Starvecrow Farm Part 30

"By your leave,"--the voice, a little breathless, was Mrs.

Gilson's--"I'm coming in too." And she came in at that, and brusquely.

"I think you are over many men for one woman," she continued, setting her cap straight, and otherwise not a whit discomposed by the men's att.i.tude. "You'll want me before you are done, you'll see."

"Want you?" the strange man answered with sarcasm. "Then when we want you we'll send for you."

"No you'll not, Joe Nadin," she retorted, coolly, as she closed the door behind her. "For I'll be here. What you will be wanting," with a toss of her double chin, "will be wit. But that's not to be had for the sending."

Nadin--he was the deputy-constable of Manchester, and the most famous police officer of that day, a man as warmly commended by the Tory party as he was fiercely hated by the Radicals--would have given an angry answer. But Bishop was before him.

"Let her be," he said--with friendly deference. "We may want her, as she says. And the young lady is waiting. Now, miss," he continued, addressing Henrietta, who stood at the table trying to hide the perturbation which these preliminaries caused her, "I've brought Mr.

Sutton to tell us in your presence what he knows. I doubt it won't go far. So that when we have heard him we shall want a good deal from you."

"Ay, from you, young lady," the Manchester man struck in, taking the word out of the other's mouth. "It will be your turn then. And what we want we must have, or----"

"Or what?" she asked, with an air of dignity that sat strangely on one so young. They did not guess how her heart was beating!

"Or 'twill be Appleby gaol!" he answered. "That's the long and the short of it. There's an end of shilly-shallying! You've to make your choice, and time's precious. But the reverend gentleman has first say.

Speak up, Mr. Chaplain! You followed this young lady last night about ten o'clock? Very good. Now what did you see and hear?"

Mr. Sutton looked miserably downcast. But he was on the horns of a dilemma, and while he knew that by speaking he forfeited all chance of Henrietta's favour, he knew that he must speak: that he had no choice.

Obstinate as he could be upon occasion, in the grasp of such a man as Nadin he succ.u.mbed. He owned that not the circ.u.mstances only but the man were too strong for him. Yet he made one effort to stand on his own legs. "I think Miss Damer would prefer to tell the tale herself,"

he said, with a spark of dignity. "In that case I have nothing to say."

"I do not know what you mean," Henrietta answered, her lip curling.

And she looked at him as she would have looked at Judas.

"Still," he murmured, with a side-glance at Nadin, "if you would be advised by me----"

"I have nothing to say," she said curtly.

"Mind you, I've told her nothing." Mrs. Gilson said, intervening in time to prevent an outburst on Nadin's part. "I was bid to get her shoes, and I got her shoes. I held my tongue."

"Then she knows nothing!" the chaplain exclaimed.

"Oh, she knows enough," Nadin struck in, his harsh, dogmatic nature getting the better of him. "If she did not know we should not come to her. We know our business. Now, where's the man hiding? For there the boy will be. Where did you leave him, my la.s.s?"

Mr. Sutton, whom circ.u.mstances had forced into a part so distasteful, saw a chance of helping the girl; and even of reinstating himself in some degree in her eyes.

"I can answer that," he said. "She did not meet him. The young lady went to the bottom of Troutbeck Lane, where, I understand, the boat came to land. But there was no one there to meet her. And she came back without seeing any one. I can vouch for that. And that," the chaplain continued, throwing out his chest, and speaking with dignity, "is all that Miss Damer did, and I can speak to it."

Nadin exploded.

"Don't tell me that she went to the place for nothing, man!"

"I tell you only what happened," the chaplain answered, sticking to his point. "She saw no one, and spoke to no one."

"Hang me if I don't think you are in with her!" Nadin replied in an insulting tone. And then turning to Henrietta, "Now then, out with it!

Where is he?"

But Henrietta, battered by the man's coa.r.s.e voice and manner, still held her ground.

"If I knew I should not tell you," she said.

"Then you'll go to Appleby gaol!"

"And still I shall not tell you."

"Understand! Understand!" Nadin replied. "I've a warrant here granted in Lancashire and backed here and in order! A warrant to take him. You can see it if you like. Don't say I took advantage of you. I'm rough, but I'm square," he continued, his broad dialect such that a Southerner would not have understood him. "The lads know me, and you'll know me before we've done!"

"Then it won't be for your wisdom!" Mrs. Gilson muttered. And then more loudly, "Why don't you tell her what's been done? Happen she knows, and happen she doesn't. If she does 'tis all one. If she doesn't you're talking to deaf ears."

Nadin shrugged his shoulders and struck his boot with his whip.

"Well," he said, "an old la.s.s with a long tongue will have her way i'

Lancashire or where it be! Tell her yourself. But she knows, I warrant!"

Mrs. Gilson also thought so, but she was not sure.

"See here, miss," she said, "you know Captain Clyne's son?"

Henrietta's colour rose at the name.

"Of course you do," the landlady continued, "for if all's true you are some sort of connection. Then you know, Miss, that he's the apple of his father's eye, and the more for being a lameter?"

Henrietta could not hear Anthony Clyne's name without agitation; without vague apprehensions and a sense of coming evil. Why did they bring in the name? And what were they going to tell her about the boy--of whom in the old days she had been contemptuously jealous? She felt her face burn under the gaze of all those eyes fixed on it. And her own eyes sank.

"Well," she muttered indistinctly, "what of him? What has he to do with this?"

"He is missing. He has been stolen."

"Stolen?"

Her tone was one of sharp surprise.

"He was carried off last night by two men," Bishop struck in. "His nurse was returning to the house near Newby Bridge--hard on nightfall, when she met two men on the road. They asked the name of the place, heard what it was, and asked who the child was. She told them, and they went one way and she another, but before she reached home they overtook her, seized her and bound her, and disappeared with the boy.

It was dusk and she might have lain in the ditch and died. But the servants in the house went out when she did not return and found her."

He looked at Nadin. "That's so, isn't it?"

"Ay, that's it," the other answered, nodding. "You've got it pat."

"When she could speak, the alarm was given, they raised the country, the men were traced to Newby Bridge. There we know a boat met them and took them off. And the point, miss, is not so much where they landed, for that we know--'twas at the bottom of Troutbeck Lane!--as where they are now."

She had turned pale and red and pale again, while she listened.

Astonishment had given place to horror, and resentment to pity. In women, even the youngest, there is a secret tenderness for children; and the thought of this child, cast lame and helpless into the hands of strangers, and exposed, in place of the care to which he had been accustomed all his life, to brutality and hardships, pierced the crust of jealousy and melted the woman's heart. Her eyes filled with tears, and through the tears indignation burned. For a moment even the insult which Anthony Clyne had put upon her was forgotten. She thought only of the father's misery, his suspense, his grief. She yearned to him.

"Oh!" she cried, "the wretches!" And her voice rang bravely. "But--but why are you here? Why do you not follow them?"

Nadin's eyes met Bishop's. He raised his eyebrows.