AT MOTHER HUFFHAM'S
It was only when Bailey and his friends were away from the house that
it occurred to them to consider what it was they had come out for.
They slunk across the grass-grown courtyard, keeping as close to the
wall as possible, to avoid the lynx-eyes of Mrs. Fletcher. That lady
was the only person in Mecklemburg House whose authority was not
entirely contemned. Let who would be master, she would be mistress;
and she had a way of impressing that fact upon those around her which
made it quite impossible for those who came within reach of her
influence to avoid respecting.
It was truly miserable weather. Any one but a schoolboy would have
been only too happy to have had a roof of any kind to shelter him, but
schoolboys are peculiar. It was one of those damp mists which not only
penetrate through the thickest clothing, and soak one to the skin, but
which render it difficult to see twenty yards in front of one, even in
the middle of the day. The day was drawing in; ere long the lamps
would be lighted; the world was already enshrouded in funeral gloom.
Not a pleasant afternoon to choose for an expedition to nowhere in
particular, in quest of nothing at all.
The boys slunk through the sodden mist, hands in their pockets, coat
collars turned up about their ears, hats rammed down over their eyes,
looking anything but a cheerful company. Griffin asked a question.
"I say, Bailey, where are you going?"
"To the village."
"What are you going to the village for?" This from Ellis.
"For what I am."
After this short specimen of convivial conversation the four trudged
on. Alas for their promise to Mr. Shane! The wet was already dripping
off their hats, and splashings of mud were ascending up the legs of
their trousers to about the middle of their back. In a minute or two
Wheeler began again.
"Have you got any money?"
Bertie pulled up short. "Have you?" he asked.
"I've got sevenpence."
"Then lend me half?"
"Lend me a penny? I'll pay you next week; honour bright, I will," said
Ellis.
Griffin was more concise. "Lend me twopence?" he asked.
Wheeler looked unhappy. It appeared that he was the only capitalist
among the four, and under the circumstances he did not feel exactly
proud of the position. Although sevenpence might do very well for one,
it would not be improved by quartering.
"Yes, I know, I daresay," he grumbled. "You're very fond of borrowing,
but you're not so fond of paying back again." He trudged on stolidly.
Bailey caught him by the arm. "You don't mean that you're not going to
lend me anything, after my asking for you to come out with me, and
all?"
"I'll lend you twopence."
"Twopence! What's twopence?"
"It's all you'll get; you can have it or lump it, I don't care;
I'm not dead nuts on lending you anything." Wheeler was a little
wiry-built boy, and when he meant a thing very much indeed he had an
almost terrier-like habit of snapping his jaws--he snapped them now.
Bailey trudged by his side with an air of dudgeon; he probably
reflected that, after all, twopence was better than nothing. But Ellis
and Griffin had their claims to urge. They apparently did not
contemplate with pleasure the prospect of tramping to and from the
village for the sake of the exercise alone. Ellis began,--
"I say, old fellow, you'll lend me a penny, won't you? I'm always game
for lending you."
"Look here, I tell you what it is, I won't lend you a blessed
farthing! It's like your cheek to ask me; you owe me ninepence from
last term."
"But I expect a letter from home in the morning with some money in it.
I'll pay you the ninepence with threepence interest--I'll pay you
eighteenpence--you see if I don't. And if you'll lend me a penny now
I'll give you twopence for it in the morning. Do now, there's a good
fellow, Wheeler; honour bright, I will."
For answer Wheeler put his finger to his eye and raised the eyelid.
"See any green in my eye?" he said.
"You're a selfish beast!" replied his friend. And so the four trudged
on. Then Griffin made his attempt.
"I'll let you have that knife, Wheeler, if you like."
"I don't want the knife."
"You can have it for threepence."
"I don't want it for threepence."
"You offered me fourpence for it yesterday."
"I've changed my mind."
Charlie pondered the matter in his mind. They were about half-way to
their destination, and already bore a closer resemblance to drowned
rats than living schoolboys. By the time they had gone there and back
again, it would be possible to wring the water out of their clothes;
what Mrs. Fletcher would have to say remained to be seen. After they
had gone a few yards further, and paddled through about half a dozen
more puddles, Charlie began again.
"I'll let you have it for twopence."
"I don't want it for twopence."
"It's a good knife." No answer. "It cost a shilling." Still no answer.
"There's only one blade broken." Still no reply. "And that's only got
a bit off near the point." Still silence. "It's a jolly good knife."
Then, with a groan, "I'll let you have it for a penny."
"I wouldn't give you a smack in the eye for it."
After receiving this truly elegant and generous reply, Griffin
subsided into speechless misery. It is not improbable that, so far as
he was himself concerned, he began to think that the expedition was a
failure.
In silence they reached the village. It was not a village of
portentous magnitude, since it only contained thirteen cottages and
one shop, the shop being the smallest cottage in the place. The
only point in its favour was that it was the nearest commercial
establishment to Mecklemburg House. The proprietor was a Mrs. Huffham,
an ancient lady, with a very bad temper, and a still worse
reputation--among the boys--for honesty in the direction of weights
and measures. It must be conceded that they could have had no worse
opinion of her than she had of them.
"Them young warmints, if they wants to buy a thing they wants ninety
ounces to the pound, and if they wants to pay for it, they wants you
to take eightpence for a shilling--oh, I knows 'em!" So Mrs. Huffham
declared.
At the door of this emporium parley was held. Ellis suddenly
remembered something.
"I say, I owe old Mother Huffham two-and-three." So far as the
gathering mist and the soaking rain enabled one to see, Dick's
countenance wore a lugubrious expression.
"Well, what of that?"
"Well"--Dick Ellis hesitated--"so long as that brute Stephen isn't
about the place I don't mind. He called out after me the other day,
that if I didn't pay he'd take the change out of me some other way."
The Stephen referred to was Mrs. Huffham's grandson, a stalwart young
fellow of twenty-one or two, who drove the carrier's cart to Kingston
and back. His ideas on pecuniary obligations were primitive. Having
learned from experience that it was vain to expect Mr. Fletcher to pay
his pupils' debts at the village shop, he had an uncomfortable way of
taking it out of refractory debtors in the shape of personal
chastisement. Endless disputes had arisen in consequence. Mr. Fletcher
had on more than one occasion threatened the summary Stephen with the
terrors of the law; but Stephen had snapped his fingers at Mr.
Fletcher, advising him to pay his own debts, lest worse things
happened to him. Then Mr. Fletcher had forbidden Mrs. Huffham to give
credit to the boys; but Mrs. Huffham was an obstinate old lady, and
treated the headmaster with no more deference than her grandson.
Finally, Mr. Fletcher had forbidden the boys to deal with Mrs.
Huffham; but in spite of his prohibition an active commerce was
carried on, and on more than one occasion the irate Stephen had been
moved to violence.
"You should have stopped at home," was Wheeler's not unreasonable
reply to Dick's confession. "I don't owe her anything. I don't see
what you wanted to come for, anyhow, if you haven't got any money and
you owe her two-and-three."
And turning the handle of the rickety door he entered Mrs. Huffham's
famed establishment. Bailey, rich in the possession of a prospective
loan of twopence, and Charlie Griffin followed close upon his heels.
After hesitating for a moment Ellis went in too. To remain shivering
outside would have been such a lame conclusion to a not otherwise too
satisfactory expedition, that it seemed to him like the last straw on
the camel's back. Besides, it was quite on the cards that the
impetuous Stephen would be engaged in his carrier's work, and be
pleasantly conspicuous by his absence from home.
The interior of the shop was pitchy dark. The little light
which remained without declined to penetrate through the small
lozenge-shaped windowpanes. Mrs. Huffham's lamp was not yet lit, and
the obscurity was increased by the quantity of goods, of almost every
description, which crowded to overflowing the tiny shop. No one came.
"Let's nick something," suggested the virtuously minded Griffin. Ellis
acted on the hint.
"I'm not going there and back for nothing, I can tell you."
On a little shelf at the side of the shop stood certain bottles of
sweets. Dick reached up to get one down. At that moment Wheeler gave
him a jerk with his arm. Ellis, catching at the shelf to steady
himself, brought down shelf, bottles and all, with a crash upon a
counter.
"Thieves!" cried a voice within. "Thieves!" and Mrs. Huffham came
clattering into the shop, out of some inner sanctum, with considerable
haste for one of her mature years. "Thieves!"
For some moments the old lady's eyes could see nothing in the darkness
of the shop. She stood, half in, half out, peering forward, where the
boys could just see her dimly in the shadow. They, deeming discretion
to be the better part of valour, and not knowing what damage they
might not have done, stood still as mice. Their first impulse was to
turn and flee, and Griffin was just feeling for the handle of the
door, preparatory to making a bolt for it, when heavy footsteps were
heard approaching outside, and the door was flung open with a force
which all but threw Griffin back upon his friends.
"Hullo!" said a voice; "is anybody in there?"
It was Stephen Huffham. With all their hearts the boys wished they had
respected authority and listened to Mr. Shane! There was a coolness
and promptness about Stephen Huffham's method of taking the law into
his own hands upon emergency which formed the basis of many a tale of
terror to which they had listened when tucked between the sheets at
night in bed.
Mr. Huffham waited for no reply to his question, but he laid an iron
hand upon Griffin's shoulder and dragged him out into the light.
"Come out of that! Oh, it's you, is it?" Charlie was gifted with
considerable powers of denial, but he found it quite beyond his power
to deny Mr. Huffham's assertion then. "Oh, there's some more of you,
are there? How many of you boys are there inside here?"
"They've been a-thieving the things!" came in Mrs. Huffham's shrill
treble from the back of the shop.
"Oh, they have, have they? We'll soon see about that. Unless I'm
blinder than I used to be, there's young Ellis over there, with whom
I've promised to have a word of a sort before to-day. You bring a
light, granny, and look alive; don't keep these young gentlemen
waiting, not by no manner of means."
Mrs. Huffham retreated to her parlour, and presently re-appeared with
a lighted lamp in her hand. This, with great deliberation, for her old
bones were stiff, and rheumatism forbade anything like undue haste,
she hung upon a nail, in such a position that its not too powerful
light shed as great an illumination as possible upon the contents of
her shop. Far too powerful an illumination to suit the boys, for it
brought into undue prominence the damage wrought by Ellis and his
friend. They eyed the ruins, and Mrs. Huffham eyed them, and Mr.
Stephen Huffham eyed them too. The old lady's feelings at the sight
were for a moment too deep for words, but Mr. Stephen Huffham soon
found speech.
"Who did this?" he asked; and there was something in the tone of the
inquiry which grated on his hearers' ears.
Had Dick Ellis and his friend deliberately planned to do as much
mischief as possible in the shortest possible space of time, they
could scarcely have succeeded better. Three or four of the bottles
were broken to pieces, and in their fall they had fallen on a little
glass case, the chief pride and ornament of Mrs. Huffham's shop, which
was divided into compartments, in one of which were cigars, in another
reels of cotton and hanks of thread, and in a third such trifles as
packets of hair-pins, pots of pomade, note-paper and envelopes, and a
variety of articles which might be classified under the generic name
of "fancy goods." The glass in this case was damaged beyond repair;
the sweets from the broken bottles had got inside, and had become
mixed with the cigars, and the paper, and the hair-pins, and the
pomade, and the rest of the varied contents.
Mr. Stephen Huffman not finding himself favoured with an immediate
reply to his inquiry, repeated it.
"Who did this? Did you do this?" And he gave Charlie Griffin a shake
which made him feel as though he were being shaken not only upside
down, but inside out.
"No-o-o!" said Charlie, as loudly as he was able with Mr. Stephen
Huffman shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat. "I-I-I didn't!
Le-e-eave me alone!"
"I'll leave you alone fast enough! I'll leave the lot of you alone
when I've taken all the skin off your bodies! Did you do this?" And
Mr. Stephen Huffham transferred his attention to Bailey.
"No!" roared Bertie, before Huffman had time to get him fairly in his
grasp. Mr. Huffman held him at arm's length, and looked him full in
the face with an intensity of scrutiny which Bertie by no means
relished.
"I suppose none of you did do it; nobody ever does do these sort of
things, so far as I can make out. It was accidental; it always is."
His voice had been so far, if not conciliatory, at least not unduly
elevated. But suddenly he turned upon Ellis with a roar which was not
unlike the bellow of a bull. "Did you do it?"
Ellis started as though he had received an electric shock.
"No-o!" he gasped. "It was Wheeler!"
"Oh, it was Wheeler, was it?"
"It wasn't me," said Wheeler.
"Oh, it wasn't you? Who was it, then? That's what I want to know; who
was it, then?" Mr. Huffham put this question in a tone of voice which
would have been eminently useful had he been addressing some person a
couple of miles away, but which in his present situation almost made
the panes of glass rattle in the windows. "Who was it, then?" And he
caught hold of Ellis and shook him with such velocity to and fro that
it was difficult for a moment to distinguish what it was that he was
shaking.
"It--was--Whe-e-eler!" gasped Ellis, struggling with his breath.
"Now, just you listen to me, you boys!" began Mr. Huffham. (They could
scarcely avoid listening to him, considering that he spoke in what was
many degrees above a whisper.) "I'll put it this way, so that we can
have things fair and square, and know what we're a-doing of. There's a
pound's damage been done here, so perhaps one of you gentlemen will
let me have a sovereign. I'm not going to ask who did it; I'm not
going to ask no questions at all: all I says is, perhaps one of you
young gentlemen will let me have a sovereign." He stretched out his
hand as though he expected to receive a sovereign then and there; as
it happened he stretched it out in the direction of Bertie Bailey.
Bertie looked at the horny, dirt-grimed palm, then up in Mr. Huffham's
face. A dog-fancier would have said that there was some scarcely
definable resemblance to the bull-dog in the expression of his eyes.
"You won't get a sovereign out of me," he said.
"Oh, won't I? we'll see!"
"We will see. I'd nothing to do with it; I don't know who did do it.
You shouldn't leave the place without a light; who's to see in the
dark?"
"You let me finish what I've got to say, then you say your say out
afterwards. What I say is this--there's a pound's worth of damage
done----"
"There isn't a pound's worth of damage done," said Bertie.
Mr. Huffham caught him by the shoulder. "You let me finish out my say!
I say there is a pound's worth of damage done; you can settle who it
was among you afterwards; and what I say is this, either you pays me
that pound before you leave this shop or I'll give the whole four of
you such a flogging as you never had in all your days--I'll skin you
alive!"
"It won't give me my money your flogging them," wailed Mrs. Huffham
from behind the counter. "It's my money I wants! Here is all them
bottles broken, and the case smashed--and it cost me two pound ten,
and everything inside of it's a-ruined. It's my money I wants!"
"It's what I wants too; so which of you young gents is going to hand
over that there sovereign?"
"Wheeler's got sevenpence," suggested Griffin.
"Sevenpence! what's sevenpence? It's a pound I want! Which of you is
going to fork up that there pound?"
"There isn't a pound's worth of damage done," said Bertie; "nothing
like. If you let us go, we'll get five shillings somehow, and bring it
you in a week."
"In a week--five shillings! you catch me at it! Why, if I was once to
let you outside that door, you'd put your fingers to your noses, and
you'd call out, 'There goes old Huffham! yah--h--h!'" And he gave a
very fair imitation of the greeting which the sight of him was apt to
call forth from the very youths in front of him.
"If they was the young gentlemen they calls themselves they'd pay up,
and not try to rob an old woman what's over seventy year."
"Now then, what's it going to be, your money or your life? That's the
way to put it, because I'll only just let you off with your life, I'll
tell you. Look sharp; I want my tea! What's it going to be, your
money, or rather, my old grandmother's money over there, an old
woman who finds it a pretty tight fit to keep herself out of the
workhouse----"
"Yes, that she do," interpolated the grandmother in question.
"Or your life?" He looked in turn from one boy to the other, and
finally his gaze rested on Bailey.
Bertie met his eyes with a sullen stare. "I tell you I'd nothing to do
with it," he said.
"And I tell you I don't care that who had to do with it," and Mr.
Huffham snapped his fingers. "You're that there pack of liars I
wouldn't believe you on your oath before a judge and jury, not that I
wouldn't!" and his fingers were snapped again. He and Bailey stood for
a moment looking into each other's face.
"If you hit me for what I didn't do, I'll do something worth hitting
for."
"Will you?" Mr. Huffham caught him by the shoulder, and held him as in
a vice.
"Don't you hit me!"
Apparently Mrs. Huffham was impressed by something in his manner.
"Don't you hit 'un hard! now don't you!"
"Won't I? I'll hit him so hard, I'll about do for him, that's about as
hard as I'll hit him." A look came into Mr. Huffham's face which was
not nice to see. Bailey never flinched; his hard-set jaw and sullen
eyes made the resemblance to the bulldog more vivid still. "You pay me
that pound!"
"I wouldn't if I had it!"
In an instant Mr. Huffham had swung him round, and was raining blows
with his clenched fist upon the boy's back and shoulders. But he had
reckoned without his host, if he had supposed the punishment would be
taken quietly. The boy fought like a cat, and struggled and kicked
with such unlooked-for vigour that Mr. Huffham, driven against the
counter and not seeing what he was doing, struck out wildly, knocked
the lamp off its nail with his fist, and in an instant the boy and the
man were struggling in the darkness on the floor.
Just then a stentorian voice shouted through the glass window of the
rickety door,--
"Bravo! that's the best plucked boy I've seen!"