Borlase began by being angry and riding hard. He was certain Mrs. Severn's interruption had been deliberate. It was not probable she would be friendly to any one who wished to rob Old Lafer of Anna, who was oil to the domestic machinery. But he thought he should quickly outwit her unless she developed an ability for taking trouble.
Gradually his pace slackened. The remembrance of the sudden shyness in Anna's manner consoled him. He was sure she had understood all at last. This fired hope and coloured her non-appearance with an encouragingconstruction; she could not have come back, for to do so would be courting his intention. The more he pondered the more convinced he was that he had banished the old Anna who went and came without a thought of self. As such she had been delightful but his pulses beat to think how much more delightful she would be now. Let him only have her to himself again and no mortal power should balk him of his opportunity. Her image seemed to move before him all the way home. The tones of her voice, her little tricks of speech and gesture were photographed on his mind. She had worn a bunch of sweet peas at her throat, how sweet they were! He went over all the alternations of her mood that evening, and as he remembered how her friendliness had at last merged into shyness, his heart leapt. He would speak to her soon, and in one short year they would be married.
Thus his ride ended slowly with droopingrein, and he was only roused by the Minster clock striking eleven as he entered Wonston.
He ought to have called at a cottage in East Lafer, and he did not know that he had passed through the village—yes, he had though; his horse had shied at the geese asleep on the green and he remembered having turned to catch the last glimpse of the lights twinkling at Old Lafer. Why the deuce had he forgotten the poor fellow in pain who was expecting him? As for the lanes with grassy margins where he generally took a gallop, the plantations suggesting pheasant-shooting, the oncoming turnips where partridges would find covert, he had seen none of them. The charm of the blurred landscape, the freshness of the night air, with its whiffs of sweetness from the honeysuckle thrown here and there in foamy sheets over the maple and holly of the hedges, had for once been unnoticed.
He had indeed forgotten everything in thinking of Anna, as he realised when he gotinto his own house. A sleepy maid met him in the hall with the announcement that a boy from the Mires had been waiting an hour for medicine. He found him in the surgery, sitting on a chair behind the door with his legs dangling, and his cap held between his knees. He had forgotten all about old Hartas Kendrew's needs, and that he had ordered a messenger to come, so could not excuse himself by having overlooked the knack these dalesboys had of covering three or four miles in a whipstitch. He whistled softly as he sought out the necessary drugs and compounded them in a mortar. It was certain a doctor had no business to be in love. He did not care much for old Kendrew, but had it not been ten to one that the man at East Lafer would be asleep, he would have galloped back to see him. Old Kendrew was a miserable sinner whose death certificate it would give him pleasure to sign any day. He was not only a drunken scoundrel and cherished ablackguardly hatred of straight dealing but knew one or two discreditable facts connected with the family whom for Anna Hugo's sake Borlase wished to hold in special honour. Borlase knew well that there were elements of disastrous wrong-doing in Mrs. Severn's character and suspected that Kendrew knew this too. She had at various times left Old Lafer for some weeks and stayed at Kendrew's pit cottage at the Mires. There she had degraded herself by intemperance. This rendered it all but an impossibility that Kendrew should not have the knowledge and power to spread a scandal whenever he chose. Knowing the man as he did, it was inexplicable that he had not already done so. Some time had passed since her last visit to the Mires; and Borlase knew that at present she was little talked about except with admiration of her appearance and musical gifts. Her old freaks, if hinted at, were considered amusing, as one of the irresponsibilities of genius. The sin involved was, he was convinced,unsuspected where it was not, as in his case, definitely known. Dinah Constantine had told him. It had, joined to his professional knowledge of her physique and character, interested him psychologically.
'And how was Hartas when you came away, Jimmy?' he asked as he folded up the bottle.
'Lord, sir, I came off just after you'd gone yourself, so he couldna either hev worsened or bettered, but I ken he wer swearing awful. I heard him the whiles Scilla wer talking to me about t' physic—swearing awful, he wer!'
Borlase laughed.
'Swearing, was he?' he said. 'That's his chief complaint, Jimmy, to tell you the truth. It comes ofnottelling the truth. A man fouls his throat with lies and oaths to back them up until a moral disease seizes it, and he can't speak anything else, and when hedrinks and gets D.T. too, the moral and physical diseases act upon each other until he's a mass of corruption, soul and body. Take care you never swear and lie and poach grouse and fire at keepers as Hartas and his lad did. Kit's in gaol, you know, having a spell at the Mill, and Hartas is still worse off, as he lies now in a strait-jacket. Mind you're always honest to the powers that be, and touch your cap to the Admiral and Miss Marlowe.'
Jimmy's eyes gleamed with awe. What he did not understand in this speech was even more impressive than what he did. 'Hartas says he'll be even with the Admiral for sending Kit to t' Mill, he says he will one of these days, sir. It's that he raves on at, and he calls Miss Cynthia too, and Lias Constantine for——'
'I daresay. For telling the truth?' said Borlase, nodding.
'Well, he witnessed he both saw themkill t' birds and lay fresh snares. Then he jumbles in Mrs. Severn and——'
'Yes, yes,' said Borlase hastily, 'he's a cantankerous old gaffer who's possessed by a thirst for vengeance against the law and those who uphold it. We all hate being found out in a sin more than the sin itself, I fear. Now get off home, and tell Scilla to keep up her heart, he'll pull through.'
'She'd a deal liefer he wouldn't,' said Jimmy, opening his jacket and buttoning up the bottle of medicine in his breast pocket. He adjusted his cap with various shovings to and fro on his shock of red hair and clutched a heavy stick that had been propped in the corner.
'Hartas's talk made me feel that queer in my inside, sir,' he said with a shrewd, half-humorous glance at him, 'that I wer fair certain there'd be a skirling o' bogies on the moor and I just brought this along to thwack t' air with.'
Borlase would have smiled had not Jimmy kept his eye on him with a boldness born of the suspicion that he might. And after all what was there to smile at? Jimmy Chapman was a fine little lad, and it was his realisation of the powers of darkness in the person of a drunkard and blasphemer that peopled the moor for him with the supernatural. When Hartas Kendrew was down in delirium tremens as the result of a drinking bout, his invoking the devil and his agencies was so real an element in the life of the pitmen at the Mires that his ravings must generate belief—however reluctant—in the probability of fiends and bogies responding. Had the Mires been a respectable hamlet and its pit population one of healthy morals and God-fearing principles, the midnight moor would have had no terrors, for good would have had the predominance over evil.
The mould which makes us is circumstance. Borlase knew it had made KitKendrew a poacher when his wife fell ill of fever. To the epigram that 'nothing is certain but the unforeseen' he thought there might be added 'or more powerful.' It had been so in Kit's case. Up to the time of his marriage he had been a wild lad, suspected of more and graver trespasses than were traced home to him, but also open-handed and kind-hearted. Those who abhorred Hartas as evil to the core and unredeemable, cast many a kind thought on Kit; he would get into trouble if only from his daring spirit, and it would be a thousand pities. When he married, many prophesied that it would be the saving of him. Priscilla was nurse-maid at Old Lafer and a good steady girl. But she lost her baby and fell ill when a hard winter was at its hardest. There was no coal-mining to be done, for the moors were snow-bound. Kit loved her passionately and nursed her devotedly. He was aghast to find that tea and porridgewould not bring her round to health. Delicacies were ordered, she must have strengthening diet. Every circumstance was just at that time against honesty.
Borlase, looking round and noting with appreciation the exceptional cleanliness and tidiness of the cottage, never dreamt that extreme poverty lurked here. He had still to learn that they are often the poorest who make the greatest efforts to appear least so, and that there are women who manage a clean collar round their throats when they have not a loaf of bread in the cupboard. The Marlowes were away, and there was no soup-kitchen at the Hall that winter for those labourers on the estate who cared to take advantage of it and no Miss Cynthia to inquire after wife, husband, or children, and make notes of necessities in a little morocco-leather note-book, which many knew well and had cause to bless. Anna Hugo was also away on one of her visits to Rocozanne.There was no one to befriend them. It was useless to go to Mrs. Severn; and his heart was sore at the remembrance of various rebuffs in his courtship which he had had from Dinah Constantine. Dinah had thought Priscilla was throwing herself away; she knew her value and begrudged losing her services. The more desperate he became, the more he shrank from asking help.
One day, as he trudged back from Wonston with medicine, his dog caught a hare in a hedge. He pocketed it and made Scilla some soup. This was before the days of the Ground Game Acts, when it was a penalty to touch a rabbit whose burrow was on the land a man rented. Kit snared a few rabbits first. Almost every man at the Mires did the same and the Admiral knew it. But they did it in a clumsy fashion that raised no fears of more ambitious depredations. Kit, however, soon found that there was an art in the practice and a blood-warming risk in itspursuit. The grouse season was just out for that winter, but there were other birds whose close time was not so strictly preserved. By the time Priscilla was strong again he had acquired a skill that absorbed him and had bent every resource of his mind to its success as a trade. She knew nothing, but Hartas knew all. They stored their spoil in a dub in the ling near the coal-pit, and the following winter this spoil was grouse.
Then came suspicion and watchfulness on the part of the keepers, combined one night with a nasty fray in which guns were used and a man was killed. The offenders got off, however, and could not be sworn to. Kit knew the police were on the alert, and would not allow his father to run risks. They both kept quiet for a while, and Kit, without the excitement that mastered him, was a miserable man. Hartas had the itching palm but Kit the young blood. Do and dare he must. And he did, once too often.He succeeded in eluding the keepers and not a soul at the Mires would have betrayed him; but Elias Constantine, shepherding on a sheep-gait which Mr. Severn had taken over unknown to him, happened to look over a wall as he was in the act of taking a moor-bird out of the snare. To Elias, whose respect for the law and all time-worn institutions was inbred and unbounded, it seemed that he was an instrument in the hands of Providence for bringing the offender to justice. Here were grouse, and the Admiral's grouse, going by dozens into a poacher's sack! Here also, in all probability, was the man who had fired the shot that killed the under-keeper. If that had not been murder, it was manslaughter. He watched the scientific process for some time, the disentangling of the birds' legs from the cunning wire-loop, the flutters of the exhausted victims, the final twist of the necks, the re-setting of the snares.
Then he gave a sign to his collie. A bound over the wall, a rush through the ling and the dog was at the man's throat and bearing him to the ground!
All was over with Kit and he knew it. He would make a clean breast of it, too, over that gun-shot, be the consequence what it might. But he managed to save his father, who was busy at the dub, by a warning whistle. The dim morning light covered Hartas's escape. But Kit was given up to the wrath of a scandalised bench of game-preserving magistrates and thence to trial by judge and jury. They inflicted upon him the full penalty of the law, on a conviction for manslaughter.
Wonston market-place was on market-days an animated scene. It was filled with booths and stalls, and crowded with country-people with their produce and townspeople with their purses. On bright days parasols vied in brilliancy with the flower and fruit stalls. Butter and eggs, pottery, meat, and corn were displayed in baskets or on the cobbles. In one corner an auction was going on, in another a patent medicine vendor shouted to a crowd of gaping half-hearted customers, who fumbled their coppers and cudgelled their brains to make sure his wares wouldsuit their own complaints, or those of Ben or Sally at home. Through the crowd, with its kaleidoscopic shifting of colour and action, drags and four with excursionists would pilot their way with much tooting of horns; or a red or yellow omnibus, laden to once again its own height with poultry hampers, would slowly wend. In the midst rose the town-cross, an obelisk on steps, with the civic horn slung at its top and a Crimean cannon at its base. The sunshine glared over all, whitening the booth awnings, and giving a dazzling cheerfulness to the whole scene.
The sleepy old town awoke on these days. Its normal stagnation on every topic but its neighbour's affairs disappeared and it went in genially for dissipation of perambulation, expenditure, and acquaintanceship. Everybody was glad to see everybody else, as conducing to the general liveliness; and though everybody did not bow to everybody to whom under an inconvenient strain of circumstancethey might have been introduced, there was certainly less of the eyelid bow on that day than on any other. It was the harvest of money and mind. Groaning tills afterwards disbursed to the banks; replete minds gave their surplus coin to their morals. All was grist of impression or profit.
On one such day Borlase was standing before the Town Hall talking to a friend. It was later in the year, grouse-shooting was now waived in conversation for partridge prospects,à proposof stubble and turnips. He had just expressed his opinion when Mr. Severn hailed him from the corn-market opposite and crossed the road.
Mr. Severn had not visibly aged much in these years since his second marriage. He was still upright and little gray showed in his black hair; but Borlase, with his habits of close observation and his knowledge of facts, knew also that his cheerfulness was always, to a certain extent, assumed. His face, whenat rest, was sad, and he often roused himself with an effort from depressing thought. This expression was strikingly evident as he stood by Borlase, whose face was singularly happy and sanguine. His height dwarfed Borlase, whose inches were scarcely up to the average and appeared less so from his breadth of chest and good muscular development. The two men shook hands with a smile; the keen eyes of the one and the quietly-perceptive eyes of the other met with genuine liking. Borlase knew no one to whom he looked up in every sense with more confidence than to Mr. Severn, who, on his part, found comfort in the knowledge that he was not ignorant of facts in his home-life of which the world had only vague suspicions and that they had secured for him and his the loyal sympathy of a less burdened heart.
'Well, Borlase,' he said, 'you're a perfect stranger, don't know when we've seen you.Called once or twice, and every one out? pshaw! that doesn't count. Now I was just coming to ask you a favour. Will you stand godfather for this baby we're going to christen next week? She's to be called Deborah Juliana, after Mrs. Marlowe. It's a name that's nearly killed my wife, but we couldn't pass over a whim of Mrs. Marlowe's. She thinks this will be our last, as we must realise now that we can't overrule Providence to another boy to mitigate the spoiling that's evidently in store for Jack, and she wants to ratify this confidence by being its godmother. Very good of her and very quaint—all put into Lord Chesterfieldisms by Mrs. Hennifer. You must dine with us and Tremenheere too. He always christens our babies. I'm going on to ask Tremenheere.'
'I shall be most happy,' said Borlase.
'My dear fellow, the favour is on your side. Anna's to be the other godmother. I meant the little thing to be called after her,that I might have an Anna left when she takes flight, as I suppose she will some day. I hope it'll be a fine day. Now I must go on to the Canon. Anna's down shopping. If you come across her you can tell her this arrangement.'
Borlase had not gone much farther when he saw Anna at the other side of the street. She had seen him first, however, and had lowered her parasol to hide her blush. He crossed over, and she waited on the edge of the pavement. It seemed to him that all the sunshine pouring into the street settled for the moment on her sparkling face. But her manner was as frank as usual. This gave him a slight shock of disappointment, for he had counted upon a shadow of the remembrance of their last parting. He was far from guessing that this very remembrance gave a buoyancy to her tones and air born of the fear that otherwise he might think she remembered too well, and haddwelt on it with wonder and happy hope. He turned and walked on with her.
'I have just had a most unexpected pleasure,' he said.
'And what is that?' said Anna.
'I am to be godfather to little Miss Deborah Juliana.'
'Indeed! Everything combines to overwhelm this baby with good luck at the beginning of her life.'
'If she is overwhelmed, it won't be good luck,' said Borlase. His fair face flushed with pleasure and he laughed light-heartedly. He had been premature in resenting a frankness which led to such a mood. 'Are you as pleased as I am, Miss Hugo?' he asked, glancing down at her.
'At baby's impending discomfiture? Are you always so benevolently disposed towards the babies, Mr. Borlase?'
'No indeed. If I have been asked once to be sponsor in this parish I have beenasked a score of times and have always refused.'
'Then you are a most inconsistent individual. What excuse can you offer for breaking your rule?'
'That one must draw the line somewhere.'
'So you will be open to all offers?'
'On the contrary this is the only one I shall accept. The rule immediately comes into practice again. No other baby would have induced me to break it.'
'But you won't have the felicity of standing by Mrs. Marlowe. Mrs. Hennifer is her proxy.'
'I shall have another felicity, however.'
'And what is that?'
'The felicity of standing by you.'
As he spoke, looking straight at her, he was startled by a change in her face. Its sparkle of archness suddenly faded, and her eyes dilated with astonishment. Evidently she had not heard what he said. She waslooking at some object in the crowded street. Involuntarily she put her hand on his arm, as though she could not stand steadily. He drew her to one side to lean against a doorway, but with a resentful gesture she freed herself and began to make her way down the pavement. He kept close to her, but there was no need to ask what had alarmed her. Elias Constantine, astride of a cart-horse, was a figure easily to be discerned above the heads of foot-passengers, and at his first following of her gaze Borlase too saw him. But he had not seen them yet and was glancing eagerly from side to side. He was red with heat and looked scared and angry. The horse had evidently been unloosed from a cart and mounted at once. Its foamy mouth and streaming flanks spoke of a gallop.
'Make him see us,' said Anna.
He was attracting attention, and various voices were shouting the addresses of thedifferent doctors, one of whom it was taken as a matter of course that he wanted. Borlase seized Anna's parasol and swung it above his head. Elias caught the movement. A look of mingled relief and more urgent anxiety possessed his face as his eyes fell on Anna. He dug his spurless heels into the horse's flanks, sending it forward with a plunge that cleared his course, and in another moment pulled up by her.
'She's off,' he said hoarsely.
'Who?' said Anna. Her voice was scarcely audible.
'Clo, t' missis, that limb o' the devil.'
'Oh, hush!' said Anna.
She put her hand over her eyes as though to collect her thoughts for grappling an emergency. But Borlase saw her stricken look. He had seen it before. He knew what must have happened at Old Lafer—only one calamity could make Anna Hugo look as she looked now. Yet when she tookher hands from her eyes she managed to smile. It wrung his heart. He had experience of that smile on a woman's face which hides the deepest wound and buries its own grief in hopes of assuaging another's.
'Come this way,' he said, placing her hand on his arm and turning down a by-street; 'every one will observe us here and some officious fool be volunteering to find Mr. Severn. As it happens, I know where he is and that he is safe from hearing of this for the present at least.'
'Do you really?' she said. Her voice trembled but she looked up at him with unutterable gratitude.
'He is gone to the Canon's, to Tremenheere's, about this christening. Now, Constantine, bring the mare quietly to this corner and tell Miss Hugo what she must know at once. I have a patient near who will take me a moment.'
He seized her hand, wrung it and turnedaway. She was scarcely conscious of a force of sympathy that almost unmanned him. Her attention was fixed on Elias.
He leant over her, clutching the horse's mane to steady himself. His face worked with an emotion more of rage than grief. He would not allow himself to be miserable; he was fired, not numbed. He could have sworn at Anna for the quenching of her spirit, she, the good, the true, to be overwhelmed by what such a hussy as Mrs. Severn could do.
'She slipped off as neat as a weasel through a chink in a wall none other ud see,' he said. 'Dinah wer scouring t' dairy as she allus does after the week's butter's off to market, and I wer sledging peats off t' edge, and Peggy minding t' baärns in the beck-side meadows. Mrs. Hennifer had been though; she came clashing ower t' flags in Madam's coach, and it went back empty, and Mrs. Hennifer walked hometo t' Hall by the woods, and so she did. And an hour on there wasn't a soul in t' house but Clo and her babby, and Dinah clashing in her pattens ower her pail and clouts. As I came ower t' edge I seed a figure flit off t' door stanes, but niver gev it a thought. It must ha' been her, and she'd slipped into t' gill and bided there while I crossed t' watter. Then she sallied forth frev t' shadow o' the firs, and when I'd reached the flags and stopped to mop a bit, I happed look across and there was my leddy tripping it ower t' ling for all the world as if she'd wings to her heels. I kenned her then, her shape and her dark gown and the way she took, due west for Kendrew's lal cottage ower at t' Mires. It wer t' old trick, but I couldn't believe my eyes, it's that long since she tried it. I shouted for Dinah, and she came and I swore, ay, God Almighty, I did, and Dinah none chided me. I lay she wished she'd been aman to swear too! She's gone after her, and I loosed t' mare and came for thee. And neither on us thought we were leaving t' babby alone. She'd none thought on it neither, her two months' babby. Shame on her!'
His voice shook. He raised his hand, held it an instant, and let it fall heavily on his knee.
Anna had stood motionless, her face absolutely blank. Now a spasm of returning emotion crossed it. Tears rushed to her eyes; she turned pale to the very lips.
'Woe to her by whom the offence cometh,' said Elias.
She lifted her head and looked at him in mute reproach. His heart misgave him.
'It fair caps me how you can care about her,' he said deprecatingly. 'Ye ken she gangs from bad to worse there, and t' Almighty alone can say where she'll stop. If she gets to drink again, t' Master must ken,it'll reach him. Scilla Kendrew's getting scared on her, and Hartas'll spread it. When Scilla told Dinah afore, she said she'd tell you next time. Nay, nay, if she can tak off like this, and leave her babby to spoon meat, she's hopeless; she's worse a deal nor last time, when there wer no babby to think on. She's possessed by t' devil hissel——' He paused a moment, forcing down a lump in his throat whose presence he disdained.
'Thee and t' Master are alike,' he said. 'It's allus "Till seventy times seven." But I dinna ken if it would be wi' t' Master, if he kenned all we do. Now don't fret, my honey. If ought can stir her to come back afore she gets drink and he gets his heart-break, it'll be yoursel.'
He spoke to her but he looked at Borlase, who had returned and was standing by her. Borlase had already laid his plans. She was stunned, but he knew she would do what he told her.
'Constantine,' he said, 'walk the mare quietly out on the Mires road, and Miss Hugo will keep up with you. I shall follow immediately and drive her to the Mires. Mr. Severn is certain to lunch at the Canon's, and will hear nothing.'
Then he turned to Anna.
'When you are out of the town, find a seat and rest until I come,' he said.
He started at once, disappearing down an alley, by which there was a short cut to his house. The look in Anna's eyes sickened him. He was astonished too. It was so long, above three years he was certain, since Mrs. Severn had last gone to the Mires, that he had been convinced the fancy had left her. Her indulgence there could not now be her excuse, for she now indulged at home. He had discovered the fact for himself and had warned Dinah Constantine, whom he considered perfectly faithful. It was certain that she had told Anna, for he had overheardElias's words. His doing so had not, assuredly, occurred to either. If, however, it were necessary to exert authority, he would own his knowledge to Anna, for the sake of using it as a leverage with Mrs. Severn. If not, Anna should not guess his knowledge until he could be certain it would relieve her to know he knew. As he ran down the alley, haunted by the hunted shame in her eyes, his feelings were strangely compounded of burning sympathy with her and professional interest in the case. What possessed Mrs. Severn to act thus? Was the problem based on the physical or the moral? Was it his duty to tell her husband?
Elias, however, did not lead the way. At first Anna declared she would go alone, but he would not hear of it—he would wait with her. They agreed that this should be at the bridge over the Woss, to which, for the sake of raising less remark, they would go by different ways.
She was there first. A hill with an abrupt turn led down to it. On either side lay a stray, in pasturage, to which the poor people of the town had common rights. It was sheltered by steep wooded banks that made the river's course still a valley. The riverwas thickly overhung with trees. Thickets of wild rose and bracken, overrun with bramble, bossed the hollows of the ground; golden spires of ragwort gleamed in the sun; the sleek red backs of the cattle were to be discerned in the patches of sultry shade. The air was breathlessly hot. Anna had walked quickly, and now, as she leant against the parapet, she felt sick and dizzy.
She had gone to the centre of the bridge before stopping. It was an old-fashioned structure, and the keystone of the arch was accented by apeakin the masonry. Along one side ran a narrow ridge as a footpath. Originally it had connected a mule-track. When mules in single file went out of fashion, it was widened for waggons. When the Marlowes vacated Old Lafer for the new Hall, to which this was the high road, the road was levelled and macadamised at great cost, but the old bridge underwent no alteration. It was said the Madam Marlowe ofthat day liked to keep her tenants waiting in their carts and shandrydans while her coach swung over it. At first this was taken as a matter of course, and the tenantry pulled their forelocks as the unwieldy vehicle, with its four black horses and buff-liveried out-riders, swayed past them. But gradually they became indifferent, then defiant, and at last it was known that some swore when they caught the glimpse of buff and the rattle of the drag that obliged them to pull up and stand to one side. More than once the present owner, the genial and popular old Admiral, had been petitioned by town and county to build a new one. It was represented to him that had it been a Borough bridge and within the jurisdiction of the Surveyor of Highways and dependent upon the ratepayers, it would have been done years before. He knew this, and declared himself glad that it was not. A generous and open-handed man, he had yet certain whims whichno mortal power could combat; indeed, under the pressure of mortal power, a whim became a resolution. It did so in this case. He favoured the petitioners with his reasons for declining: there was not much traffic except on Wonston market-days; beyond the Hall the road ran only to the moors and the Mires, an unholy hamlet which he should allow gradually to fall into ruins; the old bridge was staunch in socket and rim—when he had been carried over it on his back Cynthia might do as she liked, but by that time electricity would probably have been adapted to night-travelling in carriages and her dinner-company would illumine the road beyond possibility of mishap.
One day he asked Cynthia what she would do.
'I shall build a new one, grandpapa,' she said.
'You will? Why?'
'That I may not fear an accident somedark night to some poor creature while I am comfortable here.'
'The poor creature would be some rascal from the Mires, old Kendrew probably, getting home drunk, Cynthy.'
'Perhaps the doctor coming to you or grandmamma.'
'Or you, my blooming damsel.'
'Or me. Why not?'
'Which God forbid!' cried the Admiral. 'But in any case we would send for him with well-trimmed lamps.'
'The foolish virgins trimmed their lamps too late,' said Cynthia.
'Well, see you don't,' said the Admiral, with provoking good-humour.
'Oh grandpapa, has never a Marlowe got drunk at his own dining-room table?'
'Cynthia!'
'Well, gentlemen do,' she said with shame, but decisively.
'Never here,' said the Admiral hastily.'Perhaps at Old Lafer in the days of the Georges, never here! You go too far, Cynthy; you make me uncomfortable. What do you know of such things? I must instruct Mrs. Hennifer not to allow such a license of thought. Good Heavens, you will be turning Chartist next. There, there, I'm not going to tell you what that is.'
She looked wistful, but he laughed, chucked her under the chin and walked away.
A few days later she drove over the bridge with Mrs. Marlowe. Just as the coach took the turn on the Wonston side she looked back and her eye was caught by an unfamiliar gleam of white among the foliage from which they had emerged. It was a board on a post. She could not distinguish the notice inscribed on it but she must know what it was. She pulled the check-string and with an incoherent explanation to Mrs. Marlowe jumped out and ran back.
These were the words she read:
'Let all drunkards and blasphemers and otherwise unholy persons who are the destroyers of peace, plenty, and prosperity in their homes, beware of this bridge. To such it may prove an instrument, placed by Almighty God in the hands of the devil, for their destruction in the blackness of night or the fury of the tempest.
'Let all drunkards and blasphemers and otherwise unholy persons who are the destroyers of peace, plenty, and prosperity in their homes, beware of this bridge. To such it may prove an instrument, placed by Almighty God in the hands of the devil, for their destruction in the blackness of night or the fury of the tempest.
'Simon Marlowe,
'Lord of the Manor, 18—.'
She did not shudder. She realised instantly that such a warning as this might be efficacious, while a new bridge would encourage vice by ensuring safety. She was then a girl in her early teens, and now she was a woman. Each year the clear lettering of the words had been renewed. But there had been no judgment of God on the drunken men who clung to their saddles by His providence, or reeled to and fro on foot as they made their way home on pitch-dark nights, when the ring of a horse's hoofs could not beheard above the roar of the flood rushing below.
As Borlase turned the corner to-day his eyes fell upon the board. He was driving slowly, as it was necessary to do at this point. A moment before he had caught the sound of voices above the murmur of the scanty summer stream. He knew they would be those of Constantine and Anna. And now, as his thoughts centred gravely on the words 'destroyers of peace' as for them the kernel of the warning at this hour, he came in sight of Anna.
She was sitting on the footway. Her hat was off, her head thrown back against the masonry, her hands were clasped round her knees. Over her there played the flecks of sunshine that filtered betwixt the foliage above. Her face was turned to Elias, who sat sideways upon the mare's back, looking down at her. Her attitude was listless, her face pale and grave. Just as Borlase saw her she raised her hand to impel silenceand inclined her head to listen. Another moment and he became distinguishable in the shadow of the trees. A flash of relief so intense as to be almost joy crossed her face and she sprang up.
Not a word was spoken. All were too intent upon the plan they had to accomplish; the beating of their hearts swayed between hope and fear, misgiving and faith. It was too certain that if Mrs. Severn were to be made to return home before her husband, there was not a moment to be lost. Borlase helped Anna to the seat beside him, then whipped on his horse. Elias jogged ahead to open the gate which secured the cattle from straying, and Anna nodded as they passed him. In another moment they disappeared round a corner where one of the park lodges stood, and he retraced his way to the bridge where a lane led up the valley to East Lafer, and thence by the high road to Old Lafer. It would take an hour to reach the Mires even withBorlase's good horse. Beyond the park the road was rough and hilly. At first it was overhung with trees, then the hedges gave way to unmortared walls. The last tree, a sturdy, stunted oak, was left behind. They passed through a gate and struck across a benty pasture where cotton grass shimmered, through another with tufts of heather here and there, and then had reached the moor.
The ling was in full blow. It swelled round them for miles, purple melting into amethystine distances that faded under the heat-haze, into the sky-line. Here and there were patches of vivid green bilberry, silvery spagnum, or ash-gray burnt fibre. In the hollows was the dense olive velvet of the rush. Lichened boulders threw lengthening streaks of shadow. Deep gills with streams whose waters now gathered into still pools, then foamed round rocks, cut the hills in every direction. Over all the cloud-shadows sailed, eclipsing the sunshine that againflashed softly forth behind them and steeped the still earth in fragrant heat.
And now there was a fresh soft breeze. It seemed to blow from heights above Meupher Fell or Great Whernside, to be a very balm from Heaven. When Borlase mounted the dog-cart after closing the gate Anna took off her hat and the breeze blew over her face and through her hair, giving her a delicious feeling of renewed courage and energy. So far they had scarcely spoken. Now she suddenly felt a lightening of heart, a quenching of the fever of perplexity and grief. Her face cleared. Borlase caught the change as he took the reins again.
'Let us talk,' he said, smiling.
'I fear it will be on a well-worn subject.'
'Mrs. Severn? There might be a better as we know, but that "the nexte thinge" is the one to be faced.'
She looked straight ahead. It was so perfectly natural that Clothilde should bediscussed with Borlase, not only as an old friend but in his confidential professional character, that she was scarcely conscious of the immense relief of being able to talk of her. But her trouble was far too poignant for her to venture to meet his eyes, though imagining that he only knew the half.
'You remember this happening before?' she said.
He nodded, carefully flicking a fly from his horse's ear.
'You called at Old Lafer that very day, just after Dad had gone to see if she would be persuaded to come back at once.'
'Yes, I did.'
Would he ever forget that call?
It was on a bleak day in early spring. No gleam of sunshine lit up the old house as he rode up the hill. A north-east wind blew off the moors, whose hollows were still snow-drifted. The roar of the swollen stream thundering down the gill filled the air; thelarches strained away from the buildings they sheltered, creaking with every fresh blast. He had knocked at the front door without answer, then gone round to the back with the same result. Not even the bark of a dog disturbed the death-like silence. Returning to the flags he scanned the fields. In the corner of the first pasture was a temporary shed for the ewes. As he looked, Dinah Constantine emerged from it carrying two lambs. Her keen eyes noted him instantly. She ran back, put down the lambs, and came up the field at the top of her speed. On reaching him she grasped his arm with the grip of a vice, poured into his amazed ears her dreary story, and finally opened the parlour door and showed him Anna.
She was sitting at the table with outflung arms, in which her face was buried. It was her first sorrow. She was exhausted by a grief that had been passionate and now was sickening. It seemed to her earnest andmatter-of-fact nature that happiness had flown for ever from Old Lafer. He sat down and reasoned with her after closing the door against Dinah. He did not go near her, knowing instinctively that to feel any one near her would be intolerable, circumscribing, as it would seem to do, both grief and sympathy. Standing near the window in silence for a while, then sitting down apart, but where she could see him when she looked up, as he hoped she would do soon, he set himself to win her through the struggle and show her the light again.
And as he won her back to patience, he was himself won to love. Her bitter tears, yet the spasmodic efforts at smiles that pierced her hopelessness with hope and showed her capable of bracing herself for trial; her ardent love for Clothilde; her fierce shame and agony of remorse for Mr. Severn; her refrain at each point gained as to what had possessed Clothilde to be so'wicked' as to leave her home, and her simple perplexity at its having been 'allowed' by God, expressing themselves on her face and in her gestures more than by word, made a never-to-be-forgotten impression upon him. This school-girl, whom he had as a matter of course either overlooked or patronised, and who was certainly plain to the point of being the ugly duckling of the family, dwelt thenceforth enthroned in his heart. His thoughts centred round her. His steps took him to her side at every opportunity. Other women, though beautiful, palled upon him. There insensibly stole into his soul a tender reverence that gradually made him hold aloof from the very intensity of his longing to be near her. He discovered in himself a new nature, capable of chivalrous self-control and subtly delicate adoration. Anna Hugo was dearer to him than life itself, except for her sake. She was a girl whom time would mature into a noble womanhood,and the stern realities of life at once strengthen and sweeten; the one woman whom—if he were to have his heart's desire—he must win for his wife.
And here she was to-day, at his side but still not won. However, she knew now that she was wooed. He would know more soon. Mrs. Severn should not come between them a third time, either directly or indirectly.
'The first time she ran away I was at school,' Anna said. 'Dad has never spoken of it, but Dinah has told me how awful it was. He became frantic when hours passed and there was no news or trace of her. There had been a heavy storm, and the waters were out, and he was certain she had been in the gill and slipped in and been drowned. And then old Hartas Kendrew came over from the Mires and told them she had gone there to see Scilla. Of course they thought it was a call; and Scilla made tea and then expected she would go. But thestorm came on, and so she waited, and when it cleared Scilla proposed to set her home. Then she looked at her and said, "Prissy, I am come to stay with you, my husband won't let me go to Paris." She always calls Scilla Prissy, though she knows how she dislikes it. Scilla thought she was joking. Fancy going to the Mires because she could not go to Paris! But she would stay, and so Hartas came to tell us.'
'And Mr. Severn brought her back?'
'Yes. He was very angry, and insisted, and she was frightened. The second time he tried to persuade her, and she would not be persuaded, so he let her stay, and at a month's end she came back. But she never asked him to forgive her, and it was heart-rending to see him so gentle. He blamed himself, said he should never have asked her to marry him, that she was too young and handsome and well-born, and had he not been too selfish to let her alone she wouldhave married some man who could have given her all the wealth and pleasure she had a right to expect. Last time he did not even try to coax her, though he actually went to see her. He said she must be happy in her own way. He had only his love to plead, and she had taught him she did not care for that.'
Her voice had sunk to the lowest of tones. Its inflexion touched the chord in his heart, of whose vibration in devotion to herself she was far from thinking in this hour. He caught his breath and abruptly turned his head away. He could not have borne to glance at her. For a moment he could not speak.
'Constantine said Mrs. Hennifer had called,' he said.
'Yes. She often does, but it is generally to see me now. Somehow she and Clothilde don't care for each other, though they've known each other for years. Clothilde wasat her sister's school in London, and while she was there Mrs. Hennifer married and went out to India.'
'It seemed a strange coincidence that brought them into proximity again here.'
'That was years after. Captain Hennifer left her badly off, and she was glad to get such a delightful sinecure as looking after Cynthia.'
'Where is Miss Marlowe now?'
'In Jersey with the Kerrs. They're all going to winter there together.'
'Perhaps Mrs. Kerr will ask the Canon to join them by and by. I suppose she is his favourite sister.'
'Yes, and particularly as she's Cynthia's friend. But she will scarcely venture to ask him unless Cynthia wishes it. His being with them could only have one meaning, but I fear Cynthia won't wish it. I wish, every one does, that she would marry Canon Tremenheere.'
Above the ridge before them there just then wavered into the air a thin thread of peat reek. Anna saw it and averted her head. But Borlase had seen the rush of colour over face and neck. He put his hand on hers.
'Shall I come down with you?' he said.
She shook her head, with a swift half-frightened glance at him. He knew she did not know how she would find Mrs. Severn.
'Well, remember I am here and will do what you wish.'
'I'll come and tell you.'
'You really will?' he said, smiling into her eyes. She suddenly felt herself inspired with fortitude, and with a confidence so full and free that she could have told him anything.
'Yes, I will,' she said.
What wonder that his hand closed over hers with a sense of possession? Yetneither wished at the moment that there were time for more,—it is sweet to anticipate the joy that is very near. They were on the ridge. In the hollow below lay the Mires.