THE URCHIN VANISHES
To most people there is some corner of the earth which means more than
all others; and there are two or three in the world whose holy place
is the old house on the sea-loch which the Student's humbler neighbors
called the "big house." An old square building of gray stone, that
matches the gray sky and the gray sea, it has small claims to beauty;
it was built in the days of blank windows, and every wind in the
island meets and screams round the battered iron balustrade which
leads up its steps to the door, and strives to tear down the tendrils
of ivy that cling to the east front. To the south front, lashed by the
full Atlantic gales, not even ivy can cling; only a few twisted elders
and stunted planes grow there, and take the first force of the winter
wind; but the old lawn to the north bursts in summer into a cloud of
white marguerites, whose ethereal beauty at sunset is like the ghosts
of the dreams that haunt the place. For to some of us the old house is
full of dreams, that cling to the dark passages and the uneven floors,
and play in and out of the little windows that are still propped open
with wood, as they were a hundred years ago; dreams of the bright
lights and the bright voices that greeted us, coming in out of the
blinding rain; dreams of the dance and the song, songs of old lost
causes from which all bitterness has died away, leaving to-day nothing
but beauty behind them; dreams of faded joys and forgotten sorrows, of
loves that have passed elsewhere and of memories that abide; dreams of
faces that are seen no more. Some day it will change ownership; it
will be sold to someone from whom understanding of these things has
been withheld, and who will see only the darkness of the old
corridors, the shabbiness of the old doorway; and he will build new
doors, and porticoes and a wide verandah, and make it fair within and
without, levelling the floors and trimming the lawns; and he will have
destroyed the old house and the fragrance of it, and it will never
return. But to-day it still stands as it has stood for many a long
year, clothed in the memories that never leave it and rich in all that
the past has built into it; and to some who may never dwell there
again it is yet ever present as the home of their hearts' desire, a
true house of faery.
The Student had let the old house to the Urchin's father. He was a
tall, thin man with a hooked nose, and he knew more about one
particular family of Coleoptera than anyone living. He had taken the
place, not because he wanted it for its shooting, but because one of
the beetles of his family was reputed to be plentiful in the
neighborhood. He was never there long; he was never anywhere long. For
thirty years he had pursued his beetles over five continents; his
measurements of their wing cases alone filled nine enormous MS.
volumes. His great work on the variation of the length of the wing
case in beetles kept in captivity had become a classic. Scientific men
had nothing but praise for the book; several even read it. The
majority believed that he had re-founded Neo-Mendelism past any
overthrowing; a small but persistent minority argued that, on the
contrary, he had utterly overthrown the Neo-Mendelians. All, however,
agreed that the book was epoch-making, even though they differed
utterly as to the sort of epoch which it made. The author himself was
a shy and modest person, who never lost his temper except when people
sent him unpaid parcels from Timbuctoo or Khamchatka containing
beetles of other families in which he took no interest. On the rare
occasions when he could be induced to go into society, kind-hearted
hostesses, who saw no reason why one crawling thing should not do as
well as another had been known to try to please him by starting a
conversation about ladybirds or earwigs; and it was said to be worth
foregoing one's cigar to hear him explain, with a chuckle, that though
earwigs or ladybirds were no doubt meritorious creatures in their
several spheres, and possibly legitimate objects of study to others,
they were not his subject; his subject was a particular family of
Coleoptera. He and the Student had become great friends, and when he
was in the island he would often drop in to see the Student's bookroom
after dinner and there the two would sit, one on either side of the
fire, each smoking at a tremendous pace and talking hard on his own
subject. Neither ever expected an answer from the other; neither ever
got one. But they had silently established an unwritten law that when
one had talked for three minutes by the clock on the mantelpiece he
was to stop and let the other have a turn; and when at last they said
good night, each felt that they had both had a thoroughly enjoyable
evening. And so they had.
Unlike to unlike. The Urchin's father had married the daughter of a
stockbroker, who, on her death, had left him two legacies; one was the
Urchin, and the other was an occasional visitation from her brother
Jeconiah. Mr. Jeconiah P. Johnson, the well-known promoter of
companies, was a short, stout man with a red face and a shifty blue
eye, always immaculately dressed in broadcloth with a huge expanse of
white waistcoat, over which sprawled his double watch chain and his
triple chin. There were possibly some good points even about Jeconiah,
if anything so rotund could be said to have points; but there were
certainly not many. He was supposed by some to possess what is called
"a high standard of business morality"; it would be truer to say that
his code was prehistoric. He had so far kept himself right with the
law, because he had mastered the sordid maxim which proclaims that
honesty is the best policy; no other reason was likely to occur to
him. With some effort he had succeeded in formulating a rule of
conduct of which he was rather proud: Do good to yourself and your
friends and evil to those who stand in your way. If anyone had told
him that the philosophy of ethics took its rise, some twenty-two
centuries ago, in a reaction against a similar rule, he would have
remarked jocosely that he never studied back numbers. Of anything more
exalted than "policy," anything not to be reckoned in terms of L.s.d.,
he was as ignorant as a hippopotamus.
He was never very fond of his right hand's knowing what his left hand
did; for while the right hand promoted companies, the left hand, by
means of a manager and a registered alias, carried on a very useful
little money-lender's business. He was never averse to putting the
screw on, if there was anything to be got by it; and sometimes he got
rather funny things. Recently he had had a broken debtor on his hands,
and had taken what he could get; among other things, an old bureau
full of papers. Jeconiah, being a methodical soul, had turned a clerk
on to sort the papers; and the clerk had presently brought him the
long lost map of the Scargill cave, and a sheet of paper containing
somebody's rough explanation of what it was supposed to be. Jeconiah,
who had heard the story, scented possibilities, and, it being a slack
time in the City, promptly invited himself to his brother-in-law's
house to recover from an attack of influenza. That is how Jeconiah
comes into this story. It could not be helped, for he had the map. The
finner had said he was too fat to count; but that is where the finner
was wrong.
Jeconiah forthwith gave his mind, such as it was, to the subject of
caves. Diffidence was not his failing, and he cross-examined every
person he could find, concealing, of course, his real object. He
collected a splendid amount of rubbish; but he was acute enough where
his pocket was concerned, and out of the rubbish he presently dragged
forth the fact of the haunted cave which no one would enter. Whereon
Jeconiah went over to Scargill to fish, and had a look at the lie of
the island; settled with himself that it seemed a good enough place
for a wreck, and told the keeper to row him into the west cave. But
the keeper, who had no particular liking for Jeconiah, refused
point-blank, and told him he would not find a man in the island who
would do it; and Jeconiah, who had suddenly lost interest in the
fishing, went home in a bad temper. This happened the day after the
two children were in the cave; and the day after that the Urchin's
father received an excited cablegram from Brazil on the subject of his
beloved beetles. He rushed down at once to see the Student.
"I am going to Brazil, I don't know for how long," he said. "And my
boy can't go back to school for a month or more, as they have scarlet
fever in the village there. And I don't like to leave him with the
housekeeper, and I start in two hours. Will you take him?"
"Delighted," said the Student. "Fiona will look after him."
So the Urchin came, and with him came to Fiona a sense of
responsibility for him. She couldn't help it.
But Jeconiah showed no intention of moving. On the contrary, the
after-effects of influenza were still troubling him sorely, it seemed.
At last the Urchin's father had to tell him to stay a week or two
longer, if he wanted to; the servants would be there anyhow. And
Jeconiah thanked him and settled down to stay, as he had meant to do
all along. But as soon as his brother-in-law was gone he took the car
and went off for the day. The chauffeur said that he went to a lot of
places and talked to a lot of people; and a couple of days later two
strange men in a boat entered the bay and proceeded to camp out on a
part of the shore which was not the Student's property. Jeconiah had,
in fact, hired the boat, and found a couple of ne'er-do-wells from the
mainland who knew nothing of him and were ready to row him anywhere in
pursuit of his business, which was understood to be photographing wild
birds for an illustrated paper.
Jeconiah had, however, made one great mistake. He was aware that you
must not neglect little things, and he had neglected quite a big
little thing--the Urchin. He had never spoken to him about caves, or
taken the least notice of the boy's movements. And the Urchin on his
side had been hard at work. He had confessed to Fiona on the subject
of the footsteps, and she to him; and they had agreed, under the broad
healthy light of day, that probably they had been mistaken and afraid
of the dark, and that with lanterns it would be all right. They
agreed, however, that it was necessary to have a really good light,
and the difficulty was to find one. It was the Urchin who came forward
as the saviour of society by proposing to win over Jones, the
chauffeur, and get the loan of one of the big acetylene head-lamps
from the car. Jones, a newcomer, had not yet heard about the cave,
and, being English, he had not yet found his feet among his fellows
and was glad of any sort of diversion. The Urchin wound up a
triumphant half hour of diplomacy by making Jones promise to lend him
one of the headlights and show him how to work it. Then the Urchin
fell, as many greater men have fallen; he was lifted up with pride,
and told Jones that Fiona and he were going treasure-hunting. Jones
grinned; but that evening he talked; and in due course Jeconiah heard.
* * * * *
Fiona was digging in her garden, or rather in the Urchin's, for she
had assigned him one bit of it, which she had to cultivate for him;
otherwise it would have run waste, for all the work the Urchin put
into it. Her garden was one corner of the old walled garden of the
Student's house, which was not very well kept now. Once it had been
gay with flowers and rich with fruit; but now few flowers grew there
save such as could look after themselves, and the fruit had come down
to two gnarled old apple trees, in which Fiona had made her earliest
experiments in climbing. Most of the ground, so far as it was in use,
was now given over to cabbages and potatoes; but in June the borders
were sweet with double white narcissus, and now in September there was
a revel of unpruned roses, their blooms growing smaller year by year,
and a mass of the dark-red blossoms of the little west coast fuchsia,
which knows how to live through the winter. One deserted corner was
gay with Turk's turban, which still had strength to push up through
the ever-thickening tangle of weeds; and groups of winter crocus were
coming up in the borders, and among them a few Shirley poppies which
Fiona had sown herself. Fiona had had thoughts of taking the garden in
hand, but the space enclosed by the old walls was far too large for
her to manage unaided; and as there was no money to pay a proper
gardener, she had had to content herself with clearing one corner.
Here she had achieved a riot of color. She had made a little rockery
of oak-leaf and beech ferns brought down from the hill, sentinelled by
tall pink foxgloves; the worn-out plum trees against the wall behind
were threaded and festooned with thick trailers of yellow and scarlet
nasturtium; and in front of the rockery, her especial pride, was a
great bed of velvet pansies, rich with every hue of the rainbow. They
were flanked by simple annuals, filmy pink poppies, orange escholtzias
and sweet-scented mignonette; and in a bed by themselves were the gold
and crimson snapdragons which the Urchin had begged for her from the
gardener at the big house.
She must needs dig up a centipede, one of the small yellow ones. They
were her special dislike. The centipede did not like being dug up
either, and writhed himself into seven different sets of tangles at
once, as is the way of the smaller centipedes.
"You horrid little yellow beast," she said, forgetting that he could
understand, and made a dab at him with her spade, which, to her
relief, missed him. She felt she had done her duty by hitting at him,
but did not hide from herself that she had really missed him on
purpose.
"Little's all right," said the centipede, "and yellow's all right; and
though I'm not really a beast, we will let it go at that. But I'm not
a bit horrid."
"But I don't like you," said Fiona, "and you wriggle so."
"In the circles in which I move," said the centipede, "my wriggling is
much admired. And the mere fact that you do not like me--which, I may
remind you, is only a subjective impression and has neither objective
validity nor permanent value--does not entitle you to call me names.
You ought to have learnt better, with that bangle of yours. For all
you know, I may be a model of the more unselfish virtues."
"But you eat the roots of my flowers," said Fiona.
"That is the first I have heard of it," said the centipede. "But one
lives and learns. It need not be the same one, though, who does both.
So in the present case I propose that I should live and you should
learn."
"I wasn't going to kill you really," said Fiona.
The centipede bowed.
"A little courtesy does oil the creaking machinery of life, doesn't
it?" he said. "Please lift me up, for I have something to tell you,
and your head is so far away. Shouting at you hurts my throat."
Fiona stooped down and took up the little yellow creature in her hand.
"Congratulations," said the centipede. "We _are_ getting on. You
wanted badly to shudder, and you didn't. We shall make something of
you yet. My old friend the bookworm--who lives in your father's
library, by the way--has recently supplied me with a new quotation
from the great poet Virgil, who had once, you may remember, quite a
reputation as a magician. It was to the effect that if you couldn't
get what you wanted by beginning at the top, you should start again at
the bottom. I am the bottom. I am not the _very_ bottom, but I am near
enough to it for your purpose. Now you see what you have gained by
not killing me."
"I don't see anything yet, I'm afraid," said Fiona.
"One must have patience with weaker vessels," said the centipede. "So
I will explain. My friend the bookworm, who supplies me with my
quotations, has a cousin of the same profession in the library at the
big house. It was through him that I got the story I am going to tell
you about the fat man."
"Mr. Johnson!" exclaimed Fiona. "He has nothing to do with me." She
disliked Jeconiah heartily, so far as she had given any thought to
him.
"Oh, yes, he has," said the centipede. "This is where I come in. My
bookworm's cousin, who is a great linguist and understands English
perfectly, was at work in the library the other evening, and the fat
man was having his coffee there. After coffee he lit a cigar and began
to walk up and down, and presently he started talking to himself out
loud, as my informant says he often does when he is excited. And by
piecing his talk together, my informant made out that he had the map
of the Scargill cave, which one of your ancestors once gambled away,
and that somehow or other he had found out that the cave of the map
_was_ the Scargill cave, and that he was only waiting for a smooth day
to go and locate the treasure."
"Well?" said Fiona.
"Oh, come now," said the centipede, "it's no use pretending. We all
know that you are treasure-hunting--remember we can all understand
everything _you_ say, whether we are linguists or not--and my advice
to you is, to be quick about it, before the fat man can get his oar
in."
"Thank you so much," said Fiona. "And I am so sorry I began by being
rude. Tell me, why have you told me all this when I began by being
rude?"
"Because I am a model of the more unselfish virtues, of course," said
the centipede with a suppressed chuckle. "As a fact, I had an
earth-phone from headquarters. But we are all backing you, you know.
And now will you put me down, please; the upper air is chilly."
He wriggled into a crack in the ground, and was gone.
That evening Fiona and the Urchin made their final preparations, in
case the morrow should fall calm. That evening also Jeconiah heard
that he had rivals in the field. His language, as he walked up and
down the library, would have been very bad for the bookworm's morals
had that intelligent insect been able to understand it all; but the
bookworm's English, though good, was literary, and much of the modern
idiom employed by Jeconiah slid off its back. Jeconiah's plan had been
to make sure that the gold was there, and then charter a launch from
Glasgow and take it straight to railway-head; he saw now that he could
not afford the time, and that unless he could deal with the children
in some way he might have to take the gold off in his boat, which
would entail some risk, as well as cost him a heavy sum to buy his two
boatmen. Also he made up his mind that he must go the next morning,
whatever the weather, if it were possible to launch the boat; he knew
that the children, with their little skiff, could only go to sea on
calm days.
Unfortunately for Jeconiah, the night fell calm, and though he rose
early, he had no notion of starting without a good breakfast. By the
time his boat was launched and he himself aboard, he had the pleasure
of seeing through his glasses the children's boat off the east or
nearer end of Scargill. The wealth of adjectives which he employed in
the circumstances filled his two loafers with awe and admiration.
Fiona, having the Urchin securely under her roof, had breakfasted
before dawn, and as soon as it was light enough the children launched
their little boat. The Urchin had the precious headlight, ready
charged, tied up in an old sack which would also serve to bring away
the plunder; and round his waist he had twisted a length of cast-off
rope. Its use was not apparent, but he thought it looked
business-like. They saw that Jeconiah's boat was still drawn up
ashore, and in good heart they started on their long pull. They had
reached the island before Jeconiah had his boat out; having no
glasses, they could not see if it was being launched or not. But off
the eastern end of the island, which is low and grassy, they had a
fright, for an empty boat was drawn ashore there. However, when they
rowed close in to look at it, Fiona recognized it.
"It's Angus MacEachan's boat," she said. "He has come to see after the
sheep he has on the island. There he is, I can see him; he has got a
sheep that has hurt its foot." And indeed they could see Angus tending
a sick sheep.
"Fiona," said the boy, "we are too silly for anything. Of course the
footsteps we heard in the cave were Angus's. There is another way in
somewhere, and he would be looking for a sheep."
Fiona said nothing. As they neared the cave, the problem of the
footsteps kept intruding itself more and more vividly upon her; but
the Urchin was happy in his theory, and she did not think it necessary
to remind him that the footsteps could not possibly have been those of
Angus, who walked with a limp. She began to feel a vague sense of
disquiet, which she tried in vain to put aside.
They entered the cave, and the Urchin, with much pride, lit his great
lamp. The powerful burner threw a wonderful circle of light on to
black water and black walls, making them glow and sparkle with a soft
radiance till they looked like the very gateway of fairyland. Outside
the circle everything became black as pitch. They paddled quietly up
the bright waterway, and grounded on the stones at the end. The Urchin
was hot after his long row, and helping to draw the boat up on the
stones did not make him any cooler; he took off his jacket and pitched
it on to a thwart.
"Yes, it is hot, and stuffy," said Fiona. She recollected some story
she had read about a coal mine, and sniffed. "I hope there is no gas
here," she said.
The Urchin grinned.
"Oh, you girls!" he said. "Who ever heard of gas in a sea cave. What
you are smelling is the lamp."
Fiona took the lamp up.
"I'm going to take charge of this myself," she said. "You can carry
the treasure."
The Urchin picked up the sack and threw it over his shoulder.
"Go ahead, lady with the lamp," he said, and grinned again. He felt
very adventurous. He would rather have liked to be photographed.
With considerable caution, necessitated by the heavy lamp, they
climbed the rock barrier and descended into the darkness of the inner
cave. The walking was better here; the rounded slippery boulders had
given place to a floor of pebbles and sand. Quite a short way from the
barrier the wall of the cave curved away in a semicircle on the
right, its smooth surface forming a kind of small recess. Fiona swept
the recess with her lamp, and on the sandy floor something gleamed
back; the Urchin pounced on it and picked it up. It was a gold coin,
not the least like any which the children had ever seen. It was, in
fact, a doubloon.
"This must be one of them," said the boy exultantly as he pocketed it;
"one that got dropped. Come on, it can't be much farther."
But Fiona held the lamp steady and stared at the sand.
"Look at the marks on the sand," she said. "They are like the marks of
heavy boxes. The treasure has been here, Urchin, and it's not here
now. Someone has been here and taken it, and dropped one piece."
"I don't think so," said the Urchin. "We shall find them a bit farther
on."
So they went on, but not very far. For the light of the lamp suddenly
fell on a rock wall before them, the end of the cave. And it had
ended, not as the other caves do, by the roof growing lower and lower
till it meets the floor; it had ended in this huge chamber of high
rocky walls.
"So this is the cave that no one has ever reached the end of," said
Fiona. "Why, it goes no distance at all."
They retraced their steps to the recess, and then back to the end
again, looking on this side and on that for openings, but it seemed
quite clear that there were none.
"The boxes must have been carried off by sea," said Fiona.
But the Urchin had an idea.
"No one would try to carry great heavy boxes over the rock barrier,"
he said. "They'd just take the gold out in sacks."
"The barrier may be a rock-fall," said Fiona. "The treasure may all
have been cleared out long ago."
And then there came to the Urchin the realization of the fact that he
had lost his gun. He turned very red.
"It's a shame," he said angrily, "an awful shame. It was given to me,
and someone has taken it. Can't you think where it could be, Fiona?
I'd go _anywhere_ to find it."
Whatever Fiona may have been going to say, her words tailed off into
sudden silence. For from beyond the cave wall, as it seemed, sounded
again the footsteps which they had heard before; and this time they
knew that there was no cave there, and that It was walking through
solid rock as if along a road. There was no question this time of any
concealment or pretence; both frankly turned tail and made for the
rock barrier. Halfway there the Urchin tripped and fell heavily on his
head. Fiona put the lamp down and helped him up, dizzy and shaking.
"Can you go on, Urchin?" she said. "If not, I'll try and carry you."
The Urchin looked back into the blackness, unrelieved by any ray of
the lamp, which faced the other way. The footsteps were steadily
drawing nearer, neither hasting nor staying. What the Urchin may have
thought he saw Fiona could not guess; he gave one shriek, slid out of
her grasp, and bolted for the rock barrier as fast as his trembling
feet would carry him.
For one moment Fiona all but followed him. Then it suddenly came to
her that she was responsible for the boy's safety. She never knew
afterwards how she managed to do what she did; but she turned, and
with the courage of utter desperation--the courage which enables the
hen partridge to face the sparrow hawk--stood at bay, swinging up the
heavy lamp to see and face whatever should come.
And into the circle of lamplight quietly walked the figure of the old
hawker.
The revulsion of feeling was too much for Fiona. She sprang forward
and caught the old man's hand and clung to it.
"Oh," she said, "I'm so glad it's you. We heard the footsteps and we
were so frightened." The relief of it all was overwhelming; she was
almost crying, and went on saying anything, hardly knowing what she
said, just for the mere human companionableness of it. "How did you
come here? I suppose you came over with Angus in his boat. Of course
you would. Then there must be another way into the cave after all, and
we couldn't find it."
"And so I frightened you?" said the old man gently, making no effort
to withdraw his hand. "Yes, there is another way in." He made no
attempt to answer all her questions.
"Urchin," called Fiona, raising her voice. "Urchin, come back; it's
all right."
But there was no answer.
"Urchin," she shouted; "Urchin."
But there was no answer save the echoing of the empty cave.
"He was going down to the boat," she said, loyally repressing the fact
that the Urchin had bolted. "We must go after him, for he had hurt his
head, and I am afraid of his falling again."
They climbed the rock barrier, and made their way to the boat. The
boat lay there as it had been left, half ashore, with the swell
rippling against the stern, and over one thwart the Urchin's jacket,
just as he had thrown it down. And the boat was as empty as the cave.
Into Fiona's eyes came a sudden fear.
"He must have fallen again, and be lying somewhere," she said.
They went back, searching every nook and corner of the cave, turning
the light into every crevice, under every rock, making a minute
examination of the rock barrier; and there was no sign.
And then Fiona broke down.
"He is drowned," she said, and just sat and sobbed.
After a few moments the old man came and sat down beside her. In his
gentle voice he said that the Urchin could not possibly be drowned.
The water was quite shallow at the edge, and he was a good swimmer,
was he not? And even if he had not been, the swell would have rolled
him ashore. He himself had no doubt that all would come right.
Fiona ceased sobbing and turned on him.
"Do you know where he is?" she demanded bluntly.
"How would I know when you do not know?" said the old man. "Could I
see what you could not see?" And then "Listen."
Down the waterway came voices, and the sound of oars. It was in fact
Jeconiah's boat entering the cave.
Fiona caught at the straw.
"He may have swum out to the other boat," she said.
But there was no one in the other boat but Jeconiah and his two men.
They had powerful lanterns, and the boat was full of sacks. Jeconiah
himself was purple with suppressed rage and impatience. The moment he
could get ashore, he waddled up to Fiona and shook the map of the cave
in her face, exclaiming, "Remember, if you have found anything it
belongs to me and I claim it."
Fiona had only one thought in her mind at the moment, and the foolish
impertinence of the little fat man was to her merely so much
unnecessary sound. Her answer was "Have you seen the Urchin? We have
lost him. Did he not swim out to your boat?" She was almost sobbing
again.
"Confound the brat!" said Jeconiah roughly. "I've not come here to
play hide-and-seek with a parcel of children. Tell me at once what
you've found."
Fiona straightened herself, and looked at Jeconiah as though he were
some noxious reptile.
"There was nothing here to find," she said. "And this cave belongs to
my father. And anything in it he gave to the Urchin."
"Well, he's not here," said Jeconiah brutally, "and I am. Who finds,
keeps."
And calling to his men to bring the lights, he set off, between
stumbling and crawling, for the rock barrier. One of the men had the
decency to stop a moment and tell Fiona that they had seen nothing of
any boy; Jeconiah turned and abused him for a laggard.
With a good deal of difficulty the two men hoisted and shoved Jeconiah
over the rock barrier. Once over, he took a light himself, told the
men to wait where they were, and after a good look at the map set out
for the recess where the Urchin had found the doubloon. Fiona followed
him; there was some vague idea in her mind of protecting the Urchin's
property; behind that there was still a faint subconscious hope that
in some way or other the Urchin would suddenly reappear, and laugh at
her terrors.
Jeconiah reached the recess. He saw and understood the marks of the
boxes on the sand. He swung round on Fiona with a snarl like that of a
hungry wolf.
"You think you're clever, don't you, you and your father," he said. "I
suppose you've had the stuff moved. But I'll have it if I go to the
middle of the earth for it."
It was the old hawker who shouted. He had stood apart, a silent
spectator of the scene. And at this moment he called out, in a voice
of surprising power for so frail a body:
"Look out above you. Jump."
Fiona, who had learned to obey, jumped back just in time. But Jeconiah
had never learnt to obey any orders but his own. He stood, stupidly
staring, as a bit of the roof of the cave bowed downward, gave way,
and came cascading about him in a shower of earth and big stones, that
filled the air with thick dust. When the dust cleared again, they saw
Jeconiah lying on his back in the middle of the cliff fall,
motionless, and to all appearance dead.
But Fiona was not looking at Jeconiah. She was looking at the place
where the roof of the cave had bowed itself before falling; and into
her mind came crowding dim forgotten legends, legends of fear and
hope. And she was saying over and over again to herself, as though she
might miss its purport, that behind the cliff fall, as if impelling
and directing it, she had seen a small brown elfin hand.
* * * * *
It was the old hawker who took charge of the situation. The two men,
who at first had looked as if they would run, became amenable when he
spoke to them. They carried Jeconiah's body to his boat, and laid it
in the stern-sheets. One of the men pointed out that there was no mark
at all on his face or head, and that he did not believe he had been
struck.
"Died of fright, I expect," he said curtly.
"Lucky we stood out for wages in advance," said his companion. It
looked as if this might be Jeconiah's fitting epitaph.
The old man himself went with Fiona in her boat. But he was too feeble
to row far, so he landed on the island and went in search of Angus. In
due course Angus came down and rowed Fiona home, saying that the old
man was going to look after his sheep for him till he returned. It did
not occur to Fiona, until they had gone too far to turn back, that it
looked as though the old man wished to avoid questions. Her mind was
in a helpless whirl in which everything seemed unreal, except the
Urchin and that small brown hand. She could not give her father any
very coherent account of what had happened; but he went out at once to
find a boat and men to search the cave.
Jeconiah was laid on his bed in the big house, and there was much
commotion there; this one must go for the doctor and that one for the
Student; scared maids stood and whispered in the corridors; the two
loafers, heroes of the hour, feasted happily in the kitchen. Then the
doctor came, and went upstairs with a grave face, as befitted the
occasion; but he did not come down again, and surmise grew. Half an
hour passed before the door opened, and the doctor, smiling and
rubbing his hands together, came into the library, where the Student
had just entered and was talking to the housekeeper.
"He's not dead at all," said the doctor. "It's catalepsy--suspended
animation, you know. Like the frog in the marble. Had a shock, you
tell me? Just so, just so. How long? Oh, he may be an hour, and he
may be a month; no one can ever say. Never had the good luck to see a
case before. Not _very_ uncommon, no. Mustn't try to rouse him, you
know; might be dangerous. Just wait. Send for me at once if he comes
to. Can get two nurses to watch him, if you like; just as well
perhaps. Sometimes they are odd when they wake; think they are someone
else for a bit, you know, change their habits, and so on. Dual
personality? Oh, yes, several well-attested cases; but I don't mean as
much as that. Might arise this way, of course; but what I mean is more
just queer. But of course he need not be; might wake up as if he'd
been asleep. If it lasts long, take away all the almanacs and things,
in case he gets a shock. Well, good day, good day."
And the doctor went; and Jeconiah's body lay still on the bed, waiting
till his soul, if he had one, should return to it.
So the Student went home again; and on his way he met the old hawker,
who stopped and spoke to him; and for a few moments the two walked
together, the old man talking rather quickly. Fiona, watching from the
window of the bookroom, could see that her father first looked puzzled
and then grave and then considerably relieved; in a dim kind of way
she found herself thinking that Angus must have rowed back very fast
to Scargill, if the old hawker were already landed. She was wondering
who he really was and why her father talked to him.
"Tell Anne to get us something to eat--anything," said the Student.
"The boat will be here directly."
The Student, by straining what remained of old loyalty as far as he
dared, had found half a dozen volunteers, good men, to face the
haunted cave, provided he went himself.
"Do you want to come, Fiona?" he said. Of course Fiona meant to come.
And while they waited, the Student questioned Fiona, and had the whole
story coherently, except the hand. That part Fiona felt she could not
tell; there, in the cheerful bookroom, it seemed so impossible. Once
or twice he nodded, and said, "That would be so"; and at the end he
pointed out that whatever had happened had happened when her back was
turned, as she faced the coming footsteps. She had not thought of
that. What puzzled her, and hurt her a little, was that, though her
father seemed to feel for _her_, he did not appear to be particularly
concerned about the Urchin. "I believe it will come right," was all he
said.
The boat arrived, rowed by strong hands; the men worked with a will,
and the distance to the cave seemed short. They had brought good
lights, and the Student had a powerful electric torch. High and low
they searched the cave, and found nothing. One man, who was a good
swimmer, dived several times and found nothing there either. Tracking
footsteps was impossible; the sand, where there was any, had been
hopelessly trampled.
When nothing more could be done, the Student said that he wanted to
look for a thing himself which he had an idea of. He went down to the
end of the cave with his torch and tapped the wall with a geological
hammer. Fiona sat on the rock barrier and watched him; what he was
seeking she had no idea. He came slowly back down the cave, tapping
the wall, till he reached the recess where the Urchin had picked up
the doubloon. He went straight to the back of the recess and tapped
the wall there; and even as he did so a large piece of stone fell from
above, and smashed the electric torch in his hand. He came back to the
rock barrier quite unperturbed, looking as if he had found what he
sought.
"Not very safe, this cave," he said calmly; and told the men to push
off the boat. "There is nothing more we can do," he said; "the boy is
certainly not here."
The men's courage was fast ebbing away; they were glad to get out of
the haunted place.
Fiona sat in silence all the way home. It was dark before they
reached the house. She waited while Anne bustled over supper; she
thought she would never see her father alone. At last supper was over,
and he went into the bookroom and began to light his pipe; she
followed him. Her words came out in a torrent.
"Daddy," she said, "what does it all mean? and why are you so strange
and unconcerned? What did that old man tell you? If I couldn't see,
_he_ must have seen, for he was facing. What is it you know? And why
have you told me nothing?"
"Sit down, little daughter," said the Student. He drew her beside his
knee, with her head on his arm. "I will tell you now what I can. The
old man gave me a sort of hint. He did not really see, for the lamp
was the other way; I fancy he guessed. I wanted to test what he said
to me. I have tested it now with my hammer; it all agrees. I am
absolutely certain that no harm has come to the Urchin. But I can do
nothing for him myself. And I must not even tell you what I think;
for if I do it ruins everything. All I may tell you is this, that you
are the only person who can do anything. You will have to do it all
yourself and by yourself, little daughter. I believe you have ways and
means of your own of finding out. Are you going through with it,
Fiona?"
"Of course I am, daddy," she said. "How can I do anything else? If
only I knew what it is I have to do to find him--how to begin even."
"I cannot even tell you that," said the Student. But his fingers
played with the copper bangle on her wrist. And out of some dim corner
of subconsciousness she seemed to hear a small voice which said "If
you can't get what you want by beginning at the top you must start
again at the bottom." Her father, with his learning, was the top; the
bottom . . . ?
Fiona went to bed less miserable than she had expected.