Starvecrow Farm Part 8

And that was true, though the change was sudden; ay, and though Henrietta did not know it, nor would have admitted it. She suffered notwithstanding, and horribly. For, besides pride, there were other things that lay wounded and bleeding: her happy-go-lucky nature that had trusted lightly, and would be slow to trust again; her girlish hopes and dreams; and the foolish fancy that had pa.s.sed for love, and in a single day, an hour, a minute, might have become love. And one other thing--the bloom of her innocence. For though she had escaped, she had come too near the fire not to fear it henceforth, and bear with her the smell of singeing.

As she thought of that, of her peril and her narrow escape, and reflected how near she had come to utter shipwreck, her face lost its piteous look, and grew harder, and sharper, and sterner; so that the wealth of bright hair, that was her glory, crowned it only too brilliantly, only too youthfully. She saw how he had fooled her to the top of her bent; how he had played on her romantic tastes and her silly desire for secrecy. A low-born creature, an agitator, hiding from the consequences of a cowardly crime, he had happened upon her in his twilight walks, desired her--for an amus.e.m.e.nt, turned her head with inflated phrases, dazzled her inexperience with hints of the world and his greatness in it. And she--she had thought herself wiser than all about her, as she had thought him preferable to the legitimate lover a.s.signed to her by her family. And she had brought herself to this! This was the end!

Or no, not the end. The game, for what it was worth, was over. But the candle-money remained to be paid. Goldsmith's stanzas had still their vogue; mothers quoted them to their daughters. Henrietta knew that when lovely woman stoops to folly, even to folly of a lighter dye--when she learns, though not too late, that men betray, there is a penalty to be paid. The world is censorious, was censorious then, and apt to draw from very small evidence a very dark inference.

Henrietta's face, flaming suddenly from brow to neck, proved her vivid remembrance of this. Had she not called herself--the words burned her--"his wife in the sight of Heaven"? And now she must go back--if they would receive her--go back and face those whom she had left so lightly, face the lover whom she had flouted and betrayed, meet the smirks of the men and the sneers of the women, and the thoughts of both! Go back to blush before the servants, and hear from the lips of that grim prude, her sister-in-law, many things, both true and untrue!

The loss of the tender future, of the rosy antic.i.p.ations in which she had lived for weeks as in a fairy palace--she could bear this! And the rough awakening from the maiden dream which she had taken for love--she must bear that too, though it left her world cold as the sheet of grey water before her, and repellent as the bald, rugged screes that frowned above it. She would bear the heartsickness, the loneliness, the pain that treachery inflicts on innocence; but the shame of the home-coming--if they would receive her, which she doubted--the coa.r.s.e taunts and stinging innuendoes, the nods, the shrugs, the winks--these she could not face. Anything, anything were better, if anything she could find--deserted, flung aside, homeless as she was.

Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson, descending with a sour face, had come upon a couple of maids listening at the foot of the stairs. She had made sharp work of them, sending them packing with fleas in their ears. But they proved to be only the _avant-couriers_ of scandal. Below were the Troutbeck apothecary and a dozen gossips, whom the news had brought over the hill; and hangers-on without number. All, however, had no better fate with Mrs. Gilson; not the parish constable of Bowness, whose staff went for little, nor even Mr. Bishop, that great man out of doors, at whose slightest nod ostlers ran and helpers bowed; he smiled superior, indeed, but he had the wisdom to withdraw. In two minutes, in truth, there remained of the buzzing crowd only the old curate of Troutbeck supping small beer with a toast in it. And he, it was said, knew better than any the length of the landlady's foot.

But this was merely to move the centre of ferment to the inn-yard.

Here the news that the house had sheltered a man for whose capture the Government offered six hundred guineas, bred wild excitement. He had vanished, it was true, like a child of the mist. But he might be found again. Meantime the rustics gaped on the runner with saucer eyes, or flew hither and thither at his beck. And Radicals being at a discount in the Lowther country, and six hundred guineas a sum for which old Hinkson the miser would have bartered his soul, some spat on their hands and swore what they would do if they met the devil; while others, who were not apt at thinking, retired into corners and with knitted brows and hands plunged into breeches pockets conjured up a map of the world about Windermere.

It should be borne in mind that at this time police were unknown--outside London. There were parish constables; but where these were not cobblers, which was strangely often the case, they were men past work, appointed to save the rates. If a man's pocket were picked, therefore, or his stack fired, his daughter abducted, or his mare stolen, he had only himself and his friends to look to. He must follow the offender, confront him, seize him, carry him to the gaol. He must do all himself. Naturally, if he were a timid man or unpopular, the rogue went free; and sometimes went free again and again until he became the terror of the country-side. A fact which enables us to understand the terrors of lonely houses in those days, and explains the repugnance to life in solitary places which is traditional in some parts of England.

On the other hand, where the crime was known and outrageous, it became every man's business. It was every man's duty to join the hue and cry: if he did not take part in it he was a bad neighbour. Mr.

Bishop, therefore, did not lack helpers. On the first discovery of Walterson's flight, which the officer had made a little after daybreak, he had sent hors.e.m.e.n to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, and a boat to Newby Bridge. The nearer sh.o.r.e and the woods on the point below the bishop's house--some called it Landoff House--were well beaten, and the alarm was given in Bowness on the one hand and in Ambleside on the other. The general voice had it that the man had got away early in the night to Whitehaven. But some stated that a pedlar had met him, on foot and alone, crossing the Kirkstone Pa.s.s at daybreak; and others, that he had been viewed skulking under a haystack near Troutbeck Bridge. That a beautiful girl, his companion, had been seized, and was under lock and key in the house, was whispered by some, but denied by more. Nevertheless, the report won its way, so that there were few moments when the chatterers who buzzed about the runner had not an eye on the upper windows and a voice ready to proclaim their discoveries.

Even those who believed the story, however, were far from having a true picture of poor Henrietta. With some she pa.s.sed for a London Jezebel; locked up, it was whispered, with a bottle of gin to keep her quiet until the chaise was ready to take her to gaol. Others pictured her as the frenzied leader of one of the women's clubs which had lately sprung up in Lancashire, and of which the princ.i.p.al aim, according to the Tories, was to copy the French fish-f.a.gs and march one day to Windsor to drag the old king, blind and mad as he was, to the scaffold. Others spoke of a casual light-o'-love picked up at Lancaster, but a rare piece of goods for looks; which seemed a pity, and one of those tragedies of the law that were beginning to p.r.i.c.k men's consciences--since there was little doubt that the baggage, poor la.s.s, would hang with her tempter.

A word or two of these whisperings reached Mrs. Gilson's ears. But she only sniffed her contempt, or, showing herself for a moment at the door, chilled by the coldness of her eye the general enthusiasm. Then, woe betide the servant whom she chanced to espy among the idlers. If a man, he was glad to hide himself in the stable; if a woman, she was very likely to go back to her work with a smarting cheek. Even the Troutbeck apothecary, a roistering blade who was making a day of it, kept a wary eye on the door, and, if he could, slipped round the corner when she appeared.

But Juno herself had her moments of failure, and no mortals are exempt from them. About four in the afternoon Mrs. Gilson got a shock. Modest Ann, her face redder than usual, came to her and whispered in her ear.

In five seconds the landlady's face was also redder than usual, and her frown was something to see. She rose.

"I don't believe it!" she answered. "You are daft, woman, to think of such a thing!"

"It's true, missus, as I stand here!" Ann declared.

"To Kendal gaol? To-night!"

"That very thing! And her"--with angry fervour--"scarce more than a child, as you may say!"

"Old enough to make a fool of herself!" Mrs. Gilson retorted spitefully. "But I don't believe it!" she added. "You've heard amiss, my girl!"

"Well, you'll see," the woman answered. "'Twill be soon settled. The justice is crossing the road now, and that Bishop with him; and that little wizened chap of a clerk that makes up the Salutation books. And the man that keeps the gaol at Appleby: they've been waiting for him--he's to take her. And there's a chaise ordered to be ready if it's wanted. It's true, as I stand here!"

Mrs. Gilson's form swelled until it was a wonder the whalebone stood.

But in those days things were of good British make.

"A chaise?" she said.

"Yes."

"There's no chaise," the landlady answered firmly, "goes from here on that errand!"

Modest Ann knew that when her mistress spoke in that tone the thing was as good as done. But the waiting-maid, whose heart, for all her temper, was softer than her features, at which Jim the ostler was supposed to boggle, was not greatly comforted.

"They'll only send to the Salutation," she said despondently.

"Let them send!" the landlady replied. And taking off her ap.r.o.n, she prepared to face the enemy. "They'll talk to me before they do!"

But Ann, great as was her belief in her mistress, shook her head.

"What can you do against the law?" she muttered. "I wish that Bishop may never eat another morsel of hot victuals as long as he lives!

Gravy with the joint? Never while I am serving!"

CHAPTER VI

THE INQUIRY

"Who is there?"

Henrietta lifted her tear-stained face from the pillow and awaited the answer. Three hours earlier, her head aching, her heart full, uncertain what to do or what would follow, she had fled from the commotion below, and, locking herself in her bedroom, had lain down with her misery. It was something to find in the apathy of prostration a brief respite; it was something to close her eyes and lie quite still. For a while she might keep her door locked, might nurse her wretchedness, might evade rude looks and curious questions, might postpone decision.

For the pride that had sustained her in the morning had failed, as the day wore on. Solitude and the lack of food--she had refused to eat at midday--had worn down her spirit. At last tears had come, and plentifully--and repentance. She did not say that the fault was her own, but she knew it, she admitted it. The man had behaved to her wickedly, treacherously, horribly; but she had brought it on herself.

He had laid the snare in vain had she not stooped to deceit--had she not consented to mislead her friends, to meet him secretly, to listen to him with as little heed of propriety as if she had been Sue at the forge, or Bess in the still-room. Her own vanity, her own folly, had brought her to the very verge of ruin; and with shame she owned that there was more in the old saws with which her sister-in-law had deafened her than her inexperience had imagined. But the discovery came late. She was smirched. And what--what was she to do? Where could she go to avoid the full penalty--the taunts, the shame, the disgrace that awaited her in the old home?--even if the old home were still open to her.

Meanwhile she got no answer. And "Who is there?" she repeated wearily.

The reply came m.u.f.fled through the door.

"You are wanted downstairs, lady."

She rose languidly. Perhaps the time was come. Perhaps her brother was here, had followed, traced, and found her. For the moment she was all but indifferent. To-morrow she would suffer, and sorely; but to-day she had fallen too low. She went slowly to the door and opened it.

Ann stood in the pa.s.sage.

"They want you downstairs, miss," she said.

The girl saw that the woman looked queerly at her, but she was prepared for such looks. Unconsciously she had steeled herself to bear them. "Very well," she returned, and did not ask who wanted her. But she went back to her table, dabbed her eyes with cold water, and smoothed her hair and her neck-ribbon--she had pride enough for that.

Then she went to the door. The woman was still outside, still staring.

"I did not know that you were waiting," Henrietta said, faintly surprised. "I know my way down."

"I was to come with you, miss."

"Where are they, then?"

"They are where you were this morning," the woman answered. "This way, if you please."