When the March morning shone clear and white through the still-falling
snow, and the Morins began to bustle about their work for the day, the
mental atmosphere in the kitchen seemed to have lost something of the
excited alarm that had prevailed in the night. Courthope arose; the
garments which he had donned in the night with frantic speed clothed but
did not adorn him; he knew that he must present a wild appearance, and
the domestic clothes-line, bound round and round his arms, prevented him
from so much as pushing back the locks of hair which straggled upon his
brow. He was rendered on the whole helpless; however murderous might be
his heart, a tolerably safe companion. He interested himself by
considering how Samson-like he could be in breaking the cords, or, even
tied, how vigorously he could kick Morin, if he were not a girl's
prisoner. He reflected with no small admiration upon the quick resource
and decision that she had displayed; how, in spite of her almost
child-like frankness, she had beguiled him into turning his back to the
noose when a supposed necessity pressed her. He meditated for a few
minutes upon other girls for whom he had experienced a more or less
particular admiration, and it seemed to him that the characters of these
damsels became wan and insipid by comparison. He began to have a
presentiment that Love was now about to strike in earnest upon the harp
of his life, but he could not think that the circumstances of this
present attraction were propitious. What could he say to this girl, so
adorably strong-minded, to convince her of his claim to be again treated
as a man and a brother? Letters? He had offered them to her last night,
and she had replied that any one could write letters. Should he show
that he was not penniless? She might tell him in the same tone that it
was wealth ill-gotten. It was no doubt her very ignorance of the world
that, when suspicion had once occurred, made her reject as unimportant
these evidences of his respectability, but he had no power to give her
the eyes of experience.
These thoughts tormented him as he stood looking out of the window at
the ever-increasing volume of the snow. How long would he be detained a
prisoner in this house, and, when the roads were free, how could he find
for Madge any absolute proof of his innocence? The track of the midnight
thief was lost for ever in the snow; if he had succeeded in escaping as
mysteriously as he had come--but here Courthope's mind refused again to
enter upon the problem of the fiend-like enemy and the impassable
snowfields, which in the hours of darkness he had already given up,
perceiving the futility of his speculation until further facts were
known.
Courthope strolled through the rooms, the doors of which were now open.
Morin permitted this scant liberty chiefly, the prisoner thought,
because of a wholesome fear of being kicked. In the library at the back
of the drawing-room he found amusement in reading the titles of the
books down one long shelf and up another. Every book to which Madge had
had access had an interest for him. Three cases were filled with books
of law and history; there was but one from which the books had of late
been frequently taken. It was filled with romance and poetry, nothing so
late as the middle of the present century, nothing that had not some
claim upon educated readers, and yet it was a motley collection. Upon
the front rim of the upper shelf some one, perhaps the dead father in
his invalid days, had carved a motto with a knife, the motto that is
also that of the British arms. It might have been done out of mere
patriotism; it might have had reference to this legacy of books left to
the child-maidens, for whom, it seemed, other companionship had not been
provided.
At length Courthope realised that there was one book which he greatly
desired to take from the shelf. The Morin daughter was dusting in the
room, and, with some blandishments, he succeeded in persuading her to
lay it open upon the table where he could peruse it. To his great
amusement he observed that she was very careful not to come within a
yard or two of him, darting back when he approached, evidently thinking
that the opening of the book might be a ruse to attack her by a sudden
spring. At first the curious consciousness produced by this damsel's
awkward gambols of fear so absorbed him that he could not fix his
attention upon the book; flashes of amusement and of grave annoyance
chased themselves through his mind like sunshine and shadow over
mountains on a showery day; he knew not which was the more rational
mood. Then, attempting the book again, and turning each leaf with a good
deal of contortion and effort, he became absorbed. It was the _Letters
of a Portuguese Nun_, and in the astonishment of its perusal he forgot
the misfortune that had befallen the household, and his own discomfort
and ignominy. The Morin girl had left him in the room, shutting the
door.
An hour passed--it might have been about nine of the clock--when
Courthope began to be roused from his absorption in the book by a sound
in the next room. It was a low uncertain sound, but evidently that of
sobbing and tears. He stopped, listened; his heart was wrung with pity.
It was not the sharp little Eliz who cried like that! He knew such sobs
did not come from the stormy and uncontrolled bosoms of the French
servants. He was convinced that it was Madge who was weeping, that she
was in the long drawing-room, where the portrait of the judge hung near
the door.
He went nearer the door. His excited desire to offer her some sympathy,
to comfort, or if possible to help, became intolerable. So conscious was
he of a common interest between them that not for a moment did the sense
of prying enter his mind.
He heard then a few words whispered as if to the portrait: 'Father, oh,
father, we were so happy with him! It is almost the only time that we
have been quite happy since you went away.'
The sense of the broken whispers came tardily to Courthope's
understanding through the smothering door. The handle of the door was on
a level with the hands that were bound to his sides; he turned himself
in order to bring his fingers near it.
Before he touched it he heard Madge sob and whisper again: 'I was so
happy, father; I thought it was such fun he had come. I like gentlemen,
and we never, never see any except the ones that come out of books.'
To Courthope it suddenly seemed that the whole universe must have been
occupied with purpose to bring him here in order to put an end to her
gloom and flood her life with sunshine; the universe could not be foiled
in its attempt. Young love argues from effect to cause, and so limitless
seemed the strength of his sentiment that the simplicity of her mind and
the susceptibility of her girlhood were to him like some epic poem which
arouses men to passion and strong deeds. Ignominiously bound as he was,
his heart lightened; all doubt of his mission to love her and its
ultimate success passed from him. He turned the handle and pushed the
door half open.
The long drawing-room was almost dark; the shutters had not been opened;
the furniture remained as it had stood when the brilliant assembly of
the previous evening had broken up; the large fireplace was full of
ashes; the atmosphere was deadly cold. Courthope stood in the streak of
light which entered with him. Upon the floor, crouching, her cheek
leaning against the lower part of her father's picture, was Madge King.
She was dressed in a blanket coat; moccasins were upon her feet; a fur
cap lay upon the ground beside her. At the instant of his entrance she
lifted her bare head, and across the face flushed with tears and prayers
there flashed the look of haughty intolerance of his presence. She had
thought that he was locked up in one of the kitchens; she told him so,
intensely offended that he should see her tears. It was for that reason
that she did not rise or come to the light, only commanding and
imploring him to be gone.
'I am quite helpless, even if I wanted to harm you.' He spoke
reproachfully, knowing instinctively that if she pitied him she would
accept his pity.
'You have harmed us enough already,' she sighed; 'all the rest of our
silver, all my dear father's silver is gone. We found that out this
morning, for what we had used for the feast had been put in a basket
until we could store it away; it is all taken.'
He was shocked and enraged to hear of this further loss. He did not
attempt to reason with her; he had ceased to reason with himself.
'You trusted me when you let me in last night,' he said. 'Don't you
think that you would have had some perception of it last night if I had
been entirely unworthy? Think what an utter and abominable villain I
must be to have accepted your hospitality--to have been so very happy
with you----' So he went on appealing to her heart from the sentiments
that arose in his own.
Madge listened only for a reasonable period; she rose to her feet. 'I
must go,' she said.
He found that she proposed to walk on snow-shoes three miles to the
nearest house, which belonged to a couple of parish priests, where she
would be certain of obtaining a messenger to carry the news of the
robbery to the telegraph station. She could not be brought even to
discuss the advisability of her journey; Morin could not be sent, for
the servants and Eliz would go mad with terror if left alone.
To Courthope's imagination her journey seemed to be an abandonment of
herself to the utmost danger. If between the two houses she failed to
make progress over high drifts and against a heavy gale, what was to
hinder her from perishing? Then, too, there was that villain, who had
seemed to stalk forth from the isolated house afar into the howling
night as easily as the Frankenstein demon, and might even now be
skulking near--a dangerous devil--able to run where others must trudge
toilsomely.
Madge, it seemed, had only come to that room to make her confession and
invoke protection at the shrine of the lost father; she was ready to set
forth without further delay. She would not, in spite of his most
eloquent pleading, set Courthope at liberty to make of him either
messenger or companion.
'The evidence,' she said sadly, 'is all against you. I am very sorry.'
A wilder unrest and vexation at his position returned upon his heart
because of the lightening that had come with the impulse of love. That
impulse still remained, an under-current of calm, a knowledge that his
will and the power of the world were at one, such as men only feel when
they yield themselves to some sudden conversion; but above this
new-found faith the cross-currents of strife now broke forth again. Thus
he raged--
'What was the use of my coming here? Why should the Fates have sent me
here if I cannot go this errand for you, or if I cannot go with you to
protect you? If this beast is walking about on snow-shoes, how do you
know that he will not attack you as soon as you are out of sight of the
house?'
She seemed to realise that it was strange to be discussing her own
safety with her prisoner. Very curious was the conflict in her face; her
strong natural companionableness, her suspicion of him, and her sense of
the dignity which her situation demanded, contending together. It seemed
easier for her to disregard his words than to give all the answers which
her varying feelings would prompt. She was tying on a mink cap by
winding a woollen scarf about her head.
'Miss Madge! Miss King! It is perfectly intolerable! It--it is
intolerable!' He stepped nearer as he spoke. A thought came over him
that even the conventional title of 'Miss' which he had given her was
wholly inappropriate in a situation so strong--that he and she, merely
as man and woman, as rational beings, were met together in a wilderness
where conventions were folly. 'I cannot allow you to risk your life in
this way.' There was a tense emphasis in his words; he felt the natural
authority of the protector over the tender thing to be protected, the
intimate authority which stress of circumstance may give.
She dropped her hands from tying the scarf under her chin, returning for
his words a look of mingled curiosity, indecision, and distrust.
Quick as she looked upon him, his mind's eye looked upon himself; there
he stood in grotesque undress, bound around with the cords of an
extraordinary disgrace. He blamed himself at the moment for not having
had his hair cut more recently, for he knew that it stood in a wild
shock above his head, and he felt that it dangled in his eyes. Then a
gust of emotion, the momentary desire for laughter or groans of
vexation, rose and choked his utterance, and in the minute that he was
mute the girl, sitting down upon a low stool, began tightening the
strings of her moccasins, which, after the first putting on, had relaxed
with the warmth of the feet. Her business-like preparations for the road
maddened him.
'Don't you see,' he said, 'what disgrace you are heaping upon me? What
right have you to deny to me, a gentleman and your guest, the right to
serve and protect you? Consider to what wretchedness you consign me if I
am left here to think of you fighting alone with this dangerous storm,
or attacked by blackguards who we know may not be far away!'
She said in a quiet, practical, girlish way, 'It was I who was
responsible for letting you in last night, and then this happened--this
most unheard-of thing. We never heard of any but a petty theft ever
committed in this whole region before. Now I am bound to keep you here
until we can hear where father's silver is.'
'You don't believe that I have done it! I am sure you do not' (he
believed what he said). 'Why haven't you the courage to act upon your
conviction? You will never regret it.'
'Eliz says that she saw you quite distinctly.'
'Eliz is a little fool,' were the words that arose within him, but what
he said was, 'Your sister is excitable and nervous; she saw the thief
undoubtedly, and by some miserable freak of fortune he may have
resembled me.'
'Does that seem at all likely?'
'Well, then, there was no resemblance, and she fancied it.'
She stood up, looking harassed, but without relenting. 'I must go--there
is nothing else to be done. Do you think I would stay here when a day
might make all the difference in recovering the things which belonged to
my father? Do you think that I am going to lose the things that belonged
to him just because I am too much of a coward to go out and give the
alarm?'
She walked away from him resolutely, but the thought of the lost
treasures and all the dear memories that in her mind were identified
with them seemed to overcome her. She drew her hand hastily across her
eyes, and then, to his dismay, the sorrow for her loss emphasised her
wavering belief in his guilt; for the first time he realised how strong
that sorrow was. Impelled by emotion she turned again and came
shrinkingly back into his presence.
'I have not reproached you,' she said, 'because I thought it would be
mean in case you had not done it; but it seems that you must have done
it. Won't you tell me where the other man has taken our things? They
cannot be of any value to you compared with their value to us; and, oh,
indeed I would much rather give you as much money as you could possibly
make out of them, and more too, if you would only tell me which way this
man has gone, and send word to him that he must give them back! I will
pledge you my word of honour that----'
For the first time he was offended with her. He stepped back with a
gesture of pride, which in a moment he saw she had construed into
unwillingness to give the booty up.
'I could promise to give you the money; I could promise that you should
not be tracked and arrested. I have enough in the savings-bank of my own
that I could get out without our lawyer or mamma knowing, and you don't
know how dear, how very dear, everything that belonged to father is to
Eliz and me. If you wait here tied until my stepmother comes she will
not give any money to get the things back; she would not care if you
kept them, so long as she could punish you.'
Every word of her gentle pleading made the insult deeper and more gross,
and the fact that she was who she was only made the hurt to his pride
the sorer. He would not answer; he would not explain; he would let her
think what she liked; it is the way of the injured heart.
Angry, and confirmed in her suspicion, she too turned proudly away. He
saw her, as she crossed the hall, take up a pair of snow-shoes that she
had left leaning against the wall, and without further farewell to any
one turn toward the front door.
He knew then what he must do. Without inward debate, without even
weighing what his act's ultimate consequences might be, he followed her.
'I will do what you ask. I give you my word of honour--and there is
honour, you know, even among thieves--that I will do all in my power to
bring back everything that has been stolen. Give me snow-shoes. Keep my
horse and my watch and my luggage as surety that I mean what I say. I
cannot promise that I can get back the silver from the other man, but I
will do far more than you can do. I will do more than any one else could
do. If it is within my power I will bring it back to you.'
She considered for a little time whether she would trust him or not. It
seemed, curiously enough, that from first to last she had never
distrusted her first instinct with regard to his character, but that her
child-like belief that in the unknown world all things were possible,
allowed her to believe also in his criminality. Now that he had, as she
thought, made his confession and promised restitution, it was perhaps
the natural product of her conflicting thoughts and feelings that she
should trust to his oft-repeated vows, and make the paction with him.
She did not consult the Morins; perhaps she knew that she would only
provoke their opposition, or perhaps she knew that they would only be
too glad to get rid of the man they feared, caring for nothing but the
actual safety of the lives in the household. She brought him his coat
and cap and also a man's moccasins and snow-shoes. With a courage that,
because somewhat shy and trembling, evoked all the more his admiration,
she untied the first knot of his rope, unwound the coil, and then untied
the last knot. The process was slow because of the trembling of her
fingers, which he felt but could not see. She stood resolute, making him
dress for the storm upon the threshold of the door. He did not know how
to strap on the snow-shoes. She watched his first attempt with great
curiosity; looking up, he was made the more determined to succeed with
them by seeing the pain of incredulity returning to her eyes.
'How do you expect me to know how to manage things that I have never
handled in my life before?'
'But if you don't know how to put them on how can you walk in them?'
'I have seen men walk in them, and there are a great many things we can
do when something depends upon it.'
She directed him how to cross and tie the straps; she continued to watch
him, increasing anxiety betraying itself in her face.
The snow was so light that even the snow-shoes sank some four or five
inches. It was just below the porch that he had tied his straps, and
when he first moved forward he trod with one shoe on the top of the
other. He had not expected this; he felt that no further progress was
within the bounds of possibility. For some half minute he stood, his
back to the door, his face turned to the illimitable region of drifts
and feathery air, unable to conceive how to go forward and without a
thought of turning back. When his pulses were surging and tingling with
the discomfort of her gaze, he heard the door shut sharply. Perhaps she
thought that he was shamming and was determined not to yield again;
perhaps--and this seemed even worse--she had been overcome in the midst
of her stern responsibility by the powers of laughter; perhaps, horrid
thought, she had gone for Morin to bid him again throw the noose over
his treacherous shoulders. The last thought pricked him into motion. By
means of his reason he discovered that if he was to make progress at all
the rackets must not overlap one another as he trod; his next effort was
naturally to walk with his feet so wide apart that the rackets at their
broadest could not interfere. The result was that in a few moments he
became like a miniature Colossus of Rhodes, fixed again so that he could
not move, his feet upon platforms at either side of a harbour of snow.
He heard the door open now again sharply, and he felt certain, yes,
certain, that the lasso was on its way through the air; this time he was
not going to submit. As men do unthinkingly what they could in no way do
by thought, he found himself facing the door, his snow-shoes truly
inextricably mixed with one another, but still he had turned round.
There was no rope, no Morin; Madge was standing alone upon the outer
step of the porch, her face aflame with indignation.
'This is either perfect folly or you have deceived me,' she cried.
'I shall learn how to use them in a minute,' he said humbly. He was
conscious as he spoke that his twisted legs made but an unsteady
pedestal, that the least push would have sent him headlong into the
drift.
'How could you say that you would go?' she asked fiercely.
He looked down at his feet as schoolboys do when chidden, but for
another reason. The question as to whether or not he could get his
snow-shoes headed again in the right direction weighed like lead upon
his heart.
'I thought that I could walk upon these things,' he said, and he added,
with such determination as honour flying from shame only knows, 'and I
will walk on them and do your errand.'
With that, by carefully untwisting his legs, he faced again in the right
direction, but, having lifted his right foot too high in the untwisting
process, he found that the slender tail of its snow-shoe stuck down in
the snow, setting the shoe pointing skyward and his toe, tied by the
thongs, held prisoner about a foot above the snow. He tried to kick, but
the shoe became more firmly embedded. He lost his balance, and only by a
wild fling of his body, in which his arms went up into the air, did he
regain his upright position. The moment of calm which succeeded produced
from him another remark.
'It seems to me that you have got me now in closer bonds than before.'
As he spoke he turned his glance backward and saw that comment of his
was needless.
The girl had at last yielded to laughter. Worn out, no doubt, by a
long-controlled excitement, laughter had now entirely overcome her.
Leaning her head on her hand and her shoulders against a pillar of the
porch, she was shaking visibly from head to foot, and the effort she
made to keep the sound of her amusement within check only seemed to make
its hold upon her more absolute.
'I don't wonder you laugh,' he said, feebly beginning to laugh himself a
little.
But she did not make the slightest reply. Her face was crimson; the
ripples of her laughter went over her form as ripples of wind over a
young tree.
He was forced to leave her thus. By a miracle of determination, as it
seemed, he freed his right shoe and made slow and wary strides forward.
He saw that he had exaggerated the width of his snow-shoes, but his
progress now was still made upon the plan of keeping his feet wide
apart, although not too wide for motion. He knew that this was not the
right method; he knew that she peered at him between her fingers and was
more convulsed with laughter at his every step. He was thankful to think
that the falling flakes must soon begin to obscure his figure, but he
did not dare to try another plan of walking while she watched, lest she
should see him stop again.