Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 11

"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the eyes of the crowd were on them. "The faintness is over?"

"Yes."

"Do not talk at all. By-and-by we will talk. Now I am going to ask you a selfish question, and you are just to bend your head for 'yes' or 'no.' Will the smell of tobacco distress you, or bring the faintness back? These autumn flies sting abominably here, under the trees."

She moved her head slowly. "I do not feel them," she said after a while.

He glanced at her compa.s.sionately before nodding to Mana.s.seh for a light. "No, poor wretch, I'll be sworn you do not," he muttered between the puffs. "Thank you, Mana.s.seh; and now will you step down to the Inn, order the horses back to stable, and bring George and Harry back with you? I may require them to break a head or two here, if there should be trouble. Tell Alexander"--this was the coachman--"to have an eye on Master d.i.c.ky, and see that he gets his dinner. The child is on no account to come here, or be told about this. His papa is detained on business--you understand? Yes, and by the way, you may extract a book from the valise--the Calderon, for choice, or if it come handier, that second volume of Corneille. Don't waste time, though, in searching for this or that. In the stocks I've no doubt a book is a book: the instrument has a reputation for levelling."

Mana.s.seh departed on his errand, and for a while the Collector paid no heed to his companion. He and she were now unprotected, at the mercy of the mob if it intended mischief; and the next few minutes would be critical.

He sat immersed apparently in his own thoughts, and by the look on his face these were serious thoughts. He seemed to see and yet not to see the ring of faces; to be aware of them, yet not concerned with them, no whit afraid and quite as little defiant. True, he was smoking, but without a trace of affected insouciance or bravado; gravely rather, resting an elbow on his groin and leaning forward with a preoccupied frown. Two minutes pa.s.sed in this silence, and he felt the danger ebbing. Mob insolence ever wants a lead, and--perhaps because with the return of fine weather the fishing-crews had put to sea early--this Port Na.s.sau crowd lacked a fugleman.

"Are you here--because--of me?"

"Hush, again," he answered quietly, not turning his head. "I like you to talk if you feel strong enough; but for the moment it will be better if they do not perceive. . . . Yes, and no," he answered her question after a pause. "I am here to see that you get through this. You are in pain?"

"Yes; but it is easier."

"You are afraid of these people?"

"Afraid?" She took some time considering this. "No," she said at length. "I am not afraid of them. I do not see them. You are here."

He took the tobacco-leaf from his lips, blew a thin cloud of smoke with grave deliberateness, and in doing so contrived to glance at her face.

"You have blood in you. That face, too, my beauty," he muttered, "never came to you but by gift of blood." Aloud he said, "That's brave.

But take care when your senses clear and the strain comes back on you.

Speak to me when you feel it coming; I don't want it to tauten you up with a jerk. You understand?"

"Yes. . . ."

"I wonder now--" he began musingly, and broke off. The danger he had been keeping account with was over; Mana.s.seh had returned with the two grooms, and they--perfectly trained servants on the English model--took their posts without exhibiting surprise by so much as a twitch of the face. George in particular was a tight fellow with his fists, as the crowd, should it offer annoyance, would a.s.suredly learn. The Collector took the volume which Mana.s.seh brought him, and opened it, but did not begin to read. "You despise these people?" he asked.

He was puzzled with himself. He was here to protect her; and this, from him to her, implied a n.o.ble condescension. His fine manners, to be sure, forbade his showing it; on no account would he have shown it.

But the puzzle was, he could not feel it.

She met his eyes. "No . . . why should I despise them?"

"They are _canaille_."

"What does that mean? . . . They have been cruel to me. Afterwards, I expect, they will be crueller still. But just now it does not matter, because you are here."

"Does that make so much difference?" he asked thoughtlessly.

She caught her breath upon a sob. "Ah, do not--" The voice died, strangled, in her throat. "Do not--" Again she could get no further, but sat shivering, her fingers interlocked and writhing.

"Brute!" muttered the Collector to himself. He did not ask her pardon, but opened his Calderon, signed to Mana.s.seh to roll a fresh tobacco-leaf, and fell to reading his favourite _Alcalde de Zalamea_.

The sun crept slowly to the right over the tops of the maples. It no longer scorched their faces, but slanted in rays through the upper boughs, dappling the open walks with splashes of light which, as they receded in distance, took by a trick of the eyesight a pattern regular as diaper. By this time the Collector, when he glanced up from his book, had an ample view of the square, for the crowd had thinned.

The punishment of the stocks was no such rare spectacle in Port Na.s.sau; and five hours is a tedious while even for the onlooker--a very long while indeed to stand weighing the fun of throwing a handful of filth against the cost of a thrashing. The men-folk, reasoning thus, had melted away to their longsh.o.r.e avocations. The women, always more patient--as to their nature the show was more piquant than to the men's--had withdrawn with their knitting to benches well within eyeshot. The children, playing around, grew more and more immersed in their games; which, nevertheless, one or another would interrupt from time to time to point and ask a question. Above the Court-house the town clock chimed its quarters across the afternoon heat.

The Collector, glancing up in the act of turning a page, spied Mr. Trask hobbling down an alley towards the Jail. Mr. Trask, a martyr to gout, helped his progress with an oaken staff. He leaned on this as he halted before the stocks.

"Tired?" he asked.

"d.a.m.nably!" answered the Collector with great cheerfulness. "It takes one in the back, you see. If ever the Town Fathers think of moving this machine, you might put in a word for shifting it a foot or two back, against the prison wall."

Mr. Trask grinned.

"I suppose now," he said after a pause, "you think you are doing a fine thing, and doing it handsomely?"

"I had some notion of the sort, but this confinement of the feet is wonderfully cooling to the brain. No--if you dispute it. Most human actions are mixed."

Mr. Trask eyed him, chin between two fingers and thumb. When he spoke again it was with lowered voice. "Is it altogether kind to the girl?"

he asked.

"Eh?" The Collector in turn eyed Mr. Trask.

"Or even quite fair to her?"

"Oh, come!" said the Collector. "Tongues? I hadn't thought of that."

"I dare say not." Mr. Trask glanced up at the windows of a two-storeyed house on the left, scarcely a stone's throw away, a respectable mansion with a verandah and neat gateway of wrought iron. "But at the end of this what becomes of her?"

The Collector shrugged his shoulders. "I have thought of _that_, at all events. My coach will be here to take her home. It lies on my road.

As for me, I shall have to mount at once and ride through the night--a second test for the back-bone."

"Ride and be hanged to you!" broke out Mr. Trask with a snarl of scorn.

"But for the rest, if your foppery leave you any room to consider the girl, you couldn't put a worse finish on your injury. Drive her off in your coach indeed!--and what then becomes of her reputation?"

"--Of what you have left to her, you mean? d.a.m.n it--_you_ to talk like this!"

"Do not be profane, Captain Vyell. . . . We see things differently, and this punishment was meted to her--if cruelly, as you would say--still in honest concern for her soul's good. But if you, a loose-living man--"

Mr. Trask paused.

"Go on."

"I thank you. For the moment I forgot that you are not at liberty.

But I used not that plainness of speech to insult you; rather because it is part of the argument. If you, then, drive away with this child in public, through this town, you do her an injury for which mere carelessness is your best excuse; and the world will a.s.sign it a worse."

"The world!"

"I mean the world this young woman will have to live in. But we talk at cross-purposes. When I asked, 'What becomes of her at the end of this?'

I was thinking of the harm you have already done. As a fact, I have ordered my cart to be ready to take her home."

Captain Vyell considered for a few seconds. "Sir," he said, "since plain speech is allowed between us, I consider you a narrow bigot; but, I hasten to add, you are the best man I have met in Port Na.s.sau. By the way--that house on our left--does it by chance belong to Mr. Wapshott?"