XII
For a while he wandered, lost in a maze of passages. He understood that the Minstrels' Gallery was at the top of the house. He did not use the lift, but climbed the stairs, meeting no one; then he was on a floor that must, he thought, be servants' quarters. It had another air, something less arranged, less handsome, old-fashioned, as though it were even now as it had been two hundred years ago—a survival as the old grey tower in the market-place was a survival.
For a little while he stood hesitating. The passage was dark and he did not wish to plunge into a servant's room. Strange that up here there was no sound at all—an absolute deathly stillness!
He walked down to the end of the passage then, turning, came to a door that was larger than the others. He could see as he looked at it more closely that there was some faint carving on the woodwork above it. He turned the handle, entered the room, then stopped with a little cry of surprise and pleasure.
Truly Maradick had been right. Here was a room that, if there was nothing more to come, made the journey sufficiently of value. An enchanting room! On the left side of it were broad bright windows, and at the farther end, under the Minstrels' Gallery, windows again. There were no curtains to the windows—the whole room had an empty deserted air—but the more for that reason the place was illuminated with the glow of the evening light. The first thing that he realised was the view—and what a view!
The windows were deep set and hung forward, it seemed, over the hill, so that town, gardens, trees, were all lost and you saw only the sea.
At this hour you seemed to swing in space; the division lost between sea and sky in the now nearly horizontal rays of the sun—only a golden glow covering the blue with a dazzling blaze of colour. He stood there drinking it in, then sat in one of the window-seats, his hands clasped, lost in happiness.
After a while he turned back to the room. Flecks of dust, changed into gold by the evening light, floated in mid-air. The room was disregarded indeed. The walls were panelled. The little Minstrels' Gallery was supported on two heavy pillars. The floor was bare of carpet and had even a faint waxen sheen, as though, in spite of the room's general neglect, it was used, once and again, for dances.
But what pathos the room had! He did not know that almost fifteen years before Maradick had felt that same thing. How vastly now that pathos was increased, how greatly since Maradick's day the world's history had relentlessly cut away those earlier years. He saw that round the platform of the gallery was intricate carving, and, going forward more closely to examine, saw that in every square was set the head of a grinning lion. Some high-backed, quaintly-shaped chairs, that looked as though they might be of great age, were ranged against the wall.
Being now right under the gallery he saw some little wooden steps. He climbed up them and then from the gallery's shadow looked down across the room. How clearly he could picture that old scene, something straight from Jane Austen with Miss Bates and Mrs. Norris, stiff-backed, against the wall, and Anne Elliott and Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Collins and the rest. The fiddlers scraping, the negus for refreshment, the night darkening, the carriages with their lights gathering. . . .
The door at the far end of the room closed with a gentle click. He started, not imagining that any one would choose that room at such an hour.
Two figures were there in the shadow beyond the end room. The light fell on the man's face—Harkness could see it very clearly. The other was a woman wearing a white dress. He could not see her face.
For an instant they were silent, then the man said something that Harkness could not hear.
The girl at once broke out: "No, no. Oh, please, Herrick."
She must be a very young girl. The voice was that of a child. It had in it a desperate note that held Harkness's attention instantly.
The man said something again, very low.
"But if you don't care," the girl's voice pleaded, "then let me go back. Oh, Herrick, let me go! Let me go!"
"My father does not wish it."
"But I am not married to your father. It is to you."
"My father and I are the same. What he says I must do, I do."
"But you can't be the same." Her voice now was trembling in its urgency. "No one could love their father more than I do and yet we are not the same."
"Nevertheless you did what your father asked you to do. So must I."
"But I didn't know. I didn't know. And he didn't know. He has never seen me frightened of anything, and now I am frightened. . . . I've never said I was to any one before, but now . . . now . . ."
She was crying, softly, terribly, with the terrified crying of real and desperate fear.
Harkness had been about to move. He did not, unseen and his presence unrealised, wish to overhear, but her tears checked him. Although he could not see her he had detected in her voice a note of pride. He fancied that she would wish anything rather than to be thus seen by a stranger. He stayed where he was. He could see the man's face, thin, white, the nose long pointed, a dark, almost grotesque shadow.
"Why are you frightened?"
"I don't know. I can't tell. I have never been frightened before."
"Have I been unkind to you?"
"No, but you don't love me."
"Did I ever pretend to love you? Didn't you know from the very first that no one in the world matters to me except my father?"
"It is of your father that I am afraid. . . . These last three days in that terrible house. . . . I'm so frightened, Herrick. I want to go home only for a little while. Just for a week before we go abroad."
"All our plans are made now. You know that we are sailing to-morrow evening."
"Yes, but I could come afterwards. . . . Forgive me, Herrick. You may do anything to me if I can only go home for just some days. . . . You may do anything. . . ."
"I don't want to do anything, Hesther. No one wishes to do you any harm. But whatever my father wishes that every one must do. It has always been so."
She seemed to be seized by an absolute frenzy of fear; Harkness could see her white shadow quivering. It appeared to him as though she caught the man by the arm. Her voice came in little breathless stifled cries, infinitely pitiful to hear.
"Please, please, Herrick. I dare not speak to your father. I don't dare. I don't dare. But you—let me go—Oh! let me go—just this once, Herrick. Only this once. I'll only be home for a few days and then I'll come back. Truly I'll come back. I'll just see father and Bobby and then I'll come back. They'll be missing me. I know they will. And I'll be going to a foreign country—such a long way. And they'll be wanting me. Bobby's so young, Herrick, only a baby. He's never had any one to do anything for him but me. . . ."
"You should have thought of that before you married me, you cannot leave me now."
"I won't leave you. I've never broken my word to any one. I won't break it now. It's only for a few days."
"How can you be so selfish, Hesther, as to want to upset every one's plans just for a whim of your own? For myself I don't care. You could go home for ever for all I care. I didn't want to marry any one. But what my father wished had to be."
She clung to him then, crying again and again between her sobs:
"Oh, let me go home! Let me go home! Let me go home!"
Harkness fancied that the man put his hands on her shoulders. His voice, cold, lifeless, impersonal, crossed the room.
"That is enough. He is waiting for us downstairs. He will be wondering where we are."
The little white shadow seemed to turn to the window, towards the limitless expanse of sunlit sea. Then a voice, small, proud, empty of emotion, said:
"Father wished me——"
Harkness was once more alone in the room.