It was eleven of the forenoon when I stopped at Mr. Herbert's door, and the long incline of the street was empty. At the bottom of the hill, beyond the little bridge, there was a shimmer of green trees, and beyond the trees a flashing corner of the lake. Through a gap in the houses on my left, I caught a glimpse of the woods of Brandelaw, and the brown slope of Catbells rising from the midst of them. A shadowless August morning bent over the country, cradling it to sleep with all its drowsy murmurings, so that contentment was like a perfume in the air. And it was with a contentment untroubled by any presage that I tied up my horse and knocked at the door.
Mr. Herbert's lodging was on the first floor, and as I mounted the stairs the noise of an altercation came to me from behind the closed door. The woman who led me up shrugged her shoulders and stopped.
"One of the April showers," I thought, recalling Lord Derwentwater's words.
"Will you go up?" she asked doubtfully.
"Yes," said I. "For I take it that if I deferred the visit till to-morrow, to-morrow might be own brother of to-day."
She knocked at the door twice and got no answer. I heard a man's voice exclaim acrimoniously:
"It was the worst mistake man ever made," and a woman cry in a passion—
"Or woman either. Deary me, I wish I were dead!"
And "Deary me, I wish it too," said my attendant, and impatiently she turned the handle and opened the door. A man sprang forwards. He was young, I noticed, of a delicate face, with a dark, bilious complexion.
"Mr. Anthony Herbert, I suppose," I said, taking off my hat, and I stepped into the room. The next moment I regretted nothing so much as that I had not taken the landlady's advice, for a woman sat at the table, with her face couched upon her arms, crying.
"Your business?" asked Mr. Herbert, abruptly, getting between myself and the table.
I turned my back to the room and looked out of the window, making as though I had not seen his wife.
"Lord Derwentwater showed me yesterday a picture of his wife painted by you," I said; and I unfolded the purport of my visit slowly. In the midst of my speech I heard the rustle of a dress and a door cautiously open and shut. A second or two later I turned back into the room; it was empty. The artist accepted the commission, and I arranged with him that he should set to work next day.
"I am afraid," he said awkwardly, as he bowed me from the room, "that you caught me at an inopportune moment."
"Did I?" I returned, playing surprise. "Ah yes, you are not dressed," for he was wearing a dressing-gown. "But it is my fault in that I came too early."
And he closed the door.
"Thank you!"
The words were breathed in a whisper from the landing above that on which I stood. I looked up; the staircase was ill-lighted and panelled with a dark mahogany, so that I saw nothing but the outline of a head bent over the balustrade; and even as I looked that outline was withdrawn.
"Not at all," I replied to the empty air.
The door behind me was thrown open.
"What is it, Mr. Clavering?" asked Herbert, and he glanced suspiciously up the stairs.
I, on the contrary, stared down them.
"It is," I answered, "that your staircase is cursedly dark."
"True," says he, and steps to my side. "One cannot see an inch further than is needful;" and he looked down them too.
"One cannot even see so far," says I, and I peered upwards.
"One might break one's neck if one were careless," he continued in a musing tone.
"Oh, I did not stretch it out enough for that," I replied, thinking of something totally different.
Herbert looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"It occurs to me, Mr. Clavering," he resumed, "that if it would please you better I could fetch my easel over to Blackladies."
"There is no manner of occasion for that," I replied hastily, and I got me into the street with as little difficulty as if there had been a window to every step of the stairs.
Thus, then, I had my excuse. I rode back to Blackladies that afternoon, and bade Luke Blacket carry such clothes as I required to Mr. Herbert's lodging.
"Very well, sir," he said, but did not go. For just as it was getting dusk I saw from the library window Ashlock—for so I still called him, even or perhaps more particularly to myself—ride down the drive with the package upon his saddle-bow. I was as much surprised now at this voluntary exposure of himself as I had been previously at his sedulous concealments. But I bethought me in time that it would be dark long before Ashlock reached the village of Keswick, and as to his doings—well, I deemed it wisest to busy myself as little as possible on that head. For I was never certain from one minute to the next but what I might stumble upon some proof which I could not disregard. Consequently neither then, nor when he returned, did I utter a single word.
But on the next morning I followed my clothes to Mr. Herbert's lodging, sat to him for an hour or so, and then went about my business. And this I did day after day, visiting the gentry about, and attending the fairs and markets until I had acquired as complete a knowledge of what the district intended as would have satisfied my Lord Bolingbroke in person. That there were a great many, not merely of the gentry, but of the smallest statesmen and even peasants who favoured King James, I was rejoiced to perceive. But against this disposition I had to set a deplorable lack of arms and all munitions of war. Here and there, indeed, one came across a gentleman, like Mr. Richard Salkeld, of Whitehall, in Cumberland, who had carefully collected and stored away any weapon that he could lay his hands on, and I remember that in Patterdale, one Mr. John Burtham, a man very advanced in years, led me with tottering steps down to his cellar and showed me with the greatest glee a pile of antique musketoons and a couple of barrels of gunpowder, which his grandfather had hidden there for the service of King Charles I., but had discovered no use for after Marstoon Moor. For the most part, however, such as took the field I saw would take it with no more effectual armament than scythes and sickles and beaten-out ploughshares; and, indeed, I am not sure but what I would rather have so armed myself than with the musketoons and gunpowder of Mr. Burtham. One necessary condition, however, or rather I should say, one necessary preliminary of a rising, all with whom I had speech required and in a unanimous voice—I mean that his Most Christian Majesty should land twenty thousand troops in England and with them money for their subsistence. On the other hand, I knew that the French King, howbeit disposed to the utmost friendliness, was yet anxious, before he violated the peace of Utrecht, to ascertain which way the wind blew in England, and whether it was a steady breeze or no more than a flickering gust. It was about this time, too, that news was brought to me of the Duke of Ormond's flight to Paris, and I did not need the letter of Lord Bolingbroke which conveyed the news, to assure me how great a discouragement that flight must be to our friends in France. This, then, was the posture of affairs: France waited upon the Jacobites in England, and they in their turn waited upon France.
"There is but one hope," said Lord Derwentwater, when we were discussing the uncertainty wherein we lived—"there is but one hope of precipitating the matter to an issue, and that hope lies in the activity of the English Government. The Commons have suspended the Act of Habeas Corpus until next January, in the case of all persons suspected of conspiracy; Papists and Non-jurors are banished from the cities of Westminster and London and for ten miles round; the laws against them are to be put into the strictest execution. I do not know but what the rigour of these proceedings may goad the Jacobites to an extremity. But therein lies the one hope. And how goes it with Darby and Joan?" he broke off in a laugh. "I saw the portrait but yesterday, and it will do no discredit to the young Master of Blackladies."
But the young Master of Blackladies turned his face awkwardly to the window, and felt the blood rush to his cheeks, but never a word of answer to his lips. For, alas! what before had been the pretext and excuse was now become the real object of my journeyings. I had garnered my information—and the picture was still a-painting and little more than halfway to completion. I cannot even after this long interval of years think of that period without a lurking sense of shame—though I paid for the wrong—yes, to the uttermost farthing, and thank God in all humility that it was given me to repair it. For this, indeed, is true: the wrong went not beyond the possibility of reparation.
It was on the third occasion of my coming to the artist's apartment that I first met Mrs. Herbert face to face. She entered the room by chance, as it seemed, in the search for some embroidery. Mr. Herbert, for a wonder, was in a great good-humour that morning and presented me to her.
"This is Mr. Clavering, of Blackladies," he said with a wave of the hand, and so went on with his work. I rose from my chair and bowed to her. But with a quick impulsive movement she came forward and held out her hand to me, reddening, I must think, with some remembrance of the occasion whereon I had first seen her. And then—
"Tony," she cried reproachfully, with a glance about the room. Indeed, it had something of a slatternly appearance, which seemed to me to accord very ill with the woman who dwelled in it. The poor remains of breakfast—a dish of clammy fish, a crumbled oatmeal cake, and a plate of butter soft and oily—were spread upon a stained table-cloth. But the stains were only upon one side, and I chose to think it was there the man had sat.
"Well," says he, looking up in a flash of irritation, "what is it? What is it?" And then following the direction of her gaze, "We can afford nothing better," he snapped out.
"That is no reason," she replied, "why it should drag here till midday;" and she rang a little bell upon a side-table. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to his picture. She stood looking at him for a second, as though she expected him to speak, but he did not.
"Then, Mr. Clavering," she said, turning to me with a flush of anger upon her face, "I must needs undertake my husband's duty and make you his apologies."
Herbert started up from his seat, throwing the brush which he held petulantly on to the floor.
"Nay," I answered in some distress, for this apology was the last thing I expected or desired, "madam, there is no manner of need that such consideration should be shown me. Mr. Herbert honours me sufficiently by painting my portrait."
"That is very courteous of you," she answered with a little bow, "and I expected nothing less.But," and she drew herself up again and faced her husband, "it is not fitting we should receive our patrons with so little regard."
"Madam," I blurted out in the greatest confusion, "I beseech you. It would cause me the greatest distress to think that I had proved a trouble betwixt your husband and yourself."
It was not the discreetest phrase I could have chosen, but it served its turn, for it brought them both to a stop, and in a little Mrs. Herbert left us alone. Thereupon I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the medal of which I have spoken.
"Mr. Herbert," I said, "I have an ornament here, which I would fain have you add to the portrait;" and I held it out to him.
"Very well," said he, taking it "If you will leave it here, I will paint it in at my leisure."
"But," said I, "it would not be wise to let it lie open to the gaze of any chance-comer."
He turned it over in his hands and glanced at it
"For myself," said he, "I do not meddle in politics one way or the other. I will keep it locked. See!" And he placed it in a little iron box, and locking it put the key in his pocket.
On the next day that I came, the room was all tidied and newly swept, though the improvement brought no more peace than did its previous disorder. For, this time Mr. Herbert could find nothing that he wanted—even his brushes and colours had been tidied out of sight; so that he was forced to call in his wife to help him in the search for them, and seeing her thus engaged somehow fell ungratefully to rating her. The which she listened to with a patience which I could not but greatly admire; and after all it was she who discovered the brushes. Then very quietly she said:
"I will be no party to a quarrel before Mr. Clavering. It might perchance savour of ill-breeding;" and so she departed with the pleasantest smile, leaving Herbert in a speechless exasperation. For my part I wished intensely that she had not dragged my name into the business.
Herbert turned from the door to me, and from me again to the door; his mouth opened and shut; he spread out his hands in despair, as though the whole world was a riddle to be given up. Then he looked at the brushes in his hand.
"She hid them," he cried. "Damme but she hid them."
I felt inclined to rise from my chair and determine my visits there and then. I changed my mind, however, bethinking me that the couple were poor, and that if I acted on the inclination, I should be punishing not merely the husband but the wife as well.
To drive the notion finally from my head I needed nothing more than that by accident I should chance upon Mrs. Herbert on the stairs. For she spoke to that very point as I wished her good day.
"It will be good-bye you mean, Mr. Clavering," she answered, with something of a sigh for the loss which would befall them, since the defection of a client thus prematurely could not but damage his reputation in those parts.
"It will be good-bye if you wish it," I returned with a laugh, "but not otherwise."
Mrs. Herbert gave a start and looked across my shoulder. I turned sharply and saw Mr. Herbert himself standing in the doorway above me. He must have heard the words, I knew, but he stood quite still, his face passionless as stone, and for that reason, maybe, I did not at the time consider the construction he would be likely to put on them.
"Speaking for myself," I continued, "I shall not easily part from Mr. Herbert until the picture is finished and in my safe keeping."
So I spake with a polite bow to the painter, little thinking in how strange and hazardous a fashion I was destined to fulfil my words.
It must not, however, be thought that the pair were ever a-seething in this pot of quarrels. The sun shone betwixt the thunderclaps and with no dubious rays. At times, for instance, Mrs. Herbert would bring a book of plays into the room and read them aloud whilst her husband worked, and I—I, alas! watched the changes of her face. Once I remember she read in this way Mr. Congreve's "Love for Love," with a decent slurring of some passages and a romantical declaiming of others, at which Mr. Herbert would break into languishments and sighs, and Mr. Lawrence Clavering would feel himself the most awkward intruder in the world.
It was in the midst of this particular reading that Anthony Herbert was called downstairs upon some business, and she and I were left for a little to our devices. Mrs. Herbert continued to read with her eyes glued upon the pages, but gradually I could not but notice that a certain constraint and awkwardness crept into her voice. At last she stumbled over a passage and stopped. I rose from my chair, and, sensible that a like awkwardness was stealing over me, went and gazed at the picture. I made the mistake, however, of praising it, and of praising it, perhaps, with some extravagance, for the encomium naturally enough being couched in that vein, brought the artist's wife across the room to consider of it too.
"In truth," says she, looking from the portrait to myself, "he has caught your features, Mr. Clavering, even to the eyes and the curve of the chin."
"Yes!" I replied. "It needs no connoisseur to foretell how much Mr. Herbert will achieve."
She did not answer, but kept looking at me curiously, and I continued, in an unaccountable flurry:
"Sir Godfrey Kneller ages; one hears of no one who can fitly claim his place. The honour of it should fall to Mr. Herbert—nay, must fall to him, I think—and it is no barren honour. He has an estate at Witton, Lord Derwentwater tells me. He sits as Justice of the Peace there, and he is even now painting his tenth monarch. It is no barren honour."
I spoke with all the earnestness I could command, but of a sudden, from the corner of my eye, I saw her lips part in a queer smile. I felt my voice shake, and covered the shaking with a feeble laugh.
"So an obscure country gentleman," I continued, "has reason to count himself lucky in getting his picture done by Mr. Herbert before the sovereigns of Europe engross his art;" and at that, for sheer want of assistance, I faltered to a stop. The silence crept about us, insidious, laden with danger, and every second that passed made it yet more dangerous to speak. The woman at my side stood motionless as a statue. I did not dare to glance at her; I stared at the portrait and saw nothing of it. It was as though my face had faded from the canvas in a mist I was conscious only of the tall figure at my side. I tried to speak, but no thoughts came to me—nothing but a tumult of unconsidered words—words which I had never spoken before, and of which even now I did not apprehend the meaning. They whirled up within me and beat against my teeth for passage, I locked my mouth to keep them in, and then I began to be afraid; I began to tremble, too, lest the woman should move. At last I conned over a sentence in my mind, and repeated it and repeated it, silently, until I was sure that I could utter it without a trip.
"It must be a noble thing to be the wife of so great an artist," and as I spoke the words I was able to move away.
She gave a little quiet laugh, and answered—
"With, besides, the prospect of being wife to a Justice of the Peace at Witton."
For speaking that word I almost felt that I hated her.
"Oh, why won't you help?" I cried in a veritable despair, stretching out my arms to her.
She turned on me suddenly with her face aflame and a cry half uttered on her lips. What would have been the upshot I cannot tell, but the door opened or ever she could articulate a word, and Mr. Herbert returned to put an end to our talk. For a week after that I mounted the stairs with uncertain steps, each footfall accusing me for that I came. However, during that week I saw her no more, and was beginning to acquire some confidence in my powers of self-mastery. Indeed, I went further, and became even vaingloriously anxious that I might chance upon her in order to put those powers to the test.
The opportunity came, and this is what I made of it. There had been some dispute that morning over a trivial domestic matter, and Mr. Herbert sat glooming before his easel, when his wife entered the room with a certain air of defiance and took her customary seat. She held a book in her hand, bound in old leather, with gold lettering upon the back, so that I was able to read the title. It was Sir Thomas Malory's Book of the Morte d'Arthur, and in a very deliberate voice she read out of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and much emphasis she laid on the temperate gentleness of King Arthur and his unreadiness to believe in any misdoings either of his wife or his companions. But her words fell vainly upon deaf ears, for Herbert took no heed of any word she read or any accent of her voice; the which she came to see, and losing all her defiant dignity in a little, shut the book with a bang and ran out of the room.
For my part I had listened to the story in the greatest disorder of spirit, and was very glad to be quit of it, and of Mr. Herbert too, for that day at all events, in spite of the supremacy of his genius.
But the staircase, as I have said, was very dark, and particularly so at one corner where it turned sharply two flights below the doorway and made an angle in the wall. Now as I passed this angle, something moved in it I stopped, wondering what it was, and then a voice came to me in a whisper—
"Lancelot!"
Instinctively I drew back and threw out my hands. They touched—they held another pair of hands—for the fraction of a second.
"No," said I with an attempt at a laugh, hollow as the clatter of an empty mug, "the name does not fit me, for at all events Lancelot could fight, and I have not learnt even so much skill as that."
Unconsciously I raised my voice as I spoke, and a second after the door creaked gently above us. She drew back into the corner all a-tremble, like a chided dog, and the movement touched me with a pity that made my heart sicken. The angle I knew could not be seen from the stair-head. I slipped purposely on a step, and swore a little not over-quietly.
"What is it?" asked Mr. Herbert.
"An ill-lighted staircase is the devil," said I; and I grumbled my way to the street-door. But I heard Mr. Herbert's door shut before I left the house.
Whither I went after leaving the house I was in that perturbation of mind I cannot tell. It was my habit to stable my horse at the Lamb and Flag, opposite, and subsequently I was told that I entered the courtyard and wandered out of it again like one blind. A fire burned in my blood, and the aspect of the world was fiery to my vision. I went whither my footsteps guided me, and all places they led me to were alike. Afterwards it came upon me like the memory of a dream, that I had stood for some while with the sheen of water beneath my eyes, and the lapping of water in my ears, and that hereafter I had climbed for long hours up a wearisome green slope; and indeed my insteps and knees ached for days to come, so it may be that I went down to Derwentwater and thence toiled up some part of Skiddaw. But of all this I knew nothing at the time; I only knew that I came again to the possession of my wits in Keswick Street about ten o'clock of the night, very hungry and very tired. I entered the inn and bade the landlord get me some supper before I started homewards. And this he did, laying a table for me in the best parlour of the house—a long room on the first floor, with window-seats, from which one commanded the street. The landlord prepared the table for me at the inner end of the apartment and set the lamp there; so that as the light was but dim, and I rested myself in the window until such time as supper should be brought, I was well-nigh in the actual dark.
Now while I was seated there, a man came down the street towards me. I should not, I think, have noticed him at all but for the caution of his movements. For he kept very close to the houses and stepped lightly upon his toes; and when for all his care his spurs clinked or his foot rolled on a loose stone, he paused and looked behind and about him. So he walked until he came in front of Mr. Herbert's house. Then he stopped, and it came upon me that there was something familiar in his appearance.
I drew back into the curtains. He gazed up and down the street and then to the windows of the Lamb and Flag. A heavy tramp sounded on the cobbles some yards away, very loud and unexpected, so that it startled me little less than it did the man I watched. I drew yet farther into the curtains; he slunk into a cavity between two of the houses, and that action of his flashed of a sudden a plan into my mind; I remembered that dark angle on the staircase. The footfalls grew louder, a dalesman passed along the centre of the roadway, his steps died away up the hill. My man crept from his hiding-place, and whistled softly under Mr. Herbert's windows. The blind was pushed aside from the window an inch or so, and I saw a head against the light pressed upon the window-pane. Then the window creaked and opened. The head was thrust out and a few words were interchanged, but in so low a tone that I could catch nothing of their purport. Then the window was shut and the man advanced to the door. One thing was clear to me from these proceedings, that whosoever he might be, and I had little doubts upon that score, this was by no means his first visit to Mr. Anthony Herbert.
I set that piece of knowledge aside, however, for the present. There was a further point which concerned me more particularly just then. Was the street-door on the latch? Or must Mr. Herbert descend to give his visitor entrance?
The visitor turned the handle, opened the door, and closed it again behind him. I waited until I saw his shadow on the blind. He had taken off his hat and his cloak, and his profile was figured upon it in a silhouette.
I ran down the stairs and across the street without so much as picking up my hat. I opened Mr. Herbert's door, and crept up the staircase until I came to the angle which I had reason to know so well. There I hid myself and waited in the dark. And how dark it was and how intolerably still! Very rarely a burst of laughter, or a voice louder than the usual, would filter up to me from the back part of the house. But from the studio above, nothing—not the tread of a foot, not the whisper of a voice, not the shuffle of a chair.
What were they debating in such secrecy? I asked myself and then, "Perhaps I had been mistaken after all?" I clung to the possibility, though I had little faith in it. At all events, this night I should make sure—one way or another I should make sure.
After the weariest span, the door was opened. I could not see it because of the turn of the staircase. I stood, in fact, just under the door; but I could see on the wall facing me, at the point where the stairs turned a bright disk of light suddenly appear, such as a lamp will throw. The visitor would pass by that disk; he would intercept the rays of the lamp; those rays would burn upon his face. I leaned forward, holding my breath; the steps above me cracked as a man descended them. I heard a short "good night," but it was Mr. Herbert who spoke; and then the door was closed again and the disk vanished from the wall I could have cursed aloud, so bent was I upon discovering this visitor; but the footsteps descended towards me in the dark, and I drew myself back into my corner.
As they passed me I felt a sudden flap of wind across my face, as though the man was moving his hands in the air to guide him, and I reckoned that the hand was waved within an inch of my nose. A few seconds later and the street-door opened. The sound brought home to me all the folly of my mistake. If I had only waited outside, in that alley, say, where he himself had crept, I should have seen him—I should have known him! Now I must needs wait where I stood until he was clean out of reach, I counted a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred and then in my turn I slipped down the stairs and out of the house. The night was not over-clear, and I could perceive no one in the street. I strained my ears until they ached, and it seemed to me that I heard a light tip-toe tread very faint, diminishing up the hill. I ran in its direction with as little noise as I might. But I heard my spurs clink-clinking even as his had done, only ten times louder.
I stooped and loosed them from my feet. Then I ran on again; it seemed to me that the footsteps grew louder. I turned the corner at the head of the street. In front of me there was a blur of light; the blur defined itself into four moving points of flame as I approached, and, or ever I was aware of it, I had plumped full into my Lord Derwentwater, who was walking homewards behind his torch-bearers to the lake.
"Come, my man," said he, "what manners are these?"
"The manners of a man in a desperate hurry," says I, "and so good night to you, my lord;" and I moved on one side.
"Lawrence Clavering!" he cried out and caught me by the arm. "The very man I would be speaking with."
"But to-morrow, my lord—to-morrow."
"Nay, to-night. You come so pat upon my wish that I must needs believe God sent you;" and the deep gravity of his tone was the very counterpart of his words. I stopped, undecided, and listened. But I could no longer hear the faintest echo of those stealthy footsteps.
"Then there is something new afoot," said I.
"Something new, indeed," says he, "though I take it, it concerns no one but you." And he bade his footmen go forward. "A minute ago a man passed me on this road, his cloak was drawn about his face, his hat thrust down upon his ears, but the light of my torches flickered into his eyes, and I knew the man."
"It was doubtless my steward," I blurted out. "He was in Keswick to-day."
"Your steward?" he asked in wonderment "Your steward? No, I should not pester you with news about your steward. It was young Jervas Rookley."
"Well," said I, "what of him, my lord? I have nothing to fear from Jervas Rookley."
"You think that?"
"I know it," I answered, a trifle unsteadily. "At all events, there is solid reason why I should have no grounds for fear." For I bethought me that I had loyally kept faith with him.
Lord Derwentwater stood for a moment silent.
"Walk a step with me," he said, and holding my arm he continued, "I would not meddle in your private concerns, Mr. Clavering, but I know Jervas Rookley, and it will be a very ill day for you when you hear his step across the threshold of Blackladies."
I felt a chill slip into my veins, for if he spoke truth and his words fitted so aptly with my suspicions that I could not disbelieve them—why, that day was long become irrevocable. However, I sought to laugh the matter off.
"A very ill day indeed, for on that day I lose Blackladies to the Crown."
"The danger will come from Jervas Rookley himself."
"Then it will be man to man."
We were now come within a few paces of the footmen, so that the flare of their torches lighted up our faces fitfully. My companion stopped.
"I have known men, Lawrence," he said, "who went down to their graves in the winter of their years—children—all the more lovable for that, maybe," for an instant his grip tightened about my arm, "but none the less children, and I have known others who were greybeards in their teens."
He paused and looked at me doubtfully, as though he would say more.
"You will be wary of this man. He can have little friendliness for you and it will be no common motive that can bring him back to these parts. You will be wary of him, Lawrence?"
So much I readily promised, and again he stood shifting from one foot to the other, balanced, uneasily, betwixt speech and silence. But all he said was, again—
"You will be wary of him, Lawrence," and so with a grasp of the hand moved off.
I watched him going, and as the torches dwindled to candle-flames and, from candle-flames to sparks, a great desire grew in me to run after him and disclose all that I knew of Jervas Rookley. The desire grew almost to a passion. Had I spoken then, doubtless he would have spoken then, and so, much would have been saved me. But I had given my word to hold this estate in trust, and ignorance or the assumption of ignorance was the condition of my keeping it. The torches vanished in the darkness. I walked back to the inn and mounted my horse. As I rode out of the courtyard, I saw, far away down the street and close to the lake's edge, four stars, as it were, burning. There was still time. I turned my horse; but I had given my word, and I spurred him to a gallop up the Castle Hill and rode down Borrowdale to Blackladies.
But as I rode, this warning I had received swelled in importance; it became magnified to a menace, and my desire to speak changed into an overmastering regret that I had not spoken. I had kept my word loyally to—well, to Ashlock, since so I still must term him, even in my thoughts—nay, was still keeping it the while he played false with me. That he trusted me to keep it I was assured by the memory of his words and looks on that night when he had talked of my picture in the hall. Why, then, should he play false? There was but one man who might be able to enlighten me upon the point—Lord Derwentwater—and to that one man my lips were closed, I was, moreover, disturbed too by the knowledge that I had planned to travel to Grasmere on the following day, and be absent there until the night, thus leaving Rookley a free hand. It was late when I turned out of Borrowdale, but I noticed that there was a light still burning in the steward's office. I rode into the courtyard of the stables, and, leaving my horse there, walked to the front of the house. One or two of the attic windows still showed bright, and the ground floor was dimly lit. But somehow the house smote on me as strangely desolate and dark.
Luke Blacket was waiting to let me in, and whether it was that my strained fancies tricked me into discovering a mute hostility upon his face, but it broke in upon me with a full significance that all the servants, down to the lowest scullion, must be in the secret, and were leagued against me. I saw myself entering a trap, and so piercing a sense of loneliness invaded me, that I plumbed to the very bottom of despondency. I stood in the doorway gazing across the valley. The hills stood sentinel leaguering me about, the voices of innumerable freshets sounded chilly in my ears, as though their laughter had something of a heedless cruelty; my whole nature cried out for a companion, and with so urgent a demand that I bethought me of the light shining in the steward's office. It would be Aron without a doubt, sitting late over the books. I went down the passage and opened the door.
Aron rose hastily to his feet, and began some apology.
"Mr. Ashlock," he said, "requested me——" But I cut him short, weary for one honest word of truth.
"That will do, Aron. I have no wish to disturb you;" and I threw myself on to a couch which was ranged against the wall. "I am very tired," said I, and lay with my eyes closed.
Aron's pen stopped scratching. He sat for a second without moving. Then he came over to the couch, and, or ever I was aware of it, began pulling off my boots.
I opened my eyes and started up. In his old, worn face there was a look of friendliness which at that moment cheered me inexpressibly.
"Nay," said I, "you are too old a servant, Aron, to offer help of that kind, and I too young a master to accept it. Let it be!"
He straightened his back, and the friendliness increased upon his face. He glanced quickly about the room, and stepped softly to my side.
"Master Lawrence," he began, in much the tone a nurse may use to a child, and then, "sir, I mean, I beg your pardon." In a trice he was the formal, precise servant again.
"Nay," said I, "I know not but what I like the first title the better."
"It was a liberty," said he, with his face grown rigid.
"And the privilege of an old servant," I replied. "But that is just the point. You are not my servant, except in name," and I turned my head petulantly away.
The next moment his mouth was at my ear.
"Master Lawrence," he said, in a voice which was very low, "Master Lawrence, were I you, I would not ride again to Keswick."
I started up. Aron flushed so that the bald top of his head grew red, hopped back to his table, bit his pen, and set to writing at an indescribable rate, as though he was sensible he had said too much.
I leaned upon my elbow and looked at him. So I had a friend in the household, after all! I hugged the thought close to me. Had he any precise knowledge which prompted the advice? I wondered. But I could not ask him, and for this reason amongst others—I was too grateful for this proof of his goodwill to provoke him to a further indiscretion. But as I looked at him, I recalled something which I had noticed whilst riding about the estate. I suppose it was his scribbling at the papers put it into my head, but once it had come there, I thought vaguely that it might be of relevance.
"Aron," I said, "this plumbago? It is a valuable product?"
He looked at me startled.
"Yes," said he.
"The mine is opened once in five years?"
"Yes."
"And on that side of the mountain which faces Borrowdale?"
"Yes."
And with each assent his uneasiness increased.
"But there's a ravine runs back by the flank of the mountain, and on the mountain-side there I saw a small lateral shaft."
"It is closed now, and has been for long," he interrupted eagerly.
"But it was open once," I persisted. "The place is secret. Who opened it?"
"It was opened during Sir John Rookley's life," he answered, evading the question.
"No doubt; but by whom?"
He shuffled his feet beneath the table.
I repeated the question.
"By whom?"
"By Mr. Jervas," he answered reluctantly.
"With Sir John's knowledge and consent?"
Aron glanced at me with an almost piteous expression.
"Sir John knew of it."
"But before it was opened, or afterwards?"
The answer was slow in coming, but it came at last.
"Afterwards."
"Then I take it," I resumed, "that Mr. Jervas Rookley robbed his father?"
I spoke in a loud tone, and Aron started from his seat, his eyes drawn towards the door. I rose from the sofa and opened it; there was no one in the passage, but I left the door open. When I turned back again I saw that Aron was looking at me in some perplexity, as if he wondered whether Iknew.
"But his father forgave him," he said gently.
"Very true," said I, fixing my eyes steadily upon him; "and besides, it is hardly fair to rake up the misdeeds of a man who is so very far away."
I spoke the words very slowly one by one. Aron's mouth dropped; a paper which he had been holding in his hand fluttered to the floor. The perplexity in his eyes changed into a blank bewilderment, and from bewilderment to fear.
"You know, sir?" he whispered, nodding his head once or twice in a way that was grotesque. "Then you know?"
"I know this, Aron," I interrupted hastily. "I hold the estate of Blackladies upon this condition: that I do not knowingly part with a farthing of its revenue to Mr. Jervas Rookley. You know that? You know that if I fail to fulfil that condition the estate goes to the Crown?"
Aron nodded.
"But this you do not know," I continued. "When Ashlock came to me in Paris, and told me that Mr. Jervas was disinherited because he was a Jacobite, I refused to supplant him, being a Jacobite myself. It was my steward who persuaded me, and by this argument: that when King James came to his throne, the will might easily be set aside. I accepted Blackladies upon those terms—as a trust for Mr. Jervas. But to keep that trust I must fulfil the conditions of the will. I must not knowingly do aught for Mr. Rookley. The condition should be easy, for I have never been presented to Mr. Jervas. I have not so much as seen a portrait of him"—and at this Aron started a little; "he might be living in my house as one of my servants. I might even suspect which was he; but I should have no proof. I should not know."
Aron gazed at me with wondering eyes.
"You hold Blackladies in trust for Mr. Jervas?" he asked, and I gathered from the tone of the question that my steward had thought fit to keep that knowledge to himself.
"And hope to do so until it can be restored to him. But," I urged, "I am in no great favour with the Whigs in these parts, and if they could prove I knowingly supported Mr. Jervas, they would not, I fancy, miss the occasion. My attorney, for instance, is a Whig and the attorney of Whigs, and they tell me strangely enough that Mr. Jervas Rookley has been seen in Keswick."
Aron, however, seemed to be thinking of something totally apart. He said again, and with the same wonderment—
"You hold Blackladies in trust for Mr. Jervas?"
"That is so," said I, "but it need not keep us out of bed." And I walked into the passage.
Aron lifted up the lamp and very politely led the way to my door. There he stopped and came into the room with me.
"Sir," said he, setting down the lamp, "you will pardon me one more question?"
"It is another privilege of the old servant," I answered with a yawn.
"You were poor when Mr. Ashlock came to you in Paris?"
"Penniless," said I, and I began kicking off my boots lazily.
"Then God knows," he cried, "I would you were Sir John Rookley's son;" and with that he plumped down on his knees and drew off my boots. And this time I suffered him to do it.
I had not done with him, however, even for that night. For an hour or so later, when I was asleep in bed, some one shook me by the shoulder. I looked with blinking eyes at the flame of a candle held an inch from my nose. Behind the candle was Aron, with a coat buttoned up to his chin as though he had thrown it over his nightgear.
"Aron," I said plaintively, "the question will keep till to-morrow."
"It is no question, sir, and to-morrow I shall be in Newlands," he said gravely. "I know nothing—only, were I you, I would not ride again to Keswick."
"Well, I shall not ride there to-morrow, at all events," I said, "since to-morrow I leave for Grasmere."
But on the morrow I did ride thither after all. For I woke up the next morning with one thought fixed in my mind, as though it had taken definite shape there the while I lay asleep. I must discover Rookley's business with Anthony Herbert. The matter was too urgent for delay. My resolve to sit no more for my portrait, my journey to Grasmere I set on one side; and while I was yet at breakfast I ordered a horse to be saddled. The fellow hurried off upon the errand, and I seemed to detect, not merely in his bearing but in the bearing of all who had attended me that morning, a new deference and alertness in their service; and I wondered whether Aron had shared with them his recent knowledge of my purpose.
As I rode down the drive I chanced to look back to the house, and I saw Aron on the steps, shaking his head dolefully, but I kept on my way.
Mr. Herbert received me with the air of a man that seeks to master an excitement. He worked fitfully, with fitful intervals of talk, and I remarked a deep-seated fire in his eyes, and a tremulous wavering of the lips. His manner kept me watchful, but never a hint did he drop of any design between my steward and himself. On the contrary, his conversation was all in praise of his wife, and the great store and reliance he set on her. I listened to it for some while, deeming it not altogether extravagant; but after a little I began again to fall back upon my old question, "What end could my steward serve by playing me false?" and again, "In what respect could Herbert help him?"
In the midst of these speculations, an incident occurred which struck them clean out of my mind. I was attracted first of all by something which Herbert was saying.
"It is out of the fashion," he said, with a sneer, "for a man to care for his wife, and ludicrous to own to it. But it is one of the few privileges of an artist, however poor he be, that he need take no stock of fashions; and for my part, Mr. Clavering, I love my wife."
I replied carelessly enough that the profession was very creditable to him, for in truth I had seen him behave towards her with so cruel an inconsistency of temper that I was disinclined to rate his protestations very high.
"And so greatly, Mr. Clavering," he went on—"so greatly do I love her, that"—and here he threw down his pencils and took a step or two until he reached the window—"that if aught happened amiss to her I do not think I should live long after it, If she deceived me, I do not think that I should care to live. I do not think I should even hold it worth while to exact a retribution from the man who helped in the deceit."
And I saw his wife in the open doorway. She must have caught every word. I saw a flush as of anger overspread her face, and the flush give place to pallor.
"Mr. Ashlock, my steward, was with you last night, Mr. Herbert. Was it upon this subject that you talked?"
Herbert flung round upon his heel
"You take a tone I do not understand," he said, after a pause. "You may have a right to pry into the conversations of your servants, Mr. Clavering, but I am not one of them"—and of a sudden he caught sight of his wife in the doorway. "You here?" he asked with a start.
"It is only fair," she answered, "that I should be present when you discuss my frailties with your patrons. But it seems," and her voice hardened audibly, "you do me the kindness to discuss them with your patrons' servants too."
She stood before him superb in pride; every line of her body seemed to demand an answer.
"It is because I love you," he answered feebly; and at that her quietude gave way.
She flung up her arms above her head.
"Because you love me!" she cried "Was ever woman so insulted, and on so mean a plea?" And she sank down at the table in a passion of tears.
Herbert stepped over to her, and laid a hand upon her shoulder.
She shook his hand off, and rising of a sudden, confronted me with a blazing face.
"And you!" she cried bitterly—"you could listen to such talk—ay, like your servant!" And she swept out of the room before either her husband or myself could find a word to say.
Indeed, though I had not thought of the matter in that light before, I considered her accusation of the justest, and the sound of her sobbing remained in my ears, tingling me to pity of the woman and a sore indignation against the husband. It was for myself I should have felt that indignation I knew well, but I am relating what occurred, and—well, maybe I paid for the offence heavily enough.
"Mr. Herbert," said I, rising, with as much calmness as I could command, "I will not trouble you to continue the work."
"But the portrait!" he exclaimed, almost in alarm. "It is my best work!" And he stood a little aloof gazing at it.
"The portrait!" I cried, in a fury at his insensibility—"the portrait may go hang!"
"On the walls of Blackladies?" he asked, with a quick sneer.
"Oh," said I slowly, "you gossiped to some purpose with my steward, it appears."
He stood confused and silent I went into the room where it was my habit to change my dress, and left him. But when I came out I found him standing in the passage with a lighted candle in his hand, though it was broad noonday. Doubtless I looked my surprise at him.
"An ill-lighted staircase, Mr. Clavering, is the devil," he remarked; and with a sardonic deference he preceded me to the street.
"It will rain, I think," he said, looking op at the sky.
"The air is very heavy," said I.
He stretched out the candlestick to the full length of his arm, and the flame barely wavered.
"Yes, no doubt it will rain," he repeated.
I noticed that one or two people who were passing up the street stopped, as well they might, and stared at us. I bent forward and blew out the candle.
"You will pardon me," I said.
"It has served its purpose," said he, and he kicked the door to behind me.
I mounted, and walked my horse slowly homewards. About two miles from the town I dismounted, and tethering my horse to a tree, paced about the lake shores, resolved to unpick his sentences word by word until I had disentangled from amongst them some reference which would give me an inkling into the steward's designs. He had told Herbert of that talk we had had together in the hall concerning the hanging of the picture. Of so much I was assured, and so much I still found myself abstractedly repeating an hour later. For alas! in spite of my resolve, my thoughts had flown along a very different path. I had a vision of the woman, and her alternations from pride to tears, ever fixed before my eyes. It was myself who had caused them. One moment I accused myself for not undertaking her defence, the next for that I had ever entered her lodging; and whatever outcry I made sprang from the single conviction that I was responsible to her for the distress which she had shown. Just for that moment there seemed but two people upon God's earth—myself and a woman wronged by me.
"Mr. Clavering."
The name was uttered behind me with an involuntary cry, and I knew the voice. I turned me about, and there was Mrs. Herbert standing in a gap of the trees.
She was dressed as I had seen her an hour ago, with the addition of a hood thrown loosely over her head.
"What can I do?" I cried. "I can think of nothing. It is my fault, all this. God knows I am sensible of the remorse; I feel it at the very core of my heart; but that does not help me to the remedy. What can I do?"
"It is not your fault," she replied gently. "This would have happened sooner or later. Jealousy is never at a loss to invent an opportunity. No, it is not your fault."
"But it is," I cried. "You know it; you know that the excuse you make for me is no more than a kindly sophistry. It is my fault. What can I do?"
She gave me no answer; indeed, it almost seemed as though there was something of impatience in her attitude.
I moved a few steps away and sat down upon a boulder by the water's edge, with my head between my hands.
"There is but one thing that I can do," I said, and I heard her move a step or two nearer. "But it is so small, so poor a thing;" and at that I think she stopped. "I shall not go back again to Mr. Herbert's lodging."
"Neither shall I."
The words dulled and stupefied me like a blow. I sat staring out across the lake, and I noticed a ripple that broke and broke in a tiny wave, ever at the same spot, some thirty yards from the shore. I fell to counting the waves, I remember, and lost my reckoning and began afresh; and in a while I commenced to laugh, though it did not sound like laughter.
"Neither shall I," she repeated, and struck the laugh dead. I started from my seat. She stood patiently before me with folded hands, and to argue against that patience seemed the merest waste of words. Before, however, I could make the effort, her spirit changed. Passion leapt out of her like a flame. "I hate him," she cried, beating her hands one upon the other. "Oh, to be made a common talk for his acquaintances! The humiliation of it! Servants too, he will debate of me with them, for them to mock at."
"No!" I answered vehemently. "You do not know that. It was I that spoke of my steward and I knew nothing. I did but guess idly, heedlessly. It was not he, it was I who spoke of Ashlock." But there was no sign of assent in her demeanour. "It was I spoke of him," I repeated, "and before you. Ah, God, it is my doing this, from the beginning to the end!"
"Think!" she went on, taking no more notice of my interruption. "They are making merry over me in your servants' hall. Think, Lancelot!"
She tried to check the name, but it was carried beyond her lips on the stream of her passion. A great silence fell upon us both; I saw the colour come and go fitfully upon her face, and her bosom rise and fall with her fitful breath. Then she covered her face with her hands and sank down upon the boulder.
Yes, I thought, it was my fault. They had quarrelled before, but never for such a reason; and that reason I had provided. I had gone there of my own free will to serve my own objects. But, somehow, as I looked at her seated by my side, the thought of the slatternly room she had been compelled to live in shot into my mind. I remembered how unfitted to her I had thought it on my first going thither. Of a sudden, while I was thus watching her, she lifted her eyes to mine. What babbling incoherencies I spoke, I do not know; I do not think she caught more than their drift. If they are known at all, it is because they stand ranged against my name in the Judgment Book. I became like one drunk, his senses reeling, his words the froth of his vilest passions. I think that I cried.
"Be it so, then! Since the harm is done, let the name be Lancelot;" but I know that she rode before me on my horse to the gates of Blackladies, that we dismounted there and walked up to the house; and that I found the hall-door open, and the house to all seeming deserted.
Now, this day was the 23rd of August.
I led her into the little parlour which gives on to the terraces at the south end of the house. The wall upon one side was broken by a great 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 so disposed, upon a chilly night, and smoke his pipe with a crony over against him; for there were cushioned seats on either side of the hearth and a curtain hung to keep your head from the bricks.
The room seemed very silent as we entered it, and the silence deepened. She crossed over to this fireplace and stood with a foot raised towards the hearth, though there was no fire to warm it by. I tossed my hat and whip on to the table with more noise than was necessary and made a step as if to join her. She drew back instinctively. I stopped as though the step had been a liberty; and neither of us had a word to say. Once she untied the ribands of her hood, for she must be doing something; but the moment she was aware of what 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 to every 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 one movement we averted our heads. After that one of us had to speak.
"You will be hungry," I said lamely. "You have eaten nothing since the morning;" and I walked to a little sideboard on which a bell was standing.
"No, no!" she cried, but I had struck the bell or ever the words were past her lips. "Oh, what have you done?" she said with a shiver; "one of 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 the summons. But no one came to answer it I crossed the hall and opened the door which led to the kitchens. As a rule, the noise of women's voices was incessant in that quarter of the house, but to-day not a sound, not so much as the clatter of a dish-cover! I went back to the hall and listened. The house was as still as on that night when I crept down the stairs and discovered the marks of a picture-frame upon the wall.
Was the house empty? I wondered, and shouted to solve the doubt. My voice went echoing and diminishing along corridor and gallery, but that was all. I moved down the passage to the office, half thinking that I might find Aron there, but remembered that he would be away, and so returned reluctantly. Thereupon I mounted the stairs and walked from room to room, and maybe lingered over-long in each. I was not, indeed, concerned with their silence and vacancy so much as with the knowledge that each step brought me actually a step nearer to the parlour-door. But I came to the end of my search, and there was nothing for it but to descend again. The hall-door, however, stood open, and I saw my horse at the bottom of the steps tethered by the rein 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 in the stable-yard, and I remember putting to them a number of aimless questions which I was at great pains to think of, but did not listen to the answers; until their fidgeting made me sensible of the cowardice of my delay and drove me back to the house. Then I remembered why I had left the parlour, and going to the pantry, I got together some food upon a tray and brought it with a decanter of Burgundy into the parlour. Mrs. Herbert was standing where I had last seen her. I set out the table saying, "My servants seem all to have taken holiday;" and more for something to do, you may be sure, than from any sense of hunger, she sat herself at the table and began to play with the food. I had brought but one plate and set a chair for but one person; and neither of us noticed that. The truth is, there was a shadow in the room; the shadow cast by sin, and we watched it as children in a fitful firelight will watch a strange shadow on the wall—neither drawing near to it nor fleeing from it, but crouched watching it. Once she said, "I have brought nothing with me;" and after a little, some thought seemed to strike her. For she lifted her head 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 of my senses. Strange! It was indeed strange! Aron had warned me not to ride to Keswick; that was strange too. For the first time I set this desertion of my servants together in my mind with my suspicions of Ashlock'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 hem of my fine tablecloth and her throat working as though she was swallowing her tears. I knew by some instinct of what she was thinking. She was thinking of her poor furniture in her lodging at Keswick. It was hers, you see, won by her husband's toil, and maybe she had a passing thought, too, of Sir Godfrey Kneller's estate at Witton—earned, too, by a painter's art. And such a pity for her, such a loathing of myself, flooded my mind as drove out all thought of Mr. Ashlock's machinations. I recalled how I had deemed that slatternly apartment unfit for her. It needed that we two should be here with the shadow 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 same thoughtful tone. Then she rose from her chair with the air of one that has come upon an outlet when all outlets seemed barred. "It was kind of you," she said, "to show me your house, I would gladly have seen the 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 the urgent appeal of her eyes to take her meaning. My heart rose to it with a spring.
"I will have a carriage made ready for you," I replied; and I turned me 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 not thought 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 for her was that little apartment in Keswick. Grant her but the sight of it, 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 person in the world who could not use that argument—myself. However, she helped me out.
"I cannot go back," she said, "without he knows. It would not be just No! it is not possible;" and at that the tears came at last. The sound of her weeping pierced me like a sword.
"He shall know, then," I cried. "He shall know. I myself will ride to Keswick 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 face lightening and a timorous smile dawning through her tears. "But no!" and the hope died out of her face. "Payment will have to be made for this. You'll see, payment will be made."
She spoke in a low tone of such perfect certainty, that it seemed to me it was not so much the woman who spoke, but that Providence chose her 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 tell him?"
"Why, the truth," I answered. "That I found you by the lake, and brought you here."
"No!" she exclaimed, "I will not have you say that. It must be the truth—that I came to you."
She drew a note from her pocket as she spoke, and tossed it on to the table. I picked it up, wondering what she meant. It was a line scribbled in a hand which was familiar to me, and there was a word curiously misspelled—"wateing" for "waiting." Somewhere I had seen that word misspelled precisely in that way before, and surely in this handwriting too. Then the truth flashed upon me. It was in the inn at Commercy, 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 was not 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 no longer empty. The hall-door was still open; I had left it open, and a man stood in the centre of the hall. It was Anthony Herbert. His back was towards me, and from his manner I gathered that he was considering which of the passages giving upon the hall he should choose. It was for no more than a second that he stood thus, but that second gave me time enough to do the stupidest thing that ever a man out of his wits conceived; and yet in a way it was natural. For I slammed the door to behind 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 my voice took a trembling indecision from the foreknowledge that he would disbelieve 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, his limbs quivered with his wrath, and now and again his voice lost its steadiness 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 towards me. With the movement his cloak slipped from his left shoulder, and I noticed that he was carrying a sword and a pistol in his belt. My hand went back to the handle.
"The few words I have to say to you," said I, "had better be spoken here."
"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 comes second, and I think we shall need no words for its discussion." He took 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 handle tighter.
"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 I might enforce their truth upon him. But they only served to whet his fury and confirm him in disbelief.
"That's a lie," he shouted, and in a flash his sword was out of the scabbard and the point of it pricking my breast. "If she sent you to fetch me, why do you guard the door? Stand aside!"
But since I had made that mistake, I must go through with it.