Martha Peake Read Online Free PDF Page B

as at last he feels the sleep come stealing over him, that she will be beside him for all that lies ahead. She is a wise one, he thinks, an old soul.

    Harry Peake was a saintlike figure in those early days, said my uncle. Not a saint, but saintlike. Almost at once he was subject to the cruelty and malice London dispenses to those it does not favor, and I sometimes imagine the only real peace he knew was the time he spent with Martha by the river. Though even then there would be disturbance and interruption, always there would be those who could not leave the poor man to himself, but must ask him questions about his back. Nor was it unusual, said my uncle, that Harry by his mere presence aroused passions in primitive men, who then found the means to taunt and abuse him, he who had done no harm at all to them.
    There was one night, he said—and he peered at me with eyes grown suddenly grave and mournful, and spoke with a catch in his voice, as though grieving for humanity’s lost innocence, as indeed in a way he was—there was a night, he whispered—and he told me of the night Harry and Martha were set upon by three or four apprentice boys, all much the worse for drink. They only narrowly escaped serious harm, and that, said my uncle, was in some part due to Martha’s boldness.
    I was of course agog to know more. So he described to me how, as the drunken apprentices yelped like hounds behind them, they had run through the darkness, through the narrow streets behind the meat market, their old coats flapping about them, Harry all lurch and shamble and Martha hauling at his arm, crying out to him to hurry. Turning into a courtyard they found themselves before a pair of high wooden gates fastened with a chain—
    Trapped?
    Trapped.
    And—?
    The outcome, said my uncle, was this. The apprentice boys rushed upon them, and Harry was thrown bodily to the ground. Martha began to seize up stones from the street and hurl them as hard as she could, screaming at the boys to get away. But the boyscame forward, laughing now; Martha was, oh, nine years old, but she was tall for her years—her figure was formed—and those boys saw it. They saw it. Harry was struggling to his feet, lifting a hand, crying out that he meant them no harm, that he was a poor man, like themselves, he had nothing they wanted—
    But he did have something they wanted, whispered William, and that was Martha. So Harry pulled the child behind him and shielded her with his body, and one of the apprentice boys, enraged now, and blind with lust—and how my uncle’s old eyes fired up as he spoke of it!—this apprentice boy suddenly flailed at Harry with a stick, and Harry stepped forward into the blow, and took the force of it full on his shoulder.
    The next blow was aimed at his skull, and this one he took on his lifted arm. Again he cried out that he meant them no harm, but they shouted louder for Martha—“Give us the whore!”—and still Harry made no attempt to strike back, and still the blows rained down on his arms and shoulders, while Martha pelted their tormentors with whatever she could find at her feet, and screamed at them with all manner of violent threats. And still Harry came forward, head down and arms outstretched, crying out for mercy; and it was then, said my uncle—and here he paused again, and flung at me a dark glance from lowered eyes—that he took a savage blow to the ribs, and such was the force of it that at last he was provoked to retaliate.
    With a roar Harry rose up to his full height. Seizing the stick, and wresting it forcibly from his assailant, he made as though to attack him; and the boy fell back, shouting at his companions, who rushed at Harry but were thrust aside, not with the stick, no, but with a sweep of Harry’s arm; and then he lifted high the stick with both hands, and brought it down hard across his thigh, breaking it in two as though it were kindling wood. He flung the pieces to the ground and stood there, huge and