There was more of the same kind, and I glanced through it hurriedly, until I came to that of which I was more particularly in search.
"The sheriff came with his posse to Lord's Island in the morning, so that it was well you left during the night. He is still after you. I passed his messenger yesterday near Braithwaite, so it behoves you to be wary. I do not think, however, he has winded you as yet, and as soon as I can discover an occasion I will have you sent over the water. But being myself under the cloud of their suspicions, I have to step very deliberately. Your cousin, Jervas Rookley, lives openly under his own name at Blackladies, and receives visits from the Whig attorney; and since he can only be staying there with the sufferance of the Government, you may be certain what I told you is true. By the way, Mr. Anthony Herbert, the painter, disappeared on the same day or thereabouts that you did. It is rumoured that he has been arrested, but nothing certain is known. But if the rumour is true I greatly fear that he owes his arrest to his acquaintanceship with you and myself. I suspect Mr. Rookley's finger in the pie. Since he was playing false with the Government concerning you, he would most likely be anxious to give them an earnest of loyalty in some other matter. But I do not know."
So far I read and clapped the letter down with a bang. For here was the fellow to my own suspicion.
I sat down and finished the letter. There was but another line to it.
"I got my information about Rookley from an oldish man who came secretly here from Blackladies. He seemed in some doubt as to which of yourself or your cousin he should call master, but he was very insistent that I should let you know of his coming. I had, indeed, some difficulty in comprehending him, for now he wished me to style him 'Aron' to you and now 'Ashlock.' Altogether I thought it wiser to give him no news as to your whereabouts. This, however, is certain, from what he said to me—there is a watch set about Blackladies on the chance that you might return."
This last sentence troubled me exceedingly. For it had been growing in my mind that there was but one person who could tell me fully what I needed to know, and that person Mr. Jervas Rookley; and a vague purpose was gradually taking shape within me that I would once more make use of Mr. Curwen's stables, and riding one night round by Newlands valley and Keswick, seek to take Mr. Rookley by surprise, and wrest the truth from him. That project the letter seemed to strike dead. Accordingly I took the occasion to write to Lord Derwentwater, and implored him, if by any means he could, to inform himself more particularly of Anthony Herbert's arrest, and whither he had been taken. "For upon these two points," said I, "hangs not my safety, but my soul's salvation;" and so hurried Tash off before the poor man was halfway through his supper, and waited impatiently for an answer.
Now, during this period of waiting, since each time that I found myself alone with Mr. Curwen, his talk would wander back inquisitively to the French Court, discovering there a lustre which no doubt it had, and a chivalry which it no less certainly lacked, I began of a set purpose to avoid him; and avoiding him, was thrown the more into the company of Miss Dorothy. Moreover, the frankness with which she had hinted to me the weakness of her father, brought about a closer intimacy between us as of friend and friend rather than as of hostess and guest. It was as though Mary Tyson and she were continually building up out of their love a fence around the father, and she had joined me in the work.
Many a time, when I was on the hillside behind the house I would be startled by the sight of a horse and the flash of a red-coat upon the horse's back, only to find my heart drumming yet the faster when I perceived that it was Miss Dorothy Curwen in her red cramoisie riding-habit. Maybe I would be standing no great distance from the house, and she would see me and come up the grass while I went down towards her, her hair straying about her ears and forehead in the sweetest disorder, and her cheeks wind-whipped to the rosiest pink. On the wet days, which were by no means infrequent, she would sit at her spinet and sing such old songs as that I had listened to on the first night of my coming. If the evenings were fine, we would sometimes row out upon Ennerdale water, in a crazy battered boat, so that I was more often baling out the leakage in a tin pannikin than pulling at the oars. And on afternoons, when the sunlight fell through the leaves like great spots of a gold rain we would climb up to the orchard, and I would spread an old cloak for her upon the grass, and we would sit amongst the crabbed trunks of trees. But at all times—in the dusk, when she sang and the rain whipped the panes; at night, when we rowed across the moonlit lake as across a silver mirror, in the hush of a world asleep—at all times a feverish impatience would seize on me for an answer to my letter, and a shadow would darken across our talk, so that thereafter I sat mum and glooming and heard little that was said to me. It was not, indeed, the shadow of the gallows, but rather of the fear lest while I lingered here at Applegarth, chance might thwart me of the gallows. For the girl's presence was to me as a perpetual accusation.
Upon one such occasion, when we were together in the orchard, she looked at me once or twice curiously.
"For one so imprudent," said she, a trifle petulantly, "you are extraordinary solemn."