“Ay, ay,” the woman answered unconcernedly, “they all say that! That’s of course. But I can’t stay talking here. What’d you like for your supper? A pint of stout, and a plate of a-la-mode? Or a chop?”
Henrietta reduced the order to tea and a white loaf and butter—if it could be got—and asked meekly if she might have something to read.
The Kendal Chronicle was promised. “You’ll have your meal at five,” Mother Weighton continued. “And your light must be out at eight, and you’ll have to ’tend service in chapel on Sunday. By rule your door should be locked at five; but as you’re alone, and the lock’s on the yard, I’ll say naught about that. You can have the run of the yard as a favour and till another comes in.”
Then with a final look round she went out, her pattens clinked across the court, and Henrietta heard the key turned in the outer door.
She stood a moment pressing her hands to her eyes, and trying to control herself. At length she uncovered her eyes, and she looked again round the whitewashed cell. Yes, it was real. The flagged floor, the bench, the table, the odd-looking bed in its wooden trough—all were real, hard, bare. And the solitude and the dreary silence, and the light that was beginning to fade! The place was far from her crude notion of a prison; but in its cold, naked severity it was as far outside her previous experience. She was in prison, and this was her cell, that was her prison-yard. And she was alone, quite, quite alone.
A sob rose in her throat, and then she laughed a little hysterically, as she remembered their way with those who fainted. And sitting limply down, she warmed herself at the fire, and dried two or three tears. She looked about her again, eyed again the whitewashed walls, and listened. The silence was complete; it almost frightened her. And her door had no fastening on the inside. That fact moved her in the end to rise, and go out and explore the yard, that she might make sure before the light failed that no one was locked in with her, that no one lurked behind the closed cell doors.
The task was not long. She tried the five doors, and found them all locked; she knocked softly on them, and got no answer. The pump, the iron basin, a well scrubbed bench, a couple of besoms, and a bucket, she had soon reviewed all that the yard held. There was a trap or Judas-hole in the outer door, and another, which troubled her, in the door of her cell. But on the whole the survey left her reassured and more at ease; the place, though cold, bare, and silent, was her own. And when her tea and a dip-candle appeared at five she was able to show the jailor’s wife a cheerful face.
The woman had heard more of her story by this time, and eyed her with greater interest, and less rudely.
“You’ll not be afraid to be alone?” she said. “You’ve no need to be. You’re safe enough here.”
“I’m not afraid,” Henrietta answered meekly. “But—couldn’t I have a fastening on my door, please?”