Freaks on the Fells: Three Months' Rustication, R. M. Ballantyne [read dune .txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
Book online «Freaks on the Fells: Three Months' Rustication, R. M. Ballantyne [read dune .txt] 📗». Author R. M. Ballantyne
There was a gleam of triumph in the gypsy’s face as he said this, but it was quickly followed by a scowl when the woman said—
“Well, and much you have made of it. Here is the brat come back at the end o’ five years, to spoil our harvest!”
“How could I know he’d do that? I paid the captain a goodish lump o’ tin to take him on a long voyage, and I thought he was so young that he’d forget the old place.”
“How d’ye know that he hasn’t forgot it?” inquired the woman.
“’Cause, I seed him not twenty miles from this, and heerd him say he’d stop at the Blue Boar all night, and come on here in the morning—that’s to-morrow—so I come straight out to ask you wot I’m to do.”
“Ha! that’s like you. Too chicken-hearted to do any thing till I set you on, an’ mean enough to saddle it on me when ye’r nabbed.”
“Come, that’s an old story!” growled the man. “You know wot I am, and I knows wot you are. But if something’s not done, we’ll have to cut this here part o’ the country in the very thick o’ the season, when these southern sightseers are ranging about the hills.”
“That’s true!” rejoined the woman, seriously. “Many a penny the bairns get from them, an there’s no part so good as this. Ye couldn’t put him out o’ the way, could ye?”
“No,” said the man, doggedly.
The woman had accompanied her question with a sidelong glance of fiendish meaning, but her eyes at once dropped, and she evinced no anger at the sharp decision of her companion’s reply.
“Mother!” cried the young woman, issuing from the hut at the moment, “don’t you dare to go an’ tempt him again like that. Our hands are black enough already; don’t you try to make them red, else I’ll blab!”
The elder woman assumed an injured look as she said, “Who spoke of makin’ them red? Evil dreaders are evil doers. Is there no way o’ puttin’ a chick out o’ the way besides murderin’ him?”
“Hush!” exclaimed the man, starting and glancing round with a guilty look, as if he fancied the bare mention of the word “murder” would bring the strong arm of the law down on his head.
“I won’t hush!” cried the woman. “You’re cowards, both of you. Are there no corries in the hills to hide him in—no ropes to tie him with—that you should find it so difficult to keep a brat quiet for a week or two?”
A gleam of intelligence shot across the ill-favoured face of the gypsy.
“Ha! you’re a wise woman. Come, out with your plan, and see if I’m not game to do it.”
“There’s no plan worth speakin’ of,” rejoined the woman, somewhat mollified by her companion’s complimentary remarks. “All you’ve to do is to go down the road to-morrow, catch him, and bring him to me. I’ll see to it that he don’t make his voice heard until we’ve done with this part of the country. Then we can slip the knot, and let the brat go free.”
“I’ll do it!” said the man, sitting down on a stone and beginning to fill his pipe.
“I thought he was dead!” said the woman.
“So did I; but he’s not dead yet, an’ don’t look as if he’d die soon.”
“Maybe,” said the woman, “he won’t remember ye. It’s full five year now sin’ he was took away.”
“Won’t he?” retorted the man, with an angry look, which did not tend to improve his disagreeable visage. “Hah! I heerd him say he’d know me if he saw me in a crowd o’ ten thousand. I would ha’ throttled the cub then and there, but the place was too public.”
A short silence ensued, during which the gypsies ate their food with the zest of half-starved wolves.
“You’d better go down and see old Moggy,” suggested the woman, when the man had finished his repast and resumed his pipe. “If the brat escapes you to-morrow, it may be as well to let the old jade know that you’ll murder both him and her, if he dares to blab.”
The man shook his head. “No use!” said he. But the woman repeated her advice in a tone that was equivalent to a command, so the man rose up sulkily and went.
He was not a little surprised, on drawing near to the hut, to find it in a state of bustle, and apparently in possession of the Sudberrys. Not daring to show himself; he slunk back to his encampment, and informed his female companion of what he had seen.
“All the more reason to make sure work of him on the road to-morrow!” said she, with a dark frown.
“So I mean to!” replied the man doggedly. With these amiable sentiments and intentions animating their breasts, this pair crept into their booth and went to rest in the bosom of their family.
The morning which followed the events narrated in the last chapter broke with unclouded splendour. It was the second of the four bright days which relieved the monotony of those six dreary weeks of rain.
Rejoicing in the glorious aspect of earth and sky, and in the fresh scents which the rain had called forth from every shrub and flower on the mountains, Mr Sudberry dashed about the White House—in and out—awaiting the assembling of the family to breakfast with great impatience. His coat-tails that morning proved the means of annihilating the sugar-basin—the last of the set which had graced the board on his arrival in the Highlands, and which had been left, for some time past, “blooming alone,” all its former companions having been shattered and gone long ago.
According to custom, Mr Sudberry went forward to the barometrical banjo, intending to tap it—not that he expected correct information now. No; he had found out its falsehood, and was prepared to smile at anything it should say. He opened his eyes, however, and exclaimed “Hallo!” with unwonted energy, on observing that, as if in sheer defiance of the weather, of truth, and of public opinion, its index aimed point-blank at “stormy!”
He speedily discovered that this tremendous falsehood was the result of a careful intestine examination, to which the instrument had been privately subjected by Master Jacky the evening before; in the course of which examination the curious boy, standing below the barometer, did, after much trouble, manage to cut the bulb which held the mercury. That volatile metal, being set free, at once leaped into its liberator’s bosom, and gushed down between his body and his clothes to the floor!
“I’ll thrash him to within an inch—”
Mr Sudberry clinched his teeth and his fists, and burst out of the room, (it was at this moment that the last of the set became “faded and gone”), and rushed towards the nursery. “No, I won’t,” he muttered, suddenly wheeling round on his heel and returning slowly to the parlour. “I’ll say nothing whatever about it.” And Mr Sudberry kept his word—Jacky never heard of it from that day to this!
Seizing the opportunity of the fine day, Mr Sudberry and George went out to fish. They fished with worm now, the streams being too much swollen for fly.
Meanwhile, Master Jacky sauntered down alone, in a most free-and-easy independent manner, to visit old Moggy, who was thought to be in a dying state—at least the doctor said so, and it was to be presumed that he was right.
Jacky had regularly constituted himself sick nurse to the old woman. Despite the entreaties of Flora and his sister, who feared that the disease might be infectious, he could not be prevailed on to remain away. His nursing did not, indeed, consist in doing much that was useful. He confined himself chiefly to playing on the river-banks near the hut, and to making occasional inquiries as to how the patient was getting on. Sometimes he also assisted Flora in holding sundry cups, and glasses, and medicine bottles, and when Flora was away he amused himself by playing practical jokes on the young woman who had volunteered to act as regular nurse to the old invalid.
Towards the afternoon, Jacky put his hands behind his back—he would have put them under his coat-tails if he had had any, for he was very old-mannish in his tendencies—and sauntered down the road towards the pass. At this same time it chanced that another little boy, more than twice Jacky’s age, was walking smartly along the same road towards the same pass from the other side of it. There were as yet several miles between the two boys, but the pace at which the elder walked bid fair to bring them face to face within an hour. The boy whom we now introduce was evidently a sailor. He wore blue trousers, a blue vest with little brass buttons, a blue jacket with bigger brass buttons, and a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking all the stones out of his way, and whistling furiously. Sometimes he burst into a song, and once or twice he laughed, smote his thigh, and cheered, but never for a moment did he slacken his pace, although he had walked many a mile that day.
Curiously enough, at this same time, a man was crouching behind some bushes in the centre of the pass towards which these two boys were approaching. This man had a pair of grey eyes which might have been beautiful had they not been small and ferocious-looking, and a nose which might have been aquiline had the bridge not been broken, and a head of shaggy hair which might have been elegant had it been combed, oiled, curled, and dyed, and a general appearance which might have been prepossessing had it not been that of a thorough blackguard. This lovely specimen of humanity sat down on a rock, and waited, and fidgeted; and the expression of his sweet face betrayed, from time to time, that he was impatient, and anything but easy in his mind.
As Jack walked very leisurely and stopped frequently to play, his progress towards the pass was slow, and as our waiting friend, whom the reader no doubt recognises as the gypsy, could not see far along the road in that direction, he was not aware of his approach. On the other hand, the sailor-boy came on fast, and the road was so open and straight in that direction that the gypsy saw him when he was far enough away to seem like a mere blue spot in the distance.
Presently he gained the entrance to the pass and began the ascent, which was gradual, with a riotous windlass song, in which the sentiments, yo! heave! and ho! were most frequently expressed. As he drew near, the gypsy might have been observed to grin a smile that would have been quite captivating but for some obstinate peculiarity about the muscles of the mouth which rendered it very repulsive.
Next moment the sailor-boy was abreast of him. The moment after that the bushes parted, and the gypsy confronted his victim, cutting a tremendous “heave!” short in the middle, and converting the “ho!” that should have followed, into a prolonged whistle of astonishment.
“Hah! my lad, you remember me, it seems?”
“Remember you? Yes, I just do!” answered the boy, in whose countenance every trace of boyishness was instantly swallowed up in an intense gaze of manly determination.
This mute but meaning glance had such a strange effect upon the gypsy that he actually cowered
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