"My good girl," he said, "I am sure I do not know where he is--but it is very evident that he ought to be here, since you have amiably put yourself to such trouble. It is fortunate for you perhaps that I am here before him. What does this mean?" the question breaking from him with savage authority.
He had dragged her back to earth. She sat upright and recognised him with a hideous sense of shock, but he did not give her time to speak.
His instinct of male fury leaped within him.
"YOU!" he cried out. "It takes a woman like you to come and hide herself in a place of this sort, like a trolloping gipsy wench! It takes a New York millionairess or a Roman empress or one of Charles the Second"s d.u.c.h.esses to plunge as deep as this. You, with your golden pedestal--you, with your ostentatious airs and graces--you, with your condescending to give a man a chance to repent his sins and turn over a new leaf! d.a.m.n it," rising to a sort of frenzy, "what are you doing waiting in a hole like this--in this weather--at this hour--you--you!"
The fool"s flame leaped high enough to make him start forward, as if to seize her by the shoulder and shake her.
But she rose and stepped back to lean against the side of the chimney--to brace herself against it, so that she could stand in her lame foot"s despite. Every drop of blood had been swept from her face, and her eyes looked immense. His coming was a good thing for her, though she did not know it. It brought her back from unearthly places. All her child hatred woke and blazed in her. Never had she hated a thing so, and it set her slow, cold blood running like something molten.
"Hold your tongue!" she said in a clear, awful young voice of warning.
"And take care not to touch me. If you do--I have my whip here--I shall lash you across your mouth!"
He broke into ribald laughter. A certain sudden thought which had cut into him like a knife thrust into flesh drove him on.
"Do!" he cried. "I should like to carry your mark back to Stornham--and tell people why it was given. I know who you are here for. Only such fellows ask such things of women. But he was determined to be safe, if you hid in a ditch. You are here for Mount Dunstan--and he has failed you!"
But she only stood and stared at him, holding her whip behind her, knowing that at any moment he might s.n.a.t.c.h it from her hand. And she knew how poor a weapon it was. To strike out with it would only infuriate him and make him a wild beast. And it was becoming an agony to stand upon her foot. And even if it had not been so--if she had been strong enough to make a leap and dash past him, her horse stood outside disabled.
Nigel Anstruthers" eyes ran over her from head to foot, down the side of her mud-stained habit, while a curious light dawned in them.
"You have had a fall from your horse," he exclaimed. "You are lame!"
Then quickly, "That was why Childe Harold was trembling and standing on three feet! By Jove!"
Then he sat down on the nail keg and began to laugh. He laughed for a full minute, but she saw he did not take his eyes from her.
"You are in as unpleasant a situation as a young woman can well be," he said, when he stopped. "You came to a dirty hole to be alone with a man who felt it safest not to keep his appointment. Your horse stumbled and disabled himself and you. You are twenty miles from home in a deserted cottage in a lane no one pa.s.ses down even in good weather. You are frightened to death and you have given me even a better story to play with than your sister gave me. By Jove!"
His face was an unholy thing to look upon. The situation and her powerlessness were exciting him.
"No," she answered, keeping her eyes on his, as she might have kept them on some wild animal"s, "I am not frightened to death."
His ugly dark flush rose.
"Well, if you are not," he said, "don"t tell me so. That kind of defiance is not your best line just now. You have been disdaining me from magnificent New York heights for some time. Do you think that I am not enjoying this?"
"I cannot imagine anyone else who would enjoy it so much." And she knew the answer was daring, but would have made it if he had held a knife"s point at her throat.
He got up, and walking to the door drew it back on its crazy hinges and managed to shut it close. There was a big wooden bolt inside and he forced it into its socket.
"Presently I shall go and put the horses into the cowshed," he said.
"If I leave them standing outside they will attract attention. I do not intend to be disturbed by any gipsy tramp who wants shelter. I have never had you quite to myself before."
He sat down again and nursed his knee gracefully.
"And I have never seen you look as attractive," biting his under lip in cynical enjoyment. "To-day"s adventure has roused your emotions and actually beautified you--which was not necessary. I daresay you have been furious and have cried. Your eyes do not look like mere eyes, but like splendid blue pools of tears. Perhaps _I_ shall make you cry sometime, my dear Betty."
"No, you will not."
"Don"t tempt me. Women always cry when men annoy them. They rage, but they cry as well."
"I shall not."
"It"s true that most women would have begun to cry before this. That is what stimulates me. You will swagger to the end. You put the devil into me. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road, languid and bored to extinction. And now----" He laughed outright in actual exultation. "By Jove!" he cried out. "Things like this don"t happen to a man in these dull days! There"s no such luck going about. We"ve gone back five hundred years, and we"ve taken New York with us." His laugh shut off in the middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy, congested face close to hers. "Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here is your ancient enemy given his chance--given his chance. Do you think, by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote your own words, "you may place entire confidence in that.""
Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from it and left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in him had risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senseless folly to-morrow and know he must pay for it, but he would not see it to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said was insurmountable truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marsh land, a seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was rising on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had happened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they were recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Was all this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back against the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, while Rosy was waiting for her at Stornham--and at this very hour her father was planning his journey across the Atlantic?
"Why did you not behave yourself?" demanded Nigel Anstruthers, shaking her by the shoulder. "Why did you not realise that I should get even with you one day, as sure as you were woman and I was man?"
She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was it the wildest thing in the world which happened to her--or was it not?
Without warning--the sudden rush of a thought, immense and strange, swept over her body and soul and possessed her--so possessed her that it changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstruthers who shrank back a shade because, for the moment, she looked so near unearthly.
"I am not afraid of you," she said, in a clear, unshaken voice. "I am not afraid. Something is near me which will stand between us--something which DIED to-day."
He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught back his breath and recovered himself.
"Died to-day! That"s recent enough," he jeered. "Let us hear about it.
Who was it?"
"It was Mount Dunstan," she flung at him. "The church-bells were tolling for him when I rode away. I could not stay to hear them. It killed me--I loved him. You were right when you said it. I loved him, though he never knew. I shall always love him--though he never knew. He knows now.
Those who died cannot go away when THAT is holding them. They must stay.
Because I loved him, he may be in this place. I call on him----" raising her clear voice. "I call on him to stand between us."
He backed away from her, staring an evil, enraptured stare.
"What! There is that much temperament in you?" he said. "That was what I half-suspected when I saw you first. But you have hidden it well. Now it bursts forth in spite of you. Good Lord! What luck--what luck!"
He moved to the door and opened it.
"I am a very modern man, and I enjoy this to the utmost," he said. "What I like best is the melodrama of it--in connection with Fifth Avenue.
I am perfectly aware that you will not discuss this incident in the future. You are a clever enough young woman to know that it will be more to your interest than to mine that it shall be kept exceedingly quiet."
The white fire had not died out of her and she stood straight.
"What I have called on will be near me, and will stand between us," she said.
Old though it was, the door was ma.s.sive and heavy to lift. To open it cost him some muscular effort.
"I am going to the horses now," he explained before he dragged it back into its frame and shut her in. "It is safe enough to leave you here.
You will stay where you are."
He felt himself secure in leaving her because he believed she could not move, and because his arrogance made it impossible for him to count on strength and endurance greater than his own. Of endurance he knew nothing and in his keen and cynical exultance his devil made a fool of him.
As she heard him walk down the path to the gate, Betty stood amazed at his lack of comprehension of her.
"He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will wait until he comes back," she whispered to the emptiness of the bare room.
Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now she stooped and touched her foot.