CHAPTER VI.
[DEAD SEA APPLES.]
The two had advanced without thought to the foot of the tree which Frank had indicated, and in doing so had quitted the shelter of the rift, from which an open space a dozen yards in width now separated them. The deep shade of the yew-tree which stretched its arms above them still afforded some protection, the glare of the sun on the moorland intensifying its gloom and blackness. But such protection was partial only; it could not avail against persons approaching the tree closely.
The horror of the two may be imagined, therefore, when they awoke suddenly to this fact, and to the conviction that some one was approaching--nay, was already near. Before Jack's muttered warning had well been uttered, the sharp crack of a stick, broken under foot, and the tones of voices drawing each moment nearer placed the danger beyond dispute.
For a moment the brothers stood as still as stones, the man's face growing hard and stern as he listened and comprehended too late the reckless folly he had committed in leaving a secure hiding-place at that time of the day. His eyes traveled from the boy's, in which he read a pitiful alarm more overmastering if less intense than his own, to the space which separated him from the rift and from safety. Alas! he measured it with a despairing eye. A moment before he could have passed that interval at a bound, and at will; now he recognized with an inward groan that the attempt was hopeless. A single step in that direction must place him at once in full view of those who were approaching.
Would they stop short of the tree which hid him? That seemed his only chance. He set his teeth together, and gripped Jack's shoulder hard as he listened, and heard them still come on--come on and come nearer. His brain sought desperately for some way, some plan of escape. At the last moment, when all seemed lost, and less than a score of paces now lay between him and the newcomers, he hit upon one which might possibly help him.
"It is that woman!" he hissed in Jack's ear. "Lie down and pretend to be asleep! Take their attention for a moment only, and I may slip round this tree and reach another."
Jack, poor lad, was almost paralyzed with terror, but he understood; and he found one part of his instructions easy enough to execute. His knees were already so weak under him with fear and excitement that he sank to the ground under the pressure of his brother's hand, with scarce any volition of his own; and crouching in the shadow with his knees drawn up to his chin, remained motionless with dismay.
For a moment after reaching the spot, Mistress Gridley and the butler did not see him. The boy sat deep in the shadow, and the sun shone in their eyes as they crossed from one tree to another, and from that one to the farthest of all. The butler had even begun the argument afresh--they had been disputing about the removal of the treasure--and had stuck his spade into the ground that he might lean upon it while he talked, when he espied the pale face shining in the gloom beside the trunk, and started with affright. "Ha!" he exclaimed in a high tone, "what is that?"
The woman started too. Her mind was ill at ease; and it was strange that the child should have chosen that particular square yard of ground to sit upon. But she recovered herself more quickly. "You little brat!" she cried, peering at him with her eyes shaded, "what are you doing here? Be off! Go to the house, and stay there till I come, do you hear?"
"What is that!"--Page 118.
The child did not move.
"Do you hear, you little booby?" she repeated angrily. "Get up and be off before I give you something to remember me by!" As she spoke, she advanced a step nearer to him and raised her hand to strike him.
Still the child did not move: and the woman's hand fell harmless by her side. The peculiar pallor of the boy's face, a pallor heightened by the shade in which he sat, his immobility, the strangeness of his attitude and position, above all the fixed glare of his eyes, had their effect upon her, scared and impressed as she already was by his unexplained delivery from the closet. She hesitated and fell back a step.
The butler, who knew nothing of the closet episode, attributed the move to prudence. "Soft and easy," he muttered approvingly, "or he may suspect something. It is odd he should be here."
"Suspect!" the woman answered with a shiver; for when a strong nature gives way to panic, the rout is complete. "I doubt he knows. The child is not canny," she added, staring at him in an odd, shrinking fashion.
The butler was at all times a coward, and without understanding the woman's reasons he felt the influence of her fear. "Not canny!" he said uneasily; "why, what is the matter with him? Hi, Jack, my boy, what are you doing here?" he continued, addressing the lad with a poor attempt at good-fellowship. "Are you ill, or what is it?"
The boy did not move.
Gridley advanced gingerly towards him, as a timid man approaches a strange dog. When he came near, however, and saw that it really was the boy, little Jack Patten whom he had known from his birth, the assurance made him laugh at the woman's fears. "Come, get up, lad," he said roughly; "get up and go and play!"
He seized Jack by the collar and raised him to his feet. "Jump, lad, jump!" he said. "Be off! You will get the ague here. Go into the sun and play!"
The boy had shaken off his first terror. Frank, he thought, must be safe by this time. He kept his feet therefore, but hesitated in doubt what to do; standing, to outward view a sullen pale-faced child, beside the dark trunk of the yew. Gridley noticed that he kept his one hand closed, and acting on a momentary impulse asked him roughly what he had there. The boy, without answering, opened his fingers mechanically, disclosing three tiny whinberries which he had picked while he talked with his brother in the rift, and had involuntarily retained in his hand ever since. The butler struck them out of his little palm with a disappointed "pish!" and turning him round by the shoulder sent him off with a push. "There, go and pick some more!" he said. "Be off! Be off!"
The lad obeyed slowly, and with apparent reluctance. When he was out of sight, Gridley, who had stepped a few paces from the tree that he might watch him the better, returned and picked up his spade. "There, he is gone!" he said, with an inquisitive look at the woman, whose mood puzzled him. "And if you will have the things up, it must be done. Let us lose no more time."
He struck the spade into the ground, and began to dig, while his companion watched him. But her face betrayed none of the greedy excitement which had always marked it before when the treasure was in question. Instead, it wore a look of dread and expectation. Something like grey fear lay like a shadow upon it, and left it only when the man stopped digging, and throwing down his spade, dragged a small white bundle from the shallow hole he had made.
Then she showed at last some animation. "They are there," she muttered, her eyes beginning to burn. "I fancied----"
"Oh, they are here," he answered, chuckling as he stooped to unfasten the napkin. "They are here, never fear! Safe bind safe find, you know, my lady."
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, however, when he fell back pale and trembling. A hideous look of disappointment and dismay took in a moment the place of the gloating smile which had before distorted his features. The napkin being untied disclosed three stones; no gold, no cups, no treasure, but only three stones!
For a moment the two stood silent and thunderstruck, gazing at the pebbles, which in their perfect worthlessness seemed to mock them. Then the man turned swiftly and suddenly on the woman, rage and suspicion so transforming him, that he did not look like the same person. "You hag!" he cried, with lips which writhed under the effort he made to control himself. "You thieving witch! This is your work! Where is my gold? Where is my gold, I say?" he repeated wildly. "Tell me, or I will murder you!" And he advanced upon her, his hands opening and shutting on the empty air.
His frantic gestures and the passion of his manner might have appalled even a brave man. But the woman, who had evinced less surprise and more fear on making the discovery, waved him back with the purest contempt. "Fool!" she hissed, with a flash of scorn in her eyes, "do you think that I should have played this farce with you?"
"But the gold?" he cried, cowering away from her in a moment like the craven he was. "It is gone, woman! It is gone, you see! If you have not taken it, who has? For heaven's sake, say you have taken it, and hidden it somewhere else!"
She looked darkly at him, and the look did more to persuade him she was innocent than any words. He wrung his hands and all but wept. "Some one has taken it," he moaned. "It is gone, and I shall never see it again!"
"What brought the boy sitting here?" she muttered on a sudden.
"Jack Patten?"
Mistress Gridley nodded with a strange look in her eyes. "Ay, little Jack. And he had three whinberries in his hand," she continued in the same hushed tone. "Look about, if you are not afraid. Find the whinberries, and something may come of it!"
He did not understand, but he saw she was in deadly earnest; and he was a coward, and afraid of her. "The whinberries?" he stammered, edging a pace away from her. "What of them?"
"They are our gold cups," she muttered between fear and rage. "The child has bewitched them."
Gridley cried out "Nonsense." But all the same he looked quickly over his shoulder. The sun was high and gave him courage. "The child?" he said; "why, I have known him from his birth!"
"Find the whinberries!" was all the answer she vouchsafed. And she pointed imperatively to the ground. "Find them, I say, if you are not afraid, man."
He went down on his knees and began to search. But the earth he had thrown out of the hole lay thick on the ground, and he failed to find even one of them. He rose, and told the woman so; and she nodded as if she had expected the answer.
He shuddered at that. He saw her afraid, and he knew she feared few things. Besides, she had all the influence over him which a strong mind is sure to possess over a weak one. Seeing her afraid he grew fearful also. Though he did not believe, he trembled. He remembered how strangely the boy had looked at him, how obstinately he had refused to speak, what an odd persistence he had shown in clinging to that spot. Yet how had the boy known? How had he found the place?
Doubtfully he put that thought into words, and got his answer. "How did he get out of the wood closet when I locked him in last night?" Mistress Gridley asked contemptuously. "I left the door locked when I went to bed, and the boy inside. I found the door locked this morning, but the boy was in his own bed. That is not canny."
"He may have taken the cups without--without that," said the butler, glancing round him with a shiver.
"Then where are they?" the woman retorted swiftly. "Or do you mean that he took them and hid them, and then came again and sat on the place for us to find him? I tell you the lad can go through locked doors."
The butler was not convinced, but he trembled. He stood gnawing his nails with a gloomy face, one thing only quite clear to him; that whether the child possessed the power which the woman attributed to him or not, it was certainly he who had taken the treasure. This excited such a degree of rage in Gridley's mind as fear alone kept within bounds. He longed to follow the child and force the secret and the gold from him, and only the dread which the woman manifested kept him from doing this on the instant. As it was, he stood undecided, turning over in his mind all the stories he had heard of strange powers and weird possession--stories which then filled all the country-side, especially in lonely and ill-populated districts--and striving to recollect whether anything in little Jack's history seemed to bring him within the scope of these marvellous narratives.
Mistress Gridley watched him for a time, but presently her patience gave way. She bade him, fiercely, pick up the spade and come to the house; and together the two returned, each hating the other as the cause of a fruitless and unprofitable sin.