And as she worked, she thought of her husband, and tried to realise how she had come to marry him. It was all a jumble to her yet. In that strange gust of marrying she had answered she hardly knew how, except that, perhaps, of “Yes” and “No,” the “Yes” had come first. Not that she did not love him, as the phrase was, if that was all; but was there no more in it than that? She thoughtagain of his perilous trade. She did not reckon it as goodness or wickedness, as she knew the parson would have done, but on its two chances—impunity or a shameful end. She had never heard of the man who, sent forth against his own tyrannous brother, knew that according to how he fared his meed was to be that of a deliverer or of a fratricide; yet she dimly understood that Arthur stood in a strait scarce less narrow.—Yes, she must love him, or that little shiver, as if of a chill, would not have taken her.... She set her gloved fist to her waist to straighten herself, aching and drowsy with stooping over the teazels. As she did so, her wrist was taken from behind.
She had not heard his approach. “Arthur!” she said, and turned her head.
It was her cousin.
For a moment her smile vanished; then she smiled again, but with a quickening heart. He did not release her wrist. It was of little use to speak to him, and they stood regarding one another at arm’s length. She felt her courage falter; he was trying to daunt her with his madness. The hair of his face glinted like bits of copper wire in the strong sun.
“Let me go, Eastwood,” she cried loudly.
Still his bulging eyes strove to quell her. “I’ve seen him kiss you!” he muttered hoarsely.
“Let me go, Eastwood!” she cried again.
“Ay, oft; and I’ve known when I haven’t seenit. I can see through walls, I can....” His muttering became unintelligible.
What was left of her courage seemed to rise in a flood, and she knew that when it ebbed again she would be helpless. She tried again to free her wrist, and then she quivered throughout her frame.
“This is three times,” she cried, regardless of whether he heard or not; “and now stand off! You say you can’t look on your own blood. Stand off, then, for I’ll cut a vein with the shears if you don’t!”
He drew his hand quickly away at her menacing gesture, and she sprang back, the teazels plucking at her skirt. She breathed tumultuously, but her lips were closed, and as she retreated through the spiny teazels he began to advance again. Two or three ash-trees were behind her, but she did not dare to run for their shelter. Suddenly with all her force she began to call, “Arthur! Arthur!” Ellah plunged forward through the blue mist of bloom.
She stepped aside, and he fell. He rose scratched, and regarded his hands wildly, and she fled through the dragging teazels towards the ash-trees. She called again and again, “Arthur! Arthur!” There came an answer from the top of the Scout, but she continued to call his name. There was a sound of plunging and sliding, and Monjoy pushed through the mountain-ashes.
He took her in his arms and was gathering her tohim when suddenly he stopped. He pushed her aside and strode quickly forward. Ellah was looking, stupid and fascinated, at his bleeding hands, holding them away from him, and Monjoy took him by one leg and shoulder. He threw him as he would have thrown a sack, and the deaf man pitched shoulder first into the teazels and his legs came up and over in a curve. It was near the edge of the patch, and at the next turn his body took the slippery grass. He disappeared over the rounded edge. It seemed minutes before he reappeared, and then he was so far below that he seemed no more than a stone bounding down the hillside. Again he disappeared, and Monjoy sought Cicely. He found her huddled under an ash.
“Rest awhile, love,” he muttered, “and then come with me. I’ll get a bite and sup—I’ll not sit down—and then I’ll take you to Horwick. Let me do up your hair.... You haven’t kissed your husband yet.... Yes, yes, hush! I’ll get you to Horwick now. You should have told me....”
He talked gently, without intermission, not questioning her; then he took her basket and put his arm about her. They kept the upper edge of the teazels, and he supported her down a sheep-track. Her father’s house was empty. He took a gulp of water and ate a crust of bread while she tremblingly made herself ready; and then, his arm again about her, they descended the street.
EVENthe occasional airs that strayed on the hills did not touch Horwick Town, which lay sweltering. Orders had gone forth from the constables that water was to be used with economy, and garbage cooked in the unswilled kennels. Dogs were kept on the chain for fear of rabies; roof-chambers became stoves, bull’s-eye windows burning-glasses; dust rose heavily when it was stirred, and fell again in the same place; duckponds were basins of cracked earth; the very blue of the sky had paled before the devouring sun.
The blinds of John Emmason’s dining-room were drawn, and the magistrate had knotted the four corners of a handkerchief over his head; it gave a tipsy appearance to his solemn horse-face. Again Moon and Eastwood had called on him, and Eastwood had removed his neckband, while from the merchant’s nose the skin had peeled like a flowering grass. The magistrate’s hand held an official document, and his manner was unusually humble.
“And you don’t know what it consists of?” Moon said, breaking a long and brooding silence.
“No,” the magistrate replied; “he only says, ‘New evidence, calling for a fresh trial.’ Here’s his letter: ‘William Chamberlayne, Solicitor to His Majesty’s Mint, and also the Solicitor for the Crown’—hum, hum—‘make oath and declare that a fresh discovery is likely soon to be made which will furnish the Crown with sure and certain evidence’—hum, hum, and so forth. No, I don’t know what it is.”
“What d’ye think it is?” Moon demanded.
“Ah, Matthew, it is not always expedient to tell all you think——”
“The devil take your slippery answers! D’ye think they’re as good as hanged?”
The magistrate was silent.
“And when will this new trial be?”
“Any day,” said Emmason, battling with his wounded dignity; and Moon turned to Eastwood.
“Who can we send?” he asked abruptly.
“Best send John Raikes. Fit him up wi’ pigeons and let him get off to-day. I’ll see the clogger.”
“And for the other tomfoolery, pretending to search premises: Cope has a warrant?”
“Hm! Ay, he has a warrant,” Eastwood said, with a shrug.
“So ye’re wakening up, are ye?” Moon grunted;and the tipsy tassels of the magistrate’s handkerchief shook as he nodded, as if he himself had been addressed.
“As for seeing Parker again,” he said, in a subdued voice, “I might as well sit where I am. I am bound to say it looks as if I was discredited, and I have thought of handing in my commission. Parker knows more than I. Even this”—he tapped the document—“even this I only received in common with every other magistrate in the Riding.”
“God be thanked for a plain word from ye at last!” Moon said bitterly. “Can ye talk any more in that fashion?”
“There’s little else to say,” the humiliated magistrate replied. “If it would serve any end now to add my testimony against Northrop and Haigh—for they’re both dead as clay, I fear——”
Moon bent his narrow brows on him.
“That’ll do,” he said; “now hold your tongue.... James, if you can come with me we’ll fit John up for money. We’re not beat because Emmason’s frightened. There’s chances. Juries aren’t so ready to convict now for these half-crown matters when it’s a man’s neck; and Raikes knows his way about. Come. We’ve only two words to say to the lads, and the safest place for Cope will be his own bed. Come.—Don’t you go adding testimony, Emmason. Good day.”
They passed out into the glaring street, and thatsame afternoon John Raikes, with half a dozen pigeons in a cage, set off on horseback for York.
Cope was no longer a jest. Even that merry soul, Cole the clogger, had ceased to button his coat over his arms and to slip the clogs on his hands, and only the magpie continued from habit to whistle “Hey, Johnny Cope,” when the supervisor’s toddling steps sounded down the croft. The reiterated “Good morning—morning, morning, morning,” was returned shortly and without merriment; and Cole declared that he could have flung a clog-sole at the man only for his jarring laugh. Somebody had called the supervisor “the nail i’ the stocks”—an expression from the fulling-mill, where, should a nail get into the trough where the heavy stampers pounded the wet cloth, the whole work was rent—and the nickname stuck.
And, as if he had now less to conceal, Cope, too, bore himself differently. At any rate, if he still used the “Mr.” in addressing even a weaver, and his “hn, hn” was no less insinuating than before, he was differently interpreted, and an indefinable truculence was read into his actions. He even went a little further; for a young lad, grown bold, sang out one day in the market-place (as he had done a hundred times before), “Hey, Johnny Cope!” But this time Cope stepped to him, laughed a vicious little laugh, and took him a smart cut over the calves with his cane, passingon with his head over his shoulder, while the dumbfoundered lad whimpered and rubbed his wealed calves. A man standing by remarked, as if on a point of general discipline: “Serve him right;” but the significance of the incident did not pass unnoticed.
Cicely was with Sally again, and Monjoy still passed his nights elsewhere than in Horwick. It was to Monjoy, during one of these intervals in his labour, that Cope revealed a little more of what was in his mind. They had sat next to one another at the “Pipes” (where Cope still called frequently, and always for his single glass of weak brandy and water); and suddenly Cope, leaning towards Monjoy, said, “A word with you, Mr. Monjoy.... I am granted a search-warrant, on suspicion of I know not exactly what, over your new house up the Fullergate—hn, hn! You know as much of it as I, belike, for I may say it was forced on me; but my duty, hn!—I should have been happy to wink at it, but when magistrates become aware—hn! So at your convenience, eh?”
He scarcely took the trouble to put contempt into his tone, contempt for their childish machinating, and Monjoy gave an embarrassed laugh. “Nay, what the devil’s this?” he exclaimed; and Cope peered at him, again patted the air mockingly, and gave the engraver the “La, Mr. Monjoy!” which he seemed to reserve especially for him.
“Ay, Emmason can hand in his commission as soon as he likes,” was Matthew Moon’s comment when this was reported to him; and even Monjoy seemed unusually contemplative. But John Raikes was to be trusted, and money could be raised at a word.
A rumour, too, of whatever nature, must have penetrated to Back o’ th’ Mooin, for there arrived from that quarter something that could only be regarded as a message for Jeremy Cope.
Among other pretensions of this puerile, dangerous folk was one that their territory was theirs to the uttermost title, and that even right of passage along the Causeway was by their permission. A Back o’ th’ Mooiner would watch a stranger pass as you might good-humouredly sanction a trespass. Now to maintain such a right against the inroads of custom you have to refuse the privilege from time to time, and that was exactly what Back o’ th’ Mooin did one day to two men who had come up out of Lancashire.
A score of the roughest of them—they were carrying heavy timbers from over Booth way—came upon these two men and bade them turn. Monjoy was in Horwick. The men pleaded urgency of affairs; they refused to hear them; they must go back till midnight. One of them (he must have been an irascible fellow) showed a disposition for fight, and a consultation was held on the spot. The name of Cope was mentioned, and at the whisperedspeech of one of them—it was Mish Murgatroyd—a guffaw broke forth.
“Eh, that wad be a rare hint!” they cried, and they turned to the men, saying, “Ay, ye can go forward, but bide a bit.” A man set off at a run back to Booth, and when he returned it was with a bucket of pitch. They stripped the travellers to their boots and shirts, and when they had pitched them they cried, “Off wi’ ye; your clothes’ll be put at th’ top o’ Wadsworth Scout at midnight to-night. Gi’e ’em our love i’ Horwick.”
Some Wadsworth men found them that night, lying in the heather in the moonlight, waiting for their clothes.
And the odd thing was that when the tale got about Horwick none seemed to enjoy the jocularity of it so much as Cope himself. He heard it in the “Cross Pipes,” and he chuckled and smothered with laughter till his black-rimmed glasses were dim with his tears. “Rare fellows, rare fellows!” he wheezed; and the company, who had looked to see him take it differently, watched him warily.
“Rare fellows!” he said, rubbing his glasses. “I remember, Mr. Monjoy, something you once said about law and custom; may I take this as part of your—shall I say sovereignty?”
“No, you may not,” said Monjoy curtly.
“Hn, hn!—Now I don’t know whether you do me the honour to remember, gentlemen, my story of Hawley’s spy? I believe I omitted to say (quitea coincidence) that they brought him in tarred, too——”
The hand of a man across the parlour made a movement to a heavy earthenware jug; the hand was Matthew Moon’s. Cope blinked askew at him, and he set the jug down again. The supervisor set his spectacles with great exactness on the bridge of his nose again, made the foolish familiar movement with his hand (but this time towards the merchant), and said: “A violent temper?... La, Mr. Moon!”
Again, this happened a couple of days afterwards. The supervisor came out of his house that morning and was passing, with his customary greeting, down the croft. As he did so, Cole’s magpie fell to whistling to his short step the song of “Hey, Johnny Cope.” Cope stopped short, put his hand to his ear, and then deliberately walked back. He descended the narrow well of the clogger’s doorway, adjusted his spectacles, and craned his head forward towards the bird in the cage.
“Your bird, Mr. Cole?”
“Ay—ay—he’s mine,” the clogger replied timorously; the exciseman had never before entered his shop.
“Extraordinarily imitative creatures,” Cope observed, putting his hand to the door of the cage.
“See he doesn’t bite ye,” the clogger said tremulously.
“Eh?” said the exciseman sharply; and then, glancing malevolently over his shoulder at the clogger, and showing his corner teeth like a dog, he seized the bird with a quick movement. “Some folk, however, cannot abide them,” he said. He drew the bird out, calmly wrung its neck, and flung the still palpitating body on the bench. Then he stepped to the door, mounted the steps, and turned.
“Good morning, Mr. Cole,” he said, and passed again down the croft.
A pigeon, homing to Pim o’ Cuddy at Wadsworth, carried a message that John Raikes had arrived in York, but brought no further news. Cope was now shunned by many, and the clogger contrived to dodge out of his sight whenever he passed. After the incident of the magpie, it began to go about that he was not a man, but a devil and a ghoul; nevertheless, he avoided none, and he was to be seen wherever men met for ale and talk and tobacco. As if a contagion emanated from him, he was allowed a corner to himself at the “Cross Pipes”; and the next thing was that he ceased to visit the “Pipes.” That came about in this way.
Little was now said openly about the two men incarcerated in York Castle; but as if an imp pushed him to it, Cope himself seemed unable to keep his tongue off it. It chanced that somebody’s wain-pole had cracked (or it might havebeen a loom-timber), and a smith had made an iron collar to shrink over the split portion. The smith, sitting in the inn and toying with the ring as he talked, had set it over his wrist like a bracelet; and all at once Matthew Moon took his wrist, removed the fetter, handed it back to him, and bade him keep it in his pocket. Then, looking up, he caught Cope’s eye. The exciseman smiled.
“I think you and I were thinking the same thing, Mr. Moon,” he said.
The merchant blazed up suddenly and passionately.
“God send me better thoughts than yours!” he cried.
“Why,” the dwarf remarked, “I was thinking of the pleasure of scratching your leg when you get them off again——”
But Moon waited for no more. He sprang to his feet, his hand raised to strike, and his face black with anger.
“Ye’ll not be warned, ye fool?” he cried in a breaking voice.
There was no question of Cope’s physical courage. The merchant could have crushed him, and every man seemed disturbed to find himself so far out of his reckoning. Instead of showing fear, Cope covered, bathed, enveloped the merchant in one baleful look, and said in an even voice, “Sit down.” The door opened, and Sally Northrop stood in the entry.
“What’s to do?” she cried; and Matthew’seyes came slowly round to her. His hand fell, and he moved slowly backward to his seat.
“Nothing, Sally—get you gone—nobody wants anything—shut the door.”
She stood puzzled for a moment, then left, closing the door behind her. Moon leaned forward, both hands on the arms of his chair, and knit his brows at Cope.
“That’s the last,” he said. “Come the next, and I’ll serve you as they serve magpies.”
Cope wagged his heavy head slowly. “I’m disappointed in you, Mr. Moon,” he remarked.
“I’ve now finished speech wi’ you,” said the merchant with a dark look.
And for reply to that, Cope spat into the empty hearth.
Cicely became aware of awkward silences in Sally’s presence and of mournful looks that passed behind her back, and these things filled her with a nameless trouble and apprehension. When Arthur returned to Horwick for his two days (for his spells over the moor were now doubled), her manner became wheedling and cajoling; and one night, putting her arms about him, she sought again to draw from him that which during the day he had refused to tell her.
“Where’s John Raikes gone?” she whispered in his ear.
“Isn’t he at home?”
“You know he isn’t. Where’s he gone, dear?”
“Hush, lassie; go to sleep.”
“Where’s he gone, dear?”
“Gathering turtle-feathers; you’ll wake Sally.”
But her arms were about his neck. “Do you think I can’t keep counsel?” she pleaded. “Tell me, Arthur, or I shall guess worse than there is; tell me, dear....”
He could not but yield; he told her the little he knew. She lay very still by his side, and after a long time she said in a low voice:
“I saw Ellah to-day.”
“He’s about, is he?”
“With a stick.”
“Where was he—here?”
“No; he goes to the ‘Fullers’’ now.”
“He’s a lucky man, if he but knew it. Now, darling, go to sleep, and don’t lie awake fretting for Sally. Promise me——”
“I’ll try,” she said.
But she lay awake long after he slept soundly, and the perturbation of her thoughts showed in her manner during the days that followed. She sang over and over again the songs she knew, singing upstairs, downstairs and about, dreading to be silent for a minute; and at night she went to bed tired out, and sometimes had to lie down for an hour during the afternoon, exhausted with this forcing of her spirits.—“Whisht, ye puss!” Sally would say, kissing her or making believe to chastise her hands and wrists. “Whisht, or I’ll send for Dooina now!”and Cicely, thankful that her restlessness was thus set down, would embrace her passionately and pray that Sally might not be aware of the tears that fell sometimes on her hair. Sally would make confidences, too, which harrowed Cicely; even this acted happiness of her friend would sometimes bring a quick sadness into Sally’s eyes; and then Cicely would hurriedly set about some occupation, making work for herself, and singing again. Thus passed a fortnight of the blazing midsummer.
Ellah was about again, but pitifully changed. Folk turned to watch him as he passed—it was not known how he had come by his accident, save that he had fallen down the Scout—and they said that even yet he would be better at home than limping about Horwick, let alone the expense, for he stayed now at the “Fullers’ Arms.” His left hand dangled helplessly before his breast, an idiot gesture, and his right shook and wavered as he supported himself with a stick. His former dread of open spaces was now become so exaggerated that he would not venture into the market-place nor scarce cross even a narrow street; and he hobbled along close to walls, going thrice the distance rather than venture beyond the gutter. He said he felt easier so. On one foot he wore a felt slipper; and folk said that he was lucky to have got off with his wits only a little worse muddled than before.
Since Matthew Moon’s menace, Cope also hadmade the “Fullers’” his calling-place. The house had a humbler following than Jim Northrop’s inn, and the landlord made ends meet by weaving in a room upstairs. If here again Cope was not made over-welcome, he now seemed to enjoy that rather than otherwise. They had so entirely ceased to despise him that there was silence at a snap of his finger; he led the conversation when he would; and he did this sometimes in a manner that left them little appetite for their ale. They were not squeamish in the “Fullers’,” but Cope dealt in inhuman things, not simply wounds, maimings, and the like, but other and unspeakable things, and with a glee such as a devil might have displayed. The landlord knew that Cope’s custom cost him a good deal more than it was worth, but he dared not for his life have spoken.
One night Cope fairly emptied the room. Ellah, who had not heard his words, alone remained. The landlord had come in, and was ruefully gathering up the half-emptied, abandoned mugs, and he was passing out with his hands full of these when Cope called him sharply.
“Yes, sir?” he said, almost whimpering—for he, too, had heard.
“So you’re another of ’em, eh? Hn! hn! hn! hn!... Now I wonder if you can tell me something I’ll ask you?”
“No, sir,” the landlord almost sobbed, as if he were already asked it.
“Quiet, you fool! It is this: Their chests go purple, exactly as I described (don’t sob, landlord), and a man with a fat and puffy neck (which is what I was describing when our friend the clogger was struck all of a heap) ... well, well, it is so; and when it isn’t asphyxia it’s apoplexy, and may be both. With the windpipe partly ossified—(by the way, I haven’t seen our other friend for some time)—with the windpipe partly ossified, which I could determine by an examination with my fingers, thus——” He shot out his hand as if to clutch the landlord’s throat.
“For the love o’ God, don’t, sir!” the landlord screamed, falling back; and Cope sniggered.
“Hn! hn! hn! hn! hn!... Very well; and now to my question.” His voice changed almost to a snarl. “Why,” he demanded, “when the thing itself is at their doors, will the rascals blench at the name of it? I think their necks are stouter than their stomachs! My God, what fools!—Curse ’em in London; they told me there was work for a man here, and what do I find? Monjoy with his porridge-brains at the head of it, and the others.... I had hopes of your merchant at first; but, bah! a passionate child! Not a man worth my while among ’em; I might have begun as you see me now.... Off with you, you slavering rascal; shog off, knock-knees! Off!——”
Perhaps his obscene triumph of earlier in theevening had emboldened him, or more likely he spoke now also of design. He finished his glass, sent it rolling across the table, nibbed his hands together under Ellah’s nose, and cried, “Come, good Ellah, come, my new bosom comrade! Keep to the wall—that’s it—now a rub against the door-jamb and creep into your own shadow—excellent! Curse it, your gait’s after my own heart, dodging round corners and nosing along the kennels—hn! hn! hn! Take my arm....”
They passed out, Ellah leaning on the supervisor.
Two days later there came a word that drove all else from men’s minds: All was ready at last at the Slack. There were vague rumours of ceremonies and rites to be observed, as if, instead of two furnaces set up in defiance of the laws of the land, two altars were to be consecrated. The obtaining of fuel (it was said) still remained a difficulty, but one thing at a time; that would be solved by and by, and there was to be no further delaying of the inauguration. Monjoy had been in Horwick for a couple of days; at nine o’clock of a July evening he climbed the Scout and strode along the Causeway. It was a serene and burning sunset, and the purple of the heather was turned to a rich low gold. Sheep called from hill to hill, and from time to time grouse rose and fled. Slowly the sun went down, turning the moor to ink; the moon would not rise till midnight; and only thegrey Causeway seemed of itself to retain some dim glimmer of day. That, too, died down; the night became still and sultry; and Big Monjoy continued to stride towards the Slack long after the immense moor had become a thronging together of shadows and darkness.
DOWNin the Slack lanterns moved, and the confused noise of voices could be heard a mile away. Dark forms, running hither and thither, seemed to interweave with the shadows, while others lay stretched up the hillside or sat squatting on barrows and timbers. For a hundred yards and more the slope of the hill showed the toil of many weeks. Hillocks of earth, sand, clay, stones, a confusion of timbers, barrows, baulks, spades and mattocks, ropes, lime-heaps and what not, littered the border of the Slack. Had you tried to thread your way among these you would have run the risk of walking suddenly into the deep cutting in the hillside that sheltered the furnaces themselves. The larger furnace for smelting was built into the hill; the smaller refining furnace stood cheek by jowl with it, and was barely five feet high. A tripod of heavy beams, that had served its end with the completion of the construction, had not yet been takendown, and a half-made tackle like a heavy capstan, apparently for crushing, seemed to have been abandoned. The smaller of the furnaces was fitted with a pair of bellows in a gibbet-like frame; and fifty yards away, where the Slack turned on itself towards Brotherton Bog, was the older plant—the heavy frames in which the coining-dies were set, to be struck with the sledges.
They had blackened their faces with soot or charcoal, as children might who wished to make themselves out desperately wicked, and they leaped and moved with uncouth gestures. As if their native jargon of a dialect had not been enough, they had added to it a harsh and villainous lingo of unmeaning syllables. The furnace fires were laid; half a dozen casks of ale lay near them; and on mats of sacking on the hillside a couple of slaughtered and dressed sheep were ready for the roasting. Mish Murgatroyd had had his hair cut, and where the perspiration had partly washed his brow of its grime his two great calf-licks gleamed oilily in the shifting lantern-light. His brute of a brindled dog was fastened to one of the scaffold-timbers. A man called Leventoes had blacked, not his face only, but his body from the waist up; and Dick o’ Dean had smirched himself, not with black, but with red sheep-ruddle. These two danced here and there, mopping and mowing and talking the lingo incessantly. The youth called Charley seemed to have made himself drunk before coming; and Pim o’ Cuddy,the devil’s clerk now, hopped here and there, boasting gleefully of his own wickedness, and mixing up lingo and responses in an imbecile manner. Two men played singlestick with hammerhafts, making sharp cracks in the night.
From the northern end of the Slack there came a shout and cheer, and those lying on the hillside sat up or sprang to their feet. The lanterns moved towards one point and danced about it, like a cluster of fireflies, and a louder cheering broke out. Monjoy had appeared. Dick o’ Dean danced an antic dance towards him, banging on a spade with a gavelock, and crying, “A’m red, too, Arthur, boroo-boy, boroo, boroo!” Monjoy stood in the midst of the grimy horde.
He glanced at their disfigured faces.
“Nay, what the devil have you got yourselves up this way for?” he exclaimed, and they began to dance again, like vain children when overmuch notice is taken of them. “Let’s begin, let’s begin!” they cried, and already some had set their lanterns down before the furnace-doors. Monjoy swore softly at their folly, and then said, “Very well. Let’s have it over.” They pressed about him with lanterns, seeking the favour of whose should be accepted. All swarmed round the furnaces.
At a signal from the red imp, Dick o’ Dean, they fell back in a wide semicircle. Monjoy flung off his cap and coat and rolled up the sleeves of hisshirt; and as he knelt by the fireplace and opened a lantern a low murmur of gibberish rose like an incantation. “They’re in a choice humour to-night,” he muttered to himself, and he set the lamp-flame to the furnace.
A quick straw-flame leaped upwards, and the singsong of huggermugger words rose like some strange response. It fell again, and rose again spontaneously, as the clacking had risen and fallen at the pieceboards. It rose to a high-chanted cacophony, “Boroo, boroo!” and the foolish artificial effects of mumbling and blackened faces made ridiculous the place and hour. Sticks caught and crackled in the fire, and there broke out suddenly short yelps, accompanied by a rhythmic movement of bodies.
The fuel was dry as tinder, and the furnaces began to roar side by side. The semicircle broke up, and the moans and concerted calls became a chaos of noise. A man drove in the bung of a cask of ale, and from the shallow tin bowl that he filled three or four strove to drink at once, spilling the liquor over their bodies. They were fixing hooks into the carcases, and already from the orifice of the larger furnace flickerings of flame had begun to stream upwards. Monjoy tugged at his whiskers, regarding this. “We can’t avoid a glow,” he muttered, “but we don’t want a conflagration. I’ll build a high hood of earth....” He climbed to the brink of the cutting and stood inthought. Already the furnaces stood in a clear red light, and it was becoming hot.
Many had now stripped off their coats and shirts, and gleaming ribs and shoulders, black faces and hairy chests, flitted and mingled in the red glare fantastically. The first cask of ale was finished, and as they became drunk each man vented his joy in the howl that liked him best. The counterchange of ruddy light on leaping bodies was restless; shadows streamed away into the darkness; and men wreathed their arms about one another, and danced and wrestled as the fires burned furiously. Some were for setting the carcases on to roast at once; but Mish Murgatroyd barred the furnace door with a crowbar, seized a man who approached it in his sinewy arms, and they rolled over together in black moulder’s sand, while Mish gnashed his teeth, for all it was but horseplay. Monjoy, looking down on them from the edge of the cutting, murmured, “Satan himself won’t be able to hold them in an hour.”
Somebody touched him on the shoulder. He turned, and saw James Eastwood. Surprised, he fell a pace back.
“Why, I didn’t think this mumming was much to your taste,” he said, and Eastwood drew him by the shirt sleeve.
“Come where we can talk,” he said; “I’ve come to see you.”
They passed above the furnaces, and descendedthe hill where the Slack turns towards Brotherton Bog. They put the shoulder of the hill between themselves and the hubbub, and the moon, at its last quarter, appeared low over the moor, and showed the little creeping miasmic vapours that curled over the surface of the dark morass. Again Eastwood took Monjoy’s sleeve.
“Tell me where Ellah is,” he said abruptly.
“Eh?” said Monjoy. “You didn’t expect to find him here, did you?”
“Don’t waste words. He left the ‘Fullers’ two days ago, and he isn’t in Wadsworth.”
Monjoy’s arms were folded and his fingers were moving lightly on his big biceps. They were suddenly arrested in their movement, and his brow tightened suddenly into a concentrated knot.
“Are you sure, James?” he said slowly; and from beyond the hummock there came a fresh burst of laughter.
Eastwood made no reply.
“Did I hear you right? You say he’s gone?”
“Yes.... I see you know naught about it. Then tell me how he came crippled?”
One of Monjoy’s hands was making little plucking movements at his lip, and suddenly he turned and walked a few yards towards the Bog. Soon, “Eh?” he said mechanically over his shoulder, “At my hands, James, at my hands;” and he resumed his walk. Eastwood looked at the ground at his feet, and by and by Monjoy approached him again.
“You’re quite—quite sure that’s——?” he faltered, and without waiting for an answer he began to walk again.
He had put away quickly the solution that had leaped instantaneously into his mind. He did not dare to ask for that of the flockmaster. Another noisy peal of laughter came from behind the hill; and suddenly Monjoy felt such a shiver pass over him as they say is caused by the fall of a footstep over the place that is to be your grave.
By and by he found himself at Eastwood’s side again.
“Tell me quick what you think?” he commanded.
The flockmaster did not look at him. “A chaise went up the Fullergate the night afore last, past midnight.”
“What of that?”
“Only two things you can tak’ your pick of——”
“Christ!——”
“One, a neighbourly call on John Raikes i’ York, and t’other a signed deposition afore Parker i’ Ford. Cope’s got hold of him, that’s all.... What made ye lay hands on him?”
Monjoy groaned. “Never mind that, never mind that—where’s Cope?”
“I’ th’ bog yonder watching us, for all I know. I hadn’t time to ask Matthew any more; he packed me off to ye all in a minute and bade me run. And th’ new trial’s in a week, Emmason says.”
“Yes, yes,” Monjoy repeated stupidly.
“I wonder, James,” he said brokenly, by and by—“nay, look up at me, James—is it money, or hatred of myself he’s sold us for, sold Northrop and Haigh and all of us?”
“Nay, don’t tak’ on that road, Arthur; all isn’t over yet. Juries has stopped ... anyway, a daft man can’t gi’e evidence; no, not a daft man——”
“No, not a daft man,” Monjoy repeated dully. Mechanically he was rolling down his sleeves and fastening the buttons at the wrists.
“Come, stiffen yourself up; nothing’s happened yet. Hark! they’re calling ye; come, I’ll go back wi’ ye——”
They returned slowly towards the furnaces.
The Slack was now a pandemonium. Naked bodies were lightly striped with rivulets of sweat and grime, and a powerful smell of cooking and burning filled the night. The furnaces flamed with the yellow flare of blazing fat, and spat and roared with a tremendous hollow sound. A man, driving in the bung of another cask, struck awry, and the liquor shot forth in a spout, covering the men and spirting like a catherine-wheel when a hand was clapped over the hole; and they stood with their mouths open and received the torrent of strong liquor full in their faces. Underneath the furnaces was an incandescence of pink and white wood-ash, and men took embers in their hands and tossed them on the naked backs of their fellows.
As Monjoy and Eastwood approached, there came a fresh uproar and a new diversion.
“Show him aforehand what it’ll be like!” voices bawled, and Pim o’ Cuddy was seen struggling in a dozen arms. He shrieked for mercy, but they cried, “Show him th’ bad place where clerks goes to that’s turned wrong!” and they bore him to the mouth of the furnace. He writhed and screamed. Presently they let him go, and then they turned to the youth Charley, who was in a drunken sleep. They set glowing brands into his clothing, and screamed with delight at his uneasy movements as, with the brands burning through his clothes, he still slept. The carcases began to frizzle and char, and the furnace doors were flung open. Men made runs towards it with a long hook, and retreated again before the fierce heat, with scraps of smoking flesh at the end of the hook. Finally, they got the hook firmly fixed; the carcase lodged in the door and then came out suddenly, hissing, frying, and black with the sand on which it had fallen.
“Arthur mun cut it! Where’s Arthur?” they cried.
He had thrown himself on the hillside. He was watching them gloomily, his head on his hand. Eastwood’s sinister intelligence, brought in this his crowning hour, chimed only too well with a score of half-forgotten trifles and indications. Back o’ th’ Mooin itself still remained impregnable, but thetwo men in York could be reckoned as dead as the roasted carcases. Dead, too, on the word of a man, whose evidence, had it been for instead of against them, would not for a moment have been admitted. He made one more effort to throw off the horrible fear that lay on his heart like lead; he felt himself weak as water; he knew that the testimony of a lunatic had been admitted. Again the mummers were approaching him; he made a gesture that they were to proceed with their feast. Loud murmurings rose, and he lifted himself heavily up. “Give me a drink,” he said, and a tin bowl was filled for him.
“This is a pretty mockery,” he said to Eastwood. “It ought to be a prayer, oughtn’t it? They put themselves on their knees to pray. I must do it with a bowl of liquor to my lips. Jim and Will—Jim Northrop and Will Haigh!... Bah! Let’s get it over.” He drained the bowl and flung it far from him.
The hubbub broke out again. “Arthur!” they yelled. “King Arthur! Three for him, lads——”
The drunken shout pealed over the hills, and Monjoy stood with his arm outstretched. It died away, and he began to speak in short, deliberate sentences, turning his body that every man might hear.
“All’s ready now,” his voice sounded. “What we set out to do four months ago we’ve done. I’ll tell you again, for the last time, what that is.Most of you have never journeyed a dozen miles from this spot in your lives; I have, and it’s right that I should tell you what I know. Back o’ th’ Mooin’s only an odd corner of this land; it’s now setting itself up against all the rest. Before these furnaces are lighted for ore you’ve the odds to reckon. The trade’s paid you up to now, but it’s been a small trade, followed quietly in corners. You’re now going to make a great traffic of it, and that in the daylight. I’ll tell you what that means....”
Only the steady roar of the furnaces interrupted him as he began this, his last warning. He told them briefly how one part of a realm might prosper at the expense of the rest; how, pushed too far, that ceased to avail; how, by the commonness of a commodity, came cheapness; how gold alone, by its scarcity, settled the value of all other things; how even that was alterable at the decree of personages in authority; and again of the frightful risk.
“One man,” he continued, his voice shaking a little, “one man, speaking ten words in hatred or anger or liquor, can overwhelm all. Silver can be fought with silver, and they’ll offer rewards. Bribe, they will, and suborn and corrupt. Are we safe with that? Can’t we think of a man among us that, for a King’s reward, will sell us?...”
Rising murmurs began to interrupt him. They increased as he continued. Presently theydrowned his voice. He stopped and cried, “Let one speak for you.” Mish Murgatroyd was thrust forward.
From his lips came a thick utterance.
“We’ve heard ye, Arthur,” he said, swaying a little. “There’s naught naughbut one thing we ha’ to speak tul, eh, lads? For what ye say about makkin’ silver cheap an’ that, ’tis for ye to say how mich we shall mak’ an’ all that, an’ that’s why th’ lads calls ye king. Nobody’ll set up ageean ye i’ sich matters, so that’s sattled. But I’ll tell ye when ye weant be king onny longer. Ye’ll not be king when th’ man ye speak of offers to sell us. What, lads? What, Dick? What, Belch an’ Hell Harry? Who deals wi’ that man?”
A short ferocious roar answered him.
“Ay. I think Arthur heard that. We sattle wi’ him; so that’s done wi’ an’ all. What else is there? Nooan so mich. All’s ready, or near by. For th’ coal, we know how to get coal wi’out Arthur, an’ Arthur can tak’ a rest of a bit. We’ll see to things. We’ll see to th’ man that tak’s a bribe an’ all. Fill th’ pannikin, Leventoes; Arthur’ll ha’ one more drink wi’ us....”
* * * * *
Monjoy and Eastwood strode along the Causeway to Wadsworth. The morning star had set; the day had broken a clear saffron; and the singing of the mounting larks could be heard far away. The bells of an approaching pack jangled, the packmengave them good morning, and the jangling died away behind them. The sun came up in splendour, and a regal glory bathed the heather. As Big Monjoy removed his cap of foxskin his great russet head seemed to burn, and he turned to Eastwood.
“What do you think the next will be, James?” he asked quietly, and, Eastwood making no reply, they continued to stride forward past the black-topped guide-stones.
EVENa parson (the cynical said) could not remain for ever in ignorance of that which was so bruited about that little else was spoken of, and the Wadsworth parson awoke to the knowledge at last. The way in which he showed his distress was by a public preaching.
More of those concerned would have heard him had he preached in a tavern instead of in a church (on which also the cynical had something to say); but among the sprinkling into whose hearts his words sank was Cicely Monjoy, come over for the Sunday to see her father. She heard the earnest and broken sentences in which he addressed himself directly to the women, and his supplication and promise of God’s pardon; and he did not hesitate to speak even of the two men in York, now on the eve of another trial for their lives. At that many of the women sobbed, and Pim o’ Cuddy’s voice seemed to strangle as he read out the hymn. Just before the Benediction the parson prayed especiallyfor Northrop and Haigh; and Cicely, knowing well that after the service he would seek her out, made speed away, a painful heaviness at her heart.
The sermon came at the right time to make a stir in Horwick. The new trial was in everybody’s mouth, and (though they did not speak much of this) the disappearance, not of Eastwood Ellah only, but since several days of Jeremy Cope himself, was at the back of everybody’s thought. From John Raikes, far away in York, there came not so much as a word to allay their anxiety. It was rumoured that John Emmason had paid another call on Parker of Ford, and that Parker also was away from home and his clerk unable or unwilling to inform Emmason of his whereabouts. As the day appointed for the trial approached, the anxiety increased; and some even waited on the Wadsworth parson, who, as a public man, might have news that others lacked.
Then one morning Eastwood Ellah was seen to issue from the “Fullers’ Arms” as if he had never left the house.
Of the replies he gave to their eager questions they could make nothing. The questioners ran in haste for Matthew Moon or James Eastwood. These met with no better success. Ellah could not, or would not, hear. His eyes now rested constantly on the ground, and a lunatic he looked, with the helplessly dangling wrist at his breast. He hugged the wall, and whimpered when theytried to drag him from it; and he entered the inn again, chattering to himself, and locked himself in the landlord’s loom-loft. The landlord could only tell them that Ellah had knocked him up at two o’clock in the morning, alone.
Matthew Moon would not now set foot in the “Cross Pipes” for fear of meeting Sally’s glance, and on Monjoy’s spirits no less a heaviness rested. One evening Monjoy besought his wife to accompany him for a walk, and they passed out of the Town End to a dean in the valley under Wadsworth Shelf. They sat down on the bank of a dried-up stream. Monjoy implored her to leave the inn and to come to their own house up the Fullergate.
At the tone in which she replied he started a little.
“You shall tell me why first; you shall tell me all,” she answered frigidly.
“There’s nothing to tell, dear; John Raikes has sent no word,” he replied. He tried to take her hand, but she drew a little away from him.
“Well, I can find out elsewhere; I thought I’d ask you first,” she said, in the same cold tone. “Come, let’s get back.”
“Wait a bit, dearie,” he said dejectedly, and at that she turned quickly round on him.
“Oh, I wait too much; it’s all waiting with us women. I waited in Wadsworth, before leaving all of a sudden. I’m to wait again now. Your tidings are public enough for a parson to preachabout, but I’m not to be trusted, it seems. The only thing I’ve ever asked you for, too—a ring to wed me right—I must wait for that an’ all. Ay, we have need to be patient.”
“I don’t want you to wait another day before you come to our own house that you asked for, Cicely.”
“Our own house: but when I asked for that I asked you to turn to your engraving again, and buy me a ring I shouldn’t shame to wear, and be honest wi’ me as I am wi’ you. We spoil you wi’ waiting your pleasure, all of us, and I’m glad I came out to-night. I’m glad, because I can tell you this: I’ll come, perhaps, by and by. I’ll have a real husband or none. Look, there’s your ring. If I’m to have a husband o’ Sally’s sort, very well; me and Sally’ll wait together.”
He had turned pale. “You can’t mean, Cicely——?”
“Nay, that’s all past. I’ve thought over this. You tell me nothing, but I can guess what you dread for Jim and Sally—I can tell it by your face now. And I’m to leave her!... Nay, I’d rather leave my husband than have him ta’en from me. I’ll lie wi’ Sally to-night; you’ll be foolish to follow me. Keep your ring—it will melt up into something. I’ve waited; the little house can wait now.”
She was on her feet. “Cicely!” he cried, but she was gone. He half rose as if to follow her, thenhe sank back again. The going down of the sun found him still on the bank of the dried-up stream.
The very trade of the town was at a standstill on account of the new trial. It was fixed for the seventh, a Friday, and loungers in the market-place exchanged odd guilty looks and glanced at the grimy cactus-pattern of chimney-flues on the end of the “Cross Pipes”—for with the fixing of the date it had been impossible to keep the news any longer from Sally, and she had broken down and taken to her bed, where Cicely tended her. Another man was sent off to York to see what had become of John Raikes, and a number of Back o’ th’ Mooiners remained in Horwick to see what might befall. The door of the loom-loft at the “Fullers’ Arms,” within which Ellah had shut himself, had been forced, and Ellah had been discovered cowering in a corner and swallowing a guinea; and it was passed about that Ellah had guineas. They had locked him in the loft again and barred the window; but a bright flame had shone out into the Fullergate towards evening, and they had hastily entered again. He had collected a quantity of rubbish under the loom and had tried to set fire to it. They removed all that was loose and combustible. Friday morning broke; it might have been a Sabbath for all the work men offered to do; and they moved silently about the market-place, waiting, scarce entering their houses for their meals. The day wore to evening.
That evening a noble sunset flooded Wadsworth Scout with golden light. Groups of men stood about the small square, walking from the “Gooise” to the church, and returning again. The parson had locked himself in the church, and Pim o’ Cuddy had retired to his chamber. They watched the declining sun. As it dipped, the ridges and wrinkles of the Scout started out suddenly into strong relief, dramatic as if a scene had been changed at a playhouse; and suddenly a pigeon was seen to rise over James Eastwood’s roof and to wheel and circle as he neared his home. From every throat there issued an eager cry.
“Whose is it?” “’Tis Pim’s!” “Ho’d on—shoo’ll coit in a minute!” “Where’s Pim? Run for Pim!”
Some dashed off for the verger. The bird was wheeling in the golden light over the belfry of the church, the belfry with the new louver-boards. They recognised the bird—it was from John Raikes; and Pim o’ Cuddy was haled from his agonies of repentance. He stood peering up at the pigeon.
“Shoo’s trying to get into th’ owd coit—sitha!—shoo’s flinging hersen ageean th’ boards—th’ other coit, th’ other coit, ye——!”
“Is shoo from John?” a voice demanded.
“Ay—ay—it’s on her leg, look! Oh, coit, ye——!”
“Fotch a gun.”
A man ran off to the “Gooise” for a gun, andpresently returned, ramming home a double charge. They clustered about the buttress of the church, and the man stood back to shoot. The parson’s prayers were interrupted by the bang of a gun, and the heavy charge of lead rattled against the louver-boards of the belfry. A yell of rage went up; the double weight of shot had blown the bird to morsels, and they scrambled among the falling flesh and feathers for the message. The message, too, had disappeared.
“Up to th’ roof, Tommy—see if there’s aught there.” A lad was hoisted up by the spout.
“Can ye find owt?”
“Nooa.”
They searched far and wide; they found nothing. A man started off to Horwick at a run, another after him; and the parson, coming out of the church, strove helplessly to quell the rage of cursing. “Had John another o’ yours?” somebody demanded of Pim o’ Cuddy; and the verger, cringing under the parson’s eye, blubbered, “No—Ay, ay—No, no. Oh, go back an’ pray for us all, parson!”
They learned in Horwick within an hour that some fool had blown John Raikes’s pigeon to bits with a gun, and they ground their teeth. To York, it was thirty-eight miles as the pigeon had flown—nearer fifty than forty by the roads; but “Who has th’ best horse?” they cried, and pockets were emptied of silver there and then, and a tall fellow was despatched hell-for-leather. Again the loom-loftwhere Ellah crouched in the corner was entered, this time by half a dozen Back o’ th’ Mooiners, with Mish Murgatroyd at their head. They found him apparently in physical agony, and were compelled to leave him. They ran to Cope’s house at the top of the croft. His door was barred, but they thrust the pale youth Charley through a window, and he admitted them by the door at the back by the beck. They ransacked the house and found a bundle of letters; they took them into the clogger’s shop. Charley could read, and he read them. They were from Parker of Ford, from somebody in London called Chamberlayne, from somebody else called Captain Ritchie, and from other folk of whom they had never heard. But they were all covering-letters, or letters of general compliment, beginning, “Herewith I send you,” or “The enclosed, with Mr. Parker’s compliments,” or else, “Captain Ritchie presents his compliments to Mr. Cope.” The correspondence was copious, but they were little the wiser for the perusal of it, and they trooped on to John Emmason’s. Emmason’s servant told them the magistrate was not at home.
The latest-sent messenger should have been back early in the morning; he did not appear. He had not appeared by midday, and by that time Horwick was crowded with Back o’ th’ Mooiners. The afternoon passed, and the evening. York might have been the Indies for all the communication there was. Night fell. The Back o’ th’ Mooiners wouldhave dragged out Eastwood Ellah, but Arthur Monjoy with difficulty prevented it, and there was an uproar in the “Fullers’ Arms.” The next day was a Sunday, and the better sort betook themselves to church in the most extraordinary fashion, seeking their Lord (as men do) only in the hour of their need of Him. Perhaps, too, they thought of another service that, for all they knew, was being held thirty-eight miles away as pigeons fly, and of two men in a pew by themselves, and by their sides that which, by the rising of the morrow’s sun.... But no! Not that! Why, did not months sometimes elapse between sentence (to admit even so much as that) and the consummation of it? And had not juries ceased to convict for such offences? And why should the trial have been over all in one day? And was there not reprieve?... Not very many from Back o’ th’ Mooin went to church, but for four days not a hand had been lifted to open up the coal-workings, nor to forward the labour at the furnaces. That night a fourth rider was despatched for York.
He alone of the four returned, and that was not until the Monday midnight. A furious clattering of hoofs in the night was heard down the Fullergate, and every man who heard it sprang from his bed. The sound ceased at the “Fullers’ Arms.” In two minutes a crowd thronged the street, and the man fell from the saddle into their arms. Lights were brought, and he was carried into the inn,and there, lying extended on a bench, he gasped it out in broken sentences, the news, or some of it.
It was high flattery that he brought for Back o’ th’ Mooin. You are of consequence when, at York, thirty-eight miles away, and farther than that, you can make a stir. All York was speaking of their doings. Whether Cope was there in person the messenger was unable of his own knowledge to say. It mattered little, for men even greater than Cope had come to see to the hanging of Jim Northrop and Will Haigh, the event that the Monday morning’s sun had shone upon. John Raikes had been seized in the very act of throwing up a pigeon—(Could they get him a drop o’ brandy?)—and the other two men had been identified, or, at least, taken up on suspicion, from the pattern of their clogs.—(No, no water in it.)—He himself had barely managed to creep out of York at nightfall, without horse (he had not dared to go back for the horse), and he had walked four miles to a quiet farm and had got a horse from a stable (No, he was no horse stealer; he had left some money on the edge of the manger), and so he had ridden back. Eh, but Back o’ th’ Mooin did not know its own fame! On its sole account, constables with pikes had lined the streets, and special guards of the soldiers of the garrison had been set, and a dreaded judge and counsel, who rarely appeared out of London, had come, and prolonged the sitting ofthe court in order to finish ... for all he knew, a special jury had been packed too.... Famous? You had to go to York to learn how famous you were!
And the evidence—was it that of the man in the chamber upstairs, who had swallowed guineas and tried to set the house ablaze?—The messenger did not know for certain; all he knew was that the evidence had been taken on deposition. He knew no more than that; that he had heard spoken of in a tavern where they had all talked about the trial. He had had much ado to get himself away without making too many inquiries.—Ay, maybe they had ta’en it by deposition so as not to put a mooncalf in the box; he hadn’t come to try, the judge hadn’t—he’d come to hang. Ay, Back o’ th’ Mooin was as famous as that!—They had spoken in the tavern, too, of a new thing called an Exchequer bond, that a great lord had been made a baron for inventing; and after that, they said, gold itself would hardly be worth tampering with.—What was going to be done next he didn’t know, but they’d best look out i’ Horwick, Wadsworth, everywhere, for all wasn’t over yet.—(Could they get him some vinegar to sponge himself with, for he was one ache and bruise from neck to ankle.)—Oh, yes, they were selling Jim’s last speech, too, printed, and a letter Jim had written to his wife an’ all. He hadn’t bought one.—Ay, it was a shame, that was, the letter not being meant to beprinted and sold; to be sure, that was a shame. John Raikes had had time to buy ’em both new suits o’ clothes; they hadn’t died dunghills, neither of ’em; they’d kicked their shoes off.—If anybody’d rub him wi’ the vinegar, and make him a bed middling soft.... He dozed as he talked.
They tolled the church bells of Horwick and Wadsworth the next day.
In the collection of records among which Matthew Moon’s accounts—those of the crown-pieces and guineas and Portugals—have been preserved, you may read also of the home-coming of Jim Northrop and Will Haigh. It was two days later, on a Thursday, and no market was held that day. But every man for miles round assembled as never market-day had seen them, and they had put black crape on their arms and hats, and the women sobbed in one another’s kitchens. Every blind in Horwick was drawn. The “Cross Pipes” was closed, but Sally knew nothing of what happened, for before the Piece Hall bell had begun to toll she had been given a heavy draught, and it was said that she breathed but thrice in a minute. The day was hot and brilliant; the hills and moors were magnificent under the August sun; and the larks sang as if there was no care or anguish or death in the world.
They were aware of the approach of the procession while it was yet miles away. Men preceded it at a trot, dusty, breathless, eager as if they brought joyful news. One footsore fellow—hehad walked from York—carried some of the pamphlets of which the man who had ridden in at midnight had spoken. They were seized by Matthew Moon, who plunged a shaking hand into his breeches-pockets for silver and told off lads to buy up all of that sort that appeared. Folk began to come in in a dense stream, gaping about them, curious to see the place that had become so suddenly famous; but their holiday humour soon passed. You can’t be light-hearted in a town of mourning. They asked which was “his” inn, and gazed foolishly at the sooty flue-branchings of the “Pipes.” “Right to his own door!” they said; and some asked where the other had lived, and went away to see the place, where they stood, lugubriously contented. The bell of the Piece Hall continued to toll; the Fullergate became packed; and Arthur Monjoy, who had sought unavailingly to see Cicely, could scarce get to his own house.
A low distant murmur sounded and increased. Northrop and Haigh were coming home at last. All at once the sun glinted on the steel head of a pike, and on another and another. Above the heads of the crowd a chief constable on horseback could be seen, and behind him the driver of a cart. The nodding heads of the horses were hung with black crape. Cope did not accompany his cruel procession. The two coiners were lapped in straw in the cart, tarred for the chains, and theirgibbet-timbers rode with them. Every hat, of native or sightseer, was off, and the vendors of pamphlets and liquor and sugar-candy and rope at sixpence an inch were silent. The convoy turned into the market-place, and then all stopped. The chief constable on the horse held a proclamation in his hand, and suddenly his voice sounded over the square. The proclamation set forth the crimes for which these had died, and admonished all men to take heed; and when he had read it, he passed it to another constable, who ascended the Piece Hall steps and affixed it to the pillar that still bore the placard that only a few months before had filled Matthew Moon with apprehension. The constable gave orders for a fresh start to be made, towards a spot half way up Wadsworth Shelf, and the driver of the cart shook up his crape-draped horses.
They fell in behind the cart. All at once a stormy muttering rose and a low confused roar. About the cobbled space where they unloaded the pack-horses there was a sudden movement of men, not after the cart, but towards the “Fullers’ Arms.” Mish Murgatroyd’s tall figure headed it. James Eastwood saw whither they were bound, and he began to run by back ways and short cuts up the Fullergate to Monjoy’s house.
HEburst into the room where Monjoy sat gazing spiritlessly at his empty hearth.
“Be quick, without ye want Ellah done for,” he said.
“What’s that?” Monjoy asked, turning a haggard face.
“Rouse ye; they’re for Ellah now, Mish and a dozen rough ’uns.”
“Where?” said Monjoy, rising.
“I’ th’ ‘Fullers.’ Haste ye.”
He threw him his cap and began to bundle him about, and Monjoy roused a little from his profound depression. In the Fullergate they broke into a run, and in three minutes they were at the inn. Half-way up the back stairs they found the landlord huddled against the handrail, white-faced, fear-ridden, and listening. They sprang past him, and reached the door of the loom-loft; a low hum of voices sounded inside it. It waslocked, and Monjoy struck the heavy door with his fist. “Open!” he cried; and the sound of voices ceased.
“Who is it?” somebody called.
“I—Monjoy. Open the door.”
The bolt was shot back, and the two men entered.
The heavy loom-frame filled the greater part of the room, and about it stood a dozen—a score—it was not easy to tell how many men. Immediately Murgatroyd cried in a high voice, “Ye’ve come, but ye’ll mind that that were sattled at th’ Slack!” In his hand he held a clasp-knife.
Swiftly Monjoy’s eyes sought Ellah. He lay, a motionless heap, in one corner. He was dressed in his shirt only, and he was blackened from head to foot. Monjoy strode past the loom-seat and turned Ellah’s face up; it was of the colour of a bruised and rotten plum, and Monjoy drew in a long sibilant breath between his teeth.
“Whose work’s this?” he roared.
Murgatroyd had given a quick glance about him; a nod or two backed him up, and he stood before Monjoy.
“Keep ye to your business, Arthur,” he said, truculently. “All were sattled. Ye needn’t look at th’ knife—nobody’s been cutten yet; ’tis us tak’s ho’d now. We foun’ him all black like that; we’ve naughbut gotten out o’ him how mich he got for th’ job, and it were a hunderd pound.Nowwe’ve a bit o’ business.... Where were we, lads?”
“Me an’ Leventoes, an’ Dick o’ Dean, five; that’s fifteen,” a voice said.
“Fifty-five, then, and Pim ’ll mak’ it sixty.”
On one of the uprights of the loom Mish was cutting a tally of notches; he cut another notch. “Charley an’ Belch, how mich?” he demanded; and the low hum continued.
Monjoy had turned to Ellah again. A man standing by him remarked over his shoulder, “He’d been trying to climb up th’ chimley when we come; he’s all for smout-holes now,” and turned again to the business in hand.
“Take him on the other side, James,” Monjoy muttered; “he’s horrible to see this way.” They began with their handkerchiefs to wipe the soot from Ellah’s face.
However he had come by it, there was little doubt of Ellah’s madness now. He shuddered convulsively under their hands, and fell back in fear into his corner. The corner was foul where he had lain for days. Cope had known better than to put this figure into the box; and Monjoy groaned. “I didn’t think to bring him to this when I cast him down,” he said with a shudder.
The ominous low conference continued. They pressed about the loom, and by and by Murgatroyd said briefly, “Seventy-three. How much you, Hell Harry?”
“A month’s weyvin’; I ha’ nowt else.”
Mish made a scratch by the side of his tally, and all at once Monjoy stepped towards him.
“What is this?” he demanded. “D’ye hear? Whatisit?”
“A hunderd pounds,” said a sullen voice from the other side of the loom. “He’s paid it, he’s ha’ it back”; and “Ay, ay,” came the consenting murmur.
“Who shall?... Damnation, Murgatroyd, but you shall not play with me!”
Mish’s brow was drawn into a “V” between his calf-licks; he turned a menacing face over his shoulder.
“Will ye stick to your own business?” he said savagely—“wi’out ye want to come in wi’ us——?”
“How do you know he had a hundred pounds? The man’s mad!”
“He come down th’ chimley jabbering it right eniff. Look here; if ye want to know, we fotched him down th’ same as they fotch th’ sweeper-lads down. If ye don’t know how that is, ye can look at th’ grate.”
Monjoy glanced at the grate; it was a litter of white straw-ashes.
“Ay, did you?” said Monjoy grimly. Murgatroyd was turning to his tally again; he set his hand on his shoulder and spun him round as if he had been a skittle. Mish drew back the hand that held the knife.
“Ye’ve been warned——”
“We’ll talk about warnings in a minute. Listen, you, and every man here. If a finger’s laid on that man in the corner it shall be the beginning of a nasty business. That’s my promise.”
Murgatroyd had greenish hazel eyes; they were on Monjoy’s like those of a cat. Suddenly he made an exclamation of contempt.
“Onhim?” he sneered.—“Nobody wants to touchhim. But if ye’ll speak up now to how mich your share is ye shall ha’ your chance at Cope when th’ lots is drawn.”
Monjoy took a step back. After a moment he said unsteadily, “So you’re buying blood, are you?”
“Not right what ye might call ‘buying’; anybody’s won’t do. Come in or stay out; it’s all one to us.... Will ye say two for your cousin, Dick o’ Dean?”
James Eastwood cried out suddenly from the corner where Ellah crouched.
“Ye’re all wrong; he can’t ha’ had it!” he cried. “Listen to what Emmason telled me! Rewards is paid on a sheriff’s certificate, and not of a month after conviction. It isn’t a month yet—d’ye hear?—it isn’t a month....”
His voice ceased as suddenly as it had begun; he seemed to realise that Cope was not sticking at irregularities; and none took the trouble to answer him.
Monjoy had fallen back quite to the wall. Hesteadied himself against it with one hand, and when he moved the hand it left its shape in moisture on the plaster. Now and then one of the group glanced at him, but they were intent on their own affair, and presently Mish said, “Well, let t’other stand ower, then.” He began to whisper, and Monjoy closed his eyes and continued to leave the moist prints on the plaster wall. Dazed, he strove to think.
One thing only was clear to him: he would have nothing to do with the revolting business that was being whispered about him; and again he drew in his breath between his teeth. Cope had not returned—might not return; should he return ... and, moreover, his blood would be shed with Monjoy’s knowledge. The sweat trickled in streams from his hands; his eyes opened and rested with dread on Murgatroyd and on those who in this also were ready to follow any lead that was given them. Murgatroyd had taken a bunch of string from his pocket and was cutting it into lengths against the loom-timber—a long one—a short one—no, another long one. Monjoy watched, stupid and fascinated. Murgatroyd set the ends neatly together and bound them loosely about with another string; and suddenly Monjoy cried out aloud:
“Stop—stop—you shall not do it——”
Every head turned, and Murgatroyd advanced with the bundle of strings.
“Weant we?” he said, the “V” of his brow deepening.
“Play and lose, and stand your stake; but no, no, that’s murder!” Monjoy cried. “I’ll not have it, I say! I, Arthur Monjoy—Harry—Charley—I tell you, d’you hear? He shall be warned; I’ll warn him——”
And, knowing in his heart all the time that he had now less authority than the least of them, he continued to command, to swear, to threaten impotently.
A menacing growl rose.
“He’s turning ageean us, is he?”—“Mun we raise another hunderd?”—“Mak’ him draw too an’ stand his lot!”