Starvecrow Farm Part 43

"I wasn't complaining, indeed!" Henrietta said.

"Think of the doing we've had this night!"

"I heard," the girl answered. And an involuntary shudder escaped her.

"It was dreadful! dreadful!"

"You'd ha' thought so," ungraciously, "if you had had to deal with the lad yourself! Never was such a Jack o' Bedlam! I wonder all our heads aren't broke."

"Is he often like that?" Henrietta asked.

For she had lain awake many hours of the night, trembling and trying to close her ears against the ravings of a madman; who was confined in the next yard, and who had suffered an access of mania during the night. The prisons of that day served also for madhouses.

"No, but once in the month or so," the jailor's wife answered. "And often enough, drat him! Doctor says he'll go off in one of these Bedlam fits, and the sooner the better, I say! But I'm wasting my time and catching my death, gossipping with you! Anyway, don't you complain, young woman," severely. "There's worse off than you!" And she clattered abruptly away, and Henrietta was left to patten her road to the pump and back, and afterwards to finish her toilette in what shivering comfort she might.

For a prisoner, she might not have much of which to complain. But though that was not the day of bedroom fires, or rubber water-bottles, and luxury stopped at the warming-pan, or the heated brick, there are degrees of misery, and this degree was new to her.

However, the woman was better than her word, for in a short time her child appeared, painfully bearing at arm's length a shovelful of live embers. And the fire put a new face on things. Breakfast sent in from outside followed, and was drawn out to the utmost for the sake of the employment which it afforded. For time hung heavy on the girl's hands.

She had long exhausted the _Kendal Chronicle_; and a volume of "Sermons for Persons under Sentence of Death"--the property of the gaol--she had steadfastly refused. Other reading there was none, and she was rather gratified than troubled when she espied a thin trickle of water stealing under the door. The snow in the yard was melting; and it was soon made plain to her that if she did not wish to be flooded she must act for herself.

The task was not very congenial to a girl gently bred, and who had all her life a.s.sociated such work with Doll and a mop. But on her first entrance into the gaol she had resolved to do, as the lesser of two evils, whatever she should be told to do. And the thing might have been worse, for there was no one to see her at work. She kilted up her skirt and donned the pattens, put on her hood, and taking a broom from the corner of the yard began to sweep vigorously, first removing the snow from the flags before her door, and then, as the s.p.a.ce she had cleared grew wider, gathering the snow into a heap at the lower end of the yard.

She was soon warm and in the full enjoyment of action. But in no long time, as was natural, she tired, and paused to rest and look about her, supporting herself by the broom-handle. A robin alighted on a spike on the top of the wall, and flirting its tail, eyed her in a friendly way, with its head on one side. Then it flew away--it could fly away! And at the thought,

"What," she wondered, "would come of it all? What would be the end for her? And had they found the boy?"

Already it seemed to her that she had lain a week, a month in the gaol. The people outside must have forgotten her. Would she be forgotten? Would they leave her there?

But she would not give way to such thoughts, and she set to work again with new energy. Swish! swish! Her hands were growing sore, but she had nearly finished the task. She looked complacently at the wide s.p.a.ce she had cleared, and stooped to pin up one side of her gown which had slipped down. Then, swish! swish! with renewed vigour, unconscious that the noise of her sweeping drowned the grating of the key in the lock. So that she was not aware until a voice struck her ear, that she was no longer alone.

Then she wheeled about so sharply that, unused to pattens, she stumbled and all but fell. The accident added to her vexation. Her face turned red as a beet. For inside the door of the yard, contemplating her with a smile at once familiar and unpleasant, stood Mr. h.o.r.n.yold.

"Dear, dear," he said, as she glowered at him resentfully, ashamed at once of her short skirts and the task that compelled them. "They shouldn't have put you to this! Though I'm sure a prettier sight you'd go far to see! But your hands are infinitely too white and soft, my dear--much too white and pretty to be spoiled by broom-handles! I must speak to Mother Weighton about it."

"Perhaps if you would kindly go out a moment," she said with spirit, "it were better. I could then put myself in order."

"Not for the world!" Mr. h.o.r.n.yold retorted, with something between a leer and a wink. "You're very well as you are!" with a look at her ankles. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, I'm sure, but the contrary.

I'm told that Lady Jersey at Almack's shows more, and with a hundred to see! So you need not mind. And you could not look nicer if you'd done it on purpose."

With a jerk she disengaged her shoes from the pattens, dropped the broom, and made for the door of her room, with such dignity as her kilted skirt left her. But before she reached it:

"Steady, my lady," said Mr. h.o.r.n.yold in a tone no longer wheedling, but harsh and peremptory, "you're forgetting! You are in gaol, and you'll be pleased to stop when you're told, and do as you're told!

Don't you be in such a hurry, my dear. I am here to learn if you have any complaints."

"Only of your presence!" she cried, her face burning. "If you have come here only to insult me, I have heard enough."

And having gained her cell in spite of him, she tried to slam the door in his face.

But he had had time to approach, and he set the handle of his whip between door and jamb, and stopped her.

"I'm not come for that, I tell you, you pretty spitfire," he said; "I've come to hear if you have any complaints of your treatment here."

"I have not!" she cried.

"Come, come," he rejoined, checking her with a grin, "you must not answer the Visiting Justice in that tone. Say, 'I have none, sir, I thank you kindly,'--that's the proper form, my dear. You'll know better another time. Or"--smiling more broadly as he read the angry refusal in her eyes--"we shall have to put you to beat hemp. And that were a pity. Those pretty hands would soon lose their softness, and those dainty wrists that are not much bigger than my thumbs would be sadly spoiled. But we won't do that," indulgently. "We are never hard on pretty girls as long as they behave themselves."

She looked round wildly, but there was no escape. She could retreat no farther. The man filled the doorway; the room lay open to his insolent eyes, and he did not spare to look.

"Neat as a pin!" he said complacently. "Just as it should be. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I've nothing but praise for it. I never thought that it would ever be my lot to commend Miss Damer for the neatness of her chamber! But--good Lord!" with surprise, "what's the matter with your wrist, my girl?"

"Nothing," she said, the angry scarlet of her cheek turning a shade deeper.

"Nothing? Oh, but there is!" he returned peremptorily.

"Nothing!" she repeated fiercely. "Nothing! It's nothing that matters!"

Oh, how she hated the man! How she loathed his red, insolent grin!

Would he never leave her? Was she to be exposed, day by day, and hour by hour, to this horror?

He eyed her shrewdly.

"You haven't been turning stubborn?" he said, "have you? And they've had to handle you already? And bring you to your senses? And so they have set you to brooming? But Bishop," with a frown, "gave me no notion of that. He said you came like a lamb."

"It's not that!" she cried. "It's nothing." It was not only that she was ashamed of the mark on her arm, and shrank from showing it. But his leering, insolent face terrified her. Though he was not tipsy, he had spent the small hours at a club; and the old port still hummed in his brain. "It's not that," she repeated firmly, and more quietly, hoping to get rid of him.

"Here," he answered, "let me look at it."

"No!"

"Pooh, nonsense!" he replied, pressing his advantage, and entering the cell. "Nonsense, girl, let me look at it." He stepped nearer, and peremptorily held out his hand. He could touch her. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek. "There's no room here for airs and tempers,"

he continued. "How, if I don't see it, am I to know that they have not been ill-treating you? Show me your wrist, girl."

But she recoiled from him into the farthest corner, holding her arms behind her. Her face was a picture of pa.s.sionate defiance.

"Don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't come near me!"

"You've no right to touch me. They have not hurt my wrist. I tell you it is nothing. And if you lay a finger on me I will scream!"

"Then," he said coolly, "they'll put you in a strait waistcoat, my la.s.s, like the madman next door. That's all! You're mighty particular, but you forget where you are."

"You forget that I am a gentlewoman!" she cried. She could not retreat farther, but she looked at him as if she could have killed him. "Stand back, sir, I say!" she continued fiercely. "If you do not----"

"What will you do?" he asked. He enjoyed the situation, but he was not sure how far it would be prudent to push it. If he could contrive to surprise her wrist it would be odd if he could not s.n.a.t.c.h a kiss; and it was his experience--in his parish--that once fairly kissed, young women came off the high horse, and proved amenable. "What'll you do,"

he continued facetiously, "you silly little prude?"

"Do?" she panted.

"Ay, Miss Dainty Damer, what'll you do?" with a feigned movement as if to seize her. "You're not on the highway now, you know! Nor free on bail! Nor is there a parson here!"

There he stopped--a faint, faint sound had fallen on his ear. He looked behind him, and stepped back as if a string drew him. And his face changed marvellously. In the doorway stood, hat in hand, the last person in the world he wished to see there--Captain Clyne.