Читать книгу The Doomington Wanderer - Louis Golding - Страница 20

Table of Contents

“Something must be done!” said the village of Winfold.

“Something must be done!” said the brothers Spender.

“Something must be done!” said Bill Richmond, gnashing his teeth in his lonely caravan.

But what could be done? There was a constable who lived about a dozen miles away. Somebody said, “Call in the constable.” But what was Tom Molyneux doing to justify calling in constables? Not the curate himself had conducted his courtship with more patent respectability. And what constable would relish being called in to manhandle Tom Molyneux?

So the young men of Winfold determined on manhandling Tom Molyneux on their own account. About twenty of them, including the brothers Spender, and Bert Dalrymple, the Butcher, who saw no reason for being left out of it, set upon the negro late one night. (For Tom Molyneux had betaken himself to going out late of nights to commune with the stars and stand gazing by the river, like any love-struck stripling.)

The young men all took the precaution of wearing masks, dark though the night was; they also equipped themselves with knuckle-dusters. But these things did not help them much. The champion fought even more magnificently than he had fought Tom Cribb. Love seemed to have added to his fist both strength and subtlety—even a faculty of seeing at what points the darkness was not darkness, but face or stomach.

It was decided in Winfold that brute force was of no use in the matter of Tom Molyneux.

And then it occurred to the brothers Spender that, after all, the other prize-fighter, Bill Richmond, mooning about in his forlorn encampment at Crowleigh, had some responsibility in the affair. Wasn’t it his fault, anyway, that the accursed nigger was here at all? So they went and interviewed Bill Richmond.

“What are you going to do about it?” they asked with extreme rancour.

“Do about it?” shouted Bill. “Do about it? Is it me he’s fallen in love with? Is it my sister? I’ve a good mind to go to law against you! Do about it!”

“Well, it’s our interest to get him out of the way, and it’s yours, too! Can’t you kidnap him?”

He looked at them morosely. “Try it!” he said. They admitted it was not a good idea. They sat about for several minutes, puffing and grunting and shaking their heads.

Suddenly Bill Richmond slapped his thighs excitedly. “Why don’t you kidnap her?” he said. The brothers shook their heads despondently. “We’d rather kidnap him, any day!” they agreed. “Besides, she’d escape. And nothing in the world then would stop her wedding him. No, it’s a bad idea, a bad idea!”

The consultation went on another hour or so. The brothers proposed quite a number of ideas, but they were all too clever.

“What you can’t get into your heads,” he told them as they miserably rose to go, “is that Tom Molyneux is simple as a child. Think out something simple enough, gentlemen, and the job’s done! Good night, gentlemen, good night! And the quicker you think, you muffs,” he added under his breath, “the more I’ll like it!”

“Simple as a child!” growled Harry Spender. “Ignorant as a savage, he means!”

“What’s that you say? A savage?” shouted Ben. “Why, Harry, you’re right! That’s exactly what he is—nothing more nor less than an ignorant African savage! Let me think now, let me think!” He paused and thought for a full five minutes. Then he cried out at the top of his voice: “I’ve got it, Harry, I’ve got it! Listen, Harry!” He bent forward and whispered his plan into his brother’s ear, as if the very trees might overhear him.