Vintage Love (5 page)

The old woman smiled. “Don’t you worry, dearie. You deserve whatever the parson may do for you.”

The matronly owner of the teahouse showed her to an empty bedroom, and Betsy repaired the damages of the journey. When she had washed and looked at herself in the mirror, she decided that she looked reasonably well under the circumstances. There were lines of tiredness at her eyes, but these would vanish once she had a proper rest.

Downstairs the pleasant Parson Midland greeted her and led her to a small room directly behind a larger dining room. He explained, “We can have complete privacy here.”

“And it will give me a chance to rest before I go to my friend’s house,” she said.

As the old woman served them breakfast, the clergyman asked her, “Where does your friend live?”

“In Fetter Lane,” she said. “Number Twenty.”

He paused over his oatmeal. “I don’t know anyone in Fetter Lane. But it is a good street.”

“My friend is a rather important man,” she said.

“May I inquire his name?” Parson Midland said. “I may know him by name though not knowing his address.”

“His name is Felix Black,” she said. “That is all I can tell you. I’m sworn to secrecy about the other facts concerning him.”

“Ahha!” the stout parson said. “It has the sound of mystery and adventure.”

“It could offer both,” she said, “though I cannot be sure.”

He sighed. “Of course your parents would not approve.”

“My stepfather wouldn’t,” she said, “since he tried to sell me to that lustful Dakin.”

“A dreadful business. Yet your mother would wish you back. What about her?”

“She is weak. I’m sorry for her,” Betsy said. “But I will not be her victim.”

“You should not be,” he observed. “Yet you must be wary. If they know where you have gone, they may come in search of you.”

“They will not know.”

“I see,” the clergyman said. “This Felix Black is known only to you.”

“Yes,” she said. “A link with my father from the old days. They were not even in the house when he came to visit me.”

“So you will be safe from them and any reward they might offer for your return,” Parson Midland said.

“I’m sure I will be,” she said. “I do not suppose you will ever be questioned by them. But if you should be, I shall rely on you to keep silent.”

“Be certain of it.”

The old woman came in with a warm smile on her round rosy face. “I have brought you a good pot of tea. Made special to ease your weariness. Drink it up, my dear.” And she poured out a full cup for Betsy.

Betsy drank the steaming brew and relaxed as the parson talked on in a friendly tone. She thought what a warm and pleasant retreat this was from the noise and bustle of the London streets. Again she complimented herself on her great fortune in having found such a mentor. She was about to tell the stout clergyman this when to her amazement she found her tongue had thickened. She could no longer form words, and as she made this discovery, a great lassitude came over her, and she closed her eyes and slumped back in her chair.

The sound seemed vaguely like the crowing of a cock at dawn! But it was not dawn; there was pitch blackness all around her! Betsy’s head reeled as she raised herself on an elbow. She was stretched out on a cold, damp earthen floor. And then the crowing sound came again, and she was able to sort it out as a wild kind of laughter!

Where was she? And what had happened? Terror surged through her as her memory slowly returned. She had been at a table in the teahouse talking with the kindly Parson Midland when she had fainted! And how had she come to this dark, menacing spot? With a tiny moan she raised herself further to a sitting position.

Then a door opened, and a big woman in some kind of drab clothing and apron came into the room with a plate and a tin cup in one hand and a candle in the other. She was of middle age, her hair graying, and her face, which might have been pleasant once, bloated and sallow. She was generally unkempt in every detail.

Giving Betsy a wary look, she placed the plate of fish and chips and the tin cup of water down on the floor beside her. Then she backed away.

“That’s some food for you,” the big woman said roughly. “Don’t you try any tricks! I’ll be back for the plate and cup later.”

Betsy struggled to her feet. “Where am I?”

The woman gave her a sardonic glance. “That don’t matter to you!”

“I demand to know where I am and who brought me here. Surely not the Parson Midland!”

The woman let go that wild screeching sound which was her way of laughter. “The Parson Midland! You mean my Jim?”

She tried to think clearly, her head still reeling. “I don’t know any Jim!”

“Yes, you do,” the big woman said mockingly. “Jim is my man! He was a parson once before he went on the gin!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m telling you straight who your friend Parson Midland is,” the woman said sharply. “That’s what he calls himself now. Lost his calling when he was caught in the beds of too many of his church ladies! Ladies, indeed!” And she let out a hoot of that eerie laughter again.

Betsy said, “I don’t believe you!”

“It don’t matter to me,” the big woman said. “But it happens to be the truth. He went on the gin after they put him out of the church. For a while they had him on show in a barrel at the fairs. A penny a look at the parson who poached on his female parishioners! A proper disgrace! Then I met him.”

The enormity of it all was beginning to get through to her. She gasped, “Are you telling me Parson Midland was defrocked for adulterous relations with women?”

“You’ve said it all, dearie,” the big woman agreed. “He was what you might say at the bottom of his barrel when I found him. I brought him here and set him up in a respectable business left me by my late husband! But that’s not enough for Jim. He’s ambitious. Likes to go off into the country where no one knows he’s been defrocked and carry on as Parson Midland. Makes a good bit of cash on the side with some of his schemes!”

“He’s a criminal!” Betsy said in despair. “And he drugged me and brought me here! Why?”

The woman winked at her. “Let him tell you that. He’ll be by shortly to have a word with you.”

“You dare not hold me a prisoner here!” she cried, advancing on the woman.

“None of that!” the big woman said. “There’s no one to hear you or know you are locked down in this cellar. You’ll do best to give us no trouble and make no fuss.”

Angered, she warned, “You and your Jim will pay for this and dearly!”

“You tell Jim that!” And with another cynical hoot of that odd laughter the woman went out and locked the door after her, leaving only the lighted candle between Betsy and the grim darkness.

Now she began to take stock of her surroundings. She picked up the candle holder with its small, flickering candle and explored the narrow limits of the tiny cellar in which she had been imprisoned. Damp earthen walls and an earthen floor, only the one door leading into it. And that door securely locked.

She returned to the plate of food and tin cup. The food looked messy, and she could not eat it. But she did greedily gulp down the tepid water in the cup and wished she had more. And she thought how gullible she had been. She’d allowed herself to be tricked even before she reached the sinister back streets of the great city.

But how could she have suspected the jovial, kindly clergyman was a criminal? She was in no way prepared for the deception. And he had the ring of sincerity about him because once he had actually been a parson. Acting out the role had to be second nature to him.

So now she was a prisoner in this dark hole, with no idea of what might happen to her next. She tried to recall the conversation she’d had with the fat man, searching for some clue to his thinking.

Then the door was thrown open again, and the figure of the stout Parson Midland appeared in the doorway. He staggered slightly, and she saw that without his black suit and neat clerical collar he looked a good deal more like a drunken Jim. A stubble of beard covered the lower half of his face, and he stood there gazing at her with drunken dignity without saying a word.

She faced him angrily and demanded, “How could you do this to me?”

He nodded and in a slightly slurred version of Parson Midland said, “Child, how often I have asked that same question of an unthinking universe, about myself. We live in a cruel world.”

“You deceived me!” she declared brokenly. “Took me in completely!”

“That is a feat,” he said, rubbing his chin. “You can most gain from it by allowing it to be a lesson for you in the future.”

“What do you want with me?” she demanded.

A smile of cupidity crossed the fat face. He patted the side of his nose with his forefinger and smiled. “You, dear girl, will make me rich!”

“Are you mad?”

He shook his head. “I’m possessed of the devil, but I am not mad! I’m holding you for ransom, my fine young lady. I know Sir John and your mother will pay a pretty penny to have you back safely. Right now a messenger is on his way to them to demand five thousand pounds!”

“They’ll never give it to you!”

He chuckled. “I think they will. And if they won’t, that old fool Lord Dakin will put up the money. He has plenty of it, and from what you told me, a powerful lust for you!”

She was horrified, knowing that he could all too well be right. Her mother would be upset beyond belief, and her corrupt stepfather would undoubtedly try to talk Lord Dakin into rescuing her with a ransom — if she hadn’t finished the lecherous old lord with her heavy blows with the chamber pot. Returned, she would be expected to go through with the truly scandalous marriage out of sheer gratitude! It was a most unpleasant plot, and it might work!

She told the fat man, “You are a scoundrel!”

He said, “I have never denied it.”

“Let me go and I will see you are paid well,” she begged him.

“Not a chance. I know how to play this game. I need no help from you,” he said.

“They’ll send the police after you and let them rescue me!”

The fat man winked. “First they’d have to know where to look and they don’t. I have that all arranged. I get the money first and turn you over later.”

Betsy said, “It is not human to keep me in a place like this.”

“It’s dry and it’s quiet,” he said sanctimoniously. “It gives you a chance to contemplate. And if those parents of yours pay up as I expect, you won’t be here for long!”

As he finished speaking, there was a sudden clamor of fierce barking from outside. She listened and turned to him with a strained expression on her lovely face. “Are you having me watched by guard dogs?”

He laughed. “No. But it’s not a bad idea. What you heard is my employee, Gimpy, who you’ll be meeting, feeding the dogs. Bull mastiffs they are. Hannah, my common-law wife, was operating this den when she lifted me out of the gutter. And I have helped her with it since. We stage the most ferocious dog fights in all London! All England, if you like! And most of the time the decision is death for the loser! Many a challenger has come here to be torn to bits!”

“Horrible!” she declared, sickened at the thought of it.

“Not at all,” the fat man said, shifting his weight from one foot to another and going on to explain. “You see you must look at it as a sport! Better than the Romans’ game of throwing Christians to lions! We just put two dogs in the ring and let the better one win!”

“What satisfaction is there in allowing poor dogs to tear each other to death?”

“Its the betting that pays,” he said with a wink. “The gentry come and place their bets and watch the fights. A good lot of money changes hands some nights, and the house always gets its share. I’ve been told that some years ago the prince regent himself and some of his cronies came here to see one of the fights. Hannah’s husband was in charge in those days and real proud of it!”

“I call it a scandal!”

“You’ll be hearing a bit of noise now and then,” the fat man warned her. “The fights go on every night. And the dogs get noisy every so often in the days. You can come out to the pit with me if you like. See what goes on. Don’t try to escape. There’s no chance. The door to the pit is locked on the other side.”

He went out rather unsteadily, and she followed him if only to get out of the cell in which she’d been imprisoned. She found herself in a large cave of a room with a wooden walled square in the middle of it. At each end of the square there were gates to allow the dogs into the ring. And spectators could watch safely outside the five-foot fences.

The fat man went over to another fenced area in which a huge, ferocious-looking brown dog stood growling. Its hackles raised as the spurious parson approached the cage. On the other side of the fenced-in dog enclosure was a thin boy wearing a cap with a crutch under one arm. His back seemed strangely deformed so that one side of his poor twisted body was taller than the other. The crutch was under the armpit on his tall side.

The boy smiled and called out, “He’s in a right mean mood today, he is!”

The fat man smiled at the angry big dog who was gazing up at him in a menacing fashion with small red eyes full of hatred. “Do you think so, Gimpy?”

“I do, sir,” the crippled lad said. “He’ll do well this night! I’m sure of that!”

“Maybe I’ll just rouse him a little to show the lady,” the fat man said with a smirk on his beard-stubbled face. And he reached down and brought up a whip and began flailing the huge animal with it. The reaction of the tortured beast was fearsome. He leaped into the air, almost getting at the man, but the fence was too high and the ex-parson beat the animal back!

Betsy could stand it no longer. She placed her hands over her ears and ran back into the other cellar where she’d first awakened. The snarling and howling of the mastiff followed her, mixed with the brutal laughter of the ex-parson. She sank down on her knees and wept.

The fat man did not return. It was Gimpy, the crippled lad, who finally came to pick up her dish of food and the tin cup. He stared at the plate of food in amazement. “You didn’t eat any of it,” he said in his piping childish voice.