Bladys of the Stewponey - Sabine Baring-Gould (top 100 novels txt) 📗

done for. They are stopping every earth, and I have had to run from one ken to another, and have never known where I was safe. I’ve had to sleep in ditches and under trees, been soaked by rains and shivered by frosts. I haven’t had a proper bite of food since I last saw you. By Heaven, I must eat, and I’ll throw myself on a doss (bed) tonight if I have to swing for it. But I won’t be caught; they are hunting in another quarter now. I can’t endure this much longer; I’ll shift to Wales.”

“Why have you come here?” said Mrs Norris, holding the pipe in her hand, and eyeing him with a singular expression in her leathery face. He was too weary, hungry, miserable, to observe of her countenance.

“Why have I come?” said he impatiently; “you have potatoes, bacon; that is why. Bring me rye bread—anything. I am sick for want of proper meat and sleep.”

“I’ve no taters in the house, and not a bit of bacon for the last fortnight. But I’ll bring you a drop of cat-water (gin), and warm you some porridge with onions.”

“Anything that is hot. I’m starved. Am I safe here?”

“How can I say? This is a pot-house, and folk come in for a drop at all hours. If they find the door locked and barred they’ll smell something, and go into Kinver and lay an information.”

“Let me have the inner room. Then if anyone should enter you can keep ‘em in the kitchen as usual; and they’ll know nothing of my being under this roof. But when I’ve eaten and warmed me at the fire I’ll just throw myself on the doss.”

He went to the door of communication and looked into the dark and unoccupied chamber.

“I’ll not be in yonder, in cold and blackness, I’ve been a fortnight and more without seeing or smelling a fire. I’m starving for warmth and dryth, as I am for proper food. See—my clothing—rags they be; you can almost wring the water out of them.”

“I’ll kindle the fire in yonder,” said Mrs Norris; “and then if any one comes to the door you can step in there. I can’t refuse to open.”

“I know that; I would not have come here but that I have nowhere else whither I can run. Look at my hand, how it shakes. That is with cold and fasting and being hounded about, and never sure whether I shan’t be nabbed, and in the end crapped.”

“My fell (daughter) has been that,” said the hostess, leaning over Stracey and looking into his face with inquiry in her eyes.

He rubbed his hands together and extended them over the fire again, but did not respond to the remark.

“Do you know that?” asked Mother Norris. “She’s turned off and done for. Last Tuesday it was. What I am to do without her I can’t think. I always reckoned that you’d make a tavern sign, but I never reckoned that my Nan would be swung up. Captain, how came that about? I’d like to know. You was with her in Meg-a-Fox Hole. Couldn’t you have got her off?”

“You hell-hag! I had as much as I could do to save myself.”

“And the dust—what became of that? I know it was got away. How did you manage to carry that away and leave my Nan behind? I know you got off with the blunt, for they turned over everything in the cave and did not find it.”

“Yes, yes; I thrust it down the dolly!”

“Then why did you leave Nan behind? She was more to me than my share of the dust. She ought not to have been lagged when you were there to help her.”

With an oath George Stracey turned on the old woman and bade her get the fire lighted in the farther room and prepare food for him.

She said not another word, but hobbled into the adjoining apartment, and remained there for some minutes. Presently she returned to take a shovel-full of red-hot embers from the kitchen hearth, with which to kindle the fire in the grate of the inner chamber. As she stopped and with a hook drew the ashes into the shovel she leered up into the face of the highwayman and said:

“Ah! Captain, honey! What are you thinking and grieving over? No more games on the main toby (highway)? Or is it for Nan? Poor, poor Nan.”

The man stamped and set his teeth.

“Have I not enough to worry me without you snapping at me?”

“Just so she used to sit, looking into the glow,” continued the hag, undeterred; “with her it was nought but George this and George that; ay, ay, it was all George with her. I’ve seen her fret her heart out, there on that stool, when she fancied you was ceasing to care for her, and had took up with some other jorner.”

“Get me something to eat. Don’t you know I’m perished for food?” exclaimed Stracey, with an impatient action of the hand that made the woman wince, as she thought he was about to strike her.

She obeyed, her face wreathed with a smile more hideous than a scowl.

After a few minutes she returned, and said in a muffled voice, “Everything is ready.”

“Not more ready than am I,” said the highwayman, rising stiffly. “Zounds! I’ve had nothing baken and hot from the fire between my teeth for many days; nought but raw turnips or a handful of dry corn.”

He went into the adjoining room and threw the door back after him.

The chamber he entered was lighted by a dancing fire of sticks, in joyful contrast to the dull red fire over which he had crouched in the kitchen, and which had been reduced in volume by the red-hot embers taken to supply the other grate.

Stracey had not left the kitchen many minutes before steps were heard approaching; then a hand was laid on the latch and an attempt was made to open the door.

“Who is there?” asked Mother Norris.

“Come—open. A public-house should never be fast shut,” was the reply.

“Eh! but I am lone and old now.”

“We will not harm you. Unbar.”

“But who are you? There be more than one.”

“Ay, to be sure there be. Crispin Ravenhill and Stewponey Bla. You’re not afraid of us?”

At the door of communication between the inner room and the kitchen, appeared Stracey, signalling to the old woman. But she paid no attention to him, and withdrew the bar.

“Come in, and welcome,” she said. “There be so many wicked men about, that I’m forced, when feeling timorsome of nights, to bolt my door. What are you two about, wandering in the wind and rain and darkness?”

“We have made this journey to see you,” answered the young man in the doorway. “It has been the wish of Bladys, and I am but now returned from London town.”

“Come to the fire. Sit you down,” said the hag.

“We shall not remain over ten minutes,” said Crispin. “We must return to the Rock and Kinver.”

He strode to the hearth and stood there.

A strip of gold, the reflection from the fire in the farther apartment, through the gap made by the door being ajar, was painted from ceiling to floor, on the wall—a ribbon of flickering gold leaf.

The haste with which Mrs Norris had undone the front door, had prevented Stracey from shutting that into the room where he was.

“You have a fire in yonder,” said Ravenhill. “Is there anyone there?”

“No—no—no one,” answered the old woman. “I have kindled a faggot, as the night was damp and the room smelled mouldy, like a church vault.”

Then Bladys took the hand of Mrs Norris, and said in a shaking voice:

“Mother, I have come to say a word to you about her whom we have lost—whom I loved as well as you.”

“Ay! ay!” replied the crone. “She was a good wench, and was very fond of you. She loved me too, although I was rough with her at times. She was my own flesh and blood, and although I say it, she was a good wench; and I take it kindly of you to come and speak to me of her. That’s more than do some as ought to.” Her tone suddenly altered. “She would ha’ done better to have dashed a kettle o’ scalding water in a face I could put a name to, than to have cast eyes of love on it.”

“As you say,” spoke Bladys in feeling tones, “she was good and true, and we will remember her as such. I ever shall—to me she was loving.”

“That’s certain,” exclaimed the old woman, casting a sidelong glance at the door that was ajar. “And if right had been done by such as I know of, she’d have been here tonight to welcome you, and would not have got her head into a horse’s nightcap.”

She stooped over the fire, and put the miserable embers together and muttered, “Somebody might have saved her had he chose.”

“Do not entertain these notions,” said Bladys. “What has happened is past recall.”

“True, but, Stewponey Bla, I saw my Nan before she died. Holy Austin took me to her, or I never should have mustered up courage to go. She was woundy shy of speaking to me, but I probed her well wi’ questions, and when she turned stiff and wouldn’t give me a reply, then I sullied the truth. Yes, yes, the cravat was but to her neck that should have been fitted to the throat of another.”

It was in vain for Bladys to get the old woman to speak of her daughter in any other light. She harboured the conviction that a wrong had been done to her and Nan, and was bitter in heart with resentment against the offender, whom, however, she would not name. Bladys accordingly turned to another matter.

“Mother,” she said, “for all that Nan was to me, for the love that I bore her, I wish to do something for you. I know that you are poor, very poor, and now, in your old age, companion-less and helpless. It is my wish and intention, along with Crispin, who—who will soon be my husband, to do something for you.”

“What can you do?” asked the old woman sharply.

“We will allow you a crown every week, on which you may be able to obtain little comforts.”

The old woman laughed.

“You must have the money before you can give it.”

“We have it,” answered Bladys. “I may tell you that we have come in for a large sum of money—large, that is, for us.”

“A large sum—When? How?” greedily queried the beldame. “Have you it about you now? Show it me.”

“No, Mother Norris, I have none of it about me now. Crispin is going to expend it in barges on the canal. We shall have enough over with which to assist you. You shall receive a crown every week, from Holy Austin if we are away. And if at any time you should need more we shall not refuse further help, for dear Nan’s sake.”

“I’d like to know how you came by that money,” said the hag meditatively. “Not from Holy Austin—he has none. Not from your father—he wants it all for the dressing-up of his new jorner. Not from Luke Hangman or his mother—for I’ve heard say that you never was his wife, and so couldn’t claim aught when he was dead.”

“I have my secrets,” said Bladys, with a smile, “even from you.”

“There is one thing, further, and then we must be gone,” said Crispin. “Where is Captain Stracey?”

“Where is George Stracey?” repeated the old woman, slowly, musingly. “Oh! you desire