SECURE as I tried to feel in my change of costume, my cropped hair, and
my whiskerless cheeks, I kept well away from the coach-window, when the
dinner at the inn was over and the passengers were called to take their
places again. Thus far--thanks to the strength of my grasp on his
neck, which had left him too weak to be an outside passenger--Screw had
certainly not seen me; and, if I played my cards properly, there was no
reason why he should see me before we got to our destination.
Throughout the rest of the journey I observed the strictest caution, and
fortune seconded my efforts. It was dark when we got to Shrewsbury. On
leaving the coach I was enabled, under cover of the night, to keep a
sharp watch on the proceedings of Screw and his Bow Street ally. They
did not put up at the hotel, but walked away to a public house. There,
my clerical character obliged me to leave them at the door.
I returned to the hotel, to make inquiries about conveyances.
The answers informed me that Crickgelly was a little fishing-village,
and that there was no coach direct to it, but that two coaches running
to two small Welsh towns situated at nearly equal distances from my
destination, on either side of it, would pass through Shrewsbury
the next morning. The waiter added, that I could book a
place--conditionally--by either of these vehicles; and that, as they
were always well-filled, I had better be quick in making my choice
between them. Matters had now arrived at such a pass, that nothing was
left for me but to trust to chance. If I waited till the morning to see
whether Screw and the Bow Street runner traveled in my direction, and to
find out, in case they did, which coach they took, I should be running
the risk of losing a place for myself, and so delaying my journey for
another day. This was not to be thought of. I told the waiter to book me
a place in which coach he pleased. The two were called respectively The
Humming Bee, and The Red Cross Knight. The waiter chose the latter.
Sleep was not much in my way that night. I rose almost as early as Boots
himself--breakfasted--then sat at the coffee-room window looking out
anxiously for the two coaches.
Nobody seemed to agree which would pass first. Each of the inn servants
of whom I inquired made it a matter of partisanship, and backed his
favorite coach with the most consummate assurance. At last, I heard the
guard’s horn and the clatter of the horses’ hoofs. Up drove a coach--I
looked out cautiously--it was the Humming Bee. Three outside places were
vacant; one behind the coachman; two on the dickey. The first was taken
immediately by a farmer, the second---to my unspeakable disgust and
terror--was secured by the inevitable Bow Street runner; who, as soon as
h e was up, helped the weakly Screw into the third place, by his side.
They were going to Crickgelly; not a doubt of it, now.
I grew mad with impatience for the arrival of the Red Cross Knight.
Half-an-hour passed--forty minutes--and then I heard another horn and
another clatter--and the Red Cross Knight rattled up to the hotel door
at full speed. What if there should be no vacant place for me! I ran
to the door with a sinking heart. Outside, the coach was declared to be
full.
“There is one inside place,” said the waiter, “if you don’t mind paying
the--”
Before he could say the rest, I was occupying that one inside place. I
remember nothing of the journey from the time we left the hotel door,
except that it was fearfully long. At some hour of the day with which I
was not acquainted (for my watch had stopped for want of winding up), I
was set down in a clean little street of a prim little town (the name of
which I never thought of asking), and was told that the coach never went
any further.
No post-chaise was to be had. With incredible difficulty I got first a
gig, then a man to drive it; and, last, a pony to draw it. We hobbled
away crazily from the inn door. I thought of Screw and the Bow Street
runner approaching Crickgelly, from their point of the compass, perhaps
at the full speed of a good post-chaise--I thought of that, and would
have given all the money in my pocket for two hours’ use of a fast
road-hack.
Judging by the time we occupied in making the journey, and a little also
by my own impatience, I should say that Crickgelly must have been at
least twenty miles distant from the town where I took the gig. The sun
was setting, when we first heard, through the evening stillness, the
sound of the surf on the seashore. The twilight was falling as we
entered the little fishing village, and let our unfortunate pony stop,
for the last time, at a small inn door.
The first question I asked of the landlord was, whether two gentlemen
(friends of mine, of course, whom I expected to meet) had driven into
Crickgelly, a little while before me. The reply was in the negative;
and the sense of relief it produced seemed to rest me at once, body and
mind, after my long and anxious journey. Either I had beaten the spies
on the road, or they were not bound to Crickgelly. Any way, I had first
possession of the field of action. I paid the man who had driven me, and
asked my way to Zion Place. My directions were simple--I had only to go
through the village, and I should find Zion Place at the other end of
it.
The village had a very strong smell, and a curious habit of building
boats in the street between intervals of detached cottages; a helpless,
muddy, fishy little place. I walked through it rapidly; turned inland
a few hundred yards; ascended some rising ground; and discerned, in the
dim twilight, four small lonesome villas standing in pairs, with a shed
and a saw-pit on one side, and a few shells of unfinished houses on
the other. Some madly speculative builder was evidently trying to turn
Crickgelly into a watering-place.
I made out Number Two, and discovered the bell-handle with difficulty,
it was growing so dark. A servant-maid--corporeally enormous; but, as I
soon found, in a totally undeveloped state, mentally--opened the door.
“Does Miss Giles live here?” I asked.
“Don’t see no visitors,” answered the large maiden. “‘T’other one tried
it and had to go away. You go, too.”
“‘T’othor one?” I repeated. “Another visitor? And when did he call?”
“Better than an hour ago.”
“Was there nobody with him?”
“No. Don’t see no visitors. He went. You go, too.”
Just as she repeated that exasperating formula of words, a door opened
at the end of the passage. My voice had evidently reached the ears of
somebody in the back parlor. Who the person was I could not see, but I
heard the rustle of a woman’s dress. My situation was growing desperate,
my suspicions were aroused--I determined to risk everything--and I
called softly in the direction of the open door, “Alicia!”
A voice answered, “Good heavens! Frank?” It was _her_ voice. She had
recognized mine. I pushed past the big servant; in two steps I was at
the end of the passage; in one more I was in the back parlor.
She was there, standing alone by the side of a table. Seeing my changed
costume and altered face, she turned deadly pale, and stretched her hand
behind her mechanically, as if to take hold of a chair. I caught her
in my arms; but I was afraid to kiss her--she trembled so when I only
touched her.
“Frank!” she said, drawing her head back. “What is it? How did you find
out? For mercy’s sake what does it mean?”
“It means, love, that I’ve come to take care of you for the rest of your
life and mine, if you will only let me. Don’t tremble--there’s nothing
to be afraid of! Only compose yourself, and I’ll tell you why I am here
in this strange disguise. Come, come, Alicia!--don’t look like that at
me. You called me Frank just now, for the first time. Would you have
done that, if you had disliked me or forgotten me?”
I saw her color beginning to come back--the old bright glow returning to
the dear dusky cheeks. If I had not seen them so near me, I might have
exercised some self-control--as it was, I lost my presence of mind
entirely, and kissed her.
She drew herself away half-frightened, half-confused--certainly not
offended, and, apparently, not very likely to faint--which was more than
I could have said of her when I first entered the room. Before she had
time to reflect on the peril and awkwardness of our position, I pressed
the first necessary questions on her rapidly, one after the other.
“Where is Mrs. Baggs?” I asked first.
Mrs. Baggs was the housekeeper.
Alicia pointed to the closed folding-doors. “In the front parlor; asleep
on the sofa.”
“Have you any suspicion who the stranger was who called more than an
hour ago?”
“None. The servant told him we saw no visitors, and he went away,
without leaving his name.”
“Have you heard from your father?”
She began to turn pale again, but controlled herself bravely, and
answered in a whisper:
“Mrs. Baggs had a short note from him this morning. It was not dated;
and it only said circumstances had happened which obliged him to leave
home suddenly, and that we were to wait here till be wrote again, most
likely in a few days.”
“Now, Alicia,” I said, as lightly as I could, “I have the highest
possible opinion of your courage, good-sense, and self-control; and I
shall expect you to keep up your reputation in my eyes, while you are
listening to what I have to tell you.”
Saying these words, I took her by the hand and made her sit close by me;
then, breaking it to her as gently and gradually as possible, I told her
all that had happened at the red-brick house since the evening when
she left the dinner-table, and we exchanged our parting look at the
dining-room door.
It was almost as great a trial to me to speak as it was to her to hear.
She suffered so violently, felt such evident misery of shame and terror,
while I was relating the strange events which had occurred in her
absence, that I once or twice stopped in alarm, and almost repented my
boldness in telling her the truth. However, fair-dealing with her, cruel
as it might seem at the time, was the best and safest course for the
future. How could I expect her to put all her trust in me if I began
by deceiving her--if I fell into prevarications and excuses at the very
outset of our renewal of intercourse? I went on desperately to the end,
taking a hopeful view of the most hopeless circumstances, and making my
narrative as mercifully short as possible.
When I had done, the poor girl, in the extremity of her forlornness
and distress, forgot all the little maidenly conventionalities and
young-lady-like restraints of everyday life--and, in a burst of natural
grief and honest confiding helplessness, hid her face on my bosom, and
cried there as if she were a child again, and I was the mother to whom
she had been used to look for comfort.
I made no attempt to stop her tears--they were the safest and best vent
for the violent agitation under which she was suffering. I said nothing;
words, at such a ti me as that, would only have aggravated her distress.
All the questions I had to ask; all the proposals I had to make, must,
I felt, be put off--no matter at what risk--until some later and calmer
hour. There we sat together, with one long unsnuffed candle lighting
us smokily; with the discordantly-grotesque sound of the housekeeper’s
snoring in the front room, mingling with the sobs of the weeping girl on
my bosom. No other noise, great or small, inside the house or out of it,
was audible. The summer night looked black and cloudy through the little
back window.
I was not much easier in my mind, now that the trial of breaking my bad
news to Alicia was over. That stranger who had called at the house an
hour before me, weighed on my spirits. It could not have been Doctor
Dulcifer. He would have gained admission. Could it be the Bow Street
runner, or Screw? I had lost sight of them, it is true; but had they
lost sight of me?
Alicia’s grief gradually exhausted itself. She feebly raised her head,
and, turning it away from me, hid her face. I saw that she was not fit
for talking yet, and begged her to go upstairs to the drawing-room and
lie down a little. She looked apprehensively toward the folding-doors
that shut us off from the front parlor.
“Leave Mrs. Baggs to me,” I said. “I want to have a few words with her;
and, as soon as you are gone, I’ll make noise enough here to wake her.”
Alicia looked at me inquiringly and amazedly. I did not speak again.
Time was now of terrible importance to us--I gently led her to the door.