James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

How about the conversation which preceded the story of Mr. Spifler?—about cutting off heads, and which was not a story as it seemed, but a recent and personal experience of my master’s? Was it in allusion to cutting off somebody’s head when Ned Perks spoke of “not caring a mag about doing the job if he had a tool sharp enough”? I couldn’t make it out at all; but in a state of frightful bewilderment, crouched under the cart-seat, the sweat trickling down my face. Where were we going now? Who or what was the “party” the long sack was for—the sack that Ned Perks had over his shoulders—and who wasn’t likely to catch cold because the said sack was wet? Soot couldn’t be called a “party.” My master and his foreman went on talking, but I had no ears to listen to them. My valour had all oozed away, and my knees smote the cart flooring as the suspicion stole into my mind that all that Sam had told me was wrong, that sweeping church chimneys formed no part of Mr. Belcher’s midnight missions, and that the Secret was nothing less than murder.

It was still raining steadily, when, pulling rein, and gently whispering “whoa, lass,” to the brown horse, Mr. Belcher brought the vehicle to a standstill, and after a few moments spent in looking about him, called on me to get out, and screwing up my courage I obeyed. It was lucky that it was so pitchy dark, or Mr. Belcher would have seen enough in my face to have convinced him that something was amiss with me.

“There, now we’re here I’ll let you into a bit of the trade secret I was speakin’ on,” said he. “You see that church over there?”

I peered through the darkness in the direction he indicated, and could dimly make out the gray shape of a church spire, and between it and us there were other low standing gray shapes, which could have been nothing but tombstones.

“Yes, sir,” I replied; “I see the church.”

“Well, we’re a-goin’ there to sweep the chimbleys,” whispered he. “I ain’t got no time to go into particklers now, on’y to tell you that sweepin’ church chimbleys is a job wot’s got to be done quite on the quiet. D ’ye understand?”

“Ye—s—s, sir,” I answered, timidly, for at that instant I set my foot on the sack with the “clinking things” in it, and Ned Perks’s observation about what he would do if he had a tool sharp enough, flashed into my mind. “Ye—s—s, sir; I understand.”

“Why, what’s the matter with yer?” asked Mr. Perks, laying a hand on my shoulder. “He’s a-shiverin’ like a haspin.”

“He’s been to sleep layin’ under the seat—that’s what it is—and he’s just fresh woke. Ain’t that it, Jim?”

Thankful enough, for more reasons than one, that my master made the suggestion, I answered him promptly that it was just as he said.

“Have a little suck at this,” said he; “it’ll set you right in no time.” And as he spoke, he held the brandy-bottle to my mouth.

The sip of brandy revived me wonderfully—as, strange to tell, did the sight of the tombstones and the church spire. There was at least a show of truth in Mr. Belcher’s assertion that he was going to sweep the church chimneys.

The men got out, and leading the horse a little way to some trees that stood opposite a wicket-gate, there halted.

“Now, you get out, Jim,” whispered my master, “and stand at the mare’s head while we go and do the job. We shan’t be very long about it. Hark; that’s the church chimin’ twelve; before it chimes half-arter we shall be back agin, and there’ll be a tanner for yourself. You’re awake and all right, now, ain’t yer?”

“Yes, thanky, sir; I’m all right.” And so I was: that last nip of brandy had quite set me on my legs again, and I felt almost ashamed of the babyish fears that had beset me in the cart.

“You ain’t got no fear of tombstones, and that?”

“Not I, sir!” And I laughed a little laugh, to convince him how lightly I held such nonsense.

Ned then lifted the tools out of the cart, while Mr. Belcher lit the lantern. They did not go off immediately, however. They halted by the wicket, and Mr. Belcher took from his pocket a piece of white paper with lines drawn over it, as I could plainly see by the fierce light from the bull’s-eye lantern that was directed full upon it. The paper they laid on the top bar of the wicket, and consulted it closely, tracing the lines with the tips of their fingers, and now and then looking towards the church, with their eyes shaded from the pelting rain with their hands, as though to see if something there tallied with the tracing on the sheet. Doubtless this was what they were looking for. It was a plan of the church flues they were consulting! Sam, after all, was right, and I was a fool to get into a funk about nothing.

“It’s all right, I s’pose,” I heard Mr. Belcher say, as he folded up the paper and closed the bull’s-eye slide; “on’y I wish it was this side of the church instead of the ’tother.”

Ned made some reply, but what I did not hear, as they went through the wicket and up the church path, and were almost instantly lost in the darkness.

And there I waited, holding the brown horse by the bit-rein, with the rain pelting down and wetting me to the skin, (for the tarpauling was now put to its proper use, and covering the brown horse’s tender loins,) with nothing in sight but the little gray shapes in the churchyard, showing hazily through the blackness of the night, and the tall, gray shape beyond and above all, that showed where the church steeple was; and nothing to be heard but the dismal pit-pat of the rain on the leaves over my head, against the cart panels, against the protecting tarpauling on the horse’s back. I didn’t mind it much however; I had been in a few queer situations in the course of my young experience—situations even more dismal than my present one, and apparently hopeless. It wasn’t pleasant, standing in the pitch dark, close to a churchyard, all alone, at midnight; but it wasn’t for long: they would be back with the soot very soon now, and I should get my sixpence, and the horse would put his best legs foremost for home, and I should get to my warm bed, and it would all be very jolly to think about.

So I comforted myself until the church bells chimed the quarter past twelve, informing me that as yet not more than half the time I should have to wait had expired—not half the time; for after Mr. Belcher had called my attention to the fact that it was striking twelve o’clock, a good five minutes were spent in examining the plan at the wicket. I began to grow fidgety. Of course there were no such things as ghosts! True, Mrs. Dipple, at the workhouse, said something about the “resurrection,” and, not knowing the meaning of such a hard word, I asked her, and she explained that it meant rising out of the grave; that everybody—good as well as bad people—would have to rise out of their graves; but what did she know about it? No doubt she was an old fool, as good Mrs. Brownhunter had called her; still, it was a great satisfaction to pat the brown horse’s neck, when I called her “good lass,” as Mr. Belcher did, to hear her whinny and scrape the gravel with her hoof in a natural and commonplace manner.

The church bells chimed the half-hour.

“It’s all over, now, then,” thought I; “I don’t think I’ve stood it bad, considerin’; they’ll be back in a minute.”

And for a minute—two, three, four minutes—my eyes were fixed towards the church path, in the momentary hope of seeing brave Ned Perks staggering along under his load of soot But he didn’t come; nobody—nothing—came. My teeth began to chatter, and the old feeling of funk rapidly stole over me. I patted the mare, and called her “good lass,” and several other endearing names, but she made no response, and stood as still as a tombstone. “The bad, as well as the good,” was what Mrs. Dipple had said; then I suppose the bad were the “exy—what’s o-names,” who came with pronged props after people they caught near their abode. Flap! flap! flutter! flutter! hoo—hoo—hoo! An owl, no doubt; but at that moment an “exy—what’s-o-name” of the largest size stalking through the branches overhead—causing me to cry out with fear, and grasp the brown horse round the neck, and the brown horse to snort, and give herself an uneasy shake that made her harness rattle with a very frightful sound.