Involuntarily Henrietta, stooping with a white face to her work, shuddered. But she had no choice. To beg for mercy, it was clear, was useless; to resist was to precipitate matters, while every postponement of the crisis offered a chance of rescue. As long as insult was confined to words she must put up with it—how foolish, how foolish she had been to come! She must smile—though it were awry—and play the sullen or the cheerful, as promised best. The door was locked on her. She had no friends within reach. Help there was none. She was wholly at the mercy of these wretches, and her only hope was that, if she did their bidding, she might awaken a spark of pity in the breast of one or other of them.
Still, she did not quite lose her presence of mind. As she bent over her task, and with shaking fingers hacked at the tough rind of the bacon, the while Bess rained on her a shower of gibes and the men grinned at the joke, her senses were on the alert. Once she fancied a movement and a smothered cry in the room above; and she had work to keep her eyes lowered when Bess immediately went out. She might have thought more of the matter; but left alone with the three men she had her terrors. She dared not let her mind or her eyes wander. To go on with the task, and give the men not so much as a look, seemed the only course.
For the present the three limited their coarse gallantries to words. Nay, when the gipsy lad would have crept nearer to her, the others bade him have done; adding, that kissing the cook-maid never cleaned a dish.
Then Bess came back and forced her to hold the pan on the fire, though the heat scorched her cheeks.
“We’ve to do it! See how you like it!” the girl cried, standing over her vindictively. “And see you don’t drop it, my lass, or I’ll lay the pan to your cheek. You’re proud of your pink and white”—thrusting her almost into the fire—“see how it will stand a bit of cook-maid’s work!”
Pride helped Henrietta to restrain the rising sob, the complaint. And luckily it needed but another minute to complete the cooking. Bess and the three men sat down to the table, and Bess’s first humour was to make her wait on them. But a moment later she changed her mind, forced the girl to sit down, and, will she, nill she, Henrietta had to swallow, though every morsel seemed to choke her, the portion set for her.
“Down with it!” Bess cried, spitefully. “What’s good enough for us is good enough for you! And when supper’s done I’ll see you to your bedroom. You’re a mile too dainty, like all your sort! Ah, you’d like to kill me this minute, wouldn’t you? That’s what I like! I’ve often thought I should like to have one of you peacocks—who look at me as if I were dirt—and put my foot upon her face! And now I’ve got you—who stole my lad! And you’ll see what I’ll do to you!”
CHAPTER XXXI
A STRANGE BEDROOM
The men followed Bess’s lead, and as they supped never ceased to make Henrietta the butt of odious jests and more odious gallantries; until, now pale, now red, the girl was eager to welcome any issue from a position so hateful. Once, stung beyond reason, she sprang up and would have fled from them, with burning ears. But Bess seized her by the shoulders and thrust her back violently into her seat; and, sobered by the force used to her, and terrified lest the men should lay hands on her, she resigned herself.
Strangely, the one of the four who said nothing, was the one whom she feared the most. The gipsy lad did not speak. But his eyes never left her, and something in their insolent freedom caused her more misery than the others’ coarsest jests. He marked her blushes and pallor, and her one uncontrollable revolt; and like the bird that flutters under the spell of the serpent that hopes to devour it, she was conscious of this watching. She was conscious of it to such an extent, that when Bess cried, “Now it’s time you had your bedroom candlestick, peacock!” she did not hear, but sat on as one deaf and blind; as the hare sits fascinated by the snake’s eye.