Miss Trevisa looked up at her quickly between her half-closed lids; a bitter, cruel smile quivered about her lips. “If any one can deliver him, it will be you.”
Judith did not understand her meaning, and Aunt Dionysia did not care at that time to further enlighten her thereon. Finding her aunt inflexible, the unhappy girl left Pentyre Glaze and hurried back to Polzeath, where she implored Mr. Menaida to accompany her to Wadebridge. Go there she would—she must—that same evening. If he would not attend her, she would go alone. She could not rest, she could not remain in the house, till she had been to the place where Jamie was, and seen whether she could not release him thence by her entreaties, her urgency.
Mr. Menaida shook his head. But he was a kind-hearted old man, and was distressed at the misery of the girl, and would not hear of her making the expedition alone, as she could not well return before dark. So he assumed his rough and shabby beaver hat, put on his best cravat, and sallied forth with Judith upon her journey to Wadebridge, one that he assured her must be fruitless, and had better be postponed till the morrow.
“I cannot! I cannot!” she cried. “I cannot sleep, thinking of my darling brother in that dreadful place, with such people about him, he crying, frightened, driven mad by the strangeness of it all, and being away from me. I must go. If I cannot save him and bring him back with me, I can see him and console him, and bid him wait in patience and hope.”
Mr. Menaida with a soft heart and a weak will, was hung about with scraps of old-world polish, scraps only. In him nothing was complete—here and there a bare place of rustic uncouthness, there patches of velvet courtesy of the Queen Anne age; so, also, was he made up of fine culture, of classic learning alternating with boorish ignorance—here high principle, there none at all—a picture worked to a miniature in points, and in others rudely roughed in and neglected. Now he was moved as he had not been moved for years by the manifest unhappiness of the girl, and he was willing to do his utmost to assist her, but that utmost consisted in little more than accompanying her to Wadebridge and ringing at the house-bell of Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray’s establishment. When it came to the interview that ensued with the proprietor of the establishment and jailer of Jamie, he failed altogether. Judith and Uncle Zachie were shown into the dreary parlor without ornaments, and presently to them entered Mr. Obadiah.
“Oh, sir, is he here?—have you got Jamie here?”
Mr. Scantlebray nodded his head, then went to the door and knocked with his fists against the wall. A servant maid appeared. “Send missus,” said he, and returned to the parlor.
Again Judith entreated to be told if her brother were there with all the vehemence and fervor of her tattered heart.
Mr. Obadiah listened with stolid face and vacant eyes that turned from her to Mr. Menaida, and then back to her again. Presently an idea occurred to him and his face brightened. He went to a sideboard, opened a long drawer, brought out a large book, thrust it before Judith, and said, “Pictures.” Then, as she took no notice of the book, he opened it.
“Oh, please sir,” pleaded Judith, “I don’t want that. I want to know about Jamie. I want to see him.”