Furze the Cruel Part 25

CHAPTER XV

ABOUT JUSTICE

What luck is n.o.body can know, but it is certainly a gift to be preferred before natural ability. Luck is that undefinable thing which enables a man to push his head and shoulders well above the crowd. Make him wise it cannot, but no man cares about wisdom if he can only be wealthy.

Lucky men pile up big fortunes, and invariably become humbugs in their old age, and a.s.sure young men that their affluence is entirely owing to the splendid virtues of application, perseverance, and early rising, which they practised in their youth. No doubt the virtues help, but hard work alone makes no man wealthy, let him toil like Sisyphus. It is luck that lodges the stone on the top of the mountain. The idle apprentice who has luck is far more likely to marry his master's daughter than the industrious apprentice who hasn't it. The clever man and the lucky one start out side by side, but they soon drift apart; the lucky man goes to the right door, the clever man goes to the wrong one; and the end of it is that the clever man writes from his cottage to the lucky man in his mansion, begging the loan of a few pounds to keep the bailiffs out.

There is nothing to which a man without luck cannot attain by hard work, except one thing--success.

Decidedly there had been no fairy G.o.dmothers at Brightly's christening.

None of the good things of life had fallen upon him; and yet he possessed those virtues which are supposed to make for wealth; no man could have worked harder or showed more perseverance; and as for early rising it was easy because he had no bed to rise from. Still he could not make a living. The elusive coppers refused to increase and multiply into s.h.i.+llings; and as for sovereigns they were as extinct as dodos.

Brightly continued his various progresses with that strict attention to business which had always characterised him, and with the empty stomach which had become a habit; but without any luck. Any one might have mistaken him for a poet.

He was working the same old stretch: Meldon, Sourton Down, Bridestowe, Lydford, Brentor, and the Tavys, his basket dragging at his arm, and Ju trotting her poor little life away at his heels. Ju also had been deserted by canine fairy G.o.dmothers. Perhaps she too had dreams--of a basket, furnished with soft cus.h.i.+ons beside a fire, and perennial plates of bones and biscuits.

Brightly had a fresh stock of atrocious yellow vases, thanks to the generosity of the lovers at the fair; and he was hard at work again collecting rabbit-skins; and still encouraged himself by thinking of the glorious time when he would jog contentedly along the stony roads in a little cart neatly littered with fern, with a lamp to be lighted after dark, and the board bearing the inscription: "A. Brightly. Purveyor of rabbit-skins," set forth for all to read. It was not a very lofty ambition, although quite an impossible one. Brightly was getting on in years; his rheumatism and asthma were increasing; so was his blindness; he wept sometimes, but that did not a.s.sist his business. Sometimes he thought the time was getting near when he would have to sell his vases and buy two pennyworth of rat-poison. He thought he would do it with rat-poison. Perhaps when he woke up, if he did wake up, he would find himself in Jerusalem among the jugs of milk and honey-pots; and perhaps there would be somebody like Boodles looking at him with the same moist eyes. He could not go into the poorhouse. They would frighten him there, and he would much rather be dead than in that prison. Nature seemed rather to have overreached herself when she created Brightly. What was the use of such a defenceless creature, this sort of human rabbit whom any one could attack? Why turn him out feeble and half blind when he had his living to make? Even the wayside weed is better cared for. When its crown-bud is bitten off by a cow Nature sets to work to repair the injury at once, and the plant grows up as well as ever. Nature did nothing to repair Brightly's injuries. She did not even permit him to enjoy tobacco, that one luxury of the lonely and friendless. Probably she foresaw what a boon tobacco would be to him, so she afflicted him with asthma. Nature delights in thus adding toil to toil and trouble to trouble. It is only in the matter of adding pleasure to pleasure that she is n.i.g.g.ardly.

Brightly was coming up the moor towards St. Mary Tavy. His face looked smaller and his hands bigger. There was another change, a far more striking one; he was actually well dressed; there was nothing, of course, in the shape of useless accessories, such as s.h.i.+rt or underwear, but the black seal-like raiment had been discarded and a suit of brown cloth had taken its place. He had picked up those clothes while burrowing in a wheal to find shelter from a pitiless downpour. It had been a great find which had rejoiced his heart, for although he was accustomed to make a living by picking up things which other people threw away, he had never before discovered anything half as priceless as a suit of stout garments. It had never occurred to him that they might not have been thrown away, but merely hidden in the wheal, or that he had no right to them, or that it could be dangerous for him to be seen about in them.

"Us will pitch here," said Brightly, stopping near the moor gate, and lowering his basket carefully. "It be dinner time, Ju."

The little dog wagged at the prospect. Dinner time occurred frequently, but generally without the dinner. She sniffed ravenously at the handkerchief in the corner of the basket, and decided that the menu of the day was cheese, largely rind, but still cheese, a slab of bread, and two onions. It was one of the feast-days. They reposed upon heather, and Brightly made a division of the food, reserving the onions for himself, but allotting Ju a bigger piece of rind as compensation. "You'm a lot littler than I," he explained. "Your belly be filled quicker. It be no good giving yew an onion, 'cause yew wun't yet 'en. Tak' your cheese--don't swallow like that, ye little stoopid! Yew don't get the taste of 'en at all. Yet 'en slow, and tak' a bit o' bread wi' 'en same as I du. Us wun't get no more to-day like enough."

The meal was soon over, and then Brightly sat up and began to whistle, while Ju squatted upon the heather, her tongue lolling out, and her poor little mongrel head following every motion of her master's body.

Brightly's only recreation was whistling, and he took the pastime seriously. With his pinched face and big round gla.s.ses set towards Brentor he piped away as hard as he could; first a ballad which he had heard in an ale-house, then a hymn, and another ballad, and then the favourite of all, Jerusalem the Golden. He whistled them all wrong, but he didn't know it. For the time being he was happy enough, as he was a contented soul, and his chief happiness was to be alone on the moor, which then seemed to be his own property, with the scented garden of heather and gorse about him, and the sweet wind blowing upon his face; and they all seemed to be his own while he was alone. It was only when he saw a cottage, or a farm, or a man approaching him, that he understood they were not his own, but the property of the cottage, or the farm, or the man approaching him, and that he lived only upon sufferance, and might get into trouble for lying on the heather, and smelling the gorse, or for permitting the pleasant wind to blow upon his face.

After whistling he began to sing, making, it must be owned, a shocking noise. He did not know the words of the ballads, nor more than a single line of the Wesleyan hymn which children sing in procession upon chapel anniversary day. Brightly had often listened as he tramped by, with his full basket and his empty stomach, but he had never caught the Words because the children gabbled them so in their hurry to get the religious exercises over and attack the cakes and splits. "Jesu, Master, us belongs to yew," he howled discordantly, while Ju howled in dismal agreement, and began to whimper when her master went on to scream about Jerusalem and dairy produce.

"I reckon that be the beautifullest tune as ever was sung," commented Brightly, "I'll sing 'en again, Ju, and I'll get 'en right this time. I mun sing him a bit stronger. I reckon the end o' the world can't be over far off, wi' volks got so cruel wicked, and us mun get ready vor't."

He folded his hands upon his knees, and was about to resume his noises when the moor gate clicked. Brightly's faculties were as keen as a bat's. He could not see much, but he could sense the approach of danger; and when he heard the gate slam violently, and a thick voice exclaim: "There a' be!" he started up, anxious to get back to his solitude, conscious somehow that unfriendly beings were upon him, to steal his "duppence," and put him out of business by smas.h.i.+ng his vases. He stared through his gla.s.ses until he distinguished two fat figures, one in uniform, the other in shabby raiment, advancing upon him with threatening movements, one the village constable, the other the village reprobate; and when he saw them, that grim thing called terror descended upon Brightly. He had done nothing wrong so far as he knew, but all the same he could not resist the fear, so he fled away as hard as he could, the basket dragging upon his arm, and Ju trotting at his heels. He knew what it meant to fall into the hands of his fellow-men. Pendoggat had shown him, and most men were Pendoggats to Brightly.

He went up the moor towards the top of the village, and the stout constable soon gave up the chase, as he was not used to violent exercise, nor did he receive any extra pay for exerting himself.

Besides, he was sure of the man. He wiped his face and told the village reprobate, who was his most obliging servant and had to be, that it was cruel hot, and he'd got that l.u.s.ty he didn't seem able to run properly, and he thought he would return to the village and prepare for more strenuous deeds with a drop o' cider; and he charged the reprobate to follow Brightly and head him off at the top of the village, and keep him close until he, the constable, should have cooled down and recovered from his fatigue sufficiently to attend in great pomp and arrest the rascal. He reminded the reprobate he must not arrest Brightly because that was not allowed by law; but he was at perfect liberty to knock him down, and trample on him, and inform him that the criminal law of the land was about to spread its net around him. The constable's state of mind regarding the law was peculiar. He had no idea that laws were made to punish crime. He conceived that creatures like Brightly existed to supply the demands of the law.

At the head of the village Brightly encountered more man-hunters, but he managed to escape again, although he had to leave his basket behind.

Some children soon rifled it, and took the gorgeous vases home to their mothers. With the instinct of the hunted animal the fugitive turned upon his tracks, fled up a side lane, climbed over a hedge, waited until his pursuers had pa.s.sed, then hurried back for his basket, hoping to reclaim it and get away upon the moor, where he could soon hide himself. But he had not gone far when he saw a vision; the angel again, the angel of Tavistock, the angel from Jerusalem, who had dropped out of the church window and set him up in business with half-a-crown; and she came to meet him in the road, as angels do, with his basket in her hand, and just the same pitiful look in her eyes. There was no church just by, only a little white cottage; but perhaps it was furnished like a church, with coloured windows, booming organ, and a big black book on the outspread wings of a golden goose.

"I have got some of the vases. The children have not taken them all,"

said Boodles. "I saw it from the window. What have you done?"

"They knows, your reverent; I don't," gasped Brightly. He didn't know how he ought to address the angel, but he thought "your reverent" might do for the present. He stood upon the road, panting, s.h.i.+vering, and coughing, while Boodles looked at him and tried to laugh, but couldn't.

"What a dreadful cough!" she said sorrowfully.

"It's asthma, your reverent. I allus has it, and rheumatics tu--just here, cruel, your reverent. I be getting blind. I don't seem able to see you properly," he said, in the voice of one saying his prayers, and half choking all the time.

"Don't call me your reverent," said Boodles. "How silly! I--I'm only a little girl."

Brightly had always supposed that celestial beings are modest. He only shook his head at that remark. He had seen little girls, and knew quite well what they were like. They didn't have golden skin and a glory about their heads, neither did they drop down suddenly before starving and persecuted beings, to give them half-crowns, and save them from their enemies.

"Asthma, rheumatics, and getting blind," he repeated, shattering the words with coughs. He hoped the angel might touch him and heal his infirmities if he told her all about them.

She only gave him the basket, and said: "You had better come in and rest. I don't like to hear you cough so. I hope you haven't been stealing anything?" she said reproachfully.

"I ain't done nothing--nothing serious," declared Brightly. "I was a-sitting on the heather, singing about Jesus and us belonging to 'en, when policeman comes a-shouting, there 'a be,' and I ran, your reverent.

I was that mazed I didn't hardly know what I was doing. They'm after I now, and I ain't done nothing that I knows on. I was a-yetting my bread and cheese and singing. I warn't a-harming a living thing. I warn't a-harming not a b.u.t.terfly, your reverent."

Boodles would have laughed had Brightly been a less pathetic object. She said she believed he was honest, bent to pat Ju, then took them both into the cottage and into the little room where old Weevil was preparing a long screed, to be addressed to some society, and headed: "An Inquiry into the Number of Earthworms mutilated annually by Agricultural Implements." He was very much astonished when he saw Brightly, but became as pitiful as the girl when he had heard the story.

"I am sure he speaks the truth," said Boodles for the defence.

"I don't care whether it's the truth or a lie. Another poor thing caught by the Brute," muttered Weevil. "We must help him to escape. We will keep him here until dark, and then he can creep away. It's what we are always doing, all of us--trying to creep away from the Brute."

Brightly seated himself in a reverential att.i.tude, regarding poor old Weevil as a patriarch, a sort of modern Abraham who had pitched his tent in that part of the country for the benefit of the poor and friendless.

He wondered if the patriarch was a prophet also, and could tell him if he would ever attain to the pony and cart; but he had not the courage to ask.

"What are those things in your basket?" said Weevil.

"Two rabbit-skins, sir. I makes my living out o' they. Least I tries to," added Brightly drearily.

"Where have you come from?"

"To-day from Lydford, sir. Yesterday from Belstone, round Okehampton, and over Sourton Down. Trade be bad, sir."

"How many miles is that?"

"Mebbe nearly twenty from Belstone. I went round about like, and pitched to Lydford last night."

"Twenty miles for two rabbit-skins. Merciful G.o.d!" gasped Weevil.

"Amen, sir," said Brightly.

"Don't you know what the policeman wants you for?"

"I don't, sir. I was a-sitting on the heather when he come, and I ran. I got to the top o' the village, and a lot more of 'em were after I, and I ran again. I got away from 'em, and was a-coming back vor my basket, when the reverent appeared avore I wi' my basket in the reverent's hand."

"That's me," said Boodles, demurely and ungrammatically, in answer to Weevil's puzzled look. She was feeding Ju with biscuit, stroking her thin sides at the same time, and making the poor b.i.t.c.h share her master's impressions concerning the pleasant nature of angelic visions.

There was a knock upon the door, not the timid knock of a visitor, nor the obsequious knock of a tradesman, but the loud defiant knock of authority. The constable had arrived, full of cider and a sense of duty, and behind him a number of villagers had gathered together, with a sprinkling of children, some of whom had stolen Brightly's vases, and seen him enter Lewside Cottage, and then had run off to spread the news everywhere.

"Very sorry, miss," said the policeman, with a polite hiccup. "You've got the man I'm after. Got in when you wasn't looking, likely enough.

He'm a bad lot. I've been after him a long time, and now I've got him."

"What has he done?" said Boodles, guarding the door, and making signs to Weevil to get Brightly out at the back.

"Robbery with violence, attempted murder, and keeping a dog wi'out a licence," said the happy policeman, in the satisfied manner of a fat boy chewing Turkish delight. "You must stand aside, if you plase, miss.