CHAPTER X.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8452, 21 October 1905, Page 1

CHAPTER K.

HENBIETTA IN NAXOS. , Youth feels, let the adult say what he pleases, more deeply than middle age. It suffers and enjoys with a poignancy unknown in later life. But in revenge it is oast down more lightly, and uplifted with less reason. The mature have seen so many sunny mornings grow to tearful noons, so many days of stress close in peace, that their moods are not to the 6ame degree at the mercy of passing accidents. But it is with the young as with the tender shoots; they raise their heads to meet the April sun, as naturally they droop in the harsh east wind. And Henrietta had been more fchan girl, certainly more than nineteen. \i she had not owned the influence or the soeno and the morning that lapped her about when she next passed the threshold of the inn. She had spent in the meantime three days at which memory shuddered. Alone in her room, shrinking from every eye, turning her back on the woman who waited on her, she had found her pride insufficient to support her. Solitude ie a medium whioh exaggerates all objects, and th& longer Henrietta brooded over her past folly and her present disgrace, i the more intolerable these grew to the eye. : Fortunately, if Modest Ami's heart | bled for her, Mrs Gilson viewed her misfortunes with a saner and less sensitive eye. She saw that if the girl were left longer to herself her health would fail.Already the child looked two years older — looked a woman. So the fourth morning Mrs Gilson burst in on her, found her moping at the window with her eyes on the lake, and forthwith, after her fashion, she treated her to a piece of her mind. "See here, young miss," she said bluntly, " I'll have nobody ill in my house! Much more making themselves ill! In three days Bishop's to be back, and they'll wanit you, like enough. And a pale, peaking face won't help you, but rather the other way with men, auch foola as they be You get your gear and go out." Henrietta said meekly that she would do so. " There's a basket I want to send to Tyson's," the landlady went on. " She's ailing. It's a flea's -load, but I suppose " ? sticking her arms akimbo and looking straight at tie girl. ''* you're too much of a lady to carry it." "I'll take it very willingly," Henrietta said. And she rose with a spark of something approaching interest in her ©y«s. • . " Well, I've nobody else," said Running Mrs Gilson. " And I don't suppose you'll rim from me, 'twist here and there. And she's a poor thing. She's going to have a babby, and couldn't be more lonely if she was in Patterdale." And sh© described the way. adding that if Henrietta, kept, the road no ono would meddle with her at that hour of the morning. The girl found her head-covering, and, submitting with a good grace to the basket, she set forth. As she emerged 1 from the inn— for three dayß. vshe had not been out— she cast a halfshamed, half-defiant look this way and that. But only Modest Ann was watching h«r from a window, and if ever Si Martin procured for the faithful a summer day, initempestave as the chroniclers have it, this was the day. A warm sun glowed in the brown hollows of the wood, and turned the dying fern to flame, and spread the sheet of velvet over green lull-side and grey crag. A mild west wind enlivened *the surface of the', lake with the sparkle of innumerable wavelets, and all that had for days, been lead «eemed turned to sil-. ver. The air was brisk and clear; in a heaven of their own, very far off, the great peaks glittered and shone. The , •Eishar. Henrietta, climbed above -the inn*

roofs, and the cares that centred there, the lighter, in spite of herself— how could it be otherwise with that scene of beauty stretched before her?— rose her heart. Half a dozen times as she mounted the hill she paused to view the scene through the tender mist of her own unnappiness. But every time she stood, the rare fleck of cloud gliding across the blue, or the dancing ripple of the water below, appealed to her, and caused her thoughts to wander; and youth and hope spoke more loudly. She was young. Surely at her age an error was not irreparable. Surely things would take a turn. For even now she was less unhappy, less ashamed. When she came to the summit of the shoulder, the bare gauntness of Hinkson's farm, which rested over the beauty of sunshine, caused her a momentary chill. The dog raved at her from the wind-swept litter of the yard. The bind gable-end scowled through the firs. Behind lay the squalid outbuildings, roofless and empty. She hurried by — not without a backward glance. _. She cro-S---ed the ridge, and almost immediately say in a cup of the hills below hei--bo directly below her that roofs ami yards and pigstyes lay mapped out under her eye — another farm. On three sides the smooth hill-turf sloped steeply to the walls. -On the fourth, where a stream, which had its source beside the farm, round vent, a wood choked the descending gorge and hid the vale and the lake below. Deep-seated in its green bowl, the house was as lonely in position as the house on the shoulder, but after a warmer and more sheltered fashion. Conceivably peace and plenty, comfort and happiness might nestle in it. Yet the nearer Henrietta descended to it, leaving the world of space and view, the more a sense of stillness and isolation, and almost of danger, pressed upon her. No sound of farm life, no oheery olank of horse-gear, no human voice broke the silence of the hills. Only a few hens scratched in the fold-yard: She struck on the half-open door, and a pair of pattens clanked across the kitchen flags. A clownish, dull-faced woman with drugget petticoats showed herself. " I've come to see Mrs Tyson," Henrietta said. "She's in the house?" "Oh, ay." " Can' 1 see her?" "Oh, ay." " Then " "She's on the settle." As she spoke the woman stood aside, but continued to stare as if her curiosity grudged the loss of a moment. The kitchen, or house place — im those days the rough work of a farmhouse was done in the scullery — was spacious and clean, though sparsely and massively furnished. The flag floor was outlined in white squares, and the space about the fire was made more private by a tail settle whioh flanked th© chimney corner and averted the draught. These appearances foretold a red-armed, bustling nousewifo. But they were belied by the pale plump face framed in untidy hair, which, half in fright and half in bewilderment, peered at; her over the arm of the settle. It was a face- that had been pretty after a feeble fashion no more, than twelve months back; now it bore the mark of strain and trouble/.' And when it was not peevish it was frightened. Certainly it was no longer pretty. The owner of the face got slowly to her feet. "Is it me you want?" she aaid, ncr tone spiritless. "'lf you are Mrs Tyson," Henrietta answered gentiy. "Yes, fain." "I have brought you some things Mrs Gilson of tlie inn wished to send "I am obliged to you," with stiff shyness. f: And if you do not mind,' Henrietta continued frankly, "I will rest p little. If I do- not ixrouble you." "No, I'm most alone," the young woman answered, slowly and apathetically. And sh© bade tho servant set a chair for the visitor, and, that done, she despatched the woman with the basket to the larder. Then "I'm mostly alone/ she repeated. And this time her voice quivered, and her eyes met the other woman's eyes. "But," Henrietta said, smiling, "you have your husband." " He's often away, }) wearily. ** He's often away; by day and night. He's a doctor." " But your servant P You have her?" " She goes home, nights. And then . ." with a spasm of the querulous face that had been pretty no more than -a year before, "the hours are long when you are alone. You don't know," timidly reaching out a hand as if she would touoh Henrietta's frock-— but withdrawing it quiokly, " what it is to be alone, miss, all night in such a house as this." „ , 1U _ "No, and no one should be!'* Henrietta answered. She glanced round the great silent kitchen, and tried to fanoy what the house would be like of nights j when darkness settled down on the hollow in the hills, and the wood out it off from the world below; and when,; whatever threatened, whatever oame, whatever face of terror peered through the lowbrowed window, whatever sound, weird or startling, rent the silence of the distant rooms, this helpless woman must face it alone ! She shuddered. "But you are not alone all night?" she said. t . "No but—— in a whisper, often until after midnight, miss. And once all night." Henrietta restrained the words that rose to her lips, "Ah, well, she eaid, " you'll hayie your baby ty*?&" h j/' „ "Ay if it lives, ' the other woman answered moodily-« it lives. And," she 'continued in^a whisper, with her i: scared eyes on Henrietta's face,, and her hand on her wrist, If I live, miss." ■ ■ , ... . „ "Oh but you must not think of thai 1 !" the girl protested cheerfully. "Of course you will live." "I've mostly nought to do but' think " Tyson' 8 wife answered. " And I think queer things, Sometimes" — tightening her hold on Henrietta's arm to stay her shocked remonstrance — "that he does not wish me to live. He's at the house on the shoulder-— Hittkaon's, the . one you passed — most nights There's a girl there. And yesterday he said if I was lonely she should come and bide here while I laid up, and she'd be company for me. But" j n a tone that was almost a wail— " I* m afr aid ! ~ l>m afraid." " Afraid?" Henrietta repeated, twMnblina: a little in sympathy, and dr^S W&& nearer the other! "Of W "Of her!" the other muttered, at was ncrw*«* &..- -•••••-

" Oh, but indeed," Henrietta protested, " indeed, you must not think of these things. You are not weH, and you have fancies." Mrs Tyson shook her head. " You'd have fancies," in a gloomy tone, " if you lived in this house." " It is only because you are so much alone in it," the girl protested. "That's not all," with a shudder. The woman leant forward and spoke low with her oyes glued to the door. "That's not all. You don't know, nobody knows — that's alive! But once, after I came to live here, when I complained that he was out so much and was not treating me well, he took and showed me " " What?" Henrietta spoke as lightly as she could. " What did he show you?" For the woman had broken off, and, with her eyes closed, seemed to be on the point of fainting. " Nothing— nothing," Mrs Tyson said, recovering herself with a sudden gasp. " And here's the basket, miss. Meg lives down below. Shall she carry the basket to Mrs Gilson's? It is not fitting a young lady like you should carry it." "Oh, no; I will take it," Henrietta answered, with as careless an air as she could muster. And after a moment's awkward hesitation, under the eyes of the dull serving-maid, she rose. She would gladly have stayed and heard more; for her pity and curiosity were alike vividly roused. But it was plain that for the present she could neither act upon the one nor assuage the other. She read a plea for silence in the eyes of the weak, frightened woman; and having said that probably Mrs Gilson would be sending her that way again before long, she took her leave. Wondering much. For the low-ceil-ed kitchen with its shadowy chimneycorner and its small-paned windows, had another look for her now; and the stillness' of the house another meaning. Air might be the fancy of a nervous, brooding woman. And yet there was something. ■ And, something or nothing, there were unhappiness and fear and oruelty in this quiet work. As ehe climbed the track s that led again to the lip of the basin and to sunshine and brisk air and freedom, she had less pity for herself, she thought less of herself. She might have been in this poor woman's place. She might have lain, at the mercy of a careless, faithless husband, who played on her fears and mocked her appeals. She, when in her early unbroken days she complained, might have been taken and scared by — heaven knew what ! She was still thinking with indignation of the woman's plight when she gained the road. A hundred, paces brought her to Hinkson's. And there, standing under the firs at the corner of the house, and looking over her shoulder as if she had turned, in the act of entering, to see who passed, was the dark girl; the same whose" insolent smile had annoyed her on the morning of her arrival, before she knew what was in store for her. . Their eyes met. Again, Henrietta's face, to her intense vexation, flamed. Then the dog sprang up and raved at her, and she passed on down the road. But she was troubled; vexed with herself for losing countenance, and still more angry with the girl whose mocking smile had so strange a power to wound her. " That must be the creature we have been discussing," she thought. " Odd that I should meet her, and still more odd that I should have seen her before I I don't wonder the woman fears her ! But why does she look at me, of all people, after that fashion P" She told herself that it was ber fancy, and, trying to forget the matter, tripped on down the road. Presently, before her cheeks or her temper were quite cool, she saw that she was going to meet some one — a man who was slowly mounting the hill on horseback. A moment later she made but that the rider was Mr Hornyold, and her face grew hot again. The meeting was humiliating. She wished herself anywhere else. But at the worst she could bow coldly and pass by. She reckoned without the justice, who was wont to say that when he wore a cassock he was a parson, and when he wore his topboots he- was a gentleman. He recognised her with a subdued "View halloa!" and pulled up as she drew near. He slid from his saddle— with an agility that his bulk did not promise — and barred the way. With a grin and an ov«r-gallant salute, "Dear, dear, dear," he said. " Isn't this out of bounds, young lady? Outside the rules of the benoh 2 eh? What'd Mother Gileon be saying if she saw you here?" " I have been on an errand for her, Henrietta replied, in lier coldest tone. But she had to stop. The road waß narrow, and he had, as by accident, put bis horse across it. "An errand?" he said, smiling more broadly, "as f ar ac this? She is' very trusting! More trusting tihan I Bhould be with, a young lady of your appearance, who twist all the men round your finger." Henrietta's eyes sparkled. "I am returning to her," she said, " and lam late. Please to let me pass." "To be sure I will," he said. But instead of moving a«ide he drew a pace nearer; so that between . himself , th.& horse and the Dank 1 - she was hemmed In. "To be sure, young lady!" he amtinued. "But that is not quite the tone to take with, the powers that be ! We are gentle as sucking doves — to pretty young women — while we ar£ pleased ; and ready to stretch, a point, : ac we did th© ottuer day, for our friend Clyne, who was so deuced mysterious about the matter. But we must have our quid pro quo, eh? Oome, a kisa! Just one. There are onjy the birds to see and the hedges to tell, and I'll warrant " — the leer more plain in his eyes — "you are'not always so particular." Beoriebba was not frightened, but she was angry and savage. '' "Do you know who I am?" she eriefl, for the moment forgetting herself tp. her passion. "Nor!" he answered, before she could s»y more. "That is just tfhat I don't know, my girl. I have taken you on.? trust, and you are pretty enough But I know Clyne, and he is .interested in you. And his taste is good enough for me I" ■ ..'• " Let me pass I" Bhe oried. He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly behind the horse s heels and stood free. Hornyold wheeled about, and with an oath .- — "You sly baggage!" he cried. "You are not going J:o escape so easily! YoU—-^— : " There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance beyond her, wao a stranger. The sight was so kittle to be expected in that solitary. Diace, he had been so sure

that they were alone and the jrirl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. Tlfce stranger oame slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling magistrate and the indignant girl. " Good morning," he said, addressing her. "If I am not inopportune, I have a letter for you from Captain Clyne." "Then bo good enough," she answered, " first to take me out of the company of this person." And she turned her shoulder on /tfhe justice, and taking the stranger with her — almost in his own despite — she sailed off; and, a very picture of outraged dignity, swept down the road. Mr Hornyold glared after her, his bridle on bis arm. And his face was red with fury. Seldom had he been so served. "A parson, by heaven!" he said. " A regular methody, too, by his niminy-piminy get-up! Who is he, I wonder, and what in the name of mischief brought him here just at that moment? Ten to one she was looking to meet him, and that was why she played the prude, the little cat! To be sure. But I'll be even with her — in Appleby gaol or but! As for him, I've never set eyes^on him. And I've a good notion to have him taken up and lodged in,, the lock-up ! Any way, PI! set the runners on him. Not much spirit in him by the look of him ! But she's, a spit-fire!" Mr Hornyold had been so long acj customed to consider the girls of the village fair sport that he was considerably put out. True, Henrietta was not a village girl. She was something more, and a mystery; nor least a mystery in her relations with Captain Clyne, a man whom the justfee admitted to be more important than himself. But she was in trouble, she was under a cloud, she was smirched with suspicion ; she was certainly no better than she should be. And not experience only, but all the coarser instincts of the man forbade him to believe in such a woman's "No."