A CAPTURE
Kate Quarm had never felt a mother’s love. She could not recall her
mother, who had died when she was an infant. Her father, encumbered with
a motherless babe, had handed the child over to his sister Zerah, a hard
woman, who resented the infliction upon her in addition to the cares and
solicitudes of her house. From her aunt Kate received no love. Her uncle
paid to her no attention, save when he was provoked to rebuke by some
noise made in childish play, or some damage done in childish levity.
Thus Kate had grown up to the verge of womanhood with all her affections
buried in her bosom. That dark heart was like a cellar stored with
flower bulbs and roots. They are not dead, they send forth bleached and
sickly shoots without vigour and incapable of bloom. Hers was a tender,
craving nature, one that hungered for love; and as she received none,
wherever she turned, to whomsoever she looked, she had become
self-contained, reserved, and silent. Her aunt thought her sullen and
obstinate.
As already related, Mrs. Pepperill had not been always childless. She
had possessed a daughter, Wilmot, who had been the joy and pride of her
heart. Wilmot had been a bright, merry girl, with fair hair and
forget-me-not blue eyes, and cheeks in which the lily was commingled
with the rose. Wilmot was a born coax and coquette; she cajoled her
mother to give her what she desired, and she flattered her father into
humouring her caprices.
Naturally, the reserved, pale Kate was thrown into shadow by the
forward, glowing Wilmot; and the parents daily contrasted their own
child with that of the brother, and always to the disadvantage of the
latter.
Wilmot had a mischievous spirit, and delighted in teasing and
tyrannising over her cousin. Malevolent she was not, but inconsiderate;
she was spoiled, and, as a spoiled child, capricious and domineering.
She liked--in her fashion, loved--Kate, as she liked and loved a
plaything, that she might trifle with and knock about; not as a
playfellow, to be considered and conciliated. Association with Wilmot
hardly in any degree brightened the existence of Kate; it rather served
to cloud it. Petty wrongs, continuous setting back, repeated slights,
wounded and crushed a naturally expansive and susceptible nature. Kate
hardly ventured to appeal to her father or to her aunt against her
cousin, even when that cousin’s treatment was most unjust and
insupportable; the aunt naturally sided with her own child, and the
father heedlessly laughed at Kate’s troubles as undeserving of
consideration.
Then, suddenly, Wilmot was attacked by fever, which carried her off in
three days. The mother was inconsolable. The light went out of her life
with the extinction of the vital spark in the bosom of her child.
The death of Wilmot was of no advantage to Kate. She was no longer,
indeed, given over to the petty tyranny of her cousin, but she was left
exposed to a hardened and embittered aunt, who resented on her the loss
of her own child. Into the void heart of Zerah, Kate had no chance of
finding access; that void was filled with discontent, verjuice, and
acrimony. An unreasonable anger against the child who was not wanted and
yet remained, in place of the child who was the apple of her eye, and
was taken from her, made itself felt in a thousand ways.
Without being absolutely unkind to her, Zerah was ungracious. She held
Kate at arm’s length, spoke to her in harsh and peremptory tones, looked
at her with contracted pupils and with puckered brow. Filled with
resentment against Providence, she made the child feel her
disappointment and antagonism. The reserve, the lack of
light-heartedness in the child told against her, and Zerah little
considered that this temperament was produced by her own ungenerous
treatment.
At the time of this story, Kate was of real service in the house. The
Pepperills kept no domestic servant; they required none, having Kate,
who was made to do whatever was necessary. Her aunt was an energetic and
industrious woman, and Kate served under her direction. She assisted in
the household washing, in the work of the garden, in the feeding of the
poultry, in the kitchen, in all household work; and when folk came to
eat cockles and drink tea, Kate was employed as waitress. For all this
she got no wage, no thanks, no forbearance, no kind looks, certainly no
kind words.
The girl’s heart was sealed up, unread, misunderstood by those with whom
she was brought into contact. She had made no friends at school, had no
comrades in the village; and her father inconsiderately accepted and
applied to her a nickname given her at school by her teacher, a certain
Mr. Solomon Puddicombe,--a nickname derived from the burden of a foolish
folk-song, “Kitty Alone.”
Now the girl lay in the bottom of the boat, under Pooke’s Exeter
tailor-made clothes, shivering. What would her father think of her
absence? Would he be anxious, and waiting up for her? Would Aunt Zerah
be angry, and give her hard words?
Her eyes peered eagerly at the stars--into that great mystery above.
“They are turning,” she said.
“What are turning?” asked Pooke. “Ain’t you asleep, as you ought to be?”
“When I was waiting for you at the Hard, I saw them beginning to
twinkle.”
“What did you see?”
“Yonder, those stars. There are four making a sort of a box, and then
three more in a curve.”
“That is the Plough.”
“Well, it is something like a plough. It is turning about in the sky.
When I was waiting for the Atmospheric, I saw it in one way, and now it
is all turned about different.”
“I daresay it is.”
“But why does it turn about?”
“When I’ve ploughed to one end of a field, I turn the plough so as to
run back.”
“But this isn’t a real plough.”
“I know nothing about it,” said Pooke desperately; “and, what is more, I
won’t stand questioning. This is a ferry-boat, not a National School,
and you are Kitty Quarm, not Mr. Puddicombe. I haven’t anything more of
learning to go through the rest of my days, thankful to say.”
The night crept along, slow, chilly as a slug; the time seemed
interminable. Benumbed by cold, Kate finally dozed without knowing that
she was slipping out of consciousness. Sleep she did not--she was in a
condition of uneasy terror, shivering with cold, cramped by her
position, bruised by the ribs of the boat, with the smell of mud and new
cloth in her nose, and with occasionally a brass button touching her
cheek, and with its cold stabbing as with a needle. The wind, curling
and whistling in the boat as it came over the side, bored into the
marrow of the bones, the muscles became hard, the flesh turned to wax.
Kate discovered that she had been unconscious only by the confusion of
her intellect when Pooke roused her by a touch, and told her that the
boat was afloat. She staggered to her knees, brushed the scattered hair
out of her dazed eyes, rose to her feet, and seated herself on the
bench. Her wits were as though curdled in her brains. They would not
move. Every limb was stiff, every nerve ached. Her teeth chattered; she
felt sick and faint. Sleepily she looked around.
No lights were twinkling from the windows on the banks. In every house
candles had long ago been extinguished. All the world slept.
The clouds overhead had been brushed away, and the lights of heaven
looked down and were reflected in the water. The boat was as it were
floating between two heavens besprent with stars, the one above, the
other below, and across each was drawn the silvery nebulous Milky Way.
The constellation of the Great Bear--the Plough, as Pooke called it--was
greatly changed in position since Kate had commented on it. Cassiopēa’s
silver chair was planted in the great curve of the Milky Way. To the
south the hazy tangle of Berenice’s Hair was faintly reflected in the
inflowing tide.
Although the boat was lifted from the bank, yet it was by no means
certain that Coombe Cellars could be reached for at least another
half-hour. The tide, that had raced out, seemed to return at a crawl.
Nevertheless, it was expedient to restore circulation by the exercise of
the arms. Kate assumed one oar, John the other, and began to row; she at
first with difficulty, then with ease, as warmth returned and her blood
resumed its flow. The swelling tide carried the boat up with it, and the
oars were leisurely dipped, breaking the diamonds in the water into a
thousand brilliants.
As they approached the reach where lay Coombe-in-Teignhead, John Pooke
said: “There is a light burning in your house. They are all up, anxious,
watching for you, and in trouble. On my word, will not my father be in a
condition of fright and distress concerning me if he hears that I am
out? I went off without saying anything to anybody. I intended to be
back all right in the evening by the Atmospheric. But there’s no
telling, father may have been asking after me. Then, as I didn’t turn up
at supper, he may have sent about making inquiries, and have heard at
the Cellars that I’d gone over the water, and given command to be met by
the last train. Then they will be in a bad state of mind, father and
sister Sue. Hulloa! what is that light? It comes from our place.”
John Pooke rested on his oar, and turned.
From behind an orchard a glow, as of fire, was shining. It had broken
forth suddenly. The light streamed between the trees, sending fiery
arrows shooting over the water, it rose in a halo above the tops of the
trees.
“Kate! whatever can it be? That is our orchard. There is our rick-yard
behind. It never can be that our ricks are afire, or our house! The
house is just beyond. The blaze is at our place--pull hard!”
“It’s a chance if there is water enough to carry us ashore.”
Then, from above the belt of orchard broke lambent flame, and cast up
tufts of ignited matter into the air, to be caught and carried away by
the strong wind. Now there lay a fiery path between the ferry-boat and
the shore. Pooke seated himself. He was greatly agitated.
“Kate, it is our rick-yard. That chap, Roger, has done it.”
The words had hardly escaped him before a boat shot past, and his oar
clashed with that of the rower in that boat. As it passed, John saw the
face of the man who was rowing, kindled by the orange blaze from the
shore. The recognition was instantaneous.
“Redmore, it is you!” Then breathlessly, “Kate, about! we must catch
him. He has set our ricks ablaze.”
The boat was headed round, and the young arms bent at the oars, and the
little vessel flew in pursuit. The man they were pursuing rowed
clumsily, and with all his efforts made little way, so that speedily he
was overtaken, and Jan ran the ferry-boat against the other, struck the
oar out of the hands of the rower, and flung himself upon the man, and
gripped him.
“Kate--hold the boats together.”
Then ensued a furious struggle. Both men were strong. The position in
which both were was difficult--Jan Pooke half in one boat, half in the
other, but Roger Redmore grasped at the seat in his boat, while holding
an oar in his right hand.
The flaring rick sent a yellow light over them. The boats reeled and
clashed together, and clashing drifted together with the tide up the
river, past Coombe Cellars. Pooke, unable as he was to master his man,
cast himself wholly into his adversary’s boat. Redmore had let go the
oar, and now staggered to his feet. The men, wrestling, tossed in the
rolling boat, fell, were up on their knees, and then down again in the
bottom.
“Quick, Kate!” shouted Jan. “I have him! Quick!--the string of my
parcel.”
Kate handed him what he desired.
In another moment Pooke was upright. “He is safe,” said he, panting. “I
have bound his wrists behind his back. Now--Kate!”
The boats had run ashore, a little way above the Cellars, drifted to the
strand by the flowing tide.
“Kate,” said Pooke, jumping out, “you hold that cord--here. I have
fastened it round the rowlock. He can’t release himself. Hold him,
whilst I run for help. We will have him tried--he shall swing for this!
Do you know that, Roger Redmore? What you have done is no joke--it will
bring you to the gallows!”