BY reason of this odd adventure Anne and Gervase were in good heart all the afternoon. Providence had surely taken them in its care. Food was not plenty, their feet were getting very sore, their enemies might be upon them at the next turn in the road, they knew not where that night to lay their heads; but trudging ever side by side in the company of each other they had the spirit of youth to bear them on.
Again they took to the winding river-bank. It was kindlier traveling that way. The springing green turf was far easier than the hard stones of the road. Also the dust was less and there were fewer people to avoid.
Towards evening poor Anne began to limp rather sorely. But not a word of complaint passed those resolute lips. Gervase too was in sad case. Full many a weary mile had they made since their wild setting forth in the dawn of the April morning.
Several times in the late afternoon they were obliged to sit by the river and seek some little ease by taking off their shoes and stockings and by bathing their aching feet in the cool water. But their courage was wonderfully high, for youth was with them, and also Providence, and also a something rare and strange which each had kindled in the other’s heart.
The mists of evening began to steal down the river. As the fugitives sat on a green bank by the side of the water, their faces aglow with the sunset, nature spoke to them with a new, a fuller, an intenser meaning. Bird and beast, herb and tree were thrilling with life. And yet as Gervase and Anne sat close together they felt a sense of their tragic destiny overtaking them. The life of one, perhaps of both, was forfeit. The dark shadow was ever in their minds. All thought of the morrow must be put away.
The sun had left them now. Out of the dark valley, a little sinister with its close-grown gloom of trees, through which the reaches of the river wound, a faint wind came stealing. Very softly it caressed the face of the water, making an effect of music, eerie, solemn, yet enchanting.
Gervase knitted his brave companion to his heart. The flood-tide of youth was surging in his veins. The sudden sense of possession, of high comradeship gave him one of those rare moments to which the mind goes back when it comes to ask whether life has been worth all that has been paid for it in blood and tears. To this slender thing, so true, so resolute, he owed the life which for the moment was raised to this perilous height of ecstasy. In his arms he held this great gift of God to man; but a voice spoke to the chivalrous heart of him that he must hold it reverently.
One kiss on the lips he yielded and no more. He would have pressed a thousand there, but let him not forget the awful tragedy of their present hour. No consummation their love could ever know on earth. He fixed an iron control upon his will. And yet.... Whatever held the earthly morrow, were they not twin souls pledged to roam the starry spaces of eternity together? In the surge of his passion he tore himself suddenly from the warm embrace and rose wildly from the green bank of earth.
The darkness came, and more weary miles they trudged, her cold hand clasped in his still colder one. The night fell very chill and without a single star. Soon they left the river and struck inland, through hedges and over swampy marshland, in the hope of finding a lodging for the night more hospitable than the open country.
Of food there was little prospect. But under Providence, which during the whole of that long and terrible day had been so kind to them, they might hope to find shelter in a cow-hovel, or a shepherd’s hut, or at the worst a dry ditch. And at last, when they had grown so faint with hunger and fatigue that they knew not how they could go another mile, Providence was moved again to pity them.
Suddenly they came upon the dark bulk of a line of farm-buildings just ahead of them. A little groping brought them to a gate which led to a stackyard. By now the moon was showing, and with the aid of her fitful light they were able to find a stable. Here was a ladder which led to a hay-loft; and in spite of the darkness they made their way into it, whereupon to their unspeakable joy they found bundles of clean hay upon which they could lie warm and snug until daybreak.
In utter weariness they burrowed under the hay like moles, and very soon their cares were laid aside in as sound a sleep as they had ever known. When they awoke daylight was stealing in through the chinks in the roof. It was still very early, to judge by the absence of sounds from below.
The abundance of the hay had kept them wonderfully warm during the night, and now they shook their limbs free of it with a feeling of refreshment and gratitude. But scarcely had they begun to move when they felt a mighty need of food. Whatever befell, at all costs must they seek some.
They came down from the loft and crossed the yard, first making sure, however, that there was no one about. The morning was cold and misty. Not far off was a byre, and a number of cows were in it ready for milking.
Hunger was pressing them too hard to be put off with a scruple. Eagerly they searched all about the farmyard for a pail, and at last were able to find one in the stable out of which they had come. It was not very clean, but the attentions of the farmyard pump soon made it fit for use.
However, when it came to a matter of milking the cows they discovered but little skill at first. Gervase tried his hand with very poor results. Anne then took a turn, and at last the pail began to fill.
She it was who drank first this nectar of the gods. Then followed Gervase; then followed Anne again, and then again Gervase. Never in their lives had they had so rare a breakfast. But so completely had they been absorbed in their task that they had paid no heed to the passing of the time, or to that which was going on around them. The enjoyment of this illicit repast had taken more than an hour, and the farmyard was now astir.
Of this fact they were soon made aware. Indeed their meal was scarce at an end when a man’s shadow was thrown across the doorway of the cowhouse, and there was the farmer standing looking at them.
He was a very powerful man, broad and heavy, and dressed in a suit of russet leather. His hands were tucked in his jerkin and his chin was sunk upon his breast as if he were wrapped in profound thought. The look upon his face was not so much of anger as of amazement. “I trust ye have had your fill?” he said at last, speaking in a slow, deep voice.
“That we have,” said Gervase heartily.
All the same he felt a kind of shame for having debauched himself so freely upon another’s property. Yet it would be idle to deny that a sense of well-being was uppermost in his mind at that moment. When all was said, this feeling outweighed any that he might have had of moral turpitude.
“Well, then, having had your fill,” said the farmer, speaking as one who chooses his words, “you will not object perhaps to make payment?”
“That I cannot do, I am sorry to say,” said Gervase.
“It is just as I thought,” growled the farmer.
“I ask your pardon,” said Gervase, “for taking your milk, but we have no money to pay for any food and we are starving.”
The face of the farmer was very ugly now. “Starving, are ye? Well, my lad, ye shall both come with me to the constable.”
“I am sorry I cannot oblige you in that,” said Gervase. “I own I have done you a wrong, but not such a wrong as to allow the law to mend it.”
“Well, my lad, you shall not go without payment of some kind,” said the farmer, “and you can lay to that. Either step wi’ me to the constable, or if you’d rather have it that way, come out into the yard and have the properest thrashing you’ve had in all your born days.”
“Well, perhaps that is not unfair—if you can give it me.” Gervase spoke with the modest readiness of a man of mettle.
“Oh, I’ll give it you right enough,” said the farmer, “and you can lay to that.”
Certainly he was a most formidable-looking fellow, and he spoke with a truculence sufficient to strike terror into all save the very stout of heart. But Gervase, having slept soundly and breakfasted well, was not inclined to quail. He stepped briskly into the yard at the farmer’s behest. But there a rude shock awaited him.
“Diggory,” called the farmer to one of his hands at work in the yard, “you just fetch my horsewhip along. Ask mistress to give it thee. Now then, step lively.”
Gervase, however, proceeded to show cause why Diggory should not step lively. “Oh no, you don’t, Master Giles,” he said to the farmer with a laugh. “Pray don’t think I am going to take it that way.”
“Then what way are you going to take it, my lad?”
“Man to man with the bare knuckles if I take it at all.”
“Then by God you shall!” The farmer suddenly flung off his coat. “But you don’t know what you are out for, young fellow. A bit o’ whipcord will come a lot kinder to you than these ten commandments o’ mine.”
“I think I’ll risk that,” said Gervase modestly.
The farmer rolled up his sleeves, disclosing a pair of mighty arms. “I’m the man,” he said, “who pretty nigh killed Job Nettle in the fight at Lichfield twenty years ago. They talk about it to this day. And I reckon, young fellow, I’ll pretty nigh kill you. There was never none as could stand against Gideon Partlet as ever I heard tell of. Did you, Diggory, ever hear o’ such?”
“Naw,” said Diggory, “naw, I niver.”
And the eyes of Diggory began to start in anticipation.