THE MAN IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE.
THERE, to his horror, looking through the gap which had been filled by
Claude’s spring window, and framed, as it were, by the jagged points of
glass which were still sticking to the framework, was a rough-looking
man, with a stubbly beard, and a dirty white muffler twisted loosely
round his neck. He had only one eye; at least, if the other were there
it was hidden by a greasy green patch which was tied round his head by
a piece of old string, while his rough, sandy-coloured hair looked as
if it had not been touched by a brush and comb for years.
[Illustration: There, to his horror, looking through the gap, was a
rough-looking man, with a stubbly beard, and a dirty white muffler
twisted loosely round his neck.
V. L. PAGE 92.]
Clearly this strange-looking individual must have been in the
summer-house all the time, and have seen the whole of Vivian’s
movements, and the little boy found himself wondering, in spite of
his terror, how he had escaped being struck by a pellet or cut by a
fragment of broken glass. He would fain have turned and run away, but
something in the man’s one visible eye held him rooted to the spot,
and he remained stock-still, furtively rubbing one foot against the
other, longing, and yet half-dreading, to hear the stranger speak and
to discover how much he had seen.
‘A pretty mess you’ve made of it, young gentleman,’ said the man at
last with a chuckle; ‘and what will the gentleman as you’re staying
with say when he sees all this?’
‘It was a mistake,’ stammered Vivian, at a loss what other answer to
make.
‘Ho, ho! a mistake was it, young gentleman? And was it a mistake that
you took the pistol out of the hole, and put it back again after the
smash, looking as scared as ever was, instead of bringing it boldly out
of the house with you, like as you would have done if it had been all
square?’
‘You’ve no business whose pistol it is, or where I got it,’ said Vivian
defiantly, driven to bay by this unexpected retort; ‘and, besides, you
have no right to be in my uncle’s garden, and I’ll tell him about you
as soon as he comes home from church.’
The man laughed unpleasantly.
‘All very good, young sir,’ he said; ‘but what if I take the first
step, and go in and volunteer to tell him all about those blessed
windows, and about how nearly you shot me; and, to prove that I am
speaking the truth, what if I let him see that nice little hole up
there behind, and show him what is hid in it?’
Now, as his mother had said to him on Christmas morning, Vivian had
plenty of physical courage, and under other circumstances he would have
been quite brave enough to have watched the man until some one either
came into the garden or passed outside on the Heath, to whom he might
have shouted for help; but, as she had also told him, he was sadly
wanting in that other kind of courage which ‘grown-ups’ call ‘moral,’
and the mere threat of exposure made him cringe and beg for mercy from
this unwashed, unshaved, evil-looking stranger.
‘Oh, don’t tell—please don’t tell,’ he entreated. ‘It was really a
mistake; but I will be punished if it is found out. If you will not
tell, and will go quietly away, I’ll give you five shillings. They are
in the house, but I can soon get them and they are my very own; my
father gave them to me when I came here, and I have never spent them.’
The man laughed again, with a look that was not good to see.
He had lain concealed in the summer-house all morning with an object
in view which seemed as if it would be very difficult to carry out,
and things had played into his hands in a manner that he had little
expected. From his place of concealment he had watched all Vivian’s
movements from the time he had come out of the house, and he knew that
he had the frightened boy in his power, and could work on his feelings
as he would.
‘Five shillings!’ he said contemptuously; ‘five shillings aren’t enough
to shut my mouth. You might have killed me with that blooming pistol
of yours; more than likely you would have, had I not seen how you were
aiming, and lain down on the floor. No, no; you wouldn’t be hiding
that pistol if you had come by it in any right way, and I’ll consider
it my dooty to report to the master of the house, no matter what the
consequences be to myself.’
The man spoke in such a tone of virtuous indignation that Vivian felt
that his uncle would believe his word at once, in spite of his ragged
clothes and the dirty green patch over his eye.
‘How much would it take to make you go quietly away, and hold your
tongue?’ he asked. ‘I have more money in my purse at home, and if you
gave me your address I would send it to you.’
The man shook his head in a decided way.
‘It would take pounds and pounds to make me hold my tongue,’ he said,
‘for I am a determined man when once I have made up my mind what it
is my dooty to do. But I tell you what, young gentleman. There is one
little job which I came in here to do, but which I may not have a
chance of doing—’twould keep me too long, and I am a very busy man.
Perhaps if you could manage it for me I might not tell after all. It’s
a very simple thing, and I only promised to do it to please a little
cripple girl of mine at home.’
‘And what is it?’ asked Vivian eagerly, catching at any straw which
promised escape from the disclosures which he felt were staring him in
the face.
‘Well,’ said the man slowly, and his voice sounded quite soft and
gentle, ‘I make a living by breeding dogs, and I have a little cripple
girl at home, and she has nothing to do but to lie in bed all day, and
it gets wearisome for her at times; and to cheer her up I sometimes
put the puppies on her bed, and she plays with them, and she grows as
fond of them as if they were human beings like herself. There was one
black retriever puppy in particular, which was born on her birthday,
which I used to tell her she treated as if it were a baby, for she
would save bits of her own supper for it, and it grew so fond of her
it always slept at the foot of her bed. If I had been rich I would
always have kept it for her; but I am a poor man, young gentleman, and
when it got big it ate a lot, and I had to sell it, and the parting
well-nigh broke Tottie’s heart. The coachman here came and bought it
for his master for a watch-dog, and whenever I come on business to this
part of London—I live down Shoreditch way—Tottie always asks if I have
seen her pet. Generally I have to tell her “No,” for the coachman here
is a disobliging cove, an’ if he saw a poor man like me hanging about
the gates he’d order me off; but to-day, being Tottie’s birthday,
an’ the dog’s too of course, an’ I happening to come up to ’Ighgate
on business, she gave me two of her birthday cakes as a neighbour had
given her, an’ she says, “Daddy,” she says, “you’ll see Monarch, an’
you’ll give him these from me, an’ when I am eating mine at supper-time
I’ll know he’ll be eating his share.”’
The man paused, and drew two curious little brown buns from his pocket.
‘What queer-looking cakes!’ said Vivian, who had grown interested in
the story in spite of his own fears.
‘Yes,’ replied the man; ‘these are German cakes. The woman as lives
below us, and is kind to Tottie, is a German, and she bakes the most
curious cakes. She has a shop, and makes quite a business of it. Tottie
just loves this kind, and to think of the precious child being so
unselfish, and denying herself, and she with such a poor appetite too,
and sending two of them to Monarch, and here am I spending my whole
Sunday away from her, waiting for a chance to give them to the dog. I
climbed the fence, and laid myself open to being took up, just to try
and please the darling, for I couldn’t bear to go home and meet her
sweet face when she says, “Daddy, have you given my cakes to Monarch?”
and I having to say “No.”’
The man drew his ragged sleeve across his eyes.
‘It’s very hard, young master,’ he added in a broken voice, ‘that an
honest man can’t go boldly up to the coachman’s door, and ask to see
the dog, without being called names, and turned away as a beggar, just
because he’s poor, and his coat isn’t as whole as it might be.’
‘I could manage to give the dog your little girl’s cakes,’ said Vivian
eagerly. He was very kind-hearted, and, besides, he began to see a way
of escape for himself. ‘I could give him the cakes, only you would have
to promise’——
‘To promise not to tell about the window?’ interrupted the man, looking
up with a gleam in his eye. ‘I would gladly promise you that, for,
after all, it is none of my business. So we will make a bargain. If you
will take these cakes, and give them to Monarch about the darkening,
just when my little girl is having her supper—for it will please her
to think that he is eating them then—I will go right away, and never
tell a word about all I have seen this morning; no, not though I read
about it in the papers. But you must give me your Bible oath as you
will be true, and give them to the dog, and not guzzle them yourself.’
‘Oh, you may be sure that I won’t eat them,’ said Vivian hastily,
shuddering at the mere thought of eating anything that had been in
contact with the man’s dirty coat; ‘and I promise to give them to
Monarch. I can easily run out at tea-time, and put them in his kennel.’
‘Say “I take my Bible oath not to eat them myself, and to give them to
the dog at tea-time,”’ said the man sternly, ‘else I’ll stay here and
tell the gentleman.’
Vivian hesitated. To say that he took his Bible oath seemed to him very
much like swearing, and that would be to sink one step deeper into the
mire of despair and wickedness into which he had already fallen.
Just then the clock on the Heath rang out the half-hour.
‘You’d better choose quick, for they’ll be coming home from church,’
said the man, who had no desire to be found in the grounds, and who yet
wished to carry his point.
The warning had its due effect on Vivian. With trembling haste he
stumbled over the hated words, and then, reaching out his hand for the
two little cakes, he thrust them into his trousers-pocket, and turned
and ran into the house, feeling dully that fate was all against him,
while the man, with a satisfied smile on his face, swung himself up
into the branches of the oak-tree, and after a careful survey of the
Heath to see that there was no one in sight, let himself lightly on the
path on the other side of the hedge, and walked quickly away.
All through dinner-time, and through the short winter afternoon that
followed, Vivian waited in sickening anxiety for some one to come in
with the news of the broken windows. He knew that they must soon be
discovered, for the first person who walked round that way could not
fail to notice them, and then he would be sure to be questioned, and
he would need to tell lies to shield himself. Poor little boy! he was
fast finding out how true the saying is, that ‘one lie needs six to
cover it,’ and the hot tears came into his eyes as he thought of last
Sunday’s talk with his mother, and of the many good resolutions he had
made in church, ay, and which he had meant with all his heart to keep.
The discovery was not destined to be made that day, however. The
summer-house stood right away from the stables and greenhouses, so that
none of the men needed to go near it; and as the frost gave way again,
as it had done on so many other days during the week, and an afternoon
of heavy rain succeeded the brilliant sunshine of the morning, Aunt
Dora did not insist on the children going out for their usual run,
but sent them up into the schoolroom, where they spent the afternoon
quietly with Sunday puzzles and story-books, so as not to disturb
Isobel, who was still much more inclined to sleep than to talk.