After about ten minutes a building raised itself on his left out of the dark. Low and squat it exuded on the laurel scented evening a smell of cattle and manure. As Andrews opened the gate and began to walk up the path towards a heavy nailed studded door, a dog, somewhere round the corner of the house, rattled its chain and broke the quiet with a hoarse sound, more bellow than bark. Before Andrews had time to knock, a window was flung up a few feet above his head and a sluggish voice asked him who the hell he was. Andrews thought that he recognised one of the voices which had paid the last respects to Mr. Jennings a few days previously.
His voice breaking a little through lack of breath, he called, “I want help. Up at Jennings’s. Smugglers. They are attacking the girl.”
Andrews felt that seconds passed between the moment when the words left the farmer’s mouth and the moment when they reached his ears. When they came they were not worth the time they took.
“That’s a likely tale.”
Andrews’s breath had returned. He grew vehement. “It’s true. You must help. You’ve got men here. Horses.”
“You said smugglers, didn’t you?” the man said. “We don’t meddle with smugglers.” Andrews remembered then that Elizabeth had warned him against expecting any help from her neighbours.
“A woman,” he begged desperately.
“Nought but a bloody hoor,” the farmer returned with crushing simplicity.
Andrews unwisely lost his temper. “You damned liar,” he cried.
The man above stirred with a sleepy emotion. “Look here,” he cried, “clear off. Spoilin’ a man’s supper. Why don’t you ’elp ’er yourself?”
The question struck straight at Andrews’s uneasy conscience. Why indeed? it echoed with a despairing grief. She believed in me, he thought, and then remembering her as he had last seen her, when she had hurried him off down the path to the well, he wondered. He heard again that faintly echoed “soon,” imploring, yes, but unbelieving. She was in a damned hurry to get me away, he thought. Until this moment fear had allowed him no opportunity for thought. He had been annoyed at the imprudence of the candle and the open door. Now for the first time he questioned the imprudence. Struck by fear as to the conclusion to which his thoughts were leading him he interrupted them. “If you won’t help yourself,” he begged, “at least lend me a horse. I’ll ride into town and fetch the officers.”
“Now ain’t that likely?” the sluggish voice mocked him. “When’d I see that horse again, eh? Why don’t you help ’er yourself?”
“I’m only one man unarmed.”
“Well why should I be shot for the bloody hoor?” The man rejoined in a tone of aggrievement. “Leave ’er alone. They won’t ’urt ’er. Amiable lot—the Gentlemen.”
Leave her alone. Why, that, naturally, was the logical conclusion; it was only this blind, restless dissatisfied love which urged him to a bolder course. Leave her alone—and in a flash of revelation he knew that that was what she had consciously given him the chance to do. She had seen Joe coming and she had sent him away. That was the reason for her impatience and the disbelief in her whispered “soon.” He remembered how she had said to him. “I had no right to make you risk yourself.” Cutting him across the face like the thong of a whip struck the thought—she put her trust in my cowardice. And she was right, right, right. Her sacrifice had been safe with him. And yet remembering that “soon” he knew that she had hoped, however faintly, for his return, but a return of his own will, as her lover, accepting danger voluntarily. Clenching his hands he said to the man above, his body shrinking still in panic at his own words, “I’m going back now.”
He heard a movement as though the farmer were about to shut the window and played his last card. “There’s a reward out for these men,” he said and added quickly, “They are on the run. They’ve lost their ship.”
The voice, less sluggish now, said, “Money’s not worth a skin.”
“You needn’t risk that,” Andrews said. “Send a man in on a horse to Shoreham to the officers.”
“You’ll be askin’ fifty-fifty?” the man asked reluctantly.
“No,” said Andrews, “only the loan of a horse back to the cottage.” At his own words his heart became a battle ground between exaltation and fear.
“Stay there,” the man said, “and I’ll come down to you.”
He was winning, winning after all, he felt, in this race to catch up time. “O God, God, God,” he prayed, “give me courage to go through with this.” The knife, Lewes, his return, and the fourth time, which was, Elizabeth said, to bring him the peace he craved. But it is not peace I want now, he thought, only her. O God, guard her till I come.
He allowed himself to be inspected closely in the light of a lamp. Even to the suspicious farmer his desperate impatience proved a passport of honesty. “I’ll ride to Shoreham myself,” the man said. “D’you know the amount of the reward?” He was opening the stable door as he spoke and grunted with approval at the prompt lie “Fifty pounds a head.” Even now, however, the faint lurkings of suspicion induced him to choose the sorriest nag in the stable for Andrews to ride. But to Andrews it was a winged Pegasus compared with his weary feet.
The night for one instant, as he left the dim fluttering lights of the farm, was a pair of dark doors which opened only to enclose him. Then he was driving his horse, urging it forward with stick and passionately
