“But afterwards?” Giles persisted. “Afterwards, my lass? What then?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Bess answered. “For the matter of that, if my old dad once gets his fingers round her throat she’ll not squeak! You may swear to that.”
They dropped their voices then, or they moved farther from the door. So that the remainder of the debate escaped Henrietta, though she strained her ears to the utmost.
She had heard enough, however; enough to know where she stood, and to feel the cold grip of despair close upon her. Fortunately she had had such preparation as the scene and the change in Bess’s demeanor afforded; and while her heart thumped to choke her, and she could not restrain the glances that like a hunted hare she cast about her, she neither fainted nor raised an outcry. The gipsy lad, who lolled beside the door and never took his bold eyes from her, detected the sudden stillness of her pose and her changed aspect. But, though his gaze dwelt as freely as he pleased on her, on the turn of her pale cheek, and the curve of her figure, he was deceived into thinking that she did not catch the drift that was so clear to him.
“She’s frightened!” he thought, smacking his lips. “She’s frightened! But she’d be more frightened if she heard what they are saying. A devil, Bess is, a devil if there ever was one!” And he wondered whether, if he told the girl, she would cling to him, and pray to him, and kneel to him—to save her! He would like that, for she was a pretty prey; and the prettier in his eyes, because she was not dark-skinned and black-eyed, like his own women, but a thing of creamy fairness.
Henrietta heard all, however, and understood. And for a few moments she was near to swooning. Then the very peril in which she found herself steadied her, and gave her power to think. Was there any quarter to which she could look for help—outside or in? Outside the house, alas, none; for she had taken care, fatal care, to blind her trail, and to leave no trace by which her friends could find her! And inside, the hope was as slight. Walterson, to whose pity she might have appealed—with success, if all chivalry were not dead in him—was gone, it seemed. There remained only—a feeble straw indeed to which to cling—the woman of the house; the white-faced woman who had gone in fear, and thought this very girl Bess had designs on her life!
But was the woman here? She had been very near her time, yet no cry, no whimper bore witness to the presence of child life in the house. And the room in its wild and wasteful disorder gave the lie to the presence of any housewife, however careless. The flagged floor, long uncleaned and unwhitened, was strewn with broken pipe-stems, half-burned pipe-lights, gnawed bones and dirty platters. The bright oaken table, the pride of generations of thrifty wives, was a litter of dog’s-eared cards and over-set bottles, broken loaves, and pewter dishes. One of the oat-cake springs hung loose, tearing the ceiling; in one corner a bacon chest gaped open and empty. In another corner a pile of dubious bedding lay as its occupant had left it. The chimney corner was cumbered with logs of wood. Greasy frying-pans and half-cleaned pots lay everywhere; and on the whole, and on a medley of tattered things too repulsive to mention, a show of candles, that would have scared the least frugal dame, cast a useless glare.
In a word, everything within sight proved that the house was at the mercy of the gang who surrounded her. And if that were so? If no help were possible? For an instant panic gripped her. The room swam round, and she had to grasp the settle with her hands to maintain her composure. What was she to do? What could she do, thus trapped? What? What?
She must think—for her own sake, for the child’s sake, who, it was clear, was also in their power. But it was hard, very hard, to think with that man’s eyes gloating on her; and when with every second the door of the dairy, where they were conferring, might open, and—she knew not what horror might befall her. And—and then again there was the child!
For she spared it a thought of pity, grudgingly taken from her own need. And then the door opened. And Bess, carrying the light above her head, came up the steps, followed by the two men.