Starvecrow Farm Part 33

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-la.s.s 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 la.s.s!" 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 d.a.m.nable 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sive 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 superst.i.tious.

"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 coa.r.s.e earthen-ware bowl. And for an instant he seemed about to choke.

Then he went on eating.

CHAPTER XX

PROOF POSITIVE