The Shuttle Part 81

And she did not, but sat still, while the pain came back to her body and the anguish to her heart--and sometimes such heaviness that her head dropped forward upon her knees again, and she fell into a stupefied half-doze.

From one such doze she awakened with a start, hearing a slight click of the gate. After it, there were several seconds of dead silence. It was the slightness of the click which was startling--if it had not been caused by the wind, it had been caused by someone's having cautiously moved it--and this someone wishing to make a soundless approach had immediately stood still and was waiting. There was only one person who would do that. By this time, the mist being blown away, the light of the moon began to make a growing clearness. She lifted her hand and delicately held aside a few twigs that she might look out.

She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel Anstruthers had come back, and after his pause turned, and avoiding the brick path, stole over the gra.s.s to the cottage door. His going had merely been an inspiration to trap her, and the wood and matches had been intended to make a beacon light for him. That was like him, as well. His horse he had left down the road.

But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she was able to check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a moment. The next, her ears awoke to a new sound. Something was stumbling heavily about the patch of garden--some animal. A cropping of gra.s.s, a snorting breath, and more stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managed to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of his nearness seemed a sort of protection.

He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigel heard him. When he did hear, he came out of the house in the humour of a man the inflaming of whose mood has been c.u.mulative; Childe Harold's temper also was not to be trifled with. He threw up his head, swinging the bridle out of reach; he snorted, and even reared with an ugly lashing of his forefeet.

"Good boy!" whispered Betty. "Do not let him take you--do not!"

If he remained where he was he would attract attention if anyone pa.s.sed by. "Fight, Childe Harold, be as vicious as you choose--do not allow yourself to be dragged back."

And fight he did, with an ugliness of temper he had never shown before--with snortings and tossed head and lashed--out heels, as if he knew he was fighting to gain time and with a purpose.

But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstruthers stopped suddenly. He had stumbled again, and risen raging and stained with damp earth. Now he stood still, panting for breath--as still as he had stood after the click of the gate. Was he--listening? What was he listening to? Had she moved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught the sound?

No, he was listening to something else. Far up the road it echoed, but coming nearer every moment, and very fast. Another horse--a big one--galloping hard. Whosoever it was would pa.s.s this place; it could only be a man--G.o.d grant that he would not go by so quickly that his attention would not be arrested by a shriek! Cry out she must--and if he did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have betrayed herself and be lost.

She bit off a groan by biting her lip.

"You who died to-day--now--now!"

Nearer and nearer. No human creature could pa.s.s by a thing like this--it would not be possible. And Childe Harold, backing and fighting, scented the other horse and neighed fiercely and high. The rider was slackening his pace; he was near the lane. He had turned into it and stopped. Now for her one frantic cry--but before she could gather power to give it forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and was inside the garden speaking. A big voice and a clear one, with a ringing tone of authority.

"What are you doing here? And what is the matter with Miss Vanderpoel's horse?" it called out.

Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness--great danger--though she clutched at the hedge that she might feel its thorns and hold herself to the earth.

"YOU!" Nigel Anstruthers cried out. "You!" and flung forth a shout of laughter.

"Where is she?" fiercely. "Lady Anstruthers is terrified. We have been searching for hours. Only just now I heard on the marsh that she had been seen to ride this way. Where is she, I say?"

A strong, angry, earthly voice--not part of the melodrama--not part of a dream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound caused her heart to leap to her throat, while she trembled from head to foot, and a light, cold dampness broke forth on her skin. Something had been a dream--her wild, desolate ride--the slew tolling; for the voice which commanded with such human fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell had struck forth from the church tower.

Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not recognise that he had been a fool again and was in a nasty place; but it was not for the first time in his life, and he had learned how to brazen himself out of nasty places.

"My dear Mount Dunstan," he answered with tolerant irritation, "I have been having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New York millionairess would work herself into hysteria on my humble account."

"Those are lies," Mount Dunstan answered--"every d.a.m.ned one of them!"

He wheeled around to look about him, attracted by a sound, and in the clearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which might have risen from the earth, so far as he could guess where it had come from. He strode over to it, and it was Betty Vanderpoel, holding her whip in a clenched hand and showing to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes as were barely human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt her fingers clutch at the tweed of his coatsleeve and move there as if the mere feeling of its rough texture brought heavenly comfort to her and gave her strength.

"Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan," she panted. "He said that he meant to get what he called 'even' with me. He told me I could not get away from him and that no one would hear me if I cried out for help. I have hidden like some hunted animal." Her shaking voice broke, and she held the cloth of his sleeve tightly. "You are alive--alive!" with a sudden sweet wildness. "But it is true the bell tolled! While I was crouching in the dark I called to you--who died to-day--to stand between us!"

The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot.

"I was alive, and you see I heard you and came," he answered hoa.r.s.ely.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheek felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. He laid her down on the couch of hay and turned away.

"Don't move," he said. "I will come back. You are safe."

If there had been more light she would have seen that his jaw was set like a bulldog's, and there was a red spark in his eyes--a fearsome one.

But though she did not clearly see, she KNEW, and the nearness of the last hours swept away all relenting.

Nigel Anstruthers having discreetly waited until the two had pa.s.sed into the house, and feeling that a man would be an idiot who did not remove himself from an atmosphere so highly charged, was making his way toward the lane and was, indeed, halfway through the gate when heavy feet were behind him and a grip of ugly strength wrenched him backward.

"Your horse is cropping the gra.s.s where you left him, but you are not going to him," said a singularly meaning voice. "You are coming with me."

Anstruthers endeavoured to convince himself that he did not at that moment turn deadly sick and that the brute would not make an a.s.s of himself.

"Don't be a bally fool!" he cried out, trying to tear himself free.

The muscular hand on his shoulder being reinforced by another, which clutched his collar, dragged him back, stumbling ignominiously through the gooseberry bushes towards the cart-shed. Betty lying upon her bed of hay heard the scuffling, mingled with raging and gasping curses. Childe Harold, lifting his head from his cropping of the gra.s.s, looked after the violently jerking figures and snorted slightly, snuffing with dilated red nostrils. As a war horse scenting blood and battle, he was excited.

When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed the blood which had surged in Red G.o.dwyn's veins was up and leaping. Anstruthers, his collar held by a hand with fingers of iron, writhed about and turned a livid, ghastly face upon his captor.

"You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast and devil!" he foamed in a half shriek, and poured forth frightful blasphemies.

"That counts between man and man, but not between vermin and executioner," gave back Mount Dunstan.

The heavy whip, flung upward, whistled down through the air, cutting through cloth and linen as though it would cut through flesh to bone.

"By G.o.d!" shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping like a man who has been shot. "Don't do that again! d.a.m.n you!" as the unswerving lash cut down again--again.

What followed would not be good to describe. Betty through the open door heard wild and awful things--and more than once a sound as if a dog were howling.

When the thing was over, one of the two--his clothes cut to ribbons, his torn white linen exposed, lay, a writhing, huddled worm, hiccoughing frenzied sobs upon the earth in a corner of the cart-shed. The other man stood over him, breathless and white, but singularly exalted.

"You won't want your horse to-night, because you can't use him," he said. "I shall put Miss Vanderpoel's saddle upon him and ride with her back to Stornham. You think you are cut to pieces, but you are not, and you'll get over it. I'll ask you to mark, however, that if you open your foul mouth to insinuate lies concerning either Lady Anstruthers or her sister I will do this thing again in public some day--on the steps of your club--and do it more thoroughly."

He walked into the cottage soon afterwards looking, to Betty Vanderpoel's eyes, pale and exceptionally big, and also more a man than it is often given even to the most virile male creature to look--and he walked to the side of her resting place and stood there looking down.

"I thought I heard a dog howl," she said.

"You did hear a dog howl," he answered. He said no other word, and she asked no further question. She knew what he had done, and he was well aware that she knew it.

There was a long, strangely tense silence. The light of the moon was growing. She made at first no effort to rise, but lay still and looked up at him from under splendid lifted lashes, while his own gaze fell into the depth of hers like a plummet into a deep pool. This continued for almost a full minute, when he turned quickly away and walked to the hearth, indrawing a heavy breath.

He could not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable, because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler who could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was.

Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women did not.

In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was rising, and when she got up she supported herself against the open door, standing in the moonlight. If he was pale, she was pale also, and her large eyes would not move from his face, so drawing him that he could not keep away from her.

"Listen," he broke out suddenly. "Penzance told me--warned me--that some time a moment would come which would be stronger than all else in a man--than all else in the world. It has come now. Let me take you home."

"Than what else?" she said slowly, and became even paler than before.

He strove to release himself from the possession of the moment, and in his struggle answered with a sort of savagery.