The black horse stood at the door, but Joan had no idea of letting
Aleck see the doctor. It was part of her duty to stand guard over his
minutes and save them for him when she could.
“The doctor’s hame,” she said; “I’ll nae deny it, but it’s no
office-hours, and I mind he’s engaged just at this moment. If ye wad
hae the gudeness to call again atween the hours o’ twa and three ye
might see him then wi’ convenience to every one, or if ye will e’en
leave an order on the slate. It hangs just here in the reach o’ all.”
“Thank you,” said Aleck; “but if the doctor is engaged, can I see--”
he hesitated, for in all the excitement of coming off he had not even
asked the professor Creepy’s name.
“The little fellow that--that came to school this morning?” he went on.
“The wee bairnie? He’s no come hame, and unco whiles it is to keep a
bit thing like him cooped between walls where never a breath of free
air or sunshine can find its way.”
“He’s not come home?” said Aleck in alarm, “then I _must_ see the
doctor!” and Joan, frightened herself, though she did not know why,
opened the office-door without another word.
The doctor stood before the library with an open book in his hand,
studying up authorities on a difficult point, but one glance at Aleck
brought back his thoughts and sent a misgiving through them like a
flash; he remembered seeing him on the school-grounds that morning.
“Have you a message from the little fellow at the school?” he asked,
with one of his quick looks, and without waiting for Aleck.
“No, sir, I hoped I should find him here; but the professor wished me
to say how much he regretted--indeed, sir, he is very sorry, as well
as very angry, and we cannot really tell how it happened, but the boys
did something or said something at recess that troubled him, and he
disappeared before any one could tell which way he went. The professor
was sure he was at home, or he would have sent sooner, but--”
Before the sentence was finished the doctor had thrown his book across
the room with such force that it went flying through the open window,
where nothing but the iron railing of the little balcony outside saved
it from the sidewalk, and the doctor himself was halfway out of the
front-door. He turned suddenly and put his hand on Aleck’s shoulder.
“Thank you, my man,” he said, “and thank the professor for me, if you
please,” and in another instant he was gone, and sparks were flying
from under the black horse’s hoofs, almost out of sight down the road
leading to the almshouse. He did not know why he chose it, except that
it was the way he had taken so many times to find him before, and the
one most familiar to Creepy himself. On, on, a mile, more than a mile,
no distance at all to the flying hoofs, but a walk the doctor had never
consented to Creepy’s trying yet, though he had begged for it more than
once. The almshouse was in sight now, but there was Enoch working on
the road, and taking off his hat with as grand a flourish and as serene
a smile as if he had never heard of such a thing as trouble in the
world. Creepy could not have gone that way, but here was the old turn
in the road that he used to visit so often.
A sudden thought struck the doctor. They had passed in there to follow
the trout brook, and down the road, perhaps half a mile away, was a
great overhanging rock, facing the brook, covered with moss, and a deep
velvety bed of moss beneath it. Creepy had looked at it, and said what
a place that would be to hide from a storm, and the doctor remembered
the half-laughing half-serious look in his face as he said it.
He turned the black horse with a whirl round the corner and down the
road toward the point where the rock lay. Not a trace of any one yet,
and none to ask whom they had seen; but now the rock was coming in
sight, and what was that fluttering on a torn splinter of the fence?
Something white, a little thing, one of the very handkerchiefs Joan
had been hemming in such a hurry that “the wee bairnie suld be as weel
supplied wi’ everything as ony he might meet wi’ at the school.”
Was that Creepy, that poor little huddled up heap of something lying
there, with hands holding tightly the very roots of the moss, and a
white face half buried in its depths?
For one instant, at the sound of the doctor’s step, he raised the eyes
that had been so bright that morning; but in another he had turned them
hastily away.
“What did you come here for?” he cried, as he had once before so long
ago; “what does any one come to me for? I came here to be alone! No
one must come to me again! No one must ever look at me until I die!”
The doctor stooped and lifted Creepy gently but firmly in his arms.
“Yes, they must,” he said, “_I_ must come and take you away from here
this very moment. Don’t you know you might die, lying on such a bed as
that all this time?”
“Oh, I _wish_ I could! I wish I were dead, dead, dead!” and then
suddenly raising his head, he looked almost fiercely in the doctor’s
face.
“No I don’t! I _don’t_ wish it, for then the angels would cry out,
‘Look at Humpy!’ when they saw me coming! Oh, where shall I go? Where
will no one ever come?”
What the doctor would have said at that moment, if he could have
reached the right people to say it to, and how much more terrible
than even the professor’s his words would have been, there was no
opportunity to know. He clenched his teeth together for a moment as if
he were fighting a terrible battle with something, and then spoke in
tenderer tones than even Creepy had ever heard from him, but with the
same ring in them that had always brought comfort to the lame child.
“Where shall you go? I hope you don’t want to go anywhere away from
me; don’t you know you are all I have in the world, little man?”
Once more Creepy opened his eyes and looked at him. All through the
long hour that he had lain there, an hour that had seemed like a year
of agony sweeping through his life, the same evil voice that had
whispered to him on the playground, had brought up every such word the
doctor had ever spoken, and thrown them at him like cruel taunts! He
had been mocking him with all the rest! It was not _true_ there was a
place in the world and a share in it for him, as well as other people!
He had never meant it, he had known better all the time! How dared he
ever tell him so!
But he was here again, he had come to find him, he _did_ care! He had
not meant to mock him, it was _not_ all a vanished dream!
With a low cry he threw his arms around the doctor’s neck and clung
convulsively there, and in another moment Jet looked wonderingly over
his shoulder again while the doctor, one arm still holding the crippled
child, stepped into the chaise and gathered up the reins with his free
hand.