On the day Danby's letter to the Admiral arrived, Cynthia too had one. It was the more important-looking of the two; had the Admiral seen it he would have fired into anger, suspecting its contents. But she received it in her own room before breakfast. She knew what it held the moment her eye lit on the envelope. Nothing less than a photograph could be there. She had asked for one.
When, a little later, she emerged in the gallery, Mrs. Hennifer was just disappearing down the stairs. She ran after her andbrought her back, putting the photograph into her hands, and looking at it over her shoulder.
It was a remarkable face, and Mrs. Hennifer knew instantly that she had seen it before, and that Cynthia was going to marry the man to whom Mrs. Severn had once been engaged. It was not, however, then sealed by the sardonic keenness that marked it now. Danby's life had been passed in India, but the skin was still, as it had been in youth, extraordinarily white, except on the jaw and upper lip, where close shaving tinged it with indigo. The features were of the moulded rather than the chiselled type. The eyes had a straight gaze of penetrating hardness that, remaining fixed, yet seemed to go beyond the object looked at, and thus could not be deemed offensive. They concentrated the interest of the face. The pupils had the opaqueness of marble, but Mrs. Hennifer knew that the radiating violet of the irispossessed the faculty of a sea-anemone in contracting and expanding. Had she not known Danby she would have detested those eyes as holding what a bad man might reciprocate and a good woman resent; discovering to the one too much knowledge, to the other the nearness of evil. But she knew him as a young man, and she remembered the mortal agony of wasted tenderness they had once shown her. Why was her darling Cynthia to be the atonement for that agony? Surely it was unnatural that her young and ardent life should have chosen the subdued emotions of a man whose drama of emotion she had herself witnessed years ago, when she and her husband and he were at the same Indian station. Ought she, must she tell Cynthia all this? Or had Danby himself? Did he know that Clothilde was at Old Lafer?
'Do you like it?' said Cynthia at last.
Mrs. Hennifer sighed involuntarily.
'It is the antipodes to yours, dearest.'
'So dark? But so was Anthony's.'
'And the expression——'
'Yes. Theo disliked it when first we all met. I did not think about him then. But every one cannot be like Anthony—have that awfully sweet look, you know.'
'That look would have become very dear to you in pain or trouble.'
Cynthia flushed, then shook her head.
'This is very dear to me now,' she said. 'And I feel as though Lucius wants happiness and brightness, and I can give them. Sometimes Anthony nearly made me cry, and it vexed me always that I could not give what he wanted, at least——' she faltered and turned away.
'Never, my darling?' said Mrs. Hennifer wistfully.
'Once. There was one little moment when I could have. But it was only a moment,' she added gaily. 'And now the leaf is turned down for ever, and I shall learnevery day and hour what Lucius wants, and how to make him happy.'
'Although he is so much older than you? You may be his nurse before many years are over, Cynthy.'
'Nonsense, he's not so old as that,' said she with bright impatience. 'I know his age, he's in the prime of life. But supposing he were invalided, I'd rather be his nurse than frolicking about with any other.'
'It seems so strange he should not already be married——'
'Yes, it does, I confess,' she said, lapsing into gravity. 'I have thought that too, and I said so to him. Of course I could not expect he had never had an attachment before he met me. It is partly that he has lived in India I think, and partly, chiefly, because he had once an—but why should I tell you?' she added, breaking off with a shake of her head and a laugh. 'He has told me. That is sufficient. There was some one before, Idon't even know her name—it was natural; you understand? But it is me now? my turn wholly. He loves me well. Oh, I know I shall make him happy, and that's all I want.'
There was no combating this mood. Mrs. Hennifer had not forces to control the enemy, she could only determine to throw up earthworks to fortify her position.
She was going to the christening at Old Lafer to-day. Mrs. Severn had not been well, and it had been deferred. She had a shrewd suspicion as to the cause of her invalidism this time, and acknowledged there was reason in it. The situation was such that a better and more self-controlled woman might have been daunted, knowing the uncompromisingly honest stuff of which her husband was made. A whisper had reached the Hall that she had been to the Mires again. Indeed, when Anna's engagement was known, and Mrs. Hennifer had hastened to Old Lafer with congratulations, Anna herself had inadvertently admitted as much,and she discovered it was on the same day as her call to name Cynthia's engagement. There was no doubt in her own mind that the name of Lucius Danby had then sent her from her home. There was no doubt also that she would have to face out the situation by obtruding herself upon attention as little as possible, and certainly not by indulging in her old freak of flight to the Mires.
The coach came round at eleven o'clock, clattering over the flags of the courtyard. Mrs. Marlowe was going with her to the chapel-of-ease at East Lafer but would not get out. It was a hot September day, but the coach was stuffed with as many cushions and rugs as though the season were Arctic. A fat pug was lifted by a footman into one corner, where it lay gasping in useless expostulation against the delusion that it was taking the air. Mrs. Marlowe, in a cinnamon silk and velvet mantle, and a bonnet whosesprigged lace veil hung to her waist, descended the steps feebly. The Admiral was always in attendance on her. His portly little figure was set off by a buff waistcoat and a bunch of seals dangling at the fob. Mrs. Hennifer was crisply Quakerish in black satin and the usual fringed Oriental shawl. There wafted from the group the scent of Tonquin beans. Cynthia was not going. Her riding-horse was being led up and down, and she appeared in the hall in her habit as the coach rolled off. She and the Admiral were going to have one of their favourite morning rides round some of the inland farms where repairs were in operation, and both knew that to-day their talk would be serious. She intended Danby to have permission to come to Lafer at once.
An hour or two later the christening party had returned to Old Lafer. The ling had blown late this year and the moors were still in their glory, rolling up beyond the bent in ahaze of purple. Borlase, loitering in the garden after dinner until Anna's housewifely duties allowed her to join him, shaded his eyes to face them. How gloriously beautiful, yet how calmly unconscious they were! Stubble fields gleamed among the soft misty greens of the far-stretching plain. The trees in the gill below the house were motionless. There was no breeze. The murmur of the beck was in the air; now and then a bee buzzed over the larkspurs and lilies under the wall.
When Anna appeared she was carrying a little table, and the children with her had dishes of fruit. Dessert was arranged on the grass-plot in the centre of Madam's garden—peaches and greengages, sponge-cakes that Anna had whisked, and syllabub, all on white trellis-china. The gay flower-borders glowed beyond; there was a murmur of bees in the trees overhead; in the distance the opalescent plain lay in alternate shade and shine under the sailing cloud-shadows. Antoinette, Emmeline,Joan, and Jack, in their holland smocks and Roman scarves, frolicked from meadow to gill. Mr. Severn and Tremenheere sauntered out of the house—Mr. Severn with a decanter of claret which he intended the Canon to finish; Tremenheere himself more conscious of the charm of the place than of its conventional accessories, and bent on a walk over the moor when the shadows were lengthening and the evening breeze should silence the chirp of the grasshoppers and rustle through the ling.
The ladies were left in the parlour. Mrs. Severn had floated away from the dinner-table in her sweeping black draperies with a face so white that Borlase was still obliged to consider her an orthodox patient. Mrs. Hennifer insisted on ensconcing her on the settee with her feet up. The parlour, with its faded rose-wreathed chintzes flouncing the chairs, its gently-swaying net curtains and oak-panelled walls, was cool and quiet. Mrs. Hennifer took a chair near the window.She felt like napping. It was pleasantly suggestive to think that a nap would certainly refresh Mrs. Severn. She looked through a manuscript book of songs for a guitar accompaniment, and noticed that Clothilde soon closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall back upon the cushions. She then at once closed hers too, with a pleasant relaxing of her angular figure into something approaching negligent comfort. She had scarcely done so before Mrs. Severn spoke.
'Mary!'
'Yes.'
Mrs. Hennifer was upright again in a moment, more angry than embarrassed. She was convinced that Mrs. Severn had waited to betray her into a wish for a doze, for the sake of thwarting it immediately.
'Did you really think I meant to go to sleep, Mary?'
'Certainly. You are tired and it is so quiet here. You don't seem to have got up yourstrength well. You look no better than when I saw you last—in July, was itnot?'
'No, later than that. The day you came over to tell me about Miss Marlowe, you know. I confess I don't think I have ever been well since. You must have something more to tell me now, have you not?'
'What about?' said Mrs. Hennifer, fixing her eyes sharply upon her. Mrs. Severn avoided them; her gaze idly followed the play of her own fingers through the fringe of the coverlet thrown over her.
'Well, you know—about Miss Marlowe.'
Mrs. Hennifer scrutinised her face in silence for some time, but its absence of colour was equalled by that of expression.
'Clothilde,' she said, 'we will not deal in innuendo. It is detestable. Why don't you say like an honest woman, "Have you seen Lucius Danby yet? Is he the man I was once engaged to marry?" It is perfectly natural, in fact necessary, that you shouldstill be interested in him to that extent. For you'll have to keep out of his way. But this dallying with a love-affair that was wholly dishonouring to yourself is disgusting. You chose to obliterate yourself from his life years ago, and you did not choose to confess your dishonour to your husband; and though circumstances are so cruel that you are compelled to recall all now, it can only be for the sake of impressing upon yourself the necessity of dignified self-effacement. If you are ever compelled to meet him it will be as a married woman and the mother of children, the wife of the man who will, practically speaking, be his upper servant.'
'Then it really is the same Lucius?'
'It is the same Mr. Danby.'
'And he is at Lafer?'
'Not at all, as you know, for Severn would have named it had he been. There are a good many preliminaries to be gone through in the case of a Miss Marlowe. Cynthia wasaware of that. She came home to smooth the way. The Admiral was very much ruffled.'
'I should think he intended it to fall through so soon as they had separated by her coming home.'
'He did not cause the separation. She knew what was due to him and to herself——'
'Why, she surely has not thought more of her own dignity than of Lucius?' said Mrs. Severn, with one of her low laughs.
'Her own dignity!' repeated Mrs. Hennifer. 'She has done what was right, Clothilde, whether by instinct or deliberation I don't know. She has acted wisely. The Admiral sees her quiet determination and respects it. He is becoming reconciled, and Cynthia will soon have her way.'
'Very deep of her,' said Mrs. Severn; 'I should think you will have been struck by the new phase of her character. You would not have thought she had such management,would you? So he has not come over and contrived to see her?'
Mrs. Hennifer's boiling indignation admitted only of ejaculatory refrains.
'Contrived to see her?'
'Well, I mean is he risking nothing? It all seems to me a preposterously cool transaction. Of course he knew she was an heiress?'
'Heiress! Transaction!My word, Clothilde, I could shake you! Cynthia is not a girl to be met in a lane,' cried Mrs. Hennifer breathlessly. 'The next thing you will assert is that he is going to marry her for the purpose of being near you. Preposterous! You don't understand. He did not know she was an heiress when he proposed to her. You will have to make up your mind not to call him Lucius and also to stay at home. So you went to the Mires again after I had been here that day? Highly creditable! And how long did you mean to stay there thistime? You never will be satisfied until you have created a scandal. I don't suppose Mr. Danby knows where you are or anything about you, and cares less, I should think. I wonder you haven't thought of writing to inform him of the interesting and agreeable facts. Ah! but I suppose you don't know his address? Well, he'll be at Lafer soon.'
'I should not think of writing to him there.'
'I should think not indeed. I don't advise you even to ask him for mercy by not acknowledging you to Severn's face. Leave it to him. He'll soon respect Severn sufficiently to wish not to humiliate him. But you surely have not seriously thought of writing to him at all?'
Mrs. Severn smiled, and a faint colour flickered into her face for a moment.
'I did,' she said; 'I confess to the folly. You know I went to the Mires again—you have heard? I began a letter to him thatday to tell him where I was. It seemed best that he should know. I wrote it on the moor, and I was startled by—some one coming for me. I slipped it into a book I had taken to read, and in the hurry I dropped it and never thought of it again for weeks.'
'Letter and all? I should think you have wondered if they have ever been found.'
'I have indeed. But I daren't say a word about them.'
'And what has possessed you to be telling me the truth, eh? You're not in the habit of telling the truth, Clothilde.'
'You are very hard upon me,' she murmured.
'God knows I don't wish to be,' Mrs. Hennifer burst out, with a voice that suddenly trembled. 'Be hard upon yourself. It seems to me, inconceivable though it be, that you are trifling with memories on which it is sheer wickedness to dwell. You trifledwith him once; for Heaven's sake don't trifle with yourself.'
Mrs. Severn moved uneasily. There was a palm-leaf fan near, and she took it up and held it against her brows. Mrs. Hennifer, with every faculty upon the alert, and energy of observation as much as of suspicion, was convinced that her lip trembled. Her eyes were downcast. Her face, however, remained pale and calm. It was impossible to judge of her phase of feeling. And at that moment, as though to baffle any effort on Mrs. Hennifer's part to do so, she slid her feet to the ground and rose, then rearranged herself at the darker end of the settee. Mrs. Hennifer, noting each movement with a jealousy for Cynthia that was almost fierce, reluctantly admired while she mistrusted. The profile of her face and throat against the wainscot was like a bas-relief in ivory; every gesture had a slow and self-abandoned grace. She prayed while she watched her.
'It has struck me that he might go to see the Pitons,' said Mrs. Severn; 'I suppose he returned to Jersey after Miss Marlowe left. If he went there Ambrose would probably tell him all. I know Anna told him of the engagement when she wrote when Miss Marlowe was going there.'
'A most excellent opportunity, and I hope Ambrose would make the best use of it. In that case he isau faitwith everything, and we need not distress ourselves,' said Mrs. Hennifer decisively.
After this they sat for some time in silence.
'Clothilde, are you very fond of your children?' said Mrs. Hennifer at last, half unconscious of the question evolved from such a rush of rambling thought, that whatever had been uttered must have seemed inconsequent.
'I suppose so. They are handsome. I am always thankful they are not plain.'
'You'll miss Anna, or rather, perhaps, they will.'
'Anna cannot be spared yet. I think Mr. Borlase a very selfish and inconsiderate man, but I was really too vexed to tell him so. I told Anna, however.'
'Does Mr. Severn say she cannot be spared?'
'John? You know what John is—crazy for people to be happy, as he calls it. He said he should have her when he wanted her. It is I who have the common sense. I told him I could not spare her until Antoinette was old enough to take her place; and I told Anna Mr. Borlase might die and leave her a widow without a farthing. I do think, when John has given her a home all these years, she ought to make us the first consideration. But every one seems very hard to convince.'
She got up as she spoke and moved to the piano. While turning over some musicshe said in a low voice of bell-like clearness, 'Miss Marlowe was here the other day telling us about her visit to the Pitons at Rocozanne. I thought from her manner you had not told her then about me. Have you since?'
Mrs. Hennifer started to her feet, throwing the book she held on to the table with a vigour that startled even Mrs. Severn. It made her look round hastily.
'Clothilde,' she said, 'how can you torture me? This is torture. Don't you know I love Cynthia Marlowe with my whole heart—a thousand times more than ever I loved you with a foolish creature's adoration of your mere superficial beauty? It pierces me to the quick to think she should ever have a moment's pain of mind. Don't you think that if the Admiral knew her future husband had been jilted by you, he might not tolerate the match? And her heart might break with the misery of it all; the Admiral maylive twenty years! And how am I to tell her—and yet how am I to let it go untold?' Her voice sank, and she added this more to herself than aloud.
'Oh! she must know,' said Mrs. Severn in a matter-of-fact tone.
Mrs. Hennifer looked at her quickly.
'You either won't see it from another's point of view, or you want to break it all off,' she said.
'No, no! Only we shall meet, and he will betray something.'
'You rarely leave Old Lafer, Clothilde.'
'Still I do go into Wonston occasionally, and I dine at the Hall, and the Marlowes call upon me. You know, Mary, every one knows I am something different to John. And Lucius may already know I am here.'
Mrs. Hennifer considered a moment.
'One thing is certain,' she said drily, 'you must cure yourself of your old habit of calling him Lucius, and in order that youshall clearly understand their confidence in each otherheshall tell her who you are.'
For an instant their eyes met. Mrs. Severn's bore a darting glance of defiant appeal, and her whole figure seemed to tremble.
But whatever her fear she conquered it, and putting her arm through Mrs. Hennifer's proposed that they should go into the garden.
'Then you won't do a half-day's job?'
'No, I won't that. I wonder you've fashed yoursel to come and ask me. You ken I never will, least of all of a Friday. It's against common sense to think t'Almighty means you to tail off a week when He's sent sike a downpour the first four days. I'll none trouble t' pits this side o' Sabbath.'
'You might be the religiousest man in t' land, Hartas.'
'It's none religion. It's common sense. Sabbath's a landmark; it'll hev its due on either side from me. I'm none going to splita week or two days. We left half a dozen loads o' stuff at t' shaft mouth last week-end, and not a cart 'll hev crossed t' moor this tempest. They may come thick to-day, and if you like to go and wait for custom, you can.'
Dick Chapman laughed angrily.
'If 'twer a matter o' trapping a few rabbits none ud be keener nor yoursel,' he said. 'I can't drop into t' pit alone, and so, as Reuben's off, I'm left in t' lurch. And next week's Martinmas.'
'I ken so.'
'And 'll no split that either, I reckon.'
'Martinmas's out o' count.'
'Ah! ah! there's no spree where there's no brass, eh?'
'Brass! Brass indeed! It's folk without fire and with friends that I think on. Now, Dick, make off. I'll promise four days in t' fore-end. How art thee going, on Nobbin?'
'I lay I'll keep drier on my own shanks,and there 'll be nought for Nobbin to do, though that deuced hind leg o' hers 'll be getting stiff enough for t' farrier if she stands much longer.'
'I'll look after Nobbin.'
'Just a walk along t' track 'll do nought.'
'I think I ken t' needs o' that limb by now.'
'Well, I'll gang and see what's doing.'
Chapman sauntered off, turning up his collar and jamming his hat down on his brows. The pits lay between the Mires and Old Lafer on the moor above the Hall, and here the three able-bodied men of the Mires worked in all seasons except hay-time. At hay-time they hired out to the low-country farmers as monthly labourers. A small stock of coal sufficed in summer to eke out the dwindling turfs in the peat shanties, and keep the fire smouldering while the household laboured in the meadows.
But there were days all the year roundwhen the wild west wind, sweeping off Great Whernside, brought tempests of rain, and made it 'that rough on the tops' that no man could stand against it and even the sheep went uncounted. Then the doors at the Mires were fast shut, except when a woman in clogs pattered round for a skep of peats, or a man slouched down to the marsh to count the foaming streams pouring into it. This when it 'abated like.' Then would come another rush of wind and wet, blotting out the whole world to within a yard or two of the cottage windows.
If there were one kind of weather that Scilla detested more than another it was fog. A snow-storm or deluge of rain kept Hartas at home, but betwixt the liftings of fog he would make his way to the Inn at East Lafer, and when he came back at night there was a wath over the beck to cross, the moor-track to strike, and the pit-shaft to miss. It was nothing when he finishedoff by rolling down the slape sides of the hollow.
It was foggy to-day. Hartas was restless, and she was sure he would slip off after dinner. She had run into Chapman's and suggested the pits. But her hope had failed and she foresaw a vigil. She had not dared say a word while the men were talking, lest evident anxiety should make Hartas contradictious. But despite her forbearance he had been so. There was no managing him! She was frying bacon, and sighed over the pan, as into her simple mind there rushed the certainty of his headlong course to perdition, a perdition symbolised to her by the flames curling and hissing at every turn of the fork that sent sprints of fat on to the embers. This was really her idea of hell. She had an equally vivid one of heaven. Three miles away, straight as an arrow to the north, lay Wherndale. She had walked many a time to the edge of the moors to seeit. Skirting a deep natural moat round an old copperas mine, she had slid down the refuse slide, and plunged through bracken, rush, and spagnum to a great rock overhanging the valley. From hence the view was glorious on a fine summer evening. The western valley lay bathed in sun-rays falling through the vapoury heat-mists shrouding the mountains; the eastern flooded with sunshine; the Meupher range clear against the sky. Below, the moor fell abruptly into meadow-land; rocks were scattered in Titanic confusion among the ling; the meadows dimpled with hollows; the lowering sun streamed through the foliage, and cast long shadows from every tree and hay-pike; mists of blue smoke hung above the farmsteads; here and there was a lake-like gleam of river. Scilla, with the velvet breeze blowing against her, felt that here was heaven. Did she not touch it, when the very tufts of grass over which she walked glistened like frosted silver,and the bent-flower gleamed like cloth of gold?
'I wish the fog would lift,' she said, as she placed dinner on the table, and they drew up their chairs. 'If it would, I'd mount Nobbin and give her a good stretch, better than you'll have patience for, maybe. We mustn't have her leg worsen.'
'It only worsens with standing in t' stable. We hevn't plenty o' work for her, winding up t' coil at t' pits; she'd thrive better on twice as much, and that's truth. I've an extra job for her to-day, and spite o' t' fog I'll carry it through.'
'Why, father, she'll be that stiff after these few days!'
'It works off t' farther she goes, and what with t' weather-shakken look o' t' skies when there is a rift, and Martinmas holiday at hand, she'll be heving so much stable that her leg 'll be her doom i' now.'
Scilla listened with a sensation of breathlessness. It was rarely hetalked so much, or informed her of any of his intentions. She wondered what the 'extra job' was, but was so certain that she was to know that she easily hid her curiosity.
Hartas ate on phlegmatically, pushing his meat on to the knife with the fork, and thence conveying it with a pump-handle-like motion to his mouth. When he had finished he placed them cross-wise on the plate, drew the back of his hand across his lips, and tilted his chair, sticking his thumbs into the armholes of his coat.
'There's t' sale ower at Northside Edge to-day,' he said.
'Yes. Poor Mrs. Carling, how she'll feel it!'
'I met Luke Brockell when I wer i' Wonston some days back, and he wer talking o' taking his trolly up. He has his trolly, but he's lost his nag, dropped in a fit.'
'Then how could he take it up, and whatwould be the use of it? Does he want to put it in the sale?'
Hartas chuckled, leering at her with a scowling grin.
'Thee never wer a bright un, Scilla. All t' glint o' thy wits has run to waste in your hair. I kenned that when Kit gave you hare soup, and you never guessed what it was nor where it came from. There, there, no call to flare up! What, there's a glint in your temper too, is there?'
Scilla had turned deathly white, and pushed her chair back hastily, making a harsh sound on the roughly-paved floor that somehow suggested to Hartas the sound her voice would have had had she spoken. She looked at him with a threatening disdain as she stood a moment balancing her slight figure against the table, and apparently expecting him to speak. He did not, however, and she went to the door. Opening it, she leant against the lintel. There was something piteouslylike the fog that shrouded the world in the wanness that had overclouded her face. The sweet clearness of the blue eyes was gone. More than a suspicion of tears weighted their lids and lurked in the trembling of her mouth. But she was determined not to cry. It was not to fall a prey to the ready scoff that she had won her way through tribulation to a calm that—whatever the shocks of the future—should be abiding.
And at that moment the sky cleared, and a growing light which, in the absorption of Hartas's confidences, she had not noticed, burst into a ray of sunshine.
It fell upon her. She turned, and going in again sat down on the settle. A smile had flitted over her face.
'I know now what you meant, father. It was very stupid of me not to understand. Of course you offered Nobbin for Luke's trolly, and now you are going with her.'
She spoke in her usual bright voice, butnot with any expectation of disarming him. She knew well by this stage of her dearly-bought experience that such men are not to be disarmed. Always surly, his surliness only varied in degree.
'Them that's fools this side o' t' grave are less like for it t' other,' he said. 'It's true I'm taking Nobbin ower to Northside Edge, but there's no need for all t' Mires to ken. It may or it mayn't come to Dick Chapman's knowledge, but mind you, you're dumb. I offered her to Dick to ride to t' pits.'
While he spoke, avoiding looking at her, a foreboding of some wholly formless but very decided evil darted into her mind. For an instant she hesitated to utter the suggestion of principle that rose simultaneously to her lips. But to have done so would have been to shirk what he was shirking.
'Of course Nobbin is half his,' she said.
Hartas did not answer but got up slowly.
'And what she earns must be his, half ofit, I mean,' she said with more inward tremor, but more outward steadiness. 'Besides,' she added, getting up too and going close to him, 'do you think she's fit for this piece of work, father? It's all very well her hobbling a bit when it's only to the pits, and often no work when she gets there. No one could call us cruel to her, she's——'
Hartas raised his hand suddenly and struck out. But it was only into the air, and Scilla did not wince as he had hoped she would. He would not glance at her. Not for worlds would he have owned what the influence of that glance into her earnest unwavering eyes might have been.
'Cruel to her!' he exclaimed in his thick voice, 'she's as fat as butter, and if we're stinted she has her meat. Come, Scilla, what are you driving at? Let's leave riddles.'
'The law,' said Scilla, with an urgency which felt to her own keen emotions desperate. Was not the law her phantom, thedread avenger that dogged her steps and filled her thoughts? She loved her husband with all her heart, but in her utmost loyalty she still always considered him as a transgressor, not as a victim. To Hartas he was a victim, the victim of adverse circumstance, of an embodiment of spite in the shape of Elias Constantine. Hartas Kendrew's predominant article of faith was that in which Admiral Marlowe, Mr. Severn, and Elias Constantine were inextricably mingled. But his trinity in unity possessed, according to his distorted reasoning, a viciousness which could only nurture revengefulness.
'The law,' said Scilla again, nerving herself to appeal; 'don't let us put ourselves near it. It seems a dishonest thing to say,' she added, faltering a moment, while a look of perplexity filled her eyes, 'as though we were all the time doing wrong, but you know lots of folk 'll see Nobbin at Northside Edge, and if she goes lame——'
'There's not a sore on her, and what's a hobble? There's not a sprain about her. She's sound, I tell you. D—— the law!'
His violence convinced her of his misgivings. It was not then so much what Nobbin might earn that day, a sum that would probably be balanced on Chapman's side at the pits, but the risk he ran in taking her so far from home that made him anxious to do it quietly. But why run the risk? Where was the advantage of it? It could only be as a matter of convenience to Luke Brockell. She knew Luke and did not like him. Not that she had ever heard any evil of him. But there was something cautious and furtive about him that she instinctively resented. The straightforwardness which Hartas chose to construe as slowness of comprehension made her shrink from imputing interested or dishonest motives to others. But she was often compelled to do so. And now she searched her mind for a clue to this compactof friendliness on Hartas's part with a man who, on his side, would do well to keep out of his companionship.
She had moved aside and stood leaning against the settle-back with a droop in her figure expressive of her dismayed despondency. What more could she say or urge? To a man of Hartas Kendrew's temperament, risk added zest. To run into it quickened his sluggish blood to a degree which he cherished with delight; failure nurtured his lowest nature, success was only more enthralling as feeding a triumph whose chief charm lay in its maliciousness.
'You must have weighed it all, father,' Scilla said at last, timidly, again raising her eyes to his, and searching his face for confirmation of her worst fears. 'You know that if anything goes wrong when you take her off in this way, Dick 'll come down on us for all her value. And though she mayn't be worth much to others, she is to us.'
'You talk quite book-like,' said Hartas, with a sneer. It pleased him to think she had grasped the whole situation, and was made proportionately miserable. But after all, were not her qualms wholly womanly? His were those of manhood. He would dare the devil to do his worst at him. Had he not other plans for circumventing the devil's own? Luke Brockell was a more cautious chap than Kit, he would beat him out and out as a partner over the snare, the sack, and the dub; folks never pried into the stuff on his trolly; already grouse were again on their way from Admiral Marlowe's moors to distant markets, with which Luke dealt in the delf line. Luke had fast and influential friends, and he meant to leave no stone unturned whereby Luke might also be his.
END OF VOL. I
Printed byR. & R. Clark,Edinburgh
G. C. & Co.
Transcriber's Note: Although most printer's errors have been retained, some have been silently corrected. Some spelling and punctuation, capitalization, accents and formatting markup have been normalized and include the following:Page 88 peek is now peak [peak in the masonry]Page 213 the word as was written twice, [reflecting upon him as as]Page 241 the double quotation mark has been replaced by a single quote to match the opening quote. [I saw you last—in July, was it not?"]