Humphrey Bold Part 14

Vetch had fired his pistol through the lock of the turnpike gate; being busy with the horse he had certainly not had time to recharge it, nor to get another; so I thought that I might safely defy him.

Whispering to Mistress Lucy to find some hiding place in the cottage out of view from the window, I stood with my hand on the shutter, and said:

"What will you do if I yield?"

The answer was the heavy pistol, hurled straight at my head. It struck my temple and fell with a crash to the floor. I gave back a little, half stunned by the blow, and Vetch seized that moment to smash another pane of the window, preparing to leap on the sill and into the room, But I had sufficient strength to antic.i.p.ate him.

Throwing my whole weight on the shutter I drove it into its place, taking a certain pleasure in the knowledge that I had at least bruised the fellow's knuckles. Then I dropped the bar into its socket, and in the half darkness called to Mistress Lucy that all was well.

Immediately there began a heavy battering on the door, but not so heavy but that through it I heard Cludde order his men to splice the broken trace. 'Twas lucky it was so, for had all four of them come with one mind to force my frail defences, the brief siege would, I fear, have had but a sorry end. The door was a stout one, and finding it resisted their blows, Vetch and Cludde soon desisted, and I supposed that they had withdrawn altogether. But after a short interval, a violent crash on the back door, which was of much slighter timber, warned me that I must still be prepared to fight against heavy odds.

I looked round for Mistress Lucy: she was standing beside an oaken clothes press, the largest article of furniture in the room.

"Help will come, I hope," I said to her; "if not, I can keep them at bay, and I will."

A moment after I had spoken, I heard a shout from the road. The blows upon the door ceased; I caught the sound of scurrying feet, and running to the window, I unbarred the shutter and opened it so that I might glance out. The coach was moving: the postilion was in the saddle, the other man was on the box. It pa.s.sed through the gate: the horses were lashed to a gallop, and the equipage disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust. Flinging the shutter wide, I craned my neck out of the broken panes and looked in the other direction. Not half a mile away three hors.e.m.e.n were pressing a gallop towards us.

"You are safe," I said, turning to the girl.

She came eagerly to my side, and in another minute the hors.e.m.e.n--the innkeeper and two men whom I did not know--leapt from their saddles when I hailed them, and came to ask if all was well.

Chapter 12: I Come To Bristowe--And Leave Unwillingly.

The presence of the innkeeper and his friends--a neighboring farmer and one of his sons: another son had ridden to acquaint Mr.

Allardyce at the Hall of the kidnapping--relieved me of a certain embarra.s.sment I felt, now that the stress and excitement were over.

As yet Mistress Lucy had spoken scarce a word; but she had looked at me with great kindness, and I knew that she was but waiting for an opportunity to thank me for the service I had rendered her. With the shy awkwardness of my age I wished to avoid this, and so I willingly related to the innkeeper all that had occurred, and had barely ended when Peabody came back in haste from Glazeley, where I fear he had been fuddling himself as his wife had suggested. To him the story had to be told over again, I meanwhile itching to get away before Mr. Allardyce could arrive.

When I announced my determination to proceed at once on my journey there was a great outcry from the men: would I not wait and see the Squire and be suitably rewarded? Mistress Lucy herself, who had remained in the cottage while we conversed outside, came to the door at this point of our discussion, and with bright color in her cheeks beckoned me and asked whether I would not stay until her uncle's arrival. But my mind was made up.

"You are in safe hands," I said, "and I have far to go."

"I shall not forget what you have done for me--Joe," she said, and for the second time gave me her little hand. I could say nothing, but when I was once more upon the road I thought of her kind look and manner, and glowed with a deep contentment.

I had not walked above a mile when I heard a galloping horse behind me, and Roger's clear voice calling me by name. I halted, and he sprang from the saddle and caught me by the hand.

"By George! 'twas mighty fine of you, Joe," he cried, with kindling eyes. "I'll break d.i.c.k Cludde's head for him, I will, if ever I see him again. Who was the other villain? Lucy says there were two."

"'Twas--" I began, but suddenly bit my lip; if I named Cyrus Vetch my own secret, which I had so carefully guarded, would soon be known, and I was resolved (maybe without reason) that they should not know me as Humphrey Bold until I had done somewhat to win credit for the name. "'Twas a long weasel-faced fellow," I said, after so slight a pause that it escaped Roger's perception.

"And weasels are vermin," cried Roger, "and he has killed Lucy's dog! But come, Joe, what nonsense is this! Father insists that you shall come back; he declares this trudging to Bristowe is sheer fooling, and had already got half a dozen fine schemes in his head for you. Mount behind me, man: the mare will carry you though you are a monster; come back and we'll be sworn brothers."

I confess the boy's generosity touched me, and the offer was tempting; but I steeled my soul against it, and, strange as it may seem, 'twas the remembrance of Mistress Lucy that put an end to all wavering. Once I had had no higher aim than to win Captain Galsworthy's praise; now I felt--but dimly--that I would endure the toils of Hercules to win a lady's favor. 'Twas the budding of young love within me--and I never knew that a lad was any the worse for it.

So I thanked Roger as warmly as I might, but held to my purpose against all his reasons. The boy was impulsive and quick tempered, and finding me obdurate after ten minutes' battery of argument, he flung away in a huff, got up into the saddle, and bidding me go hang for an obstinate mule he galloped back to the turnpike.

And so I set my face once more for the south. Missing my staff, which I had thrown away in my haste, I cut myself a large hazel switch from a copse by the roadside, promising myself a stouter weapon when I should arrive at a town.

My heart was light: had I not begun to pay d.i.c.k Cludde interest on his crown piece? I was inexpressibly glad that I had been able to defeat his outrageous scheme, and thinking of this, I wondered why he had driven southward instead of to his father's house beyond Shrewsbury. My conjecture was that, knowing what a hue and cry Mr.

Allardyce would raise if he believed his niece had been conveyed thither, the Cluddes had arranged to remove her to a distance until the legal matter then pending should have been decided in their favor. I remembered hearing d.i.c.k once speak of some relatives at Worcester, and in all likelihood that had been his destination.

To have encountered me within so few miles of Shrewsbury must have mightily surprised him. He had known of my intention in setting out; 'twas common talk in Shrewsbury; and, having pa.s.sed me at Harley near two months before this, must have supposed (if he thought of me at all) that I had long since reached my destination.

What he would infer now I did not trouble to consider, and as he was to have rejoined his ship about this time, I did not expect any news of my adventure would be carried back to Shrewsbury. It crossed my mind that he might possibly seek to waylay me on the road and take vengeance for his discomfiture, but reflecting that he would scarcely suppose my journey, interrupted for so long, would be resumed at once, I was in nowise disquieted; only I resolved again to buy a stout cudgel, to have a weapon in case of need.

By noon I arrived at Bewdley, where, being mighty hungry, I made a good dinner of beef and cabbage at an inn. When I started again, I had the good luck to get a lift in a farmer's gig, which carried me for several miles, so that I reached Worcester without difficulty that night. After a sound sleep at the Ram's Head I sallied out, bought a fine staff of k.n.o.bby oak at a shop in the High Street, and after viewing the outside of the cathedral (the doors were not yet open), a building that surpa.s.sed in beauty anything that I had before seen, I set off for Gloucester.

No mischance, nor indeed any incident of note, befell me during the remainder of my journey. I pa.s.sed the next night in a wagon, swaddled in a load of fresh mown hay, the driver with rustic friendliness inviting me to keep him company on his dark journey.

On the third night after my departure from the Hall I trudged, weary and footsore, into Bristowe, and sought a bed at the White Hart in Old Market Street, this tavern having been recommended to me by the friendly hay-cart man.

Next day, when I went out to view the city of which I had heard so much, I was struck with wonderment, not merely at its size, wherein it dwarfed Shrewsbury and all the towns through which I had pa.s.sed, but at its noise and bustle. Shrewsbury was a sleepy old town, where life went on very placidly from day to day, and the sight of these busy, though narrow, streets with their many fine buildings and their swarms of people, the dogs drawing little carts of merchandise, the river with its bridges, the floating basin with many tall ships, the quays thronged with sailors and lightermen, filled me not only with wonder, but with a sense of loneliness and insignificance.

Among all these folk, intent upon their various occupations, what place was there for me, I wondered? I got in the way of a line of men on the quay side carrying large bales which I presumed had been unloaded from a ship there moored. One of them hustled me violently aside, another made a coa.r.s.e jest upon me, and, raw and inexperienced as I was, bewildered by the strangeness of it all, I felt a sinking at the heart, and questioned for the first time whether I had been wise in forsaking the scenes I knew and venturing unbefriended into this outpost of the great world.

I was standing apart, gazing at the shipping, when an old, weather-beaten sailor, smoking a black pipe, came up and accosted me.

"Lost your bearings, matey?" he said in a very hoa.r.s.e voice, which yet had a tone of friendliness.

No doubt I looked foolish, for I knew no more than the dead what he meant.

"Lor' bless you," he went on, "I knows all about it. 'Tis fifty year since I made a course for that 'ere port from Selwood way, and I stood like a stuck pig--like as you be standing now. Be you out o' Zummerzet, like me?"

I told him I came from Shrewsbury.

"Never heard tell of it," he said, "but seemingly they grow high in those parts. And what made ye steer for Bristowe, if I might ask?"

Mr. Vetch had warned me against confiding in strangers; but there was something so honest in the old seaman's look that I, who have rarely been wrong in my instinctive judgment of men, determined to trust him, and told him so much of my story as I thought necessary.

The result was that he took me under his wing, so to speak. He spent the whole morning with me, explaining to me the differences in build and rig between the vessels lying there, telling me a great deal about the duties of a seaman and the ways of life at sea. He counseled me very earnestly to give up my design and seek an employment on sh.o.r.e.

"Sea life bean't for the likes of you," he said. "I don't know nothing about lawyers, saving them as they call sea lawyers, and they're rogues; but you'd better be a land lawyer than go to sea.

'Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men the life bean't fit for a dog. Aboard ship you'd meet some very rough company--very rough indeed. I don't pretend to be better nor most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea. Of course it depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper's a good 'un--and there be good and bad--he can't have his eyes everywhere, and I've knowed youngsters so bad used on board that they'd sooner ha' bin dead. Not but what you mightn't stand a chance, being a big fellow of your inches."

What the old fellow said did not in the least shake my resolution.

The only effect of it was to turn my inclination rather in favor of the merchant service than the king's navy, to which I had inclined hitherto. In a king's ship I might certainly share in some fighting, which has ever great attractions to a healthy boy; but then I should have little chance of seeing the world unless specially favored by circ.u.mstances, for the ship might be kept cruising about, looking for the French who never came. Whereas in a merchant ship I might see India, and even China, and my new friend told me fine stories of the fortunes to be made in those distant parts by the lucky ones, besides which I felt a longing to see strange and far-off lands and peoples for the mere pleasure of it.

To take service with an East Indiaman most hit my fancy, and when the sailor told me that London and Southampton were the ports for the East India trade, I began to think of working my pa.s.sage to one or the other of them.

John Woodrow, as he was named, advised me not to be in a hurry, and when I explained that my little stock of money would be exhausted in a few days by the charges at the inn where I had put up, he recommended me to a widow living towards Clifton, who would give me board and lodging for a more modest sum. My anxieties on this score being removed, I resolved to follow Woodrow's advice, and not be in too great haste to take my first plunge. He promised to let me know of any decent skipper who might be sailing to Southampton or London if, when I had had a few days to think things over, my mind remained the same.

Next day a great king's ship of three decks came into the river, and I pa.s.sed the whole morning in gazing at her, watching what went on upon her deck, and the boatloads of mariners that came ash.o.r.e from her, envying the officers, and wavering in my design to join a merchant vessel. The vessel was named, as I found, the Sans Pareil, and though I had little French (the dead tongues being most thought of at Shrewsbury), I knew the words meant "the matchless," and certainly she outdid all the other ships around her.

The only vessel, indeed, that any way approached her was a large brig which, as my friend Woodrow had told me the day before, was a privateer that was being fitted out by certain gentlemen and merchants of Bristowe for work against the French. The Bristowe merchants had suffered great losses from the depredations made on their ships by French corsairs. Many a vessel loaded with a rich freight of sugar, or tobacco, or other produce of the colonies, had fallen a prey to the enemy, who swooped out of St. Malo or Brest, as Woodrow said, and snapped up our barques almost within sight of their harbor. 'Twas not to be wondered at that those who had suffered in this way should make reprisals.

The Sans Pareil had such a fascination for me (never having seen a king's ship before) that I was only awakened to the pa.s.sage of time by the crying out of my stomach. I had promised Mistress Perry, the widow with whom I had taken up my abode, that I would return punctually at noon for my dinner, and now the church clocks (no less than my hunger) told me it was long past that hour. She would be mightily vexed, and the joint would be burned black, and I neither wished to offend her nor to eat cinders. So I now hurried away as fast as my legs would carry me, and soon came to the footpath leading to Clifton.

As I turned the corner by Jacob's Well, I stepped hastily aside to avoid a man who was coming fast in the opposite direction. He also moved at the same moment, and, as I have often known to happen at such sudden encounters, the very movements made to prevent the collision brought it about. We both moved to the same side, and jostled each other, and I, being the more weighty of the two, gave him a tough shoulder and well nigh upset him.

"Clumsy h--" he was beginning, but he got no further, and 'twas well he did not, for if he had uttered the word "hound" that had all but come to his lips he would scarce have gone on his way without my mark upon him. But he did not say it, being indeed startled out of his self possession. No doubt he had as little expected to see me as I to see him: it was Cyrus Vetch.

We both turned after jostling each other. The impulse seized me to take him by the neck and drub him for his rascally dealing with Mistress Lucy--and to settle at the same time some little private scores of my own. But he was in truth so pitiful a creature, and looked so scared, that I let him alone; besides I felt that I might one day have a greater account to pay off, to which settlement d.i.c.k Cludde must be a party.