"It's not what has happened to him," the runner answered bluntly. "It is what is likely to happen to him."
He drew from his pocket as he spoke a large leather case, unstrapped it, and put the strap, which would have handily spliced a cart-trace of these days, between his teeth. Then he carefully selected from the mass of papers which the case contained a single letter. It was written, as the letters of that day were written, on three sides of a square sheet of coarsish paper. The fourth side served for envelope-that is, it bore the address and seal. But Bishop was careful to fold the letter in such a way that these and the greater part of the writing were hidden. He proffered the paper, so arranged, to Henrietta.
"D'you know the handwriting," he asked, "of that letter, miss?"
She had watched his actions with fascinated eyes, and could not think, could not imagine, whither they tended. She was really frightened now. But her mettle was high; she had the nerves of youth, and she hid her dismay. The hand with which she took the letter was steady as a rock, the manner with which she looked at it composed; but no sooner had her eyes fallen on the writing than she uttered an exclamation, and the colour rose to her cheeks.
"How did you get this?" she cried.
"No, miss, no," the runner answered. "One at a time. The question is, Do you know the fist? The handwriting, I mean. But I see you do."
"It is Mr. Stewart's," she answered.
He glanced at Mrs. Gilson as if to bespeak her attention.
"Just so," he said. "It is Mr. Stewart's. And I warrant you have others like it, and could prove the fact if it were needed. No-don't read it, miss, if you please," he continued. "You can tell me without that whether the gentleman has any friends in these parts."
"None."
"That you know of?"
"I never heard of any," she answered. Her astonishment was so great that she did not now think of refusing to answer. And besides, here was his handwriting. And why did he not come? The clock was on the point of striking; at this hour, at this minute, they should have been leaving the door of the inn.
"No, miss," Bishop answered, exchanging a look with the landlady. "Just so, you've never heard of any. Then one more question, if you please. You are going north, to Scotland, to be married to-day? Now which way, I wonder?"
She frowned at him in silence. She began to see his drift.
"By Keswick and Carlisle?" he continued, watching her face. "Or by Kendal and Penrith? Or by Cockermouth and Whitehaven? But no. There's only the Isle of Man packet out of Whitehaven."
"It goes on to Dumfries," she said. The words escaped her in spite of herself.
He smiled as he shook his head.
"No," he said; "it'd be a very long way round if it did. But Mr. Stewart told you that, did he? I see he did. Well, you've had an escape, miss. That's all I can say."
The colour rose to her very brow, but her eyes met his boldly.
"How?" she said. "What do you mean?"
"How?" he repeated. "If you knew, miss, who the man was-your Mr. Stewart-you'd know how-and what you have escaped!"
"Who he was?" she muttered.
"Ay, who he was!" he retorted. "I can tell you this at least, young lady," he added bluntly, "he's the man that's very badly wanted-uncommonly badly wanted!" – with a grin-"in more places than one, but nowhere more than where he came from."
"Wanted?" she said, the colour fading in her cheek. "For what? What do you mean?"
"For what?"
"That is what I asked."
His face was a picture of importance and solemnity. He looked at the landlady as much as to say, "See how I will prostrate her!" But nothing indicated his sense of the avowal he was going to make so much as the fact that instead of raising his voice he lowered it.
"You shall have the answer, miss, though I thought to spare you," he said. "He's wanted for being an uncommon desperate villain, I am sorry to say. For treason, and misprision of treason, and conspiracy. Ay, but that's the man you've come away with," shaking his head solemnly. "He's wanted for bloody conspiracy-ay, it is so indeed-equal to any Guy Fawkes, against my lord the King, his crown and dignity! Seven indictments-and not mere counts, miss-have been found against him, and those who were with him, and him the worst! And when he's taken, as he's sure to be taken by-and-by, he'll suffer!" And Mr. Bishop nodded portentously.
Her face was quite white now.
"Mr. Stewart?" she gasped.
"You call him Stewart," the runner replied coolly. "I call him Walterson-Walterson the younger. But he has passed by a capful of names. Anyway, he's wanted for the business in Spa Fields in '16, and half a dozen things besides!"
The colour returned to Henrietta's cheeks with a rush. Her fine eyes glowed, her lips parted.
"A conspirator!" she murmured. "A conspirator!" She fondled the word as if it had been "love" or "kisses." "I suppose, then," she continued, with a sidelong look at Bishop, "if he were taken he would lose his life?"
"Sure as eggs!"
Henrietta drew a deep breath; and with the same sidelong look:
"He would be beheaded-in the Tower?"
The runner laughed with much enjoyment.
"Lord save your innocent heart, miss," he said-"no! He would just hang outside Newgate."
She shuddered violently at that. The glow of eye and cheek faded, and tears rose instead. She walked to a window, and with her back to them dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Then she turned.
"Is that all?" she said.
"Good God!" Bishop cried. He stared, nonplussed. "Is that all?" he said. "Would you have more?"
"Neither more nor less," she answered-between tears and smiles, if his astonished eyes did not deceive him. "For now I know-I know why he left me, why he is not here."
"Good lord!"
"If you thought, sir," she continued, drawing herself up and speaking with indignation, "that because he was in danger, because he was proscribed, because a price was set on his head, I should desert him, and betray him, and sell his secrets to you-I, his wife-you were indeed mistaken!"
"But damme!" Mr. Bishop cried in amazement almost too great for words, "you are not his wife!"
"In the sight of Heaven," she answered firmly, "I am!" She was shaking with excitement. "In the sight of Heaven I am!" she repeated solemnly. And so real was the feeling that she forgot for the moment the situation in which her lover's flight had left her. She forgot herself, forgot all but the danger that menaced him, and the resolution that never, never, never should it part her from him.
Mr. Bishop would fain have answered fittingly, and to that end sought words. But he found none strong enough.
"Well, I am dashed!" was all he could find to say. "I am dashed!" Then-the thing was too much for one-he sought support in Mrs. Gilson's eye. "There, ma'am," he said vehemently, extending one hand, "I ask you! You are a woman of sense! I ask you! Did you ever? Did you ever, out of London or in London?"
The landlady's answer was as downright as it was unwelcome.
"I never see such a fool!" she said, "if that's what you mean. And you" – with scorn-"to call yourself a Bow Street man! Bow Street? Bah!"
Mr. Bishop opened his mouth.
"A parish constable's a Solomon to you!" she continued, before he could speak.
His face was purple, his surprise ludicrous.
"To me?" he ejaculated incredulously. "S'help me, ma'am, you are mad, or I am! What have I done?"
"It's not what you've done!" Mrs. Gilson answered grimly. "It's what you've left undone! Oh, you gaby!" she continued, with unction. "You poor creature! You bag of goose-feathers! D'you know no more of women than that? Why, I've kept my mouth shut the last ten blessed minutes for nothing else but to see what a fool you'd make of yourself! And for certain it was not for nothing!"
Henrietta tapped the table.
"Perhaps when you've done," she said, with tragic dignity, "you will both be good enough to leave the room. I desire to be alone."
Her eyes were like stars. In her voice was an odd mixture of elation and alarm.
Mrs. Gilson turned on the instant and engaged her.
"Don't talk nonsense!" she said. "Desire to be alone indeed! You deserve to be alone, miss, with bread and water, and the lock on the door! Oh, you may stare! But do you do now what he should have made you do a half-hour ago! And then you'll feel a little less like a play actress! Alone indeed! Read that letter and tell me then what you think of yourself!"
Henrietta's eyes sparkled with anger, but she fought hard for her dignity.
"I am not used to impertinence," she said. "You forget yourself!"
"Bead," Mrs. Gilson retorted, "and say what you like then. You'll have little stomach for saying anything," she added in an undertone, "or I'm a Dutchman!"
Henrietta saw nothing for it but to read under protest, and she did so with a smile of contempt. In the circumstances it seemed the easier course. But alas! as she read, her pretty, angry face changed. She had that extreme delicacy of complexion which betrays the least ebb and flow of feeling: and in turn perplexity, wonder, resentment, all were painted there, and vividly. She looked up.
"To whom was this written?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
Mrs. Gilson was pitiless.
"Look at the beginning!" she answered.
The girl turned back mechanically, and read that which she had read before. But then with surprise; now with dread.
"Who is-Sally?" she muttered.
Despite herself, her voice seemed to fail her on the word. And she dared not meet their eyes.
"Who's Sally?" Mrs. Gilson repeated briskly. "Why, his wife, to be sure! Who should she be?"
CHAPTER V
A JEZEBEL
There was a loud drumming in Henrietta's ears, and a dimness before her eyes. In the midst of this a voice, which she would not have known for her own, cried loudly and clearly, "No!" And again, more violently, "No!"
"But it is 'Yes'!" the landlady answered coolly. "Why not? D'you think" – with rough contempt-"he's the first man that's lied to a woman? or you're the first woman that's believed a rascal? She's his wife right enough, my girl" – comfortably. "Don't he ask after his children? If you'll turn to the bottom of the second page you'll see for yourself! Oh, quite the family man, he is!"
The girl's hand shook like ash-leaves in a light breeze; the paper rustled in her grasp. But she had regained command of herself-she came of a stiff, proud stock, and the very brusqueness of the landlady helped her; and she read word after word and line after line of the letter. She passed from the bottom of the second sheet to the head of the third, and so to the end. But so slowly, so laboriously that it was plain that her mind was busy reading between the lines-was busy comparing, sifting, remembering.
To Bishop's credit be it said, he kept his eyes off the girl. But at last he spoke.
"I'd that letter from his wife's hand," he said. "They are married right enough-in Hounslow Church, miss. She lives there, two doors from the 'George' posting-house, where folks change horses between London 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's taken up with some woman hereabouts, and she put me on the scent. He's a fine gift of the gab, but for all that his father's naught but a little apothecary, and as smooth a rogue and as big a Radical, one as the other! I wish to goodness," the runner continued, suddenly reminded 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 tap she had turned on for her own purposes. "You can go now!"
"But-"
"Did you hear me, man? Go!" the landlady thundered. And a glance of her eye was sufficient to bring the runner to heel like a scolded hound. "Go, and shut the door after you," she continued, with sharpness. "I'll have no eavesdropping in my house, prerogative or no prerogative!"
When he was gone she showed a single spark of mercy. She went to the fire and proceeded to mend it noisily, as if it were the one thing in the 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 two at most. But when the landlady had done, and turned her attention to the girl, Henrietta had moved to the window, so that only her back was visible. Even then, for quite a long minute Mrs. Gilson stood, with arms akimbo and pursed lips, reading the lines of the girl's figure and considering her, as if even her rugged bosom knew pity. And in the end it was Henrietta who spoke-humbly, alas! now, and in a voice almost 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 are satisfied he is a rascal-he has four children-well and good. But I'll have no goings on with such in my house, and no making two bites of 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 all the same. It's but a bit of a handbill that fool of a runner brought with 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 poor inoffensive gentleman in a shop! Shame on him for a little dirty murder, if ever there was one."
"Oh, please go! please go!" Henrietta wailed.
"Very well. But there's the paper. And do you begin to think" – removing with housewifely hand a half-eaten dish of eggs from the table, and deftly poising on the same arm a large ham-"do you begin to think like a grown, sensible woman what you'd best do. The shortest folly's soonest over! That's my opinion."
And with that she opened the door, and, heavily laden, made her way downstairs.
The girl turned and stood looking at the room, and her face was wofully changed. It was white and pinched, and full of strained wonder, as if she asked herself if she were indeed herself, and if it could really be to her that this thing had happened. She looked older by years, she looked almost plain. But in her eyes was a latent fierceness. An observer might have guessed that her pride suffered more sharply than her heart. Possibly she had never loved the man with half the fervour with which she now hated him.
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 passed 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 amusement, 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 assigned 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 anticipations 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 coarse 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 horsemen to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, and a boat to Newby Bridge. The nearer shore 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 Pass 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 passed 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 principal aim, according to the Tories, was to copy the French fish-fags 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 prick men's consciences-since there was little doubt that the baggage, poor lass, 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 apron, 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!"