"Ropes and stakes! Fiddlesticks and grandmothers! There weren't no
ropes and stakes. It was only a turn-up--that is, if there was any
fighting at all. I didn't see none; but I s'pose you did. But then
you're clever, and I'm not."
By this time the last straggler of the party had disappeared from
Lydia, who had watched their retreat from the door of the Warren
Lodge. When she turned to go in she saw Cashel cautiously entering
from the room in which he had lain concealed. His excitement had
passed off; he looked cold and anxious, as if a reaction were
setting in.
"Are they all gone?" he said. "That servant of yours is a good sort.
He has promised to bring me some clothes. As for you, you're better
than--What's the matter? Where are you going to?"
Lydia had put on her hat, and was swiftly wrapping herself in a
shawl. Wreaths of rosy color were chasing each other through her
cheeks; and her eyes and nostrils, usually so tranquil, were
dilated.
"Won't you speak to me?" he said, irresolutely.
"Just this," she replied, with passion. "Let me never see you again.
The very foundations of my life are loosened: I have told a lie. I
have made my servant--an honorable man--an accomplice in a lie. We
are worse than you; for even your wild-beast's handiwork is a less
evil than the bringing of a falsehood into the world. This is what
has come to me out of our acquaintance. I have given you a
hiding-place. Keep it. I will never enter it again."
Cashel, appalled, shrank back with an expression such as a child
wears when, in trying to steal sweet-meats from a high shelf, it
pulls the whole cupboard down about its ears. He neither spoke nor
stirred as she left the lodge.
Finding herself presently at the castle, she went to her boudoir,
where she found her maid, the French lady, from whose indignant
description of the proceedings below she gathered that the policemen
were being regaled with bread and cheese, and beer; and that the
attendance of a surgeon had been dispensed with, Paradise's wounds
having been dressed skilfully by Mellish. Lydia bade her send
Bashville to the Warren Lodge to see that there were no strangers
loitering about it, and ordered that none of the female servants
should return there until he came back. Then she sat down and tried
not to think. But she could not help thinking; so she submitted and
tried to think the late catastrophe out. An idea that she had
disjointed the whole framework of things by creating a false belief
filled her imagination. The one conviction that she had brought out
of her reading, observing, reflecting, and living was that the
concealment of a truth, with its resultant false beliefs, must
produce mischief, even though the beginning of that mischief might
be as inconceivable as the end. She made no distinction between the
subtlest philosophical misconception and the vulgarest lie. The evil
of Cashel's capture was measurable, the evil of a lie beyond all
measure. She felt none the less assured of that evil because she
could not foresee one bad consequence likely to ensue from what she
had done. Her misgivings pressed heavily upon her; for her father, a
determined sceptic, had taught her his own views, and she was,
therefore, destitute of the consolations which religion has for the
wrongdoer. It was plainly her duty to send for the policeman and
clear up the deception she had practised on him. But this she could
not do. Her will, in spite of her reason, acted in the opposite
direction. And in this paralysis of her moral power she saw the evil
of the lie beginning. She had given it birth, and nature would not
permit her to strangle the monster.