Back o' the Moon, and Other Stories/Back o' the Moon/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
CRUDELITAS.
Even the 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 that same 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, passing on 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 whispered speech 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 (quite a 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 have been 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's eyes 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 had made 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 the evening had emboldened him, or more likely he spoke now also of design. He finished his glass, sent it rolling across the table, rubbed 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 the grey 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.