He went then—awkwardly, slowly. He felt himself, in spite of his arguments, in spite of his anger, in spite of the wrong which she had done him, and the disgrace which she brought on his name,—he felt himself something of a cur. She was little more than a child, little more than a child; and he had not understood her! Even now he had no notion how often that plea would ring in his ears, and harass him and keep him wakeful. And Henrietta? She had told herself before the interview that with it the worst would be over. But as she heard his firm tread pass slowly away, down the road, and grow fainter and fainter, the pride that had supported her under his eyes sank low. A sense of her loneliness, so cruel that it wrung her heart, so cruel that she could have run after him and begged him to punish her, to punish her as he pleased, if he would not leave her deserted, gripped her throat and brought salt tears to her eyes. The excitement was over, the flatness remained; the failure, and the grey skies and leaden water and dying bracken. And she was alone; alone for always. She had defied him, she had defied them all, she had told him that whatever happened she would not go back, she would not be taken back. But she knew now that she had lied. And she crossed the road, her step unsteady, and stumbled blindly up the woodland path above the road, until she came to a place where she knew that she was hidden. There she flung herself down on her face and cried passionately, stifling her sobs in the green damp moss. She had done wrong. She had done cruel wrong to him. But she was only nineteen, and she was being punished! She was being punished!
CHAPTER X
HENRIETTA IN NAXOS
Youth feels, let the adult say what he pleases, more deeply than middle age. It suffers and enjoys with a poignancy unknown in later life. But in revenge it is cast down more lightly, and uplifted with less reason. The mature have seen so many sunny mornings grow to tearful noons, so many days of stress close in peace, that their moods are not to the same degree at the mercy of passing accidents. It is with the young, on the other hand, as with the tender shoots; they raise their heads to meet the April sun, as naturally they droop in the harsh east wind. And Henrietta had been more than girl, certainly more than nineteen, if she had not owned the influence of the scene and the morning that lapped her about when she next set foot beyond the threshold of the inn.
She had spent in the meantime three days at which memory shuddered. Alone in her room, shrinking from every eye, turning her back on the woman who waited on her, she had found her pride insufficient to support her. Solitude is a medium which exaggerates all objects, and the longer Henrietta brooded over her past folly and her present disgrace, the more intolerable these grew to the vision.
Fortunately, if Modest Ann’s heart bled for her, Mrs. Gilson viewed her misfortunes with a saner and less sensitive eye. She saw that if the girl were left longer to herself her health would fail. Already, she remarked, the child looked two years older—looked a woman. So on the fourth morning Mrs. Gilson burst in on her, found her moping at the window with her eyes on the lake, and forthwith, after her fashion, she treated her to a piece of her mind.
“See here, young miss,” she said bluntly, “I’ll have nobody ill in my house! Much more making themselves ill! In three days Bishop’s to be back, and they’ll want you, like enough. And a pale, peaking face won’t help you, but rather the other way with men, such fools as they be! You get your gear and go out.”
Henrietta said meekly that she would do so.
“There’s a basket I want to send to Tyson’s,” the landlady went on. “She’s ailing. It’s a flea’s load, but I suppose,” sticking her arms akimbo and looking straight at the girl, “you’re too much of a lady to carry it.”
“I’ll take it very willingly,” Henrietta said. And she rose with a spark of something approaching interest in her eyes.
“Well, I’ve nobody else,” said cunning Mrs. Gilson. “And I don’t suppose you’ll run from me, ’twixt here and there. And she’s a poor thing. She’s going to have a babby, and couldn’t be more lonely if she was in Patterdale.” And she described the way, adding that if Henrietta kept the road no one would meddle with her at that hour of the morning.