Chapter Twenty Five.
Before Dick of Dover.
“Perkins!” said a rather pompous voice.
Perkins was the Cathedral bell-ringer, and the gaoler of Alice Benden. He obeyed the summons of the pompous voice with obsequious celerity, for it belonged to no less a person than the Lord Bishop of Dover. His Lordship, having caught sight of the bell-ringer as he crossed the precincts, had called him, and Perkins came up, his hat in one hand, and pulling his forelock with the other.
“I desire to know, Perkins,” said the Bishop, “if that man that is your prisoner’s brother hath yet been arrested, as I bade?”
“Well, nay, my Lord, he haven’t,” said Perkins, his heart fluttering and his grammar questionable.
“And wherefore no?” asked the Bishop sternly.
“Well, my Lord, truth is, I haven’t chanced on him since.”
“He hath not visited his sister, then?”
“Well,” answered Perkins, who seemed to find that word a comfort, “ay, he have; but him and me, we hasn’t been at same time, not yet.”
“Call you that diligence in the keeping of your prisoner?”
“Please your Lordship, she’s there, all safe.”
“I bade you arrest him,” insisted the Bishop.
Perkins chewed a sprig of dried lavender, and kept silence.
“I am sore displeased with you, Perkins!”
Perkins looked provokingly obtuse. If the Bishop had only known it, he was afraid of vexing him further by saying anything, and accordingly he said nothing.
“Keep diligent watch for the man, and seize him when he cometh again. As for the woman, bring her before me to-morrow at nine o’ the clock. Be careful what you do, as you value my favour.”
Perkins pulled his forelock again, and departed.
“The man is hard as a stone,” said the Bishop to one of the Canons, with whom he was walking: “no impression can be made upon him.”
“He is scantly the worse gaoler for that, under your Lordship’s correction,” said the Canon carelessly.
“He makes an hard keeper, I cast no doubt,” answered the Bishop.
Perkins’s demeanour changed as soon as his Lordship had passed out of sight and hearing.
“Dick o’ Dover’s in a jolly fume!” he said to one of the vergers whom he met.
“Why, what’s angered him?”
“I have, belike, that I catched not yon man, Mistress Benden’s brother, a-coming to see her. Why, the loon’s full o’ wiles—never comes at after sunrise. It’d take an eel to catch him. And I’m not his thief-catcher, neither. I works hard enough without that. Old Dick may catch his eels his self if he lacks ’em.”
“Work ’ll never kill thee, Jack Perkins,” replied the verger, with a laugh. “Thou’dst best not get across with Dick o’ Dover; he’s an ugly customer when he’s in the mind.”
The right reverend prelate to whom allusion was thus unceremoniously made, was already seated on his judgment bench when, at nine o’clock the next morning, Perkins threw open the door of Monday’s Hole.
“Come forth, Mistress; you’re to come afore the Bishop.”
“You must needs help me up, then, for I cannot walk,” said Alice Benden faintly.
Perkins seized her by the arm, and dragged her up from the straw on which she was lying. Alice was unable to repress a slight moan.
“Let be,” she panted; “I will essay to go by myself; only it putteth me to so great pain.”
With one hand resting on the wall, she crept to the door, and out into the passage beyond. Again Perkins seized her—this time by the shoulder.
“You must make better speed than this, Mistress,” he said roughly. “Will you keep the Lord Bishop a-waiting?”
Partly limping by herself, partly pulled along by Perkins, and at the cost of exquisite suffering, for she was crippled by rheumatism, Alice reached the hall wherein the Bishop sat. He received her in the suavest manner.
“Now, my good daughter, I trust your lesson, which it was needful to make sharp, hath been well learned during these weeks ye have had time for meditation. Will you now go home, and go to church, and conform you to the Catholic religion as it now is in England? If you will do this, we will gladly show you all manner of favour; ye shall be our white child, I promise you, and any requests ye may prefer unto us shall have good heed. Consider, I pray you, into what evil case your obstinacy hath hitherto brought you, and how blissful life ye might lead if ye would but renounce your womanish opinions, and be of the number of the Catholics. Now, my daughter, what say you?”
Then Alice Benden lifted her head and answered.
“I am thoroughly persuaded, by the great extremity that you have already showed me, that you are not of God, neither can your doings be godly; and I see that you seek mine utter destruction. Behold, I pray you, how lame I am of cold taken, and lack of food, in that painful prison wherein I have lain now these nine weary weeks, that I am not able to move without great pain.”
“You shall find us right different unto you, if you will but conform,” replied the Bishop, who, as John Bunyan has it, had “now all besugared his lips.”
“Find you as it list you, I will have none ado with you!” answered the prisoner sturdily.
But at that moment, trying to turn round, the pain was so acute that it brought the tears to her eyes, and a groan of anguish to her lips. The Bishop’s brows were compressed.
“Take her to West Gate,” he said hastily. “Let her be clean kept, and see a physician if she have need.”
The gaoler of West Gate was no brutal, selfish Perkins, but a man who used his prisoners humanely. Here Alice once again slept on a bed, was furnished with decent clean clothing and sufficient food. But such was the effect of her previous suffering, that after a short time, we are told, her skin peeled off as if she had been poisoned.
One trouble Alice had in her new prison—that she must now be deprived of Roger’s visits. She was not even able to let him know of the change. But Roger speedily discovered it, and it was only thanks to the indolence of Mr Perkins, who was warm in bed, and greatly indisposed to turn out of it, that he was not found out and seized on that occasion. Once more he had to search for his sister. No secret was made of the matter this time; and by a few cautious inquiries Roger discovered that she had been removed to West Gate. His hopes sprang up on hearing it, not only because, as he knew, she would suffer much less in the present, but also because he fondly trusted that it hinted at a possibility of release in the future. It was with a joyful heart that he carried the news home to Christabel, and found her Aunt Tabitha sitting with her.
“O Father, how delightsome!” cried Christie, clapping her hands. “Now if those ill men will only let dear Aunt Alice come home—”
“When the sky falleth, we may catch many larks,” said Tabitha, in her usual grim fashion. “Have you told him?”
“Whom?—Edward Benden? No, I’m in no haste to go near him.”
“I would, if I knew it should vex him.”
“Tabitha!” said Roger, with gentle reproval.
“Roger Hall, if you’d had to stand up to King Ahab, you’d have made a downright poor Elijah!”
“Very like, Tabitha. I dare say you’d have done better.”
“Father,” said Christie, “did you hear what should come of Master White, and Mistress Final, and all the rest.”
“No, my dear heart: I could hear nought, save only that they were had up afore my Lord of Dover, and that he was very round with them, but all they stood firm.”
“What, Sens Bradbridge and all?” said Tabitha. “I’d have gone bail that poor sely hare should have cried off at the first shot of Dick o’ Dover’s arrow. Stood she firm, trow?”
“All of them, I heard. Why, Tabitha, the Lord’s grace could hold up Sens Bradbridge as well as Tabitha Hall.”
“There’d be a vast sight more wanted, I promise you!” said Tabitha self-righteously. “There isn’t a poorer creature in all this ’varsal world, nor one with fewer wits in her head than Sens Bradbridge. I marvel how Benedick stood her; but, dear heart! men are that stupid! Christie, don’t you never go to marry a man. I’ll cut you off with a shilling an’ you do.”
“Cut me off what, Aunt Tabitha?” inquired Christie, with some alarm in her tone.
“Off my good-will and favour, child.”
“Thank you, Aunt Tabitha, for telling me I didn’t know I was on,” said Christie simply.
“Good lack!” exclaimed Tabitha, in a tone which was a mixture of amusement and annoyance. “Did the child think I cared nought about her, forsooth?”
“O Aunt Tabitha, do you?” demanded Christie, in a voice of innocent astonishment. “I am so glad. Look you, whenever you come, you always find fault with me for something, so I thought you didn’t.”
“Bless the babe! Dost think I should take all that trouble to amend thee, if I loved thee not?”
“Well, perhaps—” said Christie hesitatingly.
“But Aunt Alice always tried to mend me, and so does Father: but somehow they don’t do it like you, Aunt Tabitha.”
“They’re both a deal too soft and sleek with thee,” growled Aunt Tabitha. “There’s nought ’ll mend a child like a good rattling scolding, without ’tis a thrashing, and thou never hast neither.”
“Art avised (are you sure) o’ that, Tabitha?” asked Roger. “God sends not all His rain in thunderstorms.”
“Mayhap not; but He does send thunderstorms, and earthquakes too,” returned Tabitha triumphantly.
“I grant you; but the thunderstorms are rare, and the earthquakes yet rarer; and the soft dew cometh every night. And ’tis the dew and the still small rain, not the earthquakes, that maketh the trees and flowers to grow.”
“Ah, well, you’re mighty wise, I cast no doubt,” answered Tabitha, getting up to go home. “But I tell you I was well thrashed, and scolded to boot, and it made a woman of me.”
“I suppose, Father,” said Christie, when Tabitha had taken her departure, “that the scolding and beating did make a woman of Aunt Tabitha; but please don’t be angry if I say that it wasn’t as pleasant a woman as Aunt Alice.”