Читать книгу The Coil of Carne - John Oxenham - Страница 13

The struggle between the boys, which began before Mr. Eager was well out of sight, resulted in a bump on Jim's forehead similar to the one which already decorated Jack's, in a few additional scratches and bruises to both brown little bodies, and in Jim's temporary possession of the rabbit.

That point decided for the time being, they sat down in the hot sand to recover their wind, Jim holding his prey tightly by the ears on his off side, since a moment's lack of caution would result in its instant transfer to another owner.

"I'm going to learn to swim," said Jack.

"HE won't let us," said Jim.

Then, intent silence as a sand-piper came hopping along a ridge. It stopped at sight of them, and fixed them first with one inquiring eye and then with the other. Their hands felt for their little clubs. The sand-piper decided against them, and flew away with a cheep of derision.

Jim had dropped the rabbit for his club. Jack leaned over behind him and had it in a second. Jim hurled himself on him, and they were at it again hammer and tongs, and presently they were sitting panting again, and this time the rabbit was on Jack's off side, and, for additional security, wedged half under his sandy leg.

"We could tell him we'd asked HIM and HE said Yes," said Jim, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break.

"He'll go and ask HIM himself, and HE'LL say No," said Jack, with perfect understanding, in spite of the mixture of third persons.

"H'mph!" grunted Jim sulkily. "Wish HE was dead."

"There'd be somebody else."

From which remark you may gather that, where abstruse thinking met with little encouragement, Master Jack was the more thoughtful of the two.

"We'll go in and watch him when he goes in to-morrow," suggested Jim presently.

"They'd see us."

"Drat 'em! Let 'em. Who cares?"

"Means lickings. . . . And that Kennet he lays on a sight harder than he used to."

"Ever since we caught him in the rat-trap. He remembers it whenever he's licking us. . . . Soon as I'm a man I'm going to kill Kennet. It's the very first thing I shall do."

"I don't know," said Jack doubtfully. "He only licks us when HE tells him to."

"I should think so," snorted Jim, with scorn at the idea of anything else.

"HE always looks at us as if we were toads. Why does he?"

"Damned if I know," said Jack quietly. It sounded odd from his childish lips, but it had absolutely no meaning for him. It was simply one of the accomplishments they had picked up from Mr. Kennet.

An upward glance at the sun at the same moment suddenly accentuated a growing want inside him. He sprang up with a whoop, swinging his rabbit by the ears, and made for the hole in the sand-hill. Jim followed close on his heels, and presently, clad only in short blue knee-breeches of homely cut, and blue sailor jerseys, they were trotting purposefully through the shallows towards Carne and dinner, chattering brokenly as they went.

A grim old man watched them from an upper window till they padded silently round the corner out of sight. They ran in through the back porch, and so into the comfortable kitchen with its red-tiled floor and shining pans, and dark wood linen-presses round the walls.

Old Mrs. Lee, grandmother to one of them, turned from the fire to greet them.

"Ready for yore dinner, lads? And which on yo' killed to-day?"--as she caught sight of the rabbit.

"I did," from Jack.

"No--me," from Jim.

"Well, both of us, then," said Jack.

"Clivver lads! Now fall to." And they needed no bidding to the food she set before them. They were always hungry, and never criticised her provisioning.

Ten years had made very little change in Mrs. Lee. Indeed, if there was any change at all it was for the better. For, whereas in the previous times she had had grievous troubles and anxieties, during these last ten years she had had an object in life, not to say two, and lively subjects both of them.

The grim old man upstairs would have viewed the death of either of the boys with more than equanimity. At the first sudden upspringing of the trouble he had, indeed, fervently wished both out of the way. But consideration of the subject and much snuff brought him to just that much better a frame of mind that he ended by desiring short shrift for only one of them, and which one he did not care a snap. Either would be preferable to a Solway Carron, but the two together produced a complication which time would only intensify, unless Death stepped in and cut the knot.

In the beginning he watched Nance's and Mrs. Lee's treatment of them as closely as he could, without betraying his keen interest in the matter. His man, Kennet, had instructions to surprise, entrap, or coerce the secret out of the women in any way he could devise.

But the women laughed to scorn their clumsy attempts at espionage, and meted out equal justice and mercy to both boys alike. Never by one single word or look of special favour bestowed on either did master or man come one step nearer to the knowledge they sought.

Mr. Kennet, indeed, undertook, for a consideration, to make Nance his lawful, wedded wife, with a view to getting at the truth. But when he deviously approached Nance herself he received so hot a repulse, which was not by any means confined to mere verbal broadsides, that he beat a hasty retreat, with marks of the encounter on his face which took longer to heal than did his ardour to cool.

She was a handsome, strapping girl, with a temper like hot lava, and she honestly believed herself Denzil Carron's lawful wife, though her mother still cast doubts upon it.

"You!" Nance labelled Mr. Kennet after this episode, and concentrated in that single word all the scorn of her outraged feelings; and thereafter, till she took herself off to parts unknown, made Mr. Kennet's life a burden to him, yet caused him to thank his stars that the matter had gone no farther.

And the grim old man upstairs? From the women's treatment of the boys--and he spied upon them in ways, and at times, and by means, of which they had no slightest idea--he had learned nothing. And so he waited and waited, with infinite patience, and hoped that time might bring some solution of the problem, even though it came by the hand of Death. And then, as Death stood aloof, and the boys grew and waxed strong, and developed budding personalities, he watched them still more keenly, in the hope of finding in their dispositions and tempers some indications which might help him in his quest.