THE GOLDEN SHIP
Two minutes after Bishop had passed from sight, Henrietta rose from a
dip in the fern; in which she had lain all the time, as snugly hidden,
though within eyeshot of him, as a hare in its form. She cast a wary
glance round. Then she hastened to the gate, but did not pass through
it. She knew too much. She chose a weak place in the fence, scaled it
with care, and sprang lightly into the road. She glanced up and down,
but no one was in sight, and pleased with her cleverness, she set off
at a quick pace up the hill.
The sun lacked an hour of setting. She might count on two hours of
daylight, and her spirits rose. As the emerald green of the lower hills
shone the brighter for the patches of snow, harbingers of winter, which
flecked them, so her spirits rose the higher for troubles overpast or
to come. She felt no fear, no despondency, none of the tremours with
which she had entered on her night adventure. A gaiety of which she did
not ask herself the cause, a heart as light as her feet and as blithe
as the black-bird’s note, carried her on. She who had awakened that
morning in a prison could have sung and caroled as she walked. The
beauty of the hills about her, of the lake below her, blue here, there
black, filled her with happiness.
And the cause? She did not seek for the cause. Certainly she did not
find it. It was enough for the moment that she had been prisoned and
was free; and that in an hour, or two hours at most, she would return
with the child or with news. And then, the sweet vengeance of laying it
in its father’s arms! She whom he had insulted, whom he had mishandled,
whom he had treated so remorselessly—it would be from her hand that he
would receive his treasure, the child whom he had told her that she
hated. He would have some cause then to talk of making amends! And need
to go about and about before he found a way to be quits with her!
She did not analyse beyond that point the feeling of gaiety and joyous
anticipation which possessed her. She would put him in the wrong. She
would heap coals of fire on his head. That sufficed. If there welled up
within her heart another thought, if since morning she had a feeling
and a hope that thrilled her and lent to all the world this smiling
guise, she was conscious of the effect, unconscious of the cause. The
wrist which Clyne had twisted was still black and blue and tender to
the touch. She blushed lest any eye fall on it, or any guess how he had
treated her. But—she blushed also, when she was alone, and her own eyes
dwelt on it. And dwell on it sometimes they would; for, strange to say,
the feeling of shame, if it was shame, was not unpleasant.
She met no one. She reached the gate of Starvecrow Farm, unseen as she
believed. But heedful of the old saying, that fields have eyes and
woods have ears, she looked carefully round her before she laid her
hand on the gate. Then, in a twinkling, she was round the house like a
lapwing and tapping at the door.
To her first summons she got no answer. And effacing herself as much as
possible, she cast a wary eye over the place. The garden was as ragged
and desolate, the house as bald and forbidding, the firs about it as
gloomy, as when she had last seen them. But the view over sloping field
and green meadow, wooded knoll and shining lake, made up for all. And
her only feeling as she tapped again and more loudly was one of
impatience. Even the memory of the squalid old man whom she had once
seen there did not avail to alarm her in her buoyant mood.
This was well, perhaps. For when she knocked a third time, in alarm
lest the person she sought should be gone, and her golden ship with
him, it was that very old man who opened the door. And, not
unnaturally, it seemed to Henrietta that with its opening a shadow fell
across the landscape and blurred the sunshine of the day. The ape-like
creature who gaped at her, the cavern-like room behind him, the breath
of the close air that came from him, inspired disgust, if not alarm,
and checked the girl in the full current of content.
He did not speak. But he moved his toothless gums unpleasantly, and
danced up and down in an odd fashion from his knees, without moving his
feet. Meanwhile his reddened eyes thrust near to hers gleamed with
suspicion. On her side Henrietta was taken aback by his appearance, and
for some moments she stared at him in consternation. What could she
expect from such a creature?
At length, “I wish to see Walterson,” she said; in a low tone—there
might be listeners in the house. “Do you understand? Do you
understand?” she repeated more loudly.
He set his head, which was bald in patches, on one side; as if to
indicate that he was deaf. And with his eyes on hers, he dropped his
lower jaw and waited for her to repeat what she had said.
She saw nothing else for it, and she crushed down her repugnance.
“Let me come in,” she said. “Do you hear? I want to talk to you. Let me
come in.”
To remain where she was, talking secrets to a deaf man, was to invite
discovery.
He understood her this time, and grudgingly he opened the door a little
wider. He stood aside and Henrietta entered. In the act she cast a
backward look over her shoulder, and caught through the doorway a last
prospect of the hills and the mid-lake and the green islets off
Bowness—set like jewels on its gleaming breast—all clear-cut in the
brisk winter air. She felt the beauty of the scene, but she did not
guess what things were to happen to her before she looked again upon
its fellow.
Not that when the door was shut upon her, the room in which she found
herself did not something appal her. The fire had been allowed to sink
low, and the squalor and the chill, vapid air of the place wrapped her
about. But she was naturally fearless, and she cheered herself with the
thought that she was stronger than the grinning old man who stood
before her. She was sure that if he resorted to violence she could
master him. Still, she was in haste. She was anxious to do what she had
to do, and escape.
And: “I must see Walterson!” she told him loudly, looking down on him,
and instinctively keeping her skirts clear of the unswept floor. “He
was here, I know, some days ago,” she continued sharply. “Don’t say you
don’t understand, because you do! But fetch him, or tell me where he
is. Do you hear?”
The old man moved his jaw to and fro. He grinned senilely.
“He was here, eh?” he drawled.
“Yes, he was here,” Henrietta returned, taking a tone of authority with
him. “And I must see him.”
“Ay?”
“It is to do no harm to him,” she explained. “Tell him Miss Damer is
here. Miss Damer, do you hear? He will see me, I am sure.”
“Ay?” he said again in the same half-vacant tone. “Ay?”
But he did not go beyond that; nor did he make any movement to comply.
And she was beginning to think him wholly imbecile when his eyes left
hers and fixed themselves on the front of her riding-coat. Then, after
a moment’s silence, during which she patted the floor with her foot in
fierce impatience, he raised his claw-like hand and stretched it slowly
towards her throat.
She stepped back, but as much in anger as in fear. Was the man
imbecile, or very wicked?
“What do you want?” she asked sharply. “Don’t you understand what I
have said to you?”
For the moment he seemed to be disconcerted by her movement. He stood
in the same place, slowly blinking his weak eyes at her. Then he turned
and moved in a slip-shod fashion to the hearth and threw on two or
three morsels of touch-wood, causing the fire to leap up and shoot a
flickering light into the darker corners of the room. The gleam
discovered his dingy bed and dingier curtains, and the shadowy entrance
to the staircase in which Henrietta had once seen Walterson. And it
showed Henrietta herself, and awakened a spark in her angry eyes.
The old man, still stooping, looked round at her, his chin on his
shoulder. And slowly, with an odd crab-like movement, he edged his way
back to her. She watched his approach with a growing fear of the gloomy
house and the silence and the dark staircase. She began to think he was
imbecile, or worse, and that nothing could be got from him. And she was
in two minds about retreating—so powerfully do silence and mystery tell
on the nerves—when he paused in his advance, and, raising his lean,
twitching hand, pointed to her neck.
“Give it me,” he whimpered. “Give it me—and I’ll see, maybe, where he
is.”
She frowned.
“What?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“The gold!” he croaked. “The gold! At your neck, lass! That sparkles!
Give it me!” opening and shutting his lean fingers. “And I’ll—I’ll see
what I can do.”
She carried her fingers to the neck of her gown and touched the tiny
gold medal struck to celebrate the birth of the Princess Charlotte,
which she wore as a clasp at her throat. And relieved to find that he
meant no worse, she smiled. The scarecrow before her was less of an
“innocent” than she had judged him. It was so much the better for her
purpose.
“I cannot give you this,” she said. “But I’ll give you its value, if
you will bring me to Walterson.”
“No, no, give it me,” he whimpered, grimacing at her and making feeble
clutches in the air. “Give it me!”
“I cannot, I say,” she repeated. “It was my mother’s, and I cannot part
with it. But if,” she continued patiently, “you will do what I ask I
will give you its value, old man, another day.”
“Give now!” he retorted. “Give now!” And leering with childish cunning,
“Trust the day and greet the morrow! Groats in pouch ne’er yet brought
sorrow! Na, na, Hinkson, old Hinkson trusts nobody. Give it me now,
lass! And I—I know what I know.” And in a cracked and quavering voice,
swaying himself to the measure,
“It is an old saying
That few words are best,
And he that says little
Shall live most at rest.
And I by my gossips
Do find it right so,
Therefore I’ll spare speech,
But—I know what I know.
I know what I know!” he repeated, blinking with doting astuteness,
“Therefore I’ll spare speech,
But—I know what I know!”
Henrietta stared. She would have given him the money, any money in her
power. But imprudently prudent, she had brought none with her.
“I can’t give it you now,” she said. “But I will give it you to-morrow
if you will do what I ask. Otherwise I shall go and you will get
nothing.”
He did not reply, but he began to mumble with his jaws and dance
himself up and down from his knees, as at her first entrance; with his
monstrous head on one side and his red-lidded eyes peering at her. In
the open, in the sunshine, she would not have feared him; she would
have thought him only grotesque in his anger. But shut up in this
hideous den with him, in this atmosphere of dimly perceived danger, she
felt her flesh creep. What if he struck her treacherously, or took her
by surprise? She had read of houses where the floors sank under doomed
strangers, or the testers of beds came down on them in their sleep. He
was capable, she was sure, of anything; even of murdering her for the
sake of the two or three guineas’ worth of gold which she wore at her
neck. Yet she held her ground.
“Do you hear?” she said with spirit. “If you do not tell me, I shall
go. And you will get nothing!”
He nodded cunningly.
“Bide a bit!” he said in a different tone. “Sit ye down, lass, sit ye
down! Bide a bit, and I’ll see.”
He slippered his way across the floor to get a stool for her. But when
he had lifted the stool from the floor in his shaking hands, she marked
with a quick leap of the heart that he had put himself between her and
the door, and that, with the possession of the stool, his looks were
altered. The heavy block wavered in his grasp and he seemed to pant and
stagger under its weight. But there was an ugly light in his eyes as he
sidled nearer and nearer to her; a light that meant murder. She was
sure that he was going to leap upon her. And she remembered that no
one, no one knew where she was, no one had seen her enter the house.
She had only her own strength to look to, only her own courage and
coolness, if she would escape this creature.
“Put down that stool!” she said.
“Eh?”
“Put down that stool!” she repeated, firmly. And she kept her eyes on
him, resisting the fatal temptation to glance at door or window. “Do
you hear me? Put down that stool!”
He hesitated, but her glance never wavered. And slowly and unwillingly
he obeyed. Shaking as with the palsy, and with his mouth fallen open—so
that he looked more imbecile and less human than ever—he relinquished
the stool.
She drew a deep breath.
“Now,” she said bravely, though she was conscious that the perspiration
had broken out on her brow, “tell me at once where he is?”
But the old miser, though his will had yielded to hers, did not answer.
He seemed to be shaken by his defeat, and to be at once feeble and
furious. Glaring askance at her, he tottered to the settle on the
hearth and sat down on it, breathing heavily.
“Curse her! Curse her! Curse her!” he gibbered low, but audibly. And he
licked his lips and gnashed his toothless gums at her in impotent rage.
“Curse her! Curse her!” The firelight, now rising, now falling, showed
him sitting there, mopping and mowing, like some unclean Eastern idol;
or, again, masked his revolting ugliness.
The girl thought him horrible, thought it all horrible. She felt for an
instant as if she were going to faint. But she had gained the victory,
she had mastered him, and she would make one last attempt to attain her
object.
“You wicked old man,” she said, “you would have hurt me! You wicked
monster! But I am stronger, much stronger than you, and I do not fear
you. Now I am going unless you tell me at once.”
He ceased to gibber to her. He beckoned to her to approach him. But she
shook her head. He no longer had the stool, but he might have some
weapon hidden under the seat of the settle. She distrusted him.
“No,” she said, “I am not coming near you. You are a villainous old
man, and I don’t trust you.”
“Have you no—no money?” he whimpered. “Nothing to give old Hinkson?
Poor old Hinkson?” with a feeble movement of his fingers on his knees,
as if he drew bed-clothes about him.
“Where is Walterson?” she repeated. “Tell me at once.”
“How do I know?” he whined. “I don’t know.”
“He was here. You do know. Tell me.”
He averted his eyes and held out a palsied hand.
“Give!” he answered. “Give!”
But she was relentless.
“Tell me,” she rejoined, “or I go, and you get nothing.” She was in
earnest now, for she began to despair of drawing anything from him, and
she saw nothing for it but to go and return another time. “Do you
hear?” she continued. “If you do not speak for me, I—I shall go to
those who will know how to make you speak.”
It was an idle threat; and one which she had no intention of executing.
But the rage into which it flung him—no rage is so fierce as that which
is mingled with fear—fairly appalled her. “Eh? Eh?” he cried, his voice
rising to an inarticulate scream. “Eh? You will, will you?” And he rose
to his feet and clawed the air as if, were she within reach, he would
have torn her to pieces. “You devil, you witch, you besom! Go!” he
cried. “I’ll sort you! I’ll sort you! I’ll fetch one as shall—as shall
dumb you!”
There was something so demoniacal in the old dotard’s passion, in its
very futility, in its very violence, that the girl shrank like
Frankenstein before the monster she had aroused. She turned to save
herself, for, weak as he was, he seemed to be about to fling himself
upon her; and she had no stomach for the contact. But as she
turned—with a backward glance at him, and an arm stretched toward the
door to make sure of the latch—a shadow cast by a figure passing before
the lattice flitted across the floor between them, and a hand rested on
the latch.