Starvecrow Farm. Weyman Stanley John
if you stand face to face with them, and do nothing, you are no man! And no lad for me!" lightly. "You are well matched as it is then. Just a match and no more for your white-faced, helpless dumpling of a wife!"
"It is all very well," he muttered, "to talk!"
"Ay, but presently we shall do as well as talk! Out in the world they are doing now! They are beginning to do. But here-what do you know in this cupboard? No more than the mice."
"Fine talk!" he retorted, stung by her contempt. "But you talk without knowing. There have been parsons and squires from the beginning, and there will be parsons and squires to the end. You may talk until you are black in the face, Bess, but you won't alter that!"
"Ay, talk!" she retorted drily. "You may talk. But if you do-as they did in France twenty years gone. Where are their squires and parsons now? The end came quick enough there, when it came."
"I don't know much about that," he growled.
"Ay, but I do."
"But how the devil do you?" he answered, in some irritation, but more wonder. "How do you?" And he looked round the bare, sordid kitchen. The fire, shooting warm tongues up the black cavernous chimney, made the one spot of comfort that was visible.
"Never you mind!" she answered, with a mysterious and tantalising smile. "I do. And by-and-by, if we've the spirit of a mouse, things will happen here! Down yonder-I see it all-there are thousands and tens of thousands starving. And stacks burning. And mobs marching, and men drilling, and more things happening than you dream of! And all that means that by-and-by I shall be knitting while Madam and Miss and that proud-faced, slim-necked chit at the inn, who faced us all down to-day-"
"Why," he struck in, in fresh surprise, "what has she done to you now?"
"That's my business, never you mind! Only, by-and-by, they will all smile on the wrong side of their face!"
He stared morosely into the fire. And she watched him, her long lashes veiling a sly and impish amusement. If he dreamed that she loved him, if he fancied her a victim of his bow and spear, he strangely, most strangely, misread her. And a sudden turn, a single quick glance should have informed him. For as the flames by turns lit her face and left it to darkness, they wrought it to many expressions; but never to kindness.
"There's many I'd like to see brought down a piece," he muttered at last. "Many, many. And I'm as fond of my share of good things as most. But it's all talk, there's nought to be done! Nor ever will be! There have been parsons and squires from the beginning."
"Would you do it," she asked softly, "if there were anything to be done?"
"Try me."
"I doubt it. And that's why you are no lad for me."
He rose to his feet in a temper at that. He turned his back on the fire.
"What's the use of getting on this every time!" he cried. And he took up his hat. "I'm weary of it. I'm off. I don't know that I shall come back again. What's the use?" with a side-long glance at her dark, handsome face and curving figure which the firelight threw into prominence.
"If there were anything to do," she asked, as if he had never spoken, never answered the question, "would you do it?" And she smiled at him, her head thrown back, her red lips parted, her eyes tempting.
"You know I would if-" He paused.
"There were some one to be won by it?"
He nodded, his eyes kindling.
"Well-"
No more. For as she spoke the word, and he bent forward, something heavy fell on the floor overhead; and she sat up straight. Her eyes, grown suddenly hard and small-perhaps with fright-held Tyson's eyes.
"What's that?" he cried, frowning suspiciously. "There's nobody upstairs?"
"Father's in bed," she said. She held up a finger for silence.
"And there's nobody else in the house?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Who should there be?" she said. "It's the cat, I suppose."
"You'd better let me see," he rejoined. And he took a step towards the staircase door.
"No need," she answered listlessly, after listening anew. "I'm not afraid. The cat is not here; it must have been the cat. I'll go up when you are gone, and see."
"It's not safe," he grumbled, still inclined to go. "You two alone here, and the old man said to be as rich as a lord!"
"Ay, said to be," she answered, smiling "As you said you were going ten minutes ago, and you are not gone yet. But-" she rose with a yawn, partly real and partly forced, "you must go now, my lad."
"But why?" he answered. "When we were just beginning to understand one another."
"Why?" she answered pertly. "Because father wants to sleep. Because your wife will scratch my eyes out if you don't. Because I am not going to say another word to-night-whatever I may say to-morrow. And because-it's my will, my lad. That's all."
He muttered his discontent, swinging his hat in his hand, and making eyes at her. But she kept him at arm's length, and after a moment's argument she drove him to the door.
"All the same," he said, when he stood outside, "you had better let me look upstairs."
But she laughed.
"I dare say you'd like it!" she said; and she shut the door in his face and he heard the great bar that secured it shot into its socket in the thickness of the wall. In a temper not much better than that in which he had left the inn, he groped his way round the house, and up the three steps at the corner of the building. He swore at the dog that it might know who came, and so he passed into the road. Once he looked back at the house, but all was dark. The windows looked the other way.
CHAPTER IX
PUNISHMENT
Anthony Clyne came to a stand before her, and lifted his hat.
"I understand," he said, without letting his eyes meet hers-he was stiffness itself, but perhaps he too had his emotions-"that you preferred to see me here rather than indoors?"
"Yes," Henrietta answered. And the girl thanked heaven that though the beating of her heart had nearly choked her a moment before, her tone was as hard and uncompromising as his. He could not guess, he never should guess, what strain she put on nerve and will that she might not quail before him; nor how often, with her quivering face hidden in the pillow, she had told herself, before rising, that it was for once only, once only, and that then she need never see again the man she had wronged.
"I do not know," he continued slowly, "whether you have anything to say?"
"Nothing," she answered. They were standing on the Ambleside road, a short furlong from the inn. Leafless trees climbed the hill-side above them; and a rough slope, unfenced and strewn with boulders and dying bracken, ran down from their feet to the lake.
"Then," he rejoined, with a scarcely perceptible hardening of the mouth, "I had best say as briefly as possible what I am come to say."
"If you please," she said. Hitherto she had faced him regally. Now she averted her eyes ever so slightly, and placed herself so that she looked across the water that gleamed pale under the morning mist.
Yet, even with her eyes turned from him, he did not find it easy to say what he must say. And for a few seconds he was silent. At last "I do not wish to upbraid you," he began in a voice somewhat lower in tone. "You have done a very foolish and a very wicked, wicked thing, and one which cannot be undone in the eyes of the world. That is for all to see. You have left your home and your friends and your family under circumstances-"
She turned her full face to him suddenly.
"Have they," she said, "empowered you to speak to me?"
"Yes."
"They do not wish to see me themselves?"
"No."
"Nor perhaps-wish me to return to them?"
"No."
She nodded