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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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295 ‘What do you want?’ she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held. ‘May I speak to your mistresses?’ I said. ‘You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from?’ ‘I am a stranger.’ ‘What is your business here at this hour?’ ‘I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.’ Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. ‘I’ll give you a piece of bread,’ she said, after a pause; ‘but we can’t take in a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely.’ ‘Do let me speak to your mistresses.’ ‘No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.’ ‘But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?’ ‘Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t do wrong, that’s all. Here is a penny; now go-’ ‘A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t shut the door:- oh, don’t, for God’s sake!’ ‘I must; the rain is driving in-’ ‘Tell the young ladies. Let me see them-’ ‘Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t make such a noise. Move off.’ ‘But I must die if I am turned away.’ ‘Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any followers-housebreakers or such like-anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.’ Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within. This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering-a throe of true despairrent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned-I wrung my hands-I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation-this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone-at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to regain. ‘I can but die,’ I said, ‘and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence.’ These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there-dumb and still. ‘All men must die,’ said a voice quite close at hand; ‘but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.’ ‘Who or what speaks?’ I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near-what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision |
