Chapter VI.
PARENTHETICAL—OF THE FAMILY OF VYELL.
Captain Oliver Vyell, as we have seen, set store upon pedigree: and here, as well in compliment to him as to make our story clearer, we will interrupt it with a brief account of his family and descent.
The tomb of Sir Thomas Vyell, second Baronet, at whose house of Carwithiel in Cornwall our Collector spent some years of his boyhood, may yet be seen in the church of that parish, in the family transept. It bears the coat of the Vyells (gules, a fesse raguly argent) with no less than twenty-four quarterings: for an Odo of the name had fought on the winning side at Hastings, and his descendants, settling in the West, had held estates there and been people of importance ever since.
The Wars of the Roses, to be sure, had left them under a cloud, shorn of the most of their wealth and a great part of their lands. Yet they kept themselves afloat (if this riot of metaphor may be pardoned) and their heads moderately high, until Sir William, the first Baronet, by developing certain tin mines on his estate and working them by new processes, set up the family fortunes once more.
His son, Sir Thomas, steadily bettered them. A contemporary narrative describes him as "chief of a very good Cornish family, with a very good estate. His marrying a grand-daughter of the Lord Protector (Oliver) first recommended him to King William, who at the Revolution made him Commissioner of the Excise and some years after Governor of the Post Office. . . . The Queen, by reason of his great capacity and honesty, hath continued him in the office of Postmaster. He is a gentleman of a sweet, easy, affable disposition—a handsome man, of middle stature, towards forty years old." This was written in 1713. Sir Thomas died in 1726, of the smallpox, having issue (by his one wife, who survived him but a few years) seven sons and three daughters.
1. Thomas, the third Baronet: of whom anon.
2. William, who became a Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford, a page to Queen Mary, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. A memoir of the time preserves him for us as "a tall sanguineman, with a merry eye and talkative in his cups." He married a Walpole, but his children died young.
3. John, who, going on a diplomatic mission to Hamburg, took a fever and died there, unmarried.
4. Henry, the father of our Collector. He married Jane, second daughter of the Marquis of Lomond; increased his wealth in Bengal as governor of the East India Company's Factory, and while yet increasing it, died at Calcutta in 1728. His children were two sons, Oliver and Henry, with both of whom our story deals.
5. Algernon, who went to Jesus College, Cambridge, became a Fellow there, practised severe parsimony, and dying unmarried in 1742, had his eyes closed by his college gyp and weighted with two penny pieces—the only coins found in his breeches pocket. He left his very considerable savings to young Oliver, whom he had never seen.
6. Frederick Penwarne, barrister-at-law. We shall have something to do
with him.
7. Roger, who traded at Calcutta and making an expedition to the
Persian Gulf, was killed there in a chance affray with some Arabs.
8. Anne, who married Sackville.
9. Frances Elizabeth, who married Pelham.
10. Arabella, whose affections went astray upon a young Cornish yeoman. Her family interfering, the match was broken off and she died unmarried.
Oliver and Henry, born at Calcutta, were for their health's sake sent home together—he one aged four, the other three—to be nurtured at Carwithiel. Here under the care of their grandparents, Sir Thomas and Lady Vyell (the Protector's grand-daughter), they received instruction at the hands—often very literally at the hands—of the Rev. Isaac Toplady, Curate in Charge of Carwithiel, a dry scholar, a wet fly-fisher, and something of a toad-eater. They had for sole playmate and companion their Cousin Diana, or Di, the seven-year-old daughter of their eldest uncle, Thomas, heir to the estates and the baronetcy.
This Thomas—a dry, peevish man, averse from country pursuits, penurious and incurably suspicious of all his fellow-men—now occupied after a fashion and with fair diligence that place in public affairs from which his father had, on approach of age, withdrawn. He sat in Parliament for the family borough of St. Michael, and by family influence had risen to be a Lord of the Admiralty. He had married Lady Caroline Pett, a daughter of the first Earl of Portlemouth, and the pair kept house in Arlington Street, where during the session they entertained with a frugality against which Lady Caroline fought in vain. They were known (and she was aware of it) as "Pett and Petty," and her life was embittered by the discovery, made too late, that her husband was in every sense a mean man, who would never rise and never understand why not, while he nursed an irrational grudge against her for having presented him with a daughter and then ceased from child-bearing.
Unless she repented and procured him a male heir, the baronetcy would come to him only to pass at his death to young Oliver; and the couple, who spent all the Parliamentary recesses at Carwithiel because Mr. Thomas found it cheap, bore no goodwill to that young gentleman. He en revanche supplied them with abundant food for censure, being wilful from the first, and given in those early years to consorting with stable-boys and picking up their manners and modes of speech. The uncle and aunt alleged—and indeed it was obvious—that the unruly boys passed on the infection to Miss Diana. Miss Diana never accompanied her parents to London, but had grown up from the first at Carwithiel—again because Mr. Thomas found it cheap.
In this atmosphere of stable slang, surrounded by a sort of protective outer aura in their grandparents' godliness, the three children grew up: mischievous indeed and without rein, but by no means vicious. Their first separation came in 1726 when Master Oliver, now rising ten, left for London, to be entered at Westminster School. Harry was to follow him; and did, in a twelve-month's time; but just before this happened, in Oliver's summer holidays. Sir Thomas took the smallpox and died and went to his tomb in the Carwithiel transept. Harry took it too; but pulled through, not much disfigured. Oliver and Diana escaped.
The boys, to whom their grandfather—so far as they regarded him at all—had mainly presented himself as a benevolent old proser, were surprised to find that they sincerely regretted him; and the events of the next few weeks threw up his merits (now that the time was past for rewarding them) into a sharp light which memory overarched with a halo. Tenderly into that halo dissolved his trivial faults—his trick, for example, of snoring between the courses at dinner, or of awaking and pulling his fingers till they cracked with a distressing sound. These and other small frailties were forgotten as the new Sir Thomas and his spouse took possession and proceeded in a few weeks to turn the place inside out, dismissing five of the stable-boys, cutting down the garden staff by one-third, and carrying havoc into the housekeeper's apartments, the dairy, the still-room.
In these dismissals I have no doubt that Sir Thomas and Lady Caroline hit (as justice is done in this world) upon the chief blackguards. But the two boys, asking one another why So-and-so had been marked down while This-other had been spared, and observing that the So-and-so's included an overbalancing number of their own cronies, found malice in the discrimination, and a malice directed with intent upon themselves.
Young Oliver, as soon as Harry was convalescent, discussed this vehemently with him. Harry, weak with illness, took it passively. He was destined for the Navy. To him already the sea meant everything: as a child of three, on his voyage home in the Mogul East Indiaman, he had caught the infection of it; on it, as offering the only career fit for a grown man, his young thoughts brooded, and these annoyances were to him but as chimney-pots and pantiles falling about the heads of folks ashore. But he agreed that Di's conduct needed explaining. She had taken a demure turn, and was not remonstrating with her parents as she ought—not playing fair, in short. "It must be pretty difficult for her," said Harry. "I don't see," said Oliver.
The two boys went back to Westminster together. They spent the Christmas holidays with their Uncle Frederick, the barrister, who practised very little at the law either in court or in chambers, hut dwelt somewhat luxuriously in the Inner Temple and lived the life of a man-about-town. Their summer vacation was to be spent at Carwithiel; but, as it happened, they were not to see Carwithiel again, for before summer came news of their father's death at Calcutta. He had amassed a fortune which, translated out of rupees, amounted to 400,000 pounds. To his widow, in addition to her jointure, he left a life interest of a thousand pounds per annum; a sum of 20,000 pounds was set aside for Harry, to accumulate until his twenty-first birthday; while the magnificent residue in like manner accumulated for young Oliver, the heir.
Lady Jane returned to England, to live in decent affluence at Bath; and at Bath, of course, Oliver and Harry spent their subsequent holidays, while their Uncle Frederick continued by occasional dinners and gifts of pocket money, by outings down the river to Greenwich, by seats at the theatre or at state shows and pageants, to mitigate the rigours of school. Had it occurred to Oliver Vyell in later life to set down his "Reflections" in the style of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he might have begun them in some such words as these: "From my mother, Lady Jane Vyell, I learned to be proud of good birth, to esteem myself a gentleman, and to regulate my actions by a code proper to my station in life. This code she reconciled with the Gospels, and indeed, she rested it on the rock of Holy Scripture. From my Uncle Frederick I learned that self-interest was the key of life; that the teachings of the priest-hood were more or less conscious humbug; that all men could be bought; that their god was vanity, and the Great Revolution the noblest event in English history. . . ."
The sane infusion of Father Neptune in Master Harry's blood preserved him from these doctrines, and before long indeed removed him out of the way of hearing them. Soon after his fifteenth birthday he sailed to learn his profession shipping (by a fiction of the service), as "cabin boy" under his mother's brother. Lord Robert Soules, then commanding the Merope frigate.
Oliver proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and thence (without waiting for a degree) to make the Grand Tour; in the course of which and in company with his cousin, Dick Pelham, and a Mr. Batty Langton, a Christ Church friend, he visited Florence, Rome, Naples, Athens, and Constantinople, returning through Rome again and by way of Venice, Switzerland, Paris. He reached home to find that his mother, who believed in keeping young men employed, had procured him a cornetcy in Lord Lomond's Troop of Horse. He was now in possession of an ample fortune. He would certainly succeed to the baronetcy, and to the Vyell acres, which were mostly entailed.
But the grave itself could not give lessons in greed to a true Whig family of that period. Lady Jane had it in her blood, every tradition of it. Her son (though within a few months he rose to command of a troop) detested all military routine save active service. He despised the triumphs of the Senate. To keep him out of mischief—or, rather, as you shall hear, to extricate him from it—the good dame made application to the Duke of Newcastle; and so in the year 1737, at the age of twenty-one, Captain Oliver Vyell was appointed to the lucrative post of Collector to the port of Boston.
He had held it, now, for close upon seven years.
Chapter VII.
A SABBATH-BREAKER.
Now, in his twenty-eighth year, Oliver Vyell, handsome of face, standing six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron constitution, might fairly be called a sensual man, but not fairly a sensualist. The distinction lay in his manliness. He was a man, every inch of him.
He enjoyed hard riding even more than hard gaming, and far more than hard drinking; courted fatigue as a form of bodily indulgence; would tramp from twenty to thirty miles in any weather on a chance of sport; loved the bite of the wind, the shock of cold water; and was a bold swimmer in a generation that shunned the exercise.
He awoke next morning to find the sun shining in on his window after a boisterous night. He looked at his watch and rang a small bell that stood on the table by his bed. Within ten seconds Manasseh appeared, and was commanded first to draw up the blind and then, though the hour was early, to bring shaving-water with all speed.
While the negro went on his errand Captain Vyell arose, slipped on his dressing-gown, and strolled to the window. It looked upon the ocean, over a clean stretch of beach that ran north-west, starting from the pier-head of the harbour and fringing the town's outskirt. Half a dozen houses formed this outskirt or suburb—decent weather-boarded houses standing in their own gardens along a curved cliff overlooking the beach. The beach was of hardest sand, and just beneath the Collector's window so level that it served for a second bowling-green, or ten-pin-alley. Thus it ran out for some twenty rods and then shelved abruptly. Captain Vyell, who had an eye for such phenomena, judged that this bank had formed itself quite recently, since the building of the pier.
A heavy sea was running, and evidently with a strong undertow. When Manasseh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he would bathe before taking his chocolate.
"Yo' Hon'ah will bathe befor' shaving?"
"You d——d fool, did you ever know me do _any_thing before shaving?"
Manasseh chose a razor, stropped it, and worked the shaving soap into a lather.
"Beggin' yo' Hon'ah's pardon," said he, "it bein' de Lawd's Day, an' these Port Nassau people dam' ig'orant—"
"Hand me the peignoir," commanded his master sharply.
He sat, and was shaved. Then, having sponged his chin, he ordered Manasseh to lay out his bathing-dress, retire, find a back way to the beach and, having opened all doors, attend him below. He indued himself in his bathing-dress very deliberately, standing up for a minute stark naked in the sunshine flooding through the open window—a splendid figure, foretasting battle with the surf.
Then, having drawn on his bathing-dress and thrust his feet into sand-shoes, he cast his dressing-gown again over him and went down the stairs at a run. The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro awaited him in the right attitude of "attention." To him he tossed his wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles have run to be clasped by the Sea-Goddess his mother.
Through the shallow wavelets he ran, stepping high and delicately splashing merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more than head high, hissing along its ridge. There, as it overarched him, he launched his body forward and shot through the transparent green, emerging beyond the white smother with a thrill and a laugh of sheer physical delight. Thrice he repeated this,—
"Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. . ."
passed the fourth wave, gained deep water, and thrust out to sea with a steady breast-stroke, his eyes all the while on the great embracing flood which, stretch as it might from here to Europe, for the moment he commanded.
Manasseh watched him from the beach. From the cliff above two scandalised householders calling to one another across their gardens' boundary pointed seaward and summoned their families to the windows to note the reprobate swimmer and a Sabbath profaned.
The eyes of a long-shore population are ever on the sea from which comes their livelihood, and nothing on the sea escapes them long. The Collector's head by this time was but a speck bobbing on the waves, but ere he turned back for shore maybe two hundred of Port Nassau's population were watching, from various points. The Port Nassauers, whatever their individual frailties, were sternly religious—nine-tenths of them from conviction or habit, the rest in self-defence—and Sabbatarians to a man. The sight of that heathen slave, Manasseh, waiting on the beach with a bath-gown over his arm, incensed them to fury. Growls were uttered, here and there, that if the authorities knew their business this law-breaker—for Sabbath-breaking was an indictable offence—should be seized on landing, haled naked to justice, and clapped in the town stocks; but fortunately this indignation had no concert and found, for the moment, no leader.
The Collector, having swum out more than half a mile, turned and sped back, using a sharp side-stroke now with a curving arm that cleft the ridges like the fin of a fish. His feet touched earth, and he ran up through the pursuing breakers—a fleet-footed Achilles again, glittering from the bath. Manasseh hurried down to throw his mantle over the godlike man.
"Towel me here," was the panting command. And, lo! slipping off his bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea. Captain Vyell was towelled under the eyes of Port Nassau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body, after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Manasseh to wash out his locks in fresh water (the Collector had a fine head of hair, of a waved brown, and detested a wig), to anoint them, and tie them behind with a fresh black ribbon. This done, he took his clothes one by one as Manasseh handed them, and arrayed himself, humming the while an air from Opera, and thus unconsciously committing a second offence against the Sabbath.
He descended to find Dicky already seated at table, awaiting him. Dicky had slept like a top in spite of the strange bed; and awaking soon after daybreak, had lain cosily listening to the boom of the sea. To him this holiday was a glorious interlude in the regime of Miss Quiney. His handsome father did not kiss him, but merely patted him on the shoulder as he passed to his chair; and to Dick (though he would have liked a kiss) it seemed just the right manly thing to do.
They talked merrily while Manasseh brought in the breakfast dishes—for Master Dicky bread-and-milk followed by a simple steak of cod; a bewildering succession of chowder, omelet, devilled kidneys, cold ham, game pie, and fruit for the Collector, who professed himself keen-set as a hunter, and washed down the viands with a tankard of cider. He described his bathe, and promised Dicky that he should have his first swimming lessons next summer. "I must talk about you to your Uncle Harry. Craze for the sea? At your age if he saw a puddle of water he must stick his toes in it. He's cruising just now, off South Carolina, keeping a look-out for guarda-costas. He'll render an account of them, you may be sure. He writes that he may be coming up Boston way any time now. Oh, I can swim, but for diving you should see your Uncle Harry— off the yard-arm—body taut as a whip—nothing like it in any of the old Greeks' statues. Plenty of talk about bathing; but diving? No. In the east, must go south to the Persian Gulf to see diving. The god Hermes descending on Ogygia—if you could imagine that, you had Uncle Harry— the shoot outwards, the delicate curve to a straight slant, heels rising above rigid body while you counted, begad! holding your breath. Then the plumb drop, like a gannet's—"
Dicky listened, glorious vistas opening before him. With the fruit Manasseh brought coffee; and still the boy sat entranced while his father chatted, glowing with exercise and enjoying a breakfast at every point excellent.
It was in merest thoughtlessness, no doubt, that having arranged for Dicky's morning walk, and after smoking a tobacco leaf rolled with an art of which Manasseh possessed the secret, the Collector so timed his message to the stables that his groom brought the horse Bayard around to the Inn door just as the Sabbath bells began tolling for divine worship. For as a sceptic he was careless rather than militant; ridiculing religion only in his own set, and when occasion arose, and then without fanaticism. For such piety as his mother's he had even a tolerant respect; and in any event had too much breeding to affront of set purpose the godly townsfolk of Port Nassau. At the first note of the bells he frowned and blamed himself for not having started earlier. But he had already made appointment by letter to meet the Surveyor and the Assistant Surveyor at noon on the headland, to measure out and discuss the site of the proposed fortification; and he was a punctilious man in observing engagements.
It may be asked how, if civil to other men's scruples, he had come to make such an appointment for the Sabbath. He had answered this and (as he hoped) with suitable apologies in his letter to the surveyor, Mr. Wapshott: explaining that as His Majesty's business was bringing him to Port Nassau, so it obliged him to be back at Boston by such-and-such a date. He was personally unacquainted with this Mr. Wapshott, who had omitted the courtesy of calling upon him at the Bowling Green, and whom by consequence he was inclined to set down as a person of defective manners. But Mr. Wapshott was, after all, in the King's service and would understand its exigencies.
He mounted therefore and rode up the street. The roadway was deserted; but along the side-walk, sober families, marching by twos and threes, turned their heads at the sound of Bayard's hoofs on the cobbles. The Collector set his face and passed them with a grave look, as of one absorbed in affairs of moment. Nevertheless, coming to the whitewashed Church where the streams of worshippers converged and choking the porchway overflowed upon the street, he added the courtesy of doffing his hat as he rode by. He did this still with a set face, looking straight between Bayard's ears; but with the tail of his eye caught one glimpse of a little comedy which puzzled and amused him.
A small rotund, red-gilled man, in bearing and aspect not unlike a turkey-cock, was mounting the steps of the portico. Behind this personage sailed an ample lady of middle age, with a bevy of younger damsels—his spouse and daughters doubtless. Suddenly—and as if, at sight of the Collector, a whisper passed among them—the middle-aged lady shot out a hand, arrested her husband by the coat-tail and drew him down a step, while the daughters ranged themselves in semicircle around him, spreading their skirts and together effacing him from view, much as a hen covers her offspring.
The Collector laughed inwardly as he replaced his hat, and rode on speculating what this bit of by-play might mean. But it had passed out of his thoughts before he came to the outskirts of the town.
Chapter VIII.
ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.
The road—the same by which he had arrived last night—mounted all the way and led across the neck of the headland. His business, however, lay out upon the headland itself and almost at its extremest verge; and a mile above the town he struck off to the left where a bridle-path climbed by a long slant to the ridge. Half an hour's easy riding brought him to the top of the ascent, whence he looked down on the long beach he had travelled yesterday. The sea lay spread on three sides of him. Its salt breeze played on his face; and the bay horse, feeling the tickle of it in his nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny. "Good, old boy—is it not?" asked the Collector, patting his neck. "Suppose we try a breather of it?"
The chine of the headland—of turf, short-cropped by the unceasing wind—stretched smooth as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with a gentle dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle. The Collector ran his eye along it in search of the two men he had come to meet, but could spy neither of them.
"Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe," he decided. "We don't mind it, hey? Come along, lad—here's wine for heroes!"
He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at a gallop—a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood; and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition—a Centaur, enlarged upon the skyline.
Man and horse at full stretch of the gallop were launching down the dip of the hollow—the wind singing past on the top note of exhilaration— when the bay, too well trained to shy, faltered a moment and broke his stride, as a figure started up from the lee-side of the ridge.
The Collector sailing past and throwing a glance over his shoulder, saw the figure and lifted a hand. In another ten strides he reined up Bayard, turned, and came back at a walk.
He confronted a lean, narrow-chested young man, black-suited, pale of face, with watery eyes, straw-coloured eyelashes and an underbred smile that twitched between timidity and assurance.
"Ah?" queried the Collector, eyeing him and disliking him at sight.
"Are you "—doubtfully—"by any chance Mr. Wapshott, the Surveyor?"
"No such luck," answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhand attempt at familiarity. "I'm his Assistant—name of Banner—Wapshott's unwell."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Mr.—Mr. Wapshott—sends word that he's unwell." Under the Collector's eye the youth suddenly shifted his manner and became respectful.
"I beg your pardon?" the Collector repeated slowly. "He 'sends word,' do you say? I had not the honour at my Inn—from which I have ridden straight—to be notified of Mr. Wapshott's indisposition."
Mr. Banner attempted a weak grin and harked back again to familiarity.
"No, I guess not. The fact is—"
"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"
"Oh, come! Why?" But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.
"Thank you. You were saying?"
"Well, I guess, between you and me"—Mr. Banner's hands were slipping to his pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palm nonchalantly on either hip—"the old man was a bit too God-fearing to sign to it."
"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact, unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"
"You've a downright way of putting it—er—sir" Mr. Banner confessed; "but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder. You see, the old—the Surveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."
The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane. Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him. "Stay," he said. "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, but may I attempt to describe him to you? He is, perhaps, a gentleman of somewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably red between the ear and the neck-stock?"
"That hits him."
"—with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, taller than their parents and not precisely in their first bloom. I speak," added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of the world."
"You've seen him anyhow," Mr. Banner nodded. "That's Wapshott."
"I saw him entering his place of worship; and I note that he thinks what you call the Lord's Day well worth keeping at the cost of a falsehood. May I ask, Mr.—" The Collector hesitated.
"Banner."
"Ah, yes—pardon me! May I ask, Mr. Banner, how it comes that you have a nicer sense than your superior of what is due to His Majesty's Service?"
Mr. Banner laughed uneasily. "Well, you mightn't guess it from my looks," he answered with an attempt to ingratiate himself by way of self-deprecation, "but I am pretty good at working out levels. I really am."
"That was not my point, though I shall test you on it presently.
You are, it appears, a somewhat less rigid Sabbatarian than Mr.
Wapshott?"
Hereupon Mr. Banner became cryptic. "You needn't fear about that," he answered. "I have what they call a dispensation; and until you startled me, I was up here keeping the Lord's Day as well as the best of 'em. Better, perhaps."
"We will get to business," said the Collector. "Follow me, please."
He wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Banner walking at his stirrup, rode slowly out to the end of the headland and as slowly back. The Collector asked a question now and then and to every question the young man responded pat. He was no fool. It soon appeared that he had studied the trajectory of guns, that he had views—and sound ones—on coast defences, and that by some study of the subject he had come, a while ago, to a conclusion the Collector took but a few minutes to endorse; that to build a fort on this headland would be waste of public money.
Professionally, Mr. Banner was tolerable. The Collector, consulting with him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing twang of his accent. He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape, calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there was borne to the Collector's ears the distant crack of a shot-gun.
At the sound of it he glanced up, in time to see Mr. Banner drop the other end of the tape and run. Almost willy-nilly he followed, vaguely wondering if there had happened some accident that called for aid.
Mr. Banner, when the Collector overtook him, had come to a halt overlooking the long beach, and pointed to a figure—a speck almost—for it was distant more than a mile.
"That Josselin girl!" panted Mr. Banner. "I call you to witness!"
The Collector unstrapped his field-glass, which he carried in a bandolier, adjusted it, and through it scanned the beach. Yes, in the distant figure he recognised Ruth Josselin. She carried a gun—or rather, stood with the gun grounded and her hands folded, resting on its muzzle—and appeared to be watching the edge of the breakers, perhaps waiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.
"See her, do you? I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at his elbow.
"Why, what is the matter?"
"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.
"Ah!"
"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.
Bathin', f'r instance."
"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively. "You honoured me with your observation this morning?"
Mr. Banner grinned. "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin' you. Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!—but I guess the magistrates were lookin' the other way. They allowed, no doubt, that even a Sabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"
The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.
"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"
"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."
Still the Collector smiled. "I am trying to picture it," said he, after a pause. "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in the stocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"
"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckled. "That, or the pillory."
"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau." The Collector frowned, upon a sudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr. Banner's unpleasant face. "By the way, you told me just now that you were here upon some sort of a dispensation. Forgive me if I do you wrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon this girl?"
"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."
"Who is Shadbolt?"
"The Town Beadle. He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."
Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.
"It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."
"So that is why you called me to witness? Well, Mr. Banner, I have a horsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your suggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?—and, if you please, in silence. Your presence is distasteful to me."
They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which—for they both enjoyed it—they were soon immersed. It may have been, too, that the wind had shifted. At any rate they missed to hear, ten minutes later, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainter than the first.
Chapter IX.
THE SCOURGE.
Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey. In the road-way beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard's bridle.
The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip tucked under his arm, came up the pebbled pathway, drawing on his gauntleted gloves. Dicky trotted beside him. Manasseh followed in attendance. Behind them in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded, like a piece of clockwork gradually running down.
"Hey!" The Collector, as he reached the gate, lifted his chin sharply— threw up his head as a finely bred animal scents battle or danger. "What's this? A riot, up the street?"
The grooms could not tell him, for the sound had reached their ears but a second or two before the question; a dull confused murmur out of which, as it increased to a clamour and drew nearer, sharper outcries detached themselves, and the shrill voices of women. A procession had turned the corner of the head of the avenue—a booing, howling rabble.
The Collector stepped to his horse's rein, flung himself into saddle, and rode forward at a foot's pace to meet the tumult.
Suddenly his hand tightened on the rein, and Bayard came to a halt; but his master did not perceive this. The hand's movement had been nervous, involuntary. He sat erect—stood, rather, from the stirrup—his nostril dilated, his brain scarcely believing what his eyes saw.
"The swine!" he said slowly, to himself. His teeth were shut and the words inaudible. "The swine!" he repeated.
Men have done, in the name of religion and not so long ago—indeed are perhaps doing now and daily—deeds so vile that mere decency cannot face describing them. It is a question if mere decency (by which I mean the good instinct of civilised man) will not in the end purge faith clean of religion; if, while men dispute and hate and inflict cruelty for religion, they are not all the while outgrowing it. Libraries, for example, are written to prove that unbaptized infants come out of darkness to draw a fleeting breath or two and pass to hell-fire; the dispute occupies men for generations—and lo! one day the world finds it has no use for any such question. Time—no thanks to the theologians— has educated it, and this thing at any rate it would no longer believe if it could, as it certainly cannot. Faith never yet has burnt man or woman at the stake. Religion has burnt its tens of thousands.
Behind the first two or three ranks of the mob—an exultant mob of grown men, grown women, and (worst of all) little children—plodded a grey horse, drawing a cart. Behind the cart, bound to it, with a thong tight about her fire-scorched wrists—But no; it is not to be written.
They had stripped her to the waist, and then for decency—their decency!—had thrown a jacket of coarse sacking over her, lacing it loosely in front with pack-thread. But, because their work required it, this garment had been gathered up into a rope at the neck, whence it dangled in folds over her young breast.
She walked with wide eyes, uttering no sound. She alone of that crowd uttered no sound. A brute with a bandaged jaw walked close behind her. Oliver Vyell saw his forearm swing up—saw the scourge whirl in his fist—met the girl's eyes. . . . She, meeting his, let escape the first and last cry she uttered that day. He could have sworn that her face was scarlet; but no, he was wrong; while he looked he saw his mistake-she was white as death. Then with that one pitiful cry she sank among the close-pressing crowd; but her hands, by the cord's constraint, still lifted themselves as might a drowning swimmer's; and the grey horse—the one other innocent creature in that procession—plodded forward, dragging her now senseless body at the cart's tail.
"You swine!"
It does a man good sometimes to get in his blow. It did Oliver Vyell good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face; to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in its fore-teeth.
"Stop the horse, some one!" he commanded, as the Beadle reeled back.
"She has fainted." He added, "The first man that interferes, I shoot."
The crowd growled. He turned on the nearest mutterer—"Your knife!" The fellow handed it; so promptly, he might have been holding it ready to proffer. The Collector stooped and cut the thongs. This done, he stood up and saw the Beadle advancing again, snarling through the bloody gap in his mouth.
"You had best take that man away," said the Collector quietly, pulling out his small pistol. "If you don't, I am going to kill him." They heard and saw that he meant it. He added in the same tone, "I am going to take all responsibility for this. Will you make way, please?"
His first intention was to lift the body lying unconscious in the roadway, carry it to the coach and drive out of Port Nassau with it, defying the law to interfere. For the moment he "saw red," as we say nowadays, and was quite capable of shooting down, or bidding his servants shoot down, any man who offered to hinder. It is even possible that had he acted straightway upon the impulse, he might, with his momentary mastery of the mob, have won clean away; possible, but by no means likely, for already a couple of constables were pushing forward to support the Beadle, and half a dozen broad-shouldered fellows—haters of "prerogative"—had recovered themselves and were ranging up to support the law. Had he noted this, it would not have daunted him. What he noted, and what gave him pause, was the girl's white back at his feet, upturning its hideous weals. He stooped to lift her, and drew back, shivering delicately at the thought of hurting the torn flesh in his arms—a vain scruple, since she had passed for the moment beyond pain. He picked up the scourge, and stood erect again, crushing it into his pocket.
"Will you make way, please," he ordered, "while I fetch a cover to hide your blasted handiwork?"
He strode through them, and they fell back to give him passage. He walked straight to the coach, pulled the door open, and, in the act of dragging forth a rug, caught sight of Dicky's small, scared face.
"Oh papa, what has happened?"
"An accident, child. Jump inside; I will explain by-and-by."
"Begging your Honour's pardon"—a heavy-featured fellow, who had followed the Collector to the coach, put out a hand and touched the child's shoulder—"I don't hold in whipping maidens, and if it's a fight I'm with you. But you can't carry her out of it, the way you're meaning. They've seen blood, same as yourself. This child of yours—he stands as much chance to be hurt as any, if you push it. Your Honour'll have to find some other way."
The Collector glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the man spoke truth.
"Dicky," he said easily, but in a voice the child durst not disobey, "there has been an accident. Go you down and amuse yourself on the sands till Manasseh calls you."
He walked back coolly, carrying the rug on his arm.
"Where was she to be taken?" he asked.
"To the stocks!" answered a voice or two. "To the Court-house!" said others.
"It's the same thing," said the heavy-browed man, at the Collector's elbow. "The stocks are just across the square from the Court-house. You'll find the magistrates there; they're the ones to face. They took her case first this morning, and this is the first part of her sentence."
Oliver Vyell walked back to the crowd. It was—a glance assured him— more hostile than before; had recovered from its surprise, and was menacing. But it gave way again before him.
He called on them to give more room. He stooped and, spreading the rug over the girl's body, lifted and laid her in the straw of the cart. A constable would have interfered. The Collector swung round on him.
"You are taking her back to the Court-house? Well, I have business there too. Where is your Court-house?"
The constable pointed.
"Up the road? I am obliged to you. Drive on, if you please."
Chapter X.
THE BENCH.
The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples. To-day—for the fall of the leaf was at hand—these maples flamed with hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the ground about the benches disposed in the shade—pleasant seats to which, of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives—ancient solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.
These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the square, before the iron-studded door of the Jail. The same hand, may be, that had blackened over the Jail's weather-boarded front with a coat of tar, had with equal propriety whitewashed the facade of the Court-house; an immaculate building, set in the cool shade, its straight-lined front broken only by a recessed balcony, whence, as occasion arose, Mr. George Bellingham, Chief Magistrate, delivered the text of a proclamation, royal or provincial, or declared the poll when the people of Port Nassau chose their Selectmen.
This morning Mr. Bellingham held session within, in the long, airy Court-room, and dispensed justice with the help of three fellow-magistrates—Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend Mr. Wapshott. They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the Justices' Clerk to advise them. On the wall behind and above their heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect that there is shame in evil-thinking, and another:—
CAR II.
FID DEF.
distributed among the four corners of the panel, with the date 1660 below. This had been erected (actually in 1664, but the artist had received instructions to antedate it) when the good people of Massachusetts after some demur rejoiced in the Restoration and accepted King Charles II. as defender of their Faith.
The four magistrates had dealt (as we know) with a case of Sabbath-breaking; had inflicted various terms of imprisonment on two drunkards and a beggar-woman; had discharged for lack of evidence (but with admonition) a youth accused of profane swearing; and were now working through a list of commoner and more venial offences, such as cheating by the use of false weights.
These four grave gentlemen looked up in slightly shocked deprecation; for the Collector entered without taking account of the constable at the door, save to thrust him aside. The Clerk called "Silence in the Court!" mechanically, and a deputy-beadle at his elbow as mechanically repeated it.
"Your Worships"—the Collector, hat in hand advanced to the table and bowed—"will forgive an interruption which only its urgency can excuse."
"Ah! Captain Vyell, I believe?" Mr. Bellingham arose from his high-backed throne of carved oak, bowed, and extended a hand across the table. "I had heard that you were honouring Port Nassau with a visit; but understanding from our friend Mr. Wapshott that the visit was—er— not official—that, in fact, it was connected with government business not—er—to be divulged, I forbore to do myself the pleasure—" Mr. Bellingham had a courtly manner and a courtly presence. He was a tallish man, somewhat thin in the face and forehead, of classical features, and a sanguine complexion. He came of a family highly distinguished in the history of Massachusetts; but he was in fact a weak man, though he concealed this by some inherited aptitude for public business and a well-trained committee manner.
"I thank you." The Collector shook the preferred hand and bowed again. "You will pardon my abruptness? A girl has fainted outside here, in the street—"
Mr. Bellingham's well-shaped brows arched themselves a trifle higher.
"Indeed?" he murmured, at a loss.
"A young girl who—as I understand—was suffering public punishment under sentence of yours."
"Yes?" Mr. Bellingham's smile grew vaguer, and his two hands touched finger-tips in front of his magisterial stomach—an adequate stomach but well on the right side of grossness. He glanced at his fellow-magistrates right and left. "It—er—-sometimes happens," he suggested.
"I dare say." Captain Vyell took him up. "But she has fainted under the punishment. She has passed the limit of her powers, poor child; and they tell me that what she has endured is to be followed, and at once, by five hours in the stocks. Gentlemen, I repeat I am quite well aware that this is most irregular—you may call it indecent; but I saw the poor creature fall, and, as it happens, I know something that might have softened you before you passed sentence."
Here the Clerk interposed, stiffening the Chief Magistrate, who wore a smile of embarrassed politeness.
"As His Honour—as Captain Vyell—suggests, your Worships, this is quite irregular."
"To be sure—to be sure—of course," hemm'd Mr. Bellingham. "We can only overlook that, when appealed to by a person of your distinction;" here he inclined himself gently. "Still, you will understand, a sentence is a sentence. As for a temporary faintness, that is by no means outside our experience. Our Beadle—Shadbolt—invariably manages to revive them sufficiently to endure—er—the rest."
I'll be shot if he will this time, thought the Collector grimly, with a glance down at a smear across the knuckle of his right-hand glove. The sight of it cheered him and steadied his temper. "Possibly," said he aloud. "But your worships may not be aware—and as merciful men may be glad to hear—that this poor creature's offence against the Sabbath was committed under stress. Her mother and grandfather have starved this week through, as I happen to know."
"That may or may not be," put in Mr. Trask—a dry-complexioned, stubborn, malignant-looking man, seated next on the Chairman's right. "But the girl—if you mean Ruth Josselin—has not been scourged for Sabbath-breaking. For that she will sit in the stocks—our invariable sentence for first offenders in this respect." From under his down-drawn brows Mr. Trask eyed the Collector malevolently. "Ruth Josselin," he continued, "has suffered the scourge for having resisted Beadle Shadbolt in the discharge of his duty, and for unlawful wounding."
"Excuse me," put in Mr. Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's left. Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue. He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear. "Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe? I have it noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet." He glanced at the Clerk, who nodded for confirmation.
"It didn't matter," Mr. Trask snapped brutally. "She got it, just the same."
"Oh, quite so!" Mr. Somershall took his hand from his ear and nodded, satisfied with having made his point.
"Wounding?" echoed the Collector, addressing the Chairman. "To be frank with you, sir, I had not heard of this—though it scarcely affects my plea."
Mr. Bellingham smiled indulgently. "Say no more, Captain Vyell—pray say no more! This is not the first time an inclination to deem us severe has been corrected by a fuller acquaintance with the facts. . . . Yes, yes—chivalrous feeling—I quite understand; but you see—" He concluded his sentence with a gentle wave of the hand. "You will be glad to hear, since you take an interest in the girl, that Providence overruled her aim and Shadbolt escaped with a mere graze of the jaw—so slight, indeed, that, taking a merciful view, we decided not to consider it an actual wound, and convicted her only of the attempt. By the way, Mr. Leemy, where is the weapon?"
The Clerk produced it from his bag and laid it on the table.
Captain Vyell drew a sharp breath.
"It is my pistol."
"Eh?"
"I have the fellow to it here." He pulled out the other and handed it by the muzzle.
"To be sure—to be sure; the pattern is identical," murmured Mr.
Bellingham, examining it and for the moment completely puzzled.
"You—er—suggest that she stole it?"
"Certainly not. I lent it to her."
There followed a slow pause. It was broken by the grating voice of Mr.
Trask—
"You remember, Mr. Chairman, that the prisoner stubbornly refused to tell how the pistol came in her possession? Does Captain Vyell give us to understand that his interest in this young woman is of older date than this morning's encounter?"
"My interest in her—such as it is—dates, sir, from the evening before last, when she was dismissed from the Bowling Green Inn. The hour was late; her home, as you know, lies at some distance—though doubtless within the ambit of your authority. I lent her this small weapon to protect herself should she be molested."
"And she used it next day upon the Beadle! Dismissed, you say? Why was she dismissed?"
"I regret that I was not more curious at the time," answered the Collector with the politest touch of weariness. "I believe it was for saving the house from fire—something of that sort. As told to me, it sounded rather heroical. But, sir—" he turned again to the Chairman—" I suggest that all this does not affect my plea. Whatever her offence, she has suffered cruelly. She is physically unfit to bear this second punishment; and when I tell you on my word as a gentleman—or on oath, if you will—that on Saturday I found her grandparent starving and that her second offence was committed presumably to supply the household wants, surely I shall not entreat your mercy in vain?"
The Chief Magistrate hesitated, and a frown showed his annoyance.
"To tell you the truth, Captain Vyell, you put me in a quandary.
I do not like to refuse you—" Here he glanced right and left.
"But it can't be done," snapped Mr. Trask. Mr. Wapshott, sitting just beyond, shook his head gently and—as he hoped—unperceived by the Collector.
"You see, sir," explained Mr. Bellingham with a sigh, "we sit here to administer justice without fear or favour. You see also to what scandal it might give rise if a culprit—merely on the intercession of a gentleman like yourself—influential—er—and, in short—"
"—In short, sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of justice committed one damnable atrocity upon this child, and plead your cowardice as an excuse for committing another. Influential, am I? And you prate to me of not being affected by that? Very well; I'll take you at your word. This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of his duty? So did I just now, and with such effect that he will resume it neither to-day nor to-morrow. She inflicted, it appears, a slight graze on his chin. I inflicted two cuts on his face and knocked in three of his teeth. You can take cognisance of my wounding, I promise you. Now, sir, will you whip me through your town?"
"This is mere violence, sir." Mr. Bellingham's face was flushed, but he answered with dignity. "The law is as little to be exasperated as defied."
"I will try you in another way, then," said the Collector, recovering grip of his temper and dropping his voice to a tone of politest insolence. "It is understood that you have not the courage to do this because, seated here and administering what you call justice, you have, each one of you, an eye upon England and preferment, and you know well enough that to touch me would play the devil among the tailors with your little ambitions. I except"—with a bow towards Mr. Trask—"this gentleman, who seems to have earned his influence on your counsels by rugged force of character, And—" for here Mr. Trask, who enjoyed a dig at his colleagues, cast his eyes down and compressed a grin—"is, I should judge, capable of striking a woman for the mere fun of it." Here Mr. Bellingham and Mr. Wapshott looked demure in turn; for that Mr. Trask led his wife a dog's life was notorious.
"—In truth, gentlemen," the Collector continued easily, "I am at some loss in addressing you, seeing that through some defect of courtesy you have omitted to wait on me, albeit informed (I believe) that I came as His Majesty's Commissioner, and that therefore I have not even the pleasure of knowing your names. I may except that of Mr. Wapshott, whom I am glad to see convalescent this morning." Here he inclined to Mr. Wapshott, whose gills under the surprised gaze of his colleagues took a perceptibly redder tinge. "Mr. Wapshott, gentlemen," explained the Collector, smiling, "had a slight attack of vertigo yesterday, on the steps of his Place of Worship. Well, sirs, as I was saying, I will try you in another way. You have not the courage to bring me to trial for assaulting your beadle. You have not even the courage, here and now, to throw me out. I believe, however, that upon a confessed breach of the law—supported by evidence, if necessary—I can force you to try me. The Clerk will correct me if I am wrong. . . . Apparently he assents. Then I desire to confess to you that yesterday, at such-and-such an hour, I broke your laws or bye-laws of Lord's Day Observance; by bathing in the sea for my pleasure. I demand trial on this charge, and, if you convict me—here you can hardly help yourselves, since to my knowledge some of you witnessed the offence—I demand my due punishment of the stocks."
"Really—really, Captain Vyell!" hemm'd the Chief Magistrate.
"Passing over your derogatory language, I am at a loss to understand—"
"Are you? Yet it is very simple. Since you reject my plea for this poor creature, I desire to share her punishment."
"Let him," snapped the mouth of Mr. Trask again, opening and shutting like a trap.
"You at any rate, sir, have sense," the Collector felicitated him and turned to the Chief Magistrate. "And you, sir, if you will oblige me, may rest assured that I shall bear the magistracy of Port Nassau no grudge whatever."
Chapter XI.
THE STOCKS.
In the end they came to a compromise. That Dame Justice should be hustled in this fashion—taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to catch up her robe and skip—offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of propriety. It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested. Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "to observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him"—a command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely worded. To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the hearing of the Weights and Measures cases—one of which was being scandalously interrupted at this moment—or it might adjourn for dinner and reassemble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out. But here Mr. Somershall had to be reckoned with. Mr. Somershall not only made it a practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fashion to confound either of these disingenuous courses. As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.
It was Mr. Trask who found the way out. Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh. He suggested that, without insisting on a trial, the Captain might be obliged, and his legs given that lesson. He cited precedents. More than once a friend or relative had, by mercy of the Court, been allowed to sit beside a culprit under punishment. If, a like leave being granted him, Captain Vyell preferred to have his ankles confined—why, truly, Mr. Trask saw no reason for denying him the experience. But the Captain, it was understood, must give his word of honour, first, to accept this as a free concession from the Bench, and, secondly, not to repent or demand release before the expiry of the five hours.
"With all my heart," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate reluctantly gave way.
Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks. She had come so far out of her swoon that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones—of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one—it may have been in unthinking mercy—had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff, irritating the raw, was as a shirt of fire.
She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete consciousness. She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering. As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look of horror they awoke as the lids parted. But they saw nothing; neither the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the crowd. She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.
But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul— like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire—pushed feebly towards the sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open. Something it sought there . . . a face . . . yes, a face. . . .
—Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were hateful, hostile, mocking her misery—God knew why; a strong face, not very pitiful—but so strong!—and yet it must be pitiful too, for it condescended to help. It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .
—What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she remembered! She was hiding from him. He was strong, he was kind, but above all he must not see her shame. Let the earth cover her and hide it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful darkness had descended. She remembered sinking into it—sinking—her hands held aloft, as by ropes. Then the ropes had parted. . . . She had fallen, plumb. . . .
She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire. Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as they half opened upon the crowd. The grinning faces—the mouths pulled awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand—these were meaningless to her. She did not, in any real sense, behold them. Her misery was a sea about her, and in the trough of it she looked up, seeking one face.
—And why not? It had shone far above her as a god's; but she had been sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may meet even a god's altitude on equal terms. Stark mortal, stark god—its limit of suffering past, humanity joins the celestial, clasping its knees.
Of a sudden, turning her eyes a little to the left, she saw him.
He had come at a strolling pace across the square, with Manasseh and the deputy-beadle walking wide beside him, and the Court-house rabble at his heels, but keeping, in spite of themselves, a respectful distance. At the stocks he faced about, and they halted on the instant, as though he had spoken a word of command. He smiled, seated himself leisurably at the end of the bench on Ruth Josselin's left, and extended a leg for Manasseh to draw off its riding-boot. At the back of the crowd a few voices chattered, but within the semicircle a hush had fallen.
It was then that she turned her eyes and saw him.
How came he here? What was he doing? . . . She could not comprehend at all. Only she felt her heart leap within her and stand still, as like a warm flood the consciousness of his presence stole through her, poured over her, soothing away for the moment all physical anguish. She sat very still, her hands in her lap; afraid to move, afraid even to look again. This consciousness—it should have been shame, but it held no shame at all. It was hope. It came near, very near, to bliss.
She was aware in a dull way of some one unlocking and lifting the upper beam of the stocks. Were they releasing her? Surely her sentence had been for five hours?—surely her faintness could not have lasted so long! This could not be the end? She did not wish to be released. She would not know what to do, where to go, when they set her free. She must walk home through the town, and that would be worst of all.
Or perhaps he was commanding them to release her? . . . No; the beam creaked and dropped into place again. A moment ago his voice had been speaking; speaking very cheerfully, not to her. Now it was silent. After some minutes she gathered courage to turn her eyes again.
Captain Vyell sat with his legs in durance. They were very shapely legs, cased in stockings of flesh-coloured silk with crimson knee-ties. He sat in perfect patience, and rolled a tobacco-leaf between his fingers. At his shoulder stood Manasseh like a statue, with face immobile as Marble—black marble—and a tinder-box ready in his hand.
"Why? . . ."
He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her breast, so faintly it reached him. She had murmured it as if to herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question. His ear was alert.
"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the eyes of the crowd were on them. "The faintness is over?"
"Yes."
"Do not talk at all. By-and-by we will talk. Now I am going to ask you a selfish question, and you are just to bend your head for 'yes' or 'no.' Will the smell of tobacco distress you, or bring the faintness back? These autumn flies sting abominably here, under the trees."
She moved her head slowly. "I do not feel them," she said after a while.
He glanced at her compassionately before nodding to Manasseh for a light. "No, poor wretch, I'll be sworn you do not," he muttered between the puffs. "Thank you, Manasseh; and now will you step down to the Inn, order the horses back to stable, and bring George and Harry back with you? I may require them to break a head or two here, if there should be trouble. Tell Alexander"—this was the coachman—"to have an eye on Master Dicky, and see that he gets his dinner. The child is on no account to come here, or be told about this. His papa is detained on business—you understand? Yes, and by the way, you may extract a book from the valise—the Calderon, for choice, or if it come handier, that second volume of Corneille. Don't waste time, though, in searching for this or that. In the stocks I've no doubt a book is a book: the instrument has a reputation for levelling."
Manasseh departed on his errand, and for a while the Collector paid no heed to his companion. He and she were now unprotected, at the mercy of the mob if it intended mischief; and the next few minutes would be critical.
He sat immersed apparently in his own thoughts, and by the look on his face these were serious thoughts. He seemed to see and yet not to see the ring of faces; to be aware of them, yet not concerned with them, no whit afraid and quite as little defiant. True, he was smoking, but without a trace of affected insouciance or bravado; gravely rather, resting an elbow on his groin and leaning forward with a preoccupied frown. Two minutes passed in this silence, and he felt the danger ebbing. Mob insolence ever wants a lead, and—perhaps because with the return of fine weather the fishing-crews had put to sea early—this Port Nassau crowd lacked a fugleman.
"Are you here—because—of me?"
"Hush, again," he answered quietly, not turning his head. "I like you to talk if you feel strong enough; but for the moment it will be better if they do not perceive. . . . Yes, and no," he answered her question after a pause. "I am here to see that you get through this. You are in pain?"
"Yes; but it is easier."
"You are afraid of these people?"
"Afraid?" She took some time considering this. "No," she said at length. "I am not afraid of them. I do not see them. You are here."
He took the tobacco-leaf from his lips, blew a thin cloud of smoke with grave deliberateness, and in doing so contrived to glance at her face.
"You have blood in you. That face, too, my beauty," he muttered, "never came to you but by gift of blood." Aloud he said, "That's brave. But take care when your senses clear and the strain comes back on you. Speak to me when you feel it coming; I don't want it to tauten you up with a jerk. You understand?"
"Yes. . . ."
"I wonder now—" he began musingly, and broke off. The danger he had been keeping account with was over; Manasseh had returned with the two grooms, and they—perfectly trained servants on the English model—took their posts without exhibiting surprise by so much as a twitch of the face. George in particular was a tight fellow with his fists, as the crowd, should it offer annoyance, would assuredly learn. The Collector took the volume which Manasseh brought him, and opened it, but did not begin to read. "You despise these people?" he asked.
He was puzzled with himself. He was here to protect her; and this, from him to her, implied a noble condescension. His fine manners, to be sure, forbade his showing it; on no account would he have shown it. But the puzzle was, he could not feel it.