by E. Nesbit
VI
CROW'S NEST
HE had brought a ball of string in his pocket, this time, and he wasglad to know he could lower the ladder by it--for the thud of a fallingladder would sound far in the night stillness. From the top of the wallhe held the ladder while she mounted.
"Sit here a moment," he said, "while I get rid of the ladder." Helowered it gently, drew the string up, leaped to the ground outside thewall, and held up his hands to her.
"Jump," he whispered. "I'll catch you."
But even as he spoke she had turned and was hanging by her hands. He lether do it her own way. She dropped expertly, landing with a littlerebound. He was glad he had not tried to catch her. It would have been apoor beginning to their comradeship if he had, at the very outset, showndoubts of her competence to do anything she set out to do.
They stood under the wall very near together.
"What are you going to do?" she said.
"I must get a car and take you away. Are you afraid to be left alone fora couple of hours?"
"I--I don't think so," she said. "But where? Did you notice the lightsas you got over the wall?"
"Yes; they were still near the house."
The two were walking side by side along the road now.
"If you were any ordinary girl I should be afraid to leave you to thinkthings over--for fear you should think you'd been rash or silly orsomething--and worry yourself about all sorts of nonsense, and perhapsend in bolting back to your hutch before I could come back to you. Butsince it's you--let's cut across the downs here--we'll keep close to theedge of the wood."
Their feet now trod the soft grass.
"How sensible of you to wear a dark cloak," he said.
"Yes," she said, "a really romantic young lady in distress would havecome in white muslin and blue ribbons, wouldn't she?"
He glowed to the courage that let her jest at such a moment.
"Where am I to wait?" she asked.
"There's an old farm-house not far away," he said. "If you don't mindwaiting there. Could you?"
"Who lives there?"
"Nobody. I happen to have the key. I was looking at it yesterday. It'snot furnished, but I noticed some straw and packing-cases. I could rigyou up some sort of lounge, but don't do it if you're afraid. If you'reafraid to be left to yourself we'll walk together to Eastbourne. But ifwe do we're much more likely to be caught."
"I'm not in the least afraid. Why should I be?" she said, and theytoiled up the hill among the furze bushes in the still starlight.
"What they'll do," she said, presently, "when they're sure I'm not inthe park, is to go down to your inn and see if you're there."
"Yes," he said, "I'm counting on that. That's why I said two or threehours. You see, I must be there when they do come, and the minutethey're gone I'll go for the motor. Look here--I've got some chocolatethat I got for a kiddy to-day; luckily, I forgot to give it to him; andhere are some matches, only don't strike them if you can help it. Now,stick to it."
They went on in silence; half-way up the hill he took her arm to helpher. Then, over the crest of the hill, in a hollow of the downs therewas the dark-spread blot of house and farm buildings. They went downthe road. Nothing stirred--only as they neared the farm-yard a horse inthe stable rattled his halter against the manger and they heard hishoofs moving on the cobbled floor of his stall. They stood listening.No, all was still.
"Give me your hand," he said, and led her round to the side of thehouse. The key grated a little as he turned it in the lock. He threwback the door.
"This is the kitchen," he said. "Stand just inside and I'll make a nestfor you. I know exactly where to lay my hands on the straw."
There was rustling in the darkness and a sound of boards grating onbricks. She stood at the door and waited.
"Ready," he said.
"They'll find me," she said. "We shall never get away."
"Trust me for that," said he.
"I must have been mad to come," he heard through the darkness.
"We're all mad once in our lives," he said, cheerfully. "Now rollyourself in your cloak. Give me your hands--so." He led her to the strawnest he had made, and lowered her to it.
"Do you wish you hadn't come?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said.
"I hope to Heaven I haven't misjudged you," he said, with the firsttrace of anxiety she had yet heard in his voice. "If you should be thekind of girl who's afraid of the dark--"
The straw rustled as she curled herself more comfortably in her nest.
"I'm not afraid," she said.
"Look here," said he, "here's my match-box, but don't strike a lightamong the straw. The door into the house is locked and the key's on thisside of the door. Can you come to the back door and lock it after me,and then find your way back to your nest?"
"Yes," she said, and felt her way past the big copper to the door.
"Sure you're not frightened?"
"Quite," said she.
"Then I'll go," said he, and went.
She locked the door and crept back to the straw. He waited till itscrackling told him that she had found her way back to her couch. Then hestarted for Jevington.
And as he went he told himself that she was right. She had been mad tocome, and he had been mad to let her come. But there was no going backnow.
There was no looking back, even. From the brow of the hill the road wasdown-hill all the way, and he ran, his rubber shoes patting almostnoiselessly in the dust. At his inn the bolt yielded to hisknife-point's pressure, the well-oiled lock let him in without a murmur,the stairs hardly creaked more than stairs can creak in their darksolitudes when we lie awake and listen to them and wonder. . . . Thenight was as silent as a thought, and when at last the silence wasshattered by the clatter of hoofs and the jangle of harness, Mr.Basingstoke's head turned a little on his pillow, not restlessly.
He heard the clanging bell echo in the flagged passage; heard throughthe plaster walls the heavy awakening of his host, the scrape of amatch, the hasty, blundering toilet; heard the big bar dropped from thefront door; voices--the groom's voice, the host's voice, the aunt'svoice.
Then heavy steps on the stairs and a knock at his door.
"Very sorry to disturb you, sir," came the muffled tones through thedoor, almost cringingly apologetic, "but could you get up, sir, just fora minute? Miss Davenant from the Hall wants a word with you--about yourdawg, sir, as I understand. If you could oblige, sir--very inconvenient,I know, sir, but the Hall is very highly thought of in the village,sir."
"What on earth--?" said Mr. Basingstoke, very loudly, and got out ofbed. "I'll dress and come down," he said.
He did dress, to the accompaniment of voices below--replaced, that is,the collar, tie, and boots he had taken off--and then he began to pack,his mind busy with the phrases in which he would explain that a house inwhich these nocturnal disturbances occurred was not fit for thesojourning of. . . . No, hang it all, that would not be fair to thelandlord--he must find some other tale.
When he had kept the lady waiting as long as he thought a man might havekept her who had really a toilet to make, he went slowly down. Voicessounded in the parlor, and a slab of light from its door lay across thesanded passage.
He went in; the landlord went out, closing the door almost toodiscreetly.
Mr. Basingstoke and the aunt looked at each other. She was very uprightand wore brown gloves and a brown, boat-shaped hat with an aggressivequill.
"You _are_ here, then?" she said.
"Where else, madam?" said Mr. Basingstoke.
"I should like you," said the aunt, deliberately, "to be somewhere elsewithin the next hour. I will make it worth your while."
"Thank you," Edward murmured.
"I think I ought to tell you," said she, "that I saw through thatbusiness of the dog. He was well trained, I admit. But I can't have myniece annoyed in this way."
"The lady must certainly not be annoyed," said Edward, with feeling.
"I
came to-night to see if you were here. . . ."
"It is an unusual hour for a call," said Edward, "but I amproportionally honored."
"--to see if you were here, and, if you were, to tell you that my nieceis not."
Edward cast a puzzled eye around the crowded parlor. "No," he said."No."
"I mean," Miss Davenant went on, "that my niece has left thisneighborhood and will not return while you are here; so you are wastingyour time and trouble."
"_I_ see," said Edward, helpfully.
"You will gain nothing by this attitude," said Miss Davenant. "If youwill consent to leave Jevington to-night I will give you twenty pounds."
"Twenty pounds!" he repeated, softly.
"Yes, twenty pounds, on condition that you promise not to molest thisdefenseless girl."
"Put up your money, madam," said Edward Basingstoke, with a noblegesture copied from the best theatrical models, "and dry your eyes.Never shall it be said that Edward Basingstoke was deaf to the voice ofa lady in distress. Lay your commands on me, and be assured that, forme, to hear is to obey."
"You are very impertinent, young man," Miss Davenant told him, "and youwon't do yourself any good by talking like a book. Clear out of thisto-night, and I'll give you twenty pounds. Stay, and take theconsequences."
"Meaning--?"
"Well, stay if you like. You won't see her. She won't return toJevington till you're gone. So I tell you you'd better accept my offerand go."
"Accept your offer and go," repeated Edward.
"Twenty pounds," said the lady, persuasively.
"Tempt me not!" said Edward. "To a man in my position. . . ."
"Exactly."
"Nay," said Edward, "there are chords even in a piano-tuner'sbreast--chords which, too roughly touched, will turn and rend thesmiter."
"Good gracious!" said Miss Davenant, "I believe the man's insane."
"Withdraw that harsh expression," he pleaded. And then, without warning,the situation ceased to amuse him. Here he was, swimming in the deep,smooth waters of diplomacy, and suddenly diplomacy seemed a stickymedium. He would have liked Miss Davenant to be a man--a man ingreen-silk Georgian coat and buckled shoes; himself also gloriouslyGeorgian, in murray-colored cut velvet, with Mechlin at wrists andthroat. Then they could have betaken themselves to the bowling-green andfought it out with ringing rapiers, by the light of the lantern held inthe landlord's trembling fingers. Or at dawn, in the meadow the red wallbounded, there could have been measured pacings--a dropped handkerchief,two white puffs drifting away on the chill, sweet air, and EdwardBasingstoke could have handed his smoking pistol to his second andmounted his horse--Black Belial--and so away to his lady, leaving hisadversary wounded slightly ("winged," of course, was the word). Thushonor would have been satisfied, and Edward well in the lime-light. Butin this little box of an overfurnished room, by the light of anill-trimmed paraffin-lamp, to rag an anxious aunt. . . . He withdrewhimself slowly from diplomacy--tried to find an inch or two of dry truthto stand on.
"Well, why don't you say something?" asked the anxious aunt.
"I will," said Mr. Basingstoke. "Madam, I have to ask your pardon for anunpardonable liberty. I have deceived you. I am not what you think. I amnot a piano-tuner, but an engineer."
"But you said you were. . . ."
"Pardon me. I said there were chords in the breasts of piano-tuners."
"But if you aren't, how did you know there was one?"
This _riposte_ he had not anticipated. Frankness had its drawbacks--sosmall a measure of it as he had allowed himself. He leaped headlong intodiplomacy again.
"Look back on what you have said, not only to me, but to others," hesaid, solemnly, and saw that the chance shot had gone home. "Now," hesaid, "don't let us prolong an interview which cannot but be painful tous both. I am not the piano-tuner for whom you take me. You are acomplete stranger to me. The only link that binds us is the fact thatyour horse ran over my dog and that you bore the apparently lifelessbody home for me. Yet if you wish me to leave the neighborhood, I willleave it. In fact, I was going in any case," he added, strugglingagainst diplomacy.
Miss Davenant looked at him. "You're speaking the truth," she said;"you're not the piano-tuner. But you got as red as fire yesterday. Sodid my niece. What was that for?"
"I cannot explain my complicated color-scheme," said Edward, "withoutdiagrams and a magic-lantern. And as for your niece, I can lay my handon my heart and say that the light of declining day never illumined thatface for me till the moment when it also illumined yours."
"Are you deceiving me?" Miss Davenant asked, weakly, and Edwardanswered:
"Yes, I am; but not in the way you think. We all have our secrets, butmine are not the secrets of the piano-tuner."
Some one sneezed in the passage outside.
"Our host has been eavesdropping," said Edward, softly.
"Well, if he doesn't make more of this conversation than I do, he won'tmake much," said Miss Davenant. "I don't trust you."
"That would make it all the easier for me to deceive you," said Edward,"if I sought to deceive."
"You've got too much language for me," said Miss Davenant. "If you'renot the man, I apologize."
"Don't mention it," said Edward.
"If you are, I don't wonder so much at what happened in London. Goodnight. Sorry to have disturbed you."
"Don't you think," said Edward, "that you might as well tell me why you_did_ disturb me?"
"I thought you were the piano-tuner," she said; "you knew thatperfectly well. And I don't want piano-tuners hanging round Jevington.I'm sorry I offered the money. I ought to have seen."
"Not at all," said Mr. Basingstoke, "and, since my presence here annoysyou, know that by this time to-morrow I shall be far away."
"There's one thing more," said Miss Davenant. But Mr. Basingstoke wasnever to know what that one thing was, for at the instant a wild shriekrang through the quiet night, there was a scuffle outside, hoarse voicesin anger and pain, the door burst open, and Miss Davenant's groomstaggered in.
"Beg pardon, ma'am"--he still remembered his station, and it was thus heaffirmed it--"beg pardon, ma'am, but this 'ere dawg--"
It was too true. Charles, perhaps conscious of his master's presence inthe parlor, had slipped his collar, scratched a hole under the stabledoor, and, finding the groom and the landlord in the passage, barringhis entrance, had bitten the groom's trousers leg. It hung, gaping, fromknee to ankle--with Charles still attached. Charles's master choked thedog off, but confidential conversation was at an end, even when asovereign had slipped from his hand to the groom's.
"Seems the young lady's missing," said the host, when the dog-cart hadrattled up the street.
"Indeed!" said Edward. "Well, I think I also shall retreat. Will itinconvenience you if I leave my traps to be sent on? I shall walk intoSeaford and catch the early train."
"It wasn't my fault the lady come, sir," said the landlord, sulky butdeferential.
"I know it," said the guest, "and I am not leaving because of hercoming. I should have left in any case. But it is a fine night, I have afancy for a walk, and it does not seem worth while to go to bed again.If you will kindly take this, pay your bill out of it, and divide theremainder between Robert and Gladys, I shall be very much obliged. I'vebeen very comfortable here and I shall certainly come again."
He pressed a five-pound note into the landlord's hand, and before thatbewildered one could think of anything more urgent than the commonplaceswhich begin, "I'm sure, sir," or, "I shouldn't like to think," he andCharles had turned their backs on the Five Bells, and the landlord wasstaring after them. The round, white back of Charles showed for quite along time through the darkness. Slowly he drew the bolts, put out thelights, and went back to bed.
"It's a rum go," he told his wife, after he had told her all he hadheard and overheard, "a most peculiar rum go. But he's a gentleman, heis, whichever way you look at it. Miss up at the Hall might do a jollysight worse, if you ask me. Shouldn't won
der, come to think of it, ifshe ain't waiting for him around the corner, as it is."
"He's the kind of gentleman a girl _would_ wait around the corner for,"said the landlady. "It's his eyes, partly, I think. And he's got such akind look. But if she is--waiting round the corner, I mean, like whatyou said--he _have_ got a face to go on like what he did to MissDavenant."
"Yes," said the landlord, blowing out the candle, "he _have_ got a face,whichever way you look at it."
It was bright daylight when a motor--one of the strong, fierce kind, nowretched taxicab, but a private motor of obvious speed andspirit--blundered over the shoulder of the downs down the rutty road toCrow's Nest Farm.
Mr. Basingstoke, happy to his finger-tips as well as to the inmostrecesses of the mind in his consciousness of results achieved anddifficulties overcome, slipped from the throbbing motor and went quicklyaround to the back door, Charles with him, straining at the lead. Thepath that led to the door had its bricks outlined with green grass, ahouse-leek spread its rosettes on the sloping lichened tiles of theroof, and in the corner of the window the toad-flax flaunted its littlehelmets of orange and sulphur-color. He tapped gently on the door.Nothing from within answered him--no voice, no movement, no creak ofboard, no rustle of straw, no click of little heels on the floor ofstone. She might be asleep--must be. He knocked again, and still silenceanswered him. Then a wave of possibilities and impossibilities rosesuddenly and swept against Mr. Basingstoke's heart. So sudden was it,and so strong was it, that for a moment he felt the tremor of a physicalnausea. He put his hand to the latch, meaning to try with his shoulderthe forcing of the lock. But the door was not locked. The latch clicked,yielding to his hand, and the door opened into the kitchen, with itswide old chimneyplace, big mantel-shelf, its oven and pump, itsbrewing-copper and its washing-copper, its litter of packing-cases andstraw, and the little nest he had made for her between the copper andthe big barrel. The soft, diffused daylight showed him every corner, andCharles sniffing, as it seemed, every corner at once. He crossed overand tried the door that led to the house. But he knew, before his handfound it unyielding, that it had not been unlocked since last he saw it.He knew, quite surely, that the lady was not there. There was no sign ortrace of her, save the rounded nest where she must have snuggled for atleast a part of the night that he had spent in such strenuous diplomacy,such ardent organization, for her sake. No other trace of her . . . yes,on the flap-table by the window his match-box, set as weight to keep inits place a handkerchief. It was own sister to the little one his pocketstill held--and, as he took it up, exhaled the same faint, delicatefragrance. He read it, Charles snuffling and burrowing in the straw athis feet. On it a few words were written, some illegible, but these fewplain:
I will write to General Post-Office, London.
There are no words for the thoughts of the baffled adventurer as helocked the door and walked around the farm to the waiting motor. Hisonly word on the way was to Charles, and it calmed, for an instant, eventhat restless spirit.
"London," he said to his chauffeur. "My friend isn't coming," and he andCharles tumbled into the car together.
A line of faces drawn up against a long fence watched his departure withmild curiosity. Twenty or thirty calves and their rustic attendant sawhim go. The chauffeur looked again at the house's blank windows andechoed the landlord's words.
"Rum go!" he said to himself. "Most extraordinary rum go."
