“YOU, WHO DIED TO-DAY,” she murmured.
She saw the horizontal poles too late. One of them had rolled from its place and lay on the ground, and she trod on it, was thrown forward against the heap, and, in her blind effort to recover herself, slipped and fell into a narrow, grassed hollow behind it, clutching at the hedge. The great French doctor had not been quite right. For the first time in her life she felt herself sinking into bottomless darkness—which was what happened to people when they fainted.
When she opened her eyes she could see nothing, because on one side of her rose the low mass of the hop poles, and on the other was the long-untrimmed hedge, which had thrown out a thick, sheltering growth and curved above her like a penthouse. Was she awakening, after all? No, because the pain was awakening with her, and she could hear, what seemed at first to be quite loud sounds. She could not have been unconscious long, for she almost immediately recognised that they were the echo of a man’s hurried footsteps upon the bare wooden stairway, leading to the bedrooms in the empty house. Having secured the horses, Nigel had returned to the cottage, and, finding her gone had rushed to the upper floor in search of her. He was calling her name angrily, his voice resounding in the emptiness of the rooms.
“Betty; don’t play the fool with me!”
She cautiously drew herself further under cover, making sure that no end of her habit remained in sight. The over-growth of the hedge was her salvation. If she had seen the spot by daylight, she would not have thought it a possible place of concealment.
Once she had read an account of a woman’s frantic flight from a murderer who was hunting her to her death, while she slipped from one poor hiding place to another, sometimes crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimes lying flat in long grass, once wading waist-deep through a stream, and at last finding a miserable little fastness, where she hid shivering for hours, until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt the reality of such histories, but there was actually a sort of parallel in this. Mad and crude things were let loose, and the world of ordinary life seemed thousands of miles away.
She held her breath, for he was leaving the house by the front door. She heard his footsteps on the bricked path, and then in the lane. He went to the road, and the sound of his feet died away for a few moments. Then she heard them returning—he was back in the lane—on the brick path, and stood listening or, perhaps, reflecting. He muttered something exclamatory, and she heard a match struck, and shortly afterwards he moved across the garden patch towards the little spinney. He had thought of it, as she had believed he would. He would not think of this place, and in the end he might get tired or awakened to a sense of his lurid folly, and realise that it would be safer for him to go back to Stornham with some clever lie, trusting to his belief that there existed no girl but would shrink from telling such a story in connection with a man who would brazenly deny it with contemptuous dramatic detail. If he would but decide on this, she would be safe—and it would be so like him that she dared to hope. But, if he did not, she would lie close, even if she must wait until morning, when some labourer’s cart would surely pass, and she would hear it jolting, and drag herself out, and call aloud in such a way that no man could be deaf. There was more room under her hedge than she had thought, and she found that she could sit up, by clasping her knees and bending her head, while she listened to every sound, even to the rustle of the grass in the wind sweeping across the marsh.
She moved very gradually and slowly, and had just settled into utter motionlessness when she realised that he was coming back through the garden—the straggling currant and gooseberry bushes were being trampled through.
“Betty, go home,” Rosalie had pleaded. “Go home—go home.” And she had refused, because she could not desert her.
She held her breath and pressed her hand against her side, because her heart beat, as it seemed to her, with an actual sound. He moved with unsteady steps from one point to another, more than once he stumbled, and his angry oath reached her; at last he was so near her hiding place that his short hard breathing was a distinct sound. A moment later he spoke, raising his voice, which fact brought to her a rush of relief, through its signifying that he had not even guessed her nearness.
“My dear Betty,” he said, “you have the pluck of the devil, but circumstances are too much for you. You are not on the road, and I have been through the spinney. Mere logic convinces me that you cannot be far away. You may as well give the thing up. It will be better for you.”
“You who died to-day—do not leave me,” was Betty’s inward cry, and she dropped her face on her knees.
“I am not a pleasant-tempered fellow, as you know, and I am losing my hold on myself. The wind is blowing the mist away, and there will be a moon. I shall find you, my good girl, in half an hour’s time—and then we shall be jolly well even.”
She had not dropped her whip, and she held it tight. If, when the moonlight revealed the pile of hop poles to him, he suspected and sprang at them to tear them away, she would be given strength to make one spring, even in her agony, and she would strike at his eyes—awfully, without one touch of compunction—she would strike—strike.
There was a brief silence, and then a match was struck again, and almost immediately she inhaled the fragrance of an excellent cigar.
“I am going to have a comfortable smoke and stroll about —always within sight and hearing. I daresay you are watching me, and wondering what will happen when I discover you, I can tell you what will happen. You are not a hysterical girl, but you will go into hysterics—and no one will hear you.”
(All the power of her—body and soul—in one leap on him and then a lash that would cut to the bone. And it was not a nightmare—and Rosy was at Stornham, and her father looking over steamer lists and choosing his staterooms.)
He walked about slowly, the scent of his cigar floating behind him. She noticed, as she had done more than once before, that he seemed to slightly drag one foot, and she wondered why. The wind was blowing the mist away, and there was a faint growing of light. The moon was not full, but young, and yet it would make a difference. But the upper part of the hedge grew thick and close to the heap of wood, and, but for her fall, she would never have dreamed of the refuge.
She could only guess at his movements, but his footsteps gave some clue. He was examining the ground in as far as the darkness would allow. He went into the shed and round about it, he opened the door of the tiny coal lodge, and looked again into the small back kitchen. He came near—nearer —so near once that, bending sidewise, she could have put out a hand and touched him. He stood quite still, then made a step or so away, stood still again, and burst into a laugh once more.
“Oh, you are here, are you?” he said. “You are a fine big girl to be able to crowd yourself into a place like that!”
Hot and cold dew stood out on her forehead and made her hair damp as she held her whip hard.
“Come out, my dear!” alluringly. “It is not too soon. Or do you prefer that I should assist you?”
Her heart stood quite still—quite. He was standing by the wigwam of hop poles and thought she had hidden herself inside it. Her place under the hedge he had not even glanced at.
She knew he bent down and thrust his arm into the wigwam, for his fury at the result expressed itself plainly enough. That he had made a fool of himself was worse to him than all else. He actually wheeled about and strode away to the house.
Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was gone long, but he was not away for twenty minutes. He had, in fact, gone into the bare front room again, and sitting upon the box near the hearth, let his head drop in his hands and remained in this position thinking. In the end he got up and went out to the shed where he had left the horses.
Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself making that strange swoop into the darkness of space again, and that it did not matter much, as one apparently lay quite still when one was unconscious—when she heard that one horse was being le
d out into the lane. What did that mean? Had he got tired of the chase—as the other man did—and was he going away because discomfort and fatigue had cooled and disgusted him—perhaps even made him feel that he was playing the part of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to derision? That would be like him, too.
Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not come as near her as before—in fact, he stood at some yards’ distance when he stopped and spoke—in quite a new manner.
“Betty,” his tone was even cynically cool, “I shall stalk you no more. The chase is at an end. I think I have taken all out of you I intended to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to prove to you that there were circumstances which might be too much even for a young woman from New York. I have done it. Do you suppose I am such a fool as to bring myself within reach of the law? I am going away and will send assistance to you from the next house I pass. I have left some matches and a few broken sticks on the hearth in the cottage. Be a sensible girl. Limp in there and build yourself a fire as soon as you hear me gallop away. You must be chilled through. Now I am going.”
He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path, mounted his horse and put it to a gallop at once. Clack, clack, clack—clacking fainter and fainter into the distance—and he was gone.
When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon her of her sense of relief was that the growing likelihood of a second swoop into darkness died away, but one curious sob lifted her chest as she leaned back against the rough growth behind her. As she changed her position for a better one she felt the jagged pain again and knew that in the tenseness of her terror she had actually for some time felt next to nothing of her hurt. She had not even been cold, for the hedge behind and over her and the barricade before had protected her from both wind and rain. The grass beneath her was not damp for the same reason. The weary thought rose in her mind that she might even lie down and sleep. But she pulled herself together and told herself that this was like the temptation of believing in the nightmare. He was gone, and she had a respite—but was it to be anything more? She did not make any attempt to leave her place of concealment, remembering the strange things she had learned in watching him, and the strange terror in which Rosalie lived.
“One never knows what he will do next; I will not stir,” she said through her teeth. “No, I will not stir from here.”
And she did not, but sat still, while the pain came back to her body and the anguish to her heart—and sometimes such heaviness that her head dropped forward upon her knees again, and she fell into a stupefied half-doze.
From one such doze she awakened with a start, hearing a slight click of the gate. After it, there were several seconds of dead silence. It was the slightness of the click which was startling—if it had not been caused by the wind, it had been caused by someone’s having cautiously moved it—and this someone wishing to make a soundless approach had immediately stood still and was waiting. There was only one person who would do that. By this time, the mist being blown away, the light of the moon began to make a growing clearness. She lifted her hand and delicately held aside a few twigs that she might look out.
She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel Anstruthers had come back, and after his pause turned, and avoiding the brick path, stole over the grass to the cottage door. His going had merely been an inspiration to trap her, and the wood and matches had been intended to make a beacon light for him. That was like him, as well. His horse he had left down the road.
But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she was able to check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a moment. The next, her ears awoke to a new sound. Something was stumbling heavily about the patch of garden—some animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath, and more stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managed to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of his nearness seemed a sort of protection.
He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigel heard him. When he did hear, he came out of the house in the humour of a man the inflaming of whose mood has been cumulative; Childe Harold’s temper also was not to be trifled with. He threw up his head, swinging the bridle out of reach; he snorted, and even reared with an ugly lashing of his forefeet.
“Good boy!” whispered Betty. “Do not let him take you —do not!”
If he remained where he was he would attract attention if anyone passed by. “Fight, Childe Harold, be as vicious as you choose—do not allow yourself to be dragged back.”
And fight he did, with an ugliness of temper he had never shown before—with snortings and tossed head and lashed—out heels, as if he knew he was fighting to gain time and with a purpose.
But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstruthers stopped suddenly. He had stumbled again, and risen raging and stained with damp earth. Now he stood still, panting for breath—as still as he had stood after the click of the gate. Was he—listening? What was he listening to? Had she moved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught the sound? No, he was listening to something else. Far up the road it echoed, but coming nearer every moment, and very fast. Another horse—a big one—galloping hard. Whosoever it was would pass this place; it could only be a man—God grant that he would not go by so quickly that his attention would not be arrested by a shriek! Cry out she must—and if he did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have betrayed herself and be lost.
She bit off a groan by biting her lip.
“You who died to-day—now—now!”
Nearer and nearer. No human creature could pass by a thing like this—it would not be possible. And Childe Harold, backing and fighting, scented the other horse and neighed fiercely and high. The rider was slackening his pace; he was near the lane. He had turned into it and stopped. Now for her one frantic cry—but before she could gather power to give it forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and was inside the garden speaking. A big voice and a clear one, with a ringing tone of authority.
“What are you doing here? And what is the matter with Miss Vanderpoel’s horse?” it called out.
Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness— great danger—though she clutched at the hedge that she might feel its thorns and hold herself to the earth.
“YOU!” Nigel Anstruthers cried out. “You!” and flung forth a shout of laughter.
“Where is she?” fiercely. “Lady Anstruthers is terrified. We have been searching for hours. Only just now I heard on the marsh that she had been seen to ride this way. Where is she, I say?”
A strong, angry, earthly voice—not part of the melodrama— not part of a dream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound caused her heart to leap to her throat, while she trembled from head to foot, and a light, cold dampness broke forth on her skin. Something had been a dream—her wild, desolate ride— the slew tolling; for the voice which commanded with such human fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell had struck forth from the church tower.
Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not recognise that he had been a fool again and was in a nasty place; but it was not for the first time in his life, and he had learned how to brazen himself out of nasty places.
“My dear Mount Dunstan,” he answered with tolerant irritation, “I have been having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women’s hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New York millionairess would work herself into hysteria on my humble account.”
“Those are lies,” Mount Dunstan answered—”every damned one of them!”
He wheeled around to look about him,
attracted by a sound, and in the clearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which might have risen from the earth, so far as he could guess where it had come from. He strode over to it, and it was Betty Vanderpoel, holding her whip in a clenched hand and showing to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes as were barely human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt her fingers clutch at the tweed of his coatsleeve and move there as if the mere feeling of its rough texture brought heavenly comfort to her and gave her strength.
“Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan,” she panted. “He said that he meant to get what he called `even’ with me. He told me I could not get away from him and that no one would hear me if I cried out for help. I have hidden like some hunted animal.” Her shaking voice broke, and she held the cloth of his sleeve tightly. “You are alive—alive!” with a sudden sweet wildness. “But it is true the bell tolled! While I was crouching in the dark I called to you—who died to-day—to stand between us!”
The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot.
“I was alive, and you see I heard you and came,” he answered hoarsely.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheek felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. He laid her down on the couch of hay and turned away.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I will come back. You are safe.”
If there had been more light she would have seen that his jaw was set like a bulldog’s, and there was a red spark in his eyes—a fearsome one. But though she did not clearly see, she KNEW, and the nearness of the last hours swept away all relenting.
The Shuttle: By Frances Hodgson Burnett Page 61
