He stood and wiped his brow, looking after her.
“Lord, what a spirit she has!” he muttered. “A fine swelling figure, too, and a sway with her head that makes you feel small! And feet that nimble! But all the same, I’m glad she’s not Mrs. Bishop! Take my word for it, she’ll be another Mother Gilson — some day.”
While Henrietta hurried on at her best pace, resentment giving way to fear and doubt and a hundred perplexities. Betray the man she could not, though he deserved nothing at her hands. She was no informer, nor would become one. The very idea was repulsive to her. And she had woven about this man the fine tissue of a girl’s first fancy; she had looked to be his, she had let him kiss her. After that, vile as he was, vilely as he had meant by her, it did not lie with her to betray him to death.
But his presence near her was hateful to her, was frightful, was almost intolerable. Not a day, not an hour, but she must expect to hear of his capture, and know it for the first of a series of ordeals, painful and humiliating. She would be confronted with him, she would be asked if she knew him, she would be asked this and that; and she would have to speak, would have to confess — to those clandestine meetings, to that kiss — while he listened, while all listened. The tale that was known as yet to few would be published abroad. Her folly would be in every mouth, in every journal. The wife and the four children, and she, the silly, silly fool whom this mean thing had captivated, taking her as easily as any doe in her brother’s park — the world would ring with them!
CHAPTER XIII.
A JEALOUS WOMAN
Meanwhile the man whom she had left in the gloom of the staircase waited. The sound of the girl’s tread died away and silence followed. But she might be taking the news, she might be gone back to those who had sent her. He knew that at any moment the party charged with his arrest might appear, and that in a few seconds all would be over. And the suspense was intolerable. After enduring it a while he pushed the door open, and he crept across the floor of the living-room. He brought his haggard face near the casement and peeped cautiously through a lower corner. He saw nothing to the purpose. Nothing moved without, except the old man, whose rags fluttered an instant among the bushes and vanished again. Probably he was dragging up some treasured scrap and hiding it anew with as little sane purpose and as much instinct as the dog that buries a bone.
The man with the price on his head stole back to the foot of the stairs, reassured for the moment; but with his heart still fluttering, his cheeks still bloodless. He had had a great fright. He could not yet tell what would come of it. But he knew that in the form of the girl whom he had tricked and sought to ruin he had seen the gallows very near.
He had not quite regained the staircase when the sound of a foot approaching the door drove him to shelter in a panic. Bess Hinkson had to call twice before he dared to descend or to run the risk of a second mistake.
The moment she saw his face she knew that something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked quickly. “What is the matter, lad?”
“I’ve seen some one,” he answered. “Some one who knew me!” He tried to smile, but the smile was a spasm; and suddenly his teeth clicked together. “Knew me by G — d!” he said.
“Bishop?”
“No, but — some one.”
Her face cleared.
“What’s took you?” she said. “There is no one else here who knows you.”
“The girl.”
She stared at him. “The girl?” she repeated — and the master-note in her voice was no longer fear, but suspicion. “The girl! How came she here? And how,” with sudden ferocity, “came she to see you, my lad?”
“I heard her below and thought that it was you.”
“But how came she here?”
“I don’t know,” he answered sullenly, “unless she was sent.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bess answered coarsely. And the jealousy of her gipsy blood sparkled in her dark eyes. “She was not sent! But maybe she was sent for! Maybe she was sent for!”
“Who was there I could send for her?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Nor I!” he answered. He shrugged his shoulders in disgust at her folly. To him, in his selfish fear, it seemed incredible folly.
“But you talked with her?”
“Not a word.”
“I say,” Bess repeated with a furious look, “you did! You talked with her! I know you did!”
“Have your own way, then,” he answered despairingly, “though may heaven strike me dead if there was a word! But she’ll he talking soon — and they’ll be here. And she” — with a quavering, passionate rise in his voice— “she’ll hang me!”
“She’d best not!” the girl replied, with a gleam of sharp teeth. “I hate her as it is. I hate her now! I’d like to kill her! But then — —”
“Then?” he retorted, his anger rising as hers sank. “What is the use of then? It’s now is the point! Curse You! while you are talking about hating her, and what you’ll do, I’ll be taken! They’ll be here and I’ll hang!”
“Steady, steady, lad,” she said. The fear had flown from his face to hers. “Perhaps she’ll not tell.”
“Why not? Why’ll she not tell?”
She did not reply that love might close the girl’s mouth. But she knew that it was possible. Instead:
“Maybe she’ll not,” she repeated. “If she did not come on purpose — and then they’d be here by now — it will take her half an hour to go back to the inn, and she’ll have to find Bishop, and he’ll have to get a few together. We’ve an hour good, and if it were night, you might be clear of this and safe at Tyson’s in ten minutes.”
“But now?” he cried, with a gesture of wrathful impatience. “It’s daylight, and maybe the house is watched. What am I to do now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. And it was noticeable that she was cool, while he was excited to the verge of tears, and was not a mile from hysterics. “It was for this I’ve been fooling Tyson — to get a safe hiding-place. But if you could get there, I doubt if he is quite ripe. I’d like to commit him a bit more before we trust him.”
“Then why play the fool with him?” he answered savagely.
“Because a day or two more and his hiding-hole may be the saving of you,” she retorted. “Sho!” shrugging her shoulders in her turn, “the game is not played to an end yet! She’ll not tell! She is proud as horses, and if she gives you up she’ll have to swear against you. And she’ll not stomach that, the little pink and white fool. She’ll keep mum, my lad!”
The hand with which he wiped the beads of sweat from his brow shook.
“But it she does tell?” he muttered. “If she does tell?”
She did not answer as she might have answered. She did not remind him of those stories of hair-breadth escapes and of coolness in the shadow of the gallows, which, as much as his plausible enthusiasm, had won her wild heart. She did not hint that his present carriage was hardly at one with them. For when women love, their eyes are slow to open, and this man had revealed to Bess a new world — a world of rarest possibilities, a world in which she and her like were to have justice, if not vengeance — a world in which the mighty were to fall from their seats, and the poor to be no more flouted by squires’ wives and parsons’ daughters! If she did not still think him all golden, if the feet and even the legs of clay were beginning to be visible, there was glamour about him still. The splendid plans, the world-embracing schemes with which he had dazzled her, had shrunk indeed into a hole-and-corner effort to save his own skin. But his life was as dear to her as to himself; and doubtless, by-and-by, when this troublesome crisis was past, the vista would widen. She was content. She was glad to put full knowledge from her, glad of any pretext to divert her own mind and his.
“Lord, I had forgotten!” she cried, after a gloomy pause, “I’ve a letter! There was one at last!” She searched in her clothes for it.
“A letter?” he cried, and stretched o
ut a shaking hand. “Good lord, girl, why did you not say so before? This may change all. Thistlewood may know a way to get me off. Once in Lancashire, in the crowd, let me have a hiding-place and I’m safe! And Thistlewood — he is no cur! He sticks at nothing! He is a good man! I was sure he would do something if I could get a word to him! Lord, I shall cheat them yet!” He was jubilant.
He ripped the letter open. His eyes raced along the lines. The girl, who could scarcely read, watched him with admiration, yet with a sinking heart. The letter might save him, but it would take him from her.
Something between a groan and an oath broke from him. He struck the paper with his hand.
“The fool!” he cried. “The fools! They are coming here!”
“They?” she answered, staring in astonishment.
“Thistlewood, Lunt — oh!” with a violent execration— “God knows who! Instead of getting me off they are bringing the hunt on me! Lancashire is too hot for them, so they are coming here to ruin me. And I’m to send a boat for them to-morrow night to Newby Bridge. But, I’ll not! I’ll not!” passionately. “You shall not go!”
The girl looked at him dubiously.
“After all,” she said presently, “if Thistlewood is what you say he is — —”
“He’s a selfish fool! Thinking only of himself!”
“Still, if he and the rest are men — it’ll not be one man, nor two, nor five will take you — with them to help you!”
But the thought gave him no comfort.
“Much good that will do!” he answered. And passionately flinging down the paper, “I’ll not have them! They must fend for themselves.”
“Do they say why they are coming?” she asked after a pause.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he replied querulously, “because it’s too hot for them there! One of the justices, Clyne, if you must know — —”
“Clyne!” she ejaculated in astonishment. “Clyne again?”
“Ay!”
“The man — you took the girl from?” she asked in a queer voice.
“The same. He’s the deuce down there. He’ll get his house burnt over his head one of these nights! He has sworn an information against them, and they swear they’ll have their revenge. But in the meantime they must needs come here and blow the gaff on me. Fine revenge!” with scorn.
“And they want you to send a boat for them to Newby Bridge?”
“Ay, curse them! I told them I had a boat I could take quietly, and come down the lake in the dark. And they say the boat can just as well fetch them.”
“To-morrow night?”
“Ay.”
“Well, it can be done,” she said coolly, “if the wind across the lake holds. I can steal a boat as I planned for you, and nobody will be the wiser. There’s no moon, and the nights are dark; and who’s to trace them from Newby Bridge? After all, it’s not from them the danger will come, but from the girl.”
He groaned.
“I thought you were sure she wouldn’t tell,” he sneered.
“Well, she has not told yet, or they had been here,” Bess answered. “But she may speak — by-and-by.”
“Curse her!”
“And that is why I am not so sorry your folks are coming,” she continued, with a queer look at him. “If they’ll help us, we’ll stop her mouth. And she’ll not speak now, nor by-and-by.”
He looked up, startled.
“You don’t mean — no!” he cried sharply, “I’ll not have it.”
“Bless her pretty, white fingers!” she murmured.
“I’ll not have her hurt!” he repeated, with vehemence. “I’ve done her harm enough.”
“Not so much harm as you would have done her, if you’d had your way!” she replied. And her face grew hard. “But now she’s to be sacred, is she? Her ladyship’s pretty, white fingers are not to be pinched — if you swing for it! Very well! It’s your neck will be pulled, not mine.”
He fidgeted on his stool, but he did not answer. His eyes roved round the bare miserable room, with its low ceiling, its deep shadows, and its squalor. At last:
“What do you mean?” he asked querulously. “Why can’t you speak plain?”
“I thought I had spoken plain enough,” she replied. “But if she’s not to be touched, there’s an end of it.”
“What would you do?”
“What I said — shut her mouth.”
He shuddered and his face, already sallow from long confinement, grew greyer.
“No,” he said, “I’ll not do it.”
She laughed in scorn of him.
“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I would get her into our hands, hold her fast, stow her somewhere where she’ll not speak! Maybe in Tyson’s hiding-hole. She’ll catch a cold, but what of that? ‘Twill be no worse for her than for you, if you’ve to go there. And the men may be a bit rough with her,” Bess continued, with a malignant smile, while her eyes scrutinized his face, “I’ll not forbid them, for I don’t love her, and I’d like well to see her brought down a bit! But we’ll not squeeze her pretty throat, if that is what you had in your mind.”
He shivered.
“I wouldn’t trust you!” he muttered.
She laughed as if he paid her a compliment.
“Wouldn’t you, lad?” she said. “Well, perhaps not. I’d not be sorry to spoil her beauty. But the men — men are such fools— ‘ll be rather for kissing than killing!”
“All the same, I don’t like it,” he muttered.
“You’ll like hanging less!” she retorted.
He felt, he knew that he played a sorry part. But it was not he who had brought Henrietta to the house, it was fate. It was not his fault that she had seen him; it was his misfortune. Could he be expected to surrender his life to spare her a little fright, a trifling inconvenience, an inconsiderable risk? Why should he? Would she do it for him? On the contrary, he recalled the look of horror which she had bent on him; she who had so lately laid her head on his shoulder, had listened to his blandishments, had thought him perfect. He was vain, and that hardened him.
“I don’t see how you’ll do it,” he said slowly.
“Leave that to me,” Bess answered. “Or rather, do what I tell you — and the bird will come to the whistle, my lad!”
“What’ll you do?”
She told him, and when she had told him she put before him pen and ink and paper; the pen and ink and paper which had been obtained that he might write to Thistlewood. But when it came to details and he knew what he was to write and what lure to throw out, he flung the pen from him. He told her angrily that he would not do it. After all, Henrietta had believed in him, had trusted him, had given up all for him.
“I’ll not do it,” he repeated. “I’ll not do it! You want to do the girl a mischief!”
She flared up at that.
“Then you’ll hang!” she cried brutally, hurling the words at him. “And, thank God, it will be she will hang you! Why, you fool,” she continued vehemently, “you were for doing her a worse turn, just to please yourself! And not a scruple!”
“No matter,” he answered, thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking sullenly before him. “I’ll not do it!”
Her face was dark with anger, and cruel. What is more cruel than jealousy?
“And that is your last word?” she cried.
He scowled at the table, aware in his heart that he would yield. For he knew — and he resented the knowledge — that he and Bess were changing places; that the upper hand which knowledge and experience and a fluent tongue had given him was passing to her for whom Nature intended it. The weak will was yielding, the strong will was asserting itself. And she knew it also; and in her jealousy she was no longer for humouring him. Brusquely she pushed together the pen and ink and paper.
“Very good,” she said. “If that is your last word, be it so; I’ve done!”
But “Wait!” he protested feebly. “You are so hasty.”
“Wait?” she retorted. “What for?
What is the use? Are you going to do it?”
He fidgeted on his stool.
“I suppose so,” he muttered at last. “Curse you, you won’t listen to what a man says.”
“You are going to do it?”
He nodded.
“Then why not say so at once?” she answered. “There, my lad,” she continued, thrusting the writing things before him, “short and sweet, as nobody knows better how to do it than yourself! Half a dozen lines will do the trick as well as twenty.”
To his credit be it said, he threw down the pen more than once, sickened by the task which she set him. But she chid, she cajoled, she coaxed him; and grimly added the pains she was at to the account of her rival. In the end, after a debate upon time and place, in which he was all for procrastination — feeling as if in some way that salved his conscience — the letter was written and placed in her hands.
Then “What sort is this Thistlewood?” she asked. “A gentleman?”
“You wouldn’t know, one way or the other,” he answered, with ill-humour.
“Maybe not,” she replied; “but would you call him one?”
“He’s been an officer, and he’s been to America, and he’s been to France. I don’t suppose,” looking round him with currish scorn, “that he’s ever been in such a hole as this!”
“But he’s in hiding. Is he married?”
“Yes.”
She frowned as if the news were unwelcome.
“Ah!” she muttered. And then, “What of the others?”
“Giles and Lunt — —”
“Ay.”
“There’s not much they’d stick at,” he replied. “They are low brutes; but they are useful. We’ve to do with all sorts in this business.”
“And why not?”
“Why not?”
“Ay! Didn’t you tell me the other day, there was no one so mean, if we succeed, he may not rise to the top? nor any one so great he may not fall to the bottom?”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 481
