Vashti Savage

Front matter

" POOR VASHTI ! " [p. 119. VASHTI SAVAGE BY SARAH TYTLER AUTHOR OF "CITOYENNE JACQUELINE," "HER GENTLE DEEDS," ETC. LONDON S. W. PARTRIDGE AND CO. 9, PATERNOSTER ROW. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS. CHAP, PAGE I. A WILD CREATURE FLEEING IN THE NIGHT ... 7 II. A DESCENDANT OF KINGS IN THE POOR-HOUSE . . 27 III. A HAWK IN A SPARROWS NEST 44 IV. "LET US TRY WHAT WE CAN MAKE OF HER, PRISSY, BEN " 67 V. TAMING THE UNTAMABLE S4 VI. BRED IN THE BONE IOO VII. THE NEW HEAD OF THE HOUSE 127 VIII. FRESHLY' INSTALLED MATRONS AT THE GREAT HOUSE AND THE RECTORY 147 IX. REBELS 16S X. THE PLOT THICKENS . . . . . . . I S4 XI. A NIGHT ADRIFT Contents. VI CHAP. PAGE XII. A STRAIT — FOUND — MRS. SWIFT'S VERDICT . . . 222 XIII. SUMMER DAYS AND SUMMER YEARS .... 242 XIV. ROGER SWIFT IN THE TOILS — THE LION AND THE MOUSE 265 XV. REPARATION *. . . . 289 XVI. TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

Chapter I

A WILD CREATURE FLEEING IN THE NIGHT. ROGER SWIFT, a kindly tempered, easy-going gentleman, long past his first youth, but not turned fifty-five, was taking an evening stroll and smoke just outside his own iron gates on a sultry night in July. Though his house was an hour's distance by railway from London, he was a City man accustomed to run up to his office every morning and return to Water Basset in time for dinner. The day had been hot, and business, though he was a prosperous man and took life easily, had been an oppression which made him more disposed to linger in the soft, sweet summer dusk, among country sounds and scents, the rattle of the land-rail, the croak of a frog, the fragrant breath of hay and honeysuckle. Another reason for prolonging his stroll was that, while he was a family man, his wife was dead and none of the elder children, to whom he was the most indulgent of fathers, had ever taken the mother's place as his confidential friend and companion.

The stable clock struck ten, warning him that it was time for him to throw away the end of his cigar and make for his lodge-gate, if he did not wish to be locked out by his own gate-keeper. He had been walking in the direction of a rough bit of common land which lay not far from where his park wall ended. As he faced about and proceeded to retrace his steps, he was struck by the cloudy darkness, probably pre ceding a storm, which threatened to render his wall and gate in the shadow of the overhanging trees well-nigh indistinguishable. " Hallo ! what on earth is that ? " he called out in surprise the next moment, as something or somebody coming up behind him with a rush struck him in passing, rebounded from the sharp contact, missed its footing, and fell rolling over from the side path into the main road.

He sprang forward, too late to prevent the accident, and picked up a young girl, half child, half girl by her gait and gestures, who had been running at the top of her speed, and now struggled violently in his grasp. "Let me go!" she panted; "let me be ! I bean't doing no harm, but I'm mortal feared, I is, that he'll catch me, and wallop me next. I mun bite and scratch if so be you'll keep me." She suited the action to the words, darting with her nails and teeth at the hands which held her. He caught her by the wrists and forced her head aside. " You little wild cat ! where do you hail from, and what mischief are you about, running like that in the darkness when every respectable child is in bed ? " " I ain't respectable ! " shrieked the girl, " and I ain't a child. I ha' helped to make and sell skewers, and pins, and traps, and nets, and baskets ; and I ha' telled fortunes at the fairs for years.

I'm turned twelve, and mother was married at fourteen — her told me. Oh ! mother, mother, has father done for you this time ? I seed blood running black, like the ditch water, and the whites o' your eyes a' turning up by the light o' the lamp. Let me go — let me go ! If you wunnot, I'll throttle you ! " At the horror of the picture she had drawn she shrieked with renewed vigour, made a spring at his throat, and fought desperately to free herself. " I cannot let you go, my girl, till I hear more of what has happened to scare you, and know what is to become of you, and where you are to find shelter for the night," said Roger Swift, not unkindly, and not unmoved by the frantic agitation of the creature he had captured. " Have you been mixed up in a row ? Is a woman — your mother hurt ? Look here ; it will do no good for you to yell and pitch into me.

Better tell your story, and see if assistance can be got. My lodge is within sight, if it were not as dark as Erebus ; it is the nearest house. You ought to be in somebody's care. You're a girl, and not a boy. I've girls of my own, and know what they should be like." " I ain't like your girls ! " cried the culprit. " No, indeed," said Roger Swift under his breath ; then he added aloud, " You're of too tender an age to be scouring the country in the middle of the night, though you may have run off to get out of the way of a free fight." " I bean't skeared," she said, half sullenly, half proudly ; " leastways, it ain't the night that has skeared me. I ha' tramped with father and mother, and I ha' tramped mysen on mother's errands to the nearest house, i' the dark, a power o' nights. Laws ! the dark ain't amiss to them as can see before their noses."

" Don't be satirical, my young friend." " What do stirical be ? Has it aught to do with picking and stealing ? I bean't a thief. As God a' mighty sees me " " Hush ! hush ! Nobody is accusing you ; but if you use, or rather abuse, sacred names in that fashion, I'll suspect you of the whole petty larceny committed by your tribe. You have come out of one of the gipsy tents pitched out on the Scrub there ? " She had submitted to his superior strength, and was consenting to walk quietly beside him, his right hand grasping her left wrist, but by the quick glances she cast in all directions, accompanied by sudden jerks of her body and half-suppressed springs of her limbs, he was satisfied that she would make off from him on the first opportunity. " There bean't but one tent on the Scrub, and that's our'n," she said, a little disdainful of his ignorance.

" If there had been a heap o' tents, I would ha' run to one o' they." He could not see anything further of her in the dusk than that she was a small, dark slip of humanity, who might be a stunted girl of twelve or a tallish child of ten. He had a notion that the wardrobe on her back, doubtless the only one she possessed, was scant and ragged ; but the impression he received might owe a great deal to both memory and association. He had often seen the waggons and tents of the nomads, half gipsies, half tramps, that were wont at certain seasons, in spite of the opposition of the respectable natives, to dot Basset Scrub ; and he had a general familiarity with their population of picturesque, slouching vagabonds of men and boys, and untidy, tattered women and children. " What's your name ? " he asked of his prisoner.

" Vash," she answered briefly. " Vache," he repeated, with a ring of laughter in his voice, for though he was kindly he was merry-hearted to excess, and could hardly help finding pleasantry and jests in every subject under the sun. " That is a queer name," he went on ; " besides, I thought it was horses, not cows, that your people dealt in." " What do you mean by cows ? " she asked sharply. " Vash is a queen's name, Vash is." " Oh," he said, " I have you now, Vashti ! I hope you are not going to copy your royal namesake in your defiance of the powers that be." " I ain't up to your meaning," said Vashti, with assumed carelessness, rather as if it was her choice and not her misfortune to fail to understand him. " She corned from the East, where we corned from, where the stars corned from." "And you are her descendant, no doubt?

" " I ain't clear what 'cendant is," said Vashti candidly. " Oh, her daughter once or twice removed." " We be king's childer — leastways father is. As for mother, her were low-born, come of tinker-tramps. I've heard father tell her that, afore he whacked her." "Was he in the habit of paying her that delicate piece of attention — I mean, of whacking her ? " " Most every day," answered Vashti, with the coolness of a person to whom a startling incident has become trite by frequent repetition. " Sometimes it were with a broom ; he gied her a black eye with that." "You don't say so!" protested Roger, making up his mind on the spot that the girl was exaggerating. " That was last week," Vashti proceeded methodi cally. "Sometimes it were with his stick. He lamed her right arm wi' thatten a month agone.

But to-night it were with the axe that he uses to split the wood, and her were bleeding like a sheep." " Hold your tongue ! " cried good-natured Roger Swift indignantly, unable to stand any more of the tale of sickening brutality. " You must be talking nor. sense ; you know you must. At the same time," he said, more to himself than to her, "we must have this affair looked into, or we'll have murder committed within our bounds. I have the honour to hold Her Majesty's commission as a justice of the peace, and it will not do to let such barbarities pass unchecked." " Be you the hangman ? " asked Vashti inquisitively. " Uncle Wisdom 'a' told father scores o' times he'll never rest till he's in the hangman's hands." " No, my functions are not quite the same as those of the gentleman you mention," said Roger, yielding to what he described afterwards as an irresistible inclina tion to talk tall language to the waif, she was so intolerably self-sustained and dignified.

"What is your other name besides Vashti ? " " I hain't no other name." " A convenient deficiency for one of your sex," he remarked lightly. " You won't need to change a name which has never existed when a certain interesting occasion occurs." n "You're greening me," said the object petulantly. " I won't be greened." " What will you do ? What happens when you are greened against your will ? " " I lies down and kicks and yells." " But you are a great deal too old for that, and you are a remarkably forward girl for your age. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for doing anything of the kind." "Them as greens me ought to be ashamed of their selves." "You're not far wrong; you hit me there, Miss Vashti. But here we are at the Lodge." He took her within the gate, and inside the door of a mock Swiss cottage, both gate and door still standing open as he had left them an hour before.

Their entrance was not accomplished without an unavailing attempt on her part to twist herself out of his clutch, double, and flee again into the darkness out of which she had come. "None of that," he told her; "you must do what I " HERE, MRS. RUST, I'VE BROUGHT YOU AN ODD NIGHT-BIRD " (p. 17). wish ; everybody does that here. You and I are going to be friends, Vashti. Why, we've been quite confi dential as it is, and I flatter myself have edified and entertained each other while we came along. Here, Mrs. Rust, I've brought you an odd night-bird, and you must find a place for her to roost in till morning, when we'll see what truth there is in the sensational tale she tells, and what is to be done with her." He was standing in the cheery, comfortable house place of a well-to-do gamekeeper's cottage ; which the bright fire on the hearth lit up, from the eight-day clock to the chest of mahogany drawers, from the stuffed owl in a case above the chimney-piece to the carefully trimmed and flourishing geranium in full flower in a pot on the window-sill.

When he came in he had found the room empty; but his entrance had brought from an inner room a fresh-coloured elderly woman, as tidy as her kitchen and sitting-room in one, in spite of the ugly fashion of having her grey hair in a brown net, and of wearing no white collar round her throat, not even such a white neckerchief under her stuff gown as her grandmother would have shown. Her eyes were not blinking with the sudden transit from darkness to firelight, and were fully open to the miserable descrip tion of child Roger Swift was thrusting forward. She was a perfect scarecrow of a dark-skinned, ill-grown girl, with unkempt locks under a torn hat, and as torn a frock, which was also so faded and stained that its original colour was lost. She had the merest pretence at shoes, down at heel and out at toe, betraying the bare feet, which were not nearer coffee-colour and more begrimed than the bare hands and throat, that went along with the feet.

" Oh my ! Mr. Swift," cried Mrs. Rust, speaking in the tone of respectful remonstrance which a good and favoured servant will not hesitate to adopt to an easy going, kind-hearted master, reckoned by his subordinates rash and thoughtless for his years. " Whatever has made you do this ? You've gone and picked up a gipsy brat from one of them tents on the Scrub, and all them young poultry and game, as I won't name more particular in present company, going about. You may lock up your gun afore the shooting season comes round, and it will be a good thing if we ain't all robbed and murdered in our beds. I don't know what Rust will say when he comes in." " Tut, tut, Mrs. Rust," said her master, looking rather shame-faced, " don't be a prophetess of evil. Smooth down Rust as you best know how. Besides, I could not help myself.

The child was scurrying past me like the wind when she tripped and fell. I caught hold of her to help her up, and tried to stop her and find where she was running to in such a desperate hurry at this time of the night. I can tell you it took me all my strength to keep her from breaking loose. She was wild with fright at what must have been a fight in her tent, though, according to her, it is a daily occurrence. It must be seen to and put a stop to, in the name of humanity," he went on, speaking in the public interest. " In the meantime, the girl isn't fit to go to Wood Basset, or Crownleigh, or wherever she was bound for. She is little older than Miss Prissy. It would have been a shame and scandal to have left her out in the road or the fields, with night and a storm coming on. Tell Rust that."

Mrs. Rust listened doubtfully and disapprovingly, though she was too well-bred a servant, and Mr. Swift, with all his tolerant, compliant way, was too well aware that he was master in his own domain, and too well accustomed to exercise his authority — quietly and jocu larly, perhaps, but still unquestionably — for her to do more than say, " Well, sir, I believe you had better have left a young gipsy alone. Trust her and her people to know the whole country as well by night as by day, and some of the cattle would be sure to be near her or to overtake her before long. Satan knows his own, if you will forgive me for using such a word. No fear of a young gipsy wench coming to grief with being out in the dark. As for her story, you may make up your mind it was a parcel of the monstrous lies which they live by telling."

"No, it weren't a lie," spoke up Vashti, hitherto quiescent, startling the speakers, who were perforce dis cussing her position and credibility in her hearing. Her manner was eager and resolute, but it had none of the indignation and pain with which one might have expected that she would deny the charge of falsehood brought against her. " Though in course I can lie." " Hear till her ! " interpolated the shocked Mrs. Rust. "But I were speaking gospel truth to the gentleman," resumed the girl. " Father ha' felled mother as he would ha' felled a' ox." Even the incredulous Mrs. Rust was a little im pressed by this statement. She might not reckon a gipsy woman her neighbour in ordinary circumstances, but it was another thing to stand by and look on or listen in cold blood while she was being murdered.

" She has told me that more than once, and sticks to her point," said Roger Swift, watching Mrs. Rust's face, and appreciating the effect produced by the idea of a wretched woman being treated as a dog is rarely treated. " I have some notion that you should send Rust up to the house the moment he comes in, and that he and I, and perhaps Spiers or Wilson," naming his gardener and coachman, " if I can get my hands on either of them, ought to start at once for the Scrub. We should get at the bottom of the tale, and rescue the woman if necessary." Mrs. Rust's mind reverted instantly to its naturally cautious and distrustful habits. "And have a score of gipsy men overpower you and my master, not to say Spiers and Wilson. Wilson is up in years, and Spiers is still lame of the hand he hacked chopping wood.

I tied it up with Friar's balsam not three days agone. In the dead of the night a band of gipsies might do what they liked with you, though Rust is a powerful man, and you are still as active a gentleman as when you came to Water Basset. I don't go in with no such tempting of Providence, Mr. Swift, and my master sha'n't go with you on no such mad errand with my will," said Mrs. Rust, in violent opposition. She knew her duty, however, and felt bound to add, in a tone of disconsolate yet exasperated humility, " But, in course, Rust is at your service." " I'm not so sure of that," said her master, chaffing her ; for he was fain to reassure and comfort anybody he contradicted, and he frequently knew no better way of doing it than by chaffing his victim. " Better stop till daylight, sir, and get the police to go with you.

It is their business, and not yours and Rust's." " I'm not certain that the poor woman will say so if she has to stand still and be mauled till it is morning, and till I can put the matter into the hands of the police " " It's nothing of the sort, sir, depend upon it. It's a tale to crave pity ; or it's a decoy to get you into mischief; or she's some drunken light-o'-the-head drab that has provoked her master beyond bearing, and only got what she deserved," wound up Mrs. Rust, with an air of superior virtue. " Gipsy women do not drink, and they are so true to their marriage vows that to fall from them means degradation worse than death," Mr. Swift told her. " They will dispute your call to go in upon them at this hour of the night. It is not as if it were day, when you might profess business and get round them, and learn whether there was such a woman and such a row, which I misdoubt," said Mrs. Rust doggedly.

" There is something in that — not the non-existence of the woman or the row, but the man's right to find fault with my demanding admittance to his tent without any authority or proper warrant after nightfall. I say, Judith, Rizpah — what do they call you ? Had your father left off beating your mother, or was he in the thick of it when you cut and run ? " Vashti had been pricking up her ears and listening with all her might ; but though she was smart enough to take in the gist of the conversation, she showed neither alacrity nor pleasure at her champion's proposal to go at once to the scene of the family fray. On the contrary, she hung back in a manner which was very suspicious to Mrs. Rust and baffling to Mr. Swift. " Father ha' done for this bout, and I ain't sure he bean't sorry by this time for knocking her about wi' the axe.

She were lying down and coming to herself and wouldn't care to be disturbed," said Vashti slowly. No doubt the girl, in her ignorance and childishness, was still fully alive to what might be the consequences to herself of introducing a pair of strange men to her father's tent during the night, and shrank from the step. This was more than she had bargained for in her headlong flight and her vague search for help and a deliverer. " I daresay your mother would not care to be disturbed," repeated Mrs. Rust ironically. " Then we had better leave her to herself till morning," said Roger Swift cheerfully; " and 'now I must make for my simple repast before I turn in for the night. You have simply been playing hankey pankey with my domestic arrangements, Miss Atalanta — do you know that ? " " I never made you play no such game, and I ain't 'Talanta ; I'se Vash," she declared in dudgeon.

"But what am I to do with this wild creature? You've never told me that, sir," pressed Mrs. Rust, following her master as he retreated precipitately to the door. " That is for you to find out. I leave her to your good offices," he called back, with a twinkle in his eye and a silent chuckle. " I have perfect faith in you, both as a humane woman and a woman of resource. You will not turn the vagrant out, and you will put her just where she should be." " It is very good of you to say so, sir," said Mrs. Rust demurely but grimly ; she was not altogether unpropitiated by the compliment, but she was a match for the compliment payer. " I should take it very kind of you if it were not just fair buttering me up ; and you'll perhaps tell me, since you've brought the trouble suddenly upon me, what you wish me to do, for I'm clean at my wits' end.

You would not have me put a little scamp like that into my best bedroom, fit for any lady, with the dimity curtains bleached as white as driven snow, though I should not say it, and the boards bees'-waxed, and the cheyney shepherdess, with her dog as natural as life, that poor Miss Prissy were that fond on a year or two agone, decorating the mantel ?" " Put her where you like," sung out Roger Swift from the doorstep. " Stuff her into any hole that is weather-tight. I don't suppose she is very nice, poor wandering soul. Give her bite and sup, and keep her safe till morning, that's all I ask of you, Mrs. Rust." " I ain't going to stop here ! " screamed Vashti. " If I ain't let go my way, I'se come with you, master, rather than stop with she. I don't like the looks of her, and she hates me like pisen."

" Hold your tongue, Vashti," he hastily reprimanded her. " Stay where you are. There are two at a bargain making. Besides, you're very well off where you are, if you only knew it. Keep her safe till morning, that's all I ask of you, Mrs. Rust." "And it's a good bit to ask," she grumbled when he was gone ; " and me a married woman, that has neither been pleased nor plagued with boys and girls of my own. More by token I had just tidied up, and prepared to sit down comfortable, with Rust's supper already on the hob, to have a young blackamoor heathen beggar fall down from the skies upon me, and it's all by the doing of the most oonreasonable of masters, that always gets his own way because nobody can make up his or her mind to say nothing to so pleasant-spoken and well-meaning a gentleman. You were a forward piece," turning upon Vashti, and address ing her severely, " to propose to go up to the house with the likes of he, as ought never to have siled his fingers with the scum of the earth.

What would Master Ben and poor Miss Prissy have thought of such a visitor ? But you weren't so far wrong neither to hang on by his coat-tails instead of catching hold of my skirts. For he was never the man to shake a poor body off unheard and unrelieved ; the greater the loss to him ! But I warn you, I can both deny you your will and give you a good shake, ay, and get Rust to take a stick to your back, if you do not behave till I've got rid of you." " I'se be good ; I'se be good," promised Vashti in tears, considerably subdued. The fact was she was much nearer being overawed by Mrs. Rust's plain spoken threats than by Mr. Swift's mystifying raillery.

Chapter II

A DESCENDANT OF KINGS IN THE POOR-HOUSE. THE next day when Roger Swift delayed his daily journey to London in order to make an investiga tion at the Scrub, he was taken aback to find that there was not a single tent to be met with on the waste ground. He could see marks of wheels where a waggon had passed, holes from which the poles that had helped to convert the tilted-up waggon into a tent had been withdrawn, the charred embers of a recent fire, and a pathway trodden in the sand and clay to a neighbouring ditch. He could even detect with a gruesome sensation a dull-red, half-obliterated stain on the coarse grass and sand. The stain probably marked the slaughter-place of the ducks and geese, hens and turkeys, rabbits and hares, pheasants and partridges, by Which, according to popular prejudice, gipsies and tinkers come lightly; but it bore an ominous resemblance to the human blood which Vashti had represented as shed like water.

Mr. Swift could do nothing more that day ; he had to leave Vashti still longer a grievous burden on Mrs. Rust, who watched the girl and Mrs. Rust's spoons for twenty-four hours with sleepless vigilance. Further inquiries were of no avail beyond the ascertaining of one or two isolated»facts. A small gipsies' waggon or van had been seen early in the morning on the road leading from Water Basset Scrub. The waggon, besides carrying the usual stock-in-trade of baskets, nets, wooden pegs, and skewers, with the primitive domestic utensils for the use of a primitive household, had appeared to contain only the man who was driving it. " Can the ruffian have slain his wife outright at last, and buried her before he left the place ? " specu lated Roger Swift, between horror and incredulity. But there was no vestige of a grave or of " troubled earth," and there was no way, except the most round about road, to confirm his suspicions.

Neither did the author of the suspicions see that much good would be got by it, except in bringing a guilty man to justice. That would come about without Mr. Swift's inter vention, and so far as the child's interests were con cerned, it would not help her to denounce her father on her report as a murderer. It was a much more pressing affair to dispose of Vashti, left on her captor's hands and professing utter ignorance of her father's movements, till her natural guardian returned to his customary haunts, which, if he were an innocent man, he was pretty sure to do. But even at the best a man who could let his daughter run wild by night, no less than by day, as Roger Swift had found her, and then, the moment she was missing, abandon her to her fate, was a sorry protector for any girl, rich or poor, wild or tame.