CHAPTER 3
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the
damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been
crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket—handkerchief. Now, I
saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of
spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every
rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh—mist was so thick, that the wooden
finger on the post directing people to our village — a direction which they
never accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to me until I was
quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed
to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the
marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run
at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and
banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as
could be, “A boy with Somebody—else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon
me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their
nostrils, “Holloa, young thief!” One black ox, with a white cravat on — who
even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air — fixed me so
obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory
manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn’t help it, sir!
It wasn’t for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud
of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick—up of his hind—legs and a
flourish of his tail.
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but
however fast I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed
riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I
knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a
Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was
‘prentice to him regularly bound, we would have such Larks there! However, in
the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and
consequently had to try back along the river—side, on the bank of loose stones
above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. Making my way along here
with all despatch, I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the
Battery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the
man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and
was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.
I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him
with his breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and
touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same
man, but another man!
And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and
had a great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was
everything that the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and
had a flat broad—brimmed low—crowned felt that on. All this, I saw in a moment,
for I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me
— it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for
it made him stumble — and then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he
went, and I lost him.
“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart
shoot as I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver,
too, if I had known where it was.
I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was
the right man—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping — waiting for me. He was awfully cold, to be
sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face and die of deadly
cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when I handed him the file
and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat
it, if he had not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down, this time, to
get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and
emptied my pockets.
“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.
“Brandy,” said I.
He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in
the most curious manner — more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a
violent hurry, than a man who was eating it — but he left off to take some of
the liquor. He shivered all the while, so violently, that it was quite as much
as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting
it off.
“I think you have got the ague,” said I.
“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.
“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying
out on the meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”
“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,”
said he. “I’d do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as
there is over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers so far, I’ll
bet you.”
He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese,
and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist
all round us, and often stopping — even stopping his jaws — to listen. Some
real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the
marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly:
“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with
you?”
“No, sir! No!”
“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”
“No!”
“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce
young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!”
Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in
him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough
sleeve over his eyes.
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he
gradually settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy
it.”
“Did you speak?”
“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”
“Thankee, my boy. I do.”
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his
food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating,
and the man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He
swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he
looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger
in every direction, of somebody’s coming to take the pie away. He was
altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I
thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his
jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.
“I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,” said
I, timidly; after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness
of making the remark. “There’s no more to be got where that came from.” It was
the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
“Leave any for him? Who’s him?” said my friend,
stopping in his crunching of pie—crust.
“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with
you.”
“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff
laugh. “Him? Yes, yes! He don’t want no wittles.”
“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.
The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the
keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise.
“Looked? When?”
“Just now.”
“Where?”
“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found
him nodding asleep, and thought it was you.”
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I
began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.
“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I
explained, trembling; “and — and” — I was very anxious to put this delicately —
“and with — the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t you hear the
cannon last night?”
“Then, there was firing!” he said to himself.
“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,” I
returned, “for we heard it up at home, and that’s further away, and we were
shut in besides.”
“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these
flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he
hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees
the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore,
closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears
the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him
steady, men!’ and is laid hands on — and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one
pursuing party last night — coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with their tramp,
tramp — I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the
cannon, arter it was broad day — But this man;” he had said all the rest, as if
he had forgotten my being there; “did you notice anything in him?”
“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what
I hardly knew I knew.
“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek
mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.
“Yes, there!”
“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left,
into the breast of his grey jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him
down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the
file, boy.”
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded
the other man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the
rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding
his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he
handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I was very
much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce
hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any
longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the best
thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over
his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient
imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I stopped in the
mist to listen, and the file was still going.
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