He remembered that she cried the same way when the doctor said he was safe and sure to recover.
“Mammy,” he said, kissing her, “Amy has birthdays—and I think this is my birthday—is it?”
“No, darlin’; no, no,” she sobbed, kissing him. “No, my darlin’, no. Oh, no, ’taint that.”
She got up hastily, and brought him his little boots that she had cleaned. The boy put them on, wondering, and she laced them.
With eyes streaming she took up one of the little cork boats, which he kept on the window-stool floating in a wooden bowl.
“You’ll give me one of them, darlin’—to old mammy—for a keepsake.”
“Oh! yes. Choose a good one—the one with the gold paper on the pin; that one sails the best of all.”
“And—and”—she cried bitterly before she could go on—“and this is the little box I’ll put them in,” and she picked them out of the bowl and laid them in a cardboard box, which she quickly tied round. “And this is the last day of poor mammy with her bright only darlin’—for your friends are sending for you today, and Mr. Archdale will be here in ten minutes, and you’re to go with him. Oh, my precious—the light o’ the house—and to leave me alone.”
The boy stood up, and with a cry, ran and threw his arms round her, where she stood near the clock.
“Oh! no, no, no. Oh! mammy, you wouldn’t; you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“Oh, darlin’, you’re breaking my heart. What can I do?”
“Don’t let me go. Oh, mammy, don’t. Oh, you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“But what can I do, darlin’? Oh, darlin’, what can I do?”
“I’ll run away, mammy, I’ll run away; and I’ll come back when they’re gone, and stay with you.”
“Oh, God Almighty!” she cried, “here he’s coming. I see him coming down the hazel road.”
“Hide me, mammy; hide me in the press. Oh, mammy, mammy, you wouldn’t give me to him!”
The boy had got into this large old-painted press, and coiled himself up between two shelves. There was hardly a moment to think; and yielding to the instinct of her desperate affection, and to the child’s wild appeal, she locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.
She sat down. She was half stunned by her own audacity. She scarcely knew what she had done. Before she could recover herself, the door darkened, a hand crossed the hatch and opened it, and ex-Sergeant-Major Archdale entered the cottage.
In curt military fashion he announced himself, and demanded the boy.
She was looking straight in this formidable man’s face, and yet it seemed as if he were vanishing from before her eyes.
“Where’s the boy?” inquired the chill stern voice of the Sergeant.
It seemed to her like lifting a mountain this effort to speak. She felt as if she were freezing as she uttered the denial.
“He ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” demanded the Sergeant’s imperturbably clear cold voice.
“He’s run away,” she said with an effort, and the Sergeant seemed to vanish quite away, and she thought she was on the point of fainting.
The Sergeant glanced at the breakfast table, and saw that two had taken tea together; he saw the carpetbag packed.
“H’m?” intimated Archdale, with closed lips. He looked round the cottage room, and the Sergeant sat down wonderfully composed, considering the disconcerting nature of the announcement.
The ex-Sergeant-Major had in his time commanded parties in search of deserters, and he was not a bad slaught-hound of that sort.
“He breakfasted with you?” said he, with a cool nod toward the table.
There was a momentary hesitation, and she cleared her voice and said—
“Yes.”
Archdale rose and placed his fingers on the teapot.
“That’s hot,” said the Sergeant with the same inflexible dignity.
Marjory was awfully uneasy.
“He can’t be far. Which way did he go?”
“Out by the door. I can’t tell.”
The ex-Sergeant-Major might have believed her the goddess of truth itself, or might have thought her the most impudent liar in England. You could not have gathered in the least from his countenance toward which view his conclusions tended.
The Sergeant’s light cold grey eye glided again round the room, and there was another silence awfully trying to our good friend Marjory.
LXII
The March to Noulton Farm
“I think, ma’am, the boy’s in the house. You’d best give him up, for I’ll not go without him. How many rooms have you?”
“Three and a loft, sir.”
The Sergeant stood up.
“I’ll search the house first, ma’am, and if he’s not here I’ll inform the police and have him in the Hue-and-Cry; and if you have had anything to do with the boy’s deserting, or had a hand in making away with him anyhow, I’ll have you in gaol and punished. I must secure the door, and you can leave the house first, if you like best.”
“Very well, sir,” answered she.
But at this moment came a knocking and crying from within the press.
“Oh! no—’twasn’t mammy; ’twas I that did it. Don’t take mammy.”
“You see, ma’am, you give useless trouble. Please open that door—I shall have to force it, otherwise,” he added, as very pale and trembling she hesitated.
Standing as he might before his commanding officer, stiff, with his heels together, with his inflexibly serene face, full before her, he extended his hand, and said simply, “The key, ma’am.”
In all human natures—the wildest and most stubborn—there is a point at which submission follows command, and there was that in the serenity of the ex-Sergeant-Major which went direct to the instinct of obedience.
It was quite idle any longer trying to conceal the boy. With a dreadful ache at her heart she put her hand in her pocket and handed him the key.
As the door opened the little boy shrank to the very back of the recess, from whence he saw the stout form of the Sergeant stooped low, as his blue, smooth fixed countenance peered narrowly into the dark. After a few seconds he seemed to
