“I’d as soon see your back,” she continued, “and ha’ done with it. I know your sort! All fine feathers and as much spunk as a mouse!”
Henrietta made up her mind. She sat down on the nearest stool.
“I shall remain,” she said, “and go with you to see him.”
“Not you! So what’s the use of talking?”
“I shall go,” Henrietta replied firmly. “It will be dark in an hour. I will remain and go with you.”
Bess shrugged her shoulders and answered nothing. But had Henrietta caught sight of her smile, she had certainly changed her mind.
Even without that, and unwarned, the girl found, as they sat there in silence, and the minutes passed and the light faded, much ground for hesitation. The words which Clyne had used when he forbade her to risk herself, the terms in which he had described the desperate plight of the men whom she must beard, the fears that had assailed her when she had gone after dark to meet a peril less serious—all these things recurred to her memory, and scared her. By pressing her lips together she maintained a show of unconcern; but only because the dusk hid her loss of colour. She repented—gravely; but she had not the courage to draw back. She shrank from meeting—as she must meet, if she rose to go—the other’s smile of triumph; she shrank from the sense of humiliation under which she would smart after she had escaped. She had cast the die and must dare. She must see the enterprise through. And she sat on. But she was sure that she could hardly suffer anything worse than she suffered during those minutes, while her fate still lay in her hands, while the power to withdraw was still hers, and indecision plucked at her. The man who fights with his back to the wall suffers less than when, before he drew his blade, imagination dealt him a score of deaths.
The old man continued to grumble over the fire; and seldom, but sometimes, he laid his chin on his shoulder and looked back at her. Bess, on the contrary, gazed at her as the cat at the mouse; but with her back to the light and her own face in shadow, so that whatever thoughts or passions clouded her dark eyes, they passed unseen. Presently, as the light failed, Bess’s head became no more than a dark knob breaking the lower line of dusty panes; while through the upper a patch of pale green sky, promising frost, held Henrietta’s eyes and raised a still but solemn voice amid the tumult of her thoughts. That morsel of sky was the only clean, pure thing within sight, and it faded quickly, and became first grey and then a blur of darkness. By that time the room, with its close, fetid odours and its hints at gruesome secrets, had sunk into the blackness of night.
The fire gave out a dull glow, but it went no farther than the hearth. Yet presently it was the cause of an illusion, if illusion it was, which gave Henrietta a shock. Turning her eyes from the window—it seemed to her that longer waiting would break her down—she saw the outline of the old miser’s figure, but erect and much closer to her than before—and, unless she was mistaken, with hands outstretched as if to clutch her neck. She uttered a low cry, and rose, and stepped back. On the instant he vanished. But whether he sank down, or retreated, or had never stirred, she could not be sure; while her cry found an echo in Bess’s mischievous laughter.
“Ha! ha! You’re not quite so bold!” Bess cried, with enjoyment, “as you were an hour ago, I reckon!”