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We returned toward the house, and at last Mrs Thorne broke the awkward silence.
‘I need not apologise for my poor girl’s strange ma
‘No, he has not mentioned anything particular.’
‘No! Well, my poor child had a severe attack of nervous fever some years ago, and ever since she is liable to recurrences of nervousness which are absolutely painful. There are days when the sound of a voice is torture to her.’
‘And perhaps she finds the sound of the rippling water soothing, dear madam. If such is the case, pray, permit her to enjoy it in peace. I should be sorry if my visit should in any way interfere with Miss Thorne’s comfort, and Archie and I have formed any amount of plans about shooting and fishing while we are here.’
‘Thank you, Mr Sinclair, but I trust Hester may be quite recovered tomorrow.’
Some household affair called my hostess inside, and I was left to pace up and down one of the walks, smoking a cigar, while waiting for Archie. I had some curiosity to know when Miss Thorne would think proper to come up from the river, too, and kept a sharp look-out until the sun was down, and the full moon was rising. At last Archie put in an appearance when it was so dark that I could scarcely recognise him.
‘You’re a fine fellow!’ I cried, ‘to leave me here all alone in an enemy’s camp. And if you don’t get a good rowing from the ladies, you deserve one.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I wrote to Bessie, telling her I would be at our old trysting place this evening, and I’ve been waiting for her ever since. Some visitors had detained her, and I had scarcely time to say half-a-dozen words to her.’
‘No, I suppose you were too busy kissing. Did you see your cousin down by the river?’
‘Hester? No, what would take me down there at this time of night?’
‘At all events she’s there. How was it you never told me what a delightful temper she had, my son?’
‘Who? Hester? I never saw anything remarkably bad about it. She used to be a bit sulky, that’s all.’
Then I related to him the episode of our interview, and he was full of astonishment. ‘I never heard of such an exhibition on my cousin’s part – surely she is greatly changed. I think I’ll go down and look for her to keep the peace. I hope to goodness she has heard nothing about Bessie. Does aunt guess, do you think, Sinclair?’
‘Not the facts, I think,’ and then I told him of the pumping I had undergone from the elder lady.
‘It’ll have to come out somehow, and, heaven knows, I’d rather face anything. Mark, you’ll promise to tell them for me when I can make up my mind, won’t you?’
‘You’re an arrant coward, Mr Archibald. Oh, yes, I’ll face the breach for you. It would be a sort of satisfaction to make that young lady a little return for her uncalled-for rudeness to Mr Sinclair. But you’d better go, if you want to make the peace for the present.’
He had scarcely gone when Mrs Thorne came out anxiously.
‘Are you alone, Mr Sinclair? I had hoped the young people were with you. Where is Archie, do you know?’
‘I think he is with Miss Thorne. Yes, there they are, coming up by the shrubbery,’ and Mrs Thorne, evidently relieved, begged me to go into the house.
The evening we spent in the little drawing-room at Riverdale was, to my mind, about the most wretchedly dull I ever passed. It was worse than dull, for it was full of restraint and discomfort. There was a piano in the room, and Mrs Thorne tried timidly to induce her daughter to sing and play for us. The reply she got was a look that silenced her and made the miserable woman’s hands tremble as though she had the ague.
Hester Thorne sat back from the lamp in the corner of a lounge, her hand on her lap, with the slender white fingers interlocked. She had chosen the seat that she might have Archie in full view as he sat in an arm-chair before her and her mother, and I saw that he knew he was watched and felt miserable under the glare of the fierce black eyes that shone in the dim corner like those of a cat.
I did my best, and so did Mrs Thorne, to try and get up a general conversation, but to no purpose. Even to direct appeals Hester would return a cold, curt monosyllable, and poor Archie was too decidedly uncomfortable to assist me in small talk. At last I took pity on him, and drew his attention to the hour with a remark that we must not keep the ladies up too late, and I saw how gladly Mrs Thorne had in a little supper and then escorted us to our several chamber doors.
When I had shut myself in, I went to the French window and opened it, for the room seemed hot and close, and feeling the inutility of attempting sleep at an hour so unusually early for me, I blew out my lamp and sat down by the open window to enjoy a cigar and a good think at one and the same time.
These new acquaintances of mine were puzzling me. As Hester Thorne sat there in the lounge during the evening and looked at Archie with that stony glare in her awful eyes, an idea that I had seen those eyes somewhere before haunted me; they seemed quite familiar to me. Indeed, the darkly-outlined face was altogether like the memory of a well-impressed dream on me, but in vain. I tried to recall the circumstances under which the impression had been made.
Finding that impossible, my mind reverted to the strange way of exhibiting her preference which I had an opportunity of witnessing since my arrival.
‘Archie, indeed, was quite correct in saying I had better wait to see the people before I recommended him to fall in with his aunt’s views,’ I thought to myself, ‘for if his cousin is not the most ill-tempered and worst-bred girl I ever met, I’m no judge. What a jolly row there will be when she finds out about Archie being over head and ears in love with Bessie Elliot! By-the-bye, I must get him to introduce me before I go. I should like to become acquainted with Archie’s idea of the beautiful.’ But little, indeed, I thought in what an awful way I should become acquainted with Bessie Elliot.
I had got to the end of my cigar and stood up to fling the butt out of the window. As I did so, I heard a rush of feminine garments and the sound of a hurried, but light, foot on the grass outside. It was, as I have before stated, nearly full moon, but a number of white, fleecy clouds were sailing in the lovely, pale sky, which at that moment had met and partially hid the lady moon so that the light under the trees at the side of the house was but indistinct. The idea that the movement I had heard was caused by some fresh freak of Hester Thorne struck me, and deeply curious, I stepped out and moved more into the shadow of the trees.
Standing there a moment I heard voices at some distance down toward the Loddon, and allowing my curiosity to overcome what small sense of decency I may have possessed, I ran down behind the fringe of shrubs that separated the gravel from the large centre grass plot. As I approached the speakers, I at once recognised the voices of mother and daughter. In a few seconds more there was between them and me only a thinly-leaved bush, and I could distinctly see the two forms – one a picture of almost demoniac anger, the other of an humble and pleading yet most terrified petitioner.
‘Do you hear? I will not be followed and haunted day and night. You are driving me mad! Don’t I tell you that it is only by the side of that water that I feel at rest, and yet you will try to keep me away from it! Go home, woman! If you are one of those who can sleep in bed when those they love are dead, go and sleep in yours. And yet you say you loved my father!’
The scorn of the latter words was unendurable, and the poor mother seemed barely able to gasp -
‘Oh, Hester!’
‘Oh, Hester!’ the angry girl mimicked. ‘Oh! Hester, why aren’t you a stone? Oh! Hester, what makes you feel? When you see the man you love, and who has loved you, drifting away from you for ever, why don’t you go to bed and sleep? Don’t deny it! He did love me! He has been mine only from boyhood. Hasn’t he lived with me under one roof, and sat with me in one school and one church, and prayed to God with me from one book, until the pretty face of a girl baby bewitched him?’ And with a dark face, eyes full of fire, and a gesture full of fury, she hurried riverward once more.