‘Quick! If you don’t want to kill me, tell me with whom Archie Hopeton is in love.’
‘I am not sufficiently in his confidence to inform you precisely, Mrs Thorne, but I believe it is some young lady in this neighbourhood. What more likely than that his heart is in his cousin’s keeping?’
She looked at me sharply, as I insinuatingly completed my reply – perhaps she was shrewd enough to guess my insincerity. At all events she made no reply, and with a strong effort at controlling her feelings made some remark that shut off the subject.
By this time we had reached the river bank, where the gravelled walk turned at an acute angle and wound along by the water. As we turned that corner, I looked up the river toward the point where stood embowered in greenery, the pretty home of Bessie Elliot, the young girl I knew was my friend Archie’s beloved fiancée, and where I thought he most likely was at that instant. I saw nothing of him, however, and went on toward Miss Thorne, who still sat like an image, staring at the running water. The mother hastened her steps as she saw her, and in a few moments, we were standing beside her.
‘Hester, dear, don’t sit here so near the river,’ Mrs Thorne said pleadingly. ‘You know it cannot be good for you.’
‘Can you tell me anything that would be good for me?’ the girl asked sharply as she lifted her eyes to her mother’s face with such a fierce glare in them that she cowered under it. ‘You are always following me about bothering – I wish to goodness you’d let me alone.’
‘My dear, Mr Sinclair is here, hoping for a stroll with you,’ the woman said in a half terrified way that strangely puzzled me.
‘What do I care for Mr Sinclair?’ was the sharp retort, ‘and what does he care for me? Please go away, and leave me in peace!’
‘Are you not forgetting your cousin, Hester?’ Mrs Thorne said faintly. ‘He will be back soon and think it so strange to find you absent.’
Such a wild laugh darted from the girl’s lips that I absolutely started, and her mother turned a frightened look towards me.
‘No, I am not forgetting my cousin Archie, and he will not return as soon as you think. Are you going?’
The question was asked with a sudden lifting of her figure from its leaning position against the tree, and a clenching of the right hand that lay on her lap, and a fierce look from the black eyes that seemed to actually wither the miserable mother.
‘Yes, yes, dear, we’re going at once. How very fond of solitude my daughter is.’
I could not reply to this remarkable observation, for I was too completely astonished at the extraordinary conduct of Miss Thorne to make small talk for her mother. ‘That’s a pretty temper if you like!’ I thought to myself, ‘and how strange Archie never mentioned it to me. Why, her very mother is afraid of her life to cross the beauty.’
We returned toward the house, and at last Mrs Thorne broke the awkward silence.
‘I need not apologise for my poor girl’s strange manner, Mr Sinclair. Of course Archie has told you what a sufferer she was?’
‘No, he has not mentioned anything particular.’
‘No! Well, my poor child had a severe attack of nervous fever some years ago, and ever since she is liable to recurrences of nervousness which are absolutely painful. There are days when the sound of a voice is torture to her.’
‘And perhaps she finds the sound of the rippling water soothing, dear madam. If such is the case, pray, permit her to enjoy it in peace. I should be sorry if my visit should in any way interfere with Miss Thorne’s comfort, and Archie and I have formed any amount of plans about shooting and fishing while we are here.’
‘Thank you, Mr Sinclair, but I trust Hester may be quite recovered tomorrow.’
Some household affair called my hostess inside, and I was left to pace up and down one of the walks, smoking a cigar, while waiting for Archie. I had some curiosity to know when Miss Thorne would think proper to come up from the river, too, and kept a sharp look-out until the sun was down, and the full moon was rising. At last Archie put in an appearance when it was so dark that I could scarcely recognise him.
‘You’re a fine fellow!’ I cried, ‘to leave me here all alone in an enemy’s camp. And if you don’t get a good rowing from the ladies, you deserve one.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I wrote to Bessie, telling her I would be at our old trysting place this evening, and I’ve been waiting for her ever since. Some visitors had detained her, and I had scarcely time to say half-a-dozen words to her.’
‘No, I suppose you were too busy kissing. Did you see your cousin down by the river?’
‘Hester? No, what would take me down there at this time of night?’
‘At all events she’s there. How was it you never told me what a delightful temper she had, my son?’
‘Who? Hester? I never saw anything remarkably bad about it. She used to be a bit sulky, that’s all.’
Then I related to him the episode of our interview, and he was full of astonishment. ‘I never heard of such an exhibition on my cousin’s part – surely she is greatly changed. I think I’ll go down and look for her to keep the peace. I hope to goodness she has heard nothing about Bessie. Does aunt guess, do you think, Sinclair?’
‘Not the facts, I think,’ and then I told him of the pumping I had undergone from the elder lady.
‘It’ll have to come out somehow, and, heaven knows, I’d rather face anything. Mark, you’ll promise to tell them for me when I can make up my mind, won’t you?’
‘You’re an arrant coward, Mr Archibald. Oh, yes, I’ll face the breach for you. It would be a sort of satisfaction to make that young lady a little return for her uncalled-for rudeness to Mr Sinclair. But you’d better go, if you want to make the peace for the present.’
He had scarcely gone when Mrs Thorne came out anxiously.
‘Are you alone, Mr Sinclair? I had hoped the young people were with you. Where is Archie, do you know?’
‘I think he is with Miss Thorne. Yes, there they are, coming up by the shrubbery,’ and Mrs Thorne, evidently relieved, begged me to go into the house.
The evening we spent in the little drawing-room at Riverdale was, to my mind, about the most wretchedly dull I ever passed. It was worse than dull, for it was full of restraint and discomfort. There was a piano in the room, and Mrs Thorne tried timidly to induce her daughter to sing and play for us. The reply she got was a look that silenced her and made the miserable woman’s hands tremble as though she had the ague.
Hester Thorne sat back from the lamp in the corner of a lounge, her hand on her lap, with the slender white fingers interlocked. She had chosen the seat that she might have Archie in full view as he sat in an arm-chair before her and her mother, and I saw that he knew he was watched and felt miserable under the glare of the fierce black eyes that shone in the dim corner like those of a cat.
I did my best, and so did Mrs Thorne, to try and get up a general conversation, but to no purpose. Even to direct appeals Hester would return a cold, curt monosyllable, and poor Archie was too decidedly uncomfortable to assist me in small talk. At last I took pity on him, and drew his attention to the hour with a remark that we must not keep the ladies up too late, and I saw how gladly Mrs Thorne had in a little supper and then escorted us to our several chamber doors.
When I had shut myself in, I went to the French window and opened it, for the room seemed hot and close, and feeling the inutility of attempting sleep at an hour so unusually early for me, I blew out my lamp and sat down by the open window to enjoy a cigar and a good think at one and the same time.
These new acquaintances of mine were puzzling me. As Hester Thorne sat there in the lounge during the evening and looked at Archie with that stony glare in her awful eyes, an idea that I had seen those eyes somewhere before haunted me; they seemed quite familiar to me. Indeed, the darkly-outlined face was altogether like the memory of a well-impressed dream on me, but in vain. I tried to recall the circumstances under which the impression had been made.