Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. He looked at Thistlewood.
The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged his square shoulders.
“I’ve naught to do with it!” he said. “Ask them!”
“Don’t you know what a kid is?” Giles, one of the two others, retorted, with a glance of contempt. “A kinchin! a yelper! It’s Squire Clyne’s, if you must know. He’ll learn now what it is to see your children trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut with sabres! He’s ground the faces of the poor long enough! D —— n him, he’s as bad as Castlereagh, the devil! But, hallo!” breaking off. “If I don’t think, mate, you’ve squeezed his throat a bit too tight!”
He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimate form of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thin bloodless hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes were half-closed; and the tiny face showed so deathly white — among those tanned faces and in that grimy place — that it was not wonderful that the man fancied for a moment that the child was dead.
But, “Not I!” the one who had carried it answered contemptuously. “It’s swooned, like enough. And I’d to stop it shrieking, hadn’t I? Let the lass look to it.”
Bess took it but reluctantly — with an ill grace and no look of tenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children but their own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkled water on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Walterson found his voice.
“What folly — what cursed folly is this?” he cried, his words vibrating with rage. “What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, or this d —— d folly — that you should bring the hunt upon us? We were snug here.”
“And ain’t we snug now?” Lunt, the man who had carried the child, asked.
“Snug? We’ll be snug behind bars in twenty-four hours!” Walterson rejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, “if that child is Squire Clyne’s child!”
“Oh, he’s that right enough, master,” Giles, the other man, struck in. A kind of ferocious irony was natural to him.
“Then you’ll have the whole country on us before noon to-morrow!” Walterson retorted. “I tell you he’ll follow you and track you and find you, if he follows you to hell’s gate! I know the man.”
“So do I,” said Thistlewood coolly. “And I say the same.”
“Yet,” Giles retorted impudently, “you’ve got a neck as well as another.”
“You can leave my neck out of the question,” Thistlewood replied. “And me!” And he turned his back on them contemptuously.
“Well, you’ve got a neck,” Giles answered, addressing Walterson, who was almost hysterical with rage. “And I suppose you have some care for it, if he has none!” with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood’s direction. “You’d as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, I suppose?”
“Sooner,” Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover. “Here, let me teach him,” she continued bluntly; the child had begun to murmur in a low, painful note. “They came on the kid by chance and snatched it, and we’ve put ten miles of water between the place and us.”
“And snow on the ground!” Walterson retorted, pointing to the thin powder that still lay white in the folds of her shawl.
“We came up through the wood,” she answered. “Trust us for that! But that’s not the point. The point is, that your pink-and-white fancy-girl never came. She’d more sense than I thought she had. But you were willing to snatch her, my lad. And why is the risk greater with the child?”
“But — —”
“It’s less,” the girl continued, before he could put his objection into words. “It’s less, I tell you, for the child’s more easily tucked away. I’ve a place we can put it, where they’ll not find it if they search for a twelvemonth!”
“They’ll soon search here,” he said sullenly. “There’s not a house they’ll not search if they trace the boat. Nor a bothy on the hills.”
“May be,” she answered confidently. “But when they search you’ll not be here, nor the kid. Nor in a bothy!”
“If you are going to trust Tyson — —”
“You leave that to me,” she replied, bending her brows.
But he was not to be silenced.
“He’ll sell you!” he cried. “He’ll sell you! He’ll give you fair words and you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there’s a reward out, and what he’ll suffer if he is found hiding us, and when he knows that all the country is up — and for this child they’d hang us on the nearest tree — he’ll give us up and you too. Though you do think you have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!” he added passionately.
With a dark look, “Stow it, my lad,” she said, as he paused for want of breath. “And leave Tyson to me.”
But the men who had listened to the debate looked something startled. They glanced at one another, and at last Thistlewood spoke.
“Is this Tyson,” he asked, “the man at whose house you said we should be better than here, my girl?”
“That’s him,” Bess answered curtly.
“Well, it seems to me that you ought to tell us a bit more. I don’t want to be sold.”
“I am of that way of thinking myself, captain,” Lunt growled. “If the man has no finger between the jamb and the door, you can’t be sure that he won’t shut it. No, curse me, you can’t! There’s other Olivers besides him who has sold a round dozen of us to Government. I’ll slit the throat of the first police spy that comes in my way!”
“And yet you trust me!” the girl flung at him, her eyes scornful. To her they all, all seemed cowards.
“Ay, but you are a woman,” Giles answered. “And though I’m not saying there’s no Polly Peachums, I’ve not come across them. Treat a maid fair and she’ll treat you fair, that’s the common way of it. She’ll not stretch you, for anything short of another wench. But a man! He’s here and there and nowhere.”
“That’s just where this man is,” she answered curtly.
“Where?”
“Nowhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s cut his lucky. He’s gone to Carlisle to see his brother and keep his skin safe — for a week. He’s like a good many more I know,” with a glance which embraced every man in the room: “willing to eat but afraid to bite.”
“But he has left his house?”
“That’s it.”
“And who’s in it?”
“His wife, no one else. And she’s bedridden with a babby, seven days old.”
“What! And no woman with her?”
“There was,” Bess answered, “but there isn’t. I quarrelled with the serving-lass this afternoon, and at sunset to-day she was to go. If she comes back to-morrow I’ll send her packing with a flea in her ear!”
“But who — —”
“Gave me leave to send her?” defiantly. “He did.”
Thistlewood smiled.
“And the wife?” he asked. “What’ll she say?”
“Say? She’d not say boh to a goose if it hissed at her!” Bess answered contemptuously. “She’s a pale, fat caterpillar, afraid of her own shadow! She’ll whine a bit, for she don’t love me — thinks I’ll poison her some fine day for the sake of her man. But she’s upstairs and there’s no one, but nor ben, to hear her whine; and at daybreak I’ll be there, tending her. Isn’t it the natural thing,” and she smiled darkly, “with this the nearest house?”
“Curse me, but you’re a clever lass!” Giles cried. And even Thistlewood seemed to feel no pity for the poor woman, left helpless with her babe. “I don’t know,” the ruffian continued, “that I’m not almost afraid of you myself!”
“And you think that house will not be searched?”
“Why should it be searched?” Bess answered. “Tyson’s well known. And if they do search it,” she continued confidently, “there’s a place — it’s not of the brightes
t, but it’ll do, and you must lie there days — that they’ll not find if they search till Doomsday!”
Walterson alone eyed her gloomily.
“And what is the child in this?” he said.
“The kid, my lad? Why, everything. You fine gentlemen can’t stay here for ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid’ll stay here until you’re safe. And if you don’t come safe, he’s a card you’ll be glad to have the use of to clear your necks, my lads!”
Thistlewood turned on his heel again.
“I’ll none of it,” he said, dark and haughty. “It’s no gentleman’s game, this!”
“Gentleman be hanged!” cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. “Do you call” — with temper— “what you were for this morning a gentleman’s game? Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table a gentleman’s game?”
“It’s our lives against theirs!” Thistlewood answered with a sombre glance. “And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breeds wrong,” he continued, his voice rising — as if already he spoke in his defence. “Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us down at Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they must be removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head and front of offence, the head and front of this damnable system under which no man that’s worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man does right! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen at the top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that find the money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearful and fond of ease — and that’s nine parts of the country! For myself,” extending his arms in a gesture of menace, “I’d as soon cut the throats of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I’d cut the throats of so many calves! And sooner, by G — d! Sooner! But for messing with children I’ll none of it! I’ve said my say.” And he turned again to the fire.
The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed him strangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but his courage. Here was what she had sighed for — a man! Here was what she thought that she had found in Walterson — a man! And Walterson himself approved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speak out where he with his life at stake dared not. The thing was cruel, was dastardly. But then — it might save his neck! For the others, they were too low, too brutish to be much moved by Thistlewood’s words.
“Ah, but we’ve got necks as well as you!” Giles muttered. “And if we risk ‘em to please you, we’ll save ‘em the way we please!”
Then, “Look at the kid!” Lunt muttered. “He’s hearing too much, and picking it up. Stow it for now!”
The girl turned to the child which she had laid on the bed. Thistlewood had knocked the fire together, and the blaze, passing by him, fell upon the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scene with a look of silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more than one. Had the boy wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given way to childish panic and tried to flee, they had thought nothing of it. They had twitched it back, hushed it by blow or threat, and cursed it for a nuisance. But this passive terror, this self-restraint at so tender an age, struck the men as unnatural, and taken with its small elfish features awoke qualms in the more superstitious.
“Curse the child!” said one, staring at it. “I think it’s bewitched!”
“See if it will eat,” said another. “Bewitched children never eat.”
Some bread was fetched and milk put to it — though Bess set nothing by such notions — and, “You eat that, do you hear!” the girl said. “Or we’ll give you to that old man there,” pointing with an undutiful finger to the squalid figure of the old miser. “And he’ll take you to his bogey-hole!”
The child shook pitifully, and the fear in its eyes deepened as it regarded the loathsome old man. With a sigh that seemed to rend the little heart, it took the iron spoon, and strove to swallow. The spoon tinkled violently against the bowl.
“I’ll manage him,” Bess said with a look of triumph. “You will see, I’ll have him so in two days that he’ll not dare to say who he is, if they do find him! You leave him to me, and I’ll sort the little imp!”
Perhaps the child knew that he had fallen among his father’s enemies. Perhaps he knew only that in a second his world was overset and he cast on the mercy of the ogres he saw about him. As he looked fearfully round the gloomy, fire-lit room with its lights and black shadows, a single large tear rolled from each eye and fell into the coarse earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke. Then he went on eating.
CHAPTER XX
PROOF POSITIVE
Anthony Clyne had made no moan, but, both in his pride and his better feelings, he had suffered more than the world thought through Henrietta’s elopement. He was not in love with the girl whom he had chosen for his second wife and the mother of his motherless child. But no man likes to be jilted. No man, even the man least in love, can bear with indifference or without mortification the slur which the woman’s desertion casts on him. At best there are invitations to be cancelled, and servants to be informed, and plans to be altered; the condolences of some and the smiles of others are to be faced. And many troubles and much bitterness. The very boy, the apple of his eye and the core of his heart, had to be told — something.
And Anthony Clyne was proud. No man in Lancashire set more by his birth and station, or had a stronger sense of his personal dignity; so that in doing all these things he suffered. He suffered much. Nor did it end with that. His own world knew him, and took care not to provoke him by a tactless word or an inquisitive question. But the operatives in his neighbourhood, who hated him and feared him, and thanked God for aught that hurt him, gibed him openly. Taunts and jests were flung after him in the streets of Manchester; and men whose sweethearts had been flung down or roughly used on the day of Peterloo inquired after his sweetheart as he passed before the mills.
But he made no sign. And no one dreamed that the suffering went farther than the man’s pride, or touched his heart. Yet it did. Not that he loved the girl; but because she was of his race, and because her own branch of the family cast her off, and because the man with whom she had fled could do nothing to protect her from the consequences of her folly. For these reasons — and a little because of a secret nobility in his own character — he suffered vicariously; he felt himself responsible for her. And the responsibility seemed more heavy after he had seen her; after he had borne away from Windermere the picture of the girl left pale and proud and lonely by the lake side.
For her figure haunted him. It rose before him in the most troublesome fashion and at the most improper times; at sessions when he sat among his peers, or at his dinner-table in the middle of a tirade against the radicals and Cobbett. It touched him in the least expected and most tender points; awaking the strongest doubts of himself, and his conduct, and his wisdom that he had ever entertained. It barbed the dart of “It might have been” with the rankling suspicion that he had himself to thank for failure. And where at first he had said in his haste that she deserved two dozen, he now remembered her defence, and added gloomily, “Or I! Or I!” The thought of her fate — as of a thing for which he was responsible — thrust itself upon him in season and out of season. He could not put her out of his mind, he could not refrain from dwelling on her. And thinking in this way he grew every day less content with the scheme of life which he had framed for her in his first contempt for her. The notion of her union with Mr. Sutton, good, worthy man as he deemed the chaplain, now jarred on him unpleasantly. And more and more the scheme showed itself in another light than that in which he had first viewed it.
Such was his state of mind, unsettled if not unhappy, and harassed if not remorseful, when a second thunderclap burst above his head, and in a moment destroyed even the memory of these minor troubles. He loved his child with the love of the proud and lonely man who loves more jealously where others pity, and clings more closely where others loo
k askance. A fig for their pity! he cried in his heart. He would so rear his child, he would so cherish him, he would so foster his mind, that in spite of bodily defect this latest of the Clynes should be also the greatest. And while he foresaw this future in the child and loved him for the hope, he loved him immeasurably more for his weakness, his helplessness, his frailty in the present. All that was strong in the man of firm will and stiff prejudice went out to the child in a passionate yearning to protect it; to shield it from unfriendly looks, even from pity; to cover it from the storms of the world and of life.
Personally a brave man Clyne feared nothing for himself. The hatred in which he was held by a certain class came to his ears from time to time in threatening murmurs, but though those who knew best were loudest in warning, he paid no heed. He continued to do what he held to be his duty. Yet if anything had had power to turn him from his path it had been fear on his son’s account; it had been the very, very small share which the boy must take in his peril. And so, at the first hint he had removed the child from the zone of trouble, and sent him to a place which he fancied safe; a place which the boy loved, and in the quiet of which health as well as safety might be gained. If the name of Clyne was hated where spindles whirled and shuttles flew, and men lived their lives under a pall of black smoke, it was loved in Cartmel by farmer and shepherd alike; and not less by the rude charcoal-burners who plied their craft in the depths of the woods about Staveley and Broughton in Furness.
On that side he thought himself secure. And so the blow fell with all the force of the unexpected. The summons of the panic-stricken servants found him in his bed; and it was a man who hardly contained himself, who hardly contained his fury and his threats, who without breaking his fast rode north. It was a hard-faced, stern man who crossed the sands at Cartmel at great risk — but he had known them all his life — and won at Carter’s Green the first spark of comfort and hope which he had had since rising. Nadin was before him. Nadin was in pursuit, — Nadin, by whom all that was Tory in Lancashire swore. Surely an accident so opportune, a stroke of mercy and providence so unlikely — for the odds against the officer’s presence were immense — could not be unmeant, could not be for nothing! It seemed, it must be of good augury! But when Clyne reached his house in Cartmel, and the terrified nurse who knew the depth of his love for the boy grovelled before him, the household had no added hope to give him, no news or clue. And he could but go forward. His horse was spent, but they brought him a tenant’s colt, and after eating a few mouthfuls he pressed on up the lake side towards Bowness, attended by a handful of farmers’ sons who had not followed on the first alarm.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 487