Starvecrow Farm Part 16

"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 pa.s.sion, 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 hara.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sionately, 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.cious and clean, though spa.r.s.ely and ma.s.sively furnished. The flag floor was outlined in white squares, and the s.p.a.ce 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.