But I was going to cry and did, breaking down like a child; and that
not so much at the thought of the desperate strait to which she had
brought me--though this was no other than the felon's dock, with the
prospect of disgrace, and to be whipped or burned in the hand, at the
best, and if I had my benefit--but at the sudden conviction, which
came upon me, perfect and overwhelming, that my mistress, for whom I
had risked so much, did not love me! In no other way, and on no other
theory, could I explain callousness so complete, thoughtlessness so
cruel! Nor did her next words tend to heal the mischief, or give me
comfort.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, flouncing from me with impatient contempt, and
walking on the other side of the way, "if you are going to be a
cry-baby, thank you for nothing! I thought you were a man!" And she
began to hum an air.
"My God! I don't think you care!" I sobbed, aghast at her
insensibility.
"Care?" she retorted indifferently, swinging her visor in her hand.
"For what?"
"For me! Or for anything!"
With a coolness that appalled me, she finished the verse she was
humming; then, "Your finger hurts, therefore you are going to die!"
she said, with a sneer. "You see the fire and therefore you must be
burned. Why, you have the courage of a hen! A flea! A mouse! You are
not worthy the name of a man."
"I am man enough to be hanged," I answered miserably.
"Hanged?" quoth she, quite cheerfully. "Do you think that man was ever
hanged for three guineas?"
"Ay, scores," I said, "and for less!"
"Then they must have been cravens like you!" she retorted, perfectly
well satisfied with her answer. "And spun their own ropes. Come,
silly, cheer up! A great many things may happen in a week! And if that
vixen is back under a week, I will eat her!"
"A week won't make three guineas," I said dolefully.
"No, but a good heart will," she rejoined. "And not three but thirty!
Only," she continued, looking askance at me, "you have not the spirit
of a man. You are just Tumbledown Dick, as they say, and as well named
as nine-pence!"
It seemed inconceivable to me that she could jest so merrily and carry
herself so gaily, after such a loss; and I stopped short in sudden
hope and new-born expectation; and peered at her, striving to read her
thoughts. "I don't believe you have lost them!" I exclaimed at last.
"Every groat, Dick!" she answered, curtly--yet still in the best of
spirits. "Never doubt that!"
On which it was not wonderful that my disappointment and her
cheerfulness agreed so ill, that we came to bitter words, and
beginning by calling one another "Thankless," and "Clutch-penny," rose
presently to "Fool," and "Jade"; and eventually parted on the latter
at the garden fence; where Dorinda, so far from lingering as on the
former night, flounced from me in a passion, and left me without a
single word of regret. How miserably after that I stole to bed, and
how wakefully I tossed in the close garret, I cannot hope to convey to
my readers; suffice it that a hundred times I cursed the folly that
had led me to ruin, a hundred times went hot and cold at thought of
the dock and the gallows; and yet amid all found in Dorinda's
heartlessness the sharpest pain. I felt sure now, and told myself
continually, that she had never loved me; therefore--at the time it
seemed to follow--I deemed my own love at an end and cast her off; and
heaping the sharpest reproaches on her head, found my one sweet
consolation--whereat I wept miserably--in composing a last dying
speech and confession that should soften at length that obdurate
bosom, and break that unfeeling heart.
But with the day, and the rising to imminent terrors and hourly fear
of detection, came first regret, then self-reproach--lest I too should
be somewhat in fault--then a revival of passion; lastly, a frantic
yearning to be reconciled to the only person to whom I could speak
freely, or who knew the danger and strait in which I stood. My heart
melting like water at the thought, I was ready to do anything or say
anything, to abase myself to any depth, in order to regain her favour
and have her advice; and the absence of Mr. and Mrs. D----, and Mrs.
Harris's easiness rendering it a matter of no difficulty to seek her,
in the course of the afternoon I took my courage in my hands and went
into the next house. There I found only Mrs. Harris.
"The little slut has stepped out," she said, looking up from the pot
over which she was stooping. "She asked leave for half an hour and has
been gone an hour. But it is the way of the wenches all the world
over. Do you beware of them, Mr. Price," she continued, eyeing me, and
laughing jollily.
I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all
the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the
dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She
did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet
I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and
cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the
next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering,
and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them,
well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there
among them, Mr. and Mrs. D---- might return, and the loss be
discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I
made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I
seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape.
I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of
those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now
making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring,
pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment
more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and
quietness with which Mrs. D----'s absence invested the school had no
more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over
her plain-stitch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning
gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth
day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of
a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night
waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six
next morning.
At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance
and deception to the winds, I rose from the class I was pretending to
teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs.
Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to
the next house. She started at sight of me in her train--as she well
might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything
ailed me.
"No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie."
"Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good
many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one."
"Why?" I stammered.
"Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because--but
what have you to do with Jennie, young man?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides
at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than
half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild
Irishmen--suppose you go back to them, young man!"
I obeyed; but whatever effect her warning might have had earlier--and
I shrewdly suspect that it would have affected me as much as water
affects a duck's back--it came too late; my one desire now being to
see the girl, even as my one hope lay in her advice. Nine had struck
that evening, however, and night had fallen, and I grown fairly sick
with fear, before my efforts were rewarded, and stealing into the
garden on a last desperate search--I think for the twentieth time--I
came on her standing in the dusk, beside the fence where I had so
often met her.
I sprang to her side, relief at my heart, reproaches on my lips; but
it was only to recoil at sight of her face, grown hard and old and
pinched, and for the moment almost ugly. "Why, child!" I cried,
forgetting my own trouble. "What is it?"
She laughed without mirth, looking at me strangely. "What do you
suppose?" she said huskily, and I could see that fear was on her. "Do
you think that you are the only one in danger?"
"How?" I exclaimed.
"How?" she replied in a tone of mockery. "Why, do you suppose that
stockings and shoes are the only things that cost money? Or that vizor
masks, and gloves and hoods grow on bushes? Briefly, fool, if you can
give me four guineas, I am saved. If not----"
"My God!" I cried, horror-stricken.
"If not," she continued hardily, "you have taught me to read, and that
may save my neck. I suppose I shall be sent to the plantations, to be
beaten weekly, and work in the sun, and----"
"Four guineas!" I groaned.
"Yes, seven in all!" she answered with a sneer.
"Have you got them?"
"No, nor a groat!" I answered, overwhelmed by the discovery that
instead of giving help she needed it. "Not a penny!"
"Then it must be got!" she answered fiercely. "It must be got!" and as
she repeated the words, she dropped her mocking tone, and spoke with
feverish energy. "It must be got, Dick!" and she seized my hands and
held them. "It must be, and can be, if you have a spark of spirit, if
you are not the poor mean thing I sometimes think you. Listen! Listen!
In the old man's room upstairs--the door is locked and double-locked,
I have tried it--are sixty guineas, in a bag! Sixty guineas, in a
drawer of the old bureau by the bed!"
"It is death," I cried feebly, recoiling from her as I spoke. "It is
death! I dare not! I dare not do it!"
"Then we hang! We hang, man!" she answered fiercely. "You and I! Will
it be better to hang for a lamb than a sheep? For seven guineas than
for sixty?"
"But if we take it, what shall we be the better for it?" I said
weakly. "He returns in the morning."
"By the morning, given the money, we shall be a score of miles away!"
she answered, flinging her arms round my neck, and hanging on my
breast, while her hot breath fanned my cheek. No wonder I felt my
brain reel, and my will melt. "Away from here, Dick," she repeated
softly. "Away---and together!"
Yet I made an effort to withstand her. "You forget the door," I said.
"If the door is locked, and Mrs. Harris sleeps in the next room, how
can it be done?"
"Not by the door, but by the window," she replied. "There is a ladder
in the second garden from this; and the latch of the window is weak.
The old fool indoors sleeps like a hog. By eleven she will be sound.
And oh, Dick!" my mistress cried, breaking down on a sudden and
snatching my hands to her bosom, "will you see me shamed? Play the man
for ten minutes only--for ten minutes only, and by morning we shall be
safe, and far from here! And--and together, Dick! Together!"
Was it likely, I ask, was it possible that I should long resist
pleading such as this? That holding her in my arms, in the warm summer
night, with her hair on my breast, while the moon sailed overhead and
a cricket chirped in the wall hard by--was it likely or possible, I
say, that I should steel my heart against her; that I should turn from
the cup of pleasure, who had tasted as yet so few delights, and
drudged and been stinted all my life? Whose appetite had known no
daintier relish than the dull round of dumpling and bacon, or at the
best salt meat and spinach; and who for sole companionship had been
shut in, June days and December nights alike, with a band of
mischievous boys, whom the ancients justly called _genus improbum_. At
any rate I did not; to my shame, great or small, according as I shall
be harshly or charitably judged--I did not; but with a beating heart
and choked voice, I gave my word and left her; and an hour later I
crept down the creaking stairs for the last time, guilty and
shivering, a bundle in my hand, and found her waiting for me in the
old place.
I confess that the flurry of my spirits in this crisis was such as to
disturb my judgment; and my passion for my mistress being no longer of
the higher kind, these two things may account for the fact that I felt
no wonder or repulsion when she explained to me, coolly and in detail,
where the bureau stood, and in what part of it lay the money; even
adding that I had better bring away a pair of silver candlesticks
which I should find in another place. By the time she had made these
things clear to me, the favourable moment was come; the lights of the
town had long been extinguished, and the house obscuring the moon cast
a black shadow on the garden, that greatly seconded our movements. Yet
for myself, and though all went well with us, I trembled at the
faintest sound, and started if a leaf stirred; nay, to this day I
willingly believe that the smallest trifle, a light at a window or a
distant voice, would have deterred me from the adventure. But nothing
occurred to hinder or alarm; and the darkness cloaking us only too
effectually, and my accomplice directing me where to find the ladder,
I fetched it, and with her help thrust it over the fence and climbed
over after it.
This was a small thing, the worst being to come. The part of the
garden under the wall of the house was paved; it was only with the
greatest exertion therefore and the utmost care that we could raise
the ladder on it without noise; and but for the surprising strength
which Jennie showed, I doubt if we should have succeeded, my hands
trembled so violently. In the end we raised it, however; the upper
part fell lightly beside the second floor casement, and Jennie
whispered to me to ascend.
I had gone too far now to retreat, and I obeyed, and had mounted two
steps, when I heard distinctly--the sound coming sharp and clear
through the night--the shod hoof of a horse paw the ground, apparently
in the road beyond the house. Scared by such a sound at such a time, I
slid rapidly down into Jennie's arms. "Hush!" I cried. "Did you hear
that? There is someone there!"
But angered by my sudden descent which had come near to knocking her
down, she whispered in a rage that I was either the biggest fool or
the poorest craven in the world. "Go up! Go up!" she continued
fiercely, almost striking me in her excitement. "There are sixty
guineas awaiting us up there--sixty guineas, man, and you budge,
because a horse stirs."
"But what is it doing there?" I remonstrated. "A horse, Jennie--at
this time of night!"
"God knows!" she answered. "What is it to us?"
Still I lingered a moment, unwilling to ascend; but hearing nothing,
and thinking I might have been mistaken, I was ashamed to hang back
longer, and I went up, though my legs trembled under me, and a bird
darting suddenly out of the ivy glued me to the ladder by both hands,
with the sweat standing out on my face. Alone, nothing on earth would
have persuaded me to it; but with Jennie below I dared not flinch, and
the latch of the window proving as weak as she had described it, in a
moment the lattice swung open and I climbed over the sill.
Feeling the floor with my feet, I stood an instant in the dark stuffy
room, and listened. It smelled strongly of herbs, on which account I
hate that smell to this day. I could hear Mrs. Harris snoring next
door; and the pendulum of the fine new clock on the stairs, which was
Mrs. D----'s latest pride, was swinging to and fro regularly; and I
knew that at the slightest alarm the house would be awake. But I had
gone too far to recede; and though I feared and sweated, and at the
touch of a hand must have screamed aloud, I went forward and groping
my way across the floor, found the bureau, and tried the drawer.
It was locked, but crazily; and Jennie foreseeing the obstacle had
given me a chisel. Inserting the point, I listened awhile to assure
myself that all was quiet, and then with the resolution of despair
forced the drawer open with a single wrench. Probably the noise was no
great one, but to my ears it rang through the night loud as the crack
of laden ice. I heard the sleeper in the next room cease her snoring
and turn in the bed; and cowering down on the floor I gave up all for
lost. But in a moment she began to breathe again, and encouraged by
that and the silence in the house, I drew the drawer open, and feeling
for the bag, discovered it, and clutching it firmly, turned to the
window.
I found that Jennie had mounted the ladder, and was looking into the
room, her hands on the sill, her head dark against the sky. "Have you
got it?" she whispered, thrusting in her arm and groping for me. "Then
give it me while you get the candlesticks. They are wrapped in
flannel, and are under the bed."
I gave her the bag, which chinked as it passed from hand to hand; then
I turned obediently, and groping my way to the bed which stood beside
the bureau, I felt under it. I found nothing, but did not at once give
up. The candlesticks might lie on the farther side, and accordingly I
rose and climbed over the bed and tried again, passing my hands
through the flue and dust which had gathered under Mrs. D----'s best
feather-bed.
How long I might have searched in the dark, and vainly, I cannot say;
for my efforts were brought to a premature end by a dull thud that
came to my ears apparently from the next room. Certain that it could
be caused by nothing less than Mrs. Harris getting out of bed, I
crawled out, and got to my feet in a panic, and stood in the dark
quaking and listening; so terrified that I am sure if the good woman
had entered at that moment, I should have fallen on my knees before
her, and confessed all. Nothing followed, however; the house remained
quiet; I heard no second sound. But my nerve was gone. I wanted
nothing so much now as to be out of the place; not for a thousand
guineas would I have stayed; and without giving another thought to the
candlesticks, I groped my way to the window, and passing one leg over
the sill, felt hurriedly for the ladder.
I failed to find it, and tried again; then peering down called Jennie
by name. She did not answer. A second time I called, and felt about
with my foot; still without success. Then as it dawned upon me at last
that the ladder was really gone, and I a prisoner, I thought of
prudence no longer, but I called frantically, at first in a whisper,
and then as loudly as I dared; called and called again, "Jennie!
Jennie!" And yet again, "Jennie!"
Still no answer came; but listening intently, in one of the intervals
of silence, I caught the even beat of hoofs, receding along the road,
and growing each moment less marked. They held me; scarcely breathing,
I listened to them, until they died away in the distance of the summer
night, and only the sharp insistent chirp of the cricket, singing in
the garden below, came to my ears.