I AM HEROIC
You may be sure that I kept up with the crowd. It was a disagreeable
crowd--Bewick Muir pitmen, and the navvies from the East Dene and
Thorsby waterworks--they were making a new pipe-line through the Bewick
Beck Valley, and the navvies were interested in poaching--so that was
what had brought them so far from home. Only the few Breckonside
people who had not left early knew anything bout Elsie.
All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis
had amassed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers,
farmers and cattle dealers--that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for
that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed
a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir
appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for
a dangerous malefactor.
There must, however, have been a Breckonside traitor among them, for as
soon as they reached the town they made straight for the cottage at the
Bridge End. The door was burst in, the poor furniture turned
topsy-turvy--Elsie's books thrown about. But I knew better than to
interfere at this point. There was something much more serious coming.
I knew very well that my father would never let poor Nance Edgar suffer
for something that she had not been mixed in at all. When Joseph
Yarrow started in to do a thing--I don't mean me--it had to be gone
through with, even though it cost some odd halfpence. For my father,
keen at a bargain as he was, did not spare his money when once he put
his hand deep into his pocket.
So I pegged it down the road and over the bridge, with the hottest of
the pack at my heels. Somebody must have told them that Elsie had gone
to "the Mount." And if I could find who that person was, I would wring
his neck on the High Street of Breckonside--which would be not a bit
more than he deserves.
"_Death to the Stennises! Death to the murderers!_"
I could hear the shout right at my heels, turning after turning, till
at last I was in the home stretch, and clambering up the steep ascent
to the red brick wall within which stood the house that was my home.
What was my surprise to find all the iron window shutters, which ever
since I could remember had been turned back against the wall (and each
caught there with a screw catch) fitted into the window frames!
My father was on the housetop. I could just see him over the railings,
for it was darkish in spite of the moon.
"Is that you, Joe?" he called out, leaning forward till I thought he
would fall off.
I answered that it was--I and no other.
"Then be off with you round by the stables. All is shut here. One of
the two Robs will let you in!"
He meant Rob Kingsman or Rob McKinstrey. So I tell you I tracked it
about the house and thumped on the gate. There was not much time, you
understand, for the first of the band were already shouting and
gesticulating to my father to give up Elsie Stennis. They meant to
make an end of all the "murdering lot," and of any who sheltered them!
So they said, and by the accent and the taint of whiskey in the air, I
could make out that there were a lot of Irish among them. Now the
Irish that stay at home are very decent people indeed, as I have good
reason to know, but those that come about Breckonside to work at the
quarries and waterworks are the devil and all--if Mr. Ablethorpe and
the vicar will excuse me the expression.
Well, I knocked and I shouted, but never an answer got I.
At last, at the window of the sleeping-room that was Rob Kingsman's, I
saw a white blob which I made out to be the occupant's face.
"Hey, Rob!" I cried; "let me in, Rob. They are after me--at my heels!"
"Reason the mair for you bidin' where ye are," said Rob, whose strong
point was certainly not courage, "if they have done ye no harm as yet,
just keep quiet and they will do ye none whatever. Ye are no Stennis.
The Stennises are a' weel-faured!"
"But I want to help--I want to get in! De'il tak' ye, Rob, let me in!"
I think even the vicar, good Churchman as he is (though not in Mr.
Ablethorpe's sense) would have forgiven me the strength of the last
expression--considering the provocation, that is. As also the fact
that, living so near Scotland, where there are so many "Presbies"
about, the very best Churchman is sometimes seduced into their rough,
but picturesque, habit of speech.
"Here, Joe!" said Rob, after a while, taking pity on me. He opened a
little wicket--just one pane of his iron-barred window, for my father
had had everything about the place strengthened at the first scare
about Riddick of Langbarns and the other lost farmers and drovers;
"here, lad, tak' haud o' this! There's a barrel that had sugar intil't
doon by the weighing machine. Creep into that. And mind--dinna shoot
onybody. Use the pistol only in self-defence. There's nae law again'
that!"
The next moment I had a revolver in one hand and a pouch of cartridges
in the other--yellow bag, waist belt and all! I tell you I felt the
citizen of no mean city as I buckled them on. I would not have changed
places with the Prince of Wales going to open an Aquarium. For, you
see, I had never been allowed to go near the little room where my
father kept the firearms for sale, the sporting ammunition, and the
other touch-and-go truck, which interested me more than anything in the
place. Of course, when father was lost for so long, I could have gone
and helped myself. But, though you mayn't think it, I had a sort of
pride about that.
I wasn't going to do when he was away what I durstn't do when he was
stamping about the yard and stores. So I didn't. But to have a real,
_real_ revolver given me, with proper cartridges--and me outside and
all the others inside--why, it was just the primest thing that ever
happened to me in all my life.
When I reached the outer gate (that by which Dapple had entered, Mad
Jeremy, no doubt, riding her to the door) Rob McKinstrey shouted that
if I looked sharp he would let me in and have the yard door shut again
before ever one of the Paddies could get his nose inside.
But I knew better than that--oh, ever so much better.
Not many fellows get a chance to die nobly, like a young hero, in front
of his own father's house, in defence of his girl--with not only that
girl, her own self, but also his second best--I mean another girl
friend (of his mother's) looking out at him from the wall, just like
the beautiful Jewess Rebecca, and Rowena the Saxon, and all that lot.
So I charged round, knowing that the eyes of Elsie and the Caw girls
were on me. And there in front of the house was a whole mob of
Geordies and Paddies, navvies, and all the general riff-raff, with here
and there an angry Bewicker who knew no better--all calling for Elsie
to be given up to them. My father was up on a flat part of the roof,
and was haranguing them, as if he had been brought up to the business.
They were flinging dirt and stones at him, too, and one had clipped him
on the side of his head, so that the blood was trickling down his
temple, which made me mad to watch. Morning had come by this time, so
that was how I could see so well. It comes precious early at
Breckonside this time of the year, as you would know if your father
started you out as early as mine did. We have lots of winter there,
but when the light time does arrive, it comes along early and stays to
supper.
Well, you see, ever since my father took so stiffly to Elsie, I had
been pretty much gone on the governor. I suppose, even before that, I
would not have seen him mishandled without shaking a stick for him.
But now, it just made my blood boil, and I am not one of your furious
heroes either. I always think well before I let my courage boil over.
As you may have noticed from this biography, I do not profess to be one
of your fetch-a-howl-and-jump-into-the-ring heroes.
But, as father's spring sale advertisements say, this was an
opportunity which might never occur again. (It didn't, as a fact.)
So I got right between the crowd and our varnished front door, over
which stood my father with his broken head, still holding forth as to
what he would do to every man present. "Twenty years hard" was the
least that even the back ranks would get.
There was not a real armed man among them. So, when I stepped up on
the stone stoop with the morning sun glinting down my revolver and my
warlike eye squinting t'other way along the sights, one hand behind my
back as I had seen them do in pictures of duellists in the _Graphic_
(when they do half-page pictures to illustrate what father calls
"bloodthirsty yarns." I never read the small print, of course, but the
pictures are prime for sticking up over a fellow's bed) and the yellow
leather belt and open pouch for cartridges--well, I wouldn't have taken
the fanciest price for myself at that moment--I really wouldn't. If it
had been at Earl's Court, they would have marked me _Hors Concours_,
and set me to judge the other exhibits!
Well, of course, these fellows had never seen the funny round black dot
a loaded revolver makes when it is pointed square at your right eye and
the fellow behind looks like pulling the trigger. And I tell you they
scurried back, fifty yards at least, and some of the less keen even
began to sneak off. Pretty soon they all did so. I think they felt
that they had been behaving foolishly.
But what they felt was nothing to what _I_ did a moment after.
You see, my father didn't know what had been happening down below. He
couldn't see, for one thing. The jut of the porch hid my warlike array
and bold defence. So he couldn't understand who the--umph--was down
there. To make out he came forward and leaned over the stone cornice
at the end of the railings, with Elsie on one side of him and Harriet
Caw on the other.
I stood up as noble as the boy on the burning deck or Fitz-James, when
he said--
"Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!"
Or, at any rate, something like that. But _my_ feet were really on my
native doorstep, while as for Fitz-James--my father says that, whether
the rock flew or not, he had no title to it that could stand the least
sniff of law.
Before my father spoke to me, both Elsie and Harriet Caw thought that I
looked "just too heroic." This I heard on good authority, and it
pleased me, for that was the exact effect I was trying to produce.
Elsie was such a brick as to swear that she thought so even after, and
to this day she sticks to it. Girls have some good points.
But it was awful enough at the time.
"Joe," shouted my father, and I could see his face red and threatening
above me, with the effort of leaning so far over, "if you do not put up
that popgun and come in the house directly, I will come out with a cane
and thrash you within an inch of your life!"
He even went on to give particulars, which I think was mean of him in
the circumstances. But no fellow can argue with his father--at least,
not with one like mine--so I stepped round to the door. My father met
me, took the revolver away from me, and made as if he would box my
ears. Last of all, he told me to go into the back kitchen and wash my
face--and ears.
I could have forgiven him all but that word.
Then Harriet Caw giggled, and said she would come and see that I did
it. But just then the tide turned. For, hearing Harriet say this,
Elsie came along, too, and though I was, indeed, pretty grimy with
racing and scratching along after these Bewick pit fellows, she took my
hands, right under the nose of Harriet Caw, and said, "Joe, I thank you
for saving my life!"
Then, loosing one of my hands, she put her palm on my shoulder, and
stooped and kissed me on the forehead, ever so stately and noble, like
another of those _Graphic_ pictures.
But evidently Harriet Caw did not think so, for she only sniffed and,
turning on her patent india-rubber heels (which she had bought to
imitate Elsie), she went right upstairs.
So it was Elsie who helped me to wash away the smoke of battle. That
wasn't so altogether bad. You should have seen her eyes, all you other
fellows, when I undid the yellow leather belt from about my war-worn
waist, and gave her the pouch of cartridges to put away.
"Are they Dum-Dum?" she said reverently.
And I said they were.
I didn't really know about the cartridges, but at least _I_ was--and
Elsie liked it very well. The fellows who talk a lot at such times
never get on with girls.