Starvecrow Farm

But he did. He walked straight into the trap, and Henrietta, who was waiting in ambush in the dark passage while he passed, sped downstairs, and would have escaped by the back door without meeting a soul, if Mrs. Gilson had not by bad luck been crossing the yard. The landlady caught sight of the girl, and raising her voice cried to her to stop. For an instant Henrietta hesitated. Then she thought it prudent to comply. She returned slowly.

"Come, come, miss, this won't do!" the landlady said tartly. "You're not going off like that all of a hurry! You bide a bit and consider who's bail for you."

"Not you!" Henrietta retorted mutinously. And as this was true, for the Gilsons' bail had been discharged, the first hit was hers.

"Oh, so you're saucy now, miss!" the landlady retorted. "Brag's the dog, is it?"

"No, but-"

"It's so, it seems! Any way, you'll please to tell me, young lady, where you are going in such a hurry."

But Henrietta was at bay. She knew that if she were delayed even two minutes her chance was gone; for Bishop would be on her heels. So, "That's my business!" she answered. And determined to escape, even by force, she turned about, light as a roe, tossed her head defiantly, and was off through the gate in a twinkling.

Mrs. Gilson was left gaping. She was not of a figure to take up the chase, for like many good housewives of her time, she seldom left her own premises except to go to church. But she was none the less certain that Henrietta ought to be followed. "There's a fine trollop!" she cried. "It won't be long before she runs her head into harm! Where's that blockhead, Bishop?" And she bundled away to the coffee-room to tell him that the girl was gone.

She arrived scant of breath-and he was not there. The coffee-room was empty, and the landlady, knowing that he had stayed in the house on purpose to keep an eye on Henrietta's movements, swept out again, fuming. In the passage she caught sight of Modest Ann and called her. "Where's that man, Bishop?" she asked.

Ann stared as if she had never heard the name.

"Bishop?" she repeated stolidly.

"What else did I say?"

"He's with the young lady."

"He's nothing of the kind!" Mrs. Gilson retorted, her temper rising.

"Well, he went to her," Ann returned. "He went-"

But Mrs. Gilson did not stay to hear. She had caught sight of Mr. Sutton walking past the open door, and aware that a second now was worth a minute by and by, she hurried out to him. "Your reverence! Here!" she cried. And when he turned surprised by the address, "The young lady's gone!" she continued. "Slipped out at the back, and she'll be God knows where in two minutes! Do you follow, sir, and keep her in sight or there's no knowing what may happen!" And she pointed through the house to indicate the nearest way.

Mr. Sutton's face turned a dull red. But he did not move, nor make any show of acting on the suggestion. Instead, "Miss Damer has gone out?" he said slowly.

"To be sure!" the landlady cried, in a fume at the delay. "And if she is not followed at once-"

"Where's the officer?" he asked, interrupting her.

"Heaven knows, or I should not come to you!" Mrs. Gilson retorted. "Do you go after her before she's beyond catching!"

But Mr. Sutton shook his head with an obstinate look. "No," he said. "It's not my business, ma'am. I'd like to oblige you after your kindness yesterday, but I've made up my mind not to interfere with the young lady. I followed her once," he continued, in a lower tone and with a conscious air-"and I've repented it!"

"You'll repent it a deal more if you don't follow her now!" the landlady retorted. She was in a towering passion by this time. "You'll repent it finely if anything happens to her. That you will, my man! Don't you know that Captain Clyne left word that she wasn't to be let go out alone? Then go, man, after her, before it is too late. And don't be a sawny!"

"I shall not," he answered firmly.

She saw then that he was not to be moved; and with a half-smothered word, not of the politest, she turned short about to find Bishop; though she was well aware that so much time had been wasted that the thing was now desperate. Again she asked Ann, who had been listening to the colloquy, where Bishop was.

"He went up to the young lady," Ann answered.

"He did not, I tell you. For she is not up but out!"

"Perhaps he has followed her."

"Perhaps you're a liar!" Mrs. Gilson cried. And advancing on Ann with a threatening gesture, "If you don't tell me where he is, I'll shake you, woman! Do you hear?"

Ann hesitated; when who should appear at the foot of the stairs but Bishop himself, looking foolish.

"Where's the young lady?" he asked. "Where's your wits?" Mrs. Gilson retorted. "She's out by the back-door this five minutes. If you want to catch her you'd best be quick!" And as with a face of consternation he hurried through the house, "She didn't turn Ambleside way!" she called after him. "That's all I know!"

This was something, but it left, as Bishop knew, two roads open. For, besides the field-path which led up the hill and through the wood, and so over the shoulder to Troutbeck, a farm lane turned short to the right behind the out-buildings, and ran into the lower road towards Calgarth and Bowness. Which had the girl taken? Bishop paused in doubt, and gazed either way. She was not to be seen on the slope leading up to the wood; but then, she was not to be seen on the other path. Still, he espied something there which gave him hope. On the hillside the snow had melted, but here and there on the north side of a wall, or in a sheltered spot, it lay; and a little way along the farm-road was such a patch extending across its width. Bishop hastened to the place, and a glance told him that the girl had not gone that way. With rising hopes he set off up the hill.

He was stout and short-winded, more at home in Cornhill than on real hills, and he did not expect to gain upon her. But he felt sure that he should find her track: and its direction where the fells were so sparsely peopled must tell him much. He remembered that it was at the upper end of the wood that he had surprised her on the occasion when her agitation had led him to question her. He resolved to make as quickly as possible for that point.

True enough, where the path entered the wood he came upon her footsteps imprinted in the snow; and he pushed on, through the covert to the upper end. Here, just within the wicket which opened on the road, lay some drifted snow; and as much to recover his breath, as because he thought it needful, he stopped to note the direction of her footprints. Alas, the snow bore no trace of feet! No one, it was clear, had passed through the gate that day.

This was a check, and he turned his back on the road, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief which he took from his hat. He gazed, nonplussed, into the recesses of the wood through which he had passed. The undergrowth, which was of oak-with here and there a clump of hollies-still carried a screen of brown leaves, doomed to fall with the spring, but sufficient in the present to mask a fugitive. Moreover, in the damp bottom, where the bridge spanned the rivulet, a company might have lain hidden; and above him, where the wood climbed the shoulder, there were knolls and dells, and unprobed depths of yellow bracken, that defied the eye. Between him and this background the brown trunks stood at intervals, shot with the gold of the declining sun, or backed by a cold patch of snow: and the scene had been beautiful, in its russet livery of autumn blended with winter, if he had had eyes for it, or for aught but the lurking figure he hoped to detect.

That figure, however, he could not see. And again he stooped, and inspected the snow beside the gate. No, she had not passed, that was certain; and baffled, and in a most unhappy mood, he raised himself and listened. Above him a squirrel, scared by his approach, was angrily clawing a branch; a robin, drawn by the presence of a man, alighted near him, and hopped nearer. But no rustle of flying skirts, no sound of snapping twigs or falling stones came to him. And, a city man by training, and much at a loss here, he mopped his brow and swore. Every second was precious, and he was losing minutes. He was losing minutes, and learning nothing!

Was she hiding in the wood pending his departure? Or had she doubled back the way she had come, and so escaped, laughing and contemptuous? Or had she passed out by some gate unknown to him? Or climbed the fence? Or was she even now meeting her man in some hiding-place among the hollies, or in some fern-clad retreat out of sight and hearing?

Bishop could not tell. He was wholly at a loss. For a few seconds he entertained the wild notion of beating, the wood for her; but he had not taken a dozen steps before he set it aside, and went back to the gate. Henrietta on the occasion when her bearing had confirmed his suspicions had descended the road to the wood. He would go up the road. And even as he thought of this, and laid his hand on the gate to open it, he heard a footstep coming heavily down the road.

He went to meet the man; a tall, grinning rustic, who bore a sheep on his shoulders with its fore and hind feet in either hand, so that it looked like a gigantic ruff. At a sign from the officer he stopped, but did not lower his burden.

"Meet anybody as you came down the road, my lad?" Bishop asked.

"Noa," the man drawled.

"Where have you come from? Troutbeck?"

"Ay."

"You haven't met a young lady?"

"Noa! Met no soul, master!" the man answered, in the accent not only of Westmoreland, but of truth.

"Not even a pretty girl?"

The man grinned more widely.

"Noa, not nobody," he said.

And he went on down the road, but twice looked back, turning sheep and all, to see what the stranger would be at.

Bishop stood for a few moments pondering the question, and then he followed the man.

"If she is not up the road," he argued, "it is ten to one that she started up the hill to throw us off the scent. And she's slipped down herself towards Calgarth. It's that way, too, she went to meet him at night."

And gradually quickening his steps as the case seemed clearer and his hopes grew stronger he was soon out of sight.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GOLDEN SHIP

Two minutes after Bishop had passed from sight, Henrietta rose from a dip in the fern; in which she had lain all the time, as snugly hidden, though within eyeshot of him, as a hare in its form. She cast a wary glance round. Then she hastened to the gate, but did not pass through it. She knew too much. She chose a weak place in the fence, scaled it with care, and sprang lightly into the road. She glanced up and down, but no one was in sight, and pleased with her cleverness, she set off at a quick pace up the hill.

The sun lacked an hour of setting. She might count on two hours of daylight, and her spirits rose. As the emerald green of the lower hills shone the brighter for the patches of snow, harbingers of winter, which flecked them, so her spirits rose the higher for troubles overpast or to come. She felt no fear, no despondency, none of the tremours with which she had entered on her night adventure. A gaiety of which she did not ask herself the cause, a heart as light as her feet and as blithe as the black-bird's note, carried her on. She who had awakened that morning in a prison could have sung and caroled as she walked. The beauty of the hills about her, of the lake below her, blue here, there black, filled her with happiness.

And the cause? She did not seek for the cause. Certainly she did not find it. It was enough for the moment that she had been prisoned and was free; and that in an hour, or two hours at most, she would return with the child or with news. And then, the sweet vengeance of laying it in its father's arms! She whom he had insulted, whom he had mishandled, whom he had treated so remorselessly-it would be from her hand that he would receive his treasure, the child whom he had told her that she hated. He would have some cause then to talk of making amends! And need to go about and about before he found a way to be quits with her!

She did not analyse beyond that point the feeling of gaiety and joyous anticipation which possessed her. She would put him in the wrong. She would heap coals of fire on his head. That sufficed. If there welled up within her heart another thought, if since morning she had a feeling and a hope that thrilled her and lent to all the world this smiling guise, she was conscious of the effect, unconscious of the cause. The wrist which Clyne had twisted was still black and blue and tender to the touch. She blushed lest any eye fall on it, or any guess how he had treated her. But-she blushed also, when she was alone, and her own eyes dwelt on it. And dwell on it sometimes they would; for, strange to say, the feeling of shame, if it was shame, was not unpleasant.

She met no one. She reached the gate of Starvecrow Farm, unseen as she believed. But heedful of the old saying, that fields have eyes and woods have ears, she looked carefully round her before she laid her hand on the gate. Then, in a twinkling, she was round the house like a lapwing and tapping at the door.

To her first summons she got no answer. And effacing herself as much as possible, she cast a wary eye over the place. The garden was as ragged and desolate, the house as bald and forbidding, the firs about it as gloomy, as when she had last seen them. But the view over sloping field and green meadow, wooded knoll and shining lake, made up for all. And her only feeling as she tapped again and more loudly was one of impatience. Even the memory of the squalid old man whom she had once seen there did not avail to alarm her in her buoyant mood.

This was well, perhaps. For when she knocked a third time, in alarm lest the person she sought should be gone, and her golden ship with him, it was that very old man who opened the door. And, not unnaturally, it seemed to Henrietta that with its opening a shadow fell across the landscape and blurred the sunshine of the day. The ape-like creature who gaped at her, the cavern-like room behind him, the breath of the close air that came from him, inspired disgust, if not alarm, and checked the girl in the full current of content.

He did not speak. But he moved his toothless gums unpleasantly, and danced up and down in an odd fashion from his knees, without moving his feet. Meanwhile his reddened eyes thrust near to hers gleamed with suspicion. On her side Henrietta was taken aback by his appearance, and for some moments she stared at him in consternation. What could she expect from such a creature?

At length, "I wish to see Walterson," she said; in a low tone-there might be listeners in the house. "Do you understand? Do you understand?" she repeated more loudly.

He set his head, which was bald in patches, on one side; as if to indicate that he was deaf. And with his eyes on hers, he dropped his lower jaw and waited for her to repeat what she had said.

She saw nothing else for it, and she crushed down her repugnance.

"Let me come in," she said. "Do you hear? I want to talk to you. Let me come in."

To remain where she was, talking secrets to a deaf man, was to invite discovery.

He understood her this time, and grudgingly he opened the door a little wider. He stood aside and Henrietta entered. In the act she cast a backward look over her shoulder, and caught through the doorway a last prospect of the hills and the mid-lake and the green islets off Bowness-set like jewels on its gleaming breast-all clear-cut in the brisk winter air. She felt the beauty of the scene, but she did not guess what things were to happen to her before she looked again upon its fellow.

Not that when the door was shut upon her, the room in which she found herself did not something appal her. The fire had been allowed to sink low, and the squalor and the chill, vapid air of the place wrapped her about. But she was naturally fearless, and she cheered herself with the thought that she was stronger than the grinning old man who stood before her. She was sure that if he resorted to violence she could master him. Still, she was in haste. She was anxious to do what she had to do, and escape.

And: "I must see Walterson!" she told him loudly, looking down on him, and instinctively keeping her skirts clear of the unswept floor. "He was here, I know, some days ago," she continued sharply. "Don't say you don't understand, because you do! But fetch him, or tell me where he is. Do you hear?"

The old man moved his jaw to and fro. He grinned senilely.

"He was here, eh?" he drawled.

"Yes, he was here," Henrietta returned, taking a tone of authority with him. "And I must see him."

"Ay?"

"It is to do no harm to him," she explained. "Tell him Miss Damer is here. Miss Damer, do you hear? He will see me, I am sure."

"Ay?" he said again in the same half-vacant tone. "Ay?"

But he did not go beyond that; nor did he make any movement to comply. And she was beginning to think him wholly imbecile when his eyes left hers and fixed themselves on the front of her riding-coat. Then, after a moment's silence, during which she patted the floor with her foot in fierce impatience, he raised his claw-like hand and stretched it slowly towards her throat.

She stepped back, but as much in anger as in fear. Was the man imbecile, or very wicked?

"What do you want?" she asked sharply. "Don't you understand what I have said to you?"

For the moment he seemed to be disconcerted by her movement. He stood in the same place, slowly blinking his weak eyes at her. Then he turned and moved in a slip-shod fashion to the hearth and threw on two or three morsels of touch-wood, causing the fire to leap up and shoot a flickering light into the darker corners of the room. The gleam discovered his dingy bed and dingier curtains, and the shadowy entrance to the staircase in which Henrietta had once seen Walterson. And it showed Henrietta herself, and awakened a spark in her angry eyes.

The old man, still stooping, looked round at her, his chin on his shoulder. And slowly, with an odd crab-like movement, he edged his way back to her. She watched his approach with a growing fear of the gloomy house and the silence and the dark staircase. She began to think he was imbecile, or worse, and that nothing could be got from him. And she was in two minds about retreating-so powerfully do silence and mystery tell on the nerves-when he paused in his advance, and, raising his lean, twitching hand, pointed to her neck.

"Give it me," he whimpered. "Give it me-and I'll see, maybe, where he is."

She frowned.

"What?" she asked. "What do you want?"

"The gold!" he croaked. "The gold! At your neck, lass! That sparkles! Give it me!" opening and shutting his lean fingers. "And I'll-I'll see what I can do."

She carried her fingers to the neck of her gown and touched the tiny gold medal struck to celebrate the birth of the Princess Charlotte, which she wore as a clasp at her throat. And relieved to find that he meant no worse, she smiled. The scarecrow before her was less of an "innocent" than she had judged him. It was so much the better for her purpose.

"I cannot give you this," she said. "But I'll give you its value, if you will bring me to Walterson."

"No, no, give it me," he whimpered, grimacing at her and making feeble clutches in the air. "Give it me!"

"I cannot, I say," she repeated. "It was my mother's, and I cannot part with it. But if," she continued patiently, "you will do what I ask I will give you its value, old man, another day."

"Give now!" he retorted. "Give now!" And leering with childish cunning, "Trust the day and greet the morrow! Groats in pouch ne'er yet brought sorrow! Na, na, Hinkson, old Hinkson trusts nobody. Give it me now, lass! And I-I know what I know." And in a cracked and quavering voice, swaying himself to the measure,

"It is an old sayingThat few words are best,And he that says littleShall live most at rest.And I by my gossipsDo find it right so,Therefore I'll spare speech,But-I know what I know.

I know what I know!" he repeated, blinking with doting astuteness,

"Therefore I'll spare speech,But-I know what I know!"

Henrietta stared. She would have given him the money, any money in her power. But imprudently prudent, she had brought none with her.

"I can't give it you now," she said. "But I will give it you to-morrow if you will do what I ask. Otherwise I shall go and you will get nothing."

He did not reply, but he began to mumble with his jaws and dance himself up and down from his knees, as at her first entrance; with his monstrous head on one side and his red-lidded eyes peering at her. In the open, in the sunshine, she would not have feared him; she would have thought him only grotesque in his anger. But shut up in this hideous den with him, in this atmosphere of dimly perceived danger, she felt her flesh creep. What if he struck her treacherously, or took her by surprise? She had read of houses where the floors sank under doomed strangers, or the testers of beds came down on them in their sleep. He was capable, she was sure, of anything; even of murdering her for the sake of the two or three guineas' worth of gold which she wore at her neck. Yet she held her ground.

"Do you hear?" she said with spirit. "If you do not tell me, I shall go. And you will get nothing!"

He nodded cunningly.

"Bide a bit!" he said in a different tone. "Sit ye down, lass, sit ye down! Bide a bit, and I'll see."

He slippered his way across the floor to get a stool for her. But when he had lifted the stool from the floor in his shaking hands, she marked with a quick leap of the heart that he had put himself between her and the door, and that, with the possession of the stool, his looks were altered. The heavy block wavered in his grasp and he seemed to pant and stagger under its weight. But there was an ugly light in his eyes as he sidled nearer and nearer to her; a light that meant murder. She was sure that he was going to leap upon her. And she remembered that no one, no one knew where she was, no one had seen her enter the house. She had only her own strength to look to, only her own courage and coolness, if she would escape this creature.

"Put down that stool!" she said.

"Eh?"

"Put down that stool!" she repeated, firmly. And she kept her eyes on him, resisting the fatal temptation to glance at door or window. "Do you hear me? Put down that stool!"

He hesitated, but her glance never wavered. And slowly and unwillingly he obeyed. Shaking as with the palsy, and with his mouth fallen open-so that he looked more imbecile and less human than ever-he relinquished the stool.

She drew a deep breath.

"Now," she said bravely, though she was conscious that the perspiration had broken out on her brow, "tell me at once where he is?"

But the old miser, though his will had yielded to hers, did not answer. He seemed to be shaken by his defeat, and to be at once feeble and furious. Glaring askance at her, he tottered to the settle on the hearth and sat down on it, breathing heavily.

"Curse her! Curse her! Curse her!" he gibbered low, but audibly. And he licked his lips and gnashed his toothless gums at her in impotent rage. "Curse her! Curse her!" The firelight, now rising, now falling, showed him sitting there, mopping and mowing, like some unclean Eastern idol; or, again, masked his revolting ugliness.

The girl thought him horrible, thought it all horrible. She felt for an instant as if she were going to faint. But she had gained the victory, she had mastered him, and she would make one last attempt to attain her object.

"You wicked old man," she said, "you would have hurt me! You wicked monster! But I am stronger, much stronger than you, and I do not fear you. Now I am going unless you tell me at once."

He ceased to gibber to her. He beckoned to her to approach him. But she shook her head. He no longer had the stool, but he might have some weapon hidden under the seat of the settle. She distrusted him.

"No," she said, "I am not coming near you. You are a villainous old man, and I don't trust you."

"Have you no-no money?" he whimpered. "Nothing to give old Hinkson? Poor old Hinkson?" with a feeble movement of his fingers on his knees, as if he drew bed-clothes about him.

"Where is Walterson?" she repeated. "Tell me at once."