“Certainly, sir, if you will make your footing good.” Which meant paying for liquor wherewith all could get fuddled.
Roger threw some money to the turnkey, and the liquor being brought, sat and boozed and sang and gambled and cursed with the motley crew until the day looked pallidly in at the barred windows.
A prisoner with money, in Newgate, could have all he wanted and do as he listed, except he could not escape. And the reason of this was plain. Every prisoner became a source of revenue to his gaolers, and to let him go was to part with the goose that laid the golden egg; and consequently never was there such liberty within the walls of a prison, and never was prison better watched.
The assemblage in which Roger Egremont found himself was made up of all sorts and conditions of men. His friend with the patch over his eye was a highwayman.
There were thieves and counterfeiters, Jacobite gentlemen and recusant curates; nearly all trades and professions were represented. No one present, not even the highwayman, drank and swore and talked so recklessly as Roger Egremont. For to fear had succeeded despair. He shouted and sang and drank, because had he stopped for one moment to think he would have dashed his brains out against the stone wall. His head was steady and his nerves strong, so that it took much liquor and extreme brawling to bring him to the point where physical fatigue overcame mental anguish. But soon after daylight he was carried like a log to his cell, by Lukens and his assistant, Diggory Hutchinson, a brawny fellow, and new to the gaoler’s business.
“They be often like this, at first,” said Lukens, with a grin, as they threw Roger, limp and maudlin, on his rude bed. “’Tis apt to take gentlemen and clergymen this a-way. Sometimes they gits over it—sometimes they don’t.”
Roger fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until the afternoon. He waked, his vigorous frame recovered entirely from his debauch, but in an instant the horror of his situation returned upon him so that he rose, dressed himself quickly, and finding some money that he had concealed upon his person, coolly took out what seemed enough for him to get drunk on, and put the other away, and then sallied forth from his miserable room in search of the hell he had found the night before. He was not familiar with his surroundings, and, following a blind corridor, he heard the sound of a woman’s voice, singing very sweetly. Presently he came upon an open door, leading to the quarters of Lukens, the turnkey, and there, in a room clean and bright, sat, spinning, Bess Lukens, the turnkey’s niece, otherwise known as Red Bess from the warm color of her auburn hair.
She was tall, well formed, and vigorous beyond the common for a woman. Her complexion had retained its original fairness from the usual darkness of the abode in which she dwelt, but it had not robbed her cheek of its ruddy bloom, nor her lips of their scarlet tint. Her large, liquid eyes were of a reddish-brown, with black lashes and eyebrows, and when she opened her wide handsome mouth she showed teeth as white and regular as Roger’s own.
She was about twenty years of age, and dressed in a plain brown stuff gown and a spotless linen cap, and she was spinning industriously and singing in a loud, sweet, rich voice as she spun. Had Roger Egremont been his natural and normal self, the sight of her sumptuous beauty would have warmed and interested him; but to all intent, he was not Roger Egremont at that moment, but a devil of despair and wickedness who had cast out Roger’s identity and was masquerading in his body.
The girl caught sight of him, however, and stopped her spinning and singing. As she rose and advanced toward him, the light of a May afternoon falling on her supple figure, he could not but note, dull as his senses were, the natural grace of her movements, and her rich voice in speaking as in singing. She showed not a particle of bashfulness or coquetry in speaking to the haggard young gentleman before her, but said pleasantly,—