Starvecrow Farm Part 25

He returned to the inn, more fixed than ever in his notion. With an impa.s.sive 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. h.o.r.n.yold.

"----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 pa.s.sing 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sumed that the spell was unbroken and her heart was his, her pride had revolted and revolted pa.s.sionately. 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 s.e.x spoke for him.

"And oh! for G.o.d's sake spare me!"