THE AFTERNOON OF THE 23RD OF AUGUST.
I led her into the little parlour which gives on to the terraces at
the south end of the house. The wall upon one side was broken by a
great open fireplace faced with bricks, and all too big for the room,
into which a man could walk and wherein he could sit too, were he so
disposed, upon a chilly night, and smoke his pipe with a crony over
against him; for there were cushioned seats on either side of the
hearth and a curtain hung to keep your head from the bricks.
The room seemed very silent as we entered it, and the silence
deepened. She crossed over to this fireplace and stood with a foot
raised towards the hearth, though there was no fire to warm it by. I
tossed my hat and whip on to the table with more noise than was
necessary and made a step as if to join her. She drew back
instinctively. I stopped as though the step had been a liberty; and
neither of us had a word to say. Once she untied the ribands of her
hood, for she must be doing something; but the moment she was aware of
what it was she did, she tied them again with hasty uncertain fingers,
and then reddened and paled, of a sudden becoming, it seemed to me,
sensible of the hastiness of her action. I sent my eyes wandering to
every corner of the room, so that they should not rest upon her face;
but none the less, after a little our glances crossed, and with one
movement we averted our heads. After that one of us had to speak.
"You will be hungry," I said lamely. "You have eaten nothing since the
morning;" and I walked to a little sideboard on which a bell was
standing.
"No, no!" she cried, but I had struck the bell or ever the words were
past her lips. "Oh, what have you done?" she said with a shiver; "one
of your servants will come;" and then she checked herself and added,
with her fingers plucking at her gown in a pitiful helpless way,
"Well, what does it matter? They had the story before it happened.
This will but confirm and seal it."
I went out into the hall to stop whosoever should be answering the
summons. But no one came to answer it I crossed the hall and opened
the door which led to the kitchens. As a rule, the noise of women's
voices was incessant in that quarter of the house, but to-day not a
sound, not so much as the clatter of a dish-cover! I went back to the
hall and listened. The house was as still as on that night when I
crept down the stairs and discovered the marks of a picture-frame upon
the wall.
Was the house empty? I wondered, and shouted to solve the doubt. My
voice went echoing and diminishing along corridor and gallery, but
that was all. I moved down the passage to the office, half thinking
that I might find Aron there, but remembered that he would be away,
and so returned reluctantly. Thereupon I mounted the stairs and walked
from room to room, and maybe lingered over-long in each. I was not,
indeed, concerned with their silence and vacancy so much as with the
knowledge that each step brought me actually a step nearer to the
parlour-door. But I came to the end of my search, and there was
nothing for it but to descend again. The hall-door, however, stood
open, and I saw my horse at the bottom of the steps tethered by the
rein to a knob of the stone balustrade. I walked down the steps,
loosed it, and led it round to the stables. There was a boy or two in
the stable-yard, and I remember putting to them a number of aimless
questions which I was at great pains to think of, but did not listen
to the answers; until their fidgeting made me sensible of the
cowardice of my delay and drove me back to the house. Then I
remembered why I had left the parlour, and going to the pantry, I got
together some food upon a tray and brought it with a decanter of
Burgundy into the parlour. Mrs. Herbert was standing where I had last
seen her. I set out the table saying, "My servants seem all to have
taken holiday;" and more for something to do, you may be sure, than
from any sense of hunger, she sat herself at the table and began to
play with the food. I had brought but one plate and set a chair for
but one person; and neither of us noticed that. The truth is, there
was a shadow in the room; the shadow cast by sin, and we watched it as
children in a fitful firelight will watch a strange shadow on the
wall--neither drawing near to it nor fleeing from it, but crouched
watching it. Once she said, "I have brought nothing with me;" and
after a little, some thought seemed to strike her. For she lifted her
head suddenly and said:
"There is no one in the house but you and I?"
"No one," I said.
"That is strange," she said absently.
Strange! The word was an arrow of light piercing through the mist of
my senses. Strange! It was indeed strange! Aron had warned me not to
ride to Keswick; that was strange too. For the first time I set this
desertion of my servants together in my mind with my suspicions of
Ashlock's treachery. I started to my feet, invaded by a sudden fear;
but I saw Mrs. Herbert at the table running her fingers along the hem
of my fine tablecloth and her throat working as though she was
swallowing her tears. I knew by some instinct of what she was
thinking. She was thinking of her poor furniture in her lodging at
Keswick. It was hers, you see, won by her husband's toil, and maybe
she had a passing thought, too, of Sir Godfrey Kneller's estate at
Witton--earned, too, by a painter's art. And such a pity for her, such
a loathing of myself, flooded my mind as drove out all thought of Mr.
Ashlock's machinations. I recalled how I had deemed that slatternly
apartment unfit for her. It needed that we two should be here with the
shadow about us, for me to realize how contemptible was the thought.
Again she said:
"No one is in the house except yourself and me," and in the same
thoughtful tone. Then she rose from her chair with the air of one that
has come upon an outlet when all outlets seemed barred. "It was kind
of you," she said, "to show me your house, I would gladly have seen
the gardens too, but the day is clouding, and it will rain, I think,
ere long."
She dropped me a formal curtsey as she spoke. I did not want the
urgent appeal of her eyes to take her meaning. My heart rose to it
with a spring.
"I will have a carriage made ready for you," I replied; and I turned
me to the window. "Yes, I am afraid that it will rain."
"Thank you!" she said.
And I, like the blundering fool I was, must needs, in my great joy,
add:
"It is no long journey into Keswick, after all"
"Keswick!" says she with a start, and drops her eyes. "I had not
thought of that. I had not thought where I should go to."
I stood before her dumb. I knew--yes, I knew that the only place for
her was that little apartment in Keswick. Grant her but the sight of
it, and the sight of her husband in it--for he loved her--and, well,
it needed no magician to forecast the result. But there was one person
in the world who could not use that argument--myself. However, she
helped me out.
"I cannot go back," she said, "without he knows. It would not be just
No! it is not possible;" and at that the tears came at last. The sound
of her weeping pierced me like a sword.
"He shall know, then," I cried. "He shall know. I myself will ride to
Keswick and tell him."
"You will?" she asked, suddenly lifting her head.
"Maybe, too, I may find means to bring him back."
"If that might be!" she whispered in a fervour of hope, her whole face
lightening and a timorous smile dawning through her tears. "But no!"
and the hope died out of her face. "Payment will have to be made for
this. You'll see, payment will be made."
She spoke in a low tone of such perfect certainty, that it seemed to
me it was not so much the woman who spoke, but that Providence chose
her voice that moment for its mouthpiece.
"Heaven send the payment fall to me," I said.
She glanced at me quickly.
"Oh," she said, in a complete change of voice, "what will you tell
him?"
"Why, the truth," I answered. "That I found you by the lake, and
brought you here."
"No!" she exclaimed, "I will not have you say that. It must be the
truth--that I came to you."
She drew a note from her pocket as she spoke, and tossed it on to the
table. I picked it up, wondering what she meant. It was a line
scribbled in a hand which was familiar to me, and there was a word
curiously misspelled--"wateing" for "waiting." Somewhere I had seen
that word misspelled precisely in that way before, and surely in this
handwriting too. Then the truth flashed upon me. It was in the inn at
Commercy, and the handwriting was Jervas Rookley's. The line was this:
"I shall be wateing for you by the lake, on the road to Blackladies."
But Jervas Rookley knew that I was journeying to Grasmere, that I was
not returning to Blackladies until night The letter was a snare, then,
to draw Mrs. Herbert from the house.
If so, all the more need for haste.
I opened the door and stepped into the hall. But the hall was no
longer empty. The hall-door was still open; I had left it open, and a
man stood in the centre of the hall. It was Anthony Herbert. His back
was towards me, and from his manner I gathered that he was considering
which of the passages giving upon the hall he should choose. It was
for no more than a second that he stood thus, but that second gave me
time enough to do the stupidest thing that ever a man out of his wits
conceived; and yet in a way it was natural. For I slammed the door to
behind my back, and stood barring it, with my hand upon the knob. Mr.
Herbert twisted round upon his heel.
"Caught!" he cried, spitting the word at me.
I realized the folly of my action, and let go of the handle.
"I was this instant setting out to find you."
The words sounded false to me, though I knew them to be true, and my
voice took a trembling indecision from the foreknowledge that he would
disbelieve them.
"No doubt," said he. "Otherwise you would not be guarding the door."
He spoke with a great effort to be calm, but his eyes were aflame, his
limbs quivered with his wrath, and now and again his voice lost its
steadiness and ran up and down in a fitful scale.
"I thought to find you in the garden," he continued.
"In the garden?" I asked.
"But doubtless you point me out the way;" and he took a step towards
me. With the movement his cloak slipped from his left shoulder, and I
noticed that he was carrying a sword and a pistol in his belt. My hand
went back to the handle.
"The few words I have to say to you," said I, "had better be spoken
here."
"But it would be best of all," he returned, "to defer them altogether.
I have some business with you, it is true, but that business comes
second, and I think we shall need no words for its discussion." He
took yet another step.
"Your business with me, Mr. Herbert, may come when it will," said I,
"but these words cannot be deferred. They are few."
"However few, they are still too many," he broke in. "Out of my way!"
"You must hear them before you pass this door." I gripped the handle
tighter.
"I'll not listen to you," he cried. "You overrate my credulity, Mr.
Clavering. Out of the way!"
"I will not. This is my house."
"But it shelters my wife."
"It was she sent me to fetch you."
I gathered all my strength into the utterance of the words, that I
might enforce their truth upon him. But they only served to whet his
fury and confirm him in disbelief.
"That's a lie," he shouted, and in a flash his sword was out of the
scabbard and the point of it pricking my breast. "If she sent you to
fetch me, why do you guard the door? Stand aside!"
But since I had made that mistake, I must go through with it.
"I will not," I answered doggedly, and I set a hand upon each side of
the doorway. "There is more to tell. I will not."
"Will not," says he grimly, "gives the wall to must," and he leaned a
little very gently on the sword.
I did not move, but behind me the handle of the door rattled. I tried
to seize it, but the door was pulled open from within; I staggered
back into the room. Herbert sprang through the opening after me, and
stood, drawing in his breath, his eyes fixed upon his wife. She
recoiled towards the hearth.
"It is the bare truth I told you," I exclaimed passionately. "Oh,
believe that! When I caught sight of you, I had taken the first step
in pursuit of you; and it was Mrs. Herbert who set me on the task. Oh,
believe that too! It was no doing of mine; it was she sent me. For
myself, I gave little thought to you, I own it. It was she declared
she could not return without you knew. I but obeyed her."
For a moment it seemed to me that his anger lulled. I watched his
eyes. They were fixed upon his wife, and I saw the conviction in them
fade to doubt, the doubt waver and melt into--was it forgiveness? I do
not know, for Mrs. Herbert shifted her position; his eyes wandered
from her face and fell upon the table. The note which she had shown me
was lying open beneath his gaze. He stooped his head towards it. I
made a movement to hinder him. He remarked the movement, and on the
instant snatched the paper up.
"You persuade me to read it," said he, which accordingly he did. As he
read, an idea occurred to me. For let him believe I wrote that note,
and he would be the more likely to attribute the blame where it was
due and exhaust his anger in the same quarter. So that when he asked,
rapping the note with his knuckles--
"This is your hand?" I kept silence.
He repeated the question, and I positively relished the growing menace
of his voice, and still kept silence. But he gave me credit for more
subtlety than I possessed.
"Oh, I understand," he burst out "You were going to fetch me, no
doubt. This letter bears you out so well. And my wife sent you to
fetch me--a cunning afterthought when the first excuse had missed its
mark. A very likely story, to be sure, but enough to hoodwink a
dull-witted fool of a husband, eh? Reconcile husband and wife, and Mr.
Lawrence Clavering may laugh in his sleeve--damn him!"
"It is the truth," I exclaimed in despair. "Believe it! Believe it!"
"The truth," he retorted with bitterest sneer, "the truth, and you are
speaking it God, I believe truth itself would become a lie if you had
the uttering of it! Believe you! Why, every trickster keeps his
excuses ready on his tongue against the time he's caught. I would not
believe you kneeling before the judgment-seat."
He poured his abuse upon me with an indescribable fury and in a voice
gusty with passion.
"But you shall answer for it," he continued.
"When you will," I answered quietly.
He was still carrying his sword in his hand, and he suddenly thrust it
out at arm's length before him, and turned it to and fro with his
wrist, so that the light flashed on it and streaked up the blade to
the hilt.
"Then I will now," he replied "now--now!" and at each word he flashed
the sword, and with each word his voice rose exultingly. "In your
garden, now!"
He moved towards the window. His wife stepped forward with a cry, and
laid a hand upon his arm. He stopped and looked at her, with eyes that
told her nothing. It must have been a full minute, I should think,
that he stood thus. He had as yet spoken no word to her, and he spoke
no word now. I saw her head decline, her whole frame relapse and
droop, and she slipped on to her knees. Herbert shook her hand from
his arm, kicked open the window, and crossed the terrace. I went into
the hall to fetch my sword. As I crossed the threshold of the room, I
heard the iron gates clang at the top of the terrace steps as though
he had flung them to behind him. While I picked up my sword I heard
the sound repeated but more faintly from the second terrace. And as I
entered the room again and drew the sword from its scabbard I heard it
yet a third time. Through the open window I could see him descending
the steps of the third terrace. But between myself and the window, the
wife was kneeling on the floor. Said she:
"You will not harm him;" and she clasped her hands in her entreaty.
"Say you will not! The payment must not fall to him."
I almost laughed, so strange and needless did the entreaty sound.
"Madam," I said, "this is the pommel of the sword and this the point.
One holds the sword too by the pommel, I believe. In fact, I know so
much, but there my knowledge ends."
She spoke a little more, but I gave scant heed to what she said. For a
sentence which she had spoken somewhile since, drummed in my ears to
the exclusion of her present speech, and the import of it shone in my
mind like a clear light. "Payment will have to be made for this," she
had said.
Over her shoulder I saw Mr. Herbert move further and further from the
house. It was about six o'clock of the afternoon and very windless and
still. A great strip of cloud, hung from Green Comb to High Knott,
gloomed across the garden, thick as wool and bulging like a sail, so
that even the scarlet flowers of the parterre took from it a tint of
grey. And underneath this cloud, from end to end, from side to side,
the garden seemed to me to be waiting--waiting consciously in a
sinister quietude for this payment to be made. The fantastic figures
into which the box-trees were shaped, bears, leopards, and I know not
what strange mammoths, appeared patient and alert in the fixity of a
sure expectation, while the oaks and larches in the Wilderness beyond
seemed purposely to restrain the flutter of their leaves. I felt the
garden beckon me by its immobility and call me by its silence.
Mr. Herbert had stripped his cloak from his shoulders, and dropped it
upon the third flight of steps; so that he now moved, a brown figure,
here showing plain against the grotto, or the grass, there confounded
with the flowers. He held his sword in his hand--at that distance, and
in that dull light it looked no more dangerous than a strip of lead,
and ever and again he would cut at a bush as he passed.
"No harm can come to him," I said, seeking to disengage myself, for
the wife still clung to me in her misplaced fear. "I could not harm
him if I would. For they do not teach one swordsmanship at the Jesuit
Colleges."
The words rose to my lips by chance and by chance were spoken. But I
know that the moment after I heard them, I staggered forward with a
groan, and stood leaning my forehead against the framework of the
window. Mrs. Herbert rose to her feet.
I was looking down the terraces across the parterres to the brown
figure moving away, but I did not see that. It was as though a black
curtain had swung down between the garden and myself. What I saw was a
very different scene--a little twilight room far away in Paris and a
stern face that warned me. I heard a voice telling me of a supreme
hour wherein God would put me to His touchstone, an hour for which I
must stand sentinel. Well, the hour had passed me and I had not
challenged it; and I might have foreseen its coming had I watched. I
lifted my head; the garden again floated into view. Anthony Herbert
was marching through the long grass of the Wilderness, with never a
look backwards. In a moment he reached the fringe of trees. The trees
were sparse at the border, and I knew that he would not stop there,
but would rather advance until he arrived at some little dingle
closely wooded about from view of the house. In and out amongst the
boles of the trees I saw him wind. Then for a second he disappeared
and came to sight again upon a little patch of unshadowed grass. I
remember that the sun gleamed of a sudden through an interstice of the
cloud as he stepped into the open. The patch of grass shone like an
emerald and the dull strip of lead in his hand turned gold; and a
larch upon the far rim where the trees grew dense, taking some stray
breath of wind, rippled and shook the sunlight from its leaves. In
some unaccountable way my spirits rose at the sight. I still was
sensible of that saying, "Payment must be made for this," but it took
a colour from the sunlight. It became rather, "Payment can be made for
this."
I slipped out of the window. Mrs. Herbert started forward to detain
me.
"A duel," she exclaimed, in a tone as though the idea became yet more
inconceivable to her. "Oh no! Not a duel."
"No, not a duel," I replied across my shoulder, "only the pretence of
one;" and while my head was thus turned a pistol-shot rang from the
Wilderness.
It sounded like the crack of a whip, and I might have counted it no
more than that but I saw a wisp of blue smoke float upwards above a
shrubbery and hang curling this way and that in the sunlight.
"God save us," I cried, "but he carried a pistol!" and I made as
though I would run across the terrace towards him. But or ever I could
move, I felt a hand tighten and tighten upon my arm. I tried to shake
it off.
"You do not understand," I exclaimed. "He carried a pistol. It was a
pistol that we heard. Maybe he was looking to the priming. Maybe he is
wounded I must go to him;" and I seized Mrs. Herbert's hand at the
wrist and sought to drag it away from my sleeve. I felt her fingers
only grip more closely. I dropped her wrist and began to unclasp them,
one by one.
"It is you who do not understand," she said, "and he is not wounded."
She spoke in a dry, passionless voice, which daunted me more than the
words she uttered. I turned and looked at her in perplexity. Her face
was like paper, even her lips were white--and her eyes shone from it
sunken and black; I was reminded of them afterwards by the sight of a
black tarn set in a moor of snow, which I was destined to look upon
one sad November afternoon in this same year. They seemed to have
grown bigger, the better to express the horror which she felt.
"He is not wounded. Be sure--be very sure of that!" she continued,
nodding her head at me in a queer, matter-of-fact way, which, joined
with the contrast of her face, had something, to my thinking, awsomely
grotesque.
"What do you mean?" I gasped, and in a momentary weakness staggered
back against the framework of the window. I felt her clasp strengthen
upon my arm, drawing me within the parlour.
"He carried a pistol--yes, but why should he look to the priming since
you were to fight with swords?" she whispered, shaking my arm with a
little impatient movement. "Did you not see? His walk grew slow, his
head drooped--drooped. He was tired, you see, so tired;" and she
uttered a low, mirthless laugh while her eyes burned into me. It was a
sound which, I thank God, I have never heard but the once. It was as
though a preternatural horror claimed a preternatural expression. "It
was not worth while," she resumed.
"Ah, no," I cried, as her meaning broke in upon me. "I'll not believe
that. I'll not believe it;" and once or twice I thrust out with my
hands as if that way I could keep belief aloof.
"But you do," she returned, and the whisper of her voice took on a
certain eagerness. It seemed that she must have a partner in her
thought. "You do believe it. Look, am I pale? Then I am your mirror.
Do I tremble? It is an ague caught from you. You do believe it. We
know, you and I--guilt binds us in knowledge. We heard this morning.
He told us, he warned us. If his wife proved false, he would not count
it worth his while to punish the betrayer. But he has--he has punished
us, so perfectly that he himself would pity us, were he alive to do
it. Would God we both were dead!" And again she laughed, and letting
drop my arm she moved away into the room.
I had no doubt her words were true, and from the bottom of my heart I
echoed her vain prayer. I remembered the conviction with which he had
spoken--all the more assured for the very quietude of his voice. Yes,
those trees, motionless under a leaden sky, in a leaden silence, were
the watchers about his bed. I braced myself to descend, but as my
first step crunched the gravel of the terrace, Mrs. Herbert was again
as my side.
"No," she cried. "Not yet, not without me, and I dare not go."
"Nay, madam," I replied, "do you stay here. There is no need for you
to come."
"But there is--there is," she insisted, looking at me wildly, like one
distraught "Step by step we must go together. And so it will be
always. You will see, you and I are fettered each to each by sin, and
there's no breaking the locks." She shook her hands piteously.
"Nay," I said, "I will go alone."
"I dare not be left alone," she replied. "For what if he passed you
while you searched for him!" and she gave a shuddering cry and
recoiled into the room. "What if he came striding from the thicket
across the grass to where I waited here! No! No! Wait, wait until it's
dark. I will go down with you. But now, in the daylight! His eyes will
be open; I dare not."
She stood with her hands clasped before her, toppling towards madness.
I dared not leave her. There was no choice for me; between the dead
man and the living woman there was no choice. I returned to the room.
"You will wait?" she asked.
"Until it is dark."
She moved into the alcove of the fireplace and crouched down upon the
seat, with her back against the wall nearest to the garden. I remained
by the window, looking down the garden with the valley on my right. I
saw the strip of cloud unfold across the valley and lower upon the
hilltops like a solid roof, The hillsides darkened, the bed of the
valley grew black--it seemed to me with the shadow of the wings of
death. Here a tree shivered; from another there, the birds of a sudden
chattered noisily. I turned and gazed across to Eagle Crag. The dale
of Langstrath sloped upwards, facing me between the mountains; and as
I gazed I saw the rain drive down from the Stake Pass to the mouth in
a great slanting column. It deployed along the hillsides;--the
mountains became unsubstantial behind it--it swept across the valley,
lashing the house, bending the trees in the garden.
"And his eyes will be open," said Mrs. Herbert behind my shoulder.
I started round. Her white face was like a wax mask in the gloom of
the chamber. But as I turned she moved back again to the fireplace.
"It is cold," she said with a shiver. I set fire to the wood upon the
hearth, and as the logs crackled and blazed, she bent forward and
spread out her hands to the flame.
I dropped into the seat opposite to her, and so we sat for a long
while in silence. Once, it seemed to me, that I heard the hoofs of a
horse upon the gravel of the drive--galloping up to the house, and in
a little galloping away from it. But what with the beating of the rain
and the turmoil of the wind I could not make sure--nor, indeed, did I
feel any concern to know. Once Mrs. Herbert raised her head to me and
said, as if answering some objection which I had urged:
"It _was_ because he loved me that he told the steward. That was his
way. God made him so;" and her voice as she spoke was very soft. Her
face, too, softened, as I could see from the glow of the fire, and I
knew that her husband in his death was drawing her more surely towards
him than he had ever done in life.
"He was very good to me," she said to herself. "It was I that plagued
him. He was very good to me, and I--I love him."
It was as though she had forgotten he was dead, and more than one
remark of the kind she made while the room darkened behind as and the
night fell upon the world without, and the raindrops hissed down the
chimney into the fire. I dared not rouse her, though the forgetfulness
struck me as horrible, but once, I know, I shifted restively upon my
seat, and she looked at me suddenly as though she had forgotten that I
was there, as though, indeed, she did not know me. But in a little,
recognition gleamed in her eyes, and they hardened slowly to hatred.
However, she said nothing, but turned her face again to the fire, and
so stared into it with eyes like pebbles.
After a while the wind lulled, the rain-drops hissed less often down
the chimney and finally ceased altogether. A line of moonlight shot
into the room and lay upon the carpet like a silver rod. The room
became mistily luminous and then pitilessly bright. Meanwhile no one
seemed as yet to be astir within the house.
I rose unsteadily from my seat; she followed my example,
"Yes, let us go," she said, and we went out on to the terrace.