Night had set in, and darkness, a darkness that could almost be felt,
reigned in the interior of the chaise. Neither of the travellers could
now see the other, though they sat within arm's length. The tutor, as
soon as they were well started, and his nerves, shaken by the man's
threats, permitted him to think of anything save his own safety, began
to wonder that his companion, who had been so forward before, did not
now speak; to look for her to speak, and to find the darkness and this
silence, which left him to feed on his fears, strangely uncomfortable.
He could almost believe that she was no longer there. At length, unable
to bear it longer, he spoke.
'I suppose you know,' he said--he was growing vexed with the girl who
had brought him into this peril--'who is at the bottom of this?' She did not answer, or rather she answered only by a sudden burst of
weeping; not the light, facile weeping of a woman crossed or
over-fretted, or frightened; but the convulsive heart-rending sobbing of
utter grief and abandonment.
The tutor heard, and was at first astonished, then alarmed. 'My dear,
good girl, don't cry like that,' he said awkwardly. 'Don't! I--I don't
understand it. You--you frighten me. You--you really should not. I only
asked you if you knew whose work this was.' 'I know! I know only too well!' she cried passionately. 'God help me!
God help all women!' Mr. Thomasson wondered whether she referred to the future and her own
fate. In that case, her complete surrender to despair seemed strange,
seemed even inexplicable, in one who a few minutes before had shown a
spirit above a woman's. Or did she know something that he did not know?
Something that caused this sudden collapse. The thought increased his
uneasiness; the coward dreads everything, and his nerves were shaken.
'Pish! pish!' he said pettishly. 'You should not give way like that! You
should not, you must not give way!' 'And why not?' she cried, arresting her sobs. There was a ring of
expectation in her voice, a hoping against hope. He fancied that she had
lowered her hands and was peering at him.
'Because we--we may yet contrive something' he answered lamely. 'We--we
may be rescued. Indeed--I am sure we shall be rescued,' he continued,
fighting his fears as well as hers.
'And what if we are?' she cried with a passion that took him aback.
'What if we are? What better am I if we are rescued? Oh, I would have
done anything for him! I would have died for him!' she continued wildly.
'And he has done this for me. I would have given him all, all freely,
for no return if he would have it so; and this is his requital! This is
the way he has gone to get it. Oh, vile! vile!' Mr. Thomasson started. Metaphorically, he was no longer in the dark. She
fancied that Sir George, Sir George whom she loved, was the contriver of
this villainy. She thought that Sir George--Sir George, her cousin--was
the abductor; that she was being carried off, not for her own sake, but
as an obstacle to be removed from his path. The conception took the
tutor's breath away; he was even staggered for the moment, it agreed as
well with one part of the facts. And when an instant later his own
certain information came to his aid and showed him its unreality, and he
would have blurted out the truth--he hesitated. The words were on the
tip of his tongue, the sentence was arranged, but he hesitated.