At these dreadful words, uttered in the cool and matter-of-fact manner of a prison keeper, Bess started from her chair, clasped her hands, and stood mute and stunned with horror. Diggory, hardened to all the frightful scenes of a gaoler’s life, looked quietly at her face, suddenly grown pallid, at her dilating eyes, at her tall and graceful figure, first rigid with the shock of what she had heard, and then trembling violently.
She could not speak, but motioned him to go on. Diggory, to whom Dicky Egremont was no more and no less than one of many Jesuit gentlemen who had walked calmly into the prison and calmly out again to the gallows, could think of nothing else to say but to repeat:
“He was resentenced o’ Monday, that was day before yesterday; and he is to be hanged o’ Thursday, that’s to-morrow.” Then, seeing in Bess’s wild white face a look of agonized inquiry, he continued, with the best possible intentions,—
“The Jesuit gentlemen, you know, is always quartered afore they’re dead. Ketch, the hangman, wanted me to turn his ’prentice, and was a-going to show me on a calf, but I hadn’t no stomach for it.”
The dingy room swam before Bess, and the two miserable candles danced up and down. A vision passed before her of Dicky, lying on the ground,—she knew all about it, although she had never seen an execution. Diggory, after a pause, spoke again. “Them Jesuits is hard to kill. One of ’em when I was a boy held out for half an hour after he was out open. He set up on the ground and made that papist sign like this here.” Diggory crossed himself. “He were a handsome old man too, and one of the gentry. A duke come to see him afore he was hanged. ’Tis no telling how long they’ll live after they are cut down.” Suddenly Bess’s strong self-control gave way. She uttered a loud and piercing scream; her voice, always clear, melodious, and penetrating, echoed through the stone archways and corridors of the vast building, like the death cry of music itself. Diggory, at this, flew at her, stopping her mouth with his palm, and Bess sunk on a chair.
“Hush! hush!” he cried. “They’ll catch you and I’ll lose my place, I will.”
There was a deep silence afterward. Bess’s mind was in a tumult, while Diggory listened for coming footsteps.
“Nobody’s coming,” he said, after five minutes had passed. “They think it’s some o’ the prisoners. Oftentimes they screams like that,—we don’t take no notice unless they has a regular spell of it.”
“Diggory,” gasped Bess after a while, “you ever had a good heart. Take me to Mr. Egremont’s cell. I know you have a pass-key. Diggory, I will give you this jewel, I swear I will, if you will but let me see Mr. Egremont.”
She unfastened with trembling fingers the brooch from her breast, and pressed it in his hand.