Helbeck of Bannisdale, vol 2 | Page 8

through the tunnel, and then leave the road to your right. The stony edge of the sands came up to the road, which shot away eastwards along the edge of the estuary, a straight white line that gradually lost itself in the night.
The man watching saw the small figure emerge. But the girl never once turned to the tunnel. She walked straight towards the town, and he lost sight of her in a dense patch of shadow made by some overhanging trees about a hundred yards from the station.
"Upon my word, she's a deep 'un!" he said, turning away; "it beats me--fair."
"Hi!" shouted the porter from the end of the platform. "There's a message just come in, sir."
The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment. It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have dropped.
He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train, kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck, Bannisdale."
The station-master stared at the message. It was, of course, long after hours, and Mr. Helbeck--whose name he knew--must have had considerable difficulty in sending the message from Marsland, where the station would have been shut before ten o'clock, after the arrival of the last train.
Another click--and the rattle of the signal outside. The express was at hand. He was not a man capable of much reasoning at short notice, and he had already drawn a number of unfavourable inferences from the conduct of the two people who had just been hanging about the station. So he hastily replied:
"Lady left station, said intended to walk by sands, but has gone towards town. Gentleman with her."
Then he rushed out to attend to the express.
* * * * *
But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must be; she had left the station in quest of it.
And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the left. She passed through it, and hurried up the steep path beyond it. Again and again she hid herself behind the boulders with which the fell was strewn, lest her moving figure should be seen from below--often she stopped in terror, haunted by the sound of steps, imagining a breath, a voice, behind her.
She ran and stumbled--ran again--tore her light dress--gulped down the sob in her throat--fearing at every step to faint, and so be taken by the pursuer; or to slip into some dark hole--the ground seemed full of them--and be lost there--still worse, found there!--wounded, defenceless.
But at last the slope is climbed. She sees before her a small platform, on a black network of supporting posts--an engine-house--and beyond, truck lines with half-a-dozen empty trucks upon them, lines that run away in front of her along the descending edge of the first low hill she has been climbing.
Further on, a dark gulf--then the dazzling wall of the quarry. A patch of deepest, blackest shadow, at the seaward end of the engine-house, caught her eye. She gained it, sank down within it, strengthless and gasping.
Surely no one could see her here! Yet presently she perceived beside her a low pile of planks within the shadow, and for greater protection crept behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in the moon.
Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness, the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only weep--and weep.
And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to offer her any disrespect?
Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?
Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at midnight, the promise of money enough would probably