A Little Wizard. Weyman Stanley John
Mistress Gridley looked fixedly and with compressed lips at the boy, who sat in the cold chimney corner, too much terrified to cry. The only sounds which broke the dreary stillness of the house were the rattling of the loom and the murmur of Luke Gridley's voice, as his tongue followed the mechanical movement of his finger.
Such was their reception; the child, hungry and fear-stricken, thought with a bursting heart of the home he had left, of the friends and the very dogs of Pattenhall, its trees and sunshine, and warm kitchen. The grim silence of the room, the woman's cruel eyes, the bareness and greyness, seemed to crush him with an iron hand, so that it was only by an effort, almost beyond his years, that he repressed a scream of passionate revolt.
Nor did he suffer alone. The butler, despite the care with which he hid his feelings, was little more at home in his company. He had no longer anything in common with his kinsfolk. In his heart he cringed before their rugged natures as a guilty dog crouches before its master. But he had thoughts of his own and a purpose to serve; and this enabled him to put a good face on the matter, or at least to endure with a wry smile.
The scanty meal of cheese and oatmeal eaten, and Luke's long extemporary prayer brought to an end, the strangers were taken to one of the two upper rooms. In five minutes the tired child was asleep; not so his companion. Gridley, fatigued as he was, lay and watched the last glimmer of daylight die away, and then, when all the house was dark and quiet, he sat up and listened. His wallets lay on the floor beside him. He rose and crawled to them, and for a long time crouched on the boards by them, thinking. He wanted a hiding-place-before morning he must have a hiding-place; but the scanty furniture of the room afforded none. This he had not anticipated, and the perplexity into which it threw him was so largely mingled with fear, that he fancied the loud beating of his heart must attract attention even through the walls. After some minutes of misery he made up his mind, and rising from the floor crept to the door and opened it. All was so still in the house that he took fresh courage. He went back to his wallets, and drawing something from them stole on tiptoe down the stairs, each creaking board-and there were many-throwing him into a cold perspiration. When a coward gives himself to wickedness, he pays dearly for his fancy.
The staircase opened directly into the kitchen, where he stood awhile listening on the hearth. Luke, the preacher, slept in the back-room, and the door seemed to be ajar. Gridley felt his way through the darkness to it and softly closed it. Then he peered round him. Where could he hide what he had to hide? Memory, conjuring up the objects round him, suggested one place after another, but in each case he foresaw the possibility of accident. The linen-chest? Mistress Gridley might take it into her head to inspect her store of linen. The under-part of the sink? She might be about to clean it. The dresser was out of the question. He decided at last on the oatmeal chest, and groping his way to it found it, to his delight, unlocked and half full. The objects he had to hide were small; he ran little risk, he thought, if he buried them near the bottom of the meal.
After pausing again to listen and assure himself that he was not watched, he plunged his treasure deep in the soft meal. Then with trembling hands he drew the stuff over it, jealously smoothing and patting the surface in his fear lest daylight should disclose some signs of what he had been about. This done, and as he believed, effectually, he heaved a sigh of relief, and laid his hand on the lid of the chest to close it. At that moment a thin ray of light pierced the darkness in which he stood, and falling across the floor of the kitchen, chilled him to the heart.
Even in his panic he had sufficient presence of mind to close the lid softly, but the act detained him so long that he had no chance of moving away from the chest; and there Mistress Gridley found him when she entered, with her rushlight shaded, and her small eyes gleaming triumphantly behind it.
"Ho! ho!" she said, in a whisper; "I have caught a rat, have I?"
"I was hungry," he stammered, recoiling before her, "and came down to see if there was any porridge left."
"You lie!" she answered contemptuously, pointing to his hands as she spoke. They were covered with oatmeal. "I know you of old. You have been hiding something. Let me see what it is."
For a moment, despair giving him courage, he raised his hand as if he would have done her some injury; but the woman's eyes cowed him. "Hold the light, fool!" she said. "Let me see what you have got here."
She rummaged an instant in the meal, and presently, with an abrupt exclamation, drew out something which glittered as she held it up. It was a small gold cup. As she turned it to and fro, and the light which trembled in the man's craven hands played quiveringly on the burnished surface of the metal, her eyes glistened with avarice. She drew a long breath. "It is gold!" she muttered wonderingly.
The wretched Gridley murmured that it was.
Glancing at him askance, and still clutching the cup as if she feared he might snatch it from her, she plunged her other hand into the meal, and drew out in quick succession a flagon and a small plate of the same precious metal. Such success, as one came forth after the other, almost frightened her. She gazed at the spoils with all her greedy soul in her eyes. She had never handled such things before, and scarcely ever seen them, but with intuitive avarice she knew their value, and loved them, and clutched them to her breast. "You stole them!" she hissed. "They are from some church. Tell me the truth."
"They have been hidden at the Hall-since before the Squire's death," he stammered.
She held them out again and looked lovingly at them. When she turned to him again, it was to wave him off. "Go!" she said fiercely, "they are not yours. I shall take them. I shall give them to-"
"Your husband?" he retorted desperately, moved to boldness and action by the imminence of the danger. "Your husband? He would call them the accursed thing, and grind them to powder and strew them on Malham Tarn. What would you gain by that?"
She scowled at him, knowing that what he said was true; and so they stood a moment gazing breathlessly at one another. Before he spoke again their eyes had made an unholy compact. "Let them remain here, and do you play fair," he said slowly, "and I will give you the large one."
"I might take all," she muttered jealously.
"No," he snarled, showing his teeth; "I should tell him."
Her eyes fell at that, so that it scarcely needed the slight shiver which passed over her to assure him that he had touched the right chord. Smooth and hypocritical, and, like all hypocrites, afraid of some one, she feared above all things her husband's stern and pitiless code; knowing that no offence could seem more heinous or less pardonable in his eyes than this dallying with the accursed thing, this sin of Achan.
So the compact was made. The larger vessel was hidden at one end of the meal-tub, the two smaller vessels at the other end. Each accomplice showed the same reluctance to trust the other, the same unwillingness to take leave of the spoil; but at last the chest was closed, and the two prepared to retire. Then a thought seemed to strike Mistress Gridley. "Why have you brought that brat here?" she whispered, as they prepared to mount the stairs. "Don't talk to me of gratitude, man! Tell me the truth."
He shifted his feet, and would have fenced with her, but she knew him, and he gave way. "Times may change," he said. "The land and the house may come back. Then it will be well to know where the lad is."
"Umph!" she said. "I see."
Perhaps her knowledge of the butler's plan prevented her being actively cruel to the child. On the other hand, neither she nor any one gave him a word or look of kindness. He had no place among them. Luke was wrapt in visions. Simon was too sternly self-contained, too completely under the mastery of his cold and ascetic faith, to give thought or word to the boy.
The other two had the meal chest to guard and each other to watch.
He was left to feel the full influence of the grey moorland life. The dismal stillness of the house, the lengthy prayers and repellent faces, drove him out of doors; the silence and solitude of the fells, which even in sunshine, when the peewits screamed and flew in circles, and the sky was blue above, were dreary and lonesome, scared him back to the house. Once a week the family went four miles to a meeting-house, where Luke Gridley and a Bradford weaver preached by turns. But this was the only break in his life, if a break it could be called. In Simon's creed boyhood and youth held no place.
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