Chapter IV: I Fall Into the Hands of a Collector

At least I call him a man; but O, my Alcide, he was a marionnette! His joints creaked. All the bran in his body seemed to have been shaken down into his calves. His hat supported itself on his ears and the top of his coat collar. His sleeves were sacks. His nose was nothing but a wen, and being no better adapted to the burden of some enormous spectacles he wore, had led his fingers to an incessant trick of adjusting those in their place. He carried under his arm an immense folio, with which, as I appeared, he aimed an agitated blow at me, only to miss and fall forward on his face on the roof.

I instantly dodged past him, and stood panting while he collected himself. His glasses, without which he was helpless, had flown off, and I saw his eyes, which before had seemed to fill the whole field of the great lenses, mere swollen slits, like a pig’s. He groped about in the utmost consternation as he knelt, pawing the tiles for his lost property.

“Who are you? Wait! I’ll be with you,” he ejaculated excitedly, as his bony hands swept the roof.

I backed out of their reach without replying.

At last he found what he sought, and fitting the rims to his nose, rose to his feet and stared at me.

“Hey, what!” he said--“a sweep! Well!”--and blew out a rumbling grunt, which he checked suddenly, as if he had turned a cock on it.

A moment after, he put his hand into his pocket, and fetching out a dirty fragment of biscuit, held it to me persuasively, as one might lure a colt. Seeing, however, that I still held away from him, he threw the biscuit down in a pet, and stood to canvass me in a baleful manner.

“What do you want?” he snapped out suddenly. “How did you find your way here?”

Still with my eyes on him, I answered, in a husky whisper--

“Don’t you know? Up the closet chimney.”

“Ay,” he said, dropping his own voice in tacit response to the warning in mine, “but not to sweep it?”

“No,” I said; “to escape by it.”

His hand went up to his glasses. He glared at me through their restored focus.

Watchful of him, lest, before I could explain, he should silence me provisionally with some stunning blow, I ventured to approach him a little nearer.

“There’s killing,” I whispered, “going on down there--a poor old man in a grey coat.”

He started violently, and pulling his jaw down, uttered a sort of mechanical crow, and let it go again.

“Grey!” he muttered. “It’s the steward, then. He didn’t give _me_ away, did he?”

I shook my head dumbly. He was readjusting his glasses to meet the answer.

“Ay,” he gulped, swallowing with relief, “poor Mackenzie! And to think that for all his loyalty he must burn!”

I whispered, “Why must he?”

“Because,” he said, “he wasn’t of the faith.”

This uncouth creature was getting horrible to me. I suppose he read my repulsion in my face, for his own suddenly grew agitated and menacing.

“Are you thinking of betraying me?” he said.

I retreated before him, working my foolish young arms.

“Keep away!” I cried; “I don’t even know who you are.”

“O!” he said, and stopped, and was at his spectacles again. Then suddenly he held up his hand.

“Hark!” he said.

I listened. Far and faint below, through the hubbub of destruction came wafted at intervals the name of the chaplain--Pope--the cynosure of all this iconoclastic zeal.

“Yes, it’s you they want,” I said.

“And you,” he retorted fiercely, “are pointing the way, you little”--

“It’s a lie!” I cried vehemently. “I came up here to escape from them, like you.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“You said you didn’t know who I was.”

“No more I did,” I protested, “till you told me.”

“_I_ told you!” he cried. “Humph!” And he glared at me sourly. “Sit down, then,” he said, “and hold your tongue till I speak to you again.”

It was the wise policy, certainly. He squatted himself between me and the chimney, and we dwelt in silence, while the mob wreaked its blind vengeance below. I was in a dreadful fright all the time. Every moment I expected to hear my master’s voice boom up the flue by way of which I had climbed; and, desperate as I was, I devised the naughty expedient to curry favour, if necessary, by claiming the credit of having run this fugitive to bay. It was a base thought, perhaps, though natural under the stress of the occasion. Chiefly, however, I regret it because it was uncalled for, and it is aggravating to burden one’s conscience with unprofitable frailties. The monster I had run from was never, in point of fact, to cross my path again. Probably, thinking I had fled from the house, he went hunting counter, and so put ever a wider interval between us.

It was not, after all, so very long before the racket of despoliation down below died away, and we heard the mob clatter from the house, and go streaming and singing across the common in its retreat. I believe that, either realising how in my master it had evoked a demon to its own legal discomfiture, or perhaps frightened by the bugbear of some reported troop of militia assembling in the neighbourhood, it was suddenly decided to temper Protestantism with prudence, and so dissipating itself with great speed and piety, left the building to a solitude more dense by contrast than before.

It was not, however, until every whisper and echo had long ceased that I durst let myself be persuaded of the reality of my reprieve; and when at last I did, the joy that grew minutely in my heart came near to upsetting my reason.

My excitement hungered for something on which to flesh itself. I rose and went up and down, quickly and softly, in the space left me, seeking the means to some larger action. Then I saw the great folio lying discarded on the roof where the chaplain had dropped it, and all of a sudden felt itching to know what it could contain to tempt this man to burden himself with its care in so anxious a situation.

He sat with his face in his hands--or cuffs, rather. He appeared to be in a sort of uncouth trance. I stole very noiseless by him, and, unobserved as I supposed, had actually lifted the book, when he started awake in a moment.

“Hey!” he cried. “That’s mine!”

“I was going to bring it to you,” I said.

He scuttled towards me on his hands and toes, and snatching the book from me, squatted down, hugging it, and glaring at me in a sort of dumb malevolence.

I had no retort for such rudeness. I stood crimsoning under my black a moment, then, in default of a better answer, began to cry.

He was not the least moved, the ill-conditioned boor, but he was disturbed by the noise.

“Ur-rh!” he bullied. “That’ll do. Do you hear?”

Indignation gave me decision. I turned my back on him.

“Where are you going?” he cried.

I stalked on without a word.

“No, you don’t!” he said, scrambling up; and he followed and caught hold of my jacket.

“Let me go!” I cried, struggling. “My master will be looking for me.”

“O!” he said, quite suddenly agitated. “Come here and I’ll show you a picture.”

I let myself be drawn reluctant.

“Is it of the Scarlet Woman?” I said.

He started, and roared, “The Scarlet--!” then, conscious of his mistake, dropped his voice to a panic whisper.

“There’s no such moth,” said he. “If you mean _heraclia dominula_, the scarlet tiger, come and I’ll show you one.”

He persuaded me to sit by him on the roof slope, and gingerly opened the book away from me.

“Don’t touch,” he said. “It’s called _Fasti Sanctorum Naturæ Cultoribus Proprii_.”

“Is that Latin?” I asked.

“Yes,” he growled; but he looked at me rather curiously. “It means The Naturalist’s Calendar of the Saints. How did you know?”

“O, I know,” I said.

He turned some leaves, while scanning me covertly and sourly; and I exclaimed becomingly over their contents. On each was a picture of a saint, hastily illuminated, and of many insects most beautifully coloured after nature. The saints, it is true, were pigmies, and the moths life size; but it was through the former that this uncivilised Churchman justified himself in a secular hobby. He was, as I came to learn presently, a crazy collector of the small game of fields and hedges, and had only drifted into the Church after a particularly fine specimen of the Painted Lady, or some such immoral creature.

I tried to appreciate in order to conciliate him; but I could see that my flattery was not expert, or perhaps fulsome enough for his taste. Presently, on the score that my mere neighbourhood threatened the lustre of his illuminations, he shut the book, and placed it discontentedly by his side.

“Did you do it all by yourself?” I asked.

“Ay,” he grunted.

“And why did you bring it up here, when”--

He smacked his great hand on his knee, interrupting me--

“If you haven’t the intelligence to see--sooner part with my blood to those Vandals! There; let the book alone, and tell me what brought you here.”

“I’ve said already--I was escaping from my master.”

“A master sweep?”

“Yes.”

“Now,” he said, “how did you know this was Latin?”

I hung my head.

“Come,” he threatened, “you’d best tell me.”

I was considering what I should do. I reddened excited under my mask, and rose to my feet again. After all these months of obliteration, a wonderful thought was beginning to dawn in me--the thought of my sex as a possible factor in my redemption. For how long, my dear friend, had I not lost the art to play it for the value of so much as a sugar-plum? And what was there now to prevent me from reassuming that charming confidence in men which so disarms them? Alas! it was a vain recovery here--a waste of art on a material no more responsive to it than a pulpit hassock.

“How did you know?” he repeated angrily.

“Because,” I whispered, blushing, and lingering over the sensation I felt I was about to produce--“because--Father--I am a little daughter of the Church.”

He had been gnawing his knuckles, as he bent his morose brows on me; and at my words stopped suddenly, his great teeth bared, like a dog looking up from a bone.

“I am the child of a great gentleman. I was stolen from my parents,” I said, and clasped my hands to him. “I am not a boy at all, but a girl.”

He leapt up as if I had struck him.

“How dare you!” he shouted; then, choking, in another hoarse reaction to panic, “How dare you try to impose upon me!”

“I’m not!” I cried, in a childish fury of chagrin over his insensibility. “It’s true, every word. My mother was a Sister of les Madelonnettes, and I was stolen from her, and I want to be sent back.”

I did not in truth, save in so far as that way only lay my chance of restoration to my darling father. But the point was inessential.

The priest’s eyes, dilated monstrosities, devoured me through their lenses.

“Les Madelonnettes--the Magdalens!” he muttered, amazed and frowning. His hand, caressing his chin, grated on the stubble of it. “Come,” he said brutally, “I’m an old bird to be caught by chaff. Confess to me, if you’re a Catholic, you wretched little sinner.”

I wanted nothing better. This sacrament of penance must convince and win him. In a moment my young elastic soul had leapt the dark interlude which divided me from my past, and my little feet were tripping once more in fancy down the royal prince’s table. I fell on my knees.

“Say your Confiteor,” he commanded harshly.

I repeated it without a mistake.

“Humph!” said he. “What are you waiting for?”

I told him my whole story. He listened to it, after the first, abstractedly, with one eye caressing his abominable book. At the end he gave me absolution, canvassing me distastefully as he pondered the penance. Presently he spoke.

“I order you,” he said, “twenty Ave Marias, and to return to your master.”

I jumped to my feet.

“My master--the sweep!” I cried.

“Certainly,” he replied stubbornly. “You were obviously the foundling of Providence, which has elected this honest tradesman to be your foster-father.”

“But, my mother?” I choked.

“It is her judgment,” he said, “to remain and mingle her weeping with the ashes of this sacrifice, in the hospital of which her crimes have made her an inmate.”

He had listened with his elbows, as I supposed. I recognised the hopelessness of my task.

“Very well,” I said. “I daresay he has finished with the steward by now. I will go and tell him what you say”--and I made for the chimney.

He was after me in a moment, at a gallop.

“Stop!” he cried. “What do you mean? That your master was one of this rabble?”

“One? The worst of them all,” I answered. “It was he knocked down the poor grey gentleman; and the last I heard of him was crying for you.”

He released me, to throw up his hands.

“The intolerance of these heretics!” he cried. “Stop! Don’t go. I withdraw my pronouncement. You shall name your own penance.”

I breathed quickly, standing before him.

“Father, that is soon done. I will go with you.”

“With me--with me?” he complained, stamping distracted. “Where to?”

“Anywhere from here,” I pleaded. “You can’t stop. The whole country’s up, and a second time, if they come, you’ll be caught.”

Snorting with agitation, he took off his spectacles to wipe them.

“It’s quite impossible,” he said. “I know of only one asylum beyond, and that”--

With a quick little snatch I ravished the glasses from his hand, and, running away with them, hid behind a chimney. For a minute or two he raved round, stumbling, and grabbing at the air, and finally tripped over his book and subsided, quite prostrate, upon the roof.

“Little sweep!” he panted, in a trembling voice. “My daughter--child of Magdalen--where are you?”

I held my breath; and he went on, in broken sentences--

“Come back--give me my glasses--where are you?--I believe all you say--What! will you give me up, and the Calendar unfinished?”

Then, as I still did not answer, “Holy saints! The little devil has hobbled me, and I shall be caught and martyred.”--A longish pause--“_In manus tuas, Domine, com_-- I wonder if in Paradise--the scarce copper--h’m!”

He began to gnaw his knuckles, with a sort of pleased abstraction over the thought. It would never do. I came out of my hiding.

“Will you take me with you?” I repeated.

“O, it’s you?” he cried, with a start. “Where are my glasses?”

“In my hand.”

“Will you return them to me?”

“Will you let me go with you?”

“Scandalous!”

“I will carry the book.”

“Pooh!”

“I will walk behind.”

“Pish!”

“If anything happens to me, then”--

“Fah!” he interposed; and then added, “What could happen to you?”

“Do you suppose I shall stay in these clothes?” I said. “I shall return to be a girl; and what am I to do then, without someone to protect and help me back to my parents?”

“That’s nothing to me,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said I.

He scrambled to his feet with a roar: “Give me back my glasses!”

I stood quite still, making no sound. He thought I had really gone this time, and began taking little strides hither and thither, and throwing his arms about. Suddenly he stopped, sweating with agitation.

“Are you there?” he said.

I did not answer. He hopped from leg to leg, pulling with one hand at the other, as if at a tight glove.

“Child!” he cried, “you’re a good child--a perfect little sweep. You shall come--do you hear?--if we ever get off this roof. We’ll escape by the woods--nobody will see us there together--and I can catch some arguses (_lasiommata ægeria_) that will be in season.”