She looked out once again at the falling snow and the slowly darkening sky, which foretold not only worsening weather to come but the approach of evening and all the hazards of a winter's night.
"I am ready," she said, and throwing open a chest against the wall drew out a hooded cloak, a woollen kirtle, and a pair of leather shoes that must surely never have seen service out of doors except thrust into a covering bag when she rode side-saddle. kirtleMy own daughter Joanna, who overtops me now, climbed from this same window a week ago," she said, "after a wager with Margaret that she had grown too fat. I am thin enough, in all conscience. What do you say? Do I lack spirit now?"
"You never lacked it, my lady," he answered, "only the spur to prick you to endeavour. You know the wood below your pasture-land?"
"I should," she said. "I rode in it most days when I was free to do so."
"Then lock your door, after I have left the room, climb from the window, and make your way to it. I will see that the track is deserted and the household all within, and will tell Sir Oliver that you dismissed me and wish to be alone."
"And the children? Joanna will be aping Sybell, as she has done continually these past weeks, but Margaret…" she paused, her courage ebbing. "Once I lose Margaret, there is nothing left."
"Only your will to live," he said. "If you keep that, you keep all things. And your children too."
"Go quickly", she said, "before I change my mind."
As we left the room I heard her lock the door, and looking at Roger I wondered if he knew what he had done, urging her to risk her life and her future in an escapade that must surely fail. The house had grown silent. We walked along the passage to the hall and found it empty, except for the two children and the dogs. Joanna was pirouetting before the looking-glass, her long hair dressed in braids with a ribbon threaded through it which had, a short time before, been on Sybell's head; while Margaret sat astride a bench, her father's conical hat upon her head and his long whip in her hand. She looked at Roger severely when he entered.
"Observe now," she said, "I am obliged to make do with a bench for a horse and borrowed plumage for equipment. I'll not remind you of your failings again, my master."
"Nor shall you have to," he told her. "I know my duty. Where is your father?"
"He's above," answered the child. "He cut his finger severing the otter's paw, and Sybell is dressing it for him."
"He'll not thank you to disturb him," said Joanna. "He likes to sleep before he dines, and Sybell sings to him. It makes him drop off the sooner and wake with better appetite. Or so he says."
"I do not doubt it," replied Roger. "In that event, please thank Sir Oliver for me and bid him goodnight. Your mother is tired and does not wish to see anyone. Perhaps you will tell him so?"
"I may," said Joanna, "if I remember."
"I'll tell him," said Margaret, "and wake him too, if he does not descend by six o'clock. Last night we dined at seven, and I can't abide late hours."
Roger wished them both goodnight and, opening the hall-door, stepped outside, closing it softly behind him. He stole round to the back of the house and listened. There were sounds coming from the kitchen quarters, but windows and doors were fastened tight, and the shutters barred. The hounds were yelping from outbuildings in the rear. It would be dark within half an hour or even less; already the copse below the field was dim, shrouded by the pall of snow, and the opposite hills were bleak and bare under the grey sky. The tracks we had made ascending to the house were almost blotted out by the fresh-fallen snow, but beside them were new prints, closer together, like those of a child who, hurrying for shelter, runs like a dancer upon her toes. Roger covered them with his own long stride, disturbing the ground, kicking the snow in front of him as he walked rapidly downhill towards the copse; and now if anyone should venture forth before darkness came they would see nothing but the tracks he had made himself, and those would be blotted too within the hour.
She was waiting for us by the entrance to the wood, carrying her pet squirrel, her cloak drawn close around her and her hood fastened under her chin. But her long gown, which she had tried to fasten up under the belted cloak, had slipped down again below her ankles and hung about her feet like a dripping valance. She was smiling, the smile her daughter Margaret would have worn had she too set forth on some adventure, with the promise of a pony at the end of it instead of a bleak unknown.
"I dressed my pillow in my night-attire", she said, "and heaped the covers over it. It may fool them for a while, should they break down the door."
"Give me your hand," he said. "Disregard your skirts and let them trail. Bess will find warm clothes for you at home."
She laughed and put her hand in his, and as she did so I felt as if it were in mine as well, and that the pair of us were lifting, dragging her through the fallen snow, and he was no longer a steward bound in the service of another woman and I a phantom from a later world, but both of us were men sharing a common purpose and a common love that neither of us, in his time or mine, would ever dare make plain.
When we came to the river and the rotten bridge that lay half-broken in mid-stream he said to her, "You must trust me once again and let me carry you across, as I would your daughter."
"But if you let me fall", she answered, "I will not clout you about the head, as Margaret would."
He laughed, and bore her safely to the other side, once more soaking himself nearly to the waist. We went on walking through the little line of stunted, shrouded trees, the silence all about us no longer ominous, as it had been when I walked alone, but hushed with a sort of magic, and a strange excitement too.
"The snow will be thicker in the valley around Treverran," he said, "and if Ric Treverran should see us he might not hold his tongue. Have you breath enough left to strike out into the open and climb the hill to the track above? Robbie awaits me there with the ponies. You shall choose which of us you please to ride behind. I am the more cautious."
"Then I choose Robbie," she said. "Tonight I bid farewell to caution, and for ever."
We turned left and began to climb the hill out of the valley, the river behind us, the snow reaching above the knees of my companions with every step, making progress laborious and slow.
"Wait," he said, letting go her hand, "there may be a drift ahead before we strike the path," and he plunged upwards, sweeping the snow aside with both his hands, so that for a moment, as he walked on alone to higher ground, I was left with her, and could stare for a brief instant at the small, pale, resolute face beneath the hood.
"All's well," he called. "The snow is firmer here. I'll come and fetch you." I watched him turn and advance, half-sliding down the slope towards her, and it seemed to me suddenly that two men were moving there, not one, and both of them were holding out their hands to help her climb. It must be Robbie, having heard his brother's voice, who had come down from the track above.
Some instinct warned me not to move, not to climb, but to let her go alone and grasp their hands. She went from me and I lost sight of her, and of Roger, and of the third shadowy figure too, in a sudden great pall of snow that blotted all of them from sight. I stood there, shaking, the strands of wire between me and the line, and it was not snow that blanketed the opposite hills and the high bank, but the grey canvas hangings looped to the wagons of the goods-train as it rattled and lumbered through the tunnel.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SELF-PRESERVATION is common to all living things, linked perhaps to that older brain which Magnus said forms part of our natural inheritance. Certainly in my own case instinct transmitted a danger signaclass="underline" had it not done so I should have died as he did, through the same cause. I remember stumbling blindly away from the railway embankment to the protection of the passage-way where the cattle had sheltered, and I heard the wagons thunder over my head as they passed down the line into the valley. Then I crossed a hedge and found myself in a field behind Little Treverran, home of the wood-worker, and so on to the field where I had left the car.