THE SEARCH
To return to Bishop. Thrown off the trail in the wood, he pushed along
the road as far as Windermere village. There, however, he could hear
nothing. No one of Henrietta’s figure and appearance had been seen
there. And in the worst of humours, with the world as well as with
himself, he put about and returned to the inn. If the girl had come
back during his absence, it was bad enough; he had had his trouble for
nothing, and might have spared his shoe-leather. Hang such pretty
frailties for him! But if, on the other hand, she had not come back,
the case was worse. He had been left to watch her, and the blame would
fall on him. Nadin would say more than he had said already about London
officers and their uselessness. And if anything happened to her! Bishop
wiped his brow as he thought of that, and of his next meeting with
Captain Clyne. It was to be hoped, be devoutly hoped, that nothing had
happened to the jade.
It wanted half an hour of sunset, when he arrived, fagged and fuming,
at the inn; and if his worst fears were not realised, he soon had
ground to dread that they might be. Miss Damer had not returned.
“I’ve no truck with them rubbishy radicals,” Mrs. Gilson added
impersonally, scratching her nose with the handle of a spoon—a sign
that she was ill at ease. “But they’re right enough in one thing, and
that is, that there’s a lot of useless folk paid by the country—that’d
never get paid by any one else! And for brains, give me a calf’s head!”
Bishop evaded the conflict with what dignity he might.
“The Captain’s not come in?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s come in,” the landlady answered.
“Well,” sullenly, “the sooner I see him the better, then!”
“You can’t see him now,” Mrs. Gilson replied, with a glance at the
clock. “He’s sleeping.”
Bishop stared.
“Sleeping?” he cried. “And the young lady not come back?”
“He don’t know that she has so much as gone out,” Mrs. Gilson answered
with the utmost coolness. “And what’s more, I’m not going to tell him.
He came in looking not fit to cross a room, my man, let alone cross a
horse! And when I went to take him a dish of tea I found him asleep in
his chair. And you may take it from me, if he’s not left to have out
his sleep, now it’s come, he’ll be no more use to you, six hours from
this, than a corpse!”
“Still, ma’am,” Bishop objected, “the Captain won’t be best pleased——”
“Please a flatiron!” Mrs. Gilson retorted. “Best served’s best pleased,
my lad, and that you’ll learn some day.” And then suddenly taking the
offensive, “For the matter of that, what do you want with him?” she
continued. “Ain’t you grown men? If Joe Nadin and you and half a dozen
redbreasts can’t find one silly girl in an open countryside, don’t talk
to me of your gangs! And your felonies! And the fine things you do in
London!”
“But in London——”
“Ay, London Bridge was made for fools to go under!” Mrs. Gilson
answered, with meaning. “It don’t stand for nothing.”
Bishop tapped his top-boot gloomily.
“She may come in any minute,” he said. “There’s that.”
“She may, or she mayn’t,” Mrs. Gilson answered, with another look at
the clock.
“She’s not been gone more than an hour and a half.”
“Nor the mouse my cat caught this afternoon,” the landlady retorted.
“But you’ll not find it easily, my lad, nor know it when you find it.”
He had no reply to make to that, but he carried his eye again to the
clock. He was very uncomfortable—very uncomfortable. And yet he hardly
knew what to do or where to look. In the meantime the girl’s
disappearance was becoming known, and caused, indoors and out, a thrill
of excitement. Another abduction, another disappearance! And at their
doors, on their thresholds, under their noses! Some heard the report
with indignation, and two in the house heard it with remorse; many with
pity. But in the breasts of most the feeling was not wholly painful.
The new mystery revived and doubled the old; and blew to a white heat
the embers of interest which were beginning to grow cold. In the teeth
of the nipping air—and sunset is often the coldest hour of the
twenty-four—groups gathered in the yard and before the house. And while
a man here and there winked at his neighbour and hinted that the young
madam had slunk back to the lover from whom she had been parted, the
common view was that mischief was afoot and something strong should be
done.
Meanwhile uncertainty—and in a small degree the absence of Captain
Clyne and Nadin—paralysed action. At five, Bishop sent out three or
four of his dependants; one to watch the boat-landing, one to keep an
eye on the entrance to Troutbeck village, and others to bid the
constables at Ambleside and Bowness be on the watch. But as long as the
young lady’s return seemed possible—and some still thought the whole a
storm in a tea-cup—men not unnaturally shrank from taking the lead. Nor
until the man who took all the blame to himself interposed, was any
real step taken.
It was nearly six when Bishop, talking with his friends in the passage,
found himself confronted by the chaplain. Mr. Sutton was in a state of
great and evident agitation. There were red spots on his cheek-bones,
his pinched features were bedewed with perspiration, his eyes were
bright. And he who usually shunned encounter with coarser wits, now
singled out the officer in the midst of his fellows.
“Are you going to do nothing,” he cried, “except drink?”
Bishop stared.
“See here, Mr. Sutton,” he said, slowly and with dignity, “you must not
forget——”
“Except drink?” the chaplain repeated, without compromise. And taking
Bishop’s glass, which stood half-filled on the window-seat beside him,
he flung its contents through the doorway. “Do your duty, sir!” he
continued firmly. “Do your duty! You were here to see that the lady did
not leave the house alone. And you permitted her to go.”
“And what part,” Bishop answered, with a sneer, “did your reverence
play, if you please?” He was a sober man for those times, and the taunt
was not a fair one.
“A poor part,” the chaplain answered. “A mean one! But now—I ask only
to act. Say what I shall do, and if it be only by my example I may
effect something.”
“Ay, you may!” Bishop returned. “And I’ll find your reverence work fast
enough. Do you go and tell Captain Clyne the lady’s gone. It’s a task
I’ve no stomach for myself,” with a grin; “and your reverence is the
very man for it.”
Mr. Sutton winced.
“I will do even that,” he said, “if you will no longer lose time.”
“But she may return any minute.”
“She will not!” Mr. Sutton retorted, with anger. “She will not! God
forgive us for letting her go! If I failed in my duty, sir, do you do
yours! Do you do yours!”
And such power does enthusiasm give a man, that he who these many days
had seemed to the inn a poor, timid creature, slinking in and out as
privately as possible, now shamed all and kindled all.
“By jingo, I will, your reverence!” Bishop cried, catching the flame.
“I will!” he repeated heartily. And he turned about and began to give
orders with energy.
Fortunately Nadin arrived at that moment; and with his burly form and
broad Lancashire accent, he seemed to bring with him the vigour of ten.
In three minutes he apprehended the facts, pooh-poohed the notion that
the girl would return, and with a good round oath “dommed them
Jacobins,” to give his accent for once, “for the graidliest roogs and
the roofest devils i’ all Lancashire—and that’s saying mooch! But we
mun ha’ them hanged now,” he continued, striding to and fro in his
long, rough horseman’s coat. “We mun ha’ them hanged! We’ll larn them!”
[Illustration: ] In ten minutes the road twinkled with lights ...
He formed parties and assigned roads and brought all into order. The
first necessity was to visit every house within a mile of the inn on
the Windermere side; and this was taken in hand at once. In ten minutes
the road twinkled with lights, and the frosty ground rang under the
tread of ironshod boots. It was ascertained that no boat had crossed
the lake that afternoon; and this so far narrowed the area to be
searched, that the men were in a high state of excitement, and those
who carried firearms looked closely to their priming.
“’Tis a pity it’s neet!” said Nadin. “But we mun ha’ them, we mun ha’
them, afoor long!”
Meanwhile, Mr. Sutton had braced himself to the task which he had
undertaken. Challenged by Bishop, he had been anxious to go at once to
Clyne’s room and tell him; that the Captain might go with the searchers
if he pleased. But he had not mounted three steps before Mrs. Gilson
was at his heels, bidding him, in her most peremptory manner, to “let
his honour be for another hour. What can he do?” she urged. “He’s but
one more, and now the lads are roused, they’ll do all he can do! Let
him be, let him be, man,” she continued. “Or if you must, watch him
till he wakes, and then tell him.”
“It will be worse then,” the chaplain said.
“But he’ll be better!” she retorted. “Do you be bidden by me. The man
wasn’t fit to carry his meat to his mouth when he went upstairs. But
let him be until he has had his sleep out and he’ll be another man.”
And Mr. Sutton let himself be bidden. But he was right. Every minute
which passed made the task before him more difficult. When at last
Captain Clyne awoke, a few minutes after eight o’clock, and startled,
brought his scattered senses to a focus, he saw sitting opposite him a
man who hid his face in his hands, and shivered.
Clyne rose.
“Man, man!” he said. “What is it? Have you bad news?”
But the chaplain could not speak. He could only shake his head.
“They have not—not found——”
Clyne could not finish the sentence. He turned away, and with a
trembling hand snuffed a candle—that his face might be hidden.
The chaplain shook his head.
“No, no!” he said. “No!”
“But it is—it’s bad news?”
“Yes. She’s—she’s gone! She’s disappeared!”
Clyne dropped the snuffers on the table.
“Gone?” he muttered. “Who? Miss Damer?”
“Yes. She left the house this afternoon, and has not returned. It was
my fault! My fault!” poor Mr. Sutton continued, in a tone of the
deepest abasement. And with his face hidden he bowed himself to and fro
like a man in pain. “They asked me to follow her, and I would not! I
would not—out of pride!”
“And she has not returned?” Clyne asked, in an odd tone.
“She has not returned—God forgive me!”
Clyne stared at the flame of the nearest candle. But he saw, not the
flame, but Henrietta; as he had seen her the morning he turned his back
on her, and left her standing alone on the road above the lake. Her
slender figure under the falling autumn leaves rose before him; and he
knew that he would never forgive himself. By some twist of the mind her
fate seemed the direct outcome of that moment, of that desertion, of
that cruel, that heartless abandonment. The after-events, save so far
as they proved her more sinned against than sinning, vanished. He had
been her sole dependence, her one protector, the only being to whom she
could turn. And he had abandoned her heartlessly; and this—this unknown
and dreadful fate—was the result. Her face rose before him, now smiling
and defiant, now pale and drawn; and the piled-up glory of her hair.
And he remembered—too late, alas, too late—that she had been of his
blood and his kin; and that he had first neglected her, and later when
his mistake bred its natural result in her act of folly, he had
deserted and punished her.
Remorse is the very shirt of Nessus. It is of all mental pains the
worst. It seizes upon the whole mind; it shuts out every prospect. It
cries into the ear with every slow tick of the clock, the truth that
that which had once been so easy can never be done now! That
reparation, that kind word, that act of care, of thoughtfulness, of
pardon—never, never now! And once so easy! So easy!
For he knew now that he had loved the girl; and that he had thrown away
that which might have been the happiness of his life. He knew now that
only pride had blinded him, giving the name of pity to that which was
love—or so near to love that it was impossible to say where one ended
and the other began. He thought of her courage and her pride; and then
of the womanliness that, responding to the first touch of gentleness on
his side, had wept for his child. And how he had wronged her from the
first days of slighting courtship! how he had misunderstood her, and
then mistrusted and maligned her—he, the only one to whom she could
turn for help, or whom she could trust in a land of strangers—until it
had come to this! It had come to this.
Oh, his poor girl! His poor girl!
A groan, bitter and irrepressible, broke from him. The man stood
stripped of the trappings of prejudice; he saw himself as he was, and
the girl as she was, a creature of youth and spirit and impulse. And he
was ashamed to the depths of his soul.
At last, “What time did she go out?” he muttered.
The chaplain roused himself with a shiver and told him.
“Then she has been missing five hours?” There was a sudden hardening in
his tone. “You have done something, I suppose? Tell me, man, that you
have done something!”
The chaplain told him what was being done. And the mere statement gave
comfort. Hearing that Mrs. Gilson had been the last to speak to her,
Clyne said he would see the landlady. And the two went out of the room.
In the passage a figure rose before them and fled with a kind of
bleating cry. It was Modest Ann, who had been sitting in the dark with
her apron over her head. She was gone before they were sure who it was.
And they thought nothing of the incident, if they noticed it.
Downstairs they found no news and no comfort; but much coming and
going. For presently the first party returned from its quest, and
finding that nothing had been discovered, set forth again in a new
direction. And by-and-by another returned, and standing ate something,
and went out again, reinforced by Clyne himself. And so began a night
of which the memory endured in the inn for a generation. Few slept, and
those in chairs, ready to start up at the first alarm. The tap ran free
for all; and in the coffee-room the table was set and set again. The
Sunday’s joints—for the next day was Sunday—were cooked and cold, and
half-eaten before the morning broke; and before breakfast the larder of
the Salutation at Ambleside was laid under contribution. At intervals,
those who dozed were aware of Nadin’s tall, bulky presence as he
entered shaking the rime from his long horseman’s coat and calling for
brandy; or of Bishop, who went and came all night, but in a frame of
mind so humble and downcast that men scarcely knew him. And now and
again a fresh band of searchers tramped in one behind the other, passed
the news by a single shake of the head, and crowding to the table ate
and drank before they turned to again—to visit a more distant, and yet
a more distant part.
Even from the mind of the father, the boy’s loss seemed partly effaced
by this later calamity. The mystery was so much the deeper: the riddle
the more perplexing. The girl had gone out on foot in the full light of
a clear afternoon; and within a few hundred yards of the place to which
they had traced the boy, she had vanished as if she had never been.
Clyne knew from her own lips that Walterson was somewhere within reach.
But this did not help much, since no one could hit on the place. And
various were the suggestions, and many and strange the solutions
proposed. Every poacher and every ne’er-do-well was visited and
examined, every house was canvassed, every man who had ever said aught
that could be held to savour of radical doctrine, was considered. As
the search spread to a wider and yet wider area, the alarm went with
it, and new helpers arrived, men on horseback and men on foot. And all
through the long winter’s night the house hummed; and the lights of the
inn shone on the water as brightly and persistently as the stars that
in the solemn firmament wheeled and marched.
But lamps and stars were alike extinguished, and the late dawn was
filtering through the casements on jaded faces and pale looks, when the
first gleam of encouragement showed itself. Clyne had been out for some
hours, and on his return had paused at the door of the snuggery to
swallow the cup of hot coffee, which the landlady pressed upon him.
Nadin was still out, but Bishop was there and the chaplain, and two or
three yeomen and peasants. In all hearts hope had by this time given
way to dejection; and dejection was fast yielding to despair. The party
stood, here and there, for the most part silent, or dropped now and
again a despondent word.
Suddenly Modest Ann appeared among them, with her head shrouded in her
apron. And, “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” the woman cried
hysterically. “I must speak!”
A thrill of amazement ran through the group. They straightened
themselves.
“If you know anything, speak by all means!” Clyne said, for surprise
tied Mrs. Gilson’s tongue. “Do you know where the lady is?”
“No! no!”
“Did she tell you anything?”
“Nothing! nothing!” the woman answered, sobbing wildly, and still
holding the apron drawn tightly over her face. “Missus, don’t kill me!
She told me naught! Naught! But——”
“Well—what? What?”
“There was a letter I gave her some time ago—before—oh, dear!—before
the rumpus was, and she was sent to Kendall! And I’m thinking,” sob,
sob, “you’d maybe know something from the person who gave it me.”
“That’s it,” said Bishop coolly. “You’re a sensible woman. Who was it?”
“That girl—of Hinkson’s,” she sobbed.
“Bess Hinkson!” Mrs. Gilson ejaculated.
“Ay, sure! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Bess said that she had it from a man on
the road.”
“And that may be so, or it may not,” Bishop answered, with quiet
dryness. He was in his element again. And then in a lower tone, “We’re
on it now,” he muttered, “or I am mistaken. I’ve seen the young lady
near Hinkson’s once or twice. And it was near there I lost her. The
house has been visited, of course; it was one of the first visited. But
we’d no suspicion then, and now we have. Which makes a difference.”
“You’re going there?”
“Straight, sir, without the loss of a minute!”
Clyne’s eyes sparkled. And tired as they were, the men answered to the
call. Ten minutes before, they had crawled in, the picture of fatigue.
Now, as they crossed the pastures above the inn, and plunged into the
little wood in which Henrietta had baffled Bishop, they clutched their
cudgels with as much energy as if the chase were but opening. It
mattered not that some wore the high-collared coats of the day, and two
waistcoats under them, and had watches in their fobs; and that others
tramped in smock frocks drawn over their fustian shorts. The same
indignation armed all, great and small, rich and poor; and in a
wonderfully short space of time they were at the gate of Starvecrow
Farm.
The house that, viewed at its best, had a bald and melancholy aspect,
wore a villainous look now—perched up there in bare, lowering ugliness,
with its blind gable squinting through the ragged fir-trees.
Bishop left a man in the road, and sent two to the rear of the crazy,
ruinous outbuildings which clung to the slope. With Clyne and the other
three he passed round the corner of the house, stepped to the door and
knocked. The sun’s first rays were striking the higher hills, westward
of the lake, as the party, with stern faces, awaited the answer. But
the lake, with its holms, and the valley and all the lower spurs, lay
grey and still and dreary in the grip of cold. The note of melancholy
went to the heart of one as he looked, and filled it with remorse.
“Too late,” it seemed to say, “too late!”
For a time no one came. And Bishop knocked again, and more imperiously;
first sending a man to the lower end of the ragged garden to be on the
look-out. He knocked a third time. At last a shuffling of feet was
heard approaching the door, and a moment later old Hinkson opened it.
He looked, as he stood blinking in the daylight, more frowsy and
unkempt and to be avoided than usual. But—they noted with
disappointment that the door was neither locked nor bolted; so that had
they thought of it they might have entered at will!
“What is’t?” he drawled, peering at them. “Why did you na’ come in?”
Bishop pushed in without a word. The others followed. A glance sufficed
to discover all that the kitchen contained; and Bishop, deaf to the old
man’s remonstrances, led the way straight up the dark, close staircase.
But though they explored without ceremony all the rooms above, and
knocked, and called, and sounded, and listened, they stumbled down
again, baffled.
“Where’s your daughter?” Bishop asked sternly.
“She was here ten minutes agone,” the old man answered. Perhaps because
the day was young he showed rather more sense than usual. But his eyes
were full of spite.
“Here, was she?”
“Ay.”
“And where’s she now?”
“She’s gone to t’ doctor’s. She be nursing there. They’ve no lass.”
“Nursing! Who’s she nursing?” incredulously.
The old man grinned at the ignorance of the question.
“The wumman and the babby,” he said.
“At Tyson’s?”
“Ay, ay.”
“The house in the hollow?”
“That be it.”
While they were talking thus, others had searched the crazy outhouses,
but to no better purpose. And presently they all assembled in the road
outside the gate.
“Where’s your dog, old lad?” asked one of the dalesmen.
The miser had shuffled after them, holding out his hand and begging of
them.
“At the doctor’s,” he answered. “Her be fearsome and begged it. Ye’ll
give an old man something?” he added, whining. “Ye’ll give something?”
“Off! Off you go, my lad!” Bishop cried. “We’ve done with you. If
you’re not a rascal ’tis hard on you, for you look one!” And when the
old skinflint had crawled back under the fir-trees, “Worst is, sir,” he
continued, with a grave face, “it’s all true. Tyson’s away in the
north—with a brother or something of that kind—so I hear. And his
missus had a baby this ten days gone or more. He’s a rough tyke, but
he’s above this sort of thing, I take it. Still, we’ll go and question
the girl. We may get something from her.”
And they trooped off along the road in twos and threes, and turning the
corner saw Tyson’s house, below them—so far below them that it had, as
always, the look of a toy house on a toy meadow at the bottom of a
green bowl. Below the house the little rivulet that rose beside it
bisected the meadow, until at the end of the open it lost itself in the
narrow wooded gorge, through which it sprang in unseen waterfalls to
join the lake below.
They descended the slope to the house; sharp-eyed but saying little. A
trifle to one side of the door, under a window, a dog was kenneled. It
leapt out barking; but seeing so many persons it slunk in again and lay
growling.. A moment and the door was opened and Bess showed herself.
She looked astonished, but not in any way frightened.
“Eh, masters!” she said. “What is it? Are you come after the young lady
again?”
“Ay,” Bishop answered. “We are. We want to know where you got the
letter you gave Ann at the inn—to give to her?”
Perhaps Bess looked for the question and was prepared. At any rate, she
betrayed no sign of confusion.
“Well,” she said, “I can tell you what he was like that gave it me.”
“A man gave it you?”
“Ay, and a shilling. And,” smiling broadly, “he’d have given me
something else if I’d let him.”
“A kiss, I bet!” said Bishop.
“Ay, it was. But I said that’d be another shilling.”
Clyne groaned.
“For God’s sake,” he said, “come to the point. Time’s everything.”
Bishop shrugged his shoulders.
“Where did you see him, my girl?” he asked.
“By the gate of the coppice as I was bringing the milk,” she answered
frankly. “‘I’m her Joe,’ he said. ‘And if you’ll hand her this and keep
mum, here’s a shilling for you.’ And——”
“Very good,” said Bishop. “And what was he like?”
With much cunning she described Walterson, and Bishop acknowledged the
likeness. “It’s our man!” he said, slapping his boot with his loaded
whip. “And now, my dear, which way did he go?”
But she explained that she had met him by the gate—he was a
stranger—and she had left him in the same place.
“And you can’t say which way he went?”
“No,” she answered. “Nor yet which way he came. I looked back to see,
to tell the truth,” frankly. “But he had not moved, and he did not move
until I was out of sight. And I never saw him again. The boy had not
been stolen then,” she continued, “and I thought little of it.”
“You should have told,” Bishop answered, eyeing her severely. “Another
time, my lass, you’ll get into trouble.” And then suddenly, “Here, can
we come in?”
She threw the door wide with a movement that disarmed suspicion.
“To be sure,” she said. “And welcome, so as you don’t make a noise to
waken the mistress.”
But when they stood in the kitchen it wore an aspect so neat and
orderly that they were ashamed of their suspicions. The fire burned
cheerfully on the wide hearth, and a wooden tray set roughly, but
cleanly, stood on the corner of the long, polished table. The door of
the shady dairy stood open, and afforded a glimpse of the great leaden
milk-pans, and the row of shining pails.
“The mistress is just overhead,” she said. “So you’ll not make much
noise, if you please.”
“We’ll make none,” said Bishop. “We’ve learned what we want.” And he
turned to go out.
All had not entered. Those who had, nodded, turned with gloomy faces,
and followed him out. The dog, lurking at the back of its kennel, was
still growling.
“I’d be afeared to sleep here without him,” Bess volunteered.
“Ay, ay.”
“He’s better ’n two men.”
“Ay?”
They looked at the dog, and some one bade her good-day. And one by one
the little troop turned and trailed despondently from the house, Clyne
with his chin sunk on his breast, Bishop in a brown study, the other
men staring blankly before them. Half-way up the ascent to the road
Clyne stopped and looked back. His face was troubled.
“I thought——” he began. And then he stopped and listened, frowning.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He looked up. “You didn’t hear anything?”
Bishop and the men said that they had not heard anything. They
listened. They all listened. And all said that they heard nothing.
“It was fancy, I suppose,” Clyne muttered, passing his hand over his
eyes. And he shook his head as if to shake off some painful impression.
But before he reached the road he paused once again and listened. And
his face was haggard and lined with trouble.
It occurred to no one that Bess had been too civil. To no one. For
shrewd Mrs. Gilson was not with them.