Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 10

Trask--

"You remember, Mr. Chairman, that the prisoner stubbornly refused to tell how the pistol came in her possession? Does Captain Vyell give us to understand that his interest in this young woman is of older date than this morning's encounter?"

"My interest in her--such as it is--dates, sir, from the evening before last, when she was dismissed from the Bowling Green Inn. The hour was late; her home, as you know, lies at some distance--though doubtless within the ambit of your authority. I lent her this small weapon to protect herself should she be molested."

"And she used it next day upon the Beadle! Dismissed, you say? Why was she dismissed?"

"I regret that I was not more curious at the time," answered the Collector with the politest touch of weariness. "I believe it was for saving the house from fire--something of that sort. As told to me, it sounded rather heroical. But, sir--" he turned again to the Chairman--"

I suggest that all this does not affect my plea. Whatever her offence, she has suffered cruelly. She is physically unfit to bear this second punishment; and when I tell you on my word as a gentleman--or on oath, if you will--that on Sat.u.r.day I found her grandparent starving and that her second offence was committed presumably to supply the household wants, surely I shall not entreat your mercy in vain?"

The Chief Magistrate hesitated, and a frown showed his annoyance.

"To tell you the truth, Captain Vyell, you put me in a quandary.

I do not like to refuse you--" Here he glanced right and left.

"But it can't be done," snapped Mr. Trask. Mr. Wapshott, sitting just beyond, shook his head gently and--as he hoped--unperceived by the Collector.

"You see, sir," explained Mr. Bellingham with a sigh, "we sit here to administer justice without fear or favour. You see also to what scandal it might give rise if a culprit--merely on the intercession of a gentleman like yourself--influential--er--and, in short--"

"--In short, sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of justice committed one d.a.m.nable atrocity upon this child, and plead your cowardice as an excuse for committing another. Influential, am I?

And you prate to me of not being affected by that? Very well; I'll take you at your word. This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of his duty? So did I just now, and with such effect that he will resume it neither to-day nor to-morrow. She inflicted, it appears, a slight graze on his chin. I inflicted two cuts on his face and knocked in three of his teeth. You can take cognisance of _my_ wounding, I promise you. Now, sir, will you whip _me_ through your town?"

"This is mere violence, sir." Mr. Bellingham's face was flushed, but he answered with dignity. "The law is as little to be exasperated as defied."

"I will try you in another way, then," said the Collector, recovering grip of his temper and dropping his voice to a tone of politest insolence. "It is understood that you have not the courage to do this because, seated here and administering what you call justice, you have, each one of you, an eye upon England and preferment, and you know well enough that to touch me would play the devil among the tailors with your little ambitions. I except"--with a bow towards Mr. Trask--"this gentleman, who seems to have earned his influence on your counsels by rugged force of character, And--" for here Mr. Trask, who enjoyed a dig at his colleagues, cast his eyes down and compressed a grin--"is, I should judge, capable of striking a woman for the mere fun of it."

Here Mr. Bellingham and Mr. Wapshott looked demure in turn; for that Mr. Trask led his wife a dog's life was notorious.

"--In truth, gentlemen," the Collector continued easily, "I am at some loss in addressing you, seeing that through some defect of courtesy you have omitted to wait on me, albeit informed (I believe) that I came as His Majesty's Commissioner, and that therefore I have not even the pleasure of knowing your names. I may except that of Mr. Wapshott, whom I am glad to see convalescent this morning." Here he inclined to Mr.

Wapshott, whose gills under the surprised gaze of his colleagues took a perceptibly redder tinge. "Mr. Wapshott, gentlemen," explained the Collector, smiling, "had a slight attack of vertigo yesterday, on the steps of his Place of Wors.h.i.+p. Well, sirs, as I was saying, I will try you in another way. You have not the courage to bring me to trial for a.s.saulting your beadle. You have not even the courage, here and now, to throw me out. I believe, however, that upon a confessed breach of the law--supported by evidence, if necessary--I can force you to try me.

The Clerk will correct me if I am wrong. . . . Apparently he a.s.sents.

Then I desire to confess to you that yesterday, at such-and-such an hour, I broke your laws or bye-laws of Lord's Day Observance; by bathing in the sea for my pleasure. I demand trial on this charge, and, if you convict me--here you can hardly help yourselves, since to my knowledge some of you witnessed the offence--I demand my due punishment of the stocks."

"Really--really, Captain Vyell!" hemm'd the Chief Magistrate.

"Pa.s.sing over your derogatory language, I am at a loss to understand--"

"Are you? Yet it is very simple. Since you reject my plea for this poor creature, I desire to share her punishment."

"Let him," snapped the mouth of Mr. Trask again, opening and shutting like a trap.

"_You_ at any rate, sir, have sense," the Collector felicitated him and turned to the Chief Magistrate. "And you, sir, if you will oblige me, may rest a.s.sured that I shall bear the magistracy of Port Na.s.sau no grudge whatever."

Chapter XI.

THE STOCKS.

In the end they came to a compromise. That Dame Justice should be hustled in this fas.h.i.+on--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to catch up her robe and skip--offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of propriety. It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested.

Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "_to observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him_"--a command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely worded. To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the hearing of the Weights and Measures cases--one of which was being scandalously interrupted at this moment--or it might adjourn for dinner and rea.s.semble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out. But here Mr.

Somershall had to be reckoned with. Mr. Somershall not only made it a practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fas.h.i.+on to confound either of these disingenuous courses. As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.

It was Mr. Trask who found the way out. Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh.

He suggested that, without insisting on a trial, the Captain might be obliged, and his legs given that lesson. He cited precedents.

More than once a friend or relative had, by mercy of the Court, been allowed to sit beside a culprit under punishment. If, a like leave being granted him, Captain Vyell preferred to have his ankles confined--why, truly, Mr. Trask saw no reason for denying him the experience. But the Captain, it was understood, must give his word of honour, first, to accept this as a free concession from the Bench, and, secondly, not to repent or demand release before the expiry of the five hours.

"With all my heart," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate reluctantly gave way.

Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks. She had come so far out of her swoon that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones--of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one--it may have been in unthinking mercy--had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coa.r.s.e stuff, irritating the raw, was as a s.h.i.+rt of fire.

She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete consciousness. She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering.

As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look of horror they awoke as the lids parted. But they saw nothing; neither the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the crowd. She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.

But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul-- like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire--pushed feebly towards the sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open. Something it sought there . . .

a face . . . yes, a face. . . .

--Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were hateful, hostile, mocking her misery--G.o.d knew why; a strong face, not very pitiful--but so strong!--and yet it must be pitiful too, for it condescended to help. It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .

--What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she remembered! She was hiding from him. He was strong, he was kind, but above all he must not see her shame. Let the earth cover her and hide it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful darkness had descended. She remembered sinking into it--sinking--her hands held aloft, as by ropes. Then the ropes had parted. . . .

She had fallen, plumb. . . .

She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire.

Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as they half opened upon the crowd. The grinning faces--the mouths pulled awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand--these were meaningless to her. She did not, in any real sense, behold them. Her misery was a sea about her, and in the trough of it she looked up, seeking one face.

--And why not? It had shone far above her as a G.o.d's; but she had been sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may meet even a G.o.d's alt.i.tude on equal terms. Stark mortal, stark G.o.d--its limit of suffering past, humanity joins the celestial, clasping its knees.

Of a sudden, turning her eyes a little to the left, she saw him.

He had come at a strolling pace across the square, with Mana.s.seh and the deputy-beadle walking wide beside him, and the Court-house rabble at his heels, but keeping, in spite of themselves, a respectful distance.

At the stocks he faced about, and they halted on the instant, as though he had spoken a word of command. He smiled, seated himself leisurably at the end of the bench on Ruth Josselin's left, and extended a leg for Mana.s.seh to draw off its riding-boot. At the back of the crowd a few voices chattered, but within the semicircle a hush had fallen.

It was then that she turned her eyes and saw him.

How came he here? What was he doing? . . . She could not comprehend at all. Only she felt her heart leap within her and stand still, as like a warm flood the consciousness of his presence stole through her, poured over her, soothing away for the moment all physical anguish. She sat very still, her hands in her lap; afraid to move, afraid even to look again. This consciousness--it should have been shame, but it held no shame at all. It was hope. It came near, very near, to bliss.

She was aware in a dull way of some one unlocking and lifting the upper beam of the stocks. Were they releasing her? Surely her sentence had been for five hours?--surely her faintness could not have lasted so long! This could not be the end? She did not wish to be released.

She would not know what to do, where to go, when they set her free.

She must walk home through the town, and that would be worst of all.

Or perhaps _he_ was commanding them to release her? . . . No; the beam creaked and dropped into place again. A moment ago his voice had been speaking; speaking very cheerfully, not to her. Now it was silent.

After some minutes she gathered courage to turn her eyes again.

Captain Vyell sat with his legs in durance. They were very shapely legs, cased in stockings of flesh-coloured silk with crimson knee-ties.

He sat in perfect patience, and rolled a tobacco-leaf between his fingers. At his shoulder stood Mana.s.seh like a statue, with face immobile as Marble--black marble--and a tinder-box ready in his hand.

"Why? . . ."

He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her breast, so faintly it reached him. She had murmured it as if to herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question. His ear was alert.