CHAPTER XXXVI

TWO OF A RACE

It was Thursday, and three days had passed since the Sunday, the day of many happenings, which had cleared up the mystery and restored Henrietta to Mrs. Gilson’s care. The frost still held, the air was brisk and clear. The Langdale Pikes lifted themselves sharp and glittering from the line of grey screes that run southward to Wetherlamb and the Coniston Mountain. A light air blew down the lake, ruffling the open water, and bedecking the leafless woods on Wray Point with a fringe of white breakers. The morning was a perfect winter morning, the sky of that cloudless, but not over-deep blue, which portends a long and steady frost. Horses’ hoofs rang loud on the road; and rooks gathered where they had passed. Men who stopped to talk hit their palms together or swung their arms. The larger and wiser birds had started betimes for salt water and the mussel preserves on the Cartmel Sands.

The inquest on the gipsy had been held, but something perfunctorily, after the fashion of the day. Captain Clyne and the chaplain had told their stories, and after a few words from the coroner, a verdict of justifiable homicide had been heartily given, and the jury had resolved itself into a “free and easy” in the tap-room; while the coroner had delivered himself of much wisdom, and laid down much law in Mrs. Gilson’s snuggery.

Henrietta had not been made to appear; for carried upstairs, in a state as like death as life, on Sunday evening, she had kept her room until this morning. She would fain have kept it longer, but there were reasons against that. And now, with the timidity which a retreat from every-day life breeds—and perhaps with some flutterings of the heart on another account—she was pausing before her looking-glass, and trying to gather courage to descend and face the world.

She was still pale; and when she met her own eyes in the mirror, a quivering smile, a something verging on the piteous in her face, told of nerves which time had not yet steadied. Possibly, her reluctance to go down, though the hour was late, and Mrs. Gilson would scold, had a like origin. None the less, she presently conquered it, opened her door and descended; as she had done on that morning of her arrival, a few weeks back, and yet—oh, such a long time back!

Now, as then, when she had threaded the dark passages and come to the door of Mr. Rogers’s room, she paused faint-hearted, and, with her hand raised to the latch, listened. She heard no sound, and she opened the door and went in. The table was laid for one.

She heaved a sigh of relief, and—cut it short midway. For Captain Clyne came forward from one of the windows at which he had been standing.

“I am glad that you are better,” he said stiffly, and in a constrained tone, “and able to come down.”

“Oh yes, thank you,” she answered, striving to speak heartily, and repressing with difficulty that proneness of the lip to quiver. “I think I am quite well now. Quite well! I am sure, after this long time, I should be.”

And she turned away and affected to warm her hands at the fire.

He did not look directly at her—he avoided doing so. But he could see the reflection of her face in the oval-framed mirror, as she stood upright again. He saw that she had lost for the time the creamy warmth of complexion that was one of her chief beauties. She was pale and thin, and looked ill.

“You have been very severely shaken,” he said. “No doubt you feel it still!”

“Yes,” she answered, “a little. I think I do.”

“Perhaps you had better be alone?”

She did not know what to say to that. Perhaps she did not know what she wished. Her lip quivered. This was very unlike what she had expected and what she had dreaded. But it was worse. He seemed to be waiting for her answer—that he might go. What could she say?

“Just as you like,” she murmured at last.

“Oh, but I wish to do what you like!” he replied, with a little more warmth; but still awkwardly and with constraint.

“So do I,” she replied.

“I shall stay then,” he answered. And he lifted a small dish from the hearth and carried it to the table. “I had Mrs. Gilson’s orders to keep this hot for you,” he said.

“It was very kind of you.”

“I am afraid,” more lightly, “that it was fear of Mrs. Gilson weighed on me as much as anything.”

He returned to the hearth when he had seen her seated. And she began her breakfast with her eyes on the table. With the first draught of coffee a feeling of warmth and courage ran through her; and he, standing with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his eyes on the mirror, saw the change in her.

“The boy is better,” he said suddenly. “I think he will do now.”

“Yes?”

“I think so. But he will need great care. He will not be able to leave his bed for a day or two. We found your brooch pinned inside his clothes.”

“Yes?”

He turned sharply and for the first time looked directly at her.

“Of course, we knew why you put it there. It was good of you. But why—don’t you ask after him, Henrietta?” in a different tone.

She felt the colour rise to her cheeks—and she wished it anywhere else.

“I saw him this morning,” she murmured.

“Oh!” he replied in surprise. And he turned to the mirror again. “I see.”

She began to wish that he would leave her, for his silence made her horribly nervous. And she dared not start a subject herself, because she could not trust her voice. The hands of the white-faced clock jerked slowly on, marking the seconds, and accentuating the silence. She grew so nervous at last that she could not lift her eyes from her plate, and she ate though she was scarcely able to swallow, because she dared not leave off.

It did not occur to her that Anthony Clyne was as ill at ease as she was; and oppressed, moreover, to a much greater degree by the memory of certain scenes which had taken place in that room. Her nervousness was in part the reflection of his constraint. And his constraint arose from two feelings widely different.

The long silence was becoming painful to both, when he forced himself to break it.

“I am so very, very deeply beholden to you,” he said, in a constrained tone, “that—that I must ask you, Henrietta, to listen to me for a few minutes—even if it be unpleasant to you.”

She laughed awkwardly.

“If it is only,” she answered, “because you are beholden to me—that—that you feel it necessary to thank me at length, please don’t. You will only overwhelm me.”

“It is not for that reason only,” he said. And he knew that he spoke, much against his will, with dreadful solemnity. “No. Naturally we must have much to say to one another. I, in particular, who owe to you——”

“Please let that be,” she protested.

“But I cannot. I cannot!” he repeated. “You have done me so great a service, at a risk so great, and under circumstances so—so——”

“So remarkable,” she cried, with something of her old girlish manner, “that you cannot find words in which to describe them! Then please don’t.” And then, more seriously: “I did not do what I did to be thanked.”

“Then why?” he asked quickly. “Why did you do it?”

“Did you think,” she protested, “that I did it to be thanked?”

“No, but—why did you do it, Henrietta?” he asked persistently. “Such a risk, such men, such circumstances, might have deterred any woman. Nay, almost any man.”

She toyed with her teaspoon; there had come a faint flush of colour into her cheeks.

“I think it was—I think it was just to reinstate myself,” she murmured.

“You mean?”

“You gave me to understand,” she explained, “that you thought ill of me. And I wished you to think well of me; or better of me, I should say, for I did not expect you to think quite well of me after—you know!” in some confusion.

“You wished to be reinstated?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder,” he said slowly, “how much you mean by that.”

“I mean what I say,” she answered, looking at him.

“Yes, but do you mean that you—wish to be reinstated altogether?”

She did not remove her eyes from his face, but she blushed to the roots of her hair.

“I am not sure that I understand,” she said with a slight air of offence.

“No?” he said. “And perhaps I did not quite mean that. What I did mean, and do mean, what I am hoping, what I am looking forward to, Henrietta——” and there he broke off.

He seemed to find it necessary to begin again:

“Perhaps I had better explain,” he said more soberly. “You told me that morning by the lake some home-truths, you remember? You showed me that what had happened was not all your fault; was perhaps not at all your fault. And you showed me this with so much energy and power, that I went away with the first clear impression of you I had had in my life. Yes, with the feeling that I had never known you until then.” He dropped his eyes, and looked thoughtfully at something on the table. “And one of the things I remember best, and which I shall always remember, was your saying that I had never paid any court to you.”

“It was true,” she said, in a low voice.

And she too did not look at him, but kept her eyes bent on the spoon with which she toyed.

“Yes. Well, if you will let the old state of things be so far reinstated as to—let me begin to pay my court to you now, I am not confident, I am very far from confident, that I can please you. I am rather old, for one thing”—with a rueful laugh—“to make love gracefully, and rather stiff and—political. But owing to the trouble I have brought upon you in the past——”

“I never said but that we both brought it!” Henrietta objected suddenly.

“Well, whoever brought it——”

“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 nobler 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.