How long I hung at the window, at one time stunned and stricken down
by the catastrophe that had befallen me, and at another feeling
frantically for the ladder which I had over and over again made sure
was not there, I know no more than another; but only that after a
time, first suspicion and then rage darted lightning-like through the
stupor that clouded my mind, and I awoke to all the tortures that love
outraged by treachery can feel; with such pangs and terrors added as
only a faithful beast, bound and doomed and writhing under the knife
of its master, may be supposed to endure.
For a while, it is true, imagining that Jennie, terrified by someone's
approach, had lowered the ladder and withdrawn herself, and so would
presently return to free me, I hoped against hope. But as minutes
passed, and yet more minutes, laden only with the cricket's even
chirp, and the creepy rustling of the wind in the poplars, and still
failed to bring her, the sound of retreating hoofs which I had heard
recurred to my mind, with dreadful significance, and on the top of it
a hundred suspicious circumstances; among which, as her sudden passion
when I had taken fright at the foot of the ladder, was not the least,
so her avoidance of me during the last few days and her frequent
absences from the house, spoken to by Mrs. Harris, had their weight.
In fine, by the light of her desertion after receiving the plunder,
and while I sought the candlesticks--which I had now convinced myself
were not there--many things obscure before, or to which I had wilfully
shut my eyes--as her callousness, her greed, her recklessness--stood
out plainly; while these again, being coolly considered, reflected so
seriously on her, as to give her sudden departure the worst possible
appearance, even in a lover's eyes. The days had been when I would not
have believed such a thing of her at the mouth of an angel from
Heaven. But much had happened since, to which my passion had blinded
me, temporarily only; so that it needed but a flash of searing light
to make all clear, and convince me that she had not only left me, but
left me trapped--I who had given up all and risked all for her!
In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so
horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to
knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would
break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And
little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy's first devotion, and
that of all sins ingratitude has the sharpest tooth! But to this
paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an
antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul,
roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a
dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my
attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the
chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard.
Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no
resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I
could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out
the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the
window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most
desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its
place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to
place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me.
In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a
surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken
round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on
the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked
whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then--strangest of all
things, and not to be invented--in the crisis of my fate, with the
feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep;
and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I
started up to find Mr. D---- in the doorway staring at me, and behind
him a crowd of piled-up faces.
"Why, Price?" he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly
into the room, "what is the meaning of this?"
Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden
scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer.
A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically
to those at the door to keep it--to keep it, though they were
half-a-dozen to one!--he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and
shook me until my teeth chattered.
"Give it up," he cried, spluttering with rage. "Give it up, you
beggar's brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it."
But as I had nothing to give up, and could not speak, I burst into
tears; which with the odd part I had played in staying in the room to
be taken, and perhaps my youth and innocent air, aroused the
neighbours' surprise; who, crowding round, asked him solicitously what
was missing. He answered after a moment's hesitation, sixty guineas.
One had already clapped his hands over my clothes, and another had
forced my mouth open; but on this they desisted, and stood, full of
admiration.
"He cannot have swallowed that," said the most active, gaping at me.
"No, that is certain. But what beats me," said another, looking round,
"is how he got here."
"To say nothing of why he stayed here!" replied the former.
"I'll tell you what," quoth a third, shaking his head. "There is some
hocus-pocus in this. And I should not wonder, neighbours, if the
Catholics were at the bottom of it!"
The theory appeared to commend itself to more than one--for they were
all of the fanatical party; but it was swept to the winds by the
entrance of Mrs. D----, who having heard of robbery, came in like a
whirlwind, her face on fire, and made no more ado, but rushed upon me,
and tore and slapped my cheeks with all her might, crying with each
blow, "You nasty thief, will that teach you better manners? That for
your roguery! and that! Oh, you jail bird, I'll teach you!"
How long she would have continued to chastise me I cannot say, but her
husband presently stepped in to protect me, and being thoroughly
winded, she let me go pretty willingly. But when she learned, having
hitherto been under the impression that I had been seized in the act
with the money upon me, that the latter could not be found, her face
turned yellow and she sat down in a chair.
"Have you searched?" she gasped.
"Everywhere," the neighbours answered her.
"He must have thrown it through the window."
They shook their heads.
On that she jumped up, and looked at me with a cold spite in her face
that made me shiver. "Then I will tell you what it is," she said, "he
has given it to that hussy, and she has taken it! But I will have it
out of him; where the money is, and she is, and how he got in! Mr.
D----, when you have done standing there like a gaby, fetch your
stoutest cane; and do you, my friends, lay him across that bed! And if
we do not cut it out of his skin, his name is not Richard Price. I
wish I had the wench here, and I would serve her the same!"
I screamed, and fell on my knees as they laid hands on me; but Mrs.
D---- was a woman without bowels, and the men were complaisant and not
unwilling to see the cruel sport of the usher flogged, and the
schoolmaster disciplined; and it would have gone hard with me, in
spite of my prayers, if the constable had not arrived at that moment,
and requested with dignity to see his prisoner. Introduced to me, he
stared; and, moved I believe by an impulse of pity, said I was young
to hang.
"Ay, but not too good!" Mrs. D---- answered shrilly, her head
trembling with passion. "He and the hussy, that is gone, have robbed
me of eighty guineas in a green bag, as I am prepared to swear!"
"Sixty, Mrs. D----," said her husband, looking a warning at her and
then askance at his neighbours.
"Rot take the man, does it matter to a guinea or two?" she
retorted--but her sallow face flushed a little. "At any rate," she
continued, pressing her thin lips together, and nodding her head
viciously, "sixty or eighty, they have taken them."
It seemed, however, that even to that one of the neighbours had a word
to say. "As to the girl, I am not so sure, Mrs. D----," he struck in
ponderously. "If she is the wench that has been carrying on with the
gentleman at the 'Rose,' she has had other fish to fry. Though I don't
say, mind you, that she has _not_ been in this. Only----"
But Mrs. D---- could restrain herself no longer. "Only! only!
Gentlemen at the 'Rose'!" she cried. "Why, man, are you mad? What do
you think has my maid--though maid she is not, but a dirty drab, and
more is the pity I took her out of charity from the parish--she was
Kitty Higgs's base-born brat as you know--what has she to do with
gentlemen at the 'Rose'?"
"Well, that is not for me to say," the man answered quietly. "Only I
know that for a week or more a wench has been walking with the
gentleman in the roads and so forth, by night as well as by day. I
came on them twice myself hard by here; and though she was dressed
more like a fine madam than a serving girl, I watched her into your
house. And for the rest, Mrs. Harris must know more than I do."
But Mrs. Harris, when Mrs. D---- turned on her in a white rage, could
only cover her head and weep in a corner; as much, I believe, out of
sorrow for me as on her own account. However, the fact that the
good-natured woman had left Jennie pretty much to her own devices
could not be gainsaid; and Mrs. D---- had much to say on it. But when
she talked of sending after the baggage and jailing her, ay, and the
gentleman at the "Rose" too, if he could not pay the money, the
constable pursed up his lips.
"It is to be remembered that he came with His Royal Highness, our
gracious Prince," he said, swelling out his chest and puffing out his
cheeks with importance. "And though it is true he ordered his horses
and went for London last evening--as I know myself, having seen him
go, and seen him before for the matter of that at Hertford Assizes,
for he is a Counsellor--it does not follow that the wench went with
him. Or, if she did, Mrs. D----, ----"
"That she had anything to do with this money," the neighbour who had
spoken before put in.
"Precisely, Mr. Jenkins," the constable answered. "You are a man of
sense. For my part," he continued, looking round a little defiantly,
"I am no Whig, and I am not for meddling with Court gentlemen, and
least of all lawyers. And if you will take my advice, Mr. D----, you
will be satisfied to lay this young jail-bird by the heels; and if he
does not speak before the rope is round his neck, it is not likely
that you will get your money other ways. But, lord," the good man went
on, standing back from me, to view me the better, "he is young to be
such a villain! It is 'broke and entered,' too, and so he will swing
for it." And he took off his hat and wiped his bald head, while he
gazed at me between pity and admiration.
Mrs. D----, who was very far from sharing either of these feelings,
would have had me taken at once before a Justice and committed. But
the constable, partly to prove his importance, and partly, I believe,
to give me a chance of disclosing where the money lay, before it was
too late, would have the house and garden searched, and all the boys
examined; under the impression that I might have had one of these for
my accomplice. Naturally, however, nothing came of this, except the
discovery that I had been out of nights lately; which had scarcely
been made when who should appear on the scene, in an unlucky hour for
me, but the gentleman who had identified me outside the gaming room at
the "Rose." As he had come for the very purpose of laying a complaint
against me, his story destroyed the last scrap of my credit, by
exhibiting me as a secret rake; and this removing all doubt of my
guilt, if any were still entertained even by Mrs. Harris, it was
determined to convey me, dinner over, to Sir Baldwin Winston's, at
Abbot's Stanstead, to be committed; the two Justices who resided in
Ware being at the moment disabled.
All this time, and while my fate was being decided, I listened to one
and another in a dull despair, which deprived me of the power to
defend myself; and from which nothing less than Mrs. D----'s atrocious
proposal to flog me, until I gave up the money, could draw me, and
that only for a moment. Conscious of my guilt, and seized in the act
and on the scene of my crime, I beheld only the near and certain
prospect of punishment; while I had not the temptation to tell all,
and inform against my crafty accomplice, to which a knowledge of her
destination must have exposed me. Besides--and I think a great part of
my apathy was due to this--I still felt the stunning effects of the
blow which her cruel treachery had dealt me. I saw her in her true
light; and as I sat, weeping silently, and seeming to those who
watched me, little moved, I was thinking at least as much of the past
and my love, and her craft, as of the fate that lay before me.
Though this was presently brought vividly before me, and of all
persons by Mrs. Harris. Mrs. D---- of herself would have given me
neither bit nor sup in the house; but the constable insisting that the
King's prisoner must be fed, Mrs. Harris, tearful and shaking, was
allowed to bring me some broken victuals. These set before me, the
good soul, instead of retiring, pottered aimlessly about the room; and
by and by got behind me; on which, or rather a moment later, I felt
something cold and sharp at the nape of my neck and started up.
Bursting into a flood of tears she plumped down on a seat, and I saw
that she had a pair of scissors and a scrap of my hair in her hand.
"Good Lord!" I said.
Doubtless the tone in which I spoke betrayed me, for the constable's
man who was in charge of me laughed brutally. "Gad, if he does not
think she did it out of love!" he cried, speaking to a friend who was
sitting with him. "When all the old dame wants is a charm for the
rheumatics; and she thinks the chance too good to be lost."
Then I remembered that the hair of a hanged man is in that part held
to be sovereign for the rheumatics; and I sat down feeling cold and
faint.