AN UNEQUAL STRUGGLE
"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me,
it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck
and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."--Matt. xviii, 6
Terror lent wings to Mollie's feet. Instinct guided her over the
unknown terrain of the wretched farm-yard. The overwhelming desire
to aid Stephen in whatever peril threatened him restrained any
thought of self. No sound escaped her lips. Unconsciously she
conserved all her energy for the crucial moment that was to come.
Around the corner of the dilapidated barn with no thought of the
horse, Walter, placidly munching his feed; past the miserable pig-sty
with its great, fierce-looking inmates peering at her through the
interstices of its frame work; along the worn path toward the
vegetable garden she sped with the fleetness of a tiny, avenging
spirit, ready to combat any ogre who might bar her way.
[Illustration: _Scene from Mary Pickford's Photoplay_. _Sparrows_.
"GIMME THAT BRAT!"]
Mollie knew what an ogre looked like. She had seen the colored
likeness of one in a book of fairy-tales. An ogre lived, so the
story said, on human beings. She had been told that fairytales were
not true. The scene which confronted her as she came abreast of the
vegetable patch convinced her that statement was a mistake. The
tales were true. Peter Grimes was an ogre. He lived on little
children!
The awful realization made the poor child's blood run cold. Her
heart seemed to stop beating. With dilated, terror-filled eyes she
gazed, transfixed, upon the hideous spectacle that was never to be
obliterated from her mind.
Before a black, loathsome sea of mud stood Peter Grimes. His tall,
spare figure appeared to Mollie colossal. His face, what she could
see of it, was twisted by a one-sided smile of inexpressible cruelty
and satisfaction. Beside him his son, Ambrose, jumped up and down in
sheer ecstasy of joy, his attention riveted upon the piteous cries
and struggles of an animal that the mud was slowly sucking down to
death in its sinister depths.
Suspended above the bog, head downward, was the form of Stephen, his
slender, knickerbockered legs held in the vise-like grip of the human
monster while the latter's powerful arms swung him like a pendulum to
and fro, heedless of the shrieks, now subsiding as the terrified boy
lapsed into unconsciousness.
Two birds, chirping furiously, flew up from the garden and across the
bog. A sudden shaft of sunlight sent a golden gleam along their
course. Subconsciously Mollie watched their flight. They
disappeared into the safety of the thicket beyond.
God's sparrows! They were flying away from the hateful place. The
ray of light pointed the way. Then God must be near!
The wonderful thought flashed over the little girl and gave her
courage. So tense was the moment she was incapable of conscious
mental effort. It was as if her body were completely detached and
she, herself, a separate entity. But the tension was broken. Her
sentient little frame quivered, then sprang with the agility of a
young wildcat straight at the ogre's legs.
She kicked, she beat with her tiny fists, she pinched. It was the
pinching that brought results.
"You bad man--you wicked--bad--man!" she screamed, emphasizing each
word with a blow. "You put Splutters down--Put him down, I say.
Don't you dare to hurt Splutters."
The leg of the ogre stamped and kicked but Mollie hung on. The great
arms of the ogre ceased their pendulous motion, but Mollie's attack
did not cease. The arms tossed their limp, senseless burden upon a
mound of dank grass. Mollie relaxed her efforts. The tall, crooked
figure of the ogre bent toward her. He seemed to be licking his
chops in anticipation. His talon-like fingers made convulsive,
clutching motions as if to encircle her throat. His evil, twisted
face with its narrow eyes leered down into her face with savage
intensity. She met the look fearlessly.
"You'd ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stormed, in a frenzy of
indignation. "And there was somebody looking at you all the time.
What do you suppose He thought?"
"What's that? Who saw anything?" exclaimed Grimes quickly. He
raised his head and looked suspiciously about.
"Never you mind. He's gone now. He'll fix you some day."
Mollie could be a little spitfire when she chose. Her large eyes,
blazing now from out her pale, oval face gave her a weird, elfin
expression that had its effect upon the uncouth and less intelligent
creature she dared to arraign. She was only repeating words she had
heard many times in the kitchen of old Lucy, her mother's cook, but
for Grimes they now had but one significance. Someone, Bailey,
probably, had been spying upon him from the other side of the gate
shutting off the farm from the narrow road leading to the main
highway. He muttered an oath.
"Aw, I was only a-jokin'," he exclaimed in a loud tone. "I'll larn
yo' young-uns that when I say a thing I mean hit an' I doan want none
o' yer back clack. Ef I feel fer ter drown a sick shote I'm a-goin'
ter do hit an' ther hain't a-goin' ter be no argymint. Anybody thet
tries hit'll git a taste o' th' same med'cine."
With a sweeping blow of his huge hand he hurled Mollie to one side
and in his habitual writhing, dragging manner, moved ominously off
toward the house.
Mollie, too dazed by the suddenness of the blow to cry out, watched
him go. The stimulus of excitement was still upon her. On the heap
of decaying vegetation near by Stephen stirred slightly. A sound
that was half sob, half moan, escaped him. Instantly Mollie was at
his side, pulling at his arms, trying with all her puny strength to
lift him to a sitting posture, beseeching him to open his eyes.
"Splutters--Splutters, wake up," she implored, an hysterical note
beginning to tincture the clear, childish treble of her voice. "It's
all right, Stevie. The ogre's gone. He won't hurt you. God got
around just in time. He scared him away. Stevie--Stevie, don't you
hear me?"
Stephen heard, but the comforting little voice seemed faint and far
away. It was musical, though, and pleasant to listen to. Somebody
did care for him, after all. He wasn't alone and forgotten, and
going to be killed--like a pig. That had all been a terrible dream.
The realization brought a sense of comfort. With a long, tremulous
sigh the lad opened his eyes, blue as violets, and looked about him.
His range of vision was obscured by Mollie's little face. She was
bending solicitously over him. He tried to smile but there was that
in Mollie's appearance which stayed him in the effort. She was pale
as death. There was a wild, startled look in her eyes. Her lips
were quivering.
"Oh, Splutters!" she gasped, and began to sob.
Stephen struggled to regain his senses. He pulled himself up on one
elbow and inspected the place where he was lying. Instantly he
sprang up in disgust. The action made him acutely conscious of his
ankles. They felt stiff, as if tight bands were about them. He
looked down. His clean stockings bore traces of muck. Could it be
that his dream was true, after all! He turned swiftly.
"Ah-a!"
The ejaculation was involuntary. Stephen almost swooned again as his
breath gave out the sound. His whole frame began to tremble as with
the palsy. A panic seized him. He would have run but that his legs
refused to move. His feet seemed rooted to the ground. In that
moment he felt old--ages old, as if he had lived a long time ago and
had just returned to the scene where he had suffered torture and
death.
Mollie's sobs brought him back to a sense of reality. The nervous
reaction after her heroism in confronting the monster whom she still
firmly believed subsisted upon little children, and whom she would
never cease to designate as "the ogre", was producing a speedy rise
in the child's temperature. Her face, pale a moment ago, was now
flushed and swollen with tears. She flung her arms about Stephen and
implored him to take her home before the ogre killed them. He, no
less miserable than herself, strove to quiet her.
"He won't eat you, Mollie," the boy whispered through lips that felt
stiff and parched, so difficult was it for him to make an articulate
sound. "He's not an ogre. He's just a bad man. Perhaps he's crazy.
I felt sorry for the pig. I didn't want him to drown it alive. I
made him mad when I teased him to give it to me and let me cure it.
I reckon he was just trying to scare me so I would not tease him
again."
Nervously the little fellow detached Mollie's clinging hands from his
arm and led her, timidly and with the utmost caution, to a pile of
thin, narrow oak boards about three feet long, such as are
substituted very commonly in the south for shingles. They had been
accumulated by Peter with a view to some day improving the roof of
the old barn. Behind them the children were not in view of anyone at
the house. There they sat down and Stephen wiped away the little
girl's tears.
"Can't we go home, Splutters--Can't we go home?" she kept repeating
with such heartbreaking monotony that his natural good judgment and
sound, though youthful reasoning almost yielded to her entreaties
that they run away at once, before any more terrible things befell
them.
"He's too big and too strong," said the boy protector, sorrowfully.
"That's why I came along with him in the first place. I almost knew
it was a mistake, but there wasn't anything I could do. I think,
when they find out about the mistake, the lady I lived with will send
someone to find me. I hadn't lived with her very long but she liked
me and I was going to be her real little boy, if she hadn't been
hurt. But she said I could go on to school and the papers could be
signed any time. I reckon if they had been signed this mistake
wouldn't have happened." He sighed wistfully.
"But if we ran away, and there was anybody coming to fetch you, maybe
we'd meet them on the way," argued Mollie, reluctant to abandon the
thought of escape.
Stephen's blue eyes thoughtfully contemplated the forbidding
landscape about them. He was considering, as well as he could, every
detail and every possibility. A sudden twinge in one of his ankles
decided him. With it came surging over him a mental repetition of
the agony through which he had passed such a short time before.
Anything--anything but that, he thought. Aloud he said to Mollie
that if they did try to escape and lost their way and walked into
such mud as seemed all about the farm they would die just as the
little pig died.
Mollie stared at him, aghast. She had not thought of that. She was
thinking only of the ogre. She wanted to get away from him.
"I don't guess he'll hurt us," Stephen remarked, after more
reflection, "so long as we keep quiet and do what he and she tell us.
We'll have to get dirty and spoil our clothes and I don't guess we'll
get anything good to eat, but after while somebody is sure to come
and take us away. I heard that man in the buggy with you tell him
that he was to keep you well, and not let you get sick, because if
you died the money would stop coming."
But of himself little Stephen was not so sure.
"I reckon I'll have to work awful hard to please him," he continued,
after a moment. "There can't any money come to him for me, because
nobody knows I'm here."
It was then Mollie had her inspiration.
"I know what," she exclaimed, with a lightning-like change of mood.
"If he's going to get money for me and mustn't hurt me, then he won't
dare hurt you very much because he'll be afraid of me, for I'd tell,
the first chance I got. And I wouldn't stay here alone without you,
and if I went off to find my way home he'd be afraid I'd drown in the
mud, and so he'll not kill you because he'll want me to live."
She paused for breath. No lawyer could have reasoned the matter out
any better or more accurately. So quickly do common danger and
necessity sharpen the wits of children whose intelligence has not
already been dulled by brutal treatment. In her enthusiasm Mollie
almost forgot her woes. Not so, Stephen.
"We'll have to be careful," he warned. "We mustn't make them mad. I
reckon we'd better go into the house. They'll be looking for us."
The dispirited tone of suppressed yearning, and abject resignation to
the miserable existence which he sensed was before them, gave to the
orphan boy's words a quality and volume of meaning far beyond their
linguistic significance.