Why did He Go?
There was a stirring of wind in the willows at the side of the creek.
Some wreckage swung gently against a box laden with tinware that was
taking a hurried voyage down-stream, and the collision brought a chiming
protest from the tinware that made Pam think of church bells in England.
She struggled for strength to speak, and tried to lift her hands to
clutch at something that would hold her back from that awful gulf into
which she had so nearly slipped. What was it the boy had to tell her?
and why, oh why, had he made grimaces at her on that day when the
inquiry was held on the remains found in the forest?
“Better, old girl?” Jack’s voice sounded so waggly and anxious that Pam
could have laughed for sheer joy because he cared so much; the love in
it warmed her like sunshine, and she strove with all her might to keep
from slipping down, down, down!
The noisy crying broke out again. Then she heard a voice that was fierce
and passionate demanding:
“Can’t you do something to bring her round? Dab water in her face or
something like that!”
“It seems to me that she has had too much water already,” replied Jack’s
troubled voice. “If I could leave her I would run back to Mrs. Buckle’s.
Don Grierson is there, and he would go and fetch his father for me
quick!”
“That he would, you bet! They say he just about worships the ground she
walks on, and he has always been a regular stand-offish sort.” A hot
feeling like a blush surged over Pam, and she made another effort to
open her eyes, to speak and let them know how she was, but before she
could achieve so much, the boy had burst out again: “I say, do fan her
or something! Burnt feathers is good for swooning folks, Miss Gittins
says, but we ain’t got no burnt feathers here!”
“What is it you have got to tell me? Say it, quick!” The authority in
Pam’s voice was not to be set aside. She struggled to rise, then felt
Jack’s arms under her, holding her up to a sitting posture. A broad
stream of sunshine smote her eyes, making her blink; then she opened her
eyes again, and saw the boy whom she had tried to save sitting on the
ground at a little distance, his small thin face all wrinkled and drawn
with pain, his eyes pathetic with distress.
“What is it that you ought to have told me?” she asked with hurry in her
voice, some instinct telling her that this thing, whatever it was,
mattered a great deal to her, and she must know without delay.
The boy hesitated, a gleam of fear came into his eyes, then he blurted
out in a great hurry:
“The old man couldn’t have done Sam Buckle in; I know he couldn’t, there
wouldn’t have been time.”
It was as if a rush of new life swept through the veins of Pam. Pushing
aside the supporting arms of Jack, she crawled across to where the boy
was lying. It seemed to her that she could not trust herself on her feet
just yet, for there was no strength in her limbs.
“Tell me what you mean,” she said with sharp insistence. “How do you
know that Grandfather did not hurt Sam Buckle?”
“Because I went to Ripple to warn the old man they were going to have a
surprise party at his place that night. It is hateful having a surprise
party come to your house when you don’t know that they are coming,” said
the boy, looking at Pam with a wistful, hungry gaze that made her feel
she wanted to cry out of sheer pity for all the limitations and
deprivations that the poor child’s life had plainly known.
“Who are you, and where do you come from?” she asked gently. The
sunshine was streaming down on her now, and she was feeling the stronger
for the genial warmth that took away the deadly chill of her immersion
in the creek.
“I am Reggie Furness, Mose Paget’s half-brother; I thought you knowed!”
he said. There was surprise in his tone, and Pam was at once conscious
that his feelings were hurt because he was of so little importance in
the place that she had lived in the district so many months without
making his acquaintance.
“Reggie Furness, then, why did you make grimaces at me that day when I
came from the inquiry in the Doctor’s wagon-house?” There was blank
bewilderment in Pam’s tone. She wanted to ask at least half a dozen
questions in a breath, and yet she was so weak and stupid that she could
scarcely collect her faculties for coherent speech.
The boy’s eyes fell, and when he answered there was a shamed note in his
tone.
“It was pure spite. I knew I could put some things right, but I wasn’t
going to then, because it might have hurt Mose. I’ve always stuck by
Mose ever since Ma died. Powerful set on Mose she was, though she knowed
his weak places better than most. She told me to take care of him for
her, and she said it would be good for his character to have me to
provide for, but it seems to me I’ve mostly had to provide for myself or
to go without. I could do it all right enough if it was not for the time
wasted every day in going to school; that is where the trouble comes
in.”
“Why would it have hurt Mose for you to tell?” asked Pam, and then was
swift to discover that her question had embarrassed the boy so sorely
that she was quick to cover her blunder by another query. “Never mind
that now. Tell me what Grandfather said to you when you came to warn
him, and how it is that you can be so positive he did not hurt Mrs.
Buckle’s husband?”
Reggie gave a wriggle, then winced as if he had hurt himself.
“The old man was downright nasty. It wouldn’t have hurt him to have
given me a quarter for my trouble, or if he hadn’t the cash to spare, he
might have given me a chunk of food; I can mostly do with a bit of
something to eat,” he said, with a wan smile that made Pam feel she
wanted to cry more than ever. She thrust out a wet and dirty hand to
give the boy a reassuring pat on the arm, then signed for him to go on.
She was too anxious to know what he had to tell to have any notice to
spare for the supreme discomfort of her condition.
“He didn’t give me nothing,” went on Reggie. “He only growled out that
if the surprise party came there they might find that they would get a
surprise themselves that they had not bargained for. Then when I asked
him out straight what I was to have for my trouble, he just said he
would set the dog at me if I did not clear out sharp. He called to the
dog, but I did not wait to have the thing come at me; it didn’t seem
worth while bringing the creature into the business, especially as I had
no stick nor anything to help me in putting up a fight. I just pelted
back to the schoolhouse as hard as I could go, and when I got there, it
was fifteen minutes past two o’clock.”
“Are you quite, quite positive about the time?” demanded Pam with
devouring eagerness.
Reggie gave a weak gurgle of laughter.
“Sure and certain!” he declared. “Schoolmarm she lays on a stroke a
minute when we are late at noon spell. We can’t help being late in the
mornings, you see, so she says she will take good care that we ain’t
encouraged in wasting time in the middle of the day. She is uncommon
smart with the stick, and I went sore for days after that.”
“Why did you not tell this before?” cried Pam with anger in her tone.
“Just think of the misery I might have been saved!”
“Why should I tell?” cried the boy bitterly. “The old man was not even
ordinarily civil to me, yet I had taken all that trouble for him. Then I
was afraid, and reckoned that the less said the better.”
“What were you afraid of?” asked Pam.
Reggie gave another wriggle.
“My leg hurts something awful, do you expect that I have broken it?” he
demanded; and now there was a whine in his voice as if he was purposely
calling attention to his sufferings in order to draw Pam’s notice from
things he did not want to have discussed just then.
“Are you hurt?” she asked in quick sympathy. She had not noticed his
position before.
“It is either a sprain or a break,” put in Jack. “The poor kid was hurt
when he came sailing down-stream on the table. Amanda saw him slipping
along past Mrs. Buckle’s house, and she came screaming to warn me, for
he shouted to her that he was hurt and could not help himself. I came as
fast as I could, and it was lucky I did, for I was only just in time to
pull you out.”
“There is the truck!” exclaimed Pam, waving her arm towards the truck,
which had been left to carry the rugs back to the house. “We can put him
on that and wheel him to the house. Then you must go for the Doctor,
Jack. Perhaps Mrs. Buckle will lend you the horse; you can stick on its
back if you try hard enough.”
“Don is at Mrs. Buckle’s, helping to make a dam to keep the water out;
he will go for the Doctor,” said Jack. Then Pam suddenly remembered what
she had heard Reggie saying when she lay in her half-swoon, and she
blushed right up to the roots of her hair. It was so absurd for people
to put sentimental constructions on every little appearance of
friendship between Don and herself; he was her very good friend, just as
Sophy was, and that was all. It was stupid to blush like a little
schoolgirl! Pam was painfully conscious of a quizzical look from Jack as
he brought the truck to the place where Reggie was sitting, and then of
course she blushed harder than ever.
Reggie was lifted on to the truck with considerable difficulty. He might
be thin and small to look at, but it took all the strength of Pam and
Jack to lift him, while his moans and groans when they touched him made
Pam feel so bad that she did not know how to bear it. The task of
pulling the truck across the sodden field was heavy, too. She and Jack
pressed forward shoulder to shoulder, and she had a queer spent feeling
as if she would give up the next moment and slip to the ground.
“What makes the kid so certain that Grandfather had no hand in hurting
Sam Buckle?” asked Jack. His head was close to hers as they drew the
heavy truck, and they could talk in low tones without any danger of
Reggie hearing what they had to say.
“It is the time that settles it,” replied Pam. “It would take Reggie
nearly an hour to go from Ripple to the schoolhouse, though he might do
it in three-quarters if he ran all the way. That would make it half-past
one when he left Ripple in a hurry, because Grandfather set the dog at
him. It was just one when Sam Buckle left his home that day, and he had
not been gone ten minutes by the clock when Mrs. Buckle remembered he
had taken the keys with him, and that she would want them when the man
from the stores came with the week’s groceries. It would take her from
twenty minutes to half an hour to walk to our boundary from her house,
which would bring her to the place about the time that Reggie was
starting away from Ripple. When she got to the fence she found her
husband lying on the ground unconscious, and so fearfully battered that
at first she thought he must be dead. Grandfather’s axe lay on the
ground near to him, and it was not wonderful, knowing as she did of the
feud between them, that she believed Grandfather had done it. Ripple was
the nearest place to run for help, but she would not be likely to come
here under the circumstances. Indeed, she could not leave her husband to
go anywhere for help at first; she found he was just alive, and so she
set to work to keep him from slipping away. It was five o’clock before
she was able to get any help of any kind. Even then it was only little
Amanda Higgins, who had happened that way round on going home from
school, because Mrs. Buckle had promised her some cookies. It was nearly
seven before the neighbours arrived to carry the poor man to his home,
and then the police and the Doctor had to be sent for.”
Jack drew a long breath. “It is something to know that Grandfather did
not do a thing like that! But why did he go away? It looks as if he had
had something to be ashamed of anyhow. The puzzle seems to grow rather
than decrease. Don’t you think so?”
Pam nodded. She was so fearfully out of breath, and she was feeling so
exhausted, that she had no strength left for any more speculation just
then. She could not even feel properly glad over the lifting of one
cloud, so afraid was she that another was going to brood close over her.
There must have been some strong reason for her grandfather going away
and remaining absent, and she quailed lest the reason might be one to be
ashamed of. It is not easy to take rosy views of things when one is
drenched to the skin with muddy water and aching from head to foot. Hope
and courage would spring again presently, but just now they were low
down, and nothing would have been easier than for Pam to collapse in a
miserable heap and burst into crying.
Her pride saved her. Talk of the sin of pride! A few sermons on the
virtues of the proper sort would not be out of place in some phases of
life and living, for certain it is that many a man and woman would give
up the struggle to present a brave face to the world but for this same
proper pride. Pam took her share of dragging the truck, and when the
house was reached she helped Jack to carry Reggie to the bedroom that
had been her grandfather’s. Then she left her brother to the task of
getting the boy to bed while she ran upstairs and slipped into clean,
dry clothing. Oh, the comfort of having a clean face and feeling dry!
Pam suddenly felt pounds better; half her aches and pains vanished, and
she hurried down to help Jack, and to insist that he, too, should stay
for dry clothes before he went off to Mrs. Buckle’s to send Don to bring
the Doctor.
It was easy to see that Reggie was in a rather bad way, and Pam, having
had but little experience of sickness, would have been thankful to shift
the burden of caring for him on to someone else. When Jack had gone, and
she was left alone with him, his moans and cries were incessant. His
mind was not clear; very often when she bent over him trying to make him
more comfortable he thought she was Mose, and he would look up at her
with a face full of reproach, crying out that he should not have stolen
the money, that stolen goods were of no use to anyone.
The waiting for the Doctor was about the hardest thing Pam had had to
bear for some time. The boy’s face was flushed with fever, and he talked
in a high-pitched tone that sounded weird and unnatural. His revelations
about his home life were to the last degree pathetic, and always he was
reminding himself that he had promised his dying mother to do what he
could to keep his brother straight.
Jack came back, and set to work on the evening “chores”, leaving Pam
free to remain in the house. It was necessary that someone should be
with the boy every minute now, for he thought himself afloat on the
table again, and he was all the time trying to throw himself out of bed
in the hope of reaching the bank. His horror of water was very great,
and he felt himself drowning every minute.
“Here comes Dr. Grierson, and Sophy is with him!” shouted Jack, putting
his head in at the door of the best sitting-room, and Pam uttered a
little cry of thankfulness, for she had wanted Sophy that afternoon more
than words could express. It was dreadful to feel so helpless and to be
able to do so little.
“Broken leg!” said the Doctor. “You will have your work cut out, Miss
Walsh, but there is no help for it; he can’t be moved. Sophy will stay,
though, and the neighbours will do what they can. The trouble is that
the boy has no reserve strength, poor child. He has been so nearly
starved, too, that a shock of this kind will certainly make things go
hard with him.”
“You don’t think that he will die, do you?” demanded Pam with blank
dismay on her face. If Reggie died her grandfather’s name could not be
cleared. Such an issue to the boy’s present condition was too dreadful
to be thought of; his life must be saved somehow.
“Doctors never think their patients are going to die,” replied Dr.
Grierson curtly. “I said that the boy had no reserve of strength, so
that he would be more ill than an ordinary case of fracture would
warrant; that is to say, he will be very feverish, and he will wander in
his mind a great deal. He will need a great deal of nursing, too, and I
expect he will be very bad-tempered and difficult to manage. As I said
before, you are going to have your hands full.”
“Anything more?” she asked with a comical gesture of pretended despair.
“But you have not frightened me yet, and he is going to be nursed back
to strength if care and painstaking can accomplish it. He told me to-day
he could prove that Grandfather was here at Ripple at the time when Sam
Buckle was so knocked about. If he can clear the name of the poor old
man, neither Jack nor myself will grudge the work of nursing him.”
“If he can do that, why has he not done it already?” asked the Doctor.
He was in the kitchen now, sitting by the stove, and drinking a cup of
tea that Jack had made for him while he was busy with Reggie.
“He was angry with Grandfather, who had not treated him well,” explained
Pam; and then she plunged into the story which the boy had told her of
how he came to Ripple to warn Wrack Peveril of the surprise party that
was coming, and did not get even thanks for his trouble. It hurt her
considerably to have to tell of that part, but she must be just, and the
old man’s treatment of the boy had not been fair, or kind either.
“Told on the surprise party, did he?” chuckled the Doctor. “I am not so
very much surprised at his keeping quiet about it, for Galena would
certainly have been very wrathful if she had known; she was the head and
front of the affair, and she is spirited, too. But, Miss Walsh, that
does but deepen the mystery, because if your grandfather had done
nothing to be ashamed of, why did he disappear in such a strange
fashion? He must have dropped everything and gone.”
“The only explanation that I can think of is that something happened to
him in the forest, and we have never found his body,” said Pam.
“Not likely,” objected the Doctor. “Supposing that he had dropped dead
from unsuspected heart disease or anything of that sort, he would have
fallen on the open trail, and his body would have been found. Then, if
he did not do the damage to Sam Buckle, why did the poor chap keep
muttering that it was his right, always that it was his right? Then
remember the rumour of the old man having been seen in the lumber camp.
How can it be explained?”
“I don’t know. It is as mysterious to me as it is to you,” said Pam,
drawing a long breath. Then she looked into the face of the Doctor, and
the steadfast light in her eyes was a sight to see, as she continued: “I
am quite sure that Reggie has told the truth. He had nothing to gain by
telling me, but perhaps a good deal to lose, for Galena can be hard
sometimes, and he works there, you see. It has given me hope. I can hold
up my head and look people in the face again, now I know Grandfather did
not do that shameful thing. Oh, you cannot think how I have suffered in
my pride because of it!”
“Yes, I can, because I know how proud you are!” The Doctor rose to go,
and stood looking at Pam with a good deal of kindliness in his gaze; he
liked her very much, and he guessed that his son liked her still more.
It was just at this moment that there came a swift run of feet across
the best sitting-room, the door was flung hastily open, and Sophy
appeared on the threshold crying urgently:
“Oh, Father, do come back again before you go, for the boy is saying
such dreadful things!”