"Quick, my lady, or you'll lose your steamer," whispered Price, and then
we crossed the landing (which was creaking again) and crept noiselessly
down a back staircase. We were near the bottom when I was startled by a
loud knocking, which seemed to come from a distant part of the house. My
heart temporarily stopped its beating, but Price only laughed and
whispered:
"There she is! We've fairly caught her out, the cat."
At the next moment Price opened an outer door, and after we had passed
through she closed and locked it behind us.
We were then in the courtyard behind the house, stumbling in the
blinding darkness over cobble-stones.
"Keep close to me, my lady," said Price.
After a few moments we reached the drive. I think I was more nervous
than I had ever been before. I heard the withered leaves behind me
rustling along the ground before the wind from the sea, and thought they
were the footsteps of people pursuing us. I heard the hammering of the
workmen and the music of the orchestra, and thought they were voices
screaming to us to come back.
Price, who was forging ahead, carried the trunk in her arms as if it had
been a child, but every few minutes she waited for me to come up to her,
and encouraged me when I stumbled in the darkness.
"Only a little further, my lady," she said, and I did my best to
struggle on.
We reached the gate to the high road at last. Tommy the Mate was there
with his stiff cart, and Price, who was breathless after her great
exertion, tumbled my trunk over the tail-board.
The time had come to part from her, and, remembering how faithful and
true she had been to me, I hardly knew what to say. I told her I had
left her wages in an envelope on the dressing-table, and then I
stammered something about being too poor to make her a present to
remember me by.
"It doesn't need a present to help me to remember a good mistress, my
lady," she said.
"God bless you for being so good to me," I answered, and then I kissed
her.
"I'll remember you by that, though," she said, and she began to cry.
I climbed over the wheel of the stiff cart and seated myself on my
trunk, and then Tommy, who had been sitting on the front-board with his
feet on the outer shaft, whipped up his horse and we started away.
During the next half-hour the springless cart bobbed along the dark road
at its slow monotonous pace. Tommy never once looked round or spoke
except to his horse, but I understood my old friend perfectly.
I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be overtaken and carried back.
Again and again I looked behind. At one moment, when a big motor-car,
with its two great white eyes, came rolling up after us, my stormy heart
stood still. But it was not my husband's car, and in a little while its
red tail-light disappeared in the darkness ahead.
We reached Blackwater in time for the midnight steamer and drew up at
the landward end of the pier. It was cold; the salt wind from the sea
was very chill. Men who looked like commercial travellers were hurrying
along with their coat-collars turned up, and porters with heavy trunks
on their shoulders were striving to keep pace with them.
I gave my own trunk to a porter who came up to the cart, and then turned
to Tommy to say good-bye. The old man had got down from the shaft and
was smoothing his smoking horse, and snuffling as if he had caught a
cold.
"Good-bye, Tommy," I said--and then something more which I do not wish
to write down.
"Good-bye, lil missie," he answered (that cut me deep), "I never
believed ould Tom Dug would live to see ye laving home like this . . .
But wait! Only wait till himself is after coming back, and I'll go bail
it'll be the divil sit up for some of them."