boys. Anyway, he seemed to want me gone, sir, and I went off at once. I
didn't see him after that."
"He must have fallen asleep, and somehow slipped over."
"Yes, sir. What a pity he was left in that shallow place!"
King seemed to have all his wits about him, but his face had a white,
odd look in it. He lay in a room on the first floor, that belonged in
general to the two girls. When I said Mark Ferrar was outside, King
asked me to take him up. But I did not like taking him without speaking
to Captain Sanker; and I went to him in the parlour.
"The idea of a Frog coming into our house!" cried resentful Dan, as he
heard me. "It's like his impudence to stop outside it! What next? Let
him wait till King's well."
"You hold your tongue, Dan," cried the captain. "The boy shall go up,
whether he's a Frog, or whether he's one of you. Take him up, Johnny."
He did not look unlike a frog when he got into the room, with his wide,
red, freckled face and his great wide mouth--but, as I have said, it was
a face to be trusted. The first thing he did, looking at King, was to
burst into a great blubber of tears.
"I hope you'll get well," said he.
"I might have been as bad as this in the fight, but for your pulling me
out of it, Frog," said King, in his faint voice. And he did not call him
Frog in any contempt, but as though it were his name: he knew him by no
other. "Was that bump done in the battle?"
Mark had his cap off: on one side of his forehead, under the hair, we
saw a big lump the size of an egg. "Yes," he answered, "it was got in
the fight. Father thinks it never means to go down. It's pretty stiff
and sore yet."
King sighed. He was gazing up at the lump with his nice blue eyes.
"I don't think there'll be any fighting in heaven," said King. "And I
wrote out 'Lord Bateman' the other day, and they shall give it you to
keep. I didn't finish telling it to you. He owned half Northumberland;
and he married her after all. She had set him free from the prison, you
know, Frog."
"Yes," replied Frog, quite bewildered, and looking as though he could
not make top or tail of the story. "I hope you'll get well, sir. How
came you to fall?"
"I don't think they expect me to get well: they wouldn't have so many
doctors if they did. I shan't be lame, Frog, up there."
"Did you slip?--or did anybody push you?" went on Frog, lowering his
voice.
"Hush!" said King, glancing at the door. "If papa heard you say that,
he might go into a passion."
"But--was it a slip--or were you pushed over?" persisted Frog.
"My leg is always slipping: it has never been of much good to me,"
answered King. "When you come up there, and see me with a beautiful
strong body and straight limbs, you won't know me again at first.
Good-bye, till then, Frog; good-bye. It was very kind of you to carry
me out of the fight, and God saw you."
"Good-bye, sir," said Frog, with another burst, as he put out his hand
to meet poor King's white one. "Perhaps you'll get over it yet."
Tod and I took leave of them in the afternoon, and went up to the Star.
The Squire wanted to be home early. The carriage was waiting before the
gateway, the ostler holding the heads of Bob and Blister, when Captain
Sanker came up in dreadful excitement.
"He's gone," he exclaimed. "My poor King's gone. He died as the clock
was striking four."
And we had supposed King to be going on well! The Squire ordered the
horses to be put up again, and we went down to the house. The boys and
girls were all crying.
King lay stretched on the bed, his face very peaceful and looking less
white than I had sometimes seen it look in life. On the cheeks there
lingered a faint colour; his forehead felt warm; you could hardly
believe he was dead.
"He has gone to the heaven he talked of," said Mrs. Sanker, through her
tears. "He has been talking about it at intervals all day--and now he is
there; and has his harp amongst the angels."
And that was the result of our Day of Pleasure! The force of those
solemn words has rarely been brought home to hearts as it was to ours
then: "In the midst of life we are in death."
XI.
THE FINAL ENDING TO IT.
Of all the gloomy houses any one ever stayed in, Captain Sanker's was
the worst. Nothing but coffins coming into it, and all of us stealing
about on tip-toe. King lay in the room where he died. There was to be
an inquest: at which the captain was angry. But he was so excited and
sorrowful just then as to have no head at all.
Which might well be excused in him. Picture what it was! Three carriages
full of us had started on the Tuesday morning, expecting to have a day
of charming pleasure on the Malvern Hills in the July sunshine; no more
thinking of death or any other catastrophe, than if the world had never
contained such! And poor King--poor lame King, whose weakness made him
more helpless than were we strong ones, and who only on the previous
Saturday had been plucked out of the fight in Diglis Meadow and been
saved--King must fall asleep on a dangerous part of the hill and roll
down it and come home to die! "Better King than any of the rest of you,"
cried Mrs. Sanker, more than once, in her dreamy way, and with her eyes
dry, for she seemed tired of tears; "he could never have done battle
with the world as you will have to do it; and he was quite ready for
heaven."
Instead of going home with our people the day after the death, as Tod
did, I had to wait at Worcester for the inquest. When the beadle (or
whoever the officer might be; he had gold cord on his hat and white
ribbed stockings below his breeches: which stockings might have been
fellows to old Jones's of Church Dykely) came to Captain Sanker's to
make inquiries the night of the death, and heard that I had been first
up with King after his fall, he said I should have to give evidence. So
I stayed on with them--much to my uneasiness.
If I had thought the Sankers queer people before, I thought them queerer
now. Not one of the boys and girls, except Fred, cared to go alone by
the door of the room where King lay. And, talking of King, it was not
until I saw the name on the coffin-lid that I knew his name was not
King, but Kingsley. He looked as nice and peaceful as any dead lad with
a nice face could look; and yet they were afraid to pass by outside. Dan
and Ruth were the worst. I did not wonder at her--she was a little girl;
but I did at Dan. Fred told me that when they were children a servant
used to tell them stories of ghosts and dreams and banshees; Hetta and
he were too old to be frightened, but the rest had taken it all into
their nature. I privately thought that Mrs. Sanker was no better than
the fool of a servant, reciting to them her dreams and accounts of
apparitions.
King died on the Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday afternoon the inquest
took place. It was held at the Angel Inn, in Sidbury, and Mr. Robert
Allies was the foreman. Boys don't give evidence on inquests every day:
I felt shy and uncomfortable at having to do it; and perhaps that may be
the reason why the particulars remain so strongly on my memory. The time
fixed was three o'clock, but it was nearly four when they came down
to look at King: the coroner explained to the jury that he had been
detained. When they went back to the Angel Inn we followed them--Captain
Sanker, Fred, and I.
All sorts of nonsense ran about the town. It was reported that there
had been a fight with the Frogs on Malvern Hill, during which King
had been pitched over. This was only laughed at by those who knew how
foundationless it was. Not a shadow of cause existed for supposing it
to have been anything but a pure accident.
The coroner and jury sat at a long table covered with green baize. The
coroner had his clerk by him; and on one side Mr. Allies sat Captain
Chamberlain, on the other side Mr. Allcroft. Dr. Teal and Mr. Woodward
were present, and gave the medical evidence in a most learned manner.
Reduced to plainness, it meant that King had died of an injury to the
head.
When my turn came, what they chiefly asked me was, whether I had seen
or heard any quarrelling with St. Peter's boys that day at Malvern. None
whatever, I answered. Was I quite sure of that? pursued one--it was
Mr. Allcroft. I did not think there had been, or could have been, I
repeated: we and the charity boys had kept apart from each other all
day. Then another of the jury, Mr. Stone, put some questions, and then
Mr. Allen--I thought they were never going to believe me. So I said it
was the opposite of quarrelling, and told of Captain Sanker's giving one
of them half-a-crown because he had been kind to King on Saturday, and
of some of the boys--all who had not gone home in the first van--having
helped us to look for King at night. After they had turned me inside
out, the coroner could say that these questions were merely put for
form's sake and for the satisfaction of the public.
When the witnesses were done with, the coroner spoke to the jury. I
suppose it was his charge. It seemed all as plain as a turnpike, he
said: the poor little lame boy had slipped and fallen. The probability
was that he had dropped asleep too near the edge of the perpendicular
bank, and had either fallen over _in_ his sleep, or in the act of
awaking. He (the coroner) thought it must have been the former, as no
cry appeared to have been made, or heard. Under these circumstances, he
believed the jury could have no difficulty in arriving at their verdict.
The last word, "verdict," was still on his tongue, when some commotion
took place at the end of the room. A working-man, in his shirt-sleeves
and a leather apron on, was pushing in through the crowd at the door,
making straight for the table and the coroner. Some of the jury knew him
for John Dance, a glove-cutter at a Quaker gentleman's manufactory hard
by. He begged pardon of the gentlefolk for coming amid 'em abrupt like
that, he said, just as he was, but something had but now come to his
hearing about the poor little boy who had died. It made him fear he had
not fell of himself, but been flung over, and he had thought it his duty
to come and tell it.
The consternation this suggestion created, delivered in its homely
words, would not be easy to describe. Captain Sanker, who had been
sitting against the wall, got up in agitation. John Dance was asked his
grounds for what he said, and was entering into a long rigmarole of a
tale when the coroner stopped him, and bade him simply say how it had
come to his own knowledge. He answered that upon going home just now to
tea, from his work, his son Harry, who was in St. Peter's School, told
him of it, having been sent to do so by the master, Clerk Jones. His son
was with him, waiting to be questioned.
The boy came forward, very red and sheepish, looking as though he
thought he was going to be hung. He stammered and stuttered in giving
his answers to the coroner.
The tale he told was this. His name was Henry Dance, aged thirteen.
He was on the hill, not very far from St. Ann's Well, on the Tuesday
afternoon, looking about for Mark Ferrar. All on a sudden he heard some
quarrelling below him: somebody seemed to be in a foaming passion, and
little King the lame boy called out in a fright, "Oh, don't! don't!
you'll throw me over!" Heard then a sort of rustle of shrubs--as it
sounded to him--and then heard the steps of some one running away along
the path below the upright bank. Couldn't _see_ anything of this; the
bank prevented him; but did see the arm of the boy who was running as
he turned round the corner. Didn't see the boy; only saw his left arm
swaying; he had a green handkerchief in his hand. Could not tell whether
it was one of their boys (St. Peter's) or one of the college boys;
didn't see enough of him for that. Didn't know then that anything bad
had happened, and thought no more about it at all; didn't hear of it
till the next morning: he had been in the first van that left Malvern,
and went to bed as soon as he got home.
The account was listened to breathlessly. The boy was in a regular
fright while he told it, but his tones and looks seemed honest and true.
"How did you know it was King Sanker's voice you heard?" asked the
coroner.
"Please, sir, I didn't know it," was the answer. "When I came to hear of
his fall the next day, I supposed it must ha' been his. I didn't know
anybody had fell down; I didn't hear any cry."
"What time in the afternoon was this?"
"Please, sir, I don't know exact. We had our tea at four: it wasn't
over-long after that."
"Did you recognize the other voice?"
"No, sir. It was a boy's voice."
"Was it one you had ever heard before?"
"I couldn't tell, sir; I wasn't near enough to hear or to catch the
words. King Sanker spoke last, just as I got over the spot."
"You heard of the accident the next morning, you say. Did you hear of
it early?"
"It was afore breakfast, sir. Some of our boys that waited for the last
van telled me; and Ferrar, he telled me. They said they had helped to
look for him."
"And then it came into your mind, that it was King Sanker you had heard
speak?"
"Yes, sir, it did. It come right into my mind, all sudden like, that he
might have been throwed over."
"Well now, Mr. Harry Dance, how was it that you did not at once hasten
to report this? How is it that you have kept it in till now?"
Harry Dance looked too confused and frightened to answer. He picked at
the band of his grey cap and stood, first on one foot, then on the
other. The coroner pressed the question sharply, and he replied in
confusion.
Didn't like to tell it. Knew people were saying it might have been one
of their boys that had pitched him over. Was afraid to tell. Did say a
word to Mark Ferrar; not much: Ferrar wanted to know more, and what it
was he meant, but didn't tell him. That was yesterday morning. Had felt
uncomfortable ever since then, wanting to tell, but not liking to. This
afternoon, in school, writing their copies at the desk, he had told Tom
Wood'art, the carpenter's son, who sat next him; leastways, had said the
college boy had not fell of himself, but been pitched over; and Tom
Wood'art had made him tell it to another boy, Collins; and then the two
had went up to the desk and telled their master, Mr. Jones; and Mr.
Jones, after calling him up to ask about it, had ordered him home to
tell it all to his father; and his father said he must come and tell it
here.
The father, John Dance, spoke up again to confirm this, so far as his
part went. He was so anxious it should be told to the gentlemen at once,
he repeated, that he had come out all untidy as he was, not stopping to
put himself to rights in any way.
The next person to step forward was Mr. Jones, in his white cravat and
black clothes. He stated that the two boys, Thomas Woodward and James
Collins, had made this strange communication to him. Upon which he
had questioned Dance, and at once despatched him home to acquaint his
father.
"What sort of a boy is Harry Dance, Mr. Jones?" inquired the coroner. "A
truthful boy?--one to be depended on? Some boys, as I dare say you know,
are capable of romancing in the most unaccountable manner: inventing
lies by the bushel."
"The boy is truthful, sir; a sufficiently good boy," was the reply.
"Some of them are just what you describe; but Dance, so far as I
believe, may be relied upon."
"Well, now, if this is to be credited, it must have been one of St.
Peter's boys who threw the deceased over," observed a juryman at the
other end. "Did you do it yourself, Harry Dance? Stand straight, and
answer."
"No, sir; I shouldn't never like to do such a cowardly thing," was the
answer, given with a rush of fear--if the look of his face might be
trusted. "I was not anigh him."
"It must have been one of you. This is the result of that fight you two
sets of boys held on Saturday. You have been harbouring malice."
"Please, sir, I wasn't in the fight on Saturday. I had went over to
Clains on an errand for mother."
"That's true," said Clerk Jones. "Dance was not in the fight at all. As
far as I can ascertain, there was no ill-feeling displayed on either
side at Malvern; no quarrelling of any kind." And Captain Sanker, who
was standing up to listen, confirmed this.
"The natural deduction to be drawn is, that if the deceased was flung
over, it was by one of St. Peter's boys--though the probability is that
he did not intend to inflict much injury," observed one of the jury to
the rest. "Boys are so reprehensibly thoughtless. Come, Harry Dance! if
you did not give him a push yourself, you can tell, I dare say, who
did."
But Dance, with tears in his eyes, affirmed that he knew no more than
he had told: he had not the least notion who the boy was that had been
quarrelling with King. He saw none of the boys, St. Peter's boys or
college boys, about the hill at that time; though he was looking out for
them, because he wanted to find Ferrar: and he knew no more than the
dead what boy it was who had run away, for he saw nothing but his arm
and a green handkerchief.
"Did you find Ferrar after that?" resumed the coroner.
"Yes, sir; not long after. I found him looking for me round on t'other
side of St. Ann's Well."
"By the way--on which side of St. Ann's Well is situated the spot where
you heard the quarrel?"
"On the right-hand side, sir, looking _down_ the hill," said the boy.
And by the stress laid on the "down" I judged him to be given to
exactness. "I know the place, sir. If you take a sideway path from the
Well bearing down'ards, you come to it. It's shady and quiet there; a
place that nobody hardly finds out."
"Did you say anything to Ferrar, when you found him, of what you had
heard?"
"No, sir. I didn't think any more about it. I didn't think any harm had
been done."
"But you did mention it to Ferrar the next morning?"
"Yes, sir, I had heard of it, then."
"What did you say?"
"I only said I was afeard he might have been throwed over. Ferrar asked
me why, but I didn't like to say no more, for fear of doing mischief. It
wasn't me," added Dance, appealing piteously to the jury. "I wouldn't
have hurt a hair of his head: he was weak and lame."
"Is Ferrar here?" cried the coroner. "We must have him."
Ferrar was not there. And Mr. Jones, speaking up, said he had seen
nothing of Ferrar since the previous day. He was informed that he had
taken French leave to go off somewhere--which kind of leave, in point of
fact, he added, Master Ferrar was much in the habit of taking.
"But where has he gone?" cried the coroner. "You don't mean he has
decamped?"
"Decamped for the time being," said Mr. Jones. "He will no doubt put in
an appearance in a day or two."
Not one of the jury but pricked up his ears; not one, I could see it in
their faces, but was beginning to speculate on this absence of Ferrar's.
The coroner was staring straight before him, speculating too: and just
then Fred Sanker said something in a half-whisper.
"Ferrar was with my brother King at the spot where he fell from. As far
as we know he was the last person who ever saw him alive."
"And not here!" cried the coroner. "Why is he not? Where does the
neglect lie, I wonder? Gentlemen, I think we had better send round for
his father, and ask an explanation."
In a small town like Worcester (small in comparison with great capitals)
the inhabitants, rich and poor, mostly know one another, what they are,
and where their dwelling is. Old Ferrar lived within a stone's-throw of
the Angel; he was a china painter, employed by the Messrs. Chamberlain.
Some one ran for him; and he came; a tidy-looking man in a good coat,
with grey whiskers and grey hair. He bowed civilly to the room, and gave
his name as Thomas Ferrar.
As far as anything connected with what took place at Malvern he was in
total ignorance, he said. When his son Mark got home on the Tuesday
night, he had told him that Captain Sanker's little boy had fallen down
a part of the hill, and that he, Mark, had been one of those who helped
to find him. In the afternoon of the same day they heard the little boy
had died.
"Where is your son?" asked the coroner.
"I am not sure where he is," replied Thomas Ferrar. "When I and his
brother got home from the factory on Wednesday evening, my daughter
told me Mark had gone off again. Somebody had given him half-a-crown,
I believe. With that in his pocket, he was pretty sure to go off on
one of his rovings."
"He is in the habit of going off, then?"
"Yes, sir, he has done it on occasion almost ever since he could run
alone. I used to leather him well for it, but it was of no use; it
didn't stop it. It's his only fault. Barring that, he's as good and
upright a lad as anybody need have. He does not go off for the purpose
of doing harm: neither does he get into any."
"Where does he go to?"
"Always to one of two places; to South Crabb, or to his grandfather's
at Pinvin. It's generally to South Crabb, to see the Batleys, who are
cousins of my late wife's. They've boys and girls of Mark's own age,
and he likes to be there."
"You conclude, then, that he is at one of these places now?"
"Sure to be, sir; and I think it's sure to be South Crabb. He was at
Pinvin a fortnight ago; for I walked over on the Sunday morning and took
him with me. Mark is of a roving turn; he is always talking of wanting
to see the world. I don't believe he'll ever settle down to steady work
at home."
"Well, we want him here, Mr. Ferrar; and must have him too. Could you
send after him--and get him here by to-morrow?"
"I can send his brother after him, if you say it must be. The likelihood
is that he will come home of himself to-morrow evening."
"Ay, but we must have him here in the afternoon, you see. We want to
hear what he can tell us about the deceased. It is thought that he was
the last person with him before the fall. And, gentlemen," added the
coroner, turning to the jury, "I will adjourn proceedings to the same
hour to-morrow--three o'clock."
So the inquest was adjourned accordingly, and the room slowly cleared
itself. Very slowly. People stood in groups of threes and fours to talk
to each other. This new evidence was startling: and the impression it
made was, that one of the Frogs had certainly thrown King down.
The green handkerchief was mentioned. Coloured silk pocket-handkerchiefs
were much patronized by gentlemen then, and the one used by Dr. Teal
that day happened to be green. The doctor said he had missed his
handkerchief when they were down at the Abbey before tea, but could not
tell where he had left it. He found it in the room at St. Ann's when
they got up again, and supposed it had been there all along. So that
handkerchief was not much thought of: especially as several of the Frogs
had green neckerchiefs on, and might have taken them off, as it was
very hot. That a Frog had flung King over, appeared to be, to use the
coroner's words on another part of the subject, as plain as a turnpike.
The Sankers, one and all, adopted it as conclusive; Captain Sanker in
particular was nearly wild, and said bitter things of the Frogs. Poor
King still lay in the same room, and none of them, as before, cared to
go by the door.
It must have been in the middle of the night. Anyway, it looked
pitch-dark. I was asleep, and dreaming that we were sorting
handkerchiefs: all colours seemed to be there but a green one, and
that--the one being looked for--we could not find: when something
suddenly woke me. A hand was grasping at my shoulder.
"Halloa! who's there?"
"I say, Johnny, I can't stop in my bed; I've come to yours. If you mind
my getting in, I'll lie across the foot, and get to sleep that way."
The voice was Dan's, and it had no end of horror in it. He was standing
by the bed in his night-shirt, shivering. And yet the summer's night was
hot.
"Get in, if you like, Dan: there's plenty of room. What's the matter
with your own bed?"
"King's there," he said, in a dreadful whisper, as he crept trembling
in.
"King! Why, what do you mean?"
"He comes in and lies down in his place just as he used to lie,"
shivered Dan. "I asked Toby to sleep with me to-night, and Fred wouldn't
let him. Fred ought to be ashamed; it's all his ill-nature. He's bigger
than I am, one of the seniors, and he never cares whether he sleeps
alone or not."
"But, Dan, you should not get these fancies into your head about King.
You know it's not true."
"I tell you it is true. King's there. First of all, he stood at the foot
of the bed and looked at me; and then, when I hid my face, I found he
had got into it. He's lying there, just as he used to lie, his face
turned to the wall."
"To begin with, you couldn't see him--him, or any one else. It's too
dark."
"It's not dark. My room's lighter than this; it has a bigger window: and
the sky was bright and the stars were out. Anyway, Johnny, it was light
enough to see King--and there he was. Do you think I'd tell a lie over
it?"