I tied up my horse in a thicket of trees half a mile from the town, and slunk from house to house in the shadow. Never before or since have I known such fear as I knew that night in Keswick, so urgent had the necessity that I must keep free, become with me during these last hours since I had climbed from Brandreth down to Applegarth. If the wind drove the leaves of the trees fluttering up the roadway, I cowered against the wall and trembled. If a dog barked from a farmhouse in the distance, I stood with my heart fainting in my breast, listening—listening for the rhythmic tread of soldiers; and when I saw on the opposite side of the street, some yards above me, a light glimmering in a window, I stopped altogether, in two minds whether or no to turn back. I looked irresolutely up and down the street. It was so dark, so still; only that one steady light burned in a window. The melancholy voice of a watchman, a couple of streets away, chanted out, “Half-past twelve, and a dull, cloudy morning.” The phrase was repeated and repeated in a dwindling tone. I waited until it had died away, and afterwards. But the light burned wakeful, persistent, a little heart of fire in a body of darkness. I felt that I dared not pass it Some one watched beside that lamp, with eyes fixed on the yellow path it traced across the road. My fears fed upon themselves and swelled into a panic, I turned and took a step or two down the hill, and it was precisely that movement which brought me to my senses and revealed to me the cowardice of the action. For if I dared not pass that lamp, still less dared I return to Applegarth with the night’s work undone. I retraced my steps very slowly until I came opposite to the window, and then, so great was the revulsion of my feeling that I reeled back against the wall, my heart jerking, my whole strength gone from me. For there at the window, beside the lamp, her face buried in her hands, was the woman I had come to seek. I might have known, I thought! For who else should be watching at this lone hour in Keswick if not this woman? I might have guessed from the position of the house in the street. It was a beacon which I had seen, this glimmering lamp, and I had taken it for no more than a wrecker’s light.
I looked about me. The street was deserted from end to end I crossed it, and picking up a pebble flung it lightly at the window. The pebble cracked against the pane—how loudly, to my impatient ears! Mrs. Herbert raised her head from her hands. I sent a second pebble to follow the first. She opened the sash, but so noisily I thought!
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Hush! “said I.
She leaned forward over the side of the window and peered into the darkness.
“You!” she whispered in a tone of wonderment, and again with a shiver of repulsion; “you!”
“Let me in!” said I.
She made a movement as if to close the window.
“You close the window on your hopes,” I said. “Let me in!”
“You bring news of—of Anthony?” she asked, with a catch in her voice.
“The smallest budget,” said I, “but a promise of more;” and as she, undecided, still leaned on the sill, “If I am captured here to-night, there will be no news at all.”
“Captured?” she began, and breaking off hurriedly came down the stairs and opened the door.
I followed her up into the room and drew the curtains across the window. She stood by the table in the full light of the lamp, her eyelids red, her eyes lustreless, her face worn; the very gloss seemed to have faded off her hair.
“How you have suffered!” I said, and again faltered the words, “How you have suffered!”
“And you?” she asked with a glance towards me, and nodded her head as though answering the question. “I said that payment would be made,” she remarked simply. “It is beginning.”
“My servant brought a note to you?”
“Yes. Was it true? I did not believe that it was true.” She spoke in a dull voice. “He came yesterday night after the soldiers had been here.”
“The soldiers,” I cried, lifting my voice. The sound of it warned me; I realized that I was standing between the lamp and the window, and that if any one should pass down the street, it was my figure which would be seen. I crossed over to get behind the chair.
“Do you sit there!” said I, pointing to her former seat
She obeyed me like a child.
“So the soldiers came here?”
“Twice.”
“When?”
“The first time, that evening—I was not here—we were in the garden of Blackladies. They searched the house and took his papers away.”
“His papers!” said I. I looked over to that box in which the medal had been locked. The lid was shut I crossed to it and tried it. The lid lifted, the lock was broken and the medal gone.
“The second time they came,” said Mrs. Herbert, “was the afternoon of the next day.”
“That would be a few hours after I had escaped. They searched the house again?”
“Yes. For you.”
“For me?” 1 exclaimed; and her eyes flashed out at me.
“For whom else should they come to search, here in my lodging?”
My eyes fell from her face.
“But did they question you?” I continued. “What did they ask? For perchance I may find help in that”
But Mrs. Herbert had relapsed into her dull insensibility.
“They questioned me without end,” she answered wearily, “but I forget the questions. It was all concerning you, not a word about Anthony, and I forget.”
“Oh, but think!” I exclaimed, and I heard the watchman crying the hour in the distance. I stopped, listening. The cry grew louder. The man was coming down the street. This window alone was lighted up, and once already the soldiers had been here to search for me. I heard the watchman’s footsteps grow separate and distinct. I heard the rattle of his lantern as it swung in his hand, and beneath the window he stopped. I counted the seconds. In a little I found myself choking, and realized that in the greatness of my anxiety I was holding my breath. Then the man moved, but it seemed to me, not down the road, but nearer to the wall of the house. A new fear burst in on me.
“You left the door below unlocked?” I whispered to Mrs. Herbert
She nodded a reply.
What if he opened that door and came stumbling up the stairs? What If he found the door not merely unlocked but open, and roused the house? To be sure he would have no warrant in his pocket. But for her sake—for the sake of that tiny chance I clung to with so despairing a grip, that perhaps—perhaps I might restore to her her husband, no rumour must go out that I or any man had been there this night I crept to the door of the room and laid my hand upon the handle. What I should do I did not think. I was trying to remember whether I had closed the door behind me, and all my faculties were engrossed in the effort I was still busy upon that profitless task, when I heard—with what relief!—the watchman’s footsteps sound again upon the stones, his voice again take up its melancholy cry.
“Quick! “said I, turning again to Mrs. Herbert “Madam, help me in this matter, if you can. Think! The officer put to you questions concerning me?”
“Oh!” she cried, waking from her lethargy, “I cannot help you. You must save yourself, as best you may. I do not remember what they said. It was of you they spoke and not at all of Anthony.”
“It is just for your husband’s sake,” I said, “that I implore you to remember.”
And she looked at me blankly.
“God!” I exclaimed, taking the thought “You believe that I journeyed hither to you in your loneliness at this hour, to plague you with questions for my safety’s sake!” And I paused, staring at her.
“Well,” she replied, in an even voice, “is the belief so strange?”
There was no sarcasm in the question, and hardly any curiosity. It was the mere natural utterance of a natural thought. My eyes, I know, fell from her face to the floor.
“Madam,” I replied slowly, “when I set out to-night, I thought that the cup of my humiliation was already full. You prove to me that my thought was wrong. It remained for you very fitly to fill it to the brim;” and again I lifted my eyes to her. “I had no purposes of my own to serve in riding hither. I know the charge against myself to its last letter. It is the charge against your husband brings me here. Neither do I know whither he has been taken. Yet these two things I must know, and I came to you on the chance that you might help me.”
I saw her face change as she listened. She leaned forward on her elbows, her chin propped upon her hands, her eyes losing their indifference. A spark of hope kindled in the depths of them, and when I had ended, she remained silent for a little, as though fearing to quench that spark by the utterance of any words. At last she asked, in almost a timid voice:
“But why—why would you know?” And she bent still further forward with parted lips, breathless for the answer.
“Why?” I answered. “Forgive me! I should have told you that before, but, like a fool, I put the questions first. They are foremost in my thoughts, you see, being the means, and as yet unsolved. The end is so clear to me, that I forgot it in looking for the road which leads to it I believe that Mr. Herbert has been seized, on the ground that he shares my—treason, let us call it, for so our judges will. Of that charge I know him innocent, and maybe can prove him so. And if I can, be sure of this—I will.”
“But how can you?” she interrupted.
“If I know the charge, if I know whither he has been taken, the place of his trial, then it may be that I can serve him. But until I know, I am like one striking at random in the dark. Suppose I go to meet the sheriff and give myself up, not knowing these things, I shall be laid by the heels and no good done. They may have taken him to London. He may be in prison for months. Meanwhile I should be tried—and they would not need Mr. Herbert’s evidence to secure a verdict against me.”
“You would give yourself up?” she asked.
“But I must know the place, I must know the charge. It would avail your husband little without that knowledge. They would keep me in prison cozening me with excuses, however urgently I might plead for him. It is enough that a man should be suspected of favouring King James. To such they dispense convictions; they make no pother about justice.”
“But,” said she, “it would mean your life.”
“Have you not said yourself that payment must be made?”
“Yes, but by us,” she said, stretching out a hand eagerly. “Not by you alone.”
“Madam,” said I, “you will have your share in it, for you will have to wait—to wait here with such patience as you can command, ignorant of the issue until the issue is reached God knows but I think you have the harder part of it.”
We stood for a little looking into each other’s eyes sealing our compact.
“Now,” I continued, “think! Was any word said which we could shape into a clue? Was any name mentioned? Was your husband’s name linked with mine? Oh, think, and quickly!”
She sat with her face covered by her hands while I stood anxiously before her.
“I do not remember,” she said, drawing her hands apart and shaking them in a helpless gesture. “It all happened so long ago.”
“It happened only yesterday,” I urged.
“I know, I know,” she said with the utmost weariness. All that light of hope had died from her eyes as quickly as it had brightened them. “But I measure by a calendar of pain. It is so long ago, I do not remember. I do not even remember how I returned here.”
There was no hint plainly to be gained from her, and I had stayed too long, as it was. I took up my hat
“You will stay here?” I asked. “I do not say that you will hear from me soon, but I must needs know where you are.”
“I will stay here,” she replied. She almost stretched out her hand and drew it in again. “Goodbye.”
I went to the door. She followed me with the lamp and held it over the balusters of the landing.
“Nay,” said I, “there is no need for that”
“The staircase,” said she, “is very dark.”
As I came out from the houses at the bottom of the hill I heard again the watchman’s voice behind me bawling out the hour. It was half-past one, and a cloudy morning, it may be, but the clouds were lighter in the north, as I remarked with some anxiety. I was still riding along Newlands valley when the morning began to break. As I reached the summit of Buttermere Hause I looked backwards over my shoulder. The sky in the north-east was a fiery glow, saffron, orange, and red were mingled there, and right across the medley of colours lay black, angry strips of cloud. The blaze of a fire, it seemed to me, seen through prison bars. It was daylight when I passed by Buttermere, sunlight as I rode down Gillerthwaite. The sweet stillness of the morning renewed my blood. The bracken bloomed upon the hillsides, here a rusty brown, there in the shadow a blackish purple, and then again gold where the sunlight kissed it Below me, by the water’s side, I could see the blue tiles of Applegarth. And as I looked about me the fever of my thoughts died, they took a new and unfamiliar quietude from the stable quietude of the hills. I felt as if something of their patience, something of their strength was entering into me. My memories went back again to the Superior’s study in the College at Paris; and in my heart of hearts I knew that the Superior was wrong. The mountains have their message, I think, for whoso will lend an ear to them, and that morning they seemed to speak to me with an unanimous voice. I can repair, I thought, this wrong. It was then more to me than a thought. It seemed, indeed, an assured and simple troth, assured and simple like those peaks in the clear air, and, like them, pointing skywards, and the Superior’s theory no more substantial than a cloud which may gather upon the peaks and hide them for a little from the eyes.
I rode down, therefore, in a calmer spirit than I had known for some long time. The difficulties which beset my path did not for the moment trouble me. That my journey that night had in no way lightened them I did not consider. I felt that the occasion of which I was in search would of a surety come, only I must be ready to grasp it.
I had passed no one on the road. I had seen, indeed, no sign of life at all beyond the sudden rush of a flock of sheep, as though in an unaccountable panic, up the hillside of the Pillar mountain, while I was as yet in the narrow path of Gillerthwaite. I had reason, therefore, to think that I had escaped all notice, and leading the horse back to the stable with the same precautions I had used on setting out, I let myself in at the door and got quietly to bed.