Chapter XVII: I Am Consigned to a Green Grave

To you, my dear Alcide, conscience is, I know, a disease, and virtue its relapse. I do not, then, ask your sympathy, but only your commiseration in that long struggle with my better self in which I was now to engage--a struggle which found me child, and left me woman--a struggle through whose intermittent deliriums moved ever the sorrowful figure of my poor lost Gogo.

Yet I must own that the oasis in which this destiny was to be fulfilled figured for a period the greenest in all my desert career. It was a dear time, in truth; a dear, abandoned, wonderful time, until the inevitable disenchantment came. Alas! to take profit of your own unselfishnesses is, with a stern Providence, to convert them into the plainest of worldly transactions!

No word passed between me and my companion as we hurried, deeper and deeper, into the fathomless woods. Sure of foot and, it seemed, of destination, he drew me unresisting by cloudy deeps of foliage, by starlit alleys, by ways so thronged and massed with trunks as to seem impenetrable. Often I shrunk before some imaginary charge of shadows; often cried out in the silent rush of woodland things across our path. There was no wind that could reach and buffet those packed desolations; no frost, save where in the clearings it could find space to bloom. And these, for precaution’s sake, we avoided, lest our footsteps should betray us. On and on we sped, till my heart was sick in my breast, and I cried out to rest and die. But he would not let me stop.

“Courage, little sister!” he cried; “we are within a cast of home.”

We mounted, after that, a long and gentle hill, from whose sides the trees fell away, till, on the summit, there was none. But here, sunk deep in the crest, was, as I could discern, an ancient gravel pit, whose slopes were rough with brake and brush to a giddy distance down.

“Come,” he whispered, and clasped my hand secure.

We descended by a path, that was no path to me, and, at the bottom, stooped under a very thicket of bush, and gained once more a sense of space and movement, but so deadly close-shut that for a little I dared not stir.

“Come,” whispered my companion again. “It is nothing but a cleft in the hill, but so overgrown above that no mortal would guess it there.”

Still I dared not move. When suddenly I felt his arm about me, and his lips on mine. Then I started to myself with a shock of anger.

“Is this to be a brother?” I cried.

“What else,” he murmured, “to give his little sister confidence.”

The low laugh with which he said it made my blood fire. I could have struck him in my fury.

“Go on!” I said, in a repressed voice. “I have come so far; I must follow, I suppose.”

“Will you not let me lead you?”

“No.”

“You may stumble in the dark.”

“Not to the fall you think.”

“I am sorry.”

“Very well. Go on.”

He went before, submissively. The gully cut straight, like a giant furrow, through the hill. It was narrow and pitch-dark, sodden here and there with dripping water, and always smelling like a vault. Not once in its entire length, so far as I could see, did the dense mat of overgrowth thin to that texture that a star of all the hosts above was visible.

At last he stopped so suddenly that I near fell against him.

“Hush!” he whispered, “we are at the end. Can you see enough to follow me?”

“Yes,” I said; “my eyes are opened now.”

He had hard work, I knew, to suppress a chuckle over my tragic tone.

“Well, keep them so,” said he; and, elbowing up a great pad of foliage, beckoned to me to pass. I obeyed, holding my skirts from him, and in a moment discovered myself in the open once more.

We had emerged, it seemed, high on the near perpendicular side of another pit, or cutting. Right beneath us, shouldering the very steep on which we were perched, was the thatched roof of a cottage, an open skylight in the midst gaping at us scarce ten feet below. So close did it invite us, in the bewildering starlight, that I was near springing, on the thought, to gain its shelter. But my companion restrained me.

“Wait,” he whispered drily. “A little of your discretion, please.”

Doubtful of me, he let go his hold reluctantly, and stooping once more under the curtain of foliage, dragged out a ladder, which was concealed behind, and which he now, with infinite precaution, lowered through the skylight till it rested.

“Now,” he said, “climb down, while I hold it firm.”

It was the rudest thing; just slats nailed across a pole--a ladder for bears, not men. But I was young and lithe, and quickly was down and through, and standing, trembling over this finish to my adventure, on the floor of a little dark, invisible room. And so, before I had time to collect myself, the other was descended in my footsteps, and the ladder hauled in and laid along the wall, and a little silence ensued.

“Well,” said his voice at length, “you are safe at last, little sister.”

Then, I don’t know how it was, the tears would come.

“Why, don’t you believe it?” he whispered, groping a step nearer.

“Have you given me reason to?” I answered, shrinking from his touch, and gulping down my sobs.

He drew away at once.

“The best reason in the world,” he said coldly, “since I have placed my life in your hands--since I leave you here the means to escape, if you will, and curry favour by betraying me.”

I could have cried out on his cruelty, but dared not.

“Understand, this is your sanctuary,” he went on, “prepared against your coming, and which none, in their turn, will betray. The path to it is sacred to me. No one will disturb you; you are secure as a bird in its nest. There is a bed in a corner; rushlight and holder and tinder-box on a table by. Light, and take possession. I must go and reassure Portlock.”

I heard him move softly over the floor; a trap opened somewhere, letting in a momentary weak film of light, and he was gone.

For a time I stood motionless, hearing the murmur of voices somewhere below; then, suddenly panic-struck, groped for the table and tinder, and shakily struck fire. The wick caught, flamed up and settled, and I saw my possession.

It was the tiniest, kindest little room, under a sloping roof, clean and friendly, with a white bed. I was dazed and weary beyond speculation. Leaving the light burning, I crept under the coverlet as I was, and fell into a profound sleep.