Goldcrest

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"If it's so dark, how will I know-" There were only the stars to light the night sky now, no moon; she mustn't bring a lantern, of course, for fear of being stopped. But all the same

She heard Si Kasparian answer smoothly. "I will wear my white wig, so that you'll see it, and this cloak. You know the cloak, don't you?" He smiled, and she could have sworn his bright eyes watched her; the expression in them was, she suddenly thought, like a triumphing devil's. She shivered, and heard him laugh. "Won't that suffice? I declare, you are only half in earnest wanting a lover."

"I am not-I am not!" She clung to his cloak, twining her fingers in it like a child in search of familiar certainty. She raised her face to him. "You will-truly-be there?"

He mocked her. "I will wager you a sixpence that when I come tomorrow night, and put out my hand into the hay, I find it empty. You will not have the courage to come."

That fired her, and she remembered the dark would be the same to him as day. They would love, then, together to morrow. Tomorrow would begin a new life.

Samson grinned, and assented readily; any orders of Mor ven's were for him to obey, without question; he did not even ask if there would be trouble. This, as Si Kasparian already knew, seemed unlikely; if Miriam had so far forgotten her self as to come by stealth and lie waiting in the hay, in the dark of a moonless night, it was unlikely that even a magis trate would take a serious view of the offender; it was more likely that a private word of advice in the average parents' ears would guarantee a sound whipping for the young lady in the case, except that Kitty Bowes was as big a fool as her daughter, Si Kasparian left the matter, weary of Miriam and her unquenchable fires; except that he said a further word to Samson, perhaps attempting, by a kind of outward bravado, to quiet his own conscience, which troubled him. 

"A guinea for the maidenhead, my friend, and five guineas if you get her in calf. Agreed? Then you had better take my cloak. We are much of a height; practise casting it about you, and walking the way I do. You have till tomorrow, see that nothing happens to it, it's the warmest I have."

He did not trouble, next night, to ensure that Samson left at the time arranged. He knew that the mulatto, obedient as any janissary, would obey his orders to the letter, as far as it could be done. Si Kasparian knew, in his usual way, that dark had now fallen, he felt the warmth of lit candles on his check. He stretched out a hand to the peg where his cloak by custom hung, and stroked the bare wall, and smiled. The cloak had gone. He sat down by the fire, and waited till Sam son should return.

As the hours passed a strange sensation reached Si Kasparian; he told himself he knew nothing of regret, of pity. In the darkness which now encompassed him, that unalterable night into which he had been plunged after the fracas with the customs-officer, years back, it was as though he had come to terms with the darkness, had become in himself what darkness was.

 That he had engendered evil, that evil was by now, at this moment, through his agency being done, should mean nothing to him, he told himself, any more than his early treat ment of Tessa should have meant anything, except as a step towards the achievement of his goal. 

That Miriam's shame, her destruction possibly, might in turn destroy her brother, his name, his estate, had already occurred to Mor ven; coldly, he had made it part of the plan. Yet now, as at times in the lonely darkness, without Livia by him, he felt deceived; as though an agency greater in evil than anything he himself might contemplate, or invent, directed him; screened him from human feeling, so that the very urge to own Malvie itself had been transformed into something grotesque, un mentionable. Si Kasparian moved where he sat; felt for the fire irons, found the long poker, and viciously jabbed at the dying ashes in the hearth. He must keep a fire for Samson when at last he came home; came home, with his tale to tell. Why should he himself, Si Kasparian Doon, sit here, almost regretting Miriam's ruin?

When Samson returned it was near morning; upstairs, Livia was asleep long ago. Si Kasparian had not gone up to her. The ashes still glowed with his long care of them; he raised his head, and forced a smile. "Well? Did you have her?" The mulatto, he sensed, had acquired a slight swagger, an air perhaps of social as well as physical satisfaction. He made an elaborate business of removing the wig and cloak. "I had her, as instructed. She was a virgin." "You altered that, I don't doubt. Is my cloak back on its peg?" "The mantle of Elijah has been returned," said Samson unexpectedly; he had, in common with most malingerers in the Bay, been flogged to church on occasion by search-officers. They laughed together. 

"Or," Si Kasparian ventured, "Jacob's kid skins. You may borrow the cloak again tomorrow night, my friend; do you go back?" His smile mocked the other. It would depend on the dark of the moon, no doubt; otherwise, Miss Miriam might be duped for long enough. But Samson queried it.

"I will go again, perhaps; but she may not come." Without more words on the subject, he went and cut himself a man chet of bread, and bit into it cautiously with his teeth, which us usual pained him.

But Miriam did not return next night; she had been badly frightened. It was one thing to hold Mary Wollstonecraft's advanced theories; another to be the prey, out of pervading darkness, of the malefic, tearing force which had invaded and half destroyed her: to feel a hand over her mouth, and a foetid warm breath, like a dog's, against her cheek; and to have no further answer.