“I don’t want nothing,” said Diggory, bashfully. “I know, and you know, Bess, that it’s worth my place, and maybe something worse, to let you into Mr. Egremont’s cell to-night,—but I’ll do it. Howsomedever, I must go and see the guard first.”
Bess handed him all the gold and paper money she could find in her purse. “Use it all,—and I have more,—only let me see Mr. Egremont this night.”
Diggory went out, closing and locking the door after him. Bess sat trembling with horror. She had been frightened about Dicky,—she feared that he would get himself in trouble, as Roger had done,—but that it would come to this, she had not fully expected. It seemed hours before Diggory returned; in truth it was but little more than twenty minutes.
“Come,” he said, in a low voice, “and don’t make not the least bit of noise.”
Bess rose, and Diggory, blowing out the candles, led the way to the corridor, and then downward to a cellar. For the first time in her life, physical weakness almost overcame Bess Lukens. In their stealthy progress along dark and unused passages and cellars, through dismal corridors and noisome courts, she often had to stop and lean, half fainting, on Diggory. At last they reached a narrow stair, at the top of which was a cell, with a lantern in it, and a stone bench. Here Diggory left Bess, and after a moment another door silently opened, and in walked Dicky Egremont.
He was handcuffed, but otherwise had no fetters or chains,—and was fully dressed in a shabby cassock, and had his beretta on his head, from which his short, curling light hair escaped. Never had Bess seen his pleasant, boyish face more calm and smiling.
“How good this is of you, dear Bess,” he said, and took her hand.
But Bess, albeit mindful of Diggory’s warning to make no noise, was sobbing convulsively, and trying to stifle her sobs in her mantle. She could not speak, but Dicky could, in his usual soft and artless voice.
“Come,” he said, “you have done me the greatest service in the world by coming to me, and I think you must have run an extra hazard,—and now you sob so you can neither speak nor hear me. ’Tis no way to do.” But Bess could only sob and sob for a while longer, Dicky waiting patiently meanwhile. Presently, under the spell of his composure, she grew calm.
“True,” she whispered, “I have my whole life to cry in,—and only a little while to be with thee. But, oh, Dicky, cannot money get thee out of this? I have a plenty,—my own and Madame de Beaumanoir’s,—and I know this place well,—and Diggory Hutchinson, the turnkey, is my friend.”