in the world he wished to see there—Captain Clyne.
+
+Clyne did not utter a syllable, but he beckoned to the other to come
+out to him. And, with a chap-fallen look and a brick-red face, Hornyold
+complied, and went out. Clyne closed the door on the girl—that she
+might not hear. And the two men alone in the yard confronted one
+another, Clyne’s face was dark.
+
+“I overheard your last words, Mr. Hornyold,” he said in a voice low but
+stern. “And you are mistaken. There is a parson here—who has forgotten
+that he is a gentleman. It is well for him, very well, that having
+forgotten that fact he remains a parson.”
+
+Hornyold tried to bluster, tried to face the other down and save the
+situation. “I don’t understand you!” he said. “What does this mean?” He
+was the taller man and the bigger, but Clyne’s air of contemptuous
+mastery made him appear the smaller. “I don’t understand you,” he
+repeated. “The young lady—I merely came to visit her.”
+
+“The less,” Clyne retorted, cutting him short, “said about her the
+better! I understand perfectly, sir,” with severity, “if you do not!
+Perfectly. And I desire you to understand that it is your cloth only
+that protects you from the punishment you deserve!”
+
+“That’s easy said!” Hornyold answered with a poor attempt at defiance.
+“Easy! What! Are we to have all this fuss about a chit that——”
+
+“Silence, sir!” And Clyne’s voice rang so loud that the other not only
+obeyed but stepped back, as if he feared a blow. “Silence, sir! I know
+you well enough, and your past, to know that you cannot afford a
+scandal. And you know me! I advise you, therefore, when you have passed
+that door”—he pointed to the door leading to the prison lodge, “to keep
+a still tongue, and to treat this lady’s name with respect. If not for
+the sake of your own character, for the sake, at any rate, of your
+ill-earned stipends.”
+
+“Fine words!” Hornyold muttered, with a sneer of bravado.
+
+“I will make them good,” Clyne answered. And the look and the tone were
+such that the other, high as he wished to carry it, thought discretion
+the better part. He turned, still sneering, on his heel, and cutting
+the air with his whip made his way with what dignity he might to the
+door. He hesitated an instant and then disappeared, raging inwardly.
+
+The moment he was gone Clyne’s face relaxed. He passed his hand over
+his brow as if to recall his thoughts, and he sighed deeply. Then
+turning he went slowly to Henrietta’s door and tapped on it. The girl
+opened. “May I speak to you?” he said.
+
+She did not answer, but she stepped out. She had recovered her
+self-control—quickly and completely, as women do; and her face told
+nothing. Whatever she thought of his intervention and of the manner in
+which he had routed Hornyold, she made no sign. She waited for him to
+speak. Yet she was aware not only of his downcast carriage, but of the
+change which sleepless nights and days of unutterable suspense had
+wrought in his face. His features were thinner and sharper, his temples
+more hollow: and there was a listening, hungry look in his eyes which
+did not quit them even when he dealt with other things than his loss.
+
+“I have brought an order for your release,” he said without an attempt
+at preface. “I have given bail for your appearance when needed. You are
+free to go. You have not to thank me, however, but Mr. Sutton, who
+discovered the letter that was written to you——”
+
+She interrupted him by an exclamation.
+
+“The letter,” he continued mechanically, “that was written to you
+making an appointment.”
+
+“Impossible!” she cried. “I destroyed it.”
+
+“He put it together again,” he answered in the same tone. “I—we are all
+indebted to him. Deeply indebted to him! I don’t know that there is
+anything more to be said,” he continued dully, “except that I have come
+to take you back. I was coming last evening, but the snow prevented
+me.”
+
+“And that is all—you have to say?”
+
+He raised his eyes to hers with so much sadness in their depths, with
+such utter dejection in his looks, that in spite of all her efforts to
+keep it alive, her anger drooped. “Except that I am sorry,” he said. “I
+am sorry. We have treated you—badly amongst us.”
+
+“You!” she said vindictively.
+
+“I, if you like. Yes, I. It is true.”
+
+She called up the remembrance of the severity with which he had judged
+her and the violence of which her wrist still wore the traces. She
+pictured the disgrace of the prison and her fears, the nights of
+apprehension and the days of loneliness, ay, and the insolence of the
+wretch who had just left her—she owed all to him! All! And yet she
+could not keep her anger hot. She tried. She tried to show him
+something of what she felt. “You!” she repeated. “And now you think,”
+bitterly, “that I shall bear to go back to the place from which you
+sent me? Sent me in open disgrace—in that man’s charge—with no woman
+with me?”
+
+“God help me!” he said. “I know not what to think or do! I thought that
+if I took you back myself, that would perhaps be best for all.”
+
+She was silent a moment, and then, “I have been very, very unhappy,”
+she said in a different tone. And even while she said it she wondered
+why she complained to him, instead of accusing him, and blaming him.
+
+“I believe it,” he said slowly. “We have wronged one another. Let it
+stand at that.”
+
+“You believe, you do believe now,” she said, “that I had no hand in
+stealing him?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“And knew naught of it,” she insisted earnestly, “before or after?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“I would have cut off my hand first!” she said.
+
+“I believe it,” he answered sorrowfully.
+
+Then they were both silent. And she wondered at herself. Why did she
+not hate him? Why did she not pour out on him the vials of her
+indignation? He had treated her badly, always badly. The wrong which
+she had done him in the first place, he had avenged by a gross insult
+to her womanhood. Then not satisfied with that, he had been quick to
+believe the worst of her. He had been violent to her, he had bullied
+her: and when he found that she was not to be wrung to compliance with
+his orders, he had degraded her to a public prison as if she had been
+the worst of her sex—instead of his kith and kin. Even now when his
+eyes were open to his injustice, even now when he acknowledged that he
+owed amends, he came to her with a few poor words, meagre, scanty
+words, a miserable “I am sorry, you are free.” And that was all. That
+was all!
+
+And yet her rage drooped cold, her spirit seemed dead. The scathing
+reproaches, the fierce truths which had bubbled to her lips as she lay
+feverish on her prison-bed, the hot tears which had scalded her eyes,
+now that she might give them vent, now that he might be wounded by them
+and made to see his miserableness—were not! She stood mute and pale,
+wondering at the change, wondering at her mildness. And when he said
+meekly, “The chaise is ready, will you make your preparations?” she
+went to do his bidding as if she had done nothing but obey him all her
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+A RECONCILIATION
+
+
+When she had filled her band-box, and with a tearful laugh looked her
+last on the cell, she emerged from the yard. She found Captain Clyne
+awaiting her with his hand on the key of the prison gate. He saw her
+look doubtfully at the closed lodge-door; and he misread the look.
+
+“I thought,” he said, “that you would wish to be spared seeing more of
+them. I have,” with a faint smile, “authority to open.”
+
+“Oh!” she answered, wrinkling her pretty brow in perplexity. “But I
+must see them, please. They have not been unkind to me, and I should
+not like to go without thanking them.”
+
+And before he could remonstrate, she had pushed open the lodge door and
+gone within.
+
+“Now, Mrs. Weighton,” he heard her cry, “you’ll give me a character,
+won’t you? I’ve behaved well now, haven’t I?”
+
+“Yes, miss, I’ll say that,” the woman answered stolidly.
+
+“I haven’t scratched nor screamed, and I’ve done as I’ve been bid? And
+you’ve had no use for the pump water?”
+
+“I wish you hadn’t swept out the yard,” grudgingly; “’twas no order of
+mine, you’ll remember. And don’t you go and say that I’ve treated you
+ill!”
+
+“I’ll not! Indeed, I’ll not!” Henrietta cried in a different tone.
+“I’ll say you treated me very well. And that is for your little girl to
+make up for her disappointment. She’ll be sorry I’m not going to be
+transported,” with a hint of laughter in her voice. “And, Mrs.
+Weighton, I’m going to ask you something.”
+
+“Well, miss? If it is to oblige you?”
+
+“Then, will you,” in a tone touched by feeling, “if you have some day
+another like me, will you be as good to her? And remember that she may
+not have done anything wrong after all? Will you promise me?”
+
+“I will, miss,” Mrs. Weighton answered—very graciously for her. “But
+there, it isn’t all has your sense! They takes and runs their heads
+against a brick wall! Either they scratches and screams, or they sulks
+and starves. And then we’ve to manage them, and we get the blame. I see
+you looked white and shivering when you come in, and I thought we’d
+have trouble with you. But there, you kept yourself in hand, and showed
+your sense—it’s breeding does it—and you’ve naught to complain of in
+consequence. Wishing you well and kindly, miss!”
+
+“I _shall_ come to you for a character!” Henrietta replied with a
+laugh.
+
+And she came out quickly and joined Captain Clyne, who, waiting with
+his hand on the lock, had heard all. He saw that though she laughed
+there was a tear in her eye; and the mingling of gaiety and sensibility
+in her conduct and her words was not lost upon him. She seemed to be
+bent on putting him in the wrong; on proving to him that she was not
+the silly-pated child he had deemed her! Even the praise of this
+jailor’s wife, a coarse, cross-grained woman, sounded reproachfully in
+his ears. She was a better judge, it seemed, than he.
+
+He put Henrietta into the chaise—the brisk, cold air of the winter
+morning was welcome to her; and they set off. Gnawed as he was by
+unhappy thoughts, wretchedly anxious as he was, he was silent for a
+time. He knew what he wanted, but he was ashamed to clutch at that
+advantage for the sake of which Sutton had resigned to him the mission.
+And for a long time he sat mute and brooding in his corner, the bright
+reflection of the snow adding pallor to his face. Yet he had eyes for
+her: he watched her without knowing it. And at the third milestone from
+Kendal, a little beyond Barnside, he saw her shiver.
+
+“I am afraid you are cold?” he said, and wondering at the rôle he
+played, he drew the wraps closer about her—with care, however, that his
+fingers should not touch her.
+
+“No,” she answered frankly. “I am not cold. But I remember passing that
+mile-stone. I was almost sick with fright when I passed it. So that it
+was all I could do not to try to get out and escape.”
+
+This was a revelation to him; and not a pleasant one. He winced.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said. “I am very sorry.”
+
+“Oh, I felt better when I was once in the prison,” she answered
+lightly. “And with Mrs. Weighton. Before that I was afraid that there
+might be only men.”
+
+He suffered, in the hearing, something of the humiliation which she had
+undergone; was she not of his blood and his class—and a woman? But he
+could only say again that he was sorry. He was sorry.
+
+A little later he forgot her in his own trouble: in thoughts of his
+child, thoughts which tortured him unceasingly, and became more active
+as his return to the Low Wood suggested the possibility of news. At one
+moment he saw the lad stretched on a pallet, ill and neglected, with no
+eye to pity, no hand to soothe; at another he pictured him in some dark
+hiding-place with fear for his sole companion. Or again he saw him
+beaten and ill-treated, shrieking for the father who had been always to
+him as heaven, omniscient and omnipotent—but shrieking in vain. And
+then the thought that to one so weak and young a little added hardship,
+another day of fear, an insignificant delay, might prove fatal—it was
+this thought that wrung the heart most powerfully, and went far towards
+maddening the man.
+
+As he sat watching the snow-covered fell slide by the chaise window, he
+was unconscious how clearly his misery was stamped on his features; or
+how pitiful was the hunger that lurked in the hollows under his eyes.
+But when the pace slackened, and the carriage began to crawl up the
+long hill beyond Broadgate, a faint sound caught his ear, and he
+remembered where he was, and turned. He saw that she was crying.
+
+The same words came to his lips.
+
+“I am sorry. I am very sorry,” he said. “But it is over now.”
+
+“It’s not that,” she sobbed. “I am sorry for you! And for him! The poor
+boy! The poor boy! Last night—no, it was the night before—-I thought
+that he called to me. I thought that he was there in the room with me!”
+
+“Don’t!” he faltered. “I cannot bear it! Don’t!”
+
+But she did not heed.
+
+“Yes,” she repeated. “And ever since, ever since I’ve been thinking of
+him! I’ve wondered, I’ve wondered if I did right!”
+
+He was silent, striving to regain control of himself. But at last,
+
+“Eight in saying nothing?” he asked.
+
+His voice shook a little, and he kept his eyes averted.
+
+“Yes. I didn’t know”—a little wildly—“I didn’t know what to do. And
+then you threatened me, and I—it seemed unreasonable. For I wanted to
+help you, I did, I did indeed. But I dared not, I dared not give him
+up! I could not have his blood on my hands after—you know.”
+
+“But you no longer—care for him?”
+
+“I loathe him!” she answered with a shudder. “But you see how it is. He
+trusted me, and I—how can I betray him? How can I? How can I?”
+
+It was his business to prove to her that she could, that she ought,
+that she must; he was here to press her to it, to persuade her, to
+cajole her to it, if necessary. He had come for that. But the words it
+behoved him to use stuck in his throat. And the chaise rolled on, and
+rolled on. And still, but with the sweat standing on his brow, he sat
+silent, looking out on the barren landscape, as the stone fences slid
+quickly by, or open moorland took their place. In ten minutes they
+would be at the Low Wood. Already through her window she could see the
+long stretch of sparkling water, and the wooded isles, and the distant
+smoke of Ambleside.
+
+Their silence was a tragedy. She could save him by a word, and she
+could not say the word. She dared not say it. And he—the pleas he
+should have used died on his lips. It behoved him to cast himself on
+her mercy; he was here for that purpose. It behoved him to work on her
+feelings, to plead with her, to weep, to pray. And he did not, he could
+not. And the minutes passed; the wheels rolled and rolled. Soon they
+would be at the end of their journey. He was like a famishing man who
+sees a meal within reach, but cannot touch it; or like one oppressed by
+a terrible nightmare, who knows that he has but to say a word, and he
+is freed from the incubus—yet his tongue refuses its office. And now
+the carriage, having climbed the rise, began to roll more quickly down
+the hill. In a very few minutes they would be at the end of their
+journey.
+
+Suddenly—“What can we do?” she cried, piteously. “What can we do? Can
+we do nothing? Nothing?”
+
+And neither of the two thought the union of interests strange; any more
+than in their absorption they noted the strangeness of this drive in
+company—over some of the very road which she had traversed when she
+eloped with another to avoid a marriage with him.
+
+He shook his head in dumb misery. Three days of suspense, and as many
+sleepless nights, the wear and tear of many journeys, had told upon
+him. He had had but little rest, and that induced by sheer exhaustion.
+He had taken his meals standing, he had passed many hours of each day
+in the saddle. He could no longer command the full resources of his
+mind, and though he still held despair at arm’s length, though he still
+by force of habit commanded himself, and was stern and reticent,
+despondency gained ground upon him. It was she who almost at the last
+moment suggested a plan that if not obvious, was simple, and to the
+purpose.
+
+“Listen,” she said. “Listen, sir! Why should not I do this? Go myself
+to—to him, to Walterson?”
+
+“You?” he answered, with undisguised repugnance.
+
+“Yes, I! I! Why not?” she asked. “And learn if he has the child, or
+knows where it is. Then if he be innocent of this last wickedness, as I
+believe him to be innocent, we shall learn the fact without harming
+him; always supposing that I go to him, undetected. And I can do
+that—with your help! That must be your care.”
+
+He pondered.
+
+“But if,” he said slowly, “you do this and he have the child? What
+then? Have you thought of the consequences to yourself? If he be privy
+to a crime which none but desperate men could commit, what of you? He
+will be capable of harming you. Or if he scruple, there will be others,
+the men who took my child, who will stick at nothing to keep their
+necks out of the noose, and to remove a witness who else might hang
+them.”
+
+“I am not afraid,” she said firmly.
+
+“God bless you!” he said. “God bless you! But I am.”
+
+“What?” she cried, and she turned to him, honestly astonished. “You?
+You dissuade me when it is your child that is in peril?”
+
+“Be silent!” he said harshly. “Be silent! For your own sake, if not for
+mine! Why do you tempt me? Why do you torture me? Do you think,
+Henrietta, that I have not enough to tempt me without your help? No,
+no,” more quietly, “I have done you wrong already! I know not how I can
+make amends. But at least I will not add to the wrong.”
+
+“I only ask you to leave me to myself,” she said hardily. “The rest I
+will do, if I am not watched.”
+
+“The rest!” he said with a groan. “But what a rest it is! Why should
+these men spare you if you go to them? They did not spare my boy!”
+
+“They took the boy,” she answered, “to punish you. They will not have
+the same motive for harming me. I mean—they will not harm me with the
+idea of hurting you.”
+
+“Ay, but——”
+
+“They will know that it will not affect you.”
+
+He did not deny the statement, but for some time he drummed on the
+window with his fingers.
+
+“That may be,” he said at length. “Yet I’ll not do it! And I’ll not let
+you do it. Instead, do you tell me where the man is and I will go to
+him myself. And I will tell no tales.”
+
+“You will keep his secret?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+“But I will not do that!” she answered. And she laughed gaily in the
+reaction of her spirits. She knew in some subtle way that she was
+reinstated; that he would never think very badly of her again. And the
+knowledge that he trusted her was joy; she scarcely knew why. But, “I
+shall not do that!” she repeated. “Have you thought what will be the
+consequence to you if he be guilty? They will be three to one, and they
+will murder you.”
+
+“And you think that I can let you run the risk?”
+
+“There will be no risk for me. I am different.”
+
+“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I wish”—despairingly—“I wish to God I
+could believe it!”
+
+“Then do believe it,” she said.
+
+“I cannot! I cannot!”
+
+“You have his letter,” she replied. And she was going to say more, she
+was going to prove that she could undertake the matter with safety,
+when the chaise began to slacken speed, and she cut her reasoning
+short. “You will let me do it?” she said, laying her hand on his
+sleeve.
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“You have only to draw them off.”
+
+“I shall not!” he cried, almost savagely. “I shall not! Do you think I
+am a villain? Do you think I care nothing what happens——”
+
+The jerk caused by the chaise coming to a stand before the inn cut his
+words short. Clyne thrust out his head.
+
+“Any news?” he asked eagerly. “Has anything been heard?”
+
+Mr. Sutton, who had been on the watch for their arrival, came forward
+to the chaise door. He answered Clyne, but his eyes, looking beyond his
+patron, sought Henrietta’s in modest deprecation; much as the dog which
+is not assured of its reception seeks, yet deprecates its master’s
+glance.
+
+“No,” he said, “none. I am sorry for it. Nadin has not yet returned,
+nor Bishop, though we are expecting both.”
+
+“Where’s Bishop?”
+
+“He has gone with a party to Lady Holm. There’s an idea that the isles
+were not thoroughly searched in the first place. But he should be back
+immediately.”
+
+A slight hardening of the lines of the mouth was Clyne’s only answer.
+He helped Henrietta to alight, and was turning with her to enter the
+house, when he remembered himself. He laid his hand on the chaplain’s
+arm.
+
+“This is the gentleman,” he said, “whom you have to thank for your
+release, Henrietta.”
+
+“I am sure,” she said, “that I am greatly obliged to him.” But her tone
+was cold.
+
+“He did everything,” Clyne said. “He left no stone unturned. Let me do
+him the justice of saying that we two must share the blame of what has
+happened, while the whole credit is his.”
+
+“I am very much obliged to him,” she said again. And she bowed.
+
+And that was all. That, and a look which told him that she resented his
+interference, that she hated to be beholden to him, that she held him
+linked for ever with her humiliation. He, and he alone, had stood by
+her two days before, when all had been against her, and Captain Clyne
+had been as flint to her. He, and he alone, had wrought out her
+deliverance and reinstated her. And her thanks were a haughty movement
+of the head, two sentences as cold as the wintry day, a smile as hard
+as the icicles that still depended in the shade of the eaves. And when
+she had spoken, she walked to the door without another glance—and every
+step was on the poor man’s heart.
+
+Mrs. Gilson had come down two steps to meet her. She had seen all.
+
+“Well, you’re soon back, miss?” she said. “Some have the luck all one
+way.”
+
+“That cannot be said of me!” Henrietta retorted, smiling.
+
+But her colour was high. She remembered how she had descended those
+steps.
+
+“No?” Mrs. Gilson responded. “When you bring the bad on yourself and
+the good is just a gift?”
+
+“A gift?”
+
+“Ay! And one for which you’re not over grateful!” with all her wonted
+grimness. “But that’s the way of the world! Grind as you will, miss,
+it’s the lower mill-stone suffers, and the upper that cries out!
+Still——”
+
+Mr. Sutton heard no more; for Henrietta had passed with the landlady
+into the house; and he turned himself about with a full heart and
+walked away. He had done so much for her! He had risked his livelihood,
+his patron, his position, to save her! He had paced this strand with
+every fibre in him tingling with pity for her! Ay, and when all others
+had put her out of their thoughts! And for return, she went laughing
+into the house and paid no heed to him—to the poor parson.
+
+True, he had expected little. But he had expected more than this. He
+had not hoped for much; or it is possible that he had not resigned the
+opportunity of bringing her back. But he had hoped for more than
+this—for the tearful thanks of a pair of bright eyes, for the clasp of
+a grateful hand, for a word or two that might remain in his memory
+always.
+
+And bitterness welled up in his heart, and at the first gate, at which
+he could stand unseen, he let his face fall on his hands. He cursed the
+barriers of caste, the cold pride of these aristocrats, even his own
+pallid insignificance—since he had as hungry a heart as panted in the
+breast of the handsomest dandy. He could not hate her; she was young
+and thoughtless, and in spite of himself his heart made excuses for
+her. But he hated the world, and the system, and the miserable
+conventions that shackled him; ay, hated them as bitterly for the time
+as the dark-faced gipsy girl whose eyes he found upon him, when at last
+a step caused him to look up.
+
+She grinned at him slyly, and he gave back the look with resentment. He
+had met her once or twice in the lanes and about the inn, and marked
+her for a rustic beauty of a savage type. Now he waited frowning for
+her to pass. But she only smiled more insolently, and lifting her
+voice, sang:
+
+“But still she replied, sir,
+
+I pray let me be!
+
+If ever I love a man,
+
+The master for me!”
+
+
+A dull flush overspread his face. “Go your way!” he said.
+
+“Ay, I’ll go!” Bess replied. “And so will she!”
+
+In pin, out trout!
+Three’s a meal and one’s nought!
+
+
+“One’s nought! One’s nought!” she continued to carol.
+
+And laughing ironically, she went up the road—not without looking back
+once or twice to enjoy a surprise which was only exceeded by the
+chaplain’s wrath. What did the girl know? And what was it to her? A
+common gipsy drab such as she, how did she come to guess these things?
+And where the joint lay at which to aim the keen shafts of her wit?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+BISHOP CAUGHT NAPPING
+
+
+“I will not do it! I will not do it!” Those had been Clyne’s last words
+on the subject; uttered and repeated with a heat which proved that, in
+coming to this decision, he fought against his own heart as much as
+against her arguments. “I will not do it! But do you,” with something
+of his former violence, “tell me where he is! Tell me at once, and I
+will go and question him.”
+
+“And I,” she had answered with spirit, “will not tell you.”
+
+At that he had looked at her with the old sternness, but her eyes had
+no longer fallen before his. And then he had been called away to follow
+one of the hasty clues, the wild-goose scents which were reported from
+hour to hour—by pedlars coming in from the dales, or by hazy parish
+constables who took every stranger for a rogue. Twice he had turned in
+his saddle, twice reined in his horse, before he passed out of sight;
+and she had known that he wrestled with himself, that he was near, very
+near, to giving way, and sacrificing her upon the altar of his child.
+But he had gone on, and not returned. And though it had grieved her to
+see how drawn and haggard was his face, how near to failing the wiry
+strength of his frame, she had rejoiced on her own account. He might
+say what he liked, forbid as he chose, it would go hard with her if she
+could not find the opportunity she needed, if she, who had suffered all
+along and in the esteem of all, did not make use of the means of
+clearing herself that remained to her.
+
+Courage at least should not be wanting; and she would be cunning, too.
+Already she dreamed of a happy return with the child; and her cheeks
+grew warm and her eyes soft as she conjured up the scene, and imagined
+herself leading the boy to his father and receiving his thanks. Then he
+would confess—more fully than he had yet confessed—how he had wronged
+her, how far from her thoughts had been harm to the boy. And she—ah,
+but she must first do her part. She must first do that which she had to
+do.
+
+So she went craftily about her task, counting up those whom she had to
+fear and ticking them off. Before Clyne had left the house a mile
+behind him she had learned where Nadin was, and a second officer whom
+she suspected of watching her movements. They were abroad and she had
+naught to fear from them. There remained Mr. Sutton and Bishop. For the
+former, “Horrid man!” she thought in her ingratitude, “I suppose he
+will look to be thanked every time I see him!” And she was confirmed in
+this, when she marked him down. He was walking to and fro before the
+door.
+
+“I must go out at the back!” she concluded.
+
+But there still remained the bluff but civil Bishop. She had little
+doubt that he was the Cerberus left to guard her. And no doubt at all
+when she learned from Modest Ann that he was taking his early dinner in
+the coffee-room with the door wide open.
+
+“Waiting to see if I go out,” she said.
+
+“Well, miss,” Ann answered, “I shouldn’t wonder if he was!”
+
+Henrietta looked at her very kindly.
+
+“Don’t you think,” she asked slowly, “that you could somehow get rid of
+him, Ann?”
+
+The woman looked as much troubled as one of her hard features could
+look.
+
+“No, miss, I don’t think I could,” she said.
+
+“You are afraid?” gently.
+
+“I’m not afraid of him,” with some asperity. “Bless the man, no! I’m
+not afraid of no man nowhere! But I am afraid of the missus?”
+
+“Ah! And you don’t think that you could tell him that I wish to see him
+upstairs? And then when he comes up and finds the room empty—that I
+shall be down from my bedroom in five minutes?”
+
+“It wouldn’t be true.”
+
+“No,” softly. “Perhaps not.”
+
+Modest Ann looked dreadfully perplexed.
+
+“You’ll get me into trouble, miss,” she said. “I know you will.”
+
+“Then I’ll get you out again,” the fair tempter retorted. “I will
+indeed, Ann.”
+
+“But if you get into trouble yourself, miss? What then?”
+
+Henrietta turned with the air of a martyr to the window and looked out.
+
+“I thought you liked me a little,” she murmured presently, and dried a
+tear that was not there. “I thought you would do a small thing for me.”
+
+The woman took her hand and kissed it softly.
+
+“I will, miss, drat me if I don’t!” she said. “I’ll do what you wish,
+come what may of it! So there.”
+
+Henrietta turned to her, her face in a glow. “You dear, kind thing!”
+she cried, “I’ll never forget it. You are the only one who is not
+against me.”
+
+Ann shook her head.
+
+“I hope I’ll not be the one to repent it!” she muttered, with a last
+spark of doubt.
+
+“Indeed, indeed you won’t! But now”—naively—“shall I lock him in or
+not?”
+
+“In the room?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Here, miss? Why, miss, he’d rouse the house!”
+
+“Not if we tied up the bell-pull first!” she suggested.
+
+But Modest Ann was aghast at the thought. “Lord, miss, he’d only have
+to open the window and shout! And there’s the parson walking up and
+down the road, and the fat’d be in the fire in two twos!”
+
+“So it would,” Henrietta admitted reluctantly. “I see. So you must just
+entice him here, and say I’ll be down from my bedroom in three minutes.
+And I hope he’ll be patient. As for you, you’ll know no more than that
+I asked you to fetch him, and said I should be with him at once.”
+
+“Well, they can’t touch me for that,” Modest Ann said; and she agreed,
+but with hesitation. “I don’t think he’ll be so simple,” she said.
+“That’s a fact. He’ll not come up.”
+
+But he did. He walked straight into the trap, and Henrietta, who was
+waiting in ambush in the dark passage while he passed, sped downstairs,
+and would have escaped by the back door without meeting a soul, if Mrs.
+Gilson had not by bad luck been crossing the yard. The landlady caught
+sight of the girl, and raising her voice cried to her to stop. For an
+instant Henrietta hesitated. Then she thought it prudent to comply. She
+returned slowly.
+
+“Come, come, miss, this won’t do!” the landlady said tartly. “You’re
+not going off like that all of a hurry! You bide a bit and consider
+who’s bail for you.”
+
+“Not you!” Henrietta retorted mutinously. And as this was true, for the
+Gilsons’ bail had been discharged, the first hit was hers.
+
+“Oh, so you’re saucy now, miss!” the landlady retorted. “Brag’s the
+dog, is it?”
+
+“No, but——”
+
+“It’s so, it seems! Any way, you’ll please to tell me, young lady,
+where you are going in such a hurry.”
+
+But Henrietta was at bay. She knew that if she were delayed even two
+minutes her chance was gone; for Bishop would be on her heels. So,
+“That’s my business!” she answered. And determined to escape, even by
+force, she turned about, light as a roe, tossed her head defiantly, and
+was off through the gate in a twinkling.
+
+Mrs. Gilson was left gaping. She was not of a figure to take up the
+chase, for like many good housewives of her time, she seldom left her
+own premises except to go to church. But she was none the less certain
+that Henrietta ought to be followed. “There’s a fine trollop!” she
+cried. “It won’t be long before she runs her head into harm! Where’s
+that blockhead, Bishop?” And she bundled away to the coffee-room to
+tell him that the girl was gone.
+
+She arrived scant of breath—and he was not there. The coffee-room was
+empty, and the landlady, knowing that he had stayed in the house on
+purpose to keep an eye on Henrietta’s movements, swept out again,
+fuming. In the passage she caught sight of Modest Ann and called her.
+“Where’s that man, Bishop?” she asked.
+
+Ann stared as if she had never heard the name.
+
+“Bishop?” she repeated stolidly.
+
+“What else did I say?”
+
+“He’s with the young lady.”
+
+“He’s nothing of the kind!” Mrs. Gilson retorted, her temper rising.
+
+“Well, he went to her,” Ann returned. “He went——”
+
+But Mrs. Gilson did not stay to hear. She had caught sight of Mr.
+Sutton walking past the open door, and aware that a second now was
+worth a minute by and by, she hurried out to him. “Your reverence!
+Here!” she cried. And when he turned surprised by the address, “The
+young lady’s gone!” she continued. “Slipped out at the back, and she’ll
+be God knows where in two minutes! Do you follow, sir, and keep her in
+sight or there’s no knowing what may happen!” And she pointed through
+the house to indicate the nearest way.
+
+Mr. Sutton’s face turned a dull red. But he did not move, nor make any
+show of acting on the suggestion. Instead, “Miss Damer has gone out?”
+he said slowly.
+
+“To be sure!” the landlady cried, in a fume at the delay. “And if she
+is not followed at once——”
+
+“Where’s the officer?” he asked, interrupting her.
+
+“Heaven knows, or I should not come to you!” Mrs. Gilson retorted. “Do
+you go after her before she’s beyond catching!”
+
+But Mr. Sutton shook his head with an obstinate look. “No,” he said.
+“It’s not my business, ma’am. I’d like to oblige you after your
+kindness yesterday, but I’ve made up my mind not to interfere with the
+young lady. I followed her once,” he continued, in a lower tone and
+with a conscious air—“and I’ve repented it!”
+
+“You’ll repent it a deal more if you don’t follow her now!” the
+landlady retorted. She was in a towering passion by this time. “You’ll
+repent it finely if anything happens to her. That you will, my man!
+Don’t you know that Captain Clyne left word that she wasn’t to be let
+go out alone? Then go, man, after her, before it is too late. And don’t
+be a sawny!”
+
+“I shall not,” he answered firmly.
+
+She saw then that he was not to be moved; and with a half-smothered
+word, not of the politest, she turned short about to find Bishop;
+though she was well aware that so much time had been wasted that the
+thing was now desperate. Again she asked Ann, who had been listening to
+the colloquy, where Bishop was.
+
+“He went up to the young lady,” Ann answered.
+
+“He did not, I tell you. For she is not up but out!”
+
+“Perhaps he has followed her.”
+
+“Perhaps you’re a liar!” Mrs. Gilson cried. And advancing on Ann with a
+threatening gesture, “If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll shake you,
+woman! Do you hear?”
+
+Ann hesitated; when who should appear at the foot of the stairs but
+Bishop himself, looking foolish.
+
+“Where’s the young lady?” he asked. “Where’s your wits?” Mrs. Gilson
+retorted. “She’s out by the back-door this five minutes. If you want to
+catch her you’d best be quick!” And as with a face of consternation he
+hurried through the house, “She didn’t turn Ambleside way!” she called
+after him. “That’s all I know!”
+
+This was something, but it left, as Bishop knew, two roads open. For,
+besides the field-path which led up the hill and through the wood, and
+so over the shoulder to Troutbeck, a farm lane turned short to the
+right behind the out-buildings, and ran into the lower road towards
+Calgarth and Bowness. Which had the girl taken? Bishop paused in doubt,
+and gazed either way. She was not to be seen on the slope leading up to
+the wood; but then, she was not to be seen on the other path. Still, he
+espied something there which gave him hope. On the hillside the snow
+had melted, but here and there on the north side of a wall, or in a
+sheltered spot, it lay; and a little way along the farm-road was such a
+patch extending across its width. Bishop hastened to the place, and a
+glance told him that the girl had not gone that way. With rising hopes
+he set off up the hill.
+
+He was stout and short-winded, more at home in Cornhill than on real
+hills, and he did not expect to gain upon her. But he felt sure that he
+should find her track: and its direction where the fells were so
+sparsely peopled must tell him much. He remembered that it was at the
+upper end of the wood that he had surprised her on the occasion when
+her agitation had led him to question her. He resolved to make as
+quickly as possible for that point.
+
+True enough, where the path entered the wood he came upon her footsteps
+imprinted in the snow; and he pushed on, through the covert to the
+upper end. Here, just within the wicket which opened on the road, lay
+some drifted snow; and as much to recover his breath, as because he
+thought it needful, he stopped to note the direction of her footprints.
+Alas, the snow bore no trace of feet! No one, it was clear, had passed
+through the gate that day.
+
+This was a check, and he turned his back on the road, and mopped his
+forehead with a handkerchief which he took from his hat. He gazed,
+nonplussed, into the recesses of the wood through which he had passed.
+The undergrowth, which was of oak—with here and there a clump of
+hollies—still carried a screen of brown leaves, doomed to fall with the
+spring, but sufficient in the present to mask a fugitive. Moreover, in
+the damp bottom, where the bridge spanned the rivulet, a company might
+have lain hidden; and above him, where the wood climbed the shoulder,
+there were knolls and dells, and unprobed depths of yellow bracken,
+that defied the eye. Between him and this background the brown trunks
+stood at intervals, shot with the gold of the declining sun, or backed
+by a cold patch of snow: and the scene had been beautiful, in its
+russet livery of autumn blended with winter, if he had had eyes for it,
+or for aught but the lurking figure he hoped to detect.
+
+That figure, however, he could not see. And again he stooped, and
+inspected the snow beside the gate. No, she had not passed, that was
+certain; and baffled, and in a most unhappy mood, he raised himself and
+listened. Above him a squirrel, scared by his approach, was angrily
+clawing a branch; a robin, drawn by the presence of a man, alighted
+near him, and hopped nearer. But no rustle of flying skirts, no sound
+of snapping twigs or falling stones came to him. And, a city man by
+training, and much at a loss here, he mopped his brow and swore. Every
+second was precious, and he was losing minutes. He was losing minutes,
+and learning nothing!
+
+Was she hiding in the wood pending his departure? Or had she doubled
+back the way she had come, and so escaped, laughing and contemptuous?
+Or had she passed out by some gate unknown to him? Or climbed the
+fence? Or was she even now meeting her man in some hiding-place among
+the hollies, or in some fern-clad retreat out of sight and hearing?
+
+Bishop could not tell. He was wholly at a loss. For a few seconds he
+entertained the wild notion of beating, the wood for her; but he had
+not taken a dozen steps before he set it aside, and went back to the
+gate. Henrietta on the occasion when her bearing had confirmed his
+suspicions had descended the road to the wood. He would go up the road.
+And even as he thought of this, and laid his hand on the gate to open
+it, he heard a footstep coming heavily down the road.
+
+He went to meet the man; a tall, grinning rustic, who bore a sheep on
+his shoulders with its fore and hind feet in either hand, so that it
+looked like a gigantic ruff. At a sign from the officer he stopped, but
+did not lower his burden.
+
+“Meet anybody as you came down the road, my lad?” Bishop asked.
+
+“Noa,” the man drawled.
+
+“Where have you come from? Troutbeck?”
+
+“Ay.”
+
+“You haven’t met a young lady?”
+
+“Noa! Met no soul, master!” the man answered, in the accent not only of
+Westmoreland, but of truth.
+
+“Not even a pretty girl?”
+
+The man grinned more widely.
+
+“Noa, not nobody,” he said.
+
+And he went on down the road, but twice looked back, turning sheep and
+all, to see what the stranger would be at.
+
+Bishop stood for a few moments pondering the question, and then he
+followed the man.
+
+“If she is not up the road,” he argued, “it is ten to one that she
+started up the hill to throw us off the scent. And she’s slipped down
+herself towards Calgarth. It’s that way, too, she went to meet him at
+night.”
+
+And gradually quickening his steps as the case seemed clearer and his
+hopes grew stronger he was soon out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+THE GOLDEN SHIP
+
+
+Two minutes after Bishop had passed from sight, Henrietta rose from a
+dip in the fern; in which she had lain all the time, as snugly hidden,
+though within eyeshot of him, as a hare in its form. She cast a wary
+glance round. Then she hastened to the gate, but did not pass through
+it. She knew too much. She chose a weak place in the fence, scaled it
+with care, and sprang lightly into the road. She glanced up and down,
+but no one was in sight, and pleased with her cleverness, she set off
+at a quick pace up the hill.
+
+The sun lacked an hour of setting. She might count on two hours of
+daylight, and her spirits rose. As the emerald green of the lower hills
+shone the brighter for the patches of snow, harbingers of winter, which
+flecked them, so her spirits rose the higher for troubles overpast or
+to come. She felt no fear, no despondency, none of the tremours with
+which she had entered on her night adventure. A gaiety of which she did
+not ask herself the cause, a heart as light as her feet and as blithe
+as the black-bird’s note, carried her on. She who had awakened that
+morning in a prison could have sung and caroled as she walked. The
+beauty of the hills about her, of the lake below her, blue here, there
+black, filled her with happiness.
+
+And the cause? She did not seek for the cause. Certainly she did not
+find it. It was enough for the moment that she had been prisoned and
+was free; and that in an hour, or two hours at most, she would return
+with the child or with news. And then, the sweet vengeance of laying it
+in its father’s arms! She whom he had insulted, whom he had mishandled,
+whom he had treated so remorselessly—it would be from her hand that he
+would receive his treasure, the child whom he had told her that she
+hated. He would have some cause then to talk of making amends! And need
+to go about and about before he found a way to be quits with her!
+
+She did not analyse beyond that point the feeling of gaiety and joyous
+anticipation which possessed her. She would put him in the wrong. She
+would heap coals of fire on his head. That sufficed. If there welled up
+within her heart another thought, if since morning she had a feeling
+and a hope that thrilled her and lent to all the world this smiling
+guise, she was conscious of the effect, unconscious of the cause. The
+wrist which Clyne had twisted was still black and blue and tender to
+the touch. She blushed lest any eye fall on it, or any guess how he had
+treated her. But—she blushed also, when she was alone, and her own eyes
+dwelt on it. And dwell on it sometimes they would; for, strange to say,
+the feeling of shame, if it was shame, was not unpleasant.
+
+She met no one. She reached the gate of Starvecrow Farm, unseen as she
+believed. But heedful of the old saying, that fields have eyes and
+woods have ears, she looked carefully round her before she laid her
+hand on the gate. Then, in a twinkling, she was round the house like a
+lapwing and tapping at the door.
+
+To her first summons she got no answer. And effacing herself as much as
+possible, she cast a wary eye over the place. The garden was as ragged
+and desolate, the house as bald and forbidding, the firs about it as
+gloomy, as when she had last seen them. But the view over sloping field
+and green meadow, wooded knoll and shining lake, made up for all. And
+her only feeling as she tapped again and more loudly was one of
+impatience. Even the memory of the squalid old man whom she had once
+seen there did not avail to alarm her in her buoyant mood.
+
+This was well, perhaps. For when she knocked a third time, in alarm
+lest the person she sought should be gone, and her golden ship with
+him, it was that very old man who opened the door. And, not
+unnaturally, it seemed to Henrietta that with its opening a shadow fell
+across the landscape and blurred the sunshine of the day. The ape-like
+creature who gaped at her, the cavern-like room behind him, the breath
+of the close air that came from him, inspired disgust, if not alarm,
+and checked the girl in the full current of content.
+
+He did not speak. But he moved his toothless gums unpleasantly, and
+danced up and down in an odd fashion from his knees, without moving his
+feet. Meanwhile his reddened eyes thrust near to hers gleamed with
+suspicion. On her side Henrietta was taken aback by his appearance, and
+for some moments she stared at him in consternation. What could she
+expect from such a creature?
+
+At length, “I wish to see Walterson,” she said; in a low tone—there
+might be listeners in the house. “Do you understand? Do you
+understand?” she repeated more loudly.
+
+He set his head, which was bald in patches, on one side; as if to
+indicate that he was deaf. And with his eyes on hers, he dropped his
+lower jaw and waited for her to repeat what she had said.
+
+She saw nothing else for it, and she crushed down her repugnance.
+
+“Let me come in,” she said. “Do you hear? I want to talk to you. Let me
+come in.”
+
+To remain where she was, talking secrets to a deaf man, was to invite
+discovery.
+
+He understood her this time, and grudgingly he opened the door a little
+wider. He stood aside and Henrietta entered. In the act she cast a
+backward look over her shoulder, and caught through the doorway a last
+prospect of the hills and the mid-lake and the green islets off
+Bowness—set like jewels on its gleaming breast—all clear-cut in the
+brisk winter air. She felt the beauty of the scene, but she did not
+guess what things were to happen to her before she looked again upon
+its fellow.
+
+Not that when the door was shut upon her, the room in which she found
+herself did not something appal her. The fire had been allowed to sink
+low, and the squalor and the chill, vapid air of the place wrapped her
+about. But she was naturally fearless, and she cheered herself with the
+thought that she was stronger than the grinning old man who stood
+before her. She was sure that if he resorted to violence she could
+master him. Still, she was in haste. She was anxious to do what she had
+to do, and escape.
+
+And: “I must see Walterson!” she told him loudly, looking down on him,
+and instinctively keeping her skirts clear of the unswept floor. “He
+was here, I know, some days ago,” she continued sharply. “Don’t say you
+don’t understand, because you do! But fetch him, or tell me where he
+is. Do you hear?”
+
+The old man moved his jaw to and fro. He grinned senilely.
+
+“He was here, eh?” he drawled.
+
+“Yes, he was here,” Henrietta returned, taking a tone of authority with
+him. “And I must see him.”
+
+“Ay?”
+
+“It is to do no harm to him,” she explained. “Tell him Miss Damer is
+here. Miss Damer, do you hear? He will see me, I am sure.”
+
+“Ay?” he said again in the same half-vacant tone. “Ay?”
+
+But he did not go beyond that; nor did he make any movement to comply.
+And she was beginning to think him wholly imbecile when his eyes left
+hers and fixed themselves on the front of her riding-coat. Then, after
+a moment’s silence, during which she patted the floor with her foot in
+fierce impatience, he raised his claw-like hand and stretched it slowly
+towards her throat.
+
+She stepped back, but as much in anger as in fear. Was the man
+imbecile, or very wicked?
+
+“What do you want?” she asked sharply. “Don’t you understand what I
+have said to you?”
+
+For the moment he seemed to be disconcerted by her movement. He stood
+in the same place, slowly blinking his weak eyes at her. Then he turned
+and moved in a slip-shod fashion to the hearth and threw on two or
+three morsels of touch-wood, causing the fire to leap up and shoot a
+flickering light into the darker corners of the room. The gleam
+discovered his dingy bed and dingier curtains, and the shadowy entrance
+to the staircase in which Henrietta had once seen Walterson. And it
+showed Henrietta herself, and awakened a spark in her angry eyes.
+
+The old man, still stooping, looked round at her, his chin on his
+shoulder. And slowly, with an odd crab-like movement, he edged his way
+back to her. She watched his approach with a growing fear of the gloomy
+house and the silence and the dark staircase. She began to think he was
+imbecile, or worse, and that nothing could be got from him. And she was
+in two minds about retreating—so powerfully do silence and mystery tell
+on the nerves—when he paused in his advance, and, raising his lean,
+twitching hand, pointed to her neck.
+
+“Give it me,” he whimpered. “Give it me—and I’ll see, maybe, where he
+is.”
+
+She frowned.
+
+“What?” she asked. “What do you want?”
+
+“The gold!” he croaked. “The gold! At your neck, lass! That sparkles!
+Give it me!” opening and shutting his lean fingers. “And I’ll—I’ll see
+what I can do.”
+
+She carried her fingers to the neck of her gown and touched the tiny
+gold medal struck to celebrate the birth of the Princess Charlotte,
+which she wore as a clasp at her throat. And relieved to find that he
+meant no worse, she smiled. The scarecrow before her was less of an
+“innocent” than she had judged him. It was so much the better for her
+purpose.
+
+“I cannot give you this,” she said. “But I’ll give you its value, if
+you will bring me to Walterson.”
+
+“No, no, give it me,” he whimpered, grimacing at her and making feeble
+clutches in the air. “Give it me!”
+
+“I cannot, I say,” she repeated. “It was my mother’s, and I cannot part
+with it. But if,” she continued patiently, “you will do what I ask I
+will give you its value, old man, another day.”
+
+“Give now!” he retorted. “Give now!” And leering with childish cunning,
+“Trust the day and greet the morrow! Groats in pouch ne’er yet brought
+sorrow! Na, na, Hinkson, old Hinkson trusts nobody. Give it me now,
+lass! And I—I know what I know.” And in a cracked and quavering voice,
+swaying himself to the measure,
+
+“It is an old saying
+
+That few words are best,
+
+And he that says little
+
+Shall live most at rest.
+
+And I by my gossips
+
+Do find it right so,
+
+Therefore I’ll spare speech,
+
+But—I know what I know.
+
+
+I know what I know!” he repeated, blinking with doting astuteness,
+
+“Therefore I’ll spare speech,
+But—I know what I know!”
+
+
+Henrietta stared. She would have given him the money, any money in her
+power. But imprudently prudent, she had brought none with her.
+
+“I can’t give it you now,” she said. “But I will give it you to-morrow
+if you will do what I ask. Otherwise I shall go and you will get
+nothing.”
+
+He did not reply, but he began to mumble with his jaws and dance
+himself up and down from his knees, as at her first entrance; with his
+monstrous head on one side and his red-lidded eyes peering at her. In
+the open, in the sunshine, she would not have feared him; she would
+have thought him only grotesque in his anger. But shut up in this
+hideous den with him, in this atmosphere of dimly perceived danger, she
+felt her flesh creep. What if he struck her treacherously, or took her
+by surprise? She had read of houses where the floors sank under doomed
+strangers, or the testers of beds came down on them in their sleep. He
+was capable, she was sure, of anything; even of murdering her for the
+sake of the two or three guineas’ worth of gold which she wore at her
+neck. Yet she held her ground.
+
+“Do you hear?” she said with spirit. “If you do not tell me, I shall
+go. And you will get nothing!”
+
+He nodded cunningly.
+
+“Bide a bit!” he said in a different tone. “Sit ye down, lass, sit ye
+down! Bide a bit, and I’ll see.”
+
+He slippered his way across the floor to get a stool for her. But when
+he had lifted the stool from the floor in his shaking hands, she marked
+with a quick leap of the heart that he had put himself between her and
+the door, and that, with the possession of the stool, his looks were
+altered. The heavy block wavered in his grasp and he seemed to pant and
+stagger under its weight. But there was an ugly light in his eyes as he
+sidled nearer and nearer to her; a light that meant murder. She was
+sure that he was going to leap upon her. And she remembered that no
+one, no one knew where she was, no one had seen her enter the house.
+She had only her own strength to look to, only her own courage and
+coolness, if she would escape this creature.
+
+“Put down that stool!” she said.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Put down that stool!” she repeated, firmly. And she kept her eyes on
+him, resisting the fatal temptation to glance at door or window. “Do
+you hear me? Put down that stool!”
+
+He hesitated, but her glance never wavered. And slowly and unwillingly
+he obeyed. Shaking as with the palsy, and with his mouth fallen open—so
+that he looked more imbecile and less human than ever—he relinquished
+the stool.
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+“Now,” she said bravely, though she was conscious that the perspiration
+had broken out on her brow, “tell me at once where he is?”
+
+But the old miser, though his will had yielded to hers, did not answer.
+He seemed to be shaken by his defeat, and to be at once feeble and
+furious. Glaring askance at her, he tottered to the settle on the
+hearth and sat down on it, breathing heavily.
+
+“Curse her! Curse her! Curse her!” he gibbered low, but audibly. And he
+licked his lips and gnashed his toothless gums at her in impotent rage.
+“Curse her! Curse her!” The firelight, now rising, now falling, showed
+him sitting there, mopping and mowing, like some unclean Eastern idol;
+or, again, masked his revolting ugliness.
+
+The girl thought him horrible, thought it all horrible. She felt for an
+instant as if she were going to faint. But she had gained the victory,
+she had mastered him, and she would make one last attempt to attain her
+object.
+
+“You wicked old man,” she said, “you would have hurt me! You wicked
+monster! But I am stronger, much stronger than you, and I do not fear
+you. Now I am going unless you tell me at once.”
+
+He ceased to gibber to her. He beckoned to her to approach him. But she
+shook her head. He no longer had the stool, but he might have some
+weapon hidden under the seat of the settle. She distrusted him.
+
+“No,” she said, “I am not coming near you. You are a villainous old
+man, and I don’t trust you.”
+
+“Have you no—no money?” he whimpered. “Nothing to give old Hinkson?
+Poor old Hinkson?” with a feeble movement of his fingers on his knees,
+as if he drew bed-clothes about him.
+
+“Where is Walterson?” she repeated. “Tell me at once.”
+
+“How do I know?” he whined. “I don’t know.”
+
+“He was here. You do know. Tell me.”
+
+He averted his eyes and held out a palsied hand.
+
+“Give!” he answered. “Give!”
+
+But she was relentless.
+
+“Tell me,” she rejoined, “or I go, and you get nothing.” She was in
+earnest now, for she began to despair of drawing anything from him, and
+she saw nothing for it but to go and return another time. “Do you
+hear?” she continued. “If you do not speak for me, I—I shall go to
+those who will know how to make you speak.”
+
+It was an idle threat; and one which she had no intention of executing.
+But the rage into which it flung him—no rage is so fierce as that which
+is mingled with fear—fairly appalled her. “Eh? Eh?” he cried, his voice
+rising to an inarticulate scream. “Eh? You will, will you?” And he rose
+to his feet and clawed the air as if, were she within reach, he would
+have torn her to pieces. “You devil, you witch, you besom! Go!” he
+cried. “I’ll sort you! I’ll sort you! I’ll fetch one as shall—as shall
+dumb you!”
+
+There was something so demoniacal in the old dotard’s passion, in its
+very futility, in its very violence, that the girl shrank like
+Frankenstein before the monster she had aroused. She turned to save
+herself, for, weak as he was, he seemed to be about to fling himself
+upon her; and she had no stomach for the contact. But as she
+turned—with a backward glance at him, and an arm stretched toward the
+door to make sure of the latch—a shadow cast by a figure passing before
+the lattice flitted across the floor between them, and a hand rested on
+the latch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+THE DARK MAID
+
+
+The substance followed the shadow so quickly that Henrietta had not
+time to consider her position before the latch rose. The door opened,
+and a girl entered hurriedly. The surprise was common to both, for the
+newcomer had closed the door behind her before she discerned Henrietta,
+and then her action was eloquent. She turned the key in the lock, and
+stood frowning, with her back to the door, and one shoulder advanced as
+if to defend herself. The other hand remained on the fastening.
+
+“You here?” she muttered.
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta replied, returning her look, and speaking with a touch
+of pride. For the feeling of dislike was instinctive; if Bess’s
+insolent smile had not stamped itself on her memory—on that first
+morning at the Low Wood, which seemed so very, very long ago—Henrietta
+had still known that she was in the presence of an enemy. “Are you—his
+daughter?” she continued.
+
+“Yes,” Bess answered. She did not move from the door, and she
+maintained her attitude, as if the surprise that had arrested her still
+kept her hand on the key. “Yes,” she repeated, “I am. You don’t”—with a
+glance from one to the other—“like him, I see!”
+
+“That is no matter,” Henrietta answered with dignity. “I am not here
+for him, nor to see him; I wish to see——”
+
+“Your lover?”
+
+Henrietta winced, and her face turned scarlet. And now there was no
+question of the hostility between them. Bess’s dark, smiling face was
+insolence itself.
+
+“What? Wasn’t he that?” the gipsy girl continued. “If he was not”—with
+a coarse look—“what do you want with him?”
+
+Silenced for the moment by the other’s taunt, Henrietta now found her
+voice.
+
+“I wish to see him,” she said. “That is enough for you.”
+
+“Oh, is it?” Bess replied. She had taken her hand from the key and
+moved a pace or two into the room, so as to confront her rival at close
+quarters. “That’s my affair! I fancy you will have to tell me a good
+deal more before you do see him.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh, why?” mimicking her rudely. “Why? Because——”
+
+“What are you to him?”
+
+“What you were!” Bess answered.
+
+Henrietta’s face flamed anew. But the insult no longer found her
+unprepared. She saw that she was in the presence of a woman dangerous
+and reckless; and one who considered her a rival. On the hearth
+crouched and gibbered that fearful old man. The door was locked—the
+action had not been lost on her; and no living being, no one outside
+that door, knew that she was here.
+
+“You are insolent!” was all she answered.
+
+“But it is true!” Bess said. “Or, if it is not true——”
+
+“It is not true!” with a glance of scorn. She knew even in her
+innocence that this girl had been more to him.
+
+“Then why do you ask for him?” with derision. “What do you want with
+him? What right have you to ask for him?”
+
+“I wish to see him,” Henrietta answered. She would not, if she could
+avoid it, let her fears appear. After all, it was daylight, and she was
+strong and young; a match, she thought, for the other if the old man
+had not been there. “I wish to see him, that is all, and that is
+enough,” she repeated, firmly.
+
+Bess did not answer at once. Indeed, at this point there came over her
+a change, as if either the other’s courage impressed her, or cooler
+thoughts suggested a different course of action. Her eyes still brooded
+malevolently on the other’s face, as if she would gladly have spoiled
+her beauty, and her sharp, white teeth gleamed. But to Henrietta’s last
+words she did not answer. She seemed to be wavering, to be uncertain.
+And at last,
+
+“Do you mean him fair?” she asked. “That is the question.”
+
+“I mean no harm to him.”
+
+“Upon your honour?”
+
+“Upon my honour.”
+
+“I’d tear you limb from limb if you did!” Bess cried in the old tone of
+violence. And the look which accompanied the words matched them. But
+the next moment, “If I could believe you,” she said more quietly, “it
+would be well and good. But——”
+
+“You may believe me. Why should I do him harm?”
+
+Bess bit her nails in doubt; and for the first time since her entrance
+she turned her eyes from her rival. Perhaps for this reason Henrietta’s
+courage rose. She told herself that she had been foolish to feel fear a
+few minutes before: that she had allowed herself to be scared by a few
+rude words, such as women of this class used on the least provocation.
+And the temptation to drop the matter if she could escape uninjured
+gave way to a brave determination to do all that was possible. She
+resolved to be firm, yet prudent; and to persevere. And when the
+dialogue was resumed the tone on each side was more moderate.
+
+“Well,” Bess said, with a grudging air, “perhaps you may not wish to do
+him harm. I don’t know, my lass. But you may do it, all the same.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“If you think he is here you are mistaken.”
+
+Henrietta had already come to this conclusion.
+
+“Still,” she said, “I can go to him.”
+
+“I don’t see how you are to go to him.”
+
+“I will go anywhere.”
+
+“Ay,” with contempt. “And so will a many more at your heels.”
+
+“No one saw me come here,” Henrietta said.
+
+“No. But it will be odd if no one sees you leave here. I met Bishop as
+I came, and another with him, hot-foot after you, both, and raising the
+country as fast as they could.”
+
+Henrietta frowned. She gazed through the window. Then she looked again
+at Bess.
+
+“Is he far from here?” she asked.
+
+“That’s telling, and I’m not going to tell. Far or near, I don’t see
+how you are to go to him, unless——” She broke off, paused a moment, and
+then, as if she put away a thought that had occurred to her, “No,” she
+said with decision, “I see no way. There is no way.”
+
+To Henrietta, the girl, the situation, the surroundings, and not least
+her own rôle, were odious. Merely to negotiate with such an one as this
+was a humiliation; but to endure her open scorn, to feel her cheeks
+burn under the fire of her taunts, was hateful. Yet failure in the
+enterprise from which she had let herself expect so much was still
+worse—still worse; and the prospect of it overcame her pride. She could
+not accept the defeat of all her hopes and expectations. She could not.
+
+“You said ‘unless,’” she retorted.
+
+Bess laughed.
+
+“Ay, but it’s an ‘unless,’” she answered contemptuously, “that you are
+not the one to fill up.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“What I say,” Bess answered impudently. And vaulting sideways on the
+table, she sat swinging her feet, and eyeing the other with a
+triumphant smile.
+
+“Unless what?”
+
+“Unless you like to stay here until it is dark,—ay, dark, my pretty
+peacock; and that won’t be for an hour or more. Then you may go to him
+safely. Not before! But you fine ladies,” with a look that took in
+Henrietta, from her high-piled hair and flushed face to the hem of her
+skirt, “are afraid of your shadows, I’m told.”
+
+“I am not afraid of my shadow,” Henrietta answered.
+
+“You’re afraid of the dark, or why didn’t you come when he asked you?
+And when you could have helped him? Why did you not come then and say
+what you chose to him?”
+
+“I did come,” Henrietta answered coldly. “It was he who failed to meet
+me.”
+
+“That’s a nice flim-flam!” Bess rejoined, with incredulity. “You’re not
+one to venture yourself out after moonrise, I’ll be bound. And so I
+told him! But any way,” sliding to her feet, and speaking with
+decision, “he’s not here, and you can’t see him! And to tell the truth,
+I’d as lief have your room as your company, that being so.”
+
+She turned to the door as if to open it. But Henrietta did not move.
+She was deep in thought. The sneering words, the dark handsome face,
+filled her with distrust; and with something like loathing of herself
+when she reflected that the man she sought had been this girl’s lover.
+But they also aroused her spirit. They spurred her to the step which
+the other dared her to take. Was she to show herself as a timid thing,
+as poor a creature as this gipsy girl deemed her? She had come hither
+with her heart set upon a prize; was she to relinquish that prize
+because its pursuit demanded an ordinary amount of courage—such courage
+as this village girl possessed and made naught of?
+
+And yet—and yet she hesitated. She was not afraid of the girl; she was
+not afraid—she told herself—of the man who had once professed to be her
+lover: but there might be others, and it would be dark. If the boy were
+there, there would be others. And she was not sure that she was—not
+afraid. For the old man by the fireside, with his squalid clothes and
+his horrible greediness, made her flesh creep. She hesitated, until
+Bess, with a sneer, bade her to go if she was going.
+
+“I’d as soon see your back,” she continued, “and ha’ done with it. I
+know your sort! All fine feathers and as much spunk as a mouse!”
+
+Henrietta made up her mind. She sat down on the nearest stool.
+
+“I shall remain,” she said, “and go with you to see him.”
+
+“Not you! So what’s the use of talking?”
+
+“I shall go,” Henrietta replied firmly. “It will be dark in an hour. I
+will remain and go with you.”
+
+Bess shrugged her shoulders and answered nothing. But had Henrietta
+caught sight of her smile, she had certainly changed her mind.
+
+Even without that, and unwarned, the girl found, as they sat there in
+silence, and the minutes passed and the light faded, much ground for
+hesitation. The words which Clyne had used when he forbade her to risk
+herself, the terms in which he had described the desperate plight of
+the men whom she must beard, the fears that had assailed her when she
+had gone after dark to meet a peril less serious—all these things
+recurred to her memory, and scared her. By pressing her lips together
+she maintained a show of unconcern; but only because the dusk hid her
+loss of colour. She repented—gravely; but she had not the courage to
+draw back. She shrank from meeting—as she must meet, if she rose to
+go—the other’s smile of triumph; she shrank from the sense of
+humiliation under which she would smart after she had escaped. She had
+cast the die and must dare. She must see the enterprise through. And
+she sat on. But she was sure that she could hardly suffer anything
+worse than she suffered during those minutes, while her fate still lay
+in her hands, while the power to withdraw was still hers, and
+indecision plucked at her. The man who fights with his back to the wall
+suffers less than when, before he drew his blade, imagination dealt him
+a score of deaths.
+
+The old man continued to grumble over the fire; and seldom, but
+sometimes, he laid his chin on his shoulder and looked back at her.
+Bess, on the contrary, gazed at her as the cat at the mouse; but with
+her back to the light and her own face in shadow, so that whatever
+thoughts or passions clouded her dark eyes, they passed unseen.
+Presently, as the light failed, Bess’s head became no more than a dark
+knob breaking the lower line of dusty panes; while through the upper a
+patch of pale green sky, promising frost, held Henrietta’s eyes and
+raised a still but solemn voice amid the tumult of her thoughts. That
+morsel of sky was the only clean, pure thing within sight, and it faded
+quickly, and became first grey and then a blur of darkness. By that
+time the room, with its close, fetid odours and its hints at gruesome
+secrets, had sunk into the blackness of night.
+
+The fire gave out a dull glow, but it went no farther than the hearth.
+Yet presently it was the cause of an illusion, if illusion it was,
+which gave Henrietta a shock. Turning her eyes from the window—it
+seemed to her that longer waiting would break her down—she saw the
+outline of the old miser’s figure, but erect and much closer to her
+than before—and, unless she was mistaken, with hands outstretched as if
+to clutch her neck. She uttered a low cry, and rose, and stepped back.
+On the instant he vanished. But whether he sank down, or retreated, or
+had never stirred, she could not be sure; while her cry found an echo
+in Bess’s mischievous laughter.
+
+“Ha! ha! You’re not quite so bold!” Bess cried, with enjoyment, “as you
+were an hour ago, I reckon!”
+
+The jeer gave a fillip to Henrietta’s pride.
+
+“I am ready,” she said, though her voice shook a little.
+
+“And you’ll go?”
+
+“Yes,” coldly; “I shall go.”
+
+“Did you think he was going to twist your pretty neck?” Bess rejoined.
+“Was that it? But come,” in a more sober tone, “we’ll go. Good-night,
+old man!” And moving to the door with the ease of one who knew every
+foot of the room, she unlocked it. A breath of fresh, cold air, blowing
+on her cheek, informed Henrietta that the door was open. She groped her
+way to it.
+
+“Do you wait here,” Bess whispered, “while I see if the coast is clear.
+You’ll hear an owl hoot; then come.”
+
+But Henrietta was not going to be left with that old man. She crept
+outside the door and, holding it behind her, waited. The night was dark
+as well as cold, for the moon would not rise for some hours; and
+Henrietta wondered, as she drew her hood about her neck, how they were
+to go anywhere. Presently the owl hooted low, and she released the
+door, and groped her way round the house and between the fir trunks to
+the gate. A hand, rough but small, clutched her wrist and turned her
+about; a voice whispered, “Come!” and the two, Bess acting as guide,
+set off in silence along the road in the direction of Troutbeck.
+
+“How far is it?” Henrietta muttered, when they had gone a distance,
+that in the night seemed a good half mile.
+
+“That’s telling,” Bess answered. “’Tain’t far. Turn here! Right!
+right!” pushing her. “Now wait while I——”
+
+“What are you doing?”
+
+Bess did not explain that she was opening a gate. Instead, she impelled
+the other forward and squeezed her arm to impress on her the need of
+silence. Henrietta felt that the ground over which they were passing
+was at once softer and more uneven, and she guessed that they had left
+the road. A moment later the air met her cheek more coldly, and the
+gloom seemed less opaque. She conjectured that she stood on the brow of
+a hill—or a precipice—and involuntarily she recoiled. But Bess dragged
+her on, down a slope so steep that, although the girl trod with
+caution, she was scarcely able to keep her feet.
+
+Feeling her still hang hack, the gipsy girl plucked at her.
+
+“Hurry!” she whispered. “Hurry, can’t you? We are nearly there.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Why, there!”
+
+But the cold and the darkness and the other’s hostile tone had shaken
+Henrietta’s nerves. She jerked herself free.
+
+“Where?” she repeated firmly. “Where are we going? I shall not go
+farther unless you tell me.”
+
+“Nonsense!”
+
+“I shall not.”
+
+“Let be! Let be!”
+
+“Tell me this minute!”
+
+“To Tyson the doctor’s, if you must know,” Bess replied grudgingly.
+
+“Oh!”
+
+She knew now. She stood half way down the smooth side of the hollow in
+which Tyson’s farm nestled. She remembered the large kitchen, with the
+shining oaken table and the woman with the pale plump face who had
+crouched on the settle and gone in fear of nights. And though the place
+still stood a trifle uncanny in her memory, and the uncomfortable
+impression which the woman’s complaints had made on her, had not quite
+passed from her, the knowledge relieved her.
+
+She knew at least where she was, and that the place lay barely a
+furlong from the road. She might count, too, on the aid of the doctor’s
+wife, who was jealous of this very girl. And after all, in comparison
+with the miser’s wretched abode, Tyson’s house, though lonely, seemed
+an everyday dwelling, and safe.
+
+The news reassured her. When Bess, in a tone of scorn that thinly
+masked disappointment, flung at her the words, “Then you are not
+coming?” she was ready.
+
+“Yes, I am coming,” she said. And she yielded herself again to Bess’s
+guidance. In less than a minute they were at the bottom of the hollow.
+They skirted the fold-yard and the long, silent buildings that bulked
+somewhat blacker than the night. They turned a corner, and a dog not
+far from them stirred its chain and growled. But Bess stilled it by a
+word, and the two halted in the gloom, where a thin line of light
+escaped beneath a door,
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+BESS’S TRIUMPH
+
+
+Bess knocked twice, and, stooping to the keyhole, repeated the owl’s
+hoot. Presently a bar was drawn back, and after a brief interval, which
+those within appeared to devote to listening, the key was turned, and
+the door was opened far enough to admit one person at a time. The two
+slid in, Bess pushing Henrietta before her.
+
+The moment she had passed the threshold Henrietta stood, dazzled by the
+light and bewildered by what she saw. Nor was it her eyes only that
+were unpleasantly affected. A voice, loud and blustering, hailed her
+appearance with a curse, fired from the heart of a cloud of tobacco
+smoke. And the air was heavy with the reek of spirits.
+
+“By G—d!” the voice which had affrighted her repeated. “Who’s this? Are
+you mad, girl?” And the speaker sprang to his feet. He was one of two
+thickset, unshaven men who were engaged in playing cards on a corner of
+the table. His comrade kept his place, but stared, a jug half lifted to
+his lips; while a third man, the only other present, a loose-limbed,
+good-looking gipsy lad, who had opened the door, grinned at the
+unexpected vision—as if his stake in the matter was less, and his
+interest in feminine charms greater. But nowhere, though the kitchen
+was wastefully lighted, and her frightened eyes flew to every part of
+it, was the man to be seen whom she came to meet.
+
+She turned quickly upon Bess, as if she thought she might still escape.
+But the door was already closed behind them, the key turned. And before
+she could speak:
+
+“Have done a minute!” Bess muttered, pushing her aside. “And let me
+deal with them.” Then, advancing into the room—but not before she had
+seen the great bar drawn across the locked door—“Shut your trap!” she
+cried to the man who had spoken. “And listen!”
+
+“Who’s this?”
+
+“What’s that to you?”
+
+“Who is it, I say?” the man cried, even more violently. “And what the
+blazes have you brought her here for?” And he poured out a string of
+oaths that drove the blood from Henrietta’s cheeks. “Who is it? Who is
+it?” he continued. “D’you think, you vixen, that because my neck is in
+a noose, I want some one to pull the rope tight?”
+
+“What a fool you are to talk before her!” Bess answered, with quiet
+scorn. “If any one pulls the hemp it’s you.”
+
+“Lord help you, I’ll do more than talk!” the man rejoined. And he
+snatched up a heavy pistol that lay on the table beside the cards.
+“Quick, will you? Speak! Who is it, and why do you bring her?”
+
+“I’ll speak quick enough, but not here!” Bess answered, contemptuously.
+“If you must jaw, come into the dairy! Come, don’t think that I’m
+afraid of you!” And she turned to Henrietta, who, stricken dumb by the
+scene, recognised too late the trap into which she had fallen. “Do you
+stay here,” she said, “unless you want his hand on you. Sit there!”
+pointing abruptly to the settle, “and keep mum until I come back.”
+
+But Henrietta’s terror at the prospect of being abandoned by the girl,
+though that girl had betrayed her, was such that she seized Bess by the
+sleeve and held her back.
+
+“Don’t leave me!” she said. And again, with a shadow of the old
+imperiousness, “You are not to leave me! Do you hear? I will come with
+you. I——”
+
+“You’ll do what you’re bid!” Bess answered. “Go and sit down!” And the
+savage glint in her eyes put a new fear into Henrietta.
+
+She went to the settle, her limbs unsteady under her, her eyes glancing
+round for a chance of escape. Where was the woman of the house? Where
+was Tyson? Chiefest of all, where was Walterson? She saw no sign of any
+of them. And terrified to the heart, she sat shivering where the other
+had ordered her to sit.
+
+Bess opened a side door which led to the dairy, a cold, flagged room,
+lower by a couple of steps than the kitchen. She took up a candle, one
+of five or six which were flaring on the table, and she beckoned to the
+two men to follow her. When they had done so, the one who had taken up
+the pistol still muttering and casting suspicious glances over his
+shoulder, she slammed to the door. But, either by accident, or with a
+view to intimidate her prisoner, she let it leap ajar again; so that
+much of the talk which followed reached Henrietta’s ears. It soon
+banished from the unhappy girl’s cheeks the blood which the gipsy lad’s
+stare of admiration had brought to them.
+
+Lunt’s first word was an oath. “You know well enough,” he cried, “that
+we want no praters here! Why have you brought this fool here to peach
+on us?”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Ay, why?” Lunt repeated. “In two days more we had all got clear, and
+nothing better managed!”
+
+“And thanks to whom?” the girl retorted with energy. “Who has hidden
+you? Who has kept you? Who has done all for you? But there it is! Now
+my lad’s gone, and Thistlewood’s gone, you think all’s yours! And as
+much of yourselves as masterless dogs!”
+
+“Stow it!”
+
+“But I’ll not!” she retorted. “Whose house is this?”
+
+“Well, my lass, not yours!” Giles, the less violent of the two,
+answered.
+
+“Nor yours either! And, any way, it’s due to me that you are in it, and
+not outside, with irons on you.”
+
+“But cannot you see, lass,” Giles answered, in a more moderate tone,
+“that you’ve upset all by bringing the wench here? You’ll hear the
+morrow, or the morrow of that, that your lad’s got clear to Leith, and
+Thistlewood with him! And then we go our way, and yon gipsy will carry
+off the brat in his long pack, and drop him the devil cares where—and
+nobody’ll be the wiser, and his father’ll have a lesson that will do
+him good! But, now you’ve let the girl in, what’ll you do with her when
+we get clear? You cannot stow her in the long pack, and the moment you
+let her go her tongue will clack!”
+
+“How do you know it will clack?” Bess asked, in a tone that froze the
+listening girl’s blood. “How do you know it will clack?” she repeated.
+“The lake’s deep enough to hold both.”
+
+“But what’s the game, lass?” Giles asked. “Show a glim. Let’s see it.
+If you are so fond of us,” in a tone of unpleasant meaning, “that
+you’ve brought her—just to amuse us in our leisure, say it out! Though
+even then I’m not for saying that the game is worth the candle, my
+lass! Since coves in our very particular case has to be careful, and
+the prettiest bit of red and white may hang a man as quick as her
+mother! But I don’t think you had that in your mind, Bess.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And that being so, and hemp so cheap, out with it! Show a glim, and
+you’ll not find us nasty.”
+
+“The thing’s pretty plain, isn’t it?” Bess answered, coolly. “You’ve
+had your fun. Why shouldn’t I have mine? You’d a grudge, and you’ve
+paid it. Why am I not to pay mine?”
+
+“What has the wench done to you?”
+
+“What’s that to you?” viciously. “Stolen my lad, if you like. Any Away,
+it’s my business. If I choose to treat her as you have treated the
+brat, what is it to you? If I’ve a mind to give her a taste of the
+smugglers’ oven, what’s that to you? Or if I choose to spoil her looks,
+or break her pride—she’s one of those that teach us to behave ourselves
+lowly and reverently to all our betters—and if I choose to give her a
+lesson, is it any business but mine? She’s crossed me! She’s a peacock!
+And if I choose to have some fun with her and hold her nose to the
+grindstone, what’s that to you?”
+
+“But afterwards?” Giles persisted. “Afterwards, my lass? What then?”
+
+“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Bess answered. “For
+the matter of that, if my old dad once gets his fingers round her
+throat she’ll not squeak! You may swear to that.”
+
+They dropped their voices then, or they moved farther from the door. So
+that the remainder of the debate escaped Henrietta, though she strained
+her ears to the utmost.
+
+She had heard enough, however; enough to know where she stood, and to
+feel the cold grip of despair close upon her. Fortunately she had had
+such preparation as the scene and the change in Bess’s demeanor
+afforded; and while her heart thumped to choke her, and she could not
+restrain the glances that like a hunted hare she cast about her, she
+neither fainted nor raised an outcry. The gipsy lad, who lolled beside
+the door and never took his bold eyes from her, detected the sudden
+stillness of her pose and her changed aspect. But, though his gaze
+dwelt as freely as he pleased on her, on the turn of her pale cheek,
+and the curve of her figure, he was deceived into thinking that she did
+not catch the drift that was so clear to him.
+
+“She’s frightened!” he thought, smacking his lips. “She’s frightened!
+But she’d be more frightened if she heard what they are saying. A
+devil, Bess is, a devil if there ever was one!” And he wondered
+whether, if he told the girl, she would cling to him, and pray to him,
+and kneel to him—to save her! He would like that, for she was a pretty
+prey; and the prettier in his eyes, because she was not dark-skinned
+and black-eyed, like his own women, but a thing of creamy fairness.
+
+Henrietta heard all, however, and understood. And for a few moments she
+was near to swooning. Then the very peril in which she found herself
+steadied her, and gave her power to think. Was there any quarter to
+which she could look for help—outside or in? Outside the house, alas,
+none; for she had taken care, fatal care, to blind her trail, and to
+leave no trace by which her friends could find her! And inside, the
+hope was as slight. Walterson, to whose pity she might have
+appealed—with success, if all chivalry were not dead in him—was gone,
+it seemed. There remained only—a feeble straw indeed to which to
+cling—the woman of the house; the white-faced woman who had gone in
+fear, and thought this very girl Bess had designs on her life!
+
+But was the woman here? She had been very near her time, yet no cry, no
+whimper bore witness to the presence of child life in the house. And
+the room in its wild and wasteful disorder gave the lie to the presence
+of any housewife, however careless. The flagged floor, long uncleaned
+and unwhitened, was strewn with broken pipe-stems, half-burned
+pipe-lights, gnawed bones and dirty platters. The bright oaken table,
+the pride of generations of thrifty wives, was a litter of dog’s-eared
+cards and over-set bottles, broken loaves, and pewter dishes. One of
+the oat-cake springs hung loose, tearing the ceiling; in one corner a
+bacon chest gaped open and empty. In another corner a pile of dubious
+bedding lay as its occupant had left it. The chimney corner was
+cumbered with logs of wood. Greasy frying-pans and half-cleaned pots
+lay everywhere; and on the whole, and on a medley of tattered things
+too repulsive to mention, a show of candles, that would have scared the
+least frugal dame, cast a useless glare.
+
+In a word, everything within sight proved that the house was at the
+mercy of the gang who surrounded her. And if that were so? If no help
+were possible? For an instant panic gripped her. The room swam round,
+and she had to grasp the settle with her hands to maintain her
+composure. What was she to do? What could she do, thus trapped? What?
+What?
+
+She must think—for her own sake, for the child’s sake, who, it was
+clear, was also in their power. But it was hard, very hard, to think
+with that man’s eyes gloating on her; and when with every second the
+door of the dairy, where they were conferring, might open, and—she knew
+not what horror might befall her. And—and then again there was the
+child!
+
+For she spared it a thought of pity, grudgingly taken from her own
+need. And then the door opened. And Bess, carrying the light above her
+head, came up the steps, followed by the two men.
+
+“We’ll let her down soft!” she said, as she appeared. “We’ll make her
+drudge first and smart afterwards! And she’ll come to it the quicker.”
+
+“Nay, Bess,” one of the men answered with a grin, “but you’ll not spoil
+her pretty fingers.”
+
+“Oh, won’t we?” Bess answered. And turning to Henrietta, and throwing
+off the mask, “Now, peacock!” she said, “I’ve got you here and you
+can’t escape. I am going to put your nose to the grindstone. I’m going
+to see if you are of the same stuff as other people! Can you cook?”
+
+Henrietta did not know what to answer; nor whether she dared assert
+herself. She tried to frame the words, “Where is Walterson? Where is
+Walterson? If he is not here, let me go!” But she knew that they would
+not let her go. And, unable to speak, she stood dumb before them.
+
+“Ah, well, we’ll see if you can,” Bess said, scoffingly. “I see you
+know what’s what, and where you are. Come, slice that bacon! And fry
+it! There’s the knife, and there’s the flitch, and let’s have none of
+your airs, or—you’ll have the knife across your knuckles. Do you hear,
+cat? Do you understand? You’ll do as you are bid here. We’ll see how
+you like to be undermost.”
+
+The men laughed.
+
+“That’s the way, Bess,” one said. “Break her in, and she’ll soon come
+to it!”
+
+“Anyways, she’ll not take my lad again!” Bess said, as Henrietta,
+bending her head, took the knife with a shaking hand. “We’ll give her
+something to do, and she’ll sleep the sounder for it when she goes to
+bed.”
+
+“Ay,” said Giles, with a smile. “Hope she’ll like her room!”
+
+“She’ll lump it’ or like it!” said Bess. “She’s one of them that grinds
+our faces. We’ll see how she likes to be ground!”
+
+Involuntarily Henrietta, stooping with a white face to her work,
+shuddered. But she had no choice. To beg for mercy, it was clear, was
+useless; to resist was to precipitate matters, while every postponement
+of the crisis offered a chance of rescue. As long as insult was
+confined to words she must put up with it—how foolish, how foolish she
+had been to come! She must smile—though it were awry—and play the
+sullen or the cheerful, as promised best. The door was locked on her.
+She had no friends within reach. Help there was none. She was wholly at
+the mercy of these wretches, and her only hope was that, if she did
+their bidding, she might awaken a spark of pity in the breast of one or
+other of them.
+
+Still, she did not quite lose her presence of mind. As she bent over
+her task, and with shaking fingers hacked at the tough rind of the
+bacon, the while Bess rained on her a shower of gibes and the men
+grinned at the joke, her senses were on the alert. Once she fancied a
+movement and a smothered cry in the room above; and she had work to
+keep her eyes lowered when Bess immediately went out. She might have
+thought more of the matter; but left alone with the three men she had
+her terrors. She dared not let her mind or her eyes wander. To go on
+with the task, and give the men not so much as a look, seemed the only
+course.
+
+For the present the three limited their coarse gallantries to words.
+Nay, when the gipsy lad would have crept nearer to her, the others bade
+him have done; adding, that kissing the cook-maid never cleaned a dish.
+
+Then Bess came back and forced her to hold the pan on the fire, though
+the heat scorched her cheeks.
+
+“We’ve to do it! See how you like it!” the girl cried, standing over
+her vindictively. “And see you don’t drop it, my lass, or I’ll lay the
+pan to your cheek. You’re proud of your pink and white”—thrusting her
+almost into the fire—“see how it will stand a bit of cook-maid’s work!”
+
+Pride helped Henrietta to restrain the rising sob, the complaint. And
+luckily it needed but another minute to complete the cooking. Bess and
+the three men sat down to the table, and Bess’s first humour was to
+make her wait on them. But a moment later she changed her mind, forced
+the girl to sit down, and, will she, nill she, Henrietta had to
+swallow, though every morsel seemed to choke her, the portion set for
+her.
+
+“Down with it!” Bess cried, spitefully. “What’s good enough for us is
+good enough for you! And when supper’s done I’ll see you to your
+bedroom. You’re a mile too dainty, like all your sort! Ah, you’d like
+to kill me this minute, wouldn’t you? That’s what I like! I’ve often
+thought I should like to have one of you peacocks—who look at me as if
+I were dirt—and put my foot upon her face! And now I’ve got you—who
+stole my lad! And you’ll see what I’ll do to you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+A STRANGE BEDROOM
+
+
+The men followed Bess’s lead, and as they supped never ceased to make
+Henrietta the butt of odious jests and more odious gallantries; until,
+now pale, now red, the girl was eager to welcome any issue from a
+position so hateful. Once, stung beyond reason, she sprang up and would
+have fled from them, with burning ears. But Bess seized her by the
+shoulders and thrust her back violently into her seat; and, sobered by
+the force used to her, and terrified lest the men should lay hands on
+her, she resigned herself.
+
+Strangely, the one of the four who said nothing, was the one whom she
+feared the most. The gipsy lad did not speak. But his eyes never left
+her, and something in their insolent freedom caused her more misery
+than the others’ coarsest jests. He marked her blushes and pallor, and
+her one uncontrollable revolt; and like the bird that flutters under
+the spell of the serpent that hopes to devour it, she was conscious of
+this watching. She was conscious of it to such an extent, that when
+Bess cried, “Now it’s time you had your bedroom candlestick, peacock!”
+she did not hear, but sat on as one deaf and blind; as the hare sits
+fascinated by the snake’s eye.
+
+The gipsy smiled. He understood. But Bess did not, and she tugged the
+girl’s hair with sufficient roughness to break the spell.
+
+“Up!” she cried. “Up when I speak! Don’t dream you’re a fine lady any
+longer! Wait till I get your bed candlestick—eh, lads?—and you’ll be
+wiser to-morrow, and tamer, too. See, my lass, that’s for you!” And she
+held up a small dark-lanthorn, and opening it, kindled the wick from
+one of the candles. “Now come! And do you—no, not you!” to the gipsy,
+who had stepped forward—“you!” to Giles, “come with me and see her
+safely into her bedroom!”
+
+Lunt growled a word or two.
+
+“Stow it!” Bess answered, as she darkened the lanthorn. “It’s to be as
+I say. Here, give me your wrist, girl.”
+
+But at that, fear gripped Henrietta. She hung back with a white face.
+
+“What are you going to do with me?” she cried. “What are you——”
+
+“In two minutes you’ll see!” Bess retorted. And with a quick movement
+she grasped the girl’s arm. “And be as wise as I am. Lay hold of her
+other arm,” she continued to Giles. “It’s no use to struggle, my
+lady!—and if she cries out down her at once. You hear, do you?” she
+continued, addressing Henrietta, who with terror found herself as
+helpless as a doe in the hound’s fangs. “Then mum, and it’ll be the
+better for you. Here, do you take the lanthorn,” she went on, handing
+it to Giles, “and I’ll carry the victuals. You can hold her?”
+
+“I’ll break her wrist if she budges,” the man replied. “But, after all,
+isn’t she as well here?”
+
+“No, she’s not!” Bess answered, with decision. “Do you”—to Lunt—“open
+the yard door for us, and stand by till we come in again. No, not you,”
+to the gipsy, who had again stepped forward. “You’re too ready, my lad,
+and I don’t trust you.”
+
+Fortunately for Henrietta, the sight of the plate of food relieved her
+of her worst fears. She was not to be done to death, but in all
+probability to be consigned to the hiding place which held the boy. And
+though the prospect was not cheerful, and Bess’s manner was cruel and
+menacing, Henrietta felt that if this were the worst she could face it.
+She could bear even what the child bore, and by sharing its hardships
+she might do something to comfort it. Always, too, there was the chance
+of escape; and from the place, be it out-house or stable, in which they
+held the boy confined, escape must be more feasible than from the
+house, with its bolts and bars.
+
+She had time to make these calculations between the kitchen and the
+yard door; through which they half-led, half-pushed her into the night.
+With all a woman’s natural timidity on finding herself held and
+helpless in the dark, she had to put restraint upon herself not to try
+to break loose, not to scream. But she conquered herself and let them
+lead her, unresisting and as one blindfold, where they pleased.
+
+It was clear that they knew the place well. For, though the darkness in
+the depths of this bowl in the hills was absolute, they did not unmask
+the lanthorn; but moved confidently for a distance of some fifty yards.
+The dog, kenneled near, had given tongue as they left the house. But
+once only. And when they paused, all was so still in the frosty mist
+that wrapped them about and clutched the throat, that Henrietta’s ear
+caught the trickle of water near at hand.
+
+“Where are we?” she muttered. “Where are we?” She hung back in sudden,
+uncontrollable alarm.
+
+“Mum, fool!” Bess hissed in her ear. “Be still, or it will be the worse
+with you. Have you,” she continued, in the same low tone, “undone the
+door, lad?”
+
+For answer a wooden door groaned on its hinges.
+
+“Right!” Bess murmured. “Bend your head, girl!”
+
+Henrietta obeyed, and pushed forward by an unseen hand, she advanced
+three paces, and felt a warmer air salute her cheek. The door groaned
+again; she heard a wooden bolt thrust home. Bess let her hand go and
+unmasked the lanthorn.
+
+Henrietta shivered. She was in a covered well-head, whence the water,
+after filling a sunken caldron, about which the moss hung in dark,
+snaky wreaths, escaped under the wooden door. Some yeoman of bygone
+days had come to the help of nature, and after enlarging a natural
+cavity had enclosed it, to protect the water from pollution. The place
+was so small that it no more than held the three who stood in it, nor
+all of them dry-shod. And Henrietta’s heart sank indeed before the
+possibility of being left to pass the night in this dank cave.
+
+Bess’s next movement freed her from this fear. The girl turned the
+light on the rough wall, and seizing an innocent-looking wooden peg,
+which projected from it, pushed the implement upwards. A piece of the
+wall, of the shape and size of a large oven door, fell downwards and
+outwards, as the tail of a cart falls. It revealed a second cavity of
+which the floor stood a couple of feet higher than the ground on which
+they were. It was very like a spacious bread-oven, though something
+higher and longer; apparently it had been made in the likeness of one.
+
+But Henrietta did not think of this, or of its shape or its purpose.
+For the same light, a dim, smoky lamp burning at the far end of the
+place, which revealed its general aspect, disclosed a bundle of straw
+and a forlorn little form.
+
+She gasped. For that any human creature, much more a child, should be
+confined in such a place, buried in the bowels of the earth, seemed so
+monstrous, so shocking, that she could not believe it!
+
+“Oh!” she cried, forgetting for the moment her own position and her own
+fate, forgetting everything in her horror and pity. “You have not left
+the child here! And alone! For shame! For shame!” she continued,
+turning on them in the heat of her indignation and fearing them no more
+than a hunter fears a harmless snake—which excites disgust, but not
+terror. “What do you think will happen to you?”
+
+For a moment, strange to say, her indignation cowed them. For a moment
+they saw the thing as she saw it; they were daunted. Then Bess sneered:
+
+“You don’t like the place?”
+
+“For that child?”
+
+“For yourself?”
+
+She was burning with indignation, and for answer she climbed into the
+place, and went on her hands and knees to the child’s side. She bent
+over it, and listened to its breathing.
+
+“Is’t asleep?” Bess asked. There was a ring of anxiety in her tone. And
+when Henrietta did not answer, “It’s not dead?” she muttered.
+
+“Dead? No,” Henrietta replied, with a shudder. “But it’s—it’s——”
+
+“What?”
+
+“It breathes, but—but——” She drew its head on to her shoulder and
+peered more closely into the small white face. “It breathes, but—but
+what is the matter with it? What have you done to it?”—glancing at them
+suspiciously. For the boy, after returning her look with lack-lustre
+eyes, had averted his face from the light and from hers.
+
+“It’s had a dose,” Bess answered roughly—she had had her moment of
+alarm. “In an hour or two it will awake. Then you can feed it. Here’s
+the porridge. And there’s milk. It was fresh this morning and must be
+fresh enough now. Hang the brat, I’m sure it has been trouble enough.
+Now you can nurse it, my lass, and I wish you joy of it, and a gay
+good-night! And before morning you’ll know what it costs to rob Bess
+Hinkson of her lad!”
+
+“But the child will die!” Henrietta cried, rising to her feet—she could
+stand in the place, but not quite erect. “Stay! Stay! At least take——”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Take the child in! And warm and feed it! Oh, I beg you take it!”
+Henrietta pleaded. “It will die here! It is cold now! I believe it is
+dying now!”
+
+“Dying, your grand-dam!” the girl retorted, scornfully. “But if we take
+it, will you stay?”
+
+“I will!” Henrietta answered. “I will!”
+
+“So you will! And the child, too!” Bess retorted. And she slammed-to
+the door. But again, while Henrietta, appalled by her position, still
+stared at the place, the shutter fell, and Bess thrust in her dark,
+handsome face. “See here!” she said. “If you begin to scream and shout,
+it will be the worse for you, and do you remember that! I shall not
+come, but I shall send Saul. He’s took a fancy to you, and will find a
+way of silencing you, I’ll bet!” with an unpleasant smile. “So now you
+know! And if you want his company you’ll shout!”
+
+She slammed the shutter to again with that, and Henrietta heard the
+bolt fall into its place.
+
+The girl stood for a moment, staring and benumbed. But presently her
+eyes, which at first travelled wildly round, grew more sober. They fell
+on her tiny fellow-prisoner, and, resting on that white, unconscious
+cheek, on those baby hands clenched in some bygone paroxysm, they
+filled slowly with tears.
+
+“I will think of the child! I will think of the child!” she murmured.
+And, crouching down, she hugged it to her with a sensation of relief,
+almost of happiness. “I thank God I came! I thank God I am here to
+protect it!”
+
+And resolutely averting her eyes from the low roof and oven-like walls,
+that, when she dwelt too long on them, seemed, like the famous dungeon
+of Poe, to contract about her and choke her, she devoted herself to the
+child; and as she grew scared by its prolonged torpor, she strove to
+rouse it. At first her efforts were vain. But she persisted in them.
+For the vision which she had had in the cell at Kendal—of the child
+holding out pleading hands to her—rose to her memory. She was certain
+that at that moment the child had been crying for aid. And surely not
+for nothing, not without purpose, had the cry come to her ears who now
+by so strange a fate was brought to the boy’s side.
+
+At intervals she felt almost happy in this assurance; as she pressed
+the child to her, and watched by the dim, yellow light its slow
+recovery from the drug. Her present danger, her present straits, her
+position in this underground place, which would have sent some mad,
+were forgotten. And the past and the future filled her thoughts; and
+Anthony Clyne. Phrases of condemnation and contempt which _he_ had used
+to her recurred, as she nursed his child; and she rejoiced to think
+that he must unsay them! The bruises which he had inflicted still
+discoloured her wrist, and moved strange feelings in her, when her eyes
+fell upon them. But he would repent of his violence soon! Very soon,
+very soon, and how completely! The thought was sweet to her!
+
+She was in peril, and a week before she had been free as air. But then
+she had been without any prospect of reinstatement, any hope of
+regaining the world’s respect, any chance of wiping out the
+consequences of her mad and foolish act. Now, if she lived, and escaped
+from this strait, he at least must thank her, he at least must respect
+her. And she was sure, yes, she dared to tell herself, blushing, that
+if he respected her, he would know how to make the world also respect
+her.
+
+But then again she trembled. For there was a darker side. She was in
+the power of these wretches; and the worst—the thought paled her
+cheek—might happen! She held the child more closely to her, and rocked
+it to and fro in earnest prayer. The worst! Yes, the worst might
+happen. But then again she fell back on the reflection that _he_ was
+searching for them, and if any could find them he would. He was
+searching for them, she was sure, as strenuously, and perhaps with more
+vengeful purpose than when he had sought the child alone! By this time,
+doubtless, she was missed, and he had raised the country, flung wide
+the alarm, set a score moving, fired the dalesmen from Bowness to
+Ambleside. Yes, for certain they were searching for her. And they must
+know, careful as she had been to hide her trail, that she could not
+have travelled far; and the scope of the search, therefore, would be
+narrow, and the scrutiny close. They could hardly fail, she thought, to
+visit the farm in the hollow; its sequestered and lonely position must
+invite inquiry. And if they entered, a single glance at the disordered
+kitchen would inform the searchers that something was amiss.
+
+So far Henrietta’s thoughts, as she clasped the boy to her and strove
+to warm him to life against her own body, ran in a current chequered
+but more or less hopeful. But again the supposition would force itself
+upon her—the men were desperate, and the woman was moved by a strange
+hatred of her. What if they fled, and left no sign? What if they
+escaped, and left no word of her? The thought was torture! She could
+not endure it. She put the child down, and rising to her knees, she
+covered her eyes with her hands. To be buried here underground! To die
+of hunger and thirst in this bricked vault, as far from hope and help,
+from the voices and eyes of men and the blessed light of the sun, as if
+they had laid her alive in her coffin!
+
+Oh, it was horrible! She could not bear it; she could not bear to think
+of it. She sprang, forgetting herself, to her feet, and the blow which
+the roof dealt her, though her thick hair saved her from injury,
+intensified the feeling. She was buried! Yes, she was buried alive! The
+roof seemed to be sinking upon her. These brick walls so cunningly
+arched, and narrowing a t either end, as the ends of a coffin narrow,
+were the walls of her tomb! Those faint lines of mortar which seclusion
+from the elements had preserved in their freshness, presently she would
+attack them with her nails in the frenzy of her despair. She glared
+about her. The weight, the mass of the hill above, seemed to press upon
+her. The air seemed to fail her. Was there no way, no way of escape
+from this living tomb—this grave under the tons and tons and tons of
+rock and earth?
+
+And then the child—perhaps she had put him from her roughly, and the
+movement had roused him—whimpered. And she shook herself free—thank
+God—free from the hideous dream that had obsessed her. She remembered
+that the men were not yet fled, nor was she abandoned. She was leaping,
+thank Heaven, far above the facts. In a passion of relief she knelt
+beside the child, and rained kisses on him, and swore to him, as he
+panted with terror in her arms, that he need not fear, that he was safe
+now, and she was beside him to take care of him! And that all would be
+well if he would not cry. All would be well. For she bethought herself
+that the child must not know how things stood. Fear and suffering he
+might know if the worst came; but not the fear, not the mental torture
+which she had known for a few moments, and which in so short a time had
+driven her almost beside herself.
+
+The boy’s faculties were still benumbed by the hardships which he had
+undergone; perhaps a little by the narcotic he had taken. And though he
+had seen Henrietta at least a dozen times in the old life, he could not
+remember her. Nevertheless she contrived to satisfy him that she was a
+friend, that she meant him well, that she would protect him. And little
+by little, in spite of the surroundings which drew the child’s eyes
+again and again in terror to the dimly-lit vaulting, on which the
+shadow of the girl’s figure bulked large, his alarm subsided. His heart
+beat less painfully, and his eyes lost in a degree the strained and
+pitiful look which had become habitual. But his little limbs still
+started if the light flickered, or the oil sputtered; and it was long
+before, partly by gentle suasion, partly by caresses, she succeeded in
+inducing the child—nauseated as he was by the drug—to take food. That
+done, though she still believed him to be in a critical state, and
+dreadfully weak, she was better satisfied. And soon, soothed by her
+firm embrace and confident words, her charge fell into a troubled
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+THE SEARCH
+
+
+To return to Bishop. Thrown off the trail in the wood, he pushed along
+the road as far as Windermere village. There, however, he could hear
+nothing. No one of Henrietta’s figure and appearance had been seen
+there. And in the worst of humours, with the world as well as with
+himself, he put about and returned to the inn. If the girl had come
+back during his absence, it was bad enough; he had had his trouble for
+nothing, and might have spared his shoe-leather. Hang such pretty
+frailties for him! But if, on the other hand, she had not come back,
+the case was worse. He had been left to watch her, and the blame would
+fall on him. Nadin would say more than he had said already about London
+officers and their uselessness. And if anything happened to her! Bishop
+wiped his brow as he thought of that, and of his next meeting with
+Captain Clyne. It was to be hoped, be devoutly hoped, that nothing had
+happened to the jade.
+
+It wanted half an hour of sunset, when he arrived, fagged and fuming,
+at the inn; and if his worst fears were not realised, he soon had
+ground to dread that they might be. Miss Damer had not returned.
+
+“I’ve no truck with them rubbishy radicals,” Mrs. Gilson added
+impersonally, scratching her nose with the handle of a spoon—a sign
+that she was ill at ease. “But they’re right enough in one thing, and
+that is, that there’s a lot of useless folk paid by the country—that’d
+never get paid by any one else! And for brains, give me a calf’s head!”
+
+Bishop evaded the conflict with what dignity he might.
+
+“The Captain’s not come in?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, he’s come in,” the landlady answered.
+
+“Well,” sullenly, “the sooner I see him the better, then!”
+
+“You can’t see him now,” Mrs. Gilson replied, with a glance at the
+clock. “He’s sleeping.”
+
+Bishop stared.
+
+“Sleeping?” he cried. “And the young lady not come back?”
+
+“He don’t know that she has so much as gone out,” Mrs. Gilson answered
+with the utmost coolness. “And what’s more, I’m not going to tell him.
+He came in looking not fit to cross a room, my man, let alone cross a
+horse! And when I went to take him a dish of tea I found him asleep in
+his chair. And you may take it from me, if he’s not left to have out
+his sleep, now it’s come, he’ll be no more use to you, six hours from
+this, than a corpse!”
+
+“Still, ma’am,” Bishop objected, “the Captain won’t be best pleased——”
+
+“Please a flatiron!” Mrs. Gilson retorted. “Best served’s best pleased,
+my lad, and that you’ll learn some day.” And then suddenly taking the
+offensive, “For the matter of that, what do you want with him?” she
+continued. “Ain’t you grown men? If Joe Nadin and you and half a dozen
+redbreasts can’t find one silly girl in an open countryside, don’t talk
+to me of your gangs! And your felonies! And the fine things you do in
+London!”
+
+“But in London——”
+
+“Ay, London Bridge was made for fools to go under!” Mrs. Gilson
+answered, with meaning. “It don’t stand for nothing.”
+
+Bishop tapped his top-boot gloomily.
+
+“She may come in any minute,” he said. “There’s that.”
+
+“She may, or she mayn’t,” Mrs. Gilson answered, with another look at
+the clock.
+
+“She’s not been gone more than an hour and a half.”
+
+“Nor the mouse my cat caught this afternoon,” the landlady retorted.
+“But you’ll not find it easily, my lad, nor know it when you find it.”
+
+He had no reply to make to that, but he carried his eye again to the
+clock. He was very uncomfortable—very uncomfortable. And yet he hardly
+knew what to do or where to look. In the meantime the girl’s
+disappearance was becoming known, and caused, indoors and out, a thrill
+of excitement. Another abduction, another disappearance! And at their
+doors, on their thresholds, under their noses! Some heard the report
+with indignation, and two in the house heard it with remorse; many with
+pity. But in the breasts of most the feeling was not wholly painful.
+The new mystery revived and doubled the old; and blew to a white heat
+the embers of interest which were beginning to grow cold. In the teeth
+of the nipping air—and sunset is often the coldest hour of the
+twenty-four—groups gathered in the yard and before the house. And while
+a man here and there winked at his neighbour and hinted that the young
+madam had slunk back to the lover from whom she had been parted, the
+common view was that mischief was afoot and something strong should be
+done.
+
+Meanwhile uncertainty—and in a small degree the absence of Captain
+Clyne and Nadin—paralysed action. At five, Bishop sent out three or
+four of his dependants; one to watch the boat-landing, one to keep an
+eye on the entrance to Troutbeck village, and others to bid the
+constables at Ambleside and Bowness be on the watch. But as long as the
+young lady’s return seemed possible—and some still thought the whole a
+storm in a tea-cup—men not unnaturally shrank from taking the lead. Nor
+until the man who took all the blame to himself interposed, was any
+real step taken.
+
+It was nearly six when Bishop, talking with his friends in the passage,
+found himself confronted by the chaplain. Mr. Sutton was in a state of
+great and evident agitation. There were red spots on his cheek-bones,
+his pinched features were bedewed with perspiration, his eyes were
+bright. And he who usually shunned encounter with coarser wits, now
+singled out the officer in the midst of his fellows.
+
+“Are you going to do nothing,” he cried, “except drink?”
+
+Bishop stared.
+
+“See here, Mr. Sutton,” he said, slowly and with dignity, “you must not
+forget——”
+
+“Except drink?” the chaplain repeated, without compromise. And taking
+Bishop’s glass, which stood half-filled on the window-seat beside him,
+he flung its contents through the doorway. “Do your duty, sir!” he
+continued firmly. “Do your duty! You were here to see that the lady did
+not leave the house alone. And you permitted her to go.”
+
+“And what part,” Bishop answered, with a sneer, “did your reverence
+play, if you please?” He was a sober man for those times, and the taunt
+was not a fair one.
+
+“A poor part,” the chaplain answered. “A mean one! But now—I ask only
+to act. Say what I shall do, and if it be only by my example I may
+effect something.”
+
+“Ay, you may!” Bishop returned. “And I’ll find your reverence work fast
+enough. Do you go and tell Captain Clyne the lady’s gone. It’s a task
+I’ve no stomach for myself,” with a grin; “and your reverence is the
+very man for it.”
+
+Mr. Sutton winced.
+
+“I will do even that,” he said, “if you will no longer lose time.”
+
+“But she may return any minute.”
+
+“She will not!” Mr. Sutton retorted, with anger. “She will not! God
+forgive us for letting her go! If I failed in my duty, sir, do you do
+yours! Do you do yours!”
+
+And such power does enthusiasm give a man, that he who these many days
+had seemed to the inn a poor, timid creature, slinking in and out as
+privately as possible, now shamed all and kindled all.
+
+“By jingo, I will, your reverence!” Bishop cried, catching the flame.
+“I will!” he repeated heartily. And he turned about and began to give
+orders with energy.
+
+Fortunately Nadin arrived at that moment; and with his burly form and
+broad Lancashire accent, he seemed to bring with him the vigour of ten.
+In three minutes he apprehended the facts, pooh-poohed the notion that
+the girl would return, and with a good round oath “dommed them
+Jacobins,” to give his accent for once, “for the graidliest roogs and
+the roofest devils i’ all Lancashire—and that’s saying mooch! But we
+mun ha’ them hanged now,” he continued, striding to and fro in his
+long, rough horseman’s coat. “We mun ha’ them hanged! We’ll larn them!”
+
+
+[Illustration: ] In ten minutes the road twinkled with lights ...
+
+
+He formed parties and assigned roads and brought all into order. The
+first necessity was to visit every house within a mile of the inn on
+the Windermere side; and this was taken in hand at once. In ten minutes
+the road twinkled with lights, and the frosty ground rang under the
+tread of ironshod boots. It was ascertained that no boat had crossed
+the lake that afternoon; and this so far narrowed the area to be
+searched, that the men were in a high state of excitement, and those
+who carried firearms looked closely to their priming.
+
+“’Tis a pity it’s neet!” said Nadin. “But we mun ha’ them, we mun ha’
+them, afoor long!”
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Sutton had braced himself to the task which he had
+undertaken. Challenged by Bishop, he had been anxious to go at once to
+Clyne’s room and tell him; that the Captain might go with the searchers
+if he pleased. But he had not mounted three steps before Mrs. Gilson
+was at his heels, bidding him, in her most peremptory manner, to “let
+his honour be for another hour. What can he do?” she urged. “He’s but
+one more, and now the lads are roused, they’ll do all he can do! Let
+him be, let him be, man,” she continued. “Or if you must, watch him
+till he wakes, and then tell him.”
+
+“It will be worse then,” the chaplain said.
+
+“But he’ll be better!” she retorted. “Do you be bidden by me. The man
+wasn’t fit to carry his meat to his mouth when he went upstairs. But
+let him be until he has had his sleep out and he’ll be another man.”
+
+And Mr. Sutton let himself be bidden. But he was right. Every minute
+which passed made the task before him more difficult. When at last
+Captain Clyne awoke, a few minutes after eight o’clock, and startled,
+brought his scattered senses to a focus, he saw sitting opposite him a
+man who hid his face in his hands, and shivered.
+
+Clyne rose.
+
+“Man, man!” he said. “What is it? Have you bad news?”
+
+But the chaplain could not speak. He could only shake his head.
+
+“They have not—not found——”
+
+Clyne could not finish the sentence. He turned away, and with a
+trembling hand snuffed a candle—that his face might be hidden.
+
+The chaplain shook his head.
+
+“No, no!” he said. “No!”
+
+“But it is—it’s bad news?”
+
+“Yes. She’s—she’s gone! She’s disappeared!”
+
+Clyne dropped the snuffers on the table.
+
+“Gone?” he muttered. “Who? Miss Damer?”
+
+“Yes. She left the house this afternoon, and has not returned. It was
+my fault! My fault!” poor Mr. Sutton continued, in a tone of the
+deepest abasement. And with his face hidden he bowed himself to and fro
+like a man in pain. “They asked me to follow her, and I would not! I
+would not—out of pride!”
+
+“And she has not returned?” Clyne asked, in an odd tone.
+
+“She has not returned—God forgive me!”
+
+Clyne stared at the flame of the nearest candle. But he saw, not the
+flame, but Henrietta; as he had seen her the morning he turned his back
+on her, and left her standing alone on the road above the lake. Her
+slender figure under the falling autumn leaves rose before him; and he
+knew that he would never forgive himself. By some twist of the mind her
+fate seemed the direct outcome of that moment, of that desertion, of
+that cruel, that heartless abandonment. The after-events, save so far
+as they proved her more sinned against than sinning, vanished. He had
+been her sole dependence, her one protector, the only being to whom she
+could turn. And he had abandoned her heartlessly; and this—this unknown
+and dreadful fate—was the result. Her face rose before him, now smiling
+and defiant, now pale and drawn; and the piled-up glory of her hair.
+And he remembered—too late, alas, too late—that she had been of his
+blood and his kin; and that he had first neglected her, and later when
+his mistake bred its natural result in her act of folly, he had
+deserted and punished her.
+
+Remorse is the very shirt of Nessus. It is of all mental pains the
+worst. It seizes upon the whole mind; it shuts out every prospect. It
+cries into the ear with every slow tick of the clock, the truth that
+that which had once been so easy can never be done now! That
+reparation, that kind word, that act of care, of thoughtfulness, of
+pardon—never, never now! And once so easy! So easy!
+
+For he knew now that he had loved the girl; and that he had thrown away
+that which might have been the happiness of his life. He knew now that
+only pride had blinded him, giving the name of pity to that which was
+love—or so near to love that it was impossible to say where one ended
+and the other began. He thought of her courage and her pride; and then
+of the womanliness that, responding to the first touch of gentleness on
+his side, had wept for his child. And how he had wronged her from the
+first days of slighting courtship! how he had misunderstood her, and
+then mistrusted and maligned her—he, the only one to whom she could
+turn for help, or whom she could trust in a land of strangers—until it
+had come to this! It had come to this.
+
+Oh, his poor girl! His poor girl!
+
+A groan, bitter and irrepressible, broke from him. The man stood
+stripped of the trappings of prejudice; he saw himself as he was, and
+the girl as she was, a creature of youth and spirit and impulse. And he
+was ashamed to the depths of his soul.
+
+At last, “What time did she go out?” he muttered.
+
+The chaplain roused himself with a shiver and told him.
+
+“Then she has been missing five hours?” There was a sudden hardening in
+his tone. “You have done something, I suppose? Tell me, man, that you
+have done something!”
+
+The chaplain told him what was being done. And the mere statement gave
+comfort. Hearing that Mrs. Gilson had been the last to speak to her,
+Clyne said he would see the landlady. And the two went out of the room.
+
+In the passage a figure rose before them and fled with a kind of
+bleating cry. It was Modest Ann, who had been sitting in the dark with
+her apron over her head. She was gone before they were sure who it was.
+And they thought nothing of the incident, if they noticed it.
+
+Downstairs they found no news and no comfort; but much coming and
+going. For presently the first party returned from its quest, and
+finding that nothing had been discovered, set forth again in a new
+direction. And by-and-by another returned, and standing ate something,
+and went out again, reinforced by Clyne himself. And so began a night
+of which the memory endured in the inn for a generation. Few slept, and
+those in chairs, ready to start up at the first alarm. The tap ran free
+for all; and in the coffee-room the table was set and set again. The
+Sunday’s joints—for the next day was Sunday—were cooked and cold, and
+half-eaten before the morning broke; and before breakfast the larder of
+the Salutation at Ambleside was laid under contribution. At intervals,
+those who dozed were aware of Nadin’s tall, bulky presence as he
+entered shaking the rime from his long horseman’s coat and calling for
+brandy; or of Bishop, who went and came all night, but in a frame of
+mind so humble and downcast that men scarcely knew him. And now and
+again a fresh band of searchers tramped in one behind the other, passed
+the news by a single shake of the head, and crowding to the table ate
+and drank before they turned to again—to visit a more distant, and yet
+a more distant part.
+
+Even from the mind of the father, the boy’s loss seemed partly effaced
+by this later calamity. The mystery was so much the deeper: the riddle
+the more perplexing. The girl had gone out on foot in the full light of
+a clear afternoon; and within a few hundred yards of the place to which
+they had traced the boy, she had vanished as if she had never been.
+Clyne knew from her own lips that Walterson was somewhere within reach.
+But this did not help much, since no one could hit on the place. And
+various were the suggestions, and many and strange the solutions
+proposed. Every poacher and every ne’er-do-well was visited and
+examined, every house was canvassed, every man who had ever said aught
+that could be held to savour of radical doctrine, was considered. As
+the search spread to a wider and yet wider area, the alarm went with
+it, and new helpers arrived, men on horseback and men on foot. And all
+through the long winter’s night the house hummed; and the lights of the
+inn shone on the water as brightly and persistently as the stars that
+in the solemn firmament wheeled and marched.
+
+But lamps and stars were alike extinguished, and the late dawn was
+filtering through the casements on jaded faces and pale looks, when the
+first gleam of encouragement showed itself. Clyne had been out for some
+hours, and on his return had paused at the door of the snuggery to
+swallow the cup of hot coffee, which the landlady pressed upon him.
+Nadin was still out, but Bishop was there and the chaplain, and two or
+three yeomen and peasants. In all hearts hope had by this time given
+way to dejection; and dejection was fast yielding to despair. The party
+stood, here and there, for the most part silent, or dropped now and
+again a despondent word.
+
+Suddenly Modest Ann appeared among them, with her head shrouded in her
+apron. And, “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” the woman cried
+hysterically. “I must speak!”
+
+A thrill of amazement ran through the group. They straightened
+themselves.
+
+“If you know anything, speak by all means!” Clyne said, for surprise
+tied Mrs. Gilson’s tongue. “Do you know where the lady is?”
+
+“No! no!”
+
+“Did she tell you anything?”
+
+“Nothing! nothing!” the woman answered, sobbing wildly, and still
+holding the apron drawn tightly over her face. “Missus, don’t kill me!
+She told me naught! Naught! But——”
+
+“Well—what? What?”
+
+“There was a letter I gave her some time ago—before—oh, dear!—before
+the rumpus was, and she was sent to Kendall! And I’m thinking,” sob,
+sob, “you’d maybe know something from the person who gave it me.”
+
+“That’s it,” said Bishop coolly. “You’re a sensible woman. Who was it?”
+
+“That girl—of Hinkson’s,” she sobbed.
+
+“Bess Hinkson!” Mrs. Gilson ejaculated.
+
+“Ay, sure! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Bess said that she had it from a man on
+the road.”
+
+“And that may be so, or it may not,” Bishop answered, with quiet
+dryness. He was in his element again. And then in a lower tone, “We’re
+on it now,” he muttered, “or I am mistaken. I’ve seen the young lady
+near Hinkson’s once or twice. And it was near there I lost her. The
+house has been visited, of course; it was one of the first visited. But
+we’d no suspicion then, and now we have. Which makes a difference.”
+
+“You’re going there?”
+
+“Straight, sir, without the loss of a minute!”
+
+Clyne’s eyes sparkled. And tired as they were, the men answered to the
+call. Ten minutes before, they had crawled in, the picture of fatigue.
+Now, as they crossed the pastures above the inn, and plunged into the
+little wood in which Henrietta had baffled Bishop, they clutched their
+cudgels with as much energy as if the chase were but opening. It
+mattered not that some wore the high-collared coats of the day, and two
+waistcoats under them, and had watches in their fobs; and that others
+tramped in smock frocks drawn over their fustian shorts. The same
+indignation armed all, great and small, rich and poor; and in a
+wonderfully short space of time they were at the gate of Starvecrow
+Farm.
+
+The house that, viewed at its best, had a bald and melancholy aspect,
+wore a villainous look now—perched up there in bare, lowering ugliness,
+with its blind gable squinting through the ragged fir-trees.
+
+Bishop left a man in the road, and sent two to the rear of the crazy,
+ruinous outbuildings which clung to the slope. With Clyne and the other
+three he passed round the corner of the house, stepped to the door and
+knocked. The sun’s first rays were striking the higher hills, westward
+of the lake, as the party, with stern faces, awaited the answer. But
+the lake, with its holms, and the valley and all the lower spurs, lay
+grey and still and dreary in the grip of cold. The note of melancholy
+went to the heart of one as he looked, and filled it with remorse.
+
+“Too late,” it seemed to say, “too late!”
+
+For a time no one came. And Bishop knocked again, and more imperiously;
+first sending a man to the lower end of the ragged garden to be on the
+look-out. He knocked a third time. At last a shuffling of feet was
+heard approaching the door, and a moment later old Hinkson opened it.
+He looked, as he stood blinking in the daylight, more frowsy and
+unkempt and to be avoided than usual. But—they noted with
+disappointment that the door was neither locked nor bolted; so that had
+they thought of it they might have entered at will!
+
+“What is’t?” he drawled, peering at them. “Why did you na’ come in?”
+
+Bishop pushed in without a word. The others followed. A glance sufficed
+to discover all that the kitchen contained; and Bishop, deaf to the old
+man’s remonstrances, led the way straight up the dark, close staircase.
+But though they explored without ceremony all the rooms above, and
+knocked, and called, and sounded, and listened, they stumbled down
+again, baffled.
+
+“Where’s your daughter?” Bishop asked sternly.
+
+“She was here ten minutes agone,” the old man answered. Perhaps because
+the day was young he showed rather more sense than usual. But his eyes
+were full of spite.
+
+“Here, was she?”
+
+“Ay.”
+
+“And where’s she now?”
+
+“She’s gone to t’ doctor’s. She be nursing there. They’ve no lass.”
+
+“Nursing! Who’s she nursing?” incredulously.
+
+The old man grinned at the ignorance of the question.
+
+“The wumman and the babby,” he said.
+
+“At Tyson’s?”
+
+“Ay, ay.”
+
+“The house in the hollow?”
+
+“That be it.”
+
+While they were talking thus, others had searched the crazy outhouses,
+but to no better purpose. And presently they all assembled in the road
+outside the gate.
+
+“Where’s your dog, old lad?” asked one of the dalesmen.
+
+The miser had shuffled after them, holding out his hand and begging of
+them.
+
+“At the doctor’s,” he answered. “Her be fearsome and begged it. Ye’ll
+give an old man something?” he added, whining. “Ye’ll give something?”
+
+“Off! Off you go, my lad!” Bishop cried. “We’ve done with you. If
+you’re not a rascal ’tis hard on you, for you look one!” And when the
+old skinflint had crawled back under the fir-trees, “Worst is, sir,” he
+continued, with a grave face, “it’s all true. Tyson’s away in the
+north—with a brother or something of that kind—so I hear. And his
+missus had a baby this ten days gone or more. He’s a rough tyke, but
+he’s above this sort of thing, I take it. Still, we’ll go and question
+the girl. We may get something from her.”
+
+And they trooped off along the road in twos and threes, and turning the
+corner saw Tyson’s house, below them—so far below them that it had, as
+always, the look of a toy house on a toy meadow at the bottom of a
+green bowl. Below the house the little rivulet that rose beside it
+bisected the meadow, until at the end of the open it lost itself in the
+narrow wooded gorge, through which it sprang in unseen waterfalls to
+join the lake below.
+
+They descended the slope to the house; sharp-eyed but saying little. A
+trifle to one side of the door, under a window, a dog was kenneled. It
+leapt out barking; but seeing so many persons it slunk in again and lay
+growling.. A moment and the door was opened and Bess showed herself.
+She looked astonished, but not in any way frightened.
+
+“Eh, masters!” she said. “What is it? Are you come after the young lady
+again?”
+
+“Ay,” Bishop answered. “We are. We want to know where you got the
+letter you gave Ann at the inn—to give to her?”
+
+Perhaps Bess looked for the question and was prepared. At any rate, she
+betrayed no sign of confusion.
+
+“Well,” she said, “I can tell you what he was like that gave it me.”
+
+“A man gave it you?”
+
+“Ay, and a shilling. And,” smiling broadly, “he’d have given me
+something else if I’d let him.”
+
+“A kiss, I bet!” said Bishop.
+
+“Ay, it was. But I said that’d be another shilling.”
+
+Clyne groaned.
+
+“For God’s sake,” he said, “come to the point. Time’s everything.”
+
+Bishop shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Where did you see him, my girl?” he asked.
+
+“By the gate of the coppice as I was bringing the milk,” she answered
+frankly. “‘I’m her Joe,’ he said. ‘And if you’ll hand her this and keep
+mum, here’s a shilling for you.’ And——”
+
+“Very good,” said Bishop. “And what was he like?”
+
+With much cunning she described Walterson, and Bishop acknowledged the
+likeness. “It’s our man!” he said, slapping his boot with his loaded
+whip. “And now, my dear, which way did he go?”
+
+But she explained that she had met him by the gate—he was a
+stranger—and she had left him in the same place.
+
+“And you can’t say which way he went?”
+
+“No,” she answered. “Nor yet which way he came. I looked back to see,
+to tell the truth,” frankly. “But he had not moved, and he did not move
+until I was out of sight. And I never saw him again. The boy had not
+been stolen then,” she continued, “and I thought little of it.”
+
+“You should have told,” Bishop answered, eyeing her severely. “Another
+time, my lass, you’ll get into trouble.” And then suddenly, “Here, can
+we come in?”
+
+She threw the door wide with a movement that disarmed suspicion.
+
+“To be sure,” she said. “And welcome, so as you don’t make a noise to
+waken the mistress.”
+
+But when they stood in the kitchen it wore an aspect so neat and
+orderly that they were ashamed of their suspicions. The fire burned
+cheerfully on the wide hearth, and a wooden tray set roughly, but
+cleanly, stood on the corner of the long, polished table. The door of
+the shady dairy stood open, and afforded a glimpse of the great leaden
+milk-pans, and the row of shining pails.
+
+“The mistress is just overhead,” she said. “So you’ll not make much
+noise, if you please.”
+
+“We’ll make none,” said Bishop. “We’ve learned what we want.” And he
+turned to go out.
+
+All had not entered. Those who had, nodded, turned with gloomy faces,
+and followed him out. The dog, lurking at the back of its kennel, was
+still growling.
+
+“I’d be afeared to sleep here without him,” Bess volunteered.
+
+“Ay, ay.”
+
+“He’s better ’n two men.”
+
+“Ay?”
+
+They looked at the dog, and some one bade her good-day. And one by one
+the little troop turned and trailed despondently from the house, Clyne
+with his chin sunk on his breast, Bishop in a brown study, the other
+men staring blankly before them. Half-way up the ascent to the road
+Clyne stopped and looked back. His face was troubled.
+
+“I thought——” he began. And then he stopped and listened, frowning.
+
+“What?”
+
+“I don’t know.” He looked up. “You didn’t hear anything?”
+
+Bishop and the men said that they had not heard anything. They
+listened. They all listened. And all said that they heard nothing.
+
+“It was fancy, I suppose,” Clyne muttered, passing his hand over his
+eyes. And he shook his head as if to shake off some painful impression.
+
+But before he reached the road he paused once again and listened. And
+his face was haggard and lined with trouble.
+
+It occurred to no one that Bess had been too civil. To no one. For
+shrewd Mrs. Gilson was not with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+THE SMUGGLERS’ OVEN
+
+
+Henrietta crouched beside the lamp, lulling the child from time to time
+with a murmured word. She held the boy, whom she had come to save,
+tight in her arms; and the thought that she held him was bliss to her,
+though poisoned bliss. Whatever happened he would learn that she had
+reached the child. He would know—even if the worst came—what she had
+done for him. But the worst must not come. Were she once in the open
+under the stars, how quickly could she flee down the road with this
+light burden in her arms—down the road until she saw the star-sprinkled
+lake spread below her! In twenty minutes, were she outside, she might
+be safe. In twenty minutes, only twenty minutes, she might place the
+child in his arms, she might read the joy in his eyes, and hear
+words—ah, so unlike those which she had heard from him!
+
+There were only two doors between herself and freedom. Her heart beat
+at the thought. In twenty minutes how different it might be with her—in
+twenty minutes, were she at liberty!
+
+She must wait until the child was sound asleep. Then when she could lay
+him down she would examine the place. The purity of the air proved that
+there was either a secret inlet for the purpose of ventilation, or that
+the door which shut off their prison from the well-head fitted ill and
+loosely. In the latter case it was possible that her strength might
+avail to force the door and make escape possible. They might not have
+given her credit for the vigour which she felt that she had it in her
+to show if the opportunity offered itself.
+
+In the meantime she scrutinised, as she sat, every foot of the walls,
+without discovering anything to encourage hope or point to a second
+exit. The light of the dim lamp revealed only smooth courses of bricks,
+so near her eyes, so low upon her head, so bewildering in their
+regularity and number, that they appalled her the more the longer she
+gazed on them. It was to seek relief that she rose at last, and laying
+the sleeping child aside, went to the door and examined it.
+
+Alas! it presented to the eye only solid wood, overlapping the aperture
+which it covered, and revealing in consequence neither hinges nor
+fastening. She set her shoulder against it, and thrust with all her
+might. But it neither bent nor moved, and in despair she left it, and
+stooping low worked her way round the walls. Her closest scrutiny
+revealed nothing; not a slit as wide as her slenderest finger, not a
+peg, nor a boss, nor anything that promised exit. She returned to the
+door, and made another and more desperate attempt to burst it. But her
+strength was unequal to the task, and to avoid a return of the old
+panic, which threatened to overcome her, she dropped down beside the
+child, and took him again in her arms, feeling that in the appeal which
+the boy’s helplessness made to her she had her best shield against such
+terrors.
+
+The next moment, with a flicker or two, the light went out. She was in
+complete darkness.
+
+She fought with herself and with the impulse to shriek; and she
+conquered. She drew a deep breath as she sat, and with the unconscious
+child in her arms, stared motionless before her.
+
+“They will come back,” she murmured steadfastly; “they will come back!
+They will come back! And in the meantime I must be brave for the
+child’s sake. I have only to wait! And they will come back!”
+
+Nevertheless, it was hard to wait. It was hard not to let her thoughts
+run on the things which might prevent their return. They might be put
+to flight, they might be discovered and killed, they might be taken and
+refuse to say where she was. And then? Then?
+
+But for the child’s sake she must not, she would not, think of that.
+She must dwell, instead, on the shortness of the time that had elapsed
+since they left her. She could not guess what the hour was, but she
+judged that it was something after midnight now, and that half of the
+dark hours were gone. Even so, she had long to wait before she could
+expect to be visited. She must have patience, therefore. Above all, she
+must not think of the mountain of earth above her, of the two thick
+doors that shut her off from the living world, of the vault that almost
+touched her head as she sat. For when she did the air seemed to fail
+her, and the grip of frenzied terror came near to raising her to her
+feet. Once on her feet and in that terror’s grasp, she knew that she
+would rave and shriek, and beat on the walls—and go mad!
+
+But she would not think of these things. She would sit quite still and
+hold the child more tightly to her, and be sensible. And be sensible!
+Above all, be sensible!
+
+She thought of many things as she sat holding herself as it were; of
+her old home and her old life, the home and the life that seemed so far
+away, though no more than a few weeks divided her from them. But more
+particularly she thought of her folly and of the events of the last
+month; and of the child and of the child’s father, and—with a
+shudder—of Walterson. How silly, how unutterably silly, she had been!
+And what stuff, what fustian she had mistaken for heroism; while,
+through all, the quiet restraint of the true master of men had been
+under her eyes.
+
+Not that all the fault had been hers. She was sure of that even now.
+Captain Clyne had known her as little as she had known him, and had
+misjudged her as largely. That he might know her better was her main
+desire now; and that he might know it, whatever the issue, she had an
+inspiration. She took from her neck the gold clasp which had aroused
+old Hinkson’s greed, and she fastened it securely inside the child’s
+dress. If the child were rescued, the presence of the brooch would
+prove that she had succeeded in her quest, and been with the boy.
+
+After that she dozed off, and presently, strange to say, she slept.
+Fortunately, the child also was worn out; and the two slept as soundly
+in the grim silence of the buried vault, with the load of earth above
+them and the water trickling from the well-hole beside them, as in the
+softest bed. They slept long, yet when Henrietta at last awoke it was
+happily to immediate consciousness of the position and of the need of
+coolness. The boy had been first to rouse himself and was crying for a
+light, and for something to quench his thirst. A little milk remained
+in the can, and with infinite precaution she groped for the vessel and
+found it. The milk was sour, but the boy lapped it eagerly, and
+Henrietta wetted her own lips, for she, too, was parched with thirst.
+She could have drunk ten times as much with pleasure, but she denied
+herself, and set the rest in a safe place. She did not know how long
+she had slept, and the fear that they might be left to meet a dreadful
+death would lift its head, hard as she strove to trample on it.
+
+She gave the child a few spoonfuls of porridge and encouraged him to
+crawl about in the darkness. But after some restless, querulous
+moanings he slept again, and Henrietta was left to her thoughts, which
+continually grew more uneasy. She was hungry; and that seemed to prove
+that the morning was come and gone. If this were so were they to remain
+there all day? And if all day, all night? And all next day? And if so,
+if they were not discovered by next day, why not—forever?
+
+Again she had to struggle against the hysterical terror that gripped
+and choked her. And resist it without action she could not. She rose,
+and in the dark felt her way to the hatchway by which she had entered.
+Again she passed her fingers down the smooth edges where it met the
+brickwork. She sought something, some bolt, some peg, some
+hinge—anything that, if it did not lead to freedom, might hold her
+thoughts and give her occupation. But there was nothing! And when she
+had set her ear against the thick wood, still there was nothing. She
+turned from it, and went slowly and doggedly round the prison on her
+knees, feeling the brickwork here and there, and in very dearth of
+hope, searching with her fingers for that which had baffled her eyes.
+Round, and round again; with just a pause to listen and a stifled sob.
+But in vain. All, as she might have known, was toil in vain. All was
+futile, hopeless. And then the child awoke, and she had to take him up
+and soothe him and give him the last of the milk and the porridge. He
+seemed a little stronger and better. But she—she was growing
+frightened—horribly frightened. She must have been hours in that place;
+and she was very near to that breakdown, which she had kept at bay so
+long.
+
+For she had no more food. And, worse, with the sound of water almost in
+her ears, with the knowledge that it ran no more than a few feet from
+her in a clear and limpid stream, she had nothing more with which she
+could quench the boy’s thirst or her own. And she had no light. That
+frantic struggle to free herself, that strength of despair which might,
+however improbably, have availed her, were and must be futile for her,
+fettered and maimed by a darkness that could be felt. She drew the
+child nearer and hugged him to her. He was her talisman, her all, the
+tie that bound her to sanity, the being outside herself for whom she
+was bound to think and plan and be cool.
+
+She succeeded—for the moment. But as she sat, dozing a little at
+intervals, with the child pressed closely to her, she fell from time to
+time into fits of trembling. And she prayed for light—only for light!
+And then again for some sound, some change in the cold, dead stillness
+that made her seem like a thing apart, aloof, removed from other
+things. And she was very thirsty. She knew that presently the child
+would grow thirsty again. And she would have nothing to give him.
+
+The thought was torture, and she seemed to have borne it an age
+already; supported by the fear of rousing the boy and hastening the
+moment she dreaded. She would have broken down, she must have broken
+down, but for one thought; that, long as the hours seemed to her, and
+far distant as the moment of her entrance appeared, she might be a
+great way out in her reckoning of time. She might not have been shut up
+there so very long. The wretches who had put her there might not have
+fled. They might not have abandoned her. If she knew all she might be
+rid in an instant of her fears. All the time she might be torturing
+herself for nothing.
+
+She clung passionately to that thought and to the child. But the
+prolonged uncertainty, the suspense, the waiting, tried her to the
+utmost of her endurance. Her ears ached with the pain of listening; her
+senses hungered for the sound of the footstep on which all depended.
+Would that sound never come? Once or twice she fancied that she heard
+it; and mocked by hope she stilled the very beating of her heart, that
+she might hear more keenly. But nothing followed, nothing. Nothing
+happened, and her heart sickened.
+
+“Presently,” she thought, “I shall begin to see things. I shall grow
+weak and fancy things. The horror of being buried alive will master me,
+and I shall shriek and shout and go mad. But that shall not be until
+the child’s trouble is over—God helping me!”
+
+And then, dazzling her with its brightness, a sudden thought flashed
+through her brain. Fool! Fool! She had succumbed in despair when a cry
+might release her! She had laid herself down to die, when she had but
+to lift up her voice, and the odds were that she would be heard. Ay,
+and be freed! For had not the girl threatened her with the man’s coarse
+gallantries if she screamed? And to what purpose, if she were buried so
+deep that her complaints could not be heard?
+
+The thought lifted a weight from her. It revived her hopes, almost her
+confidence. Immediately a current of vigour and courage coursed through
+her veins. But she did not shout at once. The child was asleep; she
+would await his awakening, and in the meantime she would listen
+diligently. For if she could be heard by those who approached the
+place, it was possible that she could hear them.
+
+She had barely conceived the thought, when the thing for which she had
+waited so long happened. The silence was broken. A sound struck her
+ear. A grating noise followed. Then a shaft of light, so faint that
+only eyes long used to utter darkness could detect it, darted in and
+lay across the brickwork of the vault. In a twinkling she was on her
+knees and scrambling with the child in her arms towards the hatch. She
+had reached it and was touching it, when the bolts that held up the
+door slid clear, and with a sharp report the hatch fell. A burst of
+light poured in and blinded her. But what was sight to her? She, who
+had borne up against fear so bravely had now only one thought, only one
+idea in her mind—to escape from the vault. She tumbled out recklessly,
+fell against something, and only through the support of an unseen hand
+kept on her feet as she alighted in the well-head.
+
+A man whom her haste had pushed aside, slapped her on the shoulder.
+
+“Lord, you’re in a hurry!” he said. “You’ve had enough of bed for
+once!”
+
+“So would you,” came the answer—in Bess’s voice—“if you’d had
+twenty-four hours of it, my lad. All the same, she’ll have to go back.”
+
+Trembling and dazed, Henrietta peered from one to the other. Mistress
+of herself two minutes before, she was now on the verge of hysteria,
+and controlled herself with an effort.
+
+“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! thank God you’ve come! Thank God you’ve come! I
+thought you had left me.”
+
+She was thankful—oh, she was thankful; though these were no rescuers,
+but the two who had consigned her to that horrible place. Bess raised
+the lanthorn so that its light fell on the girl’s haggard, twitching
+face.
+
+“We could not come before,” she said, with something like pity in her
+tone. “That’s all.”
+
+“All!” Henrietta gasped. “All! Oh, I thought you had left me! I thought
+you had left me!”
+
+Bess considered her, and there was beyond doubt something like
+softening in the girl’s dark face. But her tone remained ironical.
+
+“You didn’t,” she said, “much fancy your bedroom, I guess?”
+
+Henrietta’s teeth chattered.
+
+“Oh, God forgive you!” she cried. “I thought you had left me! I thought
+you’d left me!”
+
+“It was your own folks’ fault,” Bess retorted. “They’ve never had their
+eyes off the blessed house, one or another of them, from dawn to dark!
+We could not come. But now here’s food, and plenty!” raising the light.
+“How’s the child?”
+
+“Bad! Bad!” Henrietta muttered.
+
+She was coming to her senses. She was beginning to understand the
+position; to comprehend that no rescuers were here, no search party had
+found her; and that—and that—had not one of them dropped a word about
+her going back? Going back meant going back to that—place! With a
+sudden gesture she thrust the food from her.
+
+“Ain’t you going to eat?” Bess asked, staring. “I thought you’d be
+famished.”
+
+“Not here! Not here!” she answered violently.
+
+“Oh, nonsense!” the other rejoined. “Don’t be a fool! You’re clemmed,
+I’ll be bound. Eat while you can.”
+
+But, “Not here! Not here!” Henrietta replied. And she thrust the food
+away.
+
+The man interposed.
+
+“Stow it!” he said, in a threatening tone. “You eat while you can and
+where you can!”
+
+But she was desperate.
+
+“I’ll not eat here!” she cried. “I’ll not eat here! And I’ll not go
+back!” her voice rising. “I will die before I will go back. Do you
+hear?” with the fierceness of a wild creature at bay. “I do not care
+what you do! And the child is dying. Another night—but I’ll not suffer
+it! And if you lay a finger on me”—repelling Bess, who had made a feint
+of seizing her—“I will scream until I am heard! Ay, I will!” she
+repeated, her eyes sparkling. “But take me to the house and I will go
+quietly! I will go quietly!”
+
+It was plain that she was almost beside herself, and that fear of the
+place in which she had passed so many hours had driven out all other
+fear. The two, who had not left her alone so long without misgiving,
+looked at one another and hesitated. They might overpower her. But the
+place was so closely watched that a single shriek might be heard; then
+they would be taken red-handed. Nor did Bess at least wish to use
+force. The position, and her views, were changed. All day curious eyes
+had been fixed on the house, and inquisitive people had started up
+where they were least expected. Bess’s folly in bringing this hornets’
+nest about their ears had shaken her influence with the men; and the
+day had been one long exchange of savage recriminations. She owned to
+herself that she had done a foolish thing; that she had let her spite
+carry her too far. And in secret she was beginning to think how she
+could clear herself.
+
+She did not despair of this; for she was crafty and of a good courage.
+She did not even think it would be hard; but she must, as a _sine quâ
+non_, conciliate the girl whom she had wronged. Unluckily she now saw
+that she could not conciliate her without taking her to the house. And
+she could not with safety take her to the house. The men were irritated
+by the peril which she had brought upon them; they were ferocious and
+out of hand; and terribly suspicious to boot. They blamed her, Bess,
+for all: they had threatened her. And if she was not safe among them,
+she was quite sure that Henrietta would not be safe.
+
+There was an alternative. She might let the girl go there and then. And
+she would have done this, but she could not do it without Giles’s
+consent; and she dared not propose it to him. He was wanted for other
+offences, and the safe return of Henrietta and the child would not
+clear him. He had looked on the child, and now looked on the girl, as
+pawns in his game, a _quid pro quo_ with which—if he were taken while
+they remained in his friends’ hands—he might buy his pardon. Bess,
+therefore, dared not propose to free Henrietta: and what was she to do
+if the girl was so foolish as to refuse to go back to the place where
+she was safe?
+
+“Look here,” she said at last. “You’re safer here than in the house, if
+you will only take my word for it.”
+
+But there is no arguing with fear.
+
+“I will not!” Henrietta persisted, with passion. “I will not! Take me
+out of this! Take me out! The child will die here, and I shall go
+mad!—mad!”
+
+“You’re pretty mad now,” the man retorted. But that said, he met Bess’s
+eyes and nodded reluctantly. “Well,” he said, “it’s her own lookout.
+But I think she’ll repent it.”
+
+“Will you go quiet?” Bess asked.
+
+“Yes, yes!”
+
+“And you’ll not cry out? Nor try to break away?”
+
+“I will not! I will not indeed!”
+
+“You swear it?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“And by G—d,” the man interposed bluntly, “she’d better keep to it.”
+
+“Very well,” Bess said. “You have it your own way. But I tell you
+truly, I put you in here for the best. And perhaps you’ll know it
+before you’re an hour older. However, all’s said, and it’s your own
+doing.”
+
+“Why don’t you let me go?” Henrietta panted. “Let me go, and let me
+take the child!”
+
+“Stow it!” the man cried, cutting her short. “It’s likely, when we’re
+as like as not to pay dear for taking you. Do you shut your
+talking-trap!”
+
+“She’ll be quiet,” Bess said, more gently. “So douse the glim, lad. And
+do you give me the child,” to Henrietta.
+
+But she cried, “No! No!” and held it more closely to her.
+
+“Very good! Then take my hand—you don’t know the way. And not a
+whisper, mind! Slip the bolt, Giles! And, mum, all!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+IN TYSON’S KITCHEN
+
+
+The distance to the house was short. Before Henrietta had done more
+than taste the bliss of the open night, had done more than lift her
+eyes in thankfulness to the dark profundity above her, she was under
+the eaves. A stealthy tap was answered by the turning of a key, a door
+was quickly and silently opened, and she was pushed forward. Bess
+muttered a word or two—to a person unseen—and gripping her arm, thrust
+her along a passage. A second door gave way as mysteriously, and
+Henrietta found herself dazzled and blinking on the threshold of the
+kitchen which she had left twenty-four hours before. It was lighted,
+but not with the wastefulness and extravagance of the previous evening.
+Nor did it display those signs of disorder and riot which had yesterday
+opened her eyes.
+
+She was sinking under the weight of the child, which she had hugged to
+her that it might not cry, and she went straight to the settle and laid
+the boy on it. He opened his eyes and looked vacantly before him; but,
+apparently, he was too far gone in weakness, or in too much fear, to
+cry. While Henrietta, relieved of the weight, and perhaps of a portion
+of her fears, sank on the settle beside him, leant her face on her arms
+and burst into passionate weeping.
+
+It was perhaps the best thing in her power. For the men had followed
+her into the kitchen; and Lunt, with brutal oaths, was asking why she
+was there and what new folly was this. Bess turned on him—she well knew
+how to meet such attacks; and with scornful tongue she bade him wait,
+calling him thick-head, and adding that he’d learn by-and-by, if he
+could learn anything. Then, while Giles, ill-content himself, gave some
+kind of account of the thing, she began—as if it were a trifle—to lay
+the supper. And almost by force she got Henrietta to the table.
+
+“It’s food you want!” she said bluntly. “Don’t play the silly! Who’s
+hurt you? Who’s going to hurt you? Here, take a sip of this, and you’ll
+feel better. Never heed him,” with a contemptuous glance at Lunt. “He’s
+most times a grumbler.”
+
+For the moment Henrietta was quite broken, and the pressure which the
+other exerted was salutary. She did what she was bidden, swallowing a
+mouthful of the Scotch cordial Bess forced on her, and eating and
+drinking mechanically. Meanwhile the three men had brought their heads
+together, and sat discussing the position with unconcealed grudging and
+mistrust.
+
+At length:
+
+“You’ve grown cursed kind of a sudden!” Lunt swore, scowling at the two
+women. The child, in the presence of the men, sat paralysed with
+terror. “What’s this blamed fuss about?”
+
+“What fuss?” Bess shot at him over her shoulder. And going to the child
+she bent over it with a bowl of bread and milk.
+
+“Why don’t you lay ’em up in lavender?” the man sneered. “See here, she
+was a peacock yesterday and you’d grind her pretty face under your
+heel! To-day—— What does it mean? I want to know.”
+
+“I suppose you don’t want ’em to die?” the girl returned, in the same
+tone of contempt.
+
+“What do I care whether they die?”
+
+“They’d be much use to us, dead!” she retorted.
+
+Giles nodded assent.
+
+“The girl’s right there,” he said in a low tone. “Best leave it to her.
+She’s a cunning one and no mistake.”
+
+“Ay, cunning enough!” Lunt answered. “But whose game is she playing?
+Hers or ours?”
+
+“Didn’t know you had one!” Bess flung at him. And then in an undertone,
+“Dolt!” she muttered.
+
+“It’s all one, man, it’s all one!” Giles said. On the whole he was for
+peace. “Best have supper, and talk it over after.”
+
+“And let the first that comes in through the door find her?” Lunt
+cried.
+
+“Who’s to come?”
+
+“Didn’t they come here this morning? And last night? And if she’d been
+here, or the child—
+
+“Ay, but they weren’t!” Bess answered brusquely. “And that’s the reason
+the coves won’t come again. For the matter of that,” turning fiercely
+on them, “who was it cleaned up after you, you dirty dogs, and put this
+place straight? Without which they’d have known as much the moment they
+put their noses in—as if the girl had been sitting on the settle there.
+Who was it thought of that, and did it? And hid you safe upstairs?”
+
+“You did, Bess—you did!” the gipsy answered, speaking for the first
+time. “And a gay, clever wench you are!” He looked defiantly at Lunt.
+“You’re a game cove,” he said, “but you’re not fly!”
+
+Lunt for answer fired half a dozen oaths at him. But Giles interposed.
+
+“We’re all in one boat,” he said. “And food’s plenty. Let’s stop jawing
+and to it!”
+
+Two of the men seemed to think the advice good. And they began to eat,
+still debating. The third, Saul, continued to listen to his companions,
+but his sly eyes never left Henrietta, who sat a little farther down
+the table on the opposite side. She was not for some time aware of his
+looks, or of their meaning. But Bess, who knew his nature—he was her
+cousin—and who saw only what she had feared to see, frowned as she
+marked the direction of his glances. In the act of sitting down she
+paused, leant over the table, and with a quick movement swept off the
+Hollands bottle.
+
+But the gipsy, with a grin, touched Lunt’s elbow. And the ruffian
+seeing what she was doing, fell into a fresh fury and bade her put the
+bottle back again.
+
+“I shall not,” she said. “You’ve ale, and plenty. Do you want to be
+drunk if the girl’s folks come?”
+
+“Curse you!” he retorted. “Didn’t you say a minute ago that they
+wouldn’t come?”
+
+Giles sided with him—for the first time.
+
+“Ay, that’s blowing hot and cold!” he said. “Put the gin back, lass,
+and no two words about it.”
+
+She stood darkly hesitating, as if she meant to refuse. But Lunt had
+risen, and it was clear that he would take no refusal that was not
+backed by force. She replaced the Dutch bottle sullenly; and Giles drew
+it towards him and with a free hand laced his ale.
+
+“There’s naught like dog’s nose,” he said, “to comfort a man! The lass
+forgets that it’s wintry weather and I’ve been out in it!”
+
+“A dram’s a dram, winter or summer!” Lunt growled. And he followed the
+example.
+
+But Bess knew that she had lost the one ally on whom she had counted.
+She could manage Giles sober. But drink was the man’s weakness; and
+when he was drunk he was as brutal as his comrade; and more dangerous.
+
+She had satisfied her grudge against Henrietta. And she was aware now,
+only too well aware, that she had let it carry her too far. She had
+nothing to gain by further violence; she had everything to lose by it.
+For if the girl were ill-treated, there would be no mercy for any of
+the party, if taken; while escape, in the face of the extraordinary
+measures which Clyne was taking and of the hostility of the
+countryside, was doubtful at the best. As she thought of these things
+and ate her supper with a sombre face, she wished with all her heart
+that she had never seen the girl, and never, to satisfy a silly spite,
+decoyed her. Her one aim now was to get her out of the men’s sight, and
+to shut her up where she might be safe till morning. It was a pity, it
+was a thousand pities, that Henrietta had not stayed in the smugglers’
+oven! And Bess wondered if she could even now persuade her to return to
+it. But a glance at Henrietta’s haggard face, on which the last
+twenty-four hours had imprinted a stamp it would take many times
+twenty-four hours to efface, warned her that advice—short of the last
+extremity—would be useless. It remained to remove the girl to the only
+place where she might, with luck, lie safe and unmolested.
+
+In this Henrietta might aid her—had she her wits about her. But
+Henrietta did not seem to be awake to the peril. The insolence of the
+gipsy’s glances, which had yesterday brought the blood to her cheeks,
+passed unnoted, so complete was her collapse. Doubtless strength would
+return, nay, was even now returning; and presently wit would return.
+For her nerves were young, and would quickly recover their tone. But
+for the moment, she was almost comatose. Having eaten and drunk, she
+sat heavily, with her elbow on the table, her head resting on her hand.
+The sleeve had fallen back from her wrist, and the gipsy lad’s eyes
+rested long and freely on the white roundness of her arm. Her fair
+complexion seduced him as no dark beauty had power to seduce. He eyed
+her as the tiger eyes the fawn before it springs from covert. Bess, who
+read his looks as if they had been an open book, and who saw that
+Giles, her one dependence, was growing more sullen and dangerous with
+every draught, could have struck Henrietta for her fatuous stolidity.
+
+One thing was clear. The longer she put off the move, the more
+dangerous the men were like to be. Bess never lacked resolution, and
+she was quick to take her part. As soon as she had eaten and drunk her
+fill, she rose and tapped Henrietta on the shoulder.
+
+“We’re best away,” she said coolly. “Will you carry the brat upstairs,
+or shall I?”
+
+For a moment she thought that she had carried her point. For no one
+spoke or objected. But when Henrietta rose and turned to the settle to
+take up the boy, the gipsy muttered something in Lunt’s ear. The
+ruffian glared across at the girls, and struck the haft of his knife
+with violence on the board.
+
+“Upstairs?” he roared. “No, my girl, you don’t! We keep together! We
+keep together! S’help me, if I don’t think you mean to peach!”
+
+“Don’t be a fool,” she answered. And she furtively touched Henrietta’s
+arm, as a sign to her to be ready. Then to the gipsy lad, in a tone
+full of meaning, “The gentry mort,” she said, in thieves’ patter, “is
+not worth the nubbing-cheat. I’m fly, and I’ll not have it. Stow it, my
+lad, and don’t be a flat!”
+
+“And let you peach on us?” he answered, smiling.
+
+Lunt struck the table.
+
+“Stop your lingo!” he said. “Here, you!” to Giles. “Are you going to
+let these two sell us? The lass is on to peaching, that’s my belief!”
+
+“We’ll—soon stop that,” Giles replied, with a hiccough. “Here,
+I’ll—I’ll take one, and you—you t’other! And we’ll fine well stop their
+peaching, pretty dears!” He staggered to his feet as he spoke, his face
+inflamed with drink. “Peach, will they?” he muttered, swaying a little,
+and scowling at them over the dull, unsnuffed candles. “We’ll stop
+that, and—and ha’ some fun, too.”
+
+“S’help us if we don’t!” cried Lunt, also rising to his feet. “Let’s
+live to-day, if we die to-morrow! You take one and I’ll take the
+other!”
+
+The gipsy lad grinned.
+
+“Who’s the flat now?” he chuckled. He alone remained seated, with his
+arms on the table. “You’ve raised your pipe too soon, my lass!”
+
+“Stow this folly!” Bess answered, keeping a bold face. “We’re going
+upstairs,” she continued. “Do you”—to Henrietta—“bring the child.”
+
+But, “Curse me if you are!” Giles answered. Drink had made him the more
+dangerous of the two. He lurched forward as he spoke, and placed
+himself between the girls and the foot of the open staircase that led
+to the upper floor. “We’re one apiece for you and one over! And you’re
+going to stay, my girls, and amuse us!”
+
+And he opened his arms, with a tipsy laugh.
+
+If Henrietta had been slow to see the danger, she saw it now. And the
+shock was the greater. The men’s flushed faces and vinous eyes, still
+more the dark face of the smiling gipsy who had raised the tempest for
+his own ends, filled her with fear. She clutched the child to her, but
+as much by instinct as from calculation; and she cast a desperate look
+round her—only to see that retreat was cut off. The girls were hemmed
+in on the hearth between the fire and the long table, and it was hard
+to say which of the men she most dreaded. She had gone through much
+already and she cowered, white to the lips, behind her companion, who,
+for her part, looked greater confidence than she felt. But whatever
+Bess’s fears, she rallied bravely to the occasion, being no stranger to
+such scenes.
+
+“Well,” she said, temporising, “we’ll sit down a bit if you’ll mind
+your manners. But we’ll sit here, my lads, and together.”
+
+“No, one apiece,” Giles hiccoughed, before she had finished speaking.
+“One apiece! You come and sit by me—’twon’t be the first time, my
+beauty! And—and t’other one by him!”
+
+Bess stamped her foot in a rage.
+
+“No!” she cried, “I will not! You’ll just stay on your own side! And we
+on ours!”
+
+“You’ll just do as I say!” the man answered, with tipsy obstinacy.
+“You’ll just do—as I say!”
+
+And he lurched forward, thinking to take her by surprise and seize her.
+
+Henrietta screamed, and recoiled to the farthest corner of the chimney
+nook. Bess stood her ground, but with a dark face thrust her hand into
+her bosom—probably for a knife. She never drew it, however. Before
+Giles could touch her, or Lunt, who was coasting about the long table
+to come at Henrietta, had compassed half the distance—there was a knock
+at the door.
+
+It was a small thing, but it was enough. It checked the men as
+effectually as if it had been the knell of doom. They hung arrested,
+eye questioning eye; or, in turn, tip-toeing to gain their weapons,
+they cast looks of menace at the women. And they listened with murder
+in their eyes.
+
+“If you breathe a word,” Giles hissed, “I’ll throttle you!”
+
+And he raised his hand for silence. The knock was repeated.
+
+“Some one must go,” the gipsy lad muttered.
+
+His face was sallow with fear.
+
+“Go?” Bess answered, in a low tone, but one of fierce passion. “Who’s
+to go but me? See now where you’d be without me!”
+
+“And do you see here,” Lunt made answer, and he drew a pistol from his
+pocket, and cocked it, “one word more than’s needful, and I’ll blow
+your brains out, my lass. If I go, you go first! So mark me, and speak
+’em fair!”
+
+And with a gesture he pointed to the dairy, and beckoned to the other
+men to retire thither.
+
+He seemed to be about to command Henrietta to go with them. But he saw
+that in sheer terror she would disobey him, or he thought her
+sufficiently hidden where she was. For when he had seen the other men
+out he followed them, and holding the door of the dairy half open
+showed Bess the pistol.
+
+“Now,” he said, “and by G—d, remember. For I’ll keep my word.”
+
+Bess had already, with a hasty hand, removed some of the plates and
+mugs from the table. She made sure that Henrietta was all but invisible
+behind the settle. Then she went to the door.
+
+“Who’s there?” she cried aloud.
+
+No one answered, but the knock was repeated.
+
+Henrietta raised her white face above the level of the settle. She
+listened, and hope, terrified as she was, rose in her heart. Who was
+likely to visit this lonely house at so late an hour? Was it not almost
+certain that her friends were there? And that another minute would see
+her safe in their hands?
+
+Giles’s dark face peering from the doorway of the dairy answered that
+question. The muzzle of his weapon now covered her, now Bess. Sick at
+heart, almost fainting, she sank again behind the settle and prayed.
+While Bess with a noisy hand thrust back the great bar, and opened the
+door.
+
+There was no inrush of feet, and Bess looked out.
+
+“Well, who is it?” she asked of the darkness. “You’re late enough,
+whoever you are.”
+
+The entering draught blew the flames of the candles awry. Then a
+woman’s voice was heard:
+
+“I’ve come to ask how the missus is,” it said.
+
+“Oh, you have, have you? And a fine time this!” Bess scolded, with
+wonderful glibness. “She’s neither better nor worse. So there! I hope
+you think it’s worth your trouble!”
+
+“And the baby? I heard it was dead.”
+
+“Then you heard a lie!”
+
+The visitor, who was no other than Mrs. Tyson’s old servant, the stolid
+woman who had once admitted Henrietta to the house, seemed at a loss
+what to say next. After an awkward pause:
+
+“Oh,” she said, “well, I am glad. I was not sure you hadn’t left her.
+And if she can’t get out of her bed——”
+
+“You thought there’d be pickings about!” Bess cried, in her most
+insolent tone. “Well, there ain’t, my girl! And don’t you come up again
+scaring us after dark, or you’ll hear a bit more of my mind!”
+
+“You’re not easy scared!” the woman retorted contemptuously. “Don’t
+tell me! It takes more than the dark to frighten you!”
+
+“Anyway, nine o’clock is my hour for getting scared,” Bess returned.
+“And as it’s after that, and you’ve a dark walk back—— D’you come
+through the wood?”
+
+“Ay, I did.”
+
+“Then you’d best go back that way!” Bess replied.
+
+And she shut the door in the woman’s face, and flung the bar over with
+a resounding bang.
+
+And quickly, before the men, heaving sighs of relief, had had time to
+emerge from their retreat, she was across the floor, and had dragged
+Henrietta to her feet.
+
+“Up the stairs!” she whispered. “The door on the left! Knock! Knock!
+I’ll keep them back.”
+
+Taken by surprise as she was, Henrietta’s courage rose. She bounded to
+the open stairs, and was half-way up before the men took in the
+position and understood that she was escaping them. They rushed forward
+then, falling over one another in their eagerness to seize her. But
+they were too late, Bess was before them. She sprang on to the widest
+of the lower steps where the staircase turned in the corner of the
+room, and flashing her knife in their eyes, she swore that she would
+blind the first man who ascended. They knew her, and for the moment
+fell back daunted and dismayed; for Giles had put up his pistol. He
+bethought himself, indeed, of pulling it out, when he found parley
+useless; but it was then too late. By that time Bess’s ear told her
+that Henrietta was safe in Mrs. Tyson’s room, with the bolt shot behind
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+THROUGH THE WOOD
+
+
+Behind the closed door the two haggard-faced women looked at one
+another. Mrs. Tyson had not left her bed for many days. But she had
+heard the knocking at the outer door and the answering growl of the dog
+chained under her window; and hoping, yet scarcely daring to expect,
+that the nightmare was over and her husband or her friends were at
+hand, she had dragged herself from the bed and opened the door as soon
+as the knocking sounded in turn at that.
+
+For days, indeed, one strand, and one only, had held the feeble,
+frightened woman to life; and that strand was the babe that lay beside
+her. The sheep will fight for its lamb, the wren for its fledglings.
+And Mrs. Tyson, if she had not fought, had for the babe’s sake borne
+and endured; and surrounded by the ruffians who had the house at their
+mercy, she had survived terrors that in other circumstances would have
+driven her mad.
+
+True, Bess had not ill-treated her. On the contrary, she had been
+almost kind to her. And lonely and ill, dependent on her for
+everything, the woman had lost much of her dread of the girl; though
+now and again, in sheer wantonness, Bess would play with her fears.
+Certain that the weak-willed creature would not dare to tell what she
+knew, Bess had boasted to her of Henrietta’s presence and her danger
+and her plight. When Henrietta, therefore, the moment the door was
+unfastened, flung herself into the room, and with frantic fingers
+helped to secure the door behind her, Mrs. Tyson was astonished indeed;
+but less astonished than alarmed. She was alarmed in truth, almost to
+swooning, and showed a face as white as paper.
+
+Luckily, Henrietta had resumed the wit and courage of which stupor had
+deprived her for a time. She had no longer Bess at her elbow to bid her
+do this or that. But she had Bess’s example and her own spirit. There
+was an instant of stricken silence, during which she and the woman
+looked fearfully into one another’s faces by the light of the poor dip
+that burned beside the gloomy tester. Then Henrietta took her part. She
+laid down the child, to which she had clung instinctively; and with a
+strength which surprised herself, she dragged a chest, that stood but a
+foot on one side of the opening, across the door. It would not
+withstand the men long, but it would check them. She looked doubtfully
+at the bed, but mistrusted her power to move it. And before she could
+do more, a sound reached them from an unexpected quarter, and struck at
+the root of her plans. For it came from the window; and so
+unexpectedly, that it flung them into one another’s arms.
+
+Mrs. Tyson screamed loudly. They clung to one another.
+
+“What is it? What is it?” Henrietta cried.
+
+Then she saw a spectral face pressed against the dark casement. A hand
+tapped repeatedly on a pane.
+
+Henrietta put Mrs. Tyson from her and approached the window. She
+discovered that the face was a woman’s face, and with fumbling fingers
+she slid aside the catch that secured the window.
+
+“Tell the missus not to be scared,” whispered an anxious voice. “Tell
+her it’s me! I got up the pear tree to see her, and I saw you. I knew
+that Bess was lying, and I thought I’d—I thought I’d just get up and
+see for myself!”
+
+“Thank God!” Henrietta cried, clinging to the sill in a passion of
+relief as she recognised the stolid-faced servant. “You know me?”
+
+“You’re the young lady that’s missing?” the woman answered, taking a
+securer hold of the window-frame, and bringing her head into the room.
+“I know you. I was thinking if I dared scare the missus, when I see you
+tumble in—I nigh tumbled down with surprise! I’ll go hot-foot and take
+the news, miss!”
+
+“No, no, I shall come!”
+
+“You let me go and fetch ’em! I’ll bet, miss, I’ll be welcome. And do
+you bide quiet and safe. Now we know where you are, they’ll not harm
+you.”
+
+But Henrietta had heard a footstep on the stairs, and she was not going
+to bide quiet. She had no belief in her safety.
+
+“No,” she said resolutely. “I am coming. Can you take the child?”
+
+“Well, if you must, but——”
+
+“I must! I must!”
+
+“Lord, you are frightened!” the woman muttered, looking at her face.
+And then, catching the infection, “Is’t as bad as that?” she said. “Ay,
+give me the child, then. And for the Lord’s sake, be quick, miss. This
+pear is as good as a ladder, and the dog knows me as well as its own
+folk!”
+
+“The child! The child!” Henrietta repeated. Again her ear had caught
+the sound of shuffling feet, and of whispering on the stairs. She
+carried the child, which seemed paralysed by fear, to the sill, and
+delivered it into the other’s arm.
+
+The sill of the window was barely ten feet from the ground, and an old
+pear tree, spread-eagled against the wall, formed a natural ladder. The
+dog, which had been chained under the window to guard against egress,
+knew the woman and did no more than stand below and wag its tail. In
+two minutes Henrietta was safe on the ground, had taken the child from
+the other’s arms, and was ready for flight.
+
+But the servant would not leave until she had made sure that her
+mistress had strength to close the window. That done, she turned to
+Henrietta.
+
+“Now come!” she said. “And don’t spare yourself, miss, for if they
+catch us after this they’ll for certain cut our throats!”
+
+Henrietta had no need of the spur, and at their best pace the two fled
+down the paddock, the servant-wench holding Henrietta by the elbow and
+impelling her. The moon had risen, and Mrs. Tyson, poor, terrified,
+trembling woman, watching them from the window, could follow them down
+the pale meadow, and even discern the dark line of the rivulet, along
+the bank of which they passed, and here and there a patch of higher
+herbage, or a solitary boulder left in the middle of the turf for a
+scratching-post. Perhaps she made, in leaning forward, some noise which
+irritated the dog; or perhaps the moonlight annoyed it. At any rate, it
+began to bay.
+
+By that time, however, Henrietta and her companion had gained the
+shadow of the trees at the upper end of the wooded gorge through which
+the stream escaped. They stood there a brief while to take breath, and
+the woman offered to carry the child. But Henrietta, though she felt
+that her strength was uncertain, though she experienced an odd
+giddiness, was unwilling to resign her charge. And after a pause they
+started to descend the winding path which followed the stream, and
+often crossed and re-crossed it.
+
+They stumbled along as fast as they could. But this was not very fast.
+For not only was it dark in the covert, but the track was beset with
+projecting roots, and overhead branches hung low and scraped their
+faces. More than once startled by a rabbit, or the gurgle of the
+falling water, they stopped to listen, fancying that they were pursued.
+Still they went fast enough to feel ultimate safety certain; and
+Henrietta, as she held an end of the other’s petticoat between her
+fingers and followed patiently, bade herself bear up a little longer
+and it would be over. It would soon be over, and she—she would put his
+child in his arms. It would soon be over, and she would be able to sink
+down upon her bed and rest. For she was very weary—and odd. Very,
+unaccountably weary. When she stumbled or her foot found the descent
+longer than she expected, she staggered and swayed on her feet.
+
+But, “We shall soon be safe! We shall soon be safe!” she told herself.
+“And the child!”
+
+Meanwhile they had passed the darkest part of the little ravine. They
+had passed the place where the waterfalls made the descent most
+arduous. They could even see below them a piece of the road lying white
+in the moonlight.
+
+On a sudden Henrietta stopped.
+
+“You must take the child,” she faltered, in a tone that startled her
+companion. “I can’t carry—it any farther.”
+
+“I’ll take it. You should have given it me before!” the woman scolded.
+“That’s better. Quiet, my lad. I’ll not hurt you!” For the child,
+silent hitherto, had begun to whimper. “Now, miss,” she continued
+sharply, “bear up! It’s but a little way farther.”
+
+“I don’t think—I can,” Henrietta said. The crisis over, she felt her
+strength ebbing away in the strangest fashion. She swayed, and had to
+cling to a tree for support. “You must go on—without me,” she
+stammered.
+
+“I’ll not go on without you,” the woman answered. She was loath to
+leave the girl helpless in the wood, where it was possible that she
+might still come to harm. “You come down to the road, miss. Pluck up!
+Pluck up! It’s but a step!”
+
+And partly by words, partly by means of a vigorous arm, the good
+creature got the girl to the bottom of the wood, and by a last effort,
+half lifted, half dragged her over the stile which closed the gap in
+the wall. But once in the road, Henrietta seemed scarcely conscious
+where she was. She tottered, and the moment the woman took her hands
+from her, she sank down against the wall.
+
+“Leave me! Leave me!” she muttered, with a last exertion of sense. “And
+take the child! I’m—giddy. Only giddy! I shall be better in a minute.”
+Then, “I think—I think I am fainting.”
+
+“I think you are,” the woman answered drily. She stooped over her.
+“Poor thing!” she said. “There’s no knowing what has happened to her!
+But she’ll freeze as she is!”
+
+And whipping off her thick drugget shawl—they made such shawls in
+Kendal—she wrapped it about the girl, snatched up the child, and set
+off running and walking along the road. The Low Wood Inn lay not more
+than four furlongs away, and she counted on returning in twenty
+minutes.
+
+“Ay, in twenty minutes!” she muttered, and then, saving her breath, she
+kept on steadily along the moonlit road, soothing the child with a word
+when it was necessary. In a very brief time she was out of sight.
+
+For a while all was still as death. Then favoured by the recumbent
+position, Henrietta began to recover; and presently, but not until some
+minutes had elapsed, she came to herself.
+
+She sighed deeply, and gazing upward at the dark sky, with its
+twinkling stars, she wondered how she came to be in such a strange
+place; but without any desire to rise, or any wish to solve the riddle.
+A second sigh as deep as the first lifted the oppression from her
+breast; and with returning strength she wondered what was the long dark
+line that bounded her vision. Was it, could it be, the head-board of
+her bed? Or the tester?
+
+It was, in fact, the wall that bounded the wood, but she was not able
+to take that in. And though the nipping air, blowing freely on her
+face, was doing its best to refresh her, and she was beginning to grope
+in her memory for the past, it needed a sound, a voice, to restore to
+her, not her powers, but her consciousness. The event soon happened.
+Two men drew near, talking in low fierce tones. At first, lying there
+as in a dream, she heard without understanding; and then, still
+powerless under the spell, she heard and understood.
+
+“Why didn’t you,” Lunt’s voice growled hoarsely, “loose the dog, as I
+told you? We’d have had her by now.”
+
+“Ay, and have had the country about our ears, too,” Giles answered
+angrily.
+
+“And shan’t we have it about our ears when that vixen has told her
+tale?” the other cried. “I swear my neck aches now!”
+
+“She couldn’t carry the brat far, nor fast.”
+
+“No, but—what’s that?” There was alarm in Lunt’s tone.
+
+“Only the lad following us,” Giles answered. “He’s brought the
+lanthorn.”
+
+Perhaps the three separated then: perhaps not. She could not rise to
+see. She was paralysed. She lay as in a nightmare, and was conscious
+only of the yellow gleam of the lanthorn as it quartered the ground
+this way and that, and came nearer and nearer. At last the man who
+carried it was close to her; on the other side of the wall. He raised
+the lanthorn above his head, and looked over the wall. By evil chance,
+the light focussed itself upon her.
+
+She knew that she was discovered. And her terror was the greater
+because she knew that the man who held the lanthorn was the gipsy—whom
+she feared the most of all. But she was not capable of motion or of
+resistance; and though he held the light steadily on her, and for a few
+seconds she saw in the side-glow his dark features gleaming down at
+her, she lay fascinated. She waited for him to proclaim his discovery.
+
+He shut off the light abruptly.
+
+“So—ho! back!” he cried. “She’s not this way! Maybe she’s in the bushes
+above!”
+
+“This way?”
+
+“Ay!”
+
+“Then, burn you, why don’t you bring the light, instead of talking?”
+Lunt retorted. And from the sound he appeared to be kicking the nearer
+bushes, and probing them with a stick.
+
+The gipsy answered impudently, and the three, blaming one another,
+moved off up the wood.
+
+“You should have brought the dog,” one cried.
+
+“Oh, curse the dog!” was the answer. “I tell you she can’t be far off!
+She can’t have come as low as this.” The light was thrown hither and
+thither. “She’s somewhere among the bushes. We’ll hap on her
+by-and-by.”
+
+“And s’help me when we do,” Lunt answered, “I’ll——”
+
+And then, mercifully, the voices grew indistinct. The flicker of the
+lanthorn was lost among the trees. With wonder and stupefaction
+Henrietta found herself alone, found herself faint, gasping, scarcely
+sensible—but safe! Safe!
+
+She could not understand the why or the wherefore of her escape, and
+she had not energy to try to fathom it. She lay a few seconds to rest
+and clear her head, and then she thought that she would try to rise.
+She was on her knees, and was supporting herself with one hand against
+the cold, rough surface of the wall, when every fibre in her cried
+suddenly, Alarm! Alarm! He was coming back. Yes, he was coming back,
+leaping and running, bursting his way through the undergrowth. And she
+understood. He had led the others away and he was coming back—alone!
+
+She fell back feeling deadly faint. Then she tried to rise, but she
+could not, and she screamed. She screamed hoarsely once and again, and,
+oh, joy! even as the gipsy clambered over the stile, sprang into the
+road and came to seize her, and all her being arose in revolt against
+him, a voice answered her, feet came racing up the road, a man
+appeared, she was no longer alone.
+
+It was the chaplain, panting and horrified. He had been the first to be
+alarmed by the woman’s tale, and running out of the house unarmed and
+hatless he had come in time, in the nick of time! Across her lifeless
+body, for at last she had swooned quite away, the gipsy and he looked
+at one another by the light of the moon. And without warning, without a
+word said, the gipsy came at him like a wildcat, a knife in his hand.
+Sutton saw the gleam of the weapon, and the gleam of the man’s savage
+eyes, but he held his ground gallantly. With a yell for help he let the
+man close with him, and, more by luck than skill, he parried the blow
+which the other had dealt him with the knife. But the gipsy, finding
+his arm clutched and held, struck his enemy with his left fist a heavy
+blow between the eyes. The poor chaplain fell stunned and breathless.
+
+The gipsy stood over him an instant to see if he would rise. But he did
+not move; and the man turned to the girl, who lay insensible beside the
+wall. He stooped to raise her, with the intention of putting her over
+the wall. But in the act he heard a shout, and he lifted his head to
+listen, supposing that his comrades had got wind of the skirmish.
+
+It was not his comrades; for despairing of retaking the girl, they had
+hurried back to the house to attend to their own safety. He stooped
+again; but this time he heard the patter of footsteps coming up the
+road, and a man came in sight in the moonlight. With every passion
+roused, and determined, since he had risked so much, that he would not
+be balked, the gipsy lifted the girl none the less, and had raised her
+almost to the level of the top of the wall, when the man shouted anew.
+Perforce the ruffian let the girl down again, and with a snarl of rage
+turned and faced the newcomer with his knife.
+
+But Clyne—for it was he—had not come unarmed. For many days he had not
+gone so much as a step unarmed. And the stranger’s attitude as he let
+the girl fall, and the gleam of his knife, were enough. The man rushed
+at him, as he had rushed at the chaplain, with the ferocity of a wild
+beast. But Clyne met him with a burst of flame and shot, and then with
+a second shot; and the gipsy whirled round with a muffled cry and
+fell—at first it seemed backwards. But when he reached the ground he
+lay limp and doubled up with his face to his knees, and one arm under
+him.
+
+Clyne, with the smoking pistol in his hand, bent over him, ready, if he
+moved, to beat out his brains. But there was no need of that third
+blow, which he would have given with hearty good-will. And he turned to
+the girl. Something, perhaps the pistol-shot, had brought her to
+herself. She had raised herself against the wall, and holding it, was
+looking wildly about her; not at the dead man, nor at the chaplain, who
+stirred and groaned. But at Clyne. And when he approached her she threw
+herself on his breast and clung to him.
+
+“Oh, don’t let me go! Oh, don’t let me go!” she cried.
+
+He tried to soothe her, he tried to pacify her; keeping himself between
+her and the prostrate man.
+
+“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t. You are quite safe. You are quite safe.”
+
+He had fired with a hand as steady as a rock, but his voice shook now.
+
+“Oh, don’t let me go!” she repeated hysterically. “Oh, don’t let me
+go!”
+
+“You are safe! you are safe!” he assured her, holding her more closely,
+and yet more closely to him.
+
+And when Bishop and Long Tom Gilson, and three or four others, came up
+at a run, breathing fire and slaughter, he was still supporting her;
+and she was crying to him, in a voice that went to the men’s hearts,
+“Not to let her go! Not to let her go!”
+
+Alas, too, that was the sight which met the poor chaplain’s swimming
+gaze when he came to himself, and, groaning, felt the bump between his
+eyes—the bump which he had got in her defence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+TWO OF A RACE
+
+
+It was Thursday, and three days had passed since the Sunday, the day of
+many happenings, which had cleared up the mystery and restored
+Henrietta to Mrs. Gilson’s care. The frost still held, the air was
+brisk and clear. The Langdale Pikes lifted themselves sharp and
+glittering from the line of grey screes that run southward to
+Wetherlamb and the Coniston Mountain. A light air blew down the lake,
+ruffling the open water, and bedecking the leafless woods on Wray Point
+with a fringe of white breakers. The morning was a perfect winter
+morning, the sky of that cloudless, but not over-deep blue, which
+portends a long and steady frost. Horses’ hoofs rang loud on the road;
+and rooks gathered where they had passed. Men who stopped to talk hit
+their palms together or swung their arms. The larger and wiser birds
+had started betimes for salt water and the mussel preserves on the
+Cartmel Sands.
+
+The inquest on the gipsy had been held, but something perfunctorily,
+after the fashion of the day. Captain Clyne and the chaplain had told
+their stories, and after a few words from the coroner, a verdict of
+justifiable homicide had been heartily given, and the jury had resolved
+itself into a “free and easy” in the tap-room; while the coroner had
+delivered himself of much wisdom, and laid down much law in Mrs.
+Gilson’s snuggery.
+
+Henrietta had not been made to appear; for carried upstairs, in a state
+as like death as life, on Sunday evening, she had kept her room until
+this morning. She would fain have kept it longer, but there were
+reasons against that. And now, with the timidity which a retreat from
+every-day life breeds—and perhaps with some flutterings of the heart on
+another account—she was pausing before her looking-glass, and trying to
+gather courage to descend and face the world.
+
+She was still pale; and when she met her own eyes in the mirror, a
+quivering smile, a something verging on the piteous in her face, told
+of nerves which time had not yet steadied. Possibly, her reluctance to
+go down, though the hour was late, and Mrs. Gilson would scold, had a
+like origin. None the less, she presently conquered it, opened her door
+and descended; as she had done on that morning of her arrival, a few
+weeks back, and yet—oh, such a long time back!
+
+Now, as then, when she had threaded the dark passages and come to the
+door of Mr. Rogers’s room, she paused faint-hearted, and, with her hand
+raised to the latch, listened. She heard no sound, and she opened the
+door and went in. The table was laid for one.
+
+She heaved a sigh of relief, and—cut it short midway. For Captain Clyne
+came forward from one of the windows at which he had been standing.
+
+“I am glad that you are better,” he said stiffly, and in a constrained
+tone, “and able to come down.”
+
+“Oh yes, thank you,” she answered, striving to speak heartily, and
+repressing with difficulty that proneness of the lip to quiver. “I
+think I am quite well now. Quite well! I am sure, after this long time,
+I should be.”
+
+And she turned away and affected to warm her hands at the fire.
+
+He did not look directly at her—he avoided doing so. But he could see
+the reflection of her face in the oval-framed mirror, as she stood
+upright again. He saw that she had lost for the time the creamy warmth
+of complexion that was one of her chief beauties. She was pale and
+thin, and looked ill.
+
+“You have been very severely shaken,” he said. “No doubt you feel it
+still!”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, “a little. I think I do.”
+
+“Perhaps you had better be alone?”
+
+She did not know what to say to that. Perhaps she did not know what she
+wished. Her lip quivered. This was very unlike what she had expected
+and what she had dreaded. But it was worse. He seemed to be waiting for
+her answer—that he might go. What could she say?
+
+“Just as you like,” she murmured at last.
+
+“Oh, but I wish to do what you like!” he replied, with a little more
+warmth; but still awkwardly and with constraint.
+
+“So do I,” she replied.
+
+“I shall stay then,” he answered. And he lifted a small dish from the
+hearth and carried it to the table. “I had Mrs. Gilson’s orders to keep
+this hot for you,” he said.
+
+“It was very kind of you.”
+
+“I am afraid,” more lightly, “that it was fear of Mrs. Gilson weighed
+on me as much as anything.”
+
+He returned to the hearth when he had seen her seated. And she began
+her breakfast with her eyes on the table. With the first draught of
+coffee a feeling of warmth and courage ran through her; and he,
+standing with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his eyes on the mirror,
+saw the change in her.
+
+“The boy is better,” he said suddenly. “I think he will do now.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I think so. But he will need great care. He will not be able to leave
+his bed for a day or two. We found your brooch pinned inside his
+clothes.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+He turned sharply and for the first time looked directly at her.
+
+“Of course, we knew why you put it there. It was good of you. But
+why—don’t you ask after him, Henrietta?” in a different tone.
+
+She felt the colour rise to her cheeks—and she wished it anywhere else.
+
+“I saw him this morning,” she murmured.
+
+“Oh!” he replied in surprise. And he turned to the mirror again. “I
+see.”
+
+She began to wish that he would leave her, for his silence made her
+horribly nervous. And she dared not start a subject herself, because
+she could not trust her voice. The hands of the white-faced clock
+jerked slowly on, marking the seconds, and accentuating the silence.
+She grew so nervous at last that she could not lift her eyes from her
+plate, and she ate though she was scarcely able to swallow, because she
+dared not leave off.
+
+It did not occur to her that Anthony Clyne was as ill at ease as she
+was; and oppressed, moreover, to a much greater degree by the memory of
+certain scenes which had taken place in that room. Her nervousness was
+in part the reflection of his constraint. And his constraint arose from
+two feelings widely different.
+
+The long silence was becoming painful to both, when he forced himself
+to break it.
+
+“I am so very, very deeply beholden to you,” he said, in a constrained
+tone, “that—that I must ask you, Henrietta, to listen to me for a few
+minutes—even if it be unpleasant to you.”
+
+She laughed awkwardly.
+
+“If it is only,” she answered, “because you are beholden to
+me—that—that you feel it necessary to thank me at length, please don’t.
+You will only overwhelm me.”
+
+“It is not for that reason only,” he said. And he knew that he spoke,
+much against his will, with dreadful solemnity. “No. Naturally we must
+have much to say to one another. I, in particular, who owe to you——”
+
+“Please let that be,” she protested.
+
+“But I cannot. I cannot!” he repeated. “You have done me so great a
+service, at a risk so great, and under circumstances so—so——”
+
+“So remarkable,” she cried, with something of her old girlish manner,
+“that you cannot find words in which to describe them! Then please
+don’t.” And then, more seriously: “I did not do what I did to be
+thanked.”
+
+“Then why?” he asked quickly. “Why did you do it?”
+
+“Did you think,” she protested, “that I did it to be thanked?”
+
+“No, but—why did you do it, Henrietta?” he asked persistently. “Such a
+risk, such men, such circumstances, might have deterred any woman. Nay,
+almost any man.”
+
+She toyed with her teaspoon; there had come a faint flush of colour
+into her cheeks.
+
+“I think it was—I think it was just to reinstate myself,” she murmured.
+
+“You mean?”
+
+“You gave me to understand,” she explained, “that you thought ill of
+me. And I wished you to think well of me; or better of me, I should
+say, for I did not expect you to think quite well of me after—you
+know!” in some confusion.
+
+“You wished to be reinstated?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I wonder,” he said slowly, “how much you mean by that.”
+
+“I mean what I say,” she answered, looking at him.
+
+“Yes, but do you mean that you—wish to be reinstated altogether?”
+
+She did not remove her eyes from his face, but she blushed to the roots
+of her hair.
+
+“I am not sure that I understand,” she said with a slight air of
+offence.
+
+“No?” he said. “And perhaps I did not quite mean that. What I did mean,
+and do mean, what I am hoping, what I am looking forward to,
+Henrietta——” and there he broke off.
+
+He seemed to find it necessary to begin again:
+
+“Perhaps I had better explain,” he said more soberly. “You told me that
+morning by the lake some home-truths, you remember? You showed me that
+what had happened was not all your fault; was perhaps not at all your
+fault. And you showed me this with so much energy and power, that I
+went away with the first clear impression of you I had had in my life.
+Yes, with the feeling that I had never known you until then.” He
+dropped his eyes, and looked thoughtfully at something on the table.
+“And one of the things I remember best, and which I shall always
+remember, was your saying that I had never paid any court to you.”
+
+“It was true,” she said, in a low voice.
+
+And she too did not look at him, but kept her eyes bent on the spoon
+with which she toyed.
+
+“Yes. Well, if you will let the old state of things be so far
+reinstated as to—let me begin to pay my court to you now, I am not
+confident, I am very far from confident, that I can please you. I am
+rather old, for one thing”—with a rueful laugh—“to make love
+gracefully, and rather stiff and—political. But owing to the trouble I
+have brought upon you in the past——”
+
+“I never said but that we both brought it!” Henrietta objected
+suddenly.
+
+“Well, whoever brought it——”
+
+“We both brought it!” she repeated obstinately.
+
+“Very well. I mean only that the trouble——”
+
+“Makes it unlikely that I shall find another husband?” she said. “Pray
+be frank with me! That,” rising and going to the window, and then
+turning to confront him, “is what you mean, is it not? That is exactly
+what you mean, I am sure?”
+
+“Something of that kind, perhaps,” he admitted.
+
+“But you forget Mr. Sutton!” she said—and paused. She took one step
+forward, and her eyes shone. “You forget Mr. Sutton, Captain Clyne. The
+gentleman to whom you handed me over! To whom you gave so clear a
+certainty that I was for the first comer who was willing. He is
+willing, quite willing!”
+
+“But——”
+
+“And it cannot be said that he did not behave gallantly on Sunday
+night! I am told——”
+
+“He behaved admirably.”
+
+“And he is willing!” she flung the word at him—“quite willing to marry
+me—disgraced as I am! As you have always, always hinted I am! And not
+out of pity, Captain Clyne. Let us be frank with one another. You were
+very frank with me once—more than frank.” She held out her wrist, which
+was still faintly discoloured. “When a man does that to a woman,” she
+said, “she either loves him, sir, or hates him.”
+
+“Yes,” he said slowly—very slowly. “I see. Your mind is made up,
+then——”
+
+“That I will not accept your kind offer to—pay your court to me?” she
+answered, with derision. “Certainly. I have no mind to be wooed by
+you!” Again she held out her wrist. “You know the stale proverb: ‘He
+that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay!’” And she
+made him a little bow, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks bright.
+
+He turned his back on her, and stood for a moment looking from the
+window which was the nearer to the fire—the one looking over the lake.
+The words of her proverb—stale enough in truth—ran very sorrowfully in
+his ears. “He that will not when he may! He that will not when he may!”
+No, he might have known that she was not one to forget. He might have
+known that the words he had said, and the things that he had done,
+would rankle. And that she who had not hesitated to elope—to punish him
+for his neglect of her—would not hesitate to punish him for worse than
+neglect. He stood a long minute watching the tiny waves burst into
+white lines at the foot of Hayes Woods. No, she could not forget—nor
+forgive. But she could act, she had acted, as if she had done both. She
+had saved his child. She had risked her life for it. And if she had
+done that with this resentment, this feeling in her heart, if she had
+done it, moved only by the desire to show him that he had misjudged
+her—in a sense it was the nobler act, and one like—ay, he owned it
+sorrowfully—like herself! At any rate, it did not become him to cast a
+word of reproach at her. She had saved his child.
+
+He turned at length, and looked at her. He saw that her figure had lost
+its elation, and her cheeks their colour. She was leaning against the
+side of the window, and looked tired and ill, and almost as she had
+looked when she came into the room. His heart melted.
+
+“I would like you to know one thing,” he said, “before I go. Your
+triumph is greater, Henrietta, than you think, and your revenge more
+complete. It is no question of pity with me, but of love.” He paused,
+and laughed awry. “The worse for me, you will say, and the better for
+you. _Vae victis!_ Still, even if you hate me——”
+
+“I did not say that I hated you!”
+
+“You said——”
+
+“I did not! I did not!” she repeated, with a queer little laugh. And
+she sat down on the window seat, and turned quickly with a pettish
+movement, so that he could only see the side of her face. “I said
+nothing of the kind.”
+
+“But——”
+
+“I said something very different!”
+
+“You said——”
+
+“I said that when a man pinches a girl’s wrist black and blue, and
+swears at her—yes, Captain Clyne,” firmly, “you swore at me, and called
+me——”
+
+“Don’t!” he said.
+
+
+[Illustration: ] She was leaning against the side of the window ...
+
+
+“I only said,” she continued breathlessly, “that when a man does that,
+the woman either loves him or hates him!”
+
+“Henrietta!”
+
+“Captain Clyne!”
+
+After a long pause, “I think I understand you,” he said slowly, “but if
+you—if there were any feeling, the least feeling of that kind on your
+part, you would not have forbidden me to—to think of seeking you for my
+wife.”
+
+“I didn’t!” she answered. “I told you that you should not pay your
+court to me. And you shall not! You cannot,” half laughing and half
+crying, “woo what’s won, can you? If you still think it is worth the
+winning! Only,” stopping him by a gesture as he came towards her, “you
+are not to give me over to Mr. Sutton again, whatever I do! You must
+promise me that.”
+
+“I won’t!” he said.
+
+“You are quite sure, sir? However I behave? And even if I run away from
+you?”
+
+“Quite sure!”
+
+And a few minutes later, “Poor Sutton!” he said. “We must try to make
+it up to him.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“It is a good thing you did not set out to woo me,” she answered. “For
+you would not have shone at it. Make it up to him indeed! Make it up to
+him! What a thing, sir, to say to—me!”
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+It was not made up to Mr. Sutton; though the best living that could be
+procured by an exchange with the Bishop of Durham—and there were fat
+livings in Durham in those days, and small blame if a man held two of
+them—was found for the chaplain. He married, too, a lady of the decayed
+house of Conyers of Sockburn, beside which the Damers and the Clynes
+were upstairs. And so both in his fortune and his wife’s family he did
+as well—almost—as he had hoped to do. But though he accepted his
+patron’s gift, he came seldom to Clyne Old Hall; and some held him
+ungrateful. Moreover, a little later, when to be a radical was not
+counted quite so dreadful a thing, he turned radical in all but the
+white hat. And Clyne was disappointed, but not surprised. Henrietta,
+however, understood. Though children running about her knees had tamed
+her wildness and caged her pride, she was still a woman, and the memory
+of a past conquest was not ungrateful. She had no desire to see the
+pale replica of Mr. Pitt, but she sometimes thought of him, and always
+kindly and with gratitude.
+
+There was a third lover, of whom she never thought without unhappiness.
+
+“You will never tell the children? You will never tell the children?”
+was her prayer to her husband when Walterson was in question.
+
+And though he answered with gravity, “Not unless you do it again, my
+dear,” the sting of remembrance did not cease to rankle.
+
+Walterson was traced to Leith—and thence to Holland. There the trail
+was lost, and it is believed that he did not live to return to England.
+Whether he did return or not—and Bow Street, and Mr. Bishop in
+particular, kept watch for him long—he never re-entered Henrietta’s
+life. As the memory of the French Revolution faded from men’s minds,
+the struggle for reform fell into more reputable and less violent
+hands. Silly and turbulent men of the type of him who had turned the
+girl’s young head no longer counted; or, rising to the top at moments
+of public excitement, vanished as quickly, and no man knew whither.
+
+Giles and Lunt were not taken on that Sunday night. They escaped, it
+was supposed, to Scotland, by way of Patterdale and the Moors. Less
+fortunate, however, than Walterson, they returned to London and fell in
+again with Thistlewood. They yielded to the fascination of that
+remarkable and unhappy man, took part in his schemes, and were taken
+with him in the loft over the stable in Cato Street, when the attempt
+to murder the cabinet at Lord Harrowby’s house in Grosvenor Square
+miscarried. He and they got a fair trial, but little pity. And it is
+not to be supposed that upon the scaffold in the Old Bailey, they
+thought much of the lonely house in the hollow at Troutbeck, or of the
+helpless woman whom they had terrorised. To their credit, be it said,
+they died more worthily than they had lived; and with them came to a
+close the movement which sought to reach reform by the road of
+violence, and to that end held no instruments too cheap or vile.
+
+Tyson came out of the adventure a wiser and perhaps a better man. For
+on his return from the north he found it hard to free himself from the
+charge of complicity in the acts of those who had used his house; nor
+did he succeed until he had lain some weeks in Appleby gaol. He would
+fain have avenged himself on Bess, but for reasons to be stated, he
+could not enjoy this satisfaction. And his neighbours sent him to
+Coventry. Had he been a strong man he might have defied them and public
+opinion. But he was only a braggart, and that which must have
+embittered many, tamed him. He turned to his wife for comfort, sought
+his home more than before, and gradually settled down into a tolerable
+citizen and a high Tory.
+
+Bess saved herself by her own wit and courage. The Monday’s light saw
+her dragged to Kendal prison, where they were not so gentle with her as
+they had been with Henrietta. Her story went with her, and, “They say
+you stole a child,” the little girl murmured, standing at her knee and
+staring at her, “and ’ll be hanged at the March fair.”
+
+“Not I,” said Bess. “It’s almost a pity, too, ain’t it? There’d be a
+fine crowd to see!”
+
+The child’s eyes sparkled.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “There’d be a crowd, too.”
+
+But Bess played a fine stroke. She sent for her rival on the Friday,
+and Henrietta, twenty-four hours betrothed, and very far from unhappy,
+took that road once more, and went to her.
+
+“I saved you,” said Bess, with coolness. “Yes, I did. Don’t deny it!
+Now do you save me.”
+
+And Henrietta moved heaven and earth and Anthony Clyne to save her. She
+succeeded. Bess went abroad—to join Walterson, it was rumoured. If so,
+she returned without him, for on the old miser’s death she appeared on
+Windermere, sold Starvecrow Farm and all its belongings, and removed to
+the south, but to what part is not known, nor are any particulars of
+her later fortunes within reach. Some said that she played a part in
+the great riots at Bristol twelve years later, but the evidence is
+inconclusive, and dark women possessing a strain of gipsy blood are not
+uncommon.
+
+Nor are women with a sharp tongue and a warm heart. Yet when Mrs.
+Gilson died in the year of those very riots, and at a good age, there
+was a gathering to bury her in Troutbeck graveyard as great as if she
+had been a Lowther. The procession, horse and foot, was a mile long.
+And when those who knew her least wondered whence all these moist eyes
+and this flocking to do honour to a woman who had been quick of temper
+and rough of tongue—ay, were it to Squire Bolton of Storrs, or the rich
+Mr. Rogers himself—there was one who came a great distance to the
+burying who could have solved the riddle.
+
+It was Henrietta.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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