Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  The inquest on the gipsy had been held, but something perfunctorily, after the fashion of the day. Captain Clyne and the chaplain had told their stories, and after a few words from the coroner, a verdict of justifiable homicide had been heartily given, and the jury had resolved itself into a “free and easy” in the tap-room; while the coroner had delivered himself of much wisdom, and laid down much law in Mrs. Gilson’s snuggery.

  Henrietta had not been made to appear; for carried upstairs, in a state as like death as life, on Sunday evening, she had kept her room until this morning. She would fain have kept it longer, but there were reasons against that. And now, with the timidity which a retreat from every-day life breeds — and perhaps with some flutterings of the heart on another account — she was pausing before her looking-glass, and trying to gather courage to descend and face the world.

  She was still pale; and when she met her own eyes in the mirror, a quivering smile, a something verging on the piteous in her face, told of nerves which time had not yet steadied. Possibly, her reluctance to go down, though the hour was late, and Mrs. Gilson would scold, had a like origin. None the less, she presently conquered it, opened her door and descended; as she had done on that morning of her arrival, a few weeks back, and yet — oh, such a long time back!

  Now, as then, when she had threaded the dark passages and come to the door of Mr. Rogers’s room, she paused faint-hearted, and, with her hand raised to the latch, listened. She heard no sound, and she opened the door and went in. The table was laid for one.

  She heaved a sigh of relief, and — cut it short midway. For Captain Clyne came forward from one of the windows at which he had been standing.

  “I am glad that you are better,” he said stiffly, and in a constrained tone, “and able to come down.”

  “Oh yes, thank you,” she answered, striving to speak heartily, and repressing with difficulty that proneness of the lip to quiver. “I think I am quite well now. Quite well! I am sure, after this long time, I should be.”

  And she turned away and affected to warm her hands at the fire.

  He did not look directly at her — he avoided doing so. But he could see the reflection of her face in the oval-framed mirror, as she stood upright again. He saw that she had lost for the time the creamy warmth of complexion that was one of her chief beauties. She was pale and thin, and looked ill.

  “You have been very severely shaken,” he said. “No doubt you feel it still!”

  “Yes,” she answered, “a little. I think I do.”

  “Perhaps you had better be alone?”

  She did not know what to say to that. Perhaps she did not know what she wished. Her lip quivered. This was very unlike what she had expected and what she had dreaded. But it was worse. He seemed to be waiting for her answer — that he might go. What could she say?

  “Just as you like,” she murmured at last.

  “Oh, but I wish to do what you like!” he replied, with a little more warmth; but still awkwardly and with constraint.

  “So do I,” she replied.

  “I shall stay then,” he answered. And he lifted a small dish from the hearth and carried it to the table. “I had Mrs. Gilson’s orders to keep this hot for you,” he said.

  “It was very kind of you.”

  “I am afraid,” more lightly, “that it was fear of Mrs. Gilson weighed on me as much as anything.”

  He returned to the hearth when he had seen her seated. And she began her breakfast with her eyes on the table. With the first draught of coffee a feeling of warmth and courage ran through her; and he, standing with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his eyes on the mirror, saw the change in her.

  “The boy is better,” he said suddenly. “I think he will do now.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think so. But he will need great care. He will not be able to leave his bed for a day or two. We found your brooch pinned inside his clothes.”

  “Yes?”

  He turned sharply and for the first time looked directly at her.

  “Of course, we knew why you put it there. It was good of you. But why — don’t you ask after him, Henrietta?” in a different tone.

  She felt the colour rise to her cheeks — and she wished it anywhere else.

  “I saw him this morning,” she murmured.

  “Oh!” he replied in surprise. And he turned to the mirror again. “I see.”

  She began to wish that he would leave her, for his silence made her horribly nervous. And she dared not start a subject herself, because she could not trust her voice. The hands of the white-faced clock jerked slowly on, marking the seconds, and accentuating the silence. She grew so nervous at last that she could not lift her eyes from her plate, and she ate though she was scarcely able to swallow, because she dared not leave off.

  It did not occur to her that Anthony Clyne was as ill at ease as she was; and oppressed, moreover, to a much greater degree by the memory of certain scenes which had taken place in that room. Her nervousness was in part the reflection of his constraint. And his constraint arose from two feelings widely different.

  The long silence was becoming painful to both, when he forced himself to break it.

  “I am so very, very deeply beholden to you,” he said, in a constrained tone, “that — that I must ask you, Henrietta, to listen to me for a few minutes — even if it be unpleasant to you.”

  She laughed awkwardly.

  “If it is only,” she answered, “because you are beholden to me — that — that you feel it necessary to thank me at length, please don’t. You will only overwhelm me.”

  “It is not for that reason only,” he said. And he knew that he spoke, much against his will, with dreadful solemnity. “No. Naturally we must have much to say to one another. I, in particular, who owe to you — —”

  “Please let that be,” she protested.

  “But I cannot. I cannot!” he repeated. “You have done me so great a service, at a risk so great, and under circumstances so — so — —”

  “So remarkable,” she cried, with something of her old girlish manner, “that you cannot find words in which to describe them! Then please don’t.” And then, more seriously: “I did not do what I did to be thanked.”

  “Then why?” he asked quickly. “Why did you do it?”

  “Did you think,” she protested, “that I did it to be thanked?”

  “No, but — why did you do it, Henrietta?” he asked persistently. “Such a risk, such men, such circumstances, might have deterred any woman. Nay, almost any man.”

  She toyed with her teaspoon; there had come a faint flush of colour into her cheeks.

  “I think it was — I think it was just to reinstate myself,” she murmured.

  “You mean?”

  “You gave me to understand,” she explained, “that you thought ill of me. And I wished you to think well of me; or better of me, I should say, for I did not expect you to think quite well of me after — you know!” in some confusion.

  “You wished to be reinstated?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder,” he said slowly, “how much you mean by that.”

  “I mean what I say,” she answered, looking at him.

  “Yes, but do you mean that you — wish to be reinstated altogether?”

  She did not remove her eyes from his face, but she blushed to the roots of her hair.

  “I am not sure that I understand,” she said with a slight air of offence.

  “No?” he said. “And perhaps I did not quite mean that. What I did mean, and do mean, what I am hoping, what I am looking forward to, Henrietta — —” and there he broke off.

  He seemed to find it necessary to begin again:

  “Perhaps I had better explain,” he said more soberly. “You told me that morning by the lake some home-truths, you remember? You showed me that what had happened was not all your fault; was perhaps not at all your fault. And you showed me this with so much energy and power, that I went away with the firs
t clear impression of you I had had in my life. Yes, with the feeling that I had never known you until then.” He dropped his eyes, and looked thoughtfully at something on the table. “And one of the things I remember best, and which I shall always remember, was your saying that I had never paid any court to you.”

  “It was true,” she said, in a low voice.

  And she too did not look at him, but kept her eyes bent on the spoon with which she toyed.

  “Yes. Well, if you will let the old state of things be so far reinstated as to — let me begin to pay my court to you now, I am not confident, I am very far from confident, that I can please you. I am rather old, for one thing” — with a rueful laugh— “to make love gracefully, and rather stiff and — political. But owing to the trouble I have brought upon you in the past — —”

  “I never said but that we both brought it!” Henrietta objected suddenly.

  “Well, whoever brought it — —”

  “We both brought it!” she repeated obstinately.

  “Very well. I mean only that the trouble — —”

  “Makes it unlikely that I shall find another husband?” she said. “Pray be frank with me! That,” rising and going to the window, and then turning to confront him, “is what you mean, is it not? That is exactly what you mean, I am sure?”

  “Something of that kind, perhaps,” he admitted.

  “But you forget Mr. Sutton!” she said — and paused. She took one step forward, and her eyes shone. “You forget Mr. Sutton, Captain Clyne. The gentleman to whom you handed me over! To whom you gave so clear a certainty that I was for the first comer who was willing. He is willing, quite willing!”

  “But — —”

  “And it cannot be said that he did not behave gallantly on Sunday night! I am told — —”

  “He behaved admirably.”

  “And he is willing!” she flung the word at him— “quite willing to marry me — disgraced as I am! As you have always, always hinted I am! And not out of pity, Captain Clyne. Let us be frank with one another. You were very frank with me once — more than frank.” She held out her wrist, which was still faintly discoloured. “When a man does that to a woman,” she said, “she either loves him, sir, or hates him.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly — very slowly. “I see. Your mind is made up, then — —”

  “That I will not accept your kind offer to — pay your court to me?” she answered, with derision. “Certainly. I have no mind to be wooed by you!” Again she held out her wrist. “You know the stale proverb: ‘He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay!’” And she made him a little bow, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks bright.

  He turned his back on her, and stood for a moment looking from the window which was the nearer to the fire — the one looking over the lake. The words of her proverb — stale enough in truth — ran very sorrowfully in his ears. “He that will not when he may! He that will not when he may!” No, he might have known that she was not one to forget. He might have known that the words he had said, and the things that he had done, would rankle. And that she who had not hesitated to elope — to punish him for his neglect of her — would not hesitate to punish him for worse than neglect. He stood a long minute watching the tiny waves burst into white lines at the foot of Hayes Woods. No, she could not forget — nor forgive. But she could act, she had acted, as if she had done both. She had saved his child. She had risked her life for it. And if she had done that with this resentment, this feeling in her heart, if she had done it, moved only by the desire to show him that he had misjudged her — in a sense it was the nobler act, and one like — ay, he owned it sorrowfully — like herself! At any rate, it did not become him to cast a word of reproach at her. She had saved his child.

  He turned at length, and looked at her. He saw that her figure had lost its elation, and her cheeks their colour. She was leaning against the side of the window, and looked tired and ill, and almost as she had looked when she came into the room. His heart melted.

  “I would like you to know one thing,” he said, “before I go. Your triumph is greater, Henrietta, than you think, and your revenge more complete. It is no question of pity with me, but of love.” He paused, and laughed awry. “The worse for me, you will say, and the better for you. Vae victis! Still, even if you hate me — —”

  “I did not say that I hated you!”

  “You said — —”

  “I did not! I did not!” she repeated, with a queer little laugh. And she sat down on the window seat, and turned quickly with a pettish movement, so that he could only see the side of her face. “I said nothing of the kind.”

  “But — —”

  “I said something very different!”

  “You said — —”

  “I said that when a man pinches a girl’s wrist black and blue, and swears at her — yes, Captain Clyne,” firmly, “you swore at me, and called me — —”

  “Don’t!” he said.

  She was leaning against the side of the window ...

  “I only said,” she continued breathlessly, “that when a man does that, the woman either loves him or hates him!”

  “Henrietta!”

  “Captain Clyne!”

  After a long pause, “I think I understand you,” he said slowly, “but if you — if there were any feeling, the least feeling of that kind on your part, you would not have forbidden me to — to think of seeking you for my wife.”

  “I didn’t!” she answered. “I told you that you should not pay your court to me. And you shall not! You cannot,” half laughing and half crying, “woo what’s won, can you? If you still think it is worth the winning! Only,” stopping him by a gesture as he came towards her, “you are not to give me over to Mr. Sutton again, whatever I do! You must promise me that.”

  “I won’t!” he said.

  “You are quite sure, sir? However I behave? And even if I run away from you?”

  “Quite sure!”

  And a few minutes later, “Poor Sutton!” he said. “We must try to make it up to him.”

  She laughed.

  “It is a good thing you did not set out to woo me,” she answered. “For you would not have shone at it. Make it up to him indeed! Make it up to him! What a thing, sir, to say to — me!”

  * * * * *

  It was not made up to Mr. Sutton; though the best living that could be procured by an exchange with the Bishop of Durham — and there were fat livings in Durham in those days, and small blame if a man held two of them — was found for the chaplain. He married, too, a lady of the decayed house of Conyers of Sockburn, beside which the Damers and the Clynes were upstairs. And so both in his fortune and his wife’s family he did as well — almost — as he had hoped to do. But though he accepted his patron’s gift, he came seldom to Clyne Old Hall; and some held him ungrateful. Moreover, a little later, when to be a radical was not counted quite so dreadful a thing, he turned radical in all but the white hat. And Clyne was disappointed, but not surprised. Henrietta, however, understood. Though children running about her knees had tamed her wildness and caged her pride, she was still a woman, and the memory of a past conquest was not ungrateful. She had no desire to see the pale replica of Mr. Pitt, but she sometimes thought of him, and always kindly and with gratitude.

  There was a third lover, of whom she never thought without unhappiness.

  “You will never tell the children? You will never tell the children?” was her prayer to her husband when Walterson was in question.

  And though he answered with gravity, “Not unless you do it again, my dear,” the sting of remembrance did not cease to rankle.

  Walterson was traced to Leith — and thence to Holland. There the trail was lost, and it is believed that he did not live to return to England. Whether he did return or not — and Bow Street, and Mr. Bishop in particular, kept watch for him long — he never re-entered Henrietta’s life. As the memory of the French Revolution faded from men’s minds, the struggle for reform fell
into more reputable and less violent hands. Silly and turbulent men of the type of him who had turned the girl’s young head no longer counted; or, rising to the top at moments of public excitement, vanished as quickly, and no man knew whither.

  Giles and Lunt were not taken on that Sunday night. They escaped, it was supposed, to Scotland, by way of Patterdale and the Moors. Less fortunate, however, than Walterson, they returned to London and fell in again with Thistlewood. They yielded to the fascination of that remarkable and unhappy man, took part in his schemes, and were taken with him in the loft over the stable in Cato Street, when the attempt to murder the cabinet at Lord Harrowby’s house in Grosvenor Square miscarried. He and they got a fair trial, but little pity. And it is not to be supposed that upon the scaffold in the Old Bailey, they thought much of the lonely house in the hollow at Troutbeck, or of the helpless woman whom they had terrorised. To their credit, be it said, they died more worthily than they had lived; and with them came to a close the movement which sought to reach reform by the road of violence, and to that end held no instruments too cheap or vile.

  Tyson came out of the adventure a wiser and perhaps a better man. For on his return from the north he found it hard to free himself from the charge of complicity in the acts of those who had used his house; nor did he succeed until he had lain some weeks in Appleby gaol. He would fain have avenged himself on Bess, but for reasons to be stated, he could not enjoy this satisfaction. And his neighbours sent him to Coventry. Had he been a strong man he might have defied them and public opinion. But he was only a braggart, and that which must have embittered many, tamed him. He turned to his wife for comfort, sought his home more than before, and gradually settled down into a tolerable citizen and a high Tory.

  Bess saved herself by her own wit and courage. The Monday’s light saw her dragged to Kendal prison, where they were not so gentle with her as they had been with Henrietta. Her story went with her, and, “They say you stole a child,” the little girl murmured, standing at her knee and staring at her, “and ‘ll be hanged at the March fair.”