THE MEAL CHEST.
It was high noon, and the sun shone hotly on the hillside where the
two lay. The rim of the hollow which sheltered them from hostile eyes
kept off also such light breezes as were blowing, and served to
collect and focus the burning rays. Jack panted and fanned himself,
longing for shade and water, and cool sounds. But no thought of
deserting his brother occurred to his mind. When Frank looked up at
last, after drinking three long draughts from his queer blackjack, he
found the lad had gone bravely back to his post of espial, and was
searching the moor with diligent eyes.
Wonder and astonishment stirred afresh in the hunted man's breast.
"Why, Jack, lad," he said, gazing at him as if he now for the first
time comprehended the full strangeness of his presence; "how come you
to be here? I thought you were safe at Pattenhall, thirty miles off."
"Gridley brought me," Jack answered, lowering his voice cautiously.
"Old Gridley! He did, did he! He is a rogue if ever there was one. But
why did he bring you? And why here?"
Jack explained, as far as his knowledge went; which was not far.
Frank's worldly wisdom, gained in a hard school, helped him to the
rest.
"I see," he replied, nodding darkly. "The old schemer had his own
reasons for a sudden flitting. And he thought it a fine stroke to get
possession of you, in case our cause and his Majesty's should come
uppermost again--as, please Heaven, it will now. But you had better
have stopped at Pattenhall, Jack," Frank continued gravely. "Those
crop-eared knaves must have done something for you. They don't fight
with children, to do them justice."
"Still, I am glad I came, Frank," Jack said softly.
"So am I, lad," his brother answered. "That water and you saved my
life. I could not have held out till night, and I should not have
known where to turn for it myself. But we are being scorched here, and
the buzzing of the bees goes through my head. You said something of a
yew wood? It sounds better. Could I crawl there without being seen,
think you?"
Jack told him, sliding down eagerly, how he had come and gone, and
described the position of the fissure in the moss.
"The very thing!" the fugitive cried, his face lighting up. "I know
the kind of thing. There are no better hiding, places. They turn and
twist and throw off a dozen branches. And the nearer the house, if
these Gridleys are Parliament men, the better. They will not be
suspected of hiding malignants. Is the coast clear?"
Jack answered in the affirmative, and eagerly led the way, his brother
crawling after him, through bracken and under gorse-bushes, and over
hot patches of turf where the sun grilled them, until the edge of the
rift was safely gained. Here Frank fell over at once into the cool
depth, and then standing up helped Jack down. The shade and the
feeling of moisture which prevailed in this under-world were so
welcome that for a moment the two stood leaning against the dark wall,
the overhanging edge of peat effectually protecting them from the
sun's rays. The chasm at this point was about eight feet deep and six
wide; the bottom of a dull white color, with water percolating over
it. Away to the right it grew more shallow, and after throwing out
numerous channels, rose at last to the level of the moor it drained.
To the left it grew deeper, attaining a depth of twelve or fourteen
feet where it opened on the ravine behind the house.
"Good!" Frank said, looking round him with sombre satisfaction. "I can
find a dozen hiding-places here, and lie as snug and cool in the
meantime as a nymph in a grot. The rogues are lazy, or they would have
climbed the brow an hour ago. They will not do so now. One thing only
remains, and that is the question of food."
"I will fetch some!" Jack cried impetuously.
"Yes, but softly," his brother answered, laying his hand on his arm,
and restraining him. "It is past dinner-time, and you will have been
missed, my lad. There will be strange eyes in the house, and you will
not find it so easy to slip away again unnoticed. Whatever you do,
bide your time. I shall not starve for a bit; but if I am taken--and a
careless word or a hasty step may bring these gentry upon us--they may
give me quarter; and little gain to me!--a drum-head court-martial for
breach of parole will do the rest."
His face grew hard, and instead of meeting the boy's eyes he looked
downward and moodily kicked a lump of peat with his foot. Jack longed
to ask the meaning of that phrase "breach of parole" which he had
heard so often of late in connection with his brother's name. He did
not dare to put the question, but his patience was presently rewarded,
for Frank began to speak again, not to him, but to himself.
"A promise!" he muttered, his face still dark. "A promise under
compulsion is no promise. If I promised not to bear arms for the king
again, it was a promise made to rebels, and against my duty and
theirs, and was null and void from the beginning! Who shall say it was
not, or that my honor was concerned in it? Still, these Roundheads, if
they catch me, will fling it in my face! And Duke Hamilton looked
coldly on me. I would, after all," he added, in a voice still louder,
"that I had not taken Goring's advice."
What Goring had advised was so clear, though Frank said no more, that
Jack looked at his brother with his eyes full of sympathy. He saw,
with the astonishing clearness which children possess, that Frank's
conscience was ill at ease--so ill at ease that the mere thought of
his broken parole, now it was too late to undo the wrong, brought all
that was hard, and fierce, and desperate in his nature to the surface,
mingling a kind of ferocity with his native courage, and converting
hardihood into recklessness. Comprehending this, the lad gazed at him
with a face full of timid sympathy; until Frank, awakening from his
absent fit, glanced suddenly up and met his look.
"What! have you not gone?" he said roughly, and with a reddening
cheek. "You do not help me by staring at me like a dead pig! If you
can get food, no matter what it is, don't bring it here. You may be
followed. Lay it down at the opening of this rat-run, where you enter
it from the house. I shall find it when the coast is clear."
His manner was changed, and Jack would have been more than mortal if
he had not felt the change. It hurt and disappointed him sorely;
coming just when he had done all he could. But he hid his chagrin,
and, turning obediently away, set off without a word down the rift,
and thence through the wood of yews, where the sheltering gloom was
now as welcome to him as it had been before alarming. As he approached
the house, however, and the immediate necessity of facing Mistress
Gridley and the brothers with an unmoved countenance forced itself
upon him, he paused involuntarily, trembling under the sense of sudden
fear which beset him. The horrible events of the morning, the cries of
the men whom he had seen cut down on the moor, his brother's danger,
and the consequences of a hapless word, all rushed into his mind
together, and for the moment, if the word may be used of so young a
child, unmanned him. Clutching the trunk of the last tree he had to
pass, he leaned against it in a very ague of terror; afraid to go
forward, shaking at the very thought of going forward and facing those
unfriendly eyes, yet knowing that if he would save his brother, if he
would not shame his blood and breeding, he must go forward.
[Illustration: He leaned against it in a very ague of terror.--Page
75.]
While he stood in this agony--for it was nothing less--butler Gridley,
loitering about the back-door with thoughts and for a purpose of his
own, espied him; and with a stealthy foot and a glance in the
direction of the house, made towards him. The least observant eye must
have detected the boy's terror, or seen at least that he was laboring
under some strange emotion. But Gridley's eyes were not observant at
all; they were only hungry. He had fasted against his will for
twenty-four hours, and his plump cheeks were pallid. He had a wolf
within him that demanded all his attention. He saw in the boy only a
means of satisfying his craving.
"Jack!" he whispered, with his lips almost at the boy's ear and his
eyes devouring his face, "I have always been good to you. I want you
to do something. It is a little thing," he repeated feverishly. "It is
a nothing. Just----"
He had got so far--and alas! for him, no farther--when a harsh,
discordant laugh behind him caused him to straighten himself as if an
unseen hand had propelled him. "Let the child alone!" Mistress Gridley
cried from the door; "do you hear me? I will have no plotting and
colloguing in my house! And do you, Jack, come here!"
There was a world of sarcasm in the woman's gibing tone; and it cut
the butler like a knife. He crept away with a savage glare in his
eyes. The boy went slowly to the door with thoughts happily diverted
from the weighty issues which had a moment before overburdened him.
The incident was, indeed, his salvation; for, though the woman could
not fail to remark his embarrassment, she naturally set it down to the
wrong cause, supposing merely that the butler had been trying to
corrupt him.
"Where have you been all day?" she cried roughly, hustling him into
the house--so violently that he stumbled on the threshold. "You don't
deserve your food either," she continued, shaking him fiercely,
"playing truant all day! But you shall have it, if only to tantalize
that craven fool yonder. Where have you been, eh? You will stop at
home in future, do you hear? This is your place--inside these four
walls--until this business is over. You remember that, my lad, or it
will be the worse for you!"
Simon Gridley and two men, whom the boy did not know, were in the
kitchen, sitting dour and silent over the remains of a meal. They
looked up on the boy's entrance, but took no further notice of him.
The woman set food before him, scolding all the while, and then went
off to her work in the back premises. The boy had little heart to eat;
but presently he found occasion while Simon was talking to the two
strangers (who were brothers, of the name of Edgington, ex-troopers
and weavers of Bradford) to secrete part of his meal inside his
jacket. Mistress Gridley, when she came back, looked sharply at what
he had left; but the boy had eaten so little that her suspicions were
not aroused, and she flounced away with the platter, bidding him
remain indoors and sit where he was.
She had scarcely gone when Luke entered and joined the party by the
window, and there ensued much solemn jubilation over the morning's
work and the peculiar judgments vouchsafed to the neighborhood; and
particularly over the reported arrival at Ripon of Lieutenant-General
Cromwell, with forces which might be trusted to give a good account of
the Scotch army. Jack, sitting trembling on a stool in a corner of the
fireless chimney-place, heard their sanguine predictions and
shuddered. He knew Cromwell by name, and dimly associated him with
Marston Moor, and the sad night which had seen his father ride home to
die. The kitchen grew to the lad's eyes as he listened full of dark
shadows and forebodings of fate. The men who loomed between him and
the window seemed to increase in size. Only the purpose he had in his
mind, and the necessity of action if he would pursue it, saved him
from breaking down and bursting into childish weeping.
By dint of fixing his mind on this, however, he steadied himself; and
by-and-by, choosing a moment when the talk was loud, stole across the
room to a tub in which the oatcake was kept. Ordinary the lid lay
loose upon it: now, to his huge disappointment, he found it locked!
Baffled, and more than half inclined to cry, he wandered back to his
place and resumed his seat on the floor, affecting to be engaged in
playing with two billets of wood. In reality his thoughts were keenly
at work. The cheese and cake he had secreted were scarcely worth
carrying to his brother. Where could he get more?
It occurred to him at last that, failing everything else, raw oatmeal
might be of use. Inspired by the thought, he rose and sauntered round
three sides of the room until he reached the chest. Pretending to play
about it he presently tried the lid, and to his joy found it
unfastened. He raised it cautiously an inch or two, and thrusting his
hand in found the wooden bowl which was used for measuring the meal.
He filled this, and withdrew it successfully. Then he let the lid fall
without noise.
He had still to escape unseen with his plunder, but the men were so
busily engaged in talk that he feared no interruption from them, and
Mistress Gridley was neither to be heard nor seen. He moved towards
the back door, opened it, and slipped outside, holding the bowl under
the skirt of his jacket. The afternoon sun shone in his eyes, and for
a moment he stood blinking like an owl in the daylight, so great was
the change from the cool, sombre kitchen. Softly he advanced a step.
Before he could take another, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and
Mistress Gridley had him in her clutch.
"You little thief!" she screamed, her voice shrill with savage
triumph, "I have caught you, have I? You thought to deceive me, did
you? To deceive me, you little ninny? What is this, eh? Whose is
this?" she repeated, grasping the child's wrist, and forcing him to
hold up the little bowl of meal which his fingers still gripped
mechanically. "Whose is this, eh? Is it yours? This way, my little
thief; this way!"
She dragged him into the kitchen, and exulting in her own sharpness,
told the men, who had risen at the sound of her outcry, how she had
caught him. "He thought himself clever," she continued, shaking him to
and fro without mercy, "but he was not clever enough for me!"
"What did he want with the meal?" one of the strangers asked
suspiciously. "It looks to me very much as if----"
"What?" Mistress Gridley asked rudely.
"As if the malignant who gave us the slip this morning were hid here,
and had employed this boy to get him food."
The woman sniffed contemptuously. "Stuff and rubbish!" she said. "The
meal is for the cowardly sneak who brought the boy here. He is
outside, on short commons," she continued, laughing without mirth.
"I met him going down to Settle," Luke said briefly. "Ay, but the
child did not know he was gone," she answered with confidence. "The
child did not know it, do you see? But I will make him know enough not
to steal again, the little thief!"
The men nodded in stern approval. "Open me that closet door," Mistress
Gridley continued, pointing with her unoccupied hand to a cupboard
made in the thickness of the wall beside the chimney, and used in
winter for storing wood. "I will lock him up there for the present. It
is nice and dark. He may keep the oatmeal, and when he has finished
it, but not before, we will see about finding him some other food. In
with you!" she continued, dragging the boy forcibly to the place; "the
beetles will keep you company!" and pushing him in, she closed the
door and locked it upon him.
So far the boy had neither spoken nor resisted. But finding the door
closed on him inexorably, and the horrors of the black closet round
him--horrors which a child alone can thoroughly comprehend--he flung
himself, shrieking loudly, against the door. He beat on it with his
hands, he kicked it, he cried frantically to be let out. The woman
listened and laughed cruelly. "It is as good as beating him, and less
labor," she said. "Take no heed of him, and he will soon tire of
shouting."
The men laughed too--the boy was a thief--and went back to their talk,
while the woman sat down to her wheel. The child's cries were music to
her ears; and yet she was ill at ease. The butler had gone down to
Settle, had he? What if he had visited a certain place among the
yew-trees before going, and dug a little? She did not think he
would have had the courage to play her such a trick. Still it was
possible--it was possible, and she longed for night that she might go
to the place and have the assurance of her own eyes.
For a time the boy raved and beat the door, his fear increased by that
sense of physical oppression which children, and many who are not
children, experience when shut up in a confined space without the
power of freeing themselves. By-and-by, however, as the woman had
predicted, he grew calmer. He had a talisman which availed, when the
first paroxysm had spent itself, to keep selfish terrors at a
distance; and that was the thought of his brother. In proportion as
his sobs grew feebler his brain grew clearer. Anxiety on Frank's
account took the place of fear for himself. Crouching beside the door
with his ear laid against it, he drew such comfort from the murmur of
voices and the thin line of light which marked the threshold, that he
grew almost content with his position. He was safe from further
punishment. Only there was his brother. He pictured Frank waiting and
looking for him, waiting and looking in vain for the food which did
not come! And this fancy causing his tears to flow again, in the
middle of a stifled sob he fell asleep.