TREACHERY.
“Now, Tommy,” said Clare, having eaten his half loaf, “I’m going out
to look for work, and you must take care of baby. You’re not to feed
her--you would only choke her, and waste the good milk.”
“I want to go out too,” said Tommy.
“To see what you can pick up, I suppose?”
“That’s my business.”
“I fancy it mine while you are with me. If you don’t take care of baby
and be good to her, I’ll put you in the water-butt I took her out
of--as sure as you ain’t in it now!”
“That you shan’t!” cried Tommy; “I’ll bite first!”
“I’ll tie your hands and feet, and put a stick in your mouth,” said
Clare. “So you’d better mind.”
“I want to go with you!” whimpered Tommy.
“You can’t. You’re to stop and look after baby. I won’t be away longer
than I can help; you may be sure of that.”
With repeated injunctions to him not to leave the room, Clare went.
Before going quite, however, he must arrange for returning. To swarm
up between the two walls as he had done before, would be to bid
good-bye to his jacket at least, and he knew how appearances were
already against him. Spying about for whatever might serve his
purpose, he caught sight of an old garden-roller, and was making for
it, when Tommy, never doubting he was gone, came whistling round the
corner of the house with his hands in his pocket-holes, and an
impudent air of independence. Clare away, he was a lord in his own
eyes! He could kill the baby when he pleased! Plainly his mood was,
“He thinks I’m going to do as he tells me! Not if I knows it!” Clare
saw him before he saw Clare, and rushed at him with a roar.
“You thought I was gone!” he cried. “I told you not to leave the room!
Come along to the water-butt!”
Tommy shivered when he heard him, and gave a shriek when he saw him
coming. He shook till his teeth chattered. But terror not always
paralyzes instinct in the wild animal. As Clare came running, he took
one step toward him, and dropped on the ground at his feet. Clare shot
away over his head, struck his own against a tree, and lay for a
minute stunned. Tommy’s success was greater than he had hoped. He
scudded into the house, and closed and bolted the door to the kitchen.
When Clare came to himself, he found he had a cut on his head. It
would never do to go asking for work with a bloody face! The little
pool served at once for basin and mirror, and while he washed he
thought.
He had no inclination to punish Tommy for the trick he had played him;
he had but done after his kind! It would serve a good end too: Tommy
would imagine him lurking about to have his revenge, and would not
venture his nose out. He discovered afterward that the little wretch
had made fast the cellar-door, so that, if he had entered that way, he
would have been caught in a trap, and unable to go or return.
He got the iron roller to the foot of the wall, where he had come over
the night before, and where now first he perceived there had once been
a door; managed, with its broken handle for a lever, to set it up on
end, filled it with earth, and heaped a mound of earth about it to
steady it, placed a few broken tiles and sherds of chimney-pots upon
it, and from this rickety perch found he could reach the top easily.
The next thing was to arrange for getting up from the other side. For
this he threw over earth and stones and whatever rubbish came to his
hand, the sole quality required in his material being, that it should
serve to lift him any fraction of an inch higher. The space was so
narrow that his mound did not require to be sustained by the width of
its base except in one direction; everywhere else the walls kept in
the heap, and he made good speed. At length he descended by it, sure
of being able to get up again.
He had been gone an hour before Tommy dared again leave the room where
the baby was. He had planned what to do if Clare got into it: he would
threaten, if he came a step nearer, to kill the baby! But if he had
him in the coal-cellar, he would make his own conditions! A tramp
would not keep a promise, but Clare would! and until he promised not
to touch him, he should not come out--not if he died of hunger!
At length he could bear imprisonment no longer. He opened the
room-door with the caution of one who thought a tiger might be lying
against it. He saw no one, and crept out with half steps. By slow
degrees, interrupted by many an inroad of terror and many a swift
retreat, he got down the stair and out into the garden; whence, after
closest search, he was at length satisfied his enemy had departed. For
a time he was his own master! To one like Tommy--and such are not
rare--it is a fine thing to be his own master. But the same person who
is the master is the servant--and what a master to serve! Tommy,
however, was quite satisfied with both master and servant, for both
were himself. What was he to do? Go after something to eat, of course!
He would be back long before Clare! He had gone to look for work--and
who would give _him_ work? If Tommy were as big as Clare, lots of
people would give him work! But catch him working! Not if he knew
it!--not Tommy!
Never till she was grown up, never, indeed, until she was a
middle-aged woman and Mr. Skymer’s housekeeper, did the baby know in
what danger she was that morning, alone with surnameless Tommy.
His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect
itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature. But
in this case the exercise of the power brought him into another
relation, one with the water-butt! He went back to the room where the
child lay in her blankets like a human chrysalis, and stood for a
moment regarding her with a hatred far from mild: was he actually
expected to give time and personal notice to that contemptible thing
lying there unable to move? _He_ wasn’t a girl or an old woman! He
must go and get something to eat! that was what a man was for! Better
twist her neck at once and go!
But he could not forget the water-butt--proximate mother of the
child. Its idea came sliding into Tommy’s range, grew and grew upon
Tommy, came nearer and nearer, until the baby was nowhere, and nothing
in the world but the water-butt. His consciousness was possessed with
it. It was preparing to swallow him in its loathsome deep! All at once
it jumped back from him, and stood motionless by the side of the
wall. Now was his chance! Now he must mizzle! Not a moment longer
would he stop in the same place with the horrible thing!
But the baby! Clare would bring him back and put him in the butt! No,
he wouldn’t! What harm would come to the brat? She was not able to
roll herself off the bed! She could do nothing but go to sleep again!
Out he must and would go! He wanted something to eat! He would be in
again long before Clare could get back!
He left the room and the house, ran down the garden, scrambled up the
door, got on the top of the wall, and dropped into the waste land
behind it--nor once thought that the only way back was by the very
jaws of the water-butt.