A COLD 'UN FOR EGBERT HUNT. ROUGH 'UNS FOR PERCIVAL
I
Ima's nursing, as that doctor had said, brought Percival back from
where he had been driven beyond the mark by stress of events and put
him firmly afoot along the road of convalescence. Only one
circumstance arose to distress those days of his returning
strength--the news of Egbert Hunt.
The assizes at Salisbury followed quick on the capture of the
fugitive--run to earth in a wood by the Blue Boys and the tough boys
and brought back like some wild creature trapped--soaked, soiled,
bruised, faint, furious, terrified and struggling, for prompt committal
by the magistrate.
A newspaper reporter at the assizes wrote of him as having again that
appearance of some wild creature trapped when he stood in the dock
before the Judge. The case attracted considerable local interest.
There was first the fact that famous Boss Maddox had narrowly escaped
death at the prisoner's hand: there was second the appearance of a
noble lady of the county--Lady Burdon--as witness for the defence.
Gossips who attended the trial said it was precious little good she did
the fellow. His conviction was a foregone conclusion. A solicitor
with an eye to possibilities who attended Hunt during the police court
proceedings learnt from him that he had been in Lady Burdon's service
from boyhood and (in his own phrase) promptly "touched her" to see if
she would undertake the expenses of a defence. Her reply was in a form
to send him pretty sharply about his business and (a man of some
humour) he thanked her courteously by having her subpoeaned on the
prisoner's behalf--mitigation of sentence was to be earned by her
testimony to the young man's irreproachable character during his long
years in her service.
It was little of such testimony she gave. Angry at the trick played on
her (as she considered it), angry at being dragged into a case of
sordid aspect and of local sensation, she went angrier yet into the
witness-box for the scene made at her expense by the prisoner as she
passed the dock. The newspaper reporter who described him as
presenting the appearance of a wild animal trapped, wrote of him as
having a wolfish air as he glared about him--of his jaws that worked
ceaselessly, of his blinking eyelids, and of the perspiration that
streamed like raindrops down his face. As Lady Burdon passed him the
emotions of the public were thrilled to see his arms come suppliant
over the dock rail and to hear him scream to her: "Say a word for me,
me lady! Say a good word for me! Love o' God, say--" A warder's
rough hand jerked his cry out of utterance, and he listened to her
during her evidence, watching her with that wolfish air of his and with
those jaws ceaselessly at work.
A cold 'un, the gossips said of her when she stepped down. The Judge
in passing his stereotyped form of sentence made more seemly reference
to her testimony.
"The evidence," the judge addressed the prisoner, "of your former
employer--come here reluctantly but with the best will in the world (as
she has told us) to befriend you--has only been able to show that you
have exhibited from your boyhood upward the traits--sullenness of
temper, hatred of authority--that have led you directly to the place
where now you stand. It has been made very clear that this crime--only
by the mercy of God prevented from taking a more serious form--was
wilful, premeditated, of a sort into which your whole character shows
you might have been expected to burst at almost any period of your
maturer years. You will be sent away now where you will have leisure,
as I sincerely trust, to reflect and to repent.... Five years.... You
will go to penal servitude for that term."
Most wolfishly the wolfish eyes watched the judge while these words
were spoken; quicker the working jaws moved, lower the poor form
crouched as nearer the sentence came. As a vicious dog trembles and
threatens in every hair at the stick upraised to strike, so, by every
aspect of his mien, Egbert Hunt trembled and threatened as the ultimate
words approached. "Penal servitude for that term"--as the dog yelps
and springs so he screamed and sprung: a dreadful wordless scream, a
savage spring against the dock, arms outflung.
Warders closed about him; but he was at his full height, arms and
wolfish face directed at Lady Burdon. "You done it on me!" he
screamed. "You might ha' saved me! You--! You--cruel--! I'll do it
back on yer! Wait till I'm out! I'll come straight for yer, you an'
your--son! I'll do it on--"
A warder's hand came across his mouth. He bit through to the bone and
had his head free before they could remove him. "I've never had a fair
chance, not with you, you--Tyrangs!--tyrangs all of yer!--tyrangs!
You're the worst! God help yer when I come for yer! Tyrangs! ...
Tyrangs!..."
They carried him away.
II
"Oh, five years!--Five years!" Percival cried when he read the news.
"Poor, poor old Hunt! Five years!"
He was sitting comfortably propped in a big chair in the garden behind
"Post Offic," Aunt Maggie and Ima with him, and his weakness could not
restrain the moisture that came to his eyes. "Five years, Aunt Maggie!
He was one of my friends. I liked him--always liked him. He was
always fond of me--jolly good to me. When I think of him with his
vegules and his sick yedaches! Five years--poor old Hunt!"
He was very visibly distressed. "Everybody is fond of you, dear," Aunt
Maggie said sympathetically.
"That's just it!" he said--"that's just it!" and he threw himself back
in his chair and went into thoughts that were come upon him and that
her words exactly suited: thoughts that were often his in the days of
his sickness when he lay--was it waking or sleeping? he never quite
knew. They presented the cheery group of all his friends, all so
jolly, jolly good to him. Himself in their midst and they all smiling
at him and stretching jolly hands. But a gap in the circle--Mr.
Amber's place. Another gap now--Hunt. It appeared to him in those
feverish hours--and now again with new reason and new force--that
outside that jolly circle of friends there prowled, as a savage beast
about a camp-fire, some dark and evil menace that reached cruel hands
to snatch a member to itself and through the gap threatened him.
Within the circle the happy, happy time; beyond it some other thing.
Life was not always youth, then? not always ardour of doing, fighting,
laughing, loving? Menace lurked beyond.... What?...
But those thoughts were swept away, and fate of poor old Hunt that had
caused them temporarily forgotten, by footsteps that brought up the
path three figures, of whom two were colossal of girth and bright red
of face--one striking at his thigh as if his hand held an imaginary
stick--and one that walked behind them lean and brown, with rare bright
eyes in a face of many little lines.
"Why, Mr. Hannaford! Mr. Hannaford!" Percival cried delightedly.
"Stingo! Good old Japhra!--you've actually brought them!"
They were actually brought; but in the alarming company of women
folk--of Aunt Maggie, of Ima, and of Honor, who now, the visit having
been expected, came out with a laden tea-table--the tremendous brothers
exhibited themselves in a state of embarrassment that appeared to make
it highly improbable that they would remain. First having shaken hands
all round the circle, colliding heavily with one another before each,
Mr. Hannaford declaring to each in turn "Warm--warm--bless my eighteen
stun proper if it ain't!" and Stingo repeating some husky throatings of
identical sound but no articulation; they then shook hands with one
another; then proceeded round the circle again; simultaneously appeared
to discover their mistake; collided with shocking violence; and finally
relapsed into enormous nose-blowings, trumpeting one against the other,
as it seemed, into handkerchiefs of the size of small towels.
It was to abate this tremendous clamour that Aunt Maggie handed a cup
of tea to Mr. Hannaford, and it was without the remotest desire in the
world to have it there that Mr. Hannaford in some extraordinary way
found it on the side of his right hand and proceeded to go through an
involved series of really admirable juggling feats with it, beginning
with the cup and saucer and ending with the spoon alone, that came to a
grand finale in cup, saucer and spoon shooting separately and at
tolerable intervals in three different and considerable directions. It
was to cover the amazement of the tremendous brothers at this
extraordinary incident that Ima handed a piece of cake to Stingo, and
it was the fact that Stingo had no sooner conveyed it to his mouth than
he abandoned himself to a paroxysm of choking and for his relief was
followed about the garden by Mr. Hannaford with positively stunning
blows on the back that sent Percival at last from agonies of hopeless
giggling to peals of laughter which established every one at their ease.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" from Percival. "I'm awfully sorry--I can't
help it. Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Impossible to resist it: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" thundered Mr.
Hannaford.
"Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" shook Percival, rolling on his pillows.
"He! He! He! He! He!" came Stingo, infection of mirth vanquishing
the contrariness of the cake-crumb.
"Proper good joke!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford, not at all sure what the
joke was, but carried away by Percival's ringing mirth. "Proper good
joke! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!"; and was chorused in gentler key by
Japhra--for once--by Aunt Maggie and by Ima.
"He! He! He! He! He! Looks as well as ever he did!" choked Stingo,
catching his brother's eye and nodding towards the invalid's chair; and
that as masterfully turned the laughter to practical use as the
laughter itself had turned dreadful embarrassment into universal
joviality. It was the chance for Mr. Hannaford to cry delightedly:
"Why, that's just what I was athinking, bless my eighteen stun proper
if it isn't!" the chance for the tremendous brothers to overwhelm
Percival with the affection and the joy at his recovery with which they
had come bursting; the beginning of highest good fellowship all round,
of stupendous teas on the part of the tremendous brothers, and at last
of explanation of the real project they had made this visit in order to
discharge.
It took a very long time in the telling. On the part of Stingo there
was first a detailed account (punctuated by much affectionately
fraternal handshaking) of how he positively had settled down at
last--sold out of the show trade after and on account of the events in
which Percival and Japhra had shared, and henceforward was devoting his
entire energies to the cultivation of the little 'orse farm. There was
then from Mr. Hannaford, helped by a ledger that could have been
carried in no pocket but his, a description of the flourishing state at
which the little 'orse farm had arrived--"Orders for gentlefolks'
little carts' little 'orses apourin' in quicker'n ever we can apour 'em
out"--and in which it was monthly advancing more and more; and there
was finally a prolonged discussion in fierce whispers between the
brothers, interspersed with loud "Don't forget that's" and "Recollect
for to tell him this's."
Then Mr. Hannaford turned to Percival, struck his thigh a terrible
crack with his ledger, and in a very demanding tone said, "Well, now!"
"Well, I'm awfully--awfully glad," said Percival. "It's
splendid--splendid. By Jove, it really is a big thing. But what?--but
what--?"
"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford very solemnly, "that what we want
and the errand for what we've come is--we want you!" He turned to
Stingo: "Now your bit."
"What of it is," responded Stingo with the huskiness of a lesson learnt
by heart and to be repeated very carefully--"What of it is, he's wanted
you, told me so, ever since you come over long ago with his late
lordship and showed what a regular little pocket marvel you was, but
didn't like for to have you until I'd settled down and taken my proper
place and given my consent--which I have done and which I do, never
having set eyes on your like and never wanting to. Now your bit."
"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford, bringing himself to the point of
these remarkable proceedings with a thigh-and-ledger-thump of
astounding violence--"what of it is, we're Rough 'Uns, Stingo an' me.
All right to be Rough 'Uns when it's only little circus 'orses and
circus folk you're dealing with--no good being Rough 'Uns when it's
gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses, gentlefolks' little riding
little 'orses, and gentlefolks' little polo little 'orses. Want a
gentleman for to deal with the gentlefolk and a gentleman for to break
and ride and show for the gentlefolk. Want you--an' always have wanted
you, bless my eighteen stun proper if we ain't." (Thump!)
Percival was white and then red as the meaning of all the mysterious
conduct of the tremendous brothers' errand was thus made clear to
him--white and then red and with moisture of weakness in his eyes: why
was everybody so jolly, jolly good to him?
"Why, Mr. Hannaford--Stingo--" he began.
But the tremendous brothers raised simultaneous shoulder-of-mutton
fists to stop him, and fell into hurried preparations for departure.
It was disappointment they feared. "Don't speak hasty!" Mr. Hannaford
thundered. "Think over it--don't say a word--keep the ledger--proper
good business in it--pay you what you like--make you a partner in
it--set you up for life properly to rights." He wrung Aunt Maggie's
hand. "Say a word for us, Mam! loved him more'n a son ever since--";
in great emotion backed down the path taking Japhra with him; and in
tremendous excitement returned to wring the hand of Stingo who, after
opening and shutting his mouth several times without sound, at length
produced: "Set you up for life properly to rights--more'n that, too.
You're young. We're bound to pop off one day. No one to leave nothing
to. Rough 'Uns. You're young. Bound to go to you in the end. Rough
'Uns--"
"O' course! O' course! O' course!" joined Mr. Hannaford, wringing
Stingo's hand in ecstasy and wringing it still as he led him down the
path. "O' course! That was a good bit. Never thought of it. Bound
to pop off! Bound to go to him!"
III
"Tears in your eyes, Percival," Ima said, smiling at him as immense
trumpetings at the gate announced the Rough 'Uns' departure in a din of
emotional nose-blowing.
"Well, dash it all, there always are, nowadays," Percival laughed.
"Everybody's so jolly, jolly good to me."
He lay back with new and most wonderful visions before his eyes; set
his gaze on the dear, familiar line of distant Plowman's Ridge and
peopled it with the scenes of his new and wonderful prospects. His
hand in his pocket closed about letters received from Dora between that
night at Baxter's and the night of the fight. Black and impossible his
outlook then; limitless of opportunity now. Set up for life properly
to rights! by a miracle, nay, by a chain of tricks and chances--and he
ran through the amazing sequence of them--he suddenly was that! Dora
no longer immeasurably beyond him; Snow-White-and-Rose-Red possible to
be claimed.
Aunt Maggie broke into his thoughts. "Are you glad, dear--about the
Hannafords?"
"Glad! Aunt Maggie, I was just thinking I seem to be a sort of--sort
of thing for other people's plans. Old Japhra planned a fighter of me
and, my goodness! I had a dose of it. Here's old Hannaford always
been planning to have me with him, and here I am going sure enough!"
He laughed at an almost forgotten recollection. "Why, even you--even
you had a wonderful plan for me. Don't you remember? I say, it's in
hot company, your plan, Aunt Maggie. All come out right except yours.
You'll have to hurry up!"
"Mine will come out right," she said.