Flamsted quarries Part 34

"What shall I do--oh, what _shall_ I do!" was her hopeless unuttered cry.

It seemed to Aileen Armagh, standing there in the road at the entrance to the bridge, as if a powerful X-ray were being directed at that moment upon her whole life so far as she remembered it; and not only upon that, but upon her heart and soul--her thoughts, desires, her secret agony; as if the ray, in penetrating her body and soul, were laying bare her secret to the night:--she still loved him.

"Oh, what shall I do--what _shall_ I do!" was the continual inner cry.

Life was showing itself to her in this experience, as seen through the lens of a quickened imagination, in all its hideousness. Never had she experienced such a sense of loneliness. Never had she realized so forcibly that she was without father and mother, without kin in a foreign country, without a true home and abiding-place. Never had it been brought home to her with such keen pain that she was, in truth, a waif in this great world; that the one solid support for her in this world, her affections, had been ruthlessly cut away from under her by the hand of the man she had loved with all the freshness and joy of her young loving heart. He had been all the more to her because she was alone; the day dreams all the brighter because she believed he was the one to realize them for her--and now!

She walked on slowly.

"What shall I do--what shall I do!" was her inward cry, repeated at intervals. She crossed the bridge. All was chaotic in her thoughts. She had supposed, during the last two months, that all her love was turned to hate,--she hoped it was, for it would help her to bear,--that all her feeling for him, whom she knew she ought to despise, was dead. Why, then, if it were dead, she asked herself now, had she spoken so vehemently to Luigi? And Luigi--where was he--what was he doing?

What was it produced that nervous shock when she learned the last truth from Dulcie Caukins? Was it her shame at his dishonor? No--she knew by the light of the X-ray piercing her soul that the thought of his imprisonment meant absence from her; after all that had occurred, she was obliged to confess that she was still longing for his presence. She hated herself for this confession.--Where was he now?

She looked up the road towards the quarry woods--Thank G.o.d, those, at least, were dark! Oh, if she but dared to go! dared to penetrate them; to call to him that the hours of his freedom were numbered; to help--someway, somehow! A sudden thought, over-powering in its intimation of possibilities, stopped her short in the road just a little way beyond the Colonel's; but before she could formulate it sufficiently to follow it up with action, before she had time to realize the sensation of returning courage, she was aware of the sound of running feet on the road above her. On a slight rise of ground the figure of a man showed for a moment against the clear early dark of the October night; he was running at full speed.

Could it be--?

She braced herself to the shock--he was rapidly nearing her--a powerful ray from an arc-light shot across his path--fell full upon his hatless head--

"_You!_--Luigi!" she cried and darted forward to meet him.

He thrust out his arm to brush her aside, never slackening his pace; but she caught at it, and, clasping it with both hands, hung upon it her full weight, letting him drag her on with him a few feet.

"Stop, Luigi Poggi!--Stop, I tell you, or I'll scream for help--stop, I say!"

He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly with both hands.

"Let me go--" he said, catching his breath spasmodically.

"Not till you tell me where you've been--what you've been doing--tell me."

"Doing--" He brought out the word with difficulty.

"Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious terror.

"I don't know--" the words were a long groan.

"Where have you been then?--quick, tell me--"

He began to shake with a hard nervous chill.

"With him--over in the quarry woods--I tried to take him--he fought me--" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand.

She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror, fixed themselves on the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt--there was a stain--

"Have you killed him--" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

The answer came through the clattering teeth:

"I--I don't know--you said--you said you--never wanted to see him again--"

Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape detection--to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the s.h.i.+vering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must avoid them at all hazards.

One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must try to save him from a living death."

This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again--the sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She reached it--should she call aloud--call his name? How find him?

She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual.

She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were ma.s.sed in one corner, heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept crowding closer and more close.

In that bared s.p.a.ce of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.

She leaped down, the frightened sheep riding one another in their frantic efforts to get away from the invaders of their peace. She knelt by him; lifted his head on her knee; her hands touched his sleeve, she drew back from something warm and wet.

"Champney--O Champney, what has he done to you!" she moaned in hopeless terror; "what shall I do--"

"Is it you--Aileen?--help me up--"

With her aid he raised himself to a sitting posture.

"It must have been the loss of blood--I felt faint suddenly." He spoke clearly. "Can you help me?"

"Yes, oh, yes--only tell me how."

"If you could bind this up--have you anything--"

"Yes, oh, yes--"

He used his left hand entirely; it was the right arm that had received the full blow of some sharp instrument. "Just tear away the s.h.i.+rt--that's right--"

She did as he bade her. She took her handkerchief and bound the arm tightly above the wound, twisting it with one of her sh.e.l.l hairpins. She slipped off her white petticoat, stripped it, and under his directions bandaged the arm firmly.

He spoke to her then as if she were a personality and not an instrument.

"Aileen, it's all up with me if I am found here--if I don't get out of this--tell my mother I was trying to see her--to get some funds, I have nothing. I depended on my knowledge of this country to escape--put them off the track--they're after me now--aren't they?"

"Yes--"

"I thought so; I should have got across to the house if the quarry lights hadn't been turned on so suddenly--I knew they'd got word when I saw that--still, I might have made the run, but that man throttled me--I must go--"

He got on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars, a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark--and Rag flung himself first upon Aileen then on Champney.

He caught the dog by the throat, choking him into silence, and handed him to Aileen.

"For G.o.d's sake, keep the dog away--don't let him come--keep him quiet, or I'm lost--" he dropped over the wall and disappeared in the woods.

Here and there across the pastures a lantern shot its unsteady rays. The posse had begun their night's work.