Oliver Onions

“ Underneath the furnaces was an incandescence of pink and white wood-ash, and men took embers in their hands and tossed them on the naked backs of their fellows.
As Monjoy and Eastwood approached, there came a fresh uproar and a new diversion.
“Show him aforehand what it’ll be like!” voices bawled, and Pim o’ Cuddy was seen struggling in a dozen arms. He shrieked for mercy, but they cried, “Show him th’ bad place where clerks goes to that’s turned wrong!” and they bore him to the mouth of the furnace. He writhed and screamed. ”

“ Throw down four stacks o’ nicely-settled hay! Couldn’t they do their rummaging wi’out ruining folk? Who was to set ’em up again? And did they think to take Big Monjoy when all was done?—They were tingling for quarrel; the stacks would serve as well for a pretext as anything else; the disturbing of a sitting hen would have served; and the mob swayed like a flood. A Back o’ th’ Mooiner had a cudgel; it crossed a bayonet suddenly; there was a rush, and a breach appeared in the red-coated line; and fifty men poured through it, taking the other rank in the backs. ”

“ It was much that a chaise had got as far as Wadsworth; legs alone could clear the Scout. A man was despatched with a couple of horses to strike the Causeway lower down the valley and then to wait on the heights, and Cope descended from the chaise with the broken lamp-glass. At that, out stepped the parson from his house, and earnestly besought him to remain behind.
“Look!” he cried, pointing up the Scout, that seemed to crawl with ascending figures, “and not a man among them but bears you the worst will in the world! ”

“ A high ceaseless crackling now filled the valley, and behind it was an ominous roar. She turned again, almost direct for the cairn; the smoke was now shrouding it. She had seen the redcoats on the heights moving round as if to cut her off, and her one thought was to make for the birches where Arthur would be—they could not be very far away. She fancied that the smoke had changed a little in direction, too, and was falling more behind her. She coughed and choked as she tore forwards towards the point that she had judged to be the limit of the fire. ”

“ There were lights and moving figures down by the boat-house, but they were blotted out from time to time: the night had fallen. The cobles and craft were huddled close in, and they were tossing and hissing and groaning—fenders grunting and rubbing on wood, blocks banging, tackle shrieking, parted ropes cracking like whips.... The little jetty seemed to run out a yard or two into the night. The surf thundered out on the Spit, a deep solemn sound. A fellow was bawling through a trumpet: his voice sounded throttled, something like a bassoon. The moon wasn’t due up for a couple of hours yet. ”

“ The tall pieceboards became an avenue of legs regularly moving—legs in casings of hide, in wrappings of straw-band, calves and tibias in stockings of grey and white and blue and brown—and an appalling racket of sound arose. In a second they had taken their time from the original clackers; the rhythmic high noise filled the market-place, rang under the Piece Hall arches, spread in a harsh, splitting cascade to the hills, affronted the sense of hearing. A man from Booth tossed up a pigeon. ”

“ First, there was a delicate balance; then a number of test-rings of iron and calcined bone; then a pestle and mortar; and after these, pipkins and crucibles, a bowl of quicksilver, a number of small leaden cubes like badly-made dice, and other things. Monjoy emptied his pockets of stones; then he stripped to his shirt and breeches, and, passing to his hearth, began to revive it with a pair of bellows. The coughing of the bellows and a red glow began to fill the chamber, and Ellah, for all the tight, stifling breathing, watched sharply and eagerly. ”

“ A tall weaver turned with a heavy budget on his back and jostled somebody. A man laughed. Then the weavers fell of their own accord back to the pieceboards, and the new Supervisor of the King’s Excise was seen to be standing on the cobbles.
They have, as the Wadsworth parson had discovered, a humour of their own Horwick way. As if at a signal, there was a general catching of breath, and then a shout of laughter went up. Men clambered to the pieceboards to look over their neighbours’ shoulders at the oddity that had been sent to them for an exciseman. ”

“ The heat continued, so that paint blistered on wood and the tar glistened and bubbled on the roofs of sheds; and, maybe, the heat was the cause of the softening of moral fibre that became apparent in Pim o’ Cuddy, the verger and bellringer. More than once he was caught hugging to his breast the little brass kettle, under the lid of which he slipped the crown-pieces and down the spout the sixpences of usury; and then one night Arthur Monjoy took him over the moor. ”

“ I’m no king of Back o’ th’ Mooin now; when I’ve done what I’m going to do both sides will hunt me. I’d hoped, too, we might help one another, you and I.”
She began to tremble. “What is it, Arthur?” she asked quickly.
“Don’t ask me, except that this is my finish with it. I’ll tell you what it is I offer you now. All’s closing in, and they won’t stop at this; and I offer you danger for a portion, and not so much as a roof to your head it may be, and it may be, Cicely, just the same lot as hers stretched on the bed yonder. ”

“ Dick o’ Dean had drawn a string no longer than the width of the palm in which it lay. Two chances were accounted for; and men now pressed forward and drew more freely, and Mish paused to arrange the disordered ends. Monjoy watched without moving a muscle, and presently the pale youth called Charley backed whimpering away from his turn. There were but half a dozen strings left, and one wolf had not yet met his luck. ”

“ Draw for your murder—for your torture at the Slack for all I know—I know the wolves you are. Eastwood and I are taking Ellah away, chance you change your fickle minds and wreak something on him, too; but we’ll see you draw first. I want to see who the lucky wolves are so that I can watch them.—Into the cap with the strings, Mish my lad; you’ve a wolf’s chough yourself for blood. About it. Remember, you’re without me and Eastwood and Moon and Raikes, and the best of us. We stick at shooting and cutting and filling men’s breeches with red-hot coals. Up with the strings, Mish ”

“ Every time the door opened the rich smell and crackling of a roasting joint came along the passage from the kitchen, and it had been remarked that the care of the inn was work for more than one pair of hands. Arthur Monjoy, a-straddle on a bench in the middle of the parlour, fanned his face with his foxskin cap, for the room had grown hot and he had been laughing. Matthew Moon, in a corner of the fireplace, was reading bills and letters at arm’s-length. John Raikes smoked stolidly opposite him. ”

“ One of the first signs of this intimacy was that Monjoy fashioned for Ellah an ear-trumpet of brass. Apart from his trade of engraving, he had some skill in the related crafts of metal-work, and none knew much of how he occupied himself of a night in the garret chamber of Matthew Moon’s warehouse up the Fullergate. The low houghing of a pair of bellows could sometimes be heard, and the grinding of a pestle and mortar; but from below nothing could be seen but a pair of closed crane-doors, and the crane-arm above them. ”

“ Monjoy’s face streamed, and his eyes were drowsy; and Ellah nodded against the bench by the door. Monjoy roused himself, and with a pair of tongs drew the test from the furnace, setting it to cool. Ellah dozed, and Monjoy crossed over and listened to his breathing. Then he weighed out from his mortar a pound or so of crushed ore, added iron filings to it, set it in a melting-pot in the furnace, and began with the bellows again. An hour passed. The air was well nigh insupportable. He rose again, tottered to his bench, took a deep gulp of water, and stripped off even his shirt. ”

“ The candle leaped out, cut in two. Echoes were following the report, and a puff of smoke drifted slowly along the edge of the Scout. Captain Ritchie sprang aside.
“Fire as you are!” he ordered; “mind the others——”; and, save for a figure that was seen running far along the skyline, every man on the face of the Scout had dropped for cover. The muskets came up as if for birds; quick dropping shots rang out; and sharp cracks from the soldiers up the Scout seemed to answer them like echoes.
“Draw this chaise to one side,” said Cope, biting at his finger again. ”

“ Listen,” he said with great earnestness. “A gauger without legs, that can’t knock about and keep an eye on things, what good is he? And that’s the sort they’ve sent to Horwick. Why, think ye? I’ve a wit o’ my own, with the fancy-work left out, and I know what it might be.—Suppose he wants us to make light of him, and to be the jest of every lad in the market-place, till we say, ‘Tut, it’s only Cope’; and then suppose he’s listening and hedge-creeping, and setting a knot here and a knot there, like poachers wi’ pheasants—what then?”
“You go too fast,” said Monjoy. ”

“ The big engraver, too, was not untouched by this gale of universal espousals. Cicely Eastwood was a Wadsworth lass, eligible to be married in Wadsworth. Not all these amazing nuptials were of flesh so fair and fresh as hers; and a Wadsworth wedding that left Cicely single and a maid would have been like to break Dooina Benn’s heart. Arthur Monjoy sought an occasion.
Cicely was to have left Sally a fortnight before, but the fair had so crowded the “Pipes” every evening that even with a couple of extra men her help was no more than was needed. ”

“ Hundreds of people followed the soldiers thither, and some of the Back o’ th’ Mooiners were talking their jargon again. Webster watched sullenly from his door the soldiers surround his premises; but the mob could not be kept out, and the yard was packed. They knew now what or whom the officer in charge looked to find there; word was passed that an orderly had ridden the previous evening up the Fullergate for more troops, that were to advance to Wadsworth and Back o’ th’ Mooin itself; and the crowd surged this way and that, no man using force, but of formidable force in the mass. ”

“ Neighbours began to join in the clamour. Cole the clogger would have given stock and goodwill to have been there.
Further feigning of sleep on Pim’s part would have been preposterous. He cogitated desperately; the jest could not be relinquished yet; and then there came to him the choicest idea of all. He lighted a candle, descended to the door, and again called through the keyhole.
“Who is it?” he cried.
“I’ll learn ye who it is, ye offald-looking church ratten!” came Mrs. Pim’s reply; and then Pim lifted up his voice on high.
“What do I hear? A woman’s voice?” he cried. ”

“ When Ellah gave a grunt of thanks for the ear-trumpet, Monjoy laughed and said:
“We’ll have a finer one than that when the hazels push on a bit.”
The spring was in truth coming nicely forward, and the gardens and closes of Horwick were budding with plum and cherry and pear. The pear-tree in front of Cope’s house had begun to hide the dormers, and a sprinkling of petals lay on the grass-grown cobbles below. In yards, cloth dried on the tenter-hooks; weavers broke their work at midday to lean over walls and watch the fattening of their neighbours’ pigs or the fluffy cletches of chickens ”

“ The bell of the Piece Hall continued to toll; the Fullergate became packed; and Arthur Monjoy, who had sought unavailingly to see Cicely, could scarce get to his own house.
A low distant murmur sounded and increased. Northrop and Haigh were coming home at last. All at once the sun glinted on the steel head of a pike, and on another and another. Above the heads of the crowd a chief constable on horseback could be seen, and behind him the driver of a cart. The nodding heads of the horses were hung with black crape. Cope did not accompany his cruel procession. ”

“ Again the voice challenged, nearer; and then fortune came to their aid. A ewe, with a couple of lambs, lifted up her woody voice in the night and scampered past them down the slope they had ascended. They saw the dark form of the sentry turn after the ewe and disappear.
“What clothes have you got on, Cicely?” Monjoy whispered.
“My blacks—for Sally,” she whispered back.
“Ah! You showed like a shadow-shape on the bents. The moon will be up soon; it must be the heather again, lass. Bear up; the next Ridge is the beginning of Soyland. Put your arm in mine, and stoop.” ”

“ They came up, the fish-wives of the quay—the women who swear so—they turned out with the men; men and women, there were enough to carry the boat and us with it. Three boats had managed to keep head-up the whole of the day—you know that—and the Lizzie was one of them. The shouts and lanterns were bewildering, and I heard a fellow give a shout of recognition to Osa Couper. We turned into the street that leads to the movable bridge over the river. The river’s tidal, of course, and there was a beach of mud and pebbles; and the Portsannet men fought for places as we put her in. ”