Cheap Jack Zita

He returned to the table.

'Sit down,' said the girl. 'Do not work yourself into a passion. There's no occasion for that. Let us come to business.'

'Yes,' said Drownlands; 'that is the only way to deal with you. You have a sorry, commercial mind. Everything to you must be a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.'

'That is the only way with me,' said Zita. 'I was brought up to trade, and I love to drive a bargain. That, if you like it, is sport; it is sport and business squeezed into one.'

'I will stand here,' said the man. 'You stand there by the door, if you will; only, I beseech you, leave off polishing that cursed handle, and reckoning, as I suppose you are, how many farthings to charge me for it. As you say that you love business, to business we will go. As nothing affects you but what is presented to your mind in a monetary light, to moneys we will proceed. We also will have a deal.'

'By all means,' said Zita, with a sigh of relief. 'Now I am on my own ground. Do you want to buy, sell, or barter?'

He did not answer immediately. He folded his arms and stood by the window jamb, looking over his shoulder at her.

The dusk had set in after the set of sun, but a silvery grey light suffused the room, the reflection of the snow on the ground. In this light he could see Zita. She had withdrawn her hands from the knob, and had them raised to her bosom, and was rubbing one palm against the other leisurely. A fine, clean-built girl. He also was a fine man, with strongly-cut features, picturesque, with his long black hair, his swarthy complexion, his sturdy frame, and the tiger-skin slung across his shoulders.

'Now I am ready,' said Zita.

He did not speak. He felt that much, everything, depended on what he said, and how he said it. His breath came quick, and his brow was beaded with perspiration.

'You are slow about it,' said Zita. 'Father took an agency once for an Illustrated History of the War. It was to be in twenty parts, at half a crown a part, and four beautiful steel engravings in each, of battles, and generals, and towns. That Illustrated War was such a long time in progress that some of the subscribers died, and others moved away, and some went bankrupt, and there was no getting their money out of some of the others. Father never would have anything more to do with concerns that did not go off smart like the snap of a percussion cap. It seems to me that this business of yours is going to be as long and tiresome as that of the Illustrated War.'

'You are dagging at me again,' said Drownlands sullenly.

'I cannot speak a word but it takes you contrariways,' observed the girl.

He left the window and came to the table, leaned his hand on it, and stood with his back to the light. Still unable to make up his mind to speak, or how to speak, he began to tear up the blotting-paper into little pieces and to throw them about, some on the floor, some on the board. When the last fragment had left his fingers—

'Zita,' he said in loud and vehement tones, 'I suppose I am twice your age.'

'I should fancy more than that—a good deal.'

'Be silent and listen to me.' He raised his voice. 'I am rich. I have a large tract of land—fen-land. I have turned over every turf, and under each found gold. But it has not made me happy. I have had many contradictions, many sorrows, and some shame. My life has been blistered and full of running sores. I have ever been seeking and never finding, till I saw you. When you came into my house, then I knew at once that it was you I had craved for and longed after, and that you, and you alone, could give me what I can find nowhere else—happiness.'

'Give?' said Zita. 'I thought this was a business matter.'

'Let me buy my happiness, then, at what price you desire. I have told you what I am worth. When I see you, I feel the fire kindles in my heart; when I do not see you, it smoulders; and now—now I speak, it breaks out into raging flames.'

'I must leave this place, or you will go clean crazy.'

'No, you must not—you shall not leave it! I could not live without you, having once seen you. Zita, I must have you!'

'Me?' said Zita. 'With me go the van and the goods.'

'Curse the van!'

'You must not say that. The van is very fine, if the poultry would but leave it alone; and with the curtains and tassels is fit for a king.'

'Zita, it is you only that I want.'

'There are a lot of goods goes with me—scrubbing-brushes, mops, brooms, door-mats, pots and pans. Then there's Jewel—who is not bad when he does go.'

'You are trifling with me again. Listen to me. Hear me to the end.'

'I want to hear the end and have done with it,' said the girl. 'I was reckoning up the articles. Here's Cheap Jack Zita for one; there are all these promiscuous goods, that's two; here's the van, that's three; and there's Jewel, that's four—a job lot.'

'You are mocking me.'

'No indeed, I am not. We are after business, are we not?'

But Zita was purposely protracting the scene. She was in difficulties, and was searching to find a way out of them.

'Yes, business. You are mercantile. Listen to what I offer. I am rich, a man of consequence, and a Commissioner. Here is the house, here is the land. I have money in the bank—thousands of pounds; all—all I have is yours; give me but your own self in return.'

Zita was far from being unfeeling. She was stirred by the earnestness, the devotion of the man, but she was not for a moment doubtful as to what her answer must be. Commercial though her mind was, she could not accept him at his price. Her scruple was how to word her refusal so as least to wound him. In her peculiar fashion—one inveterate to her—she twisted the matter about so as to give it a comical aspect. She saw no other loophole for escape from a difficult and painful situation.

'I am sorry,' she said, 'that number one in the job lot is not to be parted with. That is withdrawn from the sale, or bought in. But if it is any consolation to you to have the van and a share of the goods'—

'That is no consolation to me.'

'A queer state of mind to be in—an unwholesome one, and looks like derangement of intellects. The van ought to comfort any man with his faculties about him.'

'Zita!' exclaimed Drownlands, striking the table with his fist, 'you persist in fooling with me! I will not endure this. I am in deadly earnest. I know the reason of this trifling. Mark Runham'—he choked with passion—'Mark has stepped in, and you have given him that heart which you deny me—a heart I would give worlds—worlds'—. He turned to the window. It was starlight now, starlight over snowfields. 'Look out, Zita, at the stars. It is said that they are worlds. If all these were mine, and filled with unimaginable masses of treasure, the homes of unexampled happiness, I would give all for you—all for you—listen to me—merely that I might call you mine, and then die.'

'I cannot be yours,' said Zita in a firm voice. 'And now that you have said this, I shall leave the house.'

'You shall not leave this house!' he cried fiercely. 'If you attempt it,—if I see that you are about to attempt it—and I know whither you would go,—then I will shoot you first, and myself afterwards.'

'I have to do, then, with a madman?'

'Be it so—with a madman; mad on one matter only, mad for one thing only—you. I make no empty threat. I swear by these stars I will do what I threaten. I cannot and I will not live without you. I will kill you rather than that you should belong to another.'

Zita came forward from the door, came to the table.

'I can never be yours,' she said in a tone as earnest, as grave as his. 'There is that between us which makes it for ever impossible.'

'What is the that—Mark Runham?'

'No—not Mark Runham.'

'Who is it, then?'

'There is no who. There is a something. Must I tell you what it is? I would gladly spare you.'

'Tell me, and torment me no more.'

She stepped to the corner of the room, took the flail up, and cast it on the table between them.

'The something is that flail.'

Suddenly through the window smote a red flare; it kindled the room, it turned Zita's hair into a ruddy aureole, it streamed over the table, and dyed the flail blood-red.

And Drownlands cast himself on his knees, with a cry of anguish and remorse, and buried his face in his hands.

Then through the house sounded a hubbub of voices, and cries for the master.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FEN RIOTS

SEVERAL and various causes had combined to produce discontent in the Fens.

Those who lived by fishing and fowling were angry because the improved drainage had destroyed their sporting grounds. Those who had been left behind in the scramble for land were discontented because others had seized the advantageous moment for purchasing which they had let slip.

The labourers were discontented because of the lowness of the wage and the high price of corn. How was it possible for a man on ten or eleven shillings a week to maintain a family, when wheat was at four to five shillings a stone?

It is proverbial that such as have risen from poverty prove the harshest masters. Such was the case in the Fens. The landowners were related by blood and marriage to the labourers they employed, but, nevertheless, they ground them under their own heels. A specimen of their brutality may be instanced. Twice or thrice the wheat had to be hoed, and the hoers were women. Over them the farmers set a ganger armed with an ox goad, who thrust on the lagging women with a prod between the shoulder-blades.

The men were paid partly in money, partly in corn, and were given the refuse wheat that would not sell, wheat that had been badly harvested, and had sprouted in the ear, wheat that made heavy and unwholesome bread.

Labour in the Fens was of a specially trying nature. The clayer was underground all day in pits throwing up the marl that was to serve as manure to the surface earth, and was half stifled by the noxious exhalations from the decomposing vegetable matter, and was immersed half-way up his calves in fetid, phosphorescent ooze.

The cleaning out and deepening of the dykes was trying work, for the workman was plunged to his waist in stagnant water and slime, tormented by mosquitos, and poisoned by the stings of the terrible gadfly that threw him into fever for a fortnight. Everything was poisonous. The fen-water entering a cut produced gangrene. If the hand or foot were wounded by a reed, a sore was the result that resisted healing.

The expenses of the fen-labourer were heavy. He could not do the tasks set him without a pair of well-tanned leather boots reaching to the hips, that cost him from thirty-six shillings to two pounds the pair.

His comforts were small, and were disregarded by the landowners. His cottage, though quite modern, was supremely wretched. It had been run up at the least possible expense, one brick thick, and one room deep, on piles. But 'the moor' beneath the surface had shrunk through the drainage, and the walls gaped, letting wind and rain drive through the rents, and frost enter, impossible to expel by the largest fire.

There was then, as there is now, and always will be, a body of social failures—fraudulent dealers detected and exposed, but not shamed, men who, through their sourness of temper, or indolence, or dishonesty, had failed in whatever they took in hand. These were ready-made demagogues, all talkers, all dissatisfied with every person and thing save themselves, accusing every institution of corruption, and every person of injustice, because of their own incompetence. They were in their element when real discontent prevailed on account of real wrongs. They rose into influence as agitators; they worked on the minds of the ignorant peasantry, dazzling them with expectations impossible to be realised, and exciting them to a frenzy of anger against all who were in any way their superiors. These men were rarely sincere in their convictions. They were for the most part unscrupulous fishers in troubled waters. Of the few that were sincere, Ephraim Beamish was one.

All the elements of dissatisfaction were combined at the period of our tale, and the high price of wheat produced an explosion; but it was Ephraim Beamish who applied the match.

He had been expelled his office as keeper of a mill by the Commissioners, and his enforced idleness gave him leisure to pass from one centre of discontent to another, to stir up the embers, fan them to a white heat, and organise a general outbreak. On a preconcerted day, the labourers rose, and with them was combined a large body of men of no particular calling, who had no particular grievance, and no particular end in view.

No suspicion of danger was entertained by the employers, and when the dissatisfied broke out in open riot, they were taken by surprise and were unprepared to offer resistance.

Bodies of men assembled at Mildenhall, Soham, Isleham, Downham, and Littleport, and the order was given that they were to march upon Ely, and on their way were to extort from the farmers promise of higher wage and cheaper corn. In Ely contributions were to be exacted from the Bishop, the canons, and all the wealthy and well-to-do citizens. The mills were to be wrecked and the banks plundered.

At the head of the whole movement was Beamish, but he was more especially to act as commander over the Littleport detachment.

Having got the men together,—the poachers and wild-duck fowlers armed with their guns, the labourers with cudgels,—he endeavoured to marshal them into some sort of discipline and subjection to orders. But this he found more difficult than to bring the men together. He found the men were not amenable to command, and were indisposed to confine themselves to exacting contributions. Fortified by their numbers, they attacked the grocer's shop, the vicarage, and the home of a retired farmer in Littleport, broke in the doors and pillaged them.

Having tasted the pleasures of plunder, they were prepared to sack and wreck any house whence they thought liquor or money was to be got.

It was in vain that Ephraim Beamish endeavoured to control the unwieldy body of men. Quot homines, tot sententiæ. And as each man in the disorderly love-feasts at Corinth had his prophecy, his psalm, and his interpretation, so in this assemblage of peasants, each had his opinion as to where lay the blame for the distress or discomfort under which he laboured, each had his private grudge to avenge, each his special need which he sought to satisfy, and all were united in equal determination not to submit to dictation from Beamish or any other man.

The tavern at Littleport could hardly escape, although it had been a rendezvous of the dissatisfied. The mob rushed towards it to break in and seize on the contents of the cellar. In vain did Beamish protest that they were injuring a good cause by their disorderly conduct; all desired drink, and none paid heed to his remonstrance.

The taverner barely averted having his house looted by rolling a hogshead of ale out of his doors, and bidding the rioters help themselves.

Then Beamish sprang on a bench and entreated the men to attend to what he had to say.

'We want no words,' said one of the rioters. 'We are dry, we want drink. We've empty pockets, and want to fill them. Our ears have been stuffed with words. Keep them for chapel on Sundays.'

'I will speak,' cried Beamish. 'I am your leader. You have sworn to follow and obey me. You elected me yourselves.'

'Lead us to liquor and sovereigns, and we'll follow sharp enough.'

'You are wasting time. You are damaging a righteous cause. Have we not to march to Ely? Have we not to visit the farmers on the way, and impose our terms there?'

'There's plenty of time for that, Pip.'

'There is not plenty of time. The Mildenhall men are on their way under Cutman, five hundred strong.'

'How do you know that?'

'It was so planned. The Isleham men are marching under Goat, the Soham men under Gotobed. Who will be first in Ely? Is Littleport, that should lead the way, to come in at the tail?'

'There is something in that, mates,' shouted one of the rioters. 'Stand in order, you chaps. To Ely! Bring along the waggon.'

The idea that, if looting were to be done, they of Littleport might come in merely to glean where others had reaped, and the consciousness that a far richer harvest was awaiting them in Ely than could be garnered in Littleport, acted as a stimulus, and the mob desisted from further violence, and roughly organised itself into marching order. All were armed after a fashion, with guns, pitchforks, cudgels, leaping-poles, and cleavers; and as the day was declining, there was a cry for torches.

'We shan't want them,' called one of the men. 'We'll light bonfires on our way.'

Then a waggon was drawn out. In it were stationed some fowlers with duck-guns. The object of the waggon was to serve as a sort of fortress. Those in it were above the heads of the rest, and, in the event of resistance or an attack, could fire over their heads. Moreover, the waggon would be serviceable to carry the spoil taken on the way, or gathered in Ely.

Then the mob rolled along the great drove or highway to the city, with shouts, and oaths, and laughter, and trampled the snow as it advanced, leaving a black slush behind it.

Many of the men were half intoxicated with the ale and spirits they had already imbibed, and all were wholly drunk with lust of gain and love of destruction.

Then one in the waggon shouted, 'To Crumbland!' Another shouted, 'No, no! Young Runham is not bad. He has sold his wheat cheap and thrashed out all his stacks. And the old woman is a widow.'

'That's nought,' exclaimed a third, 'if there's any liquor to be had there!'

'To Gaultrip's!' was the cry.

'Gaultrip is my cousin!' shouted another.

'That's nought,' called one of the mob. 'I suppose he has money.'

'Ely way!' roared Beamish, scrambling into the waggon. 'Drive ahead. What's the use of being the commander, if nobody listens to the word of command, and nobody thinks of obeying it, if he does hear it?'

CHAPTER XXII

TWENTY POUNDS

THE shrill voice of Mrs. Tunkiss was heard, as she ran screaming up the stairs, calling for 'the master.' Then she burst into his room, followed by the maid-of-all-work, who was in convulsive jerks.

'Oh, master! there is a riot. Some of our men have joined, and there is a stack on fire at Gaultrip's. The mob is coming here, and threatens to burn us.'

'Who are coming?' asked Drownlands, looking up. He staggered to his feet, but was as one dazed. He did not observe the glare in the room. He did not hear distinctly the words spoken.

'Look, master! look at the blaze. It is at Gaultrip's. You can hear them coming on. They are swearing horrible, and say they will have our lives.'

'What is this all about?'

'I don't know for certain. Tom Easy has run here afore to tell us what he has gathered. But lawk! poor lad, he's frightened; and me—my poor head won't hold it. He says the mob be armed with bombs and cannons, and all sorts of engines of war, and they'll blow us up into the skies.'

Drownlands passed his hand over his eyes, then went to the window and looked out.

He saw in the distance the red blaze of a burning rick, the flames dancing and leaping in the air, and carrying with them wisps of ignited straw, which were borne on the wind as firebrands, to carry destruction elsewhere. He could see the mob advancing as a ripple of fire running along the drove before a dark wave. The rioters had, in fact, twisted up bands of straw, had lighted them, and were waving them as torches as they advanced, and the flames were reflected in the dykes on each side of the road. Drownlands was surprised. He threw up the sash, and the roar of voices was carried into the room.

'What is the meaning of this?' asked he. 'Who are these that are coming this way?'

'It is the rioters,' answered Mrs. Tunkiss.

'Rioters? What rioters?'

'Lawk! how can I tell? Tom Easy said they want advance of wages, and cheap flour. And he said, they ask for money to help on the cause.'

'Cause? What cause?'

'Lawk, sir! how can I say? Tom Easy said it was the Union of Fen Labourers, and they will have blood or money. They will make you swear to pay them two shillings a-day more wage, and pull the price of flour down to half a crown.'

'They demand money of me, do they? Let them venture to require it of me.'

'Here they are!' screamed Mrs. Tunkiss, as a blow was levelled at the door, and the strokes resounded through the house.

'Who was that?' shouted Drownlands from the window, with a curse. He was not a man to spare oaths when he was angry. 'Who struck my door? I will have the law of him.'

The mob was pouring into the yard.

'Make a blaze, and let us see the old tiger!' shouted one of the rioters, and bunches of straw and corn were snatched from a rick, a blaze was made, and fire tossed about, illumining the face of the house and the figures of the men in the waggon.

'By heaven, I know you!' shouted Drownlands from the window. 'That is Aaron Chevell in the waggon, and by him Isaac Harley and Harry Tansley with guns. I'll not forget you. I have a memory. I have five ash trees on the drove side, and I shall have a rioter slung to every branch of every tree, and shall begin with my own workmen.'

'Hold a civil tongue in your head!' shouted Chevell from the waggon. 'Don't threaten what you can't perform. We have guns here, as you see, and can silence you; and we shan't think twice about doing so, if you do not come to our terms.'

'Master Drownlands!' called Ephraim Beamish, working his way forward in the waggon with his long arms, and leaning his elbows on the front board when he had thrust himself into the middle position, 'you will gain nothing by abuse and threats. We have a good cause, and are a thousand strong to support it. You have had everything in the Fens your own way too long, and have trampled the working men under foot. You have coined their sweat into silver'—

Some one shouted as a correction, 'Into gold.'

'Yes,' said Beamish; 'you have coined the sweat of your men into heavy gold, and have left the men to hunger, and toil, and nakedness; to cramp, and ague, and fever. They have their rights as well as you. They have borne their wrongs long enough. Now they have risen to demand what in equity is theirs—some share of the profits, some just proportion out of your gains, so that they may live in comfort, and not barely live.'

'Shut your mouth!' roared one of the crowd; 'we want no preaching now. We knows our rights, and we'll maintain them with our fists, and not with your tongue. Pip thinks he'll convert Tiger Ki, he does! Words won't do that. Send a shot at him, Tansley. That's the only argument for him.'

Tansley, the man addressed, thrust Beamish back with the butt-end of his fowling-piece, and laid his barrel on the front board.

'Listen, Master Drownlands,' shouted Beamish, again making an effort to shoulder his way to the front of the waggon. 'What we ask of you is twenty pounds for the cause of the United Fen Labourers. Give us twenty pounds, and swear to the conditions—a fair wage and cheap corn. Then we will do you no harm whatever. We will take your money, and move along our way. We are bound for Ely.'

'I pay you twenty pounds?' yelled Drownlands. 'I have a gun as well as you have, and will contribute lead to the cause—lead only.'

He ran to the corner of the room and took down his gun from the rack.

'I'll shoot,' threatened Tansley.

'Ay—and so will I,' said Drownlands, 'and let us see who can take the best aim. I think my eye is pretty well known to be sharp and my hand steady. By the Lord, I'll not spare you!' He paused and put on a hat. 'I can see finely with all those wisps of fire. Hold up your torches, boys, higher, that I may send my bullet into Tansley's heart. He will leap, and then down he goes.'

Fallen pieces of ignited straw had kindled the half-kneaded straw on the ground, and there ran flames and half-flames to and fro on the soil. The cart-horses in the waggon started and shifted position to escape these flashes and flickers.

'Drownlands!' shouted a young voice, and Mark Runham thrust his way through the crowd. 'I pray you be reasonable. You will provoke bloodshed.'