HOW WE FOUND A FRIEND IN NEED
But--"pas de rue sans but!" as we say in Sercq--there is no road but has an
ending. And, just as the dawn was softening the east, and when we were nigh
our last effort, we stumbled by sheerest accident on shelter, warmth, and
food,--and so upon life, for I do not think either of us could have carried
on much longer, and to have sunk down there in the marsh, with no hope of
food, must soon have brought us to an end.
It was Le Marchant who smelt it first.
"Carré," he said suddenly, "there is smoke," and he stood and sniffed like
a starving dog. Then I smelt it also, a sweet pleasant smell of burning,
and we sniffed together.
Since it came to us on the wind we followed up the wind in search of it,
and nosed about hither and thither, losing it, finding it, but getting
hotter and hotter on the scent till we came at last to a little mound, and
out of the mound the smoke came.
A voice also as we drew close, muffled and monotonous, but human beyond
doubt. We crept round the mound till we came on a doorway all covered with
furze and grasses till it looked no more than a part of the mound. We
pulled open the door, and the voice inside said, "Blight him! Blight him!
Blight him!" and we crept in on our hands and knees.
There was a small fire of brown sods burning on the ground, and the place
was full of a sweet pungent smoke. A little old man sat crouched with his
chin on his knees staring into the fire, and said, "Blight him! Blight him!
Blight him!" without ceasing. There was no more than room for the three of
us, and we elbowed one another as we crouched by the fire.
He turned a rambling eye on us, but showed no surprise.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said the little old man.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said I, deeming it well to fall in
with his humour.
"Ay--who?" he asked.
"The one you mean."
"Ay,--Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and he lifted a bottle from the
ground between his knees, and took a pull at it, and passed it on to me. I
drank and passed it to Le Marchant, and the fiery spirit ran through my
veins like new hot life.
"We are starving. Give us to eat," I said, and the old man pointed to a
hole in the side of the hut. I thrust in my hand and found bread, dark
coloured and coarse, but amazingly sweet and strengthening, and a lump of
fat bacon. We divided it without a word, and ate like famished dogs. And
all the time the old man chaunted "Blight him!" with fervour, and drank
every now and then from the bottle. We drank too as we ate, but sparingly,
lest our heads should go completely, though we could not believe such
hospitality a trap.
It was a nightmare ending to a nightmare journey, but for the moment we
had food and shelter and we asked no more. When we had eaten we curled
ourselves up on the floor and slept, with "Blight him! Blight him! Blight
him!" dying in our ears.
I must have slept a long time, for when I woke I felt almost myself again.
I had dim remembrances of half-wakings, in which I had seen the old man
still crouching over his smouldering fire muttering his usual curse. But
now he was gone, and Le Marchant and I had the place to ourselves, and
presently Le Marchant stretched and yawned, and sat up blinking at the
smoke.
"Where is the old one?" he asked. "Or was he only a dream?"
"Real enough, and so was his bread and bacon. I'm hungry again," and we
routed about for food, but found only a bottle with spirits in it, which we
drank.
We sat there in the careless sloth that follows too great a strain, but
feeling the strength grow as we sat.
"Is he safe?" asked Le Marchant at last. "Or has he gone to bring the
soldiers on us? And is it night or day?" and he felt round with his foot
till it came on the door and let in a bright gleam of daylight.
We crawled out into the sunshine and sat with our backs against the sods of
the house, looking out over the great sweep of the flats. It was like a sea
whose tumbling waves had turned suddenly into earth and become fixed. Here
and there great green breakers stood up above the rest with bristling
crests of wire grass, and the darker patches of tiny tangled shrubs and
heather and the long black pools and ditches were like the shadows that
dapple the sea. The sky was almost as clear a blue as we get in Sercq, and
was so full of singing larks that it set us thinking of home.
Away on the margin of the flats we saw the steeples of churches, and
between us and them a small black object came flitting like a jumping
beetle. We sat and watched it, and it turned into a man, who overcame the
black ditches, and picked his way from tussock to tussock, by means of a
long pole, which brought him to us at length in a series of flying leaps.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" he said as he landed. "So you are
awake at last."
"Awake and hungry," I said.
He loosed a bundle from his back and opened it, and showed us bread and
bacon.
"Blight him! Eat!" he said, and we needed no second bidding.
"You are from the cage?" he asked as he sat and watched us.
I nodded.
"All the birds that come my way I feed," he said. "For once I was caged
myself. Blight him!"
"Whom do you blight?" I asked.
"Whom?" he cried angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover
rat,--George!... And the blight works--oh, it works, and the brain rots in
his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an
effectual fervent curse!--Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him
night and day and--you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man
speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man spoke, but
I myself, and all day long and all night I cursed him out loud for the
sound of my own voice, since no other might speak to me. For the silence
and the darkness pressed upon me like the churchyard mould, and I kept my
wits only by cursing. Blight him! Blight him! And now they say--But they
may say what they will so they leave me in peace, for I know--and you
know"--and he bent forward confidentially--"it's the King that's mad, and
soon everyone will know it. Blight him! Blight him! Oh--an effectual
fervent curse indeed!"
"We are grateful to you," I said, "for food and shelter. We have money, we
will pay."
"As you will. Those who can, pay. Those who can't, don't. All caged birds,
I help. Blight him! Blight him!"
"We would rest till night, then you can put us on our way to the coast.
This is an ill land to wander in in the dark. Last night we came on one who
had strayed and died."
"Where away?" he asked quickly.
"In the marshes--over yonder--about a mile away, I should say."
"Was he clothed?" he snapped.
"Yes, he was clothed."
And he was off with his pole across the flats, in great bounds, while we
sat wondering. We could see his uncouth hops as he went to and fro at a
distance, and in time he came back with a bundle of clothes tied to his
back.
"Food one can always get for the herbs of the marshes," he said, "and drink
comes easy when you know where to get it. But clothes cost money and the
dead need them not. Blight him!"
Le Marchant begged me to ask if he had any tobacco and a pipe, and I did
so. He went inside and came out with a clay pipe and some dried brown herb.
"It is not what you smoke, but such as it is it is there," he said; and Le
Marchant tried a whiff or two, but laid the pipe aside with a grunt.
"He speaks as do the others from the cage. How come you to speak as we do?"
"I am from Sercq. It is part of England."
"I never heard of it. Why did they cage you?"
"I was prisoner on a French ship which they captured. I let them believe me
French rather than be pressed on board a King's ship."
"Right! Blight him!"
That long rest made men of us again. Our host had little to say to us
except that the King was mad, and we concluded that on that subject he was
none too sane himself, though in other matters we had no fault to find with
him.
We got directions for our guidance out of him during the day, and as soon
as it was dark he set off with us across the marshes, and led us at last on
to more trustworthy ground and told us how to go. We gave him money and
hearty thanks, and shook him by the hand and went on our way. The last
words we heard from him, out of the darkness, were the same as we heard
first in the darkness--"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and if they
did another old man no harm they certainly seemed to afford great
satisfaction to this one.
All that night we walked steadily eastward, passing through sleeping
villages and by sleeping farmhouses, and meeting none who showed any desire
to question us. In the early morning I bought bread and cheese from a
sleepy wife at a little shop in a village that was just waking up, and we
ate as we walked, and slept in a haystack till late in the afternoon. We
tramped again all night, and long before daylight we smelt salt water, and
when the sun rose we were sitting on a cliff watching it come up out of the
sea.