A Rough Shaking
Home - George MacDonald - A Rough ShakingChapter XXVIII.
Treachery.
"Now, Tommy," said Clare, having eaten his half loaf, "I'm going out
to look for work, and you must take care of baby. You're not to feed
her--you would only choke her, and waste the good milk."
"I want to go out too," said Tommy.
"To see what you can pick up, I suppose?"
"That's my business."
"I fancy it mine while you are with me. If you don't take care of baby and be good to her, I'll put you in the water-but I took her out of--as sure as you ain't in it now!"
"That you shan't!" cried Tommy; "I'll bite first!"
"I'll tie your hands and feet, and put a stick in your mouth," said Clare. "So you'd better mind."
"I want to go with you!" whimpered Tommy.
"You can't. You're to stop and look after baby. I won't be away longer than I can help; you may be sure of that."
With repeated injunctions to him not to leave the room, Clare went.
Before going quite, however, he must arrange for returning. To swarm up between the two walls as he had done before, would be to bid good-bye to his jacket at least, and he knew how appearances were already against him. Spying about for whatever might serve his purpose, he caught sight of an old garden-roller, and was making for it, when Tommy, never doubting he was gone, came whistling round the corner of the house with his hands in his pocket-holes, and an impudent air of independence. Clare away, he was a lord in his own eyes! He could kill the baby when he pleased! Plainly his mood was, "He thinks I'm going to do as he tells me! Not if I knows it!" Clare saw him before he saw Clare, and rushed at him with a roar.
"You thought I was gone!" he cried. "I told you not to leave the room! Come along to the water-but!"
Tommy shivered when he heard him, and gave a shriek when he saw him coming. He shook till his teeth chattered. But terror not always paralyzes instinct in the wild animal. As Clare came running, he took one step toward him, and dropped on the ground at his feet. Clare shot away over his head, struck his own against a tree, and lay for a minute stunned. Tommy's success was greater than he had hoped. He scudded into the house, and closed and bolted the door to the kitchen.
When Clare came to himself, he found he had a cut on his head. It would never do to go asking for work with a bloody face! The little pool served at once for basin and mirror, and while he washed he thought.
He had no inclination to punish Tommy for the trick he had played him; he had but done after his kind! It would serve a good end too: Tommy would imagine him lurking about to have his revenge, and would not venture his nose out. He discovered afterward that the little wretch had made fast the cellar-door, so that, if he had entered that way, he would have been caught in a trap, and unable to go or return.
He got the iron roller to the foot of the wall, where he had come over the night before, and where now first he perceived there had once been a door; managed, with its broken handle for a lever, to set it up on end, filled it with earth, and heaped a mound of earth about it to steady it, placed a few broken tiles and sherds of chimney-pots upon it, and from this rickety perch found he could reach the top easily.
The next thing was to arrange for getting up from the other side. For this he threw over earth and stones and whatever rubbish came to his hand, the sole quality required in his material being, that it should serve to lift him any fraction of an inch higher. The space was so narrow that his mound did not require to be sustained by the width of its base except in one direction; everywhere else the walls kept in the heap, and he made good speed. At length he descended by it, sure of being able to get up again.
He had been gone an hour before Tommy dared again leave the room where the baby was. He had planned what to do if Clare got into it: he would threaten, if he came a step nearer, to kill the baby! But if he had him in the coal-cellar, he would make his own conditions! A tramp would not keep a promise, but Clare would! and until he promised not to touch him, he should not come out--not if he died of hunger!
At length he could bear imprisonment no longer. He opened the room-door with the caution of one who thought a tiger might be lying against it. He saw no one, and crept out with half steps. By slow degrees, interrupted by many an inroad of terror and many a swift retreat, he got down the stair and out into the garden; whence, after closest search, he was at length satisfied his enemy had departed. For a time he was his own master! To one like Tommy--and such are not rare--it is a fine thing to be his own master. But the same person who is the master is the servant--and what a master to serve! Tommy, however, was quite satisfied with both master and servant, for both were himself. What was he to do? Go after something to eat, of course! He would be back long before Clare! He had gone to look for work--and who would give him work? If Tommy were as big as Clare, lots of people would give him work! But catch him working! Not if he knew it!--not Tommy!
Never till she was grown up, never, indeed, until she was a middle-aged woman and Mr. Skymer's housekeeper, did the baby know in what danger she was that morning, alone with surnameless Tommy.
His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature. But in this case the exercise of the power brought him into another relation, one with the water-but! He went back to the room where the child lay in her blankets like a human chrysalis, and stood for a moment regarding her with a hatred far from mild: was he actually expected to give time and personal notice to that contemptible thing lying there unable to move? He wasn't a girl or an old woman! He must go and get something to eat! that was what a man was for! Better twist her neck at once and go!
But he could not forget the water-but--proximate mother of the child. Its idea came sliding into Tommy's range, grew and grew upon Tommy, came nearer and nearer, until the baby was nowhere, and nothing in the world but the water-but. His consciousness was possessed with it. It was preparing to swallow him in its loathsome deep! All at once it jumped back from him, and stood motionless by the side of the wall. Now was his chance! Now he must mizzle! Not a moment longer would he stop in the same place with the horrible thing!
But the baby! Clare would bring him back and put him in the but! No, he wouldn't! What harm would come to the brat? She was not able to roll herself off the bed! She could do nothing but go to sleep again! Out he must and would go! He wanted something to eat! He would be in again long before Clare could get back!
He left the room and the house, ran down the garden, scrambled up the door, got on the top of the wall, and dropped into the waste land behind it--nor once thought that the only way back was by the very jaws of the water-but.