“Now, my dear,” he said, “you are going to be a good girl and sensible, I am sure. We don’t want to send you to prison to herd with people with whom, to judge from your appearance, you have not been wont to mix. And therefore we give you this opportunity — there’s no need we should, you know — of telling us who you are, and whence you come, and what you know; that if it appears that you have fallen into this man’s company in ignorance, and not knowing what manner of man he was, we may prevent this charge appearing, and instead of committing you to Appleby, place you here or elsewhere under bond to appear. Which, in a case so serious as this, is not a course we could adopt were you not so very young, and,” with a humorous look at the group by the door, “so very good-looking! So now be a good girl and don’t be afraid, but tell me at once who you are, and where you joined this man.”
“If I do not,” Henrietta said, looking at him with clear eyes, “must I go to prison?”
“Appleby gaol,” said the clerk, glancing over his glasses.
“Then you must send me there,” she replied, a little faintly. “For I cannot tell you.”
“Don’t be a fool!” growled Mrs. Gilson in her ear.
“I cannot tell you,” Henrietta repeated more firmly.
Mr. Hornyold stared. He was growing angry, for he was not accustomed to be set at naught. After their fashion they all stared.
“Come, come, my dear,” the runner remonstrated smoothly. “If you don’t tell us, we shall think there’s more behind.”
She did not answer.
“And that being so, it’s only a matter of time to learn what it is,” the runner continued cunningly. “Tell us now and save time, because we are sure to get to know. Young women as pretty as you are not hard to trace.”
But she shook her head. And the face Bishop called pretty was stubborn. The group by the door, marking for future gossip every particular of her appearance, the stuff of her riding-habit, the fineness of her linen, the set of her head, made certain that she was no common trollope. They wondered what would happen to her, and hoped, the more tender-hearted, that there would be no scene, and no hysterics to end it.
The clerk raised his pen in the air. “Understand,” he said, “you will be remanded to Appleby gaol — it’s no very comfortable place, I can tell you — and later, you will be brought up again and committed, I’ve very little doubt, to take your trial on these charges. If the principal offender be taken, as he is likely to be taken before the day is out, you’ll be tried with him. But it is not necessary. Now do you understand?” he continued, speaking slowly. “And are you still determined to give no evidence — showing how you came to be with this man?”
Henrietta’s eyes were full of trouble. She shivered.
“Where shall I be tried?” she muttered in an unsteady voice.
“Appleby,” the clerk said curtly. “Or in His Majesty’s Bench at Westminster! Now think, before it is too late.”
“It is too late,” she answered in a low tone, “I cannot help it now.”
The magistrate leant forward. What a fool the girl was! If she went to Appleby he would see no more of her, save for an hour or two when she was brought up again before being committed. Whereas, if she spoke and they made her a witness, she might be lodged somewhere in the neighbourhood under surveillance. And she was so handsome and so young — the little fool! — he would not be sorry to see more of her.
“I give you a last chance,” he said.
“I give you a last chance,” he said.
She shook her head.
The magistrate shrugged his shoulders.
“Then make the committal out!” he said. “There’s enough to justify it.” It was some satisfaction to think that locked up with half a dozen sluts at Appleby she would soon be sorry for herself. “Make it out!” he repeated.
If the hysterics did not come now he was very much mistaken if they did not come later, when the gaol doors were shut on her. She was evidently of respectable condition; a curate’s daughter, perhaps, figged out by the man who had deceived her, or a lady’s lady, spoiled by. her mistress, and taught ideas above her station. On such, the gaol, with its company and its hardships, fell severely. It would soon, he fancied, bring her to her senses.
The clerk dipped his pen in the ink, and after casting a last glance at the girl to see if she would still yield, began to write. She watched him with fascinated eyes, watched him in a kind of stupor. The thought throbbed loudly and more loudly in her head, “What will become of me? What will become of me?” Meanwhile the silence was broken only by the squeaking of the pen and a single angry “Lord’s sakes!” which fell from the landlady. The others awaited the end with whatever of pity, or interest, or greedy excitement came natural to them. They were within, and others were without; and they had a delicious sense of privilege. They would have much to tell: For one does not every day see a pretty girl, young, and tenderly nurtured, as this girl seemed to be, and a lady to the eye, committed to the common gaol on a charge of murder — murder, and treason felony, was it, they called it? Treason felony! That meant hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord’s sakes, indeed; poor thing, how would she bear it? And though it is likely that some among them — Mrs. Gilson for one — didn’t think it would come to this, there was a frown on the landlady’s brow that would have done honour to the Lord Chancellor Eldon himself.
CHAPTER VII
CAPTAIN ANTHONY CLYNE
Mr. Bishop of Bow Street alone watched the clerk’s pen with a look of doubt. He had his own views about the girl. But he did not interfere, and his discontent with the posture of affairs was only made clear when a knock came at the door. Then he was at the door, and had raised the latch before those who were nearest could open.
“Have you got him?” he asked eagerly. And he thrust his head into the passage.
Even Henrietta turned to catch the answer, her lips parting. Her breath seemed to stop. The clerk held his pen. The magistrate by a gesture exacted silence.
“No, but — —”
“No?” the runner cried in chagrin.
“No!” The voice sounded something peremptory. “Certainly not. But I want to see — ahem! — yes, Mr. Hornyold. At once!”
Henrietta, at the first word of the answer, had turned again. She had turned so far that she now had her back full to the door, and her face to the farthest corner. But it was not the same Henrietta, nor the same face. She sat rigid, stiff, turned to stone; she was scarlet from hair to neck-ribbon. Her very eyes burned, her shoulders burned. And her eyes were wild with insupportable shame. To be found thus! To be found thus, and by him! Better, far better the gaol, and all it meant!
Meanwhile the magistrate, after a brief demur and a little whispering and the appearance of a paper with a name on it, rose. He went out. A moment later his clerk was summoned, and he went out. Bishop had gone out first of all. Those who were left and who had nothing better to do than to stare at the girl’s back, whispered together, or bade one another listen and hear what was afoot outside. Presently these were joined by one or two of the boldest in the passage, who muttered hurriedly what they knew, or sought information, or stared with double power at the girl’s back. But Henrietta sat motionless, with the same hot blush on her cheeks and the same misery in her eyes.
Presently Mrs. Gilson was summoned, and she went out. The others, freed from the constraint of her presence, talked a little louder and a little more freely. And wonder grew. The two village constables, who remained and who felt themselves responsible, looked important, and one cried “Silence” a time or two, as if the court were sitting. The other explained the law, of which he knew as much as a Swedish turnip, on the subject of treason felony. But mixing it up with the Habeas Corpus which was then suspended, he was tripped up by a neighbour before he could reach the minutiæ of the punishment. Which otherwise must have had much interest for the prisoner.
At length the door opened, the other constable cried, “Silence! Silence in the court!” And
there entered — the landlady.
The surprise of the little knot of people at the back of the room was great but short-lived.
Mrs. Gilson turned about and surveyed them with her arms akimbo and her lower lip thrust out. “You can all just go!” she said. “And the sooner the better! And if ever I catch you” — to the more successful of the constables, on whose feet her eye had that moment alighted— “up my stairs with those dirty clogs, Peter Harrison, I’ll clout you! Now, off you go! Do you think I keep carpets for loons like you?”
“But — the prisoner?” gasped Peter, clutching at his fast-departing glory. “The prisoner, missus?”
“The goose!” the landlady retorted with indescribable scorn. “Go you down and see what the other ganders think of it. And leave me to mind my business! I’ll see to the prisoner.” And she saw them all out and closed the door.
When the room was clear she tapped Henrietta on the shoulder. “There’s no gaol for you,” she said bluntly. “Though it is not yourself you’ve got to thank for it. They’ve put you in my charge and you’re to stay here, and I’m to answer for you. So you’ll just say straight out if you’ll stay, or if you’ll run.”
Had the girl burst into tears the landlady had found it reasonable. Instead, “Where is he?” Henrietta whispered. She did not even turn her head.
“Didn’t you hear,” Mrs. Gilson retorted, “that he had not been taken?”
“I mean — I mean — —”
“Ah!” Mrs. Gilson exclaimed, a little enlightened. “You mean the gentleman that was here, and spoke for you? Yes, you are right, it’s him you’ve to thank. Well, he’s gone to Whitehaven, but he’ll see you tomorrow.”
Henrietta sighed.
“In the meantime,” Mrs. Gilson continued, “you’ll give me your word you’ll not run. Gilson is bound for you in fifty pounds to show you when you’re wanted. And as fifty pounds is fifty pounds, and a mint of money, I’d as soon turn the key on you as not. Girls that run once, run easy,” the landlady added severely.
“I will not run away,” Henrietta said meekly — more meekly perhaps than she had ever spoken in her life. “And — and I am much obliged to you, and thankful to you,” in a very small voice. “Will you please to let me go to my room, and you can lock me in?”
She had risen from her seat, and though she did not turn to the landlady, she stole, shamed and askance, a look at her. Her lip trembled, her head hung. And Mrs. Gilson, on her side, seemed for a moment on the verge of some unwonted demonstration; she stood awkward and large, and perhaps from sheer clumsiness avoided even while she appeared to invite the other’s look. But nothing happened until the two passed out, Henrietta first, like a prisoner, and Mrs. Gilson stiffly following.
Then there were half a dozen persons waiting to stare in the passage, and the way Mrs. Gilson’s tongue fell loose was a warning. In two seconds, only one held her ground: the same dark girl with the gipsy-like features whose mocking smile had annoyed Henrietta as she dressed that morning. Ah, me! what ages ago that morning seemed!
To judge from Mrs. Gilson’s indignation, this girl was the last who should have stood.
“Don’t you black-look me!” the landlady cried. “But pack! D’you hear, impudence, pack! Or not one drop of milk do I take from your old skinflint of a father! And he’ll drub you finely, if he’s not too old and silly — till you smile on the other side of your face! I’d like to know what’s taken you to-day to push yourself among your betters!”
“No harm,” the girl muttered. She had retreated, scowling, half-way down the stairs.
“And no good, either!” the landlady retorted. “Get you gone, or I’ll make your ears ring after another fashion!”
Henrietta heard no more. She had shrunk from the uproar and fled quickly to her room. With a bursting heart and a new humility she drew the key from the wards of the lock and set it on the outside, hoping — though the hope was slender — to avoid further words with the landlady. The hope came nearer fulfilment, however, than she expected; for Mrs. Gilson, after panting upstairs, only cried through the door that she would send her up supper, and then went down again — perhaps with a view to catching Bess Hinkson in a fresh trespass.
Bess was gone, however. But adventures are for the brave, and not ten minutes passed before the landlady was at issue with a fresh adversary. She found the coach-office full, so full that it overflowed into the hall. Modest Ann, called this way and that, had need of four hands to meet the demands made upon her; so furious were the calls for the lemons and rum and Old Geneva, the grateful perfume of which greeted Mrs. Gilson as she descended. Alas, something else greeted her: and that was a voice, never a favourite with her, but now raised in accents particularly distasteful. Tyson, the Troutbeck apothecary — a flashy, hard-faced young man in pepper-and-salt, and Bedford cords — had seized the command and the ear of the company in the coach-office, and was roasting Long Tom Gilson upon his own hearth.
“Not know who she is?” he was saying in the bullying tone which made him hated of the pauper class. “You don’t ask me to believe that, Tom? Come! Come!”
“It’s what I say,” Gilson answered.
He sat opposite the other, his hands on his knees, his face red and sulky. He did not like to be baited.
“And you go bail for her?” Tyson cried. “You have gone bail for her?”
“Well?”
“And don’t know her name?”
“Well — no.”
The doctor sat back in his chair, his glass in his hand, and looked round for approbation.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “what do you think of that for a dalesman?”
“Well, it wasn’t long-headed, Tom,” said one unwillingly. “Not to call long-headed, so to speak,” with north-country caution. “I’d not go bail myself, not for nobody I’d not know.”
“No,” several agreed. “No, no!”
“No, but — —”
“But what, Tom, what?” the doctor asked, waiting in his positive fashion for the other to plunge deeper into the mire.
“Captain Clyne, that I do know,” Gilson continued, “it was he said ‘Do it!’ And he said something to the Rector, I don’t doubt, for he was agreeable.”
“But he did not go bail for her?” the apothecary suggested maliciously.
“No,” Tom answered, breathing hard. “But for reason she was not there, but here. Anyway,” he continued, somewhat anxious to shift the subject, “he said it and I done it, and I’d do it again for Captain Clyne. I tell you he’s not a man as it’s easy to say ‘No’ to, Mr. Tyson. As these Radicals i’ Lancashire ha’ found out, ‘od rot ‘em! He’s that active among ‘em, he’s never a letter, I’m told, but has a coffin drawn on it, and yeomanry in his house down beyond both day and night, I hear!”
“I heard,” said one, “in Cartmel market, he was to be married next week.”
“Ay,” said the doctor jocosely, “but not to the young lady as Tom is bail for! I tell you, Tom, he’s been making a fool of you just to keep this bit of evidence against the Radicals in his hands.”
“Why not send her to Appleby gaol, then?” Tom retorted, with a fair show of sense.
“Because he knows you’ll cosset her here, and he thinks to loose her tongue that way! They can gaol her after, if this don’t answer.”
“Oh, indeed!”
“Ay, while you run the risk! If it’s not that, what’s he doing here?”
“Why should he not be here?” Gilson asked slowly. “Hasn’t he the old house in Furness, not two miles from Newby Bridge! And his mother a Furness woman. I do hear that the boy’s to be brought there for safety till the shires are quieter. And maybe it’s that brings Captain Anthony here.”
“But what has that to do with the young woman you’re going bail for?” the doctor retorted. “Go bail, Tom, for a wench you don’t know, and that’ll jump the moon one of these fine nights! I tell you, man, I never heard the like! Never! Go bail for a girl you don’t know
!”
“And I tell you,” cried a voice that made the glasses ring, “I have heard the like! And I’ll give you the man, my lad!” And Mrs. Gilson, putting aside the two who blocked the doorway, confronted the offending Tyson with a look comparable only to that of Dr. Keats of Eaton when he rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll give you the name, my lad!” she repeated.
“Well,” the doctor answered, though he was manifestly taken aback, “you must confess, Mrs. Gilson — —”
“Nay, I’ll confess nothing!” the landlady retorted. “What need, when you’re the man? Not give bail for a woman you don’t know? Much you knew of Madge Peters when you made her your wife! And wasn’t that going bail for her? Ay, and bail that you’ll find it hard to get out of, my man, though you may wish to! For the matter of that, it’s small blame to her, whatever comes of it!” Mrs. Gilson continued, setting her arms akimbo. “If all I hear of your goings-on is true! What do you think she’s doing, ill and sick at home, while you’re hanging about old Hinkson’s? Ay, you may look black, but tell me what Bess Hinkson’s doing about my place all this day? I never saw her here twice in a day in all my life before, and — —”
“What do you mean?” Tyson cried violently. To hear a thing which he thought no one suspected brought up thus before a roomful of men! He looked black as thunder at his accuser.
“I mean no harm of your wife,” the terrible landlady answered; something — perhaps this roasting of her husband on his own hearth — had roused her beyond the ordinary. “None, my gentleman, and I know none. But if you want no harm said of her, show yourself a bit less at Hinkson’s. And a bit less in my house. And a bit more in your own! And the harm will be less likely to happen!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 475