THE "BLUE BOAR"
As I stepped out, the adventure, the fight, Marah's wound, all the
tumult of the battle, seemed very far away, and as though they had
happened to some one else who had told me of them. If my head had not
ached so cruelly from the blow which the soldier gave me, I should not
have believed that they had really occurred, and that I had seen them
and taken part in them. It seemed to me that I was close to my home,
that I should soon come to the combe country, where the Gara runs down
the valley to the sea, passing the slate quarry, so grey against the
copse. The road was good enough, though I was not in good trim for
walking, after so many days cooped up in the lugger. I stepped forward
bravely along a lonely countryside till I saw before me the houses of
a town.
I thought that I had better skirt the town, lest I should tumble on
the coastguards and rouse their suspicions. It was too early in the
morning for a boy to be abroad, and I had no very satisfactory account
to give of myself in case anybody questioned me. I knew that if I said
that I had been among the smugglers I should be sent to prison. I felt
that the magistrate would be too angry to listen to my story, and that
they would perhaps send to me prison at once if they ever got hold of
me. Magistrates in those days had a great deal of power. They were
often illiterate, and they bullied and hectored the people whom they
tried. I had seen one or two bad magistrates at home, and I knew how
little chance I should stand if I told my unlikely story to a bench in
a court-house before such men as they were. So I turned up a small
road to the right, avoiding the town, where, as I could see, a good
deal of bustle was stirring; indeed, the streets were full of people.
By-and-by, as the sun rose higher, I began to meet people. A few
labouring men came past me, one of them carrying a pitchfork. I
noticed that they looked at me curiously. One of them spoke, and said,
"You have been in the wars, master!" So I said, "Yes," and passed on,
wondering what he meant. After I had passed, the man stopped to look
back at me. I even heard him take a few steps towards me, before he
thought better of it, and went on upon his way. This set me wondering
if there were anything strange about my appearance; so, when I came to
the little brook or river, which crossed the road a little further on,
I went down to a pool where the water was still, and looked at my
image in the water. Sure enough, I had an odd appearance. The blow
which the soldier gave me had broken the skin of my scalp, not badly,
but enough to make an ugly scar. You may be sure that I lost no time
in washing my face and head, till no stains showed. I rebuked myself
for not having done this while aboard the lugger, when I had splashed
my head at the scuttle-butt. I felt all the better for the wash in the
brook; but when I took to the road again I had a great fear lest the
labourers should hear of the battle, and give out that they had seen a
wounded boy going along the road away from the beach.
After a mile of lane, I came to a highroad, past a church and houses,
all very peaceful and still. I passed these, and wandered on along the
highroad, thinking that I had gone many miles from the sea, though, of
course, I had only gone a little distance. When one walks a new road,
one finds it much longer than it really is. I sat down by the roadside
now and then to think of plans. I felt that my best plan would be to
go to London, and see the Lord Mayor, who, I felt sure, would help me
to get home. But I had not much notion of where London was, and I knew
that if I went into a house to ask the road to London, people would
suspect that I was running away, and so, perhaps, find out that I had
been with the smugglers. I knew that many people there must be
smugglers themselves; but then, suppose that I asked at a house where
they were friends of the preventives? The smugglers had signs among
themselves by which they recognised each other.
They used to scratch the left ear with the left little finger, and
then bite the lower lip, before shaking hands with anybody. I thought
that I would go into an inn and try these signs on somebody (on the
landlord if possible) and then ask his advice. An inn would be a good
place, I thought, because the landlord would be sure to buy from the
smugglers; besides, in inns there are generally maps of the country,
showing the coaching houses, and the days of the fairs. A map of the
kind would show me my road, and be a help to me in that way, even if
the landlord did not recognise my signs. And yet I was half afraid of
trying these signs. I did not want to get back among the smugglers.
I only wanted to get to London. I had that foolish belief that the
Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides,
I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me
hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I so much
feared.
Presently I came to another little village, rather larger than the
last. There was an inn in the main street (the "Blue Boar"), so I went
into the inn-parlour, and looked about me. One or two men were talking
earnestly, in low voices, to a sad-faced, weary-looking woman behind
the bar. She looked up at me rather sharply as I entered, and the men
turned round and stared at me, made a few more remarks to the woman,
and went quickly out. I looked at the woman, scratched my left ear
with my left little finger, and bit my lower lip. She caught her
breath sharply and turned quite white; evidently she knew that sign
extremely well.
"What is it?" she said, "what's the news? There's been
fighting. Where's Dick?"
I said I didn't know where Dick was, but that there had been fighting,
sure enough; and the preventives had been beaten off.
"Ah," she said, "and the stuff? Did they get the stuff off?"
I said I believed that it had got off safely.
"I believe everybody's bewitched to-day," she said, bursting into
tears. "Oh, Dick, come back to me. Come back to me. Oh, why did I ever
marry a man like you?"
She cried bitterly for a few minutes. Then she asked me a lot of
questions about the fight. One question she repeated many times: "Was
there a grey horse in the second string?"
But this I could not answer certainly. All the time that we were
talking, she was crying and laughing by turns. Whenever a person
entered (even if it were only the milkman) she turned white and shook,
as though expecting the police.
"It's the palpitation," she would explain. "That and the sizzums."
Then she would go on laughing and crying by turns until some one else
came in.
Presently the landlady looked at me rather hard. "Here," she said,
"you are not one of them. You've run away from home, you have. What
are you doing here?"
I said that I was on my way to London.
"To London," she said. "What's a boy like you going to London for?
How are you going?"
I said that I was going to walk there, to see the Lord Mayor.
"To--see--the--Lord Mayor," she repeated. "Is the boy daft, or what?"
I blushed, and hung my head, for I did not like to be laughed at.
"What are you going to see the Lord Mayor for?" she asked with a
smile.
I answered that he would send me home to my friends, as he was always
generous to people in distress. She laughed very heartily when I had
said this: but still, not unkindly. Then she asked me a lot of
questions about my joining the smugglers, about my friends at home
(particularly if they were well off), and about the money I had to
carry me to London. When I had told her everything, she said,--"Well,
why don't you write to your friends from here? Surely that's a more
sensible plan than going to London--why, London's seventy miles. Write
to your friends from here. They will get the letter in three or four
days. They will be here within a week from now. That's a wiser thing
to do than going to London. Why, you'd die in a ditch before you got
half-way."
"I shouldn't," I answered hotly.
"Well, if you didn't you'd get taken up. It's all the same," she
answered. "You stop here and write to your friends. I will see that
the letter goes all right. I suppose," she continued, "I suppose your
friends wouldn't let me be a loser by you? They'd pay for what you ate
and that?"
"Yes," I said, "of course they will."
"What's your name?" she said sharply.
I told her.
"Oh," she said. "Jim--Jim Davis. Let's see that shirt of yours, to see
if it's got your name on. I been taken in once or twice before. One
has to look alive, keeping an inn."
Luckily my name was upon my shirt and stockings, so that she accepted
my story without further talk, especially as the contents of my
package showed her that I told her the truth about the lugger.
"I don't know what Dick will say," she said. "But now you come up, and
I'll dress your head. You'll have to lie low, remember. It won't do
for a smuggler like you to be seen about here. So till your friends
come, you'll keep pretty dark, remember."
She led me upstairs to plaster my wound. Then she put me into a little
bedroom on one of the upper floors, and told me to stay there till she
called me. There were one or two books upon the shelf, including a
funny one with woodcuts, a collection of tales and ballads, such as
the pedlers used to sell in those days. With this book, and with a
piece of paper and a pencil, I passed the morning more happily than I
can say.
My head felt quite easy after it had been dressed and bandaged. My
troubles were nearly over, I thought. In a week my friends would be
there to fetch me away. In three days they would get my letter and
hear all about my adventures; so as I wrote I almost sang aloud; I was
so happy at the thought of my sorrows being ended. Mrs Dick (I never
learned her real name till some years afterwards) brought me some
bread and cheese at midday. As I ate, she sealed and addressed my
letter for me, and took it over to the post-house, so that the postman
could carry it to meet the mail, as it drove past from Rye towards
London.
After my midday meal I felt strangely weary; perhaps all my
excitements had been too much for me. When Mrs Dick came back to say
that she had posted my letter I was almost asleep; but her manner was
so strange that it roused me. She could hardly speak from anxiety and
terror.
"Oh," she cried, "they have raised the whole country. My Dick'll be
taken. He will. He will. They're riding all through the land arresting
everybody. And they're going to hang them all, they say, as soon as
they can give them their trials."
She cried and cried as though her heart would break. I did what I
could to comfort her, but still she cried hysterically, and for all
that afternoon she sobbed and laughed in the little upper bedroom,
only going out at rare intervals, to peep into the bar, where her
servant served the guests.
Towards five o'clock, the servant came running upstairs to say that a
lot of the smugglers had been taken. "A whole boatload," the girl
said, so that now it would "all come out, and master would be hanged."
Mrs Dick told her not to talk in that way of her master, but to find
out if any of the men had peached.
When the girl had gone she seemed to collect herself. She became a
different woman in a minute.
"Well, if he's taken," she said, "they'll be here. That's very
sure. They'll search the premises. They mustn't find you here, Mr Jim.
If they find you, they'll question you, and you know too much by a
long way."
"Shall I go?" I asked. "I'm willing to clear out, if you wish."
"Go?" she said. "Go? I will turn no poor boy out into the road. I have
a boy of my own, somewhere walking the world. No, I'll put you in the
drawing-room. Come with me, and don't make a noise."
She led me downstairs to the foot of the lowest staircase, which was
rather broad, with high steps of stout old oak.
"Look," she said, as she stepped away from me--I suppose to touch some
secret spring--"this is the drawing-room."
As she spoke, the two lowest stairs suddenly rolled back upon a sort
of hinge, showing a little room, not much bigger than a couple of
barrels, arranged underneath them. There were blankets and a mattress
upon the floor of this little room, besides several packages like
those which I had seen in the lugger.
"You'll have to stay here, Jim," she said kindly. "But first of all I
must get together Dick's papers and that. Come on and help me."
Very soon she had gathered together a few papers and packets of
tobacco and lace, which might have brought Dick into trouble. She laid
these away in the recesses of the secret room, and told me to get
inside, and go to sleep, and above all things to keep very still if
people came along upon the stairs. I crept inside, rather frightened,
and lay down among the blankets, to get some rest. Then Mrs Dick swung
the two stairs back in to their place, a spring clicked, and I was a
prisoner in the dark, shut up in the drawing-room.