Moth-Mullein/Chapter IV

night there was an affray with the poachers, an affray that was much talked of, and one about which the news papers gave leaders.

Towards nightfall the keepers had been through Darenth Wood, and had driven the pheasants towards the path, or road, that traversed the wood from Greenhythe to the village of Darenth on the further side of the hill. Their object in doing this was to get the pheasants to roost on trees beside the open road, where, in the event of the poachers coming after them, they could be most easily surrounded and caught. In the depths of the wood it might be hard to seize them, and it would be less easy to identify them; but if the fellows came along the road and popped at the birds in the trees on each side, they would be perfectly visible to those in concealment watching for them, and it would be easy to cut off their retreat along the road by throwing a body of men across it. A good deal was made by some papers of this action of the keepers. It was represented that they had laid a trap and baited it for inoffensive men; the keepers provoked them to commit an illegal act, and then precipitated themselves upon them. On this text much indignation was expressed at the game laws; and the wealthy were held up to reprobation for reserving wild birds and beasts for their own table, and allowing the poor and deserving to starve whilst abundance was within their reach.

As it happened, the poachers belonged to a set—a set which lived on poaching, which moved about the country from place to place, and which supplied, or helped to supply, the London market with game. The men had no other business—they lived by poaching. They slept or loafed about by day. Where navvies were engaged on a line they followed them, and brought these hardworking and generally honest men into disrepute. It was said that the navvies were desperate poachers. This was riot so. The gang followed the navvies, and its components were men who never willingly did a bit of honest work—scorned the hard toil to which the navvy bowed his back. They lived by night sport, and let the navvies bear the blame of their misdeeds. Sometimes—so bold did these gangs become—they sent warning beforehand to the head-gamekeeper of my Lord or of Squire Acres, to say that they were going to visit his covers. Then the keepers had to consider whether they would muster a large force and go out against them, or keep close and let them do their worst. By no means infrequently the latter course was pursued. An affray with these rascals led to serious results. Shots were exchanged, blows dealt, and lives were lost. When the head-gamekeeper came to my Lord or to Squire Acres and said, ‘I have had notice that the gang is coming. There are daring devils among them—Long Jaques for one, who smothered his child rather than be took,’ then my Lord or Squire Acres said, ‘Well, well, don’t let there be a row and bloodshed. Go to bed, go to bed. They can’t exterminate the game.’

But in this instance the head-keeper was not willing to go to bed, and the Squire was inclined to have the poaching stopped. He had reared the pheasants, and he calculated that they had cost him a guinea a-piece. ‘I don’t see,’ said he, ‘why I should let a man pick my pocket without trying to stop him,’ and he was right. If the landowners had combined, and altogether had said ‘The gang must be put down,’ it would have been put down; but so many were timorous that the gang gathered courage, strength, and audacity.

This night—this All-Hallow E’en—there was an affray that created a sensation. It created a sensation both because one man was shot dead in it, and also because the man who killed the other was caught and carried to gaol, and that man was Long Jaques. He who was killed was Mullins the woodman, and he who revenged his death by catching the murderer was little Dicky Duck.

If the man shot had been a poacher, what an outcry would have been made!—what commiseration, what political capital would have been made out of his murder! But as the man shot was only a fellow acting for the nonce as a keeper, there was not much fuss made about him. All the Radicals said, ‘Serve him right!’

This is how it came about.

The poachers had come along the road and had tired at three of the pheasants, when the gamekeepers and their party appeared and surrounded them. There were thirteen poachers, and all strong, desperate men. They turned to break their way through. The moon was shining. Long Jaques was face to face with Mullins, and the moon was on Mullins’ face.

Jaques uttered a curse. ‘It’s you, you dog, who made me smother my kid!’ he said; put his gun to his mouth and shot him dead. Then he made a leap to pass the man as he fell, and in another moment would have got into the coppice and have escaped, had not Dicky Duck been too alert for him. In an instant he was after him, gave a leap, was on the poacher’s back, clung, and would not be shaken off. Jaques could not easily get at the adversary who was on his back, and who kicked him in the sides and fastened his grip with all his strength about the throat of the poacher, compressing the windpipe that he could not gasp. Jaques became bewildered, ran against the trees to beat off his little assailant, tried to wrench his hands away, but was unable. Duck clung like a ferret to a rat, and screamed for help, till Jaques, stumbling over a root, fell prostrate in the wood. Then the poacher would easily have mastered Dicky, had not some of the keepers come to his assistance, rescued the plucky little man, and bound the poacher.

Moth-Mullein had the kettle on the fire puffing steam, and the potatoes on the boil. The table was spread, the cold beef-steak pie was on it, and her father’s pewter tankard, brightly polished, reflected the firelight. Moth knew how to make a table look well. She had had experience. In the middle was a glass full of crisp, nutty celery; there was a piece of American cheese ready, and, balancing it, a plate of tartlets of her own making.

A little after midnight her father was brought home, dead. Finch came first to break the news to her. Mr Parkinson followed with the body. Moth bore the shock better than might have been expected: she was deadly pale; but she was a girl of nerve and self-control, and she did not go into hysterics.

‘I am very, very grieved,’ said Mr Parkinson, looking out of the corners of his eyes at the beef-steak pie. ‘This is most dreadful. You have my deepest sympathy. Dicky Duck behaved like a man,’ then he left. The young man was quite out of his element in a house of sorrow and bereavment; he really was grieved, but he was at a loss to know what to say, and how to console the girl. ‘I must come after the funeral and see her,’ he said to himself; ‘what a bore that matters should have turned out like this! I must take care not to compromise myself. She is awfully pretty, but I’m not a fool.’

Dicky Duck remained. He was of the greatest assistance to Jessie. He ran messages for her. He found an old woman to lay out the corpse, and to keep her company. He contrived about the inquest, he saw the undertaker about the coffin, he arranged for the funeral. He would have ordered the mourning for Jessie had she suffered him. What would Jessie have done without the help of Dicky? She did not consider that it would have been inconvenient for her, had he not been at her beck and call. She did not consider that he gave up his work and wage to attend her. She was grateful to him in a cold, ungracious manner only for having arrested her father’s murderer. And the reason why her gratitude was ungracious was because Dicky had caught Long Jaques in such a grotesque manner, so that when anyone spoke of the capture a flicker of a smile passed over his face. At the inquest, when the evidence was taken, and it came to the account of the taking of the poacher, there was a general laugh, and the coroner and jury laughed with the public. It was not possible to avoid laughing,—the idea of little Dick clinging to the poacher’s back, kicking him in the wind with his heels, and grabbing his throat with his hands was vastly ludicrous, especially when the little man was present with his comical face drawn in an effort to look sad.

Jessie was angry with Dick because he had not stopped her father’s murderer in a more heroic and dignified, or romantic, manner. The sense of his absurdity irritated her, and his very officiousness, though she accepted his services, helped to annoy her. She could not well do without his help, and she wished some one else—Mr Parkinson for instance—had been there instead to minister to her wants.

Mr Parkinson did not reappear till after the funeral. Then he called in a black coat with a hat, not his usual ‘billicock.’

He seemed shy. In fact he did not know what to say. He was unaccustomed to paying visits of condolence.

‘What are you going to do, if I may ask, Moth?’

‘I shall have to leave this house,’ she answered, and sobbed. ‘It will go to the new woodman.’

‘Where are you likely to go to? Have you any nice relations?’

‘I have no relations at all—that is, none whom I could stay with.’

‘But you have friends?’

‘Friends’—hesitatingly—‘yes, but I cannot go to them unless they ask me.’

‘I hope you are not left badly off?’

‘Of course I must work for my living. I should like to live near this wood and go on collecting moths and butterflies, but that would not be enough to support me, I fear.’

‘And you have no one who can put in the claim of a near and dear tie?’ Mr Parkinson turned red. He was really sorry for the girl, and also much afraid of compromising himself. ‘I mean—I thought that Dicky Duck—’

‘Sir—Mr Parkinson!’

‘I meant no offence. I have a suggestion to make. It occurred to me. It may have occurred to you. Why not go as one of the girls in a refreshment room at a railway station? It seems to me you are just the right sort of person for that, very good-looking, and like to chaff with young chaps, and don’t mind a little cheek. You are cut out for it.’

‘Mr Parkinson! is this all you have to say to me?’

‘Yes, Moth. No offence meant. ’Pon my word I have been thinking a lot about you, and I do believe you were made for a refreshment room—and now the new line is being finished——’

Jessie rose, white with anger, and left the room.

Somewhat abashed, Mr Parkinson came outside the house. Dicky was there.

‘I say, Dick,’ said he, ‘the lead told true—a coffin for old father Mullins.’

‘Yes, but not so for me. I got a dragon, and St. George killed the last of them. And two hearts, but I’ve got only one on the right and none at all on the left.’

‘And both broken. No, Dicky, your heart is in the right place, and like mine, sound.’

‘I take it, that matter of the lead is all rubbish.’

‘Who can say? Wait till next Hallow E’en.’