"I am not used to impertinence," she said. "You forget yourself!"
"Bead," Mrs. Gilson retorted, "and say what you like then. You'll have little stomach for saying anything," she added in an undertone, "or I'm a Dutchman!"
Henrietta saw nothing for it but to read under protest, and she did so with a smile of contempt. In the circumstances it seemed the easier course. But alas! as she read, her pretty, angry face changed. She had that extreme delicacy of complexion which betrays the least ebb and flow of feeling: and in turn perplexity, wonder, resentment, all were painted there, and vividly. She looked up.
"To whom was this written?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
Mrs. Gilson was pitiless.
"Look at the beginning!" she answered.
The girl turned back mechanically, and read that which she had read before. But then with surprise; now with dread.
"Who is--Sally?" she muttered.
Despite herself, her voice seemed to fail her on the word. And she dared not meet their eyes.
"Who's Sally?" Mrs. Gilson repeated briskly. "Why, his wife, to be sure! Who should she be?"
CHAPTER V
A JEZEBEL
There was a loud drumming in Henrietta's ears, and a dimness before her eyes. In the midst of this a voice, which she would not have known for her own, cried loudly and clearly, "No!" And again, more violently, "No!"
"But it is 'Yes'!" the landlady answered coolly. "Why not? D'you think"--with rough contempt--"he's the first man that's lied to a woman? or you're the first woman that's believed a rascal? She's his wife right enough, my girl"--comfortably. "Don't he ask after his children? If you'll turn to the bottom of the second page you'll see for yourself! Oh, quite the family man, he is!"
The girl's hand shook like ash-leaves in a light breeze; the paper rustled in her grasp. But she had regained command of herself--she came of a stiff, proud stock, and the very brusqueness of the landlady helped her; and she read word after word and line after line of the letter. She passed from the bottom of the second sheet to the head of the third, and so to the end. But so slowly, so laboriously that it was plain that her mind was busy reading between the lines--was busy comparing, sifting, remembering.
To Bishop's credit be it said, he kept his eyes off the girl. But at last he spoke.
"I'd that letter from his wife's hand," he said. "They are married right enough--in Hounslow Church, miss. She lives there, two doors from the 'George' posting-house, where folks change horses between London and Windsor. She was a waiting-maid in the coffee-room, and 'twas a rise for her. But she's not seen him for three years--reason, he's been in hiding--nor had a penny from him. Now she's got it he's taken up with some woman hereabouts, and she put me on the scent. He's a fine gift of the gab, but for all that his father's naught but a little apothecary, and as smooth a rogue and as big a Radical, one as the other! I wish to goodness," the runner continued, suddenly reminded of his loss, "I'd took him last night when he came in! But----"
"That'll do!" Mrs. Gilson said, cutting him short, as if he were a tap she had turned on for her own purposes. "You can go now!"
"But----"
"Did you hear me, man? Go!" the landlady thundered. And a glance of her eye was sufficient to bring the runner to heel like a scolded hound. "Go, and shut the door after you," she continued, with sharpness. "I'll have no eavesdropping in my house, prerogative or no prerogative!"
When he was gone she showed a single spark of mercy. She went to the fire and proceeded to mend it noisily, as if it were the one thing in the world to be attended to. She put on wood, and swept the hearth, and made a to-do with it. True, the respite was short; a minute or two at most. But when the landlady had done, and turned her attention to the girl, Henrietta had moved to the window, so that only her back was visible. Even then, for quite a long minute Mrs. Gilson stood, with arms akimbo and pursed lips, reading the lines of the girl's figure and considering her, as if even her rugged bosom knew pity. And in the end it was Henrietta who spoke--humbly, alas! now, and in a voice almost inaudible.
"Will you leave me, please?" she said.
"I will," Mrs. Gilson answered gruffly. "But on one understanding, miss--and I'll have it plain. It must be all over. If you are satisfied he is a rascal--he has four children--well and good. But I'll have no goings on with such in my house, and no making two bites of a cherry! Here's a bit of paper I'll put on the table."
"I am satisfied," Henrietta whispered.
Under the woman's blunt words she shook as under blows.
But Mrs. Gilson seemed to pay little heed to her feelings.
"Very good, very good!" she answered. "But I'll leave the paper all the same. It's but a bit of a handbill that fool of a runner brought with him, but 'twill show you what kind of a poor thing your Joe was. Just a spouter, that got drunk on his own words and shot a poor inoffensive gentleman in a shop! Shame on him for a little dirty murder, if ever there was one."
"Oh, please go! please go!" Henrietta wailed.
"Very well. But there's the paper. And do you begin to think"--removing with housewifely hand a half-eaten dish of eggs from the table, and deftly poising on the same arm a large ham--"do you begin to think like a grown, sensible woman what you'd best do. The shortest folly's soonest over! That's my opinion."
And with that she opened the door, and, heavily laden, made her way downstairs.
The girl turned and stood looking at the room, and her face was wofully changed. It was white and pinched, and full of strained wonder, as if she asked herself if she were indeed herself, and if it could really be to her that this thing had happened. She looked older by years, she looked almost plain. But in her eyes was a latent fierceness. An observer might have guessed that her pride suffered more sharply than her heart. Possibly she had never loved the man with half the fervour with which she now hated him.
And that was true, though the change was sudden; ay, and though Henrietta did not know it, nor would have admitted it. She suffered notwithstanding, and horribly. For, besides pride, there were other things that lay wounded and bleeding: her happy-go-lucky nature that had trusted lightly, and would be slow to trust again; her girlish hopes and dreams; and the foolish fancy that had passed for love, and in a single day, an hour, a minute, might have become love. And one other thing--the bloom of her innocence. For though she had escaped, she had come too near the fire not to fear it henceforth, and bear with her the smell of singeing.
As she thought of that, of her peril and her narrow escape, and reflected how near she had come to utter shipwreck, her face lost its piteous look, and grew harder, and sharper, and sterner; so that the wealth of bright hair, that was her glory, crowned it only too brilliantly, only too youthfully. She saw how he had fooled her to the top of her bent; how he had played on her romantic tastes and her silly desire for secrecy. A low-born creature, an agitator, hiding from the consequences of a cowardly crime, he had happened upon her in his twilight walks, desired her--for an amusement, turned her head with inflated phrases, dazzled her inexperience with hints of the world and his greatness in it. And she--she had thought herself wiser than all about her, as she had thought him preferable to the legitimate lover assigned to her by her family. And she had brought herself to this! This was the end!
Or no, not the end. The game, for what it was worth, was over. But the candle-money remained to be paid. Goldsmith's stanzas had still their