Starvecrow Farm Part 65

"We both brought it!" she repeated obstinately.

"Very well. I mean only that the trouble----"

"Makes it unlikely that I shall find another husband?" she said. "Pray be frank with me! That," rising and going to the window, and then turning to confront him, "is what you mean, is it not? That is exactly what you mean, I am sure?"

"Something of that kind, perhaps," he admitted.

"But you forget Mr. Sutton!" she said--and paused. She took one step forward, and her eyes shone. "You forget Mr. Sutton, Captain Clyne.

The gentleman to whom you handed me over! To whom you gave so clear a certainty that I was for the first comer who was willing. He is willing, quite willing!"

"But----"

"And it cannot be said that he did not behave gallantly on Sunday night! I am told----"

"He behaved admirably."

"And he is willing!" she flung the word at him--"quite willing to marry me--disgraced as I am! As you have always, always hinted I am!

And not out of pity, Captain Clyne. Let us be frank with one another.

You were very frank with me once--more than frank." She held out her wrist, which was still faintly discoloured. "When a man does that to a woman," she said, "she either loves him, sir, or hates him."

"Yes," he said slowly--very slowly. "I see. Your mind is made up, then----"

"That I will not accept your kind offer to--pay your court to me?" she answered, with derision. "Certainly. I have no mind to be wooed by you!" Again she held out her wrist. "You know the stale proverb: 'He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay!'" And she made him a little bow, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks bright.

He turned his back on her, and stood for a moment looking from the window which was the nearer to the fire--the one looking over the lake. The words of her proverb--stale enough in truth--ran very sorrowfully in his ears. "He that will not when he may! He that will not when he may!" No, he might have known that she was not one to forget. He might have known that the words he had said, and the things that he had done, would rankle. And that she who had not hesitated to elope--to punish him for his neglect of her--would not hesitate to punish him for worse than neglect. He stood a long minute watching the tiny waves burst into white lines at the foot of Hayes Woods. No, she could not forget--nor forgive. But she could act, she had acted, as if she had done both. She had saved his child. She had risked her life for it. And if she had done that with this resentment, this feeling in her heart, if she had done it, moved only by the desire to show him that he had misjudged her--in a sense it was the n.o.bler act, and one like--ay, he owned it sorrowfully--like herself! At any rate, it did not become him to cast a word of reproach at her. She had saved his child.

He turned at length, and looked at her. He saw that her figure had lost its elation, and her cheeks their colour. She was leaning against the side of the window, and looked tired and ill, and almost as she had looked when she came into the room. His heart melted.

"I would like you to know one thing," he said, "before I go. Your triumph is greater, Henrietta, than you think, and your revenge more complete. It is no question of pity with me, but of love." He paused, and laughed awry. "The worse for me, you will say, and the better for you. _Vae victis!_ Still, even if you hate me----"

"I did not say that I hated you!"

"You said----"

"I did not! I did not!" she repeated, with a queer little laugh. And she sat down on the window seat, and turned quickly with a pettish movement, so that he could only see the side of her face. "I said nothing of the kind."

"But----"

"I said something very different!"

"You said----"

"I said that when a man pinches a girl's wrist black and blue, and swears at her--yes, Captain Clyne," firmly, "you swore at me, and called me----"

"Don't!" he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was leaning against the side of the window ...]

"I only said," she continued breathlessly, "that when a man does that, the woman either loves him or hates him!"

"Henrietta!"

"Captain Clyne!"

After a long pause, "I think I understand you," he said slowly, "but if you--if there were any feeling, the least feeling of that kind on your part, you would not have forbidden me to--to think of seeking you for my wife."

"I didn't!" she answered. "I told you that you should not pay your court to me. And you shall not! You cannot," half laughing and half crying, "woo what's won, can you? If you still think it is worth the winning! Only," stopping him by a gesture as he came towards her, "you are not to give me over to Mr. Sutton again, whatever I do! You must promise me that."

"I won't!" he said.

"You are quite sure, sir? However I behave? And even if I run away from you?"

"Quite sure!"

And a few minutes later, "Poor Sutton!" he said. "We must try to make it up to him."

She laughed.

"It is a good thing you did not set out to woo me," she answered. "For you would not have shone at it. Make it up to him indeed! Make it up to him! What a thing, sir, to say to--me!"

It was not made up to Mr. Sutton; though the best living that could be procured by an exchange with the Bishop of Durham--and there were fat livings in Durham in those days, and small blame if a man held two of them--was found for the chaplain. He married, too, a lady of the decayed house of Conyers of Sockburn, beside which the Damers and the Clynes were upstairs. And so both in his fortune and his wife's family he did as well--almost--as he had hoped to do. But though he accepted his patron's gift, he came seldom to Clyne Old Hall; and some held him ungrateful. Moreover, a little later, when to be a radical was not counted quite so dreadful a thing, he turned radical in all but the white hat. And Clyne was disappointed, but not surprised. Henrietta, however, understood. Though children running about her knees had tamed her wildness and caged her pride, she was still a woman, and the memory of a past conquest was not ungrateful. She had no desire to see the pale replica of Mr. Pitt, but she sometimes thought of him, and always kindly and with grat.i.tude.

There was a third lover, of whom she never thought without unhappiness.

"You will never tell the children? You will never tell the children?"

was her prayer to her husband when Walterson was in question.

And though he answered with gravity, "Not unless you do it again, my dear," the sting of remembrance did not cease to rankle.

Walterson was traced to Leith--and thence to Holland. There the trail was lost, and it is believed that he did not live to return to England. Whether he did return or not--and Bow Street, and Mr. Bishop in particular, kept watch for him long--he never re-entered Henrietta's life. As the memory of the French Revolution faded from men's minds, the struggle for reform fell into more reputable and less violent hands. Silly and turbulent men of the type of him who had turned the girl's young head no longer counted; or, rising to the top at moments of public excitement, vanished as quickly, and no man knew whither.

Giles and Lunt were not taken on that Sunday night. They escaped, it was supposed, to Scotland, by way of Patterdale and the Moors. Less fortunate, however, than Walterson, they returned to London and fell in again with Thistlewood. They yielded to the fascination of that remarkable and unhappy man, took part in his schemes, and were taken with him in the loft over the stable in Cato Street, when the attempt to murder the cabinet at Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square miscarried. He and they got a fair trial, but little pity. And it is not to be supposed that upon the scaffold in the Old Bailey, they thought much of the lonely house in the hollow at Troutbeck, or of the helpless woman whom they had terrorised. To their credit, be it said, they died more worthily than they had lived; and with them came to a close the movement which sought to reach reform by the road of violence, and to that end held no instruments too cheap or vile.

Tyson came out of the adventure a wiser and perhaps a better man. For on his return from the north he found it hard to free himself from the charge of complicity in the acts of those who had used his house; nor did he succeed until he had lain some weeks in Appleby gaol. He would fain have avenged himself on Bess, but for reasons to be stated, he could not enjoy this satisfaction. And his neighbours sent him to Coventry. Had he been a strong man he might have defied them and public opinion. But he was only a braggart, and that which must have embittered many, tamed him. He turned to his wife for comfort, sought his home more than before, and gradually settled down into a tolerable citizen and a high Tory.

Bess saved herself by her own wit and courage. The Monday's light saw her dragged to Kendal prison, where they were not so gentle with her as they had been with Henrietta. Her story went with her, and, "They say you stole a child," the little girl murmured, standing at her knee and staring at her, "and 'll be hanged at the March fair."

"Not I," said Bess. "It's almost a pity, too, ain't it? There'd be a fine crowd to see!"

The child's eyes sparkled.

"Yes," she said. "There'd be a crowd, too."