until we’ve got something sure and proved. Then we can call on them that’s got the power in their hands. We can’t call on them till we can show them a thing no one can’t deny. As to that bridge, it’s old enough to be easy managed, and look accidental if it broke. You say she ain’t going there to-day. Well, this very night, as soon as it’s dark enough, you and me will go down and have a look at it. And what’s more, we’ll take a man with us. Judd could be trusted. Worst comes to worst, we’re only taking the liberty of making sure it’s safe, because we know it is old and we’re over careful.”
As Jane had gathered from her, by careful and apparently incidental inquiry, Emily had had no intention of visiting her retreat. In the morning she had, in fact, not felt quite well enough. Her nightmare had shaken her far more on its second occurring. The stealthy hand had seemed not merely to touch, but to grip at her side, and she had been physically unable to rise for some minutes after her awakening. This experience had its physical and mental effects on her.
She did not see Hester until luncheon, and after luncheon she found her to be in one of her strange humours. She was often in these strange humours at this time. She wore a nervous and strained look, and frequently seemed to have been crying. She had new lines on her forehead between the eyebrows. Emily had tried in vain to rouse and cheer her with sympathetic feminine talk. There were days when she felt that for some reason Hester did not care to see her.
She felt it this afternoon, and not being herself at the high-water mark of cheerfulness, she was conscious of a certain degree of discouragement. She had liked her so much, she had wanted to be friends with her and to make her life an easier thing, and yet she appeared somehow to have failed. It was because she was so far from being a clever woman. Perhaps she might fail in other things because she was not clever. Perhaps she was never able to give to people what they wanted, what they needed. A brilliant woman had such power to gain and hold love.
After an hour or so spent in trying to raise the mental temperature of Mrs. Osborn’s beflowered boudoir, she rose and picked up her little work-basket.
“Perhaps you would take a nap if I left you,” she said. “I think I will stroll down to the lake.”
She quietly stole away, leaving Hester on her cushions.
Chapter Seventeen
A few minutes later a knock at the door being replied to by Hester’s curt “Come in!” produced the modest entry of Jane Cupp, who had come to make a necessary inquiry of her mistress. “Her ladyship is not here; she has gone out.” Jane made an altogether involuntary step forward. Her face became the colour of her clean white apron.
“Out!” she gasped.
Hester turned sharply round.
“To the lake,” she said. “What do you mean by staring in that way?”
Jane did not tell her what she meant. She incontinently ran from the room without any shadow of a pretence at a lady’s maid’s decorum.
She fled through the rooms, to make a short cut to the door opening on to the gardens. Through that she darted, and flew across paths and flowerbeds towards the avenue of limes.
“She shan’t get to the bridge before me,” she panted. “She shan’t, she shan’t. I won’t let her. Oh, if my breath will only hold out!”
She did not reflect that gardeners would naturally think she had gone mad. She thought of nothing whatever but the look in Ameerah’s downcast eyes when the servants had talked of the bottomless water,—the eerie, satisfied, sly look. Of that, and of the rising of the white figure from the ground last night she thought, and she clutched her neat side as she ran.
The Lime Avenue seemed a mile long, and yet when she was running down it she saw Lady Walderhurst walking slowly under the trees carrying her touching little basket of sewing in her hand. She was close to the bridge.
“My lady! my lady!” she gasped out as soon as she dared. She could not run screaming all the way. “Oh, my lady! if you please!”
Emily heard her and turned round. Never had she been much more amazed in her life. Her maid, her well-bred Jane Cupp, who had not drawn an indecorous breath since assuming her duties, was running after her calling out to her, waving her hands, her face distorted, her voice hysteric.
Emily had been just on the point of stepping on to the bridge, her hand had been outstretched towards the rail. She drew back a step in alarm and stood staring. How strange everything seemed to-day. She began to feel choked and trembling.
A few seconds and Jane was upon her, clutching at her dress. She had so lost her breath that she was almost speechless.
“My lady,” she panted. “Don’t set foot on it; don’t—don’t, till we’re sure.”
“On—on what?”
Then Jane realised how mad she looked, how insane the whole scene was, and she gave way to her emotions. Partly through physical exhaustion and breathlessness, and partly through helpless terror, she fell on her knees.
“The bridge!” she said. “I don’t care what happens to me so that no harm comes to you. There’s things being plotted and planned that looks like accidents. The bridge would look like an accident if part of it broke. There’s no bottom to the water. They were saying so yesterday, and she sat listening. I found her here last night.”
“She! Her!” Emily felt as if she was passing through another nightmare.
“Ameerah,” wailed poor Jane. “White ones have no chance against black. Oh, my lady!” her sense of the possibility that she might be making a fool of herself after all was nearly killing her. “I believe she would drive you to your death if she could do it, think what you will of me.”
The little basket of needlework shook in Lady Walderhurst’s hand. She swallowed hard, and without warning sat down on the roots of a fallen tree, her cheeks blanching slowly.
“Oh Jane!” she said in simple woe and bewilderment. “I don’t understand any of it. How could—how could they want to hurt me!” Her innocence was so fatuous that she thought that because she had been kind to them they could not hate or wish to injure her.
But something for the first time made her begin to quail. She sat, and tried to recover herself. She put out a shaking hand to the basket of sewing. She could scarcely see it, because suddenly tears had filled her eyes.
“Bring one of the men here,” she said, after a few moments. “Tell him that I am a little uncertain about the safety of the bridge.”
She sat quite still while Jane was absent in search of the man. She held her basket on her knee, her hand resting on it. Her kindly, slow-working mind was wakening to strange thoughts. To her they seemed inhuman and uncanny. Was it because good, faithful, ignorant Jane had been rather nervous about Ameerah that she herself had of late got into a habit of feeling as if the Ayah was watching and following her. She had been startled more than once by finding her near when she had not been aware of her presence. She had, of course, heard Hester say that native servants often startled one by their silent, stealthy-seeming ways. But the woman’s eyes had frightened her. And she had heard the story about the village girl.
She sat, and thought, and thought. Her eyes were fixed upon the moss-covered ground, and her breath came quickly and irregularly several times.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I am sure—if it is true—I don’t know what to do.”
The undergardener’s heavy step and Jane’s lighter one roused her. She lifted her eyes to watch the pair as they came. He was a big, young man with a simple rustic face and big shoulders and hands.
“The bridge is so slight and old,” she said to him, “that it has just occurred to me that it