‘O no!’ she said timidly. ‘It is too near home to be quite safe. We might not be known; but if we were!’
‘We can’t go back to Bath now. I’ll tell you, dear Viviette, what we must do. We’ll go on to Warborne in separate carriages; we’ll meet outside the station; thence we’ll walk to the column in the dark, and I’ll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has disappeared.’
As there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might be required for an incarceration of two or three days they left the said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which reached Warborne about ten o’clock.
It was only necessary for Lady Constantine to cover her face with the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out of the station without fear of recognition. St. Cleeve came forth from another compartment, and they did not rejoin each other till they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the irradiation of the Warborne lamplight.
The walk to Welland was long. It was the walk which Swithin had taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment of his stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood, and blamed neither God nor man. They were not pressed for time, and passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of predestination than of choice in their proceedings which the presence of night sometimes imparts. Reaching the park gate, they found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother Louis had arrived.
Leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway yet a little further, and, plunging through the stubble of the opposite field, drew near the isolated earthwork bearing the plantation and tower, which together rose like a flattened dome and lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble. It was far too dark to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the peculiar dialect of sylvan language which the piny multitude used would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time. In the lovers’ stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm.
On being unlocked the hut was found precisely as Swithin had left it two days before. Lady Constantine was thoroughly wearied, and sat down, while he gathered a handful of twigs and spikelets from the masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the precaution to blind the little window and relock the door.
Lady Constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze. The hut was small as the prophet’s chamber provided by the Shunammite: in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher of water, a rack overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron; while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room was fitted out as a dormitory, for Swithin’s use during late observations in the tower overhead.
‘It is not much of a palace to offer you,’ he remarked, smiling. ‘But at any rate, it is a refuge.’
The cheerful firelight dispersed in some measure Lady Constantine’s anxieties. ‘If we only had something to eat!’ she said.