Once Aboard the Lugger-- The History of George and his Mary

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

III.

It was not a melancholy process. Every now and again a crack of laughter jerked him; once he took his pipe from his mouth and put up a ringing peal of mirth that sent a brace of bunnies, flirting near his feet, wildly scampering for safety. Long he brooded....

A church clock gave him eleven. At ten he had been too deeply buried. Now his head was pushed clear from the burrow in which he had been working, and the sound caught his attention. No light now pricked Herons' Holt upon the dusky chart stretched beneath him. Its occupants were abed.

“I'll do it to-night!” cried George. “I'll do it at once!”

He drew on his pipe. A full cloud of smoke came. The pipe was well alight, and caution bidding him that it were well to bide a while so that sleep might more cosily warm the beds of the household, he determined that he would have out his last smoke as plotter: his next would be smoked as doer of the deed.

He rehearsed his plan. A knife would slip back the catch of the window behind which the Rose of Sharon lay. Possessing himself of her person he would speed to that tumbled hut in the copse. There she might lie in safety for the night: neither hut nor copse was in any man's road. Upon the morrow, when the hideous circumstance had been discovered, he would bear himself as events seemed to demand. He would be boundless in his sympathy, a leader in the search. If the idea of reward did not occur to Mr. Marrapit, he must suggest it. Unlikely that in the first moment of loss, when the Rose would still seem to be near, the reward would approach the figure at which he aimed. That was for his cunning to contrive. But obviously it would be impossible permanently to keep the Rose in the hut. To-morrow, when pretending to search for her he could guard the place where she lay; but he could not always be sentinel. The countryside would be scoured; no stone left unturned, no spinney unbeaten.

As he saw the matter, the plan would be to get somewhere down the railway line on pretext of a clue, taking the Rose of Sharon with him; for the success of the whole scheme depended upon his concealing the cat until Mr. Marrapit should be upon his bended knees in his distress, in deepest despair as to the Rose's recovery, and hence would be transported to deepest gratitude when it was restored to his arms. George told himself he must be prepared against the eventuality of his uncle failing to offer in public reward so large a sum as 500 pounds. That did not greatly distress. Best indeed if that sum were offered, but, failing it, it was upon Mr. Marrapit's gratitude that George ultimately reckoned. Surely when he “found” the cat it would be Mr. Marrapit's natural reply to give in exchange the sum he had that afternoon so violently refused. At the least, he could not refuse to lend it.

Early in his brooding George had decided he must not tell his Mary. First, it would be cruel to set her upon the rack of acting a part before Mr. Marrapit, before the household, before every questioner she must encounter; second—second, my ignoble George had doubts as to in what spirit his Mary would regard this plot did he make her partner in it. That it was wholly justifiable he personally would have contended before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested-without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She might; but it was an eventuality he did not care to try against a test. His Mary was a girl—and girls are in their conduct narrowed by scruples that do not beset men. His Mary—and this it was that would make a test so violent—his Mary was his Mary, and well he knew, and loved, the little heart so delicately white as instantly to discover the finest specks of sootiness—if specks there were—in any breeze that might cross its surface.

No, he would not tell his Mary. When the thing was done—when he, the black-hearted rogue, had the little saint safe in the toils she would find so delicious, then—then he would tell her, would silence her frightened squeals—if she squealed—by his intention to pay back the money, whether won as reward (which was improbable) or earned as token of gratitude (which was highly likely). He had only asked to borrow, and it should only be a loan.

Across the dark fields in spirit he kissed his little saint. ... Of course—of course—one must admit these brutal things—of course the scheme might fail. Anything might happen to crash it about his ears. That was a deadly, dismal thought, but he flattened it from sight with that lusty hammer that gay youth uses—“I shan't be any worse off if it does fail.”