by Bram Stoker
Rafe sprang forward to catch her in his arms, but the horse started a little, and the rein on his arm held him off. There was a sort of grim irony in the situation, which, however, both Rafe and Betty were too agitated to notice.
It was, perhaps, only a natural manifestation of masculine nature, but when the conviction began to dawn upon him that he had not lost Betty’s love, the supremacy of the man over the woman began unconsciously to assert itself.
“You had better get on your way, Betty,” he said, in an authoritative manner; “the roads are not safe, and it was unwise to come alone.”
The speech may seem inconsequent, but both speaker and hearer understood the connection. The silences of lovers, and the habits of such silent understandings, are known to themselves. Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he added, with a horrified expression on his face — “My God! if it had been some other than me!”
Betty said sadly: “Would to God, Rafe, that it had!”
“But you don’t know the danger!”
Here a momentary pang of bitterness swept over Betty’s heart, and she answered out of the quickness of her woman’s speech —
“Aye, Rafe; you know better than I do the highwayman’s mercy!”
Then followed quickly the reaction of her long restraint, and in a burst of passion she poured forth her whole heart, and all that had been torturing her during the past two days. She ended thus —
“But, Rafe, it was because I feared it, and dreaded it, that I came. If it were bad for me, an. innocent woman, to suffer, what must the guilt be that makes such a fear to you. Oh, Rafe! Rafe! what mattered the danger to me, a dead woman — aye, a dead woman!” for she saw the question in his face. “What life is in one when the hopes are shattered, and the fire in the heart is quenched? I would have given my life for you, Rafe, as you did for me. Why, then, should I hesitate to run a danger for your sake?”
Here Rafe interrupted —
“But, my God! Betty, you don’t know the danger. These men are the roughest, the cruellest, the most remorseless wretches that exist!”
He ground his teeth with passion at the horrible possibilities that rose before his mind. Betty looked at him a moment, and her heart began to beat with a new hope. The lesson of his own shame and ill-doing, and what it meant to her eyes, was coming home to him; out of his very passion might come his reclamation. He would, she reasoned to herself, never have experienced such emotion if he were truly hardened; and so she felt she could enter on a new phase of her task. Still calmly looking him in the face, she put her hand in the bosom of her dress and pulled out her sharp dagger.
“See!” she said, as she held it out towards him, “I did not come unarmed!”
Rafe smiled a bitter smile, wrung from the depths of his masculine experience.
“A good weapon, child, but of small use against a desperate man. He would have beaten it from your hand with his whip or his pistol-butt before you could have struck a blow.”
Betty answered calmly, as she replaced the dagger in her breast —
“It was not for him!”
“Who for, then? Good God! Betty, not for yourself?” he added, as the thought struck him.
“For myself, Rafe! I did not come out on this desperate enterprise without weighing well the consequences. But I saw my duty clear before me, and I had no alternative. Oh, Rafe! Rafe! it was a desperate choice.” Here she broke down for a moment, but recovered herself and went on, without even a falter in her voice —
“In any case I must have suffered such a loss — my life or my love, my life or my love!”
They were both silent, and then a new thought struck Rafe, and he asked —
“But how did you know you would meet me? The chances were a thousand to one against such a thing!”
“Oh! Rafe, my heart told me.”
“Your heart told you!” said Rafe, with sudden bitterness. “Your heart told you that I was a robber, when you had no grounds even to imagine such a thing. And yet you come here with those gold buttons on your dress.
‘Love without faith ‘ indeed! And so this was your faith in me! that unheard you condemned me and held me as guilty.”
He became fairly speechless with indignation. Betty was so overwhelmed with this monstrous change of front — this outcome of jealousy and love and vanity, which was so thoroughly masculine in its nature as to be beyond feminine comprehension. She stood silent and hung her head, for the rebuke touched her deeply in her inner nature; she felt the remorse that she might, and would, have felt had her supposition as to Rafe’s misdoing proved untrue. Betty was a girl who seldom cried, and more especially when the tears came from any emotion beginning with herself. Now and again she wept at hearing or reading a piteous tale or seeing such told in a play, but her tears came gently and passed soon; but when she wept with cause her tears were very tears of blood. At such times, even before the tears fell, dark circles grew round her beautiful eyes, and the misery of her soul became very pitiful to see. Rafe saw the tears fall from her downcast eyes, but his anger was hot — -jealousy is so hard to efface — and even Betty’s tears did not move him at once. Then the anguish of the poor girl’s heart found a voice; in a deep, low tone which smote on his ears with a pang which he never forgot she said —
“Oh, Rafe! Rafe! my lost love! Would to God that my fears had been untrue! My life would have been well spent to have learned so sweet a truth!”
Then, in an instant, down at her feet fell Rafe, all the man in him rising to the height of his humility. Down into the dust, on his knees, with his face in his hands. The rein slipping from his arm freed the horse which started away, but stopped at once and began quietly to browse the herbage on the bank.
Betty still wept, but her tears were such as angels shed; and all the sorrow of her heart was turned to instant joy. Rafe was won! His heart was true, and she felt that there had come the dawn of a new life. At that moment, as though it were some mysterious presage, the day fell. The sun sank over the hill, and the red light fading left the girl, who stood with her hand on her lover’s head, pale and spirit-like. Her dress of white gleamed out beneath the thrown-back mantle of grey, and the golden buttons twinkled like stars in the night.
So they stood for a moment; but Betty suddenly raised her head and listened, and both the horses raised their ears and listened too. Far away came the quick stroke of a horse’s feet on the high-road; Robin was evidently coming at a gallop — a way that was new to him. Betty said quietly —
“Robin is returning; he must not find you here. No living soul but you and I know this sad secret; and, Rafe dear, it must die with us. You must go away for a time; it will be best for you, as for us all. Go abroad to the wars, where you can begin life afresh. Think that you go to win back your honour, and so to claim the hand of the wife that waits for you. See here! I have brought with me money that will keep you from want, and help you in your career,” and she produced the packet that Mr. Child had given her. “Take it, Rafe!”
But Rafe sunk his head lower and lower, and spoke without looking up —
“Oh! spare me — spare me this!”
“Nay,” she said, “Rafe dear, there is nothing to spare. This is not mine to give. I knew you would not receive from me — would to God that your pride had not been so; but that is past. This is a trust which my dear grandfather left me. He gave it to me the very night he died; and it is as though he were come from the grave to give it you. Take it, Rafe! It is a holy trust; and hereafter, if you may be able to do so, you may yet pass it on to others, so that it can help some in dire straits. Surely, Rafe,” she added, as he still hesitated — ”surely I have won to-day the right to ask you that no such trouble should come upon you again, when with this trust-money we can avert it. Your own heart must tell you that I am right. Quick! quick!” for the gallop sounded nearer.
Rafe put up his hand and took the packet; then he seized her hand and held it a moment to his lips, and looked up in her eyes as he said solemnly
—
“Betty, as God sees us, this hand shall never sin in such way again. It shall never be less worthy than now when it touches the hand of one of His saints.”
“Oh! hush, hush, Rafe!” said Betty, overwhelmed with emotion.
Rafe sprang to his feet; the manhood of him seemed triumphant again, and all the nobler part of the soul within stood revealed without dross.
“Betty, if I am spared I shall come back to, claim you; and if I do so come, I shall feel: worthy to ask you to share my life. But living or dying I shall send you word, if I do not - bring it, that your faith has been justified. Goodbye! Goodbye!” Betty held out her arms, and he sprang to them, and for an instant enfolded her in a passionate embrace. Then I he tore himself away. He paused a second and returned.
“Give me a keepsake,” he said. “Something that I can wear over my heart, and which will be with me always as the symbol of your faith and love.”
“Take one of the buttons, Rafe; they are dear to us both,” she said shyly. He stooped ‘ and caught one in his hand — the one nearest the ground.
“Why that one, Rafe?”
“Because it is fittest for me. ‘Tis nearest to your garment’s hem.”
“No, no, Rafe! take this!” Pulling out the dagger, she severed the third of the buttons, held it an instant to her lips, and handed it to him.
“‘Tis nearest to my heart.”
Rafe’s breast heaved; he looked at her one moment, flung himself to the dust, and kissed the hem of her dress; then, without a word, sprang to his saddle, and with a wave of his hand, leaped up the bank whence he had come.
Betty heard the crash of his passage through the short undergrowth as he started, as the crow flies, towards Harwich, to take that night a fishing-boat to Holland.
As she watched him go, even in the anguish of her parting, Betty gloried in the strength and daring of her lover, in his rapid action, and the vigour of his determination; and, womanlike, she felt happy because the man was strong.
Then she drew her horse to the bank, climbed into the saddle, and pushed hastily on -her way. She did not look back as the coming horseman drew closer, but only turned when she found that the speed did not diminish on his approach. For an instant she was startled as a woman, magnificently mounted, swept by at break-neck speed; but before horse and rider had dissolved into the shadows of the evening, she recognised beneath the woman’s habit the free carriage of a-man. A new gush of thankfulness went up from her heart, for she knew it was the rider with the money of the New River Company. Her heart beat fast at the thought of how close had been the rescue of Rafe, and a new thankfulness filled her soul. However, she proceeded on her way thankfully, so that when presently Robin, riding hot haste, overtook her, she was some distance from the scene of the meeting.
“Dear heart, Miss Betty!” said the honest fellow as he rode up, “but I feared ye would be lost when the night fell. I have the ring; but we must push on, or ‘twill be dark before we reach the house. And oh! Miss, when that daredevil woman rode past me like a flash I couldn’t but think that mayhap some of those highway gentlemen’s ladies had took to the road too! I feared till I saw you safe ahead o’ me.” That night when Robin, after his supper, was relating to the servants in the kitchen all the adventures of the day he added —
“And sure I am that the change has done Miss Betty — Lord love her! — good already. She hasn’t been so gay for days and days as when I came up to her in the road She was singing to herself like a bird, and her eyes were like stars.”
CHAPTER VIII
IN FINSBURY SQUARE
AS the next five years flew by they saw many changes in many things, but none in the heart of Betty Pole. The new dynasty grew more and more a part of the life and the future of England, and the thunder, which followed ever the hopes of the Stuarts, was but as the far roll of elemental disturbance which makes apparent to all men their own immediate safety. Everything was prosperous with Betty in the way of fortune, and her wealth grew with each year, despite the fact that the many calls on her charity were never unanswered, and that the other members of the family looked to her — and did not look in vain — for countenance in all their aspirations and endeavours. One great loss there was in the household, and only one: Priscilla slept at peace.
From the evening when they had parted on the road to Much Hadam, Betty had never heard from Rafe or of him. He had disappeared as effectually as if the earth had swallowed him. Betty’s faith never faltered. She believed that one day he would appear, or that some message from him would reach her, and in that belief she rested serenely. Some time after his disappearance she had taken into her own hands certain large sums of money, much to the chagrin of the vigilant Alderman, who remonstrated with her for withdrawing from active use any money at a time when with decent care it would multiply itself through the rage for public speculation. Betty did not attempt to argue on the subject with him, but told him that it was in the fulfilment of a duty, and begged him not to make a somewhat difficult task into a labour of pain. She spoke to him so sweetly, and withal so warmly, of her gratitude to him for his constant care, that the old gentleman, although somewhat chagrined and jealous as to the cause of her mystery, abandoned the subject except at rare intervals.
Then after a time strange rumours began to be heard. The agents of Lord Baltimore received a mysterious letter saying that if they searched in a certain place in Wandsworth they would find the money stolen so long before. They sought the place with a select following of servants, and sure enough found an amount in new gold larger than the sum stolen. This strange occurrence was followed at irregular intervals by similar ones, till after a time it was found that quite a number of persons who had been robbed-near London in the early half of 1717 had had full restitution made to them. The matter was the subject of comment in the coffee-houses, and many were the surmises as to the cause or means of so unusual a set of circumstances.
All this time Betty lived partly at her house at Much Hadam and partly at Chelsea She had now many affairs to keep her busy, and she often made calls at the counting-house of Mr. Child and lodged and drew much money from time to time. She went much amongst poor and distressed persons. Sometimes her ministrations of this kind took her to places beyond the Liberties of the city; but she smiled at warnings against footpads and went on her way. Now and again she paid visits to the prisons; and although she always went with a sort of dread upon her, and suffered much whilst witnessing the pain and degradation of the poor souls held in durance, she came away as if cheered and benefited by the accomplishment of her good work.
Once, after the news had been told in the coffee-houses of another mysterious finding of stolen property, the old Alderman came out to pay her a visit. For a time he had been angry and indignant at the disappearance of her affianced husband, and, manlike, had managed, whilst trying to comfort the poor girl, to visit on her head some of his disapprobation. She had borne it all meekly, and had held herself with such a grave manner that her friends had hardly ventured to condole with her on her loss or misfortune — they did not know which to consider Rafe’s disappearance.
On this occasion the Alderman did not come’ in his great carriage with rich hammercloth and with coachman and big servants in gorgeous livery, which he had continued to use on great occasions since he had been Lord Mayor, but in a plain coach with no servant but the driver. Betty was all alone; she was delighted to see her old friend, and made him very welcome. He, however, was manifestly ill at ease and had something on his mind; so when they sat together in the cool drawingroom Betty laid her little hand on the back of his great one and said —
“What is it? I know something is troubling you. Won’t you tell me?”
The Alderman seemed relieved to have the matter commenced, though for the moment his embarrassment increased and he grew red and stammered.
“My dear, I’ll do anything in all the wide world that you wish,” he said; and then added hastily and inconsequently —
Betty was really surprised, and with wide-open eyes she answered —
“No, Cousin Fenton. I have more than I shall ever want.”
“But I mean, my dear, money to deal with — money ” he stammered and stuttered for a second or two and then spoke with grave, frank directness —
“I mean, Betty, my dear, more money — such as you have drawn from us and spent — in your own way.” Betty shook her head; he went on, and there was a tremor in his voice —
“I mean money to deal with as you dealt with that thousand guineas of your grandfather’s. Oh, my dear! my dear! I have been thinking; and somehow I seem to know now.
I take back all I said of money to you, Betty dear! You were right and I was wrong; and now I want you to understand that if you want any more money to do what you will with — even to throw it away — I shall be only too proud if you will let me give it to you. For’ all I have is, in the end, for you, Betty! And oh! my dear; you were right. You are right in all you do; and how I honour you! All last night I lay awake, thinking of you; and I seemed to see you setting out that day from my door in your pretty white frock and your gold buttons. I didn’t know what it all meant, and in my blind obstinacy I must have caused you grievous pain — and more, piled up your troubles and difficulties on you. I’ll never get the sight of you on that morning out of my eyes again. And I never want to, my dear, for the good Lord was with you on your journey that day; and if I had only known ”
Here the old man fairly burst out crying, and taking Betty’s two hands in his raised them to his lips and kissed them and went on, whilst Betty drawing from her bosom a gold button by its white silk string, kissed it —
“My dear child, when I see you bearing your trouble so bravely, and striving so to do all that is right, I think better of others — of all others — for your sweet sake; and I pray that you may yet have the desire of your heart of hearts. I hope and pray God with all my soul that in time to come your life will be blessed with love — that love you hope for: the love of a good and worthy husband, whom you can honour and who will love and honour you as you should be loved and honoured!”
