The younger man’s face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed not only his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear and brooding. He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was no longer the dandy who had turned a feather-head—for there was little in this place to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense had sharpened his features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old, and the shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longer floated on their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritability showed in his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silence the old man’s crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moody depression. It was bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole with an imbecile driveller, and to spend long hours without other company. It was worse to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, and the peril which he had so long and so cleverly evaded yawned for him.
To do Walterson justice, it was not entirely for his own safety that he was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened—starting at the squeak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of a friend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled to ruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intention he had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not face without a shudder what might be happening at this moment by the waterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girl escaped there, would happen here; when they dragged her through the doorway, bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen who dominated him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they did they would do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight of it. For if they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, how loathly a figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor and dastardly a thing he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will he did and to whose vengeance he consented.
The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked with terrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was already playing, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met her look. Passionately he wished—as we all wish in like but smaller cases—that he had never seen either of the women, that he had never played the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen some other direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing was useless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, would not relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would not convert the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. And even while he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside, and he stood up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on the shutter, informed him that the crisis which he had been expecting and dreading, was come—was come!
Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, was already on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog face opened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wall was scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thick drugget shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall man cloaked and booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meaner appearance. The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, a bundle—Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess with the same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure the door against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up the chimney, the cloaked man addressed him.
“You’re Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we’ve met—once, I think. Well,” he spoke in a harsh, peremptory tone—“you’ll be good enough to note,” he turned and pointed to the other men, “that I have naught to do with this! I’ve neither hand nor part in it! And I’ll ask you to remember that.”
Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the man with the bundle.
“What is it?” he muttered hoarsely. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, stow this!” Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which she had secured. “The gentleman is very grand and mighty,” shrugging her shoulders, “but the thing is done now. And I’ll warrant if good comes of it he’ll not be too proud to take his share.”
“Not I, girl!” the tall man answered. “Not I!”
He took off as he spoke his cloak and hat, and showed a tall, angular figure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long, and his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features was redeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which was never long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speech and manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors. And not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemed in his presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.