A Little Wizard Read online

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE MEAL CHEST.

  It was high noon, and the sun shone hotly on the hillside where thetwo lay. The rim of the hollow which sheltered them from hostile eyeskept off also such light breezes as were blowing, and served tocollect and focus the burning rays. Jack panted and fanned himself,longing for shade and water, and cool sounds. But no thought ofdeserting his brother occurred to his mind. When Frank looked up atlast, after drinking three long draughts from his queer blackjack, hefound the lad had gone bravely back to his post of espial, and wassearching the moor with diligent eyes.

  Wonder and astonishment stirred afresh in the hunted man's breast."Why, Jack, lad," he said, gazing at him as if he now for the firsttime comprehended the full strangeness of his presence; "how come youto be here? I thought you were safe at Pattenhall, thirty miles off."

  "Gridley brought me," Jack answered, lowering his voice cautiously.

  "Old Gridley! He did, did he! He is a rogue if ever there was one. Butwhy did he bring you? And why here?"

  Jack explained, as far as his knowledge went; which was not far.Frank's worldly wisdom, gained in a hard school, helped him to therest.

  "I see," he replied, nodding darkly. "The old schemer had his ownreasons for a sudden flitting. And he thought it a fine stroke to getpossession of you, in case our cause and his Majesty's should comeuppermost again--as, please Heaven, it will now. But you had betterhave stopped at Pattenhall, Jack," Frank continued gravely. "Thosecrop-eared knaves must have done something for you. They don't fightwith children, to do them justice."

  "Still, I am glad I came, Frank," Jack said softly.

  "So am I, lad," his brother answered. "That water and you saved mylife. I could not have held out till night, and I should not haveknown where to turn for it myself. But we are being scorched here, andthe buzzing of the bees goes through my head. You said something of ayew wood? It sounds better. Could I crawl there without being seen,think you?"

  Jack told him, sliding down eagerly, how he had come and gone, anddescribed the position of the fissure in the moss.

  "The very thing!" the fugitive cried, his face lighting up. "I knowthe kind of thing. There are no better hiding, places. They turn andtwist and throw off a dozen branches. And the nearer the house, ifthese Gridleys are Parliament men, the better. They will not besuspected of hiding malignants. Is the coast clear?"

  Jack answered in the affirmative, and eagerly led the way, his brothercrawling after him, through bracken and under gorse-bushes, and overhot patches of turf where the sun grilled them, until the edge of therift was safely gained. Here Frank fell over at once into the cooldepth, and then standing up helped Jack down. The shade and thefeeling of moisture which prevailed in this under-world were sowelcome that for a moment the two stood leaning against the dark wall,the overhanging edge of peat effectually protecting them from thesun's rays. The chasm at this point was about eight feet deep and sixwide; the bottom of a dull white color, with water percolating overit. Away to the right it grew more shallow, and after throwing outnumerous channels, rose at last to the level of the moor it drained.To the left it grew deeper, attaining a depth of twelve or fourteenfeet where it opened on the ravine behind the house.

  "Good!" Frank said, looking round him with sombre satisfaction. "I canfind a dozen hiding-places here, and lie as snug and cool in themeantime as a nymph in a grot. The rogues are lazy, or they would haveclimbed the brow an hour ago. They will not do so now. One thing onlyremains, and that is the question of food."

  "I will fetch some!" Jack cried impetuously.

  "Yes, but softly," his brother answered, laying his hand on his arm,and restraining him. "It is past dinner-time, and you will have beenmissed, my lad. There will be strange eyes in the house, and you willnot find it so easy to slip away again unnoticed. Whatever you do,bide your time. I shall not starve for a bit; but if I am taken--and acareless word or a hasty step may bring these gentry upon us--they maygive me quarter; and little gain to me!--a drum-head court-martial forbreach of parole will do the rest."

  His face grew hard, and instead of meeting the boy's eyes he lookeddownward and moodily kicked a lump of peat with his foot. Jack longedto ask the meaning of that phrase "breach of parole" which he hadheard so often of late in connection with his brother's name. He didnot dare to put the question, but his patience was presently rewarded,for Frank began to speak again, not to him, but to himself.

  "A promise!" he muttered, his face still dark. "A promise undercompulsion is no promise. If I promised not to bear arms for the kingagain, it was a promise made to rebels, and against my duty andtheirs, and was null and void from the beginning! Who shall say it wasnot, or that my honor was concerned in it? Still, these Roundheads, ifthey catch me, will fling it in my face! And Duke Hamilton lookedcoldly on me. I would, after all," he added, in a voice still louder,"that I had not taken Goring's advice."

  What Goring had advised was so clear, though Frank said no more, thatJack looked at his brother with his eyes full of sympathy. He saw,with the astonishing clearness which children possess, that Frank'sconscience was ill at ease--so ill at ease that the mere thought ofhis broken parole, now it was too late to undo the wrong, brought allthat was hard, and fierce, and desperate in his nature to the surface,mingling a kind of ferocity with his native courage, and convertinghardihood into recklessness. Comprehending this, the lad gazed at himwith a face full of timid sympathy; until Frank, awakening from hisabsent fit, glanced suddenly up and met his look.

  "What! have you not gone?" he said roughly, and with a reddeningcheek. "You do not help me by staring at me like a dead pig! If youcan get food, no matter what it is, don't bring it here. You may befollowed. Lay it down at the opening of this rat-run, where you enterit from the house. I shall find it when the coast is clear."

  His manner was changed, and Jack would have been more than mortal ifhe had not felt the change. It hurt and disappointed him sorely;coming just when he had done all he could. But he hid his chagrin,and, turning obediently away, set off without a word down the rift,and thence through the wood of yews, where the sheltering gloom wasnow as welcome to him as it had been before alarming. As he approachedthe house, however, and the immediate necessity of facing MistressGridley and the brothers with an unmoved countenance forced itselfupon him, he paused involuntarily, trembling under the sense of suddenfear which beset him. The horrible events of the morning, the cries ofthe men whom he had seen cut down on the moor, his brother's danger,and the consequences of a hapless word, all rushed into his mindtogether, and for the moment, if the word may be used of so young achild, unmanned him. Clutching the trunk of the last tree he had topass, he leaned against it in a very ague of terror; afraid to goforward, shaking at the very thought of going forward and facing thoseunfriendly eyes, yet knowing that if he would save his brother, if hewould not shame his blood and breeding, he must go forward.

  He leaned against it in a very ague of terror.--Page75.]

  While he stood in this agony--for it was nothing less--butler Gridley,loitering about the back-door with thoughts and for a purpose of hisown, espied him; and with a stealthy foot and a glance in thedirection of the house, made towards him. The least observant eye musthave detected the boy's terror, or seen at least that he was laboringunder some strange emotion. But Gridley's eyes were not observant atall; they were only hungry. He had fasted against his will fortwenty-four hours, and his plump cheeks were pallid. He had a wolfwithin him that demanded all his attention. He saw in the boy only ameans of satisfying his craving.

  "Jack!" he whispered, with his lips almost at the boy's ear and hiseyes devouring his face, "I have always been good to you. I want youto do something. It is a little thing," he repeated feverishly. "It isa nothing. Just----"

  He had got so far--and alas! for him, no farther--when a harsh,discordant laugh behind him caused him to straighten himself as if anunseen hand had propelled him. "Let the child alone!" Mistre
ss Gridleycried from the door; "do you hear me? I will have no plotting andcolloguing in my house! And do you, Jack, come here!"

  There was a world of sarcasm in the woman's gibing tone; and it cutthe butler like a knife. He crept away with a savage glare in hiseyes. The boy went slowly to the door with thoughts happily divertedfrom the weighty issues which had a moment before overburdened him.The incident was, indeed, his salvation; for, though the woman couldnot fail to remark his embarrassment, she naturally set it down to thewrong cause, supposing merely that the butler had been trying tocorrupt him.

  "Where have you been all day?" she cried roughly, hustling him intothe house--so violently that he stumbled on the threshold. "You don'tdeserve your food either," she continued, shaking him fiercely,"playing truant all day! But you shall have it, if only to tantalizethat craven fool yonder. Where have you been, eh? You will stop athome in future, do you hear? This is your place--inside these fourwalls--until this business is over. You remember that, my lad, or itwill be the worse for you!"

  Simon Gridley and two men, whom the boy did not know, were in thekitchen, sitting dour and silent over the remains of a meal. Theylooked up on the boy's entrance, but took no further notice of him.The woman set food before him, scolding all the while, and then wentoff to her work in the back premises. The boy had little heart to eat;but presently he found occasion while Simon was talking to the twostrangers (who were brothers, of the name of Edgington, ex-troopersand weavers of Bradford) to secrete part of his meal inside hisjacket. Mistress Gridley, when she came back, looked sharply at whathe had left; but the boy had eaten so little that her suspicions werenot aroused, and she flounced away with the platter, bidding himremain indoors and sit where he was.

  She had scarcely gone when Luke entered and joined the party by thewindow, and there ensued much solemn jubilation over the morning'swork and the peculiar judgments vouchsafed to the neighborhood; andparticularly over the reported arrival at Ripon of Lieutenant-GeneralCromwell, with forces which might be trusted to give a good account ofthe Scotch army. Jack, sitting trembling on a stool in a corner of thefireless chimney-place, heard their sanguine predictions andshuddered. He knew Cromwell by name, and dimly associated him withMarston Moor, and the sad night which had seen his father ride home todie. The kitchen grew to the lad's eyes as he listened full of darkshadows and forebodings of fate. The men who loomed between him andthe window seemed to increase in size. Only the purpose he had in hismind, and the necessity of action if he would pursue it, saved himfrom breaking down and bursting into childish weeping.

  By dint of fixing his mind on this, however, he steadied himself; andby-and-by, choosing a moment when the talk was loud, stole across theroom to a tub in which the oatcake was kept. Ordinary the lid layloose upon it: now, to his huge disappointment, he found it locked!Baffled, and more than half inclined to cry, he wandered back to hisplace and resumed his seat on the floor, affecting to be engaged inplaying with two billets of wood. In reality his thoughts were keenlyat work. The cheese and cake he had secreted were scarcely worthcarrying to his brother. Where could he get more?

  It occurred to him at last that, failing everything else, raw oatmealmight be of use. Inspired by the thought, he rose and sauntered roundthree sides of the room until he reached the chest. Pretending to playabout it he presently tried the lid, and to his joy found itunfastened. He raised it cautiously an inch or two, and thrusting hishand in found the wooden bowl which was used for measuring the meal.He filled this, and withdrew it successfully. Then he let the lid fallwithout noise.

  He had still to escape unseen with his plunder, but the men were sobusily engaged in talk that he feared no interruption from them, andMistress Gridley was neither to be heard nor seen. He moved towardsthe back door, opened it, and slipped outside, holding the bowl underthe skirt of his jacket. The afternoon sun shone in his eyes, and fora moment he stood blinking like an owl in the daylight, so great wasthe change from the cool, sombre kitchen. Softly he advanced a step.Before he could take another, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, andMistress Gridley had him in her clutch.

  "You little thief!" she screamed, her voice shrill with savagetriumph, "I have caught you, have I? You thought to deceive me, didyou? To deceive me, you little ninny? What is this, eh? Whose isthis?" she repeated, grasping the child's wrist, and forcing him tohold up the little bowl of meal which his fingers still grippedmechanically. "Whose is this, eh? Is it yours? This way, my littlethief; this way!"

  She dragged him into the kitchen, and exulting in her own sharpness,told the men, who had risen at the sound of her outcry, how she hadcaught him. "He thought himself clever," she continued, shaking him toand fro without mercy, "but he was not clever enough for me!"

  "What did he want with the meal?" one of the strangers askedsuspiciously. "It looks to me very much as if----"

  "What?" Mistress Gridley asked rudely.

  "As if the malignant who gave us the slip this morning were hid here,and had employed this boy to get him food."

  The woman sniffed contemptuously. "Stuff and rubbish!" she said. "Themeal is for the cowardly sneak who brought the boy here. He isoutside, on short commons," she continued, laughing without mirth.

  "I met him going down to Settle," Luke said briefly. "Ay, but thechild did not know he was gone," she answered with confidence. "Thechild did not know it, do you see? But I will make him know enough notto steal again, the little thief!"

  The men nodded in stern approval. "Open me that closet door," MistressGridley continued, pointing with her unoccupied hand to a cupboardmade in the thickness of the wall beside the chimney, and used inwinter for storing wood. "I will lock him up there for the present. Itis nice and dark. He may keep the oatmeal, and when he has finishedit, but not before, we will see about finding him some other food. Inwith you!" she continued, dragging the boy forcibly to the place; "thebeetles will keep you company!" and pushing him in, she closed thedoor and locked it upon him.

  So far the boy had neither spoken nor resisted. But finding the doorclosed on him inexorably, and the horrors of the black closet roundhim--horrors which a child alone can thoroughly comprehend--he flunghimself, shrieking loudly, against the door. He beat on it with hishands, he kicked it, he cried frantically to be let out. The womanlistened and laughed cruelly. "It is as good as beating him, and lesslabor," she said. "Take no heed of him, and he will soon tire ofshouting."

  The men laughed too--the boy was a thief--and went back to their talk,while the woman sat down to her wheel. The child's cries were music toher ears; and yet she was ill at ease. The butler had gone down toSettle, had he? What if he had visited a certain place among theyew-trees before going, and dug a little? She did not think hewould have had the courage to play her such a trick. Still it waspossible--it was possible, and she longed for night that she might goto the place and have the assurance of her own eyes.

  For a time the boy raved and beat the door, his fear increased by thatsense of physical oppression which children, and many who are notchildren, experience when shut up in a confined space without thepower of freeing themselves. By-and-by, however, as the woman hadpredicted, he grew calmer. He had a talisman which availed, when thefirst paroxysm had spent itself, to keep selfish terrors at adistance; and that was the thought of his brother. In proportion ashis sobs grew feebler his brain grew clearer. Anxiety on Frank'saccount took the place of fear for himself. Crouching beside the doorwith his ear laid against it, he drew such comfort from the murmur ofvoices and the thin line of light which marked the threshold, that hegrew almost content with his position. He was safe from furtherpunishment. Only there was his brother. He pictured Frank waiting andlooking for him, waiting and looking in vain for the food which didnot come! And this fancy causing his tears to flow again, in themiddle of a stifled sob he fell asleep.