Patricia at the inn

by J. C. Snaith

“Nay, not I,” said the fellow. “Too tired I was; I lay down in my straw and slept like a hog.”

“You are lying to me,” said the landlord, raising his voice. “You walked out on to the top of one of those rocks by the seashore, and there you met the woman in the chamber upstairs. You met her there in the middle of the night; you talked to her; and she fell on her knees before you, and she kissed your hands. I know all, you lying villain! Now, sirrah, confess the reason of it all, or take the consequences.”

The serving-man twitched not a muscle. He regarded his master with a stolidity amounting almost to the bovine, and he blankly professed his ignorance of the charge. The landlord grew furious.

“Do you give the lie to my ears and eyes?” he cried.

The serving-man merely replied by a look of profound indifference. To the angry and astonished landlord, it seemed to amount almost to contempt. Will Jackson appeared to consider that his denial was enough. He neither entered into the merits of the matter, nor took the trouble to soften the force of his affirmation.

Gamaliel had never been so nonplussed in his life. He had proof positive that his serving-man had been out in the night, and that he was intimately acquainted with the woman upstairs. Yet here he audaciously denied all knowledge of her.

“By God, sirrah!” cried the landlord, “I will see to it that you hang before a week is out, as an aider and abettor of proscribed Royalists fleeing the country, if you persist in this most abominable falsehood.”

The serving-man shrugged his shoulders. He still seemed to have a perfect indifference to the landlord’s threats. And, indeed, Master Gamaliel fumed and browbeat in vain. It was precious little satisfaction he got out of the lumpish Will Jackson.

He breakfasted upon the matter. Coming to review it afterwards, he did but grow more firm in his conviction that the woman and his drawer had something more to conceal than he had at first suspected. At last he decided to confront them face to face. First, he sent up his son with a message to the lady’s chamber. Would she step down immediately to his father, as he desired to speak with her on a matter of the first importance? Her fear of the landlord was now so great, that she lost not an instant in complying with his demand.

Will Jackson was already submitting to another interrogatory from his master, when she came whitely and wearily down the stairs. The cunning landlord had contrived that their meeting should be in his presence. They should have no chance to pre-arrange an ignorance of one another. He now observed their demeanour with a devilish intentness, and he could swear he saw a sudden swift flush dart across the woman’s face and a hunted, hungry look of fear spring in her eyes the moment her gaze alighted on Will Jackson.