CHAPTER XXXIX.
[CRAWFORD IS SLEEPLESS.]
What startled Crawford and made him draw back in terror from the window was the sight beneath him of the stage reaching from Boland's Ait to Crawford's Quay across the murky waters of Crawford's Bay.
Involuntarily he put his hand behind and felt for the revolver in his pocket. It was reassuring to find it safe and within easy reach.
It had been bad enough to know that Philip Ray visited the idiotic recluse, Bramwell, on this accursed island; but to find a means of communication established between the Ait and the Quay was alarming in the extreme.
What could be the object of this floating bridge? Of course it was not there merely by accident. It was there with the consent of the Layards and the poor drivelling creature who lived on the holm.
William Crawford was not an intrepid man. Layard was near the truth when he called him a coward. Crawford never courted danger. His instinct was to flee from it. If he could not run away, he preferred thrusting his head into the sand to looking menace straight in the face. If a person or a place became obnoxious to him he simply went away or stayed away.
In the present case the thing he would like best was that Philip Ray might die, or be killed, or stop away from Boland's Ait because of some sufficient and final reason, death being the most satisfactory of all. After the cessation of Ray's visits to the Ait for fully sufficient reason, what he would have liked was his own absence from the neighbourhood. The latter means of terminating the difficulty lay in his own hands, but two considerations operated against his adopting it. In the first place, he could use the precaution of not being in the house, or even district, during the hours when Ray was likely to be free from his office; and, in the second place, he could not bring himself to abandon his pursuit of Hetty. He was willing to run a moderate risk for her sake.
"I think," he had said to himself that day on his way to Welford, "that if Nellie were to die, and I found Hetty continued to bring me luck, I should marry her."
He had never asked himself whether it was likely Hetty would marry him or not. He always considered that women should be allowed little or no voice in such matters.