IN THE MIRE
It was still darkish as the array of vans filed along the London road,
and, in the confusion, Ned lost sight of the van in which Alick had got
a lift beside the lady in curl-papers. And no wonder! for the fact
was, the show had parted in two divisions--one going to be stationed in
the East End, somewhere about Whitechapel, the other portion to
traverse the suburbs south of the Thames.
It thus happened that the two Northbourne boys were separated, as they
each discovered when the day wore on. Worse still: they found, to
their dismay, that they had been entrapped artfully. A couple of
useful boys were desperately needed, as a fever had been hanging about
the show, breaking out at fitful intervals, and the chief victims had
been the boy-helpers, who, one after another, dropped off, some to
hospitals, others to die, like rats in the holes that were all the
homes they knew.
The welcome accorded to Alick and Ned was thus explained. The
showwoman was secretly overjoyed to give the strangers a lift on their
journey. But before the first day closed in the pair of adventurers
found out what real hard work meant. Even Ned Dempster, accustomed to
the dilatory, easy-going life of sea-fishing, knew nothing indeed of
the drudgery and hustling and flurry of such everyday work as he had
stepped into, unawares, among the rough caravan folk.
Alick, of course, was thunderstruck and stupefied to find himself at
everybody's rude beck and call. And to have his awkward, bewildered
movements hurried on by hard cuffs and violent language was an
unpleasantly new experience for a Carnegy to endure. His indignant
attempts at rebelling were treated with loud jeers, and by savage
threats of a horse-whipping. The latter menace was carried out before
the week was over, on the unhappy boy obstinately refusing to clean out
the animals' cages, to fetch and carry the food for birds and beasts,
and to perform a hundred other distasteful offices.
'I'll teach ye; I'll conduct your education, young sir!' shouted the
ring-master. 'And here's the lesson-book!' he sneered, flourishing a
cruel-looking whip.
Stunned and crushed, Alick had asked repeatedly to see Ned, and also
entreated to be permitted to leave the show at once. His requests
were, of course, harshly refused. In addition, he was sternly warned
that if he attempted to escape he would be horse-whipped again, and
next-door to death.
'They're a catch for us, them two!' the brutal ring-master remarked to
his wife, as he and she sat at their supper after the performance was
over one evening. 'That tallest youngster's a swell as has run away
from 'ome, judging from his looks and clothes. He's just what we've
bin wantin' for a long time back. The fust thing to do is to break
that 'igh speerit of his, and then we'll set to work to train him to
show off with the leopards. That would draw famous with the public.'
'Not with the leopards! Not with them beasts! They're the worst and
the fiercest in the show. 'Tis next-door to impossible to tame a
leopard. I won't 'ave it, I tell you, so there!' the woman broke in,
with a high-pitched voice.
'Well, well, we're not going to 'ave words about it!' The first
speaker yielded; for his wife, the widow of the former proprietor, was
the real owner of the circus. 'We needn't say no more about the
leopards--for a bit. But I'll tell you what. 'Ee can do tricks with
little Mike, the new pony, and the monkeys. We'll make up a sort of
little performance a-purpose for 'im and them. I must invent a little
somethink that would be taking.'
'I 'ope 'ee won't catch the fever, like the rest on 'em, that's all!'
muttered the mistress, shaking her head doubtfully.
That, however, was just what Alick Carnegy managed to do. After some
weeks' slaving and knocking about at the hands of the ring-master, such
as fairly stunned him, he fell sick. At once the poor, gaunt, dirty
lad, whom Northbourne would have refused to recognise as the smart
Alick Carnegy, always trig and trim, was hustled off to the squalid
room of an old Whitechapel crone who, for the five shillings in the
pocket of his torn coat, agreed to nurse him through his trouble. If
he had the luck to live through it, the show-folk intended to have him
back. If he died--well, there was the parish ready to bury him.
Ned, on the other hand, was by no means in such evil plight. He was
still in the division of the show moving from one suburb to another, so
he had, at least, fresh air to breathe. True, he had brought on
himself one brutal thrashing by running away from the show on the first
opportunity. He was easily enough traced to the Docks, where he had
sped, hoping against hope to find Alick loitering there. Instead, he
was captured by the ring-master himself, who had been informed of the
boy's flight, and who thought it quite worth his while to look up such
an intelligent, hard-working little chap as Ned. The truth was, Ned
had made himself far too useful among the animals to be thus let slip.
All this time the dejected lad had been purposely kept in ignorance of
the whereabouts of his companion. It was only by pure accident that he
at last heard of Alick's collapse and speedy removal from the show--to
die, for what anyone cared. One of the showmen had been despatched
from the head-quarters of the establishment on an errand, and, knocking
up against Ned, exclaimed--
'Hilloa! You ain't got the fever yet, then? Your chum has distanced
you; for he's down with it.' Then the man told Ned that Alick was
lying 'as ill as ill' in the house of an old crone who once belonged to
the show herself.
It was a relief to hear even that much of his companion; it was better
than the mystery of silence. But Ned's panic was pretty severe when he
thought of Alick's perilous and deserted condition. A rush of mingled
feelings came over the Northbourne lad. He felt as the prodigal son
must have felt in the far country.
Yes, it was exactly like the Bible story which 'Miss Theedory' seemed
to like best. At least, she told it to her class-boys more often than
any other, and Ned, listening to her, had grown to realise the unhappy
youth's condition in that far-off land where he had 'wasted his
substance in riotous living,' and to sympathise cordially with him when
he 'came to himself.'
But Ned, hustled, driven, sworn at, from morning to night, could now,
in those scanty moments allowed him to swallow his rough food, or
before his tired eyes closed in sleep, still more vividly picture the
prodigal's desolation and despair.
Then he remembered the outcome of that despair: the unhappy youth in
the parable suddenly determined to arise and go to his father, to
confess, with bitter remorse, his own mad wrong-doings. Would it not
be well for himself to arise and return to Northbourne, and to confess
the terrible folly of which he and Alick had been guilty? Again and
again Ned imagined himself so doing. But the cruel whip which he had
already tasted was another side to the question. No, he dare not again
attempt to escape! He writhed still when he recollected the stinging
lashes of the long, serpent-like whip. At last came an inspiration.
He could, and he would, write to the captain at the Bunk, entreating
him to come and rescue his son, and also Ned himself. This resolve,
however, was a work of no small difficulty. To procure an envelope and
a postage-stamp were next door to impossible for the lad who was
watched so keenly. Fortunately, some body coming out of the
performance one evening, in pity for his unhappy looks, threw Ned a
penny. A day or so after, when sweeping out the ring, he found in the
sawdust an envelope unwritten upon, and tolerably clean. It was a
prize: and that evening, when the public were shrieking with laughter
over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a
couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind
one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words
that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over
and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for a
stamp; the letter was pushed, with trembling haste, into a letter-box,
and Ned had returned to his post among the squalid back-scenes of the
gay performance before anybody had time to miss him.
His heart beat in mad throbs, so that the boy was scarce able to sleep
a wink that night. Hopes and fears jostled themselves in his excited
brain. If the postman, old 'Uncle Dan,' who trudged from Brattlesby
town every day at noon with the Northbourne post-bag, only safely
delivered the letter Ned had posted, all would be well. With the
captain himself to the fore, every difficulty must, and would, be swept
away. Then---- But with a sobbing catch in his breath Ned put aside
the after. He was too weak from misery and ill-usage to finish the
blissful result. So, over and over, he murmured, 'I have sinned
against heaven and before thee!' until that refrain of all true
penitence lulled him to sleep.
'Alick is found! My boy is alive!' The captain had been able to utter
no more as he pushed the crumpled wisp of a letter into a thin hand
eagerly outstretched to receive it. The tears were running unheeded
down the old man's cheeks.
'Oh, father!' There was a glad cry. 'God is good indeed! He has
heard our prayers.'
It was Theo--or was it Theo's ghost?--who sat by the open window
drinking in the sea breezes she was still too weak to go out of doors
and meet. Yes, Theo was, day by day, coming back to her old sweet
self, after a long spell of illness. There was only weakness left to
fight--weakness and anxiety about Alick. As long as possible the fact
of Alick having run away from home was kept from the prostrate girl.
But in the end it abruptly leaked out, and nearly pushed her back
through the gates of death.
Every means that the captain knew of had been set in motion to find the
pair of runaways. But the searchers were checkmated at the outset by
failing to find the boys at the Docks. The police in the end convinced
themselves and the captain that the pair had stolen on board some
foreign vessel on the eve of its departure, and, as stowaways, were
already far off on the deep.
But which of the many hundreds of ships that had set sail since might
the boys possibly be aboard? Again and again had the half-distracted
father asked himself the maddening question as he paced the busy Docks.
He would return then to Northbourne, where his other beloved child lay
in jeopardy of her young life. Through the anxious night-watches by
her bed, the old sailor pictured his boy on board some barque ploughing
the seas, the stormy winds roaring through the rigging, the decks wet
and slippery, the rough sailors cuffing and jostling the unwelcome
intruders who had stolen their passages.
None knew better than the captain what the boys who had hidden
themselves in some dark corner of an outward-bound vessel would be
called upon to endure, when discovered; none knew better than he the
hourly dangers to which they would be exposed in the perils of the
deep--the risks of foundering, of collision, of tempests.
As the days wore on, and no word came of the runaways, the old sailor's
heart sank to the lowest depths.
'Father, we must trust him to God; it's all we can do,' a low, weak
voice whispered; and the old man took heart again. He would trust his
boy to that--
'Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave.'
Perhaps of all mankind a sailor has experienced most signal proofs of
the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed
to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty
Power that holds the heavens in the hollow of His hand.
The captain knew that his girl was right. What he and she had to do
was simply trust Alick to his Father in heaven.
Then came Ned's missive with its startling news.
'You will go, father, and fetch him home?'
'Yes, yes! If I can find him. Please God I may!'
That same day the captain started for London, and with him went Philip
Price, who insisted on joining in the search for the hapless Alick.
The young tutor had proved himself a very friend in need in 'the day of
trouble' that had befallen the Bunk. What more natural then that he
should persist in helping the captain in what would be a ticklish piece
of work, as both men knew?
Before the two set out, Philip Price brought his mother over from
Brattlesby to establish her in Theo's sick-room. It was not the
widow's first visit to the Bunk. The woman who never had a daughter of
her own found in the serious, gentle Theo a realisation of those
dream-daughters who had never been in real life.
And Theo, on her part, welcomed the quiet, soft-spoken widow--another
bit of Philip Price, so similar were mother and son. It was a relief
to the overwrought girl to restfully watch the household reins gathered
up in other and abler hands than her own. As for the widow, she grew
alert and brisk; so good is a little wholesome activity for others.
'We must have no fretting, no repining, dear Miss Carnegy,' she
persisted cheerfully. 'Your young brother is sure to be found. The
captain can't fail, now he has got my Philip to aid him in the search!'
The widow's text for every sermon was 'my Philip'; and it was one of
which Theo Carnegy never tired, to judge by her intent listening to the
subject-matter it produced.