CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
COMPANY IN DISTRESS.
"Now then, stir up, Mistress Benden! You are to be shifted to theCastle."
Alice Benden looked up as the keeper approached her with that news. Thewords sounded rough, but the tone was not unkind. There was even aslight tinge of pity in it.
What that transfer meant, both the keeper and the prisoner knew. It wasthe preparatory step to a sentence of death.
All hope for this world died out of the heart of Alice Benden. No morepossibility of reconciliation and forgiveness for Edward!--no moreloving counsels to Christabel--no more comforting visits from Roger.Instead of them, one awful hour of scarcely imaginable anguish, andthen, from His seat on the right hand of God, Christ would rise toreceive His faithful witness--the Tree of Life would shade her, and theWater of Life would refresh her, and no more would the sun light uponher, nor any heat: she should be comforted for evermore. The betterhope was to be made way for by the extinction of the lower. She liftedup her heart unto the Lord, and said silently within herself the ancientChristian formula of the early Church--
"Amen, Lord Christ!--so let it be."
In a chair, for she was too crippled to walk, Alice was carried by twoof the gaoler's men outside the Cathedral precincts. She had not beenin the open air for a month. They carried her out eastwards, acrossBurgate Street (which dates from the days of King Ethelred), down by thecity wall, past Saint George's Gate and the Grey Friars, up Sheepshank'sLane, and so to the old Norman Castle, the keep of which is the thirdlargest of Norman keeps in England, and is now, to the glory of all theHuns and Vandals, converted into a gasometer! In the barbican satseveral prisoners in chains, begging their bread. But Alice was bornepast this, and up the north-east staircase, from the walls of whichlooked out at her verses of the Psalms in Hebrew--silent, yet eloquentwitnesses of the dispersion and suffering of Judah--and into a smallchamber, where she was laid down on a rude bed, merely a frame withsacking and a couple of blankets upon it.
"Nights be cold yet," said the more humane of her two bearers. "Thepoor soul 'll suffer here, I'm feared."
"She'll be warm enough anon," said the other and more brutal of thepair. "I reckon the faggots be chopped by now that shall warm her."
Alice knew what he meant. He passed out of the door without anotherword, but the first man lingered to say in a friendly tone--"Good evento you, Mistress!" It was his little cup of cold water to Christ'sservant.
"Good even, friend," replied Alice; "and may our Saviour Christ one daysay to thee, `Inasmuch'!"
Yes, she would be warm enough by-and-by. There should be no more painnor toil, no more tears nor terrors, whither she was going. The King's"Well done, good and faithful servant!" would mark the entrance on a newlife from which the former things had passed away.
She lay there alone till the evening, when the gaoler's man brought hersupper. It consisted of a flat cake of bread, a bundle of small onions,and a pint of weak ale. As he set it down, he said--"There'll becompany for you to-morrow."
"I thank you for showing it to me," said Alice courteously; "pray you,who is it?"
"'Tis a woman from somewhere down your way," he answered, as he wentout; "but her name I know not."
Alice's hopes sprang up. She felt cheered by the prospect of thecompany of any human creature, after her long lonely imprisonment; andit would be a comfort to have somebody who would help her to turn on herbed, which, unaided, it gave her acute pain to do. Beside, there wasgreat reason to expect that her new companion would be a fellow-witnessfor the truth. Alice earnestly hoped that they would not--whether outof intended torture or mere carelessness--place a criminal with her.Deep down in her heart, almost unacknowledged to herself, lay a furtherhope. If it should be Rachel Potkin!
Of the apprehension of the batch of prisoners from Staplehurst Alice hadheard nothing. She had therefore no reason to imagine that the woman"from somewhere down her way" was likely to be a personal friend. Thesouth-western quarter of Kent was rather too large an area to rouseexpectations of that kind.
It was growing dusk on the following evening before the "company"arrived. Alice had sung her evening Psalms--a cheering custom which shehad kept up through all the changes and sufferings of her imprisonment--and was beginning to feel rather drowsy when the sound of footstepsroused her, stopping at her door.
"Now, Mistress! here you be!" said the not unpleasant voice of theCastle gaoler.
"Eh, deary me!" answered another voice, which struck Alice's ear as notaltogether strange.
"Good even, friend!" she hastened to say.
"Nay, you'd best say `ill even,' I'm sure," returned the newcomer."I've ne'er had a good even these many weeks past."
Alice felt certain now that she recognised the voice of an oldacquaintance, whom she little expected to behold in those circumstances.
"Why, Sens Bradbridge, is that you?"
"Nay, sure, 'tis never Mistress Benden? Well, I'm as glad to see youagain as I can be of aught wi' all these troubles on me. Is't me?Well, I don't justly know whether it be or no; I keep reckoning I shallwake up one o' these days, and find me in the blue bed in my own littlechamber at home. Eh deary, Mistress Benden, but this is an illlook-out! So many of us took off all of a blow belike--"
"Have there been more arrests, then, at Staplehurst? Be my brethrentaken?"
"Not as I knows of: but a lot of us was catched up all to oncet--NicholWhite, ironmonger, and mine hostess of the White Hart, and Emmet Wilson,and Collet Pardue's man, and Fishwick, the flesher, and me. Eh, but youmay give thanks you've left no childre behind you! There's my two poorlittle maids, that I don't so much as know what's come of 'em, or ifthey've got a bite to eat these hard times! Lack-a-daisy-me! but whythey wanted to take a poor widow from her bits of childre, it do beatme, it do!"
"I am sorry for Collet Pardue," said Alice gravely. "But for yourmaids, Sens, I am sure you may take your heart to you. The neighboursshould be safe to see they lack not, be sure."
"I haven't got no heart to take, Mistress Benden--never a whit, believeme. Look you, Mistress Final she had 'em when poor Benedick departed:and now she's took herself. Eh, deary me! but I cannot stay me fromweeping when I think on my poor Benedick. He was that staunch, he'dsure ha' been took if he'd ha' lived! It makes my heart fair sore tothink on't!"
"Nay, Sens, that is rather a cause for thanksgiving."
"You always was one for thanksgiving, Mistress Benden."
"Surely; I were an ingrate else."
"Well, I may be a nigrate too, though I wis not what it be without 'tisa blackamoor, and I'm not that any way, as I knows: but look you, goodMistress, that's what I alway wasn't. 'Tis all well and good for themas can to sing psalms in dens o' lions; but I'm alway looking for to beate up. I can't do it, and that's flat."
"The Lord can shut the lions' mouths, Sens."
"Very good, Mistress; but how am I to know as they be shut?"
"`They that trust in the Lord shall not want any good thing.'" A suddenmoan escaped Alice's lips just after she had said this, the result of anattempt to move slightly. Sens Bradbridge was on her knees beside herin a moment.
"Why, my dear heart, how's this, now? Be you sick, or what's took you?"
"I was kept nine weeks, Sens, on foul straw, with never a shift ofclothes, and no meat save bread and water, the which has brought me tothis pass, being so lame of rheumatic pains that I cannot scarce movewithout moaning."
"Did ever man hear the like! Didn't you trust in the Lord, then,Mistress, an't like you?--or be soft beds and well-dressed meat andclean raiment not good things?"
Alice Benden's bright little laugh struck poor desponding Sens as a verystrange thing.
"Maybe a little of both, old friend. Surely there were four sore weekswhen I was shut up in Satan's prison, no less than in man's, and Itrusted not the Lord as I should have done--"
"Well, forsooth, and no marvel!"
"And as to beds and
meat and raiment--well, I suppose they were not goodthings for me at that time, else should my Father have provided them forme."
Poor Sens shook her head slowly and sorrowfully.
"Nay, now, Mistress Benden, I can't climb up there, nohow.--'Tis a braveplace where you be, I cast no doubt, but I shall never get up yonder."
"But you have stood to the truth, Sens?--else should you not have beenhere."
"Well, Mistress! I can't believe black's white, can I, to get forth o'trouble?--nor I can't deny the Lord, by reason 'tisn't right comfortableto confess Him? But as for comfort--and my poor little maids all alone,wi' never a penny--and my poor dear heart of a man as they'd ha' took,sure as eggs is eggs, if so be he'd been there--why, 'tis enough tocrush the heart out of any woman. But I can't speak lies by reason I'mout o' heart."
"Well said, true heart! The Lord is God of the valleys, no less than ofthe hills; and if thou be sooner overwhelmed by the waters than other,He shall either carry thee through the stream, or make the waters lowerwhen thou comest to cross."
"I would I'd as brave a spirit as yourn, Mistress Benden."
"Thou hast as good a God, Sens, and as strong a Saviour. And mind thou,'tis the weak and the lambs that He carries; the strong sheep may walkalongside. `He knoweth our frame,' both of body and soul. Rest thousure, that if thine heart be true to Him, so long as He sees thou hastneed to be borne of Him, He shall not put thee down to stumble bythyself."
"Well!" said Sens, with a long sigh, "I reckon, if I'm left to myself, Isha'n't do nought but stumble. I always was a poor creature; Benedickhad to do no end o' matters for me: and I'm poorer than ever now he'sgone, so I think the Lord'll scarce forget me; but seems somehow as Ican't take no comfort in it."
"`Blessed are the poor in spirit!'" said Alice softly. "The `God ofall comfort,' Sens, is better than all His comforts."
All's Well Page 27
