Читать книгу Starvecrow Farm - Stanley John Weyman - Страница 9

Table of Contents

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."

Henrietta wondered, as the woman conducted her along several low-ceiled passages, and up and down odd stairs, and past windows which disclosed the hill rising immediately at the back of the house, what the landlady wanted.

"She is an odious woman!" she thought, with impatience. "How horrid she was to me last night! If ever there was a bully, she is one! And this creature looks not much better!"

Modest Ann, turning her head at the moment, belied the ill opinion by pointing out a step in a dark corner.

"There is a stair here, miss," she said. "Take care."

"Thank you," Henrietta answered in her clear, girlish voice. "Is Mr. Stewart with Mrs.---- What's her name?"

"Mrs. Gilson? No, miss."

And pausing, the woman opened a door, and made way for Henrietta to enter.

At that instant--and strange to say, not before--a dreadful suspicion leapt up in the girl's brain. What if her brother had followed her, and was there? Or worse still, Captain Clyne? What if she were summoned to be confronted with them and to be taken home in shameful durance, after the fashion of a naughty child that had behaved badly and was in disgrace? The fire sprang to her eyes, her cheeks burnt. It was too late to retreat; but her pretty head went up in the air, and her look as she entered spoke flat rebellion. She swept the room with a glance of flame.

However, there was no one to be burned up: no brother, no slighted, abandoned suitor. In the room, a good-sized, pleasant room, looking on the lake, were only Mrs. Gilson, who stood beside the table, which was laid for breakfast, and a strange man. The man was gazing from the window, but he turned abruptly, disclosing a red waistcoat, as her eye fell on him. She looked from one to the other in great surprise, in growing surprise. What did the man there?

"Where is Mr. Stewart?" she asked, her frigid tone expressing her feelings. "Is he not here?"

Mrs. Gilson seemed about to answer, but the man forestalled her.

"No, miss," he said, "he is not."

"Where is he?"

She asked the question with undisguised sharpness.

Mr. Bishop nodded like a man well pleased.

"That is the point, miss," he answered--"precisely. Where is he?"