OSCAR'S RETURN--THE MYSTERY CLEARED--ON THE TOR AGAIN.
How did Inna bear it?
As she bounded into the fire-lit kitchen, to prefer her request to Mrs.
Grant about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial
chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save
for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that
his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his
own--those in which he had vanished.
"Oscar!" she cried, and sat down and wept over her joy as if it were a
sorrow, like a very excited little maiden--that is how she bore her
surprise. Mary knew nothing of his arrival; he had come after she had
left to bring the little girls home. The poor kitten went flying
somewhere, anywhere to be out of the way of such sobs and tears.
"Master--Dr. Willett," called the housekeeper from out of the open
kitchen door, wondering what effect the sight of Oscar would have upon
the two doctors, who had to bear the sight of so much.
"Yes--what is it?" came wandering back up the passage. The speaker
followed close behind, Mr. Barlow behind him. Oscar come back, Inna
crying over it. Well, with the coming of the two doctors she soon dried
her eyes and inquired for her kitten.
"Kitten, dear?" Mrs. Grant thought there was something a little wrong
with her head still, just a cobweb not cleared away, because of her
crying so, you know. Not so the doctor, for there came a piteous
prolonged mew, and up scrambled the kitten, inside one of the legs of
the doctor's trousers. She had missed her way, you see, but had chosen a
friend next best to Inna.
"Well, you're no beauty," quoth the doctor, drawing her down from her
hiding-place, and holding her on his arm to stroke her; "and you're
nothing to cry over, lost or found."
Dr. Willett put her into Inna's arms, where the little thing nestled,
as if she knew her rightful place already.
"I didn't cry over the kitten, uncle; I cried over Oscar," said the
little girl.
Mr. Barlow had drawn Oscar from the room and himself stayed with him, to
keep him there.
"Where is Oscar?--it isn't a dream, is it?" and Inna's eyes swept the
room.
"Dream? no, my dear; he was here just now. Isn't it his rightful place?"
spoke the doctor drily.
"Yes, only--only----"
"Ah! yes, only you want to know where he has been, what he has been
doing, and what right he had to come back in this matter-of-fact way,
when you had been imagining all sorts of unlikely things about him; and
so you cried over it, to give the whole thing the girl-like touch it
lacked. Ha--ha!"
This was Mr. Barlow's speech, putting his head in at the kitchen door,
to see how they were getting on.
"Yes, come in, both of you," said the doctor, that sorrowful gravity
lifted from his face already.
"Well, my boy, you have taken a heavy weight from my heart and added
years to my life by coming back," was what he said, drawing the lad to
him, and laying his hand on his shoulder.
"Have you missed me so much, uncle?" asked Oscar.
"Missed!" A look passed over Dr. Willett's face, which Inna, watching,
thought very like that on her father's face when he kissed her
"Good-bye," before she came down to the farm.
"Missed you, Master Oscar! yes, we're all missed, even when 'tis a boy
we're keeping the farm for," was Mrs. Grant's unlooked-for remark.
"Very silly of Mrs. Grant, to bring up that question of the farm on the
first night of the boy's return," observed the doctor, when he and his
friend were sipping their coffee together, the young folk gone to bed,
the budget of Oscar's adventures to be opened on the morrow.
"You see, dear," said that lady to Inna, after Jenny was asleep; and
Inna's eyes were sadly wakeful. "You see, dear, I wanted Master Oscar to
see, while his heart was tender, on this first night, that as he had
been missed and wanted by his uncle, it ought to be 'give and take' with
him, when I spoke about the farm."
"Give and take?"
"Yes, Miss Inna, give and take; it's that as smooths life's rough
places. Master Oscar has nothing to give his uncle for all he's doing
for him, but his will--letting go that foolish nonsense about the sea.
He ought to give up the sea and take to the farm--that would be his
giving and taking; and his uncle would give him the farm, and take
his--his obedience to his wishes, as a sort of harvest of love after all
the years of sowing."
"Sowing?" said Inna.
"Yes, the doctor has sown a deal of trouble, thought, and anxiety over
this young brother of his, at last lost at sea--that's Oscar's father,
you know. I think, in his quiet way, he's set his heart on the boy
making him some return, in the way of love and gratitude; and besides,
he says, putting him into the farm is the best thing he can do for him,
leaving out the love, obedience, and gratitude, and----" But Inna was
asleep.
Well, the next evening's tea-drinking, over which Inna presided, was a
sort of state tea-drinking at which Dr. Willett sat down, a thing he had
scarcely ever been known to do before. But then, Oscar was to tell his
adventures during tea; a poor, thin, hollow-eyed narrator was he, who
had been down well-nigh to death's door.
The tea-table was gay with spring flowers, and through the open window
came a chorus of sweet sounds, the bleating of lambs from the meadows,
the lowing of the cows being driven home to their milking, the song of
birds, the hum of insects--bees and gnats--the one toiling, the others
dancing in idleness: types and shadows of the human race, as Mr. Barlow
remarked. To which Jenny added, "Yes; and of boys and girls--the girls
working, the boys idle."
But to this there was no time to make reply, for Inna had supplied them
all with tea, and Oscar had cleared his throat like a story-teller in a
book, and was waiting to begin.
"Well, you know when I started, and you shouted, and I shouted back,"
said he.
"Yes, we know--hurry up!" spoke Jenny, like an unmannerly boy.
"I went on first-rate for a time, then I came to a full stop, for I was
at the Ugly Leap; and before I knew it I was over."
"Not much of a full stop; I should say a note of exclamation was dashed
in there," remarked Mr. Barlow.
"I don't think I uttered a sound; I think I was too horrified--that is
as girlish, I know, as if I'd screamed!"
"Oh! Oscar, you did scream: 'twas that which told us something was
wrong," put in the interrupting damsel Jenny.
"And no wonder. I'm not sure I shouldn't have screamed myself; and boys
are but mortal, the same as doctors," remarked Mr. Barlow.
"But not nearly so wise," interrupted Jenny again.
"Nor yet so talkative as young ladies; and if present company will
excuse me, I should like some of them to be quiet," said Oscar.
"Well, my boy, after the scream----" prompted Mr. Barlow.
"Well, if I _did_ scream, after that there was a silence and the full
stop, for I fell to the bottom; and when I came to my senses I was
jolting along in a caravan--such jolting, and I full of pain and
dizziness. That was a ride to town, and no mistake--Bulverton, the town
was called, where they took me to a hospital."
"Who?" inquired irrepressible Jenny.
"The gipsies--I was in a gipsy caravan; they were passing the road at
the bottom of the Leap, hurrying away from justice of some sort, I
should say, and, hearing me moan, were humane enough to pick me up out
of my snowy bed, and carry me along with them. By the time they reached
Bulverton I was unconscious, in a high fever, and I don't know what.
They made it all right with the hospital people, somehow, that they had
no hand in bringing me to the state I was in. I was terribly knocked
about--a blow on my head, besides this on my forehead, a broken arm, and
a good shaking generally. 'Twas a wonder I escaped with my life, the
doctors told me, when I came out of my bad turn--you know the dodge, Mr.
Barlow; you all make a miracle of what you do for sick people." Mr.
Barlow shook his fist at him.
"I kept who I was a secret, though, and wouldn't tell my name. I didn't
want to make a fuss here, you know, but on the last morning it all came
out. One of the doctors saw your description of me, uncle, and the
police came ferreting me out as well, I believe; and so I'd nothing to
do but throw off my disguise, and come home like a bad penny. I daresay
you'll have a bill, uncle, for sticking-plaster and so on."
"Which I shall be happy to pay, Oscar," said the grave doctor.
This was Oscar's story. Well, the bill came from the Bulverton hospital,
and was duly settled by Dr. Willett, and all things fell into their
usual train, save that Oscar, being unfit for study, and Dick away at
school, had rather a dull time of it.
The weather was glorious, and of course he roamed about, and went some
excursions with Inna, Jenny, and the donkey and cart, the twins from the
Owl's Nest sometimes swelling the number; but an outing with a pack of
girls, as he said, was but a very tame affair, and often he sighed for
midsummer and Dick.
Both came at last, as all good things are said to do to the waiting
ones, and the meeting on the Lakely platform was almost overwhelming as
Dick sprang out among them all; Oscar and the four girls clustering
round him like bees, while Rameses, with the cart at a respectful
distance, stretched out his neck, and brayed such a note of welcome,
that the attendant porter laughed till he held his sides. With Dick's
coming, the state of affairs looked up--here, there, and everywhere went
the two boys, not always with a string of girls after them, as Dick
slightingly expressed it.
Once, according to their own words, they took revenge upon the old Tor,
and had picnics upon its wind-swept heights in a body; but where the
revenge lay they themselves best knew. But the girls looked down the
Ugly Leap with awe, Oscar, with his scarred forehead, looking down with
the rest. A wonderfully clear view they had of the sea and the Swallow's
Cliff.
"I say," cried Dick, the happy thought striking him as he gazed,
"couldn't we take the girls over as far as the cliffs and the sea?
They've never been there, you know, Willett, and 'twouldn't be too far,
if we took old Rameses and the cart."
"Just a nice little outing," agreed Oscar; and down they all sat in
council to sketch out the programme, to use their own words.