第52章 THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION(14)

The guests who had gone into the back-room for liquor and change of air,hearing something unusual,trooped back hitherward,where they endeavoured to revive poor,weak Car'line by blowing her with the bellows and opening the window.Ned,her husband,who had been detained in Casterbridge,as aforesaid,came along the road at this juncture,and hearing excited voices through the open casement,and to his great surprise,the mention of his wife's name,he entered amid the rest upon the scene.Car'line was now in convulsions,weeping violently,and for a long time nothing could be done with her.While he was sending for a cart to take her onward to Stickleford Hipcroft anxiously inquired how it had all happened;and then the assembly explained that a fiddler formerly known in the locality had lately revisited his old haunts,and had taken upon himself without invitation to play that evening at the inn.

Ned demanded the fiddler's name,and they said Ollamoor.

'Ah!'exclaimed Ned,looking round him.'Where is he,and where--where's my little girl?'

Ollamoor had disappeared,and so had the child.Hipcroft was in ordinary a quiet and tractable fellow,but a determination which was to be feared settled in his face now.'Blast him!'he cried.'I'll beat his skull in for'n,if I swing for it to-morrow!'

He had rushed to the poker which lay on the hearth,and hastened down the passage,the people following.Outside the house,on the other side of the highway,a mass of dark heath-land rose sullenly upward to its not easily accessible interior,a ravined plateau,whereon jutted into the sky,at the distance of a couple of miles,the fir-woods of Mistover backed by the Yalbury coppices--a place of Dantesque gloom at this hour,which would have afforded secure hiding for a battery of artillery,much less a man and a child.

Some other men plunged thitherward with him,and more went along the road.They were gone about twenty minutes altogether,returning without result to the inn.Ned sat down in the settle,and clasped his forehead with his hands.

'Well--what a fool the man is,and hev been all these years,if he thinks the child his,as a'do seem to!'they whispered.'And everybody else knowing otherwise!'

'No,I don't think 'tis mine!'cried Ned hoarsely,as he looked up from his hands.'But she is mine,all the same!Ha'n't I nussed her?Ha'n't I fed her and teached her?Ha'n't I played wi'her?O,little Carry--gone with that rogue--gone!'

'You ha'n't lost your mis'ess,anyhow,'they said to console him.

'She's throwed up the sperrits,and she is feeling better,and she's more to 'ee than a child that isn't yours.'

'She isn't!She's not so particular much to me,especially now she's lost the little maid!But Carry's everything!'

'Well,ver'like you'll find her to-morrow.'

'Ah--but shall I?Yet he CAN'T hurt her--surely he can't!Well--how's Car'line now?I am ready.Is the cart here?'

She was lifted into the vehicle,and they sadly lumbered on toward Stickleford.Next day she was calmer;but the fits were still upon her;and her will seemed shattered.For the child she appeared to show singularly little anxiety,though Ned was nearly distracted.It was nevertheless quite expected that the impish Mop would restore the lost one after a freak of a day or two;but time went on,and neither he nor she could be heard of,and Hipcroft murmured that perhaps he was exercising upon her some unholy musical charm,as he had done upon Car'line herself.Weeks passed,and still they could obtain no clue either to the fiddler's whereabouts or the girl's;and how he could have induced her to go with him remained a mystery.

Then Ned,who had obtained only temporary employment in the neighbourhood,took a sudden hatred toward his native district,and a rumour reaching his ears through the police that a somewhat similar man and child had been seen at a fair near London,he playing a violin,she dancing on stilts,a new interest in the capital took possession of Hipcroft with an intensity which would scarcely allow him time to pack before returning thither.

He did not,however,find the lost one,though he made it the entire business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope of discovering her,and would start up in the night,saying,'That rascal's torturing her to maintain him!'To which his wife would answer peevishly,'Don't 'ee raft yourself so,Ned!You prevent my getting a bit o'rest!He won't hurt her!'and fall asleep again.

That Carry and her father had emigrated to America was the general opinion;Mop,no doubt,finding the girl a highly desirable companion when he had trained her to keep him by her earnings as a dancer.

There,for that matter,they may be performing in some capacity now,though he must be an old scamp verging on threescore-and-ten,and she a woman of four-and-forty.