sometimes as much conjecture towards their explanation as a disputed passage in Shakspere or Aeschylus.
Could she mean me to cross that hair-like bridge? The mere thought was a terror. But I would not blench. Fear I confess—cowardice if you will:—poltroonery, not.
‘I see,’ I answered. ‘I will try. If I fall, don’t blame me. I will do my best.’
‘You don’t think,’ she returned, ‘I’m going to let you go alone! I should have to wait hours before you found a door to let me down—unless indeed you went and told Goody Wilson, and I had rather die where I am. No, no. Come along. I’ll show you how.’
With a rush and a scramble, she was up over the round back of the buttress before I had time to understand that she meant as usual to take the lead. If she could but have sent me back a portion of her skill, or lightness, or nerve, or whatever it was, just to set me off with a rush like that! But I stood preparing at once and hesitating. She turned and looked over the battlements of the tower.
‘Never mind, Wilfrid,’ she said; ‘I’ll fetch you presently.’
‘No, no,’ I cried. ‘Wait for me. I’m coming.’
I got astride of the buttress, and painfully forced my way up. It was like a dream of leap-frog, prolonged under painfully recurring difficulties. I shut my eyes, and persuaded myself that all I had to do was to go on leap-frogging. At length, after more trepidation and brain-turning than I care to dwell upon, lest even now it should bring back a too keen realization of itself, I reached the battlement, seizing which with one shaking hand, and finding the other grasped by Clara, I tumbled on the leads of the tower.
‘Come along!’ she said. ‘You see, when the girls like, they can beat the boys—even at their own games. We’re all right now.’
‘I did my best,’ I returned, mightily relieved. ‘I’m not an angel, you know. I can’t fly like you.’
She seemed to appreciate the compliment.
‘Never mind. I’ve done it before. It was game of you to follow.’
Her praise elated me. And it was well.
‘Come along,’ she added.
She seemed to be always saying Come along.
I obeyed, full of gratitude and relief. She skipped to the tiny turret which rose above our heads, and lifted the door-latch. But, instead of disappearing within, she turned and looked at me in white dismay. The door was bolted. Her look roused what there was of manhood in me. I felt that, as it had now come to the last gasp, it was mine to comfort her.
‘We are no worse than we were,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’
‘I don’t know that,’ she answered mysteriously.—‘Can you go back as you came? I can’t.’
I looked over the edge of the battlement where I stood. There was the buttress crossing the angle of moonlight, with its shadow lying far down on the wall. I shuddered at the thought of renewing my unspeakable dismay. But what must be must.
Besides, Clara had praised me for creeping where she could fly: now I might show her that I could creep where she could not fly.
‘I will try,’ I returned, putting one leg through an embrasure, and holding on by the adjoining battlement.
‘Do take care, Wilfrid,’ she cried, stretching out her hands, as if to keep me from falling.
A sudden pulse of life rushed through me. All at once I became not only bold, but ambitious.
‘Give me a kiss,’ I said, ‘before I go.’
‘Do you make so much of it?’ she returned, stepping back a pace.—How much a woman she was even then!
Her words roused something in me which to this day I have not been able quite to understand. A sense of wrong had its share in the feeling; but what else I can hardly venture to say. At all events, an inroad of careless courage was the consequence. I stepped at once upon the buttress, and stood for a moment looking at her—no doubt with reproach. She sprang towards me.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.
The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood. She bent over the battlement, stooped her face towards me, and kissed me on the mouth. My only answer was to turn and walk down the buttress, erect; a walk which, as the arch of the buttress became steeper, ended in a run and a leap on to the gutter of the hall. There I turned, and saw her stand like a lady in a ballad leaning after me in the moonlight. I lifted my cap and sped away, not knowing whither, but fancying that out of her sight I could make up my mind better. Nor was I mistaken. The moment I sat down, my brains began to go about, and in another moment I saw what might be attempted.
In going from roof to roof, I had seen the little gallery along which I had passed with Mrs Wilson on my way to the library. It crossed what might be called an open shaft in the building. I thought I could manage, roofed as it was, to get in by the open side. It was some time before I could find it again; but when I did come upon it at last, I saw that it might be done. By the help of a projecting gargoyle, curiously carved in the days when the wall to which it clung had formed part of the front of the building, I got my feet upon the wooden rail of the gallery, caught hold of one of the small pillars which supported the roof, and slewed myself in. I was almost as glad as when I had crossed the buttress, for below me was a paved bottom, between high walls, without any door, like a dry well in the midst of the building.
My recollection of the way to the armoury, I found, however, almost obliterated. I knew that I must pass through a bedroom at the end of the gallery, and that was all I remembered. I opened the door, and found myself face to face with a young girl with wide eyes. She stood staring and astonished, but not frightened. She was younger than Clara, and not so pretty. Her eyes looked dark, and also the hair she had been brushing. Her face would have been quite pale, but for the rosy tinge of surprise. She made no exclamation, only stared with her brush in her hand, and questions in her eyes. I felt far enough from comfortable; but with a great effort I spoke.
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