第152章

"Let me go in with you, mamma!" pleaded Lucy.

Barbara mechanically took the child's hand. The gates closed on them, and Miss Carlyle and Lady Isabel proceeded in the direction of the town. But not far had they gone when, in turning a corner, the wind, which was high, blew away with the veil of Lady Isabel, and, in raising her hand in trepidation to save it before it was finally gone, she contrived to knock off her blue spectacles. They fell to the ground, and were broken.

"How did you manage that?" uttered Miss Carlyle.

How, indeed? She bent her face on the ground, looking at the damage.

What should she do? The veil was over the hedge, the spectacles were broken--how could she dare show her naked face? That face was rosy just then, as in former days, the eyes were bright, and Miss Carlyle caught their expression, and stared in very amazement.

"Good heavens above," she uttered, "what an extraordinary likeness!"

And Lady Isabel's heart turned faint and sick within her.

Well it might. And, to make matters worse, bearing down right upon them, but a few paces distant, came Sir Francis Levison.

Would /he/ recognize her?

Standing blowing in the wind at the turning of the road were Miss Carlyle and Lady Isabel Vane. The latter, confused and perplexed, was picking up the remnant of her damaged spectacles; the former, little less perplexed, gazed at the face which struck upon her memory as being so familiar. Her attention, however, was called off the face to the apparition of Sir Francis Levison.

He was close upon them, Mr. Drake and the other comrade being with him, and some tagrag in attendance, as usual. It was the first time he and Miss Carlyle had met face to face. She bent her condemning brow, haughty in its bitter scorn, full upon him, for it was not in the nature of Miss Carlyle to conceal her sentiments, especially when they were rather of the strongest. Sir Francis, when he arrived opposite, raised his hat to her. Whether it was done in courtesy, in confused unconsciousness, or in mockery, cannot be told. Miss Carlyle assumed it to have been the latter, and her lips, in their anger grew almost as pale as those of the unhappy woman who was cowering behind her.

"Did you intend that insult for me, Francis Levison?"

"As you please to take it," returned he, calling up insolence to his aid.

"/You/ dare to lift off your hat to me! Have you forgotten that I am Miss Carlyle?"

"It would be difficult for /you/ to be forgotten, once seen."

Now this answer /was/ given in mockery; his tone and manner were redolent of it, insolently so. The two gentlemen looked on in discomfort, wondering what it meant; Lady Isabel hid her face as best she could, terrified to death lest his eyes should fall on it: while the spectators, several of whom had collected now, listened with interest, especially some farm laborers of Squire Pinner's who had happened to be passing.

"You contemptible worm!" cried Miss Carlyle, "do you think you can outrage me with impunity as you, by your presence in it, are outraging West Lynne? Out upon you for a bold, bad man!"

Now Miss Corny, in so speaking, had certainly no thought of present and immediate punishment for the gentleman; but it appeared that the mob around had. The motion was commented by those stout-shouldered laborers. Whether excited thereto by the words of Miss Carlyle--who, whatever may have been her faults of manner, held the respect of the neighborhood, and was looked up to only in a less degree than her brother; whether Squire Pinner, their master, had let drop, in their hearing, a word of the ducking he had hinted at, when at East Lynne, or whether their own feelings alone spurred them on, was best known to the men themselves. Certain it is, that the ominous sound of "Duck him," was breathed forth by a voice, and it was caught up and echoed around.

"Duck him! Duck him! The pond be close at hand. Let's give him a taste of his deservings! What do he the scum, turn himself up at West Lynne for, bearding Mr. Carlyle? What have he done with Lady Isabel? /Him/ put up for others at West Lynne! West Lynne's respectable, it don't want him; it have got a better man; it won't have a villain. Now, lads!"

His face turned white, and he trembled in his shoes--worthless men are frequently cowards. Lady Isabel trembled in hers; and well she might, hearing that one allusion. They set upon him, twenty pairs of hands at least, strong, rough, determined hands; not to speak of the tagrag's help, who went in with cuffs, and kicks, and pokes, and taunts, and cheers, and a demoniac dance.

They dragged him through a gap in the hedge, a gap that no baby could have got through in a cool moment; but most of us know the difference between coolness and excitement. The hedge was extensively damaged, but Justice Hare, to whom it belonged, would forgive that. Mr. Drake and the lawyer--for the other was a lawyer--were utterly powerless to stop the catastrophe. "If they didn't mind their own business, and keep themselves clear, they'd get served the same," was the promise held out in reply to their remonstrances; and the lawyer, who was short and fat, and could not have knocked a man down, had it been to save his life, backed out of the /melee/, and contented himself with issuing forth confused threatenings of the terrors of the law. Miss Carlyle stood her ground majestically, and looked on with a grim countenance. Had she interfered for his protection, she could not have been heard; and if she could have been, there's no knowing whether she would have done it.

On, to the brink of the pond--a green, dank, dark, slimy sour, stinking pond. His coat-tails were gone by this time, and sundry rents and damages appeared in--in another useful garment. One pulled him, another pushed him, a third shook him by the collar, half a dozen buffeted him, and all abused him.

"In with him, boys!"

"Mercy! Mercy!" shrieked the victim, his knees bending and his teeth chattering--"a little mercy for the love of Heaven!"

"Heaven! Much he knows of Heaven!"