Jeanne of the Marshes Part 43

"I can a.s.sure you," Engleton answered, "that I have had equally enough of being your prisoner."

"We are agreed, then," Forrest continued smoothly. "You will probably be relieved when I tell you that we have decided to end it."

Engleton rose to his feet.

"So much the better," he said. "You might keep me here till doomsday, and the end would be the same."

"We do not propose," Forrest continued, "to keep you here till doomsday, or anything like it. What we have come to say to you is this--that if you still refuse to give your promise--I need not say more than that--we are going to set you free."

"Do you mean that literally?" Engleton asked.

"Perhaps not altogether as you would wish to understand it," Forrest admitted. "We shall give you a chance at high tide to swim for your life."

Engleton shrunk a little back. After all, his nerves were a little shattered.

"Out there?" he asked, pointing to the seaward end of the pa.s.sage.

Forrest nodded.

"It will be a chance for you," he said.

Engleton looked at them for a moment, dumbfounded.

"It will be murder," he said slowly.

Forrest shrugged his shoulders.

"You may call it so if you like," he answered. "Personally, I should not be inclined to agree with you. You will be alive when you go into the sea. If you cannot swim, the fault is not ours."

"And when, may I ask," Engleton continued, "do you propose to put into operation your amiable plan?"

"Just whensoever we please, you d--d obstinate young puppy!" Forrest cried, suddenly losing his nerve. "Curse your silent tongue and your venomous face! You think you can get the better of us, do you? Well, you are mistaken. You'll tell no stories from amongst the seaweed."

Engleton nodded.

"I shall take particular good care," he said, "to avoid the seaweed."

"Enough," Forrest declared. "Listen! Here is the issue. We are tired of negative things. To-night you sign the paper and give us your word of honour to keep silent, or before morning, when the tide is full, you go into the sea!"

"I warn you," Engleton said, "that I can swim."

"I will guarantee," Forrest answered suavely, "that by the time you reach the water you will have forgotten how."

CHAPTER XII

The days that followed were strange ones for Jeanne. Every morning at sunrise, or before, she would steal out of the little cottage where she was staying, and make her way along the top of one of the high d.y.k.e banks to the sea. Often she saw the sun rise from some lonely spot amongst the sandbanks or the marshes, heard the awakening of the birds, and saw the first glimpses of morning life steal into evidence upon the grey chill wilderness. At such times she saw few people. The house where she was staying was apart from the village, and near the head of one of the creeks, and there were times when she would leave it and return without having seen a single human being. She knew, from cautious inquiries made from her landlady's daughter, that Cecil and Major Forrest were still at the Red Hall, and for that reason during the daytime she seldom left the cottage, sitting out in the old-fashioned garden, or walking a little way in the fields at the back. For the future she made no plans. She was quite content to feel that for the present she had escaped from an intolerable situation.

The woman from whom Jeanne had taken the rooms, a Mrs. Caynsard, she had seen only once or twice. She was waited upon most of the time by an exceedingly diminutive maid servant, very shy at first, but very talkative afterwards, in broad Norfolk dialect, when she had grown a little accustomed to this very unusual lodger. Now and then Kate Caynsard, the only daughter of the house, appeared, but for the most time she was away, sailing a fishing boat or looking after the little farm. To Jeanne she represented a type wholly strange, but altogether interesting. She was little over twenty years of age, but she was strong and finely built. She had the black hair and dark brown eyes, which here and there amongst the villagers of the east coast remind one of the immigration of worsted spinners and silk weavers from Flanders and the North of France, many centuries ago. She was very handsome but exceedingly shy. When Jeanne, as she had done more than once, tried to talk to her, her abrupt replies gave little opening for conversation.

One morning, however, when Jeanne, having returned from a long tramp across the sand dunes, was sitting in the little orchard at the back of the house, she saw her landlady's daughter come slowly out to her from the house. Jeanne put down her book.

"Good morning, Miss Caynsard!" she said.

"Good morning, miss!" the girl answered awkwardly. "You have had a long walk!"

Jeanne nodded.

"I went so far," she said, "that I had to race the tide home, or I should have had to wade through the home creek."

Kate nodded.

"The tide do come sometimes," she said, "at a most awful pace. I have been out after whelks myself, and had to walk home with the sea all round me, and nothing but a ribbon of dry land. One needs to know the ways about on this wilderness."

"One learns them by watching," Jeanne remarked. "I suppose you have lived here all your life."

"All my life," the girl answered, "and my father and grandfather before me. 'Tis a queer country, but them as is born and bred here seldom leaves it. Sometimes they try. They go to the next village inland, or to some town, or to foreign parts, but sooner or later if they live they come back."

Jeanne nodded sympathetically.

"It is a wonderful country," she said. "When I saw it first it seemed to me that it was depressing. Now I love it!"

"And I," the girl remarked, with a sudden pa.s.sion in her tone, "I hate it!"

Jeanne looked at her, surprised.

"It sounds so strange to hear you say that," she remarked. "I should have thought that any one who had lived here always would have loved it. Every day I am here I seem to discover new beauties, a new effect of colouring, a new undertone of the sea, or to hear the cry of some new bird."

"It is beautiful sometimes," the girl answered. "I love it when the creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the pasturage lands. I love it when the sea changes its colour as the clouds pa.s.s over the sun, and the wind blows from the west. The place is well enough then. But there are times when it is nothing but a great wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold here, cold to the bone. Then I hate the place worse than ever."

"Have you ever tried to go away for a time?" Jeanne asked.

"I went once to London," the girl said, turning her head a little away.

"I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had expected, but they didn't, and my father died suddenly, so I came home to take care of the farm."

Jeanne nodded sympathetically. She was beginning to wonder why this girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking to her. She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown. Her coa.r.s.e brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped ankles. Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear complexion. She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other nation. There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant about her, than her position seemed to warrant.

"There is a question, miss," she said at last, abruptly, "I should like to ask you. I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been in when you came to look at the rooms."

"What is it?" Jeanne asked quietly.

"I've a good eye for faces," Kate said, "and I seldom forget one.

Weren't you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few weeks ago?"

Jeanne nodded.

"Yes," she said, "I was staying there. It was because I liked the place so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I came back."