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CHAPTER 26
The Vengeance
By the time the girl reached the servants' hall they were seated at
supper. A loud, confused exclamation arose when she entered. No
one made room for her; all stared with unfriendly eyes. A page,
who entered the next minute by another door, came to her side.
'Where do you come from, hussy?' shouted the butler, and knocked
his fist on the table with a loud clang.
He had gone to fetch wine, had found the stair door broken open and
the cellar door locked, and had turned and fled. Among his
fellows, however, he had now regained what courage could be called
his.
'From the cellar,' she replied. 'The messenger broke open the
door, and sent me to you again.'
'The messenger! Pooh! What messenger?'
'The same who sent me before to tell you to repent.'
'What! Will you go fooling it still? Haven't you had enough of
it?' cried the butler in a rage, and starting to his feet, drew
near threateningly.
'I must do as I am told,' said the girl.
'Then why don't you do as I tell you, and hold your tongue?' said
the butler. 'Who wants your preachments? If anybody here has
anything to repent Of, isn't that enough - and more than enough for
him - but you must come bothering about, and stirring up, till not
a drop of quiet will settle inside him? You come along with me,
young woman; we'll see if we can't find a lock somewhere in the
house that'll hold you in!'
'Hands off, Mr Butler!' said the page, and stepped between.
'Oh, ho!' cried the butler, and pointed his fat finger at him.
'That's you, is it, my fine fellow? So it's you that's up to her
tricks, is it?'
The youth did not answer, only stood with flashing eyes fixed on
him, until, growing angrier and angrier, but not daring a step
nearer, he burst out with a rude but quavering authority:
'Leave the house, both of you! Be off, or I'll have Mr Steward to
talk to you. Threaten your masters, indeed! Out of the house with
you, and show us the way you tell us of!'
Two or three of the footmen got up and ranged themselves behind the
butler.
'Don't say I threaten you, Mr Butler,' expostulated the girl from
behind the page. 'The messenger said I was to tell you again, and
give you one chance more.'
'Did the messenger mention me in particular?' asked the butler,
looking the page unsteadily in the face.
'No, sir,' answered the girl.
'I thought not! I should like to hear him!'
'Then hear him now,' said Curdie, who that moment entered at the
opposite corner of the hall. 'I speak of the butler in particular
when I say that I know more evil of him than of any of the rest.
He will not let either his own conscience or my messenger speak to
him: I therefore now speak myself. I proclaim him a villain, and
a traitor to His Majesty the king. But what better is any one of
you who cares only for himself, eats, drinks, takes good money, and
gives vile service in return, stealing and wasting the king's
property, and making of the palace, which ought to be an example of
order and sobriety, a disgrace to the country?'
For a moment all stood astonished into silence by this bold speech
from a stranger. True, they saw by his mattock over his shoulder
that he was nothing but a miner boy, yet for a moment the truth
told notwithstanding. Then a great roaring laugh burst from the
biggest of the footmen as he came shouldering his way through the
crowd toward Curdie.
'Yes, I'm right,' he cried; 'I thought as much! This messenger,
forsooth, is nothing but a gallows bird - a fellow the city marshal
was going to hang, but unfortunately put it off till he should be
starved enough to save rope and be throttled with a pack thread.
He broke prison, and here he is preaching!' As he spoke, he
stretched out his great hand to lay hold of him. Curdie caught it
in his left hand, and heaved his mattock with the other. Finding,
however, nothing worse than an ox hoof, he restrained himself,
stepped back a pace or two, shifted his mattock to his left hand,
and struck him a little smart blow on the shoulder. His arm
dropped by his side, he gave a roar, and drew back.
His fellows came crowding upon Curdie. Some called to the dogs;
others swore; the women screamed; the footmen and pages got round
him in a half circle, which he kept from closing by swinging his
mattock, and here and there threatening a blow.
'Whoever confesses to having done anything wrong in this house,
however small, however great, and means to do better, let him come
to this corner of the room,' he cried.
None moved but the page, who went toward him skirting the wall.
When they caught sight of him, the crowd broke into a hiss of
derision.
'There! See! Look at the sinner! He confesses! Actually
confesses! Come, what is it you stole? The barefaced hypocrite!
There's your sort to set up for reproving other people! Where's
the other now?'
But the maid had left the room, and they let the page pass, for he
looked dangerous to stop. Curdie had just put him betwixt him and
the wall, behind the door, when in rushed the butler with the huge
kitchen poker, the point of which he had blown red-hot in the fire,
followed by the cook with his longest spit. Through the crowd,
which scattered right and left before them, they came down upon
Curdie. Uttering a shrill whistle, he caught the poker a blow with
his mattock, knocking the point to the ground, while the page
behind him started forward, and seizing the point of the spit, held
on to it with both hands, the cook kicking him furiously.
Ere the butler could raise the poker again, or the cook recover the
spit, with a roar to terrify the dead, Lina dashed into the room,
her eyes flaming like candles. She went straight at the butler.
He was down in a moment, and she on the top of him, wagging her
tail over him like a lioness.
'Don't kill him, Lina,' said Curdie.
'Oh, Mr Miner!' cried the butler.
'Put your foot on his mouth, Lina,' said Curdie. 'The truth Fear
tells is not much better than her lies.'
The rest of the creatures now came stalking, rolling, leaping,
gliding, hobbling into the room, and each as he came took the next
place along the wall, until, solemn and grotesque, all stood
ranged, awaiting orders.
And now some of the culprits were stealing to the doors nearest
them. Curdie whispered to the two creatures next him. Off went
Ballbody, rolling and bounding through the crowd like a spent
cannon shot, and when the foremost reached the door to the
corridor, there he lay at the foot of it grinning; to the other
door scuttled a scorpion, as big as a huge crab. The rest stood so
still that some began to think they were only boys dressed up to
look awful; they persuaded themselves they were only another part
of the housemaid's and page's vengeful contrivance, and their evil
spirits began to rise again. Meantime Curdie had, with a second
sharp blow from the hammer of his mattock, disabled the cook, so
that he yielded the spit with a groan. He now turned to the
avengers.
'Go at them,' he said.
The whole nine-and-forty obeyed at once, each for himself, and
after his own fashion. A scene of confusion and terror followed.
The crowd scattered like a dance of flies. The creatures had been
instructed not to hurt much, but to hunt incessantly, until
everyone had rushed from the house. The women shrieked, and ran
hither and thither through the hall, pursued each by her own
horror, and snapped at by every other in passing. if one threw
herself down in hysterical despair, she was instantly poked or
clawed or nibbled up again.
Though they were quite as frightened at first, the men did not run
so fast; and by and by some of them finding they were only glared
at, and followed, and pushed, began to summon up courage once more,
and with courage came impudence. The tapir had the big footman in
charge: the fellow stood stock-still, and let the beast come up to
him, then put out his finger and playfully patted his nose. The
tapir gave the nose a little twist, and the finger lay on the
floor.
Then indeed did the footman run.
Gradually the avengers grew more severe, and the terrors of the
imagination were fast yielding to those of sensuous experience,
when a page, perceiving one of the doors no longer guarded, sprang
at it, and ran out. Another and another followed. Not a beast
went after, until, one by one, they were every one gone from the
hall, and the whole crew in the kitchen.
There they were beginning to congratulate themselves that all was
over, when in came the creatures trooping after them, and the
second act of their terror and pain began. They were flung about
in all directions; their clothes were torn from them; they were
pinched and scratched any- and everywhere; Ballbody kept rolling up
them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in
particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge
pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies,
nipping as he went; varied as numerous were their woes. Nor was it
long before the last of them had fled from the kitchen to the
sculleries.
But thither also they were followed, and there again they were
hunted about. They were bespattered with the dirt of their own
neglect; they were soused in the stinking water that had boiled
greens; they were smeared with rancid dripping; their faces were
rubbed in maggots: I dare not tell all that was done to them. At
last they got the door into a back yard open, and rushed out. Then
first they knew that the wind was howling and the rain falling in
sheets. But there was no rest for them even there. Thither also
were they followed by the inexorable avengers, and the only door
here was a door out of the palace: out every soul of them was
driven, and left, some standing, some lying, some crawling, to the
farther buffeting of the waterspouts and whirlwinds ranging every
street of the city. The door was flung to behind them, and they
heard it locked and bolted and barred against them.
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