When at last he turned back into the room he found he was not alone in it. After the brightness of the sky the firelit room was dim, but it seemed to Mr Bailey that someone, a woman, had tried to slip past him through the doorway. He shut the door with decision, and shot the bolt. There were to be no more fugitives from his tavern tonight. Then he faced her, the woman of his dreams. For in this place of shadows, this moment of magic, she was that, though earlier she had been no more than a hint of it. Bright eyes, a heaving bosom, black hair in heavenly disarray, and the whole effect that of a frightened lovely proud defiant daughter of moonlight—here was romance for you. She stood clutching her silk gown about her breasts: whether it was her only garment Mr Bailey dared not surmise (dared not but did, and spared no time to rebuke himself for the liberty of his thoughts). The cup of his night, this strange exhilarating night, was filled to the brim. He stood and stared, tasting its wonder, waiting for the woman to speak but not caring whether she spoke or not.
‘Oh it’s you, landlord! I declare you quite terrified me.’
‘Nay, madam,’ he stammered, ‘I had rather suffer hanging than cause you a moment’s disquiet.’
He came nearer. The habit of servility being discarded, tossed aside, shrivelled up in the romantic fire of this moment, his attitude was gallant, his eyes discreetly admiring. This was his hour, and he was equal to it. This, this was his hour and he asked no more than to be saved from an anticlimax.
At his movement she shrank back a pace and fell into a pretty confusion. ‘To have exposed myself thus . . . as it were in my very shift!’
‘Madam,’ said he, with a deprecating gesture, ‘my profound respect, my sincere devotion, my . . . my sense of the incomparable privilege . . . these alone were sufficient to clothe you, had you nothing else.’
She tittered. ‘La, sir! What fine language you have, to be sure!’
It was not the answer he would have chosen for her. Nor would he have wished her to titter. But in his present exalted mood he was incorrigible. As he had made of her the impossible fulfilment of his dream, so he would turn her dross into gold, her speech and her titters into the very music of love. His alchemy was swift: and unconscious and irresistible.
‘You are in . . . in trouble, madam?’
She wrung her hands. Even at risk of further exposure she wrung her hands, and the gesture was infinitely alluring. ‘Alas, yes . . . Tell me, landlord, did you hear anything? I was awakened by a noise and I thought . . .’ Her voice died away; her hand fluttered towards him; like a bird, he thought, like a bird seeking its nest.
He took the hand and bowed over it. ‘Was it the noise of horses you heard?’ he asked, with a hint of tenderness tinging his respect.
He thought she nodded, but she did not answer his question. ‘Have you seen aught of my brother?’ she asked. ‘How dark it grows here,’ she added, drawing away from him. ‘It would better become me to go back to my room than stand here conversing so freely with a stranger.’
She spoke to be contradicted, as even Mr Bailey was quick enough to see. He was enchanted by her coquetry. This was the game as it should be played; and he was not, he vowed, the man to disappoint her. He hastened to reassure her and to plead that she might stay a while yet. ‘It would desolate me to be denied the honour of learning the nature of your anxiety and of assisting you with such poor counsel as I am competent to offer.’ Involuntarily he began revolving in his mind a couplet upon this theme, for the habit of years is strong; but, shaking free of the untimely temptation, he remarked: ‘As for the darkness of the room, I will see to it.’ He strode—and ‘strode’ is accurate, for he was already a new man—to the hearth, thrust a taper into the flame of a blazing faggot, and with the taper lighted a tall candle. For this service he was richly rewarded. In shadow she had been a warm exciting mystery: in candlelight she was visibly and dangerously a woman. With a delicious shiver—movement careless enough to seem the symbol of an understanding between them, yet queenly enough to keep his thoughts still at an admiring distance—she came towards the hearth and stationed herself within reach of its warmth.
‘I confess,’ she said, ‘that I am anxious. It is my brother.’
‘Whom I saw,’ remarked Mr Bailey, with a rallying air, ‘making off with your horses not many minutes ago.’
‘You saw him!’ She seemed incredulous, indignant.
‘Your pardon, madam. The rebuke is just. That I saw him with the horses cannot be maintained. But I saw him pass through this room and go out by that door. A while afterwards I heard horses trotting away. Not one horse, but more than one; and, as I conjecture, two. I think it no very bold fancy to connect the one event with the other: id est, the gentleman with the horses.’