Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 3)

CHAPTER IV

ON THE WING

Edith lay in the large easy-chair for a long time without stirring. She did not even think. It was enough that she had been delivered from the danger of discovery, and that she was free to take wing and fly away at the streak of earliest dawn.

She did not know how long she sat with her face covered with her hands. She had resolved not to move for a long time, and for a long time she remained motionless. There was no fear of her sleeping. Although her mind was not actively employed about anything it was sharply awake. The first thing to challenge her attention was a sound. No boding or terrible sound, but the faint, weak shrill chirp of a bird. She scarcely realized what it was at first, for she was unfamiliar with the country and unused to the early notes of field and wood.

She took her hands from before her face and looked at the window. The light was still very grey and blue. But it was light, and, moreover, light that would grow stronger every minute, every second. When the day is breaking for joy or deliverance, the light fills the veins with an ethereal intoxication. Thoughts which during darkness can be met only with pallid terror can, when the shadow of night has passed away, be faced with vital courage and endurance.

She rose with care, but there was firmness and decision in her movements. She was fully dressed for walking. The rain had stopped and the sky above the trees spread clear and stainless, a vast plain of open blue.

Oscar Leigh had lowered the window. She caught the sash and raised it very gently but with no trepidation. If the door had that moment opened, she would have simply sprung through the window, without a word. The want of sleep dulls the apprehensions of fear as well as the other faculties of the mind. It sobers the judgment and reduces the susceptibility to extravagance of emotion.

When she had got the sash up to its full height, she stepped resolutely out on the gravelled carriage-sweep. She felt almost at ease. She paused a moment, looked back into the room, and under the shadow of her hand saw that the note she had placed on the table was gone. She turned away from the window and began walking along the gravelled drive towards the gate.

In the face of freedom and the growing light of day the events of last night were beginning to lose all aspect of mystery or terror and to assume a commonplace aspect. The wild talk of the hunchback with his mother grew to have little or no significance worthy of attention, and the soliloquy at the window was, upon review, becoming absurd. Indisputably she was right in leaving that house. It would be entirely unpleasant to live in a house where a man whom she did not like, forced attentions on her. She would go back to London and tell her story at home, and get another place. That was all. No one but her grandmother and herself need know of this first unpleasant experience of trying to earn her bread.

Here was the gate. Locked! Of course. Mrs. Brown had told her the gate was locked by her every night when she came from the house at eleven o'clock. Edith had forgotten this. She had not bargained for finding her way barred a short distance from the house. A couple of hours ago this would have seemed an insuperable obstacle. Now she was free, and quite destitute of terror, of fear, of even grave uneasiness. She felt she could be almost angry, indignant, with this gate and those who had shut and fastened it against her egress.

She turned her face from the gate and looked back at Eltham House. All there appeared quiet and asleep. She looked at the little lodge on her right. Here all seemed quiet and asleep too. The door was shut, the curtains of the windows, one on each side of the door, were close drawn. She could hear no sound but the chatter of the small birds in the hedges, the cawing of distant rooks, and afar off the vexatious crowing of a cock.

The solitude of morning in the country around her was widely different from the solitude of the night just gone by. The solitude of midnight seemed designed for the return of banished spirits; the solitude of the dawn a desert from which man had fled for ever. A sense of desolation came upon her. She wanted to be free, to be at the other side of that gate, but when she found herself on the open road what should she do? For hours to come the people of Millway would not be stirring. She was fleeing from that house into a desolate and uninhabited plain, for though there might be people within call, they were not within sight. Anyway, she could not stay here at the gate. She was now the most conspicuous object on which the upper windows of the house looked, and if he were to come to a front window he could not fail to see her. If anyone happened to pass along that road she would be a conspicuous and most remarkable figure inside that gate at this hour.

She walked to the door of the lodge and softly placed her hand on the latch. It yielded to her touch. She pressed against the door; it moved inward. Disclosed to view was a tiny square hall, in which were two doors. Close to the door which she had opened a large iron holdfast projected from the wall, and upon the holdfast hung a large, clumsy key. The key of the gate? Perhaps so.

In a moment she had taken the key off the hook, gone back to the gate, and inserted the key in the lock. In a minute she was outside the gate on the open road. She closed the gate noiselessly behind her, and hastened away, she knew not whither.

Before she had gone a hundred yards she discovered she had turned to the right instead of to the left. She intended walking towards the town, and it lay on her left as she came through the gateway. She hastened back and found the gate quickly. She kept on at this pace until she was about as far on this side of the gate as she had been on the other. Then she slackened her speed, moving demurely along the road.

After all, from what was she fleeing? Why was she hastening away? What prevented her staying in the house until ten o'clock, and then going to the railway station, in the ordinary way?

She could not remain in the house to be found there when it was believed she had left it for good. But why had she rushed out of it the previous night in a panic? Surely there had been nothing to alarm her. No doubt Mr. Leigh had tried to kiss her upon her arrival, and she could not stay after that affront. It was intolerable that any man should attempt to kiss her. He had tried to excuse himself by saying he had only offered her a patriarchal welcome. The idea of a man who was only thirty-five years claiming the privileges of age was absurd. But, upon reflection, he might not have meant patriarchal to imply length of life, but method of life. He might have intended to convey that he, as male head of the house, assumed the privileges which obtained in patriarchal times, in remote times, when the head of the house posed as the father of all dwelling within its gates. But even if that were so, there was an affront in any such presumption, and she could not consent to remain under that roof longer than necessary. His gallantries of bows, and civil speech, and offers of service, following his atrocious attempt, were enough to warrant her in leaving if there had been no other provocation.

But there had been no occasion for mysterious or surreptitious flight. Plainly no desire existed of detaining her against her will. She had been permitted to retire to her room on pleading fatigue, the window was then fully open, the gate had not been fastened, and even when the gate was locked for the night the key was left lying accessible to anyone within the grounds. True, he believed her to be now in London. He did not know she had lost the train. Seemingly, he had taken not the least trouble to detain her in the house or to ascertain what her movements were when she quitted it.

Viewed by the sober light of day it appeared she had been making a silly romance out of some half-jocular attentions paid to her by a vulgar man, almost old enough to be her father! His soliloquy at the window about making her his wife had been only a little more absurd than his share in the dialogue between him and his mother. Presently, in a few days, the whole affair would appear nothing more than an unpleasant dream. In all likelihood she should never see Mrs. Leigh or her son again. The chances were a million to one against her encountering either during the remainder of her life. She would dismiss the whole affair from her mind and think of other matters.

Not a soul to be seen or heard yet. What a ridiculous thing it was to say that people of the country were earlier risers than people of the town! Fancy walking a mile at any time in the morning through London without meeting a soul!

About half-a-mile from Millway a seat had been placed by the side of the road. It was formed of three square bars of wood supported upon three square pillars of stone. Edith sat down and rested. She did not move until she heard the sound of approaching wheels and horses. She rose and walked briskly in the direction from which she heard the sounds. She walked quickly, with her head down, as though knowing well whither she was going, and being in haste. Two sleepy men in a cart looked with drowsy eyes at her as they passed, but said nothing. These were the first people she had met since she left Eltham House. They did not speak to her, ask her any questions, seem to take the slightest interest in her. This was reassuring. When the cart was out of sight, she returned to the seat and rested again. She would not go back towards the house lest she might be seen by Mr. Leigh or Mrs. Brown; she would not go among the sleeping houses lest she might attract attention, invite inquiries. No one else came near for half-an-hour. Then a scattered group of labourers, tramping doggedly onward from the town, disturbed her solitude. She got up and passed these quickly, as before. One of the men said "Good morning," civilly. Before they disappeared from view a second cart sounded on the road. The country was at length awake. It would not be desirable for her to sit on that bench in the view of people at that early hour. She resolved to keep moving now until the railway station opened.

After leaving that bench finally, she walked into the town as if on business of urgency, but of no alarm. It would not do to seem careless of her route or speed; it would not do to seem eagerly in haste; it would not do to seem as though she was strange to the place. She had no fear but that shy fear of attracting attention instinctively developed in those who flee, no matter from what they flee.

She wandered through many streets and roads that day, but took no note of them. She adopted a plan to avoid losing her bearings. There were six roads leading out of Millway. She took them one after the other from her left hand, went forward upon each a thousand steps, counting each step in her mind, and then came back to the point from which she had started, also counting each step as she returned. This prevented her wandering far, or losing her way. Counting the steps kept her mind fully occupied, and prevented her noticing the fatigue, or becoming unhappily conscious of her unusual position.

Upon comparing the numbers of outward and backward steps, she found that the stretch of road which measured a thousand from town, measured never more than nine hundred and fifty back. As soon as she turned towards Millway, although she knew the station would not be open when she arrived there, she unconsciously increased the length of each pace.

Only once in her monotonous and fatiguing task did anything unpleasant come in her path, and then the unpleasant object was a plain white-washed wall. Yet it gave her a sick thrill of terror. Fortunately it was in her last radiation from Millway.

She was quite unfamiliar with the town. She had never seen it until the day before, and then only as the fly drove from the station to Eltham House. This morning she had determined her course from left to right, taking the wide and open streets, down which she could see far. She passed by several ways which did not look main arteries of traffic. When it was half an hour of train time, she left behind two narrow and unpromising-looking streets, and coming upon the broadest and most open one she had yet encountered, committed herself to it without hesitation, merely making the reflection, "This is my last turn. It will be time to go to the station when I reach this corner again."

After that she took no heed of the street in which she was, but kept on. Fatigue, and the knowledge that her walk was approaching an end, made her duller and more indifferent than before. She did not look around her. She counted her steps in a purely mechanical manner. They, as it were, went on counting themselves without effort on her part. It is doubtful if she then could have stopped the enumeration. Her plan up to this had been to count up to a hundred and then begin again, closing up a finger for each five score told.

The road was not straight. She did not notice that at the end of the first hundred, the street had narrowed, and the flagging ceased. Before the end of the second hundred was chronicled, the pathway disappeared, the houses grew mean and dilapidated. Before she counted two hundred and fifty, she was traversing an alley, filthy under foot, with battered, squalid houses and hovels on either side. This was the most foul and disreputable part of Millway. It was inhabited by the unfortunate, the dissolute, and the disreputable. No one of good repute and appearance had been down there for years and years.

She saw nothing of what lay around her, did not notice the filthy, rutty ground on which she trod; did not observe the windless, noisome air through which she moved.

All at once she drew up with a quick start, and uttered a suppressed cry of alarm. She was in front of a blank white-washed wall. She glanced around in terror, looking for an avenue of escape. There was none except the way by which she had come. She found herself at the end of a frowsy, villainous-looking cul-de-sac.

She shuddered and stood still, not knowing for the moment what to do. There was no going forward; to go back, was to confess she had lost her way. Even the white radiance of the morning could not make that close, fœtid, ruinous street look innocent. It had vice and crime written too deeply on its evil face. Fortunately, no one was stirring in the street, but each house and hovel had windows, and windows of fearful aspect, and behind these windows she imagined hideous winking eyes, and fleering faces. What, if some one, some hulking, slouching figure, should shamble out of one of those sinister doorways, and plant itself in the middle of the lane, blocking up her path, and forbidding her flight!

She caught her breath, and stooped her head, and ran swiftly, fiercely, madly, as though pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves. She fancied she heard the clatter of swift, relentless feet, the clamour of ruthless voices behind her ears. She imagined she felt the touch of claw-like hands upon her shoulder. She imagined she could see out of the corners of her eyes the foul fingers of her pursuers on her shoulder, on her sleeve! She thought she heard, felt, their breathings at her ears! She ran as for life from awful death.

All at once the figure of a man barred her way, blocked her path. With a cry of despair she stood still. The man seemed to be awaiting her approach. He moved a step towards her and said: "Beg pardon, miss. You need not run. There's plenty of time. The train does not start till six-fifteen, and it's only a quarter to six."

This was the friendly railway-porter of the night before. He had just stepped out of his lodging. She had failed to notice that she had left the reeking slum behind her, and was once more in the main street of the town.

She made a powerful effort and collected herself.

"Plenty of time, miss," said the man respectfully, "if you are going up to London by the six-fifteen." He waved his hand in the direction of the station.

"Thank you. I am much obliged to you. I-I did not wish to be late." Her breath was so short from running she spoke irregularly and with difficulty.

"I am going to open the station, miss. Would you like to sit in the waiting room?"

"Thank you. I would."

He drew aside and she passed him. He followed at a deferential distance.

In five minutes they stood on the platform. He opened the door of the waiting room. Then he paused and thought a moment. He turned to her and said, pointing to a line of carriages drawn up at the platform: "That's the train for London. You haven't to change until you get there. Are you going to Victoria or Ludgate?"

"Victoria."

"That," pointing, "part of the train is for Victoria-the forward part, miss." He looked at her again, and noticed that her boots showed signs of a long walk. "Perhaps you would like to go straight into a carriage?"

"I should prefer that."

"I can see to your luggage and get your ticket for you, miss, so that you need not stir once you get in."

"I have no luggage here. It will be sent after me. Not first-class, thank you. I shall travel third, if you please." She coloured a little more deeply. Her usually pale face was faintly flushed from her late haste and excitement. "Here is the money for the ticket. You have been very kind to me-I am extremely sorry I-I-I can't make you a little present-but-"