Mr. Bob nodded. Lord Tom wasn’t to worry. His own stout person would go bail for the apprentice’s not shifting till Lord Tom returned.
The highwayman thanked him—then turned to his apprentice: “Watch out for the coach, Smut. Mr. Bob’ll show you where. Here’s a sixpence, Bob. Let the lad watch through the spyglass. Let him be a real high toby while I’m gone! Just for ten minutes, eh?”
He tossed a coin on the table, but Bob shook his greasy, good-natured head.
“Keep your money, friend. On a night like this I’m all for the warmth of kindness. The lad can watch for free. Duval would have liked that. Yes, sir, I can hear him say, ‘Bob! Let the lad watch for free!’”
“There, Smut,” said Lord Tom, with sudden pride. “There’s a small taste of our companionage. You’re among friends!”
Then, with a quick wave, he opened the door and his place was took by a flurry of snow, as he strode across the invisible road to The Wrestlers.
“A grand fellow!” remarked Bob. “One of the best!”
He eased himself into a seat close by Smith and prepared to unburden himself of all his superior memories for the amazement of a new pair of ears. But Smith was staring so fiercely and anxiously at the window that overlooked the approaches to the Common, that Bob, seeing his best tales might pass unheeded, took pity on the boy and pointed to where the spyglass stood on the mantelshelf.
“Take it, lad. Go watch for the coach. And remember, through that selfsame glass the proudest, sharpest, gallantest eyes these parts have ever known, once stared. May their brilliancy lighten your viewing. Go stand by the window . . . elbows on the sill . . . left knee cocked on the seat. The very attitude of Turpin! Duval was a taller man. He always used to sit . . .”
The capacious-memoried landlord rambled on, following Smith from the fire to the window, obliging him by pulling out the spyglass into all of its gilt sections—then standing to one side with the warming remark that Smith was “the very image of Claude Duval as a lad!”
Smith, pleased in spite of his urgency, stared out into the gathering night . . . past the ghostly reflection of his own thin, fierce face, through the snow-filled air, on to the deep white world that sank and humped and valleyed and hillocked for many a quiet, mysterious mile. This was northward. Southward lay the Town, speckled and spotted with lights.
“D’you see that long, shadowy finger?” breathed Mr. Bob. “That’s the road the coach’ll come by . . . if it comes.”
Smith saw, and raised the spyglass so’s the landscape jumped amazingly close at hand. He saw bushes and trees creaking under their white fruit which, every once in a while, the wind would shift and cause to thump and shower down, adding more whiteness to the overburdened ground.
Then, distant even in the spyglass, he saw a square black creature, with a pair of gleaming yellow eyes, tipping and lumbering in the wake of two horses.
“It’s coming!” muttered Smith, triumphantly. “Lord Tom had best be quick!”
He turned to the side window and swung the spyglass towards The Wrestlers, to see if the romantic figure of the highwayman was yet come out and was leaning through the whirling weather.
It was amazing! So strong was the glass that Smith felt he could have touched the door and walls and poked his head through the parlor window to say: “Make haste, Lord Tom! The coach is sighted! Hurry, good friend of mine. Get up off your chair and leave those—”
Those what? For there sat Lord Tom, large and near as life—leaning across a table, in deep discussion with . . .
Smith lowered the spyglass abruptly and wiped the lens. Then he looked again. He grew pale. His skin began to prickle as if the air was full of thorns and arrows. His belly turned unquiet and he began to feel sick.
Lord Tom was in deep discussion with the two men in brown. Lord Tom. His strong friend, his champion, even his hero . . . Very fearful of face, was he: very cringing, very humble. (Yes, sirs! No, sirs! The blind man’s as good as dead, sirs! And ain’t I betrayed the lad neatly? Hope you’re pleased with me, sirs!)
Smith put down the glass.
“What’s amiss, lad?”
“Nothing! You mind your own damned business, Mister Bob —and I’ll mind mine!”
Smith spoke through his hands—which were before his face to hide his rushing tears.
A very black, bitter and tragic place was the world to Smith as he understood the scope of his friend’s treachery. It was not Miss Fanny’s prattling that had betrayed his whereabouts, but the whispers of gallant Lord Tom! The blind man’s turning against him was as nothing to the wretchedness he now endured. Smith had been struck deep indeed.
“I’ll fetch you a tot of brandy, lad!” murmured Bob, much concerned and believing the apprentice to be, so to speak, the victim of “stagecoach fright.” “That’ll put fire into you for the ‘stand and deliver’!”
He was gone only a second, but when he returned the door was banging open and the parlor was empty, save for a whirl of snow. The highwayman’s apprentice was gone.
“Come back! Come back!” he bellowed—but the small, rumbling, hurtling figure that plunged down the hillside was fast vanishing—and heeded him not.
In places the snow lay two feet deep and Smith, to rise out of it, had to bound in a mighty, springing fashion—like a tremendous flea. Every now and then he’d strike on an unexpectedly shallow patch, so his feet, meeting resistance, would shoot him more powerfully than ever into the air—from which he’d fall and roll over and over in a whirl of white. Then up he’d scramble, wet and panting, to bound onward—till he fell again . . .
Such tracks as he made were almost instantly filled in after him, so that the effect of his progress was oddly supernatural. And all the while, in a harsh, sobbing voice, he’d plead and cajole and curse and beg his own despairing person to hurry, hurry, hurry!
Three devils were after him: two in brown—and one in green. But the snow kept flinging coldly suffocating arms about him—as if to hold him forever in its freezing bosom—and, as he rose, the very heavens seemed to beat him down again with their fluffy torrents. The whole huge universe was turned against him: the earth, the sky, the wind—even his own failing limbs which ached for nothing more than a bed in the dreadful, loving snow.
But each time, there came up out of the hole he’d made in the ground, a small rebellious voice:
“Come on with you, Smith! You dozy weasel! Up! Up! What for did you come out of the ’ouse of bondage? To sink and perish in this great Fleet Ditch of common ’opelessness? Not bleeding likely!” And then, in tones which shook with bitterness, grief and contempt: “So to Hell with you, Lord Tom! For that’s where you belongs!”
On which the indomitable figure of Smith would rise up out of the white, and fumble on.
Where to? The road the coach would take: the shadowy finger that Mr. Bob had pointed to. But where was it? He stared about him. Whiteness everywhere. No landmark, no post—nothing!
Once more, a feeling of hopelessness gripped him. He looked back up the hill. Three small black figures were on their way . . . In a sudden rage, Smith stamped his foot and glared about him.
Not seventy yards off, lumbered the coach! Towards him! The road—he was on it!
The horses panted and dragged and steamed. The coachman, high up on his snow-capped black mountain, leaned forward, eyes fairly glued to the vague shadow which was all he could see of firm ground. He dared not look elsewhere; one false move might end in a drift and finish the vital journey then and there.
Smith scrambled aside; sank up to his knees in snow; crouched down. He wished to God he’d waited for Mr. Bob’s tot of brandy; for what parts of him the weather neglected to chill, fright did for wonderfully.
On came the coach, its yellow lamps leaping like alarmed eyes as it rocked perilously, all haste and commotion—yet soundless. The snow and the wind muffled all. It might have been a spectral equipage, already lost some way back and only its spirit persisting.
Now it
was close enough for Smith to pick out the coachman’s features—his one-time master in the Vine Street yard. He heard the horses thumping in the snow and the harness groan and creak in the angry singing of the air. Still he waited. The coach drew level . . .
A friendly gust of wind whipped and whirled and sent stinging flakes into the coachman’s face and eyes. Smith moved quickly; he seized hold on the door; dragged it open—
“Who’s there? Who is it?” Mr. Mansfield’s voice, angry and alarmed, was swallowed up in the wind.
Smith reached within. He clutched at a coat sleeve—a wrist—a hand—and pulled with all his might.
“My God! My God!”
Out heaved the blind man, falling with the tilt of the coach into the muffling snow.
“For God’s sake, who is it? What d’you want with me?”
Smith, still holding tight, did not answer. Instead, he dragged him down into the drifts by the side of the road while the untenanted coach—its door swinging helpless, like a one-armed soldier’s sleeve—quaked and jolted on.
Again the blind man cried out and Smith fixed his hand over the betraying mouth and, in a whisper no man could have recognized, breathed: “Quiet—if you values yore life!”
Twenty yards on the coach rocked to a halt. It had been accosted and pistols pointed the way to the coachman’s brains.
The wind whipped familiar voices back to where the snow was fast hiding Smith and his prisoner.
“The lousy coach is empty!”
“Thank the Lord!” (The coachman.)
“That boy of your’n—Lord piddling Tom!—he’s beat us to it.”
“Friends!” (Lord piddling Tom.) “I swear I did what I could—”
“Not enough—not enough! You should have slit his mean throat—you green windbag!”
“Friends—friends! How was I to know—”
“You swore you’d fix him!”
“And so I meant to! I swear it!”
“Swear it to Mister Black! If he gives you leave! You’ll bleed for this!”
“No! No! They must be near at hand! Let’s search!”
“In this great ’owling blizzard?”
“Yes—yes!”
“We’ve had experience afore! Your little rat near killed us once with chasing him!”
(Smith, in concealment, couldn’t restrain a beam of pride.)
“Then what’s to be done?”
“On to Mister Black in the morning. That’s what.”
“But—but—”
“ ‘But’ to yore heart’s content, fat man. Yore day’s done. You blotted yore book. Maybe with blood, eh?”
“The coach! The coach!”
While they’d been thus engaged, the coachman had taken advantage. He’d whipped his horses and yelled them into a frenzy. Already, the coach heaved and plunged on its way!
“Stop, you fool! Stop—or you’re dead!” Lord Tom raised his pistol—aimed—and fired. A cry from ahead. The coachman, high up, clutched at his side and began to slip . . . then he seemed to recover himself partly . . . and was lost from sight behind a clump of trees. When the coach reappeared, still lumbering fast, there was nothing on the box but a heavy, jerking shape that, any moment, would fail by the wayside, unheeded.
Smith, in his excitement, had withdrawn his hand from the magistrate’s mouth.
“Is he—is he—killed?” whispered Mr. Mansfield.
Smith did not answer. Instead, with bitter, lonely eyes, he watched the three figures turn and begin their climb up the hill. Then he stood up, brushed the accumulated snow from the magistrate’s shoulders and head, and pulled him to his feet.
Four miles to the north lay Prickler’s Hill. Smith set his face in that direction and, with his hand firmly about the blind man’s wrist, began to walk. And the snow came down like a disaster . . .
16
THEY MADE POOR PROGRESS: in two hours something less than three-quarters of a mile. Every once in a while the boy would turn his back to the weather and face the blind man, drawing him on and, at the same time, seeming to retreat under the impassive stare of the snow-stained face. For there was no doubt the blind man sensed the scrutiny of unseen eyes (or did he feel warm breath softening the bitter wind?) and, as was his old habit, emptied his face of all telltale expression . . . Then the boy would grunt and turn about—to plod on into the scourging snow.
Sometimes, when they passed among the heavily bandaged trees, the wind would dislodge snow from the lower branches so that it thumped down, knocking the breath out of the two travelers and forcing them to halt for recovery. Then the blind man would once more ask his guide who he was and why he’d saved him and was leading him through this huge and bitter night. Perhaps he knew? It was hard to say.
“Very well, then—speak . . . anything . . . anything at all. Or are you dumb? A fine pair—we two! One with no tongue to tell what he sees—and the other with no eyes to see what’s worth the telling. A humorous pair! Well, then—if you won’t speak, sing!”
But Smith uttered never a word. He was deeply frightened of the magistrate’s mania for justice. He dreaded that the blind man would give him up at the first opportunity. So let him think it’s a perishing angel what’s leading ’im, thought Smith and held his tongue.
At seven o’clock the snow began to abate—though the wind did not—and a great clearness and brilliancy settled upon the landscape, across which the boy and the blind man seemed to be the only moving things.
The magistrate, having worn out his conversation, turned to singing and chanting (maybe in the hope that his silent guide would join in and betray himself).
“ ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ ”
You said it! thought Smith, plodding on.
“ ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures—’ ”
You should see ’em! mouthed Smith with fierce irony. He blinked about him; the hills were white and the valleys were white, likewise the slopes between . . . The sky alone offered relief, being of a velvety blackness, pricked out with some fifteen or twenty frosty stars.
“ ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies—’ ” Smith scowled through his windy tears for he’d not eaten that day.
The thought struck him that Mr. Mansfield knew who he was all the time and was subtly mocking him—till the chance should offer of giving him up. Certainly, everything the blind man said seemed now to be cruelly humorous—and he said a great deal! Songs and poems and lumps of the Scriptures came puffing out of his mouth with much issue of smoking breath. This was Mr. Mansfield’s stock-in-trade—his vision of the world, seen through other men’s eyes who’d digested their vision into words, and it made him a supper to last all of his life.
His own memories of what the world looked like, he no longer trusted. He was a sensible man and knew full well the changes that must have been wrought since last he’d looked. His beloved daughter could no longer have been the fearful child caught in the fire he’d remembered for so long. Even the Town itself he knew to be much changed for everywhere he heard sounds of building and of tumbling and of men losing their way. Even Nature herself he suspected of aging—and the wind and the cold seemed crueler than he recalled.
Maybe, even, they were breeding a new style of boy, now? He smiled—or tried to, but his cheeks were partly frozen. The child, Smith, for instance . . . He frowned as he recalled the powerful evidence against him. No. Whatever else might alter, justice remained fixed—like God Himself. Justice: the last refuge of a blind man.
Suddenly, he felt the grip on his wrist disappear. Frightened, he stopped, turning his face this way and that in the lonely wind. Had he been left? Oh God! Why?
Smith, beaten breathless by the weather—with a lock of his black hair (his hat was in Mr. Bob’s) frozen solid so’s it banged against his forehead like a door-knocker, was suddenly attacked by common sense. The old mole-in-the-hole was not changed. Stern and cold was his face—colder even than the snow that spotted it
. Smith was not leading him; he was leading Smith—back into the horrible house of bondage! A thousand windy voices shouted in his ears, bidding him leave the old Justice and begone. The world was a freezing, lonely place. No one would give Smith quarter in it. Not his sisters, not his treacherous friend—and, least of all, the stern-faced magistrate. Not even the howling weather!
Further and further off backed Smith, amazed by his own madness in coming thus far. He stared at the stark, menacing form of the blind man with his stony heart.
Take, take, take! And never give nought in return! I’m done with you!
And then, as Smith watched, the blind man raised his hands. He turned about, tried to take a step, stumbled, recovered himself and cried out: “Am I alone? Am I alone?”
His face, though much limited in expression by his shrouded eyes, was suddenly, and deeply, wretched. A desolate face, bespeaking a starved soul. That soul of his had been nourished on thin fare, these past twelve years, and it had grown weak without his knowing it, so that, when the wind blew, it bowed as if to break. And the wind blew as hard for the blind man as it did for the boy.
“You old blind Justice, you!” mumbled Smith, lurching back to Mr. Mansfield. “Give us your hand, then!”
The magistrate stretched out his hands, and nature made strange amends for a certain disability of his. Snow, dislodged from his spectacles and fallen against his eyes, had begun to melt so that water trickled down his cheeks as if he was doing what he could not: weeping.
Bewildered, Smith gazed on Mr. Mansfield’s melting face. He took both the outstretched hands.
“Here—here, then. Both me hands. You ain’t alone, Mister Mansfield—nor never was. I—I was only resting—”
“Smith—Smith—Smith!” cried the blind man, grasping in return the hands he’d never forgotten. “Your voice at last! How I longed to hear it!”
“You knew it was me, then?”
“Yes—yes!”
“Then—why didn’t you say?”
“You didn’t want me to know, did you?”
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