THE SHEEP-STEALERS PART COMPANY
HE hurried along with the tread of a man who hopes to lose a
remembrance in the tumult of his going. He had failed in every way;
failed in respect to the creature whom he had resolved so fixedly to
protect, and beside whom every other worldly object had all at once
become unimportant. It seemed that he was always to show himself in a
different light to the one which illumined his heart. His evil luck
willed it so, apparently. He loved truth, and yet he lay bound in a
tangle of dishonesty; he loved independence, and he was in the hollow
of a rogue's hand; he loved to be at peace with all men, and his
companion's daily aim was to rouse his temper; and lastly, he loved
Mary Vaughan, and by his own folly he had caused her to shut her door
in his face.
He felt his incapacities keenly, and the brave holly-sprig in his
buttonhole was no longer an expression of his mood but a mockery of
it. In his self-abasement he did not suspect that she had been hard
upon him, nor could he know how the sudden revelation of his
masculinity had affected her as he came into the cottage. He had
expected to take up their relationship where he had left it on the
river-bank near the snow-men, not understanding that it was an
abnormal one, risen from abnormal circumstances and passing with them.
He went through Crishowell looking neither to the right nor left and
never slackening his pace, and he was remarked only by such idlers as
were gathered round the blacksmith's shop. At that hour of the
morning, the village people had other things to think of besides their
neighbours' affairs; that was a pleasure reserved for the later part
of the day. He rushed past the churchyard in which he had first seen
Mary sitting by her father's grave, and had watched the burial from
under the yew. As he crossed a field on the way upwards, he saw
Bumpett driving in his spring cart down the lane, his hat bobbing
above the hedge with the jolting of the wheels in ruts, and though he
heard the old man hailing him in his high-pitched voice, he pretended
to be unconscious of it, and went on as though pursued. Presently the
Pig-driver stood up in the cart and produced a sound which had in it
such a note of distress that George pulled up in spite of himself, and
turned his steps towards a low bit of hedge over which he might
converse with his employer. He was rather surprised to find an elderly
woman sitting beside Bumpett on the board which served as a
driving-seat. The Pig-driver crossed his hands one over the other in
spite of the reins in them and shrugged his shoulders slowly, smiling
with the aspect of one who has an ample leisure in which to let loose
his mind upon the world; the horse looked round with cocked ears to
see what was happening. George noticed that the woman seemed agitated.
"Now, look you, Nannie," began Bumpett cheerily, "I've a fine opinion
o' this young feller. S'pose we was to ax him what he thinks."
Williams' face darkened, for he was in no humour for trifling, and he
knew by long experience that the old man's expansiveness was to be met
with caution. His malice was the only gratuitous thing about him, and
he was liable to hand that round without stint at any moment.
"Don't you!" exclaimed Nannie, half under her breath, twitching at her
companion's elbow. "Go on!" she cried to the horse, prodding it with
the umbrella beside her; the beast made a step forward, but the
Pig-driver was holding the reins tightly and progress was impossible.
"It's no matter, none at all," said Nannie. "Lord love me, I was an
old foondy, brothering at you like that. Go you on, Mr. Bumpett,
'stead o' putting foolery o' that sort into the young man's head." And
she grasped his sleeve again.
The Pig-driver only smiled more expansively, until his eyes were as
pin-points in his face.
"How you do pug at me, Nannie, to be sure! Ah, women do take up
strange notions, George, they do indeed," he said wagging his head.
"I don't know nothin' about women. I must be movin' on," answered
Williams shortly.
"Well, well. Time's money wi' you," observed the Pig-driver, winking,
"and there's no lack of honest work for honest men. But bide you a
minute. Here's Mrs. Davies have got it that Rhys Walters is hidin'
away hereabouts. What do ye say? Hey? Did 'e ever hear the like o'
that now?"
"Don't mind him, young man," cried Nannie, leaning out of the cart and
fixing an agonized eye on George. "Lord! Mr. Bumpett, what a man you
be for your fun! 'Tis all a lie, I tell you. What do I know about Mr.
Walters? He's in Ameriky by this time, and like as not he's turned
into a naked savage wi' feathers hangin' down before and behind."
"Well now, George! Did 'e ever see the like o' that? Coming down the
road she says to me, 'I know 'e's here,' she says; 'where is he, Mr.
Bumpett?' Tell her what ye think, my lad; where be he? She won't
listen to me."
For reply Williams turned his back upon the pair, and continued his
way up the field. He heard the creak of the springs as the cart
started on again. Nannie was almost sobbing.
"You're a wicked man, Bumpett," she said, "and if I know anything of
the Lord, you'll smart for this some day."
Williams was panting by the time he had climbed up to his house, and
he flung the door to unlocked behind him, for he did not want Rhys'
society.
"It's open," he said, with a backward jerk of his head as the other
came up.
"Did she take you?" asked Walters, disregarding the remark. He leaned
against the wall, and the semi-darkness which reigned in the cottage
could hardly veil the insolence in his eyes.
The other took no notice, but began to untie his neckcloth.
"Ah, you're deaf and can't hear me. I suppose you've had a punch on
the head from her father. There are some men of sense in the world
yet."
George made no reply, but his face lowered.
"Perhaps she didn't like you either," continued Rhys, in whom the long
morning spent underground was rankling. "I'm sure I don't wonder. They
like a man that can give them some sort of a decent home, to say
nothing of the rest. However, there are always some thankful enough
for a man's name to hide behind. You might get one that was----"
"Hold your foul tongue!" broke in Williams.
Rhys laughed. "Ha! I was right, was I? I knew well enough you'd been
courting and it had come to no good. My God! Fancy a man like you
trying to take up with a woman! What did you say to her, Williams? How
did you begin?"
At this moment the sprig of holly fell out of George's coat. Rhys
stepped forward to pick it up, and the sheep-stealer put his foot upon
it, grazing Walters' finger with the nails in his boot.
"I mayn't touch it, I see. I suppose you'd like me to think she gave
it you."
George was shaking with rage. The mortification in his heart was hard
enough to endure without his companion's sneers, and the Pig-driver
had already exasperated him. He knew that Rhys was as a man drawing a
bow at a venture, but his shots were going perilously near to the
mark.
"I don't care what you think," he said. "Get down the ladder, you
fool!"
"Fool, am I? Fool? You can stop that. It's enough to have to live with
an oaf, let alone being called a fool by him."
"If it hadn't been for me you'd have been living somewhere pretty
different--or maybe you mightn't be living at all," said Williams.
Anger was beginning to lend him a tongue.
"So you're throwing that in my face! It's like you to do it. If it
wasn't for Bumpett you'd be ready to turn me out into the road to take
my chance. A man who's down in the world isn't fit company for you,
and yet it isn't long since I wouldn't have spoken to a fellow like
you, except to give orders."
"Get down-stairs," said George, controlling himself with difficulty. A
man who cannot keep his temper is at the mercy of every other person
who can. He knew that very well, but Rhys' persevering insults were
beginning to make his blood boil.
"I'm not a dog to go to my kennel for you."
"I've seen many a dog that's better than you're ever like to be. Go
down and leave me alone; I've other things to do than listen to your
tongue. God! To think o' you settin' up to be above another, dog or
no! I'm not thinking o' the old man in his grave down the hill
there--'twas in hot blood an' never meant--but there was worse nor
that, an' I know it."
Rhys' calmness was leaving him, and his nostrils dilated.
"What's to come to the girl you left? Tell me _that!_" cried the
other, his voice shaking.
There was a silence, in which they eyed each other like two wild
beasts.
"You'd better take her yourself," said Rhys at last with his lips
drawn back from his teeth; "perhaps she mightn't look higher than a
thief--now."
The words had hardly left his mouth before Williams hurled himself
across the room at him with a violence which sent him staggering
against the partition at his back. It gave a loud crack, and Walters
feared that the whole thing might give way and he might find himself
on the ground among the ruins with the sheep-stealer on the top of
him. George, whose methods of attack were primitive, had got him by
the collar, and was shaking him about in a way which brought his head
smartly in contact with the panels. At last his collar tore open, and,
in the moment's backward slip which this caused the enemy, he wriggled
sideways and got himself almost free; then he flung his arms round
Williams and tried hard to get his foot in behind his heel. Nothing
could be heard in the cottage but the hard-drawn breathing of the two
men as they swung and swayed about, their teeth shut tight and their
eyes fixed; the pent-up hatred of weeks was in them and welled up in
an ecstasy of physical expression.
George was conscious only of the craving to crush his opponent, to
break his ribs with the grip of his arms, to fling him like a rag into
a corner with the breath wrung out of his body, but Rhys fought for
one end alone, to get his man under him upon the floor, and to this
object his brain worked equally with his limbs. He had always been
jealous of the other's strength, and he longed and panted to see him
lying prostrate below him and to taunt him with his overthrow. They
were well matched, for though Williams' weight was in his favour, the
other was cooler-headed, and his suppleness in shifting his position
saved him from being overborne by it. His nightly ranging about the
hills had given him back much of the vigour he had lost during his
illness, and he was, as he had always been, like a piece of tempered
steel.
Their struggles drew them nearer to the unlatched door which a little
burst of wind had blown open; they felt the air on their foreheads,
and it refreshed Rhys, whose breath was beginning to fail in the
sheep-stealer's continued grasp. With an effort which nearly broke his
back and loins he freed one arm and hit him on the temple as hard as
he could, allowing for the impossibility of getting his fist far
enough back for a satisfactory blow. George tried to dodge it with his
head, failed, slipped up, and fell with a shock which shook the
building, striking the lintel with the back of his skull. He made one
convulsive effort to rise and fell back unconscious.
The young man stood looking at the great, still form with the blood
oozing from underneath its hair; then he turned cold with fear lest he
should have killed a man without meaning to for the second time in his
life. There was no room for triumph in his mind as he knelt down and
put his hand inside Williams' shirt.
But the heart was moving, and, much reassured, he fetched the square
of looking-glass which hung on the wall and held it over George's
lips. His breath made a distinct fog on it, and it was evident to Rhys
that he was only stunned by his fall against the woodwork of the door.
With the relief, all his animosity came back, and having ventured a
few steps out to take a precautionary look round, he began to drag
Williams rather roughly over the threshold. This was no easy task, and
it took him some time to get him round the end of the house and into
the garden behind it, where he laid him on his back under the thickest
gooseberry bush in a place which could not be seen from the
cart-track.
There he left him while he went in to fetch the bird's-eye neck-cloth;
he dipped it in the brook as he came out, and then laid one end under
the cut on the back of George's head and wound the other round his
temples. After this he smoothed away all signs of their difficult
progress round the cottage, covered over a few drops of blood on the
ground and went in, locking the door. The air and the cold would soon
revive George, and he would have to come round and beg for admittance.
Meanwhile Rhys went down the ladder, meaning to keep his eye at the
aperture in the wall, from which he could see his fallen enemy as he
lay by the bush. He was occupying the exact spot under which he
generally buried his sheep's heads; indeed, his own was supported by
the little mound which these frequent interments had raised, and Rhys
smiled as he noticed it. It pleased him to see so pregnant an
illustration of "the biter bit."
It did not take long for the air and the wet bandage to do their work,
and Williams, who had only, to use his own phrase, "been knocked
silly," soon stirred and sat up. The bleeding from the cut, which was
not a deep one, relieved his head a good deal, and he gathered himself
up quite unconscious of the fact that Walters' eyes were watching him
not three yards away from his feet. His first impulse as he rose was
to hurry down the ladder after his enemy and begin the fight afresh,
but he had enough sense to realize that, with a giddiness which made
walking rather difficult, he was not likely to gain by such an
attempt. He leaned against the end of the cottage with a sore heart.
In his eternal quarrel with life he never failed to get the worst of
it, and, though he had not the morbid temperament which broods over
these things, the grim undercurrent of dislike to his surroundings was
always there. He ground his teeth as he thought of Rhys Walters, of
Bumpett and his hateful trade, of his ill success with Mary and the
rebuke he had felt so much, of the vile round of law-breaking to which
he was bound for yet another year; it was a miserable prospect. What
if he were to break away from it? The thought was like a whiff from
Paradise.
He could not owe the Pig-driver very much now, and the rent of the
hovel he was occupying was barely worth consideration, for Bumpett
would have had some difficulty in finding any one who would live in
such a place. True, he had been forgiven his old debt, which amounted
to nearly four pounds--an enormous sum for him. In his two years'
service he must have wiped it out again and again, even taking his
weekly wage into account. But, if he were free, if he could get work
of any sort, he would pinch himself to the uttermost farthing till he
could pay it back in consideration of his broken contract. He had no
one now to think of but himself; if he starved he would starve alone.
Bumpett would, of course, be furious, but, as far as giving him up to
justice was concerned, his hands would be tied. No doubt he would do
his best to injure him in small ways, but that was a risk to be
accepted in common with other chances and changes of this transitory
life. What if he were to do this thing--now--this moment--as he was?
He drew a long breath.
A shooting pain coming from the cut on his head began to annoy him,
and he went down to the brook, noticing as he passed that the door of
the cottage was shut and suspecting that Rhys had locked it; he knelt
down and rinsed the neck-cloth, wringing out the blood-stains till it
was quite clean.
As he bent forward his head ached horribly. He washed his wound and
poured the chill water over his face, which refreshed him and took
away the feeling of giddiness, then he got up and stood looking at the
house.
A bill-hook he had left outside was lying by the wall, and he went and
picked it up; in spite of his having several small possessions inside
the cottage, not for anything in the world would he have entered it,
though a push or two from his shoulders would have made short work of
the door.
He hoped never in all his life to see Rhys Walters again. What would
become of him after he had gone, or how he would manage to live on
there undetected he could not imagine and did not care. He crossed the
brook and went up the hill, not wishing to go near Crishowell, and
when he had passed the Pedlar's Stone and got on to the foot of the
mountain, he turned westwards towards Great Masterhouse.