Starvecrow Farm Part 56

"It will be worse then," the chaplain said.

"But he'll be better!" she retorted. "Do you be bidden by me. The man wasn't fit to carry his meat to his mouth when he went upstairs. But let him be until he has had his sleep out and he'll be another man."

And Mr. Sutton let himself be bidden. But he was right. Every minute which pa.s.sed made the task before him more difficult. When at last Captain Clyne awoke, a few minutes after eight o'clock, and startled, brought his scattered senses to a focus, he saw sitting opposite him a man who hid his face in his hands, and shivered.

Clyne rose.

"Man, man!" he said. "What is it? Have you bad news?"

But the chaplain could not speak. He could only shake his head.

"They have not--not found----"

Clyne could not finish the sentence. He turned away, and with a trembling hand snuffed a candle--that his face might be hidden.

The chaplain shook his head.

"No, no!" he said. "No!"

"But it is--it's bad news?"

"Yes. She's--she's gone! She's disappeared!"

Clyne dropped the snuffers on the table.

"Gone?" he muttered. "Who? Miss Damer?"

"Yes. She left the house this afternoon, and has not returned. It was my fault! My fault!" poor Mr. Sutton continued, in a tone of the deepest abas.e.m.e.nt. And with his face hidden he bowed himself to and fro like a man in pain. "They asked me to follow her, and I would not!

I would not--out of pride!"

"And she has not returned?" Clyne asked, in an odd tone.

"She has not returned--G.o.d forgive me!"

Clyne stared at the flame of the nearest candle. But he saw, not the flame, but Henrietta; as he had seen her the morning he turned his back on her, and left her standing alone on the road above the lake.

Her slender figure under the falling autumn leaves rose before him; and he knew that he would never forgive himself. By some twist of the mind her fate seemed the direct outcome of that moment, of that desertion, of that cruel, that heartless abandonment. The after-events, save so far as they proved her more sinned against than sinning, vanished. He had been her sole dependence, her one protector, the only being to whom she could turn. And he had abandoned her heartlessly; and this--this unknown and dreadful fate--was the result.

Her face rose before him, now smiling and defiant, now pale and drawn; and the piled-up glory of her hair. And he remembered--too late, alas, too late--that she had been of his blood and his kin; and that he had first neglected her, and later when his mistake bred its natural result in her act of folly, he had deserted and punished her.

Remorse is the very shirt of Nessus. It is of all mental pains the worst. It seizes upon the whole mind; it shuts out every prospect. It cries into the ear with every slow tick of the clock, the truth that that which had once been so easy can never be done now! That reparation, that kind word, that act of care, of thoughtfulness, of pardon--never, never now! And once so easy! So easy!

For he knew now that he had loved the girl; and that he had thrown away that which might have been the happiness of his life. He knew now that only pride had blinded him, giving the name of pity to that which was love--or so near to love that it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began. He thought of her courage and her pride; and then of the womanliness that, responding to the first touch of gentleness on his side, had wept for his child. And how he had wronged her from the first days of slighting courtship! how he had misunderstood her, and then mistrusted and maligned her--he, the only one to whom she could turn for help, or whom she could trust in a land of strangers--until it had come to this! It had come to this.

Oh, his poor girl! His poor girl!

A groan, bitter and irrepressible, broke from him. The man stood stripped of the trappings of prejudice; he saw himself as he was, and the girl as she was, a creature of youth and spirit and impulse. And he was ashamed to the depths of his soul.

At last, "What time did she go out?" he muttered.

The chaplain roused himself with a shiver and told him.

"Then she has been missing five hours?" There was a sudden hardening in his tone. "You have done something, I suppose? Tell me, man, that you have done something!"

The chaplain told him what was being done. And the mere statement gave comfort. Hearing that Mrs. Gilson had been the last to speak to her, Clyne said he would see the landlady. And the two went out of the room.

In the pa.s.sage a figure rose before them and fled with a kind of bleating cry. It was Modest Ann, who had been sitting in the dark with her ap.r.o.n over her head. She was gone before they were sure who it was. And they thought nothing of the incident, if they noticed it.

Downstairs they found no news and no comfort; but much coming and going. For presently the first party returned from its quest, and finding that nothing had been discovered, set forth again in a new direction. And by-and-by another returned, and standing ate something, and went out again, reinforced by Clyne himself. And so began a night of which the memory endured in the inn for a generation. Few slept, and those in chairs, ready to start up at the first alarm. The tap ran free for all; and in the coffee-room the table was set and set again.

The Sunday's joints--for the next day was Sunday--were cooked and cold, and half-eaten before the morning broke; and before breakfast the larder of the Salutation at Ambleside was laid under contribution.

At intervals, those who dozed were aware of Nadin's tall, bulky presence as he entered shaking the rime from his long horseman's coat and calling for brandy; or of Bishop, who went and came all night, but in a frame of mind so humble and downcast that men scarcely knew him.

And now and again a fresh band of searchers tramped in one behind the other, pa.s.sed the news by a single shake of the head, and crowding to the table ate and drank before they turned to again--to visit a more distant, and yet a more distant part.

Even from the mind of the father, the boy's loss seemed partly effaced by this later calamity. The mystery was so much the deeper: the riddle the more perplexing. The girl had gone out on foot in the full light of a clear afternoon; and within a few hundred yards of the place to which they had traced the boy, she had vanished as if she had never been. Clyne knew from her own lips that Walterson was somewhere within reach. But this did not help much, since no one could hit on the place. And various were the suggestions, and many and strange the solutions proposed. Every poacher and every ne'er-do-well was visited and examined, every house was canva.s.sed, every man who had ever said aught that could be held to savour of radical doctrine, was considered. As the search spread to a wider and yet wider area, the alarm went with it, and new helpers arrived, men on horseback and men on foot. And all through the long winter's night the house hummed; and the lights of the inn shone on the water as brightly and persistently as the stars that in the solemn firmament wheeled and marched.

But lamps and stars were alike extinguished, and the late dawn was filtering through the cas.e.m.e.nts on jaded faces and pale looks, when the first gleam of encouragement showed itself. Clyne had been out for some hours, and on his return had paused at the door of the snuggery to swallow the cup of hot coffee, which the landlady pressed upon him.

Nadin was still out, but Bishop was there and the chaplain, and two or three yeomen and peasants. In all hearts hope had by this time given way to dejection; and dejection was fast yielding to despair. The party stood, here and there, for the most part silent, or dropped now and again a despondent word.

Suddenly Modest Ann appeared among them, with her head shrouded in her ap.r.o.n. And, "I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" the woman cried hysterically. "I must speak!"

A thrill of amazement ran through the group. They straightened themselves.

"If you know anything, speak by all means!" Clyne said, for surprise tied Mrs. Gilson's tongue. "Do you know where the lady is?"

"No! no!"

"Did she tell you anything?"

"Nothing! nothing!" the woman answered, sobbing wildly, and still holding the ap.r.o.n drawn tightly over her face. "Missus, don't kill me!

She told me naught! Naught! But----"

"Well--what? What?"

"There was a letter I gave her some time ago--before--oh, dear!--before the rumpus was, and she was sent to Kendall! And I'm thinking," sob, sob, "you'd maybe know something from the person who gave it me."

"That's it," said Bishop coolly. "You're a sensible woman. Who was it?"

"That girl--of Hinkson's," she sobbed.

"Bess Hinkson!" Mrs. Gilson e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Ay, sure! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Bess said that she had it from a man on the road."

"And that may be so, or it may not," Bishop answered, with quiet dryness. He was in his element again. And then in a lower tone, "We're on it now," he muttered, "or I am mistaken. I've seen the young lady near Hinkson's once or twice. And it was near there I lost her. The house has been visited, of course; it was one of the first visited.

But we'd no suspicion then, and now we have. Which makes a difference."

"You're going there?"

"Straight, sir, without the loss of a minute!"