But two words had caught her ear.
"Aiding and abetting?" she muttered. And she turned her eyes, still bright with tears, upon him. Her flushed face and ruffled hair gave her a strangely childish appearance. "Aiding and abetting? Do you mean that you think that I-that I had anything to do with taking the child?"
"No, no," Bishop murmured hurriedly, and cast a warning look at his colleague. "No, no, not knowingly."
"Nay, but that depends," Nadin persisted obstinately. His fibre was coarser, and his perceptions were less acute. It was his habit to gain his ends by fear, and he was unwilling to lose the hold he had over her. "That depends," he repeated doggedly. "If you speak and tell us all you know, of course not. But if you do not speak, we shall take it against you."
"You will take it," she cried, "that I-I helped to steal the child?"
"Just so, if you don't speak," Nadin repeated, disregarding his fellow's signals. Firmness, he was sure, was all that was needed. Just firmness.
She was silent in great agitation. They suspected her! Oh, it was wicked, it was vile of them! She would not have touched a hair of the child's head. And they suspected Walterson; but it might be as falsely, it must be as falsely. Yet if she gave him up, even if he were innocent he would suffer. He would suffer on other charges, and she would have his blood on her hands though she had so often, so often, resolved that she would not be driven to that!
They asked too much of her. They asked her to betray the man to death on the chance-and she did not believe in the chance-that it would restore the child to its father. She shuddered as she thought of the child, as she thought of Anthony Clyne's grief; she would willingly have done much to help the one and the other. But they asked too much. If it were anything short of the man's life that they asked, she would be guided, she would do as they bade her. But this step was irrevocable: and she was asked to take it on a chance. Possibly they did not themselves believe in the chance. Possibly they made the charge for their own purposes, their aim to get the man into their power, the blood-money into their purse. She shuddered at that and found the dilemma cruel. But she had no doubt which course she must follow. No longer did any thought of herself or of the annoyances of his arrest weigh with her: thought of the child had outweighed all that. But she would not without proof, without clear proof, have the man's blood on her hands.
And regarding them with a pale set face,
"If you have proof," she said, "that he-Walterson-" she pronounced the name with an effort-"was concerned in carrying off the child, I will speak."
"Proof?" Nadin barked.
"Yes," she said. "If you can satisfy me that he was privy to this-I will tell you all I know."
Nadin exploded.
"Proof?" he cried with violence. "Why, by G-d, was he not at the place where we know the men landed? And didn't you expect to meet him there? And at the very hour?"
"He was not there," she cried.
"But-"
"And I was there," she continued, "yet I know nothing. I am innocent."
"Umph! I don't know!" Nadin growled.
"But I do," she replied. "If your proof comes only to that-"
"But the men who took the child are old mates of his!"
"How do you know?" she returned. "You did not see them. They may not be the men you wished to arrest. But," scornfully, "I see what kind of proof you have, and I shall not tell you."
"Come, miss," Bishop said, staying with difficulty Nadin's furious answer. "Come, miss, think! Think again. Think of the child!"
"Oh, sink the child," the Manchester officer struck in. He had seldom been so handled. "Think of yourself!"
"You will send me to prison?" she said.
"By heaven we will!" he answered. And Mr. Hornyold nodded.
"It must be so, then," she replied with dignity. "I shall not speak. I have no right to speak."
They all cried out on her, Bishop and Mr. Sutton appealing to her, Nadin growling oaths, Mr. Hornyold threatening that he would make out the warrant that minute. Only the landlady, with her apron rolled round her arms, stood grim and silent; a looker-on whose taciturnity presently irritated Nadin beyond bearing. "I suppose you think," he said, turning to her, "that you could have handled her better?"
"I couldn't ha' handled her worse!" the landlady replied.
"You think yourself a Solomon!" he sneered.
"A girl of ten's a Solomon to you!" the landlady retorted keenly. "It canna be for this, it surely canna be for this, Joe Nadin, that they pay you money at Manchester, and that 'tis said you go in risk of your life! Why, that Bishop, London chap as he is, is a greybeard beside you. He does know that Bluster is a good dog but Softly is better!"
"Well, as I live by bread I'll have her in the Stone Jug!" he retorted. "And then we'll see!"
"There's another will see before you!" Mrs. Gilson answered drily. "And it strikes me he's not far off. If you'd left her alone for just an hour and seen what his honour Captain Clyne could do with her, you'd have shown your sense!" shrugging her shoulders. "Now, I fear you've spoiled his market, my lad!"
CHAPTER XIX
AT THE FARM
It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-place at Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now on Walterson's brooding face as he stooped over the heat, now on the huddled shrunken form that filled the farther side of the hearth. As the flames rose and fell, the shadows of the two men danced whimsically behind them. At one moment they sprang up, darkening the whole smoke-grimed ceiling and seeming to menace the persons who gave them birth, at another they sank into mere hop-o'-my-thumbs, lurking in ambush behind the furniture. There was no other light in the room; it was rarely the old skinflint suffered another. And to-night the shutters were closed and barred that even the reflection of the blaze might not be seen without and breed suspicion.
The younger man's face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed not only his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear and brooding. He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was no longer the dandy who had turned a feather-head-for there was little in this place to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense had sharpened his features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old, and the shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longer floated on their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritability showed in his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silence the old man's crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moody depression. It was bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole with an imbecile driveller, and to spend long hours without other company. It was worse to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, and the 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 that he was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened-starting at the squeak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of a friend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled to ruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intention he had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not face without a shudder what might be happening at this moment by the waterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girl escaped there, would happen here; when they dragged her through the doorway, bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen who dominated him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they did they would do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight of it. For if they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, how loathly a figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor and dastardly a thing he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will he did and to whose vengeance he consented.
The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked with terrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was already playing, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met her look. Passionately he wished-as we all wish in like but smaller cases-that he had never seen either of the women, that he had never played the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen some other direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing was useless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, would not relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would not convert the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. And even while he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside, and he stood up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on the shutter, informed him that the crisis which he had been expecting and dreading, was come-was come!
Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, was already on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog face opened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wall was scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thick drugget shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall man cloaked and booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meaner appearance. The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, a bundle-Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess with the same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure the door against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up the chimney, the cloaked man addressed him.
"You're Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we've met-once, I think. Well," he spoke in a harsh, peremptory tone-"you'll be good enough to note," he turned and pointed to the other men, "that I have naught to do with this! I've neither hand nor part in it! And I'll ask you to remember that."
Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the man with the bundle.
"What is it?" he muttered hoarsely. "I don't understand."
"Oh, stow this!" Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which she had secured. "The gentleman is very grand and mighty," shrugging her shoulders, "but the thing is done now. And I'll warrant if good comes of 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, angular figure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long, and his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features was redeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which was never long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speech and manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors. And not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemed in his presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.
His two companions were stout, short-built men of a coarse type. But Walterson after a single glance, paid no heed to them. His eyes, his thoughts, his attention were all on the bundle. Yet, it was not possible, it could not be what he dreaded. It was too small, too small! 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! And came in our way just when we were ready for it. Let's look at the kid."
"The kid?"
Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. He looked at Thistlewood.
The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged his square 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 Squire Clyne's, if you must know. He'll learn now what it is to see your children trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut with sabres! 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. "If I don't think, mate, you've squeezed his throat a bit too tight!"
He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimate form of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thin bloodless hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes were half-closed; and the tiny face showed so deathly white-among those tanned faces and in that grimy place-that it was not wonderful that the 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 of tenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children but their own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkled water on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Walterson found his voice.
"What folly-what cursed folly is this?" he cried, his words vibrating with rage. "What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, or this d-d folly-that you should bring the hunt upon us? We were snug 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!" Walterson rejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, "if that child is Squire 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 country on us before noon to-morrow!" Walterson retorted. "I tell you he'll follow you and track you and find 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 as another."
"You can leave my neck out of the question," Thistlewood replied. "And me!" And he turned his back on them contemptuously.
"Well, you've got a neck," Giles answered, addressing Walterson, who was almost hysterical with rage. "And I suppose you have some care for it, if he has none!" with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood's direction. "You'd as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, I suppose?"
"Sooner," Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover. "Here, let me teach him," she continued bluntly; the child had begun to murmur in a low, painful note. "They came on the kid by chance and snatched it, and we've put ten miles of water between the place and us."
"And snow on the ground!" Walterson retorted, pointing to the thin powder 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-white fancy-girl never came. She'd more sense than I thought she had. But you were willing to snatch her, my lad. And why is the risk greater with the child?"
"But-"
"It's less," the girl continued, before he could put his objection into words. "It's less, I tell you, for the child's more easily tucked away. I've a place we can put it, where they'll not find it if they search for a twelvemonth!"
"They'll soon search here," he said sullenly. "There's not a house they'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 not be 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 words and you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there's a reward out, and what he'll suffer if he is found hiding us, and when he knows that all the country is up-and for this child they'd hang us on the nearest tree-he'll give us up and you too. Though you do think you have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!" he added passionately.
With a dark look, "Stow it, my lad," she said, as he paused for want of 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 should be 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't want to be sold."
"I am of that way of thinking myself, captain," Lunt growled. "If the man has no finger between the jamb and the door, you can't be sure that he won't shut it. No, curse me, you can't! There's other Olivers besides him who has sold a round dozen of us to Government. I'll slit the throat of the first police spy that comes in my way!"
"And yet you trust me!" the girl flung at him, her eyes scornful. To her they all, all seemed cowards.
"Ay, but you are a woman," Giles answered. "And though I'm not saying there's no Polly Peachums, I've not come across them. Treat a maid fair and she'll treat you fair, that's the common way of it. She'll not stretch you, for anything short of another wench. But a man! He's here 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 keep his skin safe-for a week. He's like a good many more I know," with a glance which embraced every man in the room: "willing to eat but afraid 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 days old."
"What! And no woman with her?"
"There was," Bess answered, "but there isn't. I quarrelled with the serving-lass this afternoon, and at sunset to-day she was to go. If she comes back to-morrow I'll send her packing with a flea in her ear!"
"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 answered contemptuously. "She's a pale, fat caterpillar, afraid of her own shadow! She'll whine a bit, for she don't love me-thinks I'll poison her some fine day for the sake of her man. But she's upstairs and there's no one, but nor ben, to hear her whine; and at daybreak I'll be there, tending her. Isn't it the natural thing," and she smiled darkly, "with this the nearest house?"
"Curse me, but you're a clever lass!" Giles cried. And even Thistlewood seemed to feel no pity for the poor woman, left helpless with her babe. "I don't know," the ruffian continued, "that I'm not almost 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 a place-it's not of the brightest, but it'll do, and you must lie there days-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 here for ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid'll stay here until you're safe. And if you don't come safe, he's a card you'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's game, this!"
"Gentleman be hanged!" cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. "Do you call" – with temper-"what you were for this morning a gentleman's game? Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table a gentleman's game?"
"It's our lives against theirs!" Thistlewood answered with a sombre glance. "And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breeds wrong," he continued, his voice rising-as if already he spoke in his defence. "Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us down at Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they must be removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head and front of offence, the head and front of this damnable system under which no man that's worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man does right! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen at the top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that find the money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearful and 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 the throats of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I'd cut the throats of so many calves! And sooner, by G-d! Sooner! But for messing with children I'll none of it! I've said my say." And he turned again to the fire.
The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed him strangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but his courage. Here was what she had sighed for-a man! Here was what she thought that she had found in Walterson-a man! And Walterson himself approved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speak out 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's words.
"Ah, but we've got necks as well as you!" Giles muttered. "And if we risk 'em to please you, we'll save 'em the way we please!"
Then, "Look at the kid!" Lunt muttered. "He's hearing too much, and picking 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 by him, fell upon the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scene with a look of silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more than one. Had the boy wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given way to 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 it for a nuisance. But this passive terror, this self-restraint at so tender an age, struck the men as unnatural, and taken with its small elfish 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 by such notions-and, "You eat that, do you hear!" the girl said. "Or we'll give you to that old man there," pointing with an undutiful finger to the squalid figure of the old miser. "And he'll take you to his bogey-hole!"
The child shook pitifully, and the fear in its eyes deepened as it regarded the loathsome old man. With a sigh that seemed to rend the little heart, it took the iron spoon, and strove to swallow. The spoon tinkled 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, if they 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 he cast on the mercy of the ogres he saw about him. As he looked fearfully round the gloomy, fire-lit room with its lights and black shadows, a single large tear rolled from each eye and fell into the coarse earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke. Then he went on eating.