A head appeared at either window of the postchaise. Henrietta looked forward. Her lover looked back.
The postchaise had nearly cleared the sands. Behind it the low line of Lancashire coast was fading from sight. Before it the long green hill of Cartmel had risen so high and drawn so near as to hide the Furness fells. On the left, seaward, a waste of sullen shallows and quaking sands still stretched to infinity--a thing to shudder at. But the savage head of Warton Crag, that for a full hour had guarded the travellers' right, had given place to the gentler outlines of Armside Knot. The dreaded Lancashire Channels had been passed in safety, and the mounted guide, whose task it was to lead wayfarers over these syrtes, and who enjoyed as guerdon the life-rent of a snug farm under Cark, no longer eyed the west with anxiety, but plashed in stolid silence towards his evening meal.
And all was well. But the margin of safety had not been large--the postboys' boots still dripped, and the floor of the carriage was damp. Seaward the pale line of the tide, which would presently sweep in one foaming wave across the flat, and in an instant cover it half a foot deep, was fretting abreast the point. Ten minutes later had been too late; and the face of Henrietta's lover, whom a few hours and a Scotch minister were to make her husband, betrayed his knowledge of the fact. He looked backward and westward over the dreary flat; and fascinated, seized, possessed by the scene, he shuddered--perhaps at his own thoughts. He would fain have bidden the postboys hasten, but he was ashamed to give the order before her. Halfway across he had set down the uneasiness he could not hide to the fear of pursuit, to the fear of separation. But he could no longer do this; for it was plain to a child that neither horse nor man would cross Cartmel sands until the tide that was beginning to run had ebbed again.
And Henrietta looked forward. The dull grey line of coast, quickly passing into the invisible, on which she turned her back, stood for her past; the sun-kissed peaks and blue distances of Furness, which her fancy still mirrored, though the Cartmel shore now hid them, stood for the future. To those heights, beautified by haze and distance, her heart went out, finding in them the true image of the coming life, the true foretype of those joys, tender and mysterious, to which she was hastening. The past, which she was abandoning, she knew: a cold home in the house of an unfeeling sister-in-law and a brother who when he was not hunting was tipsy--that, and the prospect of an unlovely marriage with a man who--horror!--had had one wife already, stood for the past. The future she did not know; but hope painted it from her brightest palette, and the girl's eyes filled, her lips quivered, her heart strained towards the sympathy and love that were henceforth to be hers--towards the happiness which she had set out to seek, and that now for certain could not escape her. As the postchaise lumbered heavily up the rough-paved groyne that led from the sands she shook from head to foot. At last her feet were set upon the land beautiful. And save for the compact which her self-respect had imposed upon her companion, she must have given way, she must have opened all her heart, thrown herself upon his breast and wept tears of tender anticipation.
She controlled herself. As it happened, they drew in their heads at the same time, and his eyes--they were handsome eyes--met hers.
"Dearest!" he said.
"We are safe now?"
"Safe from pursuit. But I am not safe."
"Not safe?"
"From your cruelty."
His voice was velvet; and he sought to take her hand.
But she withheld it.
"No, sir," she said, though her look was tender. "Remember our compact. You are quite sure that they will pursue us along the great road?"
"Yes, as far as Kendal. There they will learn that we are not before them--that we have somewhere turned aside. And they will turn back."
"But suppose that they drive on to Carlisle--where we rejoin the north road."
"They will not," he replied confidently. He had regained the plausible air which he had lost while the terror of the sands was upon him. "And if you fear that," he continued, "there is the other plan, and I think the better one. To-morrow at noon the packet leaves Whitehaven for Scotland, The wind is fair, and by six in the afternoon we may be ashore, and an hour later you will be mine!" And again he sought to draw her into his arms.
But she repelled him.
"In either case," she said, her brow slightly puckered, "we must halt to-night at the inn of which you spoke."
"The inn on Windermere--yes. And we can decide there, sweet, whether we go by land or sea; whether we will rejoin the north road at Carlisle or cross from Whitehaven to"--he hesitated an instant--"to Dumfries."
She was romantic to the pitch of a day which valued sensibility more highly than sense, and which had begun to read the poetry of Byron without ceasing to read the Mysteries of Udolpho; and she was courageous to the point of folly. Even now laughter gleamed under her long lashes, and the bubblings of irresponsible youth were never very far from her lips. Still, with much folly, with vast recklessness and an infinitude of ignorance, she was yet no fool--though a hundred times a day she said foolish things. In the present circumstances respect for herself rather than distrust of her lover taught her that she stood on slippery ways and instilled a measure of sobriety.
"At the inn," she said, "you will put me in charge of the landlady." And looking through the window, she carolled a verse of a song as irrelevant as snow in summer.
"But----" he paused.
"There is a landlady, I suppose?"
"Yes, but----"
"You will do what I say to-day," she replied firmly--and now the fine curves of her lips were pressed together, and she hummed no more--"if you wish me to obey you to-morrow."
"Dearest, you know----"
But she cut him short. "Please to say that it shall be so," she said.
He swore that he would obey her then and always. And bursting again into song as the carriage climbed the hill, she flung from her the mood that had for a moment possessed her, and was a child again. She made gay faces at him, each more tantalising than the other; gave him look for look, each more tender than the other; and with the tips of her dainty fingers blew him kisses in exchange for his. Her helmet-shaped bonnet, with its huge plume of feathers, lay in her lap. The heavy coils of her fair, almost flaxen, hair were given to view, and under the fire of his flatteries the delicacy of colouring--for pallor it could scarcely be called--which so often accompanies very light hair, and was the sole defect of her beauty, gave place to blushes that fired his blood.
But he knew something of her spirit. He knew that she had it in her to turn back even now. He knew that he might cajole, but could never browbeat her. And he restrained himself the more easily, as, in spite of the passion and eloquence--some called it vapouring--which made him a hero where thousands listened, he gave her credit for the stronger nature. He held her childishness, her frivolity, her naïveté, in contempt. Yet he could not shake off his fear of what she might do--when she knew.
They paid off the Guide under the walls of the old Priory Church at Cartmel
They paid off the guide under the walls of the old priory church at Cartmel, with the children of the village crowding about the doors of the chaise; then with a fresh team they started up the valley that leads to the foot of Windermere lake. But now the November day was beginning to draw in. The fell on their right took gloomier shape; on their left a brook sopped its way through low marsh-covered fields; and here and there the leafless limbs of trees pointed to the grey. And first one and then the other, with the shrill cries of moor-birds in their ears, and the fading landscape before their eyes, fell silent. Then, had they been as other lovers, had she stood more safely, or he been single-hearted, he had taken her in his arms and held her close, and comforted her, and the dusk within had been but the frame and set-off to their love.
But as it was he feared to make overtures, and they sat each in a corner until, in sheer dread of the effect which reflection might have on her, he asked her if she feared pursuit; adding, "Depend upon it, darling, you need not; Sir Charles will not give a thought to this road."
She drummed thoughtfully with her fingers on the pane.
"I am not afraid of my brother," she said.
"Then of whom?"
"Of Anthony," she answered, and corrected herself hurriedly--"of Captain Clyne, I mean. He will think of this road."
"But he will not have had the news before noon," Stewart answered. "It is eighteen miles from your brother's to the Old Hall. And besides, I thought that he did not love you."
"He does not," she rejoined, "but he loves himself. He loves his pride. And this will hit both--hard! I am not quite sure," she continued very slowly and thoughtfully, "that I am not a little sorry for him. He made so certain, you see. He thought all arranged. A week to-day was the day fixed, and--yes," impetuously, "I am sorry for him, though I hated him yesterday."
Stewart was silent a moment.
"I hate him to-day," he said.
"Why?"
His eyes sparkled.
"I hate all his kind," he said. "They are hard as stones, stiff as oaks, cruel as--as their own laws! A man is no man to them, unless he is of"--he paused almost imperceptibly--"our class! A law is no law to them unless they administer it! They see men die of starvation at their gates, but all is right, all is just, all is for the best, as long as they govern!"
"I don't think you know him," she said, somewhat stiffly.
"Oh, I know him!"
"But----"
"Oh, I know him!" he repeated, the faint note of protest in her voice serving to excite him. "He was at Manchester. There were a hundred thousand men out of work--starving, seeing their wives starve, seeing their children starve. And they came to Manchester and met. And he was there, and he was one of those who signed the order for the soldiers to ride them down--men, women, and children, without arms, and packed so closely that they could not flee!"
"Well," she said pertly, "you would not have us all murdered in our beds?"
He opened his mouth, and he shut it again. He knew that he had been a fool. He knew that he had gone near to betraying himself. She was nineteen, and thoughtless; she had been bred in the class he hated; she had never heard any political doctrines save those which that class, the governing class, held; and though twice or thrice he had essayed faintly to imbue her with his notions of liberty and equality and fraternity, and had pictured her with the red cap of freedom perched on her flaxen head, the only liberty in which he had been able to interest her had been her own!
By-and-by, in different conditions, she might be more amenable, should he then think it worth while to convert her. For the present his eloquence was stayed in midstream. Yet he could not be altogether silent, for he was a man to whom words were very dear.
"Well," he said in a lower tone, "there is something in that, sweet. But I know worse of him than that. You may think it right to transport a man for seven years for poaching a hare----"
"They should not poach," she said lightly, "and they would not be transported!"
"But you will think differently of flogging a man to death!"
Her face flushed.
"I don't believe it!" she cried.
"On his ship in Plymouth Harbour they will tell you differently."
"I don't believe it!" she replied, with passion. And then, "How horrid you are!" she continued. "And it is nearly dark! Why do you talk of such things? You are jealous of him--that is what you are!"
He saw the wisdom of sliding back into their old relations, and he seized the opportunity her words offered.
"Yes," he murmured, "I am jealous of him. And why not? I am jealous of the wind that caresses your cheek, of the carpet that feels your tread, of the star that peeps in at your window! I am jealous of all who come near you, or speak to you, or look at you!"
"Are you really?"--in a tone of childish delight. "As jealous as that?"
He swore it with many phrases.
"And you will be so always?" she sighed softly, leaning towards him. "Always--Alan?"
"To eternity!" he answered. And emboldened by her melting mood, he would have taken her hand, and perhaps more than her hand, but at that moment the lights of the inn at Newby Bridge flashed on them suddenly, the roar of the water as it rushed over the weirs surprised their ears, the postboys cracked their whips, and the carriage bounded and rattled over the steep pitch of the narrow bridge. A second or two later it came to a stand before the inn amid a crowd of helpers and stable lads, whose lanthorns dazzled the travellers' eyes.
They stayed only to change horses, then were away again. But the halt sufficed to cool his courage; and as they pounded on monotonously through the night, the darkness and the dim distances of river and lake--for they were approaching the shores of Windermere--produced their natural effect on Henrietta's feelings. She had been travelling since early morning cooped and cramped within the narrow chaise; she had spent the previous night in a fever of suspense and restlessness. Now, though slowly, the gloom, the dark outlines of the woods, and that sense of loneliness which seizes upon all who are flung for the first time among strange surroundings, began to tell upon the spirits even of nineteen. She did not admit the fact to herself--she would have died before she confessed it to another; but disillusion had begun its subtle task.
Here were all the things for which she had panted--the dear, delightful things of which she had dreamed: the whirl of the postchaise through the night, the crack of the whips, the cries of the postboys, the lighted inns, the dripping woods, the fear of pursuit, the presence of her lover! And already they were growing flat. Already the savour was escaping from them. There were tears in her heart, tears very near her eyes.
He could have taken her hand then, and more than her hand. For suddenly she recognised, with a feeling nearer terror than her flighty nature had ever experienced before, her complete dependence on him. Henceforth love, comfort, kindness, companionship--all must come from him. She had flung from her every stay but his, every hand but his. He was become her all, her world. And could she trust him? Not only with her honour--she never dreamed of doubting that--but could she trust him afterwards? To be kind to her, to be good to her, to be generous to her? Thoughtless, inexperienced, giddy as she was, Henrietta trembled. A pitiful sob rose in her throat. It needed but little, very little, and she had cast herself in abandonment on her lover's breast and there wept out her fears and her doubts.
But he had also his anxieties, and he let the moment pass by him unmarked. He had reasons, other and more urgent than those he had given her, for taking this road and for staying the night in a place whence Whitehaven and Carlisle were equally accessible; and those reasons had seemed good enough in the day when the fear of pursuit had swayed him. They seemed less pertinent now. He began to wish that he had taken another road, pursued another course. And he was deep in a brown study, in which love had no part, when an exclamation, at once of surprise and admiration, recalled him to the present.
They had topped a bare shoulder and come suddenly in sight of Lake Windermere. The moon had not long risen above the hills on their right, the water lay on their left; below them stretched a long pale mirror, whose borrowed light, passing over the dark woods which framed it, faintly lit and explored the stupendous fells and mountains that rose beyond. To Stewart it was no unfamiliar or noteworthy sight; and his eyes, after a passing glance of approval, turned to the road below them and marked with secret anxiety the spot where two or three lights indicated their halting-place.
But to Henrietta the sight, as unexpected as it was beautiful, appealed in a manner never to be forgotten. She held her breath, and slowly her eyes filled. Half subdued by fatigue and darkness, half awake to the dangers and possibilities of her situation, she was in the mood most fit to be moved by the tender melancholy of the scene. She was feeling a craving for something--for something to comfort her, for something to reassure her, for something on which to lean in the absence of all the common things of life: and there broke on her the mystic beauty of this moonlit lake, and it melted her. Her heart, hitherto untouched, awoke. The compact which she had made with her lover stood for naught. The tears running down her face, she turned to him, she held out her hands to him.
"Kiss me!" she murmured. "And say--say you will be good to me! I have only you now!--only you!--only you!"
He caught her in his arms and kissed her rapturously; and the embrace was ardent enough to send the scarlet surging to her temples, to set her heart throbbing. But the chaise was in the very act of drawing up at the door of the inn; and it may be doubted if he tasted the full sweetness of the occasion. A face looked in at the carriage window, on the side farther from the lake appeared a bowing landlord, a voice inquired, "Horses on?" The postchaise stopped.
Cheerful lights shining from the open doorway and the red-curtained windows of the inn, illumined the road immediately before it; and if these and the change in all the surroundings did not at once dispel the loneliness at Henrietta's heart, at least they drove the tears from her eyes and the blushes from her cheeks. The cold moonlight, the unchanging face of nature, had sobered and frightened her; the warmth of fire and candle, the sound of voices, and the low, homely front of the house, with its two projecting gables, reassured her. The forlorn child who had flung herself into her lover's arms not forty seconds before was not to be recognised in the girl who alighted slowly and with gay self-possession, took in the scene at a glance, and won the hearts of ostler and stableboy by her ease and her fresh young beauty. She was bare-headed, and her high-dressed hair, a little disordered by the journey, gleamed in the lanthorn-light. Her eyes were like stars. The landlord of the inn--known for twenty miles round as "Long Tom Gilson"--saw at a glance that the missus's tongue would run on her. He wished that he might not be credited with his hundred-and-thirty-first conquest!
The thought, however, did not stand between him and his duty. "Sharp, Sam," he cried briskly. "Fire in Mr. Rogers's room." Then to his guests: "Late? No, sir, not at all. This way, ma'am. All will be ready in a twinkling."
But Henrietta stood smiling.
"Thank you," she answered pleasantly, her clear young voice slightly raised. "But I wished to be placed in the landlady's charge. Is she here?"
Gilson turned toward the doorway, which his wife's portly form fitted pretty tightly.
"Here, missus," he cried, "the young lady wants you."
But Mrs. Gilson was a woman who was not wont to be hurried and before she reached the side of the carriage Stewart interposed; more roughly and more hurriedly than seemed discreet in the circumstances.
"Let us go in, and settle that afterwards," he said.
"No."
"Yes," he retorted. And he grasped the girl's arm tightly. His voice was low, but insistent. "Let us go in."
But the girl only vouchsafed him a look, half wondering, half indignant. She turned to the landlady.
"I am tired, and need no supper," she said. "Will you take me into a room, if you please, where I can rest at once, as we go on early to-morrow."
"Certainly," the landlady answered. She was a burly, red-faced, heavy-browed woman. "But you have come some way, ma'am. Will you not take supper with the gentleman?"
"No."
He interposed.
"At least let us go in!" he repeated pettishly. And there was an agitation in his tone and manner not easy to explain, except on the supposition that in some way she had thwarted him. "We do not want to spend the night on the road, I suppose?"
She did not reply. But none the less, as she followed Mrs. Gilson to the door, was she wondering what ailed him. She was unsuspicious by nature, and she would not entertain the thought that he wished her to act otherwise than she was acting. What was it then? Save for a burly man in a red waistcoat who stood in a lighted doorway farther along the front of the inn, and seemed to be watching their movements with lazy interest, there were only the people of the inn present. And the red-waistcoated man could hardly be in pursuit of them, for, for certain, he was a stranger. Then what was it?
She might have turned and asked her lover; but she was offended and she would not stoop. And before she thought better of it--or worse--she had crossed the threshold. A warmer air, an odour of spices and lemons and old rum, met her. On the left of the low-browed passage a half-open door offered a glimpse of shining glass and ruddy firelight; there was Mrs. Gilson's snuggery, sometimes called the coach office. On the right a room with a long table spoke of coaching meals and a groaning board. From beyond these, from the penetralia of kitchen and pantry, came faint indications of plenty and the spit.
A chambermaid was waiting at the foot of the narrow staircase to go before them with lights; but the landlady took the candles herself, and dismissed the woman with a single turn of the eye. A habit of obedience to Mrs. Gilson was the one habit of the inn, the one common ground on which all, from Tom Gilson to the smallest strapper in the stable, came together.
The landlady went ponderously up before her guest and opened the door of a dimity-hung chamber. It was small and simple, but of the cleanest. Hid in it were rosemary and lavender; and the leafless branches of a rose-tree whipped the diamond panes of the low, broad window. Mrs. Gilson lighted the two wax candles--"waxes" in those days formed part of every bill but the bagman's. Then she turned and looked at the girl with deliberate disapproval.
"You will take nothing, ma'am, to eat?" she said.
"No, thank you," Henrietta answered. And then, resenting the woman's look, "I may as well tell you," she continued, holding her head high, "that we have eloped, and are going to be married to-morrow. That is why I wished to be put in your charge."
The landlady, with her great face frowning, continued to look at the girl, and for a moment did not answer.
At length, "You've run away," she said, "from your friends?"
Henrietta nodded loftily.
"From a distance, I take it?"
"Yes."
"Well," Mrs. Gilson rejoined, her face continuing to express growing disapproval, "there's a stock of fools near and far. And if I did my duty, young lady, there'd be one who would likely be thankful all her life." She took the snuffers and slowly and carefully snuffed the two candles. "If I did my duty, I'd lock you up and keep you safe till your friends came for you."
"You are insolent," the girl cried, flaming up.
"That depends," Mrs. Gilson retorted, with the utmost coolness. "Fine feathers make fine birds. You may be my lady, or my lady's maid. Men are such fools--all's of the best that's red and white. But I'm not so easy."
Henrietta raised her chin a little higher.
"Be good enough to leave the room!" she said.
But the stout woman held her ground.
"Not before I've said what I have to say," she answered. "It is one thing, and one thing only, hinders me doing what I ought to do, and what if you were my girl I'd wish another to do. And that is--your friends may not want you back. And then, to be married tomorrow is like enough the best you can do for yourself! And the sooner the better!"
Henrietta's face turned scarlet, and she stamped on the floor.
"You are a wicked, insolent woman!" she said. "You do not know your place, nor mine. How dare you say such things to me? How dare you? Did you hear me bid you leave the room?"
"Hoity-toity!"
"Yes, at once!"
"Very good," Mrs. Gilson replied ponderously--"very good! But you may find worse friends than me. And maybe one of them is downstairs now."
"You hateful woman!" the girl cried; and had a glimpse of the landlady's red, frowning face as the woman turned for a last look in the doorway. Then the door closed, and she was left alone--alone with her thoughts.
Her face burned, her neck tingled. She was very, very angry, and a little frightened. This was a scene in her elopement which anticipation had not pictured. It humiliated her--and scared her. To-morrow, no doubt, all would be well; all would be cheerfulness, tenderness, sunshine; all would be on the right basis. But in the meantime the sense of forlornness which had attacked her in the chaise returned on her as her anger cooled, and with renewed strength. Her world, the world of her whole life up to daybreak of this day, was gone forever. In its place she had only this bare room with its small-paned casement and its dimity hangings and its clean scent. Of course he was below, and he was the world to her, and would make up a hundredfold what she had resigned for him. But he was below, he was absent; and meantime her ear and her heart ached for a tender word, a kind voice, a look of love. At least, she thought, he might have come under her window, and whistled the air that had been the dear signal for their meetings. Or he might have stood a while and chatted with her, and shown her that he was not offended. The severest prude, even that dreadful woman who had insulted her, could not object to that!
But he did not come. Of course he was supping--what things men were! And then, out of sheer loneliness, her eyes filled, and her thoughts of him grew tender and more humble. She dwelt on him no longer as her conquest, her admirer, the prize of her bow and spear, subject to her lightest whim and her most foolish caprice; but as her all, the one to whom she must cling and on whom she must depend. She thought of him as for a brief while she had thought of him in the chaise. And she wondered with a chill of fear if she would be left after marriage as she was left now. She had heard of such things, but in the pride of her beauty, and his subjection, she had not thought that they could happen to her. Now---- But instead of dwelling on a possibility which frightened her, she vowed to be very good to him--good and tender and loyal, and a true wife. They were resolutions that a trifling temptation, an hour's neglect or a cross word, might have overcome. But they were honest, they were sincere, they were made in the soberest moment that her young life had ever known; and they marked a step in development, a point in that progress from girlhood to womanhood which so few hours might see complete.
Meanwhile Mrs. Gilson had returned to her snuggery, wearing a face that, had the lemons and other comforts about her included cream, must have turned it sour. That snuggery, it may be, still exists in the older part of the Low Wood Inn. In that event it should have a value. For to it Mr. Samuel Rogers, the rich London banker, would sometimes condescend from his apartments in the south gable; and with him Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharp, a particular gentleman who sniffed a little at the rum; or Sir James Mackintosh, who, rumour had it, enjoyed some reputation in London as a writer. At times, too, Mr. Southey, Poet Laureate elsewhere, but here Squire of Greta Hall, would stop on his way to visit his neighbour at Storrs--no such shorthorns in the world as Mr. Bolton's at Storrs; and not seldom he brought with him a London gentleman, Mr. Brougham, whose vanity in opposing the Lowther interest at the late election had almost petrified Mrs. Gilson. Mr. Brougham called himself a Whig, but Mrs. Gilson held him little better than a Radical--a kind of cattle seldom seen in those days outside the dock of an assize court. Or sometimes the visitor was that queer, half-moithered Mr. Wordsworth at Rydal; or Mr. Wilson of Elleray with his great voice and his homespun jacket. He had a sort of name too; but if he did anything better than he fished, the head ostler was a Dutchman!
The visits of these great people, however--not that Mrs. Gilson blenched before them, she blenched before nobody short of Lord Lonsdale--had place in the summer. To-night the landlady's sanctum, instead of its complement of favourite guests gathered to stare at Mr. Southey's last order for "Horses on!" boasted but a single tenant. Even he sat where the landlady did not at once see him; and it was not until she had cast a log on the dogs with a violence which betrayed her feelings that he announced his presence by a cough.
"There's the sign of a good house," he said with approval. "Never unprepared!--never unprepared! Come late, come early--coach, chaise, or gig--it is all one to a good house."
"Umph!"
"It is a pleasure to sit by"--he waved his pipe with unction--"and to see a thing done properly!"
"Ay, it's a pleasure to many to sit by," the landlady answered with withering sarcasm. "It's an easy way of making a living--especially if you are waiting for what doesn't come. Put a red waistcoat on old Sam the postboy, and he'd sit by and see as well as another!"
The man in the red waistcoat chuckled.
"I'm glad they don't take you into council at Bow Street, ma'am!" he said.
"They might do worse."
"They might do better," he rejoined. "They might take you into the force! I warrant"--with a look of respectful admiration--"if they did there's little would escape you. Now that young lady?" He indicated the upper regions with his pipe. "Postboys say she came from Lancaster. But from where before that?"
"Wherever she's from, she did not tell me!" Mrs. Gilson snapped.
"Ah!"
"And what is more, if she had, I shouldn't tell you."
"Oh, come, come, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop was mildly shocked. "Oh, come, ma'am! That is not like you. Think of the King and his royal prerogative!"
"Fiddlesticks!"
Mr. Bishop looked quite staggered.
"You don't mean it," he said--"you don't indeed. You would not have the Radicals and Jacobins ramping over the country, shooting honest men in their shops and burning and ravaging, and--and generally playing the devil?"
"I suppose you think it is you that stops them?"
"No, ma'am, no," with a modest smile. "I don't stop them. I leave that to the yeomanry--old England's bulwark and their country's pride! But when the yeomanry 've done their part, I take them, and the law passes upon them. And when they have been hung or transported and an example made, then you sleep comfortably in your beds. That is what I do. And I think I may say that next to Mr. Nadin of Manchester, who is the greatest man in our line out of London, I have done as much in that way as another."
Mrs. Gilson sniffed contemptuously.
"Well," she said, "if you have never done more than you've done since you've been here, it's a wonder the roof's on! Though what you expected to do, except keep a whole skin, passes me! There's the Chronicle in today, and such talks of riots at Glasgow and Paisley, and such meetings here and alarms there, it is a wonder to me"--with sarcasm--"they can do without you! To judge by what I hear, Lancashire way is just a kettle of troubles and boiling over, and bread that price everybody is wanting to take the old King's crown off his head."
"And his head off his body, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop added solemnly.
"So that it's little good you and your yeomanry seem to have done at Manchester, except get yourselves abused!"
"Ma'am, the King's crown is on his head," Mr. Bishop retorted, "and his head is on his body!"
"Well? Not that his head is much good to him, poor mad gentleman!"
"And King Louis, ma'am, years ago--what of him? The King of France, ma'am? Crown gone, head gone--all gone! And why? Because there was not a good blow struck in time, ma'am! Because, poor, foolish foreigner, he had no yeomanry and no Bow Street, ma'am! But the Government, the British Government, is wiser. They are brave men--brave noblemen, I should say," Mr. Bishop amended with respect,--"but with treason and misprision of treason stalking the land, with the lower orders, that should behave themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, turned to ramping, roaring Jacobins seeking whom they may devour, and whose machine they may break, my lords would not sleep in their beds--no, not they, brave men as they are--if it were not for the yeomanry and the runners." He had to pause for breath.
Mrs. Gilson coughed dryly.
"Leather's a fine thing," she said, "if you believe the cobbler."
"Well," Mr. Bishop answered, nodding his head confidently, "it's so far true you'd do ill without it."
But Mrs. Gilson was equal to the situation.
"Ay, underfoot," she said. "But everything in its place. My man, he be mad upon tod-hunting; but I never knew him go to Manchester 'Change to seek one."
"No?" Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm's length, and smiled at it mysteriously. "Yet I've seen one there," he continued, "or in such another place."
"Where?"
"Common Garden, London."
"It was in a box, then."
"It was, ma'am," Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphasis. "It was in a box--'safe bind, safe find,' ma'am. That's the motto of my line, and that was it precisely! More by token it's not outside the bounds of possibility you may see"--he glanced towards the door as he knocked his pipe against his top-boot--"one of my tods in a box before morning."
Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She never stooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was no mistaking the ring of triumph in the runner's tone; yet of all the unlikely things within the landlady's range none seemed more unlikely than that he should flush his game there. She had asked herself more than once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaise changed horses, no rider passed or bagman halted, without running the gauntlet of his eye. For in that country of lake and mountain were neither riots nor meetings; and though Lancashire lay near, the echoes of strife sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands. Mills might be burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling in Bolland and Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, all England might be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Corbett's Twopenny Register and Orator Hunt's declamations--but neither the glare nor the noise had much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop's presence there seemed superfluous therefore; seemed---- But before she could come to the end of her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared, demanding four pennyworth of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr. Rogers's room; and when she was serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge in incredulity.
"A man must talk if he can't do," she said--"if he's to live."
Mr. Bishop smiled, and patted his buckskin breeches with confidence.
"You'll believe ma'am," he said, "when you see him walk into the coach with the handcuffs on his wrists."
"Ay, I shall!"
The innuendo in the landlady's tone was so plain that her husband, who had entered while she was rinsing the noggin in which she had measured the gin, chuckled audibly. She turned an awful stare on him, and he collapsed. The Bow Street runner was less amenable to discipline.
"You sent the lad, Tom?" he asked.
The landlord nodded, with an apprehensive eye on his wife.
"He should be back"--Mr. Bishop consulted a huge silver watch--"by eleven."
"Ay, sure."
"Where has he gone?" Mrs. Gilson asked, with an ominous face.
She seldom interfered in stable matters; but if she chose, it was understood that no department was outside her survey.
"Only to Kendal with a message for me," Bishop answered.
"At this time of the night?"
"Ma'am"--Mr. Bishop rose and tapped his red waistcoat with meaning, almost with dignity--"the King has need of him. The King--God bless and restore him to health--will pay, and handsomely. For the why and the wherefore he has gone, his majesty's gracious prerogative is to say nothing"--with a smile. "That is the rule in Bow Street, and for this time we'll make it the rule under Bow Fell, if you please. Moreover, what he took I wrote, ma'am, and as he cannot read and I sent it to one who will give it to another, his majesty will enjoy his prerogative as he should!"
There was a spark in Mrs. Gilson's eye. Fortunately the runner saw it, and before she could retort he slipped out, leaving the storm to break about her husband's head. Some who had known Mr. Gilson in old days wondered how he bore his life, and why he did not hang himself--Mrs. Gilson's tongue was so famous. And more said he had reason to hang himself. Only a few, and they the wisest, noted that he who had once been Long Tom Gilson grew fat and rosy; and these quoted a proverb about the wind and the shorn lamb. One--it was Bishop himself, but he had known them no more than three weeks--said nothing when the question was raised, but tapped his nose and winked, and looked at Long Tom as if he did not pity him overmuch.
In one particular at least the Bow Street runner was right. The Government which ruled England in that year, 1819, was made up of brave men; whether they were wise men or great men, or far-seeing men, is another question. The peace which followed Waterloo had been welcomed with enthusiasm. Men supposed that it would put an end to the enormous taxation and the strain which the nation had borne so gallantly during twenty years of war. The goddess of prosperity, with her wings of silver and her feathers of gold, was to bless a people which had long known only paper money. In a twinkling every trade was to flourish, every class to be more comfortable, every man to have work and wage, plenty and no taxes.
Instead, there ensued a period of want and misery almost without a parallel. During the war the country had been self-supporting, wheat had risen, land suitable and unsuitable had been enclosed and tilled. Bread had been dear but work had been plentiful. Now, at the prospect of open ports, wheat fell, land was left derelict, farmers were ruined, labourers in thousands went on the rates. Nor among the whirling looms of Lancashire or the furnaces of Staffordshire were things better. Government orders ceased with the war, while the exhausted Continent was too poor to buy. Here also thousands were cast out of work.
The cause of the country's misfortunes might be this or that. Whatever it was, the working classes suffered greater hardships than at any time during the war; and finding no anxiety to sympathise in a Parliament which represented their betters, began to form--ominous sign--clubs, and clubs within clubs, and to seek redress by unlawful means. An open rising broke out in the Fen country, and there was fighting at Littleport and Ely. There were riots at Spa Fields in London, where murder was committed; and there were riots again, which almost amounted to a rebellion, in Derbyshire. At Stock-port and in Birmingham immense mob meetings took place. In the northern counties the sky was reddened night after night by incendiary fires. In the Midlands looms were broken and furnaces extinguished. In Lancashire and Yorkshire the air was sullen with strikes and secret plottings, and spies, and cold and famine.
In the year 1819 things came to a kind of head. There was a meeting at Manchester in August. It was such a meeting as had never been seen in England. There were sixty thousand at it, there were eighty thousand, there were ninety thousand--some said one, some said the other. It was so large, at any rate, that it was difficult to say that it was not dangerous; and beyond doubt many there would have snatched at the least chance of rapine. Be that as it may, the magistrates, in the face of so great a concourse, lost their heads. They ordered a small force of yeomanry to disperse the gathering. The yeomanry became entangled--a second charge was needful: the multitude fled every way. In ten minutes the ground was clear; but six lives were lost and seventy persons were injured.
At once all England was cleft into parties--that which upheld the charge, and that which condemned it. Feelings which had been confined to the lower orders spread to the upper; and while from this date the section which was to pass the Reform Bill took new shape, underground more desperate enterprises were breeding. Undismayed the people met at Paisley and at Glasgow, and at each place there were collisions with, the soldiery.
Mr. Bishop had grounds, therefore, for his opinion of the Government of which he shared the favour with the yeomanry--their country's bulwark and its pride. But it is a far cry to Windermere, and no offset from the storm which was convulsing Lancashire stirred the face of the lake when Henrietta opened her window next morning and looked out on the day which was to change all for her. The air was still, the water grey and smooth, no gleam of sun showed. Yet the general aspect was mild; and would have been cheerful, if the more distant prospect which for the first time broke upon Henrietta's eyes had not raised it and her thoughts to the sublime. Beyond the water, above the green slopes and wooded knobs which fringed the lake, rose, ridge behind ridge, a wall of mountains. It stretched from the Peak of Coniston on the left, by the long snow-flecked screes of Bow Fell, to the icy points of the Langdales on the right--a new world, remote, clear, beautiful, and still: so still, so remote, that it seemed to preach a sermon--to calm the hurry of her morning thoughts, and the tumult of youth within her. She stood awhile in awe. But her hair was about her shoulders, she was only half-dressed; and by-and-by, when her first surprise waned, she bethought herself that he might be below, and she drew back from the window with a blush. What more likely, what more loverlike, than that he should be below? Waiting--on this morning which was to crown his hopes--for the first sight of her face, the first opening of her lattice, the gleam of her white arm on the sill? Had it been summer, and had the rose-tree which framed the window been in bloom, what joy to drop with trembling fingers a bud to him, and to know that he would treasure it all his life--her last maiden gift! And he? Surely he would have sent her an armful to await her rising, that as she dressed she might plunge her face into their perfume, and silently plighting her troth to him, renew the pure resolves which she had made in the night hours!
But when she peeped out shyly, telling herself that she was foolish to blush, and that the time for blushing was past, she failed to discover him. There was a girl--handsome after a dark fashion--seated on a low wall on the farther side of the road; and a group of four or five men were standing in front of the inn door, talking in excited tones. Conceivably he might be one of the men, for she could hear them better than she could see them--the door being a good deal to one side. But when she had cautiously opened her window and put out her head--her hair by this time being dressed--he was not among them.
She was drawing in her head, uncertain whether to pout or not, when her eyes met those of the young woman on the wall; and the latter smiled. Possibly she had noted the direction of Henrietta's glance, and drawn her inference. At any rate, her smile was so marked and so malicious that Henrietta felt her cheek grow hot, and lost no time in drawing back and closing the window.
"What a horrid girl!" she exclaimed.
Still, after the first flush of annoyance, she would have thought no more of it--would indeed have laughed at herself for her fancy--if Mrs. Gilson's strident voice had not at that moment brought the girl to her feet.
"Bess! Bess Hinkson!" the landlady cried, apparently from the doorway. "Hast come with the milk? Then come right in and let me have it? What are you gaping at there, you gaby? What has't to do with thee? I do think"--with venom--"the world is full of fools!"
The girl with a sullen air took up a milk-pail that stood beside her; she wore the short linsey petticoat of the rustic of that day, and a homespun bodice. Her hair, brilliantly black, and as thick as a horse's mane, was covered only by a handkerchief knotted under her chin.
"Bess Hinkson? What a horrid name!" Henrietta muttered as she watched her cross the road. She did not dream that she would ever see the girl again: the more as the men's voices--she was nearly ready to descend--fixed her attention next. She caught a word, then listened.
"The devil's in it if he's not gone Whitehaven way!" one said. "That's how he's gone! Through Carlisle, say you? Not he!"
"But without a horse? He'd no horse."
"And what if he'd not?" the first speaker retorted, with the impatience of superior intellect. "It's Tuesday, the day of the Man packet-boat, and he'd be away in her."
"But the packet don't leave Whitehaven till noon," a third struck in. "And they'll be there and nab him before that. S'help me, he has not gone Whitehaven way!"
"Maybe he'd take a boat?"
"He'd lack the time"--with scorn.
"He's took a boat here," another maintained. "That's what he has done. He's took a boat here and gone down in the dark to Newby Bridge."
"But there's not a boat gone!" another speaker retorted in triumph. "What do you say to that?"
So far Henrietta's ear followed the argument; but her mind lagged at the point where the matter touched her.
"The Man packet-boat?" she thought, as she tied the last ribbon at her neck and looked sideways at her appearance in the squat, filmy mirror. "That must be the boat to the Isle of Man. It leaves Whitehaven the same day as the Scotch boat, then. Perhaps there is but one, and it goes on to the Isle of Man. And I shall go by it. And then--and then----"
A knock at the door severed the thread, and drove the unwonted languor from her eyes. She cast a last look at her reflection in the glass, and turned herself about that she might review her back-hair. Then she swept the table with her eye, and began to stuff this and that into her bandbox. The knock was repeated.
"I am coming," she cried. She cast one very last look round the room, and, certain that she had left nothing, took up her bonnet and a shawl which she had used for a wrap over her riding-dress. She crossed the room towards the door. As she raised her hand to the latch, a smile lurked in the dimples of her cheeks. There was a gleam of fun in her eyes; the lighter side of her was uppermost again.
It was not her lover, however, who stood waiting outside, but Modest Ann--she went commonly by that name--the waiting-maid of the inn, who was said to mould herself on her mistress and to be only a trifle less formidable when roused. The two were something alike, for the maid was buxom and florid; and fame told of battles between them whence no ordinary woman, no ordinary tongue, no mortal save Mrs. Gilson, could have issued victorious. Fame had it also that Modest Ann remained after her defeat only by reason of an attachment, held by most to be hopeless, to the head ostler. And for certain, severe as she was, she permitted some liberty of speech on the subject.
Henrietta, however, did not know that here was another slave of love; and her face fell.
"Is Mr. Stewart waiting?" she asked.
"No, miss," the woman answered, civilly enough, but staring as if she could never see enough of her. "But Mrs. Gilson will be glad if you'll speak to her."
Henrietta raised her eyebrows. It was on the tip of her tongue to answer, "Then let her come to me!" But she remembered that these people did not know who she was--knew indeed nothing of her. And she answered instead: "I will come. Where is she?"
"This way, miss. I'll show you the way."