Starvecrow Farm Part 10

"But you must not interfere!" snapped the clerk--who kept the books of the Salutation in Ambleside and not of the Low Wood Inn.

"Haven't you sense to see the girl is fainting?" the landlady replied wrathfully.

"Oh, well----"

"I am better now," Henrietta said bravely. And she drew a deep breath.

A little colour--induced perhaps by h.o.r.n.yold's unsparing gaze--was coming back to her cheeks. "Would you--can I have a gla.s.s of water?"

she murmured.

Mrs. Gilson was bustling to the door to give the order when it opened, and Mr. Bishop, who had gone to it a moment before, took in a gla.s.s of wine, and, secretly pleased that he had antic.i.p.ated the need, handed it to her. Mrs. Gilson took it with a grunt of distrust, and made the girl swallow it; while the magistrate waited and watched, and thought that he had never seen a young woman who was so handsome, pale or red, fainting or fierce. And so fresh! so admirably, astonishingly fresh for the companion of such a man. A good many thoughts of various kinds flitted through his mind as he watched her, marking now the luxuriance of her fair hair, now the white chin, small but firm, and now the faint, faint freckles that, like clots in cream, only added to the delicacy of her complexion. He waited without impatience until the girl had drunk the wine, and when he spoke it was in a tone approaching the paternal.

"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 gla.s.ses.

"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. h.o.r.n.yold 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 princ.i.p.al 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 s.l.u.ts 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 pa.s.sage.

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. h.o.r.n.yold. 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 pa.s.sage, 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 minutiae 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.