Kitabı oku: «The Carbonels», sayfa 10
There were the branching roads, and it was far too dark to read the sign-post, so that he could only take the one that seemed to him the most likely; but when he had gone what might be any distance on the road, it seemed to get narrower and rougher than he expected, and then came an opening as if on to a common, such as he was sure did not exist on the way to Minsterham. He must have got upon the Elchester road, and there was nothing for it but to turn back. However, there was a pale brightness showing in the sky, and the moon came up, an old moon without very much light in her, but she was a great comfort to him, and told him how the night was going.
On and on, and then there was a sound of trampling of horses and of wheels coming nearer, great light eyes growing larger and larger, and the mail-coach flashed and thundered by with the four horses, and presently, far-away he could hear the guard’s horn announcing the approach to a wayside inn where the horses were changed; but by the time Johnnie had made his weary way up to the place, it was far-away on the road, indeed, he saw the lamps flash as it went up Wearyfoot Hill, but all the inn was silent again by that time even at the stables, and the hotel was a dark mass against the sky—the only light in it the moon reflected from the windows. A dog barked as he went past, but he kept far upon the other side of the road and was reassured by hearing the rattling of a chain.
Wearyfoot Hill! Yes, it was Wearyfoot to him, as he dragged up it. He could not remember whether it was four or five miles from Minsterham. There was a milestone standing on the bank, and he tried to read it, but the moon would not reveal more than the large initial letters of L for London and M for Minsterham, and he sat down at last and leaned against the stone, trying to trace out the figure above Minsterham with his fingers.
Behold, though four and five were both ringing in his head, he must have fallen asleep, for he felt quite cold and stiff, the moon was much higher in the sky, the stars were paler, and there was a mist all round. He rose up, ashamed, and shook himself, colder and more uncomfortable than before, but feeling it was a new day, and that, were it four miles or five, he was now near Minsterham. He said his morning prayers as he tramped along, stamping to warm his feet, and recollected that Aunt Judith would be lying awake praying for him. He found that when the first discomfort of awakening had passed off, he really was the better for his short sleep, and marched on more vigorously, presently hearing a cock begin to crow, and birds to twitter. Dawn was beginning, presently a lark sprang up and began to send down a wonderful cheerful song, that quite raised Johnnie’s spirits; then over the quiet misty fields came the deep note of the great Minsterham clock pealing out, what was only a half hour, but John knew that it would be much louder in his ears next time it spoke.
A waggon lumbered by, and then a labourer or two going to their work, but John kept out of their way, not wanting to be asked questions; there began to be red in the eastern mist, the clock sounded again, and from the slope of the hill, the spires of the churches in the town seemed to be rising out of a great lake of woolly mist. The clock went through all the four quarters, then solemnly told out five strokes—Johnnie’s weary night journey was over.
Chapter Twenty.
The Royal Hotel
“O haste to aid, ere aid be vain.”
Scott.
Though Johnnie’s journey was over, his troubles were not at an end. When he came to the first houses, the way seemed still to lengthen out before him, and everything appeared to be still asleep, though the daylight was coming in as brightly as a foggy morning allowed. Nor did he know his way; he had only driven to a timber-yard once with his cousin, and dined with him at a little public-house close by, and had no more than a dim recollection of shops, which looked quite different now, with all their shutters up. Only a milk-cart, coming in with full tins, seemed to give a sign that people would want their breakfast some time or other; and next appeared a very black sweep with his cart, and two miserable little bare-footed boys running beside it, as black as the silhouette over Mrs Thorpe’s chimney.
Half-past five struck, and charwomen began to come out of side alleys, baker’s shops to take down their shutters. Johnnie ventured to ask one of the apprentice boys doing so the way to the Royal George Hotel.
“D’ye want to bespeak the best apartments?” was all the answer he got, as the lad stopped his whistling and looked superciliously at Johnnie’s battered, dusty working dress, and old straw hat.
He found he should only be laughed at and walked on, renewing his question when he saw a good-natured-looking woman in a black bonnet and stout canvas apron, apparently going out for a day’s washing.
“Is it the Royal or the King George Tavern as you mean, my son?” she asked him.
“Oh! the Royal—the one where the gentlemen goes,” said Johnnie. “I’ve got a message for one of ’em.”
“Bless you, my lad, they won’t never let you in at this time of morning,” said the woman.
“It’s very particular,” returned John. “I came off at night to tell him.”
She looked at him curiously. “And what might it be, young man! Some one taken very bad, no doubt.”
“No—not that,” said John, and she looked so kind, he could not help telling. “But he have got a machine, and Jack Swing is coming, and if he don’t come home to see to the poor ladies—”
“Bless me, and who may it be?”
“Captain Carbonel—out at Uphill.”
“Never heard tell of the place.”
“It’s out beyond Poppleby.”
“My! And you’ve comed all that way to-night?”
“The ladies are very good. He’s a right good gentleman. All one to the poor as to the rich.”
“I say! You are a good young man, to be sure! I’d go with you and get to the speech of Lavinia Bull, the chambermaid, what I know right well; but if I’m not at Mrs Hurd’s by six o’clock, she’ll be flying at me like a wild cat. Mercy on me, there it goes six! Well, if that fine dandy, Boots, as is puffed up like a peacock, won’t heed you, ask for Lavinia Bull, and say Mrs Callendar sent you, and he will call her fast enough.”
John thanked her and was going off at once, but she called out, “Bless the boy, he’s off without even hearing where to go! Just opposite the City Cross, as they calls it.”
It was not much like a cross to Johnnie’s mind, being a sort of tower, all arches and pinnacles and mouldered statues, getting smaller up to the spiring top; but he knew it, and saw the hotel opposite with all its blinds down, nothing like astir yet, except that some one was about under the great open doorway leading into a yard, half entrance, to the hotel.
He could see a man brushing a shoe, and went up with “Please, sir—” But he was met by, “Get off you young vagabond, we want none of your sort here.”
“Please, sir, I have a message for Miss Bull;” he hesitated.
“She ain’t down. Get off, I say. We don’t have no idle lads here.”
“It’s very particular—from Mrs Callendar.”
“Old witch! Have she been burning any one’s shirt fronts. I say, Jem, you see if Lavinia is in the kitchen, and tell her old Callendar has been burning holes in her stockings or collars, and has sent a young scarecrow to tell her.”
John opened his mouth to say it was no such thing; but the under shoeblack, who was a sort of slave to Boots, made an ugly face at him, and was gone, turning coach wheels across the yard. In another minute Lavinia, a nice brisk looking young woman, had come up with, “Well, young man, what has Mrs Callendar been after now?”
“Please, ma’am, nothing; but she said as how I was to ask for you. It’s for Captain Carbonel, ma’am, a message from Uphill—that’s his home.”
“Captain Carbonel—that’s Number Seven,” she said, consulting a slate that hung near the bar. “He was to be called at eight o’clock. Won’t that do?”
“Oh no, no, ma’am,” implored John, thinking that the captain was taking his rest away from home. “It’s very particular, and I have come all night with it.”
“You have got to call Number Five for the High Flier at half-past six,” she said, turning to Boots. “Could not you take up word at the same time?”
“Catch me running errands for a jackanapes like that,” said Boots, with a contemptuous shrug, turning away, and brushing at his shoe.
“Never mind him,” said good-natured Lavinia. “What shall I say, young man?”
“Oh, thank you, miss. Say that John Hewlett have brought him a message from Uphill.”
“Jack Owlet! Oh my! Hoo! hoo!” exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. “Look here, Tom,”—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—“here be an Owlet’s just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that ’ere patch on your back.”
“Where you never got none,” responded the other boy. “Mother stitched it for him.”
“Ay, sitting under a hedge, with her pot hung up on three sticks and a hedgepig in it,” added the younger Boots. “Come, own up, young gipsy! Yer come to get a tanner out of Number Seven with your tales.”
“I’m no gipsy,” growled John; “but—”
“Come, come,” called out Boots, “none of your row. And you, you impudent tramp, don’t ye be larking about here, making the lads idle. Get out of the yard with ye, or I call the master to you.”
The landlord might probably have been far more civil; but poor Johnnie did not know this, and could only move off to the entrance of the court, so that when Lavinia in another moment appeared and asked where he was, Boots answered—
“How should I tell? He was up to mischief with the boys, and I bade him be off.”
“Well, Number Seven is ever so much put about, and he said he would be down in a jiffy! So there!”
Lavinia held up her skirts, and began in her white stockings to pick her way across the yard, while Boots sneered, and began brushing his shoe, and whistling as if quite undisturbed; and in another moment Captain Carbonel did appear, coming down the stairs very fast, all unshaven, and with a few clothes hastily thrown on, and quite ran after Lavinia, passing her as she pointed out beyond the entrance, where John was disconsolately leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, feeling how utterly weary and hungry he was, and with uneasy thoughts about his father coming over him.
“Oh, there you are, John Hewlett! What is it? No one ill?” exclaimed the captain.
“No, sir; but,”—coming nearer and lowering his voice—“Jack Swing, sir.”
“Jack Swing! We had notice of him out at Delafield.”
John shook his head, and looked down.
“What! Do you know anything, my boy? Here, come in—tell me!”
“Please, sir, they’ve laid it out to come to Greenhow this very day as is, to break the machine and get the guns and money.”
The captain started, as well he might; but still demanded, “How do you know?”
John held his head down, most unwilling to answer.
“Look here, my lad, you’ve done well coming to warn me; but I must be certain of your news before acting on it. We were to ride off to Delafield to-day, and I must know if this is only a rumour.”
“Aunt heard them,” said John, between his teeth. “She heard them planning it for to-morrow—that’s to-day—and she laid it on me to let you know to save the ladies from being fraught.”
“Your aunt heard it?”
“Through the window in the back garden. They planned to get all the chaps at Downhill and all, and go at the machine.”
“The villains! Who did? No, I’ll not ask that, my lad,” said the captain, knowing only too well who it must have been; “you have acted nobly, and I am for ever obliged to you. Come in, and have some breakfast, while I dress and report this, and see what is to be done. You are sure there is time?”
“They was to go about at dinner-time to get the folks,” John squeezed out of his mouth, much against his will.
“Then there’s time. Thank you with all my heart, John! I’ll see you again. Here,”—to a barmaid who had appeared on the scene—“give this young man a hearty good breakfast and a cup of ale—will you?—and I’ll be down again presently. Stay till I come, Hewlett, and I’ll see you again, and how you are to get home! Why, it is twenty miles! Were you walking all night?”
“Only I went to sleep a bit of the time when I was trying to make out the milestone; I don’t rightly know how long it was,” said John, so much ashamed of his nap that the captain laughed, and said—
“Never mind, Johnnie, you are here in the very nick of time; eat your breakfast, and I’ll see you again.”
The good-natured barmaid let John have a wash at the pump with a bit of yellow soap and the round towel, and he was able to eat his breakfast with a will—a corner of cold pie and a glass of strong ale, such a breakfast as he had never seen, though it was only the leavings of yesterday’s luncheon. Everybody was too busy just then to pay him any attention, and he had time to hear all the noises and bells seem to run into one dull sound, and to be nodding in his chair before he was called by a waiter, with—“Ha, youngster, there, look alive! the gentlemen wants you.”
Now that sleep had once begun upon him, assisted by the ale, John looked some degrees less alive, though far more respectable than on his first arrival. He was ushered into the coffee-room, where three or four gentlemen sat at one table, all in blue and silver, with the captain, and as he pulled his forelock and bobbed his head, the elder of them—a dignified looking man with grey hair and whiskers and a silver-laced uniform, said—“So, my lad, you are come to warn Captain Carbonel of an intended attack on his property?”
“Yes, sir,” John mumbled, looking more and more of a lout, for he had thought the captain would just go home alone to defend his wife and his machine, and was dismayed at finding the matter taken up in this way, dreading lest he should have brought every one into trouble and be viewed as an informer.
“What evidence have you of such intentions?”
John looked into his hat and shuffled on his foot, and Captain Carbonel, who knew that Sir Harry Hartman, the old gentleman, was persuaded that Delafield was the place to protect, was in an agony lest John should be too awkward and too anxious to shield his family to convince him. He ventured to translate the words into “How do you know?”
His voice somehow made John feel that he must speak, and he said, “Aunt heard it.”
“What’s that? Who is aunt?” said Sir Harry, in a tone as if deciding that it was gossip; but this put John rather more on his mettle, and he said, “My aunt, Judith Grey, sir.”
“How did she hear?”
“Through the window. She heard them laying it out.”
“She is bedridden,” put in the captain; “but a clever, sensible woman.”
“Whom did she hear or see?”
“She couldn’t see nobody, sir. It was a strange voice,” John was trying to save the truth.
“Oh! and what did she hear?”
“They was planning to go round the place and call up the men—that’s to-day,” said John.
“Are you sure it was to-day? Did she tell you she heard it?”
“Yes, sir. And,” John bethought him, “there was a great row going on at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ and when I came past Poppleby, a whole lot of them come out singing ‘Down with the machines.’”
“That’s more like it, if it was not a mere drunken uproar,” said Sir Harry.
“I suppose you did not know any of the voices?” said one of the other gentlemen.
John could hold his tongue this time. “And you came all this way by night, twenty miles and odd, to warn Captain Carbonel, on your aunt’s information?” said Sir Harry, thoughtfully. “Are you sure that she could hear distinctly?”
“One can hear in her room talk in our garden as well as if it was in the room,” replied John.
“Well! you are a good lad, well intentioned,” said Sir Harry. “Here’s half-a-crown to pay your journey back. We will consider what is to be done.”
John had rather not have taken the half-crown, but he did not know how to say so, so he pulled his forelock and accepted it.
Captain Carbonel came out of the coffee-room with him, and called to the hostler to let him lie down and rest for a couple of hours, when the Red Rover would change horses there, and then call him, and pay for his journey back to Poppleby.
So John lay down on clean straw and slept, too much tired out to put thoughts together, and unaware of the discussion among the gentlemen. For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett’s warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay.
Captain Carbonel, who was, of course, in an agony to get home and defend his property, but was firmly bound by his notions of discipline, argued that the lad was the son of the most disaffected man in the parish, and that his silence was testimony to the likelihood that his father was consulting with the ringleader. The invalid woman he knew to be sensible and prudent, and most unlikely either to mistake what she heard, or to send her nephew on such a night journey without urgent cause, and he asked permission to go himself, if the troop were wanted elsewhere, to defend his home. Finally, just as the debate was warming between the officers, a farmer came in from Delafield, and assured them that all was quiet there. So the horses were brought out, and there was much jingling of equipments, and Johnnie awoke with a start of dismay. He had never thought of such doings. He had only thought of Captain Carbonel’s riding home, never of bringing down what seemed to him a whole army on his father.
Chapter Twenty One.
Jack Swing
“Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,
But thou hast left unquenched the vital spark
That set Jack Straw on fire.”
Sir H. Taylor.
Nobody knew who Jack Swing was. Most likely he really was more than one person, or rather an impersonal being, worked up as a sort of shadowy puppet to act in the cause of future reform.
There were hot spirits abroad, who knew that much was amiss on many points, and who burned to set them right; and there were others who were simply envious and jealous of all that had power or authority, and wanted to put these down for their own profit. They thought that the way to get their cause attended to was to make the other party afraid of the people, and they did not know or understand that those who delayed to grant their wishes only desired patience, and to do the work in the best and wisest way. All that they demanded, and more too, has since been given to the people, but gradually, as was expedient, and without tumult or disturbance.
So there was a desire to frighten the gentry by showing the strength of the people, in anticipation of the Reform Bill to be proposed the next year. It would not have made much difference to the country people, for no one would have a vote whose rent did not amount to ten pounds a year, and they would not have cared much about it if they had not been told that if it was passed, every man would have a fat pig in his sty, and be able to drink his daily quart of beer, moreover, that the noblemen and gentlemen were resolved on keeping them out of their rights, making bread dear, and depriving them of their wages by setting up machines to do all the work.
This last came near home, and stirred up the minds that would have cared for little else. Just as four hundred years before, Jack Straw was an imaginary champion whose name inflamed the people to rise, so now Jack Swing, or whoever it was who acted in that name, sent messages round that such and such a place should be attacked at such and such a time.
There was always some one in the town who could be fired with the idea that inciting riot and revolt was patriotism, and that a good cause could be served by evil methods, who cast aside such warnings as “Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft,” or “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Besides, the infection spread, and to hear what Jack Swing was doing elsewhere encouraged others not to be behindhand with their neighbours.
So the mandate had gone out, and there were a few at Elchester ready to arrange for a rising at Uphill and Downhill. Dan Hewlett was known to them in the public-house, and he had an especial spite at Captain Carbonel, beginning from his knowledge of the tacit detection of his abstraction of the paper at Greenhow, going through his dismissal from working there, aggravated by the endeavour to remove Judith, embittered by the convictions as a poacher, and, perhaps, brought to a height by the influence over his eldest son. He hated the captain enough to be willing to direct the attack upon Greenhow, especially as it was known that the master was absent and engaged in summoning the yeomanry “to ride down the poor chaps,” as it was said, “who only wanted bread for their children’s mouths.”
There were men both at Uphill and Downhill, and even at Poppleby, who were quite willing to listen. The Poppleby folk, some of them, believed that riot was the only way to get reform, more of the villagers thought it was the only way of getting rid of the machines, the object of mysterious dread for the future, and more still, chiefly ne’er-do-wells and great idle lads, were ready for any mischief that might be going; and full of curiosity and delight at what Jack Swing might be about to do.
These youths, some of them at work and some not, dispersed the news through the village and fields that there was to be a great rising of the people’s friends, and that Gobbleall’s machine was to be somewhere. All were to meet at the randygo—supposed to mean rendezvous—at the cross-road, and as for those who did not, it would be the worse for them, and worse than all for them that told clacking women who might carry the tale up to Greenhow.
The summons was indeed not given till the men were well out of reach of their clacking women, but at work in the fields, and then a party began—not to march—they could not have done that to save their lives, but to tramp out of Poppleby, shouting to any one whom they saw in the fields to come with them and stand up for the people’s rights. At Downhill their numbers increased by all the noisy fellows, and some who fancied great good was to be gained somehow, though some wiser wives called out to them not to get into a row, nor let themselves be drawn into what they would be sorry for. At the “Fox and Hounds” they tarried and demanded a glass of beer all round, which Mr Oldfellow was really afraid to refuse. He was a timid man, half on their side, half on that of the gentry, and he saw there were enough of them to sack his cellars if he demurred.
There, too, amid much laughter, they all disguised themselves, some blackening their faces with soot, others whitening them with chalk, and some putting on the women’s cloaks, bonnets, or aprons.
Then they collected Uphill men.
“We are come for your good,” said Jack Swing, or the man who passed for him, wearing a long Punch-like nose. “We are come to help you; and where’s the mean coward that won’t come along with us in his own cause? There will be no living for poor folks if those new-fangled machines be allowed to go on, and them Parliament folk vote out all that makes for the people. Down with them, I say! Up with Reform, and down with all the fools and cowards who won’t stand up for themselves.”
All this, garnished with foul words and abuse, and roared out from the top of the horse-block, was addressed to the crowd that began to gather.
Dan Hewlett, with a horrid white face, was going about persuading the men, and so were others. “Bless you, we don’t want to do no harm to the ladies, nor the children. We only wants to do away with them toady machines, as they wants to do all the work instead of men’s hands, as the Almighty meant, and is in Scripture.”
This was the plea to the better disposed, like Tom Seddon, who held out, “You’ll not hurt madam nor the little ones. She’ve been a kind lady, and the captain, he’s a good master, I will say that; and I don’t want to hurt ’em.”
“Nobody wants to hurt them; only to do away with they machines.”
“I tell you what,” was George Truman’s answer, “them machines are the captain’s, none of yours nor mine, and I won’t go for to damage ’em. No! I won’t have my face blacked nor whited, I’m an honest man, and not ashamed to show it. So I be going to my work.”
And off he went to his day’s work at Farmer Goodenough’s, and the others hissed him and hooted him, but did him no harm. Nobody made such a noise as Softy Sam, and together this frightened Jem Gibbs out of following him, though he much wished to do so. Will Mole, as soon as he heard any sounds, ran away headlong down towards the meadows, and hid himself in the long rushes. Cox, the constable, thought discretion the better part of valour; and long before the rabble rout appeared, set off to carry a pair of shoes home to Mrs Pearson at the Lone Farm.
Master Hewlett, the carpenter, looked in vain for John, his apprentice, and growled and grumbled that he did not appear; then, on perceiving the uproar, decided that he was gone after that “there father of his’n.” He wouldn’t have thought it of Jack. No; he wouldn’t; but sure enough it was “bred in the bone of him!” Master Hewlett went on with his planing; and when the troop, now amounting to about thirty grown men, besides a huge rabble of boys and girls, came along, and Dan shouted to him to come and stand up for the rights of the people, and down with that there “tyrum Gobbleall” and his machine to grind down the poor, he answered—
“Machine ain’t nothing to me. I minds my own business, and thou beest a fool, Dan, not to mind thine! And where’s that lad of thine? A trapesing after mischief, just like all idle fellows?”
“He bain’t a labourer, and has no feeling for them as is,” said Dan. “We wants your axe, though, George.”
“Not he! I dares you to touch him,” said George Hewlett in his unmoved way, smoothing off a long curled shaving, which fell on the ground. “There, that’s the worth of you all and your Jack Swing! Swing, ye will, Dan, if you don’t take the better care.”
Some one made a move as if to seize the axe, but George made one step, and lifted quietly the stout bit of timber he had been planing, and it was plain that a whole armoury of carpenter’s tools was on his side the bench.
“Come along,” said Dan, “he’s a coward and mean-spirited cur. Us shan’t do nothing with he.”
So on they went, all the kindnesses and benefits from Greenhow forgotten, and nothing remembered at the moment but grievances, mostly past, but more looked forward to as possible!
The women did remember. Judith Grey was in an agony, praying as she lay for Mrs Carbonel and the children. Widow Mole knew nothing, but was weeding the paths at Greenhow; Betsy Seddon and Molly Barnes were crying piteously “at thought of madam and her little girl as might be fraught to death by them there rascals.” But no one knew what to do! Some stayed at home, in fear for their husbands, but a good many followed in the wake of the men, to see what would happen, and to come in for a little excitement—whether it were fright, pity, or indignation.
“’Pon my word and honour,” said Lizzy Morris, “that there will be summat to talk on.”
