Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  He went then — awkwardly, slowly. He felt himself, in spite of his arguments, in spite of his anger, in spite of the wrong which she had done him, and the disgrace which she brought on his name, — he felt himself something of a cur. She was little more than a child, little more than a child; and he had not understood her! Even now he had no notion how often that plea would ring in his ears, and harass him and keep him wakeful. And Henrietta? She had told herself before the interview that with it the worst would be over. But as she heard his firm tread pass slowly away, down the road, and grow fainter and fainter, the pride that had supported her under his eyes sank low. A sense of her loneliness, so cruel that it wrung her heart, so cruel that she could have run after him and begged him to punish her, to punish her as he pleased, if he would not leave her deserted, gripped her throat and brought salt tears to her eyes. The excitement was over, the flatness remained; the failure, and the grey skies and leaden water and dying bracken. And she was alone; alone for always. She had defied him, she had defied them all, she had told him that whatever happened she would not go back, she would not be taken back. But she knew now that she had lied. And she crossed the road, her step unsteady, and stumbled blindly up the woodland path above the road, until she came to a place where she knew that she was hidden. There she flung herself down on her face and cried passionately, stifling her sobs in the green damp moss. She had done wrong. She had done cruel wrong to him. But she was only nineteen, and she was being punished! She was being punished!

  CHAPTER X

  HENRIETTA IN NAXOS

  Youth feels, let the adult say what he pleases, more deeply than middle age. It suffers and enjoys with a poignancy unknown in later life. But in revenge it is cast down more lightly, and uplifted with less reason. The mature have seen so many sunny mornings grow to tearful noons, so many days of stress close in peace, that their moods are not to the same degree at the mercy of passing accidents. It is with the young, on the other hand, as with the tender shoots; they raise their heads to meet the April sun, as naturally they droop in the harsh east wind. And Henrietta had been more than girl, certainly more than nineteen, if she had not owned the influence of the scene and the morning that lapped her about when she next set foot beyond the threshold of the inn.

  She had spent in the meantime three days at which memory shuddered. Alone in her room, shrinking from every eye, turning her back on the woman who waited on her, she had found her pride insufficient to support her. Solitude is a medium which exaggerates all objects, and the longer Henrietta brooded over her past folly and her present disgrace, the more intolerable these grew to the vision.

  Fortunately, if Modest Ann’s heart bled for her, Mrs. Gilson viewed her misfortunes with a saner and less sensitive eye. She saw that if the girl were left longer to herself her health would fail. Already, she remarked, the child looked two years older — looked a woman. So on the fourth morning Mrs. Gilson burst in on her, found her moping at the window with her eyes on the lake, and forthwith, after her fashion, she treated her to a piece of her mind.

  “See here, young miss,” she said bluntly, “I’ll have nobody ill in my house! Much more making themselves ill! In three days Bishop’s to be back, and they’ll want you, like enough. And a pale, peaking face won’t help you, but rather the other way with men, such fools as they be! You get your gear and go out.”

  Henrietta said meekly that she would do so.

  “There’s a basket I want to send to Tyson’s,” the landlady went on. “She’s ailing. It’s a flea’s load, but I suppose,” sticking her arms akimbo and looking straight at the girl, “you’re too much of a lady to carry it.”

  “I’ll take it very willingly,” Henrietta said. And she rose with a spark of something approaching interest in her eyes.

  “Well, I’ve nobody else,” said cunning Mrs. Gilson. “And I don’t suppose you’ll run from me, ‘twixt here and there. And she’s a poor thing. She’s going to have a babby, and couldn’t be more lonely if she was in Patterdale.” And she described the way, adding that if Henrietta kept the road no one would meddle with her at that hour of the morning.

  The girl found her head-covering, and, submitting with a good grace to the basket, she set forth. As she emerged from the inn — for three days she had not been out — she cast a half-shamed, half-defiant look this way and that. But only Modest Ann was watching her from a window; and if ever St. Martin procured for the faithful a summer day, intempestive as the chroniclers have it, this was that day. A warm sun glowed in the brown hollows of the wood, and turned the dying fern to flame, and spread the sheen of velvet over green hill-side and grey crag. A mild west wind enlivened the surface of the lake with the sparkle of innumerable wavelets, and all that had for days been lead seemed turned to silver. The air was brisk and clear; in a heaven of their own, very far off, the great peaks glittered and shone. The higher Henrietta climbed above the inn-roofs, and the cares that centred there, the lighter, in spite of herself — how could it be otherwise with that scene of beauty stretched before her? — rose her heart.

  Half a dozen times as she mounted the hill she paused to view the scene through the tender mist of her own unhappiness. But every time she stood, the rare fleck of cloud gliding across the blue, or the dancing ripple of the water below, appealed to her, and caused her thoughts to wander; and youth and hope spoke more loudly. She was young. Surely at her age an error was not irreparable. Surely things would take a turn. For even now she was less unhappy, less ashamed.

  When she came to the summit of the shoulder, the bare gauntness of Hinkson’s farm, which resisted even the beauty of sunshine, caused her a momentary chill. The dog raved at her from the wind-swept litter of the yard. The blind gable-end scowled through the firs. Behind lay the squalid out-buildings, roofless and empty. She hurried by — not without a backward glance. She crossed the ridge, and almost immediately saw in a cup of the hills below her — so directly below her that roofs and yards and pig-styes lay mapped out under her eye — another farm. On three sides the smooth hill-turf sloped steeply to the walls. On the fourth, where a stream, which had its source beside the farm, found vent, a wood choked the descending gorge and hid the vale and the lake below.

  Deep-seated in its green bowl, the house was as lonely in position as the house on the shoulder, but after a warmer and more sheltered fashion. Conceivably peace and plenty, comfort and happiness might nestle in it. Yet the nearer Henrietta descended to it, leaving the world of space and view, the more a sense of stillness and isolation and almost of danger, pressed upon her. No sound of farm life, no cheery clank of horse-gear, no human voice broke the silence of the hills. Only a few hens scratched in the fold-yard.

  She struck on the half-open door, and a pair of pattens clanked across the kitchen flags. A clownish, dull-faced woman with drugget petticoats showed herself.

  “I’ve come to see Mrs. Tyson,” Henrietta said. “She’s in the house?”

  “Oh, ay.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Oh, ay.”

  “Then — —”

  “She’s on the settle.” As she spoke the woman stood aside, but continued to stare as if her curiosity grudged the loss of a moment.

  The kitchen, or house place — in those days the rough work of a farmhouse was done in the scullery — was spacious and clean, though sparsely and massively furnished. The flag floor was outlined in white squares, and the space about the fire was made more private by a tall settle which flanked the chimney corner and averted the draught. These appearances foretold a red-armed bustling house-wife. But they were belied by the pale plump face framed in untidy hair, which half in fright and half in bewilderment peered at her over the arm of the settle. It was a face that had been pretty after a feeble fashion no more than twelve months back: now it bore the mark of strain and trouble. And when it was not peevish it was frightened. Certainly it was no longer pretty.

  The owner of the face got slowly to her feet “Is it me you want?” she sai
d, her tone spiritless.

  “If you are Mrs. Tyson,” Henrietta answered gently.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I have brought you some things Mrs. Gilson of the inn wished to send you.”

  “I am obliged to you,” with stiff shyness.

  “And if you do not mind,” Henrietta continued frankly, “I will rest a little. If I do not trouble you.”

  “No, I’m mostly alone,” the young woman answered, slowly and apathetically. And she bade the servant set a chair for the visitor. That done, she despatched the woman with the basket to the larder.

  Then “I’m mostly alone,” she repeated. And this time her voice quivered, and her eyes met the other woman’s eyes.

  “But,” Henrietta said, smiling, “you have your husband.”

  “He’s often away,” wearily. “He’s often away; by day and night. He’s a doctor.”

  “But your servant? You have her?”

  “She goes home, nights. And then — —” with a spasm of the querulous face that had been pretty no more than a year before, “the hours are long when you are alone. You don’t know,” timidly reaching out a hand as if she would touch Henrietta’s frock — but withdrawing it quickly, “what it is to be alone, miss, all night in such a house as this.”

  “No, and no one should be!” Henrietta answered.

  She glanced round the great silent kitchen and tried to fancy what the house would be like of nights; when darkness settled down on the hollow in the hills, and the wood cut it off from the world below; and when, whatever threatened, whatever came, whatever face of terror peered through the dark-paned window, whatever sound, weird or startling, rent the silence of the distant rooms, this helpless woman must face it alone!

  She shuddered.

  “But you are not alone all night?” she said.

  “No, but — —” in a whisper, “often until after midnight, miss. And once — all night.”

  Henrietta restrained the words that rose to her lips.

  “Ah, well,” she said, “you’ll have your baby by-and-by.”

  “Ay, if it lives,” the other woman answered moodily— “if it lives. And,” she continued in a whisper, with her scared eyes on Henrietta’s face, and her hand on her wrist, “if I live, miss.”

  “Oh, but you must not think of that!” the girl protested cheerfully. “Of course you will live.”

  “I’ve mostly nought to do but think,” Tyson’s wife answered. “And I think queer things — I think queer things. Sometimes” — tightening her hold on Henrietta’s arm to stay her shocked remonstrance— “that he does not wish me to live. He’s at the house on the shoulder — Hinkson’s, the one you passed — most nights. There’s a girl there. And yesterday he said if I was lonely she should come and bide here while I laid up, and she’d be company for me. But” — in a wavering tone that was almost a wail— “I’m afraid! — I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid?” Henrietta repeated, trembling a little in sympathy, and drawing a little nearer the other. “Of what?”

  “Of her!” the woman muttered, averting her eyes that she might watch the door. “Of Bess. She’s gypsy blood, and it’s blood that sticks at nothing. And she’d be glad I was gone. She’d have him then. I know! She made a sign at me one day when my back was turned, but I saw it. And it was not for good. Besides — —”

  “Oh, but indeed,” Henrietta protested, “indeed, you must not think of these things. You are not well, and you have fancies.”

  Mrs. Tyson shook her head.

  “You’d have fancies,” in a gloomy tone, “if you lived in this house.”

  “It is only because you are so much alone in it,” the girl protested.

  “That’s not all,” with a shudder. The woman leant forward and spoke low with her eyes glued to the door. “That’s not all. You don’t know, nobody knows. Nobody knows — that’s alive! But once, after I came to live here, when I complained that he was out so much and was not treating me well, he took and showed me — he took and showed me — —”

  “What?” Henrietta spoke as lightly as she could. “What did he show you?” For the woman had broken off, and with her eyes closed seemed to be on the point of fainting.

  “Nothing — nothing,” Mrs. Tyson said, recovering herself with a sudden gasp. “And here’s the basket, miss. Meg lives down below. Shall she carry the basket to Mrs. Gilson’s? It is not fitting a young lady like you should carry it.”

  “Oh, no; I will take it,” Henrietta answered, with as careless an air as she could muster.

  And after a moment’s awkward hesitation, under the eyes of the dull serving-maid, she rose. She would gladly have stayed and heard more; for her pity and curiosity were alike vividly roused. But it was plain that for the present she could neither act upon the one nor assuage the other. She read a plea for silence in the eyes of the weak, frightened woman; and having said that probably Mrs. Gilson would be sending her that way again before long, she took her leave.

  Wondering much. For the low-ceiled kitchen, with its shadowy chimney-corner and its low-browed windows, had another look for her now; and the stillness of the house another meaning. All might be the fancy of a nervous, brooding woman. And yet there was something. And, something or nothing, there were unhappiness and fear and cruelty in this quiet work. As she climbed the track that led again to the lip of the basin, and to sunshine and brisk air and freedom, she had less pity for herself, she thought less of herself. She might have lain at the mercy of a careless, faithless husband, who played on her fears and mocked her appeals. She, when in her early unbroken days she complained, might have been taken and scared by — heaven knew what!

  She was still thinking with indignation of the woman’s plight when she gained the road. A hundred paces brought her to Hinkson’s. And there, standing under the firs at the corner of the house, and looking over her shoulder as if she had turned, in the act of entering, to see who passed, was the dark girl; the same whose insolent smile had annoyed her on the morning of her arrival, before she knew what was in store for her.

  Their eyes met. Again Henrietta’s face, to her intense vexation, flamed. Then the dog sprang up and raved at her, and she passed on down the road. But she was troubled. She was vexed with herself for losing countenance, and still more angry with the girl whose mocking smile had so strange a power to wound her.

  “That must be the creature we have been discussing,” she thought. “Odd that I should meet her, and still more odd that I should have seen her before! I don’t wonder that the woman fears her! But why does she look at me, of all people, after that fashion?”

  She told herself that it was her fancy, and trying to forget the matter, she tripped on down the road. Presently, before her cheeks or her temper were quite cool, she saw that she was going to meet some one — a man who was slowly mounting the hill on horseback. A moment later she made out that the rider who was approaching was Mr. Hornyold, and her face grew hot again. The meeting was humiliating. She wished herself anywhere else. But at the worst she could bow coldly and pass by.

  She reckoned without the justice, who was wont to say that when he wore a cassock he was a parson, and when he wore his top-boots he was a gentleman. He recognised her with a subdued “View halloa!” and pulled up as she drew near. He slid from his saddle — with an agility his bulk did not promise — and barred the way.

  With a grin and an over-gallant salute, “Dear, dear, dear,” he said. “Isn’t this out of bounds, young lady? Outside the rules of the bench, eh? What’d Mother Gilson be saying if she saw you here?”

  “I have been on an errand for her,” Henrietta replied, in her coldest tone.

  But she had to stop. The road was narrow, and he had, as by accident, put his horse across it.

  “An errand?” he said, smiling more broadly, “as far as this? She is very trusting! More trusting than I should be with a young lady of your appearance, who twist all the men round your finger.”

  Henrietta’s eyes sparkled.r />
  “I am returning to her,” she said, “and I am late. Please to let me pass.”

  “To be sure I will,” he said. But instead of moving aside he drew a pace nearer; so that between himself, the horse, and the bank, she was hemmed in. “To be sure, young lady!” he continued. “But that is not quite the tone to take with the powers that be! We are gentle as sucking doves — to pretty young women — while we are pleased; and ready to stretch a point, as we did the other day, for our friend Clyne, who was so deuced mysterious about the matter. But we must have our quid pro quo, eh? Come, a kiss! Just one. There are only the birds to see and the hedges to tell, and I’ll warrant” — the leer more plain in his eyes— “you are not always so particular.”

  Henrietta was not frightened, but she was angry and savage.

  “Do you know who I am?” she cried, for the moment forgetting herself in her passion.

  “No!” he answered, before she could say more. “That is just what I don’t know, my girl. I have taken you on trust and you are pretty enough! But I know Clyne, and he is interested in you. And his taste is good enough for me!”

  “Let me pass!” she cried.

  He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly behind the horse’s heels and stood free. Hornyold wheeled about, and with an oath:

  “You sly baggage!” he cried. “You are not going to escape so easily! You — —”

  There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance beyond her, was a stranger. The sight was so little to be expected in that solitary place, he had been so sure that they were alone and the girl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. The stranger came slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling magistrate and the indignant girl.

  “Good morning,” he said, addressing her. “If I am not inopportune, I have a letter for you from Captain Clyne.”