“Swear that you will not think of it again,” she responded.
“I swear,” he answered.
She gazed at him awhile. Then she said, “Wait!” She went quickly back to the house, and returned with some wine. “Perhaps I startled you without cause,” she said, smiling on him. He had not seen her smile before. “I must make amends. Drink this.”
He obeyed. “Now,” she said, “you must take my arm and go back to your chair.”
He assented as a child might, and when he reached the chair he sank into it with a sigh of relief. She stood beside him. The back of his seat was towards the house, and before him an opening in the shrubbery disclosed a shoulder of the ravine rolling upwards, the gorse on one rugged spur in bloom, the sunshine everywhere warming the dull browns and lurking purples into brilliance.
“See!” she said, with an undertone of reproach in her voice, “is not that beautiful? Is not that a thing one would regret?”
“Yes, beautiful now,” he replied, answering her thought rather than her words. “But I have seen it under another aspect. Stay!” he continued, seeing she was about to answer. “Do not judge me too hastily. You cannot tell what reason I had — what — —”
“No!” she retorted, “I cannot. But I can guess what grief you would have caused to others, what a burden you would have shifted to weaker shoulders, what duties you would have avoided, what a pang you would have inflicted on friends and relations! For shame!” She stopped for lack of breath.
“I have no relatives,” he answered slowly, “and few friends. I have no duties that others would not perform as well. My death would cause sorrow to some, joy to as many. My burden would die with me.”
She glanced at him with compressed lips, divining that he was reciting arguments he had used a score of times to his own conscience. But she was puzzled how to answer him. “Take all that for granted,” she said at last. “Are there no reasons higher than these which should have deterred you?”
“It may be so,” he replied. “Perhaps I think so now.”
She felt the admission a victory, and, seeing he had recovered his composure, she left him and went into the house. But the incident had one lasting effect. It broke down the wall between them. She felt that she knew him well — better than many whom she had owned as acquaintances for years. The confidence surprised in a moment of emotion cannot be recalled. It seemed idle for her to affect to keep him at arm’s length when she knew, if she did not acknowledge, that he had confessed his sin, and been forgiven.
So when she saw him walking feebly from the house next day she went with him, and showed him where he could rest and where obtain a view without climbing. Afterwards she fell naturally into the habit of going with him; and little by little, as she saw more of him, she owned the spell of a new perplexity. Who was he? He talked of things in a tone novel to her. He seemed to have thought deeply and read much. He spoke of visits to this country, to that country. One day her father found him reading their day-old Times, and took it from him. “You must not do that yet,” the doctor said. “My daughter can read to you, if you like, but not for long.”
She asked what she should read. He chose a review of a historical work, and gently rejected the passing topics — even a speech by Lord Hartington. This gave her an idea, and she privately searched the back numbers of the paper, but could not find that any one who resembled him was missing. Yet he had been with them almost three weeks; he had received no letters, he had sent none. How could such a man pass from his circle and cause no inquiry? Here at the Old Hall they knew no more of him than on his coming. He had not offered to disclose his name, and his host, who had fallen under his spell, had not plucked up courage to ask for it, or for an explanation — had come, indeed, to no understanding with him at all.
It is possible that of himself the doctor might have gone on unsuspicious to the last. But one afternoon, as he made up his books at the old bureau in the hall — the door being open and a flood of sunshine pouring through it — he was aware on a sudden of a shadow cast across the boards. He looked up. A middle-sized fair man, with a goatee beard and a fresh complexion, was setting down a bag on the floor and beginning to take off his gloves. “Why, Woolley!” exclaimed the doctor, gazing at him feebly, “is it you? We did not expect you until Monday.”
“No, but you see I have come to-day,” the traveller answered. It was a peculiarity of this young man — he was not very young, say thirty-eight — that when he was not well pleased he smiled. He smiled now.
The doctor rubbed his hands to hide a little embarrassment. “Yes, I see you have come,” he said. “But how? Did you walk from Sheffield?”
“I came with Nickson.”
The doctor stopped rubbing, then went on faster, as his thoughts flew from Nickson to the tall gentleman, and for some mysterious reason from the tall gentleman to Pleasance. He had never consciously traced this connection before, but something in his assistant’s face helped him to it now.
“He tells me,” Woolley continued, making a neat ball of his gloves and smiling at the floor, “that you had a strange case here, a case he was mixed up with, and that you made a cure of it.”
“Yes.”
“The fellow has cleared out, I suppose?”
“Well, no,” the doctor stammered, feeling warm. How odd it was that he had never seen into what a pit of imprudence he was sinking! He had been harbouring a lunatic, or one who had acted as a lunatic — a criminal certainly; in no light a person fit to associate with his daughter. “No, he is still here,” he stammered. “I think — I suppose he will be leaving in a day or two!”
“Here still, is he?” Woolley said with a sneer. “A queer sort of parlour-boarder, sir. May I ask where he is at present?”
“I think he is out of doors somewhere.”
“Alone?”
When the doctor thought over the scene afterwards he whistled when his memory brought him to that “Alone.” He knew then that the fat was in the fire. He saw that Woolley had pumped the carrier — who had been to the house several times since the affair — and drawn his own conclusions. “I rather think,” he ventured, “I am not sure, but I think — —”
“I do not think,” the other said dryly, “I see.”
He pointed through the open door, and alas! the tall gentleman and Pleasance were visible approaching the house. They had that moment emerged from the shrubbery, and were crossing the lawn. The girl was carrying a basket full of marsh marigolds, the man had a great bush of hawthorn on the end of his stick. They were both looking at the front of the house without a thought that other eyes were upon them. Pleasance’s face, on which the light fell strongly, was far from gay, her smile but a sad one; yet there was a tenderness in the one and the other which was not calculated to reassure a jealous onlooker.
“So!” Woolley muttered, his fingers closing like a vise on the doctor’s arm. “Let me deal with this.”
CHAPTER III
The walk which roused so much indignation in Edgar Woolley’s breast had been one of more than common interest; as perhaps something in the faces of the returning couple assured him. There is a point in the journey towards intimacy at which one or other of the converging pair turns the conversation inwards, disclosing his or her hopes, fears, ambitions. Pleasance in the purest innocence had reached this stage to-day; arriving at it by the road of that silence which is tolerable only when some progress has been made towards friendship, and which even then invites attack. The tall gentleman, having lopped and picked at her bidding, gathered up the last scraps of the hawthorn which he had ruthlessly broken from the tree. He turned to find his companion gazing into distance with a shadow on her face. “Your thoughts are not pleasant ones, I fear,” he said, half lightly, half seriously. “A penny were too much for them.”
“I was thinking of Mr. Woolley,” she answered simply.
“Indeed!” he said, surprised. He was more surprised when she poured out of a full heart the story of her father’s debt
to his assistant, and of the mortgage on the old house which the Partridges had owned for generations, and which was to her father as the apple of his eye. She let fall no word of Woolley’s position in regard to herself. But the voice has subtle inflections, and men’s apprehensions are quick where they are interested — and he was interested here. Her story omitted little which he could not conjecture.
“I am sorry to hear this,” he said, after a pause. “But money troubles — after all, money troubles are not the worst troubles.” He raised his hat and walked for a moment bareheaded.
“But this is not merely a money trouble,” she answered warmly. She was wrapped up in her own distresses, and did not perceive at the moment that he had reverted to his. “We shall lose that.”
They had reached the crown of the hill, and as she spoke she pointed to the Old Hall lying below them, its four gables, its stone front, its mullioned windows warmed into beauty by lichens and sunlight. “We shall lose that!” she repeated, pointing to it.
“Yes,” the stranger said, with a quick glance at her. “I understand. And I do not wonder that it grieves you. It has always been your home, I suppose?” She nodded. “And your father thinks it must go?” he continued, after a pause given to deep thought, as it seemed.
“He thinks so.”
“Something should be done!” he replied, in a tone of decision. “I conclude from what you say that Mr. Woolley is pressing for his money?”
She nodded again. Her eyes were full of tears, which the sight of the house had brought to them, and she could not trust herself to speak. His sympathy seemed natural to her, so that she saw nothing at this minute strange in his position. She forgot that only a few days or weeks earlier he had been in the blackness of despair himself. He talked now as if he could help others!
They were close to the house, and he had referred to the mouldering shield over the doorway, and she was telling its story when she checked herself and stood still. Edgar Woolley had emerged, and was standing before them with a flush of triumph on his check. The tall gentleman could scarcely be in doubt who he was; nor could Woolley well take Pleasance’s involuntary cry for a sign of gladness — though he strove to force the smile which was habitual to him.
“Miss Pleasance,” he said, “will you step inside? Your father is asking for you.”
“Where is he?” she asked. He had used no form of greeting, neither did she. Something — perhaps not the same thing in each — was at work, kindling the one against the other.
“He is in the hall,” he answered, chafing at her delay.
She turned to her companion. “I will take your flowers in, if you please,” she said. She held out her arms as she spoke, and he laid the pile in them, Woolley looking on the while. The assistant’s gaze was bent on her, and he did not see what she saw — that some strong emotion was distorting the tall gentleman’s face. He turned a livid white, his nostrils twitched, and a little pulse in his cheek beat wildly.
She changed her mind, seeing that. “No, do you take them in,” she said. “Will you take them in, please?” she repeated peremptorily; and she pushed the hawthorn into his arms, and held out her basket. The stranger took the things with reluctance, but without demur, and went into the house.
“Now,” she said, turning rapidly upon Woolley, “what do you want?”
“My answer?” he retorted, with answering curtness.
A second before he had not intended to say that. He had meant to carry the war into the stranger’s country. But his temper mastered him for a second, and he found himself staking all, when he had planned an affair of outposts. “Wait, Miss Pleasance,” he added desperately, seeing in a moment what he had done, and that he had committed himself. “I beg you not to give it me without thought — without thought of others, of me, of your father, as well as of yourself! Do not judge me hastily! Do not judge me,” he continued passionately, for her face was icy, “by myself as I am now, Pleasance, wild with love of you, but — —”
“By what then, Mr. Woolley?” she asked, her lip curling. “By what am I to judge you if not by yourself?”
“By — —”
“Well?” she said mercilessly. He had paused. He could not find words. In truth, he had made a mistake. If he had ever had a chance of winning her his chance was gone now; and, recognising this, he let his fury grow to such a pitch that he could not wait for the answer he had requested. He was mad with love of her, with rage at his own mistake, with shame at being so outgeneralled. “I will tell you, Miss Partridge!” he cried, his eyes sparkling with passion; “Judge me by the future! That fellow who was with you, do you know who he is? Do you know that I can put him in gaol any day? — ay, in goal!”
“What has he done?” she asked. “Tell me.”
It was a pity he could not say, “He is a thief — a forger — a swindler!” The charge he could bring against the stranger was heavy enough; and yet he found it difficult to word it so that it should seem heavy. “You thought he was shot?” he said at last. “Bah! he shot himself.”
“I know it,” she answered, without the movement of a muscle.
He stared at her. How was it? he wondered. Before his departure he had been the Old Hall’s master. He had wound the poor doctor round his finger, and Pleasance had been civil to him at least. Now all this was altered. And why? “Ah, well! He shall go to gaol, d —— n him!” he said, putting his conclusion into words. “He shall go to gaol! and if you have a fancy for him you must go there to see him!”
She lost her self-possession under the insult, and her face turned scarlet. “You coward!” she said, with scorn. “You would not dare to say to his face what you have said behind his back. Let me pass!”
She swept into the house and left him standing in the sunlight. As she hurried through the hall, which to her dazzled eyes seemed dusky, she caught a glimpse of the tall gentleman leaning over the bureau with his back to her. Had he heard? The door was open, and so was one window. She could not be sure, but the suspicion was enough. Her face was on fire as she ran up the stairs. How she hated, oh, how she hated that wretch out there! She thought that she had never known before what it was to hate.
For there was something in what he had said. There was the sting. How had she come to be so intimate with one who had done what the tall gentleman had done? She tried to trace the stages, but she could not. Then she tried to think of him with some of the horror, some of the distaste which she had felt at the time of his arrival, when he lay ghastly and blood-stained behind the closed door. But she could not. The face we have known a year can never put on for us the look it wore when we saw it first. The hand of time does not move backward. Pleasance found this was so, and in the solitude of her own room hid her face and trembled. Could anything but evil come of such a — a friendship?
Meanwhile Woolley’s state of mind was even less enviable. Hitherto his way in the world had been made by the exercise of tact and self-control; and he valued himself upon the possession of those qualities. He could not understand why they had failed him at this pinch, or why the advantage he had so far enjoyed had deserted him now. Yet the secret was not far to seek. He was jealous; and when jealousy attacks him, the man who lives by playing on the passions of others falls to the common level. Jealousy undermines his judgment as certainly as passion deprives the fencer of his skill.
Though Woolley did not allow that this was the cause of his defeat, he knew that he could not command himself at present, and before seeking the doctor he took a turn to collect his thoughts and arrange his plans. When he returned to the house he found the hall empty. He passed through it and down a short passage to a small room at the back, which Dr. Partridge used — especially in times of trouble, when bills poured in and he mediated a fresh loan — as a kind of sanctum. Woolley rapped at the door.
To his surprise no “Come in!” answered his knock, but some one rising hastily from his chair came to the door and opened it to the extent of a few inches. It was the doctor. He squeezed him
self through. His face was agitated — but then the passage was ill lit, even on a summer afternoon — his manner nervous. “You want to see me, my dear fellow?” he said, holding the door close behind him and speaking effusively. “Do you mind coming back in a quarter of an hour or so? I am — I shall be disengaged then.”
“I would prefer,” Woolley said doggedly, “to see you now.”
“Wait ten minutes, and you shall,” the doctor replied, taking him by the button with his disengaged hand, as though he would bespeak his confidence. “At this moment, my dear fellow — excuse me!”
There was an odd tone in the doctor’s voice — a tone half wheedling, half hostile. But Woolley concluded that Pleasance was with him — making a complaint in all probability; and this satisfied him. He thought that he could still depend on the doctor. With a sulky nod he gave way and returned to the lawn, and there he paced up and down, prodding the daisies with his stick. Things had gone badly with him. So much the worse for some one.
When he returned he found the doctor alone in the dingy little room, into which one plumped down two steps, so that it was very like a well. “Come in, come in,” the elder man said fussily. “What is it, Woolley? What can I do for you?” As he spoke his hands were busy with the papers on the table. Moreover, after one swift glance, which he shot at his assistant’s face on his entrance, he avoided looking at him. “What is it?”
“First,” Woolley rejoined with acidity, “I should like to know whether you propose to keep that fellow in your house as a companion for your daughter?”
“The tall gentleman?”
“Precisely.”
“He is gone!” was the unexpected answer. “He is gone already. If you doubt me, my dear fellow,” the doctor added hastily, “ask the servants — ask Daniel.”
“Gone, is he?” Woolley said gloomily, considering the statement.
“Yes, he quite saw the propriety of it,” the doctor continued. “He gave me no trouble.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 818