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.”
Henrietta was not frightened, but she was angry and savage.
“Do you know who I am?” she cried, for the moment forgetting herself in
her passion.
“No!” he answered, before she could say more. “That is just what I
don’t know, my girl. I have taken you on trust and you are pretty
enough! But I know Clyne, and he is interested in you. And his taste is
good enough for me!”
“Let me pass!” she cried.
He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly
behind the horse’s heels and stood free. Hornyold wheeled about, and
with an oath:
“You sly baggage!” he cried. “You are not going to escape so easily!
You——”
There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance
beyond her, was a stranger. The sight was so little to be expected in
that solitary place, he had been so sure that they were alone and the
girl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. The
stranger came slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised
his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling
magistrate and the indignant girl.
“Good morning,” he said, addressing her. “If I am not inopportune, I
have a letter for you from Captain Clyne.”
“Then be good enough,” she answered, “first to take me out of the
company of this person.” And she turned her shoulder on the justice,
and taking the stranger with her—almost in his own despite—she sailed
off; and, a very picture of outraged dignity, swept down the road.
Mr. Hornyold glared after her, his bridle on his arm. And his face was
red with fury. Seldom had he been so served.
“A parson, by heaven!” he said. “A regular Methody, too, by his
niminy-piminy get-up! Who is he, I wonder, and what in the name of
mischief brought him here just at that moment? Ten to one she was
looking to meet him, and that was why she played the prude, the little
cat! To be sure. But I’ll be even with her—in Appleby gaol or out! As
for him, I’ve never set eyes on him. And I’ve a good notion to have him
taken up and lodged in the lock-up. Any way, I’ll set the runners on
him. Not much spirit in him by the look of him! But she’s a spit-fire!”
Mr. Hornyold had been so long accustomed to consider the girls of the
village fair sport, that he was considerably put out. True, Henrietta
was not a village girl. She was something more, and a mystery; nor
least a mystery in her relations with Captain Clyne, a man whom the
justice admitted to be more important than himself. But she was in
trouble, she was under a cloud, she was smirched with suspicion; she
was certainly no better than she should be. And not experience only,
but all the coarser instincts of the man forbade him to believe in such
a woman’s “No.”