It was a spell of long-drawn-out anguish for the watchers on shore, the while that Theo Carnegy and little Queenie sank helplessly in their rapidly filling boat. From one to another of the cottages round the bay the news had flown like wild-fire that the captain's boat, with the captain's daughters, was going down within sight, and not a man nor a boy in Northbourne village but was out at sea since daybreak, for the 'mackerrow' were proving a little gold-mine to the community, and the fishermen grudged to sleep or eat, so eager were they to make hay while the sun was shining.
The women would not have thought twice of taking to the boats themselves and attempting a rescue, but all the decent crafts were at sea; the few that were beached were useless, being out of repair. There was, accordingly, nothing to do but stand in huddled groups wringing the hands that, perforce, were helpless. Some—the timid ones—covered their eyes from the sight. Others, fascinated, found it impossible to turn their gaze for a single second from the hapless boat which their practised sight noted was now perceptibly lower in the water. One or two among them, old Goody Dempster conspicuously, stood with white lips that moved silently as they prayed God to have pity, to stretch out His mighty hand and save those in dire danger.
And while the women watched breathlessly, or prayed, Geoff, with old Binks, struggled on, a nightmare feeling weighing them down all the time, that they were standing still, instead of making way.
At last, when the watchers on the shore could no longer see aught but the rim of the top of the boat, and only the two clinging figures in it, for 'The Theodora' had settled down almost under water, the Vicarage boat pulled up alongside, with a final long sweep, into which Geoff, half fainting, put his sole remaining strength.
How the rescue was achieved, then, none of the four could ever afterwards tell or picture with any clearness. It was as if other hands than those of Geoff and Binks did the work, while Queenie and then Theo were half lifted, half dragged in by the two.
More dead than alive, the rescued sisters were, with considerable difficulty, laid at the bottom of the boat. Theo had swooned away the moment she realised that they were saved, and the women watchers on the shore sobbed loudly in hysterical relief.
'Shall we take 'em over to the Vicarage?' hoarsely asked Binks, handling his oar for the return.
'No, no! Home—home to father!' whispered back Geoff, whose voice seemed to have died away into a feeble sort of whistle.
Then the two, exhausted as they were already, pulled their hardest over the blue waters to the tiny pier under the Bunk.
The catastrophe, next door to a terrible tragedy, had happened in the space of about fifteen minutes, and it seemed strangely impossible that the sun should be still shining, and the light wind curling the rippling waves as if nothing had happened.
The captain, who had been, as usual, absorbed in his manuscript, sitting with his back to the window, knew nothing of it until he was hastily called to carry up the senseless Theo. It was a considerable time before his efforts to restore the unconscious girl were successful; and it would not be easy to tell how the father, whom Theo Carnegy had allowed herself to think and pronounce indifferent to his children's welfare, suffered as he hung over the senseless form of his best-beloved child. Her peril stirred up all the love that, though undoubtedly existing, had been dormant. From that fateful hour, however, the old sea-captain was an altered man. His heart awoke to the fact that the chief place in it should be filled by his motherless children, instead of, as it had been, by a mere hobby.
All through the hours of the anxious night that followed he went from one bed to the other, tending the occupants with that gentleness, almost womanly, which a sailor possesses in no ordinary degree. For Queenie there were no apprehensions, save dread of a chill from the wetting she received; the child was tranquil, and appeared to have sustained no shock.
'We said "Our Father," me and Theo,' she whispered innocently to the captain, as he sat by her little bed holding her hands, 'and He sent Geoff and Binks directly to pick us out of the water; and then Theo went off to sleep in the boat, and my new shoes is spoilt most dreadful!'
With Theo it was otherwise. She had sustained a severe mental shock, as well as the bodily strain, in her fruitless efforts to pull the heavy boat through the water. And it had been a terrible spasm of terror to sink slowly, helplessly, in the yawning waves, trying all the time to hold up the precious little sister. When the doctor from Brattlesby arrived, he looked grave enough over his elder patient; and next day he was even more serious.
'She is in for brain fever!' he said briefly. He was a man of few words, leaving the burden of conversation, as a rule, to his patients. Hence, perhaps, it was that little Dr. Cobbe was the most popular being, man or doctor, for miles round Northbourne.
And with regard to Theo it was as he said. For many weeks Theo Carnegy lay battling for her life in the cruel clutches of the fever, unconscious that her most devoted and tenderest nurse was the father whom she had bitterly imagined thought more of his hobby than of his boys and girls. All Northbourne, as with one heart, sorrowed aloud for their favourite Miss Theedory; her grave condition was the sole theme of talk in the cottages round the bay.
'Happen she was too good to live!' croaked Jerry Blunt's mother, with an appropriate melancholy in her voice; and the gossips nodded approvingly at a sentiment which fitted in with their own views of life.
'Nothin' o' the sort!' struck in a dissentient voice, which belonged to Goody Dempster herself. 'There's none too good to live, seein' as life is a great gift that can only come from the Lord Himself. He gives, and He takes away, that's how we've got to look at things. And, please God, He will see fit to raise up Miss Theedory among us again, hale and sound. She's one as could be ill spared.'
'Amen!' assented more than one voice among the listeners, in ready response.
But there was one heart that felt heavier than all others—too heavy to hold a ray of hope—and that belonged to Alick Carnegy. When he returned home from his stolen holiday, and found what had happened during his absence, the remorse of the boy was uncontrollable. He could not but feel it to be true, what others did not scruple to tell him bluntly, for plain-speaking was a distinguishing feature of the fishing village, that had he and Ned Dempster been at home, they could have reached his sisters in far less time than Geoff, younger and weaker of muscle, and Binks, long past his heyday of strength and stiffened with rheumatism, had done.
With cold shivers of dread, he heard how Theo, though delivered from one perilous strait, lay in jeopardy of her life in the new peril of fever.
She would die, he was convinced, and voices seemed to be incessantly crying in his ears: 'It will be your fault, all your fault! You fought to have your own way, in spite of her pleadings, and now she will die because you were not here to help her in such sore peril. She was deserted, so she will die, our Theo!'
Alick, a boy of strong feelings, became maddened by despair, and exaggerated the calamity. As time went on—and brain fever rarely hurries itself—Theo grew no better, but rather weaker, and Alick secretly called himself her murderer. He was distraught.
'Oh, Ned, if we had been at home, you and I, we could have reached them in half the time Geoff and old Binks took! We could have rescued them before "The Theodora" began to settle down!' he blurted out when he found Ned sobbing helplessly in a corner of the tea-house, The latter, though not possessed of Alick's torturing powers of imagination, was overcome with remorse for his own share in the transaction.
Oh, Muster Alick, it ain't "we" it's me, only me, as is to blame!' he hoarsely said, in a voice choked with sobs.
'What do you mean?' asked Alick heavily; and he stared down at the crouching speaker.
'Miss Theedory telled I to mend the leak,' moaned Ned. 'And she thought I'd done it, I expec', for she showed how 'twas to be mended; but I knowed how as well as she did, for I've seed a-many done. But I put off the doin' of it to go to Brattlesby Woods along with you, Muster Alick, and Jerry Blunt, an' I deceived her; an' now she's drowned, Miss Theedory is! Leastways, 'tis the same thing; for all Northbourne's a-sayin' as she's bound to die of it all!' The boy, burying his head, broke down into a loud, irrepressible fit of crying.
Ned too! Alick's lips quivered as he turned abruptly away. He himself it was who tempted Ned away, and caused the boy to neglect his duty, bringing down all this misfortune. He had been thinking himself the only person in fault for being wilfully absent, but it was worse and worse! He had lured away, and placed another in the same position, so wide-spreading can a single evil step be in its results. Even through his sinking fears about Theo, Alick could not but feel pathetically sorry for poor Ned, whose grief grew wilder in its abandon after his confession was out.
'Have you told any one about not mending the leak, Ned? Does my father know?' he came back to Ned's side to ask anxiously.
'I dussn't!' was the choking reply. 'But I feels bound, somehow, to tell you,' he added. 'If Miss Theedory dies, 'twill be me as did it; an' you can tell 'em all so, if you like! They'll put me in gaol, o' course; p'raps they'll hang me. They may bring it in manslaughter. I dunno what they haven't the power to do!' ended Ned desperately.
Alick stared through the window out to sea, with an equally woebegone face with that of his companion in misery. Two more unhappy boys one could not have well beheld. And this grievous state of affairs had revengefully trodden on the heels of the delightfully fascinating expedition to the woods, which had been forbidden to the one boy, and which the other boy had shirked his duty to join in!
'What would be the end of it all?' Alick dully asked himself.
'Ned,' he said aloud, and there was a passionate ring of regret in his voice, 'it wasn't worth it!'
'No, muster, it warn't!' assented Ned, fully understanding that Alick would have given his right hand to have put back the clock of time, that he might again have the chance of apologising as Geoff had done, and returning to his duty in the schoolroom. Both boys felt positively assured that had they been on the spot the catastrophe could not possibly have occurred.
There was a spell of silence in the tea-house. Now and again the echo of a sob shook Ned from head to foot. Alick leaned his forehead against the window jamb, and stared sullenly at the leaping waves below. As he gazed, a strange resolve came into the boy's mind, born of the deepening despair consuming him.
In the black gloom that environed him, came Satan's opportunity.
'You will never be forgiven if Theo dies,' whispered the tempting voice. 'Perhaps you also will be put in prison, who knows, with Ned as an accomplice!' Alick Carnegy, it will be seen, had but confused notions as to what manslaughter meant. He shivered and cowered at the terrifying notions of being shut up for life, perhaps, in some gloomy gaol. Better-informed boys may jeer at Alick's ignorance of things in general, but Northbourne was an out-of-the-way, stand-still spot, with few or no opportunities of smartening the wits, of keeping up with the times.
'The best way out of the difficulty would be to run away, wouldn't it?' as he brooded, somebody seemed to suddenly and swiftly whisper in his ear. And Alick, when the sense of the suggestion penetrated his mind, abruptly lifted his hanging head. He gasped aloud in relief. A door of escape opened in the black, impenetrable wall that was closing in round him.
'Ned,' he said softly, nudging the other boy, 'listen to me! Be done with that cry-baby business! We two, you and I, have got ourselves into an awful scrape, and there's only one thing for us. Can't you guess what that is? Rouse up! Can't you guess?' he repeated impatiently.
'Me guess? No! I can't make Miss Theedory get well; and what else matters?' Ned lifted a tear-stained face to say brokenly.
'You've often said you'd be game to run away to sea, if I made up my mind to do it, haven't you? Well, all the blame of whatever happens comes on us—you and me. We are bound to suffer the penalty.' Alick spoke slowly, and with the air of weighing his words, while Ned listened in awe. 'Now, then, it seems to me, is our chance to do it. Let's set out this very night; they'd never miss us in all the—the worry about Theo, until it would be too late to overtake us. We could walk to London in about three days, I expect; and once at the Docks it would be queer if you and I couldn't slip quietly on board some North-bound vessel, as we've often planned to do. Speak up! Will you come?'
And Alick breathlessly waited for Ned's long-of-coming answer.
Meantime, while all Northbourne, in its genuine affection for Miss Theedory, hung expectantly on the issues of life or death—for who could say which it might be?—Jerry Blunt was quietly making his preparations for pursuing his new calling of bird-trainer.
Although he had said nothing about it, one of the new pupils had been specially set apart to be given to Theo, if it pleased God to spare her young life. Theo, gentle and sweet-spoken to all, had won the reverence and loyal regard of the disabled sailor, when he returned home a cripple, by her friendly welcome to him.
Jerry Blunt was not one to forget a kind word. He had not come across so many, in his up-and-down life, that they had become cheapened.
It was not, however, until the young finches were about two months old, and showed symptoms of whistling powers, that Jerry could really begin the labour of educating them in real earnest. His first step was to systematically separate his pupils into small classes, so to say, or groups of birds, lodging them in wicker cages. The next proceeding was to shut them up in a darkened room and keep them without food for a given time.
The skilful teacher then began the singing-lessons by slowly playing over and over the special tune he had selected—'The Blue Bells of Scotland'—for the finches to learn. He performed the melody upon a small instrument given him by Pierre Lacroix, his comrade on the expedition, the notes of which were curiously like the birds' own. Jerry truly had marvellous need of patience. But he knew—none better—that it is only by slow means that perfect trust is gained. His pupils sat for a considerable time sulking, perhaps with deeply injured feelings, being dinnerless; and they were, doubtless, bewildered by the darkness of the room. They were not deceived into thinking that the night had fallen, not they! As a proof, they made no attempt to sleep. They simply sat puzzling out, with suspicion, the mystery that surrounded them.
By and by, some sharper, brighter wit among his fellows began to listen to the music, so curiously familiar, with his tiny head on one side; and he was won over! Presently he tried, timidly and cautiously, to pipe a few faint notes in imitation—just a few. Then he halted.
'Not so bad for a beginning!' delightedly murmured Jerry, under his breath.
Bully, on his part, rather seemed to like the sound of his own voice. With a vain perk and a flutter, he tried again, his note more assured. Lo! there was a duet. A neighbour finch had joined in; another bully was won over, and Jerry chuckled softly. Old Pierre had been perfectly correct, then! The thing was possible. It was Jerry's own first attempt, and he had been careful to follow out the Frenchman's directions, though, until he heard with his own ears the result, he had been secretly somewhat sceptical.
In a few moments more there was a feeble chorus piping in unison with the tiny bird-organ which Jerry continued to softly play. The other finches had summoned up courage to join their brethren.
As an instantaneous reward the teacher let a flood of light into the dark room, in accordance with Pierre's code. More, he proceeded to give his hungry pupils a little—only a little—food, enough, in fact, to make them ravenous for more. Then he plunged the little room in sudden darkness again by shutting out the light. Thus Jerry gradually educated the birds into connecting the idea of food and light with the sound of his little instrument's melody.
After two or three repetitions of this performance, it followed that the finches, kept on short commons, no sooner heard the notes of the bird-organ always playing the one unvarying tune, than they, too, attempted to sing it, in the sheer hope of being fed, and of seeing the hated darkness disappear. Jerry being ever careful not to disappoint their expectations, the result came to pass that the particular melody was committed to memory—the tune was learned, more or less correctly; for the feathered pupils were like human scholars, in that the few, not the many, arrive at perfection.
After this reward for his enormous patience, Jerry Blunt's next move was to board out his pupils in the village with trustworthy boys who were selected for the posts of pupil-teachers. One boy was appointed to each bird, in order to carry out the business of teachingthetune by whistling it incessantly until the air was firmly fixed in those tiny memories, which, if they had not been exactly 'wax to receive,' proved 'marble to retain.' As the finches grew perfect in their one life-lesson, the Scottish ditty resounded sweetly all over the village of Northbourne. After that, the pupils being pronounced 'finished,' Jerry Blunt set forth, with his batch of performers, to London, where he got a fairly good price for his well-trained songsters. His birds sold off rapidly, each of them going off to be the pride and joy of some girl or boy's heart with the tuneful old melody—
'O where and O where has my Hieland laddie gane?'
and Jerry returned home with orders for many more bullfinches as he could procure.
These orders, however, he was doubtful of executing; the finches were getting too advanced in age to prove docile pupils. Still, Jerry would do his best, and he set off to trap some young birds that had already left the parent-nests. The work of training these advanced birds was quite as difficult. However, Jerry was a persevering individual, gifted with wondrous patience, an untiring teacher. He succeeded beyond his hopes, and as time went on was enabled to earn what he called a 'tidy' sum.
''Tis wonderful strange, Jerry, my son, that ye can train the morsels o' critters to sing what we may call human tunes! Nobody, of course, could do it but yer own self, I'm sure,' grudgingly admitted his mother, when success became sure.
'The idea! That's so like you, mother!' laughed Jerry, as he softly tickled the head of the bullfinch he had retained as a gift for Miss Theedory out of the first and best batch. 'You're that conceited, you think that your own son can do all things better than other folk. But I could tell you a true story, now, of what others have done.'
And in his own words Jerry related, while his mother knitted in the firelight, how a great musician had, as a youth, trained a young bullfinch to pipe 'God save the King.' The musician was much attached to the bird, and the bird to him. Love begets love, with the animal creation at least, which is, undoubtedly, the simple secret of the strange power possessed by some human beings over birds and beasts. If you desire to be their masters, you must, first of all, love the dumb creatures. Where love is, all things are possible. Bull-finches, in particular, have a strongly developed faculty for attaching themselves. And the simple logic is easy to follow out. In the training already described, music and pleasure—that is, the food and sunlight, which constitute Bully's pleasure—are inseparably connected. Hence it follows soon, that the bird, to show his joy at the sight of his owner, learns to greet him with the one tune his little life has been spent in learning.
The musician, having cause to go abroad, left his petted bird in charge of his sister. On his return to this country, his first visit was to that lady, who told him, sorrowfully, that Bully had pined himself into a serious illness, evidently in the grief he felt at his master's absence. The grieved owner went hastily into the room where the cage was, and spoke gently to the ailing bird, which stood huddled up into what looked like a ball of feathers on his perch. Instantly, at the sound of the loved master's voice, the dim, closed eyes were opened wide. There was a feeble flutter of the faded plumage; the drooping head was raised. Half creeping, half staggering, the little creature attained the outstretched finger, on which he had barely strength to steady himself. With a supreme effort, as it seemed, he piped out feebly, in low, half-muffled notes, 'God save the King.' And then—Bully fell dead!
Jerry's voice had a slight choke in it as he finished his pathetic little story. As for his old mother, she had thrown her apron over her head, and was quietly sobbing under its shelter.
'Well, my lad,' she said, by and by, when her tears were dried, 'I've aye said that you were the best son mother ever had, and for the same a blessing will, no doubt, rest upon your head. And as for the bits o' birds an' beasts well, I've heard the old passon—Mr. Vesey himself—say, an' I never forget the words, as—
'"He prayeth best who loveth bestAll men and bird and beast;"
so, to my thinkin', that's how 'tis wi' you. Ye love the mites, and ye can do all things wi' them. That's yer secret!'
And undoubtedly Jerry's old mother was right.
It was a still, dark night when two short figures, each carrying a bundle, stole away from Northbourne, skirting Brattlesby Woods, and making for the old London road.
The fugitives were Alick Carnegy and Ned Dempster, and each was trying his hardest to prevent his companion from hearing the choking sobs that could not be kept down.
All boys, of course, secretly believe that it is a fine, manly thing to run away to sea. From time immemorial it has sounded so well—in fiction. Is there a boy breathing who has not pictured himself, free as a bird on the wing, shaking off the trammels of home in this fashion? But the grim reality was an altogether different matter to the couple of friends who were setting forth under cover of darkness. For one thing, Alick, who hated anything underhand, was thoroughly ashamed of sneaking away in the night. That in itself distinctly took away from the dash and glory of the affair.
In addition, he felt himself groping in a fog of misery. Nevermore, he felt convinced, would he see his gentle, loving sister in this life; and he shivered uncontrollably as he thought that, but for his absence in her hour of peril, Theo would be as well and strong as anybody—as, for instance, little Queenie, upon whom the accident had left no evil effects.
Before and behind, life was grim and stripped of hope for both the boy-adventurers as they plunged along the high road. They were too intensely miserable to look forward to the future. All they were intent on was to escape from the dreaded consequences of their misdoings.
It is hard work travelling with a heart of lead in one's bosom—
'A merry heart goes all the day,Your sad tires in a mile-a.'
Still, the two trudged on, mile after mile, until when the dawn stole up the sky they found themselves on the outskirts of a country town at a considerable distance from Northbourne. Having but a few shillings, belonging to Alick, they had decided to walk every step of the road to London Docks. In the dim grey light from the east they saw, to their astonishment, large looming vans and many blurred forms, all in busy motion. There seemed to be, as it were, a commotion of shadows.
'What on earth is it, Ned? They look like ghosts flitting about!' Alick said, half fearfully.
'No! They ain't ghosts!' slowly rejoined Ned, after a prolonged stare. 'I'll tell you what it means. Tis a circus, or mayhap a wild-beast show, or somethin' of that sort. They're carryvans, leastways, and they're makin' an early start. Depend on it, that's what 'tis, Muster Alick!'
Alick whistled.
'I shouldn't wonder, Ned. You've just hit it. It's a circus! Let's go closer. Who knows but they might give us a lift on the road to London!'
Ned shook his head; he was extremely doubtful as to that. Such civility was not by any means the rule of the road.
As the boys drew nearer, they felt sure it must be a wild-beast show, from the rumble of subdued roars, as if from pent-up animals, and the chatter of birds that resounded from the depths of the caravans in which the inmates were, evidently, disturbed from their slumbers by the early move. Horses were being put to, and men were running to and fro, but Alick and Ned felt shy of accosting any one of them.
They hung back and watched eagerly.
'Hilloa, you two shavers! Whatever do you want loafing round here at this time o' morning? Say, can't yer?'
The shrill, loud voice came from the window of a house-caravan, and a woman's head, stuck all over with curl-papers, was thrust out to stare intently at the new-comers.
'We are going up to London—on business,' said Alick, mustering up courage, and speaking as manfully as he could. 'And,' he moved up closer to say, 'we thought that, perhaps, you would give us a lift as far as you could. I'll give you a shilling!'
The boy spoke with the air as though shillings were plentiful enough. But, in truth, he had only two half-crowns of his own in the world; they were the entire amount of his savings, which he had brought on setting forth in life.
The woman with the curl-papers stared hard down at the two young strangers before she answered, not so ill-naturedly—
'Well, I don't much mind, if so be as one of you gits on these yer steps, and has a ride along of us. The t'other can git on to one of the beasteses' vans at the back. 'Twon't break no bones if you do, as I can see.' With a reassuring nod, she then withdrew her curl-papers into the interior of her moving home.
'You'd best go aside her, I suppose, Muster Alick,' whispered Ned. 'I'll hang on to that van yonder;' and he took himself off in the direction to which the woman had seemed to point.
'The missus said as I might have a ride on the back of this van,' said he, meekly enough, to a man in his shirt-sleeves, who was too busy with the bars of the van to look up at the speaker.
'All right! If so be as she says so, it's got to be, I reckon!' he growled; and Ned swung himself up behind, trying hard to make out, as the procession moved off slowly and ponderously at last, what sort of beasts were on the other side of the boards he was leaning against. Suppose they were lions, or suppose the boards got loose? The fisher-lad, whom storm and tempest on the deep could not dismay, felt a bit creepy. Setting his ear close to the wood, he could distinctly hear hideous growls, as if some savage creature, maddened by hunger, were ready to break out and leap upon him. What would granny say if she could dream of his situation? But dashing his hand across his sleepy eyes, Ned hastily told himself there must be no harking back, no thinking of what granny or anybody else at Northbourne would say or do. It must be good-bye, for ever, to the old life. The motion of the van, the rest after the long tramp, alike caused the country-bred boy to nod sleepily as he clung to his perch.
Presently, he was back again in Northbourne. It was Sunday afternoon, and, dressed in his best, the fisher-boy stood up straight in class to repeat his hymn to his earnest-eyed, sweet-faced teacher, 'Miss Theedory.' And the words he fought sleepily to remember must have been born of his nearness to the growling monsters within the caravan—
'Christian, dost thou see themOn the holy ground,How the troops of MidianProwl and prowl around?'
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.
It was a hot, stifling summer day, and perhaps Whitechapel never looked more grimy, more squalid, more sorrowful, perforce from its pathetic contrast to the summer beauty of the skies.
The pavement was so hot that the heat seemed to rise up, flouting itself in your very face.
In one particular alley, known as Mulliner's Rents, the heat seemed almost tropical. Possibly the dense overcrowding of this quarter with human life enhanced the burning sensation of the thick air breathed out and breathed in again, unrefreshed, by multitudes of lungs. Here, there, and everywhere human beings stood about idly. Groups of untidy women, in twos and threes, gossiped; lazy men lolled against the houses, smoking in sullen silence; and for every grown-up person there were fully a dozen of squalid children playing, shouting, staring, and squabbling with a vigour no heat could abate.
There was little traffic, so to say, in Mulliner's Rents; it was quite select in that one single respect. Nothing on wheels penetrated the unlovely quarter save a coster's barrow of fruit; unwholesome little yellow pears and cruelly green apples of the lowest type of apple-kind being the wares of the moment. It was truly a sad and sorrowful haunt, this of the man-made town; and so it seemed to the two travellers fresh from the God-made country—from the wholesome breezes of thecallersalt air of Northbourne—when they plunged into its midst.
'Courage, captain!' said Philip Price, when he noticed the blanching of the elder man's brown face and the unutterable loathing of horror that spoke out of every feature. 'We've got to put our shoulder to the wheel, and leave no stone unturned to find Alick, and carry him out of this pestilent hole.'
Philip Price, before his health broke down, had been for a few months doing duty as curate in a still more squalid colony of human nests than even this. When the sailor flinched, and hung back, Philip strode forward, determined to conquer, unheeding the battery of stares turned upon himself and his companion by the inhabitants, and the free-and-easy comments, of which they were by no means chary.
Already the captain and Philip had that day spent many fruitless hours in the search, when they hit on a fresh clue and an address in Mulliner's Rents. But here, even, difficulties bristled, and the tide of hopelessness was setting in upon both men when a wretched old crone was dragged out of a public-house to confront them, with dazed eyes and with a hateful odour of gin oozing from her whole person.
'Yes—well, yes,' she grudgingly admitted, in answer to the eager questions of the searchers; 'I does know a boy down with fever. What o' that? I ain't done no harm to him! He's 'ad the best I could offer; and five shillin's don't go far when there's sickness,' she ended, with a whimper, for she was maudlin with drink.
'Take us to that boy at once!' commanded Philip Price; for the captain's agitation unmanned him for the moment.
The wretched woman, awed by Philip's tone, complied. Perhaps, also, she obeyed, half in fear of the policeman, who had stepped up to join the gentlemen, and half in hope of getting more silver to spend on more drink.
Before half an hour was over Alick Carnegy was found. It was a terrible shock to the captain to recognise his boy in the squalid, dirty, delirious sufferer tossing wearily on a heap of sacks, on the grimy floor of an attic at the top of an evil-smelling, dilapidated house, to which the crone stumblingly conducted them.
'Merciful powers!' he groaned in dismayed horror.
'Hush!' enjoined Philip. 'Be as calm as you can. I believe the poor little chap is off his head; but, if there's a gleam of consciousness, it would send him over the precipice again to witness your agitation.'
There was small fear of the captain doing any further mischief; he was stunned into helplessness, and stood mute, trying to force himself to believe that the huddled heap of squalid misery was his very own son—smart, manly-looking Alick Carnegy. Though the captain was thus helpless, Philip Price seemed to know exactly what to do, and how to do it.
Getting the address of a doctor, he rushed off, in the first place, to fetch him. Then a bedstead and clean bedding were hired in. In an hour or two more the grimy room was swept and tidied as far as possible; the window propped up to stay open; the hapless, dirty sufferer cleansed and made straight; and beside his bed sat a gentle-faced, trained nurse, whose wholesome presence seemed to transform the room.
'Now, captain,' cheerily said Philip, who looked another man in the excitement, 'you are going to take a bit of advice from me, I hope. You will go straight back to Brattlesby by the night train. Your invalid at home must not be forgotten; anxiety is not the best sort of tonic for her. And I mean to remain here with your boy.'
'God bless you, Price!' The old sailor's voice trembled as he wrung Philip's hand. 'I never knew it was in you! Man, how one can be deceived! I thought your head was in the clouds, and that you didn't know your right hand from your left, practically speaking. Yes, yes! I'll run down to-night, and to-morrow I can return. I can trust my boy to you. Let nothing be spared; there's my purse. The doctor seemed a downright good sort of chap andsheis worth a gold-mine!' He pointed to the nurse, who was deftly bathing Alick's burning brow.
'What a splendid lad that Price is! He's the very salt of the earth!' murmured the old captain, as he threaded his way later through the unsavoury streets, now ablaze with lights that enticed and beckoned forth misery to stalk out from every dark corner. 'He is a true Christian—that's what it is! To think how my boys have ill-treated him, and here he is caring for Alick so tenderly that the poor boy's mother couldn't have done more, had she been spared! That's what you call returning good for evil, with a vengeance! Well, well, please God, I'll mend my own ways too! If I have my girl and my boy both restored to me, I'll be a different father to them from what I have been.'
It had been borne in upon the captain's mind, during the cloud of sorrow overshadowing his home, that he had, somehow, failed in his duty. And, with the courage that belongs only to the brave heart, he admitted his shortcomings.
There was tremendous excitement in Northbourne when it was known that Alick had actually been found. The Bunk was besieged by an ever-growing crowd, anxious to have the news verified. And where was Ned Dempster? The captain himself had to assure them his next step would be to discover the hapless Ned. Yes, yes; Ned also should be found and brought back. Not a stone should be left unturned until he rescued Ned likewise.
And the old sailor kept his word. On his return to London he and Philip Price took it in turn, between their spells of watching beside Alick's sick-bed, to seek out the wandering half of the show-circus. Time went on, but they were still unsuccessful, however. Not until the fever died out, and Alick, weak and exhausted, almost beyond building up, began to show faint signs of interest in his surroundings, could any questions be put to him. It was Philip Price who managed, without agitating the sufferer, to win from his feeble lips the name of the show. After that it was a tolerably easy matter to unearth its whereabouts.
On demanding Ned's release, a series of denials met them as to the boy being with the establishment at all. A storm of furious resistance which followed had to be quelled by the stern detective who accompanied the captain in his raid upon the show. Back in triumph to the Whitechapel attic they carried the trembling Ned, who had to be scoured and fed and clothed into his 'right mind' once again.
And this was running away secretly! thought each humiliated adventurer as they gazed, stony-eyed, at one another.
Shortly after, when Alick had crept sufficiently far out of the fever, looking a white shadow of his former self, the two boys were conveyed back to Northbourne, where a genuinely hearty welcome awaited them from the fisher-folk. Jerry Blunt, indeed, had suggested a triumphal arch with WELCOME in letters tall and wide. But that notion was instantly quashed by wiser heads.
'We be thankful to see 'em back,' judicially said Northbourne; 'but we ain't a-goin' to make "conquerin' heroes" of such young limbs!'
So it came to pass that the boys who thought it such a fine, manly thing to run away to sea, as boys will think, returned meekly, with shamed eyes, and hearts bounding joyfully at sight of the homes they had not dreamed were so dear until they had forfeited them, as they thought, for ever.