THE LETTER
We left Mr. Bishop standing in the middle of the woodland track and
following Henrietta with his eyes. He had suspected the girl before;
his suspicions were now grown to certainties. Her agitation, her alarm
on meeting him, her refusal to parley, her anxiety to be gone, all—and
his keen eyes had missed no item of her disorder—all pointed to one
thing, to her knowledge of her lover’s hiding-place. Doubtless she had
been to visit him. Probably she had just left him.
“But she’s game, she’s very game,” the runner muttered sagely. “It’s
breed does it.” And plucking a scrap of green stuff from a briar he
chewed it thoughtfully, with his eyes on the spot where he had lost the
last wave of her skirt.
Presently he faced about. “Now where is he?” he asked himself. He
scanned the path by which she had descended, the briars, the thorns,
the under-growth. “There’s hiding here,” he thought; “but the nights
are cold, and it’d kill him in the open. And she’d been on the hill. In
a shepherd’s hut? Possibly; and it’s a pity I was not after her sooner.
But we searched the huts. Then there’s Troutbeck? And the farms? But
how’d he know any one here? Still, I’ll walk up and look about me.
Strikes me we’ve been looking wide and he’s under our noses—many a hare
escapes the hounds that way.”
He retraced his steps to the road, and strolled up the hill. His air
was careless, but his eye took note of everything; and when he came to
the gate of Starvecrow Farm he stood and looked over it. The bare and
gloomy aspect of the house and the wide view it commanded impressed
him. “I don’t wonder they keep a dog,” he thought. “A lonely place as
ever I saw. Sort of house the pedlar’s murdered in! Regular Red Barn!
But that black-eyed wench the doctor is gallivanting after comes from
here. And if all’s true he’s in and out night and day. So the other is
not like to be here.”
Still, when he had walked a few yards farther he halted. He took
another look over the fence. He noted the few sombre pines that masked
the gaunt gable-end, and from them his eye travelled to the ragged
garden. A while he gazed placidly, the bit of green stuff in his mouth.
Then he stiffened, pointing like a game dog. Slowly, almost
imperceptibly, his hand went to the pocket in his skirts, where he
carried the “barker” without which he never stirred.
On the other side of the breast-high wall, not six paces from him, a
man was crouching low, trying to hide behind a bush.
Mr. Bishop had a stout heart. He had taken many a man in the midst of
his cronies in the dark courts about St. Giles’s; and with six hundred
guineas in view it was not a small danger that would turn him. Yet he
was alone, and his heart beat a little quicker as he proceeded, with
his eyes glued to the bush, to climb the wall. The man he was going to
take had the rope about his neck—he would reck little of taking another
life. And he might have backers. Possibly, too, there was something in
the silence of this hill-side—so different from the crowded alleys in
which he commonly worked—that intimidated the officer.
Yet he did not flinch. He was of the true bull-dog breed. He, no more
than my Lord Liverpool and my Lord Castlereagh, was to be scared by
uncertain dangers, or by the fear of those over whom he was set. He
advanced slowly, and was not more than four yards from the bush, he was
even poising himself to leap on his quarry, when the man who was hiding
rose to his feet.
Bishop swore. And some one behind him chuckled. He turned as if he had
been pricked. And his face was red.
“Going to take old Hinkson?” laughed Tyson, who had come up unseen, and
been watching his movements.
“I wanted a word with him,” the runner muttered. He tried to speak as
if he were not embarrassed.
“So I see,” Tyson answered, and pointing with his finger to the pistol,
he laughed.
Mr. Bishop, with his face a fine port-wine colour, lowered the weapon
out of sight. Then he laughed, but feebly.
“Has he any sense?” he asked, looking with disgust at the frowsy old
creature, who mopping and mowing at him was holding out a crooked claw.
“Sense enough to beg for a penny,” Tyson answered.
“He knows enough for that?”
“He’d sell his soul for a shilling.”
The runner hooked out a half-penny—a good fat copper coin, to the
starveling bronze of these days as Daniel Lambert to a dandy. He put it
in the old scarecrow’s hand.
“Here’s for trespass,” he said, and turning his back on him he
recrossed the wall.
“That’ll stop his mouth,” Tyson grinned. “But what are you going to
give me to stop mine?”
Bishop laughed on the wrong side of his face.
“A bone and a jorum whenever you’ll come and take it,” he said.
“Done with you,” the doctor replied. “Some day, when that old beldame,
mother Gilson, is out, I’ll claim it. But if you think,” he continued,
“that your man is this side of the hill you are mistaken, Mr. Bishop.
I’m up and down this road day and night, and he’d be very clever if he
kept out of my sight.”
“Ay?”
“You may take my word for that. I’ll lay you a dozen wherever he is,
he’s not this side.”
The runner nodded. At this moment he was a little out of conceit with
himself, and he thought that the other might be right. Besides, he
might spend a week going from farm to farm, and shed to shed and be no
wiser at the end of it. Yet, the girl knew, he was convinced; and after
all, that was his way to it. She knew, and he’d to her again and have
it out of her one way or another. And if she would not speak, he would
shadow her; he would follow her hour by hour and minute by minute.
Sooner or later she would be sure to try to see her man, and he would
nab them both. There were no two ways about it. There was only one way.
An old hand should have known better than to go wasting time in random
searchings.
He returned to the inn, more fixed than ever in his notion. With an
impassive face he told Mrs. Gilson that he must see the young lady.
“She’s come in, I suppose?” he added.
“Ay, she’s come in.”
“Well, you’ll please to tell her I must see her.”
“I fancy _must_ will be your master,” Mrs. Gilson replied, with her
usual point. “But I’ll tell her.” And she went upstairs.
Henrietta was seated at the window with her back to the door. She did
not turn.
“Here’s the Bow-Street man,” Mrs. Gilson said, without ceremony. “Wants
to know if he can see you. Shall I tell him yes, or no, young lady?”
“No, if you please,” Henrietta answered, with a shiver.
Mrs. Gilson went down.
“She says ‘No, on no account,’” she announced, “unless you’ve got a
warrant. Her room’s her room, she says, and she’ll none of you.”
“Hoity-toity!”
“That’s what she said,” Mrs. Gilson repeated without a blush. “And for
my part I don’t see why she’s to be persecuted. What with you and that
sneaking parson, who’s for ever at her skirts, and another that shall
be nameless——”
“Just so!” said Bishop, nodding.
But whereas he meant Walterson, the good woman meant Mr. Hornyold.
“——her life’s not her own!” the landlady ended.
“Well, she’s to be brought up next Thursday,” the runner replied in
dudgeon. “And she’ll have to see me then.” And he took a seat near the
foot of the stairs, more firmly determined than ever that the girl
should not give him the slip again a second time. “He’s here,” he
thought. “He’s not a mile from me, I’ll stake my soul on it! And before
Thursday it’s odds she’ll need to see him, and I’ll nab them!” And he
began to think out various ways of giving her something which she would
wish to communicate.
Meanwhile Henrietta, seated at her window in the south gable, gazed
dolefully out; on the grey expanse of water, which she was beginning to
hate, on the lofty serrated ridge, which must ever recall humiliating
memories, on the snow-clad peaks that symbolised the loneliness of her
life. She would not weep, but her lip quivered. And oh, she thought, it
was a cruel punishment for that which she had done. In the present she
was utterly alone: in the future it would be no better. And yet if that
were all, if loneliness were all, she could bear it. She could make up
her mind to it. But if not today, to-morrow, and if not to-morrow, the
day after, the man would be taken. And then she would have to stand
forth and tell her shameful tale, and all the world, her world, would
learn with derision what a fool she had been, for what a creature she
had been ready to give up all, what dross that was which she had taken
for gold! And that which had been romantic would be ridiculous.
Beside this aching dread the insult which Captain Clyne had put upon
her lost some of its sting. Yet it smarted at times and rankled,
driving her into passing rages. She had wronged him, yet, strange to
say, she hated to think that she had lost his esteem. And perhaps for
this reason, perhaps because he had shown himself less inhuman at the
outset than her family, his treatment hurt her to a point she had not
anticipated, nor could understand.
The one drop of comfort in her cup sprang from a source as unlikely as
the rock which Moses struck. It came from the flinty bosom of Mrs.
Gilson. Not that the landlady was outwardly kind; but she was brusquely
and gruffly inattentive, trusting the girl and leaving her to herself.
And in secret Henrietta appreciated this. She began to feel a
dependence on the woman whom she had once dubbed an odious and a
hateful thing. She read kindness between the lines of her harsh visage,
and solicitude in the eye that scorned to notice her. She ceased to
tremble when the voice which flung panic through the Low Wood came
girding up the stairs. And though no word of acknowledgement passed her
lips, she was conscious that in other and smoother hands she might have
fared worse.
The open sympathy of Modest Ann was less welcome. It was even a
terrible plague at times. For the waiting-maid never came into the
girl’s presence without full eyes and a sigh, never looked at her save
as the kind-hearted look at lambs that are faring to the butcher, never
left her without a gesture that challenged Heaven’s pity. Ann, indeed,
saw in the young lady the martyr of love. She viewed her as a sharer in
her own misfortunes; and though she was forty and the girl nineteen,
she found in her echoes of her own heart-throbs. There was humour in
this, and, for some, a touch of the pathetic; but not for Henrietta,
who had a strong sense of the ridiculous and no liking for pity. In her
ordinary spirits she would have either laughed at the woman or rated
her. Depressed as she was, she bore with her none too well.
Yet Ann was honestly devoted to her heroine, and continually dreamed of
some romantic service—such as the waiting-maid in a chap-book performs
for her mistress. Given the occasion, she would have risen to it, and
would have cut off her hand before she betrayed the girl’s secrets. But
her buxom form and square, stolid face did not commend her; they were
at odds with romance. And Henrietta did not more than suffer her, until
the afternoon of this day, when it seemed to the girl that she could
suffer her no longer.
For Ann, coming in with wood for the fire, lingered behind her in a way
to try a saint. Her sighs filled the air, they were like a furnace;
until Henrietta turned her head and asked impatiently if she wanted
something.
“Nothing, miss, nothing,” the woman answered. But she gave the lie to
her words by laying her finger on her lip and winking. At the same time
she sought for something in an under-pocket.
Henrietta rose to her feet.
“Nothing!” she repeated. “Then what do you——”
“Nothing, miss,” Ann rejoined loudly. “I’m to make up the fire.” But
she still sought and still made eyes, and at last, with an exaggeration
of mystery, found what she wanted. She slipped a letter into
Henrietta’s hand. “Not a word, miss,” she breathed, with a face of
rapturous enjoyment. “Take it, miss! Lor’!” she continued in the same
tone of subdued enthusiasm, “I’d die for you, let alone do this! Even
missus should not wring it from me with wild horses!”
Henrietta hesitated.
“Who gave it you?” she whispered. “I don’t wish”—she drew back—“I don’t
wish to receive anything unless I know who sends it.”
“You read it,” Ann answered in an ecstasy of benevolence. “It’s all
right, trust me for that! Bless your heart, it comes from the right
place. As you will see when you open it!” And with absurd precaution
she tip-toed to the fire-place, took up her wood-basket, banged a log
on the dogs, and went out.
Henrietta waited with the letter hidden in her hand until the door
closed. Then she looked at the paper and grew pale, and was on the
verge of tears. Alas! she knew the handwriting. She knew, whether there
was a right place or not, that this came from the wrong.
“Shall I open it?” she asked herself. “Shall I open it?”
A fortnight before she had opened it without a thought of prudence,
without a glance at the consequences. But a fortnight, and such a
fortnight, had taught her much. And to-day she paused. She eyed the
coarse paper askance—with repugnance, with loathing. True, it could no
longer harm her. She had seen the man as he was, stripped of his
disguises. She had read in his face his meanness, his falseness, his
cowardice. And henceforth his charms and cajoleries, his sweet words
and lying looks were not for her. But she had to think what might be in
this letter, and what might come of it, and what she should do. She
might burn it unread—and perhaps that were the safer course. Or she
might hand it to the Bow Street runner, or she might open it and read
it.
Which should she do?
One course she rejected without much thought. To hand the letter to
Bishop might be to betray the man to Bishop. And she had made up her
mind not to betray the man.
Should she burn it?
Her reason whispered that that was the right, that that was the wise
course. But then she would never know what was in the letter; and she
was a woman and curious. And reason, quickly veering, suggested that to
burn it was to incur unknown risks and contingencies. It might be
equivalent to giving the man up. It might—in a word, it opened a world
of possibilities.
And after all she could still burn the letter when she had read it. She
would know then what she was doing. And what danger could she incur,
seeing that she was proof against the man’s lying tongue, and shuddered
at the thought of contact with him?
She made up her mind. And roughly, hating the task after a fashion, she
tore the letter open. With hot cheeks—it could not be otherwise, since
the writing was his, and brought back such memories—she read the
contents. There was no opening—she was glad of that—and no signature.
Thus it ran:—
“I have treated you ill, but men are not as women, and I was tempted,
God knows. I do not ask you to forgive me, but I ask you to save me. I
am in your hands. If you have the heart to leave me to a violent death,
all is said. If you have mercy, meet my messenger at ten to-morrow
evening, where the Troutbeck lane comes down to the lake. As I hope to
live you run no risk and can suffer no harm. If you are merciful—and
oh, for God’s sake spare me—put a stone before noon to-morrow on the
post of the second gate towards Ambleside.”