Starvecrow Farm Part 41

"I am glad of that," the child answered candidly. "For mother said you'd have to come to it and to worse, if you were transported, miss."

Henrietta winced afresh, and looked at the imp less kindly.

"But I'm not going to be transported," she said positively. "You're talking nonsense."

"There's never been any one transported from here."

"No?" with relief. "Then why should I be?"

"But there was a man hanged three years ago. It was for stealing a lamb. They didn't let me see it."

"And very right, too."

"But mother's promised"--with triumph--"that if you're transported I shall see it!" After which there was silence while the child stared.

At last, "Are you ready for your breakfast now?"

"Yes," said poor Henrietta. "But I am not very hungry--you can tell your mother."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RoLE CONTINUED

Mr. Sutton slept as ill on the night of his resignation as he had ever slept in his life. And many times as he tossed and turned on his bed he repented at leisure the step which he had taken in haste. Acting upon no previous determination, he had sacrificed in the heat of temper his whole professional future. He had staked his all; and he had done no good even to the cause he had at heart. The act would not bear thinking upon; certainly it would not bear the cold light of early reflection. And many, many times as he sighed upon his uneasy pillow did he wish, as so many have wished before and since, that he could put back the clock. Had he left the room five minutes earlier, had he held his tongue, however ungraciously, had he thought before he spoke, he had done as much for Henrietta and he had done no harm to himself. And he had been as free as he was now, to seek his end by other means.

For he had naught to do now but seek that end. He had not Mr. Pitt's nose in vain: he was nothing if he was not stubborn. And while Henrietta might easily have had a more discreet, she could hardly have had a more persevering, friend. Amid the wreck of his own fortunes, with his professional future laid in ruins about him, he clung steadfastly to the notion of righting her, and found in that and in the letter in his book, his only stay. At as early an hour as he considered decent, he would apply to Mr. h.o.r.n.yold, lay the evidence before the Justice, and press for the girl's release.

Unfortunately, he lay so long revolving the matter that at daybreak he fell asleep. The house was busy and no one gave a thought to him, and ten had struck before he came down and shamefacedly asked for his breakfast. Mrs. Gilson put it before him, but with a word of girding at his laziness; which the good woman could not stomach, when half the countryside were on foot searching for the boy, and when the unhappy father, after a night in the saddle, had left in a postchaise to follow up a clue at Keswick. Blameworthy or not, Mr. Sutton found the delay fatal. When he called on Mr. h.o.r.n.yold, the Justice was not at home. He had left the house and would not return until the following day.

Sutton might have antic.i.p.ated this check, but he had not; and he walked back to the inn, plunged to the very lips in despondency. The activity of the people about him, their eagerness in the search, their enthusiasm, all reflected on him and sank him in his own esteem. Yet if he would, he could not share in these things or in these feelings.

He stood outside them; his sympathies were fixed, obstinately fixed, elsewhere. And, alas, in the only direction in which he desired to proceed, and in which he discerned a possible issue, he was brought to a full stop.

He was in the mood to feel small troubles sorely, and as he neared the inn he saw that Mrs. Gilson was standing at the door. It vexed him, for he felt that he cut a poor figure in the landlady's eyes. He knew that he seemed to her a sorry thing, slinking idly about the house, while others wrought and did. He feared her sharp tongue and vulgar tropes, and he made up his mind to pa.s.s by the house as if he did not see her. He was in the act of doing this, awkwardly and consciously, with his eyes averted--when she called to him.

"If you're looking for Squire Clyne," she said, in very much the tone he expected, "he's gone these three hours past and some to that!"

"I was not," he said.

"Oh!" she answered with sarcasm, "I suppose you are looking for the boy. You will not find him, I'm afraid, on the King's highroad!"

"I was not looking for him," he answered churlishly.

"More shame to you!" Mrs. Gilson cried, with a spark in her eye. "More shame to you! For you should be!"

He flamed up at that, after the pa.s.sionate manner of such men when roused. He stopped and faced her, trembling a little.

"And to whom is it a shame," he cried, "that wicked, foul injustice is done? To whom is it a shame that the innocent are sent to herd with the guilty? To whom is it a shame--woman!--that when there is good, clear evidence put before their eyes, it is not read? Nor used? The boy?" vehemently, "the boy? Is he the only one to be considered, and sought and saved? Is his case worse than hers? I too say shame!"

Mrs. Gilson stared. "Lord save the man!" she cried, as much astonished as if a sheep had turned on her, "with his shames and his whoms! He's as full of words as a Wensleydale of mites! I don't know what you are in the pulpit, your reverence, but on foot and in the road, Mr.

Brougham was naught to you!"

"He'd not the reason," the chaplain answered bitterly. And brought down by her remark--for his pa.s.sion was of the shortest--he turned, and was moving away, morose and despondent, when the landlady called after him a second time, but in a more friendly tone. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps some new perception of the man moved her.

"See here, your reverence," she said. "If you've a mind to show me this fine evidence of yours, I'm not for saying I'll not read it. Lord knows it's ill work going about like a hen with an egg she can't lay.

So if you've a mind to get it off your mind, I'll send for my gla.s.ses, and be done with it."

"Will you?" he replied, his face flushing with the hope of making a convert. "Will you? Then there, ma'am, there it is! It's the letter that villain sent to her to draw her to meet him that night. If you can't see from that what terms they were on, and that she had no choice but to meet him, I--but read it! Read it!"

She called for her gla.s.ses and having placed them on her nose, set the nose at such an angle that she could look down it at the page. This was Mrs. Gilson's habit when about to read. But when all was arranged her face fell. "Oh dear!" she said, "it's all bits and sc.r.a.ps, like a broken curd! Lord save the man, I can't read this. I canna make top nor tail of it! Here, let me take it inside. Truth is, I'm no scholar in the open air."

The chaplain, trembling with eagerness, set straight three or four bits of paper which he had deranged in opening the book. Then, not trusting it out of his own hands, he bore the book reverently into the landlady's snuggery, and set it on the table. Mrs. Gilson rearranged her nose and gla.s.ses, and after gazing helplessly for a few moments at the broken screed, caught some thread of sense, clung to it desperately, and presently began to murmur disjointed sentences in the tone of one who thought aloud.

"Um--um--um--um!"

Had the chaplain been told a fortnight before that he would wait with bated breath for an old woman's opinion of a doc.u.ment, he would have laughed at the notion. But so it was; and when a ray of comprehension broke the frowning perplexity of Mrs. Gilson's face, and she muttered, "Lord ha' mercy! The villain!" still more when an April cloud of mingled anger and pity softened her ma.s.sive features--the chaplain's relief was itself a picture.

"A plague on the rascal!" the good woman cried. "He's put it so as to melt a stone, let alone a silly child like that! I don't know that if he'd put it so to me, when I was a la.s.s, I'd have told on him. I don't think I would!"

"It's plain that she'd no understanding with him!" Mr. Sutton cried eagerly. "You can see that, ma'am!"

"Well, I think I can. The villain!"

"It's quite clear that she had broken with him!"

"It does look so, poor lamb!"

"Poor lamb indeed!" Mr. Sutton replied with feeling. "Poor lamb indeed!"

"Yet you'll remember," Mrs. Gilson answered--she was nothing if not level-headed--"he'd the lad to think of! He'd his boy to think of! I am sure my heart bled for him when he went out this morning. I doubt he'd not slept a wink, and----"

"Do you think she slept either?" the chaplain asked, something bitterly; and his eyes glowed in his pale face. "Do you consider how young she is and gently bred, ma'am? And where they've sent her, and to what?"

"Umph!" the landlady replied, and she rubbed her ponderous cheek with the bowl of a punch-ladle, and looked, frowning, at the letter. The operation, it was plain, clarified her thoughts; and Mr. Sutton's instinct told him to be mute. For a long minute the distant clatter of Modest Ann's tongue, and the clink of pattens in the yard, were the only sounds that broke the lemon-laden silence of the room. Perhaps it was the glint of the fire on the rows of polished gla.s.s, perhaps the sight of her own well-cushioned chair, perhaps only a memory of Henrietta's fair young face and piled-up hair that wrought upon the landlady. But whatever the cause she groaned. And then, "He ought to see this!" she said. "He surely ought! And dang me, he shall, if he leaves the house to-night! After all, two wrongs don't make a right.

He's to Keswick this morning, but an hour after noon he'll be back to learn if there's news. It's only here he can get news, and if he has not found the lad he'll be back! And I'll put it on his plate----"

"G.o.d bless you!" cried Mr. Sutton.

"Ay, but I'm not saying he'll do anything," the landlady answered tartly. "If all's true the young madam has not behaved so well that she'll be the worse for smarting a bit!"

"She'll be much obliged to you," said the chaplain humbly.

"No, she'll not!" Mrs. Gilson retorted. "Nor to you, don't you think it! She's a Tartar or I'm mistaken. You'll be obliged, you mean!" And she looked at the parson over her gla.s.ses as if she were appraising him in a new character.

"I've been to Mr. h.o.r.n.yold," he said, "but he was out and will not be back until to-morrow."