LITTLE JACOB IS LOST.
Ogden flung the shoe down with an imprecation, and the whip after it. He
then climbed the wall and tried to run, but the ground here was rough
moorland, and he fell repeatedly. He saw no trace of little Jacob. He
made his way back to the house, sullen and savage, and besmeared with
earth and mud.
"Give me a lantern, damn you," he said to old Sarah, "and look sharp!"
Old Sarah took down a common candle-lantern, and purposely selected one
with a hole in it. She also chose the shortest of her candle-ends. Ogden
did not notice these particulars in his impatience, and went out again.
Just then Jim came in.
"Well," said old Sarah, "what d'ye think master's done? He's licked
little Jacob while[5] he's wenly[6] kilt him, but t' little un's reight
enough now. He'll never catch him."
"What! has little Jacob run away?"
"Ay, that he has; and he _can_ run, can little Jacob; and he knows all
th' places about. I've no fears on him. Master's gone after him wi' a
lantern wi' a hoile in it, and auve a hinch o' cannle. It's like
catchin' a bird wi' a pinch o' salt."
"Little un's safe enough, I'se warrant him."
"We mun just stop quite[7] till th' ould un's i' bedd, and then we'll go
and seech[8] little Jacob."
In a quarter of an hour Ogden came back again. His light had gone out,
and he threw the lantern down on the kitchen-floor without a word, and
shut himself up in his sitting-room.
The furniture was in great disorder. The chairs were all overturned, the
mahogany table bore deep indentations from the blows of the hammer. Some
pieces of old china that had ornamented the chimney-piece lay scattered
on the hearth. He lifted up a chair and sat upon it. The disorder was
rather pleasing to him than otherwise; he felt a bitter satisfaction in
the harmony between it and the state of his own mind. A large fragment
of broken china lay close to his foot. It belonged to a basin, which,
having been broken only into three or four pieces, was still repairable.
Ogden put it under his heel and crushed it to powder, feeling a sort of
grim satisfaction in making repair out of the question.
He sat in perfect inaction for about a quarter of an hour, and then rang
the bell. "Bring me hot water, and, stop--put these things in their
places, will you?"
Old Sarah restored some order in the room, removed the broken china, and
brought the hot water.
"Now, bring me a bottle of rum."
"Please, Mestur Ogden, you've got no rum in the house."
"No, but you have."
"Please, sir, I've got very little. I think it's nearly all done."
"D'ye think I want to rob you? I'll pay ye for't, damn you!"
"Mestur Ogden, you don't use drinkin' sperrits at Twistle Farm."
Ogden gave a violent blow on the table with his fist, and shouted,
"Bring me a bottle of rum, a bottle of rum! D'ye think you're to have
all the rum in the world to yourself, you drunken old witch?"
There was that in his look which cowed Sarah, and she reflected that he
might be less dangerous if he were drunk. So she brought the rum.
Ogden was pouring himself a great dose into a tumbler, when a sudden
hesitation possessed him, and he flung the bottle from him into the
fireplace. There was a shivering crash, and then a vast sheet of
intolerable flame. The intense heat drove Ogden from the hearth. He
seized the candle, and went upstairs into his bedroom.
Sarah and Jim waited to see whether he would come down again, but he
remained in his room, and they heard the boards creak as he walked from
wall to wall. This continued an hour. At last old Sarah said,--
"I cannot bide no longer. Let's go and seech th' childt;" and she
lighted two lanterns, which, doubtless, were in better condition, and
better provided with candles, than the one she had lent to Mr. Ogden.
They went into the stable and cowhouse (or _mistle_ as it was called in
that country), and called in the softest and most winning tones their
voices knew how to assume. "Little Jacob, little Jacob, come, my lad,
come; it's nobbut old Sarah an' Jim. Mestur's i' bedd."
They went amongst the hay with their lanterns, in spite of the risk of
setting it on fire, but he was not there. He was not to be found in any
of the out-buildings. Suddenly an idea struck Jim.
"If we'd nobbut his bit of a dog, who'd find him, sure enough."
But Feorach had disappeared. Feorach was with her young master.
They began to be rather alarmed, for it was very cold, and intensely
dark. The lad was certainly not on the premises. They set off along the
path that led to the rocks. They examined every nook and cranny of the
huge masses of sandstone, and their lanterns produced the most
unaccustomed effects, bringing out the rough projections of the rock
against the unfathomable black sky, and casting enormous shadows from
one rock to another. Wherever their feet could tread they went, missing
nothing; but the lad was not amongst the rocks. It began to be clear to
them that he could not even be in a place of such shelter as that. He
must be out on the open moor.
"We mun go and tell Mestur," said Jim. "If he's feared about th' childt,
he willn't be mad at him."
So they returned straight to the house, and went to Mr. Ogden's room. He
had gone to bed, but was not asleep. If he thought about little Jacob at
all, his reflections were probably not of an alarming kind. The child
would come back, of course.
"Please, sir," said Jim, "Master Jacob isn't come back, and we can't
find him."
"He'll come back," said Ogden.
"Please, sir, I'm rather feared about him," said Jim; "it's nearly two
hours sin' he left the house, and it's uncommon cold. We've been seekin'
him all up and down, old Sarah and me, and he's nowhere about th'
premises, and he isn't about th' rocks neither."
Mr. Ogden began to feel rather alarmed. The paroxysm of his irritation
was over by this time, and he had become rational again; indeed his mind
was clearer, and, in a certain sense, calmer, than it had been for two
or three days. For the last half-hour he had been suffering only from
great prostration, and a feeling of dulness and vacancy, which this new
anxiety effectually removed. Notwithstanding the violence of his recent
treatment of his son--a violence which had frequently broken out during
several months, and which had culminated in the scene described in the
last chapter, when it had reached the pitch of temporary insanity--he
really had the deepest possible affection for his child, and this
paternal feeling was more powerful than he himself had ever consciously
known or acknowledged. When once the idea was realized that little Jacob
might be suffering physically from the cold, and mentally from a dread
of his father, which the events of the night only too fully justified,
Mr. Ogden began to feel the tenderest care and anxiety. "I'll be down
with you in a moment," he said. "See that the lanterns are in good
order. Have the dogs ready to go with us--they may be of some use."
He came downstairs with a serious but quite reasonable expression on his
face. He spoke quite gently to old Sarah, and said, with a half-smile,
"You needn't give me a lantern with a hole in it this time;" and then he
added, "I wasted all that rum you gave me."
"It 'ud 'ave been worst wasted if you'd swallowed it, Mestur."
"It would--it would; but we may need a little for the lad if we find
him--very cold, you know. Give a little to Jim, if you have any; and
take a railway rug, or a blanket from my bed, to wrap him in if he
should need it."
The dogs were in the kitchen now--a large mastiff and a couple of
pointers. Mr. Ogden took down a little cloak that belonged to Jacob, and
made the dogs smell at it. Then he seemed to be looking about for
something else.
"Are ye seekin' something, Mr. Ogden?"
"I want something to make a noise with, Sarah." She fetched the little
silver horn that had been the Doctor's last present to his young friend.
"That's it," said Mr. Ogden; "he'll know the sound of that when he hears
it."
The little party set out towards the moor. Mr. Ogden led it to the place
where Jacob had crossed the wall; and as Jim was looking about with his
lantern he called out, "Why, master, here's one of his shoes,
and--summat else."
The "summat else" was the great whip.
Mr. Ogden took the shoe up, and the whip. They were within a few yards
of the pond, and he went down to the edge of it. A slight splash was
heard, and he came back without the whip. The weight of the steel hammer
had sunk it, and hidden it from his eyes for ever. He carried the little
shoe in his right hand.
When they had crossed the wall, Mr. Ogden bent down and put the shoe on
the ground, and called the dogs. The pointers understood him at once,
and went rapidly on the scent, whilst the little party followed them as
fast as they could.
It led out upon the open moor. When they were nearly a mile from the
house, Mr. Ogden told Sarah to go back and make a fire in little Jacob's
room, and warm his bed. The two men then went forward in silence.
It was bitterly cold, and the wind began to rise, whistling over the
wild moor. It was now eleven o'clock; Mr. Ogden looked at his watch.
Suddenly the dogs came to a standstill; they had reached the edge of a
long sinuous bog with a surface of treacherous green, and little black
pools of peat-water and mud. Mr. Ogden knew the bog perfectly, as he
knew every spot on the whole moor that he was accustomed to shoot over,
and he became terribly anxious. "We must mark this spot," he said; but
neither he nor Jim carried a stick, and there was no wood for miles
round. The only resource was to make a little cairn of stones.
When this was finished, Mr. Ogden stood looking at the bog a few
minutes, measuring its breadth with his eye. He concluded that it was
impossible for a child to leap over it even at the narrowest place, and
suggested that little Jacob must have skirted it. But in which
direction--to the right hand or the left? The dogs gave no indication;
they were off the scent. Mr. Ogden followed the edge of the bog to the
right, and after walking half a mile, turned the extremity of it, and
came again on the other side till he was opposite the cairn he had made.
The dogs found no fresh scent; they were perfectly useless. "Make a
noise," said Mr. Ogden to Jim; "make a noise with that horn."
Jim blew a loud blast. There came no answering cry. The wind whistled
over the heather, and a startled grouse whirred past on her rapid
wings.
An idea was forcing its way into Mr. Ogden's mind--a hateful, horrible,
inadmissible idea--that the foul black pit before him might be the grave
of his only son. How ascertain it? They had not the necessary
implements; and what would be the use of digging in that flowing, and
yielding, and unfathomable black mud? He could not endure the place, or
the intolerable supposition that it suggested, and went wildly on, in
perfect silence, with compressed lips and beating heart, stumbling over
the rough land.
Old Sarah warmed the little bed, and made a bright fire in Jacob's room.
When Ogden came back, he went there at once, and found the old woman
holding a small night-gown to the fire. His face told her enough. His
dress was covered with snow.
"Th' dogs is 'appen mistaken," she said; "little Jacob might be at
Milend by this time."
Mr. Ogden sent Jim down to Shayton on horseback, and returned to the
moor alone. They met again at the farm at three o'clock in the morning.
Neither of them had any news of the child. Jim had roused the household
at Milend, and awakened everybody both at the parsonage and the
Doctor's. He had given the alarm, and he had done the same at the
scattered cottages and, farm-houses between Twistle Farm and Shayton. If
Jacob were seen anywhere, news would be at once sent to his father. Dr.
Bardly was not at home; he had left about noon for Sootythorn on militia
business, and expected to go on to Wenderholme with Colonel Stanburne,
where he intended to pass the night.