Seconds elapsed before a dishevelled, copper-coloured head peeped from the hut like a turtle from its shell, and he saw then that what he had mistaken for a half-dressed urchin was a young woman and that she was blushing but looked more indignant than frightened.
“Go away!” she said, severely. “I’m not dressed. The road leads to Lea Green and there's sure to be a bridge. There are bridges for all the halts along the line.”
The girl interested him. Her accents were not those of a goose-minder, or a shepherd's daughter, but of someone at pains to overlay a strong, Northcountry brogue with a spurious gentility, and this made him wonder why a girl like that should be making her toilet in a puddle after, as appeared evident, spending the night in a turf-roofed hut on the open moor. He said, trying to keep the laughter from his voice, “Are you lost? Did you get caught in that storm last night?” and she replied, primly, “I’m not in the least lost. I live near here. I…er…I had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“I was thrown from a trap when the horse was frightened by lightning.” She had now withdrawn her head and was addressing him through the wall of the hut.
“Are you hurt?”
“No!” The voice was petulant now, a child thoroughly exasperated by grownup nosiness, “I took shelter, that's all.” Then, with the merest hint of appeal, “Would you be going to Lea Green?”
“I’m going that way,” Adam said, “then across the county to Cumberland.”
There was a long silence before she said, pleadingly, “Could I ride behind you?”
“Why not?” he said, grinning.
“Wait then, let me get dressed, but ride away and I’ll call when I’m ready.”
He chuckled at this but humoured her, squeezing the mare's flanks so that she retreated as far as the hillock. The sun began to siphon moisture from the moor, so that the hut was soon rooted in vapour, and presently she called, “Turn your back,” and he swung round watching, over his shoulder, her undignified exit on all fours, draped in what seemed to be a green tent so voluminous that she had to support its folds with both hands. Her coppery hair hung down in tangled hanks, but she had done what she could to dress it with a piece of ribbon tied in a bow. The dress she was wearing looked as if it had been put through a mangle.
“It's awful,” she said, surveying herself, “I must have been crazy to run away in this. Wherever I go, I’ll be noticed. Then they’ll catch me and send me back. I’m hungry too. I’ve only had those toffees.”
He looked at her closely, liking what he saw: a small, indomitable figure, enveloped in a green dress that had, he supposed, begun life as a crinoline but now looked ridiculous draped about her and held in damp handfuls about her hips. Her face was the face of a pretty, imperious child, but she had a woman's figure and there was maturity of a kind in the way she planted her feet and stood her ground, as though to counter mockery.
“You ran away? You mean from that riot in the town?”
“No, from that toad Makepeace.”
“Makepeace?”
“Makepeace Goldthorpe.”
He was at a loss what to make of her. She looked like a genteel girl who had lost her way in a thunderstorm on the way home from a soiree or dance, but her assumption that he should know all about the encounter with Makepeace Goldthorpe, whoever he was, reduced her to the status of a child, and a spoiled child at that. Alone up here, and enveloped in the ruin of a cageless crinoline, she did not seem in the least afraid of him, and he supposed this was due to ignorance, or a privileged background that would encourage her to take his respect for granted. He said, with a smile, “I’m a stranger, I rode into the middle of that riot last night and decided to make a detour. Is Makepeace Goldthorpe anything to do with that shoddy little town over the hill?”
She looked confused and then, rather charmingly, revealed a pair of enormous dimples in a smile. “I am a goose,” she said, “I thought everyone about here would know the Goldthorpes. They own most of Seddon Moss, all but the mill that is, and my father owns that. The mill beside the railroad.”
He stared at her unbelievingly. “You’re Sam Rawlinson's daughter?”
She said, sharply, “If you’re a stranger…” but he interrupted, impatiently, “Yes, I am, but I heard about Sam Rawlinson and his lockout last night, before the real trouble started. How long have you been out here alone?”
“All night,” she said, “since the storm began.”
“Then you won’t know your father's mill was burned down?”
“I knew they were setting it afire. Father's overseer rode up and told him, and they all rushed off in Goldthorpe's carriage. That was the last I saw of them.” The dimples went out. “That's the last I mean to see of them!”
“Why?”
She hesitated, her eyes travelling the full length of him, from his mudsplashed boots to the crown of his hard hat. “That's none of your business,” she said. Not rudely but firmly.
“It's my business if you hope to ride behind me as far as Lea Green.”
She frowned and hitched her dress and then, quite suddenly, the dimples came out again.
“All right,” she said, cheerfully, “I’ll tell you, so long as you promise to keep it a secret. Makepeace wants to marry me, and my father wants it too. I think he's hoping to get something out of it, land or free rent or something, for he usually does. It was arranged before anyone said a word to me, and after supper last night Makepeace proposed—well, sort of proposed.”
“How old are you, Miss Rawlinson?”
“Eighteen. But that doesn’t mean they can make me, does it?”
“Perhaps not. Your father, what's he like? To look at, I mean?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I think I saw him last night. He was helping to drive the mob away from the fire engine. They were fighting in the streets.”
The news did not appear to concern her overmuch. “I guessed they might be. Was my father hurt?”
“Not that I know of, but one person was killed. A boy…he was…trampled by horses, just as I was leaving.” She received this news with equal indifference.
“They’re mad,” she said, “the whole lot of them. There's been trouble all summer and I’m right sick of it. I shall be glad to get away, apart from escaping from Makepeace. Sam—my father—is a big, redfaced man. He always looks as if he's in a temper but usually he isn’t, or only when things go wrong at the mill. He's better than lots of fathers. He doesn’t whip me, like Sarah Hebditch's father does, and he doesn’t fuss about where I am and what I’m at. But when I marry, I’ll marry someone I choose. Even if they fetch me back I won’t change my mind about that.”
There was no gainsaying her description of her father or, for that matter, of Makepeace. A big, redfaced man, who looked angry. It fitted Adam's recollection of the leading horseman, just as the word “toad” would apply to the pallid young man driving the chaise. He said, “Who knows about you running away?”
“Mrs. Worrell, the housekeeper. She said I was to go to her sister's at Garston, and I was trying to catch a Liverpool train when the pony bolted. I was soaked through and Enoch, the Boffin Boy, didn’t come back for me. I didn’t think he would. He’d be too scared.”
“Was Enoch driving?”
“Yes, but he's half-witted and can’t speak very well. He's got no roof to his mouth, and he’ll pretend he left me at the station until Mrs. Worrell drags it out of him, and she won’t have a chance for a spell if the mill is burned, like you say. Everything will be in an uproar so I’ll be in Liverpool before they find I’m gone.”
He said, gently, “I don’t think you will, Miss Rawlinson. The rioters tore up the track and it’ll be at least a day before the trains can get through. I think you’d best let me take you home again.”
She reacted violently, clutching the green rags about her and stepping back until checked by the wall of the hut.
“I won’t go back. Whatever happens I’ve got to g
et to Garston, and stay away long enough to show Sam I mean what I say. Don’t you understand? Anything could happen now. If the mill is burned down my father won’t have any money, and maybe old Goldthorpe won’t let Makepeace marry me. It was only father's money that made him agree to it.”
“And Makepeace?”
“Oh, he likes pawing me, but he wouldn’t dare to do that unless his father said he could. He couldn’t do a thing except stand around and stammer if his father wasn’t right behind him.” Her head came up, sharply. “I’ll walk to Lea Green. It isn’t far and I’ve got money for my fare.”
Her defiance touched him. Life in the garrison towns had left him with a conception of women as two races inhabiting widely separated worlds. One was the delicate girl, who tinkled the piano, did a little crocheting and pokerwork, fainted at the sight of blood, and lived her life, both before and after marriage, in a genteel seraglio, and her opposite, the doxy, who might or might not be a common prostitute but who was, in either case as coarse minded as a ranker and could usually drink and swear like one. The girl standing before him did not approximate to either class. Whilst she obviously came from a good home, he could not imagine a woman of her type would make light of spending a night alone in a moorland hut. He said, finally, “Won’t your mother be anxious about you?” and she told him, unsentimentally, that her mother had died when she was bom. “There's only Mrs. Worrell,” she added, “and she’ll think I’m safe at her sister's by now.”
It was a difficult dilemma for a man whose life had been lived exclusively in the company of men, for while he did not pay much account to her schoolgirlish rejection of Makepeace, he was reluctant to return her bag and baggage into the keeping of a man who, if his deduction was accurate, had ridden over a child with as little compunction as he would a cat. A man of this kind would have no scruples in using a pretty daughter to further his own ends, and the more he thought about this the less inclined he was to do Sam Rawlinson a service of any kind. He might be mistaken, of course, in which case he had no business conveying the girl as far as Lea Green. To do more might be to compound a felony, for he was not in the least sure how English law would view a case of this kind. It might even come under the heading of abduction.
The girl switched his thoughts, giving him time to ponder the problem. “I’m starving,” she said, “have you got anything to eat in those saddlebags?”
He whistled the mare and she ambled over, the girl lifting a hand to stroke her muzzle. While he was unstrapping the bag and taking out a portion of bread and cold fowl he had bought at the hedgerow inn, she went on, “You’ve asked me a lot of questions. Now it's my turn. Who are you? And why are you riding a horse all the way to Cumberland?”
“My name is Swann,” he said, “Adam Swann. I’ve been away from England for a long time, and I’m riding north to visit my father and aunt. They live at a town called Keswick, near Derwentwater.”
She accepted his bread and chicken wing without thanks and munched away with relish, seemingly concerned with little else than to satisfy her hunger. She might, he thought, be a rich man's daughter but it was obvious no one had tried to make a lady out of her. Her strong, white teeth tore into the meat, and she continued to talk with her mouth full.
“Where did you come from? From Birmingham?”
“Now how could a man be set ashore at Birmingham? Didn’t they teach you any geography?”
She did not appear to resent his banter. “Not much,” she said, cheerfully. “I’ve had lots of governesses, but they didn’t harp on anything except sewing and deportment.”
“Deportment?” He laughed outright. “What kind of deportment?”
“Oh, silly things,” she said, “like walking with a book on your head, and not accepting a gentleman's chair straight off.”
He had often heard of girls being taught to acquire a good carriage by parading up and down with a book balanced on their heads, but the prohibition concerning the offer of a seat was new to him. “What the devil has not accepting a seat got to do with deportment?” he demanded, and she said, with a sidelong smile that was the exact equivalent of a schoolboy grin, “You never heard of that? It's in the book. ‘The chair is still warm from the gentleman's person!’”
His laugh rang across the moor. He found some aspects of her exquisitely droll. She was like a mischievous peasant child, masquerading as the daughter of a duke in an unlikely pastoral play, and she seemed to have a flair for mummery. Everything she did or said had about it a touch of saltiness, together with a lack of artifice that reminded him of children he had seen playing outside the barrack gates in faraway places. In some ways she seemed to have the mental age of about twelve and yet, behind her artlessness, was the buoyancy of a street urchin that one might have looked for in the boy her father had ridden over the night before. Presently, still munching, she went into the hut and returned carrying a basket-trunk.
“If you were thrown from that trap last night how do you come to have luggage?” he asked, and she said, with a shrug, “I was lucky. This fell off at the same time when the pony reared,” and rummaged among the contents until she found a blue, tattered book.
“What's that?”
“An atlas. I took it because I thought I would have to find my way to Ireland. I’ve got relations in Ireland I’ve never seen. Mrs. Worrell, the housekeeper, told me about them and I was going to them at first. That was before I found out she was willing to help me.” She thumbed through the pages. “Birmingham… that's right, there's no sea at Birmingham. Have you ridden all the way from London then?”
“From Plymouth.”
“Plymouth?” Her long slender finger went to tracing the coastline and the lunatic quality of this encounter impressed itself upon him. Six in the morning on an open moor; a pretty, vivacious girl of eighteen washing herself in a pool of rainwater whilst in flight from a bridegroom selected by a father who rode over children in the street. He had a sense of being caught up in a pattern of improbabilities that were ready to engulf him as completely as had the John Company up to the moment of his finding the necklace, and with this came a desperate and irrational need to confide in somebody, even the daughter of Sam Rawlinson.
He said, “Plymouth is in Devonshire. I intended to travel north by Great Western and North Western as far as Fleetwood, but I changed my mind. I bought the mare and decided to ride and take a look around on the way. I’m glad I did. The place has changed a good deal in seven years.”
“You’ve been away all that time?” and when he nodded, “For heaven's sake, where?”
“India mostly, and more than a year in the Crimea.”
This enthralled her. “Then you must be a soldier? That's marvellous—look!” and she held up an empty toffee tin decorated on all sides by pop-eyed portraits of Raglan, Cardigan, Lucan, and the French general Bosquet. She looked at him hopefully.
“Did you see the Charge of the Light Brigade?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling at her enthusiasm, “I might have been killed in it if my horse hadn’t gone lame at the start and fallen behind.”
“My stars!” she said, with unfeigned admiration. “And the Mutiny?”
“I served through that, but how would a girl like you know about the Sepoy Mutiny when you can’t even find Plymouth on the map?”
“Oh,” she said, gaily, “that's easy. I used to read all the newspaper reports aloud to Mrs. Worrell. She had a nephew in the Crimea and was very proud of him, but Mrs. Worrell can’t read, although she can scribble a bit. I like reading. I’ve read all sorts.” She threw away the chicken bone and clasped her knees. “Tell me some of your adventures. I’ve never actually talked to anyone who was there, although some of the Foot Guards attended the Victory Ball where I met Makepeace. I thought they looked fetching in their uniforms. Why aren’t you in uniform?”
“Because I’m no longer a soldier.”
“You mean you were wounded?”
“No, I just gave up being a soldier.”
She seem astonished and dismayed. “Why? Why did you do that?”
“For all kinds of reasons, far too many to explain now if you still want a lift to Lea Green.”
“Then you will take me?”
“I’ll take you but if we run into your father, or anyone else looking for you, I just found you wandering on the moor. I don’t know you or why you came to be there, is that clear?”
“Of course.” She said it lightly, as though it was something to be taken for granted, but the doubting smile she flashed at him was a warning of some kind. There was something about her that he still couldn’t fathom, a sardonic secretiveness, implying she had already taken his measure, even if he had not taken hers. She said, bunching her absurd draperies, “May I call you Adam?”
“If you like. What's your given name, Miss Rawlinson?”
God is an Englishman Page 10
