ten days had passed since the sturdy widow led her guest across the threshold, and catherine, with the remains of a badly twisted ankle, was still under her roof. she had been molested by nobody. one of her two lovers supposed her to be with the other; mrs. job did not know where she was; and susannah, equally ignorant, was only interested in knowing where she was not.
the attraction of opposites had done its work between mrs. cockshow and her housemate, for the two women were excellent friends. the human-heartedness of the elder one, and her permanent fancy for other people’s business, made her deaf [pg 152]when catherine began to speak of leaving the place. she was still very lame and the toll-woman was right when she took pharaoh to witness that to travel on foot would be insanity. besides which, where was she going to? the question was unanswerable; and finally it was settled between them that the cleaning of the house, the cooking, and the minding of that mob of fowls which dwelt at the bottom of the garden should devolve upon catherine, indefinitely, in return for her keep.
in this arrangement of mrs. cockshow’s, convenience and charity, like righteousness and peace, kissed each other. her whole interest was found outside her own walls; the road was her passion, her world; and those who went up and down on it her pictures, her newspapers, and, very often, her victims. to bandy words with her was the act of a fool; and so well was this understood that the ridicule which her strange appearance evoked when she first [pg 153]came into residence by the gate had died a natural but by no means lingering death, and gossip had taken its place. this was for the best, because the latter was satisfactory to all, while the former had only been satisfactory to mrs. cockshow.
the thing that suited catherine’s patroness best in their arrangement was that the girl could be left in charge of the gate while she went to llangarth market. she was a woman of some means, who did a small trade in eggs and poultry, and the difficulty of leaving her post on thursdays had been a weekly annoyance; for a market day was a foretaste of paradise to her. she owned a stout, aged pony of her late husband’s which she occasionally hired out to her neighbours for odd jobs, and she now looked forward to journeying in comfort to the very fountain-head of gossip. besides this, it was delightful to her to have under her roof the heroine of an episode of which she had been almost the first to hear. she [pg 154]had dragged catherine’s secret from her in the early hours of their acquaintance, and thought a great deal more of her companion when she learnt that she had eluded two of the opposite sex.
mrs. cockshow did not believe in men. her own husband had drunk heavily and persistently; and she had had time to visit his sins upon him before he escaped into the next world. she was well acquainted with charles saunders, and slightly so with black heber, for both had passed through her gate at various times.
“take care ye don’t let the sun go over the ’ill, all the same,” she had said to catherine; for though a despiser of men, she was an advocate of marriage. to her, matrimony, with the whip hand, was the ideal life.
so far, she had kept her tongue quiet on the subject of her guest. perhaps it pleased her to hug to her heart the gratification of knowing more than any one else; to pet her [pg 155]knowledge, so to speak, before using it as a boast. catherine had been kept a prisoner indoors for several days by her ankle, and when she went outside the walls it was only to tend the poultry or to hang out the washing in the garden. never had so much washing been seen on the toll-house hedges before, though mrs. cockshow, to whom soap was not important, eyed the display contemptuously. her cleanings consisted generally of what the country-side called “a lick and a promise.” the toll-house hid catherine from prying eyes on the road as she went about her business in the garden, and she began to feel secure in her very public retreat.
between herself and bungo, the white cur dog, no great friendship existed. the girl was fond of all animals; but her efforts to be on easy terms with this one had been useless, for he persisted in looking with imperishable distrust at her out of his blinking eyes and galloping away whenever [pg 156]she spoke to him. he would follow her to the garden at a servile distance; but the first words she threw him would send him flying across the cabbage beds, from the safe side of which he would stun her ears with his insane barking. in mrs. cockshow, who had hurled enough stones at him to pave a yard, he had implicit trust; but he took each movement of catherine’s hand for a menace.
she had just returned from her hens one morning, with bungo sneaking in her wake, when she heard mrs. cockshow in loud altercation on the road. the shrill, high voice of an old man was contending with that of the widow, and catherine ran to the window in the upper storey, attracted by the increasing noise. judging by the part that the word “fourpence” played in the storm, the dispute was about money, and the girl knew the toll-woman well enough to be sure that there could be but one issue to the combat. she smiled, [pg 157]hearing the baffled fury in the old man’s tone, as the gate swung open for the wheels that went grinding through it.
“a pint o’ fourpences would be no more account to me nor a pint o’ ditchwater!” he screamed. “i’ve thousands to leave behind me when i go, i have!”
“an’, by pharaoh, i’ve got more than that!” cried mrs. cockshow at the pitch of her lungs. “i’ve the world to leave be’ind me when i go!”
catherine, at her vantage point in the upper window, pulled the curtain aside as the gate closed, only to jump back as though she had been fired at; for bungo, who had joined his owner and was at the farther side of the road, fell into a frenzy of barking as he heard her movement at the open casement and saw her figure. the eyes of all went upward. the old man in the gig below was saunders’s uncle, and catherine was looking straight into the upturned face of charles.
[pg 158]
when the gig had rolled on without any action on his part, she breathed again freely. mrs. cockshow standing in her favourite spot in the middle of the road, watched the vehicle out of sight, and when a bend hid it she came close under the toll-house walls.
“’e’s ’ad enough o’ you!” she called up, her broad face all one smile. “did ye see the bald ’eaded old mawkin sittin’ up beside ’im? if the young feller’s no better nor ’im, ye did well to give ’im the slip. i’ve seen the old devil drivin’ ’is cattle along this road many a time. a proud look and a ’igh stomach ’e ’as, too; but that don’t keep ’im from bastin’ their ribs wi’ a common stick cut out o’ the ’edge—can’t spare so much as would buy a decent bit o’ ash plant. ’e don’t ’ave no cattle-man neither, an’ ’im screechin’ about ’is thousands! they do say ’e starved ’is wife too. i know them that’s seen ’er——”
at this point the widow discovered herself to be shouting up into an empty room; [pg 159]for catherine had come out and was standing behind her, with a scared face.
mrs. cockshow turned on her.
“silly wench that ye be!” she exclaimed. “it’s better to be sure than sorry. i tell ye ’e ’ates the very sight of ye now, an’ no wonder too. go an’ get the dinner. it’s nigh upon twelve, and bungo ’asn’t ’ad a bite to-day. come in, ye whelp!”
the last sentence was addressed, in a murderous tone, to the white dog, who wagged his tail. he took it for a caress.
mrs. cockshow arose next morning in her most jovial humour. it was thursday; and now, for the first time for months, she was dispensing with the services of that neighbour who called to take her eggs to market and was looking forward to carrying them there herself. catherine also was happy; for the two saunderses had driven by last evening on their return journey, without so much as a look at the toll-house windows, and she was sure the widow was [pg 160]right in saying that charles now hated the sight of her.
she was not afraid that heber would pass, though she knew that he went on thursdays to llangarth; for his way thither from the hill farm joined the highroad some way east of the toll. she sighed. could she see him, while remaining invisible herself, she knew that she would secretly be glad. but, admitting that, she put him from her thoughts with a heightened colour. since susannah’s plain speaking, she had never let her mind dwell on the shepherd; yet she had learned of late that if her pride had been cruelly handled, her heart had fared little better. she could not think, looking back, how she had ever liked or tolerated saunders. she was bitter against black heber, as well she might be; but she hated him and loved him at the same moment. for the first time, the simple girl was in a terribly complicated state of mind.
[pg 161]
mrs. cockshow had tied on her late husband’s hat with a new piece of twine and loaded her person yet more completely with clothes. before she climbed into the antiquated side-saddle on her pony’s back, she went to the roadside and began to fill the most accessible of her pockets with stones. while so engaged, she directed catherine, who looked on with astonishment, to shut the gate and tie the animal to it. the girl obeyed, and when the widow approached, bulging more strangely than usual, she helped her to mount. mrs. cockshow used the toll bars as a horse-block. then the egg basket was handed up to her, a switch cut from the hedge, and catherine was bidden to attend to the needs of passers and to suffer no one to shirk payment. before the rider was out of sight, bungo burst with a yell from the toll-house and began to follow, raising a trail of dust as he went.
in one moment mrs. cockshow had [pg 162]turned and the air was one hail of flying stones, while, through the cloud sent up by the sudden facing about of the pony, her arm could be seen whirling above her head like the arm of a mounted drummer through the smoke of battle; and as, in the blinding hurricane of hard metal and abuse, bungo flew homewards like the greyhound which had evidently been too intimate with his grandmother, catherine realised as she had never realised before, the infinite forethought of her protectress. she shut the dog into the house and sat down to await her first summons from the public.
mrs. cockshow gained llangarth without further inconvenience. many looks followed her as she rode up the street; but though there was a smile on most faces, no one addressed her with levity. having disposed of the pony, she disappeared with her basket into the market-place.
the market had drawn more than one of the actors in our story to llangarth; [pg 163]for charles and his uncle were among those inspecting cattle in the street, and heber, who had come on horseback to take some sheep to the railway station, was in the town too.
instead of answering susannah’s letter saunders had put it into the fire, for he was resolved that the episode of his acquaintance with catherine dennis should be closed for good and all. he was ashamed of it now, and felt that he had deserved all he got for meddling with a woman so far beneath him in every possible way. there was some comfort in assuring himself that he was well out of it and that he would take care never to get into such a position again. he felt little resentment against her; not because he was broad-minded or forgiving, but because his rancour was so completely concentrated on heber that it put everything else out of his head. he would never forgive the smile he had seen on the shepherd’s face as he looked back [pg 164]at him from the saddle on the talgwynne road. it was constantly in his mind, and he was thinking of it as he came out of the post-office door when his business with the cattle was over. he turned down the street and saw his enemy, who was on his way from the station, coming to meet him.
heber looked grim and weary as he approached. since sunday, when he had parted from susannah, he had had no chance of leaving his work either to question his father at talgwynne or to make any other attempt at discovering where catherine had hidden herself. he did not know what to believe; his doubt of his cousin’s truthfulness was strong and his opinion of mrs. job’s wisdom great. yet, as he looked back in cold blood at their ride in the dark and at his own roughness, he could not help seeing some likelihood in the girl’s return to his rival. he was not accustomed to considering himself from the outside—few primitive men are; but he had thought [pg 165]a good deal as he went about his business in the solitudes of the mountains; and failure will open new vistas to those who are not eaten up by vanity. though not given to succumbing to circumstances, heber was tried by the enforced patience and inaction of the last week and his heart was heavy in him.
if susannah’s letter had produced no effect on charles, it had given him the keen pleasure of knowing that heber was made a fool of as well as himself. the whole look of the man as he came to meet him sent the warmth of satisfaction through saunders, because it suggested to him that he was out of spirits with the world. as the distance lessened between them his own expression proclaimed the feeling; and back again to his mind came the vision of their last meeting and heber’s smile. it was his turn to smile now. he stopped.
“well, have ye found her yet?” he asked.
the shepherd made no pretence of misunderstanding [pg 166]him; his methods were too direct for that, and even the engrafted genteelness of charles’s points of view could not blind him to a certain nobility in the coarsely clad, weather-beaten fellow, which struck him at that moment as an additional outrage on himself.
“i know where i won’t find her, and that’s wi’ you,” said heber, at a venture.
charles was sharp enough to see where a vulnerable point would lie, and the overmastering longing to wound heber inspired his tongue.
“and that’s where you’re wrong,” said he. “i’ve got her safe enough, and i’ll keep her too—for a bit.”
the pupils of the shepherd’s eyes seemed to be contracting as saunders watched his face with an ecstatic sense of the success of his own words.
“if i follow ye till midnight,” heber said, at last, “i’ll see whether ye speak truth.”
he spoke with a slow, cold emphasis.
[pg 167]
charles was a little disconcerted. were the other to keep his word he would be likely to prove the falseness of his statement; were he to precede him to his house he would certainly do so. he suspected that heber knew where he lived.
“you’ll have some way to go, then,” said he. “a decent man doesn’t keep his wench under other folks’ noses. if you’ve a mind to see catherine, i’ll not stop you. i’m going out to see her myself, an’ perhaps the sight of the pair of us’ll please her.”
as he spoke, saunders’s eyes twinkled, for he was due at a village out in the neighbourhood and was going to start almost immediately in the gig. if moorhouse chose to annoy him by following him, he would let him have the wild-goose chase he deserved for his pains; and as he left the shepherd standing in the street he could hardly keep himself from bursting out laughing. he looked over his shoulder. heber was a few paces behind.
[pg 168]
when charles entered his house he saw that the shepherd was going to carry out his threat, for he was standing on the pavement watching him from the other side of the way; and as he emerged again to go into the stable behind the dwelling to fetch his gig, he was a little disappointed at finding that heber had disappeared. but when he had harnessed the cob and was driving out of the yard his cheerfulness returned, for heber had apparently only gone to get his horse—the same which had carried him and catherine to talgwynne—and was waiting for him at the end of the street. just as charles was starting, his uncle called after him to stop, as he meant to accompany him; and little as he desired the old man’s company at the present juncture, he had no choice but to accept it. he drove out of the town and on to the brecon road, with the trotting hoofs of the shepherd’s horse following steadily with a rhythmic beat that kept exact [pg 169]pace behind the gig, neither increasing nor slackening.
it was only when they had left llangarth behind that it occurred to charles what an egregious fool he had been. when he lured heber after him he had forgotten that, in order to reach his destination, he would have to pass through mrs. cockshow’s tollgate.
how he had perpetrated such an imbecility was beyond his understanding. on ordinary occasions he reached the village he was bound for by turning off the highway into a lane on the near side of the gate; but he remembered now that this was under repair and barred, and that he could only proceed by a cart track half a mile beyond the tollhouse. there was nothing for him to do but to put the best face he could on the business and to go forward. it was impossible to turn back because of his uncle’s presence beside him; for the old man was not in his confidence, and [pg 170]catherine’s face at the window yesterday had conveyed nothing to him. he did not know her by sight. he was aware of the trick that his nephew’s intended bride had played him, and, because he had never favoured the marriage, he had made some very sour jokes on the subject. as they neared the toll charles prayed that he might not have the chance of making more.
still the tireless hoofs beat on behind them. once he glanced back. heber was rising and falling mechanically in his stirrups with the swing of the big horse’s trot, apparently less interested in him and his gig than in the fields on either side. they went by the mouth of the closed lane. the bars were up and workmen were laying a seemingly interminable drain-pipe along the very middle of it.
as the little white house came in sight saunders stared earnestly before him for mrs. cockshow and felt in his waistcoat pocket for the gate-money. the widow [pg 171]was usually in the road, but to-day there was no sign of her familiar and unforgettable shape. he drew a sharp breath of annoyance. there would be shouting and waiting and all sorts of untoward delays; possibly a fresh battle between mrs. cockshow and his uncle. the latter was muttering already and beginning to look, as he did when excited, like a crazy hen.
heber sat, immovable and unconcerned, on his horse when they pulled up, and saunders raised his voice in the customary manner of travellers. the shepherd’s money was in his fingers, but when catherine came out of the tollhouse he almost dropped it into the dust.
for an instant the suspicion that charles’s hateful insinuations were true came to him like a cold blast. the girl hesitated, and then, with a glance at the occupants of the gig, approached him first, holding out her hand for the toll money. he leaned down towards her.
[pg 172]
“what be you doing here, catherine? how be you come here?”
she shrank back. there was suppressed vehemence in his tone.
“don’t be afeared o’ me,” he exclaimed, “i won’t hurt ye, my girl.”
“i live wi’ mrs. cockshow,” she faltered. “she’s at the market.”
“come on, come on, ye slut!” screamed saunders’s uncle. “am i to wait here all day for you to be sweetheartin’ wi’ every vagabond feller on the road?”
heber had dismounted, and as catherine, bewildered, was about to obey the cattle-breeder, he held her back. he took no notice of the outburst, but he led her up to the side of the gig on which charles sat.
“tell me the truth, catherine,” he said, “be you livin’ wi’ this man or be you not?”
“livin’ with him—with him?” she exclaimed.
“yes, you be hussy enough for anything, i’ll be bound!” cried the old man’s shrill [pg 173]voice. “let me go on, i tell ’e; open the gate! who cares a damn who ye be livin’ with?”
“he told me, not an hour back, that he was keepin’ you,” continued black heber, unmoved, pointing at charles. “be that true? answer me, girl.”
“it’s a lie,” cried catherine, in a shaking voice. “so help me god, it’s a lie!”
he loosed his hold on her.
“open the gate, catherine,” said he quietly. then he took charles’s cob by the head and looked up at its driver.
“will ye drive on, like the lyin’ cur ye are, or will ye come down now and have it out wi’ me?”
“let my horse go!” screamed the cattle-breeder. “who be you, ye thief, stopping me an’ my nephew in the road?”
charles bent forward and cut at heber with his whip.
“go on, then, if you be afeared,” said the shepherd, taking his hand from the bit. [pg 174]“it’s the wisest choice that you’ve made. and every time ye see me, ye can remember that i know the coward ye are.”
“he’s forgotten to pay,” said catherine blankly to the shepherd as they watched the gig disappear. “oh! what’ll mrs. cockshow say?”
black heber made no suggestion. there was only one question just then which interested him, and he could read its answer in catherine’s face.
“i’ll tie up the horse and come in wi’ you,” said he. “maybe i’d best wait and explain it to her.”
