WANDERING SOULS.
The long, lean fellow, Lonegon, leaped to his feet, and struck at
the man by the fire.
The latter was prepared for him. He had snatched a brand from the
hearth, and without losing the sarcastic laugh on his great mouth,
presented it sharply in the way of the descending fist, so as to
catch Lonegon's wrist.
The sparks flew about at the clash, and the man who had received the
blow uttered a howl of pain, for his wrist was torn by the firewood,
and his hand burnt by the fire.
With an imprecation and a vow to "do for" "eyes, liver, and lights"
of the "clodhopper," he rushed at him blindly. With a mocking laugh,
the man assailed thrust forth a leg, and Lonegon, stumbling across
it, measured his length on the floor.
The man called Marshall now interfered by snatching the pewter
tankard from the sailor, and aiming it at the head of him who had
overthrown his mate.
At the same time the boy, terrified, began to scream. "Mother!
mother! help! pray! they'll murder Bideabout."
The hostess speedily appeared, set her arms akimbo, planted her
feet resolutely on the floor, and said, in commanding tones--
"Now then! No fighting on the premises. Stand up, you rascal. What
have you done with the pewter? Ah, crushed out of all shape and use.
That's what Molly Luff sed of her new bonnet when she sat down on
it--Lawk, a biddy! Who'd ha' thought it?"
Lonegon staggered to his feet, and burst into a torrent of
recrimination against the man whom the boy had called Bideabout.
"I don't care where the rights are, or where be the wrongs. An
addled egg be nasty eating whether you tackle it one end or 'tother.
All I sez is--I won't have it. But what I will have is--I'll be
paid for that there tankard. Who threw it?"
"It was he--yonder, in tatters," said the boy.
"You won't get money out o' me," said Marshall; "my pockets--you may
turn 'em out and see for yourself--are rich in nothing but holes,
and there's in them just about as many of they as there are in the
rose o' a watering can."
"I shall be paid," asserted the hostess. "You three are mates, and
there'll be money enough among you."
"Look here, mistress," put in the sailor, "I'll stand the damage,
only don't let us have a row. Bring me another can of ale, and tell
me what it all comes to. Then we'll be on the move."
"The other fellows may clear off, and the sooner the better," said
the landlady. "But not you just now, and the baby has dropped off
into the sweetest of sleeps. 'Twere a sin to wake her."
"I'm going on to the Huts," said the seaman.
"And we're going with him as a guard to the baby," said the Irish
fellow.
"A blackguard set," threw in Bideabout.
"What about the color so long as it is effective?" asked Casey.
By degrees the anger of Lonegon was allayed, and he seated himself
growling at the table, and wiped the blood from his torn wrist on
his sleeve, and drawing forth a dirty and tattered red kerchief,
bound it round the bruised and wounded joint. The man, Bideabout,
did not concern himself with the wrath or the anguish of the man.
He rubbed his hands together, and clapped a palm on each knee, and
looked into the fire with a smirk on his face, but with an eye on
the alert lest his adversary should attempt to steal an advantage
on him.
Nor was he unjustified in being on his guard, judging by the
malignant glances cast at him by Lonegon.
"Whom may you be?" asked the tattered man.
"I'm Jonas Kink," answered the young fellow at the fire.
"He's Bideabout, the Broom-Squire," explained the landlady. Then
with a glimmering of a notion that this variation in names might
prove confusing, she added, "leastways that's what we calls him.
We don't use the names writ in the Church register here. He's the
Broom-Squire--and not the sort o' chap for you ragamuffins to
have dealings with--let me tell you."
"I don't kear what he be," said Lonegon, sullenly, "but dang it,
I'd like a sup o' ale with your leave," and without further
ceremony he took the new tankard from the sailor and quaffed off
half its contents.
The hostess looked from the drinker to the seaman and said, "Are
you standing tick for they?"
"I'll pay for their drink and they'll help me along the road with
the baby," said the sailor.
The landlady shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, and asked, "If
I may be so bold, what's her name?"
"What's whose name?"
"The baby's."
"Ha'n't got none," said the seaman.
"What, ain't she been christened yet?"
"No, I reckon not," answered the father. Then he proceeded to
explain. "You see my poor wife she was down in lodgings and
hadn't no friends nor relations no'ther nigh her, and she took
ill and never got over the birth of this here babe, and so it
couldn't be done. But the kid's aunt'll see to all that right
enough when I've got her there."
"What! you're trapsing about the country hugging a babe along
under your arm and slung over your shoulder and feeding her o'
blackberries and chucking her in among fly poison, and not a
Christian yet! My! What a world it is!".
"All in good time, missus."
"That's what Betsy Cole said o' her pork and 'ams when the pig
wor killed and her hadn't salt nor saltpetre. She'd see to it
some day. Meanwhile the maggots came and spiled the lot."
"It shall all be made right in a day or two."
"Ah! but what if it be too late? Then where will you go to some
day? How can you say but that the child wi' being hung topsy-turvy
and swinging like a pendiddlum may die of the apoplexy, or the
blackberries turn sour in her blessed stomach and she go off in
convulsions, or that she may ha' put out the end o' her tongue
and sucked some o' that there fly paper? Then where will you be?"
"I hope I shall be on board ship just before that comes to pass,"
said the sailor.
"Do you know what happens if a child dies and ha'n't been
christened? It becomes a wanderer."
"What do you mean?"
"It ain't a Christian, so it can't go to heaven. It ain't done
no evil, so it can't go to hell; and so the poor spirit wanders
about in the wind and never has no rest. You can hear them piping
in the trees and sobbin' at the winder. I've heard 'm scores of
times. How will you like that when at sea to have your own child
sighing and sobbin' up in the rigging of the vessel, eh?"
"I hope it will not come to that," said the sailor.
"That's what Susan Bay said when she put a darnin' needle into
the armchair cushion, and I sed, said I, 'twas a ticklesome thing
and might do hurt. She did it once too often. Her old man sat
down on it."
She brought some more ale at the request of the seaman, and as
she set down the tankard said:
"I won't be so bold as to say it's in Scriptur', but it's in
the Psalm-book I dare swear. Mother, she were a tip-top tearin'
religious woman, and she used to say it to me when I was younger
than I be now:--
"'They flies in clouds and flap their shrouds
When full the moon doth shine;
In dead of night when lacketh light,
We here 'em pipe and pine.
"'And many a soul wi' hoot and howl
Do rattle at the door,
Or rave and rout, and dance about
All on a barren moor.'
"And it goes on somehow like this. You can think on it as you go
over Hind Head in the dark:
"'Or at the winder wail and weep,
Yet never venture nigher;
In snow and sleet, within to creep
To warm 'em at the fire.'"
The child began to cry in the adjoining room.
"There," said the landlady, "'tis awake she is, poor mite without
a name, and not as much Christianity as could make a cat sneeze.
If that there child were to die afore you got to Portsmouth and
had her baptized, sure as my name is Susanna Verstage, I'd never
forgive myself, and I'd hear her for sure and certainty at the
winder. I'm a motherly sort of a woman, and there's a lot o' them
poor wanderers comes piping about the panes of an evening. But I
can do nothing for them."
"Now then, lads, let's be moving," said the mariner.
The three men at the table rose; and when standing exposed more of
their raggedness and the incongruity of their apparel than was
shown when they were seated.
The landlady reluctantly surrendered the child.
"A babe," said she, "mustn't be shaken after feeding;" then, "a
babe mustn't be allowed to get its little feet cold, or gripes
comes;" then, "you must mind and carry it with the head to your
shoulder, and away from the wind." Presently another item occurred
to the good woman, as the men left their places at the table: "You
must hold the child on your arm, between the wrist and the
elbow-jint."
As they went to the door she called, "And never be without a drop
o' dill water: it's comforting to babies."
As they made their exit--"And when nussin', mind, no green meat
nor fruit."
When all had departed the landlady turned to the man by the fire,
who still wore his sarcastic smirk, and said "Bideabout! What do
you think of they?"
"I think," answered the Broom-Squire, "that I never saw three
such cut-throat rascals as those who have gone off with the sailor;
and as for him--I take he's softish."
"I thought him a bit of a natural."
"He must be so to start on one of the lonesomest roads in England,
at fall of night, with such a parcel of jailbirds."
"Well, dear life!" exclaimed the good woman. "I hope nothing will
hap' to the poor child."
"Mother," said the boy, timidly, "it's not true is it about the
spirits of babies in the wind?"
"Of course it is. Where would you have them go? and they bain't
Christians. Hark! I won't say there be none flying about now. I
fancy I hear a sort of a kind o' whistling."
"Your boy Iver, he's coming with me to the Punch-Bowl," said the
Broom-Squire; "but I'll not go for half-an-hour, becos I don't
want to overtake that lanky, black-jawed chap as they call Lonegon.
He ain't got much love for me, and might try to repay that blow on
his wrist, and sprawl on the floor I gave him."
"What is Iver going to the Punch-Bowl for?" asked the landlady,
and looked at the boy, her son.
"It's a snipe's feather Bideabout has promised me," answered the
lad.
"And what do you want a snipe's feather for at this time o' night?"
"Mother, it's to make a paint brush of. Bideabout ain't at home
much by day. I've been over the road scores o' times."
"A paint brush! What do you want paint brushes for? Have you
cleaned out the pig-stye lately?"
"Yes, mother, but the pig lies abroad now; it's warm in the stye."
"Well, you may go. Dear life! I wish I could see that blessed babe
again, safe and sound. Oh, my!"
The good-hearted woman was destined to have her wish answered more
speedily than she could have anticipated.