"Father, We Want You!"
Rupert was so much better when he woke from his long sleep that the
doctor told Nealie she might be quite easy to leave him to the care of
Sylvia on the following day and go in search of her father if she
wished.
"You will be able to look after him too, will you not?" asked Nealie
wistfully, for in her heart she rather doubted Sylvia's nursing skill.
"No, I am coming with you," he answered, looking at her with a smile.
Nealie flushed hotly and burst into vigorous protest. "Please, please do
not take so much trouble for me; and besides, think of your patients,
and what you may lose by being away."
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Doctors have very hard times in
the back blocks, Miss Plumstead. Those who are really ill cannot as a
rule afford to pay for medical skill, and everyone is too busy to have
time for imaginary complaints. I have no patients at the moment that I
cannot leave, except the man who lives out in the direction of Pig
Hill, and I thought that I would ride over there this afternoon, and
then we would start at dawn to-morrow morning. You don't ride, do you?"
"Not much, and I am sure that I could not sit on Rockefeller, because he
is so clumsy," said Nealie.
"Then I will borrow Jim Brown's two-wheeled cart; but I think that we
shall have to take your horse, because mine is rather worn. The track
out to Pig Hill is a heavy one, and I have been there every day of
late," said the doctor, and then he hurried away to see his patients in
the town, while Nealie did her best to arrange for leaving the others
for a few days.
There was one thing which Nealie had to do that she could not speak of
to the doctor, who had been so truly good to them. Her money was
exhausted save for a few shillings, and, being face to face with
destitution, and not sure of finding her father even when she reached
Mostyn, she must have money from somewhere.
In her extremity she thought of Mr. Runciman, and although it would take
most of her remaining shillings to cable to him, she had determined to
do it.
When Dr. Plumstead had started for Pig Hill she found her way to the
telegraph office and dispatched her pitiful request.
"Please send us some money, we have not found Father here.
"Cornelia Plumstead."
But cables are expensive things, and when she came to send it she found
that she would not have enough money for the whole, and had to shorten
it, so that when it actually went it was more a demand than a plea:
"Send us money; Father not here."
"And if he does not send it, whatever shall we do?" cried Sylvia, who
had to be told, if only for the sake of sobering her and making her more
keenly alive to the responsibilities of the situation.
"He will send it, I am quite sure," replied Nealie, with a beautiful
faith in Mr. Runciman's real goodness of heart that was justified in due
course by the arrival of a cablegram authorizing her to draw fifty
pounds from the Hammerville bank as she needed it.
But she had to start off in the grey dawn of the next morning, in
company with the usurping Dr. Plumstead--as Sylvia would persist in
calling him--without knowing that her need was to be met in this
generous manner. It was perhaps the very darkest hour in her life, and
her face was drawn and pinched with the weight of her care as she lifted
it to the cold grey of the sky when she mounted into the high
two-wheeled cart which the doctor had borrowed for the journey. But even
as she looked, all the grey was flushed with rose colour from the rising
sun, and the sight brought back her courage with a rush, so that she was
able to turn and smile at the little group gathered at the door of the
doctor's house to see her drive away.
"Mind you take good care of Rupert, Sylvia," she called, feeling that
her next sister was really not old enough for such a heavy
responsibility; only, as there was no one else to take it, of course
Sylvia would have to do her best.
"I will see that she looks after him properly," said Rumple, with a wag
of his head, at which the doctor laughed; for when sleep seized upon
Rumple he was of little use in looking after other people.
Don and Billykins flung up their caps and shouted hurrah as Rockefeller
moved off, and Ducky joined in with her shrill treble, so that Nealie
felt they were doing their very best to keep her spirits up at the
moment of parting, and she could not let them think their efforts were
wasted in the least; therefore she waved her hand and tried to appear as
free from care as the rest of them.
After the heavy wagon, Rockefeller made short work of the light-weight
cart, and went along at such a tremendous pace that Nealie would
certainly have been afraid if anyone but Dr. Plumstead had been driving.
His treatment of Rupert, however, had inspired her with such confidence
in him that she sat smiling and untroubled while the big, clumsy,
vanhorse cut capers in the road, and then danced on all-fours because a
small boy rushed out of one of the little wooden houses on the other
side of the town and blew a blast on a bugle right under the horse's
nose.
"It really looks as if the creature had not had enough work for the last
three or four weeks," said the doctor, with a laugh, as he proceeded to
get pace out of Rocky in preference to pranks.
"It is a very good horse and has done us good service," said Nealie, in
a rather breathless fashion, as a sudden swerve on the part of Rocky
sent her flying against the doctor, and then, as she settled back into
her own corner and clutched at the side of the cart to keep from being
tossed out, she went on in an anxious tone: "I wonder what Mr. Wallis
will say to our keeping Rocky to go this journey instead of at once
handing him over to the nearest agent of the firm?"
"If he is the wise and just man that I take him to be he will say that
you have done quite right," replied the doctor. "You have not reached
your father yet, and you must have the horse for this extra journey,
don't you see?"
Nealie shook her head as if in doubt about this sort of reasoning, and
then she sat silent for so long that the doctor might have believed her
to be asleep, if he had not seen that her gaze was fixed on the
landscape.
The district outside Hammerville on the Mostyn track was at first mainly
composed of rich pasture, mostly settled by dairy farmers, although
farther away on the higher ground it was sheep farming that was most in
evidence.
Twenty miles out of Hammerville the road had dwindled to a grassy track,
and as they were now on the northern side of the Murrumbidgee River the
country grew very wild and mountainous, the track cut through forests
which the doctor told Nealie had only been half-explored, and the
hilltops were so solitary that it did not seem as if there were any
people in the world at all.
But it was a well-watered country, and on every side there were brawling
little streams rushing down precipitous heights or scurrying away
through woody valleys, as if anxious to find the very nearest way to the
sea.
By the time the hottest part of the day had arrived Rockefeller had done
half the journey to Mostyn, and driving up to a lone house the doctor
was so fortunate as to find a woman living there, to whose care he
confided Nealie for a few hours' rest and refreshment while he took a
siesta lying on the ground under the cart, which had been drawn close
under the shade of the willows fringing the river at this part.
It was sundown before they reached Mostyn, and then it was only to be
met with disappointment, for the doctor had been sent for to cope with
an outbreak of smallpox at Latimer.
"That settles it!" exclaimed the doctor. "I shall drive you back to
Hammerville to-morrow morning, for certainly I cannot take you to a
disease-stricken town, and equally I cannot leave you here."
"I shall not go back until I have found Father," said Nealie, smiling up
at him in a way that somehow robbed her words of their mutinous flavour.
"And there is no need to worry about the danger of taking me to a
smallpox place, because I had the complaint when I was a little girl,
before I was old enough to remember, so there is no danger for me."
The doctor was very hard to convince on this score, and was even
inclined to throw doubt on her statement, and to declare that she must
be mistaken, as it was so extremely unlikely that a child in her
position would contract the disease.
Nealie met all his arguments in silence until he came to his doubts
about her really having had the disease, and then she quietly rolled up
the left sleeve of her thin blouse and showed him two distinct marks on
the soft flesh above the elbow, which any doctor must know were pock
marks.
"I must go until I find my father, and if you will not take me I must go
alone," she said, when he left off arguing because he had no more to
say; but her gaze was very wistful, for Mostyn was so much rougher than
Hammerville that her heart sank very low as she thought of how rough
Latimer might be.
"If you must go I must certainly go too, for I cannot let you out of my
care in places like this," he said in a tone as decided as her own.
For that one night she was lodged with a good woman who cleaned the
church and school, and who kept her awake for half the night telling her
gruesome stories of happenings in disease-stricken towns, such as
Latimer was at that moment supposed to be. But if she thought to
frighten Nealie into consenting to go back to Hammerville without
finding her father she made a very great mistake indeed.
Bad as had been the journey of the doctor and his escort when he rode
from Mostyn to Latimer through the fierce heat, the experiences of young
Dr. Plumstead and Nealie were still worse. Rockefeller had lost the
fine vigour displayed on the first part of the journey, and went at a
slow trot, hanging his head and stumbling so often that Dr. Plumstead
was forced into a pretty liberal use of the whip to keep the creature on
his feet at all.
There was a strong wind blowing to-day, but luckily it came from behind,
and so Nealie opened a big umbrella, which kept off some of the dust and
also acted as a sail and helped them along. Sun, wind, and dust seemed
to bring on a sort of fever in Nealie; her hands burned like coals of
fire, she had a lightheaded sensation, and saw so many visions during
the last miles of that trying journey that she could never after
determine which was real and which was fancy of all the incidents and
happenings of that long, weary day.
"Hullo, look at that smoke yonder; is it a bush fire, I wonder, or is it
possible they have been having a big blaze at Latimer?" said the doctor,
pointing with his whip to the crest of a long hill up which the track
wound its dusty way.
"Are we near to Latimer?" asked Nealie in a languid tone.
"I think we ought to be by this time, unless we have come wrong. But
what a hill! I fancy Rockefeller expects me to walk up here," said the
doctor, who was secretly very anxious concerning that smoke which was
hanging in a cloud about the crest of the hill.
"Shall I walk too?" she asked, wondering whether the act of walking
would tend to steady her wavering fancies, and to stop that horrible
tendency to light-headedness which bothered her so badly.
"I think not; you must be quite tired enough without adding to your
fatigue by scrambling along this dusty track. Hullo!"
Nealie saw a sudden swerve on the part of Rocky, then the doctor's cane
came cutting through the air, and there was a great wriggling and
commotion on the dusty ground; but the doctor was so busy soothing the
horse that he did not even answer when she called out to know what was
the matter.
"Was it a snake?" she asked, as the cart was dragged forward at a jerk,
and Rocky, prancing along on two legs, snorting and plunging, took all
the doctor's skill to keep him from bolting in sheer fright.
"Yes; and I am very glad that you were not walking, for they are not
pleasant creatures to meet," replied the doctor, thinking how fortunate
it was that he happened to be on foot at the moment, and with a stick in
his hand, for the snake was of a very deadly kind, and the horse would
have stood no chance at all against the poison of its forked tongue.
Nealie shivered and sat suddenly straight up; it seemed as if the
little shock had restored her in some strange way. The fiercest heat of
the sun was past, and the raging of that terrible wind had dropped to a
gentle breeze which blew cool and refreshing from another quarter.
Indeed she would have felt quite cheerful had it not been for the menace
of that smoke haze lying in a cloud along the line of the hills.
Another half-hour and they were crossing the top of the ridge, while
Latimer, most snugly placed, lay on the slope of the other side. But at
first sight of the town both Nealie and the doctor had burst into
exclamations of horror, for it looked as if it had been burned out. A
cloud of smoke from the ruined houses hung thickly over the place, and
Rockefeller, with a horse's objection to facing fire, turned about on
the track and showed so much disposition to go back by the way he had
come that the doctor had to get down again and lead the scared creature.
Presently they saw a man just ahead of them, the first human being they
had glimpsed for hours, and calling to him the doctor asked what had
happened.
"It has been a fire," said the man, which, considering the smoke rising
in all directions from the ruins, was rather an unnecessary explanation.
"So I see; but what started it?" asked the doctor.
"No one will admit knowing much about that," replied the man grimly,
"but we have our thoughts all the same. We have got smallpox in the
town, you know, and one case was lodged in Jowett's hotel. The doctor
that we fetched from Mostyn said pretty decidedly that the one at
Jowett's was certainly not smallpox whatever the other two might be, but
some people won't be convinced, try how you will. So when the doctor's
back was turned it is supposed that someone, either by accident or
design, set the place on fire where the sick man was lying. In a drought
such as we are having now you may guess how the place burned. The doctor
happened to catch sight of it starting; but though he ran at the top of
his speed, all that he could do was to get there in time to see the
place one mass of fire, and he might easily have been forgiven if he had
turned his back on it then. He is made of brave stuff, though, and they
said he dashed straight into that blazing place, and, with the flames
and smoke all around him, he brought his patient out in the nick of
time, for the whole show collapsed just as he got to the doorway, the
sheets of red-hot corrugated roofing fell down upon him, and he was so
badly burned that someone will have to go and find a doctor to cure up
the one we've got, for I'm thinking that Latimer won't let a hero of
that sort die without making an attempt to save him."
"I am a doctor; I can look after him. Just lead on, and show me where he
is, will you, please?" said young Dr. Plumstead brusquely. He would
have spared Nealie the ugly story if he could, but on the whole it was
good for her to hear that her father had played the part of a hero. If
he had only known it, the hearing was good for him too, for he had been
very ready to despise the man who had given up his practice in
Hammerville and rushed away because he had not the moral courage to live
down a scandal. He had despised Nealie's father, too, because of his
treatment of his children, and altogether had decided that the poor man
was very much of a detrimental, so that this story of heroism had a
mighty effect on him as he walked by the side of the loquacious person
who had first given them the news; while Nealie sat perched up in the
cart behind, straining her ears to catch what they were saying, and
feeling so thankful that she had insisted on coming all the way that she
could have shouted with joyfulness in spite of her anxiety.
The man told Dr. Plumstead that the fire had spread from building to
building with such awful rapidity that it had been as much as anyone
could do to get the people out of their houses, so many of them having
gone to bed when the outbreak started.
"What about the smallpox patients?" asked the doctor.
"We have looked everywhere, but can't find a trace of them, and we
should have thought that they had lost their lives in the fire, only the
building where they lay was not touched, and they had not merely
disappeared, but they had taken their clothes with them, and as much
else as they could lay hands on," replied the man, and the doctor was so
tickled that he burst out laughing at the story.
"It does not look as if the outbreak of smallpox could have been very
serious," he remarked.
"Just what everyone is saying, and the boys are downright mad with old
Mother Twiney because the old woman could not tell whether it was really
smallpox or not; but, as I said, you could not expect an ignorant woman
to know a disease of that sort, and we had better have a scare that
ended in smoke than let the real thing gain ground without our taking
any steps to stamp it out," said the man, and then he turned off short
between two heaps of smoking ruins, and the doctor led Rocky, snuffing
and snorting, past the smouldering fire to the cool shadow of the forest
beyond.
"The doctor and his patient are in that hut yonder. It is where the
smallpox patients were lying; but there was no other place, and so we
had to put them there," said the man; and the doctor, turning round,
said to Nealie:
"You had better get down now and wait here by the horse while I go and
have a look at your father. Oh yes, I will come back for you in a few
minutes, and then I shall be able to arrange with this good man about
somewhere to shelter you for the night. I dare say the accommodation
will not be very grand, seeing the condition of things here."
"I don't mind about accommodation, but I do want to go to my father,"
said Nealie, her voice breaking in a sob as she scrambled down from the
cart, ignoring the hand her companion stretched out to help her, and
then she stood beside Rocky leaning her head against his side, while her
heart beat so furiously that it seemed to her the man who told them the
news, and was still lingering near, must hear it thumping away against
her side.
Would Dr. Plumstead never come? How could he be so cruel as to keep her
waiting so long?
"Ah, what news have you for me?" she asked, as the doctor emerged from
the hut with a quick step and a very grave face indeed.
"Nothing very good, I fear," he said quietly, and then turned to the man
and asked him to see that the horse was fed and cared for without delay.
"Tell me, please, is Father very bad? I can bear anything better than
suspense," she said, keeping her voice steady by a great effort.
"I think you can, and you have already proved yourself a girl of
mettle; but you will want all your courage now, for I fear that you have
found your father only to bid him goodbye," replied the doctor; and then
he caught her by the arm and held her fast while the first dizziness of
the shock was upon her.
"I am all right now," she said, moving forward in the direction of the
door, and he walked beside her, still holding her arm, as if he doubted
her strength to stand alone.
There was an old woman, very snuffy and dirty to look at, but with a
face of genuine kindness, who came forward to meet her, and, leading her
past the first bed, where a man was lying who had a much-bandaged head,
she took her to another bed in the far corner, whispering: "That is your
pa, Miss dear, and you had better speak to him quick, for we think that
he is going fast, poor brave gentleman!"
Going fast, and she had only just found him!
Nealie gave a frightened gasp, and crept closer, falling on her knees by
the bed, and trembling so that she could hardly clasp the fingers of the
uninjured hand which lay outside the thin coverlet.
"Father, dear Father, I am Nealie, your own daughter, and I have come
all the way from England to find you, and to help make home again! Oh,
you cannot go away and leave me now!" she wailed in passionate protest
against his dying.
"Hush, Missy dear, it may scare him if you speak so loud!" said the old
woman in a warning tone, for Nealie's voice had unconsciously risen
almost to a scream.
The heavy eyelids opened, and the eyes looked straight into Nealie's
face with blank amazement in their gaze.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice so faint that it was hardly more than
a whisper.
"I am your child, dear Father; I am Nealie! We have come to Hammerville
to live with you. You should have had a letter weeks ago to warn you
that we were all coming, only it was forgotten to be posted," she said,
being determined to take half the blame of that omission on her own
shoulders, for surely it was as much her fault as Rumple's, seeing that
she had never thought to remind him of the letter or to ask if it had
been safely posted.
"All seven of you?" he asked, and now there was a shocked expression in
his face which cut Nealie to the heart; only, for once, she was quite
mistaken as to its cause, and the shocked look did not mean that he was
angry with them for coming, but was solely because of what their plight
would be if he slipped out of life just then.
"Yes, we are all here," she admitted, feeling more guilty than in all
her life before; and then, almost against her will, her voice rose
again in a passionate plea to him to get better. "Dear Father, do try
and get better, for we all want you so badly!"
"I will try. All seven of you! I can't go and leave you yet!" he
exclaimed, with so much more strength in his tone that Nealie was amazed
at the change.
At that moment young Dr. Plumstead, who had come close to the bed,
touched her on the shoulder, saying quietly: "Go and sit on that bench
just outside the door until I call you in again. You have done him good
already, and perhaps now we may pull him through, if God wills; but Mrs.
Twiney is going to help me dress his wounds properly now, and then
perhaps he will be more comfortable."
And Nealie went obediently to sit on the bench outside the door, where
the air was heavy with the tarry smell of burning pine and the strong
eucalyptus odours; then, clasping her hands, she prayed fervently that
her father might be restored to health, so that they might let him know
how much they loved him.