Kitabı oku: «A Little Wizard», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VI.
DEAD SEA APPLES

The two had advanced without thought to the foot of the tree which Frank had indicated, and in doing so had quitted the shelter of the rift, from which an open space a dozen yards in width now separated them. The deep shade of the yew-tree which stretched its arms above them still afforded some protection, the glare of the sun on the moorland intensifying its gloom and blackness. But such protection was partial only; it could not avail against persons approaching the tree closely.

The horror of the two may be imagined, therefore, when they awoke suddenly to this fact, and to the conviction that some one was approaching-nay, was already near. Before Jack's muttered warning had well been uttered, the sharp crack of a stick, broken under foot, and the tones of voices drawing each moment nearer placed the danger beyond dispute.

For a moment the brothers stood as still as stones, the man's face growing hard and stern as he listened and comprehended too late the reckless folly he had committed in leaving a secure hiding-place at that time of the day. His eyes traveled from the boy's, in which he read a pitiful alarm more overmastering if less intense than his own, to the space which separated him from the rift and from safety. Alas! he measured it with a despairing eye. A moment before he could have passed that interval at a bound, and at will; now he recognized with an inward groan that the attempt was hopeless. A single step in that direction must place him at once in full view of those who were approaching.

Would they stop short of the tree which hid him? That seemed his only chance. He set his teeth together, and gripped Jack's shoulder hard as he listened, and heard them still come on-come on and come nearer. His brain sought desperately for some way, some plan of escape. At the last moment, when all seemed lost, and less than a score of paces now lay between him and the newcomers, he hit upon one which might possibly help him.

"It is that woman!" he hissed in Jack's ear. "Lie down and pretend to be asleep! Take their attention for a moment only, and I may slip round this tree and reach another."

Jack, poor lad, was almost paralyzed with terror, but he understood; and he found one part of his instructions easy enough to execute. His knees were already so weak under him with fear and excitement that he sank to the ground under the pressure of his brother's hand, with scarce any volition of his own; and crouching in the shadow with his knees drawn up to his chin, remained motionless with dismay.

For a moment after reaching the spot, Mistress Gridley and the butler did not see him. The boy sat deep in the shadow, and the sun shone in their eyes as they crossed from one tree to another, and from that one to the farthest of all. The butler had even begun the argument afresh-they had been disputing about the removal of the treasure-and had stuck his spade into the ground that he might lean upon it while he talked, when he espied the pale face shining in the gloom beside the trunk, and started with affright. "Ha!" he exclaimed in a high tone, "what is that?"

The woman started too. Her mind was ill at ease; and it was strange that the child should have chosen that particular square yard of ground to sit upon. But she recovered herself more quickly. "You little brat!" she cried, peering at him with her eyes shaded, "what are you doing here? Be off! Go to the house, and stay there till I come, do you hear?"

The child did not move.

"Do you hear, you little booby?" she repeated angrily. "Get up and be off before I give you something to remember me by!" As she spoke, she advanced a step nearer to him and raised her hand to strike him.

Still the child did not move: and the woman's hand fell harmless by her side. The peculiar pallor of the boy's face, a pallor heightened by the shade in which he sat, his immobility, the strangeness of his attitude and position, above all the fixed glare of his eyes, had their effect upon her, scared and impressed as she already was by his unexplained delivery from the closet. She hesitated and fell back a step.

The butler, who knew nothing of the closet episode, attributed the move to prudence. "Soft and easy," he muttered approvingly, "or he may suspect something. It is odd he should be here."

"Suspect!" the woman answered with a shiver; for when a strong nature gives way to panic, the rout is complete. "I doubt he knows. The child is not canny," she added, staring at him in an odd, shrinking fashion.

The butler was at all times a coward, and without understanding the woman's reasons he felt the influence of her fear. "Not canny!" he said uneasily; "why, what is the matter with him? Hi, Jack, my boy, what are you doing here?" he continued, addressing the lad with a poor attempt at good-fellowship. "Are you ill, or what is it?"

The boy did not move.

Gridley advanced gingerly towards him, as a timid man approaches a strange dog. When he came near, however, and saw that it really was the boy, little Jack Patten whom he had known from his birth, the assurance made him laugh at the woman's fears. "Come, get up, lad," he said roughly; "get up and go and play!"

He seized Jack by the collar and raised him to his feet. "Jump, lad, jump!" he said. "Be off! You will get the ague here. Go into the sun and play!"

The boy had shaken off his first terror. Frank, he thought, must be safe by this time. He kept his feet therefore, but hesitated in doubt what to do; standing, to outward view a sullen pale-faced child, beside the dark trunk of the yew. Gridley noticed that he kept his one hand closed, and acting on a momentary impulse asked him roughly what he had there. The boy, without answering, opened his fingers mechanically, disclosing three tiny whinberries which he had picked while he talked with his brother in the rift, and had involuntarily retained in his hand ever since. The butler struck them out of his little palm with a disappointed "pish!" and turning him round by the shoulder sent him off with a push. "There, go and pick some more!" he said. "Be off! Be off!"

The lad obeyed slowly, and with apparent reluctance. When he was out of sight, Gridley, who had stepped a few paces from the tree that he might watch him the better, returned and picked up his spade. "There, he is gone!" he said, with an inquisitive look at the woman, whose mood puzzled him. "And if you will have the things up, it must be done. Let us lose no more time."

He struck the spade into the ground, and began to dig, while his companion watched him. But her face betrayed none of the greedy excitement which had always marked it before when the treasure was in question. Instead, it wore a look of dread and expectation. Something like grey fear lay like a shadow upon it, and left it only when the man stopped digging, and throwing down his spade, dragged a small white bundle from the shallow hole he had made.

Then she showed at last some animation. "They are there," she muttered, her eyes beginning to burn. "I fancied-"

"Oh, they are here," he answered, chuckling as he stooped to unfasten the napkin. "They are here, never fear! Safe bind safe find, you know, my lady."

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, however, when he fell back pale and trembling. A hideous look of disappointment and dismay took in a moment the place of the gloating smile which had before distorted his features. The napkin being untied disclosed three stones; no gold, no cups, no treasure, but only three stones!

For a moment the two stood silent and thunderstruck, gazing at the pebbles, which in their perfect worthlessness seemed to mock them. Then the man turned swiftly and suddenly on the woman, rage and suspicion so transforming him, that he did not look like the same person. "You hag!" he cried, with lips which writhed under the effort he made to control himself. "You thieving witch! This is your work! Where is my gold? Where is my gold, I say?" he repeated wildly. "Tell me, or I will murder you!" And he advanced upon her, his hands opening and shutting on the empty air.

His frantic gestures and the passion of his manner might have appalled even a brave man. But the woman, who had evinced less surprise and more fear on making the discovery, waved him back with the purest contempt. "Fool!" she hissed, with a flash of scorn in her eyes, "do you think that I should have played this farce with you?"

"But the gold?" he cried, cowering away from her in a moment like the craven he was. "It is gone, woman! It is gone, you see! If you have not taken it, who has? For heaven's sake, say you have taken it, and hidden it somewhere else!"

She looked darkly at him, and the look did more to persuade him she was innocent than any words. He wrung his hands and all but wept. "Some one has taken it," he moaned. "It is gone, and I shall never see it again!"

"What brought the boy sitting here?" she muttered on a sudden.

"Jack Patten?"

Mistress Gridley nodded with a strange look in her eyes. "Ay, little Jack. And he had three whinberries in his hand," she continued in the same hushed tone. "Look about, if you are not afraid. Find the whinberries, and something may come of it!"

He did not understand, but he saw she was in deadly earnest; and he was a coward, and afraid of her. "The whinberries?" he stammered, edging a pace away from her. "What of them?"

"They are our gold cups," she muttered between fear and rage. "The child has bewitched them."

Gridley cried out "Nonsense." But all the same he looked quickly over his shoulder. The sun was high and gave him courage. "The child?" he said; "why, I have known him from his birth!"

"Find the whinberries!" was all the answer she vouchsafed. And she pointed imperatively to the ground. "Find them, I say, if you are not afraid, man."

He went down on his knees and began to search. But the earth he had thrown out of the hole lay thick on the ground, and he failed to find even one of them. He rose, and told the woman so; and she nodded as if she had expected the answer.

He shuddered at that. He saw her afraid, and he knew she feared few things. Besides, she had all the influence over him which a strong mind is sure to possess over a weak one. Seeing her afraid he grew fearful also. Though he did not believe, he trembled. He remembered how strangely the boy had looked at him, how obstinately he had refused to speak, what an odd persistence he had shown in clinging to that spot. Yet how had the boy known? How had he found the place?

Doubtfully he put that thought into words, and got his answer. "How did he get out of the wood closet when I locked him in last night?" Mistress Gridley asked contemptuously. "I left the door locked when I went to bed, and the boy inside. I found the door locked this morning, but the boy was in his own bed. That is not canny."

"He may have taken the cups without-without that," said the butler, glancing round him with a shiver.

"Then where are they?" the woman retorted swiftly. "Or do you mean that he took them and hid them, and then came again and sat on the place for us to find him? I tell you the lad can go through locked doors."

The butler was not convinced, but he trembled. He stood gnawing his nails with a gloomy face, one thing only quite clear to him; that whether the child possessed the power which the woman attributed to him or not, it was certainly he who had taken the treasure. This excited such a degree of rage in Gridley's mind as fear alone kept within bounds. He longed to follow the child and force the secret and the gold from him, and only the dread which the woman manifested kept him from doing this on the instant. As it was, he stood undecided, turning over in his mind all the stories he had heard of strange powers and weird possession-stories which then filled all the country-side, especially in lonely and ill-populated districts-and striving to recollect whether anything in little Jack's history seemed to bring him within the scope of these marvellous narratives.

Mistress Gridley watched him for a time, but presently her patience gave way. She bade him, fiercely, pick up the spade and come to the house; and together the two returned, each hating the other as the cause of a fruitless and unprofitable sin.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WOODEN CROSS

Released in a manner so much beyond his hopes, Jack lost no time in betaking himself to the house, where he found all quiet and himself alone in possession. He had every reason to congratulate himself on the success of his scheme; yet he knew he was not out of the wood. Child as he was, he saw that the woman, finding herself robbed in that place, must lay the blame on him; and in his dread of what would happen when the pair returned, he found it impossible to remain still a moment, but wandered from front to back, and kitchen to stairs, expecting yet dreading the first sound of their approach. When it came he crouched in the chimney corner and held his breath, waiting for the storm to break.

And there the woman found him when she entered. She had not expected to see him, and she started violently, for nothing her companion had urged had availed in the least to shake her belief in the child's dark powers. His pale face and huddled form and his odd and elfish position, as she came upon him, in the shadowy corner only served to confirm and support it. She shrank away without a word, and busied herself at the back of the house, until the boy finding himself free from attack took heart of grace, and little by little emerged from his retreat.

He could not understand how he had escaped suspicion and punishment, but the fact was enough, and his spirits soon rose. He wanted no reasons. Assured of his brother's safety, and delighted to think that he had contributed to it, he could scarcely restrain the impulse that would have had him hunt Frank out and share his joy with him. Fortunately, he did restrain it, however; for during the rest of the day he was the unconscious object of the strictest watchfulness. Wherever he went and whatever he did, his steps were dogged and his actions noted, though he did not perceive it himself. The woman, by an immense effort, hid her fears, while Gridley, balanced between terrors and fits of rage which became at times ungovernable, had the prudence to shun the object of his hatred, and leave the task of surveillance to her.

Accordingly, the child remained in perfect ignorance. He went about his small and-to the adult mind-incomprehensible employments in his own small fashion; playing here and there, and presently rendering the woman's task more easy by the completeness with which he gave himself up to rehearsing the morrow's plan. Mistress Gridley found him continually slipping away, and as often stalked him into corners, where she soon learned that he had something hidden about him-something which he took out when he was alone, and put away stealthily on her approach.

The woman's covetous spirit took fire afresh at this discovery, and for the moment overcame her fears. Her eyes began to burn, her cheek grew hot. When he sauntered away again, she watched him secretly, and by-and-by marked him down in a corner of the fold where the wall was highest. There she saw him sit down with his back to the house and his face to the wall, and, taking something, which she could not see, from his clothes, begin to toy with it, stooping over it, and caressing it with the utmost devotion.

She did not doubt that the thing he fondled in this strange fashion was the treasure of which he had robbed her by his arts; and in a transport of anger she slipped out of the house by the back door, and, making a circuit, stole up to the corner, keeping on the farther side of the wall. When she reached the place she paused and listened, crouching low that he might not see her. The child was muttering softly to himself-muttering some monotonous unintelligible jargon, which in her ears could be nothing but a charm. The woman shuddered at the thought, but still she persisted. Cautiously raising her eyes above the level of the wall, she got a sight of the object he was crooning over. It was neither gold nor cup nor treasure, but a strange-looking cross of wood!

Mistress Gridley shrank away, trembling in every limb. The sight confirmed all her apprehensions. She hurried back to the house. But in the excitement of the pursuit she had not noticed the change in the sky, which had grown in the last few moments dark and overcast. The first peal of the tempest, therefore, surprised her as she retreated. Startled and affrighted, she looked up and saw the black canopy impending over her head; with a cry, she crouched still lower, as if she might in that way escape the wrath she had invoked. Her nerves were so shaken that she never doubted the child had brought this sudden storm upon her, and even when it did her no harm, when it resolved itself into the most ordinary phenomenon and descended in sheets of rain, while the mountains clothed themselves in mist, and the moor streamed at a hundred pores-even then, though she had seen such a storm a hundred times and knew its every aspect, she still quailed. A terror of great darkness was upon her. She dared no longer meet the child's eyes, but sat in the farthest corner of the room, furtively watching him; while the eaves dripped outside, and the cold light of a wet summer evening stole across the moor.

When he was gone to bed and his eye withdrawn from her, she felt more at ease. But her discomposure was still so great that Simon and Luke must have remarked it when they returned, if they had not been themselves full of an anxiety which occupied their minds to the exclusion of everything else.

"This rain!" Simon cried, as he shook out his dripping cloak on the floor and turned to take a last look through the open door. "Who would have foreseen it? Who would have foreseen it, I say, this morning? Never did sky look better. Yet if it goes on through the night they will scarcely get the guns over the hills by this road. The General will be late."

"It grows more heavy," Luke answered moodily, looking out over the other's shoulder.

"Ay, and the clouds are low," Simon assented. "I never knew rain more sudden in my life, nor, surely, more untimely. There is many a man will be damp tonight and march the slower to-morrow. Heaven grant it hinders the malignants also!"

"The wind is westerly," Luke answered shrewdly. "I doubt it."

Simon shrugged his shoulders as sharing the doubt, and would have closed the door. But at that moment his wife, who had already risen from her seat, laid her hand on his arm. The hand trembled. The woman's eyes were glittering, her cheeks white. "Simon!" she said, peering into his face, and speaking in a tone of suppressed excitement, "what is it-this storm? Whom does it hinder? What does it matter? What was it you were saying about it?"

"What does it matter, and whom does it hinder?" the man answered fiercely. "It hinders the Lord's work, woman! It matters to all Christian men! It hinders guns and horses, men and wagons, that should be at Preston to-morrow to cut off the malignant Hamilton and his brood. In twelve hours, if this rain continues, the road to Preston will be a quagmire, and the Philistines will laugh at us. But we must rest content. It is the Lord's doing!"

"It is not the Lord's doing!" she answered in a tone of surprising emotion. "It is not his doing! It is Satan's!"

"Tush!" said her husband, harshly; but he started nevertheless at her tone. "You rave, woman!"

"I do not rave!" she answered, throwing up her arms wildly. "I tell you this tempest, that you talk of-I saw it raised! This hindrance-I saw it begotten! I-I, Simon Gridley! There is one here who can brew the storm and hush the whirlwind! There is one here beside whom your General is powerless!"

"Then he must have the devil's aid indeed!" Simon answered, with a grim chuckle. "But softly, wife, what is this?"

In rapid, hurried words, rendered weighty by the terror and belief which were in her, the woman detailed what she had seen the boy do, and how the storm, of which the heavens had given so little warning, had followed immediately thereon. She could not tell them all the bases of her belief; she dared not mention the gold vessels, or the strange scene under the yew-tree. But belief in such things is infectious. The mystery of the locked door was still a mystery unsolved and inexplicable. That they all knew; and nothing in the solitary life these people had led among the fells, nothing in the harsh, narrow creed they professed, or in their custom of literally applying the Scriptures to everyday events, was at odds with the conclusion that the child was possessed by an evil spirit. No one in that day was so bold as to doubt the existence of the black art. And if at the first glance this helpless child seemed the most unlikely of professors, the discovery that his powers were being used against the cause which they believed to be the cause of heaven, furnished a probability which enabled them to dispense with the other. The men looked in each other's faces uneasily. The light was waning, the corners of the room were full of shadows. Those who felt no terror felt wrath, which was near akin to it. For the woman, her eyes flickered with hatred; which was only more intense because it was held in check by abject fear.

At length Simon, whose bold and hardy spirit alone accepted the idea with any real reluctance, rose; they had long ago formed themselves into a council round the table.

"Hush!" he said, raising his hand. "The rain has stopped. What do you say to that?"

They listened and found that it was so. The eaves no longer dripped.

"If he is a wizard, he is a poor one," Simon continued, with a little contempt in his tone. "But if you will have it so, see here, we will watch him. There is a power greater than his, and in the strength of that I do not fear him."

The woman shuddered, while Luke, who was for immediate action, replied in a wild rhapsody, quoting the priests of Baal and the witch of Endor, the order of the law respecting magicians, and the fate of Magus. But Simon was firm; he was not to be moved, and in the end his proposal was accepted. The matter was thought so momentous, however, that it was decided to consult the Edgingtons next day, and bring them into the affair.

When all was settled Simon rose, and went to the door and threw it open. He knew that, within a circuit of a few miles from where he stood, thousands upon thousands of soldiers were at that moment lying under the bare heavens, without so much as a tree to cover them; and he had a soldier's feeling for their distresses. He saw with satisfaction, therefore, that though the clouds still hung low, in one quarter there was a rift in them, through which the full moon was shining out of the blue black of heaven. "It looks better," he said, as he came in again. "It will be fine to-morrow. And there is no great harm done yet."

But, to all appearance, more rain fell during the night, for when the household rose at daybreak, the hills were running with water, and every little streamlet was musical. A fine drizzle filled the air, and obscured even the nearer surface of the moor, while fog veiled the mountains and hung like a curtain before the distant prospects. The boy eating his porridge with the others, unconscious of the strange glances and suspicious shrinkings of which he was the object, looked through the window and wondered how he was to manage his counting, and whether it would be possible to tell horse from foot. From this his thoughts strayed to Frank. Frank must be suffering horribly in this weather, with no roof over him, and no cloak, and no sufficient food. At the thought Jack felt his eyes fill with tears, tears which he would fain have hidden; but he found Simon's harsh glance upon him, and whichever way he looked he could not escape it. He grew hot; he changed color and trembled in his seat, and presently, feeling his position insufferable-for he longed to think, and could not do so under eyes which seemed to read his secrets-he rose suddenly, and sidled from the room. He went, as he supposed, unnoticed, and without a thought of evil seized his cap and left the house.

Never had the moor looked more desolate; more sad and dreary and grey-colored. Here and there a stone stood upright, peering boldly through the rain; and here and there, where the fell rose, a whirl of mist floated above the surface as the fog thickened and broke before a puff of wind. The child shivered as he looked about him; and an older heart might have quailed. But shiver or quail, he held on. He had a purpose, and he clung to it. He knew the way to the high road, which passed over the moor half a league from the house, and he pressed on bravely towards it, thinking of his brother and the King, and the service he was about to perform, until, despite the rain, his puny frame glowed all over. The thoughts in his mind were childish enough, the ideas he entertained of men and things as shadowy and unreal as the fog about him. But the spirit and self-denial which supported him were as real as any which animated the greatest man who that day marched or fought for his cause.

Even the passage of an army with horse and foot and great guns could not in such a district draw together any large number of spectators; and the boy, saved from immediate pursuit by the fog, found himself free to choose his position. Avoiding a group of countryfolk who had taken possession of a hillock which would otherwise have suited him well, he made for a second mound that rose a hundred paces farther on, and seemed also to overlook the road. Climbing to the top of this, he sat down in the damp bracken to wait for the troops.

A sutler or two passed presently below him, some straggling horsemen, a few knots of yokels bent on satisfying their curiosity. But the day was four hours old before the measured tramp of hoofs and the murmur of many voices, the clang of steel, and hoarse cries of command thrilled the child with the consciousness that the time was come. Trembling with excitement, he peered over the edge of the mound. The rain had ceased for a while. There was some show of clearing in the air. The sun which had broken through the clouds struck full on the head of the column, as it came on slowly and majestically, in a frame of steaming mist; cuirass and helmet, spur and scabbard, flashing and sparkling in the white glare.

These were the horsemen who had stemmed the pride of Rupert and shattered the Cavaliers. The boy looked and looked at them, looked until the last man-a grave sergeant with a book at his belt-had ridden by him. Then he remembered himself with a sigh, and quickly drawing out his cross, cut six nicks upon it, for the six troops of horse which had formed the column.

After these, three regiments of foot passed; stern, war-worn men, muddy and travel-stained, in buff coats, and with long pikes trailing behind them. Then more troops of horse, whom he duly nicked, and then some tumbrils, which at first the boy took for guns, but afterwards perceived to be laden with ammunition. On all these the sun shone, not cheerfully but with a stern glare, which seemed confined to that part of the moor, so that they passed before the boy in a vision as it were, and he notched them off in a dream. It was strange to stand so near these thousands of marching men, to hear the murmur of their multitudinous voices, and the tramp of their feet, and yet to be apart from them and unheeded by them. For they passed in perfect order, no man stepping out of the ranks; so that at last the boy took courage and rose to his feet under their eyes.