Part 3 (1/2)

She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely powerless to get the muddy footprints out of the matting. And no doubt there were some in the houseplace too.

”If I go through the scullery, I may be seen,” she said, the water pattering off her on to the newspaper. ”So lucky you take in the _Times_; it's printed on such thick paper. Where does that window look out?”

She pointed to the window at the farther end of the room.

”On to the garden.”

”Capital! Then we can get out through it, of course, without going through the scullery.”

I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and she was through it in two cautious strides.

”Now,” she said, looking back at me, ”I'm comparatively safe for the moment, and so is the matting. But before we do anything more, get a duster--a person like you is sure to have a duster in a drawer. Just so, there it is. Now wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we first came into as well as this, and then see to the paint of the window. I have probably smirched it. Then roll up the _Times_ tight, and put it in the waste-paper basket.”

She watched me obey her.

”Having obliterated all traces of crime,” she said when I had finished, ”suppose we go on to the stable. Let me help you through the window. I will wipe my hands on the gra.s.s first. And would not you be wise to put on that little shawl I see on the sofa? It is getting cold.”

The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got out somehow, enc.u.mbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me.

She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, between us, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath the cus.h.i.+on of my armchair.

The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden path to the stable, and I unlocked the door and let her in.

”Kindly lock me in and take away the key,” she said, vanis.h.i.+ng past me into the darkness, and I thought I detected a tone of relief in her brisk, matter-of-fact voice.

”I will bring some food as soon as I can,” I whispered. ”If I knock three times, you will know it's only me.”

”Don't knock at all,” she said; ”it might be noticed. Why should you knock to go into your own stable?”

”I won't, then. And how about your wet things?”

”That's nothing. I'm accustomed to being wet.”

I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble in by the parlour window, only to sink once more into my armchair in a state of collapse.

I had always entered so acutely into the joys and sorrows of others, their love affairs, their difficulties, their bereavements (I had in this way led such a full life), that I was surprised at this juncture to find my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that ardent natures who give out a great deal in the way of helpfulness and interest are bound to suffer when the reaction comes. The reaction had come for me now. I saw only too plainly the folly I had been guilty of in harbouring a total stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, the difficulty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would find in keeping up a deception. I doubted my own powers, everything. The truth was--but I did not realise it till afterwards--that I had missed my tea.

I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the houseplace. In a few minutes she tapped to tell me it was ready, and I rose mechanically to obey the summons. And then, to my horror, I found I was still in morning dress. For the first time for years I had not dressed for dinner. What would she think if she saw me? But it was too late to change now; I must just go in as I was. My whole life seemed dislocated, torn up by the roots.

There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold chicken, a lettuce, and a little custard pudding, fortunately very nutritious, being made with Eustace Miles's proteid. There were, however, a loaf and b.u.t.ter and plasmon biscuits on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of the chicken, and put it between two very thick slices of b.u.t.tered bread.

Then I crept out again and took it to her. She got up out of the hay, and put out a gnarled brown hand for it.

”I will bring you a cup of coffee later,” I said. I was beginning to feel a kind of proprietors.h.i.+p in her. She would have starved but for me.

My servant always left at nine o'clock, to sleep at her father's cottage, just over the way. I have a bell in the roof, which I can ring with a cord in case of fire or thieves.

To-night she was, of course, later than usual, but at last she brought in the coffee, and then I heard her making her rounds, closing the shutters on the ground floor, and locking the front door--at least, trying to do so. I had already locked and bolted it. Then she locked the scullery door on the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her step on the brick path, and the click of the gate. _She was gone_.

I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was already bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, and got a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask my protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour.

I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous.