CHAPTER VIII
EPITAPH
It cannot be determined by what train of reasoning Abel proceeded from one unfortunate experience to create another, or why the grief incidental on a loss should now have nerved him to an evil project long hidden in his thoughts. But so it was; he suffered a sorrow and, under the influence of it, found himself strong enough to attempt a crime.
There was no sort of connection between the two, for nothing could bear less upon his evil project than the death of Mr. Churchouse's old cat; yet thus it fell out and the spirit of Abel reacted to his own tears.
He came home one day from school to learn how the sick cat prospered and was told to go into the study. His mother knew the child to be much wrapped up in Peter Grim, and dreading to break the news, begged Mr. Churchouse to do so.
"Your old playfellow has left us, daddy," said Ernest. "I am glad to say he died peacefully while you were at school. I think he only had a very little bit of his ninth and last life left, for he was fifteen years old and had suffered some harsh shocks."
"Dead?" asked Abel with a quivering mouth.
"And I think that we ought to give him a nice grave and put up a little stone to his memory."
Thus he tried to distract the boy from his loss.
"We will go at once," he said, "and choose a beautiful spot in the garden for his grave. You can take one of those pears and eat it while we search."
But Abel shook his head.
"Couldn't eat and him lying dead," he answered. He was crying.
They went through the French window from the study.
"Do you know any particular place that he liked?"
Slowly the child's sorrow lessened in the passing interest of finding the grave.
"You must dig it, please, when you come back from afternoon school."
Abel suggested spots not practical in the other's opinion.
"A more secluded site would be better," he declared. "He was very fond of shade. In fact, rather a shady customer himself in his young days. But not a word against the dead. His old age was dignified and blameless. You don't remember the time when he used to steal chickens, do you?"
"He never did anything wrong that I know of," said Abel. "And he always came and padded on my bed of a morning, like as if he was riding a bicycle—and—and—"
He wept again.
"If I thought anybody had poisoned him, I'd poison them," he said.
"Think no such thing. He simply died because he couldn't go on living.
You shall have another cat, and it shall be your own."
"I don't want another cat. I hate all other cats but him."
They found a spot in a side walk, where lily of the valley grew, and later in the day Abel dug a grave.
Estelle happened to visit Mr. Churchouse and he explained the tragedy.
"If you attend the funeral, the boy might tolerate you," he said. "Once break down his suspicion and get to his wayward heart, good would come of it He is feeling this very much and in a melting mood."
"I'll stop, if he won't be vexed."
Mr. Churchouse went into the garden and praised Abel's energies.
"A beautiful grave; and it is right and proper that Peter Grim should lie here, because he often hunted here."
"He caught the mice that live in holes at the bottom of the wall," said
Abel.
"If you are ready, we will now bury him. Mother must come to the funeral, and Estelle must come, because she was very, very fond of poor Peter and she would think it most unkind of us if we buried him while she was not there. She will bring some flowers for the grave, and you must get some flowers, too, Abel. We must, in fact, each put a flower on him."
The boy frowned at mention of Estelle, but forgot her in considering the further problem.
"He liked the mint bed. I'll put mint on him," he said.
"An excellent thought. And I shall pluck one of the big magnolias myself."
Returning, Ernest informed Estelle that she must be at the funeral and she went home for a bunch of blossoms to grace the tomb. She picked hot-house flowers, hoping to propitiate Abel. There woke a great hope in her to win him. But she failed.
He glowered at her when she appeared walking beside his mother, while before them marched Mr. Churchouse carrying the departed. When the funeral was ended and Abel left alone, he sat down by the grave, cried, worked himself into a very mournful mood and finally exhibited anger. Why he was angry he did not know, or against whom his temper grew; but his great loss woke resentment. When he felt miserable, somebody was always blamed by him for making him feel so. No immediate cause for quarrel with anything smaller than fate challenged his unsettled mind; then his eyes fixed upon Estelle's flowers, and since Estelle was always linked in his thoughts with his father, and his father represented an enemy, he began to hate the flowers and wish them away. He heard his mother calling him, but hid from her and when she was silent, came back to the grave again.
Meantime Estelle and Ernest drank tea and spoke of Abel.
"When grief has relaxed the emotions, we may often get in a kindly word and give an enemy something to think about afterwards," he said. "But the boy was obdurate. He is the victim of confused thinking—precocious to a degree in some directions, but very childish in others. At times he alarms me. Poor boy. You must try again to win him. The general sentiment is that the young should be patient with the old; but for my part I think it is quite as difficult sometimes for the old to be patient with the young."
He turned to his desk.
"When I found my dear cat was not, I composed an epitaph for him, Estelle. I design to have it scratched on a stone and set above his sleeping place."
"Do let me hear it," she said, and Ernest, fired with the joy of composition, read his memorial verse.
"Criticise freely," he said. "I value your criticism and you understand poetry. Not that this is a poem—merely an epitaph; but it may easily be improved, I doubt not."
He put on his glasses and read:
"'Ended his mingled joy and strife,
Here lies the dust of Peter Grim.
Though life was very kind to him,
He proved not very kind to life.'"
Estelle applauded.
"Perfect," she said. "You must have it carved on his tombstone."
"I think it meets the case. I may have been prejudiced in my affection for him, owing to his affection for me. He came to me at the age of five weeks, and his attitude to me from the first was devoted."
"Cats have such cajoling ways."
"He was not himself honest, yet, I think, saw the value of honesty in others. Plain dealers are a temptation to rogues and none, as a rule, is a better judge of an honest man than a dishonest cat."
"He wasn't quite a rogue, was he?"
"He knew that I am respected, and he traded on my reputation. His life has been spared on more than one occasion for my sake."
"On the whole he was not a very model cat, I'm afraid," said Estelle.
"Yes, that is just what he was: a model—cat."
They went out to look at the grave again, and something hurried away through the bushes as they did so.
"Friends, or possibly enemies," suggested Mr. Churchouse, but Estelle, sharper-eyed, saw Abel disappear. She also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from Peter's mound.
"Oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said.
"What a hard-hearted boy! Are there no means of winning him?"
They spoke of Abel and his mother.
"We all regretted her decision to stop. It would have been better if she had gone away."
"Raymond saw her some time ago."
"So she told me; and so did he. Misfortune seems to dog the situation, for I believe Sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that meeting. Then she changed. Apparently she misunderstood him."
"Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina angry—the last thing he meant to do. He's sorry now that he spoke. She thought he was considering himself, and he really was thinking for Abel."
"We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge her to let Abel be sent to a boarding-school. That will be a great advantage every way."
So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the channels of evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle had determined this misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. He had long contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond Ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. Inverted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his mother's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him so in a malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure his enemy was to honour his mother. And the time had come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night. He told himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. He ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds.
The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he always came to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly.
The roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. From far away down the valley came the song of the sea, where a brisk, westerly wind threw the waves on the shingle.
A feeling of awe numbed him, but it was not powerful enough to arrest his purpose. His plans had been matured for many days.
He meant to burn down the Mill.
Nothing was easier and a match in the inflammable material, of which the hackler's shop was usually full, must quickly involve the mass of the buildings.
It was fitting that where he had been impregnated by Mr. Baggs with much lawless opinion, Abel should give expression to his evil purpose. From the tar-pitched work-room of the hackler, fire would very quickly leap to the main building against which it stood, and might, indeed, under the strong wind, involve the stores also and John Best's dwelling between them. But it was fated otherwise. A very small incident served to prevent a considerable catastrophe, and when Abel broke the window of the hackling room, turned the hasp, raised it, and got in, a man lay awake in pain not thirty yards distant. The lad lighted a candle, which he had brought with him, and it was then, while he collected a heap of long hemp and prepared to set it on fire, that John Best, in torture from toothache, went downstairs for a mouthful of brandy.
Upon the staircase he passed a window and, glancing through it, he saw a light in the hackling shop. It was not the moon and meant a presence there that needed instant explanation. Mr. Best forgot his toothache, called his sailor son, who happened to be holiday-making at home, and hastened as swiftly and silently as possible over the bridge to the Mill. John Best the younger, an agile man of thirty, may be said to have saved the situation, for he was far quicker than his father could be and managed to anticipate the disaster by moments. Half a minute more might have made all the difference, for the heap of loose hemp and stricks once ignited, no power on earth could have saved a considerable conflagration; but the culprit had his back turned to the window and was still busily piling the tow when Best and his son looked in upon him, and the sailor was already half through the window before Abel perceived him. The youngster dashed for his candle, but he was too late, a pair of strong hands gripped his neck roughly enough, and he fainted from the shock.
They took him out as he had gone in, for the door was locked and Levi
Baggs had the key. Then the sailor went back to his home, dressed
himself and started for a policeman, while Mr. Best kept guard over
Abel.
When he came to his senses, the boy found himself in the moonlight with a dozen turns of stout fisherman's twine round his hands and ankles The foreman stood over him, and now that the house was roused, his wife had brought John a pair of trousers and a great coat, for he was in his night shirt.
"You'll catch your death," she said.
"It's only by God's mercy we didn't all catch our death," he answered. "Here's Sabina Dinnett's boy plotted to destroy the works, and we've yet to find whether he's the tool of others, or has done the deed on his own."
"On my own I did it," declared Abel; "and I'll do it yet."
"You shut your mouth, you imp of Satan!" cried the exasperated man. "Not a word, you scamp. You've done for yourself now, and everybody knew you'd come to it, sooner or later."
In half an hour Abel was locked up, and when Mr. Baggs heard next morning concerning the events of the night, he expressed the utmost surprise and indignation.
"Young dog! And after the friend I've been to him. Blood will tell.
That's his lawless father coming out in the wretch," he said.