I RETURN TO KESWICK.
I went back to my own room, changed my dress, and carrying my boots in
one hand and my candle in the other, went softly down the stairs. By
the clock in the hall I could see that it was five minutes after ten
o'clock. I drew on my boots in the porch, saddled the horse by the
candle-light, led it past the house along a strip of grass, and when I
thought the sound of its hoofs would be no longer heard, I mounted and
rode up the pathway. The sky was cloudy but the valleys clear of mist
I could have wished for no better night for my purpose except in one
respect: I mean that now and again a silver brilliancy would be
diffused through the air, making the night vaguely luminous. And
looking up I would see a patch of cloud very thin and very bright, and
behind that cloud I knew the moon was sailing. I chose that road of
which Tash had spoken. Towards the head of Gillerthwaite the track
turned northwards over a pass they call the Scarf Gap, and thence
westwards again past Buttermere lake to Buttermere village. At the
point where the hill descends steeply from the lake, I dismounted. I
could see the scattered village beneath me. It slept without a sound,
nor was there a light to be seen in any window. But none the less I
dreaded to ride through it; its very quietude frightened me. I feared
the lively echoes which the beat of my horse's shoes would send
ringing about the silent cottages. I descended, therefore, on foot,
leading my horse cautiously by the bridle, and in a little I came to a
gateway upon the right which gave on to a field. I crossed the field
and several others which adjoined it, and finally came out again upon
the track beyond the village, where it climbs upwards to Buttermere
Hause. From the farther side of the Hause I had a clear road of six
miles down Newlands valley to Portinscale, and I spurred my horse to a
gallop. Once or twice the clouds rifted and the moon shone out full,
so that I rode in a tremor of alarm, twisting every shadow that fell
across my path from rock or tree into the shadow of a sentinel. But
the clouds closed up again and canopied me in a gracious obscurity as
I drew near to Keswick.
I tied up my horse in a thicket of trees half a mile from the town,
and slunk from house to house in the shadow. Never before or since
have I known such fear as I knew that night in Keswick, so urgent had
the necessity that I must keep free, become with me during these last
hours since I had climbed from Brandreth down to Applegarth. If the
wind drove the leaves of the trees fluttering up the roadway, I
cowered against the wall and trembled. If a dog barked from a
farmhouse in the distance, I stood with my heart fainting in my
breast, listening--listening for the rhythmic tread of soldiers; and
when I saw on the opposite side of the street, some yards above me, a
light glimmering in a window, I stopped altogether, in two minds
whether or no to turn back. I looked irresolutely up and down the
street It was so dark, so still; only that one steady light burned in
a window. The melancholy voice of a watchman, a couple of streets
away, chanted out, "Half-past twelve, and a dull, cloudy morning." The
phrase was repeated and repeated in a dwindling tone. I waited until
it had died away, and afterwards. But the light burned wakeful,
persistent, a little heart of fire in a body of darkness. I felt that
I dared not pass it. Some one watched beside that lamp, with eyes
fixed on the yellow path it traced across the road. My fears fed upon
themselves and swelled into a panic. I turned and took a step or two
down the hill, and it was precisely that movement which brought me to
my senses and revealed to me the cowardice of the action. For if I
dared not pass that lamp, still less dared I return to Applegarth with
the night's work undone. I retraced my steps very slowly until I came
opposite to the window, and then, so great was the revulsion of my
feeling that I reeled back against the wall, my heart jerking, my
whole strength gone from me. For there at the window, beside the lamp,
her face buried in her hands, was the woman I had come to seek. I
might have known, I thought! For who else should be watching at this
lone hour in Keswick if not this woman? I might have guessed from the
position of the house in the street. It was a beacon which I had seen,
this glimmering lamp, and I had taken it for no more than a wrecker's
light.
I looked about me. The street was deserted from end to end I crossed
it, and picking up a pebble flung it lightly at the window. The pebble
cracked against the pane--how loudly, to my impatient ears! Mrs.
Herbert raised her head from her hands. I sent a second pebble to
follow the first. She opened the sash, but so noisily I thought!
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Hush!" said I.
She leaned forward over the side of the window and peered into the
darkness.
"You!" she whispered in a tone of wonderment, and again with a shiver
of repulsion; "you!"
"Let me in!" said I.
She made a movement as if to close the window.
"You close the window on your hopes," I said. "Let me in!"
"You bring news of--of Anthony?" she asked, with a catch in her voice.
"The smallest budget," said I, "but a promise of more;" and as she,
undecided, still leaned on the sill, "If I am captured here to-night,
there will be no news at all."
"Captured?" she began, and breaking off hurriedly came down the stairs
and opened the door.
I followed her up into the room and drew the curtains across the
window. She stood by the table in the full light of the lamp, her
eyelids red, her eyes lustreless, her face worn; the very gloss seemed
to have faded off her hair.
"How you have suffered!" I said, and again faltered the words, "How
you have suffered!"
"And you?" she asked with a glance towards me, and nodded her head as
though answering the question. "I said that payment would be made,"
she remarked simply. "It is beginning."
"My servant brought a note to you?"
"Yes. Was it true? I did not believe that it was true." She spoke in a
dull voice. "He came yesterday night after the soldiers had been
here."
"The soldiers," I cried, lifting my voice. The sound of it warned me;
I realized that I was standing between the lamp and the window, and
that if any one should pass down the street, it was my figure which
would be seen. I crossed over to get behind the chair.
"Do you sit there!" said I, pointing to her former seat.
She obeyed me like a child.
"So the soldiers came here?"
"Twice."
"When?"
"The first time, that evening--I was not here--we were in the garden
of Blackladies. They searched the house and took his papers away."
"His papers!" said I. I looked over to that box in which the medal had
been locked. The lid was shut I crossed to it and tried it The lid
lifted, the lock was broken and the medal gone.
"The second time they came," said Mrs. Herbert, "was the afternoon of
the next day."
"That would be a few hours after I had escaped. They searched the
house again?"
"Yes. For you."
"For me?" I exclaimed; and her eyes flashed out at me.
"For whom else should they come to search, here in my lodging?"
My eyes fell from her face.
"But did they question you?" I continued. "What did they ask? For
perchance I may find help in that."
But Mrs. Herbert had relapsed into her dull insensibility.
"They questioned me without end," she answered wearily, "but I forget
the questions. It was all concerning you, not a word about Anthony,
and I forget."
"Oh, but think!" I exclaimed, and I heard the watchman crying the hour
in the distance. I stopped, listening. The cry grew louder. The man
was coming down the street. This window alone was lighted up, and once
already the soldiers had been here to search for me. I heard the
watchman's footsteps grow separate and distinct. I heard the rattle of
his lantern as it swung in his hand, and beneath the window he
stopped. I counted the seconds. In a little I found myself choking,
and realized that in the greatness of my anxiety I was holding my
breath. Then the man moved, but it seemed to me, not down the road,
but nearer to the wall of the house. A new fear burst in on me.
"You left the door below unlocked?" I whispered to Mrs. Herbert.
She nodded a reply.
What if he opened that door and came stumbling up the stairs? What if
he found the door not merely unlocked but open, and roused the house?
To be sure he would have no warrant in his pocket. But for her
sake--for the sake of that tiny chance I clung to with so despairing a
grip, that perhaps--perhaps I might restore to her her husband, no
rumour must go out that I or any man had been there this night I crept
to the door of the room and laid my hand upon the handle. What I
should do I did not think. I was trying to remember whether I had
closed the door behind me, and all my faculties were engrossed in the
effort I was still busy upon that profitless task, when I heard--with
what relief!--the watchman's footsteps sound again upon the stones,
his voice again take up its melancholy cry.
"Quick!" said I, turning again to Mrs. Herbert "Madam, help me in this
matter, if you can. Think! The officer put to you questions concerning
me?"
"Oh!" she cried, waking from her lethargy, "I cannot help you. You
must save yourself, as best you may. I do not remember what they said.
It was of you they spoke and not at all of Anthony."
"It is just for your husband's sake," I said, "that I implore you to
remember."
And she looked at me blankly.
"God!" I exclaimed, taking the thought "You believe that I journeyed
hither to you in your loneliness at this hour, to plague you with
questions for my safety's sake!" And I paused, staring at her.
"Well," she replied, in an even voice, "is the belief so strange?"
There was no sarcasm in the question, and hardly any curiosity. It was
the mere natural utterance of a natural thought. My eyes, I know, fell
from her face to the floor.
"Madam," I replied slowly, "when I set out to-night, I thought that
the cup of my humiliation was already full. You prove to me that my
thought was wrong. It remained for you very fitly to fill it to the
brim;" and again I lifted my eyes to her. "I had no purposes of my own
to serve in riding hither. I know the charge against myself to its
last letter. It is the charge against your husband brings me here.
Neither do I know whither he has been taken. Yet these two things I
must know, and I came to you on the chance that you might help me."
I saw her face change as she listened. She leaned forward on her
elbows, her chin propped upon her hands, her eyes losing their
indifference. A spark of hope kindled in the depths of them, and when
I had ended, she remained silent for a little, as though fearing to
quench that spark by the utterance of any words. At last she asked, in
almost a timid voice:
"But why--why would you know?" And she bent still further forward with
parted lips, breathless for the answer.
"Why?" I answered. "Forgive me! I should have told you that before,
but, like a fool, I put the questions first. They are foremost in my
thoughts, you see, being the means, and as yet unsolved. The end is so
clear to me, that I forgot it in looking for the road which leads to
it. I believe that Mr. Herbert has been seized, on the ground that he
shares my--treason, let us call it, for so our judges will. Of that
charge I know him innocent, and maybe can prove him so. And if I can,
be sure of this--I will."
"But how can you?" she interrupted.
"If I know the charge, if I know whither he has been taken, the place
of his trial, then it may be that I can serve him. But until I know, I
am like one striking at random in the dark. Suppose I go to meet the
sheriff and give myself up, not knowing these things, I shall be laid
by the heels and no good done. They may have taken him to London. He
may be in prison for months. Meanwhile I should be tried--and they
would not need Mr. Herbert's evidence to secure a verdict against me."
"You would give yourself up?" she asked.
"But I must know the place, I must know the charge. It would avail
your husband little without that knowledge. They would keep me in
prison cozening me with excuses, however urgently I might plead for
him. It is enough that a man should be suspected of favouring King
James. To such they dispense convictions; they make no pother about
justice."
"But," said she, "it would mean your life."
"Have you not said yourself that payment must be made?"
"Yes, but by us," she said, stretching out a hand eagerly. "Not by you
alone."
"Madam," said I, "you will have your share in it, for you will have to
wait--to wait here with such patience as you can command, ignorant of
the issue until the issue is reached. God knows but I think you have
the harder part of it."
We stood for a little looking into each other's eyes sealing our
compact.
"Now," I continued, "think! Was any word said which we could shape
into a clue? Was any name mentioned? Was your husband's name linked
with mine? Oh, think, and quickly!"
She sat with her face covered by her hands while I stood anxiously
before her.
"I do not remember," she said, drawing her hands apart and shaking
them in a helpless gesture. "It all happened so long ago."
"It happened only yesterday," I urged.
"I know, I know," she said with the utmost weariness. All that light
of hope had died from her eyes as quickly as it had brightened them.
"But I measure by a calendar of pain. It is so long ago, I do not
remember. I do not even remember how I returned here."
There was no hint plainly to be gained from her, and I had stayed too
long, as it was. I took up my hat.
"You will stay here?" I asked. "I do not say that you will hear from
me soon, but I must needs know where you are."
"I will stay here," she replied. She almost stretched out her hand and
drew it in again. "Goodbye."
I went to the door. She followed me with the lamp and held it over the
balusters of the landing.
"Nay," said I, "there is no need for that."
"The staircase," said she, "is very dark." As I came out from the
houses at the bottom of the hill I heard again the watchman's voice
behind me bawling out the hour. It was half-past one, and a cloudy
morning, it may be, but the clouds were lighter in the north, as I
remarked with some anxiety. I was still riding along Newlands valley
when the morning began to break. As I reached the summit of Buttermere
Hause I looked backwards over my shoulder. The sky in the north-east
was a fiery glow, saffron, orange, and red were mingled there, and
right across the medley of colours lay black, angry strips of cloud.
The blaze of a fire, it seemed to me, seen through prison bars. It was
daylight when I passed by Buttermere, sunlight as I rode down
Gillerthwaite. The sweet stillness of the morning renewed my blood.
The bracken bloomed upon the hillsides, here a rusty brown, there in
the shadow a blackish purple, and then again gold where the sunlight
kissed it Below me, by the water's side, I could see the blue tiles of
Applegarth. And as I looked about me the fever of my thoughts died,
they took a new and unfamiliar quietude from the stable quietude of
the hills. I felt as if something of their patience, something of
their strength was entering into me. My memories went back again to
the Superior's study in the College at Paris; and in my heart of
hearts I knew that the Superior was wrong. The mountains have their
message, I think, for whoso will lend an ear to them, and that morning
they seemed to speak to me with an unanimous voice. I can repair, I
thought, this wrong. It was then more to me than a thought. It seemed,
indeed, an assured and simple truth, assured and simple like those
peaks in the clear air, and, like them, pointing skywards, and the
Superior's theory no more substantial than a cloud which may gather
upon the peaks and hide them for a little from the eyes.
I rode down, therefore, in a calmer spirit than I had known for some
long time. The difficulties which beset my path did not for the moment
trouble me. That my journey that night had in no way lightened them I
did not consider. I felt that the occasion of which I was in search
would of a surety come, only I must be ready to grasp it.
I had passed no one on the road. I had seen, indeed, no sign of life
at all beyond the sudden rush of a flock of sheep, as though in an
unaccountable panic, up the hillside of the Pillar mountain, while I
was as yet in the narrow path of Gillerthwaite. I had reason,
therefore, to think that I had escaped all notice, and leading the
horse back to the stable with the same precautions I had used on
setting out, I let myself in at the door and got quietly to bed.