AT THE FARM
It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-place
at Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now on
Walterson’s brooding face as he stooped over the heat, now on the
huddled shrunken form that filled the farther side of the hearth. As
the flames rose and fell, the shadows of the two men danced whimsically
behind them. At one moment they sprang up, darkening the whole
smoke-grimed ceiling and seeming to menace the persons who gave them
birth, at another they sank into mere hop-o’-my-thumbs, lurking in
ambush behind the furniture. There was no other light in the room; it
was rarely the old skinflint suffered another. And to-night the
shutters were closed and barred that even the reflection of the blaze
might not be seen without and breed suspicion.
The younger man’s face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed not
only his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear and brooding.
He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was no longer the
dandy who had turned a feather-head—for there was little in this place
to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense had sharpened his
features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old, and the
shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longer floated on
their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritability showed in
his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silence the old man’s
crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moody depression. It was
bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole with an imbecile
driveller, and to spend long hours without other company. It was worse
to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, and the peril
which he had so long and so cleverly evaded yawned for him.
To do Walterson justice, it was not entirely for his own safety that he
was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened—starting at the
squeak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of a
friend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled to
ruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intention
he had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not face
without a shudder what might be happening at this moment by the
waterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girl escaped
there, would happen here; when they dragged her through the doorway,
bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen who dominated
him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they did they would
do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight of it. For if
they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, how loathly a
figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor and dastardly a thing
he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will he did and to whose
vengeance he consented.
The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked with
terrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was already
playing, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met her
look. Passionately he wished—as we all wish in like but smaller
cases—that he had never seen either of the women, that he had never
played the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen some
other direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing was
useless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, would not
relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would not convert
the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. And even while
he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside, and he stood
up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on the shutter, informed
him that the crisis which he had been expecting and dreading, was
come—was come!
Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, was
already on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog face
opened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wall was
scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thick drugget
shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall man cloaked and
booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meaner appearance.
The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, a
bundle—Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess with the
same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure the door
against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up the chimney,
the cloaked man addressed him.
“You’re Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we’ve met—once, I think. Well,” he
spoke in a harsh, peremptory tone—“you’ll be good enough to note,” he
turned and pointed to the other men, “that I have naught to do with
this! I’ve neither hand nor part in it! And I’ll ask you to remember
that.”
Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the man
with the bundle.
“What is it?” he muttered hoarsely. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, stow this!” Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which she
had secured. “The gentleman is very grand and mighty,” shrugging her
shoulders, “but the thing is done now. And I’ll warrant if good comes
of it he’ll not be too proud to take his share.”
“Not _I_, girl!” the tall man answered. “Not I!”
He took off as he spoke his cloak and hat, and showed a tall, angular
figure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long, and
his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features was
redeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which was never
long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speech and
manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors. And
not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemed in his
presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.
His two companions were stout, short-built men of a coarse type. But
Walterson after a single glance, paid no heed to them. His eyes, his
thoughts, his attention were all on the bundle. Yet, it was not
possible, it could not be what he dreaded. It was too small, too small!
And yet he shuddered.
“What is it?” he asked in uncertain accents.
“The worth of a man’s neck, may be,” one of the two men grunted.
“Oh, curse your may-be’s!” the other who carried the child struck in.
“It’s a smart bit of justice, master, with no may-be about it! And came
in our way just when we were ready for it. Let’s look at the kid.”
“The kid?”
Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. He
looked at Thistlewood.
The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged his square
shoulders.
“I’ve naught to do with it!” he said. “Ask them!”
“Don’t you know what a kid is?” Giles, one of the two others, retorted,
with a glance of contempt. “A kinchin! a yelper! It’s Squire Clyne’s,
if you must know. He’ll learn now what it is to see your children
trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut with sabres!
He’s ground the faces of the poor long enough! D——n him, he’s as bad as
Castlereagh, the devil! But, hallo!” breaking off. “If I don’t think,
mate, you’ve squeezed his throat a bit too tight!”
He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimate form
of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thin bloodless
hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes were half-closed; and
the tiny face showed so deathly white—among those tanned faces and in
that grimy place—that it was not wonderful that the man fancied for a
moment that the child was dead.
But, “Not I!” the one who had carried it answered contemptuously. “It’s
swooned, like enough. And I’d to stop it shrieking, hadn’t I? Let the
lass look to it.”
Bess took it but reluctantly—with an ill grace and no look of
tenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children but
their own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkled
water on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Walterson
found his voice.
“What folly—what cursed folly is this?” he cried, his words vibrating
with rage. “What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, or
this d——d folly—that you should bring the hunt upon us? We were snug
here.”
“And ain’t we snug now?” Lunt, the man who had carried the child,
asked.
“Snug? We’ll be snug behind bars in twenty-four hours!” Walterson
rejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, “if that child is Squire
Clyne’s child!”
“Oh, he’s that right enough, master,” Giles, the other man, struck in.
A kind of ferocious irony was natural to him.
“Then you’ll have the whole country on us before noon to-morrow!”
Walterson retorted. “I tell you he’ll follow you and track you and find
you, if he follows you to hell’s gate! I know the man.”
“So do I,” said Thistlewood coolly. “And I say the same.”
“Yet,” Giles retorted impudently, “you’ve got a neck as well as
another.”
“You can leave my neck out of the question,” Thistlewood replied. “And
me!” And he turned his back on them contemptuously.
“Well, you’ve got a neck,” Giles answered, addressing Walterson, who
was almost hysterical with rage. “And I suppose you have some care for
it, if he has none!” with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood’s
direction. “You’d as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, I
suppose?”
“Sooner,” Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover. “Here,
let me teach him,” she continued bluntly; the child had begun to murmur
in a low, painful note. “They came on the kid by chance and snatched
it, and we’ve put ten miles of water between the place and us.”
“And snow on the ground!” Walterson retorted, pointing to the thin
powder that still lay white in the folds of her shawl.
“We came up through the wood,” she answered. “Trust us for that! But
that’s not the point. The point is, that your pink-and-white fancy-girl
never came. She’d more sense than I thought she had. But you were
willing to snatch her, my lad. And why is the risk greater with the
child?”
“But——”
“It’s less,” the girl continued, before he could put his objection into
words. “It’s less, I tell you, for the child’s more easily tucked away.
I’ve a place we can put it, where they’ll not find it if they search
for a twelvemonth!”
“They’ll soon search here,” he said sullenly. “There’s not a house
they’ll not search if they trace the boat. Nor a bothy on the hills.”
“May be,” she answered confidently. “But when they search you’ll not be
here, nor the kid. Nor in a bothy!”
“If you are going to trust Tyson——”
“You leave that to me,” she replied, bending her brows.
But he was not to be silenced.
“He’ll sell you!” he cried. “He’ll sell you! He’ll give you fair words
and you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there’s a
reward out, and what he’ll suffer if he is found hiding us, and when he
knows that all the country is up—and for this child they’d hang us on
the nearest tree—he’ll give us up and you too. Though you do think you
have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!” he added passionately.
With a dark look, “Stow it, my lad,” she said, as he paused for want of
breath. “And leave Tyson to me.”
But the men who had listened to the debate looked something startled.
They glanced at one another, and at last Thistlewood spoke.
“Is this Tyson,” he asked, “the man at whose house you said we should
be better than here, my girl?”
“That’s him,” Bess answered curtly.
“Well, it seems to me that you ought to tell us a bit more. I don’t
want to be sold.”
“I am of that way of thinking myself, captain,” Lunt growled. “If the
man has no finger between the jamb and the door, you can’t be sure that
he won’t shut it. No, curse me, you can’t! There’s other Olivers
besides him who has sold a round dozen of us to Government. I’ll slit
the throat of the first police spy that comes in my way!”
“And yet you trust me!” the girl flung at him, her eyes scornful. To
her they all, all seemed cowards.
“Ay, but you are a woman,” Giles answered. “And though I’m not saying
there’s no Polly Peachums, I’ve not come across them. Treat a maid fair
and she’ll treat you fair, that’s the common way of it. She’ll not
stretch you, for anything short of another wench. But a man! He’s here
and there and nowhere.”
“That’s just where this man is,” she answered curtly.
“Where?”
“Nowhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s cut his lucky. He’s gone to Carlisle to see his brother and keep
his skin safe—for a week. He’s like a good many more I know,” with a
glance which embraced every man in the room: “willing to eat but afraid
to bite.”
“But he has left his house?”
“That’s it.”
“And who’s in it?”
“His wife, no one else. And she’s bedridden with a babby, seven days
old.”
“What! And no woman with her?”
“There was,” Bess answered, “but there isn’t. I quarrelled with the
serving-lass this afternoon, and at sunset to-day she was to go. If she
comes back to-morrow I’ll send her packing with a flea in her ear!”
“But who——”
“Gave me leave to send her?” defiantly. “He did.”
Thistlewood smiled.
“And the wife?” he asked. “What’ll she say?”
“Say? She’d not say boh to a goose if it hissed at her!” Bess answered
contemptuously. “She’s a pale, fat caterpillar, afraid of her own
shadow! She’ll whine a bit, for she don’t love me—thinks I’ll poison
her some fine day for the sake of her man. But she’s upstairs and
there’s no one, but nor ben, to hear her whine; and at daybreak I’ll be
there, tending her. Isn’t it the natural thing,” and she smiled darkly,
“with this the nearest house?”
“Curse me, but you’re a clever lass!” Giles cried. And even Thistlewood
seemed to feel no pity for the poor woman, left helpless with her babe.
“I don’t know,” the ruffian continued, “that I’m not almost afraid of
you myself!”
“And you think that house will not be searched?”
“Why should it be searched?” Bess answered. “Tyson’s well known. And if
they do search it,” she continued confidently, “there’s a place—it’s
not of the brightest, but it’ll do, and you must lie there days—that
they’ll not find if they search till Doomsday!”
Walterson alone eyed her gloomily.
“And what is the child in this?” he said.
“The kid, my lad? Why, everything. You fine gentlemen can’t stay here
for ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid’ll
stay here until you’re safe. And if you don’t come safe, he’s a card
you’ll be glad to have the use of to clear your necks, my lads!”
Thistlewood turned on his heel again.
“I’ll none of it,” he said, dark and haughty. “It’s no gentleman’s
game, this!”
“Gentleman be hanged!” cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. “Do you
call”—with temper—“what you were for this morning a gentleman’s game?
Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table a
gentleman’s game?”
“It’s our lives against theirs!” Thistlewood answered with a sombre
glance. “And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breeds
wrong,” he continued, his voice rising—as if already he spoke in his
defence. “Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us down at
Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they must be
removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head and
front of offence, the head and front of this damnable system under
which no man that’s worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man does
right! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen at
the top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that find
the money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearful and
fond of ease—and that’s nine parts of the country! For myself,”
extending his arms in a gesture of menace, “I’d as soon cut the throats
of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I’d cut the throats of so
many calves! And sooner, by G—d! Sooner! But for messing with children
I’ll none of it! I’ve said my say.” And he turned again to the fire.
The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed him
strangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but his
courage. Here was what she had sighed for—a man! Here was what she
thought that she had found in Walterson—a man! And Walterson himself
approved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speak out
where he with his life at stake dared not. The thing _was_ cruel, _was_
dastardly. But then—it might save his neck! For the others, they were
too low, too brutish to be much moved by Thistlewood’s words.
“Ah, but we’ve got necks as well as you!” Giles muttered. “And if we
risk ’em to please you, we’ll save ’em the way we please!”
Then, “Look at the kid!” Lunt muttered. “He’s hearing too much, and
picking it up. Stow it for now!”
The girl turned to the child which she had laid on the bed. Thistlewood
had knocked the fire together, and the blaze, passing by him, fell upon
the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scene with a look of
silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more than one. Had the boy
wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given way to childish panic
and tried to flee, they had thought nothing of it. They had twitched it
back, hushed it by blow or threat, and cursed it for a nuisance. But
this passive terror, this self-restraint at so tender an age, struck
the men as unnatural, and taken with its small elfish features awoke
qualms in the more superstitious.
“Curse the child!” said one, staring at it. “I think it’s bewitched!”
“See if it will eat,” said another. “Bewitched children never eat.”
Some bread was fetched and milk put to it—though Bess set nothing by
such notions—and, “You eat that, do you hear!” the girl said. “Or we’ll
give you to that old man there,” pointing with an undutiful finger to
the squalid figure of the old miser. “And he’ll take you to his
bogey-hole!”
The child shook pitifully, and the fear in its eyes deepened as it
regarded the loathsome old man. With a sigh that seemed to rend the
little heart, it took the iron spoon, and strove to swallow. The spoon
tinkled violently against the bowl.
“I’ll manage him,” Bess said with a look of triumph. “You will see,
I’ll have him so in two days that he’ll not dare to say who he is, if
they do find him! You leave him to me, and I’ll sort the little imp!”
Perhaps the child knew that he had fallen among his father’s enemies.
Perhaps he knew only that in a second his world was overset and he cast
on the mercy of the ogres he saw about him. As he looked fearfully
round the gloomy, fire-lit room with its lights and black shadows, a
single large tear rolled from each eye and fell into the coarse
earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke. Then he
went on eating.