To a sane and humane soul there is no revelation so shocking as that
of the scorn in which its rectitude is held by the prevailing beasts
of the world. To the most of us at some time comes this bitter
realization of the force that keeps humanity low. High as our sense of
justice and of decency may be--serene as may figure the outlook from
our lofty chambers of self-respect, we have only to descend into the
plain to find manifest the brutal ruggedness of life that our hitherto
aloofness has idealized. The impotence of honesty to enforce itself in
any question of might; the impotence of morality to convince
self-interest of its baseness--these are the first lessons in the
despair of being. And when, for climax, actual bodily violence shakes
us out of all the uses of dignity, we are fain to wonder what creative
incongruity seeks to leaven all these seething continents of devils
with a finger-pinch of just men, and how the end has justified the
means of blazing Sodom and the Deluge.
To the fainting and battered prisoner in the lodge something in the
nature of such reflections was conveyed through his sufferings. He had
been beaten and mastered, it seemed, by the force that was merely
brutal. Such a situation for himself he had never remotely conceived.
His vagabondage was to have been of the picturesque sort that aims at
nothing more definite than a scorn of conventions. That which gives or
receives a blow--sings with the birds or plays with the prison rats,
with an equal philosophy, or an equal bluntness of perception, was
outside his scope, and certainly outside his knowledge. If asked, he
would have said the condition was not possible to him, inasmuch as all
his experience led him to such a confidence in his innate capacity for
finesse, in his own masterfulness and sense of what was due to
himself, as would carry the most difficult situation. That any, no
matter who, should dare to treat him with the contempt of the strong
for the weak, he had not dreamed could be; and waking to the
realization that it _was_, a bitter stubborn hatred of those who had
taught him his lesson stung in his veins like poison.
It was a poison, nevertheless, that was a tonic. It brought him to
himself, and to a determination to subordinate his passions to his
intellect. Let him recover a little, regain a moiety of his strength,
and, instead of wasting his time in fruitless ravings, he would study
to set his wits against his captors’, and win or die in the attempt to
vindicate their superiority.
He was lying on his back on the floor as he had fallen. For how long a
time he had been stretched there he could not guess; but he was stiff
and numb with cold, and all his agony of being seemed concentrated in
a single flaring thread. This was underneath him, he fancied--a taut
string of pain; and at first he could not account for it, or
disassociate the sensation from some ridiculous travesties of
delirium. He had been given a red-hot knife with which to carve his
dinner--a joint all ribs and emptiness; he had thrust his hand into
his pocket, which had been lined with a grid of steel blades; he had
broken a great crystal goblet from which he was about to drink, and a
keen fragment had sliced his arm.
By and by the unfailing localization of these grotesque injuries led
his recovering perceptions to the remembrance that his hands were tied
behind him and that he was lying upon them. Then in a flash he
recalled the final scene--the vicious swoop of the knife and the
stinging pain that followed; and he recognized all at once that he had
been stabbed.
The nature of the wound--what was it? With an effort he turned upon
his side. For all the cramp and torment in his arms he could move his
fingers a little. The pressure on these maltreated limbs had wrought
one benefit--it had stopped the flow of blood. But there was something
else--something----
With the little weak cry he gave out, he rolled on to his back once
more; for there had been a sound at the door, and a man came into the
room.
“Joe,” he said feebly--“Joe Corby!”
The new-comer, looking down upon him, nodded.
“How’s you?” said he.
“I’m very bad, Joe. I’m hurt in body, and more in mind that you should
lend yourself to this business. What makes you do it, Joe?”
Mr. Corby’s answer was enigmatical and brief.
“Bulbs,” said he.
“Joe,” said the patient, “you’re a man of such few words that I hardly
like to ask you to squander any on an explanation. Still circumstances
have dulled my faculties.”
“I spekilated in ’em,” said Joe, “and I were sold.”
“I see, sold up. A man of courage would have turned and taken Fortune
by the neck.”
“Would he? It ain’t my way. You may thumb me in like a March onion for
to come up in June, but if the ground don’t soot me I jumps out.
Gardening was my ban and I tuk to the road. What’s the odds? Here be
the Lake o’ Wine a-blossoming like a toolip at the end of it.”
“But is it, Joe?”
“Ain’t it, now? I speaks free, me and Rudland being left alone on
guard.”
“Why, where are the others?”
The ex-gardener gave a ponderous wink.
“Two ’ll suffice,” he said, “to keep this ’ere maggot from eatin’ his
way out of the apple.”
“A baby would suffice, Joe, in my present state.”
The man nodded again serenely.
“I can ventur’ to ease you a trifle,” he said.
“No, leave me alone. I’m best left quiet. It’s odd what browsing lambs
you all were till misfortune came like a wolf into the fold. What do
you expect for your share, Joe?”
“More or less than you are a-going to offer me to let you escape. It’s
no good, cap’en. The riches of the world wouldn’t bribe me with Fern
a-treadin’ on my tail.”
With the words he went to the door, looked back grinning, and
vanished.
Tuke waited during an interval of suspense, until he judged himself
strong enough to make a noiseless effort to rise. Then, very
cautiously and by slow degrees, he got to his knees--to his feet, and
stood swaying. Suddenly he wrenched his arms, and they parted and
swung down idly by his sides. It was as he had felt and dared to
hope--the slash of the murderous knife had severed his bonds at the
wrist.
For some moments he stood wrapt in the mere ecstasy of physical
relief. Then he tried to lift his arms, found himself unable to, and
looked down at the poor dangling limbs. They were a pitiful
sight--swollen, paralyzed, discoloured, and streaked with clotted
blood. In alarm he endeavoured to woo them to a return of circulation
by gently swinging and rubbing them against his coat-skirts. For a
time no result was apparent; but persisting, in what panic flurry of
motion he could contrive without noise, he was rewarded by and by with
an awakening of such twinges as he was convinced betokened a renewal
of life in the maltreated members. The twinges increased in quick
recurrence and in force, until his arms seemed mere engines of boiling
and bursting pains. He could hardly endure the agony and not cry out;
but he set his teeth and rubbed either limb furiously with a hand,
unconscious in his torment that the power of motion was thus restored
to him.
At last the pain slackened, and he was able to think. He examined his
wrist and found the wound to be a long and superficial one, but enough
to have caused him considerable loss of blood had chance not applied
an effective tourniquet. His hands were still little capable, his
whole frame was suffering and enfeebled; but his triumph of release
from bondage was a stimulant that wrought upon him like wine.
A weapon--that was his first necessity. Moving with extreme nicety, he
examined every corner and crevice in the room. Not so much as a broken
penknife rewarded his search. Across the hall-passage Mr. Corby lifted
up his voice in sincere but unmelodious praise of the red, red rose.
Escape appeared impossible but by some bold and unexpected _coup_. Was
he strong enough to venture it--to issue from the room suddenly,
overwhelm the unsuspecting Joe, put him _hors de combat_ with his own
hanger, and made a bolt for the wood by the garden-way? The risk was
fearful; and what but a floundering death in the drift should follow,
with pursuit perhaps in his tracks? On the other hand, to delay meant
probable outrage and mutilation, and a certain steady decrease of
physique hour by hour.
He was resolved to it; he stood with his shoulder set to the
door-jamb, tense for one uttermost effort--when the sound of voices
close by in the drive brought him to a pause; and the next moment he
heard the front door flung open.
Silently, his heart fearfully drumming, he stepped back to the very
spot from which he had risen, and, slipping down upon the boards,
resumed as nearly as he could the position in which the ruffians had
left him. As he did so, he heard the tramp of men in the passage, a
sound of jeering voices, and the next moment the door of the room was
thrown open and his visitors of the morning re-entered.
They bore the appearance of men baffled, but with some gloating evil
in their hearts. Fern strode to the prisoner and picked at him roughly
with his boot-toe.
“How now!” he shrilled. “D’you make your bed there?”
Tuke judged defiance the better policy.
“Curse you!” he cried in a broken voice. “Do you see this patch on the
floor? ’Twould have said little for your judgment to have left me to
bleed to death. A fine leader of rogues, on my faith!”
“Ha! my friend--we’ll cauterize the next wound for you with a red-hot
blade. And so you’ve been seeking to bribe the sentry?”
There was hoarse laughter from the door, where a half-dozen scoundrel
faces were gathered.
“I take my cue from the foremost of you,” said the prisoner, speaking
up from the boards. “’Tis not so long since Mr. Brander there made me
an offer of half-shares if I would give him secret possession of the
gem.”
The devil stood a-tiptoe and looked out through the schoolmaster’s
eyes. Mr. Fern’s face was gone a raw beetroot colour.
“How’s that, Brander?” said he.
“A ruse,” said the other coolly. “I have more tricks to my philosophy
of persuasion than you have methods to your villainy.”
“My style suits my company best, I think. You acknowledge you tried to
treat, then?”
“And do you look to my condescension to deny or explain?”
There had been murmurs at the door; and, upon this: “He’s lying!”
cried a voice.
Mr. Brander was a man of few superfluities--a born director of others.
This was because he never let an occasion over-ripen, but plucked his
fruit before it fell. He had been quite prepared before the
threatening utterance, and with the echo of it he wheeled about and
fired his pistol with unerring aim into the thick of the group.
On the clap of the shot broke a loud hiccough--as if the bullet had
pierced a wind-bag--and a fellow pitched forward on the threshold and
bled silently on the floor.
“That’s my bird,” said the sportsman.
He strode to the door, the company stumbling and retreating before
him.
“I’ve the other barrel,” he said. “Does any one want it?”
He stood waiting a moment in a black pause before he spoke again:
“You’re reflecting who it is plans the entrances while your cow-heads
are butting at the wall. Who is it prepares the way, here and
everywhere, I say, and supplies the brains without which you’d never
finger a crown-piece of your own getting?”
A little patter of voices murmured up, “Ebenezer Brander!”
“Ah!” he said, “that’s proper scholars, and spoken to the word.”
He pocketed his discharged pistol.
“When you feel you can do without me--when you feel you can depend
upon him there” (he turned fiercely and signified his captain, who
stood with an infernal smile on his face) “for all that suits you
best--then’ll be the time to question my methods and offer me my pass
to hell.”
He kicked out his foot slightly in the direction of the dead rogue.
“We were a baker’s dozen. Take away Judas Iscariot and change the
luck.”
Perhaps the suggestion, the appeal to superstition, operated as
powerfully with the company as the man’s own sinister personality.
With exclamations of approval they dragged away the fallen body. It
left a torn wake of red behind it.
“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, turning once more upon his chief--“in
your own interests you’ll thank me, I know, for this exhibition of
authority. It only remains to give this gentleman his last warning.”
“You bitter dogs!” cried up the captive, horror-stricken and overcome
at the swiftness of the tragedy. “I refuse any terms you may offer.
Why, what could such brutal cowards effect against a couple of honest,
determined men? Kill me, if you like, and certify yourselves for the
gallows. I back my good fellows to hold you at bay till the snow
melts, and there you’ll be caught in a trap and the crows shall
banquet. Kill me, and effect more than you’ve done in all these two
days!”
Forgetful in his emotion of every prudence, he raised himself on an
arm. Brander uttered a hoarse chuckling cry.
“God of thunder!” he exclaimed. “Where’s Joe Corby?”
The man was pushed into the room.
“Joe,” said the villain--“he tempted but couldn’t prevail, eh? Isn’t
that so?”
The puzzled fellow scratched his head.
“Work it out, Joe. We cut you short in cutting his bonds, didn’t we?”
He was fingering his second pistol. Tuke cried out in agony:
“The man’s innocent, you hound! ’Twas that ruffian’s knife severed the
strands when he slashed at me!”
Brander hesitated; but Joe’s profound amazement was convincing.
“Providence works for us in spite of fools--eh, Jack Fern?” said the
former.
He called in two of the men.
“Splice him up again,” he said, “and firmly.”
It was useless to resist. They tied the wretched gentleman’s hands
behind him once more, cruelly enough, with a long cord, and the slack
of this they fastened to the fire-grate.
“Now,” said Brander--(he seemed virtually the leader; through all this
scene the nominal one stood blazing sullenness)--“we’ve a little
surprise for you, my buck, and have effected more, perhaps, than you
think. Bring in the girl there!”
Lost, broken, and dumfounded, the captive raised his miserable head at
the words. What new triumph of devilry did they betoken?
Darda, before God! His swimming heart was conscious of a shock, and
following it a little burst of shameful thankfulness. Bad was it, in
all conscience, but----
He knew his cracked lips trying to mutter, “What has happened? How did
she fall into your hands?”--but only inarticulate sounds came from
them.
The girl stood there on the threshold, fierce, defiant, held by two
men. The next moment, at a gesture from Brander, she was gone.
“Now, sir,” said the schoolmaster, beckoning his coconspirator, and
coming close up to his victim--“we deal, as you see, in very severe
realities. We have two in our power at this outset of our little
campaign. A capture a day would serve, but we are impatient for a
quicker settlement. To-night again for reflection. ’Tis a concession,
but we grant it you. With dawn to-morrow it is for you to decide the
fate of this maid and of your own very ornamental members.”
Tuke, like a dying man, saw him nod to him darkly--a grotesque
phantasm as of a last delirium; saw him turn and, in company with his
chief, stalk from the room; knew himself committed to such a further
ordeal of torture as he feared his weakened body would be powerless to
sustain; and, as the last echo of retreating footsteps came to his
ears, his head dropped upon his breast and he despaired.