Starvecrow Farm Part 46

"But I will not do that!" she answered. And she laughed gaily in the reaction of her spirits. She knew in some subtle way that she was reinstated; that he would never think very badly of her again. And the knowledge that he trusted her was joy; she scarcely knew why. But, "I shall not do that!" she repeated. "Have you thought what will be the consequence to you if he be guilty? They will be three to one, and they will murder you."

"And you think that I can let you run the risk?"

"There will be no risk for me. I am different."

"I can't believe it," he said. "I wish"--despairingly--"I wish to G.o.d I could believe it!"

"Then do believe it," she said.

"I cannot! I cannot!"

"You have his letter," she replied. And she was going to say more, she was going to prove that she could undertake the matter with safety, when the chaise began to slacken speed, and she cut her reasoning short. "You will let me do it?" she said, laying her hand on his sleeve.

"No, no!"

"You have only to draw them off."

"I shall not!" he cried, almost savagely. "I shall not! Do you think I am a villain? Do you think I care nothing what happens----"

The jerk caused by the chaise coming to a stand before the inn cut his words short. Clyne thrust out his head.

"Any news?" he asked eagerly. "Has anything been heard?"

Mr. Sutton, who had been on the watch for their arrival, came forward to the chaise door. He answered Clyne, but his eyes, looking beyond his patron, sought Henrietta's in modest deprecation; much as the dog which is not a.s.sured of its reception seeks, yet deprecates its master's glance.

"No," he said, "none. I am sorry for it. Nadin has not yet returned, nor Bishop, though we are expecting both."

"Where's Bishop?"

"He has gone with a party to Lady Holm. There's an idea that the isles were not thoroughly searched in the first place. But he should be back immediately."

A slight hardening of the lines of the mouth was Clyne's only answer.

He helped Henrietta to alight, and was turning with her to enter the house, when he remembered himself. He laid his hand on the chaplain's arm.

"This is the gentleman," he said, "whom you have to thank for your release, Henrietta."

"I am sure," she said, "that I am greatly obliged to him." But her tone was cold.

"He did everything," Clyne said. "He left no stone unturned. Let me do him the justice of saying that we two must share the blame of what has happened, while the whole credit is his."

"I am very much obliged to him," she said again. And she bowed.

And that was all. That, and a look which told him that she resented his interference, that she hated to be beholden to him, that she held him linked for ever with her humiliation. He, and he alone, had stood by her two days before, when all had been against her, and Captain Clyne had been as flint to her. He, and he alone, had wrought out her deliverance and reinstated her. And her thanks were a haughty movement of the head, two sentences as cold as the wintry day, a smile as hard as the icicles that still depended in the shade of the eaves. And when she had spoken, she walked to the door without another glance--and every step was on the poor man's heart.

Mrs. Gilson had come down two steps to meet her. She had seen all.

"Well, you're soon back, miss?" she said. "Some have the luck all one way."

"That cannot be said of me!" Henrietta retorted, smiling.

But her colour was high. She remembered how she had descended those steps.

"No?" Mrs. Gilson responded. "When you bring the bad on yourself and the good is just a gift?"

"A gift?"

"Ay! And one for which you're not over grateful!" with all her wonted grimness. "But that's the way of the world! Grind as you will, miss, it's the lower mill-stone suffers, and the upper that cries out!

Still----"

Mr. Sutton heard no more; for Henrietta had pa.s.sed with the landlady into the house; and he turned himself about with a full heart and walked away. He had done so much for her! He had risked his livelihood, his patron, his position, to save her! He had paced this strand with every fibre in him tingling with pity for her! Ay, and when all others had put her out of their thoughts! And for return, she went laughing into the house and paid no heed to him--to the poor parson.

True, he had expected little. But he had expected more than this. He had not hoped for much; or it is possible that he had not resigned the opportunity of bringing her back. But he had hoped for more than this--for the tearful thanks of a pair of bright eyes, for the clasp of a grateful hand, for a word or two that might remain in his memory always.

And bitterness welled up in his heart, and at the first gate, at which he could stand unseen, he let his face fall on his hands. He cursed the barriers of caste, the cold pride of these aristocrats, even his own pallid insignificance--since he had as hungry a heart as panted in the breast of the handsomest dandy. He could not hate her; she was young and thoughtless, and in spite of himself his heart made excuses for her. But he hated the world, and the system, and the miserable conventions that shackled him; ay, hated them as bitterly for the time as the dark-faced gipsy girl whose eyes he found upon him, when at last a step caused him to look up.

She grinned at him slyly, and he gave back the look with resentment.

He had met her once or twice in the lanes and about the inn, and marked her for a rustic beauty of a savage type. Now he waited frowning for her to pa.s.s. But she only smiled more insolently, and lifting her voice, sang:

"But still she replied, sir, I pray let me be!

If ever I love a man, The master for me!"

A dull flush overspread his face. "Go your way!" he said.

"Ay, I'll go!" Bess replied. "And so will she!"

In pin, out trout!

Three's a meal and one's nought!

"One's nought! One's nought!" she continued to carol.

And laughing ironically, she went up the road--not without looking back once or twice to enjoy a surprise which was only exceeded by the chaplain's wrath. What did the girl know? And what was it to her? A common gipsy drab such as she, how did she come to guess these things?

And where the joint lay at which to aim the keen shafts of her wit?

CHAPTER XXVII

BISHOP CAUGHT NAPPING

"I will not do it! I will not do it!" Those had been Clyne's last words on the subject; uttered and repeated with a heat which proved that, in coming to this decision, he fought against his own heart as much as against her arguments. "I will not do it! But do you," with something of his former violence, "tell me where he is! Tell me at once, and I will go and question him."

"And I," she had answered with spirit, "will not tell you."