“CALL ME DAWSON.”
Scrivener walked down a narrow winding path, and Hester followed him.
They presently found themselves under some oak trees in a little dingle,
where they were completely sheltered from view. Hester stood up to her
knees in undergrowth, but Scrivener, supporting himself against the trunk
of one of the trees, twisted his arm round a lower branch, and so raised
himself out of the brushwood. In this position he could look down on the
pale and trembling girl. Hester’s agitated face showed distinctly in the
white light of the moon. The light came in checkered bars through the
bare branches of the oak tree.
“That’s right,” said Scrivener, uttering a little sigh as he spoke; “we
can talk freely now. No one will trace us to this hiding-place. With all
their ’cuteness the police would not think that we were fools enough
to stand out in a place of this sort chatting together—and if they did
see us, why, it would not matter, for we are declared lovers, and the
fooleries of lovers is past belief, as everybody knows.”
Hester made no reply to this tirade, but her trembling lips suddenly shut
themselves firmly, and she looked boldly up into Scrivener’s face.
“Well, you are a handsome girl,” said that individual. He jumped down
from his vantage ground, and clasped her in his arms.
“Let go at once,” she cried. She raised her hands and tried to push him
from her.
“Hush, hush, old girl, not so loud,” he replied. “Why, what is the matter
with you, Hetty? Ain’t a kiss welcome from your own true love?”
“Not at present,” she answered, “and if you are my true love, I don’t
know that I am yours. You have played me false, Jim Scrivener, and I am
not sure—no, I am by no means sure—that I want to have anything to do
with you.”
“Well, now, you surprise me,” he said in astonishment which was by no
means feigned. “I thought our agreement was fair and above board. I was
to make a lady of you, Hester Winsome. With your looks, and that fine,
bold, queenly way of yours, all you want, as I tell you over and over, is
money and the name of an honest man at your back.”
“An honest man!” said Hester, her lip curling.
“Well, well,” Scrivener laughed as he spoke. “You must forgive a slip now
and then,” he continued, “and in the eyes of the world I am a rare honest
specimen, in a fair way to make a big fortune. When it is made, really
made, Hester, my girl, we will forsake all the ways of evil. There is a
new world at the other side of this old earth of ours, and we’ll settle
down there and live as honest as any people in the land. Now you know our
bargain. I am to make you a lady and my wife. We are to be married as
soon as ever the registrar will do the job. You have fulfilled your part
to the letter, splendidly, too, and now it is my turn.”
“All the same, you have deceived me,” said Hester. “We did make a
bargain, but you meant more than I knew.”
“Ha, ha, you cannot blame me for being a little cunning,” said Scrivener.
“I repeat, you did your part of the job splendidly. If I had told you
all, the fat would have been in the fire—you would never have had the
courage.”
“The courage! The cruelty, you mean,” said Hester, clasping her hands so
tightly together that the veins almost started through the skin. “You
must let me speak out, Jim Scrivener. You told me some, but not all—you
deceived me. Did you think I’d have gone as far as I did if I had really
known?”
“No, that you would not, so I kept some to myself.”
“You said you wanted to have a good look at the child—that you were
really curious about him. You wanted to know if, by-and-by, not at
present, but by-and-by, he might take to the business, the cursed
black business which I hate at this moment as much as I hate you, Jim
Scrivener. You asked me to send him round for you to squint at, as you
expressed it. How could I tell you meant to kidnap him? When he never
came back last night I guessed the whole, and I was fit to kill myself.
I have been fit to kill myself ever since. And now, look here, Jim
Scrivener, I won’t be your wife, not if it makes me the grandest lady in
the land. If you don’t do something, and pretty quick, too, I’ll tell
what I know. I don’t care if I do go to prison for it, I’ll tell what I
know.”
“Is that your real mind?” said Scrivener, coming up close to her and
looking intently into her face.
He wore an ugly look; there was a certain green tint about his face which
the moonlight intensified. His small shifty eyes looked cruel. Hester,
who had not much real courage, shrank away from him.
“We’re ugly people, we are,” said Scrivener, “good to work with but
ugly to meddle with—worse than ugly, dangerous, to cross. If you ain’t
tired of the life that beats in that pretty little body of yours, Hester
Winsome, you had better not talk in that way, for I may as well say out
flat, it would not be worth an hour’s purchase if some of our folk knew
what you just said. Look me full in the face, Hester, and repeat those
words again if you dare.”
“You know I do not dare, Jim,” she answered; “you know that you have a
terrible power over me; you know that you have had it for a long time.”
“Yes; you are completely and utterly in my power, body and soul,” said
the man. As he spoke he slipped his arm round her waist and drew her
close to him. “Body and soul, little girl,” he repeated, “you are in the
power of Jim Scrivener, of the Silver School.”
“Oh, don’t say it so loud,” she panted.
“I won’t if you don’t drive me to it. There, now you look like your old
self. Give us a kiss, gentle and pretty like. Why, I am so fond of you,
Hetty, that there’s nothing I would not do for you but put my own neck
in jeopardy, and that’s more than any girl can expect.”
“Yes, I know, Jim,” she replied, seeing it was best to humour him, “and,
of course, I would not tell for all the world. But, look here, Jim,
couldn’t you manage to get the little chap back again? You cannot really
want a little fellow like that. Why, what can he do for you?”
“We want him as a draw,” said Scrivener. “You let him alone; you won’t
see him for the present.”
“Oh, Jim, I feel as if I’d go mad when I think of him. I don’t mind a bit
about the jewels nor the silver, nor, for that matter, about Mr. Rowton,
but I do care for that nice little fellow. Oh, there’s no knowing what
harm he will come to—and it is my doing. I shall feel that it’s my doing
to my dying day.”
“The kid will come to no harm, silly girl.”
“But where is he, Jim? You might tell me, seeing that you love me so
much.”
Scrivener laughed.
“Not I,” he answered. “I do love you, and you’re an uncommon pretty girl,
and I’ll make you a real affectionate sort of husband. You’ll be loving
to me, and I’ll be loving to you, and we’ll be like a pair of turtle
doves together. There, now you are looking at me in your old pretty way.
Upon my word, I am all impatient for the ceremony to take place. You
are not to know where the little chap is, Hester, but there, I’ll say
something to comfort you. He is snug enough and will come to no harm.
Long John has got him, and Long John ain’t to be gainsaid, not by any
silly girl that ever breathed, so you stop whining in that way, and let
us go to the real business which has brought me here.”
“Yes,” she said, controlling herself with a mighty effort.
Suddenly she raised her eyes, which were full of tears.
“I see you won’t tell, and I must be content,” she said. “Will you swear
faithful, then, Jim, that if I do go on bearing this awful weight on my
conscience, no real harm will happen to the child?”
“Yes, I can swear that right enough. At the very worst, the little
fighting-cock will only enter on a short and a merry life. Why, Hetty,”
continued the man, “think of what it all means—lots of money, lots of
excitement, hairbreadth escapes, adventures no end.”
“Prison afterwards, penal servitude, and worse perhaps,” she muttered
under her breath.
“True enough,” replied the man. “I ain’t one to shut my eyes to the
danger; we most of us go that way in the long run; we make up our minds
to that from the first. Why, it is part of the excitement. The fear, for
I suppose it is a sort of fear, makes the pleasure of the present all the
greater. Oh, girl, it is a mad, merry life, and I would not change it for
twenty of the humdrum existences of the city clerk and the other poor,
half-starved beggars I see around me. Now then, my pretty one, when shall
the marriage bells chime?”
“Not yet,” she answered; “I don’t want to be your wife yet awhile.”
“Yes, but I want you to. You know too much, Hester Winsome; you must join
us out and out now, or take the consequences.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning pale.
For answer, Scrivener once again put his arm round her waist, drew her
close to him, put his hand under her chin, and looked fixedly into her
eyes. Then he whispered a short sentence into her ear.
Whatever he told her had a queer effect. She turned first a vivid red,
and then white to her lips; her slender figure swayed as if she would
faint, and were the man not supporting her, she must have fallen.
“There’s a brave lass,” he said; “you have taken it as I knew you would.
You must make the best of things now, my beauty. I go back to town
to-morrow, or perhaps to-night, and I’ll see what the registrar requires.
It is my belief, as I have been so long in the place, that we can be
married at very short notice. Now, you leave your present situation in a
week or ten days at the farthest. Why, look here, I am no end of a swell
in town. You’ll be surprised when I take you to your home. In my own way
I am as good as Silver—yes, that I am. I believe his dame was a good bit
taken aback when she came here; so you’ll be when I take you to my humble
dwelling, pretty Hetty. Now let me hear from those beautiful rosebud lips
that you’ll soon be mine.”
“I’ll soon be yours, Jim,” answered the girl, “though I am in no end of a
funk.”
The man laughed. He pressed Hetty close to him, and began to kiss her on
her lips and forehead. She submitted to his caresses, shutting her eyes
and trying to keep back the agony which was really filling her heart.
“That’s all right,” said Scrivener. “You give notice to quit to-morrow,
do you hear?”
“Yes, Jim.”
“You had best not give too short notice, or it might rouse suspicion. Say
you are engaged to be married to a respectable man in a way of business.
You might call me Dawson if you like; it don’t much matter; the less
you bring in names, the better, only if you are driven to it, say the
man’s name is Sam Dawson. Then at the end of the fortnight you go up to
town, and I’ll meet you at King’s Cross and take you right away to my
own house. I think that’s all now. You had best slip back, or you may be
suspected.”
“Very well, Jim, I’ll do what you say, for I cannot help myself. I
suppose you are going to town?”
“You had best not know where I am going. Leave me to manage my own
affairs. If you don’t know, you can’t tell. There, good-bye.”