Starvecrow Farm Part 39

"What is that to you? And who are you to talk to me? Is it your child who is missing? Your child who is being tortured, perhaps out of life?

Who, a cripple, is being dragged at these men's heels? You? You? What have you to do with this?"

The tone was crushing. But the chaplain, too, had his stubborn side, and resentment flamed within him as he thought of the girl and her lot. "Do I understand then," he said--he was very pale--"that you refuse to hear what I have by chance discovered--in Miss Damer's favour?"

"I do."

"That you will not, Captain Clyne, even look at this letter--this letter which I have found and which exonerates her?"

"Never!" Clyne replied harshly. "Never! And, now you know my mind, go, sir, and do not return to this subject! This is no time for trifling, nor am I in the mood."

But the chaplain held his ground, though he was very nervous. And a resolution, great and heroic, took shape within him, growing in a moment to full size--he knew not how. He raised his meagre figure to its full height, and his pale peaky face a.s.sumed a dignity which the pulpit had never known. "I, too, am in no mood for trifling, Captain Clyne," he said. "But I do not hold this matter trifling. On the contrary, I wish you to understand that I think it so important that I consider it my duty to press it upon you by every means in my power!"

Clyne looked at him wrathfully, astonished at his presumption. "The girl has turned your head," he said.

The chaplain waived the words aside. "And therefore," he continued, "if you decline, Captain Clyne, to read this letter, or to consider the evidence it contains----"

"That I do absolutely! Absolutely!"

"I beg to resign my office," Mr. Sutton responded, trembling violently. "I will no longer--I will no longer serve one, however much I respect him, or whatever my obligations to him, who refuses to do justice to his own kith and kin, who refuses to stand between a helpless girl and wrong! Vile wrong!" And he made a gesture with his hands as if he laid something on the table.

If his object was to gain possession of Captain Clyne's attention he succeeded. Clyne looked at him with as much surprise as anger.

"She has certainly turned your head," he said in a lower tone, "if you are not playing a sorry jest, that is. What is it to you, man, if I follow my own judgment? What is Miss Damer to you?"

"You offered her to me," with a trembling approach to sarcasm, "for my wife. She is so much to me."

"But I understood that she would not take you," Clyne retorted; and now he spoke wearily. The surprise of the other's defiance was beginning to wear off. "But, there, perhaps I was mistaken, and then your anxiety for her interests is explained."

"Explain it as you please," Mr. Sutton answered with fire, "if you will read this letter and weigh it."

"I will not," Clyne returned, his anger rising anew. "Once for all, I will not!"

"Then I resign the chaplaincy I hold, sir."

"Resign and be d----d!" the naval captain answered. The day had cruelly tried his temper.

"Your words to me," Mr. Sutton retorted furiously, "and your conduct to her are of a piece!" And white with pa.s.sion, his limbs trembling with excitement, he strode to the door. He halted on the threshold, bowed low, and went out.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN KENDAL GAOL

Bishop, in his corner of the chaise, made his burly person as small as he could. He tried his best to hide his brown tops and square-toed boots. In her corner Henrietta sat upright, staring rigidly before her. For just one moment, as she pa.s.sed from the house to the carriage, under a score of staring eyes, a scarlet flush had risen to her very hair, and she had shrunk back. But the colour had faded as quickly as it had risen; she had restrained herself, and taken her seat. And now the screes of Bow Fell, flecked with snow, were not more cold and hard than her face as she gazed at the postilion's moving back and saw it not. She knew that she was down now without hope of rising; that, the prison doors once closed on her, their shadow would rest on her always. And her heart was numbed by despair. The burning sense of injustice, of unfairness, which sears and hardens the human heart more quickly and more completely than any other emotion, would awaken presently. But for the time she sat stunned and hopeless; dazed and confounded by the astonishing thing which had happened to her.

To be sent to prison! To be sent to herd--she remembered his very words--with such vile creatures as prisons hold! To be at the beck and call of such a man as this who sat beside her. To have to obey; and to belong no longer to herself, but to others! As she thought of all this, and of the ordeal before her, fraught with humiliations yet unknown, a hunted look grew in her eyes, and for a few minutes she glanced wildly first out of this window, then out of that. To prison!

She was going to prison!

Fortunately her native courage came to her aid in her extremity. And Bishop, who was not blind to her emotion, spoke.

"Don't you be over-frightened, miss," he said soothingly. "There's naught to be scared about. I'll speak to them, and they'll treat you well. Not that a gaol is a comfortable place," he continued, remembering his duty to his employer; "and if you could see your way to speaking--even now, miss--I'd take it on me to turn the horses."

"I have nothing to say," she answered, with a shudder and an effort--for her throat was dry. But the mere act of speaking broke the spell and relieved her of some of her fears.

"It's the little boy I'm thinking of," Bishop continued in a tone of apology. "Captain Clyne thinks the world of him. The world of him!

But, lord, miss!" abruptly changing his tone, as his eyes alighted on her wrist, "what have you done to your arm?"

She hid her wrist quickly, and with her face averted said that it was nothing, nothing.

Bishop shook his head sagely.

"I doubt you bruised it getting out of the window," he said. "Well, well, miss; live and learn. Another time you'll be wiser, I hope; and not do such things."

She did not answer, and the chaise pa.s.sing by Plumgarth began to descend into the wide stony valley. Below them the white-washed walls and slated roofs and mills of Kendal could be seen cl.u.s.tering about the Castle Bow and the old grey ruin that rises above the Ken river.

On either hand bleak hills, seamed with grey walls, made up a landscape that rose without beauty to a lowering sky. There were few trees, no hedges; and somewhere the cracked bell of a drugget factory or a dye-works was clanging out a monotonous summons. To Henrietta's eye--fresh from the lake-side verdure--and still more to her heart, the northern landscape struck cold and cheerless. It had given her but a sorry welcome had she been on her way to seek the hospitality of the inn. How much poorer was its welcome when she had no prospect before her but the scant comfort and unknown hardships of a gaol!

The chaise did not enter the town, but a furlong short of it turned aside and made for a group of windowless buildings, which crowned a small eminence a bow-shot from the houses. As the horses drew the chaise up the ascent to a heavy stone doorway, Henrietta had time to see that the entrance was mean, if strong, and the place as unpretending as it was dull. Nevertheless, her heart beat almost to suffocation, as she stepped out at a word from Bishop, who had alighted at once and knocked at the iron-studded door. With small delay a grating was opened, a pale face, marked by high, hollow temples, looked out; and some three or four sentences were exchanged.

Then the door was unlocked and thrown open. Bishop signed to her to enter first and she did so--after an imperceptible pause. She found herself in a small well-like yard, with the door and window of the prison-lodge on her left and dead walls on the other sides.

Two children were playing on the steps of the lodge, and some linen, dubiously drying in the cold winter air, hung on a line stretched from the window to a holdfast in the opposite wall. Unfortunately, the yard had been recently washed, and still ran with water; so that these homely uses, and even the bench and pump which stood in a corner, failed to impart much cheerfulness to its aspect. Had Henrietta's heart been capable of sinking lower it had certainly done so.

The children stared open-mouthed at her: but not with half as much astonishment as the man in shirt sleeves who had admitted her. "Eh, sir, but you've brought the cage a fine bird," he said at last. "Your servant, miss. Well, well, well!" with surprise. And he scratched his head and grinned openly. "Debtors' side, I suppose?"

"Remand," Bishop answered with a wink and a meaning shake of the head.

"Here's the warrant. All's right." And then to Henrietta--"If you'll sit down on that bench, miss, I'll fix things up for you."

The girl, her face a little paler than usual, sat down as she was bidden, and looked about her. This was not her notion of a prison; for here were neither gyves nor dungeons, but just a slatternly, damp yard--as like as could be to some small backyard in the out-offices of her brother's house. Nevertheless, the gyves might be waiting for her out of sight; and with or without them, the place was horribly depressing that winter afternoon. The sky was grey above, the walls were grey, the pavement grey. She was almost glad when Bishop and the man in shirt-sleeves emerged from the lodge followed by a tall, hard-featured woman in a dirty mob-cap. The woman's arms were bare to the elbow, and she carried a jingling bunch of keys. She eyed Henrietta with dull dislike.

"That is settled, then," Bishop said, a little overdoing the cheerfulness at which he aimed. "Mother Weighton will see to you, and 'twill be all right. There are four on the debtors' side, and you'll be best in the women-felons', she thinks, since it's empty, and you'll have it all to yourself."

Henrietta heaved a deep sigh of relief. "I shall be alone, then?" she said. "Oh, thank you."

"Ay, you'll be alone," the woman answered, staring at her. "Very much alone! But I'm not sure you'll thank me, by-and-by. You madams are pretty loud for company, I've always found, when you've had your own a bit." Then, "You don't mind being locked up in a yard by yourself?"

she continued, with a close look at the girl's face and long grey riding-dress.

"Oh no, I shall be grateful to you," Henrietta said eagerly, "if you will let me be alone."

"Ah, well, we'll see how you like it," the woman retorted. "Here, Ben," to her husband, "I suppose she is too much of a fine lady to carry her band-box--yet awhile. Do you bring it."

"I am sure," Bishop said, "the young lady will be grateful for any kindness, Mrs. Weighton. I will wait till you've lodged her comfortably. G.o.d bless my soul," he continued, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his features, as he affected to look about him, "I don't know that one's not as well in as out!"

"Well, there's no writs nor burglars!" the jailor answered with a grin. "And the young folks, male nor female, don't get into trouble through staying out o' nights. Now, then, missis," to his wife, "no need to be all day over it."

The woman unlocked a low door in the wall opposite the lodge, but at the inner end of the yard; and she signed to Henrietta to enter before her. The girl did so, and found herself in a flagged yard about thirty feet square. On her right were four mean-looking doors having above each a grated aperture. Henrietta eyed these and her heart sank. They were only too like the dungeons she had foreseen! But the jailor's wife turned to the opposite side of the yard where were two doors with small glazed windows over them. The two sides that remained consisted of high walls, surmounted by iron spikes.

"We'll put you in a day-room as they're all empty," the woman grumbled. She meant not ill, but she had the unfortunate knack of making all her concessions with a bad grace.