“YOU WILL remember, Gleeson, the gun-case is to be sent to the Court, and you are to stay as long as you like; and when you are tired lock the place up and let Bolt & Barsly have the key. That is all, I think!”
“I’ll take care it is all done as you say, Sir Donald.” Gleeson’s comely, wrinkled face was puckered up; her eyes were dim with tears behind their spectacles. Her young master had been the apple of her eye in the old days when she had been Lady Hannah’s maid. It sometimes seemed to her that he was even dearer to her now that they had gone through these weeks of anxiety with regard to her beloved mistress together. And he was going with his purpose all unaccomplished—the reconciliation with his aunt upon which he had set his heart apparently as far off as ever.
No wonder that Gleeson felt dull and miserable, and that all the morning she had been furtively bringing out her handkerchief to wipe away her tears.
Farquhar’s face was unmistakably gloomy as he picked up the handbag that stood at the foot of the stairs.
“Good-bye, then, Glee!” he said, going back to his old boyish name for her; and then, moved by some sudden impulse, he stooped and touched the old woman’s cheek with his lips. “Mind you don’t stay a day longer than you like. You know there is always a home for you at the Court. I don’t like your being here all alone.”
“You are very kind, Sir Donald!” Gleeson responded, much touched, “I shall do very well. I have come to that time of life when it is pleasant to sit still and think over the days that have passed and the faces that we shall see no more; and it is borne in upon me sometimes that perhaps my lady is wanting me, and I feel happier like near her.”
“You are a good woman!” Sir Donald paused a moment irresolutely; then he caught up his bag. “Good-bye, take care of yourself, Glee! And”— keeping his face resolutely from her as he went through the porch—“if that young lady who came here should want any help, you will do what you can for her, I know.”
“Miss Hammond? Why, certainly I will, Sir Donald!” Gleeson’s tone was full of comfortable assurance. “A sweet young thing like that, and the very image of my lady as she used to be!”
“That is all right, then.” Sir Donald walked quickly down the garden-path, turning at the gate to wave a farewell.
Gleeson stood in the porch, shading her eyes with her hand as she watched his tall figure striding away into the distance.
“I misdoubt me there is something wrong with the lad,” she muttered to herself. “I misdoubt me there is something wrong.”
Long after Farquhar had become a mere speck on the horizon and finally disappeared from her vision, she still stood, her eyes mechanically turned towards Glastwick, her lips silently moving.
Farquhar, meanwhile, was rapidly nearing Glastwick. His thoughts, to judge by his expression, were none of the pleasantest, his eyes looked gloomy and absorbed, his lips were pressed tightly together. He was not one of those natures that take things lightly, and beyond all doubt his discovery of the deception that Cynthia had practised upon him had hit him hard.
There had been something about her unprotected position, about her isolation at Greylands that had appealed to him from the first. Her brown eyes, with their long upcurled lashes, and her pretty, plaintive smile had done the rest. He was surprised to find how strong was her hold upon him, how difficult, nay, how impossible it was to put her image out of his heart.
In vain he reminded himself of all her sins against him, of her marriage and her refusal to live with her husband; he found his thoughts dwelling on the little tendrils of hair that curled so prettily round her ears, on the soft delicious curve of her cheek.
The express was due in five minutes when he reached Glastwick; he had allowed himself no margin of time for accidents. As he took his ticket a trunk with “C.H.” painted conspicuously upon it in white caught his eye. As he was looking at them the station-master strolled up.
“Good morning, sir!”
“Good morning, Mr King!” Farquhar responded with the pleasant smile that made him a general favourite. “You got my note in time to have the express stopped, I hope?”
“Oh, yes, sir! But as a matter of fact I had telegraphed up to Alnwick before it came. Mr Gillman he wrote last night; his niece is going up to town to-day. Leastways if she is in time. They are drawing it rather fine. Ah, there they are!” as a dog-cart dashed into the station yard.
Farquhar waited to recognize the slim, brown-clad figure by Gillman’s side; then he turned and fled.
When the train came in he hurriedly ensconced himself in an empty first-class smoking carriage, and, keeping himself well in the shadow, carefully watched the platform. Though he was anxious above all things that Cynthia should not recognize him, and though he told himself that his greatest wish was that they might never meet again, yet he could not deny himself one last look at her face, but in spite of his efforts he was destined not to obtain it. At the last moment Gillman came quickly out of the booking-office and opened the door of the very next compartment to that in which he was sitting, and Farquhar, to his intense disappointment, saw that the girl behind him had swathed her head and hat in a thick veil. As she stood back while her escort opened the carriage-door Farquhar from his post could almost have touched her coat, she was so near him. There was a mark on one sleeve that had been made when they were walking in the wood and she had brushed against a tree-trunk. The sight of it recalled a thousand memories and associations. He would have given much for just one last glance, but the veil defied his efforts.
When the train started he told himself that that chapter of his life was closed for ever, but as he leaned back in his corner he found the knowledge that only the wooden partition separated him from Cynthia singularly disquieting. In vain he tried to turn his mind to other subjects—her pleading voice, her sweet, beseeching eyes, haunted him; her words, “Forgive me, Donald; indeed I did not know!” seemed to ring in his ears with a maddening iteration.
The first stop was at Derby, and, in spite of his resolution, Farquhar was at the window as the train began to slow down. It was possible that Cynthia might need some refreshment; at any rate the probabilities were that she would want a paper or periodical and he might be fortunate enough to get a glimpse of her. As they stopped, the door of the next compartment opened, and he caught sight of a slim brown figure. She was getting out, then? He drew back in his corner; his eyes as he watched were very bright and eager. Then he started forward with a smothered exclamation. The girl who stood on the platform wore a brown dress, certainly, but the veil had been discarded in the train, and as she stopped a moment before the window, instead of Cynthia’s chestnut hair, he saw Sybil’s gleaming golden tresses. Yet from where he sat he could see plainly the mark on the sleeve which he remembered; undoubtedly she was wearing Cynthia’s gown, and the trunk at the station had been marked “C.H.” As he wondered what could be the meaning of it she accosted a porter.
“I think there is a train to Clastor in a few minutes?”
“At 1.10, miss,” the man responded. “That is in a quarter of an hour. It goes from platform Number Two. You will have to cross.”
“Thank you!” She hurried down the platform. Farquhar got out and stood looking after her with an expression of absolute bewilderment. Clastor was a station a few miles from Glastwick on a different line. What could be the girl’s motive, he wondered, in coming down to Derby, evidently only to hurry back again at her earliest opportunity? And why was she masquerading in Cynthia’s dress? He could not help fancying that the veil had been assumed as a disguise, that both she and Gillman had intended her to be taken for Cynthia. Why? He could not see daylight in the matter at all. A porter touched his arm impatiently.
“Now, sir, time’s up! Are you going on?”
Farquhar took a sudden resolution. He reached for his handbag.
“No,” he said curtly. “Which is the platform for Clastor?”
“Number Two, sir!” The man banged the door, and the next moment the train was off.
Farquhar, walking down the platform, wondered whether he had done a silly thing. It was quite possible, he told himself, that the events that had puzzled him were capable of a perfectly innocent explanation. Very probably Cynthia had lent her dress and trunk to her cousin; it was quite possible that the other had forgotten something that rendered her return necessary, and it might be that she knew of some reason that made it easier to get to Greylands from Clastor than from Glastwick.
Reason as he would he could not rid himself of an uneasy sense that there was something wrong, that Cynthia was in some peril. When he reached the platform he saw that Sybil was walking briskly up and down; with a shamed feeling that he was in some sense a spy he betook himself to the waiting- room until the train came in; then, carefully keeping out of her sight, he made his way to a smoking compartment as far away from her as possible.
It was a slow train. Though Farquhar kept a careful look-out at the various stations he saw nothing of Sybil until they reached Clastor. There he waited until she had alighted and passed quickly through the booking-office. As he followed more quietly, he saw that Gillman was waiting outside in his dog-cart. Evidently Sybil was expected, and Farquhar asked himself again what could possibly be the reason of this extraordinary journey and how far Cynthia’s connexion with it went.
As he stood in the road outside the little station and watched Gillman’s trap bowling away in the distance, and reflected upon the weary miles that lay between him and the cottage on the moor, he was inclined to think that he had been a fool for his pains.
Gleeson was just bestirring herself to set her cup of tea, when the sound of the opening gate made her look round, and she saw Farquhar coming up the path. She lifted up her hands.
“Eh, Sir Donald, and here I have just been fretting myself to death thinking I might not see you for years, and you walk in at the gate your very self! You look tired, sir.”
Farquhar threw himself down on the seat in the porch.
“So you would be if you had walked from Clastor, Glee!”
“You never have, Sir Donald!” The old woman looked at him. “Then you’ll not say another word until you have rested. I’ll bring you your tea here.”
She bustled into the house to make her preparations, and presently reappeared with a dainty tray.
Farquhar did ample justice to her providing, and as he ate and drank he related the events that had brought him back.
“What do you make of it, Glee?” he asked.
Gleeson’s face was very grave.
“I misdoubt me it means some harm to the poor lamb, Sir Donald. Mr Gillman would stand at nothing to serve his ends. When I think of her and my lady both in his power my heart aches sorely. What will you be going to do, Sir Donald?”
“I don’t know. Now that I am here I do not seem to be any good,” Farquhar said slowly; “but I could not go away and leave things in this uncertainty.”
“Bless you, Sir Donald, no!” Gleeson agreed heartily. “You know I was always against your going. It does seem to me as her nearest of kin ought not to rest till my lady is out of that villain’s hands.”
“If she hugs her chains, if she will not let us take her away, what are we to do, Glee?”
“I can’t say that I rightly see the way, Sir Donald, not yet; but I shan’t believe as my lady wants to stay in that lonely place until I hear her say so with her own lips. If I was you, Sir Donald, I should walk up to Greylands in the morning and insist on seeing Miss Cynthia.”
“Perhaps I had better.” In spite of his resentment against her Farquhar’s heart leapt at the prospect of meeting his cousin again.
Already the gloaming was setting in, and as he watched the shadows deepening on the moor his uneasiness grew, his conviction that some danger threatened Cynthia increased, and at length, feeling the impossibility of remaining inactive until morning, he determined to walk as far as Greylands, and, though it was too late to ask to see Cynthia, at least to give himself the satisfaction of feeling that he was at hand should she need any help or service.
It was dark when he reached the pine-wood; he could just see that there were lights in the upper windows at Greylands. After waiting some time he tried the gate and found that it was locked. Evidently it was useless to attempt to get inside, and it was difficult to see what use he could be outside the walls. Nevertheless he could not bring himself to go back, and after waiting some time longer he turned and walked slowly round the fence that encircled the pines. As he did so, he heard a noise within. Evidently some one—a man—was running about among the pines, brushing the undergrowth aside and plunging through it recklessly, uttering every now and then a sharp exclamation or a smothered imprecation; then a dog barked.
Wondering what it might mean, Farquhar paused. The sounds were not so audible now; the man, whoever he might be, was getting farther away. Farquhar still waited; at length he bethought himself of the little gate opposite the wood. It was possible he might find that open. It seemed to him that the mystery was deepening, and the necessity to assure himself of Cynthia’s safety was becoming more imperative.
As he turned the corner at the end of the pine shrubbery, his thoughts intent on what was going on inside, he ran violently into a man coming from the opposite direction.
“What—I beg your pardon—” the stranger began. Then, with a start of amazement, “Sir Donald! I had no idea you were in this neighbourhood!”
“Mr Barsly!” Farquhar’s tone was one of unmixed amazement. “Is there anything wrong?”
The lawyer coughed.
“A good deal, I am afraid, Sir Donald. In fact, matters that have come to my knowledge have been so unsatisfactory that I decided to come down myself, and—what was that?”
It was a slight noise, almost like a sob, sounding close to them, evidently just on the other side of the fence.
Both men were silent, but not the least movement was to be heard now, and Farquhar was beginning to think that it must have been merely some animal in pain, when across the stillness of the night there rang a woman’s shriek, a long piercing cry of anguish.