Lady Barbarity: A Romance

by J. C. Snaith

“What the devil!” he exclaimed, starting up as I could tell by the brisk rustling of his straw.

“No, child, not the devil,” I says, “a person handsomer by far. But hush! lad, hush! I am here to save your neck.”

He strangled a natural cry at this injunction, though an emotion of surprise caused him to strain unconsciously against his bonds. The rattle of the manger ring to which the unhappy creature was secured cut me keenly to the quick. They prate of the cruelty of us women, but I wish some of these men would consider their own gifts in this direction, ere they tax us for our drawing-room barbarities. Now Captain Grantley, in his haste to take me from the window on the occasion of my visit earlier in the night, had forgotten to reshutter it, and his omission was now a friend we could not well have done without. It let a lively flood of moonlight in, which had the cunning to show me not only my precise locality, but how one was affected to the other, the work that was before me, and the fairest means by which it could be done.

At first the poor prisoner dare not accept the testimony of his eyes, nor could he trust his ears.

“I—I cannot understand,” he said.

“Men never can,” I whispered. “But if we are silent, speedy, and ingenious I think I can save you from Tyburn, sir.”

For these words he invoked God’s blessing on me, which was quite a new experience, as the invocations of his sex are much the other way in my case. Then he tried to pierce my vizard with his eyes, and then rose with slow pain to his feet and pushed his handcuffed wrists towards me, for he had seen me take forth the file. I attacked at once the stout chains by which they were clinched together, and in which the cord was looped. ’Twas no light employ, let me assure you. The file rasped without surcease on the steel for the best part of an hour, and I put such an energy in the task that long before I had bitten through the gyve my fingers ached most bitterly, and I could feel the sweat shining in my face. Whoever it was that had put those fetters on, ’twas plain he was no tyro in the art. But that winter night, had my business been to reduce a castle with my single hand I could have razed it to the earth, I think. Therefore, at last I overcame the stubborn bonds, and in something less than a minute afterwards the desperate rebel had all his members free. I am not sure but what a bond was forged about his heart though. For in the stern assaults I had directed on his chains the spring that held my vizard fell away, the patch of velvet dropped into the straw, and lo! at the lifting of my eyes, I stood unmasked before him. And perhaps I was not sorry for it, since—the charming fellow!—no sooner did he discover that his hands were out of durance than he uttered a low cry of pleasure and of gratitude, and when he regarded his deliverer his eyes became so bright that they must have been sensible of joy. But I was determined that in this present instance, no matter how much beyond the common, my native power should yet assert itself. Wherefore I drew myself to my fullest inches, tipped up my chin and throat a little to let him see what snow and dimples are, and what a provocation poets sometimes undergo. Then I met those fine eyes of his fully with mine own. On this occasion ’twas his that did recoil. Nor was this at all remarkable, since Mr. Horace Walpole had informed me but a week before, for the fifteenth time, that if these my orbs should confront the sun at any time, the sun would be diminished and put out. Thus the rebel’s own high look yielded reluctantly to mine, and I judged by the twitching of his mouth that ’twas as much as he could do to suppress his wonder and his thankfulness. But he did in lieu of that a thing that was even yet more graceful.

Without a word he fell on his knees before the feet of his releaser, and when I deigned to give my hand to him that he might touch it with his lips, as I thought his delicious silence not unworthy of reward, my every finger thrilled beneath the one burning tear that issued from his fine, brave eyes and plashed upon them softly.

“Madam,” he said then, with his voice all passion-broken and shaking so that it must have given him an agony to speak, “a word can never thank you. May I thank you some time otherwise?”

The moonlight was much our friend in this strange passage, here amongst the straw of a cold, gloomy, and unclean stable at an unheard-of hour of night. Pouring through the window it wrapped our figures in a sweet vague hue that was as beautiful as it was subdued. It had a mellow holiness about it too, I thought.