It should be borne in mind that at this time police were unknown—outside London. There were parish constables; but where these were not cobblers, which was strangely often the case, they were men past work, appointed to save the rates. If a man’s pocket were picked, therefore, or his stack fired, his daughter abducted, or his mare stolen, he had only himself and his friends to look to. He must follow the offender, confront him, seize him, carry him to the gaol. He must do all himself. Naturally, if he were a timid man or unpopular, the rogue went free; and sometimes went free again and again until he became the terror of the country-side. A fact which enables us to understand the terrors of lonely houses in those days, and explains the repugnance to life in solitary places which is traditional in some parts of England.
On the other hand, where the crime was known and outrageous, it became every man’s business. It was every man’s duty to join the hue and cry: if he did not take part in it he was a bad neighbour. Mr. Bishop, therefore, did not lack helpers. On the first discovery of Walterson’s flight, which the officer had made a little after daybreak, he had sent horsemen to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, and a boat to Newby Bridge. The nearer shore and the woods on the point below the bishop’s house—some called it Landoff House—were well beaten, and the alarm was given in Bowness on the one hand and in Ambleside on the other. The general voice had it that the man had got away early in the night to Whitehaven. But some stated that a pedlar had met him, on foot and alone, crossing the Kirkstone Pass at daybreak; and others, that he had been viewed skulking under a haystack near Troutbeck Bridge. That a beautiful girl, his companion, had been seized, and was under lock and key in the house, was whispered by some, but denied by more. Nevertheless, the report won its way, so that there were few moments when the chatterers who buzzed about the runner had not an eye on the upper windows and a voice ready to proclaim their discoveries.
Even those who believed the story, however, were far from having a true picture of poor Henrietta. With some she passed for a London Jezebel; locked up, it was whispered, with a bottle of gin to keep her quiet until the chaise was ready to take her to gaol. Others pictured her as the frenzied leader of one of the women’s clubs which had lately sprung up in Lancashire, and of which the principal aim, according to the Tories, was to copy the French fish-fags and march one day to Windsor to drag the old king, blind and mad as he was, to the scaffold. Others spoke of a casual light-o’-love picked up at Lancaster, but a rare piece of goods for looks; which seemed a pity, and one of those tragedies of the law that were beginning to prick men’s consciences—since there was little doubt that the baggage, poor lass, would hang with her tempter.
A word or two of these whisperings reached Mrs. Gilson’s ears. But she only sniffed her contempt, or, showing herself for a moment at the door, chilled by the coldness of her eye the general enthusiasm. Then, woe betide the servant whom she chanced to espy among the idlers. If a man, he was glad to hide himself in the stable; if a woman, she was very likely to go back to her work with a smarting cheek. Even the Troutbeck apothecary, a roistering blade who was making a day of it, kept a wary eye on the door, and, if he could, slipped round the corner when she appeared.
But Juno herself had her moments of failure, and no mortals are exempt from them. About four in the afternoon Mrs. Gilson got a shock. Modest Ann, her face redder than usual, came to her and whispered in her ear. In five seconds the landlady’s face was also redder than usual, and her frown was something to see. She rose.
“I don’t believe it!” she answered. “You are daft, woman, to think of such a thing!”
“It’s true, missus, as I stand here!” Ann declared.
“To Kendal gaol? To-night!”
“That very thing! And her”—with angry fervour—“scarce more than a child, as you may say!”
“Old enough to make a fool of herself!” Mrs. Gilson retorted spitefully. “But I don’t believe it!” she added. “You’ve heard amiss, my girl!”