CHAPTER IV
THE RED HAND
The Mill had a fascination for all Bridetown children and they would trespass boldly and brave all perils to get a glimpse of the machinery. The thunder of the engines drew them, and there were all manner of interesting fragments to be picked up round and about. That they were not permitted within the radius of the works was also a sound reason for being there, and many boys could tell of great adventures and hairbreadth escapes from Mr. Best, Mr. Benny Cogle and, above all, Mr. Baggs. For Mr. Baggs, to the mind of youth, exhibited ogre-like qualities. They knew him as a deadly enemy, for which reason there was no part of the works that possessed a greater or more horrid fascination than the hackling shop. To have entered the den of Mr. Baggs marked a Bridetown lad as worthy of highest respect in his circle. But proofs were always demanded of such a high achievement. When Levi caught the adventurer, as sometimes happened, proofs were invariably apparent and a posterior evidence never lacked of a reverse for the offensive; but youth will be served, even though age sometimes serves it rather harshly, and the boys were untiring. Unless Levi locked the shop, when he went home at noon to dinner, there was always the chance of a raid with a strick or two possibly missing as proof of success.
Sabina had told Abel that he must keep away from the works, but he ignored her direction and often revolved about them at moments of liberty. He was a past master in the art of scouting and evading danger, yet loved danger, and the Mill offered him daily possibilities of both courting and escaping peril. Together with other little boys nourished on a penny journal, Abel had joined the 'Band of the Red Hand.' They did no harm, but hoped some day, when they grew older, to make a more' painful impression on Bridetown. At present their modest ambition was to leave the mark of their secret society in every unexpected spot possible. On private walls, in church and chapel, or the house-places of the farms, it was their joy to write with chalk, 'The Red Hand has been here.' Then followed a circle and a cross—the dark symbol of the brotherhood. Once a former chief of the gang had left his mark in the hackling shop and more than one member had similarly adorned the interior of the Mill; but the old chief had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, and, though younger than some of the present members, Abel was now appointed leader and always felt the demand to attempt things that should be worthy of so high a state.
They were not the everyday boys who thus combined, but a sort of child less common, yet not uncommon. Such lads scent one another out by parity of taste and care less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adventures. They would rather go trespassing than play cricket; they would organise a secret raid before a public pastime. Intuitively they desire romance, and feeling that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, of course, applaud the successful companion who does so with most complete results.
Now 'the old Adam'—a comprehensive term for independence of view and unpreparedness to accept the tried values of pastors and masters—was strong in Abel Dinnett. He loved life, but hated discipline, and for him the Mill possessed far more significance than it could offer to any lesser member of the band, since his father owned it. For that much Abel apprehended, though the meaning of paternity was as yet hidden from him.
That Raymond Ironsyde was his father he understood, and that he must hate him heartily he also understood: his dead grandmother had poured this precept into his young mind at its most receptive period. For the present he was still too youthful to rise beyond this general principle, and he was far too busy with his own adventures to find leisure to hate any one more than fitfully. He told the Red Handers that some day he designed a terrific attack on Raymond Ironsyde; and they promised to assist and support him; but they all recognised their greater manifestations must be left until they attained more weight in the cosmic and social schemes, and, for the moment, their endeavour rose little higher than to set their fatal sign where least it might be expected.
To this end came dark-eyed Abel to the Mill at an hour when he should have been at his dinner. Ere long his activities might be curtailed, for he was threatened with a preparatory school in the autumn; but before that happened, the Red Hand must be set in certain high places, and the hackling shop of Levi Baggs was first among them.
Abel wore knickerbockers and his feet and legs were bare, for he had just waded across the river beyond the Mill, and meant to retreat by the same road. He had hidden in a may bush till the people were all gone to their meal, and then crossed the stream into the works. That the door of the hackler's would be open he did not expect, for Levi locked it when he went home; but there was a little window, and Abel, who had a theory that where his head could go, his body could follow, believed that by the window it would be possible to make his entrance. The contrary of what he expected happened, however, for the window was shut and the door on the latch. Fate willed that on the very day of Abel's attack, Mr. Baggs should be spending the dinner-hour in his shop. His sister, who looked after him, was from home until the evening, and Levi had brought his dinner to the works. He was eating it when the boy very cautiously opened the door, and since Mr. Baggs sat exactly behind the door, this action served to conceal him. The intruder therefore thought the place empty, and proceeded with his operations while Levi made no sound, but watched him.
Taking a piece of chalk from his pocket Abel wrote the words of terror, 'The Red Hand has been here,' and set down the circle and cross. Then he picked up one of the bright stricks, that lay beside the hackling board, and was just about to depart in triumph, when Mr. Baggs banged the door and revealed himself.
Thus discomfited, Abel grew pale and then flushed. Mr. Baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that attended failure. But he bore pain well. He had been operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would now do so.
"It's you, is it?" said Mr. Baggs. "And the Red Hand has been here, has it? And perhaps the red something else will go away from here. You're a darned young thief—that's what you are."
"I ain't yet," argued Abel. His voice fluttered, for his heart was beating very fast.
"You're as good, however, for you was going to take my strick. The will was there, though I prevented the deed."
"I had to show the Band as I'd been here."
"Why did you come? What sense is there to it?"
Abel regarded Mr. Baggs doubtfully and did not reply.
"Just to show you're a bit out of the common, perhaps?"
Abel clutched at the suggestion. His eyes looked sideways slyly at Mr. Baggs. The ogre seemed inclined to talk, and through speech might come salvation, for he had acted rather than talked on previous occasions.
"We want to be different from common boys," said the marauder.
"Well, you are, for one, and there's no need to trouble in your case. You was born different, and different you've got to be. I suppose you've been told often enough who your father is?"
"Yes, I have."
"Small wonder then that you've got your knife into the world at large, I reckon. What thinking man, or boy, has not for that matter? So you're up against the laws and out for the liberties? Well, I don't quarrel with that. Only you're too young yet to understand what a lot you've got to grumble at. Some day you will."
Abel said nothing. He hardly listened, and thought far less of what Mr. Baggs was saying than of what he himself would say to his companions after this great adventure. To make friends with the ogre was no mean feat, even for a member of the Red Hand.
What motiveless malignity actuated Levi Baggs meanwhile, who can say? He was now a man in sight of seventy, yet his crabbed soul would exude gall under pressure as of yore. None was ever cheered or heartened by anything he might say; but to cast a neighbour down, or make a confident and contented man doubtful and discontented, affected Mr. Baggs favourably and rendered him as cheerful as his chronic pessimism ever permitted him to be.
He bade the child sit and gave him his portion of currant dumpling.
"Put that down your neck," he said, "and don't you think so bad of me in future. I treat other people same as they treat me, and that's a rule that works out pretty fair in practice, if you've got the power to follow it. But some folks are too weak to treat other people as they are treated—you, for example. You're one of the unlucky ones, you are, Abel Dinnett."
Abel enjoyed the pudding; and still his mind dwelt more on future narration of this great incident than on the incident itself. With unconscious art, he felt that the moment when this tale was told, would be far greater for him than the moment when it happened.
"I ain't unlucky, Mister Baggs. I would have been unlucky if you'd beat me; but you've give me your pudding, and I'm on your side till death now."
"Well, that's something. I ain't got many my side, I believe. The fearless thinker never has. You can come and see me when you mind to, because I'm sorry for you, owing to your bad fortune. You've been handicapped out of winning the race, Abel. You know what a handicap is in a race? Well, you won't have no chance of winning now, because your father won't own you."
"I won't own him," said the boy. "Granny always told me he was my bitterest enemy, and she knew, and I won't trust him—never."
"I should think not—nor any other wise chap wouldn't trust him. He's a bad lot. He only believes in machines, not humans."
The boy began to be receptive.
"He wants to be friends, but I won't be his friend, because I hate him.
Only I don't tell mother, because she don't hate him so much as me."
"More fool her, then. She ought to hate him. She's got first cause. Do you know who ought to own these works when your father dies?"
"No, Mister Baggs."
"You. Yes, they did ought to belong to you in justice, because you are his eldest son. Everything ought to be yours, if the world were run by right and fairness and honour. But it's all took from you and you can't lift a finger to better yourself, because you're only his natural son, and Nature may go to hell every time for all the Law and the Church care. Church and Law both hate Nature. So that's why I say you're an unlucky boy; and that's why I say that, despite your father's money and fame and being popular and well thought on and all that, he's a cruel rogue."
Abel was puzzled but interested.
"If I'm his boy, why ain't my mother his wife, like all the other chaps' fathers have got wives?"
"Why ain't your mother his wife? Yes, why? After ten years he'll find that question as hard to answer as it was before you were born, I reckon. And the answer to the question is the same as the answer to many questions about Raymond Ironsyde. And that is, that he is a crooked man who pretends to be a straight one; in a word, a hypocrite. And you'll grow up to understand these things and see what should be yours taken from you and given to other people."
"When I grow up, I'll have it out with him," said Abel.
"No, you won't. Because he's strong and you're weak. You're weak and poor and nobody, with no father to fight for you and give you a show in the world. And you'll always be the same, so you'll never stand any chance against him."
The boy flushed and showed anger.
"I won't be weak and poor always."
"Against him you will. Suppose you went so far as to let him befriend you, could he ever make up for not marrying your mother? Can he ever make you anything but a bastard and an outcast? No, he can't; and he only wants to educate you and give you a bit of money and decent clothes for the sake of his own conscience. He'll come to you hat in hand some day—not because he cares a damn for you, but that he may stand well in the eyes of the world."
Abel now panted with anger, and Mr. Baggs was mildly amused to see how easily the child could be played upon.
"I'll grow up and then—"
"Don't you worry. You must take life as you find it, and as you haven't found it a very kind thing, you must put up with it. Most people draw blanks, and that's why it's better to stop out of the world than in it. And if we could see into the bottom of every heart, we should very likely find that all draw blanks, and even what looks like prizes are not."
Levi laughed after this sweeping announcement. It appeared to put him in a good temper. He even relaxed in the gravity of his prophecies.
"However, life is on the side of youth," he said, "and you may come to the front some day, if you've got enough brains. Brains is the only thing that'll save you. Your mother's clever and your father's crafty, so perhaps you'll go one better than either. Perhaps, some day, if you wait long enough, you'll get back on your father, after all."
"I will wait long enough," declared Abel. "I don't care how long I wait, but I'll best him, Mister Baggs."
"You keep in that righteous spirit and you'll breed a bit of trouble for him some day, I daresay. And now be off, and if you want to come and see me at work and learn about hackling and the business that ought to be yours but won't be, then you can drop in again when you mind to."
"Thank you, sir," said Abel. "I will come, and if I say you let me, nobody can stop me."
"That's right. I like brave boys that ain't frightened of their betters—so called."
Then Abel went off, crossed Bride among the sedges and put on his shoes and stockings again. He had a great deal to think about, and this brief conversation played its part in his growing brain to alter old opinions and waken new ideas. That he had successfully stormed the hackling shop and found the ogre friendly was, of course, good; but already, and long before he could retail the incident, it began to lose its rare savour. He perceived this himself dimly, and it made him uncomfortable and troubled. Something had happened to him; he knew not what, but it dwarfed the operations of the Red Hand, and it even made his personal triumph look smaller than it appeared a little while before.
Abel stared at the Mill while he pulled on his stockings and listened to the bell calling the people back to work.
By right, then, all these wonders should be his some day; but his father would never give them to him now. He vaguely remembered that his grandmother had said something like this; but it remained for Mr. Baggs to rekindle the impression until Abel became oppressed with its greatness.
He considered the problem gloomily for a long time and decided to talk to his mother about it. But he did not. It was characteristic of him that he seldom went to Sabina for any light on his difficulties. Indeed he attached more importance to Mr. Churchouse's opinions than his mother's. He determined to see Levi Baggs again and, meantime, he let a sense of wrong sink into him. Here the Band of the Red Hand offered comfort. It seemed proper to his dawning intelligence that one who had been so badly treated as he, should become the head of the Red Hand. Yet, as the possible development of the movement occurred to Abel, the child began to share the uneasiness of all conspiracy and feel a weakness inherent in the Band. Seen from that modest standard of evil-doing which belonged to Tommy and Billy Keep, Amos Whittle and Jacky Gale, the Red Handers appeared a futile organisation even in Abel's eyes. He felt, as greater than he have felt, that an ideal society should embrace one member only: himself. There were far too many brothers of the Red Hand, and before he reached home he even contemplated resignation. He liked better the thought of playing his own hand, and keeping both its colour and its purpose secret from everybody else in the world. His head was, for the moment, full of unsocial thoughts; but whether the impressions created by Mr. Baggs were likely to persist in a mind so young, looked doubtful.
He told his mother nothing, as usual. Indeed, had she guessed half that went on in Abel's brains, she might have sooner undertaken what presently was indicated, and removed herself and her son to a district far beyond their native village.
But the necessity did not exist in her thoughts, and when she recognised it, since the inspiration came from without, she was moved to resent rather than accept it.