CATHERINE OPENS THE GATE 151
CHAPTER I
BETHESDA
CHAPTER I
BETHESDA
A DULL patter of sheep's hurrying feet came from behind a small knoll
that jutted into the track along the mountain. The level plateau was
wide and smooth below the towering slopes, and the threads of water
crossing it at intervals had laid the underlying rock bare. As the
sound neared, a travelling flock came round the knoll, herded thickly
together and running before a man on horseback like clouds scudding
before a gale. Forty pairs of light-coloured eyes, with their clear
black bar of pupil, stared limpidly into space, and the backs of the
flock bobbed and heaved as the hundred and sixty little cloven hoofs
set their mark on the earthy places over which they passed.
Heber Moorhouse, pressing hard on their heels, shouted now and again,
swinging the rope's end he carried and leaning far out of his saddle
as he drove the stragglers in. The rough-coated, weedy-looking pony
under him cantered on, stubborn in face and obedient in limb to the
rider's hand and balance. 'Black Heber' could bring in his sheep as
easily without his dog as with him.
It was nothing in his colouring that had earned him the title by which
some spoke of him, for his hair was of the same indefinite shade as
that of many of his neighbours, and his eyes were rather light than
dark. But they had a fire, on occasion, that suggested dark things
even to the ardent and sober Baptist community to which he belonged.
Though he was a young man he looked older than his years by reason of
his gauntness and his thin beard. He had sole charge of the flock on a
fair-sized sheep farm, and was counted by his employer a responsible,
if inconveniently independent, fellow. He was a convinced chapel-goer,
rather bigoted and with qualities which made certain wildnesses in him
doubly marked by contrast.
He looked wild enough this afternoon, with his battered, wide-brimmed
hat and the arm which swung the rope-end showing sharply against the
sky. He was a figure which by no stretch of imagination could be
supposed to belong to the valley lying below his feet, rich,
chequered, and green; its soft luxuriance pertained to another world
from that which had given birth to this crude son of action.
The afternoon was wearing on and he was anxious to get the crowd in
front of him to its destination in a pen farther along the plateau;
when the sheep were off his hands there would be other matters calling
him, and his mind was running on far before the flock.
Meanwhile, as he rode on the mountain turf, a little concourse of
people waited about among the trees at the head of the dingle farther
on. Where a primitive cart-road plunged through a grove of alders, a
two-storied house, scarcely more pretentious than a cottage, stood
back from it, facing the passer-by and parted from him by a wide yard.
An obliterated signboard, high on the rough-cast wall, showed that the
building had formerly been a house of entertainment, while it offered
no clue to the device it had once borne, nor suggested the name,
"Bethesda," by which it was now known. What gave the place
significance was the stream of water which crossed the road on its
downward course and dived in among the trees, falling from level to
level, and disappearing in the thicket of hazels and undergrowth.
Opposite to the house, but on the farther side of the way, a paved
channel was cut from the stream to a square pool the sides of which
were walled by slabs of stone. From this another channel led to the
edge of the high ground, but at the present moment it was blocked by a
single slab, the removal of which would drain the basin dry. The inlet
from the main flow was controlled in like manner, and now both these
sluices were closed and more than three feet of water lay in the pool,
dark, and spotted with islands of bursting bubbles. A couple of
two-wheeled vehicles rested on their shafts in the yard, while the
beasts belonging to them, tethered upon the grass, got all they could
out of their situation.
As Heber emerged from the outhouse in which he had tied up his pony to
approach the pool, two persons were standing apart from the rest, with
their backs turned to him, and he went towards a thick place, from
which he could see them without being noticed. The woman was a young,
slight creature, soft-eyed, and with a swift gentleness of movement
unlike that of the working class to which she belonged. Her clear skin
flushed when her companion spoke to her as she stood by him holding a
hymn-book and nervously turning its leaves. She had a sensitive mouth
and when she looked down her lashes rested in a broad fringe upon her
cheek.
The other was a human being of a very different type, a man of ruddy
complexion, with white teeth showing in a pleasant smile when he
spoke; he was well dressed and had the assured bearing of one who
expects well of the world. Moorhouse watched the pair from where he
stood in the background of alder stems. It was easy now to see why he
was called 'Black Heber.'
As more people arrived at the spot the girl seemed to shrink closer to
the man beside her; and when three women went off alone towards the
house, she gave her book into his hand and prepared to follow them.
"It's time now," she said tremulously. "I must go. You'll follow soon,
Charles."
"I suppose you must have your way, Catherine," he said.
He looked after her as she disappeared and the door of the old inn
closed behind her. Then a dark-coated man held up his hand for silence
and the whole assembly went down upon its knees; Heber, too, knelt in
his brake of alder. The dark-coated man began to pray aloud.
The prayer had continued a little time when Charles, who was looking
eagerly towards the house from under the hand with which he had
covered his face, saw the four women emerge again and come across the
yard.
They approached slowly, one behind the other, a grey-headed woman
first; and there was something in the solemn demeanour of each that
sent Charles Saunders's mind back to the woodcuts of martyrdoms and
executions he had seen as a boy in his school history-books. This
half-barbarous scene was heightening the barrier which his slightly
superior station had raised between himself and Catherine Dennis,
though he was to be married to her in a week, and though he believed
it to have fallen altogether. He frowned as the prayer ceased and he
took his hands from his eyes. So far as he was anything, he was a
Baptist by force of parentage and tradition, though the doctrine of
total immersion appealed neither to him nor to his family.
Nevertheless, he had promised her that he would embrace it
practically, and he glanced at the small knot of men who awaited their
turn to be baptized and with whom he was to present himself when the
women came up from the pool.
The quiet figures stood modestly in a row behind the minister,
Catherine and the grey-haired woman together; the girl's colour was
mounting and fading again in her face. She looked over for a moment at
her affianced husband, and he could see the exaltation that burned in
her eyes, suggesting to him more than ever the idea of martyrdom. That
sexless exaltation divided her from him too. He shifted from foot to
foot and a smouldering anger was in him. It grew as he noticed that,
though the other three wore boots and stockings, she had slipped her
feet into a pair of shoes only and her bare ankles could be seen under
her stuff petticoat. Heber's eyes, which looked dark indeed, were set
on her, and, as Saunders suddenly perceived him among the trees, the
anger kindled in him like a flame.
He knew little of the man, scarcely more than that he was Catherine's
old lover, and that the two had parted because of some trivial
disagreement; but he had once drawn from her the admission that she
had been afraid of Black Heber. Saunders, who worked for a well-to-do
cattle-breeding uncle, whom he was eventually to succeed in business,
was made of a different stuff from the tall shepherd whose ways were
in the hill; and though the two men belonged to the same sect they did
not go to the same chapel, for Saunders worshipped in Llangarth, where
he and his relation lived and drove their trade. Heber's looks
suggested a rebellion against all with which the other held, and the
independence that clothed him as a garment irked the richer man; for
he had a mortifying certainty that if the other envied him at all, it
was on Catherine's account alone. There was annoyance in the thought
that Heber Moorhouse would not have exchanged his sheep and his life
of exertion and hardship--the cold winter snow and starlight of the
mountain, its burning, shadeless summer heats--for the advantages
which had placed himself high in the consideration of Catherine's few
friends. Catherine was an orphan and her lot in life that of a
maidservant at a humble farm. She had caught Charles's affections in
spite of every prejudice he possessed and the fact spoke well for the
strength of his feelings.
The minister was beginning the opening line of a hymn. His voice was
not strong, but the first sharp note pierced the silence of the trees
and threw the murmur of falling water into the background. The sound
gathered volume as one and then another of the congregation struck in.
Saunders alone was silent; he had a rich voice which agreed with his
generous type of looks and he was fond of using it; but he stood dumb
in his place as verse after verse rose and fell. It seemed to him as
if everything--voices, prayers, the very trees and the air of the
early autumn afternoon--was conspiring to make a show of the girl who
was his own and who was set in front of these scores of eyes,
conspicuous, with her bare ankles.
As the last words of the hymn died out the minister stepped down into
the water. It swirled round his middle, for he was a small man, and
lapped against the stone sides of the pool; and the oddness of his
appearance as he stood, fully dressed, in the confined space, with
only the upper half of him visible, brought a smile to the lips of a
few present to whom the sight was strange.
Catherine was the last of the four to descend into the pool, and she
paused before entering it to help her grey-headed predecessor up the
slope of the bank. The old woman was bewildered from the shock of the
immersion, and her teeth chattered as the girl supported her for a
moment before her companions led her away to the house. The minister
looked after the retreating women with some concern. Every eye was
upon Catherine, who had drawn the shawl she wore more tightly about
her and stood waiting for the support of her pastor's hand. For a
minute her heart quailed at the coming chill and her lips trembled;
then she put forward one white ankle and found herself clinging to the
man's sleeve, and up to her waist in the pool. Her grasp loosened as
she felt her feet and she joined her hands together while he lifted
his voice, calling on God to look down on this woman, His servant, who
stood forth to be baptized before the little congregation of the
faithful. She did not unclasp her hands as he put one arm round her
while he gently forced her backwards with the other; her eyes were
closed as the water rose about her throat and over her forehead. Just
as she disappeared completely under the surface the minister put his
foot on a loose stone on the floor of the paved place and slipped. He
regained his balance in a moment, but as Catherine felt his support
waver, panic took her, and she made a convulsive effort to rise. The
water gripped at her shawl and the sudden weight almost dragged her
down.
She had fastened the heavy covering securely, but it broke loose and
floated, half submerged, on the pool. She stood up, pale and
terrified, in her white shift and thick petticoat. The linen clung,
dripping, to her shoulders and bosom, outlining every curve of her
body, and her loosened hair fell in a coil to her elbows. The minister
drew the shawl from the water and wrapped it about her.
Saunders had come a few paces nearer, and as she regained the bank the
girl could see, even through the streams pouring from her hair, his
look of steady rage. She hurried quickly into the house: the tears
were mingling with the colder drops that washed her cheeks. She sank
down on a chair, in the room where the other women were putting on
their dry clothes, and sobbed. One of them came to her and began to
unfasten her wet shift. A dry one lay in a corner, with her stockings
and the rest of her garments; she sobbed on, heeding no one, for her
thoughts were with the angry man outside. She was very timid and she
had looked forward to this day as to a day of happiness.
At the brink of the pool the men who were awaiting baptism were taking
off their coats and boots and Saunders stood back again as he saw them
making their preparations. The wrath which the sight of Catherine's
bare ankles and her thinly veiled body had raised turned every
instinct in revolt against the rite he had witnessed. His foolish
promise to share in it had been given in the glamour of some tender
moment and he felt it would be impossible to redeem it. The whole
thing disgusted him; he took his religion and its forms more as a
matter of course than as a matter of conviction; and baptism by
immersion struck him now as an absurdity for a man--a positive
indecency for a woman. As he saw the minister looking towards him he
turned away, and went, in a tumult of revulsion, in among the trees.
He would have no part with these people.
He felt a wide difference between himself and these men and women of
the hillside; and he would take care that his wife should have no more
to do with them. She had no relations, fortunately, to beset her with
their influence.
He strode over the channel which was the outlet of the pool, his head
down, his angry look fixed on the ground. He would have turned his
back upon Bethesda, there and then, had he not told Catherine that he
would walk home with her to the farmhouse at which she served. He knew
that most of the congregation was aware of his intention to be
baptized to-day, and he could not endure the well-meaning glances of
inquiry that followed him. He hated every creature in it.
He reached a large alder whose divided stems rose from a wet place,
dark with that touch of the unhallowed which is the charm of alder
trees; Heber was leaning against the trunk amid the thick brush of
leaves. He was so appropriate a figure to his surroundings that an
imaginative person might have been startled. Saunders, who had for the
time being forgotten his existence, stopped. He was not imaginative,
but Heber--or, rather, the religious aspect of him--stood in his mind
for everything he was rebelling against now; for at this moment
Charles felt ready to become an infidel. The other aspect of
Heber--the one which had been uppermost while he watched the woman he
loved from the alder brake--only struck him as the man spoke.
"I thought ye were to go down to the water alongside o' her," he said.
"I would ha' done better for her than that."
There was savage contempt in his voice.
"_You!_" exclaimed the other, catching his breath; "_you_, indeed!"
"Yes, I."
"Ah! you scoundrel!" cried Saunders suddenly, "you black scoundrel,
hiding there among the trees with your eyes on another man's girl!"
"She won't be yours long," replied Heber.
"No, that she won't!" shouted Saunders, "not if she's going to keep up
wi' you folks on the hill! not if she's to make a show of herself and
a shame! not if she's to go a different way to heaven from me that's
to be her husband! What'll take me there'll take her too, and she
shall know it!"
His voice was so loud that many of the congregation were turning in
his direction. By this time the minister had come up from the water
and was speaking to the newly baptized persons who were standing about
him. Catherine and the three women waited afar off in the yard of the
inn.
Charles controlled himself and his voice dropped. He went off to the
house, skirting the limits of the crowd.
"I must be going home now," said the girl nervously, as he joined her.
He made no reply, merely starting off down the road and bidding her
come quickly. The people beside the pool had begun to talk and laugh,
now that the business that had brought them together was over, and the
sound of their loosened tongues made him hurry out of earshot. When
they had gone a little way he turned upon Catherine. The fact that she
had made no mention of his broken promise showed her to be entirely
conscious of his mood.
"You're angry with me," she said as he was about to speak.
"Why did you come out i' the face of all the people without your
stockings and without your gown? What took you that you couldn't be
decent and modest like the other women? There were you in your smock
for all these gaping fellows to see--good-for-nothing rascals like
that Black Heber sneaking there among the trees--damn him! I have no
mind for my wife to be a sight for the like of him!"
Catherine looked up at him with an agonised face.
"I was ashamed of you--that's what I was," continued he, "and I'll
have no more of it! I tell you to be done with all these common folk
that can't get baptized without making a parade and a show of
themselves. I wonder that an honest old grandmother like the woman
beside you should let you go out of the house like that."
"But my shawl came off," protested Catherine, who was now crying
bitterly; "the water pulled it away from me."
"And where was your gown that should have kept you decent?"
"I've only got one," sobbed the girl, "an' I was afraid to spoil it;
I've been pinching an' saving to buy my wedding dress, and there's
only this one to my back. Mrs. Job lent me her shawl that I mightn't
spoil what I've got."
Charles hardly knew what to say. In his heart he really acquitted
Catherine of the immodest behaviour with which he had charged her, but
his humour demanded an outlet. What really wrung his withers was his
smarting sense of the gulf between himself and the community from
which he was taking a wife. His origin was no higher than that of the
people whose voices he could still hear as they chatted round the
precincts of Bethesda, but his uncle's business had led him into a
more sophisticated class, and he had identified himself passionately
with it. In this access of contempt and wrath he had been stung into
positive fury by the meeting with Heber Moorhouse; for he was a
jealous man, and the thought that the girl he loved had been the
promised wife of such an one as Black Heber was more than he could
bear. It had almost made him hate Catherine.
They walked on in silence. She turned her face from him and wept on;
and Saunders's sense of justice was beginning to be touched--as the
sense of justice in the weak so often is--not by the actual rights
of the matter, but by his own sentiments. He grew a little less
furious. By the time they neared their destination he put out his hand
and drew her closer to him.
"There, there," he said, speaking more gently, "we'll say no more
about it. You'll have more than one gown, I'll go bail, when we're man
an' wife."
Catherine Dennis's existence had been dependent upon the will of
others ever since she could remember and no thought of rebellion
against her lover's unreasonableness came to her. A so-called aunt had
brought her up and at her death she had gone into service; she had
never had any choice in her course of life until 'Black Heber' had
found his way into it. Even the quarrel which parted them had been the
work of a third person, and Catherine had suffered and wept in secret
and been barely consoled by those who never ceased telling her that he
was a wild fellow and that she was well rid of him.
Only one person had taken a different line, and that was Mrs. Job
Williams who lived near Pencoed Chapel, on the lower slope of the
Black Mountain.
"Mrs. Job," as she was called by her neighbours, was a sharp-featured,
middle-aged matron, whose absolute ascendency over her husband had
made him almost a negligible quantity with his acquaintance. Her own
personality was so marked, and the impression she made upon the minds
of her neighbours so keen, that it was considered a lucky thing for
Catherine Dennis, tossed about, as she was, to have found anchorage in
'Mrs. Job's' goodwill. Her mission was to keep the little Baptist
Chapel of Pencoed in order, and she lived in a cottage beside the
green track connecting that place with the more frequented ways along
the hill. She was a fervent Baptist and it was owing to her that
Catherine had been brought into the community. Only her feeling of
responsibility for the girl's soul had prevented her from turning her
angular back upon her when Heber arrived one evening at her door, and
she discovered that the two had parted; she had wrestled sorely with
herself in her determination to keep friendly with Catherine, and that
responsibility was probably the one thing that could have enabled her
to do so. The girl was impressionable and excitable; she was
determined that it should not be her fault if the lamb she had brought
into the fold wandered back into the Church. She it was who had
influenced Catherine to persuade Saunders to be rebaptized in Bethesda
pool. Mrs. Job's heart was hot within her, for she liked the shepherd
more than she did most people. She had no child and the lonely visions
that came to her of the son she might have borne wore the face of
Black Heber.
And now Catherine's wedding was only a few days off. It was to take
place at an early hour in the morning and she was to sleep at Mrs.
Job's house on the preceding night. But though her prospects were so
good and though she was leaving a life of hard work for one of
comparative ease; though Charles's wrath had cooled during their long
walk, she stood at the gate of the farm looking after him with a
downcast heart. She had expected to be so happy, but it had been a day
of tears. He had not said a word about his broken promise, and she had
not found courage to speak of it.
CHAPTER II
A NIGHT OF STARS
CHAPTER II
A NIGHT OF STARS
ON the night before Catherine Dennis's wedding the spangled sky
spread, still and cloudless, above Pencoed Chapel. The plain
squareness of the house of worship, and the treeless stretch
surrounding it and Mrs. Job's cottage hard by, looked all the plainer
for the white points of light that burned in remote solemnity over the
mountain. The building, but for the one insignificant dwelling, was,
as it were, the solitary feature in a bare world; and the starlight on
the grey walls gave them an even greater austerity than they had by
day.
In the moonless night the gravestones round the chapel, having no
shadows to throw them into relief, were merged into general neutrality
with the grass. The sharpest things in earth or heaven were the angles
of Cassiopeia's Chair, high among the constellations, which seemed not
to look down on the sleep-bound world but to be turning from it,
consciously aloof in their unwavering detachment; a sight to affect
some not at all; to oppress some by the comparison of infinitude with
their own individualities; to raise others, by that very comparison,
to the height of ecstasy--the dim foreknowledge of what that true
sense of proportion must be which swallows the individual into the
immutable and divine.
At the back of Mrs. Job's house the small barn, which had been made
habitable as a lodging for travelling preachers, contained a single
light; and Mrs. Job, whose eye had caught the glimmer, crossed the
intervening space in the darkness and pushed the door open. Catherine
Dennis rose from her knees at the bedside and faced her, startled,
with parted lips. Though it was late she had not undressed, and, for a
girl on the eve of her wedding to a man she was supposed to love, her
look was curious. Perhaps she stood in awe of the morrow and of the
changes it must bring. There was an air of tension hanging over the
bare little room with its scanty, rough furnishings. Catherine's hat
lay on the bed; it was as if she had touched nothing, displaced
nothing, since she entered the place; only the depressions made by her
elbows on the bedcover were so deep they looked like dark pools in the
coarse white material.
She confronted Mrs. Job with the face of one caught in some evil act.
The woman's sharp eyes took in every detail of the scene. She indulged
in no useless comment, for it was not her way.
"Well," said she, as though waiting for Catherine to speak.
"I couldn't rest--I don't think I can sleep," said the girl.
"Ah, you've made your bed and you must lie on it," said Mrs. Job
grimly.
There was a pause.
"You've made a bed that'll be hard," she continued, "not for your body
but your soul. You've taken a man that may give you down to lie on an'
trouble to wake to."
She seated herself bolt upright upon the single chair the room
contained. In the candlelight her thin, sharp nose looked sharper.
"You'll be goin' back to the Church next," she added conclusively.
"But Charles is a Baptist," said Catherine.
"A Baptist? A Baptist?" cried the other; "he's nothin'--not him--but a
lukewarm Christian. And you who might have been married to Heber!"
She looked at the girl as though she were dust beneath her feet; she
could not understand her. She had never yet mentioned Black Heber's
name to the harassed little bride-elect; but she seemed likely to make
up for that omission now.
"_That_ was a man," she went on, "not a soft, blow-hot-an'-cold fellow
that could behave to ye like Saunders behaved at Bethesda! Heber's a
man of his word, an' you broke your word to him, an' Saunders broke
his word to you; yes, an' will again too. If he can't keep faith wi'
his sweetheart what'll he do with his wife?"
"But he's a very good-living man," began Catherine.
"That may be," cried Mrs. Job, raising her voice; "but there's no
religion in him! He don't care for nothin' but his cattle an' his
money an' his buyin' an' sellin' an' layin' up riches. What's the use
o' that when his heart's proud before God an' the truth's not in him?
Maybe ye'll live to find it out, girl. An' when ye do, don't come to
me. Don't tell me I didn't warn ye. This is a sad night for ye,
Catherine Dennis, an' to-morrow may be a sadder day, if I'm not
mistaken.
"But I've warned ye," she said, rising; "an' may be the Lord robbed ye
o' your sleep this night that I might bring home the warning."
She lifted the latch and paused on the threshold, looking back into
the room like some ominous, uncouth shadow between Catherine and the
star-set night outside. Her steps were audible crossing the space
between the barn and her own house, and the bang of the door, and the
loud scrape of the key as she locked it, had a suggestive finality
that awed the listener sitting alone with the guttering candle.
Catherine remained crouched where she was; she did not go to bed, for
her body seemed as numb and frozen as her heart. The sound of the
shutting door brought home the truth that another door had closed for
good and all; though Mrs. Job befriended her still and was giving her
the hospitality of her roof on this last night of her girlhood, she
was as much cut off from her as if she had openly declared herself an
enemy. Catherine understood that. She felt herself lost, somehow, in
the incalculable ways of life; she knew herself to be timid and
irresolute to an absolutely fatal degree and she clung all the more to
any hand that was stretched forward.
She wondered why she had parted from Heber Moorhouse; for, in spite of
the half-hearted fear with which his uncommon personality and decided
doings inspired her, she had liked him better than Saunders. He might
look like an outlaw, but he was an honest man. Why had she listened to
her mistress at the farm when she told her nobody but a born fool
would refuse Charles Saunders? Heber was a proud man, she knew; an
unforgiving one, she believed. No doubt he hated her now and Mrs. Job
was turning away from her for ever. She remembered Charles's bitter
words and heavy-browed rage on the way home from Bethesda. She had
seen a new Charles that day. Was that the man she was to live with the
rest of her life, and for whose sake she was parting with her old ways
and her old friends? He had said a good deal to her about the home he
was going to give her and enumerated its comforts and glories many
times; and she had listened with pleasure and looked forward to the
realisation of his pictures; but now she did so no more. These things
were untried, terrible, full of pitfalls. And worse than any vision
she could raise, or any misgiving about her betrothed, was the
half-superstitious belief growing on her that she was doing wrong.
Catherine's fears had been worked on as much by Mrs. Job's grim
appearance and the menace in her voice as by any words she had said.
She was dazed and weary, so weary that the effort of undressing was
too much for her slackened will. There was no clock in the barn to
tell her how the hours went by, or how many lay between her and
to-morrow's fate. It seemed that everything had passed out of her
control and that she could only be still, a sad, helpless heap, her
hands clasped round her knees and her head bowed on the footboard of
the wooden bedstead. And this was the eve of her wedding!
She did not know how long she had stayed there when there was a sound
outside which made her sit upright to listen. Before she could collect
her wits, a smart, short rap fell upon the door and a hand passed over
the outside of it as though groping for the latch.
Despairing fear seized Catherine. She did not move nor answer and her
heart bounded in her as though it would beat her side to pieces. As
the knock sounded again she hid her face in her palms. When she looked
up the door was open, and a tall figure stood on the threshold, with a
star looking over either shoulder out of the patch of fathomless sky
framed in the doorway.
She could not even scream as Heber Moorhouse strode towards her, but
she was aware of a horse which stood outside and the warm contact of a
man's hands as they closed over her own.
"I've come for ye, Catherine," he said, drawing her to her feet.
She tried to free her hands, but he held them fast.
"Saunders shan't have ye," he went on. "When he comes to Pencoed in
the morning there'll be nobody to meet him but Mrs. Job. You're coming
with me."
"I can't--I can't--" she exclaimed desperately.
"He shan't have you," said Heber again, as if he had not heard her.
"D'ye think I've ridden all this way for nothing?"
"It's too late. There's nought to be done now," cried the girl.
"Go--go, Heber. Let me be! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"
"You'll do what I bid you. Come, Catherine; it's best done first as
last. I've got a cloak for you there on the saddle."
The horse moved outside, and the sound sent Black Heber to the door.
All was as still as death, and he turned back.
"There's no time to lose," said he. "Come, be a good girl."
As he spoke an imperceptible stir of air flicked at the candle-flame
and its shine struck on the gold ring with a device of clasped hands
on Catherine's finger. He took her almost roughly by the wrist.
"Take that off," he said; "you'll need it no more."
She shook her head.
"Take it off," he repeated again, standing over her.
She hesitated and then obeyed.
It looked as though the action had decided her fate. He took the ring
from her and laid it on the table.
"Saunders 'll find it there safe," he observed, smiling, "and it's all
he'll find."
He drew her outside to the high doorstep, and, taking the cloak from
the strap on the saddle, he put it round her. She was as passive as if
the loss of her ring had mesmerised her. She felt destiny slipping
from her hold and the relief from its weight was well-nigh grateful to
her in her bewilderment. But she was being forced to do a terrible
thing, and she could not even tell whether or no it was against her
will. If only Mrs. Job would come back and either bid her go with this
man or save her from him!
It was not Heber's mountain pony that waited outside, but a big, dark
horse, seeming colossal to Catherine in the uncertainty of the night.
While she stood on the step he leaped into the saddle.
"Now," said he, "put your foot on mine and come."
She drew back, a last protest on her lips; as it left them he leaned
down and gripped her by both arms.
"Step up," he said.
The stone slab she stood on was a fair height above the level of the
horse's feet, and, as she set her foot upon the shepherd's boot, he
swung her up in front of him and turned the beast's head from the
barn. She gave a cry, clinging to him as they moved forward, and his
arm tightened round her, drawing her close.
"I won't let ye drop, my dear," said he: "no fear o' that, Catherine.
We're going to Talgwynne."
"To Talgwynne?"
"To my father's house. Nobody'll meddle with us there and we'll leave
it man and wife before long."
As they crossed the yard and turned the corner of Mrs. Job's house
stillness lay on the world round them as the tide lies on the sands.
But it was a strange thing that when they were a few yards distant on
the green road past Pencoed Chapel, a latch was raised softly in the
cottage.
And, as the tread of the dark horse died away, Mrs. Job, like Sarah in
the Scriptures, stood behind the door and laughed.
* * * * *
Black Heber set his face to the open stretches below the mountain.
Above, treading the paths of the sky, the planets wheeled on their way
towards morning; the constellations had turned a little. The night, as
it approached its zenith, had lightened under the dominance of the
shining groups with their myriad companions.
Catherine was so slight that the double weight made small difference
to the animal which carried the pair. Heber's strong clasp held her
firmly in front of him in the large country saddle, and as she grew
more accustomed to the horse's movements she sat more upright, looking
into the darkness. To her eyes it was darkness positive, though to her
discarded but inalienable lover, with his keen shepherd's sight and
his familiarity with every rood of the ground in all aspects and
circumstances of weather, season, and hour, it was only comparative.
It struck her that she would not have felt so secure with Charles
under like conditions, though he considered himself a finer horseman
and though he was such a well-appointed figure when he rode into the
market-town on his sleek hackney. She would hardly have been a woman
had the thought not given her pleasure. They turned towards the hill
as the track opened into unconfined wideness. They had spoken little
and no caress had passed between the reunited couple; Heber had not so
much as kissed the woman in his arms. His attention was centred on the
dark course he was steering, or fixed on landmarks only visible to his
practised gaze. Nothing moved upon the hill-slopes rising on their
left hand to bank themselves against the stars.
The horse was a fast walker and they had kept to a foot's pace the
whole way. All at once a stone, loosened perhaps from its bed on a
higher level by the foot of some grazing sheep, came rolling down the
hillside. They could hear it coming almost from the start of its
downward career, though in the darkness it was impossible to guess at
what point it might cross their way. The horse cocked his ears and
sidled, and Heber shortened his rein, holding the girl as in a vice.
The thing bounded across their path, a dim, shapeless, momentary flash
of grey on its irresponsible journey from nowhere to nowhere, and the
startled beast planted his forefeet and would have turned but for
Heber's strong hand and the grip of his knees. As she felt the swerve,
Catherine threw her arms round the rider with a sob of terror and
clung to him with her face buried in his shoulder.
Then it was as if madness had entered into Black Heber with her clasp
and the close pressure of her cheek; and the mountain air that blew on
his forehead stung him with its associations of freedom, and space,
and action. He gave a shout that rang against the slopes and sent the
horse forward at a gallop.
They rushed on through the night; in the starlight the animal took his
way safely along the smooth turf. There was no obstacle and no rough
ground in the whole of the stretch before them. Wild exultation filled
Heber, and his right arm was wound round the slight creature, who was
as a child in his hold. As long as they galloped thus, so long, he
knew, she would cling to him; there was room in his mind for nothing
but the insane desire to race on for ever with the hill air smiting
his face and her arms about him. No, indeed, Saunders should not have
her! He laughed aloud to think of his discovery in the morning.
It was well enough for him to laugh, and gallop, and exult, and to
give free play to the spirit of madness that the events of the night
had awakened in his wild heart, but Catherine was almost fainting. She
had lost all power of speech and could only strain her trembling body
convulsively to him; her breath was coming in sobs, stifled by the
contact of his coat. At every moment she thought to be dashed into the
night-stricken void through which they were rushing. The wind of their
pace tore at her hair and was cold on her neck. The echoes of their
flying hoof-beats were flung back from the hill.
They raced on. They were nearing the end of the mountain when Heber
pulled up and she ventured to raise her head and turn her cramped
limbs. She was shaking all over. "Put me down," she entreated; but she
could scarcely finish her sentence for the kisses with which he was
covering her lips, her cheeks, the loosened hair upon her brow.
Saunders had never kissed her like that. She dared not struggle, for
the last half-mile had worn her out and she was afraid of falling; she
could only pray to be allowed to walk.
He set her upon the ground at last, and dismounted beside her. It was
some time before he could persuade her that she must go forward if she
did not want to spend the night upon the hills. She was completely
unnerved, and when she finally suffered him to put her in the saddle
he led the horse on, walking at its head. She sat with her knee
crooked on the saddle-tree, her white face drooping with fatigue; two
great plaits of hair were falling to her waist.
The appalling complications that life can weave round its victims had
never been brought home to her so forcibly before: she was too tired
and frightened even to think of the end of this crazy journey or of
what would be its results; she was adrift and cut off from every one
but the wild man who walked in front with his hand on the bridle. Her
back ached and she was bewildered and cold.
They plodded on till they had left the hill behind and were on the
road. Two o'clock was striking from the tower of Talgwynne church as
they entered the little town, and the sound rang over the empty
street. Heber stopped at a door in a by-lane, and bidding Catherine
remain on horseback, he flung a handful of small stones against an
upper window. The casement was opened with some caution and a head was
thrust out. Catherine started as she heard a woman speak.
"It's me," said Heber; "let me in."
Before he had ended his request the head was withdrawn, and in a few
minutes the door opened like a yawning mouth in the whitewashed wall.
The woman ran back for a light. Black Heber lifted Catherine from the
saddle, and she followed him in.
The striking of matches came from an adjacent room, and, when the
light flared up, the girl found herself looking into a flagged kitchen
from which emanated the faint warmth of a half-dead fire. The woman
who had admitted them was bending over the lamp she was lighting, with
its chimney, which she had taken off, in her hand; she replaced it,
screwing up the wick, and turned to Heber.
Her expression as she caught sight of the girl behind him was
singular, and she neither came forward nor spoke a word, but stood
looking at the shepherd, her reddish hair taking a redder glow from
the lamp. The colour ran up to her face and remained in a bright spot
on each of her high cheek-bones. Faint lines about her mouth and jaw
showed that she had passed her freshest youth, though her full figure
and unfaded eyes held all the attraction of womanhood in the
mid-thirties. She had hurried on a few clothes, but her bodice was
carelessly fastened and strained across her full bosom. When she
turned her attention to Catherine she seemed to be looking down at her
from a height.
"Here's my girl, Catherine Dennis," said Heber shortly. "Ye'll not
refuse her a bed to-night, Susannah."
There was a tentative ring through his words which Catherine had not
heard before.
"There's no bed but mine," said the other.
"She's dead tired," added Heber. "Where's father?"
"Asleep," answered Susannah. "It's nigh on morning."
Without more ado he turned, leaving the women together, and mounted
the stair outside the kitchen door.
The elder of the two pushed forward a chair with grudging hospitality
and motioned to the unexpected guest to take it. Catherine drew near
to what warmth there was left; she had been meek enough through all
Heber's vagaries, but there was something in her companion's manner
that stirred her blood, and her spirit was rising. Susannah threw some
wood upon the red embers in the grate and raked the bottom bar. Then
she stood with one hand on her hip, regarding Catherine, until the
silence became so irksome that the girl felt herself forced to speak.
"I'll stay here by the fire," she said. "I don't need a bed."
The other had made no offer of sharing her own with the stranger, but
the bare idea of being alone with Susannah in the dark frightened
Catherine. The tacit antagonism between them was stronger with each
breath they drew.
For a few minutes the sound of voices continued overhead and was heard
through the ceiling, and then the shepherd came down again. He went up
to Catherine and took her hand.
"You'll stay here," said he, "an' I'll go home wi' the horse. I'll
settle wi' them at the farm and be back in a day or two, an' the
minister 'll do the rest. Give me a kiss, Catherine."
Had she wished to refuse him, the intuitive knowledge that the other
woman would gladly have disputed her claim on Heber made her consent.
He kissed her heartily.
"What did uncle say?" demanded Susannah, watching the pair with her
defiant eyes.
Heber laughed. "Never you mind, my dear. You take care o' my girl, and
I'll tell you when I come back."
He went out, followed by Susannah, and mounted the horse. Susannah
shut the house door and locked it behind him.
Then she stole upstairs without returning to the kitchen and leaned
out of her window till long after he had turned the corner of the
bylane. She did not want to sleep when at last she lay down; but it
was no concern for the chilled and lonely guest at the hearth below
that kept her waking.
Catherine sat on by the fire, so tired that the silence fallen on the
house with the shutting of Susannah's window was a relief. She was
aching, and her limbs felt the strain of that gallop along the edge of
the hill. Surely there never was a woman so hard driven by the
caprices of contrary winds as she; never a bride who was to watch the
dawning of her expected wedding-day in such an untoward plight. Above
her head enmity--there was small doubt of that--and now Heber was
miles away. He had appeared, only to drag her from the beaten path to
the altar and to disappear again, leaving her stranded. Though, even
now, she did not actually regret Saunders, her soul was overwhelmed by
the things she had heard about the shepherd before the breaking of her
troth with him. People had called him "a wild man," shaking their
heads, but she had never been able to reconcile the accusation with
his strict principles and religious zeal. Out of chapel and in it he
was not the same man, though no one had yet made any definite
allegation against him. Labels play a large part in the imagination of
youth and she was young enough to be desperately impressed by
discrepancies and contradictions. Her association with him had been
short, and ran smoothly till its breaking, but she had learnt little
about men from it. Until their quiet courtship had begun, her lot had
been entirely with women. Her mistress had not given her much
latitude, and Heber had been seldom to the farm; their walks to and
from Pencoed chapel on Sundays had been almost the only meetings of
the engaged pair. The man who had dismounted at the door of Mrs. Job's
barn and whirled her, terrified, through the starlight, could not have
existed in those untroubled Sabbaths. He could not be the same person
as the Heber she had known. She did not suspect that, though he had
always existed, she had never seen him. A like puzzle had dismayed her
in Saunders; the same chameleon-like habit of turning, under new
circumstances, into a different being. Her simple philosophy and
experience had given her nothing with which to meet these problems.
She had sat some time when there was a movement above and a step came
quietly down the stairs. Catherine straightened herself, her eyes
dilating as Susannah entered. She carried no light, but the
intermittent flame in the grate played on her, alternately hiding and
revealing her face. She sat down at the table, leaning her elbow on
it, and her companion did not need the sudden illumination starting
from the fire to make her aware of her expression.
"I've heard about you," said Susannah.
Catherine turned away her head. It seemed to her that her best refuge
was in silence.
"There's not much Heber hides from me," continued the other; "it isn't
for nothing he comes back to his father's house time and again as he
do. He's reckoned a good son, is Heber."
The sly scorn of her laugh ran like an electric current through the
kitchen.
"I mind when he parted wi' you," she went on. "He come back to me. I
knew he'd come. 'That's over, my dear,' says he, 'an' over for good
an' all, too. A false woman's better found out before the ring's on
her hand.' An' false you are, too," added Susannah loudly--"to Heber
first and to Saunders last."
"But here I am all the same," rejoined Catherine, her spirit roused
where another woman was concerned.
Susannah laughed again.
"Well, why not?" she cried; "no one knows better nor me _why_ you're
here. Heber's not one to let the paying of his debts slip out of his
mind. 'Saunders shall never have her,' says he. 'I'll be even wi'
Saunders.' And like enough he'll be even wi' you, too, Catherine
Dennis. Are you goin' to stop here waitin' for him? Maybe you'll have
to wait longer than you think."
Defiance died out of the girl's face, and a chill went to her heart as
this new and dreadful idea reached her. Through the darkness Susannah
heard the catch of her breath. She rose, and coming close to
Catherine, she knelt down and thrust a stick from the bundle lying in
the chimney-corner between the bars. She crouched, devouring the other
with her fierce look as the fire blazed up.
"It's not a white-faced thing like you that's the match for a man like
him," she added.
Her companion watched her, fascinated. She felt small and poor in the
presence of Susannah's bold womanhood. The angles which the wear of
life and work had begun to accentuate strengthened, by contrast, her
untamed generosity of line. Her red lips were drawn back a little from
her even teeth, and her hair, tousled by contact with her pillow,
burned in hotter colours in the glow which came from the grate.
She had repelled Catherine so completely, that only at this moment did
she strike her as a creature of possible attraction, something more
than a mere sordid, sexless influence. But, with the warm light and
some undercurrent in Susannah's voice and talk, there came to the
younger woman a new view of her companion. This throb of revelation
was still quick in her when Susannah spoke again.
"Yes, you may wait," she said slowly; "you may sit and wait--and
you'll know something more at the end nor you do now. Have I lived
here for nigh upon three years under the old man's roof for nothin'?
Is Heber my own cousin for nothin'? D'ye think because I haven't got a
white face an' soft ways that no man has ever looked at me? D'ye
believe that when Heber comes home it's uncle that he comes for?"
She rose to her feet, and as she did so she shook her head, and her
rolled-up hair fell and hung below her waist. She picked up the horn
comb that clattered down upon the hearthstone.
"Look!" she cried, holding out the tangled mass. Her arm was at full
stretch, and as the ends of hair slipped away from between palm and
fingers, the sleeve of her coarse night-smock slipped back too and her
thick, round arm showed through the sleeve as a patch of the white
moon through the drifting of dusky cloud.
It began to dawn on Catherine that she was more than the sport of her
own evil luck; she was a pawn in the hands of Heber and of this
strange woman, who was making her, in spite of herself, feel her
almost brutal fascination. What could she do in such a trap? Even she,
with her timid, simple experiences, could guess that Susannah loved
her cousin, and her heart quailed at the bitter thought which was
assuming a certainty; it was revenge only that had prompted the
shepherd to snatch her from the man who had supplanted him, while she
had supposed, in her folly, that he loved her still; it was a double
revenge that Black Heber was wreaking on herself and on Saunders. The
blood ran to her face as she remembered his kisses at the end of their
headlong ride. He had but sought to make her humiliation more
complete. How meekly she had followed him out of the door at Pencoed!
She had distrusted herself all her life; and now she must despise
herself too, as she sat, a deluded fool, in front of Susannah, who
knew all, and was mocking her because of the knowledge.
When people have been a long time in learning some elementary truth,
the lesson, once made plain, takes complete hold of them. Catherine
had never yet attempted to act for herself and now she saw that she
must awake from her passiveness and free herself, once and for all,
from the web in which she was taken. As she looked at Susannah she
pierced beyond her into a new sequence of ideas. She had been hunted
into a corner because she had been too ready to run. All the people
she had known were so much stronger than she was that she had given up
her own will to theirs without a struggle. Her mistress at the farm,
Mrs. Job, Heber, and now Susannah; none of these suffered themselves
to be dragged about by circumstances and by others as she had done.
She was having hard measure from them all and it was time that,
independently of them all, she should choose her own life. Only
intense physical exhaustion kept her from running out of the house,
yet again, into the night, where she might be alone with her biting
mortification. The same roof should not shelter herself and Susannah.
Perhaps a shade of pity smote the elder woman at the sight of her
white cheeks and her heavy eyes, dark with weariness. She took her by
the shoulder.
"There," she said, "come you in here and lie down or you'll be dead
afore morning."
She opened a door and pushed her into a tiny room in which the flicker
from the kitchen fire showed the outline of a mattress on the floor.
Susannah bade her lie down while she fetched a covering and she
obeyed; she would have liked to rebel, but her fatigue was too great.
When the elder woman left her she lay still for a space, her one
thought of escape. Then she slept, worn out; to-morrow--somehow--she
would begin the world for herself.
CHAPTER III
TALGWYNNE FAIR
CHAPTER III
TALGWYNNE FAIR
ON the second morning after Heber and Catherine disturbed the sleeping
house, Talgwynne was also shaken out of its accustomed quiet by its
half-yearly horse-fair. But for the usual market this was the little
town's one explosion of business and pleasure; sheep and cattle
changed hands every week within sound of the clock on the square
church tower in larger or smaller quantities, but it was only in
spring and autumn that mountain ponies, hackneys, and carthorses
enlivened the place by their transitory presence.
On these occasions the west side of the town was by far its most
cheerful point, for the road sprawled out into the country, and, for a
flat quarter of a mile, was set apart as a show-ground by those who
had horses to sell. A rough fringe of grass on either side of the way
was the rallying place of the solid, who came to buy; the idle, who
came to look on; and the light-minded, who would assemble to jeer and
to goad unskilful horsemen with taunts and advice. After mid-day the
roadsides would be strewn with hats, wisps of straw, broken clay pipes
and the persons of those who had already succumbed to the pleasures of
the fair.
To Heber's father, crippled by rheumatism and well on in years, this
gathering was not a thing to be missed, for it was his one link with
the world as he had known it all the days of his life. The stream on
which he had plied in youth and manhood had taken an outward bend, as
it does for the very aged, and had left him on that sad, isolated
piece of shore which is the last resting-place for their living feet.
But Talgwynne fair could still give him the faces of a few old cronies
and the wry pleasure he could still experience at the sight of younger
men compulsorily parting company with their saddles.
He sat on a log, sheltered from the fresh wind by the hedge at his
back, with Susannah, to whom both horses and riders were interesting,
beside him. Though old Moorhouse was remarkable by reason of his
stature, which years and rheumatism had only slightly disguised, and
his niece, because of a vivid, indefinable something, which arrested
both male and female eyes, the couple was too ordinary a sight to
attract notice from regular haunters of the fair, and only a few
strangers let their minds wander from business to glance at them. The
interest of most people appeared to be centred in a prosperous-looking
man whose face was unfamiliar to Susannah, as he loitered with a knot
of farmers standing by their gigs on the grass. So many glances
followed him that she remarked on it to a lad who was watching him
with a half-curious grin and an elbow which jogged the ribs of a
neighbouring friend.
"That's him--Charles Saunders," replied the young fellow; "come to
look for 'is wench, a' s'pose. You be a bit behind the times, missus."
The two friends went off into the victorious crow which is the yokel's
recognition of another's discomfiture.
Susannah checked the exclamation on her tongue; there was hardly any
one in the world at that moment who interested her so much, and she
rose and pressed forward a little to get a better view of Charles,
whom she had never seen. As she surveyed him she wavered between her
sense of his inferiority to Heber as a masculine creature, and her
surprise that Catherine should have attracted so important a suitor.
She edged nearer to the group in which he stood, but the passing and
repassing of animals, and the varied sounds of the fair, prevented her
from hearing anything that was said by himself or by his companions.
Business was getting brisker as the sun climbed the sky, and it was
evident that Saunders and his friends were waiting for a horse to be
trotted out from the crowd choking the road at the entrance to the
town.
She stood lost in contemplation of Catherine's jilted bridegroom. So
many things were surging in her mind that the shouts along the road
were unheeded, and she only realised, when a hand pulled her back to
the grass, that a horse was almost upon her.
Roars of laughter were gathering density, like a snowball on its
career, and for an instant she imagined herself and her threatened
mishap to be their cause. A wrathful flush was on her cheek and it was
only on the beast's return journey that the redoubled merriment
undeceived her.
Every one was standing back to have a fuller view of the passing
horseman. He was a long, elderly man, whose appearance and demeanour
made the horse under him a mere adjunct to himself and commerce a
secondary matter. The lightning trot that formed his charger's chief
qualification was of such incredible swiftness that he had gone by
almost before the onlookers knew what had happened. In order that this
should not degenerate into a canter, the rider had laid himself
forward on the leggy creature's neck, and was firmly grasping its
ears, from between which his own face, crowned by a pot hat and framed
in streaming whiskers, stared into futurity. Behind him, the bellying
skirts of an old greatcoat flew high above tail and crupper and a gale
of laughter ran alongside him as he went, hanging in his wake like
rubbish in the draught of an express train.
Susannah had some humour, but it was of that unreliable sort which
flies from its owner at a personal touch, and not even the passage of
such a figure across her vision could divert her eyes from Saunders.
It did not escape her observation that, though he opened his mouth and
shouted with the rest of the world, he shut it again quickly; and
that, while his companions closed in on the road to get a last view of
the horseman as he disappeared into the town, he alone kept his place.
It was clear that he was pre-occupied; and the sullen uneasiness of
his expression when he was separated from his friends told the woman
who watched him something of his mind.
As the day went on, and horse after horse was led or ridden out for
the benefit of the farmers, old Moorhouse's stiff limbs were growing
uneasy on his log and he summoned his niece and began to move
homeward. Susannah was obliged to go with him, but she determined to
return when she had left him within safe distance of his own door; for
she had spread his midday bread and cheese on the kitchen table before
leaving the house, and there were possibilities waiting for her in
Talgwynne of which she had not dreamed as she set out for the fair. By
hook or by crook, she meant to have a word with Saunders.
Her uncle moved slowly, and the crowd made it so difficult for them to
get on, that they were forced to take the most devious way to avoid
it. Though she did not enter the house, it was almost an hour before
she found herself in the town and once more in the middle of the
throng. There was no sign of Saunders, and she guessed that he was
still on the road; but she stayed where she was, keeping as much as
possible in the background and shunning those acquaintances whom she
saw. She told herself that he must return to fetch his horse, for she
knew, by his splashed leggings and the whip under his arm, that he had
ridden to the fair. There would be a better chance of attracting his
attention quietly in the hurly-burly than on the open road.
She was standing in the shadow of a doorway when at last she saw him
and observed a greater geniality on his face. He was flushed, and his
hat sat at a more cheerful angle; and though his assured and steady
manner of threading the maze of people held him above all suspicion of
being drunk, Susannah suspected that he had been bolstering his fallen
spirits in the popular way. She edged again into the moving mass of
humanity and soon found herself close to him. He seemed to be
searching for some person, for it was nearly impossible to catch his
eye. She plucked him boldly by the sleeve.
Saunders turned round at once. She was as completely unknown to him as
he had been to her a few hours ago; but, thanks to a couple of visits
to the Hand of Friendship, his downhearted uneasiness had given way to
a more venturesome outlook on the world. Though Susannah wore a plain
black jacket and an unsuggestive hat, both of which had seen better
days, there was in her appearance that demand for attention from the
other sex which certain women carry with them wherever they go and
however they are clothed. Her direct eyes challenged those of Charles,
which now had a roving expression absent from them in the morning.
"Well, my dear," said he easily.
"What'll you give me for a bit o' news?" asked Susannah, answering his
look in kind. Her hand was still on his arm and she gave it a little
shake.
Saunders smiled. He did not quite know what to say in reply, nor what
turn he wished the situation to take; it seemed to have several
possibilities.
"It's good news, too," continued she, "and maybe I'll give it you for
nothin'. You've been used very bad, Mr. Saunders."
Charles's countenance changed. The certainty that he was a marked man
had dogged him all day. He had come to Talgwynne very unwillingly,
because his uncle, who wanted a horse, and whom he could not afford to
disoblige, had sent him to the fair to look for something suitable. He
had read in every face how completely his misfortunes were public
property, though the Hand of Friendship had helped to put his
humiliation from him for a little while. Every one he met knew how he
had arrived at Pencoed on his wedding morning to find himself there on
a fool's errand. No living creature had seen Catherine go; and all
that he or any one had been able to drag from Mrs. Job was the
admission that she had heard a horse pass her cottage long after she
was snug in bed. She had risen and stared into the darkness, but,
seeing nothing, had returned to her rest. As for the girl, she had
bidden her good-night, leaving her safe in the barn, hours before.
Charles had cursed and stormed. Heber came to his mind even before he
heard his detested name upon the lips of the best man, who spoke his
suggestion boldly. But there was no clue, no trace; nothing but the
marks of horse's feet printed about Mrs. Job's barn-door and crossing
the yard, only to lose themselves on the hard turf of the mountain.
While to every one possessed of the rudiments of good sense, these
were proofs of the shepherd's complicity, Heber was quietly at his
business at the farm. The best man, whose curiosity, draped in the
cloak of friendship for Saunders, urged him to the place, brought back
this news. But there was no sign of Catherine.
The sting of wounded pride was so sharp on Charles that the idea of a
search for the lost woman was far from him, and he was loud in his
resolve not to stir an inch in pursuit. Had he been able to injure
Heber he would have done so willingly, but Catherine should go free.
She had proved herself no fit wife for a man of his sort, and it was
not for him to take her back at a gift--not now. His tongue moved with
unclean freedom as he made known his opinion.
"Yes, you've been used shameful, but you'll have the laugh o' them
yet, and I'll help you to get it, if you'll listen to me," continued
Susannah. "I can tell you that much. Come you out of the crowd a bit.
We can't speak private enough here."
Charles looked round suspiciously, first on the elbowing mass and then
on the unknown woman at his side; not far off he saw one of the
farmers with whom he had been in company that morning. Certainly it
would not do to discuss his affairs in such publicity. Had his head
been perfectly clear he might not have been minded to discuss them at
all, but as it was, the mixture of sympathy and knowingness in
Susannah's voice had its effect. If she had been a man he would have
shaken her off, cursing her for her impudence; but he liked women, and
there was something about this one that impressed him and took his
fancy too. As he hesitated his name was shouted across the way.
"Here! let me go--I must be off!" he exclaimed, turning from her.
"There's a horse coming out for me to see."
The friend who had hailed him shouted again.
"There's a man just come who'll fetch him out for you," he called, his
hands trumpet-wise about his mouth; "you go up the road, Charlie, and
he'll bring him along!"
Saunders looked round for Susannah, but she was no longer beside him
and was already pushing her way on the pavement towards the western
entrance to the town. He followed, more slowly, and found her waiting
where the houses ended. She was panting a little. She fell into step
with him, and together they made for the place where old Moorhouse had
sat earlier in the day.
"Here's my news," said Susannah. "_I know where Catherine Dennis is._"
"I don't care a damn where she is, not I!" burst out Charles. "She's
with Heber Moorhouse that's been sneakin' after her these months past!
That's no news to me."
His companion paid no heed to the string of adjectives with which he
prefixed the shepherd's name.
"That she's not," replied she, with finality.
"Don't tell me lies!" cried Saunders, hurrying on as though to get rid
of her, "what's the use of that? _I_ don't want to know what's come of
her; another man's leavings are no good to the likes of me! Heber's
got her now, and he can keep her, an' welcome too."
"He's not got her, I tell you! And he won't neither, if you're any
kind of a man."
Charles cast a searching look upon her, stopping in the middle of the
road. His face was a little more flushed than when they started.
"You mind me, Mr. Saunders," said Susannah, stopping too and planting
herself in front of him. "The night afore the wedding Heber brought
her to our house an' knocked me out o' my bed to let him in. As white
as a sheet she was, for he'd ridden with her the whole way from
Pencoed, an' she was fit to lie down and die on the floor. I was sorry
for the poor thing; that I was. He left her there without so much as a
word, and she sat like a ghost by the fire until I made her lie down
an' sleep. I give her my own bed to lie in, Mr. Saunders. She were
that afraid of Heber she couldn't rest for shakin' an' tremblin', an'
it was easy enough to see she'd come sore against her will. It was
that old witch at Pencoed Chapel that turned her out--she's always
been a friend o' Heber's, has Mrs. Job; and between her and Heber,
what could the poor thing do?"
The puzzled astonishment on Charles's face grew as she unfolded her
blending of lies, facts, and half truths.
"And there she is, and Heber's to come back for her as soon as he
can."
"What's Heber got to do with you?" interrupted Charles, pushing his
hat back on his forehead. "Who are you? What the devil have you got to
do with me either?"
"I'm his own cousin," replied Susannah, "I live in his father's
house."
"You come and take her away," continued she, dropping her voice and
coming closer; "she frettin' sore for you, Mr. Saunders. She dursn't
go back to Mrs. Job, an' she hasn't got a penny piece in her pocket.
Heber knows that well enough, and he's no fear but she's safe till he
comes."
"_I_ don't want her!" he exclaimed again; "she's gone and disgraced
herself, woman."
"You can pay him back in his own coin," urged Susannah, as if she had
not heard his last words, "you've got a finer chance o' that than any
man ever had before. You found the nest empty yourself----"
She paused and broke into a laugh, which made his hot face grow
hotter.
"Come you, Mr. Saunders," she went on; "be a man. When it's too late
you'll be sorry there's anybody alive can laugh at you for gettin' the
worst of it like you've done. My! the talk I've heard this morning!
You're too well known in these parts for a thing like that to pass off
easy."
Had there been no Hand of Friendship in Talgwynne, Susannah might
merely have succeeded in irritating Charles without producing any
effect; his brain was muddled, though in a slight degree, by what he
had drunk, and he was in that unbraced humour in which rapid changes
of mind are possible. But he was annoyed too, and his vanity, which
had been so bitterly assailed, was as likely to turn him in one
direction as in another. The two had come to a standstill, when the
beat of hoofs made them look back.
The expected horse was emerging from between the houses in a series of
capers and pig-jumps that promised the man on its back an interesting
ride. Saunders had examined it in the fair, but, as the small boy in
charge had orders not to mount himself, the owner, a very old man, had
been obliged to look round for some one with pretensions to
horsemanship before the young, excitable animal could be trotted out
for Charles to see. Though everybody was not minded for the
responsibility, the difficulty had been overcome at last. While
Saunders watched the approaching rider, Susannah broke into an
exclamation, and, running towards a gap in the hedge, concealed
herself behind the trunk of a tree, which grew upon the bank.