Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Arrived at the next market town to Peasmarsh, Lady Bell's driver took / her into the lamp-lit inn-yard; and when she pressed a recompense upon / him, looked doubtfully at it, and then, as if he would do more to / deserve it, hailed a sleepy chambermaid.

"Here, Dolly, here be a poor madam who has missed the coach, or summat, / and I ha' given her a lift. She be skeared and knocked up. Do you put / her up at a reasonable charge, and see her on her way in the morning."

The woman undertook to lead the stranger to a bedroom immediately, and / good-naturedly promised to bring her bread and cheese, and what was left / of the hot cyder, before she herself retired for the night.

In passing across the never dark or quiet yard, which was surrounded by / an old-fashioned brown gallery, forming an outside passage from room to / room on the second floor of the inn, Lady Bell could see the landlord / standing, candlestick in hand, in the gallery, exchanging a parting word / with one of his guests. She could hear the words, "There is no lady or / gentleman wanting to go to Thorpe, who will pay for the spare seat in / the chaise with you and your wife. There is no help for it, since you / say you must get on; but, as you complain, sir, it will come plaguey / expensive."

Lady Bell had been making her steps slower-she stood still altogether. / She was, when she was not fit to sink and die, ready to see wonders and / miracles in every step of this journey, and the sight of miracles braced / her for the moment, and lent her genius, and a faculty of seizing every / little incident and turning it to her purpose.

"There is help for it, landlord," she found courage and voice to call / up, in contradiction of the man. "I, too, must get on to Thorpe. I shall / take the vacant seat in the chaise."

The landlord and the gentleman thus suddenly interrupted, leapt asunder / like two detected conspirators on the stage. The landlord held down his / candle, and threw its light on the slender little figure in the ordinary / lady's travelling-dress, standing in the court below, while the / gentleman cried, "By Jove! this smacks of magic!"

But the conclusion was arrived at by a third person. A lady, with her / head enveloped in a night-cap, put it out of a door opening into the / gallery, and declared promptly, "It is a piece of uncommon good luck. We / cannot afford, for our child's sake, to spend a shilling that we can / spare-make the bargain," and withdrew with as little loss of time as she / had taken to present herself, and throw the weight of her authority into / the scale.

"Ahem! you understand, madam, that the single seat in the post-chaise, / with the advantage of our protection and society, is dirt cheap at a / sovereign," called down the gentleman from his gallery with an air of / importance, and also with an evident eagerness to turn a penny, which / savoured of possible impecuniosity in time past, and probable opulence, / by dint of similar bargain driving, in time to come.

"I understand, and I agree," answered Lady Bell, still standing in the / yard below, awaiting the termination of the affair.

"Then you hold yourself in readiness to be called at six o'clock in the / morning," concluded the gentleman, with a flourishing bow, to which Lady / Bell forced her stiffening knees to respond with a curtsey.

The little transaction was complete-even to witnesses provided in the / chambermaid and the landlord, not over well-pleased to find his / departing and arriving guests in league thus to free him of their / company.

The second best bed at the Blue Bear, Dartwich, was not more comfortless / than Lady Bell's old closet at St. Bevis's, or more devoid of domestic / happiness and sympathy, than her room at Trevor Court. Her flight had / prospered so far, alike beyond her expectations and her deserts; its / farther progress was secured, and Lady Bell, with the strain on her / forces relaxed, found herself more fairly and fully tired than she had / ever been before in the whole course of her fifteen years of life. She / said her prayers, dropping asleep between every sentence, but without / the least sense of mockery in the act; on the contrary, with a / pathetically delusive conviction at once of the rectitude and the / inevitableness of her course. The moment she had finished, she sank into / thorough insensibility, and was with difficulty aroused to keep her / appointment in the hodden grey of an autumn morning.

When Lady Bell descended to the public room, which, at that hour, was / the kitchen of the inn, she found the party to which she had attached / herself already assembled in travelling gear, and engaged without / ceremony at breakfast.

"Be quick, madam! " the lady in the mantle, with the baby in her lap, / addressed her, in a tone of command, hardly looking at the person to / whom she spoke, she was so full of her own affairs; "I must be at Thorpe / before two o'clock, which, with the stoppage to bait, will take all our / time. Besides, my child is ready to fall into his morning sleep, when he / will travel with less hurt to him."

Lady Bell stared and submitted, not only because of the exigencies of / the case, but as submission must be natural to all who came in contact / with this lady.

There was a natural, ineffaceable power, amounting to majesty, which did / not suit ill with the woman, even at an anti-climax like this, when she / was sitting on a wooden stool, in a common inn-kitchen, herself wrapped / in a faded duffle mantle, and occupied, between the intervals of feeding / the child, in supping heartily from a basin of bread and milk for her / own breakfast.