Now we take ten years at a leap.
So small a span of time has made no difference in the great house of Carne, or in its surroundings. Many times have the sand-hills sifted and shifted hither and thither. Many times have the great yellow banks out beyond lazily uncoiled themselves like shining serpents, and coiled themselves afresh into new entanglements for unwary mariners. In the narrow channels the bones of the unwary roll to and fro, and some have sunk down among the quicksands. Times without number have the mighty flats gleamed and gloomed. And the great house has watched it all stonily, and it all looks just the same.
But ten years work mighty changes in men and women, and still greater ones in small boys.
A tall straight-limbed young man strode swiftly among the sand-hummocks and came out on the flats, and stood gazing round him, with a great light in his eyes, and a towel round his neck.
He had a lean, clean-shaven face, to which the hair brushed back behind his ears lent a pleasant eagerness. But the face was leaner and whiter than it should have been, and the eyes seemed unnaturally deep in their hollows.
"Whew!" he whistled, as the wonder of the flats struck home. "A change, changes, and half a change, and no mistake! And all very much for the better--in most respects. The bishop said I'd find it rather different from Whitechapel, and he was right! Very much so! Dear old chap!"
It was ten o'clock of a sweet spring morning. The brown ribbed flats gleamed and sparkled and laughed back at the sun with a thousand rippling lips. The cloudless blue sky was ringing with the songs of many larks.
The young man stood with his braces slipped off his shoulders, and looked up at the larks. Then he characteristically, flung up a hand towards them, and cried them a greeting in the famous words of that rising young poet, Mr. Robert Browning, "God's in His heaven! All's well with the world!--Well! Well! Ay--very, very well!" And then, with a higher flight, in the words of the old sweet singer which had formed part of the morning lesson--"Praise Him, all His host!" And then, as his eye caught the gleam of the distant water, he resumed his peeling in haste.
"Ten thousand souls--and bodies, which are very much worse--to the square mile there, and here it looks like ten thousand square miles to this single fortunate body. . . . That sea must be a good mile away. . . . The run alone will be worth coming for. . . ."
He had girt himself with a towel by this time, and fastened it with a scientific twist. . . . "Now for a dance on the Doctor's nose," and he sped off on the long stretch to the water.
The kiss of the salt air cleansed him of the travail of the slums as no inland bathing had ever done. The sun which shone down on him, and the myriad broken suns which flashed up at him from every furrow of the rippled sand, sent new life chasing through his veins. He shouted aloud in his gladness, and splashed the waters of the larger pools into rainbows, and was on and away before they reached the ground.
And so, to the sandy scum of the tide, and through it to deep water, and a manful breasting of the slow calm heave of the great sea; with restful pauses when he lay floating on his back gazing up into the infinite blue; and deep sighs of content for this mighty gift of the freedom of the shore and the waves. And a deeper sigh at thought of the weary toilers among whom he had lived so long, to whom such things were unknown, and must remain so.
But there!--he had done his duty among them to the point almost of final sacrifice. There was duty no less exigent here, though under more God-given conditions. So--one more ploughing through deep waters, arm over arm, side stroke with a great forward reach and answering lunge. Then up and away, all rosy-red and beaded with diamonds, to the clothing and duty of the work-a-day world.
"Grim old place," he chittered as he ran, and his eye fell on Carne for the first time. "Grand place to live . . . if she lived there too. . . . Great saving in towels that run home. . . . Now where the dickens . . . ?"
He looked about perplexedly, then began casting round, hither and thither, like a dog on a lost scent.
"Hang it! I'm sure this was the place. . . . I remember that sand-hill with its hair all a-bristle."
He poked and searched. He scraped up the sand with his hands in case they should have got buried, but not a rag of his clothes could he find.
Stay! Not a rag? What's that? Away down a gully between two hummocks, as if it had attempted escape on its own account--a blue sock which he recognised as his own.
He pounced on it with a whoop, dusted one foot free of the dry, soft sand, and put the sock on.
"It's a beginning," he said, quaintly enough, "but----!" But obviously more was necessary before he could return home. He searched carefully all round, but could not find another thread. He climbed the sliding side of the nearest sand-hill, and looked cautiously about him. But the whole place was a honeycomb of gullies, and the clothing of a thousand men might have hidden in them and never been seen again.
He sat down in the warm sand and cogitated. He looked at his single towel, and at the wire-grass bristling sparsely through the sand, and wondered if it might be possible to construct a primitive raiment out of such slight materials. But his deep-set eyes never ceased their vigilant outlook.
Something moved behind the rounded shoulder of a hill in front. It might be only the loping brown body of a rabbit, but he was after it like a shot.
When he topped the hill he saw a naked white foot slipping out of sight into a dark hole like a big burrow. He leaped down the hill, and stretched a groping arm into the hole. It lighted on squirming flesh. His hand gripped tightly that which it had caught, and a furious assault of blows, scratches, bites, and the frantic tearings of small fingers strove to loosen it. But he held tight, and inch by inch drew his prisoner out--a small boy with dark hair thick with sand, and dark eyes blazing furiously.
He was stark naked, and held in his hand a small weapon consisting of a round stone with a hole in the centre, into which a wooden handle had been thrust and bound with string. With this, as he lay on his back, now that he had space to use it, he proceeded to lash out vigorously at his captor, who still held on to his ankle in spite of the punishment his wrist and arm were receiving.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" said the young man in the towel, dodging the blows as well as he could. "What in Heaven's name are you? Ancient Briton? Bit of the Stone Age?"
"Le' me go or I'll kill you," howled the prisoner.
"No, don't! You're strong: be merciful. Hello!" as a fresh attack took him in the rear, and his bare back resounded to the blows of a weapon similar to the one that was pounding his arm. "You young savages! Two to one, and an unarmed man!"
He loosed the ankle and made a quick dive at the brown thrashing arm, and, having secured it, lifted the wriggling youngster and tucked him under his arm like a parcel. Then, in spite of the struggles of his prisoner, he turned on the new-comer and presently held him captive in similar fashion.
They bit and tore and wriggled like a pair of little tiger-cats, but the arms that held them were strong ones if the face above was thin and worn and gentle.
"Stop it!" He knocked their heads together, and squeezed the slippery little bodies under his arms till the breath was nearly out of them, and took advantage of the moment of gasping quiescence to ask, "Will you be quiet if I let you down?"
They intimated in jerks that they would be quiet.
"Drop those drumsticks, then."
First one, then the other weapon dropped into the sand. He put his foot on them and stood the boys on their feet.
"Drumsticks!" snorted one, his sandy little nose all a-quiver.
"Well, neither am I a drum," said their captor good-humouredly. "Now what's the meaning of all this? Who are you? Or what are you?"
They were fine sturdy little fellows, of ten or eleven, he judged, their skins tanned brown and coated with dry sand, quick dark eyes and dark flushed faces all aglow still with the light of battle. They stood panting before him, no whit abashed either by their defeat or their lack of clothing. He saw their eyes settle longingly on the clubs under his feet. He stooped and picked them up, and the dark eyes followed them anxiously.
"Promise not to use them on me and I'll give them back to you."
The brown hands reached out eagerly, and he handed the weapons over.
"Now sit down and tell me all about it." And he sat down himself in the sand.
He saw them glance towards the mouth of their retreat, and shook his head.
"You can't manage it. I'd have you out before you were half way in. You're prisoners of war on parole. Now then, who are you?"
"Carr'ns."
"Carr'ns, are you? Well, you look it, whatever it means. Do you live in that hole?"
"Sometimes."
"Never wear any clothes?"
"Sometimes."
"I see. Much jollier without, isn't it? But, you see, I can't go home like this. So perhaps you won't mind telling me why you stole my things and where they are?"
"Carr'ns don't steal," jerked one.
"Carr'ns only take things," jerked the other.
"I see. It's a fine point, but it comes to much the same thing unless you return what you take. So perhaps you'll be so good as to turn up my things. Where are they?"
One of the boys nodded towards the burrow.
"That's the stronghold, is it? Not much room to turn about in, I should say."
They declined to express an opinion.
"May I go in and have a look?"
But that was not in the terms of their parole, and they sprang instantly to the defence of their hold. The young man of the towel was beginning to wonder if another pitched battle would be necessary before he could recover his missing property, when a diversion was suddenly created by an innocent outsider.
A foolish young rabbit hopped over the shoulder of a neighbouring sand-hill to see what all the disturbance was about. In a moment the round stone clubs flew and the sense was out of him before he had time to twinkle an eye or form any opinion on the subject. With a whoop the boys sprang at him and resolved themselves instantly into a pyrotechnic whirl of arms and legs and red-hot faces and flying sand, as they fought for their prey.
"Little savages!" said the young man, and did his best to separate them.
But he might as well have attempted argument with a Catherine wheel in the full tide of its short life. And so he took to indiscriminate spanking wherever bare slabs of tumbling flesh gave him a chance, and presently, under the influence of his gentle suasion the combatants separated and stood panting and tingling. Thecausus bellihad disappeared beneath the turmoil of the encounter, but suddenly it came to light again under the workings of twenty restless little toes. They both instantly dived for it, and the fight looked like beginning all over again, when the long white arm shot in and secured it and held it up above their reach.
"I say! Are you boys or tiger-cats?" he asked, as he examined them again curiously.
"Carr'ns," panted one, while both gazed at the rabbit like hounds at the kill.
"Yes, you said that before, but I'm none the wiser. Where do you live when you're clothed and in your right minds?--if you ever are," he added doubtfully.
One of them jerked his head sharply in the direction of the great gray house away along the shore.
"There?"
Another curt nod. He had rarely met such unnatural reserve, even in Whitechapel, where pointed questions from a stranger are received with a very natural suspicion. Here, as there, it only made him the more determined to get to the bottom of it. But Whitechapel had taught him, among other things, that round-about is sometimes the only way home.
"Why do you want to fight over a dead rabbit?"
"I killed it."
"Didn't. 'Twas me."
"Well now, if you ask me, I should say you both killed it. How did you become such capital shots?"
But to tell that would have needed much talk, so they only stared up at him. He saw he must go slowly.
"Those are first-rate clubs. Did you make them?"
Nods from both.
"Do you know?"--he picked one up and examined it carefully--"these are exactly what the wild men used to make when they lived here a couple of thousand years ago and used to go about naked just as you do." They listened eagerly, with wide unwinking eyes, which asked for more. "They used to stain themselves all blue"--the idea so evidently commended itself to them that he hastened to add--"but you'd better not try that or you'll be killing yourselves. They used the juice of a plant which you can't get and it did them no harm. Can you swim?"
Both heads shook a reluctant negative.
"Can't? Oh, you ought to swim. You can fight, I know, and you are splendid shots--and good runners, I'll be bound. Why haven't you learnt to swim?"
"Won't let us."
"Who won't let you?"
"HIM."
"Who's 'him'?"
"Sir Denzil."
"Is that your father?"
"Gran'ther
"I see. I wonder if he'd let me teach you. Every boy ought to learn to swim. You'd like to?"
The black heads left no possible doubt on that point.
"Well, I'll call on him and ask his permission. Now, what are your names?"
"Denzil Carr'n."
"And you?"
"Denzil Carr'n."
"But you can't both be Denzil Carr'n."
"I'm Jack."
"I'm Jim."
"And how am I to tell who from which? You're as like as two peas."
They looked at one another as if it had never struck them.
"Stand up and let me see who's the biggest. No"--with a shake of the head, as they stood side by side--"that doesn't help. You're both of a tires Now, let me see. Jack's got a big bump on the forehead,"--at which Jim grinned with reminiscent enjoyment. "That will identify him for a few days, anyhow, and by that time I shall have got to know you. Why hasn't your grandfather let you learn to swim?"
"Devil of a coast," said Jack, loosing his tongue at last.
"Damned quicksands," said Jim in emulation. "Suck and suck and never let go."
"We must be careful, then. You must tell me all about them. My name's Eager--Charles Eager. I've come to take Mr. Smythe's place at Wyvveloe. Do you two go to school?"
Emphatically No from both shaggy heads, and undisguised aversion to the very thought of such a thing.
"But you can't go on like this, you know. What will you do when you grow up?"
"Go fighting," said Jack of the bumped forehead.
"Quite so. But you don't want to go as privates, I suppose. And to be officers you must learn many things."
This was a new view of the matter. It seemed to make a somewhat unfavourable impression. It provided food for thought to Eager himself also, and he sat looking at them musingly with new and congenial vistas opening before him.
He had in him a great passion for humanity--for the uplifting and upbuilding of his fellows. Here apparently was virgin soil ready to his hand, and he wanted to set to work on it at once.
"You know how to read and write, I suppose?"
"We can readRobinson Crusoe--round the pictures."
"Of course. Good old Robinson Crusoe! He's taught many a boy to read."
"He's in there," said Jim, nodding vaguely in the direction of their burrow.
"That's a good ides. Let us have a look at him." And Jim started off to fetch Robinson out. "And you might bring my things out too, Jim. My back's getting raw with the sun."
Jim grinned and crept into the hole, and reappeared presently with an armful of clothing and a richly bound volume.
Eager put on his other sock and his shirt and trousers, and then sat down again and picked up the book. It was an unusually fine edition of the old story, with large coloured plates, and had not been improved by its sojourn in the land.
"Does your grandfather know you have this out here?"
Most decidedly not.
"I should take it back if I were you, or keep it wrapped in paper. It's spoiling with the sand and damp. It always hurts me to see a good book spoiled. Are there many more like this at the house?"
"Heaps,"--which opened out further pleasant prospects if the mine proved workable.
"Have you gone right through it?"
"Only 'bout the pictures."
"Well, if you're here to-morrow I'll begin reading it to you from the beginning. There must be quite three-quarters of it that you know nothing about. And as soon as I can, I'll call on your grandfather and have a talk with him about, the swimming and the rest. Can you write?"
"Not much," said Jack.
"Sums?"
Nothing of the kind and no slightest inclination that way.
"Now I must get back to my work," said Eager, as he finished dressing. "This is my first morning, and it's been holiday. I've been living for the last five years in the East End of London, where the people are all crowded into dirty rooms in dirty streets, and I came to have a took at the sea and the sands. It's like a new life. Now, good-bye," and he shook hands politely with each in turn. "I shall be on the look-out for you to-morrow."
He strode away through the sand-hills towards Wyvveloe, and the boys stood watching till he disappeared.
"My rabbit!" cried Jim, as his eye lighted on the old gage of battle lying on the sand, and he dashed at it.
"Mine!" and in a moment they were at it hammer and tongs. And the Rev. Charles went on his way, not a little elated at thoughts of this new field that lay open before him.
"Mrs. Jex," said Eager, to the old woman in whose cottage he had taken his predecessor's rooms, "who lives in yon big house on the shore?"
Mrs. Jex straightened her big white cap nervously. She had hardly got used yet to this new "passon," who was so very different from the last, and who had already in half a day asked her more questions than the last one did in a year.
"Will it be Carne yo' mean, sir?"
"That's it,--Carne. Who lives there, and what kind of folks are they?"
"There's Sir Denzil an' there's Mr. Kennet----"
"Who's Mr. Kennet?"
"Sir Denzil's man, sir. An' there's the boys----'
"Ah, then, it's the boys I met on the shore, running wild and free, without a shirt between them."
"Like enough, sir. They do say 'at----"
"Yes?"---as she came to a sudden stop.
"'Tain't for the likes o' me, sir, to talk about my betters," said Mrs. Jex, with a doubtful shake of the head.
"Oh, the parson hears everything, you know, and he never repeats what he hears. What do they say about the boys? Are they twins? They're as like as can be, and just of an age, as far as I could see."
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Jex, with another shake, "there's more to that than I can say, an' I'm not that sure but what it's more'n anybody can say."
"Why, what do you mean? That sounds odd."
"Ay, 'tis odd. Carne's seen some queer things, and this is one of 'em, so they do say."
"I'd like to hear. I rather took to those boys. They seem to be growing up perfect little savages, learning nothing and----"
"Like enough, sir."
"And I thought of calling on their grandfather and seeing if he'd let me take them in hand."
"Yo'd have yore hands full, from all accounts."
"That's how I like them. They've been a bit overfull for a good many years, but this offers the prospect of a change anyway."
"Well, yo'd best see Dr. Yool. If yo' con get him talking he con tell yo' more'n onybody else. He were there when they were born--one of 'em onyway."
"Worse and worse? You're a most mysterious old lady. What's it all about?"
"Yo'd better ask t' doctor. He knows. I only knows what folks say, and that's mostly lies as often as not. Yore dinner's all ready. Yo' go and see t' doctor after supper and ax him all about it."
After dinner he took a ramble round his new parish. He had arrived a couple of days sooner than expected and the head shepherd was away from home, so he had had to find his way about alone and make the acquaintance of his sheep as best he could.
Mrs. Jex, who had also acted as landlady for the departed Smythe, had already thanked God for the change. For Smythe, a lank, boneless creature, who cloaked a woeful lack of zeal for humanity under cover of an unwrinkling robe of high observance, had found the atmosphere of Wyvveloe uncongenial. It lacked the feminine palliatives to which he had been accustomed. He had grown fretful and irritable--"a perfec' whimsy!" as Mrs. Jex put it. The sturdy fisher-farmer folk laughed him and his ways to scorn, and the whole parish was beginning to run to seed when, to the relief of all concerned, he succeeded in obtaining his transfer to a sphere better suited to his peculiar requirements.
Mrs. Jex had had experience of Mr. Eager for one night and half a day, and she already breathed peacefully, and had thanked God for the change. And it was the same in every cottage into which the Rev. Charles put his lean, smiling face that day.
Those simple folk, who looked death in the face as a necessary part of their daily life, knew a man when they saw one, and there was that in Charles Eager's face which would never be in Mr. Smythe's if he lived to be a hundred--that keen hunger for the hearts and souls and lives of men which makes one man a pastor, and the lack of which leaves another but a priest.
And if the cottagers instinctively recognised the difference, how much more that bluff guardian--beyond their inclinations at times--of their outer husks, Dr. Yool!
When Jane Tod, his housekeeper, ushered the stranger into his room Dr. Yool was mixing himself a stiff glass of grog and compounding new fulminations, objurgative and expletive, tending towards the cleansing of Wynsloe streets and backyards.
Miss Tod was a woman in ten thousand, and had been specially created for the post of housekeeper to Dr. Yool. She was blessed with an imperturbable placidity which the irascible doctor had striven in vain to ruffle for over twenty years. When he came in of a night, tired and hungry and bursting with anger at the bovine stupidity of his patients, she let him rave to his heart's relief without changing a hair, and set food and drink before him, and agreed with all he said, even when he grew personal, and she never talked back. When she showed in Mr. Eager she simply opened the sitting-room door, said "New passon," and closed it behind him.
"Will you let me introduce myself, Dr. Yool, seeing that the vicar is not here to do it? I am Charles Eager, vice Smythe, translated. You aid I are partners, you see, so I thought the sooner we became acquainted the better."
"H'mph!" grunted Dr. Yool, eyeing his visitor keenly over the top of the glass as he sipped his red-hot grog.
"Charles Eager, eh? And what are you eager for, Mr. Eager?"
"Men, women, children--bodies and souls."
"You leave their bodies to me," growled Dr. Yool in his brusquest manner. "Their souls '11 be quite as much as you can tackle."
But Eager saw through his brusquerie. A very beautiful smile played over the keen, earnest face as he said:
"When you separate them it's too late for either of us to do them any good."
"Separate them! Takes me all my time to keep 'em together."
"Exactly! So we'll make better headway if we work together and overlap."
"Right! We'll work together, Mr. Eager." And the doctor's big brown hand met the other's in a friendly grip. "You've got more bone in you than the late invertebrate. He was a sickener. Hand like a fish. Have some grog?
"I don't permit myself grog. It wouldn't do, you know. But I'll have a pipe. I see you don't object to smoke."
"Smoke and grog are the only things a man can look forward to with certainty after a stiff day's work. The sooner you can get your flock to cleanse out the sheepfolds the better, Mr. Shepherd. We had typhus here ten years ago, and it gave them such a scare that for one year the place was fairly sweet. Now it stinks as bad as ever, and I'll be hanged if I can stir them."
"I'll stir them, or I'll know the reason why!"
Dr. Yool studied the deep-set eyes and firm mouth before him for a good minute, and then said:
"Gad! I believe you will if any man can."
"Do you know East London?"
"Not intimately. I've seen enough of it to strengthen my preference for clean sand."
"This is heaven compared with it. I'm going to open these people's eyes to their advantages."
"You'll be a godsend if you can."
"I want you to tell me all you think fit about two naked boys I came across on the shore this morning. Carr'ns, they called themselves. Fine little lads, and next door to savages, as far as I could judge. I tried to pump Mrs. Jex, and she referred me to you."
Dr. Yool puffed contemplatively, and looked at him through the smoke.
"That's the problem of Carne," he said slowly at last--"the insoluble problem."
"What's the problem? And why insoluble?"
"One of them is heir to Caine; the other is baseborn. No man on earth knows which is which."
"Any woman?"
"Ah--there you have it! Can you make a woman speak against her will--and her interest?" he added, as a hopeful look shot through Eager's eyes.
"It's a strong combination against one. All the same, there is no reason why those boys should grow up naked of mind as well as of body. They are surely close in age? They're as like as two peas--splendid little savages, both."
"There may be a week between them, not more." He puffed thoughtfully for several minutes again, and then said slowly: "If you can clothe them, body and mind, it will be a good work and a tough one. It's virgin soil and a big handful, and one of them's got a place in the world. I'll tell you the story for your guidance. I can trust it in your keeping. The old man would curse me, no doubt, but his time is past and the boys' is only coming. They are of more consequence."
And bit by bit he told him what he knew of the strange happenings which had led to the problem of Carne.
Eager followed him with keen interest.
"And was that first marriage genuine?" he asked.
"Very doubtful. I worried the old man till he went off to look into it, but when he came back he would say nothing. It makes no difference, however, for we don't know one boy from the other."
"And the mother--the one who lived?" asked Eager, following out his own line of thought.
"She stayed on at Carne with her mother for about a year. Then she disappeared, and, as far as I know, nothing has been heard of her since. She could solve the problem doubtless, but if she swore to it no one would believe her."
"She believed in her own marriage, of course?"
"Doubtless. And the time may come when she will put in her claim, if she is alive."
"That's what I was thinking. And the father of the boys?"
"The man he killed--unintentionally, no doubt, still after threats--had powerful friends. They would have exacted every penalty the law permitted. Denzil no doubt considered he could enjoy life better in other ways. If he is alive he is abroad. He has never shown face here since."
"A complicated matter," said Eager thoughtfully, "and likely to become more so. Where would the old man's death land things?"
"God knows. I've puzzled over it many a day and night."
"And meanwhile Sir Denzil allows the youngsters to run to seed?"
"Exactly. He takes absolutely no interest in them. If one of them died it would be all right for the other. He would be Carron of Carne in due course and no questions asked. But the complication of the two has made him look askance at both."
"And the old woman--Mrs. Lee?"
"She lives on at Carne, biding her time. I have no doubt she knows which is her grandson, but she won't speak till the time comes."
"And how does Sir Denzil treat her?"
"They say he has never spoken to her for the last ten years--never a word since that day she and her daughter brought the two children in to him and started the game. She tends the house and does the cooking, and so on. Sir Denzil lives in his own rooms, and his man Kennet looks after him. It's a very long time since I saw him. We never got on well together. He killed that poor girl, dragging her here as he did, and I told him so. And he chose to say that I ought to have been able to recognise t'other baby from which. Much he knows about it," snorted the doctor.
"And what does he do with himself? Is he a student?"
"Drinks, I imagine. I meet his man about now and again, and if it's like master like man there's not much doubt about it."
"Poor little fellows! I must get hold of them, doctor. I must have them. Now, how shall I set about it?"
"Better call on the old man and see what he says. His soul's in your charge, you know. I have my own opinion as to its probable ultimate destination, in spite of you. It'll be an experience, anyway."
"For me or for him?"
"Well, I was thinking of you at the moment."
"And not an over-pleasant one, you suggest?
"Oh, he's a gentleman, is the old man, if he is an old heathen. Gad! I'd like to go along with you, only it would upset your apple-cart and set you in the ditch."
"I'll see him in the morning," said Eager.
The struggle between the boys, which began before Mr. Eager was well out of sight, resulted in a bump on Jim's forehead similar to the one which already decorated Jack's, in a few additional scratches and bruises to both brown little bodies, and in Jim's temporary possession of the rabbit.
That point decided for the time being, they sat down in the hot sand to recover their wind, Jim holding his prey tightly by the ears on his off side, since a moment's lack of caution would result in its instant transfer to another owner.
"I'm going to learn to swim," said Jack.
"HE won't let us," said Jim.
Then, intent silence as a sand-piper came hopping along a ridge. It stopped at sight of them, and fixed them first with one inquiring eye and then with the other. Their hands felt for their little clubs. The sand-piper decided against them, and flew away with a cheep of derision.
Jim had dropped the rabbit for his club. Jack leaned over behind him and had it in a second. Jim hurled himself on him, and they were at it again hammer and tongs, and presently they were sitting panting again, and this time the rabbit was on Jack's off side, and, for additional security, wedged half under his sandy leg.
"We could tell him we'd asked HIM and HE said Yes," said Jim, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break.
"He'll go and ask HIM himself, and HE'LL say No," said Jack, with perfect understanding, in spite of the mixture of third persons.
"H'mph!" grunted Jim sulkily. "Wish HE was dead."
"There'd be somebody else."
From which remark you may gather that, where abstruse thinking met with little encouragement, Master Jack was the more thoughtful of the two.
"We'll go in and watch him when he goes in to-morrow," suggested Jim presently.
"They'd see us."
"Drat 'em! Let 'em. Who cares?"
"Means lickings. . . . And that Kennet he lays on a sight harder than he used to."
"Ever since we caught him in the rat-trap. He remembers it whenever he's licking us. . . . Soon as I'm a man I'm going to kill Kennet. It's the very first thing I shall do."
"I don't know," said Jack doubtfully. "He only licks us when HE tells him to."
"I should think so," snorted Jim, with scorn at the idea of anything else.
"HE always looks at us as if we were toads. Why does he?"
"Damned if I know," said Jack quietly. It sounded odd from his childish lips, but it had absolutely no meaning for him. It was simply one of the accomplishments they had picked up from Mr. Kennet.
An upward glance at the sun at the same moment suddenly accentuated a growing want inside him. He sprang up with a whoop, swinging his rabbit by the ears, and made for the hole in the sand-hill. Jim followed close on his heels, and presently, clad only in short blue knee-breeches of homely cut, and blue sailor jerseys, they were trotting purposefully through the shallows towards Carne and dinner, chattering brokenly as they went.
A grim old man watched them from an upper window till they padded silently round the corner out of sight. They ran in through the back porch, and so into the comfortable kitchen with its red-tiled floor and shining pans, and dark wood linen-presses round the walls.
Old Mrs. Lee, grandmother to one of them, turned from the fire to greet them.
"Ready for yore dinner, lads? And which on yo' killed to-day?"--as she caught sight of the rabbit.
"I did," from Jack.
"No--me," from Jim.
"Well, both of us, then," said Jack.
"Clivver lads! Now fall to." And they needed no bidding to the food she set before them. They were always hungry, and never criticised her provisioning.
Ten years had made very little change in Mrs. Lee. Indeed, if there was any change at all it was for the better. For, whereas in the previous times she had had grievous troubles and anxieties, during these last ten years she had had an object in life, not to say two, and lively subjects both of them.
The grim old man upstairs would have viewed the death of either of the boys with more than equanimity. At the first sudden upspringing of the trouble he had, indeed, fervently wished both out of the way. But consideration of the subject and much snuff brought him to just that much better a frame of mind that he ended by desiring short shrift for only one of them, and which one he did not care a snap. Either would be preferable to a Solway Carron, but the two together produced a complication which time would only intensify, unless Death stepped in and cut the knot.
In the beginning he watched Nance's and Mrs. Lee's treatment of them as closely as he could, without betraying his keen interest in the matter. His man, Kennet, had instructions to surprise, entrap, or coerce the secret out of the women in any way he could devise.
But the women laughed to scorn their clumsy attempts at espionage, and meted out equal justice and mercy to both boys alike. Never by one single word or look of special favour bestowed on either did master or man come one step nearer to the knowledge they sought.
Mr. Kennet, indeed, undertook, for a consideration, to make Nance his lawful, wedded wife, with a view to getting at the truth. But when he deviously approached Nance herself he received so hot a repulse, which was not by any means confined to mere verbal broadsides, that he beat a hasty retreat, with marks of the encounter on his face which took longer to heal than did his ardour to cool.
She was a handsome, strapping girl, with a temper like hot lava, and she honestly believed herself Denzil Carron's lawful wife, though her mother still cast doubts upon it.
"You!" Nance labelled Mr. Kennet after this episode, and concentrated in that single word all the scorn of her outraged feelings; and thereafter, till she took herself off to parts unknown, made Mr. Kennet's life a burden to him, yet caused him to thank his stars that the matter had gone no farther.
And the grim old man upstairs? From the women's treatment of the boys--and he spied upon them in ways, and at times, and by means, of which they had no slightest idea--he had learned nothing. And so he waited and waited, with infinite patience, and hoped that time might bring some solution of the problem, even though it came by the hand of Death. And then, as Death stood aloof, and the boys grew and waxed strong, and developed budding personalities, he watched them still more keenly, in the hope of finding in their dispositions and tempers some indications which might help him in his quest.
Plain living was the order of those days at Caine; and he who had hobnobbed with princes, and had been notorious for his prodigality in time when excess rioted through the land, lived now as simply as the simplest yeoman of the shire. And that not of necessity, for his income was large, and, since he spent nothing, the accumulations were rollicking up into high figures. The candle had simply burnt itself out. He had not a desire left in life, unless it was to get the better of these women who had dusted his latter days with ashes.
Of his son, the origin of this culminating and enduring trouble, he had heard nothing for many years. He did not even know whether he was alive or dead, and, save for the confusion which lack of definite knowledge on that head might cause in the table of descent, he did not much care.
He had looked to the gallant captain to raise the house of Carne to its old standing in the world--a poor enough ambition indeed, but still all that was left him. By his hot-headed folly Captain Denzil had struck himself out of the running, and by degrees, as this became more and more certain, his father's interest in life transferred itself from the impossible to the remotely possible, even though the possibility was all of a tangle.
For a time he supplied the prodigal freely with money, and the prodigal dispensed it in riotous living. The fact that by rights he ought to have been cooling his heels in prison gave a zest to his enjoyments, and he denied himself none.
His father buoyed his hopes, as long as hope was possible, on his son's return in course of time to his native land, and to those aristocratic circles of which he had previously been so bright an ornament. But time passed and brought no amelioration of his prospects. Louis Philippe still occupied the French throne. The death of d'Aumont was not forgotten. Sir Denzil's quiet soundings of the authorities were always met with the invariable, and perfectly obvious, reply, that Captain Carron was at liberty to return at any time--at his own risk; a reply which only strengthened Captain Carron's determination to remain strictly where he was.
He lived for a time, as Kennet told us, in Paris, under an assumed name of course, but under the very noses of the men whose implacable memories debarred him from returning home. It was added spice to his already highly spiced life. But high living demands high paying, and Captain Denzil's demands grew and grew till at last his father--who would have withheld nothing for a definite object, but saw no sense in aimless prodigality--flatly refused anything beyond a moderate allowance. From that time communications ceased, and whether and how his son lived Sir Denzil knew, not, and, from all appearance; cared little. He had ceased to be a piece of value in the old man's game.
Pending direction, from above or below or from the inside, Sir Denzil left the boys to develop as they might. A magnanimous, even a reasonably balanced nature would have assumed the burden and done its best for both alike, and trusted to Time and Providence for a solution of the problem. But no one ever miscalled Sir Denzil Carron to the extent of imputing to him any faintest trace of magnanimity. Time he had some hopes of. Providence he had no belief in. He was simply the product of his age: an unmitigated old heathen, with but one aim in life--the resuscitation of the house of Carne, and to that end ready to sacrifice himself, or any other, body, soul, and spirit.
That both boys were of his blood he was satisfied, but the unsolvable doubt as to which was the rightful heir cancelled all his feelings for them and set them both outside the pale of his doubtful favours.
At times, in pursuance of his search for leading signs, he had sent for the boys, talked to them, tried to get below the surface. But in his presence they crept into their innermost shells and became dull and dumb, and impervious even to his biting sarcasms on their appearances, tastes, and habits.
They feared and hated the grim old tyrant, with his peaked white face and thin scornful lips and gold snuff-box. There was no kindliness for them in the keen dark eyes, and they felt it without understanding why. They would slink out of his presence like whipped puppies, but once out of it he would hear their natural spirits rising as they raced for the kitchen, and their merry shouts as they sped across the flats to their own devices.
When that was possible he watched them unawares, on the look-out always for what he sought. But such chances were few, for natural instinct caused the boys to remove themselves as far away from him as possible, and the sand-hills offered an inviting field and unlimited scope for their abilities.