Starvecrow Farm Part 22

"But how came she here?"

"I don't know," he answered sullenly, "unless she was sent."

"I don't believe you," Bess answered coa.r.s.ely. And the jealousy of her gipsy blood sparkled in her dark eyes. "She was not sent! But maybe she was sent for! Maybe she was sent for!"

"Who was there I could send for her?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Nor I!" he answered. He shrugged his shoulders in disgust at her folly. To him, in his selfish fear, it seemed incredible folly.

"But you talked with her?"

"Not a word."

"I say," Bess repeated with a furious look, "you did! You talked with her! I know you did!"

"Have your own way, then," he answered despairingly, "though may heaven strike me dead if there was a word! But she'll he talking soon--and they'll be here. And she"--with a quavering, pa.s.sionate rise in his voice--"she'll hang me!"

"She'd best not!" the girl replied, with a gleam of sharp teeth. "I hate her as it is. I hate her now! I'd like to kill her! But then----"

"Then?" he retorted, his anger rising as hers sank. "What is the use of _then?_ It's now is the point! Curse You! while you are talking about hating her, and what you'll do, I'll be taken! They'll be here and I'll hang!"

"Steady, steady, lad," she said. The fear had flown from his face to hers. "Perhaps she'll not tell."

"Why not? Why'll she not tell?"

She did not reply that love might close the girl's mouth. But she knew that it was possible. Instead:

"Maybe she'll not," she repeated. "If she did not come on purpose--and then they'd be here by now--it will take her half an hour to go back to the inn, and she'll have to find Bishop, and he'll have to get a few together. We've an hour good, and if it were night, you might be clear of this and safe at Tyson's in ten minutes."

"But now?" he cried, with a gesture of wrathful impatience. "It's daylight, and maybe the house is watched. What am I to do now?"

"I don't know," she said. And it was noticeable that she was cool, while he was excited to the verge of tears, and was not a mile from hysterics. "It was for this I've been fooling Tyson--to get a safe hiding-place. But if you could get there, I doubt if he is quite ripe.

I'd like to commit him a bit more before we trust him."

"Then why play the fool with him?" he answered savagely.

"Because a day or two more and his hiding-hole may be the saving of you," she retorted. "Sho!" shrugging her shoulders in her turn, "the game is not played to an end yet! She'll not tell! She is proud as horses, and if she gives you up she'll have to swear against you. And she'll not stomach that, the little pink and white fool. She'll keep mum, my lad!"

The hand with which he wiped the beads of sweat from his brow shook.

"But it she does tell?" he muttered. "If she does tell?"

She did not answer as she might have answered. She did not remind him of those stories of hair-breadth escapes and of coolness in the shadow of the gallows, which, as much as his plausible enthusiasm, had won her wild heart. She did not hint that his present carriage was hardly at one with them. For when women love, their eyes are slow to open, and this man had revealed to Bess a new world--a world of rarest possibilities, a world in which she and her like were to have justice, if not vengeance--a world in which the mighty were to fall from their seats, and the poor to be no more flouted by squires' wives and parsons' daughters! If she did not still think him all golden, if the feet and even the legs of clay were beginning to be visible, there was glamour about him still. The splendid plans, the world-embracing schemes with which he had dazzled her, had shrunk indeed into a hole-and-corner effort to save his own skin. But his life was as dear to her as to himself; and doubtless, by-and-by, when this troublesome crisis was past, the vista would widen. She was content. She was glad to put full knowledge from her, glad of any pretext to divert her own mind and his.

"Lord, I had forgotten!" she cried, after a gloomy pause, "I've a letter! There was one at last!" She searched in her clothes for it.

"A letter?" he cried, and stretched out a shaking hand. "Good lord, girl, why did you not say so before? This may change all. Thistlewood may know a way to get me off. Once in Lancas.h.i.+re, in the crowd, let me have a hiding-place and I'm safe! And Thistlewood--he is no cur! He sticks at nothing! He is a good man! I was sure he would do something if I could get a word to him! Lord, I shall cheat them yet!" He was jubilant.

He ripped the letter open. His eyes raced along the lines. The girl, who could scarcely read, watched him with admiration, yet with a sinking heart. The letter might save him, but it would take him from her.

Something between a groan and an oath broke from him. He struck the paper with his hand.

"The fool!" he cried. "The fools! They are coming here!"

"They?" she answered, staring in astonishment.

"Thistlewood, Lunt--oh!" with a violent execration--"G.o.d knows who!

Instead of getting me off they are bringing the hunt on me! Lancas.h.i.+re is too hot for them, so they are coming here to ruin me. And I'm to send a boat for them to-morrow night to Newby Bridge. But, I'll not!

I'll not!" pa.s.sionately. "You shall not go!"

The girl looked at him dubiously.

"After all," she said presently, "if Thistlewood is what you say he is----"

"He's a selfish fool! Thinking only of himself!"

"Still, if he and the rest are men--it'll not be one man, nor two, nor five will take you--with them to help you!"

But the thought gave him no comfort.

"Much good that will do!" he answered. And pa.s.sionately flinging down the paper, "I'll not have them! They must fend for themselves."

"Do they say why they are coming?" she asked after a pause.

"Didn't I tell you?" he replied querulously, "because it's too hot for them there! One of the justices, Clyne, if you must know----"

"Clyne!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in astonishment. "Clyne again?"

"Ay!"

"The man--you took the girl from?" she asked in a queer voice.

"The same. He's the deuce down there. He'll get his house burnt over his head one of these nights! He has sworn an information against them, and they swear they'll have their revenge. But in the meantime they must needs come here and blow the gaff on me. Fine revenge!" with scorn.

"And they want you to send a boat for them to Newby Bridge?"

"Ay, curse them! I told them I had a boat I could take quietly, and come down the lake in the dark. And they say the boat can just as well fetch them."

"To-morrow night?"

"Ay."

"Well, it can be done," she said coolly, "if the wind across the lake holds. I can steal a boat as I planned for you, and n.o.body will be the wiser. There's no moon, and the nights are dark; and who's to trace them from Newby Bridge? After all, it's not from them the danger will come, but from the girl."

He groaned.

"I thought you were sure she wouldn't tell," he sneered.