CHAPTER II
A RED WAISTCOAT
Cheerful lights shining from the open doorway and the red-curtainedwindows of the inn, illumined the road immediately before it; and ifthese and the change in all the surroundings did not at once dispelthe loneliness at Henrietta's heart, at least they drove the tearsfrom her eyes and the blushes from her cheeks. The cold moonlight, theunchanging face of nature, had sobered and frightened her; the warmthof fire and candle, the sound of voices, and the low, homely front ofthe house, with its two projecting gables, reassured her. The forlornchild who had flung herself into her lover's arms not forty secondsbefore was not to be recognised in the girl who alighted slowly andwith gay self-possession, took in the scene at a glance, and won thehearts of ostler and stableboy by her ease and her fresh young beauty.She was bare-headed, and her high-dressed hair, a little disordered bythe journey, gleamed in the lanthorn-light. Her eyes were like stars.The landlord of the inn--known for twenty miles round as "Long TomGilson"--saw at a glance that the missus's tongue would run on her. Hewished that he might not be credited with his hundred-and-thirty-firstconquest!
The thought, however, did not stand between him and his duty. "Sharp,Sam," he cried briskly. "Fire in Mr. Rogers's room." Then to hisguests: "Late? No, sir, not at all. This way, ma'am. All will be readyin a twinkling."
But Henrietta stood smiling.
"Thank you," she answered pleasantly, her clear young voice slightlyraised. "But I wished to be placed in the landlady's charge. Is shehere?"
Gilson turned toward the doorway, which his wife's portly form fittedpretty tightly.
"Here, missus," he cried, "the young lady wants you."
But Mrs. Gilson was a woman who was not wont to be hurried and beforeshe reached the side of the carriage Stewart interposed; more roughlyand more hurriedly than seemed discreet in the circumstances.
"Let us go in, and settle that afterwards," he said.
"No."
"Yes," he retorted. And he grasped the girl's arm tightly. His voicewas low, but insistent. "Let us go in."
But the girl only vouchsafed him a look, half wondering, halfindignant. She turned to the landlady.
"I am tired, and need no supper," she said. "Will you take me into aroom, if you please, where I can rest at once, as we go on earlyto-morrow."
"Certainly," the landlady answered. She was a burly, red-faced,heavy-browed woman. "But you have come some way, ma'am. Will you nottake supper with the gentleman?"
"No."
He interposed.
"At least let us go in!" he repeated pettishly. And there was anagitation in his tone and manner not easy to explain, except on thesupposition that in some way she had thwarted him. "We do not want tospend the night on the road, I suppose?"
She did not reply. But none the less, as she followed Mrs. Gilson tothe door, was she wondering what ailed him. She was unsuspicious bynature, and she would not entertain the thought that he wished her toact otherwise than she was acting. What was it then? Save for a burlyman in a red waistcoat who stood in a lighted doorway farther alongthe front of the inn, and seemed to be watching their movements withlazy interest, there were only the people of the inn present. And thered-waistcoated man could hardly be in pursuit of them, for, forcertain, he was a stranger. Then what was it?
She might have turned and asked her lover; but she was offendedand she would not stoop. And before she thought better of it--orworse--she had crossed the threshold. A warmer air, an odour of spicesand lemons and old rum, met her. On the left of the low-browed passagea half-open door offered a glimpse of shining glass and ruddyfirelight; there was Mrs. Gilson's snuggery, sometimes called thecoach office. On the right a room with a long table spoke of coachingmeals and a groaning board. From beyond these, from the penetralia ofkitchen and pantry, came faint indications of plenty and the spit.
A chambermaid was waiting at the foot of the narrow staircase to gobefore them with lights; but the landlady took the candles herself,and dismissed the woman with a single turn of the eye. A habit ofobedience to Mrs. Gilson was the one habit of the inn, the one commonground on which all, from Tom Gilson to the smallest strapper in thestable, came together.
The landlady went ponderously up before her guest and opened the doorof a dimity-hung chamber. It was small and simple, but of thecleanest. Hid in it were rosemary and lavender; and the leaflessbranches of a rose-tree whipped the diamond panes of the low, broadwindow. Mrs. Gilson lighted the two wax candles--"waxes" in those daysformed part of every bill but the bagman's. Then she turned and lookedat the girl with deliberate disapproval.
"You will take nothing, ma'am, to eat?" she said.
"No, thank you," Henrietta answered. And then, resenting the woman'slook, "I may as well tell you," she continued, holding her head high,"that we have eloped, and are going to be married to-morrow. That iswhy I wished to be put in your charge."
The landlady, with her great face frowning, continued to look at thegirl, and for a moment did not answer.
At length, "You've run away," she said, "from your friends?"
Henrietta nodded loftily.
"From a distance, I take it?"
"Yes."
"Well," Mrs. Gilson rejoined, her face continuing to express growingdisapproval, "there's a stock of fools near and far. And if I did myduty, young lady, there'd be one who would likely be thankful all herlife." She took the snuffers and slowly and carefully snuffed the twocandles. "If I did my duty, I'd lock you up and keep you safe tillyour friends came for you."
"You are insolent," the girl cried, flaming up.
"That depends," Mrs. Gilson retorted, with the utmost coolness. "Finefeathers make fine birds. You may be my lady, or my lady's maid. Menare such fools--all's of the best that's red and white. But I'm not soeasy."
Henrietta raised her chin a little higher.
"Be good enough to leave the room!" she said.
But the stout woman held her ground.
"Not before I've said what I have to say," she answered. "It is onething, and one thing only, hinders me doing what I ought to do, andwhat if you were my girl I'd wish another to do. And that is--yourfriends may not want you back. And then, to be married tomorrow islike enough the best you can do for yourself! And the sooner thebetter!"
Henrietta's face turned scarlet, and she stamped on the floor.
"You are a wicked, insolent woman!" she said. "You do not know yourplace, nor mine. How dare you say such things to me? How dare you? Didyou hear me bid you leave the room?"
"Hoity-toity!"
"Yes, at once!"
"Very good," Mrs. Gilson replied ponderously--"very good! But you mayfind worse friends than me. And maybe one of them is downstairs now."
"You hateful woman!" the girl cried; and had a glimpse of thelandlady's red, frowning face as the woman turned for a last look inthe doorway. Then the door closed, and she was left alone--alone withher thoughts.
Her face burned, her neck tingled. She was very, very angry, and alittle frightened. This was a scene in her elopement whichanticipation had not pictured. It humiliated her--and scared her.To-morrow, no doubt, all would be well; all would be cheerfulness,tenderness, sunshine; all would be on the right basis. But in themeantime the sense of forlornness which had attacked her in the chaisereturned on her as her anger cooled, and with renewed strength. Herworld, the world of her whole life up to daybreak of this day, wasgone forever. In its place she had only this bare room with itssmall-paned casement and its dimity hangings and its clean scent. Ofcourse _he_ was below, and he was the world to her, and would make upa hundredfold what she had resigned for him. But he was below, he wasabsent; and meantime her ear and her heart ached for a tender word, akind voice, a look of love. At least, she thought, he might have comeunder her window, and whistled the air that had been the dear signalfor their meetings. Or he might have stood a while and chatted withher, and shown her that he was not offended. The severest prude, eve
nthat dreadful woman who had insulted her, could not object to that!
But he did not come. Of course he was supping--what things men were!And then, out of sheer loneliness, her eyes filled, and her thoughtsof him grew tender and more humble. She dwelt on him no longer as herconquest, her admirer, the prize of her bow and spear, subject to herlightest whim and her most foolish caprice; but as her all, the one towhom she must cling and on whom she must depend. She thought of him asfor a brief while she had thought of him in the chaise. And shewondered with a chill of fear if she would be left after marriage asshe was left now. She had heard of such things, but in the pride ofher beauty, and his subjection, she had not thought that they couldhappen to her. Now---- But instead of dwelling on a possibility whichfrightened her, she vowed to be very good to him--good and tender andloyal, and a true wife. They were resolutions that a triflingtemptation, an hour's neglect or a cross word, might have overcome.But they were honest, they were sincere, they were made in thesoberest moment that her young life had ever known; and they marked astep in development, a point in that progress from girlhood towomanhood which so few hours might see complete.
Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson had returned to her snuggery, wearing a facethat, had the lemons and other comforts about her included cream, musthave turned it sour. That snuggery, it may be, still exists in theolder part of the Low Wood Inn. In that event it should have a value.For to it Mr. Samuel Rogers, the rich London banker, would sometimescondescend from his apartments in the south gable; and with him Mr.Kirkpatrick Sharp, a particular gentleman who sniffed a little at therum; or Sir James Mackintosh, who, rumour had it, enjoyed somereputation in London as a writer. At times, too, Mr. Southey, PoetLaureate elsewhere, but here Squire of Greta Hall, would stop on hisway to visit his neighbour at Storrs--no such shorthorns in the worldas Mr. Bolton's at Storrs; and not seldom he brought with him a Londongentleman, Mr. Brougham, whose vanity in opposing the Lowther interestat the late election had almost petrified Mrs. Gilson. Mr. Broughamcalled himself a Whig, but Mrs. Gilson held him little better thana Radical--a kind of cattle seldom seen in those days outside thedock of an assize court. Or sometimes the visitor was that queer,half-moithered Mr. Wordsworth at Rydal; or Mr. Wilson of Elleray withhis great voice and his homespun jacket. He had a sort of name too;but if he did anything better than he fished, the head ostler was aDutchman!
The visits of these great people, however--not that Mrs. Gilsonblenched before them, she blenched before nobody short of LordLonsdale--had place in the summer. To-night the landlady's sanctum,instead of its complement of favourite guests gathered to stare at Mr.Southey's last order for "Horses on!" boasted but a single tenant.Even he sat where the landlady did not at once see him; and it was notuntil she had cast a log on the dogs with a violence which betrayedher feelings that he announced his presence by a cough.
"There's the sign of a good house," he said with approval. "Neverunprepared!--never unprepared! Come late, come early--coach, chaise,or gig--it is all one to a good house."
"Umph!"
"It is a pleasure to sit by"--he waved his pipe with unction--"and tosee a thing done properly!"
"Ay, it's a pleasure to many to sit by," the landlady answered withwithering sarcasm. "It's an easy way of making a living--especially ifyou are waiting for what doesn't come. Put a red waistcoat on old Samthe postboy, and he'd sit by and see as well as another!"
The man in the red waistcoat chuckled.
"I'm glad they don't take you into council at Bow Street, ma'am!" hesaid.
"They might do worse."
"They might do better," he rejoined. "They might take you into theforce! I warrant"--with a look of respectful admiration--"if they didthere's little would escape you. Now that young lady?" He indicatedthe upper regions with his pipe. "Postboys say she came fromLancaster. But from where before that?"
"Wherever she's from, she did not tell me!" Mrs. Gilson snapped.
"Ah!"
"And what is more, if she had, I shouldn't tell you."
"Oh, come, come, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop was mildly shocked. "Oh, come,ma'am! That is not like you. Think of the King and his royalprerogative!"
"Fiddlesticks!"
Mr. Bishop looked quite staggered.
"You don't mean it," he said--"you don't indeed. You would not havethe Radicals and Jacobins ramping over the country, shooting honestmen in their shops and burning and ravaging, and--and generallyplaying the devil?"
"I suppose you think it is you that stops them?"
"No, ma'am, no," with a modest smile. "I don't stop them. I leave thatto the yeomanry--old England's bulwark and their country's pride! Butwhen the yeomanry 've done their part, I take them, and the law passesupon them. And when they have been hung or transported and an examplemade, then you sleep comfortably in your beds. That is what I do. AndI think I may say that next to Mr. Nadin of Manchester, who is thegreatest man in our line out of London, I have done as much in thatway as another."
Mrs. Gilson sniffed contemptuously.
"Well," she said, "if you have never done more than you've done sinceyou've been here, it's a wonder the roof's on! Though what youexpected to do, except keep a whole skin, passes me! There's the_Chronicle_ in today, and such talks of riots at Glasgow and Paisley,and such meetings here and alarms there, it is a wonder to me"--withsarcasm--"they can do without you! To judge by what I hear, Lancashireway is just a kettle of troubles and boiling over, and bread thatprice everybody is wanting to take the old King's crown off his head."
"And his head off his body, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop added solemnly.
"So that it's little good you and your yeomanry seem to have done atManchester, except get yourselves abused!"
"Ma'am, the King's crown is on his head," Mr. Bishop retorted, "andhis head is on his body!"
"Well? Not that his head is much good to him, poor mad gentleman!"
"And King Louis, ma'am, years ago--what of him? The King of France,ma'am? Crown gone, head gone--all gone! And why? Because there was nota good blow struck in time, ma'am! Because, poor, foolish foreigner,he had no yeomanry and no Bow Street, ma'am! But the Government, theBritish Government, is wiser. They are brave men--brave noblemen, Ishould say," Mr. Bishop amended with respect,--"but with treason andmisprision of treason stalking the land, with the lower orders, thatshould behave themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,turned to ramping, roaring Jacobins seeking whom they may devour,and whose machine they may break, my lords would not sleep in theirbeds--no, not they, brave men as they are--if it were not for theyeomanry and the runners." He had to pause for breath.
Mrs. Gilson coughed dryly.
"Leather's a fine thing," she said, "if you believe the cobbler."
"Well," Mr. Bishop answered, nodding his head confidently, "it's sofar true you'd do ill without it."
But Mrs. Gilson was equal to the situation.
"Ay, underfoot," she said. "But everything in its place. My man, he bemad upon tod-hunting; but I never knew him go to Manchester 'Change toseek one."
"No?" Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm's length, and smiled at itmysteriously. "Yet I've seen one there," he continued, "or in suchanother place."
"Where?"
"Common Garden, London."
"It was in a box, then."
"It was, ma'am," Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphasis. "It was ina box--'safe bind, safe find,' ma'am. That's the motto of my line, andthat was it precisely! More by token it's not outside the bounds ofpossibility you may see"--he glanced towards the door as he knockedhis pipe against his top-boot--"one of my tods in a box beforemorning."
Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She neverstooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was nomistaking the ring of triumph in the runner's tone; yet of all theunlikely things within the landlady's range none seemed more unlikelythan that he should flush his game there. She had asked herself morethan once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaisechanged horses, no rider passed or bagman h
alted, without running thegauntlet of his eye. For in that country of lake and mountain wereneither riots nor meetings; and though Lancashire lay near, the echoesof strife sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands. Millsmight be burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling inBolland and Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, allEngland might be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Corbett'sTwopenny Register and Orator Hunt's declamations--but neither theglare nor the noise had much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop'spresence there seemed superfluous therefore; seemed---- But before shecould come to the end of her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared,demanding four pennyworth of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr.Rogers's room; and when she was serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge inincredulity.
"A man must talk if he can't do," she said--"if he's to live."
Mr. Bishop smiled, and patted his buckskin breeches with confidence.
"You'll believe ma'am," he said, "when you see him walk into the coachwith the handcuffs on his wrists."
"Ay, I shall!"
The innuendo in the landlady's tone was so plain that her husband, whohad entered while she was rinsing the noggin in which she had measuredthe gin, chuckled audibly. She turned an awful stare on him, and hecollapsed. The Bow Street runner was less amenable to discipline.
"You sent the lad, Tom?" he asked.
The landlord nodded, with an apprehensive eye on his wife.
"He should be back"--Mr. Bishop consulted a huge silver watch--"byeleven."
"Ay, sure."
"Where has he gone?" Mrs. Gilson asked, with an ominous face.
She seldom interfered in stable matters; but if she chose, it wasunderstood that no department was outside her survey.
"Only to Kendal with a message for me," Bishop answered.
"At this time of the night?"
"Ma'am"--Mr. Bishop rose and tapped his red waistcoat with meaning,almost with dignity--"the King has need of him. The King--God blessand restore him to health--will pay, and handsomely. For the why andthe wherefore he has gone, his majesty's gracious prerogative is tosay nothing"--with a smile. "That is the rule in Bow Street, and forthis time we'll make it the rule under Bow Fell, if you please.Moreover, what he took I wrote, ma'am, and as he cannot read and Isent it to one who will give it to another, his majesty will enjoy hisprerogative as he should!"
There was a spark in Mrs. Gilson's eye. Fortunately the runner saw it,and before she could retort he slipped out, leaving the storm to breakabout her husband's head. Some who had known Mr. Gilson in old dayswondered how he bore his life, and why he did not hang himself--Mrs.Gilson's tongue was so famous. And more said he had reason to hanghimself. Only a few, and they the wisest, noted that he who had oncebeen Long Tom Gilson grew fat and rosy; and these quoted a proverbabout the wind and the shorn lamb. One--it was Bishop himself, but hehad known them no more than three weeks--said nothing when thequestion was raised, but tapped his nose and winked, and looked atLong Tom as if he did not pity him overmuch.
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