be, the striker of the match, the inceptor of all the mischief?
Jupp could not imagine; hunt high, hunt low, as he might and did.
At first, he thought that the young iconoclast, as nothing could be
perceived of him on the lawn or flower-beds, had been blown up in the
air over the laurel hedge and into the lane; as, however, nothing could
be discovered of him here, either, after the most careful search, this
theory had to be abandoned, and Jupp was fairly puzzled.
Teddy had completely vanished!
It was very strange, for his sisters had seen him on the spot the moment
before the explosion.
Mary, of course, had followed Jupp round to the front of the house,
while the little girls came out on to the lawn; and Molly the cook, as
well as Joe the gardener, attracted by the commotion, had also been
assisting in the quest for the missing Teddy, prying into every hole and
corner.
But all their exertions were in vain; and there they stood in wondering
astonishment.
"P'aps," suggested Cissy, "he's done upstairs?"
"Nonsense, child!" said Conny decisively; "we would have seen him from
the window if he had come in."
"Still, we'd better look, miss," observed Mary, who was all pale and
trembling with anxiety as to the safety of her special charge. "He may
have been frightened and rushed to the nursery to hide himself, as he
has done before when he has been up to something!"
So saying, she hurried into the passage, and the rest after her.
It was of no use looking into the drawing-room or kitchen, the little
girls having been in the former apartment all the time, and Molly in the
latter; but the parlour was investigated unsuccessfully, and every nook
and cranny of the study, a favourite play-ground of the children when
the vicar was out, as he happened to be this evening, fortunately or
unfortunately as the case might be, visiting the poor of his parish.
Still, there was not a trace of Teddy to be found.
The search was then continued upstairs amongst the bed-rooms by Mary and
Molly, accompanied by the three little girls, who marched behind their
elders in silent awe, Jupp and Joe remaining down in the hall and
listening breathlessly for some announcement to come presently from
above.
The nursery disclosed nothing, neither did the children's sleeping room,
nor the vicar's chamber, although the beds were turned up and turned
down and looked under, and every cupboard and closet inspected as
cautiously as if burglars were about the premises; and Mary was about to
give up the pursuit as hopeless, when all at once, she thought she heard
the sound of a stifled sob proceeding from a large oak wardrobe in the
corner of the spare bed-room opposite the nursery, which had been left
to the last, and where the searchers were all now assembled.
"Listen!" she exclaimed in a whisper, holding up her finger to enjoin
attention; whereupon Cissy and Liz stopped shuffling their feet about,
and a silence ensued in which a pin might have been heard to drop.
Then, the noise of the stifled sobs that had at first attracted Mary's
notice grew louder, and all could hear Teddy's voice between the sobs,
muttering or repeating something at intervals to himself.
"I do believe he's saying his prayers!" said Mary, approaching the
wardrobe more closely with stealthy steps, so as not to alarm the little
stowaway, a smile of satisfaction at having at last found him crossing
her face, mingled with an expression of amazement--"Just hear what he is
repeating. Hush!"
They all listened; and this was what they heard proceeding from within
the wardrobe, a sob coming in as a sort of hyphen between each word of
the little fellow's prayer.
"Dod--bess pa--an' Conny an' Liz--an' 'ittle Ciss--an' Jupp, de porter
man, an' Mary--an'--an'--all de oders--an' make me dood boy--an' I'll
neber do it again, amen!"
"The little darling!" cried Mary, opening the door of the wardrobe when
Teddy had got so far, and was just beginning all over again; but the
moment she saw within, she started back with a scream which at once
brought Jupp upstairs. Joe the gardener still stopped, however, on the
mat below in the passage, as nothing short of a peremptory command from
the vicar would have constrained him to put his heavy clod-hopping boots
on the soft stair-carpet. Indeed, it had needed all Mary's persuasion
to make him come into the hall, which he did as gingerly as a cat
treading on a hot griddle!
As Jupp could see for himself, when he came up to the group assembled
round the open door of the wardrobe there was nothing in the appearance
of poor Teddy to frighten Mary, although much to bespeak her pity and
sympathy--the little fellow as he knelt down in the corner showing an
upturned face that had been blistered by the gunpowder as it exploded,
besides being swollen to more than twice its ordinary size. His
clothing was also singed and blackened like that of any sweep, while his
eyelashes, eyebrows, and front hair had all been burnt off, leaving him
as bare as a coot.
Altogether, Master Teddy presented a very sorry spectacle; and the
little girls all burst into tears as they looked at him, even Jupp
passing his coat-sleeve over his eyes, and muttering something about its
being "a bad job" in a very choky sort of voice.
It was but the work of an instant, however, for Mary to take up the
unfortunate sufferer in her arms, and there he sobbed out all his woes
as she cried over him on her way to the nursery, sending off Jupp
promptly for the doctor.
"I'se not do nuzzin," explained Teddy as he was being undressed, and his
burns dressed with oil and cotton-wool, pending the arrival of medical
advice. "I'se only zust light de match an' den dere was a whiz; an' a
great big black ting lift me up an' trow me down, and den I climb up out
of de smoke an' run 'way here. I was 'fraid of black ting comin' an'
hide!"
"There was no black thing after you, child," said Conny. "It was only
the force of the explosion that knocked you down, and the cloud of smoke
you saw, which hid you from us when you ran indoors."
"It was a black ting," repeated Teddy, unconvinced by the wise Miss
Conny's reasoning. "I see him, a big black giant, same as de jinny in
story of de fairies; but I ran 'way quick!"
"All right, dear! never mind what it was now," said Mary soothingly.
"Do you feel any better now?"
"Poor mou's so sore," he whimpered, "an' 'ittle nosey can't breez!"
"Well, you shouldn't go meddling with matches and fire, as I've told you
often," said Mary, pointing her moral rather inopportunely. Still she
patted and consoled the little chap as much as she could; and when
Doctor Jolly came up from Endleigh presently, he said that she had done
everything that was proper for the patient, only suggesting that his
face might be covered during the night with a piece of soft rag dipped
in Goulard water, so as to ease the pain of the brows and let the little
sufferer sleep.
The vicar did not return home until some time after the doctor had left
the house and Jupp gone back to his duties at the railway-station; but
although all traces of the explosion had been removed from the lawn and
the grass smoothed over by Joe the gardener, he knew before being told
that something had happened from the unusual stillness around, both
without and within doors, the little girls being as quiet as mice, and
Teddy, the general purveyor of news and noise, being not to the fore as
usual.
It was not long before he found out all about the accident; when there
was a grand to-do, as may be expected, Mr Vernon expressing himself
very strongly anent the fact of Jupp putting such a dangerous thing as
gunpowder within reach of the young scapegrace, and scolding Mary for
not looking after her charge better.
Jupp, too, got another "blowing up" from the station-master for being
behind time. So, what with the general upset, and the dilapidated
appearance of Master Teddy, with his face like a boiled vegetable
marrow, when the bandages had been removed from his head and he was
allowed to get up and walk about again, the celebration of the Queen's
Birthday was a black day for weeks afterwards in the chronicles of the
vicar's household!
During the rest of the year, however, and indeed up to his eighth year,
the course of Teddy's life was uneventful as far as any leading incident
was concerned.
Of course, he got into various little scrapes, especially on those
occasions when his grandmother paid her periodic visits to the vicarage,
for the old lady spoiled him dreadfully, undoing in a fortnight all that
Mary had effected by months of careful teaching and training in the way
of obedience and manners; but, beyond these incidental episodes, he did
not distinguish himself by doing anything out of the common.
Teddy leisurely pursued that uneven tenor of way customary to boys of
his age, exhibiting a marked preference for play over lessons, and
becoming a great adept at field sports through Jupp's kindly tuition,
albeit poor Puck was no longer able to assist him in hunting rabbits,
the little dog having become afflicted with chronic asthma ever since
his immersion in the river when he himself had so narrowly escaped from
drowning.
If water, though, had worked such ill to Puck, the example did not
impress itself much on Teddy; for, despite his own previous peril, he
was for ever getting himself into disgrace by going down to the river to
catch sticklebacks against express injunctions to the contrary, when
left alone for any length of time without an observant and controlling
eye on his movements. He was also in the habit of joining the village
boys at their aquatic pranks in the cattle-pond that occupied a
prominent place in the meadows below Endleigh--just where the spur of
one of the downs sloped before preparing for another rise, forming a
hollow between the hills.
Here Master Teddy had loved to go on the sly, taking off his shoes and
stockings and paddling about as the shoe and stockingless village
urchins did; and this summer, not satisfied with simple paddling as of
yore, he bethought himself of a great enterprise.
The pond was of considerable extent, and when it was swollen with rain,
as happened at this period, the month of June being more plentiful than
usual of moisture, its surface covered several acres, the water being
very deep between its edge and the middle, where it shallowed again, the
ground rising there and forming a sort of island that had actually an
alder-tree growing on it.
Now, Teddy's ambition was to explore this island, a thing none of the
village boys had dreamed of, all being unable to swim; so, as the
wished-for oasis could not be reached in that fashion, the next best
thing to do was to build a boat like Robinson Crusoe and so get at it in
that way.
As a preliminary, Teddy sounded the ex-sailor as to the best way of
building a boat, without raising Jupp's suspicions--for, the worthy
porter, awed by the vicar's reprimand anent the _feu de joie_ affair and
Mary's continual exhortations, had of late exhibited a marked
disinclination to assist him in doing anything which might lead him into
mischief--artfully asking him what he would do if he could find no tree
near at hand large enough that he could hollow out for the purpose; but,
Jupp could give him no information beyond the fact that he must have a
good sound piece of timber for the keel, and other pieces curved in a
particular fashion for the strakes, and the outside planking would
depend a good deal whether he wanted the boat clinker-built or smooth-
sided.
"But how then," asked Teddy--he could speak more plainly now than as a
five-year old--"do people get off from ships when they have no boat?"
"Why, they builds a raft, sir," answered Jupp.
"A raft--what is that?"
"Why, sir, it means anything that can swim," replied Jupp, quite in his
element when talking of the sea, and always ready to spin a yarn or tell
what he knew. "It might be made of spare spars, or boards, or anything
that can float. When I was in the _Neptune_ off Terra del Faygo I've
seed the natives there coming off to us seated on a couple of branches
of a tree lashed together, leaves and all."
"Oh, thank you," said Teddy, rejoiced to hear this, the very hint he
wanted; "but what did they do for oars?"
"They used sticks, in course, sir," answered the other, quite
unconscious of what the result of his information would be, and that he
was sowing the seeds of a wonderful project; and Teddy presently leading
on the conversation in a highly diplomatic way to other themes, Jupp
forgot bye and bye what he had been talking about.
Not so, however, Master Teddy.
The very next day, taking up Puck in his arms, and getting away
unperceived from home soon after the early dinner, which the children
always partook of at noon, he stole down to the pond, where, collecting
some of the little villagers to assist him, a grand foray was made on
the fencing of the fields and a mass of material brought to the water's
edge.
Teddy had noted what Jupp had said about the Tierra del Fuegans lashing
their rude rafts together, so he took down with him from the house a
quantity of old clothes-lines which he had discovered in the back
garden. These he now utilised in tying the pieces of paling from the
fences together with, after which a number of small boughs and branches
from the hedges were laid on top of the structure, which was then pushed
off gently from the bank on to the surface of the pond.
Hurrah, it floated all right!
Teddy therefore had it drawn in again, and stepped upon the raft, which,
although it sank down lower in the water and was all awash, still seemed
buoyant. He also took Puck with him, and tried to incite some others of
the boys to venture out in company with him.
The little villagers, however, were wiser in their generation, and being
unused to nautical enterprise were averse to courting danger.
"You're a pack of cowards!" Teddy exclaimed, indignant and angry at
their drawing back thus at the last moment. "I'll go by myself."
"Go 'long, master," they cried, noways abashed by his comments on their
conduct; "we'll all watch 'ee."
Naturally plucky, Teddy did not need any further spurring, so, all alone
on his raft, with the exception of the struggling Puck, who did not like
leaving _terra firma_, and was more of a hindrance than an aid, he
pushed out into the pond, making for the islet in the centre by means of
a long pole which he had thinned off from a piece of fencing, sticking
it into the mud at the bottom and pushing against it with all his might.
Meanwhile, the frail structure on which he sat trembled and wobbled
about in the most unseaworthy fashion, causing him almost to repent of
his undertaking almost as soon as he had started, although he had the
incense of popular admiration to egg him on, for the village boys were
cheering and hooraying him like--"like anything," as he would himself
have said!
CHAPTER SEVEN.
FATHER AND SON.
The road from the vicarage to the village and station beyond passed
within a hundred yards or so of the pond; but from the latter being
situated in a hollow and the meadows surrounding it inclosed within a
hedge of thick brushwood, it could only be seen by those passing to and
fro from one point--where the path began to rise above the valley as it
curved round the spur of the down.
It was Saturday also, when, as Teddy well knew, his father would be
engaged on the compilation of his Sunday sermon, and so not likely to be
going about the parish, as was his custom of an afternoon, visiting the
sick, comforting the afflicted, and warning those evil-doers who
preferred idleness and ale at the "Lamb" to honest toil and uprightness
of living; consequently the young scapegrace was almost confident of
non-interruption from any of his home folk, who, besides being too busy
indoors to think of him, were ignorant of his whereabouts. It was also
Jupp's heaviest day at the station, so _he_ couldn't come after him he
thought; and he was enjoying himself to his heart's content, when as the
Fates frequently rule it, the unexpected happened.
Miss Conny, now a tall slim girl of thirteen, but more sedate and
womanly even than she had been at ten, if that were possible, was
occupied in the parlour "mending the children's clothes," as she
expressed it in her matronly way, when she suddenly missed a large reel
of darning cotton. Wondering what had become of it, for, being neat and
orderly in her habits, her things seldom strayed from their proper
places, she began hunting about for the absent article in different
directions and turning over the piles of stockings before her.
"Have you seen it?" she asked Liz, who was sitting beside her, also
engaged in needlework, but of a lighter description, the young lady
devoting her energies to the manufacture of a doll's mantilla.
"No," said Liz abstractedly, her mouth at the time being full of pins
for their more handy use when wanted, a bad habit she had acquired from
a seamstress occasionally employed at the vicarage.
"Dear me, I wonder if I left the reel upstairs," said Conny, much
concerned at the loss; and she was just about prosecuting the search
thither when Cissy threw a little light on the subject, explaining at
once the cause of the cotton's disappearance.
"Don't you recollect, Con," she observed, "you lent it to Teddy the
other day? I don't s'pose he ever returned it to you, for I'm sure I
saw it this morning with his things in the nursery."
"No more he did," replied Conny. "Please go and tell him to bring it
back. I know where you'll find him. Mary is helping Molly making a
pie, and he's certain to be in the kitchen dabbling in the paste."
"All right!" said Cissy; and presently her little musical voice could be
heard calling through the house, "Teddy! Teddy!" as she ran along the
passage towards the back.
Bye and bye, however, she returned to the parlour unsuccessful.
"I can't see him anywhere," she said. "He's not with Mary, or in the
garden, or anywhere!"
"Oh, that boy!" exclaimed Conny. "He's up to some mischief again, and
must have gone down to the village or somewhere against papa's orders.
Do you know where he is, Liz?"
"No," replied the young sempstress, taking the pins out of her mouth
furtively, seeing that Conny was looking at her. "He ran out of the
house before we had finished dinner, and took Puck with him."
"Then he has gone off on one of his wild pranks," said her elder sister,
rising up and putting all the stockings into her work-basket. "I will
go and speak to papa."
The vicar had just finished the "thirdly, brethren," of his sermon; and
he was just cogitating how to bring in his "lastly," and that favourite
"word more in conclusion" with which he generally wound up the weekly
discourse he gave his congregation, when Conny tapped at the study door
timidly awaiting permission to enter.
"What's the matter?" called out Mr Vernon rather testily, not liking to
be disturbed in his peroration.
"I want to speak to you, papa," said Conny, still from without.
"Then come in," he answered in a sort of resigned tone of voice, it
appearing to him as one of the necessary ills of life to be interrupted,
and he as a minister bound to put up with it; but this feeling of
annoyance passed off in a moment, and he spoke gently and kindly enough
when Conny came into the room.
"What is it, my dear?" he asked, smiling at his little housekeeper, as
he called her, noticing her anxious air; "any trouble about to-morrow's
dinner, or something equally serious?"
"No, papa," she replied, taking his quizzing in earnest. "The dinner is
ordered, and nothing the matter with it that I know of. I want to speak
to you about Teddy."
"There's nothing wrong with him, I hope?" said he, jumping up from his
chair and wafting some of the sheets of his sermon from the table with
his flying coat-tails in his excitement and haste. "Nothing wrong, I
hope?"
Although a quiet easy-going man generally, the vicar was wrapt up in all
his children, trying to be father and mother in one to them and making
up as much as in him lay for the loss of that maternal love and guidance
of which they were deprived at an age when they wanted it most; but of
Teddy he was especially fond, his wife having died soon after giving him
birth, and, truth to say, he spoiled him almost as much as that
grandmother whose visitations were such a vexed question with Mary,
causing her great additional trouble with her charge after the old lady
left.
"Nothing wrong, papa dear, that I know of," replied Conny in her formal
deliberative sort of way; "but, I'm afraid he has gone off with those
village boys again, for he's nowhere about the place."
"Dear me!" ejaculated the vicar, shoving up his spectacles over his
forehead and poking his hair into an erect position like a cockatoo's
crest, as he always did when fidgety. "Can't you send somebody after
him?"
"Mary is busy, and Teddy doesn't mind Joe, so there's no use in sending
him."
"Dear me!" ejaculated her father again. "I'm afraid he's getting very
headstrong--Teddy, I mean, not poor Joe! I must really get him under
better control; but, I--I don't like to be harsh with him, Conny, you
know, little woman," added the vicar dropping his voice. "He's a brave,
truthful little fellow with all his flow of animal spirits, and his eyes
remind me always of your poor mother when I speak sternly to him and he
looks at me in that straightforward way of his."
"Shall I go after him, papa?" interposed Conny at this juncture, seeing
that a wave of memory had carried back her father into the past, making
him already forget the point at issue.
"What? Oh, dear me, no!" said the vicar, recalled to the present.
"I'll go myself."
"But your sermon, papa?"
"It's just finished, and I can complete what has to be added when I come
back. No--yes, I'll go; besides, now, I recollect, I have to call at
Job Trotter's to try and get him to come to church to-morrow. Yes, I'll
go myself."
So saying, the vicar put on the hat Conny handed to him, for she had to
look after him very carefully in this respect, as he would sometimes,
when in a thinking fit, go out without any covering on his head at all!
Then, taking his stick, which the thoughtful Conny likewise got out of
the rack in the hall, he went out of the front door and over the lawn,
through the little gate beyond. He then turned into the lane that led
across the downs to the village, Miss Conny having suggested this as the
wisest direction in which to look for Teddy, from the remembrance of
something the young scapegrace had casually dropped in conversation when
at dinner.
As he walked along the curving lane, the air was sweet with the scent of
dry clover and the numerous wild flowers that twined amongst the
blackberry bushes of the hedgerows. Insects also buzzed about, creating
a humming music of their own, while flocks of starlings startled by his
approach flew over the field next him to the one further on, exhibiting
their speckled plumage as they fluttered overhead, and the whistle of
the blackbird and coo of the ring-dove could be heard in the distance.
But the vicar was thinking of none of these things.
Conny's words about Teddy not minding Joe the gardener, or anybody else
indeed, had awakened his mind to the consciousness that he had not given
proper consideration to the boy's mental training.
Teddy's education certainly was not neglected, for he repeated his
lessons regularly to his father and displayed the most promising signs
of advancement; but, lessons ended, he was left entirely to the
servants. The vicar reflected, that this ought not to be permitted with
a child at an age when impressions of right and wrong are so easily
made, never to be effaced in after life, once the budding character is
formed.
He would correct this error, the vicar determined; in future he would
see after him more personally!
Just as he arrived at this sound conclusion the vicar reached the bend
of the lane where it sloped round by the spur of the down, a bustling
bumblebee making him notice this by brushing against his nose as he
buzzed through the air in that self-satisfied important way that all
bumblebees affect in their outdoor life; and, looking over the hedge
that sank down at this point, he saw a group of boys gathered round the
edge of the pond.