The Case of Richard Meynell Part 67

Each day the court was crowded, and though Meynell seemed to be addressing his judges, he was in truth speaking quite as consciously to a sweet woman's face in a far corner of the crowded hall. Mary went into the long wrestle with him, as it were, and lived through every moment of it at his side. Then in the evening there were half hours of utter silence, when he would sit with her hands in his, just gathering strength for the morrow.

Six days of Meynell's speech were over. On the seventh the Court opened amid the buzz of excitement and alarm. The chief defendant in the suit was not present, and had sent--so counsel whispered to each other--a hurried note to the judge to the effect that he should be absent through the whole remainder of the trial owing to "urgent private business."

In a few more hours it was known that Meynell had left England, and men on both sides looked at each other in dismay.

Meanwhile Mary had forwarded to her mother a note written late at night, in anguish of soul:

"Alice wires to me to-night that Hester has disappeared--without the smallest trace. But she believes she is with Meryon. I go to Paris to-night--Oh, my own, pray that I may find her!--R. M."

CHAPTER XXII

The mildness of the winter had pa.s.sed away. A bleak February afternoon lay heavy on Long Whindale. A strong and bitter wind from the north blew down the valley with occasional spits and s.n.a.t.c.hes of snow, not enough as yet to whiten the heights, but prophesying a wild night and a heavy fall.

The blasts in the desolate upper reach of the dale were so fierce that a shepherd on the path leading over the pa.s.s to Marly Head could scarcely hold himself upright against them. Tempestuous sounds filled all the upper and the lower air. From the high ridges came deep reverberating notes, a roaring in the wind; while the trees along the stream sent forth a shriller voice, as they whistled and creaked and tossed in the eddying gusts. Cold gray clouds were beating from the north, hanging now over the cliffs on the western side, now over the bare screes and steep slopes of the northern and eastern walls. Gray or inky black, the sharp edges of the rocks cut into the gloomy sky; while on the floor of the valley, blanched gra.s.s and winding stream seemed alike to fly scourged before the persecuting wind.

A trap--Westmoreland calls it a car--a kind of box on wheels, was approaching the head of the dale from the direction of Whinborough. It stopped at the foot of the steep and narrow lane leading to Burwood, and a young lady got out.

"You're sure that's Burwood?" she said, pointing to the house partially visible at the end of the lane.

The driver answered in the affirmative.

"Where Mrs. Elsmere lives?"

"Aye, for sure." The man as he spoke looked curiously at the lady he had brought from Whinborough station. She was quite a young girl he guessed, and a handsome one. But there seemed to be something queer about her. She looked so tumbled and tired.

Hester Fox-Wilton took out her purse, and paid him with an uncertain hand, one or more of the shillings falling on the road, where the driver and she groped for them. Then she raised the small bag she had brought with her in the car, and turned away.

"Good day to yer, miss," said the man as he mounted the box. She made no reply. After he had turned his horse and started on the return journey to Whinborough, he looked back once or twice. But the high walls of the lane hid the lady from him.

Hester, however, did not go very far up the lane. She sank down very soon on a jutting stone beneath the left-hand wall, with her bag beside her, and sat there looking at the little house. It was a pleasant, home-like place, even on this bitter afternoon. In one of the windows was a glow of firelight; white muslin curtains everywhere gave it a dainty, refined look; and it stood picturesquely within the shelter of its trees, and of the yew hedge which encircled the garden.

Yet Hester shivered as she looked at it. She was very imperfectly clothed for such an afternoon, in a serge jacket and skirt supplemented by a small fur collarette, which she drew closer round her neck from time to time, as though in a vain effort to get warm. But she was not conscious of doing so, nor of the cold as cold. All her bodily sensations were miserable and uncomfortable. But she was only actively aware of the thoughts racing through her mind.

There they were, within a stone's throw of her--Mary and Mrs. Elsmere--in the warm, cosy little house, without an idea that she, Hester, the wretched, disgraced Hester, was sitting in the lane so close to them. And yet they were perhaps thinking of her--they must have often thought about her in the last fortnight. Mrs. Elsmere must of course have been sorry.

Good people were always sorry when such things happened. And Mary?--who was eight years older--_older!_ than this girl of eighteen who sat there, sickened by life, conscious of a dead wall of catastrophe drawn between her and the future.

Should she go to them? Should she open their door and say--"Here I am!--Horrible things have happened. No decent person will ever know me or speak to me again. But you said--you'd help me--if I wanted it.

Perhaps it was a lie--like all the rest?"

Then as the reddened eyelids fell with sheer fatigue, there rose on the inward sight the vision of Catharine Elsmere's face--its purity, its calm, its motherliness. For a moment it drew, it touched, it gave courage. And then the terrible sense of things irreparable, grim matters of fact not to be dreamed or thought away, rushed in and swept the clinging, shipwrecked creature from the foothold she had almost reached.

She rose hastily.

"I can't! They don't want to see me--they've done with me. Or perhaps they'll cry--they'll pray with me, and I can't stand that! Why did I ever come? Where on earth shall I go?"

And she looked round her in petulant despair, angry with herself for having done this foolish thing, angry with the loneliness and barrenness of the valley, where no inn opened doors of shelter for such as she, angry with the advancing gloom, and with the bitter wind that teased and stung her.

A little way up the lane she saw a small gate that led into the Elsmeres'

garden. She took her bag, and opening the gate, she placed it inside.

Then she ran down the lane, drawing her fur round her, and shivering with cold.

"I'll think a bit--" she said to herself--"I'll think what to say.

Perhaps I'll come back soon."

When she reached the main road again, she looked uncertainly to right and left. Which way? The thought of the long dreary road back to Whinborough repelled her. She turned toward the head of the valley. Perhaps she might find a house which would take her in. The driver had said there was a farm which let lodgings in the summer. She had money--some pounds at any rate; that was all right. And she was not hungry. She had arrived at a junction station five miles from Whinborough by a night train. At six o'clock in the morning she had found herself turned out of the express, with no train to take her on to Whinborough. But there was a station hotel, and she had engaged a room and ordered a fire. There she had thrown herself down without undressing on the bed, and had slept heavily for four or five hours. Then she had had some breakfast, and had taken a midday train to Whinborough, and a trap to Long Whindale.

She had travelled straight from Nice without stopping. She would not let herself think now as she hurried along the lonely road what it was she had fled from, what it was that had befallen. The slightest glimpse into this past made her begin to sob, she put it away from her with all her strength. But she had had, of course, to decide where she should go, with whom she should take refuge.

Not with Uncle Richard, whom she had deceived and defied. Not with "Aunt Alice." No sooner did the vision of that delicate withered face, that slender form come before her, than it brought with it terrible fancies.

Her conduct had probably killed "Aunt Alice." She did not want to think about her.

But Mrs. Elsmere knew all about bad men, and girls who got into trouble.

She, Hester, knew, from a few things she had heard people say--things that no one supposed she had heard--that Mrs. Elsmere had given years of her life, and sacrificed her health, to "rescue" work. The rescue of girls from such men as Philip? How could they be rescued?--when--

All that was nonsense. But the face, the eyes--the shining, loving eyes, the motherly arms--yes, those, Hester confessed to herself, she had thirsted for. They had brought her all the way from Nice to this northern valley--this bleak, forbidding country. She shivered again from head to foot, as she made her way painfully against the wind.

Yet now she was flying even from Catharine Elsmere; even from those tender eyes that haunted her.

The road turned toward a bridge, and on the other side of the bridge degenerated into a rough and stony bridle path, giving access to two gray farms beneath the western fell. On the near side of the bridge the road became a cart-track leading to the far end of the dale.

Hester paused irresolute on the bridge, and looked back toward Burwood. A light appeared in what was no doubt the sitting-room window. A lamp perhaps that, in view of the premature darkening of the afternoon by the heavy storm-clouds from the north, a servant had just brought in. Hester watched it in a kind of panic, foreseeing the moment when the curtains would be drawn and the light shut out from her. She thought of the little room within, the warm firelight, Mary with her beautiful hair--and Mrs.

Elsmere. They were perhaps working and reading--as though that were all there were to do and think about in the world! No, no! after all they couldn't be very peaceful--or very cheerful. Mary was engaged to Uncle Richard now; and Uncle Richard must be pretty miserable.

The exhausted girl nearly turned back toward that light. Then a hand came quietly and shut it out. The curtains were drawn. Nothing now to be seen of the little house but its dim outlines in the oncoming twilight, the smoke blown about its roof, and a faint gleam from a side-window, perhaps the kitchen.

Suddenly, a thought, a wild, attacking thought, leapt out upon her, and held her there motionless, in the winding, wintry lane.

When had she sent that telegram to Upcote? If she could only remember!

The events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemed to be all confused in one mad flux of misery. Was it _possible_ that they too could be Here--Uncle Richard, and "Aunt Alice?" She had said something about Mrs.

Elsmere in her telegram--she could not recollect what. That had been meant to comfort them, and yet to keep them away, to make them leave her to her own plans. But supposing, instead, its effect had been to bring them here at once, in pursuit of her?

She hurried forward, sobbing dry sobs of terror as though she already heard their steps behind her. What was she afraid of? Simply their love!--simply their sorrow! She had broken their hearts; and what could she say to them?

The recollection of all her cruelty to "Aunt Alice" in Paris--her neglect, her scorn, her secret, unjust anger with those who had kept from her the facts of her birth--seemed to rise up between her and all ideas of hope and help. Oh, of course they would be kind to her!--they would forgive her--but--but she couldn't bear it! Impatience with the very scene of wailing and forgiveness she foresaw, as of something utterly futile and vain, swept through the quivering nerves.

"And it can never be undone!" she said to herself roughly, as though she were throwing the words in some one's face. "It can never, _never_ be undone! What's the good of talking?"

So the only alternative was to wander a while longer into these clouds and storms that were beginning to beat down from the pa.s.s through the darkness of the valley; to try and think things out; to find some shelter for the night; then to go away again--somewhere. She was conscious now of a first driving of sleet in her face; but it only lasted for a few minutes. Then it ceased; and a strange gleam swept over the valley--a livid storm-light from the west, which blanched all the withered gra.s.s beside her, and seemed to shoot along the course of the stream as she toiled up the rocky path beside it.

What a country, what a sky! Her young body was conscious of an angry revolt against it, against the northern cold and dreariness; her body, which still kept as it were the physical memory of sun, and blue sea, and orange trees, of the shadow of olives on a thin gra.s.s, of the scent of orange blossom on the broken twigs that some one was putting into her hand.

Another fit of shuddering repulsion made her quicken her pace, as though, again, she were escaping from pursuit. Suddenly, at a bend in the path, she came on a shepherd and his flock. The shepherd, an old white-haired man, was seated on a rock, staff in hand, watching his dog collect the sheep from the rocky slope on which they were scattered.

At sight of Hester, the old man started and stared. Her fair hair escaping in many directions from the control of combs and hairpins, and the pale lovely face in the midst of it, shone in the stormy gleam that filled the basin of the hills. Her fashionable hat and dress amazed him.

Who could she be?