A Little Wizard Part 7

Still the child did not move: and the woman's hand fell harmless by her side. The peculiar pallor of the boy's face, a pallor heightened by the shade in which he sat, his immobility, the strangeness of his att.i.tude and position, above all the fixed glare of his eyes, had their effect upon her, scared and impressed as she already was by his unexplained delivery from the closet. She hesitated and fell back a step.

The butler, who knew nothing of the closet episode, attributed the move to prudence. "Soft and easy," he muttered approvingly, "or he may suspect something. It is odd he should be here."

"Suspect!" the woman answered with a shiver; for when a strong nature gives way to panic, the rout is complete. "I doubt he knows. The child is not canny," she added, staring at him in an odd, shrinking fashion.

The butler was at all times a coward, and without understanding the woman's reasons he felt the influence of her fear. "Not canny!" he said uneasily; "why, what is the matter with him? Hi, Jack, my boy, what are you doing here?" he continued, addressing the lad with a poor attempt at good-fellowship. "Are you ill, or what is it?"

The boy did not move.

Gridley advanced gingerly towards him, as a timid man approaches a strange dog. When he came near, however, and saw that it really was the boy, little Jack Patten whom he had known from his birth, the a.s.surance made him laugh at the woman's fears. "Come, get up, lad," he said roughly; "get up and go and play!"

He seized Jack by the collar and raised him to his feet. "Jump, lad, jump!" he said. "Be off! You will get the ague here. Go into the sun and play!"

The boy had shaken off his first terror. Frank, he thought, must be safe by this time. He kept his feet therefore, but hesitated in doubt what to do; standing, to outward view a sullen pale-faced child, beside the dark trunk of the yew. Gridley noticed that he kept his one hand closed, and acting on a momentary impulse asked him roughly what he had there. The boy, without answering, opened his fingers mechanically, disclosing three tiny whinberries which he had picked while he talked with his brother in the rift, and had involuntarily retained in his hand ever since. The butler struck them out of his little palm with a disappointed "pish!" and turning him round by the shoulder sent him off with a push. "There, go and pick some more!" he said. "Be off! Be off!"

The lad obeyed slowly, and with apparent reluctance. When he was out of sight, Gridley, who had stepped a few paces from the tree that he might watch him the better, returned and picked up his spade. "There, he is gone!" he said, with an inquisitive look at the woman, whose mood puzzled him. "And if you will have the things up, it must be done. Let us lose no more time."

He struck the spade into the ground, and began to dig, while his companion watched him. But her face betrayed none of the greedy excitement which had always marked it before when the treasure was in question. Instead, it wore a look of dread and expectation. Something like grey fear lay like a shadow upon it, and left it only when the man stopped digging, and throwing down his spade, dragged a small white bundle from the shallow hole he had made.

Then she showed at last some animation. "They _are_ there," she muttered, her eyes beginning to burn. "I fancied----"

"Oh, they are here," he answered, chuckling as he stooped to unfasten the napkin. "They are here, never fear! Safe bind safe find, you know, my lady."

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, however, when he fell back pale and trembling. A hideous look of disappointment and dismay took in a moment the place of the gloating smile which had before distorted his features. The napkin being untied disclosed three stones; no gold, no cups, no treasure, but only three stones!

For a moment the two stood silent and thunderstruck, gazing at the pebbles, which in their perfect worthlessness seemed to mock them.

Then the man turned swiftly and suddenly on the woman, rage and suspicion so transforming him, that he did not look like the same person. "You hag!" he cried, with lips which writhed under the effort he made to control himself. "You thieving witch! This is your work!

Where is my gold? Where is my gold, I say?" he repeated wildly. "Tell me, or I will murder you!" And he advanced upon her, his hands opening and shutting on the empty air.

His frantic gestures and the pa.s.sion of his manner might have appalled even a brave man. But the woman, who had evinced less surprise and more fear on making the discovery, waved him back with the purest contempt. "Fool!" she hissed, with a flash of scorn in her eyes, "do you think that I should have played this farce with you?"

"But the gold?" he cried, cowering away from her in a moment like the craven he was. "It is gone, woman! It is gone, you see! If you have not taken it, who has? For heaven's sake, say you have taken it, and hidden it somewhere else!"

She looked darkly at him, and the look did more to persuade him she was innocent than any words. He wrung his hands and all but wept.

"Some one has taken it," he moaned. "It is gone, and I shall never see it again!"

"What brought the boy sitting here?" she muttered on a sudden.

"Jack Patten?"

Mistress Gridley nodded with a strange look in her eyes. "Ay, little Jack. And he had three whinberries in his hand," she continued in the same hushed tone. "Look about, if you are not afraid. Find the whinberries, and something may come of it!"

He did not understand, but he saw she was in deadly earnest; and he was a coward, and afraid of her. "The whinberries?" he stammered, edging a pace away from her. "What of them?"

"They are our gold cups," she muttered between fear and rage. "The child has bewitched them."

Gridley cried out "Nonsense." But all the same he looked quickly over his shoulder. The sun was high and gave him courage. "The child?" he said; "why, I have known him from his birth!"

"Find the whinberries!" was all the answer she vouchsafed. And she pointed imperatively to the ground. "Find them, I say, if you are not afraid, man."

He went down on his knees and began to search. But the earth he had thrown out of the hole lay thick on the ground, and he failed to find even one of them. He rose, and told the woman so; and she nodded as if she had expected the answer.

He shuddered at that. He saw her afraid, and he knew she feared few things. Besides, she had all the influence over him which a strong mind is sure to possess over a weak one. Seeing her afraid he grew fearful also. Though he did not believe, he trembled. He remembered how strangely the boy had looked at him, how obstinately he had refused to speak, what an odd persistence he had shown in clinging to that spot. Yet how had the boy known? How had he found the place?

Doubtfully he put that thought into words, and got his answer. "How did he get out of the wood closet when I locked him in last night?"

Mistress Gridley asked contemptuously. "I left the door locked when I went to bed, and the boy inside. I found the door locked this morning, but the boy was in his own bed. That is not canny."

"He may have taken the cups without--without that," said the butler, glancing round him with a shiver.

"Then where are they?" the woman retorted swiftly. "Or do you mean that he took them and hid them, and then came again and sat on the place for us to find him? I tell you the lad can go through locked doors."

The butler was not convinced, but he trembled. He stood gnawing his nails with a gloomy face, one thing only quite clear to him; that whether the child possessed the power which the woman attributed to him or not, it was certainly he who had taken the treasure. This excited such a degree of rage in Gridley's mind as fear alone kept within bounds. He longed to follow the child and force the secret and the gold from him, and only the dread which the woman manifested kept him from doing this on the instant. As it was, he stood undecided, turning over in his mind all the stories he had heard of strange powers and weird possession--stories which then filled all the country-side, especially in lonely and ill-populated districts--and striving to recollect whether anything in little Jack's history seemed to bring him within the scope of these marvellous narratives.

Mistress Gridley watched him for a time, but presently her patience gave way. She bade him, fiercely, pick up the spade and come to the house; and together the two returned, each hating the other as the cause of a fruitless and unprofitable sin.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WOODEN CROSS.

Released in a manner so much beyond his hopes, Jack lost no time in betaking himself to the house, where he found all quiet and himself alone in possession. He had every reason to congratulate himself on the success of his scheme; yet he knew he was not out of the wood.

Child as he was, he saw that the woman, finding herself robbed in that place, must lay the blame on him; and in his dread of what would happen when the pair returned, he found it impossible to remain still a moment, but wandered from front to back, and kitchen to stairs, expecting yet dreading the first sound of their approach. When it came he crouched in the chimney corner and held his breath, waiting for the storm to break.

And there the woman found him when she entered. She had not expected to see him, and she started violently, for nothing her companion had urged had availed in the least to shake her belief in the child's dark powers. His pale face and huddled form and his odd and elfish position, as she came upon him, in the shadowy corner only served to confirm and support it. She shrank away without a word, and busied herself at the back of the house, until the boy finding himself free from attack took heart of grace, and little by little emerged from his retreat.

He could not understand how he had escaped suspicion and punishment, but the fact was enough, and his spirits soon rose. He wanted no reasons. a.s.sured of his brother's safety, and delighted to think that he had contributed to it, he could scarcely restrain the impulse that would have had him hunt Frank out and share his joy with him.

Fortunately, he did restrain it, however; for during the rest of the day he was the unconscious object of the strictest watchfulness.

Wherever he went and whatever he did, his steps were dogged and his actions noted, though he did not perceive it himself. The woman, by an immense effort, hid her fears, while Gridley, balanced between terrors and fits of rage which became at times ungovernable, had the prudence to shun the object of his hatred, and leave the task of surveillance to her.

Accordingly, the child remained in perfect ignorance. He went about his small and--to the adult mind--incomprehensible employments in his own small fashion; playing here and there, and presently rendering the woman's task more easy by the completeness with which he gave himself up to rehearsing the morrow's plan. Mistress Gridley found him continually slipping away, and as often stalked him into corners, where she soon learned that he had something hidden about him--something which he took out when he was alone, and put away stealthily on her approach.

The woman's covetous spirit took fire afresh at this discovery, and for the moment overcame her fears. Her eyes began to burn, her cheek grew hot. When he sauntered away again, she watched him secretly, and by-and-by marked him down in a corner of the fold where the wall was highest. There she saw him sit down with his back to the house and his face to the wall, and, taking something, which she could not see, from his clothes, begin to toy with it, stooping over it, and caressing it with the utmost devotion.

She did not doubt that the thing he fondled in this strange fashion was the treasure of which he had robbed her by his arts; and in a transport of anger she slipped out of the house by the back door, and, making a circuit, stole up to the corner, keeping on the farther side of the wall. When she reached the place she paused and listened, crouching low that he might not see her. The child was muttering softly to himself--muttering some monotonous unintelligible jargon, which in her ears could be nothing but a charm. The woman shuddered at the thought, but still she persisted. Cautiously raising her eyes above the level of the wall, she got a sight of the object he was crooning over. It was neither gold nor cup nor treasure, but a strange-looking cross of wood!

Mistress Gridley shrank away, trembling in every limb. The sight confirmed all her apprehensions. She hurried back to the house. But in the excitement of the pursuit she had not noticed the change in the sky, which had grown in the last few moments dark and overcast. The first peal of the tempest, therefore, surprised her as she retreated.

Startled and affrighted, she looked up and saw the black canopy impending over her head; with a cry, she crouched still lower, as if she might in that way escape the wrath she had invoked. Her nerves were so shaken that she never doubted the child had brought this sudden storm upon her, and even when it did her no harm, when it resolved itself into the most ordinary phenomenon and descended in sheets of rain, while the mountains clothed themselves in mist, and the moor streamed at a hundred pores--even then, though she had seen such a storm a hundred times and knew its every aspect, she still quailed. A terror of great darkness was upon her. She dared no longer meet the child's eyes, but sat in the farthest corner of the room, furtively watching him; while the eaves dripped outside, and the cold light of a wet summer evening stole across the moor.

When he was gone to bed and his eye withdrawn from her, she felt more at ease. But her discomposure was still so great that Simon and Luke must have remarked it when they returned, if they had not been themselves full of an anxiety which occupied their minds to the exclusion of everything else.

"This rain!" Simon cried, as he shook out his dripping cloak on the floor and turned to take a last look through the open door. "Who would have foreseen it? Who would have foreseen it, I say, this morning?

Never did sky look better. Yet if it goes on through the night they will scarcely get the guns over the hills by this road. The General will be late."

"It grows more heavy," Luke answered moodily, looking out over the other's shoulder.