Just as Mrs Belflower reached this point I was irritated to hear my mother approaching. I didn’t want her to know I was asking anything about the Huffam family in case she guessed that I had seen the letter.
“You both look very comfortable,” she said as she came in.
“I was just starting to tell Master Johnnie a story,” Mrs Belflower explained.
“I believe he enjoys your stories better than the fairy-tales I read him,” my mother said smiling at me.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I like them both. But the stories Mrs Belflower tells are true stories because they happened to real people.”
“Do go on, cook,” my mother said.
“No, please tell it to me another time, Mrs Belflower,” I said quickly.
“That’s very rude of you, Johnnie.”
Mrs Belflower heaved herself to her feet: “I’ll not stay now you’ve come, ma’am. I’ll say goodnight, and goodnight to you, Master Johnnie.”
She bent over the bed and kissed my forehead.
“Goodnight, Mrs Belflower. And thank you for telling me that story.”
“Sleep well, my dear. I hope that storm don’t come no closer.”
When she had gone out my mother said: “Johnnie, you were very rude to Mrs Belflower just now. And you were unkind to me earlier.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“But you were. Please try to be better.”
“I don’t need to try,” I insisted. “I am better already.”
She sighed then bade me good-night, kissed me, extinguished the candle, and left the room.
As I snuggled under the bed-clothes I heard the wind moaning softly as it prowled around the house, rattling the doors and windows as if seeking some way to get in. Now with a flash of lightning that lit up my room in an eerie white light and left my eyes dazzled as the darkness returned, the storm at last broke. As the rumble of thunder rolled overhead there was the first sudden downpour of rain that was hurled against the rattling windows like showers of pebbles thrown in handfuls. I thought of the fields of beaten-down grain that lay around the house, under whose wet straw the mice and birds must now be huddling in terror.
Surely I was connected with the Huffam family! There was the similarity of the motto and also the evidence of the letter I had seen. Then another thought came to me: the seal had not been broken. My mother had never opened the letter! Then did that mean that it was not addressed to her? If so, then to whom was it directed?
I tried to keep my mind on this, but other thoughts came to me. How strange to have bricks and slates around me, keeping the cold and the water out. And yet now that the wind buffeted the house in wave after wave with a shock that made the shutters and window-frames bounce and rattle, I wondered how long it could withstand such blows, for I recalled Sukey’s stories of cottages in the village whose rooves had had their slates stripped off by high winds, and I thought of the roof above my head being scattered like a handful of dead leaves flung up in the air. Of course, animals had hides and birds had feathers that kept the rain from soaking them, like the tarred canvas I had seen stretched over the backs of waggons. And so with thoughts like these, even before the storm had spent itself, I must have fallen asleep.
CHAPTER 5
The weather next day was cold and louring as if ill-tempered after the debauch of the night before. Since the storm had kept my mother awake and given her a headache and because Bissett, who was anyway still “under the weather”, declined to escort me on my afternoon walks now that their range had increased with the length of my legs, that task fell to Sukey. In consequence, I achieved the ambition I had nursed for so long.
“Let’s go up Gallow-tree-hill,” I suggested innocently as we left the house and made towards the village.
“Now you know that ain’t allowed,” she said. “Anyway, fust of all we must stop by mither’s for a moment.”
“But that’s not fair,” I protested. “That’s not allowed either.”
Sukey turned a worried face towards me: “Uncle has been took bad agin and I want to larn how he is. You won’t get me into no trouble at home will you, Master Johnnie?”
Now my mother had not issued an explicit prohibition against my going to that part of the village, but this was only because she did not know that Sukey ever went to her own house when I was with her.
“Not if you promise to take me to the turnpike today.”
“To the turnpike?” she said cheerfully. “Why, very well. We’ll go round by Lower Hempford.”
I was surprised and even a little disappointed to have secured so easy a victory and thought the less of Sukey for compromising so easily.
It occurred to me that she was secretly going against my mother’s wishes just as I had done yesterday in looking at the locket and the letter. If Sukey could do it perhaps it was not wrong then, and yet I felt it was so because I had not wanted my mother to catch me in the act. Perhaps it was that while to do something that was forbidden was naughty it was not nearly as wicked as, for example, lying or stealing are. If my mother had asked me when she came back into the room, then I would have had to admit the truth rather than lie.
We soon reached Silver-street, which straggled along the southern edge of the Green and consisted of two rows of low cottages on either side of the stream which ran down its centre, supposedly kept within its wide and indeterminate channel, but frequently overflowing onto the footways on either side — as it was today after the storm. The cottages, with their bulging walls of lath and earth and their mouldering thatched rooves, seemed to be trying to hide themselves in shame by slipping back into the muddy ground from which they were scarcely to be distinguished. We came opposite Sukey’s cottage and since we were on the wrong side of the stream, had to walk across on a series of large flat stones in the water.
“Now be good and wait here,” said Sukey and went inside.
Sukey’s cottage leant up against an exactly identical one, as if each were trying to support itself by leaning against the other. It had only one window and this was a small hole stuffed with rags and kindling-wood. Stamping my feet and blowing on my fingers, I stood at the door and watched some ragged children carrying a bucket of water to another of the cottages. Two boys came past carrying bundles of wood along the opposite side of the stream. One of them was a little older than me and the younger one about my age. They were poorly dressed, wearing ragged clothes that were too large for them and with their bare feet wrapped in sacking as was usual amongst the village-children when the cold weather came.
“Where are you from?” the elder cried, and he and his companion ominously laid down their bundles.
“You’re from the Rector’s, aren’t you?” the other one shouted.
I shook my head.
“Yes you are,” the older boy insisted. “Your father is his brother that’s visiting there.”
“No, you’re mistaken,” I said mildly.
“Then who is your father?” he sneered.
I hesitated and he cried out: “He won’t tell us!” I saw the younger boy pick something up. Before I knew what he was about a stone hurtled towards me and thudded into the grass a few feet away. The other boy bent and picked up another.
“I’ll fight one of you fairly,” I called out. “But this isn’t fair.”
“Yaagh!” came the reply and two stones hurtled toward me. Both of them missed me, and the older boy shouted: “Come, Dick! We’ll go across and catch him between us.”
Carrying several stones a-piece they began to cross over the ford, pausing a little way across to fire another broadside at me.
Fortunately one of the stones struck the door of the cottage behind me and a moment later Sukey rushed out with a basket over her arm which she raised threateningly though she could hardly have intended to hurl it across the stream: “Be off with you, Tom o’ Joe,” she cried, “or I’ll get your dad to tan the hide off your back for ye! And you, too, Dick o’ Bob!”
With muttered threats the
boys picked up the bundles of wood and made off.
“Are you all right, Master Johnnie?” Sukey asked anxiously.
“Yes, Sukey,” I replied. “They didn’t hit me. And if they’d come across I would have given them more than they’d bargained for.”
“Well, no harm done then, thank goodness,” Sukey said and began to move off.
“But why are we going this way?” I asked for we were going towards Gallow-tree-hill.
“I must take some vittles to my poor aunt,” she replied, indicating the basket. “There’s nobody else can go. We can get to ’Ougham and back before your tea if we hurry. But you must promise not to tell nobody as to how I took you that way.”
“Oh yes, I promise!” I exclaimed with delight for I had been told that the lane to Hougham ran for some distance alongside the turnpike-road.
Well, Sukey was being very naughty! And yet I had done even worse things than I had done yesterday, for I had never told anyone that the burglar spoke to me and therefore that I knew who he was. And I had never mentioned to anyone the business of the mole-spade. Just when I believed I had found the courage to ask the old gardener himself about it, he had stopped coming.
“Sukey, what has become of Mr Pimlott?” I asked.
“He won’t be doing no more work for your mother. He has gone to the poorhouse now.”
“Why?”
“On account of he’s too old and ill to look arter hisself. Like poor Uncle. He’ll lose his place soon, so the steward has told him and aunty, for he’s too poorly to keep the lodge. And if he has to leave the cottage he don’t have no settlement in that parish and so they’ll have to go back to where he were born.”
Could Mr Pimlott have had a hand in the burglary? I asked myself once again while Sukey was chattering on. I had not believed so at the time, partly because I recalled how fiercely he had seemed that afternoon to be defending my mother’s property against the poaching mole. Yet I wondered now if, young as I was then, I had misunderstood him. Or had the tramper simply acted alone?
“I never believed that Job took part in the burglary,” I remarked.
“Lor’, Master Johnnie, I don’t know why you should say his name so sudden like that when he’s been in my thoughts all day. He’s j’ined up for a sodger and gone away, you know, and all on account of Mr Emeris kept on trying to have him took up on one charge arter another.”
Perhaps I had been wrong not to speak out, even at the risk of making trouble for Mr Pimlott. “Sukey,” I asked, “how can it be right for you to take me this way when you know my mother does not wish it?”
“But uncle’s ill! I’ve got to go!”
“So sometimes you can decide to do what’s wrong if it would be more wrong not to do it?”
“Aye, that’s it, Master Johnnie,” she said gratefully.
“Then,” I pounced gleefully, “that’s like saying you can choose to break the law when it suits you. Why, Sukey, that man who broke into our house might have said the same, you know.”
I was fascinated to see how powerfully this thrust appeared to affect her for she stopped suddenly and stared at me apparently unable to speak.
“But if he was hungry, Master Johnnie,” she began in a rush, “or say if he had to watch his children crying for hunger and he knowed that there was something he could get for food as the persons as owned it didn’t want for theirselves and didn’t even know as they owned it, and that it would be hard for him and dangerous, too, to ketch it, then mightn’t it be right for him to try to take it?”
Once again, I wished my mother had not forbidden me to ask Sukey about her father. Anyway, the answer to her question was very simple: “No, Sukey, for if you have no law then everybody would take everything from everybody else. And then where should we all be?”
That silenced her. But it was an interesting thought that you could do something wrong if you had a good enough reason for it.
“So what will you say if my mother asks where we have been?” I asked. “Will you tell a lie by saying that we didn’t go near the turnpike?”
“But it ain’t the ’pike you’re forbidden!” she cried and then broke off.
Not the ’pike! Then why had my mother always been so reluctant to come this way? We walked on in silence for some minutes as I thought about this. After a time I gave this up and returned to another puzzle: “Sukey, can you tell me about fathers? Oh, I don’t mean your father,” I added hastily, and she flushed. “I mean my own.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that, Master Johnnie.”
“But all I want to know is, could he have died many years before I was born?”
“Why, I don’t believe so. No, I’m sartin sure not.”
We walked on in a thoughtful silence. Some minutes later, just as we reached the turnpike Sukey suddenly said: “My dad broke the law. There now, I didn’t ought to have told you that and I shan’t say no more.”
I stored this away to think about later for by now my mind was on the ’pike and my disappointment in finding that there was no vehicle upon it in sight in either direction. We continued along it for about half a mile with the wall of the park on the left, and in that time only a couple of waggons and a light chaise passed us.
“Time to turn off, Master Johnnie,” Sukey said sorrowfully as we reached the turning to Hougham.
“Mayn’t we wait a little?” I asked.
At that instant I thought I heard a metallic wailing note in the distance.
“Oh listen, Sukey,” I exclaimed. “Here comes something.”
“We must hurry, Master Johnnie,” she protested.
The road ran up a long slope to a bend about a mile away, and I fixed my eyes upon that point. Suddenly something appeared there. Even before I could construe what I was looking at I heard the clattering of horses’ hooves — more of them and faster than I had ever heard before. Now I could make out the coach and team as they came thundering towards us at full gallop. I saw the blinkered heads of the horses, raised and rearing backwards and pulled to one side as if they were reluctant to advance, and yet at the same time their great fore-legs were always thrusting forward as if to pull the road towards them. I saw the cloaked figure of the driver on the box holding his long whip before him, and then the body of the vehicle itself, gleaming and painted bright red. At that moment Sukey clutched me and pulled me back with sudden violence onto the wide grass verge.
Now it was almost upon us and the thunder of the hooves and the great metal-clad wheels on the hard surface of the road grew and grew until it seemed to be pounding and clattering inside my head. Then the horses were passing us, their huge heads and rolling eyes seeming only inches from us, their coats gleaming wet with sweat, and after them the great lurching monster of the coach itself, with the face of the inside passengers briefly glimpsed through the windows, and the driver and the outsides huddling together against the wind on the top.
In an instant it was gone, and from beneath Sukey’s arm I looked at its swaying back as it bounced across the uneven surface of the road.
We were both silent for a moment, and then I said: “Did you see, Sukey? That was the York to London coach. The Arrow.”
“Was it, boy?” Sukey said, her face still flushed with excitement. “How do you know?”
“It had it written on the side in big golden writing,” I told her proudly, for Sukey, of course, did not know her letters. “Though of course,” I added regretfully, “it wasn’t the Royal Mail.”
“What am I thinking of!” she exclaimed suddenly. “We must be gettin’ on.”
So we hurried down the lane with the high wall of the demesne still on our left. It was badly delapidated so that in places we could easily look down into the park as it sloped towards the bottom of the valley where we saw a line of thick bushes and trees marking the course of a hidden stream until it broadened out into an expanse of grey water which was the lake.
We skirted Stoke Mompesson with its broad high street with rows of handsome cott
ages on either side, and then another half a mile further, a straggling group of rough-cast hovels on our right marked the beginning of the village that was our goal. And a very squalid hamlet it was in comparison to Melthorpe, looking to me like an extended version of Silver-street, made up of mean one-story houses built of furze-branches, mud and mortar, and in many cases with turves for rooves. I expected the big house to be nearby but there was no sign of it.
“The village was moved, see,” Sukey explained. “So now it’s out o’ the paritch as the estate is in.”
And so we had to walk for another ten minutes before Sukey said: “That’s where my aunt lives.” She indicated a small cottage that stood beside a pair of tall stone columns topped with globes. They framed a set of lofty black double gates with elegant filigree iron-work fancifully wrought into flourishes and flowers, which were secured by a large padlock and chain, and whose railings rose to sharp points.
“Now you’ll be all right to wait here for a little and won’t get up to no mischief, will you, Master Johnnie?”
I nodded agreement and she went into the cottage. Overcome by curiosity I approached the gate and peered through the bars, whose black paint was peeling off, revealing the rust underneath. Beyond was a courtyard with a paved surface whose stones were not merely overgrown with moss and grass but had become loosened and dislodged by the passage of long years of neglect.
Some distance away I could see the shape of a house looming up. Although it was sideways on to me, its huge size was apparent, and so, too, was its state of delapidation. Its windows were either shuttered or the paint was flaking off the bars and frames; no smoke rose from its chimneys, many of which were missing pots; slates had slipped from the part of the roof that was visible to me; and altogether the house appeared to be a deserted and uninhabited ruin.
As I watched, however, a figure, dressed in the clothes of a working man and pushing a hand-barrow, came round the corner of the house. He began to gather up the pieces of fallen masonry and shattered slate that lay about on the ground, presumably blown down in the storm the night before.