But as it was he feared to make overtures, and they sat each in a corner until, in sheer dread of the effect which reflection might have on her, he asked her if she feared pursuit; adding, “Depend upon it, darling, you need not; Sir Charles will not give a thought to this road.”
She drummed thoughtfully with her fingers on the pane.
“I am not afraid of my brother,” she said.
“Then of whom?”
“Of Anthony,” she answered, and corrected herself hurriedly— “of Captain Clyne, I mean. He will think of this road.”
“But he will not have had the news before noon,” Stewart answered. “It is eighteen miles from your brother’s to the Old Hall. And besides, I thought that he did not love you.”
“He does not,” she rejoined, “but he loves himself. He loves his pride. And this will hit both — hard! I am not quite sure,” she continued very slowly and thoughtfully, “that I am not a little sorry for him. He made so certain, you see. He thought all arranged. A week to-day was the day fixed, and — yes,” impetuously, “I am sorry for him, though I hated him yesterday.”
Stewart was silent a moment.
“I hate him to-day,” he said.
“Why?”
His eyes sparkled.
“I hate all his kind,” he said. “They are hard as stones, stiff as oaks, cruel as — as their own laws! A man is no man to them, unless he is of” — he paused almost imperceptibly— “our class! A law is no law to them unless they administer it! They see men die of starvation at their gates, but all is right, all is just, all is for the best, as long as they govern!”
“I don’t think you know him,” she said, somewhat stiffly.
“Oh, I know him!”
“But — —”
“Oh, I know him!” he repeated, the faint note of protest in her voice serving to excite him. “He was at Manchester. There were a hundred thousand men out of work — starving, seeing their wives starve, seeing their children starve. And they came to Manchester and met. And he was there, and he was one of those who signed the order for the soldiers to ride them down — men, women, and children, without arms, and packed so closely that they could not flee!”
“Well,” she said pertly, “you would not have us all murdered in our beds?”
He opened his mouth, and he shut it again. He knew that he had been a fool. He knew that he had gone near to betraying himself. She was nineteen, and thoughtless; she had been bred in the class he hated; she had never heard any political doctrines save those which that class, the governing class, held; and though twice or thrice he had essayed faintly to imbue her with his notions of liberty and equality and fraternity, and had pictured her with the red cap of freedom perched on her flaxen head, the only liberty in which he had been able to interest her had been her own!
By-and-by, in different conditions, she might be more amenable, should he then think it worth while to convert her. For the present his eloquence was stayed in midstream. Yet he could not be altogether silent, for he was a man to whom words were very dear.
“Well,” he said in a lower tone, “there is something in that, sweet. But I know worse of him than that. You may think it right to transport a man for seven years for poaching a hare — —”
“They should not poach,” she said lightly, “and they would not be transported!”
“But you will think differently of flogging a man to death!”
Her face flushed.
“I don’t believe it!” she cried.
“On his ship in Plymouth Harbour they will tell you differently.”
“I don’t believe it!” she replied, with passion. And then, “How horrid you are!” she continued. “And it is nearly dark! Why do you talk of such things? You are jealous of him — that is what you are!”
He saw the wisdom of sliding back into their old relations, and he seized the opportunity her words offered.
“Yes,” he murmured, “I am jealous of him. And why not? I am jealous of the wind that caresses your cheek, of the carpet that feels your tread, of the star that peeps in at your window! I am jealous of all who come near you, or speak to you, or look at you!”
“Are you really?” — in a tone of childish delight. “As jealous as that?”
He swore it with many phrases.
“And you will be so always?” she sighed softly, leaning towards him. “Always — Alan?”
“To eternity!” he answered. And emboldened by her melting mood, he would have taken her hand, and perhaps more than her hand, but at that moment the lights of the inn at Newby Bridge flashed on them suddenly, the roar of the water as it rushed over the weirs surprised their ears, the postboys cracked their whips, and the carriage bounded and rattled over the steep pitch of the narrow bridge. A second or two later it came to a stand before the inn amid a crowd of helpers and stable lads, whose lanthorns dazzled the travellers’ eyes.
They stayed only to change horses, then were away again. But the halt sufficed to cool his courage; and as they pounded on monotonously through the night, the darkness and the dim distances of river and lake — for they were approaching the shores of Windermere — produced their natural effect on Henrietta’s feelings. She had been travelling since early morning cooped and cramped within the narrow chaise; she had spent the previous night in a fever of suspense and restlessness. Now, though slowly, the gloom, the dark outlines of the woods, and that sense of loneliness which seizes upon all who are flung for the first time among strange surroundings, began to tell upon the spirits even of nineteen. She did not admit the fact to herself — she would have died before she confessed it to another; but disillusion had begun its subtle task.
Here were all the things for which she had panted — the dear, delightful things of which she had dreamed: the whirl of the postchaise through the night, the crack of the whips, the cries of the postboys, the lighted inns, the dripping woods, the fear of pursuit, the presence of her lover! And already they were growing flat. Already the savour was escaping from them. There were tears in her heart, tears very near her eyes.
He could have taken her hand then, and more than her hand. For suddenly she recognised, with a feeling nearer terror than her flighty nature had ever experienced before, her complete dependence on him. Henceforth love, comfort, kindness, companionship — all must come from him. She had flung from her every stay but his, every hand but his. He was become her all, her world. And could she trust him? Not only with her honour — she never dreamed of doubting that — but could she trust him afterwards? To be kind to her, to be good to her, to be generous to her? Thoughtless, inexperienced, giddy as she was, Henrietta trembled. A pitiful sob rose in her throat. It needed but little, very little, and she had cast herself in abandonment on her lover’s breast and there wept out her fears and her doubts.
But he had also his anxieties, and he let the moment pass by him unmarked. He had reasons, other and more urgent than those he had given her, for taking this road and for staying the night in a place whence Whitehaven and Carlisle were equally accessible; and those reasons had seemed good enough in the day when the fear of pursuit had swayed him. They seemed less pertinent now. He began to wish that he had taken another road, pursued another course. And he was deep in a brown study, in which love had no part, when an exclamation, at once of surprise and admiration, recalled him to the present.
They had topped a bare shoulder and come suddenly in sight of Lake Windermere. The moon had not long risen above the hills on their right, the water lay on their left; below them stretched a long pale mirror, whose borrowed light, passing over the dark woods which framed it, faintly lit and explored the stupendous fells and mountains that rose beyond. To Stewart it was no unfamiliar or noteworthy sight; and his eyes, after a passing glance of approval, turned to the road below them and marked with secret anxiety the spot where two or three lights indicated their halting-place.
But to Henrietta the sight, as unexpected as it was beautiful, appealed in a manner never to be fo
rgotten. She held her breath, and slowly her eyes filled. Half subdued by fatigue and darkness, half awake to the dangers and possibilities of her situation, she was in the mood most fit to be moved by the tender melancholy of the scene. She was feeling a craving for something — for something to comfort her, for something to reassure her, for something on which to lean in the absence of all the common things of life: and there broke on her the mystic beauty of this moonlit lake, and it melted her. Her heart, hitherto untouched, awoke. The compact which she had made with her lover stood for naught. The tears running down her face, she turned to him, she held out her hands to him.
“Kiss me!” she murmured. “And say — say you will be good to me! I have only you now! — only you! — only you!”
He caught her in his arms and kissed her rapturously; and the embrace was ardent enough to send the scarlet surging to her temples, to set her heart throbbing. But the chaise was in the very act of drawing up at the door of the inn; and it may be doubted if he tasted the full sweetness of the occasion. A face looked in at the carriage window, on the side farther from the lake appeared a bowing landlord, a voice inquired, “Horses on?” The postchaise stopped.
CHAPTER II
A RED WAISTCOAT
Cheerful lights shining from the open doorway and the red-curtained windows of the inn, illumined the road immediately before it; and if these and the change in all the surroundings did not at once dispel the loneliness at Henrietta’s heart, at least they drove the tears from her eyes and the blushes from her cheeks. The cold moonlight, the unchanging face of nature, had sobered and frightened her; the warmth of fire and candle, the sound of voices, and the low, homely front of the house, with its two projecting gables, reassured her. The forlorn child who had flung herself into her lover’s arms not forty seconds before was not to be recognised in the girl who alighted slowly and with gay self-possession, took in the scene at a glance, and won the hearts of ostler and stableboy by her ease and her fresh young beauty. She was bare-headed, and her high-dressed hair, a little disordered by the journey, gleamed in the lanthorn-light. Her eyes were like stars. The landlord of the inn — known for twenty miles round as “Long Tom Gilson” — saw at a glance that the missus’s tongue would run on her. He wished that he might not be credited with his hundred-and-thirty-first conquest!
The thought, however, did not stand between him and his duty. “Sharp, Sam,” he cried briskly. “Fire in Mr. Rogers’s room.” Then to his guests: “Late? No, sir, not at all. This way, ma’am. All will be ready in a twinkling.”
But Henrietta stood smiling.
“Thank you,” she answered pleasantly, her clear young voice slightly raised. “But I wished to be placed in the landlady’s charge. Is she here?”
Gilson turned toward the doorway, which his wife’s portly form fitted pretty tightly.
“Here, missus,” he cried, “the young lady wants you.”
But Mrs. Gilson was a woman who was not wont to be hurried and before she reached the side of the carriage Stewart interposed; more roughly and more hurriedly than seemed discreet in the circumstances.
“Let us go in, and settle that afterwards,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes,” he retorted. And he grasped the girl’s arm tightly. His voice was low, but insistent. “Let us go in.”
But the girl only vouchsafed him a look, half wondering, half indignant. She turned to the landlady.
“I am tired, and need no supper,” she said. “Will you take me into a room, if you please, where I can rest at once, as we go on early to-morrow.”
“Certainly,” the landlady answered. She was a burly, red-faced, heavy-browed woman. “But you have come some way, ma’am. Will you not take supper with the gentleman?”
“No.”
He interposed.
“At least let us go in!” he repeated pettishly. And there was an agitation in his tone and manner not easy to explain, except on the supposition that in some way she had thwarted him. “We do not want to spend the night on the road, I suppose?”
She did not reply. But none the less, as she followed Mrs. Gilson to the door, was she wondering what ailed him. She was unsuspicious by nature, and she would not entertain the thought that he wished her to act otherwise than she was acting. What was it then? Save for a burly man in a red waistcoat who stood in a lighted doorway farther along the front of the inn, and seemed to be watching their movements with lazy interest, there were only the people of the inn present. And the red-waistcoated man could hardly be in pursuit of them, for, for certain, he was a stranger. Then what was it?
She might have turned and asked her lover; but she was offended and she would not stoop. And before she thought better of it — or worse — she had crossed the threshold. A warmer air, an odour of spices and lemons and old rum, met her. On the left of the low-browed passage a half-open door offered a glimpse of shining glass and ruddy firelight; there was Mrs. Gilson’s snuggery, sometimes called the coach office. On the right a room with a long table spoke of coaching meals and a groaning board. From beyond these, from the penetralia of kitchen and pantry, came faint indications of plenty and the spit.
A chambermaid was waiting at the foot of the narrow staircase to go before them with lights; but the landlady took the candles herself, and dismissed the woman with a single turn of the eye. A habit of obedience to Mrs. Gilson was the one habit of the inn, the one common ground on which all, from Tom Gilson to the smallest strapper in the stable, came together.
The landlady went ponderously up before her guest and opened the door of a dimity-hung chamber. It was small and simple, but of the cleanest. Hid in it were rosemary and lavender; and the leafless branches of a rose-tree whipped the diamond panes of the low, broad window. Mrs. Gilson lighted the two wax candles— “waxes” in those days formed part of every bill but the bagman’s. Then she turned and looked at the girl with deliberate disapproval.
“You will take nothing, ma’am, to eat?” she said.
“No, thank you,” Henrietta answered. And then, resenting the woman’s look, “I may as well tell you,” she continued, holding her head high, “that we have eloped, and are going to be married to-morrow. That is why I wished to be put in your charge.”
The landlady, with her great face frowning, continued to look at the girl, and for a moment did not answer.
At length, “You’ve run away,” she said, “from your friends?”
Henrietta nodded loftily.
“From a distance, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Mrs. Gilson rejoined, her face continuing to express growing disapproval, “there’s a stock of fools near and far. And if I did my duty, young lady, there’d be one who would likely be thankful all her life.” She took the snuffers and slowly and carefully snuffed the two candles. “If I did my duty, I’d lock you up and keep you safe till your friends came for you.”
“You are insolent,” the girl cried, flaming up.
“That depends,” Mrs. Gilson retorted, with the utmost coolness. “Fine feathers make fine birds. You may be my lady, or my lady’s maid. Men are such fools — all’s of the best that’s red and white. But I’m not so easy.”
Henrietta raised her chin a little higher.
“Be good enough to leave the room!” she said.
But the stout woman held her ground.
“Not before I’ve said what I have to say,” she answered. “It is one thing, and one thing only, hinders me doing what I ought to do, and what if you were my girl I’d wish another to do. And that is — your friends may not want you back. And then, to be married tomorrow is like enough the best you can do for yourself! And the sooner the better!”
Henrietta’s face turned scarlet, and she stamped on the floor.
“You are a wicked, insolent woman!” she said. “You do not know your place, nor mine. How dare you say such things to me? How dare you? Did you hear me bid you leave the room?”
“Hoity-toity!”
“Very good,” Mrs. Gilson replied ponderously— “very good! But you may find worse friends than me. And maybe one of them is downstairs now.”
“You hateful woman!” the girl cried; and had a glimpse of the landlady’s red, frowning face as the woman turned for a last look in the doorway. Then the door closed, and she was left alone — alone with her thoughts.
Her face burned, her neck tingled. She was very, very angry, and a little frightened. This was a scene in her elopement which anticipation had not pictured. It humiliated her — and scared her. To-morrow, no doubt, all would be well; all would be cheerfulness, tenderness, sunshine; all would be on the right basis. But in the meantime the sense of forlornness which had attacked her in the chaise returned on her as her anger cooled, and with renewed strength. Her world, the world of her whole life up to daybreak of this day, was gone forever. In its place she had only this bare room with its small-paned casement and its dimity hangings and its clean scent. Of course he was below, and he was the world to her, and would make up a hundredfold what she had resigned for him. But he was below, he was absent; and meantime her ear and her heart ached for a tender word, a kind voice, a look of love. At least, she thought, he might have come under her window, and whistled the air that had been the dear signal for their meetings. Or he might have stood a while and chatted with her, and shown her that he was not offended. The severest prude, even that dreadful woman who had insulted her, could not object to that!
But he did not come. Of course he was supping — what things men were! And then, out of sheer loneliness, her eyes filled, and her thoughts of him grew tender and more humble. She dwelt on him no longer as her conquest, her admirer, the prize of her bow and spear, subject to her lightest whim and her most foolish caprice; but as her all, the one to whom she must cling and on whom she must depend. She thought of him as for a brief while she had thought of him in the chaise. And she wondered with a chill of fear if she would be left after marriage as she was left now. She had heard of such things, but in the pride of her beauty, and his subjection, she had not thought that they could happen to her. Now —— But instead of dwelling on a possibility which frightened her, she vowed to be very good to him — good and tender and loyal, and a true wife. They were resolutions that a trifling temptation, an hour’s neglect or a cross word, might have overcome. But they were honest, they were sincere, they were made in the soberest moment that her young life had ever known; and they marked a step in development, a point in that progress from girlhood to womanhood which so few hours might see complete.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 470