Weyman Stanley John
Starvecrow Farm

CHAPTER XII
THE OLD LOVE

Mr. Sutton was a vain man and sensitive, and though he clung to hope, Henrietta's words hurt him to the quick. The name of Chaplain was growing obsolete at this time; it was beginning to import unpleasant things. With this chaplain in particular his dependence on a patron was a sore point; for with some capacity, he lacked, and knew that he lacked, that strength of mind which enables a man to hold his own, be his position what it may. For an hour, writhing under the reflection that even the yokels about him were aware of his discomfiture, he was cast down to the very ground. He was inclined to withdraw his hand and let the dazzling vision pass.

Then he rallied his forces. He bethought him how abnormal was the chance, how celestial the dream, how sweet the rapture of possessing the charms that now flouted him. And he took heart of grace. He raised his head, he enlisted in the cause all the doggedness of his nature. He recalled stories, inaccurately remembered, of Swift and Voltaire and Rousseau, all dependants who had loved, and all men of no greater capacity, it was possible, than himself. What slights had they not encountered, what scornful looks, and biting gibes! But they had persisted, having less in their favour than he had; and he would persist. And he would triumph as they had triumphed. What matter a trifling loss of countenance as he passed by the coach-office, or a burning sensation down the spine when those whom he had left tittered behind him? He laughed best who laughed last.

For such a chance would never, could never fall to him again. The Caliph of Bagdad was dead, and princesses wedded no longer with calendars. Was he to toss away the one ticket which the lottery of life had dropped in his lap? Surely not. And for scruples-he felt them no longer. The girl's stinging words, her scornful taunt, had silenced the small voice that on his way hither had pleaded for her; urging him to spare her loneliness, to take no advantage of her defenceless position. Bah! If that were all, she could defend herself well.

So Henrietta, when she came downstairs, a little paler and a little prouder, and with the devil, that is in all proud women, a little nearer to urging her on something, no matter what, that might close a humiliating scene, was not long in discovering a humble black presence that by turns followed and evaded her. Mr. Sutton did not venture to address her directly. To put himself forward was not his rôle. But he sought to commend himself by self-effacement; or at the most by such meek services as opening the door for her without lifting his eyes above the hem of her skirt, or placing a thing within reach before she learned her need of it. Nevertheless, whenever she left her room she caught sight of him; and the consciousness that he was watching her, that his eyes were on her back, that if her gown caught in a nail of the floor he would be at hand to release it, wore on her nerves. She tried to disregard him, she tried to be indifferent to him. But there he always was, pale, obstinate, cringing, and waiting. And so great is the power of persistence, that she began to fear him.

Between his insidious court and the dread of Mr. Hornyold's gallantries she was uncomfortable as well as wretchedly unhappy. The position shamed her. She felt that it was her own conduct which she had to thank for their pursuit; and for Anthony Clyne's more cruel insult, which she swore she would never forgive. She knew that in the old life, within the fence where she had been reared, no one had ever dared to take a liberty with her or dreamed of venturing on a freedom. Now it was so different. So different! And she was so lonely! She stood fair game for all. Presently even the village louts would nudge one another when she passed, or follow her in the hope of they knew not what.

Already, indeed, if she passed the threshold she had a third follower; whose motives were scarcely less offensive than the motives of the other two. Mr. Bishop had been away for nearly a week scouring the roads between Cockermouth and Whitehaven, and Maryport and Carlisle. He had drawn, as he hoped, a net round the quarry-if it had not already escaped. In particular, he had made sure that trusty men-and by trusty men Mr. Bishop meant men who would not refuse to share the reward with their superiors-watched the most likely places. These arrangements had taken his brown tops and sturdy figure far afield: so that scarce a pot-house in all that country was now ignorant of the face of John Bishop of Bow Street, scarce a saddle-horse was unversed in his weight. Finally he had returned to the centre of his spider's web, and rather than be idle he was giving himself up to stealthy observation of Henrietta.

For he had one point in common with Mr. Sutton. While the Low Wood folk exhausted themselves in surmises and believed in a day a dozen stories of the girl who had dropped so strangely among them, the runner knew who she was. Perforce he had been taken into confidence. But thereupon his experience of the criminal kind led him astray. He remembered how stubbornly she had refused to give her name, to give information, to give anything; and he suspected that she knew where Walterson lay hid. He thought it more than likely that she was still in relations with him. A girl of her breeding, the runner argued, does not give up all for a romantic stranger unless she loves him: and once in love, such an one sticks at nothing. So he too haunted her footsteps, vanished when she came, and appeared when she retreated; and all with an air of respect which maddened the victim and puzzled the onlookers.

But for this she had been able to spend these days of loneliness and incertitude in wandering among the hills. She was young enough to feel confinement irksome, and she yearned for the open and the unexplored. She fancied that she would find relief in plunging into the depths of woods where, on a still day, the leaves floated singly down to mingle with the dying ferns. She thought that in long roaming, with loosened hair and wind-swept cheeks, over Wansfell Pike, or to the upper world of the Kirkstone or the Hog-back beyond Troutbeck, she might forget, in the wilds of nature, her own small woes and private griefs. At least on the sheep-trodden heights there would be no one to reproach her, no one to fling scorn at her.

And two mornings later she felt that she must go; she must escape from the eyes that everywhere beset her. She marked down Mr. Bishop in the road before the house, and, safe from him, she slipped out at the back, and, almost running, climbed the path that led to the hills. She passed through the wood and emerged on the shoulder; and drew a deep breath, rejoicing in her freedom. One glance at the lake spread out below her-and something still and sullen under a grey sky-and she passed on. She had a crust in her pocket, and she would remain abroad all day-for it was mild. With the evening she would return footsore and utterly weary. And she would sleep.

She was within a few yards of the gate of Hinkson's farm when she saw coming towards her the last man whom she wished to meet-Mr. Hornyold. He was walking beside his nag, with the rein on his arm and his eyes on the road. His hands were plunged far into the fobs of his breeches, and he was studying something so deeply that he did not perceive her.

The memory of their last meeting-on that very spot-was unpleasantly fresh in Henrietta's mind, and the impulse to escape was strong. Hinkson's gate was within reach of her arm, the dog was asleep in the kennel; in a twinkling she was within and making for the house. Any pretence would do, she thought. She might ask for a cup of water, drink it, and return to the road. By that time he would have gone on his way.

She knew that the moment she had passed the corner of the house she was safe from observation. And seeing the front so grim, so slatternly, so uninviting, she paused. Why go on? Why knock? After giving Hornyold time to pass she might slip back to the road without challenging notice.

She would have done this, if her eyes, as she hesitated, had not met those of a grimy, frowsy scarecrow who seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with her from the shelter of the decaying bushes that stood for a garden. She saw herself discovered, and not liking the creature's looks, she returned to her first plan. She knocked on the half-open door, and receiving no answer, pushed it open and stepped in-as she had stepped into cottages in her own village scores of times.

For an instant the aspect of the interior gave her pause; so bare, with the northern bareness, so squalid with the wretchedness of poverty, was the great dark kitchen. Then, telling herself that it was only the sudden transition from the open air and the wide view that gave a sinister look to the place, she rapped on the table.

Some one moved overhead, crossed the floor slowly, and began to descend the stairs. The door at the foot of the staircase was ajar, and Henrietta waited with her eyes fixed on it. She wondered if the step belonged to the girl whose bold look had so displeased her; or to a man-the tread seemed too heavy for a woman. Then the door was pushed open a few inches only, a foot at most. And out of the grey gloom of the stairway a face looked at her, and eyes met her eyes.

The face was Stewart's! Walterson's!

She did not cry out. She stood petrified, silent, staring. And after a whispered oath wrung from him by astonishment, he was mute. He stood, peering at her through the half-open door; the dangerous instinct which bade him spring upon her and secure her curbed for the moment by his ignorance of the conditions. She might have others with her. There might be men within hearing. How came she there? And above all, what cursed folly had led him to show himself? What madness had drawn him forth before he knew who it was, before he had made certain that it was Bess's summons?

It was she who broke the spell. She turned, and with no uncertainty or backward glance she went out slowly and softly, like a blind person, passed round the house, and gained the road. Hornyold had gone by and was out of sight; but she did not give a thought to him.

The shock was great. She was white to the lips. By instinct she turned homewards-wandering abroad on open hills was far from her thoughts now. But even so, when she had gone a little way she had to stand and steady herself by a gate-post-her knees trembled so violently under her. For by intuition she knew that she had escaped a great danger. The wretched creature cowering in the gloom of the stairway had not moved hand or foot after his eyes met hers; but something in those eyes, a gleam wild and murderous, recurred to her memory. And she shuddered.

Presently the first effects of the shock abated and left her free to think. She knew then that a grievous thing had happened, and a thing which must add much to the weight of unhappiness she had thought intolerable an hour before. To begin, the near presence of the man revolted her. The last shred of the romance in which she had garbed him, the last hue of glamour, were gone; and in the creature whom she had espied cowering on the stairs, with the danger-signal lurking in his eyes, she saw her old lover as others would see him. How she could have been so blind as to invest such a man with virtue, how she could have been so foolish as to fancy she loved that, passed her understanding now! Ay, and filled her with a trembling disgust of herself.

Meantime, that was the beginning. Beyond that she foresaw trouble and embarrassment without end. If he were taken, he would be tried, and she would be called to the witness box, and the story of her infatuation would be told. Nay, she would have to tell it herself in face of a smiling crowd; and her folly would be in all the journals. True, she had had this in prospect from the beginning, and, thinking of it, had suffered in the dark hours. But his capture had then been vague and doubtful and the full misery of her exposure had not struck her as it struck her now, with the picture of that man on the stairs fresh in her mind. To have disgraced herself for that! – for that!

She was thinking of this and was still much agitated when she came to the spot where the path through the wood diverged from the road. There with his hand on the wicket-gate, unseen until she was close upon him, stood Mr. Bishop.

He raised his hat and stepped aside, as if the meeting took him by surprise, as if he had not been watching her face through a screen of briars for the last thirty seconds. But that due paid to politeness, the runner's sharp eyes remained glued to her face.

"Dear me, miss," he said, in apparent innocence, "nothing has happened, I hope! You don't look yourself! I hope," respectfully, "that nobody has been rude to you."

"It is nothing," she made shift to murmur. She turned her face aside. And she tried to go by him.

He let her go through the gate, but he kept at her side and scrutinised her face with side-long glances. He coughed.

"I am afraid you have heard bad news, miss?" he said.

"No!"

"Oh, perhaps-seen some one who has startled you?"

"I have told you it is nothing," she answered curtly. "Be good enough to leave me."

But he merely paused an instant in obedience to the gesture of her hand, then he resumed his place beside her. In the tone of one who had made up his mind to be frank-

"Look here, miss," he said, "it is better to come to an understanding here, where there is nobody to listen. If it is not that somebody has been rude to you, I'm clear that you have heard news, or you have seen somebody. And it is my business to know the one or the other."

She stopped.

"I have nothing to do with your business!" she cried.

He made a wry face, and spread out his hands in appeal.

"Won't you be frank?" he replied. "Come, miss? What is the use of fencing with me? Be frank! I want to make things easy for all. Lord, miss, you are not the sort, and we two know it, that suffers in these things. You'll come out all right if you'll be frank. It's that I'm working towards; to put an end to it, and the sooner the better. You can't-a wife and four children, miss, and a radical to boot-you can't think much of him! So why not help instead of hindering?"

"You are impudent!" Henrietta said, with a fine colour in her cheeks. "Be good enough to let me pass."

"If I knew where he was" – with his eyes on her face-"I could make all easy. All done, and nothing said, my lady; just 'from communications received,' no names given, not a word of what has happened up here! Lord bless you, what do they care in London-and it is in London he'll be tried-what happens here!"

"Let me pass!" she answered breathlessly.

He was so warm upon the scent he terrified her.

But he did not give way.

"Think, miss," he said more gravely. "Think! A wife and six children! Or was it four? Much he cared for any but himself! I'm sure I'm shocked when I think of it!"

"Be silent!" she cried.

"Much he cared what became of you! While Captain Clyne, if you were to consult his wishes, miss, I'm sure he'd say-"

"I do not care what he would say!" she retorted passionately, stung at last beyond reticence or endurance. "I never wish to hear Captain Clyne's name again: I hate him; do you hear? I hate him! Let me pass!"

Then, whether he would or no, she broke from him. She hurried, panting, and with burning cheeks, down the steep path; the briars clutching unheeded at her skirts, and stones rolling under her feet. He followed at her heels, admiring her spirit; he even tried to engage her again, begging her to stop and hear him. But she only pushed on the faster, and presently he thought it better to desist, and he let her go.

He stood and wiped his brow, looking after her.

"Lord, what a spirit she has!" he muttered. "A fine swelling figure, too, and a sway with her head that makes you feel small! And feet that nimble! But all the same, I'm glad she's not Mrs. Bishop! Take my word for it, she'll be another Mother Gilson-some day."

While Henrietta hurried on at her best pace, resentment giving way to fear and doubt and a hundred perplexities. Betray the man she could not, though he deserved nothing at her hands. She was no informer, nor would become one. The very idea was repulsive to her. And she had woven about this man the fine tissue of a girl's first fancy; she had looked to be his, she had let him kiss her. After that, vile as he was, vilely as he had meant by her, it did not lie with her to betray him to death.

But his presence near her was hateful to her, was frightful, was almost intolerable. Not a day, not an hour, but she must expect to hear of his capture, and know it for the first of a series of ordeals, painful and humiliating. She would be confronted with him, she would be asked if she knew him, she would be asked this and that; and she would have to speak, would have to confess-to those clandestine meetings, to that kiss-while he listened, while all listened. The tale that was known as yet to few would be published abroad. Her folly would be in every mouth, in every journal. The wife and the four children, and she, the silly, silly fool whom this mean thing had captivated, taking her as easily as any doe in her brother's park-the world would ring with them!

CHAPTER XIII
A JEALOUS WOMAN

Meanwhile the man whom she had left in the gloom of the staircase waited. The sound of the girl's tread died away and silence followed. But she might be taking the news, she might be gone back to those who had sent her. He knew that at any moment the party charged with his arrest might appear, and that in a few seconds all would be over. And the suspense was intolerable. After enduring it a while he pushed the door open, and he crept across the floor of the living-room. He brought his haggard face near the casement and peeped cautiously through a lower corner. He saw nothing to the purpose. Nothing moved without, except the old man, whose rags fluttered an instant among the bushes and vanished again. Probably he was dragging up some treasured scrap and hiding it anew with as little sane purpose and as much instinct as the dog that buries a bone.

The man with the price on his head stole back to the foot of the stairs, reassured for the moment; but with his heart still fluttering, his cheeks still bloodless. He had had a great fright. He could not yet tell what would come of it. But he knew that in the form of the girl whom he had tricked and sought to ruin he had seen the gallows very near.

He had not quite regained the staircase when the sound of a foot approaching the door drove him to shelter in a panic. Bess Hinkson had to call twice before he dared to descend or to run the risk of a second mistake.

The moment she saw his face she knew that something was wrong.

"What is it?" she asked quickly. "What is the matter, lad?"

"I've seen some one," he answered. "Some one who knew me!" He tried to smile, but the smile was a spasm; and suddenly his teeth clicked together. "Knew me by G-d!" he said.

"Bishop?"

"No, but-some one."

Her face cleared.

"What's took you?" she said. "There is no one else here who knows you."

"The girl."

She stared at him. "The girl?" she repeated-and the master-note in her voice was no longer fear, but suspicion. "The girl! How came she here? And how," with sudden ferocity, "came she to see you, my lad?"

"I heard her below and thought that it was you."

"But how came she here?"

"I don't know," he answered sullenly, "unless she was sent."

"I don't believe you," Bess answered coarsely. And the jealousy of her gipsy blood sparkled in her dark eyes. "She was not sent! But maybe she was sent for! Maybe she was sent for!"

"Who was there I could send for her?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Nor I!" he answered. He shrugged his shoulders in disgust at her folly. To him, in his selfish fear, it seemed incredible folly.

"But you talked with her?"

"Not a word."

"I say," Bess repeated with a furious look, "you did! You talked with her! I know you did!"

"Have your own way, then," he answered despairingly, "though may heaven strike me dead if there was a word! But she'll he talking soon-and they'll be here. And she" – with a quavering, passionate rise in his voice-"she'll hang me!"

"She'd best not!" the girl replied, with a gleam of sharp teeth. "I hate her as it is. I hate her now! I'd like to kill her! But then-"

"Then?" he retorted, his anger rising as hers sank. "What is the use of then? It's now is the point! Curse You! while you are talking about hating her, and what you'll do, I'll be taken! They'll be here and I'll hang!"

"Steady, steady, lad," she said. The fear had flown from his face to hers. "Perhaps she'll not tell."

"Why not? Why'll she not tell?"

She did not reply that love might close the girl's mouth. But she knew that it was possible. Instead:

"Maybe she'll not," she repeated. "If she did not come on purpose-and then they'd be here by now-it will take her half an hour to go back to the inn, and she'll have to find Bishop, and he'll have to get a few together. We've an hour good, and if it were night, you might be clear of this and safe at Tyson's in ten minutes."

"But now?" he cried, with a gesture of wrathful impatience. "It's daylight, and maybe the house is watched. What am I to do now?"

"I don't know," she said. And it was noticeable that she was cool, while he was excited to the verge of tears, and was not a mile from hysterics. "It was for this I've been fooling Tyson-to get a safe hiding-place. But if you could get there, I doubt if he is quite ripe. I'd like to commit him a bit more before we trust him."

"Then why play the fool with him?" he answered savagely.

"Because a day or two more and his hiding-hole may be the saving of you," she retorted. "Sho!" shrugging her shoulders in her turn, "the game is not played to an end yet! She'll not tell! She is proud as horses, and if she gives you up she'll have to swear against you. And she'll not stomach that, the little pink and white fool. She'll keep mum, my lad!"

The hand with which he wiped the beads of sweat from his brow shook.

"But it she does tell?" he muttered. "If she does tell?"

She did not answer as she might have answered. She did not remind him of those stories of hair-breadth escapes and of coolness in the shadow of the gallows, which, as much as his plausible enthusiasm, had won her wild heart. She did not hint that his present carriage was hardly at one with them. For when women love, their eyes are slow to open, and this man had revealed to Bess a new world-a world of rarest possibilities, a world in which she and her like were to have justice, if not vengeance-a world in which the mighty were to fall from their seats, and the poor to be no more flouted by squires' wives and parsons' daughters! If she did not still think him all golden, if the feet and even the legs of clay were beginning to be visible, there was glamour about him still. The splendid plans, the world-embracing schemes with which he had dazzled her, had shrunk indeed into a hole-and-corner effort to save his own skin. But his life was as dear to her as to himself; and doubtless, by-and-by, when this troublesome crisis was past, the vista would widen. She was content. She was glad to put full knowledge from her, glad of any pretext to divert her own mind and his.

"Lord, I had forgotten!" she cried, after a gloomy pause, "I've a letter! There was one at last!" She searched in her clothes for it.

"A letter?" he cried, and stretched out a shaking hand. "Good lord, girl, why did you not say so before? This may change all. Thistlewood may know a way to get me off. Once in Lancashire, in the crowd, let me have a hiding-place and I'm safe! And Thistlewood-he is no cur! He sticks at nothing! He is a good man! I was sure he would do something if I could get a word to him! Lord, I shall cheat them yet!" He was jubilant.

He ripped the letter open. His eyes raced along the lines. The girl, who could scarcely read, watched him with admiration, yet with a sinking heart. The letter might save him, but it would take him from her.

Something between a groan and an oath broke from him. He struck the paper with his hand.

"The fool!" he cried. "The fools! They are coming here!"

"They?" she answered, staring in astonishment.

"Thistlewood, Lunt-oh!" with a violent execration-"God knows who! Instead of getting me off they are bringing the hunt on me! Lancashire is too hot for them, so they are coming here to ruin me. And I'm to send a boat for them to-morrow night to Newby Bridge. But, I'll not! I'll not!" passionately. "You shall not go!"

The girl looked at him dubiously.

"After all," she said presently, "if Thistlewood is what you say he is-"

"He's a selfish fool! Thinking only of himself!"

"Still, if he and the rest are men-it'll not be one man, nor two, nor five will take you-with them to help you!"

But the thought gave him no comfort.

"Much good that will do!" he answered. And passionately flinging down the paper, "I'll not have them! They must fend for themselves."

"Do they say why they are coming?" she asked after a pause.

"Didn't I tell you?" he replied querulously, "because it's too hot for them there! One of the justices, Clyne, if you must know-"

"Clyne!" she ejaculated in astonishment. "Clyne again?"

"Ay!"

"The man-you took the girl from?" she asked in a queer voice.

"The same. He's the deuce down there. He'll get his house burnt over his head one of these nights! He has sworn an information against them, and they swear they'll have their revenge. But in the meantime they must needs come here and blow the gaff on me. Fine revenge!" with scorn.

"And they want you to send a boat for them to Newby Bridge?"

"Ay, curse them! I told them I had a boat I could take quietly, and come down the lake in the dark. And they say the boat can just as well fetch them."

"To-morrow night?"

"Ay."

"Well, it can be done," she said coolly, "if the wind across the lake holds. I can steal a boat as I planned for you, and nobody will be the wiser. There's no moon, and the nights are dark; and who's to trace them from Newby Bridge? After all, it's not from them the danger will come, but from the girl."

He groaned.

"I thought you were sure she wouldn't tell," he sneered.

"Well, she has not told yet, or they had been here," Bess answered. "But she may speak-by-and-by."

"Curse her!"

"And that is why I am not so sorry your folks are coming," she continued, with a queer look at him. "If they'll help us, we'll stop her mouth. And she'll not speak now, nor by-and-by."

He looked up, startled.

"You don't mean-no!" he cried sharply, "I'll not have it."

"Bless her pretty, white fingers!" she murmured.

"I'll not have her hurt!" he repeated, with vehemence. "I've done her harm enough."

"Not so much harm as you would have done her, if you'd had your way!" she replied. And her face grew hard. "But now she's to be sacred, is she? Her ladyship's pretty, white fingers are not to be pinched-if you swing for it! Very well! It's your neck will be pulled, not mine."

He fidgeted on his stool, but he did not answer. His eyes roved round the bare miserable room, with its low ceiling, its deep shadows, and its squalor. At last:

"What do you mean?" he asked querulously. "Why can't you speak plain?"

"I thought I had spoken plain enough," she replied. "But if she's not to be touched, there's an end of it."

"What would you do?"

"What I said-shut her mouth."

He shuddered and his face, already sallow from long confinement, grew greyer.

"No," he said, "I'll not do it."

She laughed in scorn of him.

"I don't mean that," she said. "I would get her into our hands, hold her fast, stow her somewhere where she'll not speak! Maybe in Tyson's hiding-hole. She'll catch a cold, but what of that? 'Twill be no worse for her than for you, if you've to go there. And the men may be a bit rough with her," Bess continued, with a malignant smile, while her eyes scrutinized his face, "I'll not forbid them, for I don't love her, and I'd like well to see her brought down a bit! But we'll not squeeze her pretty throat, if that is what you had in your mind."

He shivered.

"I wouldn't trust you!" he muttered.

She laughed as if he paid her a compliment.

"Wouldn't you, lad?" she said. "Well, perhaps not. I'd not be sorry to spoil her beauty. But the men-men are such fools-'ll be rather for kissing than killing!"

"All the same, I don't like it," he muttered.

"You'll like hanging less!" she retorted.

He felt, he knew that he played a sorry part. But it was not he who had brought Henrietta to the house, it was fate. It was not his fault that she had seen him; it was his misfortune. Could he be expected to surrender his life to spare her a little fright, a trifling inconvenience, an inconsiderable risk? Why should he? Would she do it for him? On the contrary, he recalled the look of horror which she had bent on him; she who had so lately laid her head on his shoulder, had listened to his blandishments, had thought him perfect. He was vain, and that hardened him.

"I don't see how you'll do it," he said slowly.

"Leave that to me," Bess answered. "Or rather, do what I tell you-and the bird will come to the whistle, my lad!"

"What'll you do?"

She told him, and when she had told him she put before him pen and ink and paper; the pen and ink and paper which had been obtained that he might write to Thistlewood. But when it came to details and he knew what he was to write and what lure to throw out, he flung the pen from him. He told her angrily that he would not do it. After all, Henrietta had believed in him, had trusted him, had given up all for him.

"I'll not do it," he repeated. "I'll not do it! You want to do the girl a mischief!"

She flared up at that.

"Then you'll hang!" she cried brutally, hurling the words at him. "And, thank God, it will be she will hang you! Why, you fool," she continued vehemently, "you were for doing her a worse turn, just to please yourself! And not a scruple!"