Hide and Seek

'Partly because I was a bitter bad 'un, and partly because of a letter I picked up in port, at the Brazils, at the end of a long cruise. Here's the letter—but it's no good showing it to you: the paper's so grimed and tore about, you can't read it.'

'Who wrote it? Mary?'

'No: father—saying what had happened to Mary, and telling me not to come back home till things was pulled straight again. Here—here's what he said—under the big grease-spot. 'If you can get continued employment anywhere abroad, accept it instead of coming back. Better for you, at your age, to be spared the sight of such sorrow as we are now suffering.' Do you see that?'

'Yes, yes, I see. Ah! poor man! he couldn't give no kinder better advice; and you—'

'Deserted from my ship. The devil was in me to be off on the tramp, and father's letter did the rest. I got wild and desperate with the thought of what had happened to Mary, and with knowing they were ashamed to see me back again at home. So the night afore the ship sailed for England I slipped into a shore-boat, and turned my back on salt-junk and the boatswain's mate for the rest of my life.'

'You don't mean to say you've done nothing but wander about in foreign parts from that time to this?'

'I do, though! I'd a notion I should be shot for a deserter if I turned up too soon in my own country. That kep' me away for ever so long, to begin with. Then tramps' fever got into my head; and there was an end of it.'

'Tramps' fever! Mercy on me! what do you mean?'

'I mean this: when a man turns gypsy on his own account, as I did, and tramps about through cold and hot, and winter and summer, not caring where he goes or what becomes of him, that sort of life ends by getting into his head, just like liquor does—except that it don't get out again. It got into my head. It's in it new. Tramps' fever kep' me away in the wild country. Tramps' fever will take me back there afore long. Tramps' fever will lay me down, some day, in the lonesome places, with my hand on my rifle and my face to the sky; and I shan't get up again till the crows and vultures come and carry me off piecemeal.'

'Lord bless us! how can you talk about yourself in that way?' cried Mrs. Peckover, shuddering at the grim image which Mat's last words suggested. 'You're trying to make yourself out worse than you are. Surely you must have thought of your father and sister sometimes—didn't you?'

'Think of them? Of course I did! But, mind ye, there come a time when I as good as forgot them altogether. They seemed to get smeared out of my head—like we used to smear old sums off our slates at school.'

'More shame for you! Whatever else you forgot, you oughtn't to have forgotten—'

'Wait a bit. Father's letter told me—I'd show you the place, only I know you couldn't read it—that he was a going to look after Mary, and bring her back home, and forgive her. He'd done that twice for me, when I run away; so I didn't doubt but what he'd do it just the same for her. She'll pull through her scrape with father just as I used to pull through mine—was what I thought. And so she would, if her own kin hadn't turned against her; if father's own sister hadn't—' He stopped; the frown gathered on his brow, and the oath burst from his lips, as he thought of Joanna Grice's share in preventing Mary's restoration to her home.

'There! there!' interposed Mrs. Peckover, soothingly. 'Talk about something pleasanter. Let's hear how you come back to England.'

'I can't rightly fix it when Mary first begun to drop out of my head like,' Mat continued, abstractedly pursuing his previous train of recollections. 'I used to think of her often enough, when I started for my run in the wild country. That was the time, mind ye, when I had clear notions about coming back home. I got her a scarlet pouch and another feather plaything then, knowing she was fond of knick-knacks, and making it out in my own mind that we two was sure to meet together again. It must have been a longish while after that, afore I got ashamed to go home. But I did get ashamed. Thinks I, 'I haven't a rap in my pocket to show father, after being away all this time. I'm getting summut of a savage to look at already; and Mary would be more frighted than pleased to see me as I am now. I'll wait a bit,' says I, 'and see if I can't keep from tramping about, and try and get a little money, by doing some decent sort of work, afore I go home.' I was nigh about a good ten days' march then from any seaport where honest work could be got for such as me; but I'd fixed to try, and I did try, and got work in a ship-builder's yard. It wasn't no good. Tramps' fever was in my head; and in two days more I was off again to the wild country, with my gun over my shoulder, just as damned a vagabond as ever.'

Mrs. Peckover held up her hands in mute amazement. Matthew, without taking notice of the action, went on, speaking partly to her and partly to himself.

'It must have been about that time when Mary and father, and all what had to do with them, begun to drop out of my head. But I kep' them two knick-knacks, which was once meant for presents for her—long after I'd lost all clear notion of ever going back home again, I kep' 'em—from first to last I kep' 'em—I can't hardly say why; unless it was that I'd got so used to keeping of them that I hadn't the heart to let 'em go. Not, mind ye, but what they mightn't now and then have set me thinking of father and Mary at home—at times, you know, when I changed 'em from one bag to another, or took and blew the dust off of 'em, for to keep 'em as nice as I could. But the older I got, the worse I got at calling anything to mind in a clear way about Mary and the old country. There seemed to be a sort of fog rolling up betwixt us now. I couldn't see her face clear, in my own mind, no longer. It come upon me once or twice in dreams, when I nodded alone over my fire after a tough day's march—it come upon me at such times so clear, that it startled me up, all in a cold sweat, wild and puzzled with not knowing at first whether the stars was shimmering down at me in father's paddock at Dibbledean, or in the lonesome places over the sea, hundreds of miles away from any living soul. But that was only dreams, you know. Waking, I was all astray now, whenever I fell a-thinking about father or her. The longer I tramped it over the lonesome places, the thicker that fog got which seemed to have rose up in my mind between me and them I'd left at home. At last, it come to darken in altogether, and never lifted no more, that I can remember, till I crossed the seas again and got back to my own country.'

'But how did you ever think of coming back, after all those years?' asked Mrs. Peckover.

'Well, I got a good heap of money, for once in a way, with digging for gold in California,' he answered; 'and my mate that I worked with, he says to me one day:—'I don't see my way to how we are to spend our money, now we've got it, if we stop here. What can we treat ourselves to in this place, excepting bad brandy and cards? Let's go over to the old country, where there ain't nothing we want that we can't get for our money; and, when it's all gone, let's turn tail again, and work for more.' He wrought upon me, like that, till I went back with him. We quarreled aboard ship; and when we got into port, he went his way and I went mine. Not, mind ye, that I started off at once for the old place as soon as I was ashore. That fog in my mind, I told you of, seemed to lift a little when I heard my own language, and saw my own country-people's faces about me again. And then there come a sort of fear over me—a fear of going back home at all, after the time I'd been away. I got over it, though, and went in a day or two. When I first laid my hand on the churchyard gate that Mary and me used to swing on, and when I looked up at the old house, with the gable ends just what they used to be (though the front was new painted, and strange names