Chapter 8

I looked at him, wondering what his trouble might be, for he seemed well-to-do and comfortable, except for the hat-brim. Yet he spoke with urgency, and it flashed upon me that his need might not be for himself, but another.

I was about to answer him when he, whose eye had left me to wander round the narrow passage where we were, caught sight of a rim of light under a doorway.

"Is she in that chamber, and alone? What, then, are you afraid of?" he asked, with impatience. "Do you think I would hurt a good creature like that?"

"You would be a cruel wretch, indeed, to do it," I answered, plucking up a little spirit, "for she lives only to show kindness to others."

"So I have been told. 'Tis the same woman," and without more ado he stalked past me to the door of her room, where she sat reading a Bible as her custom was; so he opened it and went in.

I stood without in the passage, trembling still a little, and uncertain of his purpose, yet remembering his words and the horror he had shown at the thought of doing any hurt to my mistress. I said to myself that he could not be a wicked man, and that there was nothing to fear. But, well-a-day, well-a-day, we know not what is before us, nor the evil that we shall do before we die. Of a surety the man that I let in that night had no thought of what he should do; yet he came in the end to do it, and even to justify the doing of it.

I waited outside, as I have said, and the sound of voices came to me. I thought to myself once, "Shall I go nearer and listen?" though it was only for my mistress's sake that I considered it, being no eavesdropper. But I did not go, and in so abstaining I was kept safe in the greatest danger I have been in throughout my life. For if I had heard and known, my fate might have been like hers; and should I have had the strength to endure it?

In a little time the door opened and she came out alone. Her face was paler even than ordinary, and she gave a start on seeing me stand there.

"Child," she said, "have you heard what passed between us on the other side of that door?"

I answered that I had not heard a word; and then she beckoned me to follow her into the kitchen.

When we were alone there I put down my candle on the deal table, and stood still while she looked at me searchingly. I could see that there was more in her manner than I understood.

"Child," she said, "I have had to trust you before when I have given help to those in trouble, and you have not been wanting in discretion; yet you are but a child to trust."

"If you tell me nothing I can repeat nothing," I answered proudly.

"Yet you know something already. Can you keep silent entirely and under all circumstances as to what has happened since you opened the street door?"

"It is not my custom to gabble about your affairs."

"Will you seek to learn no more and to understand no more?"

"I desire to know nothing of the affairs of others, if they do not choose to tell me of their own free will."

She looked at me and sighed a little, at the which I marvelled somewhat, for it was ever her custom to trust in God and so to go forward without question.

"You are young and ill prepared for trial, yet you have wandered alone--silly lassie that you are--into a wilderness of wolves."

"There is trouble everywhere," I answered.

"And danger too," she said; "but there is trouble that we seek for ourselves, and trouble that God sends to us. You will do well, when you are safe at home, to wander no more. Now go to bed and rest."

"Shall I not get a meal for your guest?" I asked; for I was well aware that the man had not yet left the house.

[Sidenote: "Ask no Questions!"]

"Do my bidding and ask no questions," she said, more sternly than was her custom. So I took my candle and went away silently, she following me to my chamber. When I was there she bid me pray to God for all who were in danger and distress, then I heard that she turned the key upon me on the outside and went away.

I undressed with some sullenness, being ill-content at the mistrust she showed; but presently she came to the chamber herself, and prayed long before she lay down beside me.

And now a strange time followed. I saw no more of that visitor that had come to the house lately, nor knew at what time he went away, or if he had attained the end he sought. My mistress busied me mostly in the lower part of the house, and went out very little herself, keeping on me all the while a strict guard and surveillance beyond her wont.

But at last a charitable call came to her, which she never refused; and so she left me alone, with instructions to remain between the kitchen and the street-door, and by no means to leave the house or to hold discourse with any that came, more than need be.

I sat alone in the kitchen, fretting a little against her injunctions, and calling to mind the merry evenings in the parlour at home, where I had sported and gossiped with my comrades. I loved not solitude, and sighed to think that I had now nothing to listen to but the great clock against the wall, nothing to speak to but the cat that purred at my feet.

I was, however, presently to have company that I little expected. For, as I sat with my seam in my hand, I heard a step upon the stairs; and yet I had let none into the house, but esteemed myself alone there.

It came from above, where was an upper chamber, and a loft little used.

My heart beat quickly, so that I was afraid to go out into the passage, for there I must meet that which descended, man or spirit as it might be. I heard the foot on the lowest stair, and then it turned towards the little closet where my mistress often sat alone at her devotions.

While it lingered there I wondered whether I should rush out into the street, and seek the help and company of some neighbour. But I remembered Mrs. Gaunt's injunction; and, moreover, another thought restrained me. It was that of the man that I had let into the house and never seen again. It might well be that he had never left the place, and that I should be betraying a secret by calling in a stranger to look at him.

So I stood trembling by the deal table until the step sounded again and came on to the kitchen.

[Sidenote: The Man Again]

The door opened, and a man stood there. It was the same whom I had seen before.

He looked round quickly, and gave me a courteous greeting; his manner was, indeed, pleasant enough, and there was nothing in his look to set a maid trembling at the sight of him.

"I am in luck," he said, "for I heard Mrs. Gaunt go out some time since, and I am sick of that upper chamber where she keeps me shut up."

"If she keeps you shut up, sir," I said, his manner giving me back all my self-possession, "sure she has some very good reason."

"Do you know her reason?" he asked with abruptness.

"No, nor seek to know it, unless she chooses to tell me. I did not even guess that she had you in hiding."

"Mrs. Gaunt is careful, but I can trust the lips that now reprove me. They were made for better things than betraying a friend. I would willingly have some good advice from them, seeing that they speak wise words so readily." And so saying he sat down on the settle, and looked at me smiling.

I was offended, and with reason, at the freedom of his speech; yet, his manner, was so much beyond anything I had been accustomed to for ease and pleasantness, that I soon forgave him, and when he encouraged me, began to prattle about my affairs, being only, with all my conceit, the silly lassie my mistress had called me.

I talked of my home and my own kindred, and the friends I had had--which things had now all the charm of remoteness for me--and he listened with interest, catching up the names of places, and even of persons, as if they were not altogether strange to him, and asking me further of them.

"What could make you leave so happy a home for such a dungeon as this?" he asked, looking round.

Then I hung my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the prettiest maidens."

"Tom Windham was no country lout," I answered proudly; upon which he leaned forward and asked, "What name was that you said? Windham? and from Westover? Is he a tall fellow with straw-coloured hair and a cut over his left eye?"

"He got it in a good cause," I answered swiftly; "have you seen him?"

"Yes, lately. It is the same. Lucky fellow! I would I were in his place now." And he fell straightway into a moody taking, looking down as if he had forgotten me.

"Sir, do you say so?" I stammered foolishly, "when--when----"

"When you have run away from him? Not for that, little maid;" and he broke again into a laugh that had mischief in it. "But because when we last met he was in luck and I out of it, yet we guessed it not at the time."

"I am glad he is doing well," I said proudly.

"Then should you be sorry for me that am in trouble," he answered. "For I have no home now, nor am like to have, but must go beyond seas and begin a new life as best I may."

"I am indeed sorry, for it is sad to be alone. If Mrs. Gaunt had not been kind to me----"

[Sidenote: Interrupted]

"And to me," he interrupted, "we should never have met. She is a good woman, your mistress Gaunt."

"Yet, I have heard that beyond seas there are many diversions," I answered, to turn the talk from myself, seeing that he was minded to be too familiar.

"For those that start with good company and pleasant companions. If I had a pleasant companion, one that would smile upon me with bright eyes when I was sad, and scold me with her pretty lips when I went astray--for there is nothing like a pretty Puritan for keeping a careless man straight."

"Oh, sir!" I cried, starting to my feet as he put his hand across the deal table to mine; and then the door opened and Elizabeth Gaunt came in.

"Sir," she said, "you have committed a breach of hospitality in entering a chamber to which I have never invited you. Will you go back to your own?"

He bowed with a courteous apology and muttered something about the temptation being too great. Then he left us alone.

"Child," she said to me, "has that man told you anything of his own affairs?"

"Only that he is in trouble, and must fly beyond seas."

"Pray God he may go quickly," she said devoutly. "I fear he is no man to be trusted."

"Yet you help him," I answered.

"I help many that I could not trust," she said with quietness; "they have the more need of help." And in truth I know that much of her good work was among those evil-doers that others shrank from.

"This man seems strong enough to help himself," I said.

"Would that he may go quickly," was all her answer. "If the means could but be found!"

Then she spoke to me with great urgency, commanding me to hold no discourse with him nor with any concerning him.

I did my best to fulfil her bidding, yet it was difficult; for he was a man who knew the world and how to take his own way in it. He contrived more than once to see me, and to pay a kind of court to me, half in jest and half in earnest; so that I was sometimes flattered and sometimes angered, and sometimes frighted.

Then other circumstances happened unexpectedly, for I had a visitor that I had never looked to see there.

I kept indoors altogether, fearing to be questioned by the neighbours; but on a certain afternoon there came a knocking, and when I went to open Tom Windham walked in.

I gave a cry of joy, because the sight of an old friend was pleasant in that strange place, and it was not immediately that I could recover myself and ask what his business was.

"I came to seek you," he said, "for I had occasion to leave my own part of the country for the present."

Looking at him, I saw that he was haggard and strange, and had not the confidence that was his formerly.

"There has been a rising there," I answered him, "and trouble among many?"

"Much trouble," he said with gloom. Then he fell to telling me how such of the neighbours were dead, and others were in hiding, while there were still more that went about their work in fear for their lives, lest any should inform against them.

"Your father's brother was taken on Sedgemoor with a pike in his hand," he added, "and your father has been busy ever since, raising money to buy his pardon--for they say that money can do much."

"That is ill news, indeed," I said.

"I have come to London on my own affairs, and been to seek you at your cousin Alstree's. When I learnt of the trouble that had befallen I followed you to this house, and right glad I am that you are safe with so good a woman as Mrs. Gaunt."

"But why should you be in London when the whole countryside at home is in gaol or in mourning? Have you no friend to help? Did you sneak away to be out of it all?" I asked with the silly petulance of a maid that knows nothing and will say anything.

"Yes," he said, hanging his head like one ashamed, "I sneaked away to be out of it all."

It vexed me to see him so, and I went on in a manner that it pleased me little afterwards to remember. "You, that talked so of the Protestant cause! you, that were ready to fight against Popery! you were not one of those that marched for Bristol or fought at Sedgemoor?"

"No," he said, "I did neither of these things."

"Yet you have run away from the sight of your neighbours' trouble--lest, I suppose, you should anyways be involved in it. Well, 'twas a man's part!"

He was about to answer me when we both started to hear a sound in the house. There was a foot on the stairs that I knew well. Tom turned aside and listened, for we had now withdrawn to the kitchen.

"That is a man's tread," he said; "I thought you lived alone with Mrs. Elizabeth Gaunt."

"Mrs. Gaunt spends her life in good works," I answered, "and shows kindness to others beside me."

I raised my voice in hopes that the man might hear me and come no nearer, but the stupid fellow had waxed so confident that he came right in and stood amazed.

[Sidenote: "You!"]

"You!" he said; and Tom answered, "You!"

So they stood and glared at one another.

"I thought you were in a safe place," said Tom, swinging round to me.

"She is in no danger from me," said the man.

"Are you so foolish as to think so?" asked Tom.

"If you keep your mouth shut she is in no danger," was the answer.

"That may be," said Tom. Yet he turned to me and said, "You must come away from here."

"I have nowhere to go to--and I will not leave Mrs. Gaunt."

"I am myself going away," the man said.

"How soon?"

"To-night maybe; to-morrow night at farthest."

"'Tis a great danger," said Tom, "and I thought you so safe." Again he spoke to me.

"Is there danger from _you_?" the man asked.

"Do you take me for a scoundrel?" was the wrathful reply.

"A man will do much to keep his skin whole."

"There are some things no man will do that is a man and no worse."

"Truly you might have easily been in my place; and you would not inform against a comrade?"

"I should be a black traitor to do it."

Yet there was a blacker treachery possible, such as we none of us conceived the very nature of, not even the man that had the heart to harbour it afterwards.

Tom would not leave me until Mrs. Gaunt came in, and then they had a private talk together. She begged him to come to the house no more at present, because of the suspicions that even so innocent a visitor might bring upon it at that time of public disquiet.

"I shall contrive to get word to her father that he would do well to come and fetch her," he said, in my hearing, and she answered that he could not contrive a better thing.

The man that, as I now understood, we had in hiding went out that night after it was dark, but he came back again; and he did so on the night that followed. Mrs. Gaunt, perceiving that she could not altogether keep him from my company, and that the hope of his safe departure grew less, began to show great uneasiness.

"I see not how I am to get away," the man said gloomily when he found occasion for a word with me; "and the danger increases each day. Yet there is one way--one way."

"Why not take it and go?" I asked lightly.

"I may take it yet. A man has but one life." He spoke savagely and morosely; for his manner was now altered, and he paid me no more compliments.

There came a night on which he went out and came back no more.

"I trust in God," said Mrs. Gaunt, who used this word always in reverence and not lightly, "that he has made his escape and not fallen into the hands of his enemies."

The house seemed lighter because he was gone, and we went about our work cheerfully. Later, when some strange men came to the door--as I, looking through an upper window, could see--Mrs. Gaunt opened to them smiling, for the place was now ready to be searched, and there was none to give any evidence who the man was that had lately hidden there.

[Sidenote: Arrested]

But there was no search. The men had come for Elizabeth Gaunt herself, and they told her, in my hearing, that she was accused of having given shelter to one of Monmouth's men, and the punishment of this crime was death.

It did not seem to me at first possible that such a woman as Elizabeth Gaunt, that had never concerned herself with plots or politics, but spent her life wholly in good works, should be taken up as a public enemy and so treated only because she had given shelter to a man that had fled for his life. Yet this was, as I now learnt, the law. But there still seemed no possibility of any conviction, for who was there to give witness against her of the chief fact, namely, that she had known the man she sheltered to be one that had fought against the King? Her house was open always to those that were in trouble or danger, and no question asked. There were none of her neighbours that would have spied upon her, seeing that she had the reputation of a saint among them; and none to whom she had given her confidence. She had withheld it even from me, nor could I certainly say that she had the knowledge that was charged against her. For Windham was out of the way now--on my business, as I afterwards discovered; and if he had been nigh at hand he would have had more wisdom than to show himself at this juncture.

When I was taken before the judge, and, terrified as I was, questioned with so much roughness that I suspected a desire to fright me further, so that I might say whatever they that questioned me desired, even then they could, happily, discover nothing that told against my mistress, because I knew nothing.

In spite of all my confusion and distress, I uttered no word that could be used against Elizabeth Gaunt.

I saw now her wise and kind care of me, in that she had not put me into the danger she was in herself. It seemed too that she must escape, seeing that there was none to give witness against her.

And then the truth came out, that the villain himself, tempted by the offer of the King to pardon those rebels that should betray their entertainers, had gone of his own accord and bought his safety at the cost of her life that had sheltered and fed him.

When the time came that he must give his evidence, the villain stepped forward with a swaggering impudence that ill-concealed his secret shame, and swore not only that Elizabeth Gaunt had given him shelter, but moreover that she had done it knowing who he was and where he came from. And so she was condemned to death, and, in the strange cruelty of the law, because she was a woman and adjudged guilty of treason, she must be burnt alive.

She had no great friends to help her, no money with which to bribe the wicked court; yet I could not believe that a King who called himself a Christian--though of that cruel religion that has since hunted so many thousands of the best men out of France, or tortured them in their homes there--could abide to let a woman die, only because she had been merciful to a man that was his enemy. I went about like one distracted, seeking help where there was no help, and it was only when I went to the gaol and saw Elizabeth herself--which I was permitted to do for a farewell--that I found any comfort.

"We must all die one day," she said, "and why not now, in a good cause?"

"Is it a good cause," I cried, "to die for one that is a coward, a villain, a traitor?"

"Nay," she answered, "you mistake. I die for the cause of charity. I die to fulfil my Master's command of kindness and mercy."

"But the man was unworthy," I repeated.

"What of that? The love is worthy that would have helped him; the charity is worthy that would have served him. Gladly do I die for having lived in love and charity. They are the courts of God's holy house. They are filled full of peace and joy. In their peace and joy may I abide until God receives me, unworthy, into His inner temple."

"But the horror of the death! Oh, how can you bear it?"

"God will show me how when the time comes," she said, with the simplicity of a perfect faith.

[Sidenote: Death by Fire]

And of a truth He did show her; for they that stood by her at the last testified how her high courage did not fail; no, nor her joy either; for she laid the straw about her cheerfully for her burning, and thanked God that she was permitted to die in this cruel manner for a religion that was all love.

I could not endure to watch that which she could suffer joyfully, but at first I remained in the outskirts of the crowd. When I pressed forward after and saw her bound there--she that had sat at meals with me and lain in my bed at night--and that they were about to put a torch to the faggots and kindle them, I fell back in a swoon. Some that were merciful pulled me out of the throng, and cast water upon me; and William Penn the Quaker, that stood by (whom I knew by sight--and a strange show this was that he had come with the rest to look upon), spoke to me kindly, and bid me away to my home, seeing that I had no courage for such dreadful sights.

So I hurried away, ashamed of my own cowardice, and weeping sorely, leaving behind me the tumult of the crowd, and smelling in the air the smoke of the kindled faggots. I put my fingers in my ears and ran back to the empty house: there to fall on my knees, to pray to God for mercy for myself, and to cry aloud against the cruelty of men.

Then there happened a thing which I remember even now with shame.

The man who had betrayed my mistress came disguised (for he was now at liberty to fly from the anger of the populace and the horror of his friends) and he begged me to go with him and to share his fortunes, telling me that he feared solitude above everything, and crying to me to help him against his own dreadful thoughts.

I answered him with horror and indignation; but he said I should rather pity him, seeing that many another man would have acted so in his place; and others might have been in his place easily enough.

"For," said he, "your friend Windham was among those that came to take service under the Duke and had to be sent away because there were no more arms. He was sorely disappointed that he could not join us."

"Then," said I suddenly, "this was doubtless the reason why he fled the country--lest any should inform against him."

"That is so," he answered; "and a narrow escape he has had; for if he had fought as he desired he might well have been in my place this day."

"In Elizabeth Gaunt's rather!" I answered. "He would himself have died at the stake before he could have been brought to betray the woman that had helped him."

"You had a poorer opinion of him a short while ago."

"I knew not the world. I knew not men. I knew not _you_. Go! Go! Take away your miserable life--for which two good and useful lives have been given--and make what you can of it. I would--coward as I am--go back to my mistress and die with her rather than have any share in it!"