“Keep away!” I cried; “I don’t even know who you are.”
“O!” he said, and stopped, and was at his spectacles again. Then
suddenly he held up his hand.
“Hark!” he said.
I listened. Far and faint below, through the hubbub of destruction
came wafted at intervals the name of the chaplain--Pope--the cynosure
of all this iconoclastic zeal.
“Yes, it’s you they want,” I said.
“And you,” he retorted fiercely, “are pointing the way, you little”--
“It’s a lie!” I cried vehemently. “I came up here to escape from them,
like you.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“You said you didn’t know who I was.”
“No more I did,” I protested, “till you told me.”
“_I_ told you!” he cried. “Humph!” And he glared at me sourly. “Sit
down, then,” he said, “and hold your tongue till I speak to you
again.”
It was the wise policy, certainly. He squatted himself between me and
the chimney, and we dwelt in silence, while the mob wreaked its blind
vengeance below. I was in a dreadful fright all the time. Every moment
I expected to hear my master’s voice boom up the flue by way of which
I had climbed; and, desperate as I was, I devised the naughty
expedient to curry favour, if necessary, by claiming the credit of
having run this fugitive to bay. It was a base thought, perhaps,
though natural under the stress of the occasion. Chiefly, however, I
regret it because it was uncalled for, and it is aggravating to burden
one’s conscience with unprofitable frailties. The monster I had run
from was never, in point of fact, to cross my path again. Probably,
thinking I had fled from the house, he went hunting counter, and so
put ever a wider interval between us.
It was not, after all, so very long before the racket of despoliation
down below died away, and we heard the mob clatter from the house, and
go streaming and singing across the common in its retreat. I believe
that, either realising how in my master it had evoked a demon to its
own legal discomfiture, or perhaps frightened by the bugbear of some
reported troop of militia assembling in the neighbourhood, it was
suddenly decided to temper Protestantism with prudence, and so
dissipating itself with great speed and piety, left the building to a
solitude more dense by contrast than before.
It was not, however, until every whisper and echo had long ceased that
I durst let myself be persuaded of the reality of my reprieve; and
when at last I did, the joy that grew minutely in my heart came near
to upsetting my reason.
My excitement hungered for something on which to flesh itself. I rose
and went up and down, quickly and softly, in the space left me,
seeking the means to some larger action. Then I saw the great folio
lying discarded on the roof where the chaplain had dropped it, and all
of a sudden felt itching to know what it could contain to tempt this
man to burden himself with its care in so anxious a situation.
He sat with his face in his hands--or cuffs, rather. He appeared to be
in a sort of uncouth trance. I stole very noiseless by him, and,
unobserved as I supposed, had actually lifted the book, when he
started awake in a moment.
“Hey!” he cried. “That’s mine!”
“I was going to bring it to you,” I said.
He scuttled towards me on his hands and toes, and snatching the book
from me, squatted down, hugging it, and glaring at me in a sort of
dumb malevolence.
I had no retort for such rudeness. I stood crimsoning under my black a
moment, then, in default of a better answer, began to cry.
He was not the least moved, the ill-conditioned boor, but he was
disturbed by the noise.
“Ur-rh!” he bullied. “That’ll do. Do you hear?”
Indignation gave me decision. I turned my back on him.
“Where are you going?” he cried.