THE ANSWER
When Henrietta had read this letter twice, shivering and drawing in her
breath as often as she came to the passionate cry for mercy that broke
its current, she sat gazing at the paper. And her face was rigid. Had
he made appeal to her affection, to the past, to that which had been
between them, still more had he assumed that the spell was unbroken and
her heart was his, her pride had revolted and revolted passionately.
She had spurned the letter and the writer. And perhaps, when it was too
late, she had repented.
But that cry, wrung, it seemed, from the man’s heart in his own
despite, pierced her heart. How could she refuse, if his life hung on
her act, if by lifting her finger, she could save him without risk to
herself? The thought of him was repugnant to her, shamed her, filled
her with contempt of herself. But she had loved him once, or had
fancied in her folly that she loved him; and he asked for his life. He,
a man, lay at the mercy of a woman, a girl; how could she refuse? If
her heart were obdurate, her sex spoke for him.
“And oh! for God’s sake spare me!”
She read the words again and again, and shuddered. If she refused, and
afterwards when it was too late, when nothing could be done, she
repented? If when judgment had passed upon him, and the day was come
and the hour and the minute—and in her brain, though she were one
hundred miles away, St. Sepulchre’s bell tolled—if she repented then
how would she bear it?
She would not be able to bear it.
And then other considerations not less powerful, and all pointing in
the same direction, arose in her mind. If she did this thing, whatever
it was, the man would escape. He would vanish from the country and from
her knowledge and ken. There would be an end of him, and the relief
would be great. Freed from the shameful incubus of his presence she
would breathe again. She might make a new start then, she might frame
some plan for her life. She was too young to suppose that she could
ever be happy after this, or that she would live to smile at these
troubles. But at least she would not be harassed by continual fears,
she would not be kept in a panic by the thought of that which every
hour might bring forth. She would be spared the public trial, the
ordeal of the witness-box, the shame of open confession. Should she do,
then, that which he wished? Ay, a thousand times, ay. Her heart cried,
ay, her mind was made up. And rising, she walked the room in
excitement. Her pulse beat high, her head was hot, she was in a fever
to begin, to be doing, to come to an end of the thing and be safe.
But the thing? Her heart sank a little when she turned to that, and
conned the note again and marked the hour. Ten? The evenings were long
and dark, and the house was abed by ten. How was she to pass out? Nor
was that all. What of her position when she had passed out? She shrank
from the thought of going alone to meet she knew not who in the
darkness by the lonely edge of the water. There would be no help within
call at that hour; nor any, if she disappeared, to say which way she
had gone or how she had met her fate. If aught happened to her she
would vanish and leave no trace. And they would think perhaps that she
had fled to him!
The prospect was terrifying. And nine girls out of ten, though of
ordinary courage, would have shrunk hack. But Henrietta had a
spirit—too high a spirit or she had not been here!—and she fancied that
if ever it behoved her to run a risk, it behove her to run one now. And
that not for the man’s sake only, but for her own. She rose above her
momentary alarm, therefore, and she asked herself what she had to fear.
True, when she had met him that morning she had imagined in the gloom
of the kitchen that she read murder in his eyes. But for an instant
only; now she laughed at the notion. Safe in her chamber she found it
absurd: the bizarre creation of her fancy or her timidity, aided by
some shadow cast athwart his face. And for the matter of that, why
should he harm her? Her presence at the trysting-place would be his
surety that she had no mind to betray him; but that on the contrary she
was willing to help him.
“I will go, I must go,” she thought. “I must go.”
Yet vague alarms troubled her; and she hesitated. If there had been no
menace in his eyes that morning—the eyes that had so often looked into
hers and languished on her with a lover’s fondness—why had she fled so
precipitately? And why had her knees shaken under her? Pshaw, she had
been taken by surprise. It was repugnance rather than fear which she
had felt. And because she had been foolish once, and imagined things,
because she was afraid, like a child, of the dark, because she shrank
from meeting a stranger after nightfall, surely, surely she was not
going to let a man perish whom she could save with one of her fingers!
And still, prudence whispered her, asking why he fixed so late an hour.
Why had he not fixed five or six, if it were only out of respect for
her? At five it was already dark, yet the world was awake and astir,
respectable folk were abroad, and help was within call. She would have
met him without hesitation at five or at six. But there, how stupid she
was! It was the very fact that the world was astir and awake that made
an early hour impossible. If she went at five or at six she would be
followed, her movements would be watched, her companion would be noted.
The very air would be full of eavesdroppers. She knew that, for the
fact irritated her hourly and daily. And doubtless he too, hedged about
by fears and suspicions, knew it.
The lateness of the hour was natural, therefore. Still, it rendered her
task more difficult. She dared not interfere with the heavy bars that
secured the two doors which looked on the lake. She would be heard,
even if the task were not beyond her strength. And to gain the back
entrance she must thread a labyrinth of passages guarded by wakeful
dogs and sleeping servants; for servants in those days slept on the
stairs or in any odd place. She would be detected before she had undone
a single bolt.
Then what was she to do? Her bedroom was on the second floor, and exit
by the window was not possible. On which, some, surveying the
situation, would have sat still, and thought themselves justified. But
Henrietta was of firmer stuff; and for such where there is a will there
is a way. Mr. Rogers’s room, of which she had still the use, was on the
first floor of the south wing and somewhat remote from the main part of
the house. Outside the door was a sash window which gave light to the
passage; and owing to the rise of the hill on every side of the house
save the front, the sill of this window was not more than six feet
above the garden. She could drop from it with safety. Return was less
easy, but with the help of a chair, which she could lower before she
descended, she might manage to climb in again. The feat seemed easy and
she did not feel afraid. Whether she would feel afraid when the time
came was another matter.
In the meantime she had to wait, and sleeping ill that night, she had
many uneasy dreams, and waking before daybreak thought herself into a
fever. All the dreadful things that might befall her rose before her in
the liveliest shapes; and long before the house awoke—there is no fear
like five-o’clock-in-the-morning fear—she had given up the notion. But
when the dull November day peered in at the bedroom window, and she had
risen, she was herself again. She chid herself for the childish terrors
in which she had indulged, and lest she should give way to them again
she determined to take a decisive step. Long before noon she slipped
out of the house and turned towards Ambleside.
Unfortunately it was a wet morning, and she feared that her promenade
in such weather must excite suspicion. Eyes, she was sure, were on her
before she had gone a dozen paces. To throw watchers off the scent and
to prove herself careless of espial she would not look back; but when
she reached the first corner she picked up a stone, and threw it at an
imaginary object on the edge of the lake. She stood an instant with her
wet-weather hood drawn about her face as if to mark the effect of her
shot. Then she picked up another stone and poised it, but did not throw
it. Instead, she walked on with the stone in her hand. All without
looking back.
She came to the second gate on the Ambleside road. It was out of sight
of the inn, and it seemed an easy and an innocent thing to lay the
stone on the head of the pillar—gate-posts in that country are of
stone—and to go on her way. But she heard a footstep behind her and
panic seized her. She felt that nothing in the world would be so
suspicious, so damning as such an act. She hesitated, and was lost. She
walked on slowly with the stone in her hand, and the fine rain beating
in her face.
Her follower, a country clown, passed her. She loitered until he was
out of sight; then she turned and retraced her steps. A half-minute’s
walking brought her again to the gate. There was no one in sight and in
a fever lest at the last some one should take her in the act she set
the stone on the top of the post, and passed on.
Half-way back to the inn she stopped. What if the stone had not kept
its place? She had merely thrust out her hand as she passed, and
deposited the stone without looking. Now she was sure that her ear had
caught the faint sound which the stone made in striking the sodden
turf. She turned and walked back.
When she reached the gate she was thankful that she had had that
thought. The stone had fallen. Fortunately there was no one in sight,
and it was easy to pick up the first stone that came to hand and
replace the signal. Then she walked back to the inn, inclined to laugh
at the proportions to which her simple task had attained in her mind.
She would have laughed after another fashion had she known that her
movements from beginning to end had been watched by Mr. Sutton. The
chaplain, ashamed yet pursuing, had sneaked after her when she left the
inn, hoping that if she went far he might find in some lonely place,
where she could not escape, an opportunity of pleading his cause. He
fancied that the lapse of three days, and his patient, mournful
conduct, might have softened her; to say nothing of the probable effect
on a young girl of such a life as she was leading—of its solitude, its
dullness, its weariness.
On seeing her turn, however, he had had no mind to be detected, and he
had slipped into the wood. From his retreat he had seen her deposit the
stone: he had seen also her guilty face—it was he, indeed, who had
removed the stone. He had done so, expecting to find a note under it,
and he was all but surprised in the act. When she placed the second, he
was within three paces of her, crouching with a burning face behind the
wall. The thought of her contempt if she discovered him so appalled him
that, cold as it was, he sweated with shame; nor was it until she had
gone some distance that he dared to lift his eyes above the wall. Then
he saw that she had put another stone on the gate-post.
He took it in his hand and compared it with the one which he still
held. They were as common stones as any that lay in the road. And there
was no letter. The conclusion was clear. The stone was a signal. Nor
could he doubt for whom it was intended. The London officer was right.
Walterson was in the neighbourhood and she was in communication with
him. The girl’s infatuation still ruled her.
That hardened him a little in his course of action. But he was not at
ease, and when some one coughed—slightly but with meaning—while he
gazed at the stone, he jumped a yard. He stood, with all the blood in
his body flown to his face. The cough had come from the wood behind
him; and ten paces from him, peeping over the bush, was Mr. Bishop.
The runner chuckled. “Very well done, reverend sir,” he said. “Very
well done. You’ve the makings of a very tidy officer about you. I could
not have done it much neater myself. But now, suppose you leave the
coast clear, or maybe you’ll be scaring the other party.”
Mr. Sutton, with his face the colour of beetroot—for he was heartily
ashamed of the part he had been playing—began to stammer an
explanation.
“I saw the young lady, and didn’t—I couldn’t understand——”
“What the lay was,” Mr. Bishop answered, grinning at the other’s
discomfiture. “Just so. Same with me. But suppose in the meantime,
reverend sir,” with unction, “you leave the ground clear for the other
party? We can talk as well elsewhere as here, and without queering the
pitch.”
The chaplain swallowed his vexation as well as he could and
complied—but stiffly. The two made their way back in silence to the gap
in the wall by which the chaplain had entered. There, having first
ascertained that the road was clear, they stepped out. By that time Mr.
Sutton was feeling better. After all, he had been right to follow the
girl. Left to herself, and a slave to the villain who had fascinated
her, she might suffer worse things than a friendly espionage. He
determined to take the bull by the horns. “What do you make of it?” he
asked, still blushing.
“Queer lay,” Bishop answered drily.
“You understand it, then?”
“Middling well. Gipsy patter that.” He pointed to the stone.
“You think the young lady is communicating—”
“With another party? I do. Leastways I know it. And the party——”
“Is Walterson?”
“Just so,” the runner answered. “Why not? Young ladies are but women,
after all, reverend sir, and much like other women, only sometimes more
so. I began, I confess, by being of your way of thinking. The lady is
so precious snowy and so precious stiff you would not believe ice would
melt in her mouth. But when I came to think it all over, and remembered
how she stood by it at first, and would not give her name, nor any clue
by which we could trace where she came from—so that till Captain Clyne
turned up I was altogether at a loss—and how she made light of what
Walterson had done, when it was first told her, and a lot of little
things like that, I began to see how the land lay, innocent as she
looks. And after all, come to think of it, if she liked the man well
enough to go off with him—why should she cut him adrift? When she had,
so to speak, paid the price for him, your reverence? How does that
strike you?”
“But Captain Clyne,” Sutton answered slowly, “who knew her well, and
knows her well——”
“I know.”
“He does not share your opinion. He is under the belief,” the chaplain
continued, “that her eyes are open. And that she hates the very thought
of the man, and of the mistake she made. His view is that she is only
anxious to behave herself.”
Bishop winked. “Ay, but Captain Clyne,” he said, “is in love with her,
you see.”
Mr. Sutton stared. The colour rose slowly to his cheeks.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “In fact, I may say I know that it is not
so. He has long given up the remotest idea of the—of the match that was
projected.”
“May be, may be,” the runner answered lightly. “I don’t say that that
is not so. But it is just when a man has given up all thought of a
thing that he thinks of it the most, Mr. Sutton. Anyway, there is the
stone, and there is the post, and I’ll ask you plain for whom it is
meant, if it is not meant for Walterson?”
Mr. Sutton nodded. But his thoughts were still engaged with Captain
Clyne’s feelings. The more he considered the point the more inclined he
was to think that the runner was right. Clyne’s insistence on the
girl’s innocence, the extreme bitterness that had once or twice broken
through his reticence, and an unusual restlessness of manner when he
had made the remarkable proposal that Mr. Sutton should take his place,
all pointed that way. And this being so, it was strange how the
suspicion sharpened the chaplain’s keenness to win the prize. If she
had still so great a value in the eyes of his patron, how enviable
would he be if by hook or crook he could gain her! How very enviable!
And was it not for her own good that he should gain her; even if he
compassed his end by a little manœuvring, by stooping a little, by
spying a little? Ay, even, it might be, by frightening her a little. In
love, as in war, all was fair, and if he did not love her he desired
her. She was so desirable, so very desirable, he might be forgiven
somewhat if he stooped to conquer: seeing that if he failed this
dangerous man held her in his power.
So when Bishop asked for the second time, “Will you help me to keep an
eye on her? You can do it more easily than I can,” he was ready with
his answer, though he blushed a little.
“I will stay here and note who passes,” he replied. “Yes, I will do
that.”
“You can do it with less risk of notice than I can,” the officer
answered. “And I must get back and keep her in view. It is just
possible that this is a ruse, and that the man we want is the other
way.”
“I will remain,” said Mr. Sutton curtly. And he stayed. But he was so
taken up with this new view of his patron’s feelings that though Bess
Hinkson rowed along the shore before his eyes, and looked hard at him,
he never saw her.