Cheap Jack Zita

He released her arm. She felt that his hand was shaking. He knew that it shook, and he was afraid lest she should observe it.

He walked in silence to the stable with his head lowered. Zita followed. She had gained a first advantage. She had forestalled his attack, and now, instead of her being cowed by him, he was subdued by her.

When they were both in the stable,—for she had followed him to show him how little fear she entertained,—then he addressed her in an altered tone.

'You do not intend to leave me?'

'No; if you desire me to remain, I will remain.'

'I do desire it. I could not endure that you should go.'

'That is right; but why did you threaten me? I will stay. I could not put up old Jewel in the windmill, and I haven't been invited to Crumbland by Mark Runham.'

He stamped his foot impatiently and set his teeth.

'Why do you speak of him again?'

'Speech is free here—in the van—in a king's palace—everywhere save a gaol. I will speak of any one I choose, at any time, before any one, and in any place I like.'

'Why did you go with him today?'

'Because I am free to go where I choose, and with whom I choose. This is Sunday, and a holiday.'

'Yes; but if you have any regard for me, do not go with him at all.' He drew a long breath, removed and put on again his broad-brimmed hat. 'Why do you speak to me of payment for the trifling things I have done for you? of payment with warming-pans, red waistcoats, and fish-glue?'

'I am glad we are round to that point again,' said Zita, 'for speak of that I must. No one can be expected to do things for nothing. If you house me and Jewel, and feed us both'—

'You have worked—you have done more than that beldame Leehanna and the girl would do in twenty years.'

'I have taken that into account. I know how many hours I have worked at fivepence three-farthings (needles and thread included). Nevertheless, the balance is against me. There is the warming-pan, or the scrubbing-brushes, or the fish-glue'—

He struck his fist against the stable door to drown her words.

Zita put her hand on his arm.

'It is of no good your acting the fool,' she said. 'What is right is right. I shouldn't feel square in my insides if the account were not balanced. My dear father was mighty particular on that score. Every night we balanced our accounts as true as any banker, with a stump of a pencil as he sucked. If I don't balance I can't sleep. I'll put to my account some pins I had set to yours, all because of that squinch of the wrist you gave me. If I were to leave your house to-morrow, Master Drownlands, you'd find on the shelf in my room a row of articles that I reckoned up would belong in rights to you as balancing our account.'

He did not answer. He thrust his horse into a stall and put a halter round its head.

Then Zita went to the corn-chest and brought out a feed. The horse whinnied as he sniffed the oats. Drownlands was in the stall tightening the knot at the end of the halter. As Zita turned to depart, after having tossed the oats into the manger, he came out after her, and, laying hold of one side of the corn-measure, said—

'Are you going?'

'Yes. I have fed Pepper.'

He shook the measure, and said, in tones of angry discouragement, 'You will not take a bite of my bread, nor lie on a flock of my wool, nor cover your golden head with one tile of my roof, but you must weigh each and prize and pay me its value to the turn of a hair.'

'Not so exactly; of course, I leave a margin.'

'A margin of what?'

'Profits!'

'To whom?'

'To myself, of course. We should never get along in the world without profits. When we come to deal among friends, as you and I, then the profits are reasonable. But when one has to do with the general public,—that father always called the General Jackass,—then you lay it on thick and heavy. Without profits of some sort one can't sleep the sleep of innocence, as father said. But it is one thing dealing with General Jackass and another with a friend; and I want you to understand the footing on which we deal is the latter.'

'So—the footing of buy and sell?'

'Yes. I take my small profits. When a dressmaker makes your frocks, she charges you for a packet of needles and uses one—the rest are profits. She charges you for a knot of tape, and uses two yards and a half—the rest is profit. And she cuts out eight yards of lining, and puts down twelve—four are profits; and she puts you some frilling round your neck and cuffs, charging three yards, and she uses one—there's profits again. I do the same with you. I couldn't sleep if I didn't. It's feather bed and pillow and bolster to me—profits.'

'Take what you will. All you like.'

'No,' said Zita. 'Fair trade between us. We deal as friends. I respect and regard you too greatly to treat you as if you were General Jackass.'

Then she left the empty corn-measure in his hand and walked away, with a swing of the shoulders, a toss of the head, an elasticity in her tread, that appertained to one who was victor—not to one defeated. And Drownlands stood looking after her, holding the empty corn-measure, and he wondered at himself that he had been beaten at every point by this girl—he who had galloped home boiling with anger, resolved to break her into meek subjection to his will.

CHAPTER XV

ON ANOTHER FOOTING

A SOUGH of wind passed over the Fens like a long-drawn sigh. Every one who heard it listened in silence. It was repeated, and then the general comment was, 'The skating is over.'

Nor was the comment falsified by the event. The wind had veered round suddenly, without warning, to the south-west. It blew all night and sent a warm rain against the windows that faced that quarter. It covered wood and walls with dew. The ice broke up in the river, it dissolved in the dykes. The sails of the mills were again in revolution, they whirled merrily, merrily.

Zita had come upon the embankment to see the broken ice drift down the sluggish river, swept along by the wind rather than the current. There she encountered Mark Runham.

'What, you here, Cheap Jackie? No, hang it! I won't call you that. It seems impudent; but I do not mean that, you may be sure.'

'I know that, and am not offended.'

'Your name—it continually slips my memory.'

'Zita.'

'A queer sort of a name that.'

'It is not often you meet a Cheap Jack girl. They do not come thick as windmills in the flats. So it suits me to bear a queer name.'

'A queer name becomes a queer girl.'

'Thanks. I have something for you—half a pound of bird's eye.'

'What for?'

'In payment for my run on the ice.'

'I do not want payment.'

'It gave you trouble, made you hot, but it was a very great pleasure to me.'

'I won't take it.' The young fellow laughed with his merry eyes as well as with his fresh lips. 'Can you understand this, that it gave me five times as much pleasure as it did you to spin you along and see the red roses bloom in your cheeks and those dark eyes of yours twinkle as though there were Jack o' Lanterns dancing in them? Zita, it is not every day that a lad gets the chance of running a pretty girl along the ice. It is I am in debt to you. We'll square the account, anyhow.' He caught her head between his hands and gave her a kiss on her red lips. 'There is the account scored out, and a new account begun.'

'That is not fair!' exclaimed Zita, shrinking back.

'What! not settled? Again, then.' He kissed her once more. 'And so—till all is right, and the balance squared.'

Then he laughed, and, releasing her head, said—

'You know we raced,—that old Drownlands and I,—and you were to be the prize. I won you.' Then, seeing that she looked disturbed, he went off to, 'Now, Cheap Jackie, tell me, was not that a droll sort of a life, going over the world in that comical van?'

'It was a very happy life, and the van was not comical at all. It is splendid.'

'I have not seen it.'

'Then why did you call it unsuitable names?'

'A jolly life, was it?'

'Indeed it was. I was very happy in it—specially when we had piled up the profits.'

'You made a pile when you sold my father a flail for a guinea.'

'We did; but if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, it was the thoughts of that made him pass away so happy.'

'A guinea was nought to my father; he was rich. Now I am rich.' Then, with a trip of his foot on the bank as though he were dancing, 'Zita, what a joke it would be for us to go round in the summer with the old van and the stock-in-trade. What have you done with the goods?'

'They are safe.'

'And we will visit Swaffham, and Littleport, and Ely together, and sell away like blazes. I'll attend to the horse, and you shall do all the talking the folk want. What fun it will be!'

'No,' said Zita, colouring; 'that will not be right.'

'Why not?'

'No. It was all very well with my father. But I will not go again.'

'You must—you shall—with me!'

'I will not—indeed I will not.' She turned away.

'Well, anyhow you will show me the van?'

'Yes. When you like.'

'I can't well go into Prickwillow as matters are between us and Drownlands—not that I bear him ill-will, but he is sour as a crab towards me. We will manage it somehow at some time. But I can't help thinking what fun it would be for us two to travel the world all over together, selling pots and pans. I wish I had been born a Cheap Jack. Where are you off to now, Zita?'

'I am going to see Kainie at Red Wings.'

'I will go with you. I also want to see her. I am very fond of Kainie, I am.' Said with a mischievous laugh.

'I daresay you are, but I am going alone.'

'Nonsense! I shall go with you. I must see Kainie. I have an errand to her.'

'Who sent you?'

Mark hesitated, then said, 'Well, no one. But it is business. I must go.'

'Then go. I will remain here.'

Zita observed a lighter moored to the bank in the river. She stepped towards it. 'I will go into the barge. Will you come with me and punt me about?'

'I cannot. I must go to Kainie.'

'You wanted to come with me in the van, asked me to go with you. Now I ask you to come with me in the boat, and you will not.'

'I pay you off,' said Mark good-naturedly. 'You would not travel with me in the van, so I will not travel with you in the barge. But, seriously, I cannot. I must go on to Kainie. Come along with me,' urged Mark. 'Kainie will be pleased to see you.'

'Oh! you can answer for her?'

'In some things; certainly in this.'

'I will not go.'

Zita pouted and turned her back on Mark. The young man did not press her to change her intention. The decision in her face, the look in her eyes, convinced him that his labour would be in vain were he to attempt it. He started in the direction of Red Wings without her, and whistled as he walked. Zita's brow was moody. She was a girl of impulse and of no self-restraint, changeful in temper and vehement in passion.

There was no reason why she should resent Mark's going to Red Wings, and yet she did resent it. If he had to go, and she refused to accompany him, he must go without her. That was obvious, and yet she was very wroth. In her mind she contrasted Drownlands with Mark. She had but to express a wish to the former, and it was complied with. Had she said to him that she desired him to row her on the canal, he would have placed himself at her service with eager delight. But this scatterbrained Mark had no notion of submission to her wishes. He had desired her society on the bank; when she refused it, he did without it, and did without it with a light heart—he went away whistling.

Zita stepped into the barge and seated herself on the side. She put her chin in her hand and looked sullenly into the water full of broken, half-dissolved pieces of ice.

She was hot, her angry blood was racing through her veins. She was, in her way, as impetuous as Drownlands. She had been suffered in her girlhood by her father to follow her own bent, to do just what she liked. But, indeed, there had been no occasion for him to cross her, their interests were identical. Good-natured though Zita was, she was masterful. She had sense, but sense is sometimes obscured by passion.

She sat biting her nails. A fire was in her cheeks, and now and then the tears forced themselves into her burning eyes.

What could Mark have to call him to Red Wings?

What possible business could he have with Kainie?

Red Wings was not on his land; the mill did not drain his dykes.

Zita marvelled how long Mark would remain with Kerenhappuch. Would he sit down with her in her cabin? Would their conversation turn on herself—Zita? Would Mark say that she was sulky? What would Kerenhappuch reply? Would she not say, 'What else can you expect from a girl who is a vagabond? We who lead settled lives in mills and farmhouses know how to behave ourselves. What can you get out of a chimney but soot? What does a marsh breed but gadflies?'

It is really wonderful what a cloud of torments an ingenious mind can rouse if it resolves to give run to fancy. Perhaps a woman is more prone to this than a man. She conceives conversations relative to herself; she puts into the mouths of the speakers the most offensive expressions relative to herself. She wreathes their faces with contemptuous smiles, gives to their voices insulting intonations, and finally assumes that all the brood of her festering brain is real fact, and not mirage.

It was so now with Zita.

She was startled from her reverie of self-torment by a shock in the boat. She looked up, startled, and saw before her a man with long arms and large hands, dark-haired and dark-eyed. He was handsome, but his face bore an expression of sour discontent. The thin lips were indicative of a sharp and querulous temper, and the checks seemed as though they could not dimple into laughter.

'What are you doing in the lighter?' asked the man, whom Zita recognised as Ephraim Beamish, the orator.

'I suppose I have as much right to be in the boat as you,' answered the girl peevishly.

'No doubt. We neither have any right anywhere. We are both poor. I know who you are—the Cheap Jack girl. I hear you have been taken into Prickwillow. Wish you happiness. It is not the place I should care to be in. Drownlands is not the man to clothe the poor, house the wanderer, feed the hungry, without expecting his reward—and that here. He does nothing of good to any one but to serve his own ends. He has just had me turned out.'

'Turned out of what?'

'Turned out of my mill, out of my employ, out of my livelihood. I have now to run about the fens, in ice and snow. I have no home. I am a gentleman, however, for I have no work. The rats may shelter in the barn, the mice may nest in the stack, but I must be without a roof to cover my head, without work to engage my hands, and without bread to put into my mouth. And all for why? Because I have been bold to speak the truth. Truth is like light. Men hate it and turn their eyes from it. Them as speaks the truth gets persecuted, and I am one of these.'

'You can obtain work elsewhere,' said Zita, displeased at having her imaginary troubles broken in on by some one with a real grievance.

'No, I cannot,' answered Beamish; 'the owners of property hang together like bees when they swarm. If you disturb one, the whole hive sets on you and stings you to death.'

'Well,' said Zita irritably, 'you need not tell me all this. I cannot assist you.'

'I do not suppose you can. But—has Property got into your blood, that you speak so sharp to me? Maybe, like a bat, you're hanging on to it by a claw. Like a gnat, you have your lips to it, and are sucking your fill. I do not ask your help. I fend for myself. But I like to talk. Nothing will be done to correct evils if the evils be not talked about. You must go round Jericho and blow the trumpets seven times, and seven times again, before the walls will fall, and we can march up and take the city. Let Property look out. The working people will not stand to be robbed and maltreated any longer.'

Beamish unloosed the rope that attached the boat to the shore, and, taking a pole, thrust out and began slowly to force the vessel up stream, talking as he punted.

'You may tell Drownlands my curse rests on him; and that will rot his timber and rust his corn.'

'I will bear him no such message,' said Zita. 'But where are you taking me?'

'Up the river. I shall leave you presently; but I will return and punt you back again.'

'Where are you going?'

'To Red Wings.'

'What do you want there?'

'I have an errand,' answered Beamish.

'There is one gone there before you, with an errand from himself—and that is Mark Runham.'

'He there!' exclaimed Pip Beamish, leaning on the punting-pole and looking down into the water. 'Property meets one everywhere. Property blights everything. I am a poor chap. I am cast out of employ; but I did think I had my ewe lamb. And now Property comes between me and her. Property says to me, "Go—what I cannot consume I will destroy, lest you have it." Do you think, you Cheap Jack girl, that Mark Runham will marry Kainie? He is a man of property, and property hungers for property. She is like me. She has nothing. She is a miller grinding nought save water.'

He thrust the boat towards the shore.

'I'll not go to see her,' said Beamish. 'I could not bear it. I'm off to the Duck at Isleham. I shall meet there some fellows who love the working people, and who will combine to teach these men who hold the Fens in their fists to deal with their labourers justly and mercifully.'

He leaped ashore, mounted the bank, and, standing there, extended his long arms and expanded his great hands, and cried, 'I see the day coming! I see the light about to break! The trumpet will sound, and the dead and crushed working men will rise and stand on their feet. That will be a day of vengeance!—a day of fire and consuming heat! Then will the fen-farmers call to the earth to swallow them, and to the isles to cover them, against the anger of the dead men risen up in judgment against them.'

'There comes Mark,' said Zita. 'I suppose I must get him to punt me home. But I shall not speak to him all the way.'

CHAPTER XVI

BURNT HATS

AT the time of our tale, the Duck at Isleham—a solitary inn on slightly rising ground—was notorious as a place of resort for poachers, a centre to which smuggled goods were brought from the Wash, and whence they were distributed, and a general rendezvous for the dissatisfied. Not a bad trade was done at the Duck. Thither came the poachers as to a mart for the disposal of their game, and the dealers to take the spoil of the poachers; thither came not only those who brought, up the dark path from the sea, spirits which had not paid duty, but also the farmers who desired to lay in supplies. As the fen-water was not potable unmixed, it was a matter of necessity for the fen-dwellers to temper it with something that would neutralise its unpleasant savour as well as kill its unwholesome elements. Moreover, such being the case, those who desired to lay in a stock of this counteracting agent went for it, by a law of nature, to the cheapest shop, and the cheapest shop was that where the traffic was in spirits that were contraband. Lastly, at the Duck assembled the great company of grumblers, large everywhere, but especially large in the Fens.

As the Duck afforded space for a good many grumblers in bar and kitchen and parlour, and as grumblers like to grumble into the ears of men of their own kidney, the Duck drew to it the discontented of all classes—farmers dissatisfied with their rent, yeomen dissatisfied at their rates, artisans out of humour because trade was slack, gangers, clayers, bankers, gaulters, slodgers, millers, molers, gozzards—everyone whom the depressing atmosphere of the Fens made dispirited, and who thought the cause of his depression was due to the oppression of some one else.

The kitchen of the Duck was full. A great fire of turf was heaped up, and glowed red, diffusing heat, but giving out no flame, and, notwithstanding the tobacco smoke, filling the place with its penetrating, peculiar odour. The men present—on this occasion they were all men—were drinking; they were mostly men of the class of agricultural labourer. Among them were two or three with dazed eyes, men silent, pallid, who looked at the speakers and acquiesced in every sentiment or opinion expressed, however contradictory they might be. These were opium-eaters.

In the Fens, almost every cottage grows its crop of white poppy in the small garden. Of the poppy heads a tea is brewed. The mothers are accustomed to work in the fields, hoeing between the ranks of wheat. The rich soil that produces the corn produces also weeds that have to be kept under. That the babe may not interfere with the mother earning a small wage, it is given poppy tea, and that sends it to sleep for the day. But the drops of opium thus administered in infancy affect the tender brains, bewilder them, and subject the child to nervous pains. As it grows up to man or womanhood, it has recourse to the drug to which it was brought up in infancy. A large business in laudanum is done in the Fens, and much of the distraught mind and tortured nerve is due to this cause. The poppy tea dispels trouble as surely as whisky, and opium dulls pain at a cheaper and surer rate than the surgeon who boggles over its removal.

'I tell you,' said Pip Beamish, 'it is due to the farmers and yeomen. Look at them, up to the eyes in gold, and gold that is squeezed out of the fen by your hands. Till they have been taught a lesson, and that a sharp and stinging one, they will go on in the same way. No Acts of Parliament will help us. You may send up whom you will, Whig or Tory, to Westminster, it is the same. No party will do aught for you. No judges and no jury are of any avail, for law can't come in and right us. We must do that with our own hands. When a boy won't do the right thing, you put a stick across his back and make him; you don't ask for an Act of Parliament, you don't elect a member to teach him his duty. We must teach our farmers as you teach idle and thievish boys. Teach them in such a way as they won't forget. Teach them to fear the rod. Set the stackyards blazing throughout the Fens, and by the light of those fires they'll begin to see what is the way of justice and equity.'

'I don't see how that's going to lower the price of wheat,' said a ganger, named Silas Gotobed. 'You sez that the cost of bread is too high. If you burn the wheatstacks, there will be less corn, and up the price will go.'

'You're right there. That's reason, Silas,' said a third, Thomas Goat, a gaulter. 'The mischief don't lie with the farmers. They grow the corn—some one must do that. The wickedness is in the eaters.'

'Why, we're all eaters.'

'Ay!' said Goat sententiously. 'But we've a right to eat; there be a lot eats as hasn't a right to do so.'

'You mean rats and mice.'

'No, I don't—leastways not four-legged ones.'

'What do you mean, then?'

'It is them collegers,' said Goat. 'I've been to Cambridge. I've seen them there, a thousand of them. They come up in swarms from every part of England, and there they do nought but eat and drink and row on the river, and play cricket on Parker's Piece. Rowin' and playin' cricket ain't qualifications for eatin'. What would you say if a thousand rats, big as bullocks, was to come on to the Fens and attack our stacks? There'd be a pretty outcry. Every man would take down his gun. The terriers would be called for. Traps, poison would be laid, and none quiet till every rat was exterminated. Very well, up from every part of England come these darned collegers to the Univarsity, and spend their time there, eatin'—eatin'—eatin'. Mates, I axes, what are they eatin'? It is the wheat we grow on our fens. I calculate that one-half of what we grow goes down into their stomicks. If there were no collegers, then there'd be twice as much corn, and corn would be at forty-eight instead of ninety-six. It is that Univarsity and them collegers does it. I have shown you that as clear as these five fingers of mine. If that ain't reason, show me where it is to be found.'

'I don't hold with you,' said Gotobed, impatient at having his say snapped out of his mouth. 'I suppose collegers must eat somewhere.'