CHAPTER VIII.
THE AFTERNOON OF THE 23RD OF AUGUST.
I led her into the little parlour which gives on to the terraces atthe south end of the house. The wall upon one side was broken by agreat open fireplace faced with bricks, and all too big for the room,into which a man could walk and wherein he could sit too, were he sodisposed, upon a chilly night, and smoke his pipe with a crony overagainst him; for there were cushioned seats on either side of thehearth and a curtain hung to keep your head from the bricks.
The room seemed very silent as we entered it, and the silencedeepened. She crossed over to this fireplace and stood with a footraised towards the hearth, though there was no fire to warm it by. Itossed my hat and whip on to the table with more noise than wasnecessary and made a step as if to join her. She drew backinstinctively. I stopped as though the step had been a liberty; andneither of us had a word to say. Once she untied the ribands of herhood, for she must be doing something; but the moment she was aware ofwhat it was she did, she tied them again with hasty uncertain fingers,and then reddened and paled, of a sudden becoming, it seemed to me,sensible of the hastiness of her action. I sent my eyes wandering toevery corner of the room, so that they should not rest upon her face;but none the less, after a little our glances crossed, and with onemovement we averted our heads. After that one of us had to speak.
"You will be hungry," I said lamely. "You have eaten nothing since themorning;" and I walked to a little sideboard on which a bell wasstanding.
"No, no!" she cried, but I had struck the bell or ever the words werepast her lips. "Oh, what have you done?" she said with a shiver; "oneof your servants will come;" and then she checked herself and added,with her fingers plucking at her gown in a pitiful helpless way,"Well, what does it matter? They had the story before it happened.This will but confirm and seal it."
I went out into the hall to stop whosoever should be answering thesummons. But no one came to answer it I crossed the hall and openedthe door which led to the kitchens. As a rule, the noise of women'svoices was incessant in that quarter of the house, but to-day not asound, not so much as the clatter of a dish-cover! I went back to thehall and listened. The house was as still as on that night when Icrept down the stairs and discovered the marks of a picture-frame uponthe wall.
Was the house empty? I wondered, and shouted to solve the doubt. Myvoice went echoing and diminishing along corridor and gallery, butthat was all. I moved down the passage to the office, half thinkingthat I might find Aron there, but remembered that he would be away,and so returned reluctantly. Thereupon I mounted the stairs and walkedfrom room to room, and maybe lingered over-long in each. I was not,indeed, concerned with their silence and vacancy so much as with theknowledge that each step brought me actually a step nearer to theparlour-door. But I came to the end of my search, and there wasnothing for it but to descend again. The hall-door, however, stoodopen, and I saw my horse at the bottom of the steps tethered by therein to a knob of the stone balustrade. I walked down the steps,loosed it, and led it round to the stables. There was a boy or two inthe stable-yard, and I remember putting to them a number of aimlessquestions which I was at great pains to think of, but did not listento the answers; until their fidgeting made me sensible of thecowardice of my delay and drove me back to the house. Then Iremembered why I had left the parlour, and going to the pantry, I gottogether some food upon a tray and brought it with a decanter ofBurgundy into the parlour. Mrs. Herbert was standing where I had lastseen her. I set out the table saying, "My servants seem all to havetaken holiday;" and more for something to do, you may be sure, thanfrom any sense of hunger, she sat herself at the table and began toplay with the food. I had brought but one plate and set a chair forbut one person; and neither of us noticed that. The truth is, therewas a shadow in the room; the shadow cast by sin, and we watched it aschildren in a fitful firelight will watch a strange shadow on thewall--neither drawing near to it nor fleeing from it, but crouchedwatching it. Once she said, "I have brought nothing with me;" andafter a little, some thought seemed to strike her. For she lifted herhead suddenly and said:
"There is no one in the house but you and I?"
"No one," I said.
"That is strange," she said absently.
Strange! The word was an arrow of light piercing through the mist ofmy senses. Strange! It was indeed strange! Aron had warned me not toride to Keswick; that was strange too. For the first time I set thisdesertion of my servants together in my mind with my suspicions ofAshlock's treachery. I started to my feet, invaded by a sudden fear;but I saw Mrs. Herbert at the table running her fingers along the hemof my fine tablecloth and her throat working as though she wasswallowing her tears. I knew by some instinct of what she wasthinking. She was thinking of her poor furniture in her lodging atKeswick. It was hers, you see, won by her husband's toil, and maybeshe had a passing thought, too, of Sir Godfrey Kneller's estate atWitton--earned, too, by a painter's art. And such a pity for her, sucha loathing of myself, flooded my mind as drove out all thought of Mr.Ashlock's machinations. I recalled how I had deemed that slatternlyapartment unfit for her. It needed that we two should be here with theshadow about us, for me to realize how contemptible was the thought.
Again she said:
"No one is in the house except yourself and me," and in the samethoughtful tone. Then she rose from her chair with the air of one thathas come upon an outlet when all outlets seemed barred. "It was kindof you," she said, "to show me your house, I would gladly have seenthe gardens too, but the day is clouding, and it will rain, I think,ere long."
She dropped me a formal curtsey as she spoke. I did not want theurgent appeal of her eyes to take her meaning. My heart rose to itwith a spring.
"I will have a carriage made ready for you," I replied; and I turnedme to the window. "Yes, I am afraid that it will rain."
"Thank you!" she said.
And I, like the blundering fool I was, must needs, in my great joy,add:
"It is no long journey into Keswick, after all"
"Keswick!" says she with a start, and drops her eyes. "I had notthought of that. I had not thought where I should go to."
I stood before her dumb. I knew--yes, I knew that the only place forher was that little apartment in Keswick. Grant her but the sight ofit, and the sight of her husband in it--for he loved her--and, well,it needed no magician to forecast the result. But there was one personin the world who could not use that argument--myself. However, shehelped me out.
"I cannot go back," she said, "without he knows. It would not be justNo! it is not possible;" and at that the tears came at last. The soundof her weeping pierced me like a sword.
"He shall know, then," I cried. "He shall know. I myself will ride toKeswick and tell him."
"You will?" she asked, suddenly lifting her head.
"Maybe, too, I may find means to bring him back."
"If that might be!" she whispered in a fervour of hope, her whole facelightening and a timorous smile dawning through her tears. "But no!"and the hope died out of her face. "Payment will have to be made forthis. You'll see, payment will be made."
She spoke in a low tone of such perfect certainty, that it seemed tome it was not so much the woman who spoke, but that Providence choseher voice that moment for its mouthpiece.
"Heaven send the payment fall to me," I said.
She glanced at me quickly.
"Oh," she said, in a complete change of voice, "what will you tellhim?"
"Why, the truth," I answered. "That I found you by the lake, andbrought you here."
"No!" she exclaimed, "I will not have you say that. It must be thetruth--that I came to you."
She drew a note from her pocket as she spoke, and tossed it on to thetable. I picked it up, wondering what she meant. It was a linescribbled in a hand which was familiar to me, and there was a wordcuriously misspelled--"wateing" for "waiting." Somewhere I had seenthat word misspelled precisely in that way before, and surel
y in thishandwriting too. Then the truth flashed upon me. It was in the inn atCommercy, and the handwriting was Jervas Rookley's. The line was this:
"I shall be wateing for you by the lake, on the road to Blackladies."
But Jervas Rookley knew that I was journeying to Grasmere, that I wasnot returning to Blackladies until night The letter was a snare, then,to draw Mrs. Herbert from the house.
If so, all the more need for haste.
I opened the door and stepped into the hall. But the hall was nolonger empty. The hall-door was still open; I had left it open, and aman stood in the centre of the hall. It was Anthony Herbert. His backwas towards me, and from his manner I gathered that he was consideringwhich of the passages giving upon the hall he should choose. It wasfor no more than a second that he stood thus, but that second gave metime enough to do the stupidest thing that ever a man out of his witsconceived; and yet in a way it was natural. For I slammed the door tobehind my back, and stood barring it, with my hand upon the knob. Mr.Herbert twisted round upon his heel.
"Caught!" he cried, spitting the word at me.
I realized the folly of my action, and let go of the handle.
"I was this instant setting out to find you."
The words sounded false to me, though I knew them to be true, and myvoice took a trembling indecision from the foreknowledge that he woulddisbelieve them.
"No doubt," said he. "Otherwise you would not be guarding the door."
He spoke with a great effort to be calm, but his eyes were aflame, hislimbs quivered with his wrath, and now and again his voice lost itssteadiness and ran up and down in a fitful scale.
"I thought to find you in the garden," he continued.
"In the garden?" I asked.
"But doubtless you point me out the way;" and he took a step towardsme. With the movement his cloak slipped from his left shoulder, and Inoticed that he was carrying a sword and a pistol in his belt. My handwent back to the handle.
"The few words I have to say to you," said I, "had better be spokenhere."
"But it would be best of all," he returned, "to defer them altogether.I have some business with you, it is true, but that business comessecond, and I think we shall need no words for its discussion." Hetook yet another step.
"Your business with me, Mr. Herbert, may come when it will," said I,"but these words cannot be deferred. They are few."
"However few, they are still too many," he broke in. "Out of my way!"
"You must hear them before you pass this door." I gripped the handletighter.
"I'll not listen to you," he cried. "You overrate my credulity, Mr.Clavering. Out of the way!"
"I will not. This is my house."
"But it shelters my wife."
"It was she sent me to fetch you."
I gathered all my strength into the utterance of the words, that Imight enforce their truth upon him. But they only served to whet hisfury and confirm him in disbelief.
"That's a lie," he shouted, and in a flash his sword was out of thescabbard and the point of it pricking my breast. "If she sent you tofetch me, why do you guard the door? Stand aside!"
But since I had made that mistake, I must go through with it.
"I will not," I answered doggedly, and I set a hand upon each side ofthe doorway. "There is more to tell. I will not."
"Will not," says he grimly, "gives the wall to must," and he leaned alittle very gently on the sword.
I did not move, but behind me the handle of the door rattled. I triedto seize it, but the door was pulled open from within; I staggeredback into the room. Herbert sprang through the opening after me, andstood, drawing in his breath, his eyes fixed upon his wife. Sherecoiled towards the hearth.
"It is the bare truth I told you," I exclaimed passionately. "Oh,believe that! When I caught sight of you, I had taken the first stepin pursuit of you; and it was Mrs. Herbert who set me on the task. Oh,believe that too! It was no doing of mine; it was she sent me. Formyself, I gave little thought to you, I own it. It was she declaredshe could not return without you knew. I but obeyed her."
For a moment it seemed to me that his anger lulled. I watched hiseyes. They were fixed upon his wife, and I saw the conviction in themfade to doubt, the doubt waver and melt into--was it forgiveness? I donot know, for Mrs. Herbert shifted her position; his eyes wanderedfrom her face and fell upon the table. The note which she had shown mewas lying open beneath his gaze. He stooped his head towards it. Imade a movement to hinder him. He remarked the movement, and on theinstant snatched the paper up.
"You persuade me to read it," said he, which accordingly he did. As heread, an idea occurred to me. For let him believe I wrote that note,and he would be the more likely to attribute the blame where it wasdue and exhaust his anger in the same quarter. So that when he asked,rapping the note with his knuckles--
"This is your hand?" I kept silence.
He repeated the question, and I positively relished the growing menaceof his voice, and still kept silence. But he gave me credit for moresubtlety than I possessed.
"Oh, I understand," he burst out "You were going to fetch me, nodoubt. This letter bears you out so well. And my wife sent you tofetch me--a cunning afterthought when the first excuse had missed itsmark. A very likely story, to be sure, but enough to hoodwink adull-witted fool of a husband, eh? Reconcile husband and wife, and Mr.Lawrence Clavering may laugh in his sleeve--damn him!"
"It is the truth," I exclaimed in despair. "Believe it! Believe it!"
"The truth," he retorted with bitterest sneer, "the truth, and you arespeaking it God, I believe truth itself would become a lie if you hadthe uttering of it! Believe you! Why, every trickster keeps hisexcuses ready on his tongue against the time he's caught. I would notbelieve you kneeling before the judgment-seat."
He poured his abuse upon me with an indescribable fury and in a voicegusty with passion.
"But you shall answer for it," he continued.
"When you will," I answered quietly.
He was still carrying his sword in his hand, and he suddenly thrust itout at arm's length before him, and turned it to and fro with hiswrist, so that the light flashed on it and streaked up the blade tothe hilt.
"Then I will now," he replied "now--now!" and at each word he flashedthe sword, and with each word his voice rose exultingly. "In yourgarden, now!"
He moved towards the window. His wife stepped forward with a cry, andlaid a hand upon his arm. He stopped and looked at her, with eyes thattold her nothing. It must have been a full minute, I should think,that he stood thus. He had as yet spoken no word to her, and he spokeno word now. I saw her head decline, her whole frame relapse anddroop, and she slipped on to her knees. Herbert shook her hand fromhis arm, kicked open the window, and crossed the terrace. I went intothe hall to fetch my sword. As I crossed the threshold of the room, Iheard the iron gates clang at the top of the terrace steps as thoughhe had flung them to behind him. While I picked up my sword I heardthe sound repeated but more faintly from the second terrace. And as Ientered the room again and drew the sword from its scabbard I heard ityet a third time. Through the open window I could see him descendingthe steps of the third terrace. But between myself and the window, thewife was kneeling on the floor. Said she:
"You will not harm him;" and she clasped her hands in her entreaty."Say you will not! The payment must not fall to him."
I almost laughed, so strange and needless did the entreaty sound.
"Madam," I said, "this is the pommel of the sword and this the point.One holds the sword too by the pommel, I believe. In fact, I know somuch, but there my knowledge ends."
She spoke a little more, but I gave scant heed to what she said. For asentence which she had spoken somewhile since, drummed in my ears tothe exclusion of her present speech, and the import of it shone in mymind like a clear light. "Payment will have to be made for this," shehad said.
Over her shoulder I saw Mr. Herbert move further and further from thehouse. It was about six o'clock of
the afternoon and very windless andstill. A great strip of cloud, hung from Green Comb to High Knott,gloomed across the garden, thick as wool and bulging like a sail, sothat even the scarlet flowers of the parterre took from it a tint ofgrey. And underneath this cloud, from end to end, from side to side,the garden seemed to me to be waiting--waiting consciously in asinister quietude for this payment to be made. The fantastic figuresinto which the box-trees were shaped, bears, leopards, and I know notwhat strange mammoths, appeared patient and alert in the fixity of asure expectation, while the oaks and larches in the Wilderness beyondseemed purposely to restrain the flutter of their leaves. I felt thegarden beckon me by its immobility and call me by its silence.
Mr. Herbert had stripped his cloak from his shoulders, and dropped itupon the third flight of steps; so that he now moved, a brown figure,here showing plain against the grotto, or the grass, there confoundedwith the flowers. He held his sword in his hand--at that distance, andin that dull light it looked no more dangerous than a strip of lead,and ever and again he would cut at a bush as he passed.
"No harm can come to him," I said, seeking to disengage myself, forthe wife still clung to me in her misplaced fear. "I could not harmhim if I would. For they do not teach one swordsmanship at the JesuitColleges."
The words rose to my lips by chance and by chance were spoken. But Iknow that the moment after I heard them, I staggered forward with agroan, and stood leaning my forehead against the framework of thewindow. Mrs. Herbert rose to her feet.
I was looking down the terraces across the parterres to the brownfigure moving away, but I did not see that. It was as though a blackcurtain had swung down between the garden and myself. What I saw was avery different scene--a little twilight room far away in Paris and astern face that warned me. I heard a voice telling me of a supremehour wherein God would put me to His touchstone, an hour for which Imust stand sentinel. Well, the hour had passed me and I had notchallenged it; and I might have foreseen its coming had I watched. Ilifted my head; the garden again floated into view. Anthony Herbertwas marching through the long grass of the Wilderness, with never alook backwards. In a moment he reached the fringe of trees. The treeswere sparse at the border, and I knew that he would not stop there,but would rather advance until he arrived at some little dingleclosely wooded about from view of the house. In and out amongst theboles of the trees I saw him wind. Then for a second he disappearedand came to sight again upon a little patch of unshadowed grass. Iremember that the sun gleamed of a sudden through an interstice of thecloud as he stepped into the open. The patch of grass shone like anemerald and the dull strip of lead in his hand turned gold; and alarch upon the far rim where the trees grew dense, taking some straybreath of wind, rippled and shook the sunlight from its leaves. Insome unaccountable way my spirits rose at the sight. I still wassensible of that saying, "Payment must be made for this," but it tooka colour from the sunlight. It became rather, "Payment can be made forthis."
I slipped out of the window. Mrs. Herbert started forward to detainme.
"A duel," she exclaimed, in a tone as though the idea became yet moreinconceivable to her. "Oh no! Not a duel."
"No, not a duel," I replied across my shoulder, "only the pretence ofone;" and while my head was thus turned a pistol-shot rang from theWilderness.
It sounded like the crack of a whip, and I might have counted it nomore than that but I saw a wisp of blue smoke float upwards above ashrubbery and hang curling this way and that in the sunlight.
"God save us," I cried, "but he carried a pistol!" and I made asthough I would run across the terrace towards him. But or ever I couldmove, I felt a hand tighten and tighten upon my arm. I tried to shakeit off.
"You do not understand," I exclaimed. "He carried a pistol. It was apistol that we heard. Maybe he was looking to the priming. Maybe he iswounded I must go to him;" and I seized Mrs. Herbert's hand at thewrist and sought to drag it away from my sleeve. I felt her fingersonly grip more closely. I dropped her wrist and began to unclasp them,one by one.
"It is you who do not understand," she said, "and he is not wounded."
She spoke in a dry, passionless voice, which daunted me more than thewords she uttered. I turned and looked at her in perplexity. Her facewas like paper, even her lips were white--and her eyes shone from itsunken and black; I was reminded of them afterwards by the sight of ablack tarn set in a moor of snow, which I was destined to look uponone sad November afternoon in this same year. They seemed to havegrown bigger, the better to express the horror which she felt.
"He is not wounded. Be sure--be very sure of that!" she continued,nodding her head at me in a queer, matter-of-fact way, which, joinedwith the contrast of her face, had something, to my thinking, awsomelygrotesque.
"What do you mean?" I gasped, and in a momentary weakness staggeredback against the framework of the window. I felt her clasp strengthenupon my arm, drawing me within the parlour.
"He carried a pistol--yes, but why should he look to the priming sinceyou were to fight with swords?" she whispered, shaking my arm with alittle impatient movement. "Did you not see? His walk grew slow, hishead drooped--drooped. He was tired, you see, so tired;" and sheuttered a low, mirthless laugh while her eyes burned into me. It was asound which, I thank God, I have never heard but the once. It was asthough a preternatural horror claimed a preternatural expression. "Itwas not worth while," she resumed.
"Ah, no," I cried, as her meaning broke in upon me. "I'll not believethat. I'll not believe it;" and once or twice I thrust out with myhands as if that way I could keep belief aloof.
"But you do," she returned, and the whisper of her voice took on acertain eagerness. It seemed that she must have a partner in herthought. "You do believe it. Look, am I pale? Then I am your mirror.Do I tremble? It is an ague caught from you. You do believe it. Weknow, you and I--guilt binds us in knowledge. We heard this morning.He told us, he warned us. If his wife proved false, he would not countit worth his while to punish the betrayer. But he has--he has punishedus, so perfectly that he himself would pity us, were he alive to doit. Would God we both were dead!" And again she laughed, and lettingdrop my arm she moved away into the room.
I had no doubt her words were true, and from the bottom of my heart Iechoed her vain prayer. I remembered the conviction with which he hadspoken--all the more assured for the very quietude of his voice. Yes,those trees, motionless under a leaden sky, in a leaden silence, werethe watchers about his bed. I braced myself to descend, but as myfirst step crunched the gravel of the terrace, Mrs. Herbert was againas my side.
"No," she cried. "Not yet, not without me, and I dare not go."
"Nay, madam," I replied, "do you stay here. There is no need for youto come."
"But there is--there is," she insisted, looking at me wildly, like onedistraught "Step by step we must go together. And so it will bealways. You will see, you and I are fettered each to each by sin, andthere's no breaking the locks." She shook her hands piteously.
"Nay," I said, "I will go alone."
"I dare not be left alone," she replied. "For what if he passed youwhile you searched for him!" and she gave a shuddering cry andrecoiled into the room. "What if he came striding from the thicketacross the grass to where I waited here! No! No! Wait, wait until it'sdark. I will go down with you. But now, in the daylight! His eyes willbe open; I dare not."
She stood with her hands clasped before her, toppling towards madness.I dared not leave her. There was no choice for me; between the deadman and the living woman there was no choice. I returned to the room.
"You will wait?" she asked.
"Until it is dark."
She moved into the alcove of the fireplace and crouched down upon theseat, with her back against the wall nearest to the garden. I remainedby the window, looking down the garden with the valley on my right. Isaw the strip of cloud unfold across the valley and lower upon thehilltops like a solid roof, The hillsides darkened, the bed of thevalley grew black--it seemed to me with the shadow of the wi
ngs ofdeath. Here a tree shivered; from another there, the birds of a suddenchattered noisily. I turned and gazed across to Eagle Crag. The daleof Langstrath sloped upwards, facing me between the mountains; and asI gazed I saw the rain drive down from the Stake Pass to the mouth ina great slanting column. It deployed along the hillsides;--themountains became unsubstantial behind it--it swept across the valley,lashing the house, bending the trees in the garden.
"And his eyes will be open," said Mrs. Herbert behind my shoulder.
I started round. Her white face was like a wax mask in the gloom ofthe chamber. But as I turned she moved back again to the fireplace."It is cold," she said with a shiver. I set fire to the wood upon thehearth, and as the logs crackled and blazed, she bent forward andspread out her hands to the flame.
I dropped into the seat opposite to her, and so we sat for a longwhile in silence. Once, it seemed to me, that I heard the hoofs of ahorse upon the gravel of the drive--galloping up to the house, and ina little galloping away from it. But what with the beating of the rainand the turmoil of the wind I could not make sure--nor, indeed, did Ifeel any concern to know. Once Mrs. Herbert raised her head to me andsaid, as if answering some objection which I had urged:
"It _was_ because he loved me that he told the steward. That was hisway. God made him so;" and her voice as she spoke was very soft. Herface, too, softened, as I could see from the glow of the fire, and Iknew that her husband in his death was drawing her more surely towardshim than he had ever done in life.
"He was very good to me," she said to herself. "It was I that plaguedhim. He was very good to me, and I--I love him."
It was as though she had forgotten he was dead, and more than oneremark of the kind she made while the room darkened behind as and thenight fell upon the world without, and the raindrops hissed down thechimney into the fire. I dared not rouse her, though the forgetfulnessstruck me as horrible, but once, I know, I shifted restively upon myseat, and she looked at me suddenly as though she had forgotten that Iwas there, as though, indeed, she did not know me. But in a little,recognition gleamed in her eyes, and they hardened slowly to hatred.However, she said nothing, but turned her face again to the fire, andso stared into it with eyes like pebbles.
After a while the wind lulled, the rain-drops hissed less often downthe chimney and finally ceased altogether. A line of moonlight shotinto the room and lay upon the carpet like a silver rod. The roombecame mistily luminous and then pitilessly bright. Meanwhile no oneseemed as yet to be astir within the house.
I rose unsteadily from my seat; she followed my example,
"Yes, let us go," she said, and we went out on to the terrace.