Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  CHAPTER XXV

  PRISON EXPERIENCES

  When Henrietta rose on the second morning of her imprisonment, and opened her door and looked out, she met with an unpleasant surprise. Snow had fallen in the night, and lay almost an inch deep in the yard. The sheet of dazzling white cast the dingy spiked wall and the mean cell-doors into grey relief. But it was not this contrast, nor the memory of childish winters with their pleasures — though that memory took her by the throat and promised to choke her — that filled her with immediate dismay. It was the difficulty of performing the prison duties, of going beyond her door, and refilling her water-pitcher at the pump. To cross the yard in sandaled shoes — such as she and the girls of that day wore — was to spoil her shoes and wet her feet. Yet she could not live without water; the more as she had an instinctive fear of losing, under the pressure of hardship, those refinements in which she had been bred. At length she was about to venture out at no matter what cost, when the door of the yard opened, and the jailor’s wife came stumbling through the snow on a pair of pattens. She carried a second pair in her hand, and she seemed to be in anything but a pleasant humour.

  “Here’s a mess!” she said, throwing down the pattens and looking about her with disgust. “By rights, you should set to work to clear this away, before it’s running all of a thaw into your room. But I dare say it will wait till midday — it don’t get much sun here — and my good man will come and do it. Anyways, there are some pattens, so that you can get about — there’s as good as you have gone on pattens before now! Ay, and mopped the floor in them! And by-and-by my girl will bring you some fire ‘gainst you’re ready for your breakfast.”

  “I’m ready whenever the breakfast is ready,” Henrietta answered, as cheerfully as she could. She was shivering with cold.

  “Ah, well, ah, well, my lass!” the woman answered snappishly, “there’s worse troubles in the world than waiting for your breakfast. For the Lord’s sake, don’t you get complaining.”

  “I wasn’t complaining, indeed!” Henrietta said.

  “Think of the doing we’ve had this night!”

  “I heard,” the girl answered. And an involuntary shudder escaped her. “It was dreadful! dreadful!”

  “You’d ha’ thought so,” ungraciously, “if you had had to deal with the lad yourself! Never was such a Jack o’ Bedlam! I wonder all our heads aren’t broke.”

  “Is he often like that?” Henrietta asked.

  For she had lain awake many hours of the night, trembling and trying to close her ears against the ravings of a madman; who was confined in the next yard, and who had suffered an access of mania during the night. The prisons of that day served also for madhouses.

  “No, but once in the month or so,” the jailor’s wife answered. “And often enough, drat him! Doctor says he’ll go off in one of these Bedlam fits, and the sooner the better, I say! But I’m wasting my time and catching my death, gossipping with you! Anyway, don’t you complain, young woman,” severely. “There’s worse off than you!” And she clattered abruptly away, and Henrietta was left to patten her road to the pump and back, and afterwards to finish her toilette in what shivering comfort she might.

  For a prisoner, she might not have much of which to complain. But though that was not the day of bedroom fires, or rubber water-bottles, and luxury stopped at the warming-pan, or the heated brick, there are degrees of misery, and this degree was new to her.

  However, the woman was better than her word, for in a short time her child appeared, painfully bearing at arm’s length a shovelful of live embers. And the fire put a new face on things. Breakfast sent in from outside followed, and was drawn out to the utmost for the sake of the employment which it afforded. For time hung heavy on the girl’s hands. She had long exhausted the Kendal Chronicle; and a volume of “Sermons for Persons under Sentence of Death” — the property of the gaol — she had steadfastly refused. Other reading there was none, and she was rather gratified than troubled when she espied a thin trickle of water stealing under the door. The snow in the yard was melting; and it was soon made plain to her that if she did not wish to be flooded she must act for herself.

  The task was not very congenial to a girl gently bred, and who had all her life associated such work with Doll and a mop. But on her first entrance into the gaol she had resolved to do, as the lesser of two evils, whatever she should be told to do. And the thing might have been worse, for there was no one to see her at work. She kilted up her skirt and donned the pattens, put on her hood, and taking a broom from the corner of the yard began to sweep vigorously, first removing the snow from the flags before her door, and then, as the space she had cleared grew wider, gathering the snow into a heap at the lower end of the yard.

  She was soon warm and in the full enjoyment of action. But in no long time, as was natural, she tired, and paused to rest and look about her, supporting herself by the broom-handle. A robin alighted on a spike on the top of the wall, and flirting its tail, eyed her in a friendly way, with its head on one side. Then it flew away — it could fly away! And at the thought,

  “What,” she wondered, “would come of it all? What would be the end for her? And had they found the boy?”

  Already it seemed to her that she had lain a week, a month in the gaol. The people outside must have forgotten her. Would she be forgotten? Would they leave her there?

  But she would not give way to such thoughts, and she set to work again with new energy. Swish! swish! Her hands were growing sore, but she had nearly finished the task. She looked complacently at the wide space she had cleared, and stooped to pin up one side of her gown which had slipped down. Then, swish! swish! with renewed vigour, unconscious that the noise of her sweeping drowned the grating of the key in the lock. So that she was not aware until a voice struck her ear, that she was no longer alone.

  Then she wheeled about so sharply that, unused to pattens, she stumbled and all but fell. The accident added to her vexation. Her face turned red as a beet. For inside the door of the yard, contemplating her with a smile at once familiar and unpleasant, stood Mr. Hornyold.

  “Dear, dear,” he said, as she glowered at him resentfully, ashamed at once of her short skirts and the task that compelled them. “They shouldn’t have put you to this! Though I’m sure a prettier sight you’d go far to see! But your hands are infinitely too white and soft, my dear — much too white and pretty to be spoiled by broom-handles! I must speak to Mother Weighton about it.”

  “Perhaps if you would kindly go out a moment,” she said with spirit, “it were better. I could then put myself in order.”

  “Not for the world!” Mr. Hornyold retorted, with something between a leer and a wink. “You’re very well as you are!” with a look at her ankles. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure, but the contrary. I’m told that Lady Jersey at Almack’s shows more, and with a hundred to see! So you need not mind. And you could not look nicer if you’d done it on purpose.”

  With a jerk she disengaged her shoes from the pattens, dropped the broom, and made for the door of her room, with such dignity as her kilted skirt left her. But before she reached it:

  “Steady, my lady,” said Mr. Hornyold in a tone no longer wheedling, but harsh and peremptory, “you’re forgetting! You are in gaol, and you’ll be pleased to stop when you’re told, and do as you’re told! Don’t you be in such a hurry, my dear. I am here to learn if you have any complaints.”

  “Only of your presence!” she cried, her face burning. “If you have come here only to insult me, I have heard enough.”

  And having gained her cell in spite of him, she tried to slam the door in his face.

  But he had had time to approach, and he set the handle of his whip between door and jamb, and stopped her.

  “I’m not come for that, I tell you, you pretty spitfire,” he said; “I’ve come to hear if you have any complaints of your treatment here.”

  “I have not!” she cried.

  “Come, come,” he rejoin
ed, checking her with a grin, “you must not answer the Visiting Justice in that tone. Say, ‘I have none, sir, I thank you kindly,’ — that’s the proper form, my dear. You’ll know better another time. Or” — smiling more broadly as he read the angry refusal in her eyes— “we shall have to put you to beat hemp. And that were a pity. Those pretty hands would soon lose their softness, and those dainty wrists that are not much bigger than my thumbs would be sadly spoiled. But we won’t do that,” indulgently. “We are never hard on pretty girls as long as they behave themselves.”

  She looked round wildly, but there was no escape. She could retreat no farther. The man filled the doorway; the room lay open to his insolent eyes, and he did not spare to look.

  “Neat as a pin!” he said complacently. “Just as it should be. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I’ve nothing but praise for it. I never thought that it would ever be my lot to commend Miss Damer for the neatness of her chamber! But — good Lord!” with surprise, “what’s the matter with your wrist, my girl?”

  “Nothing,” she said, the angry scarlet of her cheek turning a shade deeper.

  “Nothing? Oh, but there is!” he returned peremptorily.

  “Nothing!” she repeated fiercely. “Nothing! It’s nothing that matters!”

  Oh, how she hated the man! How she loathed his red, insolent grin! Would he never leave her? Was she to be exposed, day by day, and hour by hour, to this horror?

  He eyed her shrewdly.

  “You haven’t been turning stubborn?” he said, “have you? And they’ve had to handle you already? And bring you to your senses? And so they have set you to brooming? But Bishop,” with a frown, “gave me no notion of that. He said you came like a lamb.”

  “It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s nothing.” It was not only that she was ashamed of the mark on her arm, and shrank from showing it. But his leering, insolent face terrified her. Though he was not tipsy, he had spent the small hours at a club; and the old port still hummed in his brain. “It’s not that,” she repeated firmly, and more quietly, hoping to get rid of him.

  “Here,” he answered, “let me look at it.”

  “No!”

  “Pooh, nonsense!” he replied, pressing his advantage, and entering the cell. “Nonsense, girl, let me look at it.” He stepped nearer, and peremptorily held out his hand. He could touch her. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek. “There’s no room here for airs and tempers,” he continued. “How, if I don’t see it, am I to know that they have not been ill-treating you? Show me your wrist, girl.”

  But she recoiled from him into the farthest corner, holding her arms behind her. Her face was a picture of passionate defiance.

  “Don’t touch me!” she cried. “Don’t come near me!”

  “You’ve no right to touch me. They have not hurt my wrist. I tell you it is nothing. And if you lay a finger on me I will scream!”

  “Then,” he said coolly, “they’ll put you in a strait waistcoat, my lass, like the madman next door. That’s all! You’re mighty particular, but you forget where you are.”

  “You forget that I am a gentlewoman!” she cried. She could not retreat farther, but she looked at him as if she could have killed him. “Stand back, sir, I say!” she continued fiercely. “If you do not — —”

  “What will you do?” he asked. He enjoyed the situation, but he was not sure how far it would be prudent to push it. If he could contrive to surprise her wrist it would be odd if he could not snatch a kiss; and it was his experience — in his parish — that once fairly kissed, young women came off the high horse, and proved amenable. “What’ll you do,” he continued facetiously, “you silly little prude?”

  “Do?” she panted.

  “Ay, Miss Dainty Damer, what’ll you do?” with a feigned movement as if to seize her. “You’re not on the highway now, you know! Nor free on bail! Nor is there a parson here!”

  There he stopped — a faint, faint sound had fallen on his ear. He looked behind him, and stepped back as if a string drew him. And his face changed marvellously. In the doorway stood, hat in hand, the last person in the world he wished to see there — Captain Clyne.

  Clyne did not utter a syllable, but he beckoned to the other to come out to him. And, with a chap-fallen look and a brick-red face, Hornyold complied, and went out. Clyne closed the door on the girl — that she might not hear. And the two men alone in the yard confronted one another, Clyne’s face was dark.

  “I overheard your last words, Mr. Hornyold,” he said in a voice low but stern. “And you are mistaken. There is a parson here — who has forgotten that he is a gentleman. It is well for him, very well, that having forgotten that fact he remains a parson.”

  Hornyold tried to bluster, tried to face the other down and save the situation. “I don’t understand you!” he said. “What does this mean?” He was the taller man and the bigger, but Clyne’s air of contemptuous mastery made him appear the smaller. “I don’t understand you,” he repeated. “The young lady — I merely came to visit her.”

  “The less,” Clyne retorted, cutting him short, “said about her the better! I understand perfectly, sir,” with severity, “if you do not! Perfectly. And I desire you to understand that it is your cloth only that protects you from the punishment you deserve!”

  “That’s easy said!” Hornyold answered with a poor attempt at defiance. “Easy! What! Are we to have all this fuss about a chit that — —”

  “Silence, sir!” And Clyne’s voice rang so loud that the other not only obeyed but stepped back, as if he feared a blow. “Silence, sir! I know you well enough, and your past, to know that you cannot afford a scandal. And you know me! I advise you, therefore, when you have passed that door” — he pointed to the door leading to the prison lodge, “to keep a still tongue, and to treat this lady’s name with respect. If not for the sake of your own character, for the sake, at any rate, of your ill-earned stipends.”

  “Fine words!” Hornyold muttered, with a sneer of bravado.

  “I will make them good,” Clyne answered. And the look and the tone were such that the other, high as he wished to carry it, thought discretion the better part. He turned, still sneering, on his heel, and cutting the air with his whip made his way with what dignity he might to the door. He hesitated an instant and then disappeared, raging inwardly.

  The moment he was gone Clyne’s face relaxed. He passed his hand over his brow as if to recall his thoughts, and he sighed deeply. Then turning he went slowly to Henrietta’s door and tapped on it. The girl opened. “May I speak to you?” he said.

  She did not answer, but she stepped out. She had recovered her self-control — quickly and completely, as women do; and her face told nothing. Whatever she thought of his intervention and of the manner in which he had routed Hornyold, she made no sign. She waited for him to speak. Yet she was aware not only of his downcast carriage, but of the change which sleepless nights and days of unutterable suspense had wrought in his face. His features were thinner and sharper, his temples more hollow: and there was a listening, hungry look in his eyes which did not quit them even when he dealt with other things than his loss.

  “I have brought an order for your release,” he said without an attempt at preface. “I have given bail for your appearance when needed. You are free to go. You have not to thank me, however, but Mr. Sutton, who discovered the letter that was written to you — —”

  She interrupted him by an exclamation.

  “The letter,” he continued mechanically, “that was written to you making an appointment.”

  “Impossible!” she cried. “I destroyed it.”

  “He put it together again,” he answered in the same tone. “I — we are all indebted to him. Deeply indebted to him! I don’t know that there is anything more to be said,” he continued dully, “except that I have come to take you back. I was coming last evening, but the snow prevented me.”

  “And that is all — you have to say?”

  He
raised his eyes to hers with so much sadness in their depths, with such utter dejection in his looks, that in spite of all her efforts to keep it alive, her anger drooped. “Except that I am sorry,” he said. “I am sorry. We have treated you — badly amongst us.”

  “You!” she said vindictively.

  “I, if you like. Yes, I. It is true.”

  She called up the remembrance of the severity with which he had judged her and the violence of which her wrist still wore the traces. She pictured the disgrace of the prison and her fears, the nights of apprehension and the days of loneliness, ay, and the insolence of the wretch who had just left her — she owed all to him! All! And yet she could not keep her anger hot. She tried. She tried to show him something of what she felt. “You!” she repeated. “And now you think,” bitterly, “that I shall bear to go back to the place from which you sent me? Sent me in open disgrace — in that man’s charge — with no woman with me?”

  “God help me!” he said. “I know not what to think or do! I thought that if I took you back myself, that would perhaps be best for all.”

  She was silent a moment, and then, “I have been very, very unhappy,” she said in a different tone. And even while she said it she wondered why she complained to him, instead of accusing him, and blaming him.