"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towards town. Gentleman with her."
Then he rushed out to attend to the express.
But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must be; she had left the station in quest of it.
And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the left. She pa.s.sed through it, and hurried up the steep path beyond it.
Again and again she hid herself behind the boulders with which the fell was strewn, lest her moving figure should be seen from below--often she stopped in terror, haunted by the sound of steps, imagining a breath, a voice, behind her.
She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down the sob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by the pursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full of them--and be lost there--still worse, found there!--wounded, defenceless.
But at last the slope is climbed. She sees before her a small platform, on a black network of supporting posts--an engine-house--and beyond, truck lines with half-a-dozen empty trucks upon them, lines that run away in front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she has been climbing.
Further on, a dark gulf--then the dazzling wall of the quarry. A patch of deepest, blackest shadow, at the seaward end of the engine-house, caught her eye. She gained it, sank down within it, strengthless and gasping.
Surely no one could see her here! Yet presently she perceived beside her a low pile of planks within the shadow, and for greater protection crept behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in the moon.
Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness, the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only weep--and weep.
And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to offer her any disrespect?
Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?
Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly and a driver.
But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational being was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had suddenly aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight from him was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage, he would still have been there, within reach of her, or beside her. The very dream of it made her crouch more closely behind the pile of planks.
The moon is at her height; across the bay, mountains and lower hills rise towards her, "ambitious" for that silver hallowing she sheds upon sh.o.r.e and bay. The night is one sigh of softness. The rivers glide glistening to the sea. Even the shining roofs of the little station and the white line of the road have beauty, mingle in the common spell. But on Laura it does not work. She is in the hall at Bannisdale--on the Marsland platform--in the woodland roads through which Mr. Helbeck has driven home.
No!--by now he is in his study. She sees the crucifix, the books, the little altar. There he sits--he is thinking, perhaps, of the girl who is out in the night with her drunken cousin, the girl whom he has warned, protected, thought for in a hundred ways--who had planned this day out of mere wilfulness--who cannot possibly have made any honest mistake as to times and trains.
She wrings her hands. Oh! but Polly must have explained, must have convinced him that owing to a prig"s self-confidence they were all equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert--? But then, how is she at fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly"s lips. The words glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with them. But that face in the oak chair does not change.
Yet in flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl"s name were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care--take any trouble? Would such a ravening world be worth respecting, worth the fearing?
It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there be these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holds nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less.
How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the same adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed it down; would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with Hubert.
Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring.
Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina"s sake? But never the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!
Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is escaping her, tearing its way to the light.
How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to have been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all ages the woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do without her. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields.
Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose first thought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundred torturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange pa.s.sion of it!--it rushes through the girl"s nature in one blending storm of longing and despair....
... What sound was that?
She raised her head. A call came from the sands--a distant call, floating through the night. Another--and another! She stood up--she sprang on the heap of planks, straining her eyes. Yes--surely she saw a figure on that wide expanse of sand, moving quickly, moving away? And one after another the cries rose, waking dim echoes from the sh.o.r.e.
It was Hubert, no doubt--Hubert in pursuit, and calling to her, lest she should come unawares upon the danger spots that marked the sands.
She stood and watched the moving speck till it was lost in a band of shadow. Then she saw it no more, and the cries ceased.
Would he be at Bannisdale before she was? She dashed away her tears, and smiled. Ah! Let him seek her there!--let him herald her. Light broke upon her; she began to rise from her misery.
But she must sleep a little, or she would never have the strength to begin her walk with the dawn. For walk she would, instead of waiting for tardy trains. She saw herself climbing the fell--she would never trust herself to the road, the open road, where cousins might be hiding after all--finding her way through back lanes into sleeping villages, waking someone, getting a carriage to a point above the park, then slipping down to the door in the garden and so entering by the chapel, when entrance was possible. She would go straight to Augustina. Poor Augustina! there would be little sleep for her to-night. The tears rose again in the girl"s eyes.
She drew her thin shawl round her, and crept again into the shadow of the engine-house. Not three hours, and the day would have returned. But already the dawn-breath seemed to be blowing through the night. For it had grown cold and her limbs shivered.
... She woke often in terror, pursued by sheets of flame, or falling through unfathomed s.p.a.ce; haunted all through by a sense of doom, an awful expectancy--like one approaching some grisly Atreus-threshold and conscious of the death behind it. But sleep seized her again, a cold tormented sleep, and the hours pa.s.sed.
Meanwhile the light that had hardly gone came welling gently back. The stars paled; the high mountains wrapped themselves in clouds; a clear yellow mounted from the east, flooding the dusk with cheerfulness. Then the birds woke. The diminished sands, on which the tide was creeping, sparkled with sea-birds; the air was soon alive with their white curves.
With a start Laura awoke. Above the eastern fells scarlet feather-clouds were hovering; the sun rushed upon them as she looked; and in that blue dimness to the north lay Bannisdale.
She sprang up, stared half aghast at the black depths of the quarry, beside which she had been sleeping, then searched the fell with her eyes.
Yes, there was the upward path. She struck into it, praying that friend and houses might meet her soon.
Meanwhile it seemed that nothing moved in the world but she.
CHAPTER III
It was on the stroke of midnight when the message from Braeside was handed to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been dragged by that gentleman"s urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottage beside the line.
The master of Bannisdale thrust the slip of paper into his pocket, and stood an instant with bent head, as though reflecting.
"Thank you, Mr. Brough," he said at last. "I will not ask you to do anything more. Good-night."
Rightful reward pa.s.sed, and Mr. Helbeck left the station. Outside, his pony cart stood tied to the station railing.
Before entering it he debated with himself whether he should drive on to the town of Marsland, get horses there and then, and make for Braeside at once.
He could get there in about a couple of hours. And then?
To search a sleeping town for Miss Fountain--would that mend matters?
A carriage arriving at two o"clock in the morning--the inn awakened--no lady there, perhaps--for what was to prevent her having found decent shelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-house visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must in any case get abroad!
He turned the pony homewards.
Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night.