BETTY SIGGS DREAMS A DREAM
The girl rose slowly from the ground, after the two men had
disappeared, and, still sobbing heavily, made her way towards the door
which led to the upper part of the house. But her mother, brought to
herself by the movement, advanced rapidly, and caught her in her arms.
“Child,” she said, in a sort of gasp—“this ain’t no time for callin’
folks names, or talkin’ about rights and wrongs. Quick—what’s i’ the
wind? I see Master Dandy a lookin’ in at that winder—straight at me;
what’s i’ the wind, child—and w’ere have they gone?”
For some moments, Clara Siggs could not speak; her sobs seemed to shake
her from head to foot. But, after a little time, she grew more calm,
and told what she knew.
“I saw him—looking in at the window; he beckoned to me. Then, when I
slipped out to him, I was frightened at first, because he seemed so
worn-looking, and so strange. But he kept saying, again and again, that
he wanted to see you—that he could not go away, without seeing you.
And, in spite of all they have said, I could not believe, somehow, when
I looked into his eyes, that he could have done such a cruel and wicked
deed as that.” Here her sobs broke out afresh, so that Betty had much
ado to comfort her.
“There, there—don’t cry, child,” she said. “Crying never mended any
think yet. Wot else did ’e say?”
“He asked who the man was with us; and, when I told him, he laughed,
and said he would give him a run for his money, anyway.”
“Spoke like a Chater—that was!” cried Betty, with considerable pride.
“Then wot ’appened?”
“Master Dandy said that as it wouldn’t be safe to see you, he would
make across the fields, so as to get clear of Bamberton, and walk on
the way to London. Then, as I was crying, he put his arm round my
shoulders—indeed, indeed, there was no shame in it, mother dear—and
told me not to mind, for he would clear himself yet. And just at that
moment, I heard a rustling in the hedge, and Harry jumped through.”
Toby Siggs looked long at his daughter; slowly shook his head; and
delivered himself of this piece of wisdom. “The good Lord, with the
willin’ ’elp of yer mother, made ye fair-lookin’ an’ put bright eyes
into your face; but neither the good Lord nor your mother meant as ’ow
they should be a snare, or in any way deludin’. One lad is good enough
for the best o’ gels. Go to bed—an’ think well on it!”
Clara, still sobbing, took her way slowly upstairs. For a long time,
Toby Siggs and his wife sat in whispered conversation; Toby saying but
little, but probably thinking the more. The shadow of that crime in the
wood seemed to have fallen even on that quiet household; Betty Siggs
watched the dying fire; and her mind travelled back, through the years
to the farm in Australia, on the edge of the Bush, and to the
bright-faced lad that cruel Bush had swallowed up, and snatched from
her. Old Toby Siggs knew the story; for, when first he had met her, she
had had to account for the presence of the child; but Toby was a silent
man, and the lost boy was as far back in the mists of the dead years,
as in the mists of Toby’s brain.
“It’s all been a muddle, Toby,” said Mrs. Siggs at last, still in the
same cautious whisper. “If the old Squire could only know what has
happened, I think ’e’d be a bit sorry ’e cast that boy loose, an’ took
up with the younger. Lor’, Toby—wot a boy ’e was!”
Toby nodded his head slowly. “Ah!” he ejaculated. “There ain’t no
up-settin’ about me, or about you, ole gal; we knows ourselves for
ordinary folk. But that boy moved, and talked, and ’eld ’isself like a
gen’leman.”
“That ’e did!” replied Betty, with a vigorous nod. “Lor’, Toby—if ’e’d
’ave bin at the ’All—we’d ’ave ’ad no talks about pore ruined gals; no
policemen in the ’ouse—no ’untin’ an’ dodgin’ an’ ’idin’ like this.
God knows ’ow it’s all goin’ to end, Toby.”
The house had been shut, so far as its public capacity was concerned,
for some time. Knowing, however, that the Inspector must presently make
his appearance, and that, in any case, his bed was reserved for him,
Mrs. Siggs and her husband sat on over the fire, each filled with sad
thoughts, and ready, from the events of the evening, for anything which
could happen.
Presently there came a heavy knock at the front door; Mrs. Siggs, with
a hand on her ample bosom, started, and looked appealingly at Toby.
That gentleman, rising with a determined countenance, proceeded to the
door, and flung it open. Exactly what he was prepared to see, it is
impossible to say; but he was certainly not prepared for the sight
which met his eyes.
Out of the darkness there staggered into the place a solitary
figure—that of Inspector Tokely. His hat was gone—one side of his
face was grazed and bleeding; he was covered with mud and water almost
from head to foot; and his coat was torn right across one shoulder.
Gasping and weary, he shook a fist in the face of the astonished Toby
Siggs, and snapped out his wrath at that innocent man.
“You scoundrel!” he shouted—“You infernal villain! This is all a
plot—a conspiracy—you know it is! I’m lured out of this place, and go
racing and chasing across country—where there are no street lamps as
there ought to be, and no constables to whistle for. I bark my face
against a tree—put there on purpose, I’ve no doubt, for me to run my
head against; I fall into a ditch, which ought to have been drained
long ago; I lose my hat, which cost nine-and-sixpence; I tear my coat
on a barbed wire fence, which ought never to have been put up. And—to
crown it all—I lose my prisoner!”
Betty Siggs, who had come to the door of the little parlour, suddenly
clapped her hands and cried out—with an exclamation of so much relief,
that the Inspector turned savagely upon her.
“Yes, Ma’am—laugh—giggle—clap your hands—scream with joy, Ma’am! I
like it—it does me good! How will _you_ like it, when you appear in
the dock—the dock, Ma’am!—on a charge of aiding and abetting a
prisoner, to escape? What about windows covered with curtains——”
“What would you ’ave ’em covered with?” retorted Betty, with a
laugh—“wall paper?”
“Never mind, Ma’am—never mind,” retorted Tokely, viciously. “At the
present moment, Ma’am, I will go to bed. The Law, Ma’am, can wait.
Prepare yourself, Ma’am, for the dock—for the dock, I say!”
With these words, and utterly scornful of Betty Siggs’s peals of
laughter, the Inspector made his way upstairs to his chamber—leaving a
trail of muddy water to mark his passage.
“That chap’s done me good!” exclaimed Betty, wiping her eyes, and
turning to Toby, who was staring in ludicrous amazement after Tokely.
“I just wanted summink to stir me up—I did—an’ that chap’s done it!”
“You take care, ole gal, that ’e don’t stir _you_ up,” retorted Toby,
shaking his head. “The Law ’as got a ’eap be’ind it—an’ you ain’t got
the figger to be redooced by skilly, nor the fingers for oakum-pickin’.
An’, mark my words, that’s what you’ll come to, ole gal, if you mocks
at the Law!”
Betty Siggs, however, was in too good a humour to heed any such
warning; she gaily locked up the house, extinguished the lights and
pushed Toby upstairs to bed. “Blow the Law!” she exclaimed, kissing
him—“You an’ me won’t sleep the less sound, because the Law ’as got
its face scratched, and lost its ’at—will we, Toby?”
Nevertheless, Betty’s prediction proved to be, so far as she was
concerned, a false one; sleep refused to come to her, no matter how she
wooed it. Living, as she always had done, a good brisk hard-working
blameless life, with a conscience as clear as her own healthy skin,
Betty had known nothing of the terrors of insomnia; yet to-night, she
lay blinking at the stars peeping in through the uncurtained window,
thinking of many things—thinking most of all, perhaps, of the unhappy
man flying for his life, hiding in ditches and under hedges, and
trembling at every sound. Betty’s tender heart melted a little when she
thought of him, and she sadly cried herself into a state of quiet
exhaustion, and so fell into a troubled sleep.
And in that sleep she dreamed a dream. She was back again, in the old
days, in Australia, at Tallapoona Farm—the farm which had never paid,
and from which that bright-faced boy Philip had wandered out one
morning, never to return. Yet the curious part of Betty’s dream was
this; that, although the sights and sounds beyond the windows were as
she had known them over a quarter of a century ago, the house bore a
curious resemblance to the Chater Arms; indeed, faces familiar to her
later days in Bamberton passed to and fro before the windows, and the
slow Bamberton drawl was in her ears.
But, in her dream, night came swiftly on, and the place was in
darkness. She thought she stood again in the little parlour alone; and,
drawing back the curtain from before the window, looked out upon the
sandy bridle-tracks, and wild vegetation which fringed the denser
growth beyond. Suddenly, out of this, and coming straight to the
window, she saw the child, just as she had known him eighteen long
years before. So vivid was the dream, and so clearly did she see his
face, and recognise it, that—waking with a cry upon her lips—she
found herself out of bed, and standing on the floor, in the faint light
of the stars.
Betty Siggs was more troubled than ever. She looked round the room, as
though half expecting to see her dream realised; rubbed her eyes, and
began to tremble a little. Toby’s regular breathing reassured her
somewhat; but still she felt uneasy. The window at which she had seen
the face of the man that night, in reality, and the dream-face of the
child, haunted her; she felt that she must go to it—must assure
herself that there was nothing on the other side of it.
She threw a long cloak round her, noiselessly lit a candle, and crept
out of the room. There was no sound anywhere, save the quick patter of
her own feet on the stairs, and the rapid scurry of a mouse flying from
the light. Betty reached the parlour, set down her candle, and faced
the window, over which the curtain had been drawn again.
Now, under all the circumstances, it is probable that ninety-nine
people out of a hundred would have hesitated, at that hour, to draw
back that curtain; and the hundredth would have done it—if at all—out
of sheer bravado. But the curious thing was, that Betty had no fear of
it at all; so completely was she dominated by her dream, and so much
did she seem to be dreaming still, that she walked up to the curtain,
and softly drew it aside.
Nor did she think it strange, under the circumstances, that there was a
face upon the other side; for, although she believed she looked upon
Dandy Chater, somehow the dream face had got mixed up with it; the
dream-eyes of the child she believed dead smiled at her, out of the
face of the man. Still keeping her eyes upon the window, she slipped
along to the door and softly drew the bolt, and opened it; and
then—for no known reason, and yet for some reason which seemed strong
within her—began to tremble very much, as though she faced something
uncanny.
A figure moved towards the door, slipped into the room, and took her in
his arms. Not Dandy Chater—not the man with a price on his head, and
blood on his cruel hands—not the man whose name was a by-word and a
reproach in all that countryside; but her boy—her dear lad, back from
his grave thousands of miles away! You couldn’t have tried to deceive
old Betty Siggs at that moment; she knew that no other arms could hold
her like that.
Then, when he called her—as he had done all those long years
before—“little mother”—when he whispered, did she remember Tallapoona
Farm, and the mare with the rat-tail, and Peter the sheep-dog—and a
dozen other things that would have stamped him as her boy, if nothing
else could have done; old Betty woke from her dream, and burst into a
flood of tears, and laid her old grey head down on his shoulder.
Perhaps it was well that Toby was sleeping soundly above. For, if _he_
had happened to dream, and had wandered, in his night apparel, down to
that same parlour, he would have been very properly scandalised. For
here was the supposed Dandy Chater, sitting near the table, with Betty
Siggs—(hugging him mighty tight round the neck)—on his knee—the
while he rapidly sketched out all that happened in those eighteen years.
“Ah—little mother—little mother!” he said, drawing her face down,
that he might kiss it—“You didn’t know to whom you were talking, when
I strolled in here the other day, and you read me a lecture on the sins
of Dandy Chater. It’s been a long time, little mother; picked up, more
dead than alive, by an exploring party in the Bush; taken with them
miles into the interior; then more miles, by a party bound for the
West, with whom they came in contact. Then, five or six years of life
with a dear old couple, who had no chicks of their own, and were fond
of the friendless boy thrown on their hands. Then, when I could, I went
back to Tallapoona—only to find that you had gone to England—no one
exactly knew where.”
“An’ you kep’ a thought of me all those years—did you, Phil?”
whispered the old woman, proudly.
“Yes—and came back to you as soon as I could. At least—not to you,
because I didn’t know where you were. But I remembered the story you
had told me; and I knew I had the right to the place which had been my
father’s. But I would not have turned out my brother; my idea was that
we might live together peaceably, sharing what there was. But he is
dead.”
She looked round at him, with a startled face; and he realised, in a
moment, that he had given her the clue to the whole mystery. Therefore,
with much pains and many pauses to allow her to fully digest the
extraordinary story, he told her of the whole business; of his arrival
in England—of his discovery of the strange likeness between himself
and the real Dandy Chater; and of his determination, on discovering
that his brother was dead, to trade upon it. Of his certainty that his
brother had been murdered; and of the impossibility of fixing the crime
upon any one’s shoulders.
But Betty Siggs saw only with the limited vision of love; knew only
that her boy was with her again, and that he was innocent of the crime
she had unconsciously laid to his charge.
“Lor’—this’ll be news for Toby!” she cried; “this’ll be something to
laugh at in the village; that they’ve taken my boy for Dandy Chater,
and called him names, and ’unted ’im with perlice and sich like——”
“Stop—stop!” he cried, hurriedly. “Not a word of this to a soul,
little mother—not a word. Don’t you see the position in which I stand?
My brother is dead; I have upon me, at the present moment, his clothes,
his papers—his valuables. Good God, little mother—I’ve traded on his
name, and on his appearance; I’m mixed up in I know not what shady
things concerning him. Turn to any living soul about here
to-night—save yourself—and tell my story. They will laugh you to
scorn; will deride your boy, who’s come back from the grave. Don’t you
see that their first question would naturally be—‘If you are not Dandy
Chater—you who wear his clothes, and use his name, and hide by night,
because of his sins—if you are not the man, where is he?’ And, Heaven
help me—what am I to answer them?”
Betty Siggs seemed altogether nonplussed, and could only shake her
head. Philip, with his arm about her, did his best to cheer her up
again.
“Come—you mustn’t be down-hearted; I’ll pull through, somehow or
other,” he said. “But, for the time, I must keep out of the way. Every
day I’m getting nearer to the truth about my brother’s death; every day
I seem to see my way more clearly. But I don’t want to be accused of
his murder—for they might say, with perfect justice, that I murdered
him, the better to take his place. No—I want to track down the real
man; when that time comes, I’ll call on you to speak. Until then, you
must be silent as the grave.”
“I can’t—I can’t!” cried Betty Siggs. “Is my dear boy to come back to
me, after all these years—and am I to see ’im ’unted an’ drove like
this ’ere, by a mere common Tokely—an’ say nothink? Not me!” Betty
Siggs folded her arms, and nodded her head with much determination.
“Little mother—little mother!” he exclaimed—“do you want to ruin me?
Do you want to undo all that I have tried so hard to bring about? Shall
I tell you something more?—something to be hidden deep in that good
heart of yours, and never breathed to any one? Betty—you don’t mind my
calling you Betty—do you?—have you ever been in love?”
“P’raps you’d like to ask Toby, as is a snorin’ ’is ’ead off upstairs
this very minute,” retorted Mrs. Siggs, with a very becoming blush. “In
love, indeed!”
“Well then, you will understand my difficulty. _I’m_ in love, little
mother—and with the sweetest girl in all the world. But even in that,
my ill-luck dogs me; for she believes that her lover is Dandy Chater,
whom she has known for years; if she once heard that she had whispered
her words of love and tenderness and sympathy to a stranger—do you
think that she would look at me again? Little mother—it’s the maddest
thing in the world; because, if she has any regard for me as Dandy
Chater, she knows me for everything that’s bad and vile—food only for
the common hangman; while, on the other hand, as Philip Chater I am a
stranger, and farther from her than ever. In any case, it is hopeless;
yet, knowing that whatever sympathy she has is given to Dandy Chater,
I’ll be Dandy Chater to the end—whatever that end may be. And even
you, little mother, shall not change that purpose. So don’t talk about
it.”
She recognised—however unwillingly—that what he said was true;
although she cried a little—partly for love of him, partly in terror
at his danger—she yet was comforted by the feeling that all the sad
years of mourning were swept away, and that the boy she had reared and
loved had fulfilled her most sanguine expectations and had grown to the
manhood she had pictured for him.
He got up, and took her tenderly in his arms again, to say good-bye.
“It won’t be long, little mother,” he said, “before I come again to
you, and take my place in my father’s home. But, for the present, I
want you to swear to me—to swear to me on something you love
well—that you will not betray my secret. Betty—for the love of your
boy—swear to me that you will not betray me—will not take from me the
love of the woman who is more to me than anything else in the wide
world. Swear to me!”
With tears in her honest old eyes, she drew his head down, and kissed
him. “I’ll swear to you, Phil,” she said—“by that!”
He ran out into the darkness, and left her standing, in the light of
the candle, in the little parlour.