Starvecrow Farm Read online

  CHAPTER V

  A JEZEBEL

  There was a loud drumming in Henrietta's ears, and a dimness beforeher eyes. In the midst of this a voice, which she would not have knownfor her own, cried loudly and clearly, "No!" And again, moreviolently, "No!"

  "But it is 'Yes'!" the landlady answered coolly. "Why not? D'youthink"--with rough contempt--"he's the first man that's lied to awoman? or you're the first woman that's believed a rascal? She's hiswife right enough, my girl"--comfortably. "Don't he ask after hischildren? If you'll turn to the bottom of the second page you'll seefor yourself! Oh, quite the family man, he is!"

  The girl's hand shook like ash-leaves in a light breeze; the paperrustled in her grasp. But she had regained command of herself--shecame of a stiff, proud stock, and the very brusqueness of the landladyhelped her; and she read word after word and line after line of theletter. She passed from the bottom of the second sheet to the head ofthe third, and so to the end. But so slowly, so laboriously that itwas plain that her mind was busy reading between the lines--was busycomparing, sifting, remembering.

  To Bishop's credit be it said, he kept his eyes off the girl. But atlast he spoke.

  "I'd that letter from his wife's hand," he said. "They are marriedright enough--in Hounslow Church, miss. She lives there, two doorsfrom the 'George' posting-house, where folks change horses betweenLondon and Windsor. She was a waiting-maid in the coffee-room, and'twas a rise for her. But she's not seen him for three years--reason,he's been in hiding--nor had a penny from him. Now she's got it he'staken up with some woman hereabouts, and she put me on the scent. He'sa fine gift of the gab, but for all that his father's naught but alittle apothecary, and as smooth a rogue and as big a Radical, one asthe other! I wish to goodness," the runner continued, suddenlyreminded of his loss, "I'd took him last night when he came in!But----"

  "That'll do!" Mrs. Gilson said, cutting him short, as if he were a tapshe had turned on for her own purposes. "You can go now!"

  "But----"

  "Did you hear me, man? Go!" the landlady thundered. And a glance ofher eye was sufficient to bring the runner to heel like a scoldedhound. "Go, and shut the door after you," she continued, withsharpness. "I'll have no eavesdropping in my house, prerogative or noprerogative!"

  When he was gone she showed a single spark of mercy. She went to thefire and proceeded to mend it noisily, as if it were the one thing inthe world to be attended to. She put on wood, and swept the hearth,and made a to-do with it. True, the respite was short; a minute or twoat most. But when the landlady had done, and turned her attention tothe girl, Henrietta had moved to the window, so that only her back wasvisible. Even then, for quite a long minute Mrs. Gilson stood, witharms akimbo and pursed lips, reading the lines of the girl's figureand considering her, as if even her rugged bosom knew pity. And in theend it was Henrietta who spoke--humbly, alas! now, and in a voicealmost inaudible.

  "Will you leave me, please?" she said.

  "I will," Mrs. Gilson answered gruffly. "But on one understanding,miss--and I'll have it plain. It must be all over. If you aresatisfied he is a rascal--he has four children--well and good. ButI'll have no goings on with such in my house, and no making two bitesof a cherry! Here's a bit of paper I'll put on the table."

  "I am satisfied," Henrietta whispered.

  Under the woman's blunt words she shook as under blows.

  But Mrs. Gilson seemed to pay little heed to her feelings.

  "Very good, very good!" she answered. "But I'll leave the paper allthe same. It's but a bit of a handbill that fool of a runner broughtwith him, but 'twill show you what kind of a poor thing your Joe was.Just a spouter, that got drunk on his own words and shot a poorinoffensive gentleman in a shop! Shame on him for a little dirtymurder, if ever there was one."

  "Oh, please go! please go!" Henrietta wailed.

  "Very well. But there's the paper. And do you begin tothink"--removing with housewifely hand a half-eaten dish of eggs fromthe table, and deftly poising on the same arm a large ham--"do youbegin to think like a grown, sensible woman what you'd best do. Theshortest folly's soonest over! That's my opinion."

  And with that she opened the door, and, heavily laden, made her waydownstairs.

  The girl turned and stood looking at the room, and her face waswofully changed. It was white and pinched, and full of strainedwonder, as if she asked herself if she were indeed herself, and if itcould really be to her that this thing had happened. She looked olderby years, she looked almost plain. But in her eyes was a latentfierceness. An observer might have guessed that her pride sufferedmore sharply than her heart. Possibly she had never loved the man withhalf the fervour with which she now hated him.

  And that was true, though the change was sudden; ay, and thoughHenrietta did not know it, nor would have admitted it. She sufferednotwithstanding, and horribly. For, besides pride, there were otherthings that lay wounded and bleeding: her happy-go-lucky nature thathad trusted lightly, and would be slow to trust again; her girlishhopes and dreams; and the foolish fancy that had passed for love, andin a single day, an hour, a minute, might have become love. And oneother thing--the bloom of her innocence. For though she had escaped,she had come too near the fire not to fear it henceforth, and bearwith her the smell of singeing.

  As she thought of that, of her peril and her narrow escape, andreflected how near she had come to utter shipwreck, her face lost itspiteous look, and grew harder, and sharper, and sterner; so that thewealth of bright hair, that was her glory, crowned it only toobrilliantly, only too youthfully. She saw how he had fooled her to thetop of her bent; how he had played on her romantic tastes and hersilly desire for secrecy. A low-born creature, an agitator, hidingfrom the consequences of a cowardly crime, he had happened upon her inhis twilight walks, desired her--for an amusement, turned her headwith inflated phrases, dazzled her inexperience with hints of theworld and his greatness in it. And she--she had thought herself wiserthan all about her, as she had thought him preferable to thelegitimate lover assigned to her by her family. And she had broughtherself to this! This was the end!

  Or no, not the end. The game, for what it was worth, was over. But thecandle-money remained to be paid. Goldsmith's stanzas had still theirvogue; mothers quoted them to their daughters. Henrietta knew thatwhen lovely woman stoops to folly, even to folly of a lighterdye--when she learns, though not too late, that men betray, thereis 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 vividremembrance of this. Had she not called herself--the words burnedher--"his wife in the sight of Heaven"? And now she must go back--ifthey would receive her--go back and face those whom she had left solightly, face the lover whom she had flouted and betrayed, meet thesmirks of the men and the sneers of the women, and the thoughts ofboth! Go back to blush before the servants, and hear from the lips ofthat grim prude, her sister-in-law, many things, both true and untrue!

  The loss of the tender future, of the rosy anticipations in which shehad lived for weeks as in a fairy palace--she could bear this! Andthe rough awakening from the maiden dream which she had taken forlove--she must bear that too, though it left her world cold as thesheet of grey water before her, and repellent as the bald, ruggedscrees that frowned above it. She would bear the heartsickness, theloneliness, the pain that treachery inflicts on innocence; but theshame of the home-coming--if they would receive her, which shedoubted--the coarse taunts and stinging innuendoes, the nods, theshrugs, the winks--these she could not face. Anything, anything werebetter, if anything she could find--deserted, flung aside, homeless asshe was.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson, descending with a sour face, had come upon acouple of maids listening at the foot of the stairs. She had madesharp work of them, sending them packing with fleas in their ears. Butthey proved to be only the _avant-
couriers_ of scandal. Below were theTroutbeck apothecary and a dozen gossips, whom the news had broughtover the hill; and hangers-on without number. All, however, had nobetter fate with Mrs. Gilson; not the parish constable of Bowness,whose staff went for little, nor even Mr. Bishop, that great man outof doors, at whose slightest nod ostlers ran and helpers bowed; hesmiled superior, indeed, but he had the wisdom to withdraw. In twominutes, in truth, there remained of the buzzing crowd only the oldcurate of Troutbeck supping small beer with a toast in it. And he, itwas 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 theGovernment offered six hundred guineas, bred wild excitement. He hadvanished, it was true, like a child of the mist. But he might be foundagain. Meantime the rustics gaped on the runner with saucer eyes, orflew hither and thither at his beck. And Radicals being at a discountin the Lowther country, and six hundred guineas a sum for which oldHinkson the miser would have bartered his soul, some spat on theirhands and swore what they would do if they met the devil; whileothers, who were not apt at thinking, retired into corners and withknitted brows and hands plunged into breeches pockets conjured up amap of the world about Windermere.

  It should be borne in mind that at this time police wereunknown--outside London. There were parish constables; but where thesewere not cobblers, which was strangely often the case, they were menpast work, appointed to save the rates. If a man's pocket were picked,therefore, or his stack fired, his daughter abducted, or his marestolen, he had only himself and his friends to look to. He must followthe offender, confront him, seize him, carry him to the gaol. He mustdo all himself. Naturally, if he were a timid man or unpopular, therogue went free; and sometimes went free again and again until hebecame the terror of the country-side. A fact which enables us tounderstand the terrors of lonely houses in those days, and explainsthe repugnance to life in solitary places which is traditional in someparts of England.

  On the other hand, where the crime was known and outrageous, itbecame every man's business. It was every man's duty to join the hueand 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 ofWalterson's flight, which the officer had made a little afterdaybreak, he had sent horsemen to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, anda boat to Newby Bridge. The nearer shore and the woods on the pointbelow the bishop's house--some called it Landoff House--were wellbeaten, and the alarm was given in Bowness on the one hand and inAmbleside on the other. The general voice had it that the man had gotaway early in the night to Whitehaven. But some stated that a pedlarhad met him, on foot and alone, crossing the Kirkstone Pass atdaybreak; and others, that he had been viewed skulking under ahaystack near Troutbeck Bridge. That a beautiful girl, his companion,had been seized, and was under lock and key in the house, waswhispered by some, but denied by more. Nevertheless, the report wonits way, so that there were few moments when the chatterers who buzzedabout the runner had not an eye on the upper windows and a voice readyto proclaim their discoveries.

  Even those who believed the story, however, were far from having atrue picture of poor Henrietta. With some she passed for a LondonJezebel; locked up, it was whispered, with a bottle of gin to keep herquiet until the chaise was ready to take her to gaol. Others picturedher as the frenzied leader of one of the women's clubs which hadlately sprung up in Lancashire, and of which the principal aim,according to the Tories, was to copy the French fish-fags and marchone day to Windsor to drag the old king, blind and mad as he was, tothe scaffold. Others spoke of a casual light-o'-love picked up atLancaster, but a rare piece of goods for looks; which seemed a pity,and one of those tragedies of the law that were beginning to prickmen's consciences--since there was little doubt that the baggage, poorlass, would hang with her tempter.

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

  But Juno herself had her moments of failure, and no mortals are exemptfrom them. About four in the afternoon Mrs. Gilson got a shock. ModestAnn, 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, andher frown was something to see. She rose.

  "I don't believe it!" she answered. "You are daft, woman, to think ofsuch 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 achild, as you may say!"

  "Old enough to make a fool of herself!" Mrs. Gilson retortedspitefully. "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. Thejustice is crossing the road now, and that Bishop with him; and thatlittle wizened chap of a clerk that makes up the Salutation books. Andthe man that keeps the gaol at Appleby: they've been waiting forhim--he's to take her. And there's a chaise ordered to be ready ifit'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 onthat errand!"

  Modest Ann knew that when her mistress spoke in that tone the thingwas as good as done. But the waiting-maid, whose heart, for all hertemper, was softer than her features, at which Jim the ostler wassupposed 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 apron, sheprepared 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 Bishopmay never eat another morsel of hot victuals as long as he lives!Gravy with the joint? Never while I am serving!"