Lawrence Clavering Part 39

"Nine days and three, twelve together. Your daughter, Mr. Curwen, shall be on board the _Swallow_ by the twenty-ninth. Meanwhile I think you can lie safely here with Ashlock. From Ravengla.s.s the sloop shall sail directly here, and, taking you up, make straight for France. So sketch me here the way from Applegarth!"

Mr. Curwen drew a rough outline on the paper while I bent over him.

"You will mount to the top of Gillerthwaite," he said, "then bear to the right betwixt Great Gable and the pillar. Descend the gra.s.s into Mosedale. Here is Wastdale Church; strike westwards thence to the great gap between Scafell and the Screes. This is Burnmoor--five miles of it, and there is no water; after you pa.s.s Burnmoor tarn until you have come down to Eskdale. Cross Eskdale towards the sea. The long ridge here is Muncaster Fell. Keep along the slope of it, and G.o.d send you see the _Swallow!_"

He gave me the paper. I folded it carefully and thrust it into my pocket. Then I took up my hat and held out my hand to him. He took it, and still clasping it came to the door with me, and out into the open.

"Mr. Clavering," he said, "when you first came to Applegarth I told you that I had lost a son. Tonight I seem to have found another, and it would be a great joy to me if, when the _Swallow_ puts in here, I could see that second son upon its deck."

I stood for a moment looking at him, his words so tempted me! The difficulties of the adventure which lay before me became trivial in my eyes as the crossing of a muddy road. My fancy, bridging all between, jumped to the moment when the _Swallow_ should loose its sails with Dorothy on board. I saw myself in imagination standing by her side, watching the c.u.mberland Hills lessen and dwindle, the while we streamed down the coast towards the sandbanks here.

"Then you shall see me," I longed to cry. But the thought of another woman weeping by a lonely lamp in Keswick crept into my heart, and thereafter the thought of a man lying somewhere kennelled in a prison.

CHAPTER XIX.

APPLEGARTH AGAIN.

I travelled along the beach until I reached the southern cape of Morecambe Bay, and only now and again swerved inland when I espied ahead of me the smoke and houses of a village. This I did more for safety's sake than for any comfort or celerity in the act of walking.

Indeed, the sand, which, being loose and dry, slipped and yielded with every step I took, did, I think, double the labour and tedium of my journey. But on the other hand, the country by the sea-coast was flat, so that I could distinguish the figures of people and the direction of their walk at a long distance--a doubtful advantage, you may say, and one that cut both ways. And so it would have been but for the gra.s.sy sand-hills which embossed the wide stretch of sh.o.r.e. It was an easy thing to drop into the gra.s.s at the first sight of a stranger and crawl down into the hollows betwixt the hillocks; and had such an one pursued me, he would have had the most unprofitable game of hide-and-seek that ever a man engaged in. I had other reasons besides for keeping near the sea. For since I travelled chiefly by night and in the late and early quarters of the day, I had need of a resting-place when the day was full. Now so long as I kept to the coast I had ever one ready to my hand amongst these lonely and desolate sandhills, where I was easily able to scoop out a bed, and so lie snug from the wind. For another thing, I had thus the noise of the sea continually in my ears. I did not know in truth what great store I set on that, until a little short of Lancaster I turned my back on it.

The sea sang to me by day and by night, lulling me like a cradle-song when I lay cushioned among the sand-hills, inspiriting as the drums of an army when I walked through the night. It was not merely that it told me of the _Swallow_ swinging upon its tides, and of the great hopes I drew therefrom, but it spoke too with voices of its own, and whether the voices whispered or turbulently laughed, it was always the same perplexing mystery they hinted of. They seemed to signify a message they could not articulate, and it came upon me sometimes, as I sat tired by the sh.o.r.e, that I would fain sit there and listen until I had plucked out the kernel of its meaning. I used to fancy that once a man could penetrate to that and hold it surely, there would be little more he needed to know, but he would carry it with him, as a magic crystal wherein he could see strangely illuminated and made plain, the eternal mysteries which girded him about.

From Morecambe Bay I turned inland towards the borders of Yorkshire, and pa.s.sing to the east of Kirby Lonsdale, that I might avoid the line of Forster's march, curved round again towards Grasmere. Here I began to redouble my precautions, seeing that I was come into a country where my face and recent history might be known. For since I had left the coast I had voyaged in no great fear of detection, taking a lift in a carrier's cart when one chanced to pa.s.s my way, and now and again hiring a horse for a stage. The apothecary at Preston, in addition to his other benefactions, had provided me with an inconspicuous suit of clothes, and as I had money in my pockets wherewith to pay my way, I was able to press on unremarked, or at least counted no more than a merchant's clerk travelling upon his master's business.

From Grasmere, I mounted by the old path across Cold Barrow Fell, which had first led me to Blackladies, and keeping along the ridge crept down into Keswick late upon the seventh day. There was no light in Mrs. Herbert's lodging as I slipped down the street, and for a second I was seized with a recurrence of my fear that she had left the town. It was only for a second, however. For that conviction which I had first tasted when I rode down Gillerthwaite in the early morning, had been growing stronger and stronger within me, more especially of late. I was possessed by some instinctive foreknowledge that the occasion for which I looked would come; that somehow, somewhere I should be enabled to bring forward my testimony to the clearing of Mr.

Herbert from the imputation of disloyalty. It was a thought that more and more I repeated to myself, and each time with a stouter confidence. It may be that these more immediate tasks to which I had set my hand--I mean the rescue of Mr. Curwen and his daughter from the consequence of partic.i.p.ation in the rebellion--hindered me from looking very closely into the difficulties of the third and last. It may be, too, that this conviction was in some queer way the particular message which the sea had for me--that I had received the message unconsciously while pondering what it might be. I do not know; I only know that when I repeated it to myself, it sounded like nothing so much as the booming of waves upon a beach.

I slept that night under a familiar boulder on the hillside above Applegarth, and in the early morning I came down to the house, and without much ceremony roused the household. Mary Tyson poked her head out of a window.

"Miss Dorothy?" I cried

"She is asleep."

"Wake her up and let me in!"

So I was in time. Mary Tyson came down and opened the door; and in a little, as I waited in the hall, I heard Dorothy's footsteps on the stairs.

"You have escaped!" she cried; "and my father--you bring bad news of him?"

"No; I thank G.o.d for it, I bring good news."

And the blood came into her cheeks with a rush.

I told her briefly how we had escaped from Preston. She listened to the story with shining eyes.

"And all this you have done for--for us?" she said with a singular note of pride in her voice.

"It is little," I replied, "even if what's left to do crowns it successfully. But if in that we go astray, why, it is less than nothing." Thereupon I told her of the plan which I had formed with regard to the _Swallow_, and of the journey which she and I must take.

She listened to me now, however, with an occupied air, and interrupted me before I had come to a close.

"It is you who have done this?" she repeated in the same tone which she had used before.

"I did but keep my promise. It was made to you," I answered simply.

"I am your debtor for all my life."

"No," I cried. "It is the other way about."

"I do not feel the debt," she said very softly, and then raising a face all rosy: "Ah, but I let you stand here!" she exclaimed. "You shall tell me more of your plan while we breakfast, for I am not sure that I gave a careful ear to it;" and taking me by the arm she led me towards the dining-room. "You have come from Preston in all this haste. My poor child!" She spoke in a quite natural tone of pity, and I doubt not but what my appearance gave a reasonable complexion to her pity. It was the motherliness, however, which tickled me.

"What is it you laugh at?" she asked suddenly, her voice changing at once to an imperious dignity.

"I was thinking," said I, "that your head, Miss Curwen, only reaches to my chin."

"If G.o.d made me a dwarf," said she, with a freezing stateliness, "it is very courteous of you to reproach me with it--the most delicate courtesy, upon my word."

She was in truth ever very sensitive as to her height, and anxious to appear taller than she was; for which anxiety there was no reason whatever, since she was just of the right stature, and an inch more or less would have been the spoiling of her; which opinion I most unfortunately expressed to her, and so made matters worse. For said she--

"Your condescension, Mr. Clavering, is very amiable and consoling;"

and with that she left me alone in the room, until such a time as breakfast should be ready. I went out, however, in search of Mary Tyson, and finding her, explained my design, and asked her to put together in a bundle the least quant.i.ty of clothes which would suffice for Dorothy until she reached France. Mary fell in with the plan immediately, and began to regret her age and bulk that would hinder her from keeping pace with us. But I cut short her discourse, and bidding her hasten on the breakfast, made shift with a basin of water and a towel to hurriedly repair the disarray of my toilet.

For now every instant of delay began to drag upon my spirits. Once upon the hillside, it would be strange, I thought, if we did not contrive to come undetected to Ravengla.s.s. We had to cross two valleys, it is true, but they were both rugged and bleak, with but few dwellings scattered about them, and those only of the poorer sort, inhabited by men cut off from the world by the barrier of the hills, who from very ignorance could not, if they would, meddle in their neighbours' affairs. The one danger of the journey that I foresaw lay, as I have said, in the great fall of snow.

But here within the walls of the house it was altogether different.

Danger seemed impending about me. Every moment I looked to hear the beat of hoofs upon the road, and a knocking on the door. It was, I a.s.sured myself, the most unlikely thing that on this one day the officers should come for Dorothy Curwen, but the a.s.surance brought me little comfort I tasted in antic.i.p.ation all the remorse which I should feel if the girl should be taken at the very moment of deliverance.

I was the more glad, therefore, when, on coming into the garden, I found Dorothy already dressed for the journey, in a furred waistcoat and a hood quilted and lined with a rose-coloured taffety.

"That is wise," said I, "for I fear me, Miss Curwen, we shall have it cold before we get to our journey's end."

She said never a word, but stood looking at me, and if glances could make one cold, I should have been shivering then.

"But let me be quick," I continued. "Is it known that you are at Applegarth? Have you ridden far abroad?" And in my anxiety I went over to the window and gazed down the road. Neither did she answer my questions, but, standing by the fireplace, in an even, deliberate voice she began to read me a lecture upon my manners.

"Miss Curwen!" I cried; "do you understand? Every moment you stay here, every word you speak, imperils your liberty."

She waited patiently until I had done, and continued her lecture at the point where I had interrupted her, as though I had not so much as spoken at all.

"This is the purest wilfulness!" I interrupted again, being indeed at my wits' end to know how I should stop her. I think that I showed too much anxiety, with my bobbings at the window, and exclamations, and that, seeing my alarm, she prolonged her speech out of sheer perversity to punish me the more. At last, however, she came to an end, and we set ourselves to the breakfast in silence. However, I was too hot with indignation to keep that silence wisely.

"The most ill-timed talk that ever I heard," I muttered.

She laid her knife and fork on the instant, and quietly recommenced. I rose from the table in a rage, and by a lucky chance hit upon the one argument that would close her lips.

"You forget," said I, "that your father's safety depends on your escape. If you and I are taken here, how shall he get free?" And in a very few minutes after that I took up the bundle Mary Tyson had made ready, and we crossed the threshold of Applegarth and made our way up Gillerthwaite.