Weyman Stanley John
Starvecrow Farm

CHAPTER IX
PUNISHMENT

Anthony Clyne came to a stand before her, and lifted his hat.

"I understand," he said, without letting his eyes meet hers-he was stiffness itself, but perhaps he too had his emotions-"that you preferred to see me here rather than indoors?"

"Yes," Henrietta answered. And the girl thanked heaven that though the beating of her heart had nearly choked her a moment before, her tone was as hard and uncompromising as his. He could not guess, he never should guess, what strain she put on nerve and will that she might not quail before him; nor how often, with her quivering face hidden in the pillow, she had told herself, before rising, that it was for once only, once only, and that then she need never see again the man she had wronged.

"I do not know," he continued slowly, "whether you have anything to say?"

"Nothing," she answered. They were standing on the Ambleside road, a short furlong from the inn. Leafless trees climbed the hill-side above them; and a rough slope, unfenced and strewn with boulders and dying bracken, ran down from their feet to the lake.

"Then," he rejoined, with a scarcely perceptible hardening of the mouth, "I had best say as briefly as possible what I am come to say."

"If you please," she said. Hitherto she had faced him regally. Now she averted her eyes ever so slightly, and placed herself so that she looked across the water that gleamed pale under the morning mist.

Yet, even with her eyes turned from him, he did not find it easy to say what he must say. And for a few seconds he was silent. At last "I do not wish to upbraid you," he began in a voice somewhat lower in tone. "You have done a very foolish and a very wicked, wicked thing, and one which cannot be undone in the eyes of the world. That is for all to see. You have left your home and your friends and your family under circumstances-"

She turned her full face to him suddenly.

"Have they," she said, "empowered you to speak to me?"

"Yes."

"They do not wish to see me themselves?"

"No."

"Nor perhaps-wish me to return to them?"

"No."

She nodded as she looked away again; in sheer defiance, he supposed. He did not guess that she did it to mask the irrepressible shiver which the news caused her.

He thought her, on the contrary, utterly unrepentant, and it hardened him to speak more austerely, to give his feelings freer vent.

"Had you done this thing with a gentleman," he said, "there had been, however heartless and foolish the act, some hope that the matter might be set straight. And some excuse for yourself; since a man of our class might have dazzled you by the possession of qualities which the person you chose could not have. But an elopement with a needy adventurer, without breeding, parts, or honesty-a criminal, and wedded already-"

"If he were not wedded already," she said, "I had been with him now!"

His face grew a shade more severe, but otherwise he did not heed the taunt.

"Such an-an act," he said, "unfits you in your brother's eyes to return to his home." He paused an instant. "Or to the family you have disgraced. I am bound-I have no option, to tell you this."

"You say it as from them?"

"I do. I have said indeed less than they bade me say. And not more, I believe on my honour, than the occasion requires. A young gentlewoman," he continued bitterly, "brought up in the country with every care, sheltered from every temptation, with friends, with home, with every comfort and luxury, and about to be married to a gentleman in her own rank in life, meets secretly, clandestinely, shamefully a man, the lowest of the low, on a par in refinement with her own servants, but less worthy! She deceives with him her friends, her family, her relatives! If" – with some emotion-"I have overstated one of these things, God forgive me!"

"Pray go on!" she said, with her face averted. And thinking that she was utterly hardened, utterly without heart, thinking that her outward calm spelled callousness, and that she felt nothing, he did continue.

"Can she," he said, "who has been so deceitful herself, complain if the man deceives her? She has chosen a worthless creature before her family and her friends? Is she not richly served if he treats her after his own nature and her example? If, after stooping to the lawless level of such a poor thing, she finds herself involved in his penalties, and her name a scandal and a shame to her family!"

"Is that all?" she asked. But not a quiver of the voice, not a tremour of the shoulders, betrayed what she was feeling, what she suffered, how fiercely the brand was burning into her soul.

"That is all they bade me say," he replied in a calmer and more gentle tone. "And that they would make arrangements-such arrangements as may be possible for your future. But they would not take you back."

"And now-what on your own account?" she asked, almost flippantly. "Something, I suppose?"

"Yes," he said, answering her slowly, and with a steady look of condemnation. For in all honesty the girl's attitude shocked and astonished him. "I have something to say on my own account. Something. But it is difficult to say it."

She turned to him and raised her eyebrows.

"Really!" she said. "You seem to speak so easily."

He did not remark how white, even against the pale shimmer of the lake, was the face that mocked him; and her heartlessness seemed dreadful to him.

"I wish," he said, "to say only one thing on my own account."

"There is only one thing you must not say," she retorted, turning on him without warning and speaking with concentrated passion. "I have been, it may be, as foolish as you say. I am only nineteen. I may have been, I don't know about that, very wicked-as wicked as you say. And what I have done in my folly and in my-you call it wickedness-may be a disgrace to my family. But I have done nothing, nothing, sir," – she raised her head proudly-"to disgrace myself personally. Do you believe that?"

And then he did notice how white she was.

"If you tell me that, I do believe it," he said gravely.

"You must believe it," she rejoined with sudden vehemence. "Or you wrong me more cruelly than I have wronged you!"

"I do believe it," he said, conquered for the time by a new emotion.

"Then now I will hear you," she answered, her tone sinking again. "I will hear what you wish to say. Not that it will bend me. I have injured you. I own it, and am sorry for it on your account. On my own I am unhappy, but I had been more unhappy had I married you. You have been frank, let me be frank," she continued, her eyes alight, her tone almost imperious. "You sought not a wife, but a mother for your child! A woman, a little better bred than a nurse, to whom you could entrust the one being, the only being, you love, with less chance of its contamination," she laughed icily, "by the lower orders! If you had any other motive in choosing me it was that I was your second cousin, of your own respectable family, and you did not derogate. But you forgot that I was young and a woman, as you were a man. You said no word of love to me, you begged for no favour; when you entered a room, you sought my eye no more than another's, you had no more softness for me than for another! If you courted me at all it was before others, and if you talked to me at all it was from the height of wise dullness, and about things I did not understand and things I hated! Until," she continued viciously, "at last I hated you! What could be more natural? What did you expect?"

A little colour had stolen into his face under the lash of her reproaches. He tried to seem indifferent, but he could not. His tone was forced and constrained when he answered.

"You have strange ideas," he said.

"And you have but two!" she riposted. "Politics and your boy! I cared," with concentrated bitterness, "for neither!"

That stung him to anger and retort.

"I can imagine it," he said. "Your likings appear to be on a different plane."

"They are at least not confined to fifty families!" she rejoined. "I do not think myself divine," she continued with feverish irony, "and all below me clay! I do not think because I and all about me are dull and stupid that all the world is dull and stupid, talking eternally about" – and she deliberately mocked his tone-"'the licence of the press!' and 'the imminence of anarchy!' To talk," with supreme scorn, "of the licence of the press and the imminence of anarchy to a girl of nineteen! It was at least to make the way very smooth for another!"

He looked at her in silence, frowning. Her frankness was an outrage on his dignity-and he, of all men, loved his dignity. But it surprised him at least as much as it shocked him. He remembered the girl sometimes silly, sometimes demure, to whom he had cast the handkerchief; and he had not been more astonished if a sheep had stood up and barked at him. He was here, prepared to meet a frightened, weeping, shamefaced child, imploring pardon, imploring mediation; and he found this! He was here to upbraid, and she scolded him. She marked with unerring eye the joints in his armour, and with her venomous woman's tongue she planted darts that he knew would rankle-rankle long after she was gone and he was alone. And a faint glimpse of the truth broke on him. Was it possible that he had misread the girl; whom he had deemed characterless, when she was not shy? Was it possible that he had under-valued her and slighted her? Was it possible that, while he had been judging her and talking down to her, she had been judging him and laughing in her sleeve?

The thought was not pleasant to a proud nature. And there was another thing he had to weigh. If she were so different in fact from the conception he had formed of her, the course which had occurred to him as the best, and which he was going to propose for her, might not be the best.

But he put that from him. A name for firmness at times compels a man to obstinacy. It was so now. He set his jaw more stiffly, and-

"Will you hear me now?" he asked.

"If there is anything more to be said," she replied. She spoke wearily over her shoulder.

"I think there is," he rejoined stubbornly, "one thing. It will not keep you long. It refers to your future. There is a course which I think may be taken and may be advantageous to you."

"If," she cried impetuously, "it is to take me back to those-"

"On the contrary," he replied. He was not unwilling to wound one who had shown herself so unexpectedly capable of offence. "That is quite past," he continued. "There is no longer any question of that. And even the course I suggest is not without its disadvantages. It may not, at first sight, be more acceptable to you than returning to your home. But I trust you have learnt a lesson, and will now be guided." After saying which he coughed and hesitated, and at length, after twice pulling up his cravat, "I think," he said-"the matter is somewhat delicate-that I had better write what I have in my mind."

Under the dead weight of depression which had succeeded to passion, curiosity stirred faintly in her. But-

"As you please," she said.

"The more," he continued stiffly, "as in the immediate present there is nothing to be done. And therefore there is no haste. Until this" – he made a wry face, the thing was so hateful to him-"this inquiry is at an end, and you are free to leave, nothing but preliminaries can be dealt with; those settled, however, I think there should be no delay. But you shall hear from me within the week."

"Very well." And after a slight pause, "That is all?"

"That is all, I think."

Yet he did not go. And she continued to stand with her shoulder turned towards him. He was a man of strong prejudices, and the habit of command had rendered him in some degree callous. But he was neither unkind by nature, nor, in spite of the story Walterson had told of him, inhuman in practice. To leave a young girl thus, to leave her without a word of leave-taking or regret, seemed even to him, now it came to the point, barbarous. The road stretched lonely on either side of them, the woods were brown and sad and almost leafless, the lake below them mirrored the unchanging grey above, or lost itself in dreary mist. And he remembered her in surroundings so different! He remembered how she had been reared, by whom encircled, amid what plenitude! And though he did not guess that the slender figure standing thus mute and forlorn would haunt him by night and by day for weeks to come, and harry and torment him with dumb reproaches-he still had not the heart to go without one gentler word.

And so "No, there is one thing," he said, his voice shaking very slightly, "I would like to add-I would like you to know. It is that after next week I shall be at Rysby in Cartmel-Rysby Hall-for about a month. It is not more than two miles from the foot of the lake, and if you are still here and need advice-"

"Thank you."

" – or help, I would like you to know that I am there."

"That I may apply to you?" she said without turning her head.

He could not tell whether at last there were tears in her voice, or whether she were merely drawing him on to flout him.

"I meant that," he said coldly.

"Thank you."

Certainly there was a queer sound in her voice.

He paused awkwardly.

"There is nothing more, I think?" he said.

"Nothing, thank you."

"Very well," he returned. "Then you will hear from me upon the matter I mentioned-in a day or two. Good-bye."

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 said, 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.

"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."