CHAPTER VII

PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO HIS FARM OF A FARMER

I

The front door of the farmhouse, embowered in a porch, was found to be on the side further from the strawyard. A fine knocker, very massive, hung upon the door, and this Mr. Puddlebox now seized and operated very loudly, with effect of noise which, echoing through the silent house and through the still air of early morning, would in former circumstances have utterly horrified Mr. Wriford and have put him to panic-stricken flight in very natural apprehension of what it would bring forth. Now, however, it had no other effect upon him than first to make him give a nervous gasp and nervous laugh of nervous glee, and next himself to seize the knocker and put into it all the determination of those old days forever ended and these new days of freedom in which he cared for nothing and for nobody now begun.

Fiercely Mr. Wriford knocked until his arm was tired and then flung down the knocker with a last crash and turned on Mr. Puddlebox a flushed face and eyes that gleamed. "I don't care a damn what happens!" he cried.

"My word," said Mr. Puddlebox, gazing at him, "something is like to happen now after all that din. You've got hold of yourself this time, boy."

Mr. Wriford laughed recklessly. "I'll show you," he cried, "I'll show you this time!" and took up the knocker again.

But something was shown without his further effort. His hand was scarcely put to the knocker, when a casement window grated above the porch in which they stood, and a very harsh voice cried: "What's up? Who's that? What's the matter there?" and then with a change of tone: "What's that light in the sky? Is there a fire?"

Mr. Wriford, his new fierceness of not caring, of letting himself go, fierce upon him, was for rushing out of the porch to look up at the window and face this inquiry, but Mr. Puddlebox a moment restrained him. "That's our old villain for sure," Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "There's no ghost of light in the sky that fire would make; but he's prepared for one, and that proves him the old villain that he is."

"Now, then!" rasped the voice. "Who are you down there? What's up? What's that light in the sky?"

Out from the porch charged Mr. Wriford, Mr. Puddlebox with a hand on his arm bidding him: "Go warily, boy; leave this to me."

So they faced the window, and there, sure enough, framed within it, was displayed the gentleman that had been seen with the lantern, with the black scrub upon his upper lip, and with the yellow teeth protruded beneath it.

"That light is the moon," Mr. Puddlebox informed him pleasantly. "Luna, the dear old moon. Queen-Empress of the skies."

"The moon!" shouted the yellow-toothed gentleman. "The moon! Who the devil are you, and what's your business?"

Mr. Puddlebox responded stoutly to this rough address. "Why, what to the devil else should it be but the moon? Is it something else you're looking for--?"

The yellow-toothed gentleman interrupted him by leaning out to his waist from the window and bellowing: "Something else! Come, what the devil's up and what's your business, or I'll rouse the house and set about the pair of 'ee."

Then Mr. Wriford, no longer to be restrained. Mr. Wriford, fierce to indulge his resolution not to care for anybody and shaking with the excitement of it. Mr. Wriford, to Mr. Puddlebox's much astonishment, in huge and ferocious bawl: "What's up!" bawled Mr. Wriford, hopping about in reckless ecstasy of fierceness. "What's up! Why, you know jolly well what's up, you beastly old villain. Tried to set your barn afire, you ugly-faced old scoundrel! I saw you! I was in there! I saw you with your lamp! Come down, you rotten-toothed old fiend! Come down and have your face smashed, you miserable old sinner!"

The gentleman thus opprobriously addressed disappeared with great swiftness, and immediately could be heard thumping down-stairs with sounds that betokened bare feet.

"That's done it," said Mr. Wriford, wiping his face which was very hot, and placed himself before the porch to await the expected arrival.

"My goodness, it has," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You've let yourself go this time, boy. And what the devil is going to happen next--

"I'll show you," cried Mr. Wriford and, as the key turned in the lock and the door opened, proceeded to the demonstration thus promised with a fierceness of action even more astonishing than his earlier outburst of words.

The door was no sooner opened to reveal the yellow-toothed gentleman in his nightshirt and bare feet, than Mr. Wriford rushed upon him, seized him by his flowing garment, and dragged him forth into the yard. Mr. Wriford then revolved very swiftly, causing the yellow-toothed gentleman, who had the wider ambit to perform, to revolve more swiftly yet, and this on naked feet that made him complain very loudly and bound very highly when they lighted upon a stone, spun him in these dizzy circles down the yard, and after a final maze at final speed released him with the result that the yellow-toothed gentleman first performed a giddy whirl entirely on his own account, then the half of another on his heels and in mortal danger of overbalancing, and then, with the best intentions in the world to complete this circuit, was checked by waltzing into his duck-pond, wherein with a very loud shriek he disappeared.

Mr. Wriford again wiped his face, which was now much hotter than before, and with a cry of "Come on!" to Mr. Puddlebox, who was staring in amazement towards the pond and its struggling occupant, made a run to the house. Mr. Puddlebox joined him within the door, and Mr. Wriford then locked the door behind them, and looking very elatedly at Mr. Puddlebox, inquired of him triumphantly: "Well, what about that?"

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I never saw the like of it. It's a licker."

"So it is!" cried Mr. Wriford. "I fairly buzzed him, didn't I? You needn't whisper. There's no one here but ourselves, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that chap's managed to get the place to himself so that he could make no mistake about getting his barn burnt down. Anyway, I'm going to see, and I don't care a dash if there is." And by way of seeing, Mr. Wriford put up his head and shouted: "Hulloa! Hulloa, is there anybody in here?"

"Hulloa!" echoed Mr. Puddlebox, subscribing with great glee to Mr. Wriford's excitement.

"Hulloa!" cried Mr. Wriford in a very loud voice. "If anybody wants a hit in the eye come along down and ask for it!"

To this engaging invitation there was from within the house no answer; but from without, against the door, a very loud thud which was the yellow-toothed gentleman hurling himself against it, and then his fists beating against it and his voice crying: "Let me in! Let me in, won't you!"

"No, I won't!" called Mr. Wriford, and answered the banging with lusty and defiant kicks. "Get back to your pond or I'll come and throw you there."

"I'm cold," cried the yellow-toothed gentleman, changing his voice to one of entreaty. "Look here, I want to talk to you."

"Go and light your barn again and warm yourself," shouted Mr. Puddlebox; but the laughter with which he shouted it was suddenly checked, for the yellow-toothed gentleman was heard to call: "Hullo! Hi! Jo! Quick, Jo! Come along quick!"

"Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "we ought to have got away from this while he was in the pond. What to the devil's going to happen now?"

"Listen," said Mr. Wriford; but they had scarcely listened a minute before there happened a sound of breaking glass in an adjoining room. "They're getting in through a window," cried Mr. Wriford. "We must keep them out."

Several doors led from the spacious old hall in which they stood, and Mr. Puddlebox, choosing one, chose the wrong one, for here was an apartment whose window stood intact and beyond which the sounds of entry could still be heard. A further door in this room that might have led to them was found to be locked and without key. Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford charged back to the hall, down the hall alongside this room, through a door which led to a passage behind it, and thence through another door which revealed one gentleman in his nightshirt, yellow and black with mire from head to foot, who was reaching down a wide-mouthed gun from the wall, and another gentleman in corduroys, having a bucolic countenance which was very white, who in the act of entry had one leg on the floor and the other through the window.

II

"If they've got in we'll run for it," Mr. Puddlebox had said as they came down the passage. But the room was entered so impetuously that the only running done was, perforce, into it, and at that with a stumbling rush on the part of Mr. Puddlebox into the back of the nightshirt and the collapse of Mr. Wriford over Mr. Puddlebox's heels upon him. Mr. Puddlebox encircled the nightshirt about its waist with his arms; the nightshirt, gun in hand, staggered towards the corduroy and with the gun swept its supporting leg from under it; the gun discharged itself through its bell-shaped mouth with an appalling explosion; the corduroy with a loud shriek to the effect that he was dead fell upon the head of the nightshirt; and there was immediately a tumult of four bodies with sixteen whirling legs and arms, no party to which had any clear perception as to the limbs that belonged to himself, or any other strategy of campaign than to claw and thump at whatever portion of whoever's body offered itself for the process. There were, with all this, cries of very many kinds and much obscenity of meaning, changing thrice to a universal bellow of horror as first a table and its contents discharged itself upon the mass, then a dresser with an artillery of plates and dishes, and finally a grandfather clock which, descending sideways along the wall, swept with it a comprehensive array of mural decorations.

Assortment of arms and legs was at length begun out of all this welter by the corduroyed gentleman who, finding himself not dead as he had believed, but in great danger of reaching that state in some very horrible form, found also his own hands and knees and upon them crawled away very rapidly towards an adjoining room whose door stood invitingly open. There were fastened to his legs as he did so a pair of hands whose owner he first drew after him, then dislodged by, on the threshold of the open door, beating at them with a broken plate, and having done so, sprung upright to make for safety. The owner of the hands however sprung with him, attached them--and it was Mr. Wriford--to his throat, and thrust him backwards into the adjoining room and into the midst of several shallow pans of milk with which the floor of this room was set.

This apartment was, in fact, the dairy; and here, while thunder and crashing proceeded from the other room in which Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt weltered, extraordinary contortions to the tune of great splashing and tin-pan crashing were forced upon the corduroyed gentleman by Mr. Wriford's hands at his throat. Broad shelves encircled this room, and first the corduroyed gentleman was bent backwards over the lowest of these until the back of his head adhered to some pounds of butter, then whirled about and bent sideways until in some peril of meeting his end by suffocation in cream, then inclined to the other side until a basket of eggs were no longer at their highest market value, and finally hurled from Mr. Wriford to go full length and with a large white splash into what pans of milk remained in position on the floor.

Mr. Wriford, with a loud "Ha!" of triumph, and feeling, though greatly bruised in the first portion of the fight and much besmeared with dairy-produce in the second, much more of a man than he had ever felt before, then dashed through the door and locked it upon the corduroy's struggles to free himself from death in a milky grave, and then prepared to give fierce assistance to the drier but as deadly fray still waging between Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt.

Upon the welter of crockery and other debris here to view, these combatants appeared to be practising for a combined rolling match, or to be engaged in rolling the litter into a smooth and equable surface. Locked very closely together by their arms, and with equal intensity by their legs, they rolled first to one end of the room or to a piece of overturned furniture and then, as if by common consent, back again to the other end or to another obstacle. This they performed with immense swiftness and with no vocal sounds save very distressed breathing as they rolled and very loud and simultaneous _Ur!_ as they checked at the end of a roll and started back for the next.

As Mr. Wriford watched, himself breathing immensely after his own exertions yet laughing excitedly at what he saw, he was given opportunity of taking part by the rollers introducing a new diversion into their exercise. This was provided by the grandfather clock, which, embedded in the debris like a partly submerged coffin, now obstructed their progress. A common spirit of splendid determination not to be stopped by it appeared simultaneously to animate them. With one very loud _Ur!_ they came against it; with a secondhand a third and each time a louder _Ur!_ charged it again and again; with a fourth _Ur!_ magnificently mounted it; and with a fifth, the debris on this side being lower, plunged down from it. The shock in some degree relaxed their embrace one with the other. From their locked forms a pair of naked legs upshot. Mr. Wriford jumped for the ankles, clutched them amain, and with the information "I've got his legs!" and with its effect, encouraged Mr. Puddlebox to a mighty effort, whereby at length he broke free from the other's grasp, sat upright upon the nightshirt's chest, and then, securing its arms, faced about towards Mr. Wriford, and seated himself upon the nightshirt's forehead.

"Where's yours?" said Mr. Puddlebox, when he had collected sufficient breath for the question.

"Locked up in there," said Mr. Wriford, nodding his head towards the dairy.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "this has been the most devil of a thing that ever any man has been in, and I challenge you or any man ever to have been in a worse."

"I'll have you in a worse," bawled the nightshirt. "I'll--" and as though incapable of giving sufficient words to his intentions he opened his mouth very widely and emitted from it a long and roaring bellow. Into this cavern of his jaws Mr. Puddlebox, now kneeling on the nightshirt's arms, dropped a cloth cap very conveniently abandoned by the corduroy; and then, facing across the prostrate form, Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford went into a hysteria of laughter only checked at last by the nightshirt, successfully advantaging himself of the weakening effect of their mirth, making a tremendous struggle to overthrow them.

"But, loony," said Mr. Puddlebox when the farmer was again mastered, "we are best out of this, for such a battle I could by no means fight again."

"Well, I don't care," said Mr. Wriford. "I don't care a dash what happens or who comes. Still, we'd better go. First we must tie this chap up and then clean ourselves. My man's all right in there. There's no window where he is--only a grating round the top. I'll find something to fix this one with if you can hold his legs."

This Mr. Puddlebox, by kneeling upon the nightshirt's arms and stretching over them to his legs, was able to do, and Mr. Wriford, voyaging the dishevelled room, gave presently a gleeful laugh and presented himself before Mr. Puddlebox with a wooden box and with information that made Mr. Puddlebox laugh also and the nightshirt, unable to shout, to express his personal view in new and tremendous struggles.

"Nails," said Mr. Wriford, "and a hammer. We'll nail him down;" and very methodically, working along each side of each extended arm, and down each border of the nightshirt pulled taut across his person, proceeded to attach the yellow-toothed gentleman to the floor more literally and more closely than any occupier, unless similarly fastened, can ever have been attached to his boyhood's home.

"There!" said Mr. Wriford, stepping back and regarding his handiwork, which was indeed very creditably performed, with conscionable satisfaction. "There you are, my boy, as tight as a sardine lid, and if you utter a sound you'll get one through your head as well."

This, however, was a contingency which the nightshirt, thanks to the cap in his mouth, was in no great danger of arousing, and leaving him to enjoy the flavour of his gag and his unique metallic bordering, which from the hue of his countenance and the flame of his eyes he appeared indisposed to do, there now followed on the part of Mr. Wriford and Mr. Puddlebox a very welcome and a highly necessary adjustment of their toilets. It was performed by Mr. Puddlebox with his mouth prodigiously distended with a meal collected from the kitchen, and by Mr. Wriford, as he cooled, with astonished reflection upon the extraordinary escapades which he had now added to his exploits of the previous day. "Well, this is a most extraordinary state of affairs for me," reflected Mr. Wriford, much as he had reflected earlier in the morning. "Most extraordinary, I'm dashed if it isn't! I've pretty well killed a chap and drowned him in milk; and I've slung a chap into a pond and then nailed him down by his nightshirt. Well, I'm doing things at last; and I don't care a dash what happens; and I don't care a dash what comes next."

III

Now this cogitation took place in an upper room whither Mr. Wriford had repaired in quest of soap and brushes, and what came next came at once and came very quickly, being first reported by Mr. Puddlebox, who at this point rushed up-stairs to announce as rapidly as his distended mouth would permit: "Loony, there's a cart come up to the door with four men in it--hulkers!" and next illustrated by a loud knocking responsive to which there immediately arose from the imprisoned corduroy a great shouting and from the gagged and nailed-down nightshirt a muffled blaring as of a cow restrained from its calf.

Very much quicker than might be supposed, and while Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford stared one upon the other in irresolute concern, these sounds blended into an enormous hullabaloo below stairs which spoke of the entry by the window of the new arrivals, of the release from his gag of the nailed-down nightshirt and from his milky gaol of the imprisoned corduroy, and finally of wild and threatening search which now came pouring very alarmingly up the stairs.

Mr. Wriford locked the door, Mr. Puddlebox opened the window, and immediately their door was first rattled with cries of "Here they are!" and then assailed by propulsion against it of very violent bodies.

The drop from the window was not one to be taken in cold blood. It was taken, nevertheless, side by side and at hurtling speed by Mr. Wriford and by Mr. Puddlebox through each half of the casement; and this done, and the concussion recovered from, the farm surroundings which divided them from the road were taken also at headlong bounds accelerated when midway across by a loud crash and by ferocious view-hulloas from the window.

The boundary hedge was gained. There was presented to the fugitives a roadside inn having before it, travel-stained, throbbing, and unattended, a very handsome touring motor-car. There was urged upon their resources as they jumped to the road the sight of two men red-hot in their rear and, more alarmingly, three led by the milky corduroy short-cutting towards their flank.

"Blink!" gasped Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hide!" and ran two bewildered paces up the road and three distracted paces down it.

"Hide where?" panted Mr. Wriford, his wits much shaken by his run, by the close sight of the pursuit, and more than ever by Mr. Puddlebox bumping into him as he turned in his first irresolution and colliding with him again as he turned in his second.

"Blink!--Here," cried Mr. Puddlebox, made a dash at the motor-car--Mr. Wriford in bewildered confusion on his heels--opened the door, and closing it behind them, crouched with Mr. Wriford on the floor.

"Run for it the opposite way as soon as they pass us," said Mr. Puddlebox. "This is a very devil of a business, and I will challenge--Here they come!"

But, quicker than they, came also another, and he from the inn. This was a young man in livery of a chauffeur, who emerged very hurriedly wiping his mouth and telling the landlord who followed him: "My gov'nor won't be half wild if I ain't there by two o'clock." With which he jumped very nimbly to his wheel, released his clutch, and with no more than a glance at the milky corduroy and his friends who now came baying down the hedge, was in a moment bearing Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford at immense speed towards wherever it was that his impatient gov'nor awaited him.

Mr. Wriford put his hands to his head and said, more to himself than to Mr. Puddlebox: "Well, this is the most extraordinary--"

Mr. Puddlebox settled his back against the seat, and cocking a very merry eye at Mr. Wriford, chanted with enormous fervour:

"O ye motors of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever."