He added, however, that he should request Mr.
Crayshaw, as a personal favour, that I should receive no punishment for
running away, as I had suffered sufficiently already.
We had told very little of the true history of Crayshaw's before Jem
fainted, and I felt no disposition to further confidences. I took as
cheerful a farewell of my mother as I could, for her sake; and put on a
good deal of swagger and "don't care" to console Jem. He said, "You're
as plucky as Lorraine," and then his eyes shut again. He was too ill to
think much, and I kissed his head and left him. After which I got
stoutly into the dog-cart, and we drove back up the dreary hills down
which Jem and I had run away.
That Snuffy was bland to cringing before my father did not give me hope
that I should escape his direst revenge; and the expression of
Lorraine's face showed me, by its sympathy, what _he_ expected. But we
were both wrong, and for reasons which we then knew nothing about.
Cruelty was, as I have said, Mr. Crayshaw's ruling passion, but it was
not his only vice. There was a whispered tradition that he had once been
in jail for a misuse of his acquirements in the art of penmanship; and
if you heard his name cropping up in the confidential conversation of
such neighbours as small farmers, the postman, the parish overseer, and
the like, it was sure to be linked with unpleasingly suggestive
expressions, such as--"a dirty bit of business," "a nasty job that," "an
awkward affair," "very near got into trouble," "a bit of bother about
it, but Driver and Quills pulled him through; theirs isn't a nice
business, and they're men of t' same feather as Crayshaw, so I reckon
they're friends.
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