Starvecrow Farm Part 63

"And shan't we have it about our ears when that vixen has told her tale?" the other cried. "I swear my neck aches now!"

"She couldn't carry the brat far, nor fast."

"No, but--what's that?" There was alarm in Lunt's tone.

"Only the lad following us," Giles answered. "He's brought the lanthorn."

Perhaps the three separated then: perhaps not. She could not rise to see. She was paralysed. She lay as in a nightmare, and was conscious only of the yellow gleam of the lanthorn as it quartered the ground this way and that, and came nearer and nearer. At last the man who carried it was close to her; on the other side of the wall. He raised the lanthorn above his head, and looked over the wall. By evil chance, the light focussed itself upon her.

She knew that she was discovered. And her terror was the greater because she knew that the man who held the lanthorn was the gipsy--whom she feared the most of all. But she was not capable of motion or of resistance; and though he held the light steadily on her, and for a few seconds she saw in the side-glow his dark features gleaming down at her, she lay fascinated. She waited for him to proclaim his discovery.

He shut off the light abruptly.

"So--ho! back!" he cried. "She's not this way! Maybe she's in the bushes above!"

"This way?"

"Ay!"

"Then, burn you, why don't you bring the light, instead of talking?"

Lunt retorted. And from the sound he appeared to be kicking the nearer bushes, and probing them with a stick.

The gipsy answered impudently, and the three, blaming one another, moved off up the wood.

"You should have brought the dog," one cried.

"Oh, curse the dog!" was the answer. "I tell you she can't be far off! She can't have come as low as this." The light was thrown hither and thither. "She's somewhere among the bushes. We'll hap on her by-and-by."

"And s'help me when we do," Lunt answered, "I'll----"

And then, mercifully, the voices grew indistinct. The flicker of the lanthorn was lost among the trees. With wonder and stupefaction Henrietta found herself alone, found herself faint, gasping, scarcely sensible--but safe! Safe!

She could not understand the why or the wherefore of her escape, and she had not energy to try to fathom it. She lay a few seconds to rest and clear her head, and then she thought that she would try to rise.

She was on her knees, and was supporting herself with one hand against the cold, rough surface of the wall, when every fibre in her cried suddenly, Alarm! Alarm! He was coming back. Yes, he was coming back, leaping and running, bursting his way through the undergrowth. And she understood. He had led the others away and he was coming back--alone!

She fell back feeling deadly faint. Then she tried to rise, but she could not, and she screamed. She screamed hoa.r.s.ely once and again, and, oh, joy! even as the gipsy clambered over the stile, sprang into the road and came to seize her, and all her being arose in revolt against him, a voice answered her, feet came racing up the road, a man appeared, she was no longer alone.

It was the chaplain, panting and horrified. He had been the first to be alarmed by the woman's tale, and running out of the house unarmed and hatless he had come in time, in the nick of time! Across her lifeless body, for at last she had swooned quite away, the gipsy and he looked at one another by the light of the moon. And without warning, without a word said, the gipsy came at him like a wildcat, a knife in his hand. Sutton saw the gleam of the weapon, and the gleam of the man's savage eyes, but he held his ground gallantly. With a yell for help he let the man close with him, and, more by luck than skill, he parried the blow which the other had dealt him with the knife. But the gipsy, finding his arm clutched and held, struck his enemy with his left fist a heavy blow between the eyes. The poor chaplain fell stunned and breathless.

The gipsy stood over him an instant to see if he would rise. But he did not move; and the man turned to the girl, who lay insensible beside the wall. He stooped to raise her, with the intention of putting her over the wall. But in the act he heard a shout, and he lifted his head to listen, supposing that his comrades had got wind of the skirmish.

It was not his comrades; for despairing of retaking the girl, they had hurried back to the house to attend to their own safety. He stooped again; but this time he heard the patter of footsteps coming up the road, and a man came in sight in the moonlight. With every pa.s.sion roused, and determined, since he had risked so much, that he would not be balked, the gipsy lifted the girl none the less, and had raised her almost to the level of the top of the wall, when the man shouted anew.

Perforce the ruffian let the girl down again, and with a snarl of rage turned and faced the newcomer with his knife.

But Clyne--for it was he--had not come unarmed. For many days he had not gone so much as a step unarmed. And the stranger's att.i.tude as he let the girl fall, and the gleam of his knife, were enough. The man rushed at him, as he had rushed at the chaplain, with the ferocity of a wild beast. But Clyne met him with a burst of flame and shot, and then with a second shot; and the gipsy whirled round with a m.u.f.fled cry and fell--at first it seemed backwards. But when he reached the ground he lay limp and doubled up with his face to his knees, and one arm under him.

Clyne, with the smoking pistol in his hand, bent over him, ready, if he moved, to beat out his brains. But there was no need of that third blow, which he would have given with hearty good-will. And he turned to the girl. Something, perhaps the pistol-shot, had brought her to herself. She had raised herself against the wall, and holding it, was looking wildly about her; not at the dead man, nor at the chaplain, who stirred and groaned. But at Clyne. And when he approached her she threw herself on his breast and clung to him.

"Oh, don't let me go! Oh, don't let me go!" she cried.

He tried to soothe her, he tried to pacify her; keeping himself between her and the prostrate man.

"I won't," he said. "I won't. You are quite safe. You are quite safe."

He had fired with a hand as steady as a rock, but his voice shook now.

"Oh, don't let me go!" she repeated hysterically. "Oh, don't let me go!"

"You are safe! you are safe!" he a.s.sured her, holding her more closely, and yet more closely to him.

And when Bishop and Long Tom Gilson, and three or four others, came up at a run, breathing fire and slaughter, he was still supporting her; and she was crying to him, in a voice that went to the men's hearts, "Not to let her go! Not to let her go!"

Alas, too, that was the sight which met the poor chaplain's swimming gaze when he came to himself, and, groaning, felt the b.u.mp between his eyes--the b.u.mp which he had got in her defence.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

TWO OF A RACE

It was Thursday, and three days had pa.s.sed since the Sunday, the day of many happenings, which had cleared up the mystery and restored Henrietta to Mrs. Gilson's care. The frost still held, the air was brisk and clear. The Langdale Pikes lifted themselves sharp and glittering from the line of grey screes that run southward to Wetherlamb and the Coniston Mountain. A light air blew down the lake, ruffling the open water, and bedecking the leafless woods on Wray Point with a fringe of white breakers. The morning was a perfect winter morning, the sky of that cloudless, but not over-deep blue, which portends a long and steady frost. Horses' hoofs rang loud on the road; and rooks gathered where they had pa.s.sed. Men who stopped to talk hit their palms together or swung their arms. The larger and wiser birds had started betimes for salt water and the mussel preserves on the Cartmel Sands.

The inquest on the gipsy had been held, but something perfunctorily, after the fashion of the day. Captain Clyne and the chaplain had told their stories, and after a few words from the coroner, a verdict of justifiable homicide had been heartily given, and the jury had resolved itself into a "free and easy" in the tap-room; while the coroner had delivered himself of much wisdom, and laid down much law in Mrs. Gilson's snuggery.

Henrietta had not been made to appear; for carried upstairs, in a state as like death as life, on Sunday evening, she had kept her room until this morning. She would fain have kept it longer, but there were reasons against that. And now, with the timidity which a retreat from every-day life breeds--and perhaps with some flutterings of the heart on another account--she was pausing before her looking-gla.s.s, and trying to gather courage to descend and face the world.

She was still pale; and when she met her own eyes in the mirror, a quivering smile, a something verging on the piteous in her face, told of nerves which time had not yet steadied. Possibly, her reluctance to go down, though the hour was late, and Mrs. Gilson would scold, had a like origin. None the less, she presently conquered it, opened her door and descended; as she had done on that morning of her arrival, a few weeks back, and yet--oh, such a long time back!

Now, as then, when she had threaded the dark pa.s.sages and come to the door of Mr. Rogers's room, she paused faint-hearted, and, with her hand raised to the latch, listened. She heard no sound, and she opened the door and went in. The table was laid for one.

She heaved a sigh of relief, and--cut it short midway. For Captain Clyne came forward from one of the windows at which he had been standing.

"I am glad that you are better," he said stiffly, and in a constrained tone, "and able to come down."

"Oh yes, thank you," she answered, striving to speak heartily, and repressing with difficulty that p.r.o.neness of the lip to quiver. "I think I am quite well now. Quite well! I am sure, after this long time, I should be."

And she turned away and affected to warm her hands at the fire.

He did not look directly at her--he avoided doing so. But he could see the reflection of her face in the oval-framed mirror, as she stood upright again. He saw that she had lost for the time the creamy warmth of complexion that was one of her chief beauties. She was pale and thin, and looked ill.

"You have been very severely shaken," he said. "No doubt you feel it still!"

"Yes," she answered, "a little. I think I do."

"Perhaps you had better be alone?"

She did not know what to say to that. Perhaps she did not know what she wished. Her lip quivered. This was very unlike what she had expected and what she had dreaded. But it was worse. He seemed to be waiting for her answer--that he might go. What could she say?