Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “You are wasting time,” he answered. “You have eight minutes.”

  “You are determined that I shall go?”

  “Or speak.”

  “Will you not hear,” she asked slowly, “what I have to say on my side? What reason I have for not speaking? What excuse? What extenuation of my conduct?”

  “No,” he replied. “Your reasons for speaking or not speaking, your conduct or misconduct, are nothing to me. I am thinking of my child.”

  “And not at all of me?”

  “No.”

  “Yet listen,” she said, with something approaching menace in her tone, “for you will think of me! You will think of me — presently! When it is too late, Captain Clyne, you will remember that I stood before you, that I was alone and helpless, and you would not hear my reasons nor my excuses. You will remember that I was a girl, abandoned by all, left alone among strangers and spies, without friend or adviser.”

  “I,” he said, coldly interrupting her, “was willing to advise you. But you took your own path. You know that.”

  “I know,” she retorted with sudden passion, “that you were willing to insult me! That you were willing to set me, because I had committed an act of folly, as low as the lowest! So low that all men were the same to me! So low that I might be handed like a carter’s daughter who had misbehaved herself, to the first man who was willing to cover her disgrace. That! that was your way of helping me and advising me!”

  “In two minutes,” he said in measured accents, “the time will be up!”

  He appeared to be quite unmoved by her reproaches. His manner was as cold, as repellant, as harsh as ever. But he was not so entirely untouched by her appeal as he wished her to think. For the time, indeed, his heart was numbed by anxiety, his breast was rendered insensible by the grip of suspense. But the barbed arrows of her reproaches stuck and remained. And presently the wounds would smart and rankle, troubling his conscience, if not his heart. It is possible that he had already a suspicion of this. If so, it only deepened his rage and his hostility.

  With the same pitiless composure, he repeated:

  “In two minutes. There is still time, but no more than time.”

  “You have told me that you do not wish to hear my reasons?”

  “For silence? I do not.”

  “They will not turn you,” her voice shook under the maddening sense of his injustice, “whatever they are?”

  “No,” he answered, “they will not. And having said that I have said all that I propose to say.”

  “You condemn me unheard?”

  “I condemn you? No, the law will condemn you, if you are condemned.”

  “Then I, too,” she answered, with a beating heart — for indignation almost choked her— “have said all that I propose to say. All!”

  “Think! Think, girl!” he cried.

  She was silent.

  He closed his watch with a sharp, clicking sound, and put it in his fob.

  “You will not speak?” he said.

  “No!”

  Then passion, long restrained, long kept under, swept him away. He took a stride forward, and before she guessed what he would be at, he had seized her wrist, gripping it cruelly.

  “But you shall! — you shall!” he cried. His face full of passion was close to hers, he pressed her a pace backwards. “You vixen! Speak now!” he cried. “Speak!”

  “Let me go!” she cried.

  “Speak or I will force it from you. Where is he?”

  “I will never speak!” she panted, struggling with him, and trying to snatch her arm from him. “I will never speak! You coward! Let me go!”

  “Speak or I will break your wrist,” he hissed.

  He was hurting her horribly.

  But, “Never! Never! Never!” She shrieked the word at him, her face white with rage and pain, her eyes blazing. “Never, you coward. You coward! Let me go!”

  He let her go then — too late remembering himself. He stepped back. Breathing hard, she leant against the table, and nursed her bruised wrist in the other hand. Her face, an instant before white, now flamed with anger. Never, never since she was a little child had she been so treated, so handled! Every fibre in her was in revolt. But she did not speak. She only, rocking herself slightly to and fro, scathed him with her eyes. The coward! The coward!

  And he was as yet too angry — though he had remembered himself and released her — to feel much shame for what he had done. He was too wrapt in the boy and his object to think soberly of anything else. He went, his hand shaking a little, his face disordered by the outbreak, to the bell and rang it. As he turned again,

  “Your ruin be on your own head!” he cried.

  And he looked at her, hating her, hating her rebellious bearing.

  He saw in her, with her glowing cheeks and eyes bright with fury, the murderess of his boy. What else, since, if it was not her plan, she covered it? Since, if it was not her deed, she would not stay it? She must be one of those feminine monsters, those Brinvilliers, blonde and innocent to the eye, whom passion degraded to the lowest! Whom a cursed infatuation made suddenly most base, driving them to excesses and crimes.

  While she, her breast boiling with indignation, her heart bursting with the sense of bodily outrage, of bodily pain, forgot the anguish he was suffering. She forgot the provocation that had exasperated him to madness, that had driven him to violence. She saw in him a cowardly bully, a man cruel, without shame or feeling. She fully believed now that he had flogged a seaman to death. Why not, since he had so treated her? Why not, since it was clear that there was no torture to which he would not resort, if he dared, to wring from her the secret he desired?

  And a torrent of words, a flood of scathing reproaches and fierce home-truths, rose to her lips. But she repressed them. To complain was to add to her humiliation, to augment her shame. To protest was to stoop lower. And strung to the highest pitch of animosity they remained confronting one another in silence, until the door opened and Justice Hornyold entered, followed by his clerk. After these Nadin, Bishop, Mr. Sutton, and two or three more trooped in until the room was half full of people.

  It was clear that they had had their orders below, and knew what to expect; for all looked grave, and some nervous. Even Hornyold betrayed by his air, half sheepish and half pompous, that he was not quite comfortable.

  “The young lady has not spoken?” he said.

  “No,” Clyne answered, breathing quickly. He could not in a moment return to his ordinary self. “She refuses to speak.”

  “You have laid before her reasons?”

  He averted his eyes.

  “I have said all I can,” he muttered sullenly. “I have assured myself that she is privy to this matter, and I withdraw the informal undertaking which I gave a fortnight ago that she should be forthcoming if wanted. Unless, therefore, you are satisfied with the landlord’s bail — but that is for you.”

  Mr. Hornyold shook his head.

  “With this new charge advanced?” he said. “No, I am afraid not. Certainly not. But perhaps,” looking at her, “the young lady will still change her mind. To change the mind” — with a feeble grin— “is a lady’s privilege.”

  “I shall not tell you anything,” Henrietta said with a catch in her breath. She hid her smarting, tingling wrist behind her. She might have complained; but not for the world would she have let them know what he had done to her, what she had suffered.

  Mr. Sutton, who was standing in the background, stepped forward.

  “Miss Damer,” he said earnestly, “I beg you, I implore you to think.”

  “I have thought,” she answered with stubborn anger. “And if I could help him,” she pointed to Clyne, “if I could help him by lifting my finger — —”

  “Oh, dear, dear!” the chaplain cried, appalled by her vehemence. “Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”

  “What shall I say, then?” she answered — still she remembered herself. “I have told you that I know nothing of the ab
duction of his child. That is all I have to say.”

  Hornyold shook his sleek head again.

  “I am afraid that won’t do,” he said. “What” — consulting Nadin with his eye— “what do the officers say?”

  Nadin laughed curtly.

  “Not by no means, it won’t do!” he said. “What she says is slap up against the evidence, sir, and evidence strong enough to hang a man. The truth is, your reverence, the young lady has had every chance, and all said and done we are losing time. And time is more than money! The sooner she is under lock and key the better.”

  “You apply that she be committed?” Hornyold asked slowly.

  “I do, sir.”

  The Justice looked at Bishop.

  “Do you join in the application?” he asked.

  The officer nodded, but with evident reluctance.

  The clerk, who had taken his seat at the corner of the table and laid some papers before him, dipped his pen in the inkhorn, which he carried at his button-hole. He prepared to write. “On the charge of being accessory?” he said in a low voice. “Before or after, Mr. Nadin?”

  “Both,” said Nadin.

  “After,” said Bishop.

  The clerk looked from one to the other, and then began to write; but slowly, and as if he wished to leave as long as possible a locus penitentiæ. It was a feeling shared by all except Captain Clyne. Even the Manchester man, hardened as he was by a rude life in the roughest of towns, had had jobs more to his taste — and wished it done; while the feeling of the greater part was one of pity. The girl was so young, her breeding and refinement were so manifest, her courage so high, she confronted them so bravely, that they were sensible of something cruel in their attitude to her; gathered as they were many to one — and that one a woman with no one of her sex beside her. They recoiled from the idea of using force to her. And now it was really come to the point of imprisoning her, those who had a notion what a prison was disliked it most; fearing not only that she might resist removal and cause a heart-rending scene, but still more that she had unknown sufferings before her.

  For the prisons of that day were not the prisons of to-day. There was no separation of one class of offenders from another. There were no separate cells, there were rarely even separate beds. Girls awaiting trial were liable to be locked up with the worst women-felons. Nay, the very warders were often old offenders, who had earned their places by favour. In small country prisons, conditions were better, but air, light, space, and cleanliness were woefully lacking. Something might be done, no doubt, to soften the lot of a prisoner of Henrietta’s class; but indulgence depended on the whim of the jailor — who at Appleby was a blacksmith! — and could be withdrawn as easily as it was granted.

  Suddenly the clerk looked up over his glasses. “The full name,” he said, “if you please.”

  “Henrietta Mary Damer.” It was Clyne who spoke.

  The clerk added the name, and rising from his seat offered the pen to the magistrate. But Hornyold hesitated. He looked flurried, and something startled.

  “But should not — —” he murmured, “ought we not to communicate with her brother — with — Sir Charles? He must be her guardian!”

  “Sir Charles,” Clyne answered, “has repudiated all responsibility. It would be useless to apply to him. I have seen him. And the matter is a criminal matter.”

  The girl said nothing, but her colour faded suddenly. And in the eyes of one or two she seemed a more pitiful figure, standing alone and mute, than before. But for the awe in which they held Clyne, and their knowledge of his reason for severity, the chaplain and Long Tom Gilson, who was one of those by the door, would have intervened. As it was, Hornyold stooped to the table and signed the form — or was signing it when the clerk spoke.

  “One moment, your reverence,” he said in a low voice. “The debtors’ quarters at Appleby, where they’d be sure to put the young lady, are as good as under water at this time of the year. Kendal’s nearer, she’d be better there. And you’ve power to say which it shall be.”

  “Kendal, then,” Hornyold assented. The name was altered and he signed the committal.

  As he rose from the table, constraint fell on one and all. They wondered nervously what was to come next; and it was left to Nadin to put an end to the scene. “Landlord!” he said, turning to the door, “a chaise for Kendal in ten minutes. And send your servant to go with the young lady to her room, and get together what she’ll want. You’d best take her, Bishop.”

  Bishop assented in a low tone, and Gilson went out to give the order. Hornyold said something to Clyne and they talked together in low tones and with averted faces. Then, still talking, they moved to the door and went out without looking towards her. The clerk gathered up his papers, handed one to Bishop, and fastened the others together with a piece of red tape. That done, he, too, rose and followed the magistrate, making her an awkward bow as he passed. Mr. Sutton alone remained, and, pale and excited, fidgeted to and fro; he could not bear to stay, and he could not bear to leave the girl alone with the officers. Possibly — but to do him justice this went for little — he might by staying commend himself to her, he might wipe out the awkward impression made by the night’s adventure. But Clyne put in his head and called him in a peremptory tone; and he had to go with a feeble apologetic glance at her. She was left standing by the table, alone with the officers.

  For an instant she looked wildly at the door. Then, “May I go to my room now?” she asked in a low tone.

  “Not alone,” Nadin answered — but civilly, for him. “In a moment the woman will be here, and you can go with her. It’s not quite regular, but we’ll stretch a point. But you must not be long, miss! You’ll have no need,” with a faint grin, “of many frocks, or furbelows, where you’re going.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  MR. SUTTON’S NEW RÔLE

  When the chaise which carried the prisoner to Kendal had left the inn, and the search parties had gone their way under leaders who knew the country, and the long tail of the last shaggy pony had whisked itself out of sight, a dullness exceeding that of November settled down on the inn by the lake. The road in front ran, a dull, unbroken ribbon, along the water-side; and alone and melancholy the chaplain walked up and down, up and down, the last man left. Occasionally Mrs. Gilson appeared at the door and looked this way and that; but her eye was sombre and her manner did not invite approach or confidence. Occasionally, too, Modest Ann’s face was pressed against the window of the coffee-room, where she was setting out the long table against evening; but she was disguised in tears and temper, and before Mr. Sutton could identify the phenomenon, or grasp its meaning, she was gone. The frosty promise of the morning had vanished, and in its place leaden clouds dulled sky and lake, and hung heavy and black on the scarred forehead of Bow Fell. Mr. Sutton looked above and below, and this way and that, and, too restless to go in, found no comfort without. He wished that he had gone with the searchers, though he knew not a step of the country. He wished that he had said more for the girl, and stood up for her more firmly, though to do so had been to quarrel with his patron. Above all, he wished that he had never seen her, never given way to the temptation to aspire to her, never started in pursuit of her — last of all, that he had never stooped to spy on her. He was ill content with himself and his work; ill content with the world, his patron, everybody, everything. No man was ever worse content.

  For Nemesis in an unexpected form was overtaking, nay even as he walked the road, had overtaken the chaplain. He had come to marry, he remained to love; he had come to enjoy, he remained to suffer. He had come, dazzled by the girl’s rank and fortune, that rank and that fortune which he had thought so much above himself, and to which her beauty added so piquant and delicate a charm. And, lo, it was neither her rank, nor her fortune, nor her beauty that, as he walked, beat at his heart and would be heard, would have entrance; but the girl’s lonely plight and her disgrace and her trouble. On a sudden, as he went helplessly and aimlessly and unhappily up
and down the road, he recognised the truth; he knew what was the matter with him. His eyes filled, his feelings overcame him — and no man was ever more surprised. He had to walk a little way down the road before, out of ken of the horse, he dared to wipe the tears from his cheeks. Nor even then could he refrain from one or two foolish, unmanly gasps.

  “I did not think that I was — such a fool!” he muttered. “Such a fool! I didn’t think it!”

  When he regained command of himself he found that his feet had borne him to the gate-pillar where so much had happened the previous day. To the very place where he had surprised Henrietta as she arranged her signal, and where she had so nearly surprised him in the act of watching her! In his new-born repentance, in his newborn honesty he hated the place; he hated it only less than he hated the conduct of which it reminded him. And partly out of sentiment, partly out of some unowned notion of doing penance, he turned and slowly retraced her course to the inn, treading as far as possible where she had trodden. When he reached the door he did not go in, but, unwilling to face any one, he went on as far as a seat on the foreshore, where he had seen her sit. And the sentiment of her presence still forming the attraction, he wondered if she had paused there on that morning, or if she had gone indoors at once.

  He was so unhappy that he did not feel the cold. The thought of her warmed him, and he sat for a minute or two, with his eyes on the gloomy face of the lake that, towards the farther shore, frowned more darkly under the shadow of the woods. He wished that he understood her conduct better, that he had the clue to it. He wished that he understood her refusal to speak. But right or wrong, she was in trouble and he loved her. Ay, right or wrong! For good or ill! Still he sighed, for all was very dark. And presently he went to rise.

  His eyes in the act fell on a few scraps of paper which lay at his feet and showed the whiter for the general gloom. Letters were not so common then as now. It was much if one person in five could write. The postage on a note sent from the south of England to the north was a shilling; the pages were crossed and recrossed, were often read and cherished long. Paper, therefore, did not lie abroad, as it lies abroad now; and Mr. Sutton — hardly knowing what he did — bent his eyes on the scraps. He was long-sighted, and on one morsel a little larger than its neighbours, he read the word “gate.”