The Turnpike House

Transcriber's Notes: 1. Transcribed from page images published as a serial on page 2 in the Cheshire Observer starting 18 January 1902 (http://newspapers.library.wales/view/4281236/4281238) and ending with 26 April 1902 as provided on the internet by Welsh Newspapers Online.

THE TURNPIKE HOUSE.

By FERGUS HUME, Author of "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," "The Crimson Cryptogram," "The Golden Idol," "Aladdin in London," "The Dwarf's Chamber," etc.

CHAPTER I. THE CONVICT'S RETURN.

It stood where four roads met--a square building of two storeys, with white-washed walls and a high slate roof. The fence, and the once trim garden, had vanished with the turnpike gate; and a jungle of gooseberry bushes, interspersed with brambles, shut off the house from the roads. And only by courtesy could these be so-called, for time and neglect had almost obliterated them.

On all sides stretched a flat expanse of reaped fields, bleak-looking and barren in the waning November twilight. Mists gathered thickly over ditch and hedge and stubbled furrow a constant dripping could be heard in the clumps of trees looming here and there in the fog.

Through the kitchen-garden jungle a narrow, crooked path led up to the door where two rough stones ascended to a broken threshold. Indeed, the whole house appeared ragged in its poverty. Many of the windows were stuffed up with rags; walls, cracked and askew, exuded green slime; moss interspersed with lichen, filled in the crevices of the slates upon the roof. A dog would scarcely have sought such a kennel, yet a dim light in the left-hand window of the lower storey shewed that this kennel was inhabited. There sat within--a woman and a child.

The outer decay but typified the poverty of the interior. Plaster had fallen from walls and ceiling, and both were cracked in all directions. No carpet covered the warped floor, and the pinched fire in the rusty grate gave but scanty warmth to the small apartment. A deal table, without a cloth, two deal chairs, and a three-legged stool--these formed the sole furniture. On the blistered black mantelshelf a few cups and saucers of thick delf ranged themselves, and their gay pinks and blues were the only cheerful note in the prevailing misery.

The elder of these two outcasts sat by the bare table; a tallow candle of the cheapest description stuck in a bottle shed a feeble tight, by which she sewed furiously at a flannel shirt. Stab, click, click, stab, she toiled in mad haste as though working for a wager. Intent on her labour, she had no looks to spare for the ten-year-old boy who crouched by the fire; not that he heeded her neglect, for a brown toy horse took up all his attention, and he was perfectly happy in managing what was, to him, an unruly steed.

From the likeness between these two, the most casual observer would have pronounced them mother and son. She had once been beautiful, this slender woman, with her fair hair and blue eyes, but trouble and destitution had robbed her of a delicate loveliness which could have thriven only under congenial circumstances. In those faded eyes, now feverishly glittering, there lurked and expression of dread telling of a mind ill at ease. Dainty garments would have well become her fairness, but she was clothed, rather than dressed, in a black stuff gown without even a linen collar to relieve its lustreless aspect. Poverty had made her careless of her appearance, heedless of the respect due to herself, and her sole aim, apparently, was the speedy completion of the shirt at which she incessantly wrought.

The boy was a small copy of his mother, with the same fair hair and blue eyes but his face had more colour, his figure was more rounded, and he was clothed with a care which shewed the forethought and the love of a mother even in the direst poverty.

After some twenty minutes of silence, broken only by the clicking of the needle and the low chatter of the child, signs of exhaustion began to show themselves in the worker. Before long, big, hot tears fell on the grey flannel, and she opened her mouth with an hysterical gasp. Slowly and more slowly did the seamstress ply her needle, until at last, with a strangled sob, she flung back her head. "Oh, Heavens!" was her moan, and it seemed to be wrung from the very depths of her suffering heart. The child, with a nervous cry, looked up, trembling violently.

"What is it mother? Is father coming?"

"No, thank Heaven!" said the mother, fiercely. "Do you want him?"

So white did the boy's face become that his eyes shewed black as pitch balls. The question seemed to strike him like a blow, and he hurled himself forward to bury his head in the woman's lap. "Don't--don't let him come!" he sobbed, with unrestrained passion.

"Why do you speak of him, then?" cried the mother, angrily, just as she might have addressed a person of her own age. "Never mention your father, Gilbert. He has gone out of your life--out of mine. He is dead to you--and to me."

"I am glad," sobbed the boy, shaking with nervous excitement. "Are you sure, quite sure, mother, he will never come back again?"

"Who is sure of anything?" muttered the woman, gloomily. "He is out of prison now; at any time he may track us down. But he shall not I get you, my boy," and she strained the child to her breast. "I would kill him first!"

"I would kill him, too--kill him, too!" panted Gilbert, brokenly. "Oh, mother, mother! I hate him! I hate him!" and he burst into tears.

"Hush, hush, my baby!" soothed the mother. "Never think of him. He will not get you. No, no."

But the boy continued to sob convulsively, and it required all her arts to pacify him. She knew from experience what the end of this outbreak would be if it continued beyond a point. The lad was precocious and neurotic, quite undisciplined, taking colour from his surroundings, tone from the atmosphere in which he chanced to be; and as the fit took him, could be angel or demon. But in ten minutes the mother had succeeded in soothing him sufficiently to send him back to his play. Then she recommenced her work, and as the needle flew through the coarse stuff she thought of her husband.

"The brute! The hound!" so ran her thoughts. "It is his work. If Gilbert should see him again he would die or go mad, or fall into one of his trances. In any case he would be lost to me. Ah!" she broke out aloud, pushing the hair from her lined forehead. "How long will it last?"

There was no answer to the despairing question, and she went on sewing, listening the while to the prattle of her lad.

"Stand still. Brownie!" the child was saying. "You aren't galloping over the big green of Bedford-park. Do you remember your nice stable by this there, Brownie, and the pretty rooms? I don't like this house any more than you do. Mother was happy in our pretty cottage, so was I, so was my Brownie."

"Mother will never be happy again," murmured the woman, savagely stabbing the flannel as though she were stabbing the man of whom she was thinking. "Ruin and disaster. Disaster and ruin! Why are such men created?"

Gilbert took no notice. "Do you remember the red houses, Brownie, and the railway? I took you there often for a trot. It was just three years ago. Trot now!"

"Aye, just three years!" cried the woman. "Years of agony, pain, shame and disgrace. Why doesn't he die!" and she bit off the end of a thread viciously.

"Mother," said the boy, unexpectedly, "I'm hungry. Give me something to eat."

The woman opened a cupboard and brought out a small loaf, a bundle of victuals, and a tiny packet of tea, precious as gold to her poverty. In silence she boiled the kettle and brewed a cup; in silence she set the food before the hungry child. But when he began to eat her feelings proved too much for her. She burst into fierce words.

"Eat the bread of charity, Gilbert!" she said in a loud, hard voice, and still speaking as though to a person of her own age. "The loaf only is paid for by our own money. I got the bones and the meat from Miss Cass at the Hall. She took me for a beggar in spite of the work I have done for her. And she is right, I am a beggar--so are you--and your father---- There, there! Don't look so scared. We will not speak of him."

Then the boy did a strange thing. With a sudden pounce he seized a sharp-pointed, buck-handled knife used for cutting the bread, and, raising it in the air, looked at his mother with fierce eyes.

"If my father takes me away from you," he said, shrilly, "I'll stick this into him. I will, mother!"

With an ejaculation of terror she snatched the knife out of his small hands, clenched now so wickedly. "Heaven forgive me," she thought, laying it down on the table. "My hatred comes out in him. I may lead him into danger. Heaven keep his father out of his way. I should see a doctor." She glanced round the room and laughed bitterly. "Oh, Heavens'" she broke out aloud. "See a doctor. I can't pay, and ask him in this hovel! Charity? No, no. I'll earn my bread, if I die in the earning." And she fell as fiercely as before to her sewing.

Gilbert, now himself again, ate slowly and with much enjoyment. At intervals he fed the horse which he had brought to the table with him. His mother watched him, pondering over his late outburst so terribly suggestive of the latent instincts in the child. She knew well the reason of it, though she would not acknowledge so much even to herself. Her husband had treated her brutally, and the high-spirited creature had resented his behaviour with passionate hatred. She had taught her child to detest his father.

It was a wild night. The wind beat against the crazy building till it creaked in all its loosened joints. Still the woman went on sewing, and the boy continued to eat. A miserable silence settled down upon them.

Suddenly the mother raised her hand, and the child stopped eating with an expression of terror on his white face.

The woman listened, wild eyed--not in vain. From some distance came the sound of a dragging footstep. There was a drag, a halt, and then again a drag, as though some wounded animal were writhing its way to a place of safety. The outcast knew the sound of that halting gait only two well. So did the boy.

"It's father!" he cried, shrilly. A look of mingled terror, repulsion, hatred, took possession of his white face.

"Hush!" said the woman, imperatively, and left the room. For a moment Gilbert sat quietly listening; then his small hand slipped along the table to grasp the buck-handled knife. Trembling with excitement, he watched the door; he could hear without his mother's taunting voice.

"Come in, Mark Jenner. I know you are standing there in the darkness. Enter, and see the state to which your wickedness has reduced your wife and child. Come in, you lying scoundrel, you brute, you thief!"