Starvecrow Farm Read online

  CHAPTER XIX

  AT THE FARM

  It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-placeat Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now onWalterson's brooding face as he stooped over the heat, now on thehuddled shrunken form that filled the farther side of the hearth. Asthe flames rose and fell, the shadows of the two men dancedwhimsically behind them. At one moment they sprang up, darkening thewhole smoke-grimed ceiling and seeming to menace the persons who gavethem birth, at another they sank into mere hop-o'-my-thumbs, lurkingin ambush behind the furniture. There was no other light in the room;it was rarely the old skinflint suffered another. And to-night theshutters were closed and barred that even the reflection of the blazemight not be seen without and breed suspicion.

  The younger man's face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed notonly his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear andbrooding. He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was nolonger the dandy who had turned a feather-head--for there was littlein this place to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense hadsharpened his features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old,and the shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longerfloated on their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritabilityshowed in his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silencethe old man's crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moodydepression. It was bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole withan imbecile driveller, and to spend long hours without other company.It was worse to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, andthe peril which he had so long and so cleverly evaded yawned for him.

  To do Walterson justice, it was not entirely for his own safety thathe was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened--starting at thesqueak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of afriend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled toruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intentionhe had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not facewithout a shudder what might be happening at this moment by thewaterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girlescaped there, would happen here; when they dragged her through thedoorway, bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen whodominated him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they didthey would do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight ofit. For if they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, howloathly a figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor anddastardly a thing he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will hedid and to whose vengeance he consented.

  The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked withterrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was alreadyplaying, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met herlook. Passionately he wished--as we all wish in like but smallercases--that he had never seen either of the women, that he had neverplayed the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen someother direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing wasuseless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, wouldnot relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would notconvert the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. Andeven while he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside,and he stood up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on theshutter, informed him that the crisis which he had been expecting anddreading, was come--was come!

  Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, wasalready on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog faceopened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wallwas scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thickdrugget shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall mancloaked and booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meanerappearance. The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, abundle--Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess withthe same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure thedoor against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up thechimney, the cloaked man addressed him.

  "You're Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we've met--once, I think. Well," hespoke in a harsh, peremptory tone--"you'll be good enough to note," heturned and pointed to the other men, "that I have naught to do withthis! I've neither hand nor part in it! And I'll ask you to rememberthat."

  Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the manwith the bundle.

  "What is it?" he muttered hoarsely. "I don't understand."

  "Oh, stow this!" Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which shehad secured. "The gentleman is very grand and mighty," shrugging hershoulders, "but the thing is done now. And I'll warrant if good comesof it he'll not be too proud to take his share."

  "Not _I_, girl!" the tall man answered. "Not I!"

  He took off as he spoke his cloak and hat, and showed a tall, angularfigure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long,and his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features wasredeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which wasnever long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speechand manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors.And not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemedin his presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.

  His two companions were stout, short-built men of a coarse type. ButWalterson after a single glance, paid no heed to them. His eyes, histhoughts, his attention were all on the bundle. Yet, it was notpossible, it could not be what he dreaded. It was too small, toosmall! And yet he shuddered.

  "What is it?" he asked in uncertain accents.

  "The worth of a man's neck, may be," one of the two men grunted.

  "Oh, curse your may-be's!" the other who carried the child struck in."It's a smart bit of justice, master, with no may-be about it! Andcame in our way just when we were ready for it. Let's look at thekid."

  "The kid?"

  Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. Helooked at Thistlewood.

  The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged hissquare 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 SquireClyne's, if you must know. He'll learn now what it is to see yourchildren trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut withsabres! 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. "IfI don't think, mate, you've squeezed his throat a bit too tight!"

  He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimateform of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thinbloodless hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes werehalf-closed; and the tiny face showed so deathly white--among thosetanned faces and in that grimy place--that it was not wonderful thatthe 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 oftenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children buttheir own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkledwater on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Waltersonfound his voice.

  "What folly--what cursed folly is this?" he cried, his words vibratingwith rage. "What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, orthis d----d folly--that you should bring the hunt upon us? We weresnug 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!" Waltersonrejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, "if that child isSquire 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 c
ountry on us before noon to-morrow!"Walterson retorted. "I tell you he'll follow you and track you andfind 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 asanother."

  "You can leave my neck out of the question," Thistlewood replied. "Andme!" And he turned his back on them contemptuously.

  "Well, you've got a neck," Giles answered, addressing Walterson, whowas almost hysterical with rage. "And I suppose you have some care forit, if he has none!" with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood'sdirection. "You'd as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, Isuppose?"

  "Sooner," Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover."Here, let me teach him," she continued bluntly; the child had begunto murmur in a low, painful note. "They came on the kid by chance andsnatched it, and we've put ten miles of water between the place andus."

  "And snow on the ground!" Walterson retorted, pointing to the thinpowder 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-whitefancy-girl never came. She'd more sense than I thought she had. Butyou were willing to snatch her, my lad. And why is the risk greaterwith the child?"

  "But----"

  "It's less," the girl continued, before he could put his objectioninto words. "It's less, I tell you, for the child's more easily tuckedaway. I've a place we can put it, where they'll not find it if theysearch for a twelvemonth!"

  "They'll soon search here," he said sullenly. "There's not a housethey'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 notbe 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 wordsand you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there's areward out, and what he'll suffer if he is found hiding us, and whenhe knows that all the country is up--and for this child they'd hang uson the nearest tree--he'll give us up and you too. Though you do thinkyou have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!" he addedpassionately.

  With a dark look, "Stow it, my lad," she said, as he paused for wantof 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 shouldbe 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'twant to be sold."

  "I am of that way of thinking myself, captain," Lunt growled. "If theman has no finger between the jamb and the door, you can't be surethat he won't shut it. No, curse me, you can't! There's other Oliversbesides him who has sold a round dozen of us to Government. I'll slitthe throat of the first police spy that comes in my way!"

  "And yet you trust me!" the girl flung at him, her eyes scornful. Toher they all, all seemed cowards.

  "Ay, but you are a woman," Giles answered. "And though I'm not sayingthere's no Polly Peachums, I've not come across them. Treat a maidfair and she'll treat you fair, that's the common way of it. She'llnot stretch you, for anything short of another wench. But a man! He'shere 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 keephis skin safe--for a week. He's like a good many more I know," with aglance which embraced every man in the room: "willing to eat butafraid 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 daysold."

  "What! And no woman with her?"

  "There was," Bess answered, "but there isn't. I quarrelled with theserving-lass this afternoon, and at sunset to-day she was to go. Ifshe comes back to-morrow I'll send her packing with a flea in herear!"

  "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 answeredcontemptuously. "She's a pale, fat caterpillar, afraid of her ownshadow! She'll whine a bit, for she don't love me--thinks I'll poisonher some fine day for the sake of her man. But she's upstairs andthere's no one, but nor ben, to hear her whine; and at daybreak I'llbe there, tending her. Isn't it the natural thing," and she smileddarkly, "with this the nearest house?"

  "Curse me, but you're a clever lass!" Giles cried. And evenThistlewood seemed to feel no pity for the poor woman, left helplesswith her babe. "I don't know," the ruffian continued, "that I'm notalmost 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 aplace--it's not of the brightest, but it'll do, and you must lie theredays--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 herefor ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid'llstay here until you're safe. And if you don't come safe, he's a cardyou'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'sgame, this!"

  "Gentleman be hanged!" cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. "Do youcall"--with temper--"what you were for this morning a gentleman'sgame? Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table agentleman's game?"

  "It's our lives against theirs!" Thistlewood answered with a sombreglance. "And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breedswrong," he continued, his voice rising--as if already he spoke in hisdefence. "Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us downat Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they mustbe removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head andfront of offence, the head and front of this damnable system underwhich no man that's worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man doesright! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen atthe top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that findthe money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearfuland 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 thethroats of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I'd cut thethroats of so many calves! And sooner, by G--d! Sooner! But formessing with children I'll none of it! I've said my say." And heturned again to the fire.

  The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed himstrangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but hiscourage. Here was what she had sighed for--a man! Here was what shethought that she had found in Walterson--a man! And Walterson himselfapproved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speakout 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'swords.

  "Ah, but we've got necks as well as you!" Giles muttered. "And if werisk 'em to please you, we'll save 'em the way we please!"

  Then, "Look at the kid!" Lunt muttered. "He's hearing too much, andpicking 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 byhim, fell upon the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scenewith a look of silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more thanone. Had the boy wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given wayto 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 itfor a nuisance. But this passive terror, this self-restraint at sotender an age, struck the men as unnatural, and taken with its smallelfish 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 bysuch notions--and, "You eat that, do you hear!" the girl said. "Orwe'll give you to that old man there," pointing with an undutifulfinger to the squalid figure of the old miser. "And he'll take you tohis bogey-hole!"

  The child shook pitifully, and the fear in its eyes deepened as itregarded the loathsome old man. With a sigh that seemed to rend thelittle heart, it took the iron spoon, and strove to swallow. The spoontinkled 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, ifthey 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 hecast on the mercy of the ogres he saw about him. As he lookedfearfully round the gloomy, fire-lit room with its lights and blackshadows, a single large tear rolled from each eye and fell into thecoarse earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke.Then he went on eating.