COUSIN MEETS COUSIN
Nadin and the others had not left her more than ten minutes when
Henrietta heard his voice under the window. She was still flushed and
heated, sore with the things which they had said to her, bruised and
battered by their vulgarity and bluster. Indignation still burned in
her; and astonishment that they could not see the case as she saw it.
The argument in her own mind was clear. They must prove that Walterson
had committed this new crime, they must prove that if she betrayed the
man she would save the child—and she would speak. Or she would speak if
they would undertake to release the man were he not guilty. But short
of that, no. She would not turn informer against him, whom she had
chosen in her folly—except to save life. What could be more clear, what
more fair, what more logical? And was it not monstrous to ask anything
beyond this?
She had wrought herself in truth to an almost hysterical stubbornness
on the point. The romantic bent that had led her to the verge of ruin
still inclined her feelings. Yet when she heard the father’s step
approaching along the passage, she trembled. She gazed in terror at the
door. The prospect of the father’s tears, the father’s supplication,
shook her. She had to say to herself, “I must not tell, I must not! I
must not!” as if the repetition of the words would strengthen her under
the torture of his appeal. And when he entered, in the fear of what he
might say she was before him. She did not look at him, or heed what
message his face conveyed—or she had been frozen into silence. But in a
panic she rushed on the subject.
“I am sorry, oh, I am so sorry!” she cried, tears in her voice. “I
would do it, if I could, I would indeed. But I cannot,” distressfully,
“I must not! And I beg you to spare me your reproaches.”
“I have none to make to you,” he said.
It was his tone, rather than his words, which cut her like a whip.
“None!” she cried. “Ah, but you blame me? I am sure you do.”
“I do not blame you,” he replied in the same cold tone. “My business
here has nothing to do with reproaches or with blame. I give you
fifteen minutes to tell me what you know, and all you know, of the man
Walterson’s whereabouts. That told, I have no more to say to you.”
She looked at him as one thunderstruck.
“And if I do not do that,” she murmured, “within fifteen minutes? If I
do not tell you?”
“You will go to Appleby gaol,” he said, in the same passionless tone.
“To herd with your like, with such women as may be there.” He laid his
watch on the table, beside his whip and glove; and he looked not at
her, but at it.
“And you? You will send me?” she answered.
“I?” he replied slowly. “No, I shall merely undo what I did before. My
coming last time saved you from the fate which your taste for low
company had earned. This time I stand aside and the result will be the
same as if I had never come. There is, let me remind you, a minute
gone.”
She looked at him, her face colourless, but her eyes undaunted. But the
look was wasted, for he looked only at his watch.
“You are come, then,” she said, her voice shaking a little, “not to
reproach me, but to insult me! To outrage me!”
“I have no thought of you,” he answered.
The words, the tone, lashed her in the face. Her nostrils quivered.
“You think only of your child!” she cried.
“That is all,” he answered. And then in the same passionless tone, “Do
not waste time.”
“Do not——”
“Do not waste time!” he repeated. “That is all I have to say to you.”
She stood as one stunned; dazed by his treatment of her; shaken to the
soul by his relentless, pitiless tone, by his thinly veiled hatred.
He who had before been cold, precise and just was become inhuman,
implacable, a stone. Presently, “Three minutes are gone,” he said.
“And if I tell you?” she answered in a voice which, though low,
vibrated with resentment and indignation, “if I tell you what you wish
to know, what then?”
“I shall save the child—I trust. Certainly I shall save him from
further suffering.”
“And what of me?”
“You will escape for this time.”
Her breast heaved with the passion she restrained. Her foot tapped the
floor. Her fingers drummed on the table. Such treatment was not fit
treatment for a dog, much less for a woman, a gentlewoman! And his
injustice! How dared he! How dared he! What had she done to deserve it?
Nothing! No, nothing to deserve this.
Meanwhile he seemed to have eyes only for his watch, laid open on the
table before him. But he noted the signs, and he fancied that she was
about to break down, that she was yielding, that in a moment she would
fall to weeping, perhaps would fall on her knees—and tell him all. A
faint surprise, therefore, pierced his pitiless composure when, after
the lapse of a long minute, she spoke in a tone that was comparatively
calm and decided.
“You have forgotten,” she said slowly, “that I am of your blood! That I
was to be your wife!”
“It was you who forgot that!” he replied.
She had her riposte ready.
“And wisely!” she answered, “and wisely! How wisely you have proved to
me to-day—you,”—with scorn equal to his own—“who are willing to
sacrifice me, a helpless woman, on the mere chance of saving your
child! Who are willing to send me, a woman of your blood, to prison and
to shame, to herd—you have said it yourself—with such vile women as
prisons hold! And that on the mere chance of saving your son! For
shame, Captain Clyne, for shame!”
“You are wasting time,” he answered. “You have eight minutes.”
“You are determined that I shall go?”
“Or speak.”
“Will you not hear,” she asked slowly, “what I have to say on my side?
What reason I have for not speaking? What excuse? What extenuation of
my conduct?”
“No,” he replied. “Your reasons for speaking or not speaking, your
conduct or misconduct, are nothing to me. I am thinking of my child.”
“And not at all of me?”
“No.”
“Yet listen,” she said, with something approaching menace in her tone,
“for you will think of me! You will think of me—presently! When it is
too late, Captain Clyne, you will remember that I stood before you,
that I was alone and helpless, and you would not hear my reasons nor my
excuses. You will remember that I was a girl, abandoned by all, left
alone among strangers and spies, without friend or adviser.”
“I,” he said, coldly interrupting her, “was willing to advise you. But
you took your own path. You know that.”
“I know,” she retorted with sudden passion, “that you were willing to
insult me! That you were willing to set me, because I had committed an
act of folly, as low as the lowest! So low that all men were the same
to me! So low that I might be handed like a carter’s daughter who had
misbehaved herself, to the first man who was willing to cover her
disgrace. That! that was your way of helping me and advising me!”
“In two minutes,” he said in measured accents, “the time will be up!”
He appeared to be quite unmoved by her reproaches. His manner was as
cold, as repellant, as harsh as ever. But he was not so entirely
untouched by her appeal as he wished her to think. For the time,
indeed, his heart was numbed by anxiety, his breast was rendered
insensible by the grip of suspense. But the barbed arrows of her
reproaches stuck and remained. And presently the wounds would smart and
rankle, troubling his conscience, if not his heart. It is possible that
he had already a suspicion of this. If so, it only deepened his rage
and his hostility.
With the same pitiless composure, he repeated:
“In two minutes. There is still time, but no more than time.”
“You have told me that you do not wish to hear my reasons?”
“For silence? I do not.”
“They will not turn you,” her voice shook under the maddening sense of
his injustice, “whatever they are?”
“No,” he answered, “they will not. And having said that I have said all
that I propose to say.”
“You condemn me unheard?”
“I condemn you? No, the law will condemn you, if you are condemned.”
“Then I, too,” she answered, with a beating heart—for indignation
almost choked her—“have said all that I propose to say. All!”
“Think! Think, girl!” he cried.
She was silent.
He closed his watch with a sharp, clicking sound, and put it in his
fob.
“You will not speak?” he said.
“No!”
Then passion, long restrained, long kept under, swept him away. He took
a stride forward, and before she guessed what he would be at, he had
seized her wrist, gripping it cruelly.
“But you shall!—you shall!” he cried. His face full of passion was
close to hers, he pressed her a pace backwards. “You vixen! Speak now!”
he cried. “Speak!”
“Let me go!” she cried.
“Speak or I will force it from you. Where is he?”
“I will never speak!” she panted, struggling with him, and trying to
snatch her arm from him. “I will never speak! You coward! Let me go!”
“Speak or I will break your wrist,” he hissed.
He was hurting her horribly.
But, “Never! Never! Never!” She shrieked the word at him, her face
white with rage and pain, her eyes blazing. “Never, you coward. You
coward! Let me go!”
He let her go then—too late remembering himself. He stepped back.
Breathing hard, she leant against the table, and nursed her bruised
wrist in the other hand. Her face, an instant before white, now flamed
with anger. Never, never since she was a little child had she been so
treated, so handled! Every fibre in her was in revolt. But she did not
speak. She only, rocking herself slightly to and fro, scathed him with
her eyes. The coward! The coward!
And he was as yet too angry—though he had remembered himself and
released her—to feel much shame for what he had done. He was too wrapt
in the boy and his object to think soberly of anything else. He went,
his hand shaking a little, his face disordered by the outbreak, to the
bell and rang it. As he turned again,
“Your ruin be on your own head!” he cried.
And he looked at her, hating her, hating her rebellious bearing.
He saw in her, with her glowing cheeks and eyes bright with fury, the
murderess of his boy. What else, since, if it was not her plan, she
covered it? Since, if it was not her deed, she would not stay it? She
must be one of those feminine monsters, those Brinvilliers, blonde and
innocent to the eye, whom passion degraded to the lowest! Whom a cursed
infatuation made suddenly most base, driving them to excesses and
crimes.
While she, her breast boiling with indignation, her heart bursting with
the sense of bodily outrage, of bodily pain, forgot the anguish he was
suffering. She forgot the provocation that had exasperated him to
madness, that had driven him to violence. She saw in him a cowardly
bully, a man cruel, without shame or feeling. She fully believed now
that he had flogged a seaman to death. Why not, since he had so treated
her? Why not, since it was clear that there was no torture to which he
would not resort, if he dared, to wring from her the secret he desired?
And a torrent of words, a flood of scathing reproaches and fierce
home-truths, rose to her lips. But she repressed them. To complain was
to add to her humiliation, to augment her shame. To protest was to
stoop lower. And strung to the highest pitch of animosity they remained
confronting one another in silence, until the door opened and Justice
Hornyold entered, followed by his clerk. After these Nadin, Bishop, Mr.
Sutton, and two or three more trooped in until the room was half full
of people.
It was clear that they had had their orders below, and knew what to
expect; for all looked grave, and some nervous. Even Hornyold betrayed
by his air, half sheepish and half pompous, that he was not quite
comfortable.
“The young lady has not spoken?” he said.
“No,” Clyne answered, breathing quickly. He could not in a moment
return to his ordinary self. “She refuses to speak.”
“You have laid before her reasons?”
He averted his eyes.
“I have said all I can,” he muttered sullenly. “I have assured myself
that she is privy to this matter, and I withdraw the informal
undertaking which I gave a fortnight ago that she should be forthcoming
if wanted. Unless, therefore, you are satisfied with the landlord’s
bail—but that is for you.”
Mr. Hornyold shook his head.
“With this new charge advanced?” he said. “No, I am afraid not.
Certainly not. But perhaps,” looking at her, “the young lady will still
change her mind. To change the mind”—with a feeble grin—“is a lady’s
privilege.”
“I shall not tell you anything,” Henrietta said with a catch in her
breath. She hid her smarting, tingling wrist behind her. She might have
complained; but not for the world would she have let them know what he
had done to her, what she had suffered.
Mr. Sutton, who was standing in the background, stepped forward.
“Miss Damer,” he said earnestly, “I beg you, I implore you to think.”
“I have thought,” she answered with stubborn anger. “And if I could
help him,” she pointed to Clyne, “if I could help him by lifting my
finger——”
“Oh, dear, dear!” the chaplain cried, appalled by her vehemence. “Don’t
say that! Don’t say that!”
“What shall I say, then?” she answered—still she remembered herself. “I
have told you that I know nothing of the abduction of his child. That
is all I have to say.”
Hornyold shook his sleek head again.
“I am afraid that won’t do,” he said. “What”—consulting Nadin with his
eye—“what do the officers say?”
Nadin laughed curtly.
“Not by no means, it won’t do!” he said. “What she says is slap up
against the evidence, sir, and evidence strong enough to hang a man.
The truth is, your reverence, the young lady has had every chance, and
all said and done we are losing time. And time is more than money! The
sooner she is under lock and key the better.”
“You apply that she be committed?” Hornyold asked slowly.
“I do, sir.”
The Justice looked at Bishop.
“Do you join in the application?” he asked.
The officer nodded, but with evident reluctance.
The clerk, who had taken his seat at the corner of the table and laid
some papers before him, dipped his pen in the inkhorn, which he carried
at his button-hole. He prepared to write. “On the charge of being
accessory?” he said in a low voice. “Before or after, Mr. Nadin?”
“Both,” said Nadin.
“After,” said Bishop.
The clerk looked from one to the other, and then began to write; but
slowly, and as if he wished to leave as long as possible a _locus
penitentiæ_. It was a feeling shared by all except Captain Clyne. Even
the Manchester man, hardened as he was by a rude life in the roughest
of towns, had had jobs more to his taste—and wished it done; while the
feeling of the greater part was one of pity. The girl was so young, her
breeding and refinement were so manifest, her courage so high, she
confronted them so bravely, that they were sensible of something cruel
in their attitude to her; gathered as they were many to one—and that
one a woman with no one of her sex beside her. They recoiled from the
idea of using force to her. And now it was really come to the point of
imprisoning her, those who had a notion what a prison was disliked it
most; fearing not only that she might resist removal and cause a
heart-rending scene, but still more that she had unknown sufferings
before her.
For the prisons of that day were not the prisons of to-day. There was
no separation of one class of offenders from another. There were no
separate cells, there were rarely even separate beds. Girls awaiting
trial were liable to be locked up with the worst women-felons. Nay, the
very warders were often old offenders, who had earned their places by
favour. In small country prisons, conditions were better, but air,
light, space, and cleanliness were woefully lacking. Something might be
done, no doubt, to soften the lot of a prisoner of Henrietta’s class;
but indulgence depended on the whim of the jailor—who at Appleby was a
blacksmith!—and could be withdrawn as easily as it was granted.
Suddenly the clerk looked up over his glasses. “The full name,” he
said, “if you please.”
“Henrietta Mary Damer.” It was Clyne who spoke.
The clerk added the name, and rising from his seat offered the pen to
the magistrate. But Hornyold hesitated. He looked flurried, and
something startled.
“But should not——” he murmured, “ought we not to communicate with her
brother—with—Sir Charles? He must be her guardian!”
“Sir Charles,” Clyne answered, “has repudiated all responsibility. It
would be useless to apply to him. I have seen him. And the matter is a
criminal matter.”
The girl said nothing, but her colour faded suddenly. And in the eyes
of one or two she seemed a more pitiful figure, standing alone and
mute, than before. But for the awe in which they held Clyne, and their
knowledge of his reason for severity, the chaplain and Long Tom Gilson,
who was one of those by the door, would have intervened. As it was,
Hornyold stooped to the table and signed the form—or was signing it
when the clerk spoke.
“One moment, your reverence,” he said in a low voice. “The debtors’
quarters at Appleby, where they’d be sure to put the young lady, are as
good as under water at this time of the year. Kendal’s nearer, she’d be
better there. And you’ve power to say which it shall be.”
“Kendal, then,” Hornyold assented. The name was altered and he signed
the committal.
As he rose from the table, constraint fell on one and all. They
wondered nervously what was to come next; and it was left to Nadin to
put an end to the scene. “Landlord!” he said, turning to the door, “a
chaise for Kendal in ten minutes. And send your servant to go with the
young lady to her room, and get together what she’ll want. You’d best
take her, Bishop.”
Bishop assented in a low tone, and Gilson went out to give the order.
Hornyold said something to Clyne and they talked together in low tones
and with averted faces. Then, still talking, they moved to the door and
went out without looking towards her. The clerk gathered up his papers,
handed one to Bishop, and fastened the others together with a piece of
red tape. That done, he, too, rose and followed the magistrate, making
her an awkward bow as he passed. Mr. Sutton alone remained, and, pale
and excited, fidgeted to and fro; he could not bear to stay, and he
could not bear to leave the girl alone with the officers. Possibly—but
to do him justice this went for little—he might by staying commend
himself to her, he might wipe out the awkward impression made by the
night’s adventure. But Clyne put in his head and called him in a
peremptory tone; and he had to go with a feeble apologetic glance at
her. She was left standing by the table, alone with the officers.
For an instant she looked wildly at the door. Then, “May I go to my
room now?” she asked in a low tone.
“Not alone,” Nadin answered—but civilly, for him. “In a moment the
woman will be here, and you can go with her. It’s not quite regular,
but we’ll stretch a point. But you must not be long, miss! You’ll have
no need,” with a faint grin, “of many frocks, or furbelows, where
you’re going.”