Starvecrow Farm Part 48

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

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

But Mrs. Gilson did not stay to hear. She had caught sight of Mr.

Sutton walking past the open door, and aware that a second now was worth a minute by and by, she hurried out to him. "Your reverence!

Here!" she cried. And when he turned surprised by the address, "The young lady's gone!" she continued. "Slipped out at the back, and she'll be G.o.d knows where in two minutes! Do you follow, sir, and keep her in sight or there's no knowing what may happen!" And she pointed through the house to indicate the nearest way.

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

he said slowly.

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

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

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

But Mr. Sutton shook his head with an obstinate look. "No," he said.

"It's not my business, ma'am. I'd like to oblige you after your kindness yesterday, but I've made up my mind not to interfere with the young lady. I followed her once," he continued, in a lower tone and with a conscious air--"and I've repented it!"

"You'll repent it a deal more if you don't follow her now!" the landlady retorted. She was in a towering pa.s.sion by this time. "You'll repent it finely if anything happens to her. That you will, my man!

Don't you know that Captain Clyne left word that she wasn't to be let go out alone? Then go, man, after her, before it is too late. And don't be a sawny!"

"I shall not," he answered firmly.

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

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

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

"Perhaps he has followed her."

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was a check, and he turned his back on the road, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief which he took from his hat. He gazed, nonplussed, into the recesses of the wood through which he had pa.s.sed.

The undergrowth, which was of oak--with here and there a clump of hollies--still carried a screen of brown leaves, doomed to fall with the spring, but sufficient in the present to mask a fugitive.

Moreover, in the damp bottom, where the bridge spanned the rivulet, a company might have lain hidden; and above him, where the wood climbed the shoulder, there were knolls and dells, and unprobed depths of yellow bracken, that defied the eye. Between him and this background the brown trunks stood at intervals, shot with the gold of the declining sun, or backed by a cold patch of snow: and the scene had been beautiful, in its russet livery of autumn blended with winter, if he had had eyes for it, or for aught but the lurking figure he hoped to detect.

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

Was she hiding in the wood pending his departure? Or had she doubled back the way she had come, and so escaped, laughing and contemptuous?

Or had she pa.s.sed out by some gate unknown to him? Or climbed the fence? Or was she even now meeting her man in some hiding-place among the hollies, or in some fern-clad retreat out of sight and hearing?

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

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

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

"Noa," the man drawled.

"Where have you come from? Troutbeck?"

"Ay."

"You haven't met a young lady?"

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

"Not even a pretty girl?"

The man grinned more widely.

"Noa, not n.o.body," he said.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GOLDEN s.h.i.+P

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

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

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

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