"How far is it?" Henrietta muttered, when they had gone a distance, that in the night seemed a good half mile.
"That"s telling," Bess answered. ""Tain"t far. Turn here! Right!
right!" pushing her. "Now wait while I----"
"What are you doing?"
Bess did not explain that she was opening a gate. Instead, she impelled the other forward and squeezed her arm to impress on her the need of silence. Henrietta felt that the ground over which they were pa.s.sing was at once softer and more uneven, and she guessed that they had left the road. A moment later the air met her cheek more coldly, and the gloom seemed less opaque. She conjectured that she stood on the brow of a hill--or a precipice--and involuntarily she recoiled.
But Bess dragged her on, down a slope so steep that, although the girl trod with caution, she was scarcely able to keep her feet.
Feeling her still hang hack, the gipsy girl plucked at her.
"Hurry!" she whispered. "Hurry, can"t you? We are nearly there."
"Where?"
"Why, there!"
But the cold and the darkness and the other"s hostile tone had shaken Henrietta"s nerves. She jerked herself free.
"Where?" she repeated firmly. "Where are we going? I shall not go farther unless you tell me."
"Nonsense!"
"I shall not."
"Let be! Let be!"
"Tell me this minute!"
"To Tyson the doctor"s, if you must know," Bess replied grudgingly.
"Oh!"
She knew now. She stood half way down the smooth side of the hollow in which Tyson"s farm nestled. She remembered the large kitchen, with the shining oaken table and the woman with the pale plump face who had crouched on the settle and gone in fear of nights. And though the place still stood a trifle uncanny in her memory, and the uncomfortable impression which the woman"s complaints had made on her, had not quite pa.s.sed from her, the knowledge relieved her.
She knew at least where she was, and that the place lay barely a furlong from the road. She might count, too, on the aid of the doctor"s wife, who was jealous of this very girl. And after all, in comparison with the miser"s wretched abode, Tyson"s house, though lonely, seemed an everyday dwelling, and safe.
The news rea.s.sured her. When Bess, in a tone of scorn that thinly masked disappointment, flung at her the words, "Then you are not coming?" she was ready.
"Yes, I am coming," she said. And she yielded herself again to Bess"s guidance. In less than a minute they were at the bottom of the hollow.
They skirted the fold-yard and the long, silent buildings that bulked somewhat blacker than the night. They turned a corner, and a dog not far from them stirred its chain and growled. But Bess stilled it by a word, and the two halted in the gloom, where a thin line of light escaped beneath a door,
CHAPTER x.x.x
BESS"S TRIUMPH
Bess knocked twice, and, stooping to the keyhole, repeated the owl"s hoot. Presently a bar was drawn back, and after a brief interval, which those within appeared to devote to listening, the key was turned, and the door was opened far enough to admit one person at a time. The two slid in, Bess pushing Henrietta before her.
The moment she had pa.s.sed the threshold Henrietta stood, dazzled by the light and bewildered by what she saw. Nor was it her eyes only that were unpleasantly affected. A voice, loud and bl.u.s.tering, hailed her appearance with a curse, fired from the heart of a cloud of tobacco smoke. And the air was heavy with the reek of spirits.
"By G--d!" the voice which had affrighted her repeated. "Who"s this?
Are you mad, girl?" And the speaker sprang to his feet. He was one of two thickset, unshaven men who were engaged in playing cards on a corner of the table. His comrade kept his place, but stared, a jug half lifted to his lips; while a third man, the only other present, a loose-limbed, good-looking gipsy lad, who had opened the door, grinned at the unexpected vision--as if his stake in the matter was less, and his interest in feminine charms greater. But nowhere, though the kitchen was wastefully lighted, and her frightened eyes flew to every part of it, was the man to be seen whom she came to meet.
She turned quickly upon Bess, as if she thought she might still escape. But the door was already closed behind them, the key turned.
And before she could speak:
"Have done a minute!" Bess muttered, pushing her aside. "And let me deal with them." Then, advancing into the room--but not before she had seen the great bar drawn across the locked door--"Shut your trap!" she cried to the man who had spoken. "And listen!"
"Who"s this?"
"What"s that to you?"
"Who is it, I say?" the man cried, even more violently. "And what the blazes have you brought her here for?" And he poured out a string of oaths that drove the blood from Henrietta"s cheeks. "Who is it? Who is it?" he continued. "D"you think, you vixen, that because my neck is in a noose, I want some one to pull the rope tight?"
"What a fool you are to talk before her!" Bess answered, with quiet scorn. "If any one pulls the hemp it"s you."
"Lord help you, I"ll do more than talk!" the man rejoined. And he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a heavy pistol that lay on the table beside the cards.
"Quick, will you? Speak! Who is it, and why do you bring her?"
"I"ll speak quick enough, but not here!" Bess answered, contemptuously. "If you must jaw, come into the dairy! Come, don"t think that I"m afraid of you!" And she turned to Henrietta, who, stricken dumb by the scene, recognised too late the trap into which she had fallen. "Do you stay here," she said, "unless you want his hand on you. Sit there!" pointing abruptly to the settle, "and keep mum until I come back."
But Henrietta"s terror at the prospect of being abandoned by the girl, though that girl had betrayed her, was such that she seized Bess by the sleeve and held her back.
"Don"t leave me!" she said. And again, with a shadow of the old imperiousness, "You are not to leave me! Do you hear? I will come with you. I----"
"You"ll do what you"re bid!" Bess answered. "Go and sit down!" And the savage glint in her eyes put a new fear into Henrietta.
She went to the settle, her limbs unsteady under her, her eyes glancing round for a chance of escape. Where was the woman of the house? Where was Tyson? Chiefest of all, where was Walterson? She saw no sign of any of them. And terrified to the heart, she sat shivering where the other had ordered her to sit.
Bess opened a side door which led to the dairy, a cold, flagged room, lower by a couple of steps than the kitchen. She took up a candle, one of five or six which were flaring on the table, and she beckoned to the two men to follow her. When they had done so, the one who had taken up the pistol still muttering and casting suspicious glances over his shoulder, she slammed to the door. But, either by accident, or with a view to intimidate her prisoner, she let it leap ajar again; so that much of the talk which followed reached Henrietta"s ears. It soon banished from the unhappy girl"s cheeks the blood which the gipsy lad"s stare of admiration had brought to them.
Lunt"s first word was an oath. "You know well enough," he cried, "that we want no praters here! Why have you brought this fool here to peach on us?"
"Why?"
"Ay, why?" Lunt repeated. "In two days more we had all got clear, and nothing better managed!"
"And thanks to whom?" the girl retorted with energy. "Who has hidden you? Who has kept you? Who has done all for you? But there it is! Now my lad"s gone, and Thistlewood"s gone, you think all"s yours! And as much of yourselves as masterless dogs!"
"Stow it!"
"But I"ll not!" she retorted. "Whose house is this?"
"Well, my la.s.s, not yours!" Giles, the less violent of the two, answered.