I was on that account the more relieved when, late upon the third night afterwards, Tash knocked at the door, and brought me a letter from Lord Derwentwater. I opened it eagerly, and read it through. It told me much which is common knowledge now, as that the Earl of Mar had summoned his friends in Scotland to meet him at Aboyne on the 27th, upon the pretext of a great hunting-party; that the mug-house riots in London were daily increasing in number and violence; but that with the French King, so near to his dissolution, and the precautions of the English Government in bringing over Dutch troops, and thronging the Channel with its ships, Lord Bolingbroke was all for delay. “But God knows,” he added, “whether delay is any possible, and I fear for the event. We have many of the nobles on our side — but the body of our countrymen? It will be like a game of chess in which one side plays without pawns. We have Bishops and Knights and Castles, but no pawns.”
There was more of the same kind, and I glanced through it hurriedly, until I came to that of which I was more particularly in search.
“The sheriff came with his posse to Lord’s Island in the morning, so that it was well you left during the night. He is still after you. I passed his messenger yesterday near Braithwaite, so it behoves you to be wary. I do not think, however, he has winded you as yet, and as soon as I can discover an occasion I will have you sent over the water. But being myself under the cloud of their suspicions, I have to step very deliberately. Your cousin, Jervas Rookley, lives openly under his own name at Blackladies, and receives visits from the Whig attorney; and since he can only be staying there with the sufferance of the Government, you may be certain what I told you is true. By the way, Mr. Anthony Herbert, the painter, disappeared on the same day or thereabouts that you did. It is rumoured that he has been arrested, but nothing certain is known. But if the rumour is true I greatly fear that he owes his arrest to his acquaintanceship with you and myself. I suspect Mr. Rookley’s finger in the pie. Since he was playing false with the Government concerning you, he would most likely be anxious to give them an earnest of loyalty in some other matter. But I do not know.”
So far I read and clapped the letter down with a bang. For here was the fellow to my own suspicion.
I sat down and finished the letter. There was but another line to it.
“I got my information about Rookley from an oldish man who came secretly here from Blackladies. He seemed in some doubt as to which of yourself or your cousin he should call master, but he was very insistent that I should let you know of his coming. I had, indeed, some difficulty in comprehending him, for now he wished me to style him ‘Aron’ to you and now ‘Ashlock.’ Altogether I thought it wiser to give him no news as to your whereabouts. This, however, is certain, from what he said to me — there is a watch set about Blackladies on the chance that you might return.”
This last sentence troubled me exceedingly. For it had been growing in my mind that there was but one person who could tell me fully what I needed to know, and that person Mr. Jervas Rookley; and a vague purpose was gradually taking shape within me that I would once more make use of Mr. Curwen’s stables, and riding one night round by Newlands valley and Keswick, seek to take Mr. Rookley by surprise, and wrest the truth from him. That project the letter seemed to strike dead. Accordingly I took the occasion to write to Lord Derwentwater, and implored him, if by any means he could, to inform himself more particularly of Anthony Herbert’s arrest, and whither he had been taken. “For upon these two points,” said I, “hangs not my safety, but my soul’s salvation;” and so hurried Tash off before the poor man was halfway through his supper, and waited impatiently for an answer.
Now, during this period of waiting, since each time that I found myself alone with Mr. Curwen, his talk would wander back inquisitively to the French Court, discovering there a lustre which no doubt it had, and a chivalry which it no less certainly lacked, I began of a set purpose to avoid him; and avoiding him, was thrown the more into the company of Miss Dorothy. Moreover, the frankness with which she had hinted to me the weakness of her father, brought about a closer intimacy between us as of friend and friend rather than as of hostess and guest. It was as though Mary Tyson and she were continually building up out of their love a fence around the father, and she had joined me in the work.
Many a time, when I was on the hillside behind the house I would be startled by the sight of a horse and the flash of a red-coat upon the horse’s back, only to find my heart drumming yet the faster when I perceived that it was Miss Dorothy Curwen in her red cramoisie riding-habit. Maybe I would be standing no great distance from the house, and she would see me and come up the grass while I went down towards her, her hair straying about her ears and forehead in the sweetest disorder, and her cheeks wind-whipped to the rosiest pink. On the wet days, which were by no means infrequent, she would sit at her spinet and sing such old songs as that I had listened to on the first night of my coming. If the evenings were fine, we would sometimes row out upon Ennerdale water, in a crazy battered boat, so that I was more often baling out the leakage in a tin pannikin than pulling at the oars. And on afternoons, when the sunlight fell through the leaves like great spots of a gold rain we would climb up to the orchard, and I would spread an old cloak for her upon the grass, and we would sit amongst the crabbed trunks of trees. But at all times — in the dusk, when she sang and the rain whipped the panes; at night, when we rowed across the moonlit lake as across a silver mirror, in the hush of a world asleep — at all times a feverish impatience would seize on me for an answer to my letter, and a shadow would darken across our talk, so that thereafter I sat mum and glooming and heard little that was said to me. It was not, indeed, the shadow of the gallows, but rather of the fear lest while I lingered here at Applegarth, chance might thwart me of the gallows. For the girl’s presence was to me as a perpetual accusation.
Upon one such occasion, when we were together in the orchard, she looked at me once or twice curiously.
“For one so imprudent,” said she, a trifle petulantly, “you are extraordinary solemn.”
“There are creatures,” said I, with a weariful shake of the head, “who are by nature solemn.”
“True,” says she, placidly, “but even they hoot at night;” and she looked across the valley with extreme unconsciousness. But I noticed that her mouth dimpled at the corners as if she was very pleased.
“I know,” said I, remorsefully, “that I make the dullest of companions.”
She nodded her head in cordial agreement
“Perhaps you cannot help it,” says she, with great sympathy.
“The truth is,” I exclaimed sharply, “I have overmuch to make me solemn.”
“No doubt,” and the sympathy deepened in her voice, “and I am sure every one must pity you. There was a king once who never smiled again. I am sure every one pitied him too.”
“He only lost a son,” I replied foolishly, meaning thereby that honour was a thing of more worth.
“And you an estate,” says she. “It is indeed very true,” and she clasped her hands and shook her head.
“Madam,” I returned with some dignity, “you put words into my mouth that I had no thought of using. It was not of a mere estate that I was speaking.”
“No?” says she reflectively. “Could it be a heart, then? Dear! dear! this is very tragical.”
“No,” I said very quickly; and on the instant fell to stammering “No, no.”
“The word gains little force from repetition. In fact, I have heard that two noes make a yes.”
“Madam,” said I stiffly, getting to my feet, “you persist in misunderstanding me;” and I moved a step or two apart from her.
“I do not know,” she said demurely, “that you use any great effort to prevent the mistake.”
That I felt to be true. I wondered for a moment whether she had not a right to know, and I turned back to her. She was sitting with her head cocked on one side and glancing whimsically towards me from the tail of her eye. The glance became, on t
he instant, the blankest of uninterested looks. I plumped down again on the grass.
“That evening,” I began, “when I left the candle burning in the stables, I rode into Keswick. There was something I should have done before I came hither,” and I stumbled over the words.
She took me up immediately with a haughty indifference, and her chin very high in the air.
“Nay, I have no desire to pry into your secrets — not the least in the world.”
“Oh,” said I, “I fancied you were curious.”
“Curious?” she exclaimed, with a flash of her eyes. “Curious, indeed! And why should I be curious about your concerns, if you please?” And she spoke the word again with a laugh of scorn, “Curious!”
Said I, “The word gains no force from repetition.”
Dorothy Curwen gasped with indignation.
“A very witty and polite rejoinder, upon my word,” she said slowly, and began to repeat that remark too, but broke off at the second word.
For a little we were silent. Then she plucked a reed of grass and bit it pensively.
“No!” she said indifferently, “since my father has lived quietly at Applegarth, I have lost my interest in politics.”
“It was no question of politics at all!” I exclaimed, and —
“Oh!” she exclaimed, swinging round to me with all her indifference gone.
“No,” I went on, but reluctantly, for I was no longer sure that I ought to tell her, and quibbled accordingly. “There was some one in Keswick for whom I had news which would not wait.”
“News of your escape?” she interposed, with a certain constraint in her voice.
“Partly that,” I replied, and continued, “and from whom I most heartily desired news.”
She sat for a moment with her face averted and very still.
“And what is she like?” she asked of a sudden.
The question startled me so that I jumped and stared at her open-mouthed. But by the time I had fashioned an answer, she had no longer any need for it For “No! No!” she exclaimed. “I have no wish to hear;” and she fell unaccountably to talking of Jervas Rookley, at first in something of a flurry, and afterwards in a tone as though she found great comfort in the thought of him. “He is not so black as he is painted,” was the burden of her speech, and she played many variations on the tune.
Now, I had in my pocket a certain letter from Lord Derwentwater, which was a clear disproof of her words, and, to speak the truth, her manner stung me. For whatever part of my misfortunes I did not owe to myself, that I owed to Mr. Jervas Rookley.
“And I never could bring myself to believe that story of the wad-mines,” she said. “Never! Ah, poor man! What will he be doing now? It is a thought which often troubles me, Mr. Clavering. Doubtless he is somewhere tossed upon the sea. It is a very noble life, a sailor’s. There is no nobler, is there?” and she asked the question as if she had no doubt whatever but that I should agree with her.
“I know nothing of that,” I replied in some heat, “but as for the wad-mines I know that story to be true, for I have seen the shaft.”
She shook her head at me with an air of disappointment. It seemed she thought I was slandering the man after slipping into his shoes. I whipped the letter out of my pocket and thrust it before her.
“There, Madam, there!” I exclaimed. “The thought of Mr. Rookley need no longer trouble you. I am glad, indeed, to have the opportunity of disposing of your trouble. It will be the one moment’s satisfaction the man has given me. He is nowhere tossed upon the sea, in that noblest of all lives, as you will be able to perceive for yourself, if you will glance through this letter, but, on the contrary, sitting quietly in an armchair in whatever room at Blackladies pleases him best.”
“I am not so short of sight,” she observed sedately, “that I need the paper to be rubbed against my nose.”
She took it and read it through once and a second time. I told her the story of my dealings with Mr. Rookley, from the moment of his coming to me at the Jesuit College in Paris, to the morning when I fled from Blackladies, and so much of his dealings with me as I was familiar with. It was, in fact, much the same story that I had told to my Lord and Lady Derwentwater, and contained little mention of Mr. Herbert, except the fact that he was painting my portrait, and no mention whatsoever of Mr. Herbert’s wife. For I found that the whole account of my proceedings since I had come to England, fell very naturally into two halves, each of which to all seeming was in itself complete. She heard me out to the end, and then in low, penitent voice, for which it seemed to me there was no occasion —
“I knew nothing of this,” she said, “or I would never so much as have uttered Mr. Rookley’s name. I could not know. You will bear me out in this; I could not know.” And she turned to me with the sweetest appeal in her grey eyes and a hand timidly outstretched.
“Indeed,” said I, earnestly, “I will. You could not know, and I can well believe Mr. Jervas Rookley’s conduct was very different to you.” With that I took her hand, and again took it gingerly by the finger-tips. Thereupon she snatched it away, and got quickly to her feet.
“And for whom — —” she began, and stopped, while she very deliberately fastened a button of her glove which was already buttoned.
“For whom — what?” said I.
“It is no matter,” she said carelessly, and then, “For whom was the picture intended?” and as though she was half-ashamed of the question, she ran lightly down the hillside without waiting for an answer.
“For no one,” I cried out after her. “It was intended to hang in the great hall of Blackladies.” But she descended into the house, and I — I passed through the orchard and up the hillside behind it, and over the crest of the fell, until ridge upon ridge opened out beneath the overarching sky, and the valleys between them became so many furrows drawn by a giant’s plough. And coming into that great space and solitude where no tree waved, no living thing moved, no human sound was heard, I dropped upon the ground, pressing a throbbing face down among the cool bracken, and twining my fingers about the roots of ferns. It was the blackest hour that had ever till then befallen me; mercifully I could not know that it was but a foretaste of others yet blacker which were to follow. Something very new and strange was stirring within me; I loved her. The truth was out that afternoon. I think it was her questioning which taught it me. For it brought Mrs. Herbert into my thoughts, and so I learned this truth by the bitterest of all comparisons. I saw the two faces side by side, and then the one vanished and the other remained. Here, I thought, was my life just beginning to take some soul of meaning; here was its usual drab a-flush with that rosy light, as of all the sunrises and all the sunsets which had ever brightened across the world — and I must give it up, and through my own fault. There was the hardest part of the business — through my own fault! The knowledge stung and ached at my heart intolerably. There was nothing heroical in the reparation which I purposed; here was no laying down of one’s life at the feet of one’s mistress, with a blithe heart and even a gratitude for the occasion, such as I had read of in Mr. Curwen’s romances — and how easy that seemed to me at this moment! — it was the mere necessary payment for a sordid act of shame.
It was drawing towards night when I rose to my feet and came down the mountain-side to Applegarth, and, as the outcome of my torturing reflections, one conviction, fixed very clearly in my mind before, had gained an added impulsion. I must needs hasten on this reparation. It was not, I am certain, the fear that delay in the fulfilment would weaken my purpose, which any longer spurred me; but of those two faces which had made my comparison: one, as I say, had vanished from my thoughts, the other now occupied them altogether, and it seemed to me that if by any chance I missed the opportunity of atonement, I should be doing the owner of that face an irreparable wrong.
Miss Dorothy Curwen came late from her room to supper, and the moment she entered the parlour where Mr. Curwen and I were waiting, it appeared that something had gone amis
s with her, and that we were in consequence to suffer. Her face was pale and tired, her eyes hostile, and asperity was figured in the tight curve of her lips. From the crown of her head to the toe-tips, she was panoplied in aggression, so that the very ribands seemed to bristle on her dress.
It was plain, too, that she did but wait her opportunity. Mr. Curwen provided it by a question as to her looks, and a suggestion that her health was disordered.
“No wonder,” says she, and “Not a doubt of it.” She snatched the occasion with both hands as it were, and said, I think, more than she intended. “I am much troubled by an owl that keeps me from my proper sleep.”
“An owl?” asked Mr. Curwen, with an innocent sympathy.
“An owl?” I asked in a sudden heat.
Her eyes met mine, very cold and blank.
“O-w-l,” she answered, spelling the word deliberately.
I could not think what had caused this sudden change in her.
“But, my dear,” said Mr. Curwen in perplexity, “are you certain you have made no mistake?”
“Oh no, sir, there will be no mistake,” says I, indignantly, or ever she could open her lips. But, indeed, I do not know whether in any case she would have opened them or not. For her face was like a mask.
“But I did not know there was an owl at Applegarth,” says he.
“He is a new-comer,” says I; “but you may take my word for it, there is an owl at Applegarth — a tedious, solemn owl.”
Miss Dorothy nodded her head quietly at each epithet, and her action much increased my anger.
“Then you have heard it, Mr. Clavering,” says Mr. Curwen; and “Indeed I have,” I cried in a greater heat than ever, for I noticed a certain contentment begin to steal over the girl’s face at each fresh evidence of my rage. “Indeed I have — under the eaves at my bedroom window.”
“But, my dear Mr. Clavering,” expostulated Mr. Curwen, “what sort of an owl is it?”
“A very uncommon owl,” said I.
“Oh dear no, not at all,” said Miss Curwen, stonily, with a lift of her eyebrows.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 231