The young man felt a sob in his throat.
"My G.o.d! I shan"t ever see her again," he said to himself in a sudden terror. "She is going to that house--to that man!"
For the first time a wild jealousy of Helbeck awoke in him. He rushed across the bridge, dropped on a stone half-way up the further bank, then strained his eyes across the river.
... Yes, there she pa.s.sed, a swift moving whiteness, among the great trees that stood like watchmen along the high edge of the water. Below him flowed the stream, a gulf of darkness, rent here and there by sheets and jags of silver. And she, that pale wraith--across it--far away--was flitting from his ken.
All the fountains of the youth"s nature surged up in one great outcry and confusion. He thought of his boyish loves and sensualities--of the girls who had provoked them--of some of the ugly facts connected with them. A great astonishment, a great sickening, came upon him. He felt the burden of the flesh, the struggle of the spirit. And through it all, the maddest and most covetous yearning!--welling up through schemes and hopes, that like the moonlit ripples on the Greet, dissolved as fast as they took shape.
Meanwhile Laura went quickly home. A new tenderness, a new remorse towards the "cub" was in the girl"s mind. Ought she to have gone? Had she been kind? Oh! she would be his friend and good angel--without any nonsense, of course.
She hurried through the trees and along the dimly gleaming path. Suddenly she perceived in the distance the sparkle of a lantern.
How vexatious! Was there no escape for her? She looked in some trouble at the climbing woods above, at the steep bank below.
Ah! well, her hat was large, and hid her face. And her dress was all covered by her cloak. She hastened on.
It was a man--an old man--carrying a bundle and a lantern. He seemed to waver and stop as she approached him, and at the actual moment of her pa.s.sing him, to her amazement, he suddenly threw himself against one of the trees on the mountain side of the path, and his lantern showed her his face for an instant--a white face, stricken with--fear, was it? or what?
Fright gained upon herself. She ran on, and as she ran it seemed to her that she heard something fall with a clang, and, afterwards, a cry. She looked back. The old man was still there, erect, but his light was gone.
Well, no doubt he had dropped his lantern. Let him light it again. It was no concern, of hers.
Here was the door in the wall. It opened to her touch. She glided in--across the garden--found the chapel door ajar, and in a few more seconds was safe in her own room.
CHAPTER III
Laura was standing before her looking-gla.s.s straightening the curls that her rapid walk had disarranged, when her attention was caught by certain unusual sounds in the house. There was a hurrying of distant feet--calls, as though from the kitchen region--and lastly, the deep voice of Mr.
Helbeck. Miss Fountain paused, brush in hand, wondering what had happened.
A noise of fluttering skirts, and a cry for "Laura!"--Miss Fountain opened her door, and saw Augustina, who never ran, hurrying as fast as her feebleness would let her, towards her stepdaughter.
"Laura!--where is my sal volatile? You gave me some yesterday, you remember, for my headache. There"s somebody ill, downstairs."
She paused for breath.
"Here it is," said Laura, finding the bottle, and bringing it. "What"s wrong?"
"Oh, my dear, such an adventure! There"s an old man fainted in the kitchen. He came to the back door to ask for a light for his lantern.
Mrs. Denton says he was shaking all over when she first saw him, and as white as her ap.r.o.n. He told her he"d seen the ghost! "I"ve often heard tell o" the Bannisdale Lady," he said, "an now I"ve seen her!" She asked him to sit down a minute to rest himself, and he fainted straight away.
He"s that old Scarsbrook, you know, whose wife does our washing. They live in that cottage by the weir, the other end of the park. I must go!
Mrs. Denton"s giving him some brandy--and Alan"s gone down. Isn"t it an extraordinary thing?"
"Very," said Laura, accompanying her stepmother along the pa.s.sage. "What did he see?"
She paused, laying a restraining hand on Augustina"s arm--cudgelling her brains the while. Yes! she could remember now a few contemptuous remarks of Mr. Helbeck to Father Leadham on the subject of a ghost story that had sprung up during the Squire"s memory in connection with the park and the house--a quite modern story, according to Helbeck, turning on the common motive of a gypsy woman and her curse, started some forty years before this date, with a local success not a little offensive, apparently, to the owner of Bannisdale.
"What did he see?" repeated the girl. "Don"t hurry, Augustina; you know the doctor told you not. Shall I take the sal volatile?"
"Oh, no!--they want me." In any matter of doctoring small or great, Augustina had the happiest sense of her own importance. "I don"t know what he saw exactly. It was a lady, he says--he knew it was, by the hat and the walk. She was all in black--with "a Dolly Varden hat"--fancy the old fellow!--that hid her face--and a little white hand, that shot out sparks as he came up to her! Did you ever hear such, a tale? Now, Laura, I"m all right. Let me go. Come when you like."
Augustina hurried off; Laura was left standing pensive in the pa.s.sage.
"H"m, that"s unlucky," she said to herself.
Then she looked down at her right hand. An old-fashioned diamond ring with a large centre stone, which had been her mother"s, shone on the third finger. With an involuntary smile, she drew off the ring, and went back to her room.
"What"s to be done now?" she thought, as she put the ring in a drawer.
"Shall I go down and explain--say I was out for a stroll?"--She shook her head.--"Won"t do now--I should have had more presence of mind a minute ago. Augustina would suspect a hundred things. It"s really dramatic.
Shall I go down? He didn"t see my face--no, that I"ll answer for! Here"s for it!"
She pulled out the golden ma.s.s of her hair till it made a denser frame than usual round her brow, looked at her white dress--shook her head dubiously--laughed at her own flushed face in the gla.s.s, and calmly went downstairs.
She found an anxious group in the great bare servants" hall. The old man, supported by pillows, was stretched on a wooden settle, with Helbeck, Augustina, and Mrs. Denton standing by. The first things she saw were the old peasant"s closed eyes and pallid face--then Helbeck"s grave and puzzled countenance above him. The Squire turned at Miss Fountain"s step.
Did she imagine it--or was there a peculiar sharpness in his swift glance?
Mrs. Denton had just been administering a second dose of brandy, and was apparently in the midst of her own report to her master of Scarsbrook"s story.
""I wor just aboot to pa.s.s her," he said, "when I nawticed "at her feet made noa noise. She keam glidin--an glidin--an my hair stood reet oop--it lifted t"whole top o" my yed. An she gaed pa.s.st me like a puff o"
wind--as cauld as ice--an I wor mair deed nor alive. An I luked afther her, an she vanisht i" th" varra middle o" t" path. An my leet went oot--an I durstn"t ha gane on, if it wor iver so--so I juist crawled back tet hoose----""
"The door in the wall!" thought Laura. "He didn"t know it was there."
She had remained in the background while Mrs. Denton was speaking, but now she approached the settle. Mrs. Denton threw a sour look at her, and flounced out of her way. Helbeck silently made room for her. As she pa.s.sed him, she felt instinctively that his distant politeness had become something more p.r.o.nounced. He left her questions to Augustina to answer, and himself thrust his hands into his pockets and moved away.
"Have you sent for anyone?" said Laura to Mrs. Fountain.
"Yes. Wilson"s gone in the pony cart for the wife. And if he doesn"t come round by the time she gets here--some one will have to go for the doctor, Alan?"
She looked round vaguely.
"Of course. Wilson must go on," said Helbeck from the distance. "Or I"ll go myself."
"But he is coming round," said Laura, pointing.
"If yo"ll n.o.bbut move oot o" t" way, Miss, we"ll be able to get at "im,"
said Mrs. Denton sharply. Laura hastily obeyed her. The housekeeper brought more brandy; then signs of returning force grew stronger, and by the time the wife appeared the old fellow was feebly beginning to move and look about him.
Amid the torrent of lamentations, questions, and hypotheses that the wife poured forth, Laura withdrew into the background. But she could not prevail on herself to go. Daring or excitement held her there, till the old man should be quite himself again.
He struggled to his feet at last, and said, with a long sigh that was still half a shudder, "Aye--noo I"ll goa home--Lisbeth."
He was a piteous spectacle as he stood there, still trembling through all his stunted frame, his wrinkled face drawn and bloodless, his grey hair in a tragic confusion. Suddenly, as he looked at his wife, he said with a clear solemnity, "Lisbeth--I ha" got my death warrant!"