Transcriber's note: This was one of the most enjoyable e-texts that I
have prepared but also one of the most difficult.
Many of the characters use the working class slang
and dialect of 100 years ago and the author sticks
to this consistently throughout the book. At times
there seems to be as many apostrophes as characters!
The printers have spaced these out and I hope that
I have joined them up acceptably for our purpose.
Chapter X of the original book contained a diagram
of a tattoo, and another diagram appeared in Chapter
XX. Text has been added to substitute for these
diagrams.
TRUE TILDA
By "Q" (A.T. QUILLER-COUCH)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
II HOW TRUE TILDA CAME TO DOLOROUS GARD
III A KIDNAPPING
IV IN WHICH CHILDE ARTHUR LOSES ONE MOTHER AND GAINS ANOTHER
V TEMPORARY EMBARRASSMENTS OF A THESPIAN
VI MR. MORTIMER'S ADVENTURE
VII IN WHICH MR. HUCKS TAKES A HAND
VIII FLIGHT
IX FREEDOM
X THE FOUR DIAMONDS.
XI THE "STRATFORD-ON-AVON"
XII PURSUED
XIII ADVENTURE OF THE FURRED COLLAR
XIV ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMROSE FETE
XV ADVENTURE OF THE FAT LADY
XVI ADVENTURES OF THE "FOUR ALLS" AND OF THE CELESTIAL CHEMIST
XVII BY WESTON WEIR
XVIII DOWN AVON
XIX THE S.S. _EVAN EVANS_
XX INISTOW FARM
XXI THE HUNTED STAG
XXII THE VOYAGE
XXIII THE ISLAND
XXIV GLASSON IN CHASE
XXV MISS SALLY BREAKS THE DOORS
XXVI THE RESCUE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER I
AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
"_That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land or by
water . . . all sick persons, and young children._"--THE LITANY.
"I love my love with a H'aitch, because he's 'andsome--"
Tilda turned over on her right side--she could do so now without pain--
and lifting herself a little, eyed the occupant of the next bed.
The other six beds in the ward were empty.
"I 'ate 'im, because--look 'ere, I don't believe you're listenin'?"
The figure in the next bed stirred feebly; the figure of a woman,
straight and gaunt under the hospital bedclothes. A tress of her hair
had come uncoiled and looped itself across the pillow--reddish auburn
hair, streaked with grey. She had been brought in, three nights ago,
drenched, bedraggled, chattering in a high fever; a case of acute
pneumonia. Her delirium had kept Tilda--who was preternaturally sharp
for her nine years--awake and curious during the better part of two
night-watches. Thereafter, for a day and a night and half a day, the
patient had lain somnolent, breathing hard, at intervals feebly
conscious. In one of these intervals her eyes had wandered and found
the child; and since then had painfully sought her a dozen times, and
found her again and rested on her.
Tilda, meeting that look, had done her best. The code of the show-folk,
to whom she belonged, ruled that persons in trouble were to be helped.
Moreover, the long whitewashed ward, with its seven oblong windows set
high in the wall--the smell of it, the solitude, the silence--bored her
inexpressibly. She had lain here three weeks with a hurt thigh-bone
bruised, but luckily not splintered, by the kick of a performing pony.
The ward reeked of yellow soap and iodoform. She would have exchanged
these odours at the price of her soul--but souls are not vendible, and
besides she did not know she possessed one--for the familiar redolences
of naphtha and horse-dung and trodden turf. These were far away: they
had quite forsaken her, or at best floated idly across her dreams.
What held her to fortitude had been the drone and intermittent hoot of a
steam-organ many streets away. It belonged to a roundabout, and
regularly tuned up towards evening; so distant that Tilda could not
distinguish one tune from another; only the thud of its bass mingled
with the buzz of a fly on the window and with the hard breathing of the
sick woman.
Sick persons must be amused: and Tilda, after trying the patient
unsuccessfully with a few jokes from the _repertoire_ of her own
favourite clown, had fallen back upon "I love my love"--about the only
game known to her that dispensed with physical exertion.
"Sleepin', are you? . . . Well, I'll chance it and go on. I 'ate 'im
because he's 'aughty--or 'igh-born, if you like--"
The figure beneath the bedclothes did not stir. Tilda lifted herself an
inch higher on the elbow; lifted her voice too as she went on:
"And I'll take 'im to--'OLMNESS--"
She had been watching, expecting some effect. But it scared her when,
after a moment, the woman raised herself slowly, steadily, until
half-erect from the waist. A ray of the afternoon sun fell slantwise
from one of the high windows, and, crossed by it, her eyes blazed like
lamps in their sockets.
"--And feed 'im on 'am!" concluded Tilda hurriedly, slipping down within
her bedclothes and drawing them tight about her. For the apparition was
stretching out a hand. The hand drew nearer.
"It's--it's a name came into my 'ead," quavered the child.
"Who . . . told . . . you?" The fingers of the hand had hooked
themselves like a bird's claw.
"Told me yerself. I 'eard you, night before last, when you was talkin'
wild. . . . If you try to do me any 'arm, I'll call the Sister."
"Holmness?"
"_You_ said it. Strike me dead if you didn'!" Tilda fetched a grip on
herself; but the hand, its fingers closing on air, drew back and
dropped, as though cut off from the galvanising current. She had even
presence of mind to note that the other hand--the hand on which the body
propped itself, still half-erect, wore a plain ring of gold.
"You talked a lot about 'Olmness--and Arthur. 'Oo's Arthur?"
But the patient had fallen back, and lay breathing hard. When she spoke
again all the vibration had gone out of her voice.
"Tell them . . . Arthur . . . fetch Arthur . . . ." The words
tailed off into a whisper. Still the lips moved as though speech
fluttered upon them; but no speech came.
"You just tell me where he is, and maybe we'll fetch 'im," said Tilda
encouragingly.
The eyes, which had been fixed on the child's, and with just that look
you may note in a dog's eyes when he waits for his master's word,
wandered to the table by the bedside, and grew troubled, distressful.
"Which of 'em?" asked Tilda, touching the medicine bottles and glasses
there one by one.
But the patient seemed to shake her head, though with a motion scarcely
perceptible.
She could talk no more.
Tilda lay back thinking.
"Sister!" she said, twenty minutes later, when the Second Nurse entered
the ward. The Second Nurse had charge just now, the matron being away
on her August holiday.
"Well, dear?"
"She wants something." Tilda nodded towards the next bed.
"To be sure she does, and I'm going to give it to her." The Second
Nurse, composed in all her movements, bent over the medicine table.
"Garn!" retorted Tilda. "It's easy seen you wasn' brought up along with
animals. Look at the eyes of her."
"Well?" The Second Nurse, after a long look at the patient, turned to
Tilda again.
"You mind my tellin' you about Black Sultan?"
"Of course I do. He was the one with the bearing rein and the white
martingale. Miss Montagu rode him."
"Right-O!" Tilda nodded. "Well, they used to come on next turn to mine,
which was the Zambra Fambly, as before the Crowned 'eads--only there
wasn' no fambly about it, nor yet no 'eads. Me bein' 'andy an' dressed
up, with frizzy 'air, they stood me on a tub with a 'oop, makin' believe
'twas for Miss Montagu to jump through; but of course she didn', reely.
When she came round to me she'd only smile and touch me playful under
the chin; and that made the sixpenny seats say, ''Ow womanly!' or, 'Only
think! able to ride like that and so fond of children!' Matter of fact,
she 'ad none; and her 'usband, Mike O'Halloran, used to beat her for it
sometimes, when he'd had a drop of What-killed-Aunty. He was an
Irishman."
"You didn't start to tell me about Mr. O'Halloran."
"No. He wasn' your sort at all; and besides, he's dead. But about
Black Sultan--Miss Montagu used to rest 'im, 'alf-way in his turn, while
the clown they called Bimbo--but his real name was Ernest Stanley--as't
a riddle about a policeman and a red 'errin' in a newspaper. She always
rested alongside o' me; and I always stood in the same place, right
over a ring-bolt where they made fast one of the stays for the trapeze;
and regular as Black Sultan rested, he'd up with his off hind foot and
rub the pastern-bone, very soft, on the ring-bolt. So one day I
unscrewed an' sneaked it, jus' to see what he'd do. When he felt for it
an' missed it, he gave me a look. That's all. An' that's what's the
matter with '_er_."
"But what can she be missing?" asked the Second Nurse. "She had nothing
about her but an old purse, and nothing in the purse but a
penny-ha'penny."
"It don't sound much, but we might try it."
"Nonsense!" said the Second Nurse; but later in the evening she brought
the purse, and set it on the table where the patient's eyes might rest
on it. For aught she could detect, they expressed no thanks, gave no
flicker of recognition. But the child had been watching them too, and
was quicker--by one-fifth of a second, perhaps.
It was half-past eight, and the sister turned low the single gas-jet.
She would retire now to her own room, change her dress for the
night-watching, and return in about twenty minutes. The door had no
sooner closed upon her than Tilda stretched out a hand. The sick woman
watched, panting feebly, making no sign. The purse--a cheap thing,
stamped with forget-me-nots, and much worn at the edges where the
papier-mache showed through its sham leather--contained a penny and a
halfpenny; these, and in an inner stamp-pocket a scrap of paper, folded
small, and greasy with handling.
Still peering across in the dim light, Tilda undid the broken folds and
scrambled up to her knees on the bed. It cost her a twinge of pain, but
only by standing upright on the bed's edge could she reach the
gas-bracket to turn the flame higher. This meant pain sharper and more
prolonged, yet she managed it, and, with that, clenched her teeth hard
to keep down a cry. The child could swear, on occasion, like a trooper;
but this was a fancy accomplishment. Just now, when an oath would have
come naturally to a man, she felt only a choking in the throat, and
swallowed it down with a sob.
On the paper were four lines, written in pencil in a cramped hand; and,
alas! though Tilda could read print, she had next to no acquaintance
with handwriting.
The words were a blur to her. She stared at them; but what she saw was
the gaze of the sick woman, upturned to her from the bed. The scrap of
paper hid it, and yet she saw. She must act quickly.
She gave a reassuring nod, turned the gas-jet low, and slid down into
bed with the paper clenched in her hand. But as her head touched the
pillow she heard a rustling noise, and craned up her neck again.
The patient had rolled over on her left side, facing her, fighting for
breath.
"Yes, yes," Tilda lied hardily. "To-morrow--Arthur--they shall send for
him to-morrow."
"Four," said the sick woman. The word was quite distinct. Another word
followed which Tilda could not catch.
"Four o'clock, or may be earlier," she promised.
"L--l--lozenges," the tongue babbled.
Tilda glanced towards the medicine table.
"Diamonds," said the voice with momentary firmness; "four
diamonds . . . on his coat . . . his father's . . . his . . . ."
"Four diamonds, yes?" the child repeated.
"Ned did them . . . he told me . . . told me . . . ." But here the voice
wavered and trailed off into babble, meaningless as a year-old infant's.
Tilda listened hard for a minute, two minutes, then dropped her head
back on her pillow as the door-handle rattled. It was the Second Nurse
returning for night duty.
Early next morning the doctor came--a thin young man with a stoop, and a
crop of sandy hair that stood upright from his forehead. Tilda detested
him.
He and the Second Nurse talked apart for quite a long while, and paid no
attention to the child, who lay shamming a doze, but with her ears open.
She heard the doctor say--
"She? Oh, move her to the far end of the ward."
The Second Nurse muttered something, and he went on--
"She is well, practically. All she wants now is someone to keep an eye
on her, make her lie up for a couple of hours every day, and box her
ears if she won't."
"That's me," thought Tilda. "I'm to be moved out of the way because
t'other's going to die; and if she's going to die, there's no time to be
lost."
She stirred, lifted her head, and piped--
"Doctor!"
"Hullo, imp! I thought you were sleeping."
"So I was. I sleep 'eaps better now." She drew her hurt leg up and
down in the bed. "Doctor, I 'd be all right, certain sure, if you let
me out for arf-an-hour. Sister let me sit out for ever so long
yestiday, an' while she was dustin' out the men's ward I practised
walkin'--all the lenth of the room an' back."
"When I told you never, on any account!" the Sister scolded.
"If I'd only the loan of a crutch!" pleaded Tilda; "an' it couldn' do me
no 'arm in this weather."
"Pining for liberty, hey?" said the doctor. (She saw what was passing
through his mind, and despised him for it.) "Well, suppose, now, we let
you out for just half an hour?"
Tilda clapped her palms together, and her eyes shone. To herself she
said: "Kiddin' of me, that's what they are. Want to get me out of the
way while they shift the beddin'. Lemme get back my clothes, that's
all, an' I'll teach him about pinin' for liberty."
"But," said the doctor severely, lifting a finger, "you're to keep to
the pavement mind--just outside, where it's nice and shady. Only so far
as the next turning and back; no crossing anywhere or getting in the way
of traffic, and only for half an hour. The chimes from St. Barnabas
will tell you, if you can't read the clock."
She had learnt to read the time before she was five years old, and had a
mind to tell him, but checked herself and merely nodded her head.
"Half an hour, and the pavement only. Is that understood?"
"Honest!"
It annoyed her--when, an hour later, she began to dress for the
adventure--to find herself weaker than she had at all supposed.
Although she forbore to mention it to the Second Nurse, there was an
irresponsible funny feeling in her legs. They seemed to belong to her
but by fits and starts. But the clothes were hers: the merino skirt a
deal too short for her--she had grown almost an inch in her bed-lying--
the chip hat, more badly crushed than ever, a scandal of a hat, but
still hers. The dear, dear clothes! She held them in both hands and
nuzzled into them, inhaling her lost self in the new-old scent of
liberty.
When at length her hat was donned, the notion took her to stand by the
sick woman's bed to show herself.
Consciousness had drained away deep into the sick woman's eyes.
It wavered there darkly, submerged, half-suspended, as you may see the
weed waver in a dim seapool. Did a bubble, a gleam, float up from the
depths? At any rate, the child nodded bravely.
"Goin' to fetch 'im, don't you fret!"
CHAPTER II
HOW TRUE TILDA CAME TO DOLOROUS GARD
"_Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set. And blew 'Childe Roland to
the Dark Tower came.'_" BROWNING.
Fifty years before, the Hospital of the Good Samaritan had been the pet
"charity" of a residential suburb. Factories and slums had since
crowded in upon it, ousting the residents and creeping like a tide over
the sites of their gardens and villas. The street kept its ancient
width, and a few smoke-blackened trees--lilacs, laburnums, limes, and
one copper-beech--still dignified the purlieus. Time, ruthless upon
these amenities, had spared, and even enlarged, the hospital.
It stood on the shaded side of the street. Nevertheless, the sunshine,
reflected from the facade of mean houses across the way, dazzled Tilda
as she crossed the threshold of the great doorway and hopped down the
steps. There were five steps, and on the lowest she paused, leaning a
moment on her crutch before taking the final plunge into liberty.
Then, while she stood blinking, of a sudden a yellowish brown body
bounded at her out of the sun-dazzle, pushed her tottering, danced back,
and leapt at her again, springing to lick her face, and uttering sharp,
inarticulate noises from a throat bursting with bliss.
"'Dolph! O 'Dolph!"
Tilda sank on the lowest step and stretched out both arms. The dog,
rushing between them, fairly bowled her backwards; lit in her lap and
twisted his body round ecstatically, thrusting, nuzzling at her bosom,
her neck, her face--devouring her with love. In her weakness she caught
him around the chest, close behind the forelegs, and hugged him to her.
So for a quarter of a minute the two rocked together and struggled.
"'Dolph! O good dog! . . . Did Bill send yer?"
'Dolph, recoiling, shook his neck-ruff and prepared for another spring;
but Tilda pushed him back and stood up. "Take me along to him," she
commanded, and lifted her face impudently to the clock-face of St.
Barnabas above the mean roofs. "Barnabas, are yer? Then give my
compliments to the doctor, you Barnabas, an' tell 'im to cheese it."
'Dolph--short for Godolphus--pricked both ears and studied the sky-line.
Perceiving nothing there--not even a swallow to be chased--he barked
twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood thoroughly, and at once
fell to new capers by way of changing the subject. Tilda became severe.
"Look here, Godolphus," she explained, "this is biz-strict biz. You
may wag your silly Irish tail, but that don't take _me_ in.
Understand? . . . Well, the first thing you 'ave to do is take me to Bill."
Godolphus was dashed; hurt, it may be, in his feelings. Being dumb, he
could not plead that for three weeks daily he had kept watch on the
hospital door; that, hungry, he had missed his meals for faith, which is
the substance of things unseen; that, a few hours ago, having to choose
between half-gods assured and whole gods upon trust--an almost desperate
trust--he had staked against the odds. Or, it may be, he forgot all
this, and only considered what lay ahead for the child. At any rate,
his tail, as he led the way, wagged at a sensibly lower angle.
"Bill can read any kind of 'andwriting," said Tilda, half to herself and
half to the dog. "What's more, and whatever's the matter, Bill 'elps."
So she promised herself. It did not strike her that 'Dolph--who in an
ordinary way should have been bounding ahead and anon bounding back to
gyrate on his hind legs and encourage her--preferred to trot ahead some
thirty or forty yards and wait for her to overtake him; nor that, when
she came up, he avoided her eyes, pretending that here a doorstep, there
a grating or water-main absorbed his curiosity. Once or twice, indeed,
before trotting off again, he left these objects of interest to run
around Tilda's heels and rub against her crutch. But she was busy with
her own plans.
So through a zig-zag of four or five dingy streets they came to one she
recognised as that leading into the Plain, or open space where the
show-people encamped. At its far end 'Dolph halted. His tail still
wagged, but his look was sidelong, furtive, uneasy.
Tilda, coming up with him, stood still for a moment, stared, and caught
her breath with a little gasp of dismay.
The Plain was empty.
Circus and menagerie, swing-boats, roundabouts, shooting-galleries--all
were gone. The whole area lay trampled and bare, with puddles where the
steam-engines had stood, and in the puddles bedabbled relics of paper
brushes, confetti bags, scraps torn from feminine flounces, twisted
leaden tubes of "ladies' tormentors" cast away and half-trodden into the
mire; the whole an unscavenged desolation. Her folk--the show-folk--had
deserted her and vanished, and she had not a penny in her pocket.
It cost Tilda all her pluck to keep what she called a tight upper lip.
She uttered no cry, but seated herself on the nearest doorstep--
apparently with deliberation, actually not heeding, still less caring,
to whom the doorstep belonged.
"Oh, 'Dolph!" she murmured.
To her credit, in the act of appealing to him, she understood the dog's
heroism, and again stretched forth her arms. He had been waiting for
this--sprang at her, and again was caught and hugged. Again the two
forlorn ones rocked in an embrace.
Brief ecstasy! The door behind them was constructed in two portions, of
which the upper stood wide, the lower deceptively on the latch. Against
this, as she struggled with Godolphus's ardour, Tilda gave a backward
lurch. It yielded, flew open, and child and dog together rolled in
across the threshold, while a shop-bell jangled madly above them.
"Get out of this--you and your nasty cur!"
Tilda picked up herself and her crutch, and stood eyeing the shopwoman,
who, summoned by the bell, had come rushing from an inner room, and in
no sweet temper. From the woman she glanced around the shop--
a dairy-shop with a marble-topped counter, and upon the counter a pair
of scales and a large yellow block of margarine.
"It was a naccident," said Tilda firmly and with composure. "And my dog
isn' a nasty cur; it only shows your ignorance. Be quiet, 'Dolph!"
She had to turn and shake her crutch at Godolphus, who, perceiving his
mistress's line of action, at once, in his impulsive Irish way, barked
defiance at the shopwoman.
But the shopwoman's eyes rested on the crutch, and the sight of it
appeared to mollify her.
"My gracious! I do believe you 're the child was hurt at Maggs's Circus
and taken to hospital."
Tilda nodded.
"Did you see me?"
"Carried by on a stretcher--and your face the colour of _that_."
The woman pointed to the marble counter-top.
"I was a serious case," said Tilda impressively. "The people at the
Good Samaritan couldn' remember admittin' the likes of it. There were
complications."
"You don't say!"
"But what's become of Maggs's?"
"Maggs's left a week ago come Tuesday. I know, because they used to buy
their milk of me. They were the first a'most, and the last was the
Menagerie and Gavel's Roundabouts. _They_ packed up last night.
It must be a wearin' life," commented the shopwoman. "But for my part I
like the shows, and so I tell Damper--that's my 'usband. They put a bit
of colour into the place while they last, besides bein' free-'anded with
their money. Light come light go, I reckon; but anyway, it's different
from cows. So you suffered from complications, did you?"
"Internal," Tilda assured her in a voice as hollow as she could make it.
"I must have spit up a quart of blood, first an' last. An' the medicine
I 'ad to take! You wouldn' think it, but the colour was pale
'eliotrope."
"I wonder," said Mrs. Damper sympathetically--"I wonder it stayed in
the stomach."
"It didn'."
"Wouldn' you fancy a glass o' milk, now?"
"It's very kind of you." Tilda put on her best manners. "And 'ere's
'ealth!" she added before sipping, when the milk was handed to her.
"And the dog--wouldn' '_e_ like something?"
"Well, since you mention it--but it's givin' you a 'eap of trouble. If
you 'ave such a thing as a bun, it don't matter 'ow stale."
"I can do better 'n that." Mrs. Damper dived into the inner room, and
re-emerged with a plateful of scraps. "There's always waste with
children," she explained, "and I got five. You can't think the load off
one's shoulders when they're packed to school at nine o'clock.
And that, I dessay," she wound up lucidly, "is what softened me t'ards
you. Do you go to school, now?"
"Never did," answered Tilda, taking the plate and laying it before
Godolphus, who fell-to voraciously.
"I 'd like to tell that to the attendance officer," said Mrs. Damper in
a wistful tone. "But p'r'aps it might get you into trouble?"
"You 're welcome."
"He do give me a lot of worry; and it don't make things easier Damper's
threatenin' to knock his 'ead off if ever he catches the man darkenin'
our door. Never been to school, aven't you? I 'd like to tell 'im, and
that, if there's a law, it ought to be the same for all. But all my
children are 'ealthy, and that's one consolation."
"'Ealth's the first thing in life," agreed Tilda. "So they've all
cleared out?--the shows, I mean."
"Every one--exceptin' the Theayter."
"Mortimer's?" Tilda limped to the open door. "But I don't see him,
neither."
"Mortimer's is up the spout. First of all, there was trouble with the
lodgings; and on top of that, last Monday, Mr. Hucks put the bailiffs
in. This mornin' he sent half a dozen men, and they took the show to
pieces and carried it off to Hucks's yard, where I hear he means to sell
it by public auction."
"Who's Mr. Hucks?"
"He's the man that farms the Plain here--farms it _out_, I mean," Mrs.
Damper explained. "He leases the ground from the Corporation and lets
it out for what he can make, and that's a pretty penny. Terrible
close-fisted man is Mr. Hucks."
"Oh!" said Tilda, enlightened. "When you talked of farmin', you made me
wonder . . .So they're all gone? And Wolverhampton-way, I reckon.
That was to be the next move."
"I've often seen myself travellin' in a caravan," said Mrs. Damper
dreamily. "Here to-day an' gone to-morrow, and only to stretch out your
hand whether 'tis hairpins or a fryin'-pan; though I should never get
over travellin' on Sundays." Here, while her eyes rested on the child,
of a sudden she came out of her reverie with a sharp exclamation.
"Lord's sake! You ain't goin' to tell me they've left you in 'ospital,
stranded!"
"That's about it," said Tilda bravely, albeit with a wry little twist of
her mouth.
"But what'll you do?"
"Oh, I dunno . . . We'll get along some'ow--eh, 'Dolph? Fact is, I got
a job to do, an' no time to lose worryin'. You just read _that_."
Tilda produced and handed her scrap of paper to Mrs. Damper, who took
it, unfolded it, and perused the writing slowly.
"Goin' there?" she inquired at length.
"That depends." Tilda was not to be taken off her guard. "I want you to
read what it says."
"Yes, to be sure--I forgot what you said about havin' no schoolin'.
Well, it says: 'Arthur Miles, surname Chandon, b. Kingsand, May 1st,
1888. Rev. Dr. Purdie J. Glasson, Holy Innocents' Orphanage, Bursfield,
near Birmingham '--leastways, I can't read the last line clear, the
paper bein' frayed; but it's bound to be what I've said."
"Why?"
"Why, because that's the address. Holy Innocents, down by the canal--
I know it, o' course, _and_ Dr. Glasson. Damper supplied 'em with milk
for over six months, an' trouble enough we had to get our money."
"How far is it?"
"Matter of half a mile, I should say--close by the canal. You cross it
there by the iron bridge. The tram'll take you down for a penny, only
you must mind and get out this side of the bridge, because once you're
on the other side it's tuppence. Haven't got a penny? Well,"--Mrs.
Damper dived a hand into her till--"I'll give you one. Bein' a mother,
I can't bear to see children in trouble."
"Thank you," said Tilda. "It'll come in 'andy; but I ain't in no
trouble just yet."
"I 'spose," Mrs. Damper ventured after a pause, "you don't feel like
tellin' me what your business might be down at the orphanage? Not that
I'm curious.
"I can't." This was perfectly true, for she herself did not know.
"You see," she added with a fine air of mystery, "there's others mixed
up in this."
Mrs. Damper sighed.
"Well, I mustn' detain you . . . This Arthur Miles Chandon--he's not a
friend of yours by any chance?"
"He's a--sort of connection," said Tilda. "You know 'im, p'r'aps?"
"Dear me, no!"
"Oh,"--the child, without intending it, achieved a fine irony--
"I thought you seemed interested. Well, so long! and thank you again--
there's a tram stoppin' at the corner! Come along, 'Dolph!"
She was not--she had said it truthfully--by any means in trouble just
yet. On the contrary, after long deprivation she was tasting life
again, and finding it good. The streets of this Bursfield suburb were
far from suggestive of the New Jerusalem--a City of which, by the way,
Tilda had neither read nor heard. They were, in fact, mean and squalid,
begrimed with smoke and imperfectly scavenged. But they were, at least,
populous, and to Tilda the faces in the tram and on the pavements wore,
each and all, a friendly--almost an angelic--glow. The tram-car rolled
along like a celestial chariot trailing clouds of glory, and 'Dolph,
running beside it and threading his way in and out between the legs of
the passers-by, was a hound of heaven in a coat effluent of gold.
Weariness would come, but as yet her body felt no weariness, buoyed upon
a spirit a-tiptoe for all adventure.
The tram reached the iron bridge and drew up. She descended, asked the
conductor to direct her to Holy Innocents, and was answered with a jerk
of the thumb.
It stood, in fact, just beyond the bridge, with a high brick wall that
turned off the street at right angles and overhung the towpath of the
canal. Although in architecture wholly dissimilar, the building put her
in mind of the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, and her spirits sank for
a moment. Its facade looked upon the street over a strip of garden
crowded with dingy laurels. It contained a depressingly large number of
windows, and it seemed to her that they were at once bare and dirty.
Also, and simultaneously, it occurred to her that she had no notion what
step to take next, nor how, if she rang the bell, to explain herself.
She temporised therefore; whistled to 'Dolph, and turned aside down the
steps leading to the towpath. She would con the lie of the land before
laying siege--the strength of the castle before summoning the defence.
The castle was patently strong--strong enough to excuse any
disheartenment. Scarcely a window pierced its narrow butt-end, four
stories high, under which the steps wound. It ended just where they met
the towpath, and from its angle sprang a brick wall dead-blank, at least
twelve feet high, which ran for eighty or ninety yards along the
straight line of the path. Across the canal a row of unkempt cottage
gardens sloped to the water, the most of them fenced from the brink of
it with decayed palings, a few with elder bushes and barbed wire to fill
up the gaps, while at least two ended in moraines of old meat tins and
shards of crockery. And between these containing banks wound the canal,
shallow and waveless, with noisome weeds trailing on its surface afloat
amid soot and iridescent patches or pools of tar. In the cottage
gardens not a soul was at work, nor, by their appearance, had a soul
worked in them for years past. The canal, too, was deserted, save for
one long monkey-boat, black as Charon's barge, that lay moored to a
post on the towpath, some seventy-odd yards up stream, near where the
wall of the Orphanage ended. Beyond this, and over a line of ragged
thorns, the bulk of a red-brick Brewery--its roof crowned with a
sky-sign--closed the view.
The monkey-boat lay with her stem down-stream, and her after-part--her
habitable quarters--covered by a black tarpaulin. A solitary man was at
work shovelling coal out of her middle hold into a large metal bucket.
As Tilda hobbled towards him he hoisted the full bucket on his
shoulders, staggered across the towpath with it, and shot its contents
into a manhole under the brick wall. Tilda drew near and came to a
halt, watching him.
"Afternoon," said the man, beginning to shovel again.
"Afternoon," responded Tilda.
He was a young man--she could detect this beneath his mask of coal dust.
He wore a sack over his shoulders, and a black sou'wester hat with a
hind-flap that fell low over his neck. But she liked the look in his
eyes, though the rims of them were red and the brows caked with grit.
She liked his voice, too. It sounded friendly.
"Is this the Orph'nige? What they call 'Oly Innercents?" she asked.
"That's so," the young coalheaver answered. "Want to get in?"
"I do an' I don't," said Tilda.
"Then take my advice an' don't."
He resumed his shovelling, and Tilda watched him for a while.
"Nice dorg," said he, breaking off and throwing an affable nod towards
Godolphus who, having attracted no attention by flinging himself on the
grass with a lolling tongue and every appearance of fatigue, was now
filling up the time in quest of a flea. "No breed, but he has points.
Where did you pick him up?"
"He belongs to a show."
"Crystal Pallus?"
"And," pursued Tilda, "I was wonderin' if you'd look after him while I
step inside?"
She threw back her head, and the man whistled.
"You're a trustin' one, I must say!"
"You'd never be mean enough to make off with 'im, an' I won't believe it
of you," spoke up Tilda boldly.
"Eh? I wasn' talkin of the dorg," he explained. "I was meanin' the
Orph'nage. By all accounts 'tisn' so easy to get in--an' 'tis a sight
harder to get out."
"I've _got_ to get in," urged Tilda desperately.
"I've a message for someone inside. His name's Arthur Miles Chandon."
The young coalheaver shook his head.
"I don't know 'im," he said. "I'm new to this job, an' they don't talk
to me through the coal-'ole. But you seem a well-plucked one, and what
with your crutch--How did you come by it?"
"Kick of a pony."
"Seems to me you've been a good deal mixed up with animals, for your
age. What about your pa and ma?"
"Never 'ad none, I thank Gord."
"Eh?" The young man laid down his shovel, lifted the flap of his
sou'wester, and scratched the back of his head slowly. "Let me get the
hang o' _that_, now."
"I've seen fathers and mothers," said the sage child, nodding at him;
"and them as likes 'em is welcome to 'em."
"Gor-a-mussy!" half-groaned the young man. "If you talk like that,
they'll take you in, right enough; but as to your gettin' out--"
"I'll get out, one way or 'nother--you see!" Tilda promised. "All you
'ave to do is to take charge o' this crutch an' look after the dog."
"Oh, I'll look after 'im!"
The child shook a forefinger at 'Dolph, forbidding him to follow her.
The dog sank on his haunches, wagging a tail that swept the grasses in
perplexed protest, and watched her as she retraced her way along the
towpath.
Tilda did not once look back. She was horribly frightened; but she had
pledged her word now, and it was irredeemable. From the hurrying
traffic of the street she took a final breath of courage, and tugged at
the iron bell-pull depending beside the Orphanage gate. A bell clanged
close within the house, and the sound of it almost made her jump out of
her boots.
CHAPTER III
A KIDNAPPING
"_And with that sound the castle all to-brast; so she took him, and they
two fared forth hand in hand." "QUEST OF THE GRAIL."
The front door opened, and a slatternly woman in a soiled print dress
came shuffling down the flagged pathway to the gate. She wore cloth
boots, and Tilda took note that one of them was burst.
"Go away," said the woman, opening the gate just wide enough to thrust
out her head. "We don't give nothing to beggars."
"I could 'a told _you_ that," retorted Tilda. "But as it 'appens, I
ain't one." She pointed to a brass letter-plate beside the wicket--it
was pierced with a slit, and bore the legend, _For Voluntary Donations_.
"Seems you collect a bit, though. Like it better, I dessay."
"Look here, if you've come with a message, let's 'ave it, an' take
yourself off. It's washing-day in the 'ouse, an' I'm busy."
"Ah!" said Tilda politely, "I'm glad I came before you begun.
I want"--here she unfolded her scrap of paper and made pretence to
read--"I want to see the Reverend Doctor Purdie J. Glasson."
"Then you can't," snapped the woman, and was about to shut the door in
her face, but desisted and drew back with a cry as a formidable yellow
dog slipped through the opening, past her skirts, and into the garden.
It was 'Dolph, of course. Anxiety for his mistress had been too much
for him, and had snapped the bonds of obedience; and knowing full well
that he was misbehaving, he had come up furtively, unperceived.
But now, having crossed the Rubicon, the rogue must brazen things out--
which he did by starting a cat out of one of the dingy laurels,
chivvying her some way into the house, and returning to shake himself on
the front doorstep and bark in absurd triumph.
"'Dolph! 'Dolph!" called Tilda.
"Belongs to you, does he? Then fetch him out at once! You, and your
dogs!"
"I'm fetchin' him fast as I can."
Tilda pushed past her, and advanced sternly to the front doorstep.
"'Dolph, come here!" she commanded. 'Dolph barked once again defiantly,
then laid himself down on the step in abject contrition, rolling over on
his back and lifting all four legs skyward.
Tilda rolled him sideways with a slap, caught him by the scruff of the
neck, and began to rate him soundly. But a moment later her grasp
relaxed as a door opened within the passage, and at the sound of a
footstep she looked up, to see a tall man in black standing over her and
towering in the doorway.
"What is the meaning of this noise?" demanded the man in black. He was
elderly and bald, with small pig-eyes, grey side-whiskers, and for mouth
a hard square slit much like that of the collecting-box by the gate.
A long pendulous nose came down over it and almost met an upthrust lower
jaw. He wore a clerical suit, with a dingy white neck-tie; the skin
about his throat hung in deep folds, and the folds were filled with an
unpleasing grey stubble.
"If--if you please, sir, I was comin' with a message, an' he started
after a cat. I can't break 'im of it."
"Turn him out," said the man in black. He walked to the gate and held
it open while Tilda ejected Godolphus into the street. "I never allow
dogs on my premises."
"No, sir."
"Now tell me your message."
"It's about a--a boy, sir," stammered Tilda, and felt a horrible fear
creeping over her now that she approached the crisis. "That is, if
you're the Reverend Doctor Glasson."
"I am Doctor Glasson. Well?"
"It's about a boy," harked back poor Tilda. "He's called Arthur Miles
Surname Chandon--an' he was born at a place called Kingsand, if that's
any 'elp--an' there's somebody wants to see 'im most particular."
"Come indoors."
Doctor Glasson said it sharply, at the same time turning right about and
leading the way towards the house. Tilda followed, while behind her the
excluded 'Dolph yapped and flung himself against the gate. But the gate
was lined on the inside with wire-netting, and the garden wall was
neither to be leapt nor scaled.
In the porch Dr. Glasson stood aside to let the servant precede them
into the house, looked after her until she vanished down the length of a
dark passage that smelt potently of soapsuds and cabbage-water, and
motioned the child to step within. She obeyed, while her terror and the
odours of the house together caught her by the throat. But worse was
her dismay when, having closed the front door, the Doctor bolted it and
slipped a chain on the bolt.
"The first door to the left, if you please." He stepped past her and
pushed it open, and she entered, albeit with quaking knees. The room--a
large and high one--was furnished barely and like an office--with a red
flock wall-paper, a brown linoleum on the floor, and in the centre of
the linoleum a bulky roll-top desk and a Windsor chair. Other Windsor
chairs stood in array against the walls, and a couple of rosewood
bookcases with glass fronts. There was also by the fireplace an
armchair covered with American leather, a rag-work hearth-rug, and a
large waste-paper basket stuffed with envelopes and circulars. Over the
mantelshelf hung a print in an Oxford frame, with the title _Suffer
Little Children to Come unto Me_, and a large stain of damp in the lower
left-hand corner. The mantelshelf itself supported a clock, a pair of
bronze candlesticks, a movable calendar, a bottle of paste, and a wooden
box with _For the Little Ones_ painted on it in black letters.
All this the child took in almost at a glance, and notwithstanding that
the room was dark. Yet it had two large windows, and they were
curtainless. Its gloom came of the thick coating of dirt on their upper
panes, and a couple of wire blinds that cut off all light below.
Doctor Glasson had walked straight to his desk, and stood for a few
moments with his back to the child, fingering his papers and apparently
engaged in thought. By-and-by he picked up a pair of spectacles,
turned, and adjusted them slowly whilst he stared down on her.
"Where did you get this information?"
Tilda's first impulse was to show him her scrap of paper, but she
thought better of it. She would keep it back while she could, as a
possible trump card. Besides, she feared and distrusted this man with
the little eyes. Seen through glasses they were worse than ever.
"He's wanted by someone very particular," she repeated.
"By whom? Speak up, child! Who sent you?"
Heaven knows to what invisible spirits the child appealed. They were
certainly disreputable ones, as will be seen; but they heard her prayer,
and came to her now in her extremity. Hardly knowing what she did, she
opened on this man a pair of eyes seraphically innocent, and asked--
"W'y, haven't you seen my aunt?"
"Your aunt?"
"She _promised_ to call here at twelve-thirty, an' I was to meet her.
But"--here Tilda had to keep a tight hold on her voice--"per'aps I'm
early?"
"It's close upon one o'clock," said Doctor Glasson, with a glance
towards the mantelshelf. "What is your aunt's name, and her business?"
"She's called Brown--Martha Brown--_Mrs._ Martha Brown, and she keeps a
milliner's shop in the Edgeware Road, London," panted Tilda.
"I should have asked, What is her business with me?" Doctor Glasson
corrected his question severely.
"I think--I dunno--but I _think_, sir, she might be wantin' to enter me
for a orphlan. My pa, sir, was knocked down an' killed by a motor-car.
It was in the early days," pursued Tilda, desperate now and aghast at
her own invention. The lies seemed to spring to her lips full grown.
"Pa was a stableman, sir, at Buckin'am Palace, and often and often I've
'eard 'im tell mother what'd be the end of 'im. He 'd seen it in a
dream. And mother, _she_ was a stewardess in a Sou'-Western boat that
got cut in two last year. Maybe you read of it in the papers?"
Tears by this time filled the child's eyes. She was casting about to
invent a last dying speech for her mother, when Doctor Glasson
interrupted.
"If your aunt wishes to place you here, it might perhaps be managed, for
a consideration. Just now we have no room for-er--non-paying children.
But you began by asking for Arthur Miles."
"Surname Chandon."
"Yes--quite so--Chandon." He picked up a pencil and a half-sheet of
paper from the desk, and wrote the name. "Born at Kingsand--I think you
said Kingsand? Do you happen to know where Kingsand is? In what
county, for instance?"
But Tilda had begun to scent danger again, she hardly knew why, and
contented herself with shaking her head.
"Someone wants to see him. Who?"
"She's--an invalid," Tilda admitted.
"Not your aunt?"
"She's a--a _friend_ of my aunt's."
Doctor Glasson pulled out a watch and compared it with the clock on the
mantelshelf. While he did so Tilda stole a look up at his face, and
more than ever it seemed to her to resemble a double trap--its slit of a
mouth constructed to swallow anything that escaped between nose and
chin.
"Your aunt is far from punctual. You are sure she means to call?"
"Sure," answered Tilda still hardily. "'Twelve-thirty' was her last
words when she left me at the doctor's--my 'ip bein' 'urt, sir, through
tumblin' out of a nomnibus, three weeks ago. But you never can depend
on 'er to a few minutes up 'an down. She gets into the streets,
watchin' the fashions, an' that carries 'er away. P'r'aps, sir, I 'd
better go back into the street and 'ave a look for her."
"I think you had better wait here for her," said Doctor Glasson,
shutting his lips with a snap. "There are some picture-books in the
drawing-room."
He led the way. The drawing-room lay at the back of the house--an
apartment even more profoundly depressing than the one she had left.
Its one important piece of furniture was a circular table of rosewood
standing in the centre of the carpet under a brass gaselier, of which
the burnish had perished in patches; and in the centre of the table
stood a round-topped glass case containing a stuffed kestrel, with a
stuffed lark prostrate under its talons and bleeding vermilion wax.
Around this ornament were disposed, as the Doctor had promised, a number
of albums and illustrated books, one of which he chose and placed it in
her hands, at the same time bringing forward one of a suite of rosewood
chairs ranged with their backs to the walls. He motioned her to be
seated.
"You shall be told as soon as ever your aunt arrives."
"Yes, sir," said Tilda feebly. For the moment all the fight had gone
out of her.
He stood eyeing her, pulling at his bony finger-joints, and seemed on
the point of putting some further question, but turned abruptly and left
the room.
As the door closed--thank Heaven, at least, he did not bolt this one
also!--a dry sob escaped the child. Why had she told that string of
falsehoods? She was trapped now--imprisoned in this horrible house, not
to be released until this fictitious aunt arrived, which, of course,
would be never. The book on her lap lay open at a coloured lithograph
of Mazeppa bound upon his steed and in full flight across the Tartar
steppes. She knew the story--was it not Mr. Maggs's most thrilling
"equestrian _finale_," and first favourite with the public? At another
time she would have examined the picture eagerly. But now it swam
before her, unmeaning. She closed the book, threw a glance around the
four corners of the room, another at the stuffed kestrel--whose pitiless
small eye strangely resembled Doctor Glasson's--and dragged herself to
the window.
The lower panes of the window were filled with coloured transparencies
representing in series the history of the Prodigal Son. They excluded a
great deal of daylight and the whole of the view. Even by standing on
tip-toe she could not look over them, and she dared not try to raise the
sash.
By-and-by a thought struck her. She went back to her chair, lifted it,
carried it to the window and climbed upon it; and this was no small feat
or succession of feats, for as yet her thigh pained her, and fear held
her half-paralysed.
What she looked upon was an oblong space enclosed by brick walls ten or
twelve feet high, and divided by a lower wall--also of brick--into two
parallelograms of unequal width. Of these the wider was a gravelled
yard, absolutely bare, in extent perhaps an acre; and here, in various
knots and groups, were gathered some two dozen children. Alongside of
the yard and upon its left--that is to say, as Tilda guessed, between it
and the canal--ran a narrower strip of kitchen garden, planted with
leeks, cabbages, potatoes, and ending in a kind of shed--part
glass-house, part out-house--built in lean-to fashion against the
terminal wall, which overtopped it by several feet. The children in the
yard could not look into this garden, for the dividing wall reached far
above their heads.
Tilda, too, had no eyes for the garden, after a first glance had assured
her it was empty. The children engaged all her attention. She had
never seen anything like them; and yet they were obviously boys and
girls, and in numbers pretty equally divided, What beat her was that
they neither ran about nor played at any game, but walked to and fro--to
and fro--as though pacing through some form of drill; and yet again they
could not be drilling, for their motions were almost inert and quite
aimless. Next, to her surprise, she perceived that, on no apparent
compulsion, the boys kept with the boys in these separate wandering
groups, and the girls with the girls; and further that, when two groups
met and passed, no greeting, no nod of recognition, was ever exchanged.
At any rate she could detect none. She had heard tell--indeed, it was
an article of faith among the show-children with whom she had been
brought up--that the sons and daughters of the well-to-do followed weird
ways and practised discomfortable habits--attended public worship on
Sundays, for instance, walking two and two in stiff raiment. But these
children were patently very far from well-to-do. The garments of some
hung about them in rags that fell short even of Tilda's easy standard.
The spectacle fascinated her. For the moment it chased fear out of her
mind. She was only conscious of pity--of pity afflicting and
indefinable, far beyond her small understanding, and yet perhaps not
wholly unlike that by which the great poet was oppressed as he followed
his guide down through the infernal circles and spoke with their
inhabitants. The sight did her this good--it drove out for a while,
along with fear, all thought of her present situation. She noted that
the majority were in twos or threes, but that here and there a child
walked solitary, and that the faces of these solitary ones were hard to
discern, being bent towards the ground . . .
The door-handle rattled and called her back to terror. She had no time
to clamber down from her chair. She was caught.
But it was a woman who entered, the same that had opened the front gate;
and she carried a tray with a glass of water on it and a plate of
biscuits.
"The Doctor told me as 'ow you might be 'ungry," she explained.
"Thank you," said Tilda. "I--I was lookin' at the view."
For an instant she thought of appealing to this stranger's mercy.
The woman's eyes were hard, but not unkind. They scrutinised her
closely.
"You take my advice, an' get out o' this quick as you can."
The woman thumped down the tray, and made as if to leave the room with a
step decisive as her speech. At the door, however, she hesitated.
"Related to 'im?" she inquired.
"Eh?" Tilda was taken aback. "'Oo's 'im?"
"I 'eard you tell the Doctor you wanted to see 'im."
"An' so I do. But I'm no relation of 'is--on'y a friend."
"I was thinkin' so. Lawful born or come-by-chance, the child's a
little gentleman, an' different from the others. Blood al'ays comes
out, don't it?"
"I s'pose so."
Tilda, still perched on her chair, glanced out at the children in the
yard.
"You won't see 'im out there. He's in the shed at the end o' the
kitchen garden, cleanin' the boots. If you've got anything good to tell
'im, an' 'll promise not to be five minutes, I might give you a run
there while the Doctor's finishin' his dinner in his study. Fact is,"
added this strange woman, "the child likes to be alone, an' sometimes I
lets 'im slip away there--when he's good, or the Doctor's been extra
'ard with 'im."
"Beats 'im?" asked Tilda, and suddenly, still erect on her chair and
looking down on the woman, felt her courage flowing back full and
strong. "He's a beast, then."
"You musn' talk like that," said the woman hurriedly, with a glance back
at the half-open door. "Hut he's 'ard if you cross 'im--an' the child's
pay bein' be'ind--'and--"
"What's your name?" demanded Tilda.
"Sarah 'Uggins."
"Miss or Missis?"
"What's that to you?"
The blood surged into the woman's face, and she eyed the child
suspiciously under lowered brows. Tilda slipped down from her chair.
She had a sense of standing dangerously on the edge of something evil,
forbidden. If only she could scream aloud and rush out--anywhere--into
the open air!
"I--I was only wantin' to speak polite," she stammered. "I been
impident to yer. But O, Sarah 'Uggins--O, ma'am--'elp me see 'im an'
get away, an' I'll bless yer name fur ever and ever! Amen."
"Nip in front o' me," said the woman, "and be quick, then! First
turnin' to the right down the stairs, an' don't clatter yer boots."
Tilda obeyed breathlessly, and found herself in a dark stone stairway.
It led down steeply to the basement, and here her guide overtook and
stepped ahead of her. They passed through two dirty kitchens, through a
wash-house littered with damp linen and filled with steam from a copper
in the corner, and emerged upon a well-court foetid with sink-water and
decaying scraps of vegetables. They had met no one on their way, and it
crossed Tilda's mind--but the thought was incredible--that Sarah Huggins
served this vast barracks single-handed. A flight of stone steps led up
from this area to the railed coping twenty feet aloft, where the sky
shone pure and fresh.
"Up there, an' you 're in the garden." Tilda ran, so fast that at the
head of the steps she had to clutch at the railing and draw breath.
The garden, too, was deserted. A gravelled path, scarcely four feet
wide, ran straight to the end of it, and along this she hurried, not
daring to look back, but aware that all the back windows were following
her--watching and following her--with horrible curtainless eyes.
The garden, planted for utility, was passably well kept. It contained,
in all its parcelled length, not a single flower. At the very end a few
currant bushes partially hid the front of the shed and glass-house.
They were the one scrap of cover, and when she reached them she had a
mind to crouch and hide, if only for a moment, from the staring windows.
Her own eyes, as she passed these bushes, were fastened on the shed.
But it seemed that someone else had discovered shelter here; for with a
quick, half-guttural cry, like that of a startled animal, a small figure
started up, close by her feet, and stood and edged away from her with an
arm lifted as if to ward off a blow.
It was a small boy--a boy abominably ragged and with smears of blacking
thick on his face, but for all that a good-looking child. Tilda gazed
at him, and he gazed back, still without lowering his arm. He was
trembling, too.
"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" said Tilda, lifting the brim of her
chip hat and quoting from one of Mr. Maggs's most effective dramatic
sketches. But as the boy stared, not taking the allusion, she went on,
almost in the same breath, "Is your name Arthur--Arthur Miles?"
It seemed that he did not hear. At any rate he still backed and edged
away from her, with eyes distended--she had seen their like in the ring,
in beautiful terrified horses, but never in human creatures.
--"Because, if you 're Arthur Miles, I got a message for you."
A tattered book lay on the turf at her feet. She picked it up and held
it out to him. For a while he looked at her eyes, and from them to the
book, unable to believe. Then, with a noise like a sob, he sprang and
snatched it, and hid it with a hug in the breast of his coat.
"I got a message for you," repeated Tilda. "There's someone wants to
see you, very bad."
"You go away!" said the boy sullenly. "You don't know. If _he_ catches
you, there's no chance."
Tilda had time in her distress to be astonished by his voice. It was
pure, distinct, with the tone of a sphere not hers. Yet she recognised
it. She had heard celestial beings--ladies and gentlemen in Maggs's
three-shilling seats--talk in voices like this boy's.
"I've took a 'eap o' trouble to find yer," she said. "An' now I've done
it, _all_ depends on our gettin' out o' this. Ain't there no way? _Do_
try to think a bit!"
The boy shook his head.
"There isn't any way. You let me alone, and clear."
"He can't do worse'n kill us," said Tilda desperately, with a look back
at the house. "S'help me, let's try!"
But her spirit quailed.
"He won't kill you. He'll catch you, and keep you here for ever and
ever."
"We'll try, all the same."
Tilda shut her teeth and held out a hand--or rather, was beginning to
extend it--when a sound arrested her. It came from the door of the
glass-house, and as she glanced towards it her heart leapt and stood
still.
"'Dolph!"
Yes, it was 'Dolph, dirty, begrimed with coal; 'Dolph fawning towards
her, cringing almost on his belly, but wagging his stump of a tail
ecstatically. Tilda dashed upon him.
"Oh, 'Dolph!--_how?_"
The dog strangled down a bark, and ran back to the glass-house, but
paused in the doorway a moment to make sure that she was following.
It was all right. Tilda had caught the boy's hand, and was dragging him
along. 'Dolph led them through the glass-house and down a flight of
four steps to the broken door of a furnace-room. They pushed after him.
Behind the furnace a second doorway opened upon a small coal-cellar,
through the ceiling of which, in the right-hand corner, poured a
circular ray of light. The ray travelled down a moraine of broken coal,
so broad at the base that it covered the whole cellar floor, but
narrowing upwards and towards the manhole through which the daylight
shone.
Down through the manhole, too--O bliss!--came the sound of a man's
whistle.
"_Ph'ut! Phee-ee--uht!_ Darn that fool of a dog! _Ph'w_--"
"For the Lord's sake!" called Tilda, pushing the boy up the coal-shute
ahead of her and panting painfully as her feet sank and slid in the
black pile.
"Eh? . . . Hullo!" A man's face peered down, shutting off the daylight.
"Well, in all my born days--"
He reached down a hand.
"The boy first," gasped Tilda, "--and quick!"
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH CHILDE ARTHUR LOSES ONE MOTHER AND GAINS ANOTHER.
"_But and when they came to Easter Gate,
Easter Gate stood wide;
'y' are late, y' are late,' the Porter said;
'This morn my Lady died.'_"--OLD BALLAD.
"Well, in all my born days!" said the young coalheaver again, as he
landed the pair on the canal bank.
He reached down a hand and drew up 'Dolph by the scruff of his neck.
The dog shook himself, and stood with his tail still wagging.
"Shut down the hole," Tilda panted, and catching sight of the iron
cover, while the young man hesitated she began to drag at it with her
own hands.
"Steady on there!" he interposed. "I got five hundred more to deliver."
"You don't deliver another shovelful till we're out o' this," said Tilda
positively, stamping the cover in place and standing upon it for safety.
"What's more, if anyone comes an' arsks a question, you ha'n't seen us."
"Neither fur nor feather of ye," said the young man, and grinned.
She cast a look at the boy; another up and down the towing-path.
"Got such a thing as a cake o' soap hereabouts? You wouldn', I
suppose--" and here she sighed impatiently.
"I 'ave, though. Always keeps a bit in my trouser pocket." He produced
it with pride.
Said Tilda, "I don't know yername, but you're more like a Garden Angel
than any I've met yet in your walk o' life. Hand it over, an' keep a
look-out while I wash this child's face. I _can't_ take 'im through the
streets in this state." She turned upon the boy. "Here, you just kneel
down--so--with your face over the water, an' as near as you can manage."
He obeyed in silence. He was still trembling. "That's right, on'y take
care you don't overbalance." She knelt beside him, dipped both hands in
the water, and began to work the soap into a lather. "What's the
'andiest way to the Good Samaritan?" she asked, speaking over her
shoulder.
"Meanin' the 'orspital?"
"Yes." She took the boy's passive face between her hands and soaped it
briskly. "The 'andiest way, _an'_ the quietest, for choice."
"The 'andiest way," said the young coalheaver, after considering for
half a minute, "an' the quietest, is for me to cast off the bow-straps
here an' let her drop across stream. You can nip up through the garden
yonder--it don't belong to nobody just now. That'll bring you out into
a place called Pollard's Row, an' you turn straight off on your right.
First turnin' opposite on the right by the 'Royal Oak,' which is a
public-'ouse, second turnin' to the left after that, an' you're in Upper
Town Street, an' from there to the Good Samaritan it's no more 'n a
stone's throw."
Tilda was silent for a few moments whilst she fixed these directions in
her mind.
"It do seem," she said graciously while she dried the boy's face with
the skirt of her frock, "like as if you 'd dropped 'ere from 'eaven.
What we should a-done without you, I can't think."
"You'd best thank that dog o' your'n." The young man bent to cast off
his rope. "He broke away from me once, an' I made sure I'd lost 'im.
But by-an'-by back he came like a mad thing, an' no need to tell me you
was inside there. He was neither to hold nor to bind, an' I do believe
if he hadn't thought o' the manhole he'd 'a-broke the wall down, or elst
his 'eart."
"When I tell you 'e got me in as well as out--But, good sake, I musn'
stand 'ere talkin'! Gimme my crutch, an' shove us across, that's a dear
man."
She pushed the boy before her on to the barge. 'Dolph sprang on board
at their heels, and the young coalheaver thrust the bows across with his
pole. The canal measured but seventeen or eighteen feet from brink to
brink, and consequently the boat, which was seventy feet long at least,
fell across at a long angle. The garden on the opposite shore was
unfenced, or rather, its rotten palings had collapsed with time and the
pressure of a rank growth of elder bushes.
"So long, an' th' Lord bless yer!"
Tilda took the boy's hand and jumped ashore.
"Same to you, an' wishin' you luck!" responded the young coalheaver
cheerfully. "Look 'ere," he added, "if you get in trouble along o'
this, I'm willin' to stand in for my share. Sam Bossom's my name--
employ of Hucks, Canal End Basin. If they lag you for this, you just
refer 'em to Sam Bossom, employ of Hucks--everyone knows Hucks; an' I'll
tell 'em--well, darned if I know what I'll tell 'em, unless that we was
all under the influence o' drink."
"You're a white man," responded Tilda, "though you don't look it; but
there ain't goin' to be no trouble, not if I can 'elp. If anyone arsks
questions, you han't seen us, mind."
"Fur nor feather of ye," he repeated. He watched the pair as they dived
through the elder bushes; saw them, still hand in hand, take the path on
the left side of the garden, where its party hedge could best screen
them from the back windows of the Orphanage; and poled back
meditatively.
"Got an 'ead on her shoulders, that child!" On their way up the garden
Tilda kept silence. She was busy, in fact, with Sam Bossom's
complicated itinerary, repeating it over and over to fix it in her mind.
She was fearful, too, lest some inquisitive neighbour, catching sight of
them, might stop them and challenge to know their business. The streets
once gained, she felt easier--easier indeed with every yard she put
between her and that house of horrors. But the streets, too, held their
dangers. The bells had rung in the elementary schools; all respectable
boys and girls were indoors, deep in the afternoon session, and she had
heard of attendance officers, those prowling foes.
At the end of Pollard's Row--a squalid street of tenement houses--she
suffered indeed a terrible scare. A benevolent-looking middle-aged
lady--a district visitor, in fact--emerging from one of these houses and
arrested perhaps at sight of the crutch or of the boy's strange rags,
stopped her and asked where she was going.
Tilda fell back on the truth. It was economical.
"To the 'orspital," she answered, "the Good Samaritan."
Then she blundered.
"It's 'ereabouts, ain't it, ma'am?"
"Not very far," replied the lady; "two or three streets only. Shall I
show you the way? I have plenty of time."
"Thank you," said Tilda (she was suffering a reaction, and for a moment
it dulled the edge of her wits), "but I know the Good Samaritan, an'
they know all about me."
"What's the matter?"
"'Ip trouble, ma'am. I been treated for it there these three weeks."
"That is strange," said the lady. "You have been going there for three
weeks, and yet you don't know your way?"
"I been a in-patient. I was took there"--she was about to say "on a
stretcher," but checked herself in time--"I was took there in the
evenin' after dark. Father couldn' take me by day, in his work-time.
An' this is my first turn as day-patient, an' that's why my brother 'ere
is let off school to see me along," she wound up with a desperate rush
of invention.
"You don't live in my district? What's your father's name?"
"No, ma'am. He's called Porter--Sam Porter, an' he works on the
coal-barges. But I wouldn' advise you, I reely wouldn', because
father's got opinions, an' can't abide visitors. I've 'eard 'im threaten
'em quite vi'lent."
"Poor child!"
"But I won't 'ave you say anything 'gainst father," said Tilda, taking
her up quickly, "for 'e's the best father in the world, if 'twasn' fur
the drink."
The effect of this masterstroke was that the lady gave her a copper and
let her go, wishing her a speedy recovery. The gift, although she took
it, did not appear to placate Tilda. She hobbled up the next street
with quickened pace, now and then muttering angrily.
"Serves me right!" she broke out at length. "Bill--you don't know Bill,
but 'e's the wisest man in the 'ole world, _an'_ the kindest, _an'_ the
bestest. Bill would 'a-slapped my ear if 'e 'd 'eard me jus' now.
Near upon gave the show away, I did, an' all through wantin' to 'ear
somebody else tell what I knew a'ready. Never let nobody else make sure
for you--that's one o' Bill's sayin's. Take warnin' by me, an' don't
you ever forget it, Arthur Miles."
The boy had not spoken all the way. He glanced at her timidly, and she
saw that he did not understand. Also it was plain that the streets,
with their traffic, puzzled him; at the approach of every passer-by he
would halt uncertainly, like a puppy not yet way-wise. By-and-by he
said--
"But if that's so, you must be my sister."
"I'm not," said Tilda sharply. "What put it into your 'ead?"
"You told the lady--" he began.
"Eh? So I did. But that was all flam." He could make nothing of this.
"I was kiddin' of 'er--tellin' what wasn' true," she explained.
He walked forward a few steps with a frown--not disapproving, but
painfully thinking this out.
"And about the Hospital--wasn't that true either?"
"Yes," Tilda nodded. "We're goin' to the 'orspital all right.
That's why I came to fetch yer. There's someone wants to see yer, ever
so bad."
"I know about the Good Samaritan," announced the boy.
Tilda stared.
"I bet yer don't," she contradicted.
"He found a man, a traveller, that some thieves had hurt and left by the
road. Going down to Jericho, it was; and he poured oil and wine into
his wounds."
"Oh, cheese it!" said Tilda. "Oo's a-kiddin' now? An' see 'ere, Arthur
Miles--it don't matter with me, a lie up or down; I'm on'y Tilda.
But don't you pick up the 'abit, or else you'll annoy me. I can't tell
why ezactly, but it don't _sit_ on you."
"Tilda?" The boy caught up her name like an echo. "Tilda what?"
"The Lord knows. Tilda _nothin'_--Tilda o' Maggs's, if you like, an'
nobody's child, anyway."
"But that isn't _possible_," he said, after thinking a moment.
"They called me that sometimes, back--back--"
"At the Orph'nige, eh? 'Oo called you that? The Doctor? No," said
Tilda hurriedly, as he halted with a shiver, "don't look be'ind; 'e's
not anywhere near. An' as for the Good Samaritan, you're wrong about
that, too; for _'ere's_ the Good Samaritan!"
She pointed at the building, and he stared. He could not comprehend at
all, but she had switched him off the current of his deadly fear.
"Now you just wait 'ere by the steps," she commanded, "an' 'Dolph'll
wait by you an' see you come to no 'arm. Understand, 'Dolph? I'm goin'
inside for a minute--only a minute, mind; but if anybody touches Arthur
Miles, you _pin_ 'im!"
'Dolph looked up at his mistress, then at the boy. He wagged his tail,
not enthusiastically. He would fain have followed her, but he
understood, and would obey.
Tilda went up the steps, and up the stairs. On the landing, as chance
would have it, she met the Second Nurse coming out from the ward, with a
sheet in one hand and a tray of medicines in the other.
"You extremely naughty child!" began the Second Nurse, but not in the
shrill tone nor with quite the stern disapproval the child had expected.
"When the doctor told you half an hour exactly, and you have been
_hours!_ What _have_ you been doing?"
"Lookin' up the old folks," she answered, and took note first that the
medicine bottles were those that had stood on the sick woman's table,
and next that the Second Nurse, as she came out, transferred the sheet
to her arm and closed the door behind her.
"You must wait here for a moment, now you have come so late. I have had
to give you another bed; and now I've to fetch some hot water, but I'll
be back in a minute."
"Folks don't make beds up with hot water," thought Tilda.
She watched the nurse down the passage, stepped to the door, and turned
the handle softly.
There was no change in the ward except that a tall screen stood by the
sick woman's bed. Tilda crept to the screen on tip-toe, and peered
around it.
Ten seconds--twenty seconds--passed, and then she drew back and stole
out to the landing, closing the door as softly as she had opened it.
In the light of the great staircase window her face was pale and
serious.
She went down the stairs slowly.
"Seems I made a mistake," she said, speaking as carelessly as she could,
but avoiding the boy's eyes. "You wasn' wanted up there, after all."
But he gazed at her, and flung out both arms with a strangling sob.
"You won't take me back! You'll hide me--you won't take me back!"
"Oh, 'ush!" said Tilda. "No, I won't take yer back, an' I'll do my
best, but--oh, 'Dolph!"--she brushed the back of her hand across her
eyes and turned to the dog with the bravest smile she could contrive--
"to think of me bein' a mother, at _my_ time o' life!"
CHAPTER V
TEMPORARY EMBARRASSMENTS OF A THESPIAN.
"_Sinner that I am," said the Showman, "see how you are destroying and
ruining my whole livelihood!_"--DON QUIXOTE.
Mr. Sam Bossom, having poled back to the towpath, stepped ashore, made
fast his bow moorings, stood and watched the two childish figures as
they passed up the last slope of the garden out of sight, and proceeded
to deliver his remaining hundredweights of coal--first, however, peering
down the manhole and listening, to assure himself that all was quiet
below.
"If," said he thoughtfully, "a man was to come an' tell me a story like
that, I'd call 'im a liar."
Twice or thrice before finishing his job he paused to listen again, but
heard nothing. Still in musing mood, he scraped up the loose coal that
lay around the manhole, shovelled it in, re-fixed the cover, and tossed
his shovel on board. His next business was to fetch a horse from the
stables at the Canal End and tow the boat back to her quarters; and
having taken another glance around, he set off and up the towpath at a
pretty brisk pace. It would be five o'clock before he finished his
work: at six he had an engagement, and it would take him some time to
wash and titivate.
Canal End Basin lay hard upon three-quarters of a mile up stream, and
about half that distance beyond the bend of the Great Brewery--a
malodorous pool packed with narrow barges or monkey-boats--a few loading
leisurably, the rest moored in tiers awaiting their cargoes.
They belonged to many owners, but their type was well nigh uniform.
Each measured seventy feet in length, or a trifle over, with a beam of
about seven; each was built with rounded bilges, and would carry from
twenty-five to thirty tons of cargo; each provided, aft of its hold or
cargo-well, a small cabin for the accommodation of its crew by day; and
for five-sixths of its length each was black as a gondola of Venice.
Only, where the business part of the boat ended and its cabin began, a
painted ribbon of curious pattern ornamented the gunwale, and terminated
in two pictured stern-panels.
Wharves and storehouses surrounded the basin, or rather enclosed three
sides of it, and looked upon the water across a dead avenue (so to
speak) of cranes and bollards; buildings of exceedingly various height
and construction, some tiled, others roofed with galvanised iron.
Almost every one proclaimed on its front, for the information of the
stranger, its owner's name and what he traded in; and the stranger,
while making his choice between these announcements, had ample time to
contrast their diversity of size and style with the sober uniformity
that prevailed afloat.
The store and yard of Mr. Christopher Hucks stood at the head of the
basin, within a stone's-throw of the Weigh Dock, and but two doors away
from the Canal Company's office. It was approached through
folding-doors, in one of which a smaller opening had been cut for
pedestrians, and through this, on his way to the stables in the rear,
Mr. Sam Bossom entered. He entered and halted, rubbing his eyes with
the back of his hand, which, grimed as it was with coal grit, but
further inflamed their red rims. In the centre of the yard, which had
been empty when he went to work, stood a large yellow caravan; and on
the steps of the caravan sat a man--a stranger--peeling potatoes over a
bucket.
"Hullo!" said Sam.
The stranger--a long-faced man with a dead complexion, an abundance of
dark hair, and a blue chin--nodded gloomily.
"The surprise," he answered, "is mutual. If it comes to _that_, young
man, you are not looking your best either; though doubtless, if washed
off, it would reveal a countenance not sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought--thought such as, alas! must be mine--thought which, if
acquainted with the poets, you will recognise as lying too deep for
tears."
"Governor settin' up in a new line?" asked Sam, slowly contemplating the
caravan and a large tarpaulin-covered wagon that stood beside it with
shafts resting on the ground.
"If, my friend, you allude to Mr. Christopher Hucks, he is not setting
up in any new line, but pursuing a fell career on principles which (I am
credibly informed) are habitual to him, and for which I can only hope he
will be sorry when he is dead. The food, sir, of Mr. Christopher Hucks
is still the bread of destitution; his drink, the tears of widows; and
the groans of the temporarily embarrassed supply the music of his
unhallowed feast."
"There is a bit o' that about the old man, until you get to know him,"
assented Sam cheerfully.
"Mr. Christopher Hucks--" began the stranger with slow emphasis,
dropping a peeled potato into the bucket and lifting a hand with an open
clasp-knife towards heaven.
But here a voice from within the caravan interrupted him.
"Stanislas!"
"My love?"
"I can't find the saucepan."
A lady appeared at the hatch of the doorway above. Her hair hung in
disarray over her well-developed shoulders, and recent tears had left
their furrows on a painted but not uncomely face.
"I--I--well, to confess the truth, I pawned it, my bud. Dear, every
cloud has its silver lining, and meanwhile what shall we say to a simple
fry? You have an incomparable knack of frying."
"But where's the dripping?"
Her husband groaned.
"The dripping! The continual dripping! Am I--forgive the bitterness of
the question--but am I a stone, love?"
He asked it with a hollow laugh, and at the same time with a glance
challenged Sam's approval for his desperate pleasantry.
Sam jerked his thumb to indicate a wooden out-house on the far side of
the yard.
"I got a shanty of my own across there, _and_ a few fixin's. If the van's
anchored here, an' I can set you up with odds-an'-ends such as a
saucepan, you're welcome."
"A friend in need, sir, is a friend indeed," said the stranger
impressively; and Sam's face brightened, for he had heard the proverb
before, and it promised to bring the conversation, which he had found
some difficulty in following, down to safe, familiar ground. "Allow me
to introduce you--but excuse me, I have not the pleasure of knowing your
name--"
"Sam Bossom."
"Delighted! 'Bossom' did you say? B--O--double S--it should have been
'Blossom,' sir, with a slight addition; or, with an equally slight
omission--er--'Bosom,' if my Arabella will excuse me. On two hands, Mr.
Bossom, you narrowly escape poetry." (Sam looked about him uneasily.)
"But, as Browning says, 'The little more and how much it is, the little
less and what miles away.' Mine is Mortimer, sir--Stanislas Horatio
Mortimer. You have doubtless heard of it?"
"Can't say as I 'ave," Sam confessed.
"Is it possible?" Mr. Mortimer was plainly surprised, not to say hurt.
He knit his brows, and for a moment seemed to be pondering darkly.
"You hear it, Arabella? But no matter. As I was saying, sir, I desire
the pleasure of introducing you to my wife, Mrs. Mortimer, better known
to fame, perhaps, as Miss Arabella St. Maur. You see her, Mr. Bossom,
as my helpmeet under circumstances which (though temporarily
unfavourable) call forth the true woman--naked, in a figurative sense,
and unadorned. But her Ophelia, sir, has been favourably, nay
enthusiastically, approved by some of the best critics of our day."
This again left Sam gravelled. He had a vague notion that the lady's
Ophelia must be some admired part of her anatomy, but contented himself
with touching his brow politely and muttering that he was Mrs.
Mortimer's to command. The lady, who appeared to be what Sam called to
himself a good sort, smiled down on him graciously, and hoped that she
and her husband might be favoured with his company at supper.
"It's very kind of _you_, ma'am," responded Sam; "but 'fact is I han't
knocked off work yet. 'Must go now and fetch out th' old hoss for a
trifle of haulage; an' when I get back I must clean meself an' shift for
night-school--me bein' due early there to fetch up leeway. You see," he
explained, "bein' on the move wi' the boats most o' my time, I don't get
the same chances as the other fellows. So when I hauls ashore, as we
call it, I 'ave to make up lost time."
"A student, I declare!" Mr. Mortimer saluted him. Rising from the steps
of the caravan, he rubbed a hand down his trouser-leg and extended it.
"Permit me to grasp, sir, the horny palm of self-improvement. A scholar
in humble life! and--as your delicacy in this small matter of the
saucepan sufficiently attests--one of Nature's gentlemen to boot!
I prophesy that you will go far, Mr. Bossom. May I inquire what books
you thumb?"
"Thumb?" Sam, his hard hand released, stared at it a moment perplexed.
"That ain't the _method_, sir; not at our school. But I'm gettin'
along, and the book is called Lord Macaulay."
"What? Macaulay's _Essays?_"
"It's called _Lays_, sir--Lord Macaulay's _Lays_. The rest of the class
chose it, an' I didn' like to cry off, though I 'd not a-flown so high
as a lord myself--not to start with."
"The _Lays of Ancient Rome?_ My dear Bossom--my dear Smiles--you'll
allow me to dub you Smiles? _On Self Help_, you know. I like to call
my friends by these playful sobriquets, and friends we are going to be,
you and I. My dear fellow, I used to know 'em by heart--"
'Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the nine gods he swore--'
"--Is that the ticket, hey?"
Mr. Mortimer clapped him on the shoulder. "Dang it!" breathed Sam,
"how small the world is!"
"Smiles, we must be friends. Even if, for a paltry trifle of seven
pounds fifteen and six, I am condemned by your master (whom you will
excuse my terming a miscreant) to eke out the dregs of my worthless
existence in this infernal yard--no, my loved Arabella, you will pardon
me, but as a practical man I insist on facing the worst--even so I have
found a congenial spirit, a co-mate and brother in exile, a Friend in my
retreat Whom I can whisper: 'Solitude is sweet.' Pursue, my dear
Smiles! You are young: hope sits on your helm and irradiates it.
For me, my bark is stranded, my fortunes shipwrecked, my career trickles
out in the sands. Nevertheless, take the advice of an Elder Brother,
and pursue. By the way"--Mr. Mortimer drew from his breast-pocket the
stump of a half-consumed cigar--"I regret that I have not its fellow to
offer you; but could you oblige me with a match?"
Sam produced a couple of sulphur matches.
"I thank you." Mr. Mortimer lit and inhaled. "A--ah!" he sighed between
two luxurious puffs. "Connoisseurs--epicures--tell me a cigar should
never be lit twice. But with tobacco of this quality--the last of the
box, alas! All its blooming companions--and, between you and me,
smuggled." He winked knowingly.
Just then a hooter from the Great Brewery announced five o'clock.
Sam groaned. He had engaged himself to the schoolmaster for an hour's
private tuition before the Evening Class opened, and Mr. Mortimer's
fascinating talk had destroyed his last chance of keeping that
engagement. Even if he dropped work straight away, it would take him a
good three-quarters of an hour to clean himself and don his best suit.
He was explaining this to Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer when, his eyes resting
on the empty shafts of the wagon, a happy thought occurred to him.
"O' course," he began, "--but there, I don't like to suggest it, sir."
"Say on, my friend."
"Well--I was thinkin' that you, may be, bein' accustomed to hosses--"
"My father," put in Mr. Mortimer, "rode to hounds habitually. A _beau
ideal_, if I may say so, of the Old English squire. It is in the
blood."
"I _know_ it's a come-down," Sam owned. "And a shilling at most for
overtime--meanin' no offence--"
Mr. Mortimer waved a hand.
"If," said he, "it be a question of my rendering you any small service,
I beg, my friend--I command--that all question of pecuniary recompense
be left out of the discussion."
Sam, feeling that he had to deal with a noble character, explained that
the job was an easy one; merely to lead or ride one of the horses down
the hauling-path to where the boat lay, to hitch on the tackle, cast off
straps, pull up and ship the two crowbars to which they were made fast,
and so take the tiller and steer home. The horse knew his business, and
would do the rest.
"And you can't mistake the boat. _Duchess of Teck_ is her name, an' she
lies about three ropes' lengths this side of the iron bridge, just as
you come abreast o' the brick wall that belongs to the Orph'nage."
"Bring forth the steed," commanded Mr. Mortimer. "Nay, I will accompany
you to the stables and fetch him."
"_And_ the saucepan! Don't forget the saucepan!" Mrs. Mortimer called
after them in a sprightly voice as they crossed the yard together.
"Ha, the saucepan!" Within the stable doorway Mr. Mortimer stood still
and pressed a hand to his brow. "You cannot think, my dear Smiles, how
that obligation weighs on me. The expense of a saucepan--what is it?
And yet--" He seemed to ponder. Of a sudden his brow cleared.
"--Unless, to be sure--that is to say, if you should happen to have a
shilling about you?"
"I got no change but 'arf-a-crown, if that's any use," answered the
charmed Sam.
"Nothing smaller? Still," suggested Mr. Mortimer quickly, "I could
bring back the change."
"Yes, do."
"It will please Arabella, too. In point of fact, during the whole of
our married life I have made it a rule never to absent myself from her
side without bringing back some trifling gift. Women--as you will
understand one of these days--set a value on these _petits soins_; and
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the iron bridge a tinsmith's should
not be hard to find . . . Ah, thanks, my dear fellow--thanks
inexpressibly! Absurd of me, of course; but you cannot think what a
load you have taken off my mind."
Sam unhitched one of a number of hauling tackles hanging against the
wall, and led forth his horse--a sturdy old grey, by name Jubilee.
Casting the tackle carelessly on the animal's back, he handed Mr.
Mortimer the headstall rope, and left him, to return two minutes later
with the saucepan he had promised.
"She must use this one for the time," he explained. "And afterwards
yours will come as a surprise."
"It must be so, I suppose," assented Mr. Mortimer, but after a pause,
and reluctantly, averting his eyes from the accursed thing.
To spare him, Sam hurried across to deliver it to the lady, who awaited
them in the doorway: and thus approaching he became aware that she was
making mysterious signals. He glanced behind him. Plainly the signals
were not directed at her husband, who had halted to stoop and pass a
hand over old Jubilee's near hind pastern, and in a manner almost more
than professional. Sam advanced, in some wonder. Mrs. Mortimer reached
down a shapely hand for the pan-handle, leaned as she did so, and
murmured--
"You will not lend money to Stanislas? He is apt, when the world goes
ill with him, to seek distraction, to behave unconventionally. It is
not a question of drowning his cares, for the least little drop acting
upon his artistic temperament--"
But at this moment her husband, having concluded his inspection of the
grey, called out to be given a leg-up, and Sam hurried back to oblige.
"Thank you. Time was, Smiles, when with hand laid lightly on the
crupper, I could have vaulted."
Overcome by these reminiscences, Mr. Mortimer let his chin sink, his
legs dangle, and rode forward a pace or two in the classical attitude of
the Last Survivor from Cabul; but anon looked up with set jaw and
resolution in his eye, took a grip with his knees, and challenged--
"Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail,
And his something or other--I forget
the exact expression--
On sea nor shore shall fail!"
--"Fling wide the gate, Smiles!" He was now the Dashing Cavalier,
life-sized. "Take care of yourself, poppet!"
He gave his bridle-rein a shake (so to speak), turned, blew a kiss to
his spouse, dug heel and jogged forth chanting--
"_Tirra tirra_ by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot!"
CHAPTER VI.
MR. MORTIMER'S ADVENTURE.
"_Old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?_"--HAMLET
All the way along the canal bank Mr. Mortimer continued to carol.
Mercurial man! Like all actors he loved applause, but unlike the most
of them he was capable of supplying it when the public failed; and this
knack of being his own best audience had lifted him, before now, out of
quite a number of Sloughs of Despond and carried him forward singing.
He had left care behind him in Mr. Hucks's yard, and so much of noble
melancholy as he kept (for the sake of artistic effect) took a tincture
from the sunset bronzing the smoke-laden sky and gilding the unlovely
waterway. Like the sunset, Mr. Mortimer's mood was serene and golden.
His breast, expanding, heaved off all petty constricting worries,
"like Samson his green wythes": they fell from him as he rode, and as he
rode he chanted--
"The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot . . ."
Old Jubilee--if, like John Gilpin's horse, he wondered more and more--
was a philosophical beast and knew his business. Abreast of the boat,
beside the angle of the Orphanage wall, he halted for his rider to
alight, and began to nose for herbage among the nettles. Nor did he
betray surprise when Mr. Mortimer, after a glance down the towpath
towards the iron bridge and the tram-lights passing there, walked off
and left him to browse.
Fifteen minutes passed. The last flush of sunset had died out of the
sky, and twilight was deepening rapidly, when Mr. Mortimer came
strolling back. Apparently--since he came empty-handed--his search for
a saucepan had been unsuccessful. Yet patently the disappointment had
not affected his spirits, for at sight of Old Jubilee still cropping in
the dusk he stood still and gave utterance to a lively whoop.
The effect of this sobered him. Old Jubilee was not alone. Hurriedly
out of the shadow of the Orphanage wall arose a grey-white figure--a
woman. It seemed that she had been kneeling there. Now, as Mr.
Mortimer advanced, she stood erect, close back against the masonry,
waiting for him to pass.
"'S a female," decided Mr. Mortimer, pulling himself together and
advancing with a hand over his brow, the better to distinguish the
glimmer of her dress. "'S undoubtedly a female. Seems to be looking
for something . . ." He approached and lifted his hat. "Command me,
madam!"
The woman drew herself yet closer under the shadow.
"Go your way, please!" she answered sharply, with a catch of her breath.
"You mishun'erstand. Allow me iggs--I beg pardon, eggs--plain.
Name's Mortimer--Stanislas 'Ratio, of that ilk. A Scotch exshpression."
Here he pulled himself together again, and with an air of anxious
lucidity laid a precise accent on every syllable. "The name, I flatter
myself, should be a guarantee. No reveller, madam, I s'hure you;
appearances against me, but no Bacchanal; still lesh--shtill _less_ I
should iggs--or, if you prefer it, eggs--plain, gay Lothario. Trust me,
ma'am--married man, fifteen years' standing--Arabella--tha's my wife--
never a moment's 'neasiness--"
'Two shouls'--you'll excuse me, souls--' with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat ash one.'
"Between you and me, ma'am, we have thoughts of applying for Dunmow
flitch. Quaint old custom, Dunmow flitch. Heard of it, I dareshay?"
"I wish you would go about your business."
Mr. Mortimer emitted a tragic laugh.
"I will, madam--I will: if it please you witness to what base uses we
may return, Horatio. Allow me first remove mishunderstanding.
Preshumed you to be searching for something--hairpin for exshample.
Common occurrence with my Arabella. No offensh--merely proffered my
shervices . . . The deuce! What's _that?_"
The woman seemed inclined to run, but stood hesitating.
"You heard it? There! close under the wall--"
Mr. Mortimer stepped forward and peered into the shadow. He was
standing close above the manhole, and to the confusion of all his senses
he saw the cover of the manhole lift itself up; saw the rim of it rise
two, three inches, saw and heard it joggle back into its socket.
"For God's sake go away!" breathed the woman.
"Norrabit of it, ma'am. Something wrong here. Citizen's duty, anything
wrong--"
Here the cover lifted itself again. Mr. Mortimer deftly slipped three
fingers under its rim, and reaching back with his other hand produced
from his pocket the second of Sam's two matches.
"Below there!" he hailed sepulchrally, at the same moment striking the
match on the tense seat of his trousers and holding it to the aperture.
"Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness . . . Eh? . . . Good Lord!"--
he drew back and dropped the match--"it's a clergyman!"
He clapped down the cover in haste, sprang to his feet, and lifting his
hat, made her the discreetest of bows. He was sober, now, as a judge.
"A thousand pardons, madam! I have seen nothing--believe me, nothing."
He strode in haste to Old Jubilee's headstall and began to back him
towards the boat. The woman gazed at him for a moment in mere
astonishment, then stepped quickly to his side.
"I didn' know," she stammered. "You don't look nor talk like a bargee."
Here her voice came to a halt, but in the dusk her eyes appeared to
question him.
"Few of us are what we seem, ma'am," Mr. Mortimer sighed. "Bargee for
the nonce I am, yet gentleman enough to understand a delicate situation.
Your secret is safe with me, and so you may tell your--your friend."
"Then you must a-seen them?" she demanded.
"Them?" echoed Mr. Mortimer.
"No," she went on hurriedly, mistaking his hesitation. "They made you
promise, an' I don't _want_ to know. If I knew, he'd force it out o'
me, an' then he 'd cut my heart out."
She glanced over her shoulder, and Mr. Mortimer, interpreting the
glance, nodded in the direction of the manhole.
"Meanin' his Reverence?" he asked.
"His name's Glasson. The Orph'nage belongs to him. It's a serious
thing for him to lose one o' the children, and he's like a madman about
it ever since . . ." She broke off and put out a hand to help him with
the haulage tackle. "Where are you taking her?"
"Her? The boat? Oh, back to Hucks's--Christopher Hucks, Anchor Wharf,
Canal End Basin. 'Anchor,' you'll observe,--supposed emblem of Hope."
He laughed bitterly.
"Yes, yes," she nodded. "And quick--quick as ever you can! Here, let
me help--" She caught at one of the two crowbars that served for
mooring-posts and tugged at it, using all her strength. "He'll be
coming around here," she panted, and paused for a moment to listen.
"If he catches me talkin', God knows what'll happen!" She tugged
again.
"Steady does it," said Mr. Mortimer; and having helped her to draw the
bar up, he laid it in the boat as noiselessly as he could and ran to the
second. "There's no one coming," he announced. "But see here, if
you're in fear of the man, let me have another go at the manhole.
He may be down there yet, and if so I'll give him the scare of his life.
Yes, ma'am, the scare of his life. You never saw my Hamlet, ma'am?
You never heard me hold parley with my father's ghost? Attend!"
Mr. Mortimer stepped to the manhole and struck thrice upon it with his
heel.
"Glasson!" he called, in a voice so hollow that it seemed to rumble down
through the bowels of earth. "Glasson, forbear!"
"For God's sake--" The woman dragged at his shoulder as he knelt.
"All is discovered, Glasson! Thy house is on fire, thy orphans are
flown. Rake not the cellarage for their bones, but see the newspapers.
Already, Glasson, the newsboys run about the streets. It spreads,
Glasson; may'st hear them call. Like wildfire it spreads. ''Orrible
discovery of 'uman remains! A clergyman suspected!'"
Here Mr. Mortimer, warm to his work, let out a laugh so blood-curdling
that Old Jubilee bolted the length of his rope.
"The boat!" gasped the woman.
"Eh?"
Mr. Mortimer turned and saw the boat glide by the bank like a shadow;
heard the thud of Old Jubilee's hoofs, and sprang in pursuit. The woman
ran with him.
But the freshest horse cannot bolt far with a 72-feet monkey-boat
dragging on his shoulders, and at the end of fifty yards, the towrope
holding, Old Jubilee dropped to a jog-trot. The woman caught her breath
as Mr. Mortimer jumped aboard and laid hold of the tiller. But still
she ran beside panting.
"You won't tell him?"
Mr. Mortimer waved a hand.
"And--and you'll hide 'em--for he's bound to come askin'--you'll hide
'em if you can--"
Mr. Mortimer heard, but could not answer for the moment, the steerage
claiming all his attention. When he turned towards the bank she was no
longer there. He looked back over his shoulder. She had come to a dead
halt and stood watching, her print gown glimmering in the dusk. And so,
as the boat rounded the bend by the Brewery, he lost sight of her.
He passed a hand over his brow.
"Mysterious business," he mused; "devilish mysterious. On the face of
it looks as if my friend Smiles, not content with self-help in its
ordinary forms, has been helping himself to orphans! Must speak to him
about it."
He pondered, gazing up the dim waterway, and by-and-by broke into a
chuckle.
He chuckled again twenty minutes later, when, having stabled Old
Jubilee, he crossed the yard to sup and to season the meal with a
relation of his adventure.
"Such an encounter, my poppet!" he announced, groping his way across to
the caravan, where his spouse had lit the lamp and stood in the doorway
awaiting him. "Smiles--our ingenuous Smiles--has decoyed, has laid me
under suspicion; and of what, d'you think? Stealing orphans!"
"Hush!" answered Mrs. Mortimer. "They 're here."
"They? Who? . . . Not the bailiffs? Arabella, don't tell me it's the
bailiffs again!"
Mr. Mortimer drew back as though a snake lay coiled on the caravan
steps.
"It's not the bailiffs, Stanislas; it's the orphans."
"But--but, my sweet, there must be some mistake. I--er--actually, of
course, I have nothing to do with any orphans whatsoever."
"Oh, yes, you have," his wife assured him composedly. "They are inside
here, with a yellow dog."
While Mr. Mortimer yet reeled under this news the door of the courtyard
rattled and creaked open in the darkness. A lantern showed in the
opening, and the bearer of it, catching sight of the lit caravan,
approached with quick, determined strides.
"Can you inform me," asked a high clerical voice, "where I can find Mr.
Christopher Hucks?"
The stranger held his lantern high, so that its ray fell on his face,
and with that Mr. Mortimer groaned and collapsed upon the lowest step,
where mercifully his wife's ample shadow spread an aegis over him.
"Mr. Hucks, sir?" Mrs. Mortimer answered the challenge. "I saw him,
not twenty minutes ago, step into his private office there to the left,
and by the light in the window he's there yet."
"But who is it?" she asked, as the stranger, swinging his lantern,
marched straight up to Mr. Hucks's door.
"Good Lord, it's the man himself--Glasson! And he's come for his
orphans."
"He shan't have 'em, then," said Mrs. Mortimer.
CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH MR. HUCKS TAKES A HAND.
"_A many-sided man._"--COLERIDGE ON SHAKESPEARE.
Let Mr. Christopher Hucks introduce himself in his own customary way,
that is, by presenting his card of business:--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| CHRISTOPHER HUCKS |
| |
| ANCHOR WHARF, CANAL END BASIN, BURSFIELD |
| CANAL CARRIER, LIGHTERMAN, FREIGHTER AND WHARFINGER |
| BOAT BUILDER, COAL AND GENERAL MERCHANT |
| AUCTIONEER, PRACTICAL VALUER, HOUSE AND ESTATE AGENT |
| |
| --------------- |
| |
| FIRE, LIFE, ACCIDENT AND PLATE GLASS INSURAMCES EFFECTED |
| FIRE AND INCOME TAX CLAIMS PREPARED AND ADJUSTED |
| LIVE STOCK INSURED AGAINST DEATH FROM ACCIDENT OR DISEASE |
| SERVANTS REGISTRY OFFICE |
| |
| ----------------- |
| |
| AGENT FOR JOHN TAYLOR AND CO.'S PHOSPHATE AND SOLUBLE BONE |
| MANURES |
| COPPERAS, CHARCOAL, ETC., FOR SEWAGE AND OTHER PURPOSES |
| ACIDS AND ANILINES FOR THE TEXTILE TRADES |
| |
| ----------------- |
| |
| VALUATIONS FOR PROBATE EMIGRATION AGENT |
| PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS NEGOTIATED WITH CREDITORS |
| |
| ----------------- |
| |
| N.B.--ALL KINDS OF RIVER AND CANAL CRAFT BUILT OR REPAIRED, |
| PURCHASED, SOLD, OR TO LET. NOTE THE ADDRESS |
| |
Mr. Hucks, a widower, would have to be content in death with a shorter
epitaph. In life his neighbours and acquaintances knew him as the
toughest old sinner in Bursfield; and indeed his office hours (from 9
a.m. to 9 p.m. nominally--but he was an early riser) allowed him scant
leisure to practice the Christian graces. Yet though many had occasion
to curse Mr. Hucks, few could bring themselves to hate him. The rogue
was so massive, so juicy.
He stood six feet four inches in his office slippers, and measured
fifty-two inches in girth of chest. He habitually smoked the strongest
shag tobacco, and imbibed cold rum and water at short intervals from
morning to night; but these excesses had neither impaired his
complexion, which was ruddy, jovial and almost unwrinkled, nor dimmed
the delusive twinkle of his eyes. These, under a pair of grey bushy
brows, met the world humorously, while they kept watch on it for
unconsidered trifles; but never perhaps so humorously as when their
owner, having clutched his prey, turned a deaf ear to appeal. For the
rest, Mr. Hucks had turned sixty, but without losing his hair, which in
colour and habit resembled a badger's; and although he had lived inland
all his life, carried about with him in his dress, his gait, his speech
an indefinable suggestion of a nautical past. If you tried to fix it,
you found yourself narrowed down to explaining it by the blue jersey he
wore in lieu of shirt and waistcoat. (He buttoned his braces over it,
and tucked its slack inside the waistband of his trousers.) Or, with
luck, you might learn that he habitually slept in a hammock, and
corroborate this by observing the towzled state of his back hair. But
the suggestion was, in fact, far more subtle, pervasive--almost you
might call it an aroma.
The Counting House--so he called the single apartment in which he slung
his hammock, wrote up his ledgers, interviewed his customers, and in the
intervals cooked his meals on an oil-stove--was, in pact, a store of
ample dimensions. To speak precisely, it measured thirty-six feet by
fourteen. But Mr. Hucks had reduced its habitable space to some eight
feet by six, and by the following process.
Over and above the activities mentioned on his business card, he was a
landlord, and owned a considerable amount of cottage property, including
a whole block of tenement houses hard by The Plain. Nothing could be
simpler than his method of managing this estate. He never spent a penny
on upkeep or repairs. On a vacancy he accepted any tenant who chose to
apply. He collected his rents weekly and in person, and if the rent
were not forthcoming he promptly distrained upon the furniture.
By this process Mr. Hucks kept his Counting House replete, and even
crowded, with chattels, some of which are reckoned among the necessaries
of life, while others--such as an accordion, a rain-gauge, and a case of
stuffed humming-birds--rank rather with its superfluities. Of others
again you wondered how on earth they had been taken in Mr. Hucks's
drag-net. A carriage umbrella, for example, set you speculating on the
vicissitudes of human greatness. When the collection impinged upon Mr.
Hucks so that he could not shave without knocking his elbow, he would
hold an auction, and effect a partial clearance; and this would happen
about once in four years. But this clearance was never more than
partial, and the residuum ever consisted in the main of musical
instruments. Every man has his own superstitions, and for some reason
Mr. Hucks--who had not a note of music in his soul--deemed it unlucky to
part with musical instruments, which was the more embarrassing because
his most transitory tenants happened to be folk who practised music on
the public for a livelihood--German bandsmen, for instance, not so well
versed in English law as to be aware that implements of a man's trade
stand exempt from seizure in execution. Indeed, the bulk of the
exhibits in Mr. Hucks's museum could legally have been recovered from
him under writ of replevy. But there they were, and in the midst of
them to-night their collector sat and worked at his ledger by the light
of a hurricane lamp.
A knock at the door disturbed his calculations.
"Come in!" he called, and Dr. Glasson entered.
"Eh? Good evenin'," said Mr. Hucks, but without heartiness.
He disliked parsons. He looked upon all men as rogues more or less, but
held that ministers of religion claimed an unfair advantage on the
handicap. In particular this Dr. Glasson rubbed him, as he put it, the
wrong way.
"Good evening," said Dr. Glasson. "You will excuse my calling at this
late hour."
"Cert'nly. Come to pay for the coals? Fifteen tons best Newcastle at
eighteen shillin' makes thirteen ten, and six pounds owin' on the last
account--total nineteen ten. Shall I make out the receipt?"
"You don't seriously expect me, Mr. Hucks, to pay for your coals on the
same day you deliver them--"
"No," Mr. Hucks agreed, "I didn' _expect_ it; but I looked for ye to pay
up the last account before I sent any more on credit. I've told
Simmonds he was a fool to take your order, and he'll get the sack if it
happens again. Fifteen tons, too! But Simmonds has a weak sort of
respect for parsons. Sings in the choir somewhere. Well, if you ain't
come to pay, you've come for something; to explain, may be, why you go
sneakin' around my foreman 'stead of dealin' with me straight an'
gettin' 'no' for an answer."
"Your manner is offensive, Mr. Hucks, but for the moment I must overlook
it. The fact is, I want information, if you can give it, on an urgent
matter. One of my charges is missing."
"Charges?" repeated Mr. Hucks. "Eh? Lost one of your orphans? Well, I
haven't found him--or her, if it's a girl. Why don't you go to the
police?"
"It is a boy. Naturally I hesitate to apply to the police if the poor
child can be recovered without their assistance. Publicity in these
matters, as no doubt you can understand--"
Mr. Hucks nodded.
"I understand fast enough."
"The newspapers exaggerate . . . and then the public--even the
charitable public--take up some groundless suspicion--"
"Puts two and two together," agreed Mr. Hucks, still nodding, "and then
the fat's in the fire. No, I wouldn' have the police poke a nose into
the 'Oly Innocents--not if I was you. But how do _I_ come into this
business?"
"In this way. One of your employees was delivering coal to-day at the
Orphanage--"
"Fifteen ton."
"--and I have some reason to believe that the child escaped by way of
the coal-cellar. I am not suggesting that he was helped."
"Aren't you? Well, I'm glad to hear you say it, for it did look like
you was drivin' at something o' the sort. I don't collect orphans, for
my part," said Mr. Hucks with a glance around.
"What I meant to say was that your man--whoever he was--might be able to
give some information."
"He might," conceded Mr. Hucks guardedly, "and he mightn't; and then
again he might be more able than willin'."
"Must I remind you, Mr. Hucks, that a person who abets or connives at
the sort of thing we are discussing is likely to find himself in
trouble? or that even a refusal of information may be awkwardly
construed?"
"Now see here, Glasson"--Mr. Hucks filled his pipe, and having lit it,
leaned both elbows on the table and stared across at his visitor--
"don't you ride the high horse with me. A moment ago you weren't
suggestin' anything, and you'd best stick to that. As for my man--
whoever he was--you can't charge him with stealin' one o' your blessed
orphans until you lay hold on the orphan he stole and produce him in
court. That's _Habeas Corpus_, or else 'tis _Magna Charter_--I forget
which. What's more, you'd never face a court, an' you know it."
He cast a curious glance at the Doctor's face, and added, "Sit down."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Sit down. No, not there." But the warning came too late. "Not hurt
yourself, I hope?" he asked, as the Doctor rubbed that part of himself
which had come into collision with the sharp edge of a concertina.
"Clear away that coil of hose and take a seat on the packing-case
yonder. That's right; and now let's talk." He puffed for a moment and
appeared to muse. "Seems to me, Glasson, you're in the devil of a hurry
to catch this child."
"My anxiety is natural, I should hope."
"No it ain't," said Mr. Hucks with brutal candour.
"And that's what's the matter with it. What's more, you come to me.
Now," with continued candour, "I ain't what you might call a model
Christian; but likewise you don't reckon me the sort that would help you
pick up orphans just for the fun of handin' 'em over to you to starve.
So I conclude," Mr. Hucks wound up, "there's money in this somewhere."
Doctor Glasson did not answer for a few seconds. He seemed to be
considering. His eyes blinked, and the folds of his lean throat worked
as if he swallowed down something.
"I will be frank with you, Mr. Hucks," he said at length. "There may or
may not be, as you put it, money in this. I have kept this child for
close upon eight years, and during the last two the Orphanage has not
received one penny of payment. He was brought to us at the age of two
by a seafaring man, who declared positively that the child was not his,
that he was legitimate, and that he had relatives in good position.
The man would not tell me their names, but gave me his own and his
address--a coast-guard station on the East coast. You will pardon my
keeping these back until I know that you will help me."
"Go on."
"Sufficiently good terms were offered, and for six years my charges were
regularly met without question. Then payment ceased. My demands for an
explanation came back through the Dead Letter Office, and when I
followed them up by a journey to the address given, it was to learn that
my man--a chief boatman in the coast-guard service--had died three
months before, leaving no effects beyond a pound or two and the contents
of his sea-chest--no will--and, so far as could be traced, no kith or
kin. So far, Mr. Hucks, the business does not look promising."
"All right, Glasson. You keep a child for two years on charity, and
then get into a sweat on losing him. I trust your scent, and am not
disheartened--yet."
"The boy has considerable natural refinement."
"You didn't keep him for _that_?"
"It has often suggested to me that his parentage was out of the
ordinary--that he probably has relatives at least--er--well-to-do.
But the main point is that he did not escape to-day of his own accord.
He was kidnapped, and in circumstances that convince me there has been a
deliberate plot. To my mind it is incredible that these children,
without collusion--" But here Doctor Glasson pulled himself up and sat
blinking.
"Eh? Was there more than one?" queried Mr. Hucks, sharp as a knife.
"There was a small girl, not one of my charges. She called on me
shortly after midday with a story that an aunt of hers, who may or may
not exist, but whom she pretended to anticipate, took an interest in
this child. While she waited for this aunt's arrival, the--er--matron,
Mrs. Huggins, incautiously allowed her access to the kitchen garden,
where--without my knowledge and against my rules--the boy happened to be
working. The pair of them have disappeared; and, further, I have
convinced myself that their exit was made by way of the coal-shaft."
"A small girl, you say? What age?"
"About ten, as nearly as I can guess. A slip of a child, very poorly
dressed, and walking with a decided limp."
"I follow you this far," said Mr. Hucks, ruminating. "--Allowin'
there's a plot, if 'tis worth folks' while to get hold o' the child,
'tis worth your while to get him back from 'em. But are you sure
there's a plot? There it don't seem to me you've made out your case."
Mr. Hucks said it thoughtfully, but his mind was not working with his
speech. The coals, as he knew--though he did not propose to tell the
Doctor, at any rate just yet--had been delivered by Sam Bossom.
Of complicity in any such plot as this Sam was by nature incapable.
On the other hand, Sam was just the fellow to help a couple of children
out of mere kindness of heart. Mr. Hucks decided to have a talk with
Sam before committing himself. He suspected, of course--nay, was
certain--that Glasson had kept back something important.
Thus his meditations were running when the Doctor's reply switched the
current in a new direction.
"You have not heard the whole of it. As it happens, the man in charge
of the coal-boat was not, as I should judge, one of your regular
employees--certainly not an ordinary bargeman--but a person whose speech
betrayed him as comparatively well educated."
"Eh?" Mr. Hucks sat upright and stared.
"I am not suggesting--"
"No, damme--you 'd better not!" breathed Mr. Hucks.
"Very possibly he had bribed your man with the price of a pot of beer.
At all events, there he was, and in charge of the boat."
"You saw him? Spoke to him?"
"To be accurate, he spoke to me--down the coal-shaft, as I was examining
it. I judged him to be simulating drunkenness. But his voice was a
cultivated one--I should recognise it anywhere; and Mrs. Huggins, who
saw and spoke with him, describes him as a long-faced man, of
gentlemanly bearing, with a furred collar."
"Good Lord! Mortimer!" ejaculated Mr. Hucks, but inwardly.
"I need hardly point out to you that a bargee in a furred collar--"
"No, you needn't." Mr. Hucks rose from his chair. "See here, Glasson,
you've come with a notion that I'm mixed up in this. Well, as it
happens, you're wrong. I don't ask you to take my word--I don't care a
d--n whether you believe me or not--only you're wrong. What's more,
I'll give no promise to help--not to-night, anyway. But I'm goin' to
look into this, and to-morrow I'll tell you if we play the hand
together. To-morrow at nine-thirty, if that suits? If not, you can go
and get the police to help."
"Time may be precious," hesitated Glasson.
"Mine is, anyway," Mr. Hucks retorted. "Let me see you out. No, it's
no trouble. I'm goin' to look into this affair right away."
He handed the Doctor his lantern, opened the door for him, and walked
with him three parts of the way across the yard. As they passed the
caravan door his quick ear noted a strange sound within. It resembled
the muffled yap of a dog. But Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer did not keep a
dog.
He halted. "There's the gate. Good night," he said, and stood
watching while Glasson passed out. Then, swinging on his heel, he
strode back to the caravan.
"Mortimer!" he challenged, mounting to the third step and knocking.
"Ha! Who calls?" answered the deep voice of Mr. Mortimer after two
seconds' interval.
"Hucks. And I want a word with you."
The door opened a little way . . . and with that someone within the van
uttered a cry, as a dark object sprang out over the flap, hurtled past
Mr. Hucks, and hurled itself across the court towards the gate.
"'Dolph! 'Dolph!" called an agonised voice--a child's voice.
"The dog's daft!" chimed in Mr. Mortimer.
"'E'll kill 'im!"
As Mr. Hucks recovered his balance and stared in at the caravan doorway,
now wide open, from the darkness beyond the gate came a cry and a fierce
guttural bark--the two blent together. Silence followed. Then on the
silence there broke the sound of a heavy splash.
CHAPTER VIII.
FLIGHT.
"_So all night long and through the dawn the ship cleft her way."
--ODYSSEY, ii.
Mr. Hucks ran. Mr. Mortimer ran. As they reached the gate they heard
the voice of Doctor Glasson uplifted, gurgling for help.
They spied him at once, for by a lucky chance his lantern--one of the
common stable kind, with panes of horn--had fallen from his grasp as he
pitched over the edge of the basin. It floated, bobbing on the waves
cast up by his struggles and splashings, and by the light of it they
quickly reached the spot. But unluckily, though they could see him well
enough, they could not reach Doctor Glasson. He clung to the head-rope
of a barge moored some nine feet from shore, and it appeared that he was
hurt, for his efforts to lift himself up and over the stem of the boat,
though persistent, were feeble, and at every effort he groaned.
The dog--cause of the mischief--craned forward at him over the water,
and barked in indecent triumph.
Mr. Mortimer, who had gone through the form of tearing off his coat,
paused as he unbuttoned his waistcoat also, and glanced at Mr. Hucks.
"Can you swim?" he asked. "I--I regret to say it is not one of my
accomplishments."
"I ain't goin' to try just yet," Mr. Hucks answered with creditable
composure. "They 're bound to fetch help between 'em with the row they
're making. Just hark to the d--d dog."
Sure enough the alarm had been given. A voice at that moment hailed
from one of the boats across the water to know what was the matter, and
half a dozen porters, canal-men, night watchmen from the warehouses,
came running around the head of the basin; but before they could arrive,
a man dashed out of the darkness behind the two watchers, tore past
them, and sprang for the boat. They heard the thud of his feet as he
alit on her short fore-deck, and an instant later, as he leaned over the
stem and gripped Dr. Glasson's coat-collar, the light of the bobbing
lantern showed them his face. It was Sam Bossom.
He had lifted the Doctor waist-high from the water before the other
helpers sprang on board and completed the rescue. The poor man was
hauled over the bows and stretched on the fore-deck, where he lay
groaning while they brought the boat alongside the quay's edge. By this
time a small crowd had gathered, and was being pressed back from the
brink and exhorted by a belated policeman.
It appeared as they lifted him ashore that the Doctor, beside the
inconvenience of a stomachful of dirty canal water, was suffering
considerable pain. In his fright (the dog had not actually bitten him)
he had blundered, and struck his knee-cap violently against a bollard
close by the water's edge, and staggering under the anguish of it, had
lost his footing and collapsed overboard. Then, finding that his
fingers could take no hold on the slippery concrete wall of the basin,
with his sound leg he had pushed himself out from it and grasped the
barge's head-rope. All this, between groans, he managed to explain to
the policeman, who, having sent for an ambulance stretcher, called for
volunteers to carry him home; for home Dr. Glasson insisted on being
taken, putting aside--and with great firmness--the suggestion that he
would be better in hospital.
Sam Blossom was among the first to offer his services. But here his
master interposed.
"No, no, my lad," said Mr. Hucks genially, "you've behaved pretty
creditable already, and now you can give the others a turn. The man's
all right, or will be by to-morrow; and as it happens," he added in a
lower tone, "I want five minutes' talk with you, and at once."
They watched while the sufferer was hoisted into his stretcher. So the
escort started, the policeman walking close behind and the crowd
following the policeman.
"Now," said Mr. Hucks as they passed out of sight, "you'll just step
into the yard and answer a few questions. You too, sir," he turned to
Mr. Mortimer and led the way. "Hullo!"--he let out a kick at Godolphus
snuffling at the yard gate, and Godolphus, smitten on the ribs, fled
yelping. "Who the devil owns that cur?" demanded Mr. Hucks, pushing the
gate open.
"I do," answered a voice just within, close at his elbow. "An' I'll
arsk you not to fergit it. Ought to be ashamed o' yerself, kickin' a
pore dumb animal like that!"
"Eh?" Mr. Hucks passed down into the darkness. "Sam, fetch a
lantern . . . So you 're the young lady I saw just now inside o' the
van, and unless I'm mistaken, a nice job you're responsible for."
Tilda nodded. 'Dolph's indiscretion had put her in a desperate fix; but
something told her that her best chance with this man was to stand up to
him and show fight.
"Is he drowned?" she asked.
"Drowned? Not a bit of it. Only a trifle wet, and a trifle scared--
thanks to that poor dumb animal of yours. A trifle hurt, too."
"I'm sorry he wasn't drowned," said Tilda.
"Well, you 're a nice Christian child, I must say. Start with
kidnappin', and then down on your luck because you haven't wound up with
murder! Where's the boy you stole?"
"In the caravan."
"Fetch him out."
"Shan't!"
"Now look here, missie--"
"I shan't," repeated Tilda. "Oh, Mr. Bossom, you won't let them!
They're strong, I know . . . but he's got a knife that he took when
Mr. Mortimer's back was turned, and if they try to drag 'im back
to that Orph'nige--"
"Stuff and nonsense!" Mr. Hucks interrupted. "Who talked about handin'
him back? Not me."
"Then you won't?"
"I'm not sayin' that, neither. Fetch the boy along into my Counting
House, You and me must have a talk about this--in fact, I want a word
with everybody consarned."
Tilda considered for a moment, and then announced a compromise.
"Tell you what," she said, "I don't mind comin' along with you first--
not if you let 'Dolph come too."
"I shan't let him murder _me_, if that's in your mind."
Mr. Hucks grinned.
"You can call the others in if he tries," Tilda answered seriously.
"But he won't, not if you be'ave. An' then," she went on, "you can arsk
me anything you like, an' I'll answer as truthful as I can."
"Can't I see the boy first?" asked Mr. Hucks, hugely tickled.
"No, you can't!"
"You're hard on me," he sighed. The child amused him, and this
suggestion of hers exactly jumped with his wishes. "But no tricks,
mind. You others can look after the boy--I make you responsible for
him. And now this way, missie, if you'll do me the honour!"
Tilda called to 'Dolph, and the pair followed Mr. Hucks to the Counting
House, where, as he turned up the lamp, he told the child to find
herself a seat. She did not obey at once; she was watching the dog.
But 'Dolph, it appeared, bore Mr. Hucks no malice. He walked around for
thirty seconds smelling the furniture, found a rag mat, settled himself
down on it, and sat wagging his tail with a motion regular almost as a
pendulum's. Tilda, observing it, heaved a small sigh, and perched
herself on the packing-case, where she confronted Mr. Hucks fair and
square across the table.
"Now you just sit there and answer me," said Mr. Hucks, seating himself
and filling a pipe. "First, who's _in_ this?"
"Me," answered Tilda. "Me and 'im."
Mr. Hucks laid down his pipe, spread his fingers on the table, and made
as if to rise.
"I thought," said he, "you had more sense in you 'n an ord'nary child.
Seems you have less, if you start foolin'."
"I can't 'elp 'ow you take it," Tilda answered. "I got to tell you
what's true, an' chance the rest. Mr. Sam Bossom, 'e gave us a 'and at
the coal-'ole, an' Mr. Mortimer got mixed up in it later on; an' that's
all _they_ know about it. There's nobody elst, unless you count the
pore woman at the orspital, an' _she's_ dead."
"That aunt of yours--is _she_ dead too?"
Tilda grinned.
"You've been talkin' to Glasson."
"P'r'aps," suggested Mr. Hucks, after a shrewd glance at her, "you'd
best tell me the story in your own way."
"That's what I'd like. You see," she began, "I been laid up three
weeks in 'orspital--the Good Samaritan, if you know it--along o' bein'
kicked by a pony. End o' last week they brought in a woman--dyin' she
was, an' in a dreadful state, an' talkin'. I ought to know, 'cos they
put her next bed to mine; s'pose they thought she'd be company. All o'
one night she never stopped talkin', callin' out for somebody she called
Arthur. 'Seemed as she couldn' die easy until she'd seen 'im. Next
day--that's yesterday--her mind was clearer, an' I arsked her who
Arthur was an' where he lived, if one had a mind to fetch 'im. I got
out of her that he was called Arthur Miles Surname Chandon, an' that he
lived at 'Oly Innercents. So this mornin', bein' allowed out, I went
down to the place an' arsked to see Arthur Miles Surname Chandon. First
thing I noticed was they didn' know he was called Chandon, for Glasson
took a piece o' paper an' wrote it down. I was afraid of Glasson, an'
pitched that yarn about an aunt o' mine, which was all kid. I never 'ad
no aunt."
"What's your name, by the way?"
"Tilda."
"Tilda what?"
"That's what they _all_ arsks," said Tilda wearily. "I dunno. If a
body _can't_ do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to
please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is
where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' when
they billed me."
"You don't look much like an acrobat," commented Mr. Hucks.
"Don't I? Well, you needn't to take _that_ on trust, anyway."
The child stepped down from the packing-case, stretched both arms
straight above her, and began to bend the upper part of her body slowly
backward, as though to touch her heels with the backs of her fingers,
but desisted half-way with a cry of pain. "Ow! It hurts." She stood
erect again with tears in her eyes. "But 'Dolph will show you," she
added upon a sudden happy thought, and kneeling, stretched out an arm
horizontally.
"Hep, 'Dolph!"
The dog, with a bark of intelligence, sprang across her arm, turned on
his hind legs, and sprang back again. She crooked her arm so that the
tips of her fingers touched her hip, and with another bark he leapt
between arm and body as through a hoop.
"He don't properly belong to me," explained Tilda. "He belongs to Bill,
that works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; but he larned his tricks
off me. That'll do, 'Dolph; go an' lie down."
"He's a clever dog, and I beg his pardon for kicking him," said Mr.
Hucks with a twinkle.
"He's better 'n clever. Why, 'twas 'Dolph that got us out."
"What, from the Orph'nage?"
"Yes." Tilda described how the Doctor had shut her in his drawing-room,
how she had escaped to the garden and found the boy there, and how
'Dolph had discovered the coal-shaft for them. "An' then Mr. Bossom 'e
'elped us out an' put us across the canal. That's all the 'and '_e_
took in it. An' from the canal I 'urried Arthur Miles up to the Good
Samaritan; but when we got there his mother was dead--becos o' course
she must a-been his mother. An' so," Tilda wound up, "I turned-to an'
adopted 'im, an' we came along 'ere to arsk Mr. Bossom to 'elp us.
An' now--if you give 'im up it 'll be a burnin' shame, an' Gawd'll pull
your leg for it."
"That's all very well," said Mr. Hucks after a few moments' thought.
"That's all very well, missie," he repeated, "but grown-up folks can't
take your easy way wi' the law. You're askin' me to aid an' abet,
knowin' him to be stolen; an' that's serious. If 'twas a matter between
you an' me, now--or even between us an' Sam Bossom. But the devil is,
these playactors have mixed themselves up in it, and the Doctor is warm
on Mortimer's scent."
"I thought o' that d'reckly he told me. But O, Mr. 'Ucks, I thought on
such a neav'nly plan!" Tilda clasped hands over an uplifted knee and
gazed on him. Her eyes shone. "They told me you was keepin' them here
for debt; but that's nonsense, becos they can't never pay it back till
you let 'em make money."
"A fat lot I shall ever get from Mortimer if I let him out o' my sight.
You don't know Mr. Mortimer."
"Don't I?" was Tilda's answer. "What d'yer take me for? Why
_everybody_ knows what Mr. Mortimer's like--everybody in Maggs's,
anyway. He's born to borrow, Bill says; though at _Hamlet_ or _Seven
Nights in a Bar-Room_ he beats the band. But as I said to his wife,
'Why shouldn' Mr. 'Ucks keep your caravan against what you owe, an' loan
you a barge? He could put a man in charge to look after your takin's,
so's you wouldn' get out o' reach till the money was paid: an' you could
work the small towns along the canal, where the shows don't almost never
reach. You won't want no more'n a tent,' I said, 'an' next to no
scenery; an' me an' Arthur Miles could be the _Babes in the Wood_ or the
_Princes in the Tower_ for you, with 'Dolph to fill up the gaps.'"
"Darn _me_," said Mr. Hucks, staring, "if you're not the cleverest for
your size!"
"'Eav'nly--that was Mrs. Mortimer's word for it; an' Mr. Mortimer said
'twas the dream of 'is life, to pop--"
"Eh?"
"It began with pop--to pop something Shakespeare in places where they
'adn't 'eard of 'im. But you know 'is way."
Mr. Hucks arose, visibly pondering. 'Dolph, who had been keeping an eye
on him, rose also, and 'Dolph's tail worked as if attached to a steam
engine.
"There's a cargo, mostly beer, to be fetched up from Stratford," said
Mr. Hucks after a pause. "Sam Bossom might take down the _Success to
Commerce_ for it, and he's as well out o' the way wi' the rest o' you."
Tilda clapped her hands.
"Mind you," he went on, "I'm not includin' any orphan. I got no consarn
with one. I haven't so much as seen him."
He paused, with his eyes fixed severely on Tilda's.
She nodded.
"O' course not."
"And if, when you go back to the van and tell the Mortimers, you should
leave the door open for a minute, forgetful-like, why that's no affair
o' mine."
"I'm a'most certain to forget," owned Tilda. "If you'd been brought up
half yer time in a tent--"
"_To_ be sure. Now attend to this. I give Sam Bossom instructions to
take the boat down to Stratford with three passengers aboard--you and
the Mortimers--as a business speckilation; and it may so happen--I don't
say it will, mind you--that sooner or later Mortimer'll want to pick up
an extry hand to strengthen his company. Well, he knows his own
business, and inside o' limits I don't interfere. Still, I'm financin'
this voyage, as you might say, and someone must keep me informed. F'r
instance, if you should be joined by a party as we'll agree to call
William Bennetts, I should want to know how William Bennetts was doin',
and what his purfessional plans were; and if you could find out anything
more about W. B.--that he was respectably connected, we'll say--why so
much the better. Understand?"
"You want Mr. Mortimer to write?" asked Tilda dubiously.
"No, I don't. I want _you_ to write--that's to say, if you can."
"I can print letters, same as the play-bills."
"That'll do. You can get one o' the Mortimers to address the envelopes.
And now," said Mr. Hucks, "I 'd best be off and speak to Sam Bossom to
get out the boat. Show-folks," he added thoughtfully, "likes travellin'
by night, I'm told. It's cooler."
Two hours later, as the Brewery clock struck eleven, a canal-boat, towed
by a glimmering grey horse, glided southward under the shadow of the
Orphanage wall. It passed this and the iron bridge, and pursued its way
through the dark purlieus of Bursfield towards the open country.
Its rate of progression was steady, and a trifle under three miles an
hour.
Astride the grey horse sat Mr. Mortimer, consciously romantic.
The darkness, the secrecy of the flight--the prospect of recovered
liberty--beyond this, the goal! As he rode, Mr. Mortimer murmured
beatifically--
"To Stratford! To Stratford-on-Avon!" Sam Bossom stood on the small
after-deck and steered. In the cabin Mrs. Mortimer snatched what repose
was possible on a narrow side-locker to a person of her proportions; and
on the cabin floor at her feet, in a nest of theatrical costumes, the
two children slept dreamlessly, tired out, locked in each others arms.
CHAPTER IX.
FREEDOM.
"_O, a bargeman's is the life for me,
Though there's nothin' to be seen but scener-ee!_"--OLD SONG.
A pale shaft of daylight slanted through the cabin doorway. It touched
Tilda's eyelids, and she opened them at once, stared, and relaxed her
embrace.
"Awake?" asked Mrs. Mortimer's voice from the shadow above the locker.
"Well, I'm glad of that, because I want to get to the stove. Sardines,"
said Mrs. Mortimer, "you can take out with a fork; but, packed as we
are, when one moves the rest must follow suit. Is the boy stirring
too?"
"No," answered Tilda, peering down on him. But as she slipped her arm
from under his neck, he came out of dreamland with a quick sob and a
shudder very pitiful to hear and to feel. "Hush!" she whispered,
catching at his hand and holding it firmly. "It's _me_--Tilda; an' you
won't go back there never no more."
"I--I thought--" said he, and so with an easier sob lay still.
"O' course you did," Tilda soothed him. "But what's 'appened to the
boat, ma'am?"
"We are at anchor. If you want to know why, you had best crawl out and
ask Mr. Bossom. He gave the order, and Stanislas has gone ashore to buy
provisions. Marketing," said Mrs. Mortimer, "is not my husband's strong
point, but we'll hope for the best."
The cabin doorway was low as well as narrow. Looking through it, Tilda
now discerned in the gathering daylight the lower half of Sam Bossom's
person. He sat with his legs dangling over the break of the stairway,
and as the children crawled forth they perceived that he was busy with a
small notebook.
"Why are we stoppin' here?" demanded Tilda, with a glance about her.
The boat lay moored against the bank opposite the towpath, where old
Jubilee stood with his face deep in a nosebag. He stood almost directly
against the rising sun, the effect of which was to edge his outline with
gold, while his flank presented the most delicate of lilac shadows.
Beyond him stretched a level country intersected with low hedges, all
a-dazzle under the morning beams. To the left the land sloped gently
upward to a ridge crowned, a mile away, by a straggling line of houses
and a single factory chimney. Right astern, over Mr. Bossom's shoulder,
rose the clustered chimneys, tall stacks, church spires of the dreadful
town, already wreathed in smoke. It seemed to Tilda, although here were
meadows and clean waterflags growing by the brink, and a wide sky all
around, that yet this ugly smoke hung on their wake and threatened them.
"Why are we stoppin'?" she demanded again, as Sam Bossom, with a hurried
if friendly nod, resumed his calculations.
"And four is fifteen, and fifteen is one-an'-three," said he. "Which,"
he added, looking up as one who would stand no contradiction, "is the
'alf of two-an'-six . . . You'll excuse me, missy, but business first
an' pleasure afterwards. We're stoppin' here for the day."
"For the day?" echoed Tilda, with a dismayed look astern. "An' we've
on'y come this far!"
"Pretty good goin', _I_ should call it," Mr. Bossom assured her
cheerfully. "Six locks we've passed while you was asleep, not countin'
the stop-lock. But maybe you 're not used to travel by canal?"
"I thank the Lord, no; or I'd never 'ave put Mr. 'Ucks up to it.
Why, I'd _walk_ it quicker, crutch an' all."
"What'd you call a reas'nable price for eggs, now--at this time o'
year?" asked Mr. Bossom, abstractedly sucking the stump of a pencil and
frowning at his notebook. But of a sudden her words seemed to strike
him, and he looked up round-eyed.
"You ain't tellin' me _you_ put this in 'Ucks's mind?"
"'Course I did," owned Tilda proudly.
"An' got me sent to Stratford-on-Avon!" Mr. Bossom added. "Me that
stood your friend when _you_ was in a tight place!"
"No, I didn'. It was 'Ucks that mentioned Stratford--said you'd find a
cargo of beer there, which sounded all right: an' Mortimer jumped at it
soon as ever he 'eard the name. Mortimer said it was the dream of his
youth an' the perspiration of his something else--I can't tell the ezact
words; but when he talked like that, how was I to guess there was
anything wrong with the place?"
"There ain't anything wrong wi' the _place_, that I know by," Mr. Bossom
admitted.
"But I remember another thing he said, because it sounded to me even
funnier. He said, 'Sweet swan of Avon upon the banks of Thames, that
did so please Eliza and our James.' Now what did he mean by that?"
Mr. Bossom considered and shook his head.
"Some bank-'oliday couple, I reckon; friends of his, maybe. But about
that swan--Mortimer must 'a-been talkin' through his hat. Why to get to
the Thames that bird'd have to go up the Stratford-on-Avon to Kingswood
cut, down the Warwick an' Birmingham to Budbrooke--with a trifle o'
twenty-one locks at Hatton to be worked or walked round; cross by the
Warwick an' Napton--another twenty-two locks; an' all the way down the
Oxford Canal, which from Napton is fifty miles good."
"She'd be an old bird before she got there, at our pace," Tilda agreed.
"But, o' course, Mr. Bossom, if we want to get to Stratford quick, an'
you don't, you'll make the pace what you like an' never mind us."
"Who said I didn' want to get to Stratford?" he asked almost fiercely,
and broke off with a groan.
"Oh, it's 'ard!--it's 'ard! . . . And me sittin' here calcilatin' eggs
an' milk domestic-like and thinkin' what bliss . . . But you don't
understand. O' course you don't. Why should you?"
Tilda placed her hands behind her back, eyed him for half-a-minute, and
sagely nodded.
"Well, I never!" she said. "Oh, my goodness gracious mercy me!"
"I can't think what you 're referrin' to," stammered Mr. Bossom.
"So we're in love, are we?"
He cast a guilty look around.
"There's Mortimer, comin' down the path, an' only two fields away."
"And it's a long story, is it? Well, I'll let you off this time," said
Tilda. "But listen to this, an' don't you fergit it. If along o' your
dawdlin' they lay hands on Arthur Miles here, I'll never fergive you--
no, never."
"You leave that to me, missie. And as for dawdlin', why if you
understood about canals you 'd know there's times when dawdlin' makes
the best speed. Now just you bear in mind the number o' things I've got
to think of. First, we'll say, there's you an' the boy. Well, who's
goin' to look for you here, aboard an innercent boat laid here between
locks an' waitin' till the full of her cargo comes down to Tizzer's
Green wharf or Ibbetson's? Next"--he checked off the items on his
fingers--"there's the Mortimers. In duty to 'Ucks, I got to choose
Mortimer a pitch where he'll draw a 'ouse. Bein' new to this job, I'd
like your opinion; but where, thinks I, 'll he likelier draw a 'ouse
than at Tizzer's Green yonder?--two thousand op'ratives, an' I doubt if
the place has ever seen a travellin' theayter since it started to grow.
Anyway, Mortimer has been pushin' inquiries: an' that makes Secondly.
Thirdly, I don't know much about play-actors, but Mortimer tells me he
gets goin' at seven-thirty an' holds 'em spellbound till something after
ten; which means that by the time we've carted back the scenery _an'_
shipped _an'_ stowed it, _an'_ got the tarpaulins on, _an'_ harnessed
up, we shan't get much change out o' midnight. Don't lose your patience
now, because we haven't come to the end of it yet--not by a long way.
By midnight, say, we get started an' haul up to Knowlsey top lock, which
is a matter of three miles. What do we find there?"
"Dunno," said Tilda wearily. "A brass band per'aps, an' a nillumynated
address, congratylatin' yer."
Sam ignored this sarcasm.
"We find, likely as not, a dozen boats hauled up for the night, blockin'
the fairway, an' all the crews ashore at the 'Ring o' Bells' or the
'Lone Woman,' where they doss an' where the stablin' is. Not a chance
for us to get through before mornin'; an' then in a crowd with everybody
wantin' to know what Sam Bossom's doin' with two children aboard.
Whereas," he concluded, "if we time ourselves to reach Knowlsey by seven
in the mornin', they'll all have locked through an' left the coast
clear."
Said Tilda, still contemptuous--
"I 'd like to turn Bill loose on this navigation o' yours, as you call
it."
"Oo's Bill?"
"He works the engine on Gavel's roundabouts; an' he's the best an' the
cleverest man in the world."
"Unappre'shated, I spose?"
"Why if you 'ad Bill aboard this boat, in less'n a workin' day he'd 'ave
her fixed up with boiler an' engine complete, an' be drivin' her like a
train."
Mr. Bossom grinned.
"I'd like to see 'im twenty minutes later, just to congratilate 'im.
You see, missie, a boat can't go faster than the water travels past
'er--which is rhyme, though I made it myself, an' likewise reason.
Can she, now?"
"I s'pose not," Tilda admitted doubtfully.
"Well now, if your friend Bill started to drive th' old _Success to
Commerce_ like a train, first he'd be surprised an' disappointed to see
her heavin' a two-foot wave ahead of her--maybe more, maybe less--along
both banks; an' next it might annoy 'im a bit when these two waves fell
together an' raised a weight o' water full on her bows, whereby she 'd
travel like a slug, an' the 'arder he drove the more she wouldn' go; let
be that she'd give 'im no time to cuss, even when I arsked 'im perlitely
what it felt like to steer a monkey by the tail. Next _an'_ last, if he
should 'appen to find room for a look astern at the banks, it might vex
'im--bein' the best o' men as well as the cleverest--to notice that he
'adn't left no banks, to speak of. Not that 'twould matter to 'im
pers'nally--'avin' no further use for 'em."
Tilda, confounded by this close reasoning, was about to retreat with
dignity under the admission that, after all, canal-work gave no scope to
a genius such as Bill's, when 'Dolph came barking to announce the near
approach of Mr. Mortimer.
Mr. Mortimer, approaching with a gait modelled upon Henry Irving's, was
clearly in radiant mood. Almost he vaulted the stile between the field
and the canal bank. Alighting, he hailed the boat in nautical
language--
"Ahoy, Smiles! What cheer, my hearty?"
"Gettin' along nicely, sir," reported Mr. Bossom. "Nicely, but peckish.
The same to you, I 'ope."
"Good," was the answer. "Speak to the mariners: fall to't yarely, or we
run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir!"
Tilda, who for the last minute or so had been unconsciously holding
Arthur Miles by the hand, was astonished of a sudden to find it
trembling in hers.
"You mustn' mind what Mr. Mortimer says," she assured the child
encouragingly--"it's on'y his way."
Mr. Mortimer stepped jauntily across the gang-plank, declaiming with so
much of gesture as a heavy market-basket permitted--
"The pirates of Parga, who dwell by the waves,
And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
Shall leave by the beach, Smiles, the long galley and oar--"
"I have done it, Smiles. In the words of the old-time classical
geometer, I have found it; and as he remarked on another occasion
(I believe subsequently), 'Give me where to stand, and I will move the
Universe.' His precise words, if I recall the original Greek, were _Dos
Pou Sto_--and the critical ear will detect a manly--er--self-reliance in
the terse monosyllables. In these days," pursued Mr. Mortimer, setting
down the market-basket, unbuttoning his furred overcoat, extracting a
green and yellow bandanna from his breastpocket and mopping his heated
brow, "in these days we have lost that self-confidence. We are weary,
disillusioned. We have ceased to expect gold at the rainbow's foot.
Speaking without disrespect to the poet Shelley"--here he lifted his hat
and replaced it--"a new Peneus does _not_ roll his fountains against the
morning star, whatever that precise--er--operation may have been.
But let us honour the aspiration, Smiles, though the chill monitor
within forbid us to endorse it. 'A loftier Argo'"--Mr. Mortimer
indicated the _Success to Commerce_ with a sweep of the hand--
"A loftier Argo cleaves the main
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus--you'll excuse the comparison--sings again,
And loves, and weeps--and dies."
"Stanislas, you have not forgotten the eggs, I hope?" interposed the
voice of Mrs. Mortimer from the cabin.
"I have not, my bud. Moreover, as I was just explaining to our friend,
I have secured a _Pou Sto_--a hall, my chick--or perhaps it might be
defined more precisely as a--er--loft. It served formerly--or, as the
poets would say, whilom--as a barracks for the Salvation Army; in more
recent times as a store for--er--superphosphates. But it is commodious,
and possesses a side-chamber which will serve us admirably for a
green-room when the proprietor--an affable person by the name of Tench--
has removed the onions at present drying on the floor; which he has
engaged to do."
"Are you tellin' me," inquired Sam, "that you've been and 'ired the
room?"
"At the derisory charge of four-and-six for the night. As a business
man, I believe in striking while the iron is hot. Indeed, while we are
on the subject, I may mention that I have ordered the bills. _Professor
and Madame St. Maw_--my Arabella will, I know, forgive my reverting to
the name under which she won her maiden laurels--it cost me a pang, my
dear Smiles, to reflect that the fame to be won here, the honour of
having popularised HIM, here on the confines of his native Arden, will
never be associated with the name of Mortimer. _Sic vos non vobis_, as
the Mantuan has poignantly observed. But for the sake of the children--
and, by the way, how do my bantlings find themselves this morning?
Tol-lollish, I trust?--for the sake of the children it was necessary, as
we used to say with the Pytchley, to obscure 'the scent. Talking of
scent, Smiles, it might be advisable--what with the superphosphates and
the onions--to take some counteracting steps, which your ingenuity may
be able to suggest. The superphosphates especially are--er--potent.
And, by one of those coincidences we meet, perhaps, oftener than we
note, Mr. Tench's initial is 'S'--standing for Samuel."
Mr. Mortimer extracted an egg from his basket and rubbed it with his
bandanna thoughtfully before passing it down to his wife.
"So you've been an' ordered the bills too?" murmured Mr. Bossom.
"And what will the bills run to?--if, as the treasurer, I may make so
bold."
"To the sum of five shillings precisely, which will, of course, be
hypothecated as a first charge upon our takings, and which I ask you, my
dear Smiles, as treasurer to debit to that account in due form, here and
now." It would have been hard to conceive any manner more impressively
business-like than Mr. Mortimer's as he made this demand. "You will
excuse my putting it so plainly, Smiles, but I may venture a guess that
in the matter of conducting a theatrical tour you are, comparatively
speaking, a tiro?"
"I've got to account to 'Ucks, if that's what you mean," Sam assented.
"The bill, Smiles, is the theatrical agent's first thought; the
beginning which is notoriously half the battle. For three-inch
lettering--and to that I restricted myself--five shillings can only be
called dirt cheap. Listen--"
PROFESSOR AND MADAME ST. MAUR,
OF THE LEADING LONDON THEATRES
PART I.--WITH VOICE AND LUTE, A POT-POURRI