[CHAPTER V
AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT]
NAT had rushed up the stairs and thrown himself on his bed with that sense of injury which is so keen at seventeen, and which compels us to find relief in tramping heavily, and flinging ourselves down without taking off our boots. A few passionate tears, however, wore off its sharpest edge, and with renewed vigour he soon sat up again; and it was not without even some feeling of enjoyment that he began to ask himself what was the next thing he should do. His mother’s order did not concern him much; Nat was quick in compunction, and not slow in penitence, but in spite of these qualities it must be owned that he was not the ideal of an obedient son.
An artist might have taken his picture as he sat up on the bed, with his eyes still bright with tears, and a face alive for fun, and his hair as rough as its want of length would permit, for it had crisp ends, although cut too short for curls. A handsome boy! (all the members of his family were good-looking), with deep-set, grey eyes beneath fair, curved eyebrows, and lips which, though small and full, yet found themselves able to close as obstinately as thin lips could do. It was a face undeveloped, passionate, full of contradicting, opposing qualities; a face that was rich in many promises, but whose future must yet remain a problem. Under any circumstances he would not have been easily trained, and his home education had not been satisfactory; he was too young to appreciate what was best in his mother, and his father’s career could only be thought of as a disgrace. We commend such lads’ characters to the instruction of experience; but Experience is an instructor who teaches with the stick.
Guarded at home, educated in a Board School, trained to out-door work, and yet in too many respects unguarded, untrained, uneducated, at this moment sore with anger, and with a pinch of hunger, all ready for adventures, and ripe for mischief, Nat sat up upon the bed and considered what he should do. A lad of his nature does not long reflect; adventures lie ready and can be found easily.
‘I’ll go to t’ Farm, an’ take Miss Gillan’s basket. I’d like to see Miss Gillan, they say such things o’ her! An’ Alice’ll give me a bit o’ cake; I’m sure I’m in want of it, goin’ without my supper! She’ll like be vexed if she knows that mother’s angered, but I can’t attend always to what Alice says. I’ll try an’ see Miss Gillan, although it is so late; they do talk so of her, all the lads do!’
With gleaming eyes, and a keen sense of adventure, he got off the bed and took his cap in his hand, and went to the little window that stood out from the roof to see if he could open it and let himself down from there. It might have been well if he had not undone that fastening, or if his mother had come upstairs, or if he had reflected that he had vexed her once that evening, and that it would be better for him not to vex her again. But the rusty fastening only detained him for a minute, and there was no sound of any footstep on the stairs, and he only thought that he had been already punished, and that his mother and Annie should not triumph over him. So easily, with such heedless footsteps, do we make our own paths to the temptations of our lives.
All was quiet outside when he had dropped from the window; the noise in the village had completely died away; in the west, beyond the great, dim field of the Thackbusk, a pale after-glow from the sunset still lingered. The public-house at the corner was quiet, though it was lighted; he came out of the lane into the lower village-street; and, turning into the principal street, where the Rantan had begun, he began to mount the hill towards the Manor Farm. A wan, blurred moon was shining, the street was dark and dim, from a public-house and from shops there came faint streams of light; there were lounging lads like dark shadows in the corners, or tramping together towards the public-house. In one of the shop-windows there was a light behind rows of bottles, and this threw the shadows of the bottles across the road; they stood in a row on the cottage wall opposite, with a curious effect, like that of an upright regiment. Nat passed by these things, and by the dim steps and church, without stopping once either to loiter or to speak; for he had no wish to join himself to the shadows in the corners, and was glad that the night-time kept his face concealed. It was only when he had reached the top of the street and hill, a more silent part of the world where no wayfarers were, that he turned aside to the fields upon the left, and sat down on a ledge of stone beneath a stile.
All was quiet, the Fens were dark in the distance, there was the soft noise made by cows grazing in the darkness. Nat leant his head against the stile, and lingered—the ledge was a familiar resting-place for Sunday afternoons, but he had never rested here at this time of night before. Perhaps the strangeness frightened him, or his own natural nervousness, for he began to ask himself whether after all he should go on. What should he say to Miss Gillan when he gave back her basket?.... it was so late, she would not understand why he had come.
But oh! he must see Miss Gillan, cried the spirit of adventure; he must know for himself why the ‘folk talked so of her;’ he had heard ‘such a-many stories from the lads,’ and he would like to know if these things were true. For there were many who said that she was ‘quite a beauty;’ and others, that she had come from London, and had been an actress there; and others, that she was a relation of old Mr Lee in Lindum, and that he was going to leave her his money when he died. The village propriety shook its head over her, with the village propensity to surmise the worst, but this spice of doubtfulness did but add to the curiosity that had been excited in the breasts of old and young. And Nat was a boy, with a true boy’s eagerness, and a determination to find out all he could.