“Yes. I didn’t know”—a little wildly—“I didn’t know what to do. And then you threatened me, and I—it seemed unreasonable. For I wanted to help you, I did, I did indeed. But I dared not, I dared not give him up! I could not have his blood on my hands after—you know.”
“But you no longer—care for him?”
“I loathe him!” she answered with a shudder. “But you see how it is. He trusted me, and I—how can I betray him? How can I? How can I?”
It was his business to prove to her that she could, that she ought, that she must; he was here to press her to it, to persuade her, to cajole her to it, if necessary. He had come for that. But the words it behoved him to use stuck in his throat. And the chaise rolled on, and rolled on. And still, but with the sweat standing on his brow, he sat silent, looking out on the barren landscape, as the stone fences slid quickly by, or open moorland took their place. In ten minutes they would be at the Low Wood. Already through her window she could see the long stretch of sparkling water, and the wooded isles, and the distant smoke of Ambleside.
Their silence was a tragedy. She could save him by a word, and she could not say the word. She dared not say it. And he—the pleas he should have used died on his lips. It behoved him to cast himself on her mercy; he was here for that purpose. It behoved him to work on her feelings, to plead with her, to weep, to pray. And he did not, he could not. And the minutes passed; the wheels rolled and rolled. Soon they would be at the end of their journey. He was like a famishing man who sees a meal within reach, but cannot touch it; or like one oppressed by a terrible nightmare, who knows that he has but to say a word, and he is freed from the incubus—yet his tongue refuses its office. And now the carriage, having climbed the rise, began to roll more quickly down the hill. In a very few minutes they would be at the end of their journey.
Suddenly—“What can we do?” she cried, piteously. “What can we do? Can we do nothing? Nothing?”
And neither of the two thought the union of interests strange; any more than in their absorption they noted the strangeness of this drive in company—over some of the very road which she had traversed when she eloped with another to avoid a marriage with him.
He shook his head in dumb misery. Three days of suspense, and as many sleepless nights, the wear and tear of many journeys, had told upon him. He had had but little rest, and that induced by sheer exhaustion. He had taken his meals standing, he had passed many hours of each day in the saddle. He could no longer command the full resources of his mind, and though he still held despair at arm’s length, though he still by force of habit commanded himself, and was stern and reticent, despondency gained ground upon him. It was she who almost at the last moment suggested a plan that if not obvious, was simple, and to the purpose.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen, sir! Why should not I do this? Go myself to—to him, to Walterson?”
“You?” he answered, with undisguised repugnance.