Nowhere was there comfort for Barbara; she was utterly alone. In vain she strode about the shed, tried to fix her mind upon the past, upon the traditions of her family, upon the boasted courage of the Winslows. In vain she repeated verses, recalled stories, anything to distract her mind, she could not control her thoughts, could not drive the face of the tortured woman from before her eyes, nor banish from her ears the terror of her cries.
It was now dark and her nerves were overstrung, worn out completely with the excitement of what she had passed through. The thing had come upon her so unexpectedly she had no resistance to offer, and now in the silence and loneliness of the night the full horror of the future gradually dawned upon her mind. She pictured with all the vividness of a strong imagination every detail of the life before her; death itself seemed easier to face than this nightmare of shame and torture. She sobbed with terror. Fear took possession of her soul, and she suffered as only those of strong will and high courage can suffer in their moments of weakness.
CHAPTER XIII
Lady Cicely, who was overcome with the effects of her encounter with Jeffreys and the attendant incidents of the previous evening, had not the courage to attend the sitting of the court, although Master Lane had ascertained that her cousin's trial might be expected to take place during the day. She sat hour by hour in the quiet house waiting for her host to bring her news of the verdict.
Prudence was unusually silent and depressed. She had been severely blamed by her mother for her share in the expedition of the previous evening; moreover, the sight of her friend's misery sobered her into a quite unwonted gravity. Deborah, on the contrary, passed the day in a state of hysterical excitement. Like so many otherwise kind-hearted women she possessed in a large degree that morbid love of horrors, which is erroneously considered to be an attribute of the uneducated classes alone.
At intervals during that terrible day, she darted in with some fresh tale of misery, culled from the gossip of the neighbours or the chatter of the maids. She poured forth these stories with an air of eager excitement, nay, more, of intense enjoyment, ill-concealed beneath a grave head-shaking and copious exclamations of pity and horror.
"They have built up a scaffold in the market-place," she announced rapturously. "Oh! 'tis terrible to see it. Martha Hemming saith she could not sleep for the sound of the hammering, and thinking of all the poor creatures to be hanged there. 'Tis said they mostly go straight from their trial to be hanged. Think on't. They may be hanging now, the poor fellows. 'Tis said, down Dorchester way, the judges sent three hundred to be hanged, and my Lord Jeffreys hath said it will not be his fault if he doth not depopulate this place. 'Tis terrible. 'Tis as it was in July. Dost mind it, Prudence, after the fight at Sedgemoor, when Colonel Kirke first came here? They hanged them on the signpost of the Inn. Oh! 'twas too horrible. Joan Marlow saw it. 'Twas said that one wretch was strung up and cut down again four times ere he died. Think on't. And the troopers jesting at him the while. 'Twas a fearsome time! I doubt not 'twill be yet more dreadful now. 'Tis a wonder such things should be. One can but pity them though they be rebels."
So she rattled on, while Cicely sat by shuddering with horror.
Later in the day Deborah became still more profuse and detailed in her narratives.
"They say my Lord Jeffreys is fair raging. Some say he is mad or drunk, for he laughs and jests, and then again bellows with fury. What a man it is! But, oh! Prudence, I had nigh forgot. Philip Harke is hanged. Straight from court they took him, hanged him till he was well-nigh spent, then cut him down and quartered him. The horror of it! And none dare tell his wife; but she was out ere they knew, and saw his head on a pole in High Street, and has turned silly, they say. And small wonder too; I shall not dare to walk the streets for a month. Praise be to God we have no friends among them, saving, of course, your cousin, Lady Cicely, yet 'tis terrible to see the heads and corpses. And the market-place must be a shambles, they say."