Already there was a new note in his voice, a hoa.r.s.e, tyrannous note, as though he felt her in his power. In her terror the girl recalled that wild drive from the Browhead dance, with its disgusts and miseries. Was he sober now? What was she to do?--how was she to protect herself? She felt a pa.s.sionate conviction that she was trapped, that he had planned the whole catastrophe, knowing well what would be thought of her at Bannisdale--in the neighbourhood.
She looked round her, making a desperate effort to keep down exhaustion and excitement. The main-line train had just gone, and the station-master, with a lantern in his hand, was coming up the platform.
Laura went to meet him.
"I"ve made a mistake and missed the last train to Marsland. Can I sit here in the station till the morning?"
The station-master looked at her sharply--then at the man standing a yard or two behind her. The young lady had to his eye a wild, dishevelled appearance. Her fair hair had escaped its bonds in all directions, and was hanging loose upon her neck behind. Her hat had been crumpled and bent by the child"s embracing arms; the little muslin dress showed great smears of coal-dust here and there, and the light gloves were black.
"No, Miss," he said, with rough decision. "You can"t sit in the station.
There"ll be one more train down directly--the express--and then we shut the station for the night."
"How long will that be?" she asked faintly. He looked at his watch.
"Thirty-five minutes. You can go to the hotel, Miss. It"s quite respectable."
He gave her another sharp glance. He was a Dissenter, a man of northern piety, strict as to his own morals and other people"s. What on earth was she doing here, in that untidy state, with a young man, at an hour going on for midnight? Missed train? The young man said nothing about missed trains.
But just as he was turning away, the girl detained him.
"How far is it across the sands to Marsland station?"
"Eight miles, about--shortest way."
"And the road?"
"Best part of fifteen."
He walked off, throwing a parting word behind him.
"Now understand, please, I can"t have anybody here when we lock up for the night."
Laura hardly heard him. She was looking first to one side of the station, then to the other. The platform and line stood raised under the hill.
Just outside the station to the north the sands of the estuary stretched bare and wide under the moon. In the other direction, on her right hand, the hills rose steeply; and close above the line a limestone quarry made a huge gash in the fell-side. She stood and stared at the wall of glistening rock that caught the moon; at the little railing at the top, sharp against the sky; at the engine-house and empty trucks.
Suddenly she turned back towards Mason. He stood a few yards away on the platform, watching her, and possessed by a dumb rage of jealousy that entirely prevented him from playing any rational or plausible part. Her bitter tone, her evident misery, her refusal an hour or two before to let him be her escort home--all that he had feared and suspected that morning--during the past few weeks,--these things made a dark tumult about him, in which nothing else was audible than the alternate cries of anger and pa.s.sion.
But she walked up to him boldly. She tried to laugh.
"Well! it is very unlucky and very disagreeable. But the station-master says there is a respectable inn. Will you go and see, while I wait? If it won"t do--if it isn"t a place I can go to--I"ll rest here while you ask, and then I shall walk on over the sands to Marsland. It"s eight miles--I can do it."
He exclaimed:
"No, you can"t."--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, a note that increased the girl"s fear of him.--"Not unless you let me take you. And I suppose you"d sooner die than put up with another hour of me!--The sands are dangerous. You can ask them."
He nodded towards the men in the distance.
She put a force on herself, and smiled. "Why shouldn"t you take me? But go and look at the inn first--please!--I"m very tired. Then come and report."
She settled herself on a seat, and drew a little white shawl about her.
From its folds her small face looked up softened and beseeching.
He lingered--his mind half doubt, half violence, He meant to force her to listen to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that priest-ridden fool at Bannisdale.
She seemed so tiny, so fragile a thing as he looked down upon her. An ugly sense of power came to consciousness in him. Coupled with despair, indeed! For it was her very delicacy, her gentlewoman"s grace--maddeningly plain to _him_ through all the stains of the steel works--that made hope impossible, that thrust him down as her inferior forever.
"Promise you won"t attempt anything by yourself--promise you"ll sit here till I come back," he said in a tone that sounded like a threat.
"Of course."
He still hesitated. Then a glance at the sands decided him. How, on their bare openness, could she escape him?--if she did give him the slip. Here and there streaks of mist lay thin and filmy in the moonlight. But as a rule the sands were clear, the night without a stain.
"All right. I"ll be back in ten minutes--less!"
She nodded. He hurried along the platform, asked a question or two of the station-master, and disappeared.
She turned eagerly to watch. She saw him run down the road outside the station--past a grove of trees--out into the moonlight again. Then the road bent and she saw him no more. Just beyond the bend appeared the first houses of the little town.
She rose. Her heart beat so, it seemed to her to be a hostile thing hindering her. A panic terror drove her on, but exhaustion and physical weakness caught at her will, and shod her feet with lead.
She walked down the platform, however, to the station-master.
"The gentleman has gone to inquire at the inn. Will you kindly tell him when he comes back that I have made up my mind after all to walk to Marsland? He can catch me up on the sands."
"Very good, Miss. But the sands aren"t very safe for those that don"t know "em. If you"re a stranger you"d better not risk it."
"I"m not a stranger, and my cousin knows the way perfectly. You can send him after me."
She left the station. In her preoccupation she never gave another thought to the station-master.
But there was something in the whole matter that roused that person"s curiosity. He walked along the raised platform to a point where he could see what became of the young lady.
There was only one exit from the station. But just outside, the road from the town pa.s.sed in a tunnel under the line. To get at the sands one must double back on the line after leaving the station, walk through the tunnel, and then leave the road to your right. The stony edge of the sands came up to the road, which shot away eastwards along the edge of the estuary, a straight white line that gradually lost itself in the night.
The man watching saw the small figure emerge. But the girl never once turned to the tunnel. She walked straight towards the town, and he lost sight of her in a dense patch of shadow made by some overhanging trees about a hundred yards from the station.
"Upon my word, she"s a deep "un!" he said, turning away; "it beats me--fair."
"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There"s a message just come in, sir."
The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment.
It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have dropped.
He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train, kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck, Bannisdale."
The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long after hours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerable difficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station would have been shut before ten o"clock, after the arrival of the last train.
Another click--and the rattle of the signal outside. The express was at hand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and he had already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct of the two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastily replied: