Starvecrow Farm Part 49

She met no one. She reached the gate of Starvecrow Farm, unseen as she believed. But heedful of the old saying, that fields have eyes and woods have ears, she looked carefully round her before she laid her hand on the gate. Then, in a twinkling, she was round the house like a lapwing and tapping at the door.

To her first summons she got no answer. And effacing herself as much as possible, she cast a wary eye over the place. The garden was as ragged and desolate, the house as bald and forbidding, the firs about it as gloomy, as when she had last seen them. But the view over sloping field and green meadow, wooded knoll and shining lake, made up for all. And her only feeling as she tapped again and more loudly was one of impatience. Even the memory of the squalid old man whom she had once seen there did not avail to alarm her in her buoyant mood.

This was well, perhaps. For when she knocked a third time, in alarm lest the person she sought should be gone, and her golden ship with him, it was that very old man who opened the door. And, not unnaturally, it seemed to Henrietta that with its opening a shadow fell across the landscape and blurred the sunshine of the day. The ape-like creature who gaped at her, the cavern-like room behind him, the breath of the close air that came from him, inspired disgust, if not alarm, and checked the girl in the full current of content.

He did not speak. But he moved his toothless gums unpleasantly, and danced up and down in an odd fashion from his knees, without moving his feet. Meanwhile his reddened eyes thrust near to hers gleamed with suspicion. On her side Henrietta was taken aback by his appearance, and for some moments she stared at him in consternation. What could she expect from such a creature?

At length, "I wish to see Walterson," she said; in a low tone--there might be listeners in the house. "Do you understand? Do you understand?" she repeated more loudly.

He set his head, which was bald in patches, on one side; as if to indicate that he was deaf. And with his eyes on hers, he dropped his lower jaw and waited for her to repeat what she had said.

She saw nothing else for it, and she crushed down her repugnance.

"Let me come in," she said. "Do you hear? I want to talk to you. Let me come in."

To remain where she was, talking secrets to a deaf man, was to invite discovery.

He understood her this time, and grudgingly he opened the door a little wider. He stood aside and Henrietta entered. In the act she cast a backward look over her shoulder, and caught through the doorway a last prospect of the hills and the mid-lake and the green islets off Bowness--set like jewels on its gleaming breast--all clear-cut in the brisk winter air. She felt the beauty of the scene, but she did not guess what things were to happen to her before she looked again upon its fellow.

Not that when the door was shut upon her, the room in which she found herself did not something appal her. The fire had been allowed to sink low, and the squalor and the chill, vapid air of the place wrapped her about. But she was naturally fearless, and she cheered herself with the thought that she was stronger than the grinning old man who stood before her. She was sure that if he resorted to violence she could master him. Still, she was in haste. She was anxious to do what she had to do, and escape.

And: "I must see Walterson!" she told him loudly, looking down on him, and instinctively keeping her skirts clear of the unswept floor. "He was here, I know, some days ago," she continued sharply. "Don't say you don't understand, because you do! But fetch him, or tell me where he is. Do you hear?"

The old man moved his jaw to and fro. He grinned senilely.

"He was here, eh?" he drawled.

"Yes, he was here," Henrietta returned, taking a tone of authority with him. "And I must see him."

"Ay?"

"It is to do no harm to him," she explained. "Tell him Miss Damer is here. Miss Damer, do you hear? He will see me, I am sure."

"Ay?" he said again in the same half-vacant tone. "Ay?"

But he did not go beyond that; nor did he make any movement to comply.

And she was beginning to think him wholly imbecile when his eyes left hers and fixed themselves on the front of her riding-coat. Then, after a moment's silence, during which she patted the floor with her foot in fierce impatience, he raised his claw-like hand and stretched it slowly towards her throat.

She stepped back, but as much in anger as in fear. Was the man imbecile, or very wicked?

"What do you want?" she asked sharply. "Don't you understand what I have said to you?"

For the moment he seemed to be disconcerted by her movement. He stood in the same place, slowly blinking his weak eyes at her. Then he turned and moved in a slip-shod fashion to the hearth and threw on two or three morsels of touch-wood, causing the fire to leap up and shoot a flickering light into the darker corners of the room. The gleam discovered his dingy bed and dingier curtains, and the shadowy entrance to the staircase in which Henrietta had once seen Walterson.

And it showed Henrietta herself, and awakened a spark in her angry eyes.

The old man, still stooping, looked round at her, his chin on his shoulder. And slowly, with an odd crab-like movement, he edged his way back to her. She watched his approach with a growing fear of the gloomy house and the silence and the dark staircase. She began to think he was imbecile, or worse, and that nothing could be got from him. And she was in two minds about retreating--so powerfully do silence and mystery tell on the nerves--when he paused in his advance, and, raising his lean, twitching hand, pointed to her neck.

"Give it me," he whimpered. "Give it me--and I'll see, maybe, where he is."

She frowned.

"What?" she asked. "What do you want?"

"The gold!" he croaked. "The gold! At your neck, la.s.s! That sparkles!

Give it me!" opening and shutting his lean fingers. "And I'll--I'll see what I can do."

She carried her fingers to the neck of her gown and touched the tiny gold medal struck to celebrate the birth of the Princess Charlotte, which she wore as a clasp at her throat. And relieved to find that he meant no worse, she smiled. The scarecrow before her was less of an "innocent" than she had judged him. It was so much the better for her purpose.

"I cannot give you this," she said. "But I'll give you its value, if you will bring me to Walterson."

"No, no, give it me," he whimpered, grimacing at her and making feeble clutches in the air. "Give it me!"

"I cannot, I say," she repeated. "It was my mother's, and I cannot part with it. But if," she continued patiently, "you will do what I ask I will give you its value, old man, another day."

"Give now!" he retorted. "Give now!" And leering with childish cunning, "Trust the day and greet the morrow! Groats in pouch ne'er yet brought sorrow! Na, na, Hinkson, old Hinkson trusts n.o.body. Give it me now, la.s.s! And I--I know what I know." And in a cracked and quavering voice, swaying himself to the measure,

"It is an old saying That few words are best, And he that says little Shall live most at rest.

And I by my gossips Do find it right so, Therefore I'll spare speech, But--I know what I know.

I know what I know!" he repeated, blinking with doting astuteness,

"Therefore I'll spare speech, But--I know what I know!"

Henrietta stared. She would have given him the money, any money in her power. But imprudently prudent, she had brought none with her.

"I can't give it you now," she said. "But I will give it you to-morrow if you will do what I ask. Otherwise I shall go and you will get nothing."

He did not reply, but he began to mumble with his jaws and dance himself up and down from his knees, as at her first entrance; with his monstrous head on one side and his red-lidded eyes peering at her. In the open, in the sunshine, she would not have feared him; she would have thought him only grotesque in his anger. But shut up in this hideous den with him, in this atmosphere of dimly perceived danger, she felt her flesh creep. What if he struck her treacherously, or took her by surprise? She had read of houses where the floors sank under doomed strangers, or the testers of beds came down on them in their sleep. He was capable, she was sure, of anything; even of murdering her for the sake of the two or three guineas' worth of gold which she wore at her neck. Yet she held her ground.

"Do you hear?" she said with spirit. "If you do not tell me, I shall go. And you will get nothing!"

He nodded cunningly.

"Bide a bit!" he said in a different tone. "Sit ye down, la.s.s, sit ye down! Bide a bit, and I'll see."

He slippered his way across the floor to get a stool for her. But when he had lifted the stool from the floor in his shaking hands, she marked with a quick leap of the heart that he had put himself between her and the door, and that, with the possession of the stool, his looks were altered. The heavy block wavered in his grasp and he seemed to pant and stagger under its weight. But there was an ugly light in his eyes as he sidled nearer and nearer to her; a light that meant murder. She was sure that he was going to leap upon her. And she remembered that no one, no one knew where she was, no one had seen her enter the house. She had only her own strength to look to, only her own courage and coolness, if she would escape this creature.

"Put down that stool!" she said.

"Eh?"

"Put down that stool!" she repeated, firmly. And she kept her eyes on him, resisting the fatal temptation to glance at door or window. "Do you hear me? Put down that stool!"

He hesitated, but her glance never wavered. And slowly and unwillingly he obeyed. Shaking as with the palsy, and with his mouth fallen open--so that he looked more imbecile and less human than ever--he relinquished the stool.