Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  But he did not say it. Boom, boom, rolled the drum, drowning his voice beyond hope. And this time, with the fourth stroke, a couple of fifes struck into a sprightly measure, and the next moment three score lively voices were roaring:

  You’ve here the little Peeler,

  Out of place he will not go!

  But to keep it, don’t he turn about

  And jump Jim Crow!

  But to keep it see him turn about

  And jump Jim Crow!

  Turn about, and wheel about

  And do just so!

  Chorus

  The only dance Sir Robert knows

  Is Jump Jim Crow!

  The only dance Sir Robert knows

  Is Jump Jim Crow!

  For a verse or two the singers had it their own way. Then the band of the meeting struck in with “See, the Conquering Hero Comes!” and as the airs clashed in discord, the stalwarts of the two parties clashed also in furious struggle. In a twinkling and as by magic the scene changed. Women, children, lads, fled every way, screaming and falling. Shrieks of alarm routed laughter. The crowd swayed stormily, flowed this way, ebbed that way. The clatter of staves on clubs rang above oaths and shouts of defiance, as the Yellows made a rush for the drum. Men were down, men were trampled on, men strove to scale the cart, others strove to descend from it. But to descend from it was to descend into a mêlée of random fists and falling sticks, and the man from Manchester bellowed to stand fast; while Hatton shouted to “clear out these rogues,” and Banfield called on his men to charge. Basset alone stood silent, measuring the conflict with his eyes. With an odd exultation he felt his spirits rise to meet the need.

  He saw quickly that the orange favors were outnumbered, and were giving way; and almost as quickly that, so far as mischief was meant, it was aimed at the Manchester man. He was a stranger, he was the delegate of the League, he was a marked man. Already there were cries to duck him. Basset tapped Banfield on the shoulder.

  “They’ll not touch us,” he shouted in the man’s ear, “but we must get Brierly away. There’s Pritchard’s house opposite. We must fight our way to it. Pass the word!” Then to Brierly, “Mr. Brierly, we must get you away. There’s a gang here means mischief.”

  “Let them come on!” cried the Manchester man, “I’m not afraid.”

  “No, but I am,” Basset replied. “We’re responsible, and we’ll not have you hurt here. Down all!” he cried raising his voice, as he saw the band whom he had already marked, pressing up to the cart through the mêlée — they moved with the precision of a disciplined force, and most of their faces were muffled. “Down all!” he shouted. “Yellows to the rescue! Down before they upset us!”

  The leaders scrambled out of the cart, some panic-stricken, some enjoying the scuffle. They were only just in time. The Yellows were in flight, amid yells and laughter, and before the last of the platform was over the side, the cart was tipped up by a dozen sturdy arms. Hatton and another were thrown down, but a knot of their men, the last with fight in them, rallied to the call, plucked the two to their feet, and, striking out manfully, covered the rear of the retreating force.

  The men with the belcher neckerchiefs pressed on silently, brandishing their clubs, and twice with cries of “Down him! Down him!” made a rush for Brierly, striking at him over the shoulders of his companions. But it was plain that the assailants shrank from coming to blows with the local magnates; and Basset seeing this handed Brierly over to an older man, and himself fell back to cover the retreat.

  “Fair play, men,” he cried, good humoredly. And he laughed in their faces as he fell back before them. “Fair play! You’re too many for us to-day, but wait till the polling-day!”

  They hooted him. “Yah! Yah!” they cried. “You’d ruin the land that bred you! You didn’t ought to be there!” “Give us that fustian rascal! We’ll club him!”

  “Who makes cloth o’ devil’s dust?” yelled another. “Yah! You d — d cotton-spawn!”

  Basset laughed in their faces, but he was not sorry when the friendly doorway received his party. The country gang, satisfied with their victory, began to fall back after breaking a dozen panes of glass; and the panting and discomfited Yellows, thronging the passage and pulling their coats into shape, were free to exchange condolences or recriminations as they pleased. More than one had been against the open-air meeting, and Hatton, a sorry figure, hatless, and with a sprained knee, was not likely to hear the end of it. Two or three had black eyes, one had lost two teeth, another his hat, and Brierly his note-book.

  But almost before a word had been exchanged, a man pushed his way among them. He had slipped into the house by the back way. “For God’s sake, gentlemen,” he cried, “get the constable, or there’ll be murder!”

  “What is it?” asked a dozen voices.

  “They’ve got Ben Bosham, half a hundred of them! They’re away to the canal with him. They’re that mad with him they’ll drown him!”

  So far Basset had treated the affair as a joke. But Bosham’s plight in the hands of a mob of angry farmers seemed more than a joke. Murder might really be done. He snatched a thick stick from a corner — he had been hitherto unarmed — and raised his voice. “Mr. Banfield,” he said, “go to Stubbs and tell him what is doing! He can control them if any one can. And do some of you, gentlemen, come with me! We must get him from them.”

  “But we’re not enough,” a man protested.

  “The man must not be murdered,” Basset replied. “Come, gentlemen, they’ll not dare to touch us who know them, and we’ve the law with us! Come on!”

  “Well done, Squire!” cried Brierly. “You’re a man!”

  “Ay, but I’m not man enough to take you!” Basset retorted. “You stay here, please!”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  BY THE CANAL

  It was noon on that day, the day of the meeting at Riddsley, and Mary was sitting in the parlor at the Gatehouse. She was stooping over the fire with her eyes on the embers. The old hound lay beside her with his muzzle resting on her shoe, and Mrs. Toft, solidly poised on her feet, on the farther side of the table, rolled her apron about her arms and considered the pair.

  “It’s given us all a rare shock,” she said as she marked the girl’s listless pose, “the poor Master’s death! That sudden and queer, too! I don’t know that I’m better for it, myself, and Toft goes up and down like a toad under a harrow, he’s that restless! For ‘Truria, she’s fairly mazed. Her body’s here and her thoughts are lord knows where. Toft, he seems to think something will come of her and her reverend — —”

  “I hope so,” Mary said gently.

  “But it’s beyond me what Toft thinks these days. I asked him point — blank yesterday, ‘Toft,’ I says, ‘are we going or are we staying?’ And, bless the man, he looks at me as if he’d eat me. ‘Take time and you’ll know,’ he says. ‘But whose is the house?’ I asks, ‘and who’s to pay us?’ ‘God knows!’ he says, and whiffs out of the room like one of these lucifers!”

  “I think that the house is Mr. Basset’s,” Mary explained, “for the rest of the lease; that’s about three years.”

  “But you’ll not be staying, begging your pardon, Miss? I suppose you’ll be naming the day soon? The Master’s gone and his lordship will be wanting you somewhere else than here.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said quietly. “I suppose so.”

  Mrs. Toft looked for a blush and saw none, and she drew her conclusions. She went on another tack. “There’s like to be a fine rumpus in the town to-day,” she said comfortably. “The Squire’s brought a foreigner down to trim their nails, and there’s to be a wagon and speaking and such like foolishness at the Maypole. As if all the speeches of all the fools in Staffordshire would lower the quartern loaf! Anyway, if what Petch says is true, the farmers are that mad there’s like to be lives lost!”

  Mary stooped and carefully put a piece of wood on the fire.

  “And, to be sure, they’re a rough lot,” Mrs. Toft continue
d, dropping her apron. “I’m not forgetting what happened to the reverend Colet, and I wish the young master safe out of it. It’s all give and no take with him, too much for others and too little for himself! I’m thinking if anybody’s hurt he’ll be there or thereabouts.”

  Mary turned. “Is Petch — couldn’t Petch go down and — —”

  “La, Miss,” Mrs. Toft answered — the girl’s face told her all that she wished to know— “Petch don’t dare, with his lordship on the other side! But, all said and done, I’ll be bound the young master’ll come through. It’s a pity, though,” she continued thoughtfully, as she began to dust the sideboard, “as people don’t know their own minds. There’s the Squire, now. He’s lived quiet and pleasant all these years and now he must dip his nose into this foolishness, same as if he dipped it into hot worts when Toft’s a-brewing! I don’t know what’s come to him. He goes riding up to Blore these winter nights, twenty miles if it’s a furlong, when this house is his! He’s more like to take his death that way, if I’m a judge.”

  “Is he doing that?” Mary asked in a small voice.

  “To be sure,” Mrs. Toft returned. “What else! Which reminds me, Miss, are those papers to go to the bank to-day?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, you’re looking that peaky, you’d best take a jaunt with them. Why not? It’s a fine day, and if there is a bit of a clash there’s none will hurt you. Do you go, Miss, and get a little color in your cheeks. At worst, you’ll bring back the news and I’m sure we’re that dead-alive and moped a little’s a godsend!”

  “I think I will go,” Mary said.

  So when the gig, which was to convey the boxes to the bank, arrived about three, she mounted beside the driver. Here, were it only for an hour, was distraction and a postponement of that need to decide, to choose between two courses, which was crushing her under its weight.

  For Mary was very unhappy. That moment which had proved to her that she did not love the man she was to marry and did love another, had stamped itself on her memory, never to be wiped from it. In Audley’s company, and for a time after they had parted, the shock had numbed her mind and dulled her feelings. But once alone and free to think, she had grasped all that the discovery meant — to her and to him; and from that moment she had not known an instant of ease.

  She saw that she had made a terrible mistake, and one so vital that, if nothing could be done, it must wreck her happiness and another’s happiness. And what was she to do? What ought she to do? In a moment of emotion, led astray by that love of love which is natural to women, and something swayed — so she told herself in scorn — by

  Those glories of our blood and state,

  which to women are not shadows, she had made this mistake, and now, self-tricked, she had only herself to blame if

  Sceptre and crown

  Were tumbled down

  And in the dust were lesser made

  Than the poor crooked scythe and spade!

  But to see her folly did not avail. What was she to do?

  Ought she to tell the truth, however painful it might be, to the man whom she had deceived? Or ought she to go through with it, to do her duty and save him at least from hurt? Either way, she had wrecked her own craft, but she might still hope to save his. Or — might she hope? She was not certain even of this.

  What was she to do? Hour after hour she asked herself the question, sometimes looking through the windows with eyes that saw nothing, at others pacing her room in a fever of anxiety. What was she to do? She could not decide. Now she thought one thing, now another. And time was passing. No wonder that she was glad even of the distraction of this journey to Riddsley that at another time had been so dull an adventure! It was, at least, a reprieve, a respite from the burden of decision.

  She would not own, even to herself, that she had any other thought in going, or that anxiety had any part in her restlessness. From that side of the battle she turned her eyes with all the strength of her will. Her conduct had been that of a silly girl rather than that of a woman who had seen and suffered; but she was not light — and besides Basset was cured. She was only unfortunate, and desperately unhappy.

  As they drove by the old Cross at the foot of the hill she averted her eyes. Surely it must have been in some other life that she had made it the object of a walk, and had told herself that she would never forget it.

  Alas, she had been right. She would never forget it!

  The man who drove saw that her face matched her mourning, and he left her to her thoughts, so that hardly a word passed between them until they were close upon the outskirts of the town. Then the driver, to whom the dull winter landscape, the lines of willows, and the low water-logged fields, were no novelty, pricked up his ears.

  “Dang me!” he said, “they’ve started! There’s a fine rumpus in the town. Do you hear ‘em, Miss? That’s a band I’m thinking?”

  “I hope no one will be hurt.”

  The man winked at his horse. “None of the right side, Miss,” he said slyly. “But it might be a hanging, front o’ Stafford gaol, by the roar! I met a tidy lot going in as I came out, a right tidy lot! I’m blest,” after listening a moment, “if they’re not coming this way!”

  “I hope they won’t do anything to — —”

  “La, Miss,” the man answered, misreading her anxiety and interrupting her, “they’ll never touch us. And for the old nag, he’s yeomanry. He’d not start if he met a mile o’ funerals!”

  Certainly the noise was growing. But the lift of the canal bridge and bank, which crossed the road a hundred yards before them, hid all of the town from them save a couple of church towers, some tiled roofs, and the brick gable of Hatton’s Works. The man whipped up his horse.

  “Teach they Manchester chaps a trick!” he muttered. “Shouldn’t wonder if there’ll be work for the crowner out of this! Gee-up, old nag, let’s see what’s afoot! ‘Pears to me,” as the shouting grew plainer, “we’ll be in at the death yet, Miss!”

  Mary winced at the word, but if the man feared that she would refuse to go on, he was mistaken. On the contrary, she looked eagerly to the front as the old horse, urged by the whip, took the rise of the bridge at a canter, and, having reached the crown, relapsed into an absent-minded walk.

  “Dang me!” cried the driver, greatly excited, “but they do mean business! It’s in knee in neck with ‘em! Never thought it would come to this. And who is’t they’ve got, Miss?”

  Certainly there was something out of the common on foot. Moving to meet the gig, and filling the road from ditch to ditch, appeared a disorderly crowd of two or three hundred persons. Cheering, hooting, and brandishing sticks, they came on at something between a walk and a run, although in the heart of the mass there was a something that now and again checked the movement, and once brought it to a stand. When this happened the crowd eddied and flowed about the object in its centre and presently swept on again with the same hooting and laughter.

  But in the laughter, as in the hooting, there was, after each of these pauses, a more savage note.

  “What is it?” Mary cried, as the driver, scared by the sight, pulled up his horse. “What is it?”

  “D — n me,” the man replied, forgetting his manners, “if I don’t think it’s Ben Bosham they’ve got! It is Ben! And they’re for ducking him! It’s mortal deep by the bridge there, and s’help me, if it’s not ten to one they drown him!”

  “Ben Bosham?” Mary repeated. Then she recalled the name. She remembered what Mrs. Toft had said of him — that the man had a wife and would bring her to ruin. The crowd was not fifty yards from them now and was still coming on. To the left a track ran down to the towing-path and the canal, and already the leaders of the mob were swerving in that direction. As they did so — and were once more checked for a moment — Mary espied among them a man’s bald head twisting this way and that, as he strove to escape. The man was struggling desperately, his clothes almost torn from his back, but he was helpless in the hands of
a knot of stout fellows, and after a brief resistance he was hauled forcibly on. A hundred jeering voices rose about him, and a something cruel in the sound chilled Mary’s blood. The dreary scene, the sluggish canal, the flat meadows, the rising mist, all pressed on her mind and deepened the note of tragedy.

  But on that she broke the spell. The blood in her spoke. She clutched the driver’s arm and shook it. “Go on!” she cried. “Go on! Drive into them!”

  The man hesitated — he saw that the crowd was in no jesting mood. But the old horse felt the twitch on the reins and started, and having the slope with him, trotted gently forward as if the road were empty before him. The crowd waved and shouted, and cursed the driver. But the horse, thinking perhaps that this was some new form of parade, only cocked his ears and ambled on till he reached the foremost. Then a man seized the rein, jerked it, and stopped him.

  In a moment Mary sprang down, heedless of the fact that she was one woman among a hundred men. She faced the crowd, her eyes bright with indignation. “Let that man go,” she cried. “Do you hear? Do you want to murder him?” And, advancing a step, she laid her hand on Ben Bosham’s ragged, filthy sleeve — he had been down more than once and been rolled in the mud. “Let him go!” she continued imperiously. “Do you know who I am, you cowards? Let him go!”

  “Yah!” shouted the crowd, and drowned her voice and pressed roughly about her, threatened her. One of the foremost asked her what she would do, another cried that she had best make herself scarce! Furious faces surrounded her, fists were shaken at her. But Mary was not daunted. “If you don’t let him go, I shall go to Lord Audley!” she said.

  “You’re a fool meddling in this!” cried a voice. “We’re only going to wash the devil!”

  “You will let him go!” she replied, facing them all without fear and, advancing a step, she actually plucked the man from the hands that held him. “I am Miss Audley! If you do not let him go — —”