Starvecrow Farm Part 26

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 pa.s.sed 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 hara.s.sed 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 pa.s.s out? Nor was that all. What of her position when she had pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage; 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 d.a.m.ning 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 compa.s.sed his end by a little man[oe]uvring, 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 pa.s.ses," 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 sh.o.r.e before his eyes, and looked hard at him, he never saw her.

CHAPTER XVI

A NIGHT ADVENTURE