The game was played, but Marjory did not appear, and Tom Orange, entertaining his young friend with a ludicrous imitation of Bill Withershins’ knock-knees, took his departure, leaving his delighted companion in the state which Moore describes as being usual
“When the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out.”
So, having watched Tom till he was quite out of sight, he returned to his neglected navy on the pond, and delivered his admirable Crichton’s message to Marjory Daw on her return.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
Supper-time came, and Tom Orange did not return. Darkness closed over the old cottage, the poplar trees and the town, and the little boy said his prayers under the superintendence of worthy Marjory, and went to his bed.
He was disturbed in his sleep by voices talking in the room. He could only keep his eyes open for a little time, and he saw Tom Orange talking with mammy. He was at one side of the little table and she at another, and his head was leaning forward so as to approach uncomfortably near to the mutton-fat with a long snuff in the middle. Mammy, as he indiscriminately called “Granny,” was sobbing bitterly into her apron, and sometimes with streaming eyes, speaking so low that he could not hear, to Tom Orange.
Interesting as was the scene, slumber stole him away, and when he next wakened, Tom was gone, and mammy was sitting on the bed, crying as if her heart would break. When he opened his eyes, she said, —
“Oh, darlin’! darlin’! My man — my own, own blessed man — my darlin’!” and she hugged him to her heart.
He remembered transports similar when two years ago he was very ill of a fever.
“I’m not sick, mammy, indeed; I’m quite well,” and with these assurances and many caresses, he again fell asleep.
In the morning his Sunday clothes, to his wonder, were prepared for him to put on. The little old faded crimson carpet-bag, which she had always told him, to the no small content of his self-importance, was his own, stood plump and locked on the little table under the clock. His chair was close beside mammy’s. She had all the delicacies he liked best for his breakfast. There was a thin little slice of fried bacon, and a new-laid egg, and a hot cake, and tea — quite a grand breakfast.
Mammy sat beside him very close. Her arm was round him. She was very pale. She tried to smile at his prattle, and her eyes filled up as often as she looked at him, or heard him speak.
Now and then he looked wonderingly in her face, and she tried to smile her old smile and nodded, and swallowed down some tea from her cup.
She made belief of eating her breakfast, but she could not.
When the wondering little man had ended his breakfast, with her old kind hands she drew him towards her.
“Sit down on my lap, my precious — my own man — my beautiful boy — my own angel bright. Oh, darlin’ — darlin’ — darlin’!” and she hugged the boy to her heart, and sobbed over his shoulder as if her heart was bursting.
He remembered that she cried the same way when the doctor said he was safe and sure to recover.
“Mammy,” he said, kissing her, “Amy has birthdays — and I think this is my birthday — is it?”
“No, darlin’; no, no,” she sobbed, kissing him. “No, my darlin’, no. Oh, no, ‘taint that.”
She got up hastily, and brought him his little boots that she had cleaned. The boy put them on, wondering, and she laced them.
With eyes streaming she took up one of the little cork boats, which he kept on the window-stool floating in a wooden bowl.
“You’ll give me one of them, darlin’ — to old mammy — for a keepsake.”
“Oh! yes. Choose a good one — the one with the gold paper on the pin; that one sails the best of all.”
“And — and” — she cried bitterly before she could go on— “and this is the little box I’ll put them in,” and she picked them out of the bowl and laid them in a cardboard box, which she quickly tied round. “And this is the last day of poor mammy with her bright only darlin’ — for your friends are sending for you to-day, and Mr. Archdale will be here in ten minutes, and you’re to go with him. Oh, my precious — the light o’ the house — and to leave me alone.”
The boy stood up, and with a cry, ran and threw his arms round her, where she stood near the clock.
“Oh! no, no, no. Oh! mammy, you wouldn’t; you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“Oh, darlin’, you’re breaking my heart. What can I do?”
“Don’t let me go. Oh, mammy, don’t. Oh, you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“But what can I do, darlin’? Oh, darlin’, what can I do?”
“I’ll run away, mammy, I’ll run away; and I’ll come back when they’re gone, and stay with you.”
“Oh, God Almighty!” she cried, “here he’s coming. I see him coming down the hazel road.”
“Hide me, mammy; hide me in the press. Oh, mammy, mammy, you wouldn’t give me to him!”
The boy had got into this large old-painted press, and coiled himself up between two shelves. There was hardly a moment to think; and yielding to the instinct of her desperate affection, and to the child’s wild appeal, she locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.
She sat down. She was half stunned by her own audacity. She scarcely knew what she had done. Before she could recover herself, the door darkened, a hand crossed the hatch and opened it, and ex-Sergeant-Major Archdale entered the cottage.
In curt military fashion he announced himself, and demanded the boy.
She was looking straight in this formidable man’s face, and yet it seemed as if he were vanishing from before her eyes.
“Where’s the boy?” inquired the chill stern voice of the Sergeant.
It seemed to her like lifting a mountain this effort to speak. She felt as if she were freezing as she uttered the denial.
“He ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” demanded the Sergeant’s imperturbably clear cold voice.
“He’s run away,” she said with an effort, and the Sergeant seemed to vanish quite away, and she thought she was on the point of fainting.
The Sergeant glanced at the breakfast table, and saw that two had taken tea together; he saw the carpet bag packed.
“H’m?” intimated Archdale, with closed lips. He looked round the cottage room, and the Sergeant sat down wonderfully composed, considering the disconcerting nature of the announcement.
The ex-Sergeant-Major had in his time commanded parties in search of deserters, and he was not a bad slaught-hound of that sort.
“He breakfasted with you?” said he, with a cool nod toward the table.
There was a momentary hesitation, and she cleared her voice and said —
“Yes.”
Archdale rose and placed his fingers on the teapot.
“That’s hot,” said the Sergeant with the same inflexible dignity.
Marjory was awfully uneasy.
“He can’t be far. Which way did he go?”
“Out by the door. I can’t tell.”
The ex-Sergeant-Major might have believed her the goddess of truth itself, or might have thought her the most impudent liar in England. You could not have gathered in the least from his countenance toward which view his conclusions tended.
The Sergeant’s light cold grey eye glided again round the room, and there was another silence awfully trying to our good friend Marjory.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MARCH TO NOULTON FARM.
“I think, ma’am, the boy’s in the house. You’d best give him up, for I’ll not go without him. How many rooms have you?”
“Three and a loft, sir.”
The Sergeant stood up.
“I’ll search the house first, ma’am, and if he’s not here I’ll inform the police and have him in the Hue-and-Cry; and if you have had anything to do with the boy’s deserting, or had a hand in making away with him anyhow, I’ll have you in gaol and punished. I must secure the door, and you can leav
e the house first, if you like best.”
“Very well, sir,” answered she.
But at this moment came a knocking and crying from within the press.
“Oh! no— ’twasn’t mammy; ’twas I that did it. Don’t take mammy.”
“You see, ma’am, you give useless trouble. Please open that door — I shall have to force it, otherwise,” he added, as very pale and trembling she hesitated.
Standing as he might before his commanding officer, stiff, with his heels together, with his inflexibly serene face, full before her, he extended his hand, and said simply, “The key, ma’am.”
In all human natures — the wildest and most stubborn — there is a point at which submission follows command, and there was that in the serenity of the ex-Sergeant-Major which went direct to the instinct of obedience.
It was quite idle any longer trying to conceal the boy. With a dreadful ache at her heart she put her hand in her pocket and handed him the key.
As the door opened the little boy shrank to the very back of the recess, from whence he saw the stout form of the Sergeant stooped low, as his blue, smooth fixed countenance peered narrowly into the dark. After a few seconds he seemed to discern the figure of the boy.
“Come, you sir, get out,” said the commanding voice of the visitor, as the cane which he carried in his hand, paid round with wax-end for some three inches at the extremity, began switching his little legs smartly.
“Oh, sir, for the love of God!” cried Marjory, clinging to his hand. “Oh, sir, he’s the gentlest little creature, and he’ll do whatever he’s bid, and the lovingest child in the world.”
The boy had got out by this time, and looking wonderingly in the man’s face, was unconsciously, with the wincing of pain, lifting his leg slightly, for the sting of the cane was quite new to him.
“If I catch you at that work again I’ll give you five dozen,” said his new acquaintance.
“Is this his?” said he, touching the carpet bag with his cane.
“Yes, sir, please.”
He took it in his hand, and glanced at the boy — I think it was in his mind to make him carry it. But the child was slender, and the bag, conscientiously packed with everything that had ever belonged to him, was a trifle too heavy.
“Anything else?” demanded the Sergeant-Major.
“This — this, God bless him.”
It was the little box with the ships.
“And this;” and she thrust the griddle cake, broken across and rolled up in brown paper, into the boy’s pocket.
“And these;” and three apples she had ready, she thrust after them.
“And oh! my blessed darlin’, my darlin’, darlin’, darlin’.”
He was lifted up against her heart, folded fast, and hugging her round the neck, they kissed and cried and cried and kissed, and at last she let him down; and the Sergeant-Major, with the cane under his arm, the carpet-bag in one hand, and the boy’s wrist firmly held in the other, marched out of the door.
“That’s enough — don’t follow, woman,” said he, after they had gone about twenty yards on the path; “and I’ll report you,” he added with a nod which, with these pleasant words, she might take as a farewell or not as she pleased.
She stood on the little rising ground by the hawthorn tree, kissing her hands wildly after him, with streaming eyes.
“I’ll be sure to see you soon. I’d walk round the world barefoot to see my pretty man again,” she kept crying after him; “and I’ll bring the ninepins, I’ll be sure. Mammy’s comin’, my darlin’.”
And the receding figure of the little boy was turned toward her all it could. He was gazing over his shoulder, with cheeks streaming with tears, and his little hand waving yearningly back to her until he was out of sight. And after a while she turned back, and there was their ninepins’ ground, and the tarn, and her sobs quickened almost to a scream; and she sat down on the stone bench under the window — for she could not bear to enter the dark cottage — and there, in Irish phrase, she cried her fill.
In the meantime Archdale and his companion, or prisoner — which you will — pursued their march. He still held the boy’s wrist, and the boy cried and sobbed gently to himself all the way.
When they came down to the little hamlet called Maple Wickets he hired a boy to carry the carpet-bag to Wunning, four miles further on, where the Warhampton ‘bus passes, as everybody knows, at halfpast twelve o’clock daily.
They resumed their march. The Sergeant was a serenely taciturn man. He no more thought of addressing the boy than he did of apostrophising the cane or the carpet-bag. He let him sob on, and neither snubbed nor consoled him, but carried his head serene and high, looking straight before him.
At length the novelty of the scene began to act upon the volatility of childhood.
As he walked by the Sergeant he began to prattle, at first timidly, and then more volubly.
The first instinct of the child is trust. It was a kind of consolation to the boy to talk a great deal of his home, and Tom Orange was of course mentioned with the usual inquiry, “Do you know Tom Orange?”
“Why so?”
Then followed the list of that facetious and brilliant person’s accomplishments.
“And are we to go near a place called Wyvern or Carwell Grange?” asked the boy, whose memory, where his fancy was interested, was retentive.
“Why so?” again demanded the Sergeant, looking straight before him.
“Because Tom Orange told me there’s the biggest mushroom in the world grown up there, and that the owner of the house can’t get in, for it fills up the door.”
“Tom Orange told you that?” demanded the Sergeant in the same way.
And the boy, supposing it incredulity on his part, assured him that Tom, who was truth itself, had told him so only yesterday.
The Sergeant said no more, and you could not have told in the least by his face that he had made a note of it and was going to “report” Tom Orange in the proper quarter. And in passing, I may mention that about three weeks later Tom Orange was peremptorily dismissed from his desultory employments under Mr. Archdale, and was sued for stealing apples from Warhampton orchard, and some minor peccadillos, and brought before the magistrates, among whom sat, as it so happened, on that occasion, Squire Fairfield of Wyvern, who was “precious hard on him,” and got him in for more than a month with hard labour. The urchin hireling with the carpet-bag trudged on in front as the Sergeant-Major had commanded.
Our little friend, with many a sobbing sigh, and a great load at his heart, yet was looking about him.
They were crossing a moor with beautiful purple heather, such as he had never seen before. The Sergeant had let go his wrist. He felt more at his ease every way.
There were little pools of water here and there which attracted the boy’s attention, and made him open his box of cork boats and peep at them. He wondered how they would sail in these dark little nooks, and at last, one lying very conveniently, he paused at its margin, and took out a ship and floated it, and another, and another. How quickly seconds fly and minutes.
He was roused by the distant voice of the Sergeant-Major shouting, “Hollo, you sir, come here.”
He looked up. The Sergeant was consulting his big silver watch as he stood upon a little eminence of peat.
By the time he reached him the Sergeant had replaced it, and the two or three seals and watchkey he sported were dangling at the end of his chain upon his paunch. The Sergeant was standing with his heels together and the point of his cane close to the side of his boot.
“Come to the front,” said the Sergeant.
“Give up that box,” said he.
The boy placed it in his hand. He uncovered it, turned over the little navy with his fingers, and then jerked the box and its contents over the heath at his side.
“Don’t pick one of ‘em up,” said he.
“Move half a pace to the right,” was his next order.
His next command was —
>
“Hold out your hand.”
The boy looked in his face, surprised.
The Sergeant’s face looked not a bit angrier or a bit kinder than usual. Perfectly serene.
“Hold out your hand, sir.”
He held it out, and the cane descended with a whistling cut across his fingers. Another. The boy’s face flushed with pain, and his deadened hand sunk downward. An upward blow of the cane across his knuckles accompanied the command, “Hold it up, sir,” and a third cut came down.
The Sergeant was strong, and could use his wrist dexterously.
“Hold out the other;” and the same discipline was repeated.
Mingled with and above the pain which called up the three great black weals across the slender fingers of each hand, was the sense of outrage and cruelty.
The tears sprang to his eyes, and for the first time in his life he cried passionately under that double anguish.
“Walk in front,” said the Sergeant, serenely.
And squeezing and wringing his trembling hands together, the still writhing little fellow marched along the path, with a bitterer sense of desolation than ever.
The bus was late at Wunning; and a lady in it, struck by the beauty and sadness of the little boy’s face, said some kind words, and seemed to take to him, he thought, with a tenderness that made his heart fuller; and it was a labour almost too great for him to keep down the rising sobs and the tears that were every moment on the point of flowing over. This good Samaritan bought a bag of what were called “Gingerbread nuts” — quite a little store; which Archdale declined leaving at the boy’s discretion. But I am bound to say that they were served out to him, from day to day, with conscientious punctuality by the Sergeant-Major, who was strictly to be depended on in all matters of property; and would not have nibbled at one of those nuts though his thin lips had watered and not a soul had been near. He must have possessed a good many valuable military virtues, or he could not, I presume, have been where he was.
Noulton Farm is a melancholy but not an ugly place. There are a great many trees about it. They stand too near the windows. The house is small and old, and there is a small garden with a thick high hedge round it.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 516