Chapter Five.“Oh, dear!” groaned Aleck. “How am I to face him?” and he went on till only a few steps divided him from the cultivated garden, where he stopped again. “I wonder where he is. In the study, I suppose—write, write, write, at that great history. Can’t I leave it and get into my room with a bad headache? It’s only true. It aches horribly. I’ll send word by Jane that I’m too poorly to come down. Bah!” muttered the boy. “What nonsense; he’d come up to me directly with something for me to take. I wonder whether he is in his room or out in the garden. He mustn’t see me till I’ve been up into my room and done something to my hair. Perhaps he’s in the summer-house and I can get in and upstairs without his seeing me. Oh, if I only—”“Hullo! Aleck, lad, what are you doing there? Why are you so late? Dinner has been ready quite an hour.”The captain had suddenly appeared from behind a great clump of waving tamarisk, and stood looking down at the lad.“I was coming to see if you were in sight, and—why, what in the name of wonder is the matter with you? Where have you been? Why, by all that’s wonderful, you’ve been fighting!”“Yes, uncle,” said the lad, with a gasp of relief, for it seemed to him as if, instead of taking the bold plunge, swimming fashion, he had been suddenly dragged in.“I thought so,” cried the captain, angrily. “Here—no, stop; come up to the house, to my room. We can’t talk here.”“I don’t see why not,” thought the lad, dismally. “There’s plenty of room, and we could get it over more easily, even if he does get into a furious passion with me.”But the captain had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry words that was to come.He did not glance round nor speak, but strode on, evidently growing more and more out of temper, the lad thought, for as he walked he kept on kicking the loose shelly covering of the path over the flower beds, while the silence kept up seemed to Aleck ominous in the extreme.“But, never mind,” he thought; “it must soon be over now. What a sight I must look, though! He seemed to be astonished.”Culprit-like, the lad followed close at his uncle’s heels till the side entrance was reached, where, with what seemed to be another sign of his angry perturbation, the old officer stopped short, rested one hand upon the door-post to steady himself, and began to very carefully do what was not the slightest degree necessary, to wit: he scraped his shoes most carefully over and over again—for there was not even a scrap of dust to remove.“Stand back a moment, sir,” cried the captain, suddenly. “Jane has heard us, and is carrying in the dinner. Don’t let her see you in that state.”Aleck shrank to one side, and then as a door was heard to close started forward again in obedience to his uncle’s order.“Now in, quick—into the study.”He led the way sharply, and Aleck sprang after him, but the ascent of so many steps gave the maid time to re-open the little dining-room door, from which point of vantage she was able to catch a glimpse of the lad’s face, which looked so startling that she uttered an involuntary “Oh, my!” before letting her jaw drop and pausing, her mouth wide open and a pair of staring eyes.“Come in!” roared the captain, angrily, as Aleck paused to turn for a moment at the door; and instead of entering, stood shaking his head deprecatingly at the maid, while his lips moved without a sound escaping them as he tried to telegraph to one who took much interest in his appearance: “Not hurt much. I couldn’t help it!”He started violently then at his uncle’s stern command, uttered like an order to a company of men to step into some deadly breach, and the next moment the door was closed and the old man was scowling at him from the chair into which he had thrown himself, sending it back with the legs, giving forth a sound like a harsh snort as they scraped over the bare oaken floor.Aleck drew a long deep breath and tried to tighten up his nerves, ready for what he felt was going to be a desperate encounter with the fierce-looking old man whom from long experience he knew to be harsh, stern, and troubled with a terrible temper, which made him morose and strange at times, his fits lasting for days, during which periods he would hardly speak a word to his nephew, leaving him to himself save when he came upon him suddenly to see that he was not wasting time, but going on with one or other of the studies which the old man supervised, or working in the garden.“I want you, though you lead this lonely life with me, Aleck,” he would say, frowning heavily the while, “to grow up fairly learned in what is necessary for a young man’s education, so that some day, when I am dead and gone out of this weary world, you may take your place as a gentleman—not an ornamental gentleman, whose sole aim is to find out how he can best amuse himself, but a quiet, straightforward, honourable gentleman, one whom, if people do not admire because his ways are not the same as theirs, they will find themselves bound to respect.”These strange fits of what Aleck, perhaps instigated by Jane, their one servant, called “master’s temper,” would be followed by weeks of mental blue sky, when the black clouds rolled away and the sun of a genial disposition shone out, and the old man seemed as if he could not lavish enough affection upon his nephew. The result of all this was that the boy’s feelings towards the old man, who had always occupied the position of father to him as well as preceptor, were a strange mingling of fear of his harshness, veneration of his learning and power of instructing him in everything he learned, and love. For there were times when Aleck would say, gloomily, to himself, “I’m sure uncle thoroughly hates me and wishes me away,” while there were times when he was as happy as the days were long, and ready to feel certain that the old man loved him as much as if he were his own child.“He must,” thought the boy, “or he wouldn’t have nursed and coddled me up so when I had that fever and the doctor told Jane that he had done all he could, and that I should die—go out with the tide next day. That’s what I like in uncle,” he mused, “when he isn’t out of temper—he’s so clever. Knew ever so much better than the doctor. What did he say then? ‘Doctors are all very well, Aleck, but there are times when the nurse is the better man—that is, when it’s a cock nurse and not a hen. You had a cock nurse, boy, and I pulled you through.’”But the love was in abeyance on this particular morning at the Den, as the old man had named his out-of-the-way solitary dwelling, and Aleck felt that the place was rightly named as he stood ready to face the savage-looking denizen of the place, who, after staring him down with a pair of fiercely glowing eyes, suddenly opened upon him with:“Now, then, sir! So you’ve been fighting?”“Yes, uncle,” said the boy, meekly.“Who with?”“Some of the Rockabie boys, uncle.”“Hah! And in the face of all that I have said and taught you about your being different by your birth and education from the young ragamuffin rout of Rockabie harbour! Cannot you run over there in your boat and do what business you have to carry out without being mixed up in some broil?”“No, uncle.”“Disgraceful, sir! A gentleman’s education should teach him that his weapons are words properly applied, and not tooth and nail, blows and kicks.”“I never bit or kicked, uncle,” said Aleck, sullenly.“Of course not, sir; and don’t retort upon me in that insolent way. You know perfectly well that I was speaking metaphorically. Did you for a moment imagine I thought you used your teeth and claws like a savage dog?”“No, uncle.”“Then don’t reply to me like that. Of course I would know you would use your fists. Look at your knuckles!” thundered the old man.Aleck looked at those parts of his person dismally, and they looked bad. For the skin was damaged in three places, and the nail of his left thumb was split in a painful way.“Disgusting,” said the old man. “I trusted you to go over there, and you come back a disreputable wreck. All my teaching seems to be thrown away upon a pugnacious untrustworthy boy.”“I’m not pugnacious, uncle, if they’d let me alone.”“Bah! You ought to be above noticing the scum of the place.”“I am, uncle, and I don’t notice them,” pleaded the boy; “it’s they who will notice me.”“How, pray?”“I can’t go into the place without their mobbing me and calling me names.”“Contemptible! And pray, sir,” cried the old man, in harsh, sarcastic tones, “what do they call you?”“All sorts of things,” replied the boy, confusedly. “I can’t recollect now. Yes, I know; sometimes they shout ‘Fox’ or ‘Foxy’ after me.”“And pray why?”“Because they say I’ve just come out of the Den.”“Rubbish.”“At other times it’s ‘Spider.’”“Spider?”“Yes, uncle; because I’ve got such long legs.”“Worse and worse,” cried the old man. “To fight for that! It is childish.”“Oh, I didn’t fight for that, uncle!”“What for, then, pray, sir?”“Sometimes they lay wait for me and hide behind a smack or the harbour wall, and pelt me with shells and the nasty offal left about by the fishermen.”“Disgusting! The insolent young dogs! They deserve to be flogged. So that is why you fought this morning?”“Sometimes they throw pebbles and cobble stones, uncle,” said the boy, evasively. “And they’re so clever with them; they throw so well. I don’t like to be hit and hurt, uncle. I suppose I’ve got a bad temper. I do keep it under so long as they call me names and throw nasty, soft things, but when a stone hits me and hurts, something inside my chest seems to get loose, and I feel hot and burning. I want to hurt whoever threw as much as he hurt me.”“What!” cried the old man. “Haven’t I taught you, sir, that you must be above resenting the attacks of the vulgar herd?”“Yes, uncle.”“Of course. I have always had to bear those assaults, boy. And so the young ruffians threw stones at you?”Aleck hesitated.“It was heads and bits of fish to-day, uncle.”“The scum! The insolent scum! And some of the offal hit you?”“Well, no; nothing hit me, uncle. They followed me about all through the place, and shouted at me every time I came out of a shop.”“Bah! And because some young ragamuffins were insolent to you, my nephew must lower himself to their level. This is not the first time, sir. You have complained to me before, and you remember what I said to you one day when you came back after engaging in a most degrading scuffle.”“Yes, uncle.”“You promised me that should never occur again, after I had pointed out to you what your conduct ought to be, and how that the more you noticed these young rascals’ proceedings the worse it would be.”“Yes, uncle, but I couldn’t remember it to-day. You can’t tell how bad it was, and how hard to bear.”“I? Not tell? Not know?” cried the old man, passionately. “I not know what it is to be the butt of a few boys? You talk in your ignorance, sir, like a fool talketh. Why, for long years past I have been the mark for the contumely and insult of civilised England. Don’t make your paltry excuses to me. I say your conduct has been disgraceful. You were trusted to go. I made no objection, sir, save that for your sake and protection you should have an experienced boatman to help manage your boat on the way back, and you come home in this degraded state—hands and face bruised, your lips cut, and your eyes swollen up ready to turn black with horrible bruises. Aleck, it is blackguardly. You make me feel as if I ought to treat you as you deserve—take down that dusty old riding whip and flog you soundly.”Aleck started violently, and his eyes flashed through the narrow slits of lids.“But I can’t treat you, an educated, thoughtful lad, in such a degrading way. The lash is only for those whose nature is low and vile—whose education has never placed them upon a level with such as you. It would be the right punishment for the lads who continually annoy and assault you. But as for you—Aleck, I am hurt and disappointed. To come back like this because a few boys pelted you!”“No, uncle, it was not because of that,” cried the lad, warmly.“Then, why was it, sir?”Aleck was silent, and the sailor’s advice suddenly came to mind: “Tell him you won and thrashed your man.”But the words would not come, and while he remained silent Captain Donne spoke again, very sternly now:“Do you hear me, sir?”“Yes, uncle,” said the boy, desperately.“Then answer my question. You say it was not because you were pelted and called names. Why, then, did you degrade yourself like this and fight?”“It was because—no, no, uncle,” cried the boy, through his teeth, which were compressed tightly as if he was afraid that the simple truth would escape; “I—I can’t tell you.”“Then there is something more?”“Yes, uncle.”“What is it, then?” cried the old man, whose own temper was rapidly getting the mastery. “Speak out, sir, and let me hear whether you have any decent excuse to offer for your conduct. Do you hear?”“Yes, uncle,” faltered the lad.“Then speak, sir.”“I—I can’t, uncle. Don’t ask me, please.”“What! I will and do ask you, sir,” cried the old man, furiously: “and what is more, I will be told. I am the proper judge of your conduct. How dare you refuse to speak—how dare you tell me almost to my face that you will not answer my question?”“I don’t tell you that, uncle,” cried the boy, passionately. “I only say I can’t tell you.”“You obstinate young scoundrel! How dare you!” roared the old man, now almost beside himself with rage. “Tell me this instant. Why, then, did you engage in this disgraceful encounter?”Aleck darted an imploring look at the old man, which seemed to be begging him piteously not to press for the answer, but in his furious outbreak the old man could not read it aright—could only set it down to stubbornness—and, completely overcome by the passion bubbling up to his brain, he started to his feet and pointed to the door, but only to dash his hand down upon the table the next moment.“No,” he cried, “if you forget your duty to me, Aleck, I will not forget mine to you. I’ll not be angry, but quite cool. Now, sir,” he cried, with his face looking congested and his heavy grey brows drawn down over his glowing eyes, while his voice sounded hoarse and strange. “Aleck, tell me at once. I’ll have an answer before you leave this room. Why did you engage in that disgraceful fight?”“I can’t tell you, uncle,” said the boy, in a hoarse whisper.“Ha! That means, sir, that you are obstinately determined not to speak?”“It isn’t obstinacy, uncle.”“Don’t contradict me, sir. I say it is obstinacy. Now, once more, for the last time, will you answer my question?”Aleck drew in a long, low, hissing breath and stood fast for a few moments, before saying, in a low tone, his voice quivering the while:“I can’t tell you, uncle.”There was a dead silence in the room for a few moments then; so dead was the silence, in fact, that if the proverbial pin had dropped it would have sounded loudly on the polished oaken boards.Then the old man spoke, in a curiously suppressed tone of voice.“Very well,” he said, huskily; “it is what was bound to come sooner or later. I see I have made another of the mistakes which have blasted my existence. I must have time to think out what I shall do. One thing is very evident—you have rebelled against my rule, Aleck, and are struggling to get away to think and act, sir, for yourself. I have done my best for you, but in my isolation I have doubtless been blind and narrow. It is the natural result of our solitary life here—the young spirit seeking to soar.”“Oh, no, uncle—” began the boy.“Silence, sir!” thundered the old man. “Hear me out. I say it is so, and I know. You resent my holding the tether longer, but you are too young yet to fly unheld. I have my duty to do for your mother’s sake and for yours. I must have time to think out my plans, but in the meantime prepare yourself to go to some school or institution for a year or two before entering upon your profession.”“But, uncle!”“That will do, sir,” said the old man, sternly. “You have struck your blow against my authority, and this painful episode in my life must end.”“If you’d only let me speak, uncle!” cried the boy, passionately.“I begged of you to speak, sir,” said the old man, coldly. “I ordered you to speak; but in each case you refused. Well, now then, tell me simply—I ask again on principle—why did you fight those boys?”Aleck set his teeth and hung his head.“That will do,” said the old man, in deep, husky tones. “Go to your room and get rid of as much of the traces of your encounter as you can before going down to your dinner. You need not interrupt me here again till I send for you. There—go.”The old man once more raised his hand to point towards the door, and, unable to contain himself longer, Aleck rushed out, made for his room, and shut and bolted himself in.
“Oh, dear!” groaned Aleck. “How am I to face him?” and he went on till only a few steps divided him from the cultivated garden, where he stopped again. “I wonder where he is. In the study, I suppose—write, write, write, at that great history. Can’t I leave it and get into my room with a bad headache? It’s only true. It aches horribly. I’ll send word by Jane that I’m too poorly to come down. Bah!” muttered the boy. “What nonsense; he’d come up to me directly with something for me to take. I wonder whether he is in his room or out in the garden. He mustn’t see me till I’ve been up into my room and done something to my hair. Perhaps he’s in the summer-house and I can get in and upstairs without his seeing me. Oh, if I only—”
“Hullo! Aleck, lad, what are you doing there? Why are you so late? Dinner has been ready quite an hour.”
The captain had suddenly appeared from behind a great clump of waving tamarisk, and stood looking down at the lad.
“I was coming to see if you were in sight, and—why, what in the name of wonder is the matter with you? Where have you been? Why, by all that’s wonderful, you’ve been fighting!”
“Yes, uncle,” said the lad, with a gasp of relief, for it seemed to him as if, instead of taking the bold plunge, swimming fashion, he had been suddenly dragged in.
“I thought so,” cried the captain, angrily. “Here—no, stop; come up to the house, to my room. We can’t talk here.”
“I don’t see why not,” thought the lad, dismally. “There’s plenty of room, and we could get it over more easily, even if he does get into a furious passion with me.”
But the captain had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry words that was to come.
He did not glance round nor speak, but strode on, evidently growing more and more out of temper, the lad thought, for as he walked he kept on kicking the loose shelly covering of the path over the flower beds, while the silence kept up seemed to Aleck ominous in the extreme.
“But, never mind,” he thought; “it must soon be over now. What a sight I must look, though! He seemed to be astonished.”
Culprit-like, the lad followed close at his uncle’s heels till the side entrance was reached, where, with what seemed to be another sign of his angry perturbation, the old officer stopped short, rested one hand upon the door-post to steady himself, and began to very carefully do what was not the slightest degree necessary, to wit: he scraped his shoes most carefully over and over again—for there was not even a scrap of dust to remove.
“Stand back a moment, sir,” cried the captain, suddenly. “Jane has heard us, and is carrying in the dinner. Don’t let her see you in that state.”
Aleck shrank to one side, and then as a door was heard to close started forward again in obedience to his uncle’s order.
“Now in, quick—into the study.”
He led the way sharply, and Aleck sprang after him, but the ascent of so many steps gave the maid time to re-open the little dining-room door, from which point of vantage she was able to catch a glimpse of the lad’s face, which looked so startling that she uttered an involuntary “Oh, my!” before letting her jaw drop and pausing, her mouth wide open and a pair of staring eyes.
“Come in!” roared the captain, angrily, as Aleck paused to turn for a moment at the door; and instead of entering, stood shaking his head deprecatingly at the maid, while his lips moved without a sound escaping them as he tried to telegraph to one who took much interest in his appearance: “Not hurt much. I couldn’t help it!”
He started violently then at his uncle’s stern command, uttered like an order to a company of men to step into some deadly breach, and the next moment the door was closed and the old man was scowling at him from the chair into which he had thrown himself, sending it back with the legs, giving forth a sound like a harsh snort as they scraped over the bare oaken floor.
Aleck drew a long deep breath and tried to tighten up his nerves, ready for what he felt was going to be a desperate encounter with the fierce-looking old man whom from long experience he knew to be harsh, stern, and troubled with a terrible temper, which made him morose and strange at times, his fits lasting for days, during which periods he would hardly speak a word to his nephew, leaving him to himself save when he came upon him suddenly to see that he was not wasting time, but going on with one or other of the studies which the old man supervised, or working in the garden.
“I want you, though you lead this lonely life with me, Aleck,” he would say, frowning heavily the while, “to grow up fairly learned in what is necessary for a young man’s education, so that some day, when I am dead and gone out of this weary world, you may take your place as a gentleman—not an ornamental gentleman, whose sole aim is to find out how he can best amuse himself, but a quiet, straightforward, honourable gentleman, one whom, if people do not admire because his ways are not the same as theirs, they will find themselves bound to respect.”
These strange fits of what Aleck, perhaps instigated by Jane, their one servant, called “master’s temper,” would be followed by weeks of mental blue sky, when the black clouds rolled away and the sun of a genial disposition shone out, and the old man seemed as if he could not lavish enough affection upon his nephew. The result of all this was that the boy’s feelings towards the old man, who had always occupied the position of father to him as well as preceptor, were a strange mingling of fear of his harshness, veneration of his learning and power of instructing him in everything he learned, and love. For there were times when Aleck would say, gloomily, to himself, “I’m sure uncle thoroughly hates me and wishes me away,” while there were times when he was as happy as the days were long, and ready to feel certain that the old man loved him as much as if he were his own child.
“He must,” thought the boy, “or he wouldn’t have nursed and coddled me up so when I had that fever and the doctor told Jane that he had done all he could, and that I should die—go out with the tide next day. That’s what I like in uncle,” he mused, “when he isn’t out of temper—he’s so clever. Knew ever so much better than the doctor. What did he say then? ‘Doctors are all very well, Aleck, but there are times when the nurse is the better man—that is, when it’s a cock nurse and not a hen. You had a cock nurse, boy, and I pulled you through.’”
But the love was in abeyance on this particular morning at the Den, as the old man had named his out-of-the-way solitary dwelling, and Aleck felt that the place was rightly named as he stood ready to face the savage-looking denizen of the place, who, after staring him down with a pair of fiercely glowing eyes, suddenly opened upon him with:
“Now, then, sir! So you’ve been fighting?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the boy, meekly.
“Who with?”
“Some of the Rockabie boys, uncle.”
“Hah! And in the face of all that I have said and taught you about your being different by your birth and education from the young ragamuffin rout of Rockabie harbour! Cannot you run over there in your boat and do what business you have to carry out without being mixed up in some broil?”
“No, uncle.”
“Disgraceful, sir! A gentleman’s education should teach him that his weapons are words properly applied, and not tooth and nail, blows and kicks.”
“I never bit or kicked, uncle,” said Aleck, sullenly.
“Of course not, sir; and don’t retort upon me in that insolent way. You know perfectly well that I was speaking metaphorically. Did you for a moment imagine I thought you used your teeth and claws like a savage dog?”
“No, uncle.”
“Then don’t reply to me like that. Of course I would know you would use your fists. Look at your knuckles!” thundered the old man.
Aleck looked at those parts of his person dismally, and they looked bad. For the skin was damaged in three places, and the nail of his left thumb was split in a painful way.
“Disgusting,” said the old man. “I trusted you to go over there, and you come back a disreputable wreck. All my teaching seems to be thrown away upon a pugnacious untrustworthy boy.”
“I’m not pugnacious, uncle, if they’d let me alone.”
“Bah! You ought to be above noticing the scum of the place.”
“I am, uncle, and I don’t notice them,” pleaded the boy; “it’s they who will notice me.”
“How, pray?”
“I can’t go into the place without their mobbing me and calling me names.”
“Contemptible! And pray, sir,” cried the old man, in harsh, sarcastic tones, “what do they call you?”
“All sorts of things,” replied the boy, confusedly. “I can’t recollect now. Yes, I know; sometimes they shout ‘Fox’ or ‘Foxy’ after me.”
“And pray why?”
“Because they say I’ve just come out of the Den.”
“Rubbish.”
“At other times it’s ‘Spider.’”
“Spider?”
“Yes, uncle; because I’ve got such long legs.”
“Worse and worse,” cried the old man. “To fight for that! It is childish.”
“Oh, I didn’t fight for that, uncle!”
“What for, then, pray, sir?”
“Sometimes they lay wait for me and hide behind a smack or the harbour wall, and pelt me with shells and the nasty offal left about by the fishermen.”
“Disgusting! The insolent young dogs! They deserve to be flogged. So that is why you fought this morning?”
“Sometimes they throw pebbles and cobble stones, uncle,” said the boy, evasively. “And they’re so clever with them; they throw so well. I don’t like to be hit and hurt, uncle. I suppose I’ve got a bad temper. I do keep it under so long as they call me names and throw nasty, soft things, but when a stone hits me and hurts, something inside my chest seems to get loose, and I feel hot and burning. I want to hurt whoever threw as much as he hurt me.”
“What!” cried the old man. “Haven’t I taught you, sir, that you must be above resenting the attacks of the vulgar herd?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Of course. I have always had to bear those assaults, boy. And so the young ruffians threw stones at you?”
Aleck hesitated.
“It was heads and bits of fish to-day, uncle.”
“The scum! The insolent scum! And some of the offal hit you?”
“Well, no; nothing hit me, uncle. They followed me about all through the place, and shouted at me every time I came out of a shop.”
“Bah! And because some young ragamuffins were insolent to you, my nephew must lower himself to their level. This is not the first time, sir. You have complained to me before, and you remember what I said to you one day when you came back after engaging in a most degrading scuffle.”
“Yes, uncle.”
“You promised me that should never occur again, after I had pointed out to you what your conduct ought to be, and how that the more you noticed these young rascals’ proceedings the worse it would be.”
“Yes, uncle, but I couldn’t remember it to-day. You can’t tell how bad it was, and how hard to bear.”
“I? Not tell? Not know?” cried the old man, passionately. “I not know what it is to be the butt of a few boys? You talk in your ignorance, sir, like a fool talketh. Why, for long years past I have been the mark for the contumely and insult of civilised England. Don’t make your paltry excuses to me. I say your conduct has been disgraceful. You were trusted to go. I made no objection, sir, save that for your sake and protection you should have an experienced boatman to help manage your boat on the way back, and you come home in this degraded state—hands and face bruised, your lips cut, and your eyes swollen up ready to turn black with horrible bruises. Aleck, it is blackguardly. You make me feel as if I ought to treat you as you deserve—take down that dusty old riding whip and flog you soundly.”
Aleck started violently, and his eyes flashed through the narrow slits of lids.
“But I can’t treat you, an educated, thoughtful lad, in such a degrading way. The lash is only for those whose nature is low and vile—whose education has never placed them upon a level with such as you. It would be the right punishment for the lads who continually annoy and assault you. But as for you—Aleck, I am hurt and disappointed. To come back like this because a few boys pelted you!”
“No, uncle, it was not because of that,” cried the lad, warmly.
“Then, why was it, sir?”
Aleck was silent, and the sailor’s advice suddenly came to mind: “Tell him you won and thrashed your man.”
But the words would not come, and while he remained silent Captain Donne spoke again, very sternly now:
“Do you hear me, sir?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the boy, desperately.
“Then answer my question. You say it was not because you were pelted and called names. Why, then, did you degrade yourself like this and fight?”
“It was because—no, no, uncle,” cried the boy, through his teeth, which were compressed tightly as if he was afraid that the simple truth would escape; “I—I can’t tell you.”
“Then there is something more?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“What is it, then?” cried the old man, whose own temper was rapidly getting the mastery. “Speak out, sir, and let me hear whether you have any decent excuse to offer for your conduct. Do you hear?”
“Yes, uncle,” faltered the lad.
“Then speak, sir.”
“I—I can’t, uncle. Don’t ask me, please.”
“What! I will and do ask you, sir,” cried the old man, furiously: “and what is more, I will be told. I am the proper judge of your conduct. How dare you refuse to speak—how dare you tell me almost to my face that you will not answer my question?”
“I don’t tell you that, uncle,” cried the boy, passionately. “I only say I can’t tell you.”
“You obstinate young scoundrel! How dare you!” roared the old man, now almost beside himself with rage. “Tell me this instant. Why, then, did you engage in this disgraceful encounter?”
Aleck darted an imploring look at the old man, which seemed to be begging him piteously not to press for the answer, but in his furious outbreak the old man could not read it aright—could only set it down to stubbornness—and, completely overcome by the passion bubbling up to his brain, he started to his feet and pointed to the door, but only to dash his hand down upon the table the next moment.
“No,” he cried, “if you forget your duty to me, Aleck, I will not forget mine to you. I’ll not be angry, but quite cool. Now, sir,” he cried, with his face looking congested and his heavy grey brows drawn down over his glowing eyes, while his voice sounded hoarse and strange. “Aleck, tell me at once. I’ll have an answer before you leave this room. Why did you engage in that disgraceful fight?”
“I can’t tell you, uncle,” said the boy, in a hoarse whisper.
“Ha! That means, sir, that you are obstinately determined not to speak?”
“It isn’t obstinacy, uncle.”
“Don’t contradict me, sir. I say it is obstinacy. Now, once more, for the last time, will you answer my question?”
Aleck drew in a long, low, hissing breath and stood fast for a few moments, before saying, in a low tone, his voice quivering the while:
“I can’t tell you, uncle.”
There was a dead silence in the room for a few moments then; so dead was the silence, in fact, that if the proverbial pin had dropped it would have sounded loudly on the polished oaken boards.
Then the old man spoke, in a curiously suppressed tone of voice.
“Very well,” he said, huskily; “it is what was bound to come sooner or later. I see I have made another of the mistakes which have blasted my existence. I must have time to think out what I shall do. One thing is very evident—you have rebelled against my rule, Aleck, and are struggling to get away to think and act, sir, for yourself. I have done my best for you, but in my isolation I have doubtless been blind and narrow. It is the natural result of our solitary life here—the young spirit seeking to soar.”
“Oh, no, uncle—” began the boy.
“Silence, sir!” thundered the old man. “Hear me out. I say it is so, and I know. You resent my holding the tether longer, but you are too young yet to fly unheld. I have my duty to do for your mother’s sake and for yours. I must have time to think out my plans, but in the meantime prepare yourself to go to some school or institution for a year or two before entering upon your profession.”
“But, uncle!”
“That will do, sir,” said the old man, sternly. “You have struck your blow against my authority, and this painful episode in my life must end.”
“If you’d only let me speak, uncle!” cried the boy, passionately.
“I begged of you to speak, sir,” said the old man, coldly. “I ordered you to speak; but in each case you refused. Well, now then, tell me simply—I ask again on principle—why did you fight those boys?”
Aleck set his teeth and hung his head.
“That will do,” said the old man, in deep, husky tones. “Go to your room and get rid of as much of the traces of your encounter as you can before going down to your dinner. You need not interrupt me here again till I send for you. There—go.”
The old man once more raised his hand to point towards the door, and, unable to contain himself longer, Aleck rushed out, made for his room, and shut and bolted himself in.
Chapter Six.It was some time before the boy could do anything but sit with elbows upon knees, chin upon hands, gazing straight before him into vacancy. His head throbbed so that he could not think consistently. In his struggle on the pier he had been a good deal shaken, and that alone was enough to produce a feverish kind of excitement. Then on the way back his brain had been much troubled, while, worst of all, there had been the scene with his uncle.It was then no wonder that he could not arrange his thoughts so as to sit in judgment upon his acts, especially that last one, in which he had stubbornly, as it seemed, refused or declined to respond to his uncle’s question.He tried, and tried hard, with a curious seething desire working in his brain, to decide upon going straight to the old man and speaking out, giving him frankly his reason for refusing to speak. But this always came to the same conclusion: “I can’t—I dare not—I can’t.”At last, wearied out and confused more and more by his throbbing brain, the boy rose and walked slowly to the looking-glass, where he started in dismay at the image reflected there. For a few moments it seemed to be part and parcel of some confused dream, but its truth gradually forced itself upon him, and finally he burst out into a mocking, half hysterical laugh.“I don’t wonder at uncle,” he cried; “I don’t wonder at his being in a rage.”With a weary sigh he went to the washstand and half filled the basin.“I’d no idea I looked such a sight,” he muttered, as he began to bathe his stiff and swollen features. “The brute!” he said, after a few moments. “I wish I’d told uncle, though, that I beat him well. But, oh, dear! what a muddle it all seems! I wish I’d hit him twice as hard,” he said, with angry vehemence, half aloud. “Yes?”For there was a gentle tapping at the door.“Aren’t you coming down to dinner, Master Aleck?”“No, Jane; not to-day.”“But it’s all over-done, my dear—been ready more than an hour. Do, do come, or it’ll be spoiled.”“Go and tell uncle then. I’m not coming down.”“But I have been, my dear, and he said I was to come and tell you. He isn’t coming down. Do make haste and finish and come down.”“No, not to-day, Jane. I can’t come.”“But what is the matter, dear? Is master in a temper because you fell off the cliff and cut your face?”“I didn’t fall off the cliff and cut my face,” said Aleck.“Then, whatever is the matter, my dear?”“Well, if you must know, Jane, I’ve been fighting—like a blackguard, I suppose,” cried the boy, pettishly.“And is that what made master so cross?”“Yes.”“Did it hurt you very much?” came through the door crack in a whisper.“Yes—no,” replied Aleck.“I don’t know what you mean, my dear,” sighed Jane.“Never mind. Go away, please, now. I’m bathing my face.”“But my dinner’s all being spoiled, my dear. You won’t come, and master won’t come. What am I to do?”“Go and sit down and eat it,” cried Aleck, in a passion now; “only don’t bother me.”“Well, I’m sure!” cried the captain’s maid, tartly. “Master’s temper’s bad enough to drive anyone away, and now you’re beginning too. I don’t know what we’re coming to in—”um—um—murmur—murmur—murmur—bang!At least that is how it sounded to Aleck as he went on with his bathing, the sharp closing of the passage door bringing all to an end and leaving the boy to continue the bathing and drying of his injuries by degrees, after which he sat down by the open window, to rest his aching head upon his hand and let the soft sea air play upon his temples.He was very miserable, and in a good deal of bodily pain, but the trouble seemed to be the worse part, and it was just occurring to him that he felt very sick and faint and that a draught of water would do him good, when there was a sharp tap at the door after the handle had been tried.“Uncle!” thought the lad, and the blood flushed painfully to his face.Then the tap was repeated.“Master Aleck, Master Aleck!”“Yes.”“I’ve brought you up some dinner on a tray.”“I don’t want any—I couldn’t eat it,” said the boy, bitterly.“Don’t tell me, my dear. You do want something—you must; and you can eat it if you try. Now, do come and open the door, please, or you’ll be ill.”Aleck rose with a sigh and crossed the room, and the maid came in with a covered plate of something hot which emitted an appetising odour.“It’s very good of you, Jane,” began Aleck; “but—”“My! You are a sight, Master Aleck! Whatever have you been a-doing to yourself?”“Fighting, I tell you,” said the boy, smiling in the middle-aged maid’s homely face.“Who with, my dear?”“Oh, some of the fishermen’s boys over at the town.”“Then it didn’t ought to be allowed. Youarein a state!”“Yes; I know without your telling me. What’s under that cover?”“Roast chicken and bacon, my dear.”“Oh, I couldn’t touch it, Jane!”“Now, don’t say that, my dear. People must eat and drink even if they are in trouble; because if they don’t they’re ill. I know what I’ve brought you isn’t as nice as it should be, because it’s all dried up, and now it’s half cold. So be a good boy, same as you used to be years ago when I first knew you. There was no quarrelling with your bread and butter then, and you were always hungry. But, there, I must go. I wouldn’t have master catch me here now for all the millions in the Bank of England. Oh, what a temper he is in, to be sure!”“Have—have you seen him lately?” asked Aleck, excitedly.“Seen him? No, my dear. He’s shut himself up, like he does sometimes; but I could hear him in the kitchen, walking all over my head, just like a wild beast in a cage, and now and then he began talking to himself quite out loud. It’s all your fault, Master Aleck, for he was as good-tempered as could be this morning when I went in to ask him what I was to get ready for dinner, and what time.”Jane closed the door after her with these words and left Aleck with the tray.“Yes,” he said, bitterly, in his pain; “it’s all my fault, I suppose, and I’m to go away from everything I like here.”He raised the cover over the plate as he spoke, and a pleasant, appetising odour greeted his nostrils; but he lowered the cover again with a gesture of disgust.“I couldn’t touch it,” he said, with a shudder, “even to do me good. Nothing would do me good now. My face feels so stiff, and my eyes are just as if they’d got something dark over them.”He went near the window again to look out in the direction of the sea, with some idea of watching the birds, of which so many floated up into sight above the cliffs that shut in the Den. But it was an effort to look skyward, and he sat down by the window to think, in a dull, heavy, dreamy way, about his uncle’s words.And it seemed to him, knowing how stern and uncompromising the old man was, that it would be a word and a blow. For aught he knew to the contrary letters might have been written by then, making arrangements for him to go to some institution where he would be trained to enter into some pursuit that he might detest. Time back there had been talk about his future, the old man having pleasantly asked him what he would like to be. He had replied. “An officer in the Army,” and then stood startled by the change which came over the old man’s face.“No,” he had said, scowling, “I could never consent to that, Aleck. I might agree to your going into the Navy, but as a soldier, emphatically no.”“Why doesn’t he want me to be a soldier?” mused the boy. “He was a soldier himself. I should like to know the whole truth. It can’t be what he said.”Aleck sat wrinkling up his brow and thinking for some little time. Not for long; it made his head ache too much, and he changed from soldiering to sailoring.“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” he said, half drowsily, for a strange sensation of weariness came over him. “I should like to be a sailor. Why not go? Tom Bodger would help me to get a ship; and as uncle is going to send me away, talking as if he had quite done with me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go.”The drowsy feeling increased, so that the boy to keep it off began to look over his clothes, thinking deeply the while, but in a way that was rather unnatural, for his hurts had not been without the effect of making him a little feverish. And as he thought he began to mutter about what had taken place that afternoon.“Uncle can’t like me,” he said. “He has been kind, but he never talked to me like this before. He wants to get rid of me, to send me away somewhere to some place where I shouldn’t like to go. I’ve no father, no mother, to mind my going, so why shouldn’t I? He’ll be glad I’m gone, or he wouldn’t have talked to me like that.”Aleck rested his throbbing head upon his crossed arms and sank into a feverish kind of sleep, during which, in a short half-hour, he went through what seemed like an age of trouble, before he started up, and in an excited, spasmodic way, hardly realising what he was doing in his half-waking, half-sleeping state, but under the influence of his troubled thoughts, he roughly selected a few of his under-things for a change and made them up into a bundle, after which he counted over the money he had left after the morning’s disbursement, and told himself it would be enough, and that the sooner he was away from the dear old Den the better.At last all his preparations were made, even to placing his hat and a favourite old stick given him by his uncle ready upon the chair which held his bundle; and then, with his head throbbing worse than ever, producing a feeling of confusion and unreality that was more than painful, he went once more to the glass to look at his strangely-altered features.“I can’t go like that,” he said, shrinking back in horror. But like an answer to his words came from far back in his brain, and as if in a faint whisper: “You must now. You’ve gone too far. You must go now, unless you’re too great a coward.”“Yes,” he muttered, confusedly; “I must go now—as soon as it’s dark. Not wanted here—Tom Bodger—he’ll help me—to a ship.”He had sunk heavily into a chair, right back, with his head nodding forward till his chin rested upon his breast, and the next moment he had sunk into a feverish stupor, in which his head was swimming, and in some unaccountable way he seemed to be once more heavily engaged with Big Jem, whose fists kept up a regular pendulum-like beat upon his head, while in spite of all his efforts he could never get one blow back in return at the malicious, jeering, taunting face, whose lips moved as they kept on saying words which nearly drove him wild with indignation.And what were the words, repeated quite clearly now?“Master Aleck, don’t be so silly! Wake up, you’re pretending to be asleep. Oh, my! what a state your face is in! And your head’s as hot as fire.”
It was some time before the boy could do anything but sit with elbows upon knees, chin upon hands, gazing straight before him into vacancy. His head throbbed so that he could not think consistently. In his struggle on the pier he had been a good deal shaken, and that alone was enough to produce a feverish kind of excitement. Then on the way back his brain had been much troubled, while, worst of all, there had been the scene with his uncle.
It was then no wonder that he could not arrange his thoughts so as to sit in judgment upon his acts, especially that last one, in which he had stubbornly, as it seemed, refused or declined to respond to his uncle’s question.
He tried, and tried hard, with a curious seething desire working in his brain, to decide upon going straight to the old man and speaking out, giving him frankly his reason for refusing to speak. But this always came to the same conclusion: “I can’t—I dare not—I can’t.”
At last, wearied out and confused more and more by his throbbing brain, the boy rose and walked slowly to the looking-glass, where he started in dismay at the image reflected there. For a few moments it seemed to be part and parcel of some confused dream, but its truth gradually forced itself upon him, and finally he burst out into a mocking, half hysterical laugh.
“I don’t wonder at uncle,” he cried; “I don’t wonder at his being in a rage.”
With a weary sigh he went to the washstand and half filled the basin.
“I’d no idea I looked such a sight,” he muttered, as he began to bathe his stiff and swollen features. “The brute!” he said, after a few moments. “I wish I’d told uncle, though, that I beat him well. But, oh, dear! what a muddle it all seems! I wish I’d hit him twice as hard,” he said, with angry vehemence, half aloud. “Yes?”
For there was a gentle tapping at the door.
“Aren’t you coming down to dinner, Master Aleck?”
“No, Jane; not to-day.”
“But it’s all over-done, my dear—been ready more than an hour. Do, do come, or it’ll be spoiled.”
“Go and tell uncle then. I’m not coming down.”
“But I have been, my dear, and he said I was to come and tell you. He isn’t coming down. Do make haste and finish and come down.”
“No, not to-day, Jane. I can’t come.”
“But what is the matter, dear? Is master in a temper because you fell off the cliff and cut your face?”
“I didn’t fall off the cliff and cut my face,” said Aleck.
“Then, whatever is the matter, my dear?”
“Well, if you must know, Jane, I’ve been fighting—like a blackguard, I suppose,” cried the boy, pettishly.
“And is that what made master so cross?”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt you very much?” came through the door crack in a whisper.
“Yes—no,” replied Aleck.
“I don’t know what you mean, my dear,” sighed Jane.
“Never mind. Go away, please, now. I’m bathing my face.”
“But my dinner’s all being spoiled, my dear. You won’t come, and master won’t come. What am I to do?”
“Go and sit down and eat it,” cried Aleck, in a passion now; “only don’t bother me.”
“Well, I’m sure!” cried the captain’s maid, tartly. “Master’s temper’s bad enough to drive anyone away, and now you’re beginning too. I don’t know what we’re coming to in—”um—um—murmur—murmur—murmur—bang!
At least that is how it sounded to Aleck as he went on with his bathing, the sharp closing of the passage door bringing all to an end and leaving the boy to continue the bathing and drying of his injuries by degrees, after which he sat down by the open window, to rest his aching head upon his hand and let the soft sea air play upon his temples.
He was very miserable, and in a good deal of bodily pain, but the trouble seemed to be the worse part, and it was just occurring to him that he felt very sick and faint and that a draught of water would do him good, when there was a sharp tap at the door after the handle had been tried.
“Uncle!” thought the lad, and the blood flushed painfully to his face.
Then the tap was repeated.
“Master Aleck, Master Aleck!”
“Yes.”
“I’ve brought you up some dinner on a tray.”
“I don’t want any—I couldn’t eat it,” said the boy, bitterly.
“Don’t tell me, my dear. You do want something—you must; and you can eat it if you try. Now, do come and open the door, please, or you’ll be ill.”
Aleck rose with a sigh and crossed the room, and the maid came in with a covered plate of something hot which emitted an appetising odour.
“It’s very good of you, Jane,” began Aleck; “but—”
“My! You are a sight, Master Aleck! Whatever have you been a-doing to yourself?”
“Fighting, I tell you,” said the boy, smiling in the middle-aged maid’s homely face.
“Who with, my dear?”
“Oh, some of the fishermen’s boys over at the town.”
“Then it didn’t ought to be allowed. Youarein a state!”
“Yes; I know without your telling me. What’s under that cover?”
“Roast chicken and bacon, my dear.”
“Oh, I couldn’t touch it, Jane!”
“Now, don’t say that, my dear. People must eat and drink even if they are in trouble; because if they don’t they’re ill. I know what I’ve brought you isn’t as nice as it should be, because it’s all dried up, and now it’s half cold. So be a good boy, same as you used to be years ago when I first knew you. There was no quarrelling with your bread and butter then, and you were always hungry. But, there, I must go. I wouldn’t have master catch me here now for all the millions in the Bank of England. Oh, what a temper he is in, to be sure!”
“Have—have you seen him lately?” asked Aleck, excitedly.
“Seen him? No, my dear. He’s shut himself up, like he does sometimes; but I could hear him in the kitchen, walking all over my head, just like a wild beast in a cage, and now and then he began talking to himself quite out loud. It’s all your fault, Master Aleck, for he was as good-tempered as could be this morning when I went in to ask him what I was to get ready for dinner, and what time.”
Jane closed the door after her with these words and left Aleck with the tray.
“Yes,” he said, bitterly, in his pain; “it’s all my fault, I suppose, and I’m to go away from everything I like here.”
He raised the cover over the plate as he spoke, and a pleasant, appetising odour greeted his nostrils; but he lowered the cover again with a gesture of disgust.
“I couldn’t touch it,” he said, with a shudder, “even to do me good. Nothing would do me good now. My face feels so stiff, and my eyes are just as if they’d got something dark over them.”
He went near the window again to look out in the direction of the sea, with some idea of watching the birds, of which so many floated up into sight above the cliffs that shut in the Den. But it was an effort to look skyward, and he sat down by the window to think, in a dull, heavy, dreamy way, about his uncle’s words.
And it seemed to him, knowing how stern and uncompromising the old man was, that it would be a word and a blow. For aught he knew to the contrary letters might have been written by then, making arrangements for him to go to some institution where he would be trained to enter into some pursuit that he might detest. Time back there had been talk about his future, the old man having pleasantly asked him what he would like to be. He had replied. “An officer in the Army,” and then stood startled by the change which came over the old man’s face.
“No,” he had said, scowling, “I could never consent to that, Aleck. I might agree to your going into the Navy, but as a soldier, emphatically no.”
“Why doesn’t he want me to be a soldier?” mused the boy. “He was a soldier himself. I should like to know the whole truth. It can’t be what he said.”
Aleck sat wrinkling up his brow and thinking for some little time. Not for long; it made his head ache too much, and he changed from soldiering to sailoring.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” he said, half drowsily, for a strange sensation of weariness came over him. “I should like to be a sailor. Why not go? Tom Bodger would help me to get a ship; and as uncle is going to send me away, talking as if he had quite done with me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go.”
The drowsy feeling increased, so that the boy to keep it off began to look over his clothes, thinking deeply the while, but in a way that was rather unnatural, for his hurts had not been without the effect of making him a little feverish. And as he thought he began to mutter about what had taken place that afternoon.
“Uncle can’t like me,” he said. “He has been kind, but he never talked to me like this before. He wants to get rid of me, to send me away somewhere to some place where I shouldn’t like to go. I’ve no father, no mother, to mind my going, so why shouldn’t I? He’ll be glad I’m gone, or he wouldn’t have talked to me like that.”
Aleck rested his throbbing head upon his crossed arms and sank into a feverish kind of sleep, during which, in a short half-hour, he went through what seemed like an age of trouble, before he started up, and in an excited, spasmodic way, hardly realising what he was doing in his half-waking, half-sleeping state, but under the influence of his troubled thoughts, he roughly selected a few of his under-things for a change and made them up into a bundle, after which he counted over the money he had left after the morning’s disbursement, and told himself it would be enough, and that the sooner he was away from the dear old Den the better.
At last all his preparations were made, even to placing his hat and a favourite old stick given him by his uncle ready upon the chair which held his bundle; and then, with his head throbbing worse than ever, producing a feeling of confusion and unreality that was more than painful, he went once more to the glass to look at his strangely-altered features.
“I can’t go like that,” he said, shrinking back in horror. But like an answer to his words came from far back in his brain, and as if in a faint whisper: “You must now. You’ve gone too far. You must go now, unless you’re too great a coward.”
“Yes,” he muttered, confusedly; “I must go now—as soon as it’s dark. Not wanted here—Tom Bodger—he’ll help me—to a ship.”
He had sunk heavily into a chair, right back, with his head nodding forward till his chin rested upon his breast, and the next moment he had sunk into a feverish stupor, in which his head was swimming, and in some unaccountable way he seemed to be once more heavily engaged with Big Jem, whose fists kept up a regular pendulum-like beat upon his head, while in spite of all his efforts he could never get one blow back in return at the malicious, jeering, taunting face, whose lips moved as they kept on saying words which nearly drove him wild with indignation.
And what were the words, repeated quite clearly now?
“Master Aleck, don’t be so silly! Wake up, you’re pretending to be asleep. Oh, my! what a state your face is in! And your head’s as hot as fire.”
Chapter Seven.“That you, Jane?”“Why, of course it is. Were you really asleep?”“Asleep? No—yes. I don’t know, Jane. My head’s all gone queer, I think.”“And no wonder, fighting like that, and never touching a bit of the dinner I brought you up. Yes, your head’s all in a fever, and your poor swelled-up eyes too. That’s better. Now, then, you must take this.”“What is it?” said the lad, drowsily.“What is it? Why, can’t you see?”“No; my head’s all swimming round and round, and my eyes won’t open.”“Never mind, poor boy, this’ll do you good. I’ve brought you up a big breakfast-cup of nice, fresh, hot tea, and two rounds of buttered toast. They’ll do your head good.”“I say, Jane, where’s uncle?”“In his room. He’s had some too. I didn’t wait to be asked, but took the tea in.”“What was he doing?” said Aleck.“Writing.”“His book?”“No, letters; and as busy as could be. Come, try and drink your tea.”“But isn’t it very early for tea—directly after dinner like this?”“Directly after dinner? Why, bless the boy, it’s past seven!”“Then I must have been asleep,” said the boy, speaking more collectedly now.“I should just think you must, and the best thing for you. Hark! There’s master’s study bell; he wants more tea. I must go; but promise me you’ll take yours?”“Yes, I’m dreadfully thirsty,” said the lad, and as the woman left the room he began to sip the tea and eat pieces of the toast till all was gone, and then, after a weary sigh, he glanced at his bundle and hat upon the chair, reeled towards the bed, held on by the painted post, while he thrust off his boots and then literally rolled upon it, with his face looking scarlet upon the white pillow. The next moment he was breathing heavily in deep, dreamless sleep.That dreamless sleep lasted till the old eight-day clock on the landing had struck eleven, during which time Jane, who was growing anxious about him, came in three times—the first to take away the tea and dinner things, the other twice to make sure that he was not going into a high fever, as she termed it, and feeling better satisfied each time.“Nothing like so hot,” she said to herself. “It was that cup o’ tea that did him good. There’s nothing like a hot cup o’ tea and a good sleep for a bad headache.”So Jane left and went to bed after a final peep, and, as before said, the sound sleep went on till the clock began to strike, and then he began to dream that his uncle came into the room with a chamber candlestick in his hand, set it down where its light shone full upon his stern, severe old features, and seated himself upon the chair by the bed’s head.Then he began to question him; and it seemed to the boy that in his dream he answered without moving his head or opening his eyes, which appeared strange, for he fancied he could see the old man’s angry face all the time.“Not undressed, Aleck?” said the old man.“No, uncle.”“Shoes here ready—hat, bundle, and stick on the chair! Does that mean waiting till all is quiet, and then running away from home?”“Yes, uncle.”“Hah! From one who took you to his heart when you were a little orphan child, just when your widowed mother had closed her eyes for ever on this weary world, and swore to treat you as if you were his own!”“Yes, uncle.”“And why?”“Because you are tired of me, uncle, and don’t trust me—and are going to send me away.”“Hah! You are not going to try and be taken as a soldier?”“No, uncle.”“Hah! What then? Going to seek your fortune?”“No, uncle. I’m going to sea.”Perhaps thathah! that ejaculation, was louder than the other words—perhaps Aleck Donne had not been dreaming—perhaps it was all real!At any rate the sleeper had awakened and with his eyes able to open a little more, and through the two narrow slits he was gazing at the stern, sorrowful face, lit up by one candle, seated there within a yard of the pillow.“Head better, my lad?”“Yes, uncle.”“Seems clearer, eh?”“Yes, uncle.”“Feel feverish?”“No, uncle, I think not. I’m hardly awake yet.”“I know, my lad. You got a good deal knocked about, then?”“I don’t quite know, uncle. I suppose so. It all seems very dreamy now.”“Consequence of injury to the head. Soldiers are in that condition sometimes after a blow from the butt end of a musket.”“Are they, uncle?” asked Aleck, who was half ready to believe that this was all part of his dream.The captain nodded, and sat silent for a few moments, before glancing at the bundle, hat, and cane. Then—“So you’ve been making up your mind to run away?”“To go away, uncle; not run.”“Hah! Same thing, my lad.”“No, uncle.”“What! Don’t contradict me, sir. Do you want to quarrel again?”“No, uncle.”“Humph! You prepared those things for running away?”“I had some such ideas, uncle, when I tied them up,” said the lad, firmly; “but I should not have done that.”“Indeed! Then why did you tie them up?”“To go away, uncle.”“Well, that’s what I said, sir.”“That was not quite correct, uncle. If I ran away it would have been without telling you.”“Of course, and that’s what you meant to do.”“No, uncle; I feel now that I could not have done that. I should have come to you in the morning to tell you that I felt as if I should be better away, and that I would go to sea at once.”“Humph! And if you went away, sir, what’s to become of me?”“I don’t know, uncle, only I feel that you’d be better without such an obstinate, disobedient fellow as I am.”“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, you shouldn’t be obstinate then.”“I didn’t mean to be, uncle.”“Then, why, in the name of all that’s sensible, were you? Why didn’t you tell me why you fought and got in such a state?”“I felt that I couldn’t tell you, uncle.”“Why not, sir—why not?”Aleck was silent once more.“There you are, you see. As stubborn as a mule.”“No, I’m not, uncle.”“Now, look here, Aleck; I couldn’t go to bed without trying to make peace between us. Don’t contradict me, sir. I say you are stubborn. There, I’ll give you one more chance. Now, then, why did you fight those lads?”“Don’t ask me, uncle, please. I can’t tell you.”“But I do ask you, and I will know. Now, sir, why was it? For I’m sure there was some blackguardly reason. Now, then, speak out, or—or—or—I vow I’ll never be friends with you again.”“Don’t ask me, uncle.”“Once more, I will ask you, sir. Why was it?”“Because—” began Aleck, and stopped.“Well, sir—because?” raged out the old man. “Speak, sir. You are my sister’s son. I have behaved to you since she died like a father. I am in the place of your father, and I command you to speak.”“Well, uncle, it was because they spoke about you,” said the lad, at last, desperately.“Eh? Ah! Humph!” said the old man, with his florid face growing clay-coloured. “They spoke ill of me, then?”“Yes, uncle.”“About my past—past life, eh?”“Yes, uncle.”“Humph! What did they say?”“Uncle, pray don’t ask me,” pleaded Aleck.“Humph! I know. Said I was disgraced and turned out of my regiment, eh? For cowardice?”“Yes, uncle.”“And you said it wasn’t true?”“Of course, uncle.”“Got yourself knocked into a mummy, then, for defending me?”“Yes, uncle; but I’m not much hurt.”“Humph!” ejaculated the old man, frowning, and looking at the lad through his half-closed eyes. “Said it was not true, then?”“Of course, uncle,” cried the boy, flushing indignantly.“Humph! Thankye, my boy; but, you see, it was true.”Aleck’s eyes glittered as he stared blankly at the fierce-looking old man. For the declaration sounded horrible. His uncle had been one of the bravest of soldiers in the boy’s estimation, and time after time he had sat and gloated over the trophy formed by the old officer’s sword and pistols, surmounted by the military cap, hanging in the study. Many a time, too, he had in secret carefully swept away the dust. More than once, too, in his uncle’s absence he had taken down and snapped the pistols at some imaginary foe, and felt a thrill of pleasure as the old flints struck off a tiny shower of brilliant stars from the steel pan cover. At other times, too, he had carefully lifted the sword from its hooks and tugged till the bright blade came slowly out of its leathern scabbard, cut and thrust with it to put enemies to flight, and longed to carry it to the tool-shed to treat it to a good whetting with the rubber the gardener used for his scythe, for the rounded edge held out no promise of cutting off a Frenchman’s head. And now for the old hero of his belief to tell him calmly and without the slightest hesitation that the charge was true was so staggering, so beyond belief, that the blank look of dismay produced by the assertion gradually gave place to a smile of incredulity, and at last the boy exclaimed:“Oh, uncle! You are joking!”The old soldier returned the boy’s smile with a cold, stern gaze full of something akin to despair, as he drew a long, deep breath and said, slowly:“You find it hard to believe, then, Aleck, my boy?”“Hard to believe, uncle? Of course I do. Nobody could believe such a thing of you.”“You are wrong, my boy,” said the old man, with a sigh, “for everyone believed it, and the court-martial sentenced me to be disgraced.”“Uncle! Oh, uncle! But it wasn’t—it couldn’t be true,” cried Aleck, wildly, as he sat up in bed.“The world said it was true, my boy,” replied the old man, whose voice sounded very low and sad.“But you, uncle—you denied the charge?”“Of course, my boy.”“Then the people on the court-martial must have been mad,” cried the boy, proudly. “I thought the word of an officer and a gentleman was quite sufficient to set aside such a charge.”“Then you don’t believe it was true, my lad?”“I?” cried the boy, proudly; “what nonsense, uncle! Of course not.”“But, knowing now what I have told you, suppose you should hear this charge made against me again, what would you do?”Aleck’s eyes flashed, and, regardless of the pain it gave him, he clenched his injured fists, set his teeth hard, and said, hoarsely:“The same as I did to-day, uncle. Nobody shall tell such lies about you while I am there.”Captain Lawrence caught his young champion to his breast and held him tightly for a few moments, before, in a husky, quivering voice, he said:“Yes, Aleck, boy, for they are lies. But the mud thrown at me stuck in spite of all my efforts to wash it away, and the stains remained.”“But, uncle—”“Don’t talk about it, boy,” cried the old man, hoarsely. “You are bringing up the past, Aleck, with all its maddening horrors. I can’t talk to you and explain. It was at the end of a disastrous day. Our badly led men were put to flight through the mismanagement of our chief—one high in position—and someone had to suffer for his sins, there had to be a scapegoat, and I was the unhappy wretch upon whom the commander-in-chief’s sins were piled up. They said that the beating back of my company caused the panic which led to the headlong flight of our little army. Yes, Aleck, they piled up his sins upon my unlucky shoulders, and I was driven out into the wilderness—hounded out of society, a dishonoured, disgraced coward. Aleck, boy,” he continued, with his voice growing appealing and piteous, “I was engaged to be married to the young and beautiful girl I loved as soon as the war was over, and I was looking forward to happiness on my return. But for me happiness was dead.”“Oh! but, uncle,” cried the boy, excitedly, catching at the old man’s arm, “the lady—surely she did not believe it of you?”“I never saw her again, Aleck,” said the old man, slowly. “Six months after my sentence the papers announced her approaching marriage.”“Oh!” cried the lad, indignantly.“Wait, my boy. No; she never believed it of me. She was forced by her relatives to accept this man. I have her dear letter—yellow and time-stained now—written a week before the appointed wedding-day which never dawned for her, my boy. She died two days before, full of faith in my honour.”Aleck’s hands were both resting now upon his uncle’s arm, and his eyes looked dim and misty.“There, my boy, I said I could not explain to you, and I have uncovered the old wound, laying it quite bare. Now you know what it is that has made me the old cankered, harsh, misanthropic being you know—bitter, soured, evil-tempered, and so harsh; so wanting in love for my kind that even you, my boy, my poor dead sister’s child, can’t bear to live with me any longer.”“Uncle!” panted Aleck. “I didn’t know—”“Let’s see,” continued the old man, with a resumption of his former fierce manner; “you said you would not run away, only go. To sea, eh?”“Uncle,” cried Aleck, “didn’t you hear what I said?”“Yes, quite plainly,” replied the old man, bitterly; “I heard. I don’t wonder at a lad of spirit resenting my harsh, saturnine ways. What a life for a lad like you! Well, you’ve made up your mind, and I’ll be just to you, my lad. You shall be started well. When would you like to go?”“When you drive me away, uncle,” cried the boy, passionately. “Oh, uncle, won’t you listen to me—won’t you believe in me? How can you think me such a coward as to leave you, knowing what I do?”The old man caught him by the shoulders, held him back at arm’s length, and stood gazing fiercely in his eyes for a few moments, and then his own began to soften, and he said, gently:“Aleck, when I was your age my sister and I were constant companions. You have her voice, boy, and there is a ring in it so like—oh, so like hers! Yes, I heard, and I believe in you. I believe, too, that you will respect my prayers to you that all I have said this night shall be held sacred. I do not wish the world to know our secrets. But, there, there,” he said, in a totally changed voice, “what a day this has been for us both! You have suffered cruelly, my boy, for my sake, and I in my blindness and bitterness treated you ill.”“Oh, uncle, pray, pray say no more!” cried the boy, piteously.“I must—just this, Aleck: I have suffered too, my boy. Another black shadow had come across my darkened life, and in my ignorance I turned against you as I did. Aleck, boy, your uncle asks your forgiveness, and—now no more, my boy; it is nearly midnight, and we must try and rest. Can you go to sleep again?”“Yes, uncle,” cried the boy, eagerly, “I feel as if it will be easy now. Good-night, uncle.”“Good-night, my boy,” whispered the old man, huskily, and he hurried out, whispering words of thankfulness to himself; but they were words the nephew did not hear.As the door closed Aleck sprang off the bed on to his feet, his knuckles smarting as he struck an attitude and tightly clenched his fists, seeing in imagination Big Jem the slanderer standing before him once again.“You cowardly brute!” he muttered; and then his aspect changed in the dim light shed by the candle, for there was a look of joyous pride in his countenance, disfigured though it was, as he said, hurriedly: “I didn’t half tell uncle that I thoroughly whipped him, after all. But old Tom Bodger—he’ll be as pleased as Punch.”It was rather a distorted smile on Aleck’s lips, as, after undressing, he fell fast asleep, but it was a very happy one all the same, and so thought Captain Lawrence as he stole into the room in the grey dawn to see if his nephew was sleeping free from fever and pain, and then stole out again without making a sound.
“That you, Jane?”
“Why, of course it is. Were you really asleep?”
“Asleep? No—yes. I don’t know, Jane. My head’s all gone queer, I think.”
“And no wonder, fighting like that, and never touching a bit of the dinner I brought you up. Yes, your head’s all in a fever, and your poor swelled-up eyes too. That’s better. Now, then, you must take this.”
“What is it?” said the lad, drowsily.
“What is it? Why, can’t you see?”
“No; my head’s all swimming round and round, and my eyes won’t open.”
“Never mind, poor boy, this’ll do you good. I’ve brought you up a big breakfast-cup of nice, fresh, hot tea, and two rounds of buttered toast. They’ll do your head good.”
“I say, Jane, where’s uncle?”
“In his room. He’s had some too. I didn’t wait to be asked, but took the tea in.”
“What was he doing?” said Aleck.
“Writing.”
“His book?”
“No, letters; and as busy as could be. Come, try and drink your tea.”
“But isn’t it very early for tea—directly after dinner like this?”
“Directly after dinner? Why, bless the boy, it’s past seven!”
“Then I must have been asleep,” said the boy, speaking more collectedly now.
“I should just think you must, and the best thing for you. Hark! There’s master’s study bell; he wants more tea. I must go; but promise me you’ll take yours?”
“Yes, I’m dreadfully thirsty,” said the lad, and as the woman left the room he began to sip the tea and eat pieces of the toast till all was gone, and then, after a weary sigh, he glanced at his bundle and hat upon the chair, reeled towards the bed, held on by the painted post, while he thrust off his boots and then literally rolled upon it, with his face looking scarlet upon the white pillow. The next moment he was breathing heavily in deep, dreamless sleep.
That dreamless sleep lasted till the old eight-day clock on the landing had struck eleven, during which time Jane, who was growing anxious about him, came in three times—the first to take away the tea and dinner things, the other twice to make sure that he was not going into a high fever, as she termed it, and feeling better satisfied each time.
“Nothing like so hot,” she said to herself. “It was that cup o’ tea that did him good. There’s nothing like a hot cup o’ tea and a good sleep for a bad headache.”
So Jane left and went to bed after a final peep, and, as before said, the sound sleep went on till the clock began to strike, and then he began to dream that his uncle came into the room with a chamber candlestick in his hand, set it down where its light shone full upon his stern, severe old features, and seated himself upon the chair by the bed’s head.
Then he began to question him; and it seemed to the boy that in his dream he answered without moving his head or opening his eyes, which appeared strange, for he fancied he could see the old man’s angry face all the time.
“Not undressed, Aleck?” said the old man.
“No, uncle.”
“Shoes here ready—hat, bundle, and stick on the chair! Does that mean waiting till all is quiet, and then running away from home?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Hah! From one who took you to his heart when you were a little orphan child, just when your widowed mother had closed her eyes for ever on this weary world, and swore to treat you as if you were his own!”
“Yes, uncle.”
“And why?”
“Because you are tired of me, uncle, and don’t trust me—and are going to send me away.”
“Hah! You are not going to try and be taken as a soldier?”
“No, uncle.”
“Hah! What then? Going to seek your fortune?”
“No, uncle. I’m going to sea.”
Perhaps thathah! that ejaculation, was louder than the other words—perhaps Aleck Donne had not been dreaming—perhaps it was all real!
At any rate the sleeper had awakened and with his eyes able to open a little more, and through the two narrow slits he was gazing at the stern, sorrowful face, lit up by one candle, seated there within a yard of the pillow.
“Head better, my lad?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Seems clearer, eh?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Feel feverish?”
“No, uncle, I think not. I’m hardly awake yet.”
“I know, my lad. You got a good deal knocked about, then?”
“I don’t quite know, uncle. I suppose so. It all seems very dreamy now.”
“Consequence of injury to the head. Soldiers are in that condition sometimes after a blow from the butt end of a musket.”
“Are they, uncle?” asked Aleck, who was half ready to believe that this was all part of his dream.
The captain nodded, and sat silent for a few moments, before glancing at the bundle, hat, and cane. Then—
“So you’ve been making up your mind to run away?”
“To go away, uncle; not run.”
“Hah! Same thing, my lad.”
“No, uncle.”
“What! Don’t contradict me, sir. Do you want to quarrel again?”
“No, uncle.”
“Humph! You prepared those things for running away?”
“I had some such ideas, uncle, when I tied them up,” said the lad, firmly; “but I should not have done that.”
“Indeed! Then why did you tie them up?”
“To go away, uncle.”
“Well, that’s what I said, sir.”
“That was not quite correct, uncle. If I ran away it would have been without telling you.”
“Of course, and that’s what you meant to do.”
“No, uncle; I feel now that I could not have done that. I should have come to you in the morning to tell you that I felt as if I should be better away, and that I would go to sea at once.”
“Humph! And if you went away, sir, what’s to become of me?”
“I don’t know, uncle, only I feel that you’d be better without such an obstinate, disobedient fellow as I am.”
“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, you shouldn’t be obstinate then.”
“I didn’t mean to be, uncle.”
“Then, why, in the name of all that’s sensible, were you? Why didn’t you tell me why you fought and got in such a state?”
“I felt that I couldn’t tell you, uncle.”
“Why not, sir—why not?”
Aleck was silent once more.
“There you are, you see. As stubborn as a mule.”
“No, I’m not, uncle.”
“Now, look here, Aleck; I couldn’t go to bed without trying to make peace between us. Don’t contradict me, sir. I say you are stubborn. There, I’ll give you one more chance. Now, then, why did you fight those lads?”
“Don’t ask me, uncle, please. I can’t tell you.”
“But I do ask you, and I will know. Now, sir, why was it? For I’m sure there was some blackguardly reason. Now, then, speak out, or—or—or—I vow I’ll never be friends with you again.”
“Don’t ask me, uncle.”
“Once more, I will ask you, sir. Why was it?”
“Because—” began Aleck, and stopped.
“Well, sir—because?” raged out the old man. “Speak, sir. You are my sister’s son. I have behaved to you since she died like a father. I am in the place of your father, and I command you to speak.”
“Well, uncle, it was because they spoke about you,” said the lad, at last, desperately.
“Eh? Ah! Humph!” said the old man, with his florid face growing clay-coloured. “They spoke ill of me, then?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“About my past—past life, eh?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Humph! What did they say?”
“Uncle, pray don’t ask me,” pleaded Aleck.
“Humph! I know. Said I was disgraced and turned out of my regiment, eh? For cowardice?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“And you said it wasn’t true?”
“Of course, uncle.”
“Got yourself knocked into a mummy, then, for defending me?”
“Yes, uncle; but I’m not much hurt.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the old man, frowning, and looking at the lad through his half-closed eyes. “Said it was not true, then?”
“Of course, uncle,” cried the boy, flushing indignantly.
“Humph! Thankye, my boy; but, you see, it was true.”
Aleck’s eyes glittered as he stared blankly at the fierce-looking old man. For the declaration sounded horrible. His uncle had been one of the bravest of soldiers in the boy’s estimation, and time after time he had sat and gloated over the trophy formed by the old officer’s sword and pistols, surmounted by the military cap, hanging in the study. Many a time, too, he had in secret carefully swept away the dust. More than once, too, in his uncle’s absence he had taken down and snapped the pistols at some imaginary foe, and felt a thrill of pleasure as the old flints struck off a tiny shower of brilliant stars from the steel pan cover. At other times, too, he had carefully lifted the sword from its hooks and tugged till the bright blade came slowly out of its leathern scabbard, cut and thrust with it to put enemies to flight, and longed to carry it to the tool-shed to treat it to a good whetting with the rubber the gardener used for his scythe, for the rounded edge held out no promise of cutting off a Frenchman’s head. And now for the old hero of his belief to tell him calmly and without the slightest hesitation that the charge was true was so staggering, so beyond belief, that the blank look of dismay produced by the assertion gradually gave place to a smile of incredulity, and at last the boy exclaimed:
“Oh, uncle! You are joking!”
The old soldier returned the boy’s smile with a cold, stern gaze full of something akin to despair, as he drew a long, deep breath and said, slowly:
“You find it hard to believe, then, Aleck, my boy?”
“Hard to believe, uncle? Of course I do. Nobody could believe such a thing of you.”
“You are wrong, my boy,” said the old man, with a sigh, “for everyone believed it, and the court-martial sentenced me to be disgraced.”
“Uncle! Oh, uncle! But it wasn’t—it couldn’t be true,” cried Aleck, wildly, as he sat up in bed.
“The world said it was true, my boy,” replied the old man, whose voice sounded very low and sad.
“But you, uncle—you denied the charge?”
“Of course, my boy.”
“Then the people on the court-martial must have been mad,” cried the boy, proudly. “I thought the word of an officer and a gentleman was quite sufficient to set aside such a charge.”
“Then you don’t believe it was true, my lad?”
“I?” cried the boy, proudly; “what nonsense, uncle! Of course not.”
“But, knowing now what I have told you, suppose you should hear this charge made against me again, what would you do?”
Aleck’s eyes flashed, and, regardless of the pain it gave him, he clenched his injured fists, set his teeth hard, and said, hoarsely:
“The same as I did to-day, uncle. Nobody shall tell such lies about you while I am there.”
Captain Lawrence caught his young champion to his breast and held him tightly for a few moments, before, in a husky, quivering voice, he said:
“Yes, Aleck, boy, for they are lies. But the mud thrown at me stuck in spite of all my efforts to wash it away, and the stains remained.”
“But, uncle—”
“Don’t talk about it, boy,” cried the old man, hoarsely. “You are bringing up the past, Aleck, with all its maddening horrors. I can’t talk to you and explain. It was at the end of a disastrous day. Our badly led men were put to flight through the mismanagement of our chief—one high in position—and someone had to suffer for his sins, there had to be a scapegoat, and I was the unhappy wretch upon whom the commander-in-chief’s sins were piled up. They said that the beating back of my company caused the panic which led to the headlong flight of our little army. Yes, Aleck, they piled up his sins upon my unlucky shoulders, and I was driven out into the wilderness—hounded out of society, a dishonoured, disgraced coward. Aleck, boy,” he continued, with his voice growing appealing and piteous, “I was engaged to be married to the young and beautiful girl I loved as soon as the war was over, and I was looking forward to happiness on my return. But for me happiness was dead.”
“Oh! but, uncle,” cried the boy, excitedly, catching at the old man’s arm, “the lady—surely she did not believe it of you?”
“I never saw her again, Aleck,” said the old man, slowly. “Six months after my sentence the papers announced her approaching marriage.”
“Oh!” cried the lad, indignantly.
“Wait, my boy. No; she never believed it of me. She was forced by her relatives to accept this man. I have her dear letter—yellow and time-stained now—written a week before the appointed wedding-day which never dawned for her, my boy. She died two days before, full of faith in my honour.”
Aleck’s hands were both resting now upon his uncle’s arm, and his eyes looked dim and misty.
“There, my boy, I said I could not explain to you, and I have uncovered the old wound, laying it quite bare. Now you know what it is that has made me the old cankered, harsh, misanthropic being you know—bitter, soured, evil-tempered, and so harsh; so wanting in love for my kind that even you, my boy, my poor dead sister’s child, can’t bear to live with me any longer.”
“Uncle!” panted Aleck. “I didn’t know—”
“Let’s see,” continued the old man, with a resumption of his former fierce manner; “you said you would not run away, only go. To sea, eh?”
“Uncle,” cried Aleck, “didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yes, quite plainly,” replied the old man, bitterly; “I heard. I don’t wonder at a lad of spirit resenting my harsh, saturnine ways. What a life for a lad like you! Well, you’ve made up your mind, and I’ll be just to you, my lad. You shall be started well. When would you like to go?”
“When you drive me away, uncle,” cried the boy, passionately. “Oh, uncle, won’t you listen to me—won’t you believe in me? How can you think me such a coward as to leave you, knowing what I do?”
The old man caught him by the shoulders, held him back at arm’s length, and stood gazing fiercely in his eyes for a few moments, and then his own began to soften, and he said, gently:
“Aleck, when I was your age my sister and I were constant companions. You have her voice, boy, and there is a ring in it so like—oh, so like hers! Yes, I heard, and I believe in you. I believe, too, that you will respect my prayers to you that all I have said this night shall be held sacred. I do not wish the world to know our secrets. But, there, there,” he said, in a totally changed voice, “what a day this has been for us both! You have suffered cruelly, my boy, for my sake, and I in my blindness and bitterness treated you ill.”
“Oh, uncle, pray, pray say no more!” cried the boy, piteously.
“I must—just this, Aleck: I have suffered too, my boy. Another black shadow had come across my darkened life, and in my ignorance I turned against you as I did. Aleck, boy, your uncle asks your forgiveness, and—now no more, my boy; it is nearly midnight, and we must try and rest. Can you go to sleep again?”
“Yes, uncle,” cried the boy, eagerly, “I feel as if it will be easy now. Good-night, uncle.”
“Good-night, my boy,” whispered the old man, huskily, and he hurried out, whispering words of thankfulness to himself; but they were words the nephew did not hear.
As the door closed Aleck sprang off the bed on to his feet, his knuckles smarting as he struck an attitude and tightly clenched his fists, seeing in imagination Big Jem the slanderer standing before him once again.
“You cowardly brute!” he muttered; and then his aspect changed in the dim light shed by the candle, for there was a look of joyous pride in his countenance, disfigured though it was, as he said, hurriedly: “I didn’t half tell uncle that I thoroughly whipped him, after all. But old Tom Bodger—he’ll be as pleased as Punch.”
It was rather a distorted smile on Aleck’s lips, as, after undressing, he fell fast asleep, but it was a very happy one all the same, and so thought Captain Lawrence as he stole into the room in the grey dawn to see if his nephew was sleeping free from fever and pain, and then stole out again without making a sound.
Chapter Eight.The breakfast the next morning was rather late, consequent upon Captain Lawrence and his nephew dropping off each into a deep sleep just when it was about time to rise; but it was a very pleasant meal when they did meet, for the removal of a great weight from Aleck’s mind allowed some other part of his economy to rise rampant with hints that it had missed the previous day’s dinner. There was a pleasant odour, too, pervading the house, suggesting that Jane had been baking bread cakes and then frying fish.Aleck noticed both scents when he threw open his window to let the perfume of the roses come in from the garden; but the kitchen windows and door were open, and the odour of the roses was regularly ousted by that of the food.“My word! It does smell good,” said the boy to himself, and his lips parted to be smacked, but gave vent to the interjection “O!” instead, for the movement of the articulations just in front of his ears caused a sharp pain.“That’s nice!” muttered Aleck. “How’s a fellow to eat with his jaw all stiff like that?”This reminder of the previous day’s encounter brought with it other memories, which took the lad to the looking-glass, and the reflection he saw there made him grin at himself, and then wince again.“Oh, my!” he said, softly. “How it hurts! My face feels stiff all over. I do look a sight. Can’t go down to breakfast like this, I know; I’ll stop here, and Jane will bring me some up. One can’t stir out like this.”Grasping the fact that it was late, the boy dressed hurriedly, casting glances from time to time at the birds which sailed over from the sea, and at old Dunning, the gardener, who was busy digging a deep trench for celery, and treating the soft earth when he drove in the spade in so slow and tender a way that it seemed as if he was afraid of hurting it.Aleck noted this, and grinned and hurt himself again.“Poor old ’Nesimus,” he said, feeling wonderfully light-hearted; “he always works as if he thought it must be cruel to kill weeds.”The boy had a good final look at the old man, who wore more the aspect of a rough fisherman than a gardener. In fact he had pursued the former avocation entirely in the past, in company with the speculative growing of fruit and vegetables in his garden patch—not to sell to his neighbours, the fishing folk of the tiny hamlet of Eilygugg, but to “swap” them, as he termed it, for fish. Then the time came when the Den gardener happened to be enjoying himself at Rockabie with a dozen more men, smoking, discussing shoals of fish, the durability of nets, and the like, when they suddenly discovered the fact that a party of men had landed on the shore from His Majesty’s ship Conqueror, stolen up to the town in the darkness, and, after surrounding the little inn with a network of men, drawn the said net closer and closer, and ended by trammelling the whole set of guests and carrying them off as pressed men to the big frigate.That was during the last war, and not a man came back to take up his regular avocation. Consequently there was a vacancy for a gardener at the Den, and it was afterwards filled up by Fisherman Onesimus Dunning, the wrinkled-faced man handling the spade and dealing so tenderly with his Mother Earth when Aleck looked out of the window.“I wonder old Jane hasn’t been up to see how I am,” said Aleck, as he handled his comb as gingerly as the gardener did his spade.“I wonder how Master Aleck is,” said Jane, just about the same time. “But I won’t disturb him. Nothing like a good long sleep for hurts.”“I know,” said Aleck to himself; “I can’t call down the stairs, because uncle would hear. I daresay he’s asleep. I’ll tell old Ness to go round to the kitchen door and say she is to come up. No, I won’t; he’d come close up and see my face, and it would make her cross now she’s busy frying fish. How good it smells! Iamhungry! Wish she’d bring some up at once. HowamI to let her know?”He had hardly thought this before he started, for there was a sharp rap at the door, the handle rattled, and the old captain came in.“Getting up, Aleck, boy?” he said. “Ah, that’s right—dressed. Come along down. You must be hungry.”“I am, uncle,” replied the boy, returning his uncle’s warm and impressive grasp; “but I can’t come down like this,” and the boy made a deprecating gesture towards his battered face.“Well, you don’t look your best, Aleck, lad,” said the old man, smiling; “but you are no invalid. Never mind your looks; you’ll soon come right.”Nothing loth, the boy followed his uncle downstairs, Jane hurriedly appearing in the little breakfast-room with a hot dish and plates on hearing the steps, and smiling with satisfaction on seeing Aleck.“Ah, that’s right, Jane!” said the captain, cheerfully, making the maid beam again on seeing “master” in such an amiable frame of mind.“Fried fish?”“Yes, sir; brill.”“Some of your catching, Aleck?”“No, sir,” put in the maid, eagerly; “that Tom Bodger was over here with it as soon as it was light. He knocked and woke me up. Said Master Aleck forgot it yes’day.”“No wonder,” said the captain, smiling at his nephew; “enough to knock anything out of your head, eh, Aleck?”“Yes, uncle; one of the fishermen said I was to bring it home.”“That’s right. Shows you have friends as well as foes in Rockabie.”The breakfast went on, and after the first mouthfuls the boy’s jaws worked more easily, and he was enjoying his meal thoroughly, when his uncle suddenly exclaimed:“What are you going to do to-day, my boy?”“Go on with those problems, uncle, unless you want me to do anything else.”“I do,” said the old man, smiling. “I want you to leave your books to-day—for a few days, I should say, till your face comes round again—I mean less round, boy,” he added, laughing. “Have a rest. Go and ramble along the cliffs. Take the little glass and watch the birds till evening, and then you can fish.”Aleck jumped at the proposal, for the thought of books and writing had brought on suggestions of headache and weariness; and soon after breakfast he went up to his uncle’s study, to find him sitting looking very thoughtful, and ready to start at the boy’s entry.“I’ve come for the spy-glass, uncle,” said Aleck.“To be sure, yes. I forgot,” said the old man, hastily. “Take it down, my boy; and mind what you’re about—recollect you are half blind. Let’s have no walking over the cliff or into one of the gullies.”“I’ll take care, uncle,” said the boy, smiling. “I’ll be back to dinner at two.”The captain nodded, and Aleck was moving towards the door, when the old man rose hastily, overtook him, and grasped his hand for a moment or two.“Just to show you that I have not forgotten yesterday, Aleck, my boy,” he said, gravely, and then he turned away.“Who could forget yesterday?” thought the boy, as he slipped out by the side door and took the path leading round by the far edge of the cliff wall, the part which was left wild, that is, to its natural growth.For Aleck’s intent was to avoid being observed by the old gardener, whom he had last seen at work over the celery trench upon the other side of the house.“He’d only begin asking questions about my face, and grinning at me like one of the great stupid fisher boys,” said Aleck to himself, as he passed the sling strap of the spy-glass over his shoulder and hurried in and out among the bosky shrubs close under the great cliff wall, till, passing suddenly round a great feathery tuft of tamarisk, he came suddenly upon the very man he was trying to avoid, standing in a very peculiar position, his back bowed inward, head thrown backward, and a square black bottle held upside down, the neck to his lips and the bottom pointing to the sky.Aleck stopped short, vexed and wondering, while the old gardener jerked himself upright, spilling some of the liquid over his chin and neck, and making a movement as if to hide the bottle, but, seeing how impossible it was, standing fast, with an imbecile grin on his countenance.“Morning, Master Aleck,” he said. “Strange hot morning. Been diggin’; and it makes me that thusty I’m obliged to keep a bottle o’ water here in the shady part o’ the rocks.”“Oh, are you?” said Aleck, quietly, and he could not forbear giving a sniff.“Ah! nice, arn’t it, sir? Flowers do smell out here on a morning like this, what with the roses and the errubs and wile thyme and things. It do make the bees busy. But what yer been eating on, sir? Or have yer slipped down among the nattles? Your face is swelled-up a sight. Here, I know—you’ve been bathing!”“Not this morning, Ness; I did yesterday.”“That’s it, then, my lad, and you should mind. I know you’ve had one o’ they jelly-fish float up agen yer face, and they sting dreadful sometimes.”“Yes, I know,” said Aleck, beginning to move onward past the man; “but it wasn’t a jelly-fish that stung my face.”“Wasn’t it now? Yer don’t mean it was a bee or wops?”“No, Ness; it was a blackguard’s fist.”“Why, yer don’t mean to say yer been fighting, do ’ee?”“Yes, I do, Ness. Going to finish the celery trench?”“Yes, sir; but the ground’s mighty hard. Hot wuck, that it is. But where be going wi’ the spy-glass?”“Over yonder along the cliffs to look at the Eilyguggs.”“Eh?” cried the man, sharply. “’Long yonder, past the houses?”“Yes.”“Nay, nay, nay, I wouldn’t go that away. Go east’ard. It’s a deal better and nicer that way, and there’s more buds.”“I’ll go that way another time,” said the boy, surlily, and he hurried on. “A nasty old cheat,” he muttered; “does he take me for a child? Water, indeed! Strong water, then. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if it was smuggled gin. But, there, I won’t tell tales.”“Ahoy there!” shouted the gardener. “Master Aleck, there’s a sight more eggs yon other way.”“Yes, I know,” cried the boy. “Another time.” Then to himself, “Bother his officiousness! Wants to be very civil so that I shan’t notice about his being there with that bottle.”The man shouted something back, and upon Aleck looking round he saw to his surprise that he was being followed, the gardener shuffling after him at a pretty good rate.“Now, why does he want me to go the other way?” thought the boy. “I didn’t mind which cliff I went along, but I do now. I’m not going to be dictated to by him. I know, he wants to come with me, just by way of an excuse to leave off digging for an hour or two and chatter and babble and keep on saying things I don’t want to hear, as well as question me about yesterday’s fight; and I’m not going to give him the chance.”Aleck smiled to himself, and winced again, for the swollen face was stiff and the nerves and muscles about his eyes in no condition for smiles. Then, keeping on for a few yards till he was hidden from his follower by the thick shrubs, he stooped down, ran off to his right, and reached the path on the other side of the depression, well out of the gardener’s sight; and reaching a suitable spot he dropped down upon his knees, having the satisfaction of watching the man hurrying along till he came to where the depression narrowed and the pathway along the chasm began.From here there was a good view downward, and the man stopped short, sheltered his eyes with his right hand to scan the narrow shelf-like declivity for quite a minute, before he took off his hat and began scratching his head, while he looked round and behind before having another scratch and appearing thoroughly puzzled.“Wondering how I managed to drop out of sight,” laughed Aleck to himself.He was quite right, for he saw Dunning turn to right and left, after looking forward, ending by staring straight up in the air, and then backward, before giving his leg a sounding rap, and taking off his hat to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.“He doesn’t get so hot as that over his work,” said Aleck to himself, as he crouched lower, laughing heartily; and he had another good laugh when, after one more careful look, the old gardener shook his head disconsolately and turned to walk back.“Given it up as a bad job,” he said, merrily. “An old stupid! I could have found him. Well, I can go now in peace.”He waited till the coast was clear, and then, stooping low, set off at a trot, getting well down into the gorge-like rift. Striking off gradually to his right, he attacked the great cliff wall in a perfectly familiar fashion, and climbed from ledge to ledge till he reached the top, glanced back to see that the gardener was not in sight, and then strode away over the short, velvety, slippery turf, with the edge of the cliff some fifty yards or so to his left, and the rough, rocky slope that led up to the scattered cottages of the Eilygugg fishermen to his right.He soon reached a somewhat similar chasm to that which ended in his own boat harbour; but this was far wider, and upon reaching its edge he could look right down it to the sea, where at its mouth a couple of luggers and about half a dozen rowboats of various sizes were moored.The cottages lay round and about the head of the creek, and partly natural, partly cut and blasted out of the cliff side, ledge after ledge had been formed, giving an easy way down from the cottages to the boats. But there was not a soul in sight, and nothing to indicate that there were people occupying the whitewashed cots, save some patches of white newly-washed clothes which were kept from being blown away by the playful wind by means of big cobble stones—smooth boulders—three or four of which were laid upon the corners of the washing.There was not even one fisherman hanging about the front of the cottages, where all looked quiet and sleepy in the extreme, so, passing on, Aleck hurried round the head of the narrow rugged harbour, and was soon after making his way along the piled-up cliffs, keeping well inland so as to avoid the great gashes or splits which ran up into the land and had to be circumvented, where they ended as suddenly as they appeared, in every case being perfectly perpendicular, with the water running right up, looking in some cases black, still, deep and clear, in others floored with foam as the waves rushed in over the black, jagged masses of rock that had in stormy times been torn from the sides.To a stranger nothing could have appeared more terrible than these zigzag jagged gashes or splits in the stern, rocky coast, for they were turfed to the sharp edge, where an unwary step would have resulted in the visitor plunging downward, to drown in the deep, black water, or be mutilated by the rocks amidst which the waters foamed.But “familiarity breeds contempt,” says one proverb, “use is second nature” another, and there was nothing that appeared terrible to the boy, who walked quickly along close to the edge, glancing perhaps at its fellow, in some cases only a few yards away, and looking so exactly the counterpart of that on the near side that it seemed as if only another convulsion of nature was needed to compress and join the crack again so that it would be possible to walk where death was now lurking.But there was nothing horrible there to Aleck who in every case turned inland to skirt the chasm, gazing down with interest the while at the nesting-places of the sea-birds which covered nearly every ledge, each one being alive with screaming, clamouring, hungry young, straining their necks to meet the swift-winged auks and puffins that darted to and fro with newly-captured fish in their bills.Aleck had left the whitewashed cottages behind, along with the last traces of busy human life in the shape of boat, rope, spar, lobster-pot, and net, to reach one of the most rugged and inaccessible parts of the rocky cliffs—a spot all jagged, piled-up rift with the corresponding hollows—and at last selected a place which looked like the beginning of one of the chasms where Nature had commenced a huge gaping crack a good hundred feet in depth, though its darkened wedge-shaped bottom was still quite a hundred feet above where the waves swayed in and out at the bottom, of the cliff. The sides here were not perpendicular, but with just sufficient slope to allow an experienced, cool-headed cliff-climber to descend from ledge to ledge and rock to rock till a nook could be reached, where, securely perched, one who loved cliff-scanning and the beauties of the ever-changing sea and shore, could sit and enjoy the wild wonders of the place.The spot was exactly suited to Aleck’s taste; and as old practice and acquaintance with the coast had made giddiness a trouble he never felt, he was not long in lowering himself down to this coign of vantage. Here he perched himself with a sigh of satisfaction, and watched for a time the great white-breasted gulls which floated down to gaze with curious watchful eyes at the intruder upon their wild domain. The puffins kept darting down from the ledges, with beaks pointed, web feet stretched out behind, and short wings fluttering so rapidly that they were almost invisible, while the singular birds looked like so many animated triangles darting down diagonally to the sea, and gliding over it for some distance before touching the water, into which they plunged like arrow-heads, to disappear and continue their flight under water till they emerged far away with some silvery fish in their beaks.Some little distance below a few sooty-looking cormorants had taken possession of an out-standing rock upon which the sun beat warmly, and here, their morning fishing over, leaving them absolutely gorged, they sat with wings half open and feathers erect, drying themselves, looking the very images of gluttonous content.Birds were everywhere—black, black and white, black and grey, and grey and white, with here and there a few that looked black in the distance, but when inspected through the glass proved to be of a deep bronzy metallic green.But while the air and rocks were alive with objects that delighted the watcher’s eye, there was plenty to see beside. Close in where the deep water was nearly still, the jelly-fish floated at every depth, shrinking and expanding like so many opening and shutting bubbles of soap and water, glistening with iridescent hues. Farther out the smooth, vividly-blue water every now and then turned in patches from sapphire to purple, and a patch—a whole acre perhaps in extent—became of the darkest purple or amethyst, all of a fret and work, while silvery flashes played all over it, reflecting the rays of the burning sun. For plenty of shoals of fish were feeding, over which the birds were rising, falling, darting and splashing, as they banqueted upon their silvery prey.All this was so familiar to Aleck that, though still enjoying it, he satisfied himself with a few glances before, carefully focussing the glass he had brought, he began to sweep the coast wherever he could command it from where he sat.The opposite side of the rift seemed to take his attention most, and perhaps he was examining some of the deep cavernous hollows seen here and there high up or low down towards the sea; or maybe his attention was riveted upon some quaint puffin, crouching, solemn and big-beaked, watching patiently for the next visit of main or dad; or, again, maybe the lad was looking at a solitary greatly-blotched egg, big at one end, going off to almost nothing at the other, and wanting in the soft curves of ordinary eggs, while he wondered how it was that such an egg should not blow out of its rocky hollow when the wind came, but spin round as upon a pivot instead.Anyhow, Aleck was watching the other side of the half-made chasm, the great wedge-shaped depression in the coast-line, looking straight across at a spot about a hundred yards distant in the level, though higher up it was too, and going off to nothing at the bottom, where the place looked like the dried-up bed of a river.All at once he started and nearly dropped the glass, as he wrenched himself right round to gaze back and up, for a gruff voice had suddenly cried:“Hullo!”The next moment the boy, was gazing in a fierce pair of very dark eyes belonging to a swarthy, scowling, sea-tanned face, the lower part of which was clothed in a crisp black beard, as black as the short head of hair.This head of hair of course belonged to a man, but no man was to be seen, nothing but the big round bullet head peering down from the edge of one of the ledges, while on both sides, apparently not heeding the head in the least, dozens of wild fowl sat solemnly together, looking stupid and waiting for the next coming of parent birds.“Hullo!” cried the head again.“Hullo!” retorted Aleck, as gruffly as he could, after recovering from his surprise. “That you, Eben Megg?”“Oh! ay, it’s me right enough, youngster. What are you doing there?”“Now?” said Aleck, coolly. “Looking up at your black face.”“Black face, eh, youngster? Perhaps other people ha’ got black faces too. What ha’ you been doing of—tumbling off the rocks? Strikes me you’re trying it on for another tumble.”Aleck flushed a little at the allusion to his injured face, feeling guilty too, as it struck him that he had brought the allusion upon himself, a Rowland for his Oliver, on the principle that those who play at bowls must expect rubbers.“No, I haven’t had a tumble, and I’m not going to tumble,” he said, testily. “I daresay I can climb as well as you.”“P’raps you can, youngster, and p’raps you can’t; but, if you do want to break your neck, stop at home and do it, and don’t come here.”“What!” cried Aleck, indignantly. “Why not? I’ve as good a right here as you have, so none of your insolence.”“Oh, no, you haven’t. All along here’s our egging-ground, and we don’t want our birds disturbed.”“Your egging-ground—your birds!” cried Aleck, indignantly. “Why, I do call that cool. You’ll be telling me next that the fish in the sea are yours, and that I mustn’t whiff or lay a fish-pot or trammel.”“Ay, unless you want to lose your net or other gear. I hev knowed folk as fished on other people’s ground finding a hole knocked in the bottoms of their boats.”“What!” cried Aleck. “That’s as good as saying that if I fish along here you’ll sink my boat.”“Didn’t say I would, but it’s like enough as some ’un might shove a boat-hook through or drop in a good big boulder stone.”“Then I tell you what it is, Master Eben Megg. If any damage is done to my Seagull you’ll have to answer for it before the magistrate.”“Oh! that’s your game, is it, my lad? Now, lookye here, don’t you get threatening of me or you’ll get the worst on it. We folk at Eilygugg never interferes with you and the captain and never interferes about your ketching a bit o’ fish or taking a few eggs so long as you are civil; but you’re on’y foreigners and intruders and don’t belong to these parts, and we do.”“Well, of all the impudence,” cried Aleck, “when my uncle bought the whole of the Den estate right down to the sea! Don’t you know that you’re intruders and trespassers when you come laying your crab-pots under our cliff and shooting your seine on the sandy patch off the little harbour?”“No, youngster, I don’t; but I do know as you’re getting a deal too sarcy, and that I’m going to stop it, and my mates too.”“Get out! Who are you?” cried the boy, indignantly. “What do you mean?”“I mean that if you want to fish off our shore and wants a man to help with your boat you’ve got to ask some of us to help, and not get bringing none o’ your wooden-legged cripples spying and poking about our ground.”“Spy? What is there to spy?” said Aleck, giving the man a peculiar look.“Never you mind about that. You be off home, and don’t you come spying about here with none of your glasses.”Aleck laughed derisively.“Ah, you may grin, my lad; but I’ve been a-watching of yer this morning,” said the man, fiercely. “You’ve been busy with that glass, prying and peering about, and I caught yer at it.”Aleck laughed again.“Oh! that’s what you think, is it?” he said.“Yes, and it’s what I says; so be off home.”“I shall do nothing of the kind, Eben,” said the boy, hotly. “I’ve a better right here than you have, and I shall come whenever I please. Spying, eh?”“Ay, spying, youngster; and I won’t have it.”“Then it’s all true, eh?” said the boy, mockingly.“What’s true?” snarled the man.“You know. What have you got hidden away among the caverns—Hollands gin or French brandy? Perhaps it’s silk or velvet. No, no; I know. But you can’t think that. How do you manage to land the great casks?”“I dunno what you’re talking about, youngster—do you?”“Thoroughly. But aren’t the tobacco casks too big and too heavy to haul up the cliffs?”“Look here, young fellow,” growled the man; “none o’ your nonsense. You’d better be off before you get hurt. That’s your way back.”“Is it?” said Aleck. “Then I’m not going back till I choose. I say, should you talk like this to one of the Revenue sloop’s men if he came ashore?”“Oh, we know how to talk to that sort if he comes our way,” said the man, with a chuckling laugh; “and they knows it, too, and don’t come.”“Nor the press-gang either, eh?” said Aleck, mockingly.Up to that moment the man’s fierce face had alone been seen, but at the word press-gang he gave a violent start and rose to his knees, upon which he hobbled close up to the edge of the shelf upon which he had perched himself.“Oh, that’s it, is it, my lad, eh?” he growled, shaking his fist savagely. “Then, look here. If the press-gang—cuss ’em!—ever does come along here we shall know who put ’em up to it, and if they take any of our chaps—mind yer they won’t take all, and them behind’ll know what to do. I’m not going to threaten, but if someone wasn’t sunk in his boat, or had a bit o’ rock come tumbling down on him when he was taking up his net under the cliffs, it would be strange to me. D’yer hear that?”“Oh, yes, I hear that,” retorted Aleck. “So you won’t threaten, eh? What do you call that?”“Never you mind what I call it, youngster; and what I says I means. So now you know.”“Yes,” said Aleck, coolly; “now I know that what people say about you and your gang up at Eilygugg is quite true.”“What do people say?” shouted the man. “What people?”“The Rockabie folk.”“And what do they say?”“That you’re a set of smugglers, and, worse still, wreckers when you get a chance, and don’t stop at robbery or murder. One of the fishermen—I won’t say his name—said you were a regular gang of pirates.”“The Rockabie fishermen are a set o’ soft-headed fools,” snarled the man. “But what do I care for all they say? Let ’em prove it; and, look here, if we’re as bad as that you folk up at the Den aren’t safe.”“Which means that you threaten the captain, my uncle,” cried Aleck, defiantly.“Are you going to tell him what I said?”“Perhaps I am,” said Aleck; “perhaps I’m not. I’m going to do just as I please all along this coast, for it’s free to everybody, and my uncle has ten times the rights here that you people at the fishermen’s cottages have. You’ve just been talking insolence to me, so let’s have no more of it. This comes of the captain, my uncle, being kind and charitable to you people time after time when someone has been ill.”The man growled out something in a muttering way.“Ah, you know it, Eben Megg! It’s quite true.”“Who said it warn’t?” growled the man; “but if he’d done ten times as much I’m not going to have you spying and prying about here. What is it you want to know?”“That’s my business,” said Aleck, defiantly. “I say, you haven’t made a fortune out of smuggling, have you, and bought the estate?”“You keep your tongue quiet, will yer?” growled the man, fiercely. “What do you know about smuggling?”“Just as much as you do, Eben Megg,” cried the boy, laughing. “Just as much as everyone else does who lives here. Didn’t our old maid come in scared one night after a holiday and walking across from Rockabie and go into a fit because she had seen, as she said, a whole regiment of ghosts walking over the moor, leading ghostly horses, which came out of the sea fog and crossed the road without making a sound? Jane said they were the spirits of the old soldiers who were killed in the big fight and buried by the four stones on Black Hill, and that as soon as they were across the stony road they were all swallowed up in a mist. She keeps to it till now, and believes it.”“Well, why shouldn’t she?” growled the man. “She arn’t the first as has seen a ghost. Why shouldn’t she?”“Because it’s so silly, when it was a party of smugglers leading their horses, with kegs slung across their backs and bales on pack saddles.”“Bah!” cried the man. “Horses loaded like that would clatter over the rough stones.”“Yes,” said Aleck, “if their hoofs weren’t covered over with bits of canvas and a few handfuls of hay.”“What!”“I found one that a horse had kicked off on the road one morning, Eben,” said the boy. “Ah! I see now.”“See—see what?” said the rough, fisherman-like fellow, sharply.“See why Ness Dunning was so anxious that I shouldn’t come along the cliff this side.”“Ness Dunning?” cried the man, scowling. “What did he say?”“That I’d better go the other way. Behaved just like a silly plover which wants to prove to you that it has no nest on the moor, and sets you looking for it.”“Ness Dunning’s an old fool,” cried the man, fiercely.“Yes, he is a thick-headed old noodle, Eben; I wouldn’t trust him.”“Then because he did that he made you think there was something hid somewhere and come to hunt for it, did you?” cried the man, angrily.“No, I didn’t think anything of the kind till just this minute, but I see now. You’re not much wiser than old Ness, Eben, for you’ve been trying to throw me off the scent too, and now I know as well as if I could see it that you people have been running a cargo, and you’ve got it hidden in one of the caves or sunk in one of the holes.”“What yer talking about?”“Smuggled goods, Eben. I could find it if I tried now.”The man stepped down from the shelf on which he had been standing, and made a great show of being exceedingly ferocious, evidently thinking that the boy would turn and run away. But Aleck stood fast, not even stirring when the man was close up, planting his doubled fists upon his hips and thrusting out his lower jaw in a peculiarly animal-like way.“So you’re going to look and see if you can find something hidden, and when you’ve found it you’re going to send word to the Revenue cutter men to fetch it, are yer?”“Who says I am?” said Aleck, sharply.“Who says it? Why, I do, my lad. So that’s what you think you’re going to do, is it?”“No,” said the lad, coolly enough. “Why should I? It’s no business of mine.”“Ho!” growled the man, frowning, and raising one hand to rub his short, crisp, black beard. “No,” he said, after a pause, “it arn’t no business of yours, is it?”“Of course not,” said the boy, coolly. “I don’t want to know where the run cargo’s hidden, and I wasn’t looking for it. I only came to watch the birds and get a few eggs if I saw any that I hadn’t got.”The man made a sudden quick movement and caught Aleck’s right wrist tightly, leaning forward as if to pierce his eyes with the fierce look he gave.“Don’t do that—you hurt!” cried Aleck, sharply.“Yes, I mean to hurt,” growled the man. “Now, then, look at me! Is that true?”“Do you hear, Eben Megg? You hurt me. Let go, or I shall hit out.”“You’ll do what?” cried the big fellow, mockingly, as he tightened his grasp to a painful extent, whenspank! Aleck’s left fist flew out, striking the man full on the right cheek, not a heavy blow, but as hard as the boy could deliver, hampered as he was, being dragged close to his assailant’s breast.“Why, you—” roared the man. He did not say what, but flung the arm he had at liberty round the boy’s waist and lifted him, kicking and struggling, from the ground, perfectly helpless, with the great muscular arm acting like a band of iron, to do more than try to deliver some ineffective blows, which his assailant easily avoided.“Ah! Would you?” he growled, fiercely. “You’re a nice young game cock chick, you are. Hold still!” he roared, taking a step forward, to stand on the very edge of the shelf. “Keep that hand quiet, or I’ll hurl you down among the rocks. You’ll look worse then than you do now.”“Do, if you dare,” cried the lad, defiantly.“You tell me what I asked,” growled the man; “is what you said true?”“I won’t tell you while you grip my wrist.”“You’d better speak,” cried the man. “D’yer see, you’re like a feather to me. I could pitch you right out so as you’d go to the bottom yonder.”“You could, but you daren’t?” cried Aleck, grinding his teeth and striving hard to bear the pain he suffered.“Oh, I dare—I could if I liked! Nobody would see out here. It would kill yer, and nobody would know how it happened; but they’d say when they found you that you’d slipped and fell when you was egging. They would, wouldn’t they? That’s true, arn’t it?”“I suppose so,” said the boy, huskily.“And that’s what I’m going to do for hitting me, unless you tell me whether that was true what you said. Now, then, beg me not to hurl yer down.”“I—shan’t,” ground out the boy through his set teeth, and a grim smile crossed the man’s dark face, making it look for the moment open and manly—a smile caused by something akin to admiration.“Well, you’re a nice-tempered sort of a young fellow,” growled the man.“Let go of my wrist.”“Will yer promise not to hit?”Aleck nodded.“Nor yet kick?”The boy nodded again.“There,” said the man, loosening the prisoned wrist. “Now, tell me, is it true?”“Of course it is,” said the boy, haughtily.“I’ll believe yer,” growled the man. “There,” he continued, dropping the boy to his feet. “Then you won’t look for where the stuff’s stowed?”Aleck burst into a hoarse laugh.“Then there is some stowed?”The man gave himself a wrench, and his face puckered up again with anger.“Lookye here,” he said, more quietly, “I don’t say there is, and I don’t say there arn’t; but suppose there is, you’re going to swear as you won’t take no notice.”“No, I’m not,” said Aleck, boldly.“Then you do want me to chuck you down yonder?”“You’ve got to catch me first,” cried the boy, making a backward bound which took him ten feet downward before he landed and kept his feet, following up his leap by running along the ledge of stony slate he had reached and then beginning to climb rapidly.The man had followed him at once, leaping boldly, but without Aleck’s success, for he slipped, through the stones giving way, and went down quite five-and-twenty feet in a rough scramble before he checked himself and took up the pursuit, which he soon found would be useless, for his young adversary was lighter and far more active, and soon showed that he was leaving him behind.“There, hold hard, Master Aleck,” he growled, looking up at the lad. “I won’t hurt yer now.”“Thankye,” said the boy, mockingly, as he stopped, holding on by a projecting rock in the stiff slope, and well on his guard to go on climbing if there was the slightest sign of pursuit.“You made me wild by hitting out at me.”“Serve you right, you great lumbering coward, to serve me like that!”“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”“Yes, you did—brute! You squeezed my wrist as hard as you could.”“Well, I didn’t want to hurt you much. But you did make me wild, you know, hitting me like you did.”“Look here,” cried Aleck, fiercely, as the man took a step to continue climbing to where the boy stood, some thirty feet above him, “you come another step, and I’ll send this big stone down at you—it is loose.”“I don’t want to ketch you now, only to talk quiet without having to shout.”“I can hear you plainly enough. Sit down.”The great muscular fellow dropped at once, seating himself upon the slope and digging his heels into the loose screes to keep from sliding down.“There y’are,” he growled.“Now, then,” said Aleck, “what do you want to say?”“Only about you coming along here to-day. You warn’t trying to spy out nowt, was yer?”“No,” cried Aleck; “of course I wasn’t. I’ve known for long enough that you people at Eilygugg do a lot of smuggling. I’ve stood with the captain, my uncle, of a night and seen you signal with a lanthorn, and then after a bit seen a light shown out at sea.”“You’ve seen that, youngster?”“Lots of times; and the boats going and coming and the lights showing up against the cliff. Of course we know what goes on, but my uncle doesn’t care to interfere, and I’ve never tried to find out where you hide the smuggled goods; but I shouldn’t be long finding out if I tried.”“Hum!” growled the man, gazing up searchingly. “P’raps you’re right, youngster, p’raps you arn’t; but there is a deal o’ smuggling goes on along this coast.”“Especially about here,” said Aleck, with a smile.“Well, what’s the harm, eh? A man must live, and if one didn’t do it another would.”“Look here; I don’t want to know or hear anything about it,” cried Aleck. “Only I shall come along these cliffs, egging or watching the birds, as often as I like.”“Well, I don’t know as anyone’ll mind, Master Aleck, if I speaks to ’em and says as you says as a young gentleman that you’ll never take no notice of anything as you sees or hears—”“What! How can a gentleman promise anything of the kind about people breaking the law?”“How? Why, by just saying as he won’t.”“A gentleman can’t, I tell you. There, I won’t promise anything.”The man gave his rough head a vicious scratch, before saying, sharply:“Then how’s a man to trust yer?”“I don’t know,” said Aleck, carelessly, “but I’ll tell you this. If I’d wanted to I could have found out whether you’ve got a place to hide your stuff, as you call it, long enough ago.”“I don’t know so much about that,” said the man, with a grin.“Well, then, I could have told the Revenue cutter’s men where they had better look.”“But you won’t, Master Aleck? We are neighbours, you know.”“Neighbours!” said Aleck, scornfully. “Pretty neighbours! There, I’m not going to alter my words. I shall make no promises at all.”“Well, you are a young gentleman, and I’ll trust yer,” said the man; “for I s’pose I must. But I don’t know what some of our lads’ll say.”“Then I’d better tell my uncle that if anything happens to me he’d better get the Revenue cutter’s men to hunt out the Eilygugg smugglers, because they pushed me off the cliff.”“Nay, don’t you go and do that,” said the man, anxiously. “I didn’t mean it.”“Am I to believe that, Eben?” said the boy, sharply.The man showed his teeth in a laugh, and put his hands round his neck in a peculiar way.“Look here, Master Aleck,” he said; “man who goes to sea has to take his chance o’ being drownded.”“Of course.”“And one who tries to dodge the Revenue sailors has to take his chance of getting a cut from a bit o’ steel or a bullet in him.”“I suppose so.”“That’s quite bad enough, arn’t it?”“Yes.”“Bad enough for me, sir, so I’m not going to do what might mean being—you know what I mean?”“What—”“Yes, that’s it. A bit o’ smuggling’s not got much harm in it, but they call it murder when a man kills a man.”“By pushing him off a cliff, Eben?” said Aleck. “Yes.”
The breakfast the next morning was rather late, consequent upon Captain Lawrence and his nephew dropping off each into a deep sleep just when it was about time to rise; but it was a very pleasant meal when they did meet, for the removal of a great weight from Aleck’s mind allowed some other part of his economy to rise rampant with hints that it had missed the previous day’s dinner. There was a pleasant odour, too, pervading the house, suggesting that Jane had been baking bread cakes and then frying fish.
Aleck noticed both scents when he threw open his window to let the perfume of the roses come in from the garden; but the kitchen windows and door were open, and the odour of the roses was regularly ousted by that of the food.
“My word! It does smell good,” said the boy to himself, and his lips parted to be smacked, but gave vent to the interjection “O!” instead, for the movement of the articulations just in front of his ears caused a sharp pain.
“That’s nice!” muttered Aleck. “How’s a fellow to eat with his jaw all stiff like that?”
This reminder of the previous day’s encounter brought with it other memories, which took the lad to the looking-glass, and the reflection he saw there made him grin at himself, and then wince again.
“Oh, my!” he said, softly. “How it hurts! My face feels stiff all over. I do look a sight. Can’t go down to breakfast like this, I know; I’ll stop here, and Jane will bring me some up. One can’t stir out like this.”
Grasping the fact that it was late, the boy dressed hurriedly, casting glances from time to time at the birds which sailed over from the sea, and at old Dunning, the gardener, who was busy digging a deep trench for celery, and treating the soft earth when he drove in the spade in so slow and tender a way that it seemed as if he was afraid of hurting it.
Aleck noted this, and grinned and hurt himself again.
“Poor old ’Nesimus,” he said, feeling wonderfully light-hearted; “he always works as if he thought it must be cruel to kill weeds.”
The boy had a good final look at the old man, who wore more the aspect of a rough fisherman than a gardener. In fact he had pursued the former avocation entirely in the past, in company with the speculative growing of fruit and vegetables in his garden patch—not to sell to his neighbours, the fishing folk of the tiny hamlet of Eilygugg, but to “swap” them, as he termed it, for fish. Then the time came when the Den gardener happened to be enjoying himself at Rockabie with a dozen more men, smoking, discussing shoals of fish, the durability of nets, and the like, when they suddenly discovered the fact that a party of men had landed on the shore from His Majesty’s ship Conqueror, stolen up to the town in the darkness, and, after surrounding the little inn with a network of men, drawn the said net closer and closer, and ended by trammelling the whole set of guests and carrying them off as pressed men to the big frigate.
That was during the last war, and not a man came back to take up his regular avocation. Consequently there was a vacancy for a gardener at the Den, and it was afterwards filled up by Fisherman Onesimus Dunning, the wrinkled-faced man handling the spade and dealing so tenderly with his Mother Earth when Aleck looked out of the window.
“I wonder old Jane hasn’t been up to see how I am,” said Aleck, as he handled his comb as gingerly as the gardener did his spade.
“I wonder how Master Aleck is,” said Jane, just about the same time. “But I won’t disturb him. Nothing like a good long sleep for hurts.”
“I know,” said Aleck to himself; “I can’t call down the stairs, because uncle would hear. I daresay he’s asleep. I’ll tell old Ness to go round to the kitchen door and say she is to come up. No, I won’t; he’d come close up and see my face, and it would make her cross now she’s busy frying fish. How good it smells! Iamhungry! Wish she’d bring some up at once. HowamI to let her know?”
He had hardly thought this before he started, for there was a sharp rap at the door, the handle rattled, and the old captain came in.
“Getting up, Aleck, boy?” he said. “Ah, that’s right—dressed. Come along down. You must be hungry.”
“I am, uncle,” replied the boy, returning his uncle’s warm and impressive grasp; “but I can’t come down like this,” and the boy made a deprecating gesture towards his battered face.
“Well, you don’t look your best, Aleck, lad,” said the old man, smiling; “but you are no invalid. Never mind your looks; you’ll soon come right.”
Nothing loth, the boy followed his uncle downstairs, Jane hurriedly appearing in the little breakfast-room with a hot dish and plates on hearing the steps, and smiling with satisfaction on seeing Aleck.
“Ah, that’s right, Jane!” said the captain, cheerfully, making the maid beam again on seeing “master” in such an amiable frame of mind.
“Fried fish?”
“Yes, sir; brill.”
“Some of your catching, Aleck?”
“No, sir,” put in the maid, eagerly; “that Tom Bodger was over here with it as soon as it was light. He knocked and woke me up. Said Master Aleck forgot it yes’day.”
“No wonder,” said the captain, smiling at his nephew; “enough to knock anything out of your head, eh, Aleck?”
“Yes, uncle; one of the fishermen said I was to bring it home.”
“That’s right. Shows you have friends as well as foes in Rockabie.”
The breakfast went on, and after the first mouthfuls the boy’s jaws worked more easily, and he was enjoying his meal thoroughly, when his uncle suddenly exclaimed:
“What are you going to do to-day, my boy?”
“Go on with those problems, uncle, unless you want me to do anything else.”
“I do,” said the old man, smiling. “I want you to leave your books to-day—for a few days, I should say, till your face comes round again—I mean less round, boy,” he added, laughing. “Have a rest. Go and ramble along the cliffs. Take the little glass and watch the birds till evening, and then you can fish.”
Aleck jumped at the proposal, for the thought of books and writing had brought on suggestions of headache and weariness; and soon after breakfast he went up to his uncle’s study, to find him sitting looking very thoughtful, and ready to start at the boy’s entry.
“I’ve come for the spy-glass, uncle,” said Aleck.
“To be sure, yes. I forgot,” said the old man, hastily. “Take it down, my boy; and mind what you’re about—recollect you are half blind. Let’s have no walking over the cliff or into one of the gullies.”
“I’ll take care, uncle,” said the boy, smiling. “I’ll be back to dinner at two.”
The captain nodded, and Aleck was moving towards the door, when the old man rose hastily, overtook him, and grasped his hand for a moment or two.
“Just to show you that I have not forgotten yesterday, Aleck, my boy,” he said, gravely, and then he turned away.
“Who could forget yesterday?” thought the boy, as he slipped out by the side door and took the path leading round by the far edge of the cliff wall, the part which was left wild, that is, to its natural growth.
For Aleck’s intent was to avoid being observed by the old gardener, whom he had last seen at work over the celery trench upon the other side of the house.
“He’d only begin asking questions about my face, and grinning at me like one of the great stupid fisher boys,” said Aleck to himself, as he passed the sling strap of the spy-glass over his shoulder and hurried in and out among the bosky shrubs close under the great cliff wall, till, passing suddenly round a great feathery tuft of tamarisk, he came suddenly upon the very man he was trying to avoid, standing in a very peculiar position, his back bowed inward, head thrown backward, and a square black bottle held upside down, the neck to his lips and the bottom pointing to the sky.
Aleck stopped short, vexed and wondering, while the old gardener jerked himself upright, spilling some of the liquid over his chin and neck, and making a movement as if to hide the bottle, but, seeing how impossible it was, standing fast, with an imbecile grin on his countenance.
“Morning, Master Aleck,” he said. “Strange hot morning. Been diggin’; and it makes me that thusty I’m obliged to keep a bottle o’ water here in the shady part o’ the rocks.”
“Oh, are you?” said Aleck, quietly, and he could not forbear giving a sniff.
“Ah! nice, arn’t it, sir? Flowers do smell out here on a morning like this, what with the roses and the errubs and wile thyme and things. It do make the bees busy. But what yer been eating on, sir? Or have yer slipped down among the nattles? Your face is swelled-up a sight. Here, I know—you’ve been bathing!”
“Not this morning, Ness; I did yesterday.”
“That’s it, then, my lad, and you should mind. I know you’ve had one o’ they jelly-fish float up agen yer face, and they sting dreadful sometimes.”
“Yes, I know,” said Aleck, beginning to move onward past the man; “but it wasn’t a jelly-fish that stung my face.”
“Wasn’t it now? Yer don’t mean it was a bee or wops?”
“No, Ness; it was a blackguard’s fist.”
“Why, yer don’t mean to say yer been fighting, do ’ee?”
“Yes, I do, Ness. Going to finish the celery trench?”
“Yes, sir; but the ground’s mighty hard. Hot wuck, that it is. But where be going wi’ the spy-glass?”
“Over yonder along the cliffs to look at the Eilyguggs.”
“Eh?” cried the man, sharply. “’Long yonder, past the houses?”
“Yes.”
“Nay, nay, nay, I wouldn’t go that away. Go east’ard. It’s a deal better and nicer that way, and there’s more buds.”
“I’ll go that way another time,” said the boy, surlily, and he hurried on. “A nasty old cheat,” he muttered; “does he take me for a child? Water, indeed! Strong water, then. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if it was smuggled gin. But, there, I won’t tell tales.”
“Ahoy there!” shouted the gardener. “Master Aleck, there’s a sight more eggs yon other way.”
“Yes, I know,” cried the boy. “Another time.” Then to himself, “Bother his officiousness! Wants to be very civil so that I shan’t notice about his being there with that bottle.”
The man shouted something back, and upon Aleck looking round he saw to his surprise that he was being followed, the gardener shuffling after him at a pretty good rate.
“Now, why does he want me to go the other way?” thought the boy. “I didn’t mind which cliff I went along, but I do now. I’m not going to be dictated to by him. I know, he wants to come with me, just by way of an excuse to leave off digging for an hour or two and chatter and babble and keep on saying things I don’t want to hear, as well as question me about yesterday’s fight; and I’m not going to give him the chance.”
Aleck smiled to himself, and winced again, for the swollen face was stiff and the nerves and muscles about his eyes in no condition for smiles. Then, keeping on for a few yards till he was hidden from his follower by the thick shrubs, he stooped down, ran off to his right, and reached the path on the other side of the depression, well out of the gardener’s sight; and reaching a suitable spot he dropped down upon his knees, having the satisfaction of watching the man hurrying along till he came to where the depression narrowed and the pathway along the chasm began.
From here there was a good view downward, and the man stopped short, sheltered his eyes with his right hand to scan the narrow shelf-like declivity for quite a minute, before he took off his hat and began scratching his head, while he looked round and behind before having another scratch and appearing thoroughly puzzled.
“Wondering how I managed to drop out of sight,” laughed Aleck to himself.
He was quite right, for he saw Dunning turn to right and left, after looking forward, ending by staring straight up in the air, and then backward, before giving his leg a sounding rap, and taking off his hat to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.
“He doesn’t get so hot as that over his work,” said Aleck to himself, as he crouched lower, laughing heartily; and he had another good laugh when, after one more careful look, the old gardener shook his head disconsolately and turned to walk back.
“Given it up as a bad job,” he said, merrily. “An old stupid! I could have found him. Well, I can go now in peace.”
He waited till the coast was clear, and then, stooping low, set off at a trot, getting well down into the gorge-like rift. Striking off gradually to his right, he attacked the great cliff wall in a perfectly familiar fashion, and climbed from ledge to ledge till he reached the top, glanced back to see that the gardener was not in sight, and then strode away over the short, velvety, slippery turf, with the edge of the cliff some fifty yards or so to his left, and the rough, rocky slope that led up to the scattered cottages of the Eilygugg fishermen to his right.
He soon reached a somewhat similar chasm to that which ended in his own boat harbour; but this was far wider, and upon reaching its edge he could look right down it to the sea, where at its mouth a couple of luggers and about half a dozen rowboats of various sizes were moored.
The cottages lay round and about the head of the creek, and partly natural, partly cut and blasted out of the cliff side, ledge after ledge had been formed, giving an easy way down from the cottages to the boats. But there was not a soul in sight, and nothing to indicate that there were people occupying the whitewashed cots, save some patches of white newly-washed clothes which were kept from being blown away by the playful wind by means of big cobble stones—smooth boulders—three or four of which were laid upon the corners of the washing.
There was not even one fisherman hanging about the front of the cottages, where all looked quiet and sleepy in the extreme, so, passing on, Aleck hurried round the head of the narrow rugged harbour, and was soon after making his way along the piled-up cliffs, keeping well inland so as to avoid the great gashes or splits which ran up into the land and had to be circumvented, where they ended as suddenly as they appeared, in every case being perfectly perpendicular, with the water running right up, looking in some cases black, still, deep and clear, in others floored with foam as the waves rushed in over the black, jagged masses of rock that had in stormy times been torn from the sides.
To a stranger nothing could have appeared more terrible than these zigzag jagged gashes or splits in the stern, rocky coast, for they were turfed to the sharp edge, where an unwary step would have resulted in the visitor plunging downward, to drown in the deep, black water, or be mutilated by the rocks amidst which the waters foamed.
But “familiarity breeds contempt,” says one proverb, “use is second nature” another, and there was nothing that appeared terrible to the boy, who walked quickly along close to the edge, glancing perhaps at its fellow, in some cases only a few yards away, and looking so exactly the counterpart of that on the near side that it seemed as if only another convulsion of nature was needed to compress and join the crack again so that it would be possible to walk where death was now lurking.
But there was nothing horrible there to Aleck who in every case turned inland to skirt the chasm, gazing down with interest the while at the nesting-places of the sea-birds which covered nearly every ledge, each one being alive with screaming, clamouring, hungry young, straining their necks to meet the swift-winged auks and puffins that darted to and fro with newly-captured fish in their bills.
Aleck had left the whitewashed cottages behind, along with the last traces of busy human life in the shape of boat, rope, spar, lobster-pot, and net, to reach one of the most rugged and inaccessible parts of the rocky cliffs—a spot all jagged, piled-up rift with the corresponding hollows—and at last selected a place which looked like the beginning of one of the chasms where Nature had commenced a huge gaping crack a good hundred feet in depth, though its darkened wedge-shaped bottom was still quite a hundred feet above where the waves swayed in and out at the bottom, of the cliff. The sides here were not perpendicular, but with just sufficient slope to allow an experienced, cool-headed cliff-climber to descend from ledge to ledge and rock to rock till a nook could be reached, where, securely perched, one who loved cliff-scanning and the beauties of the ever-changing sea and shore, could sit and enjoy the wild wonders of the place.
The spot was exactly suited to Aleck’s taste; and as old practice and acquaintance with the coast had made giddiness a trouble he never felt, he was not long in lowering himself down to this coign of vantage. Here he perched himself with a sigh of satisfaction, and watched for a time the great white-breasted gulls which floated down to gaze with curious watchful eyes at the intruder upon their wild domain. The puffins kept darting down from the ledges, with beaks pointed, web feet stretched out behind, and short wings fluttering so rapidly that they were almost invisible, while the singular birds looked like so many animated triangles darting down diagonally to the sea, and gliding over it for some distance before touching the water, into which they plunged like arrow-heads, to disappear and continue their flight under water till they emerged far away with some silvery fish in their beaks.
Some little distance below a few sooty-looking cormorants had taken possession of an out-standing rock upon which the sun beat warmly, and here, their morning fishing over, leaving them absolutely gorged, they sat with wings half open and feathers erect, drying themselves, looking the very images of gluttonous content.
Birds were everywhere—black, black and white, black and grey, and grey and white, with here and there a few that looked black in the distance, but when inspected through the glass proved to be of a deep bronzy metallic green.
But while the air and rocks were alive with objects that delighted the watcher’s eye, there was plenty to see beside. Close in where the deep water was nearly still, the jelly-fish floated at every depth, shrinking and expanding like so many opening and shutting bubbles of soap and water, glistening with iridescent hues. Farther out the smooth, vividly-blue water every now and then turned in patches from sapphire to purple, and a patch—a whole acre perhaps in extent—became of the darkest purple or amethyst, all of a fret and work, while silvery flashes played all over it, reflecting the rays of the burning sun. For plenty of shoals of fish were feeding, over which the birds were rising, falling, darting and splashing, as they banqueted upon their silvery prey.
All this was so familiar to Aleck that, though still enjoying it, he satisfied himself with a few glances before, carefully focussing the glass he had brought, he began to sweep the coast wherever he could command it from where he sat.
The opposite side of the rift seemed to take his attention most, and perhaps he was examining some of the deep cavernous hollows seen here and there high up or low down towards the sea; or maybe his attention was riveted upon some quaint puffin, crouching, solemn and big-beaked, watching patiently for the next visit of main or dad; or, again, maybe the lad was looking at a solitary greatly-blotched egg, big at one end, going off to almost nothing at the other, and wanting in the soft curves of ordinary eggs, while he wondered how it was that such an egg should not blow out of its rocky hollow when the wind came, but spin round as upon a pivot instead.
Anyhow, Aleck was watching the other side of the half-made chasm, the great wedge-shaped depression in the coast-line, looking straight across at a spot about a hundred yards distant in the level, though higher up it was too, and going off to nothing at the bottom, where the place looked like the dried-up bed of a river.
All at once he started and nearly dropped the glass, as he wrenched himself right round to gaze back and up, for a gruff voice had suddenly cried:
“Hullo!”
The next moment the boy, was gazing in a fierce pair of very dark eyes belonging to a swarthy, scowling, sea-tanned face, the lower part of which was clothed in a crisp black beard, as black as the short head of hair.
This head of hair of course belonged to a man, but no man was to be seen, nothing but the big round bullet head peering down from the edge of one of the ledges, while on both sides, apparently not heeding the head in the least, dozens of wild fowl sat solemnly together, looking stupid and waiting for the next coming of parent birds.
“Hullo!” cried the head again.
“Hullo!” retorted Aleck, as gruffly as he could, after recovering from his surprise. “That you, Eben Megg?”
“Oh! ay, it’s me right enough, youngster. What are you doing there?”
“Now?” said Aleck, coolly. “Looking up at your black face.”
“Black face, eh, youngster? Perhaps other people ha’ got black faces too. What ha’ you been doing of—tumbling off the rocks? Strikes me you’re trying it on for another tumble.”
Aleck flushed a little at the allusion to his injured face, feeling guilty too, as it struck him that he had brought the allusion upon himself, a Rowland for his Oliver, on the principle that those who play at bowls must expect rubbers.
“No, I haven’t had a tumble, and I’m not going to tumble,” he said, testily. “I daresay I can climb as well as you.”
“P’raps you can, youngster, and p’raps you can’t; but, if you do want to break your neck, stop at home and do it, and don’t come here.”
“What!” cried Aleck, indignantly. “Why not? I’ve as good a right here as you have, so none of your insolence.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t. All along here’s our egging-ground, and we don’t want our birds disturbed.”
“Your egging-ground—your birds!” cried Aleck, indignantly. “Why, I do call that cool. You’ll be telling me next that the fish in the sea are yours, and that I mustn’t whiff or lay a fish-pot or trammel.”
“Ay, unless you want to lose your net or other gear. I hev knowed folk as fished on other people’s ground finding a hole knocked in the bottoms of their boats.”
“What!” cried Aleck. “That’s as good as saying that if I fish along here you’ll sink my boat.”
“Didn’t say I would, but it’s like enough as some ’un might shove a boat-hook through or drop in a good big boulder stone.”
“Then I tell you what it is, Master Eben Megg. If any damage is done to my Seagull you’ll have to answer for it before the magistrate.”
“Oh! that’s your game, is it, my lad? Now, lookye here, don’t you get threatening of me or you’ll get the worst on it. We folk at Eilygugg never interferes with you and the captain and never interferes about your ketching a bit o’ fish or taking a few eggs so long as you are civil; but you’re on’y foreigners and intruders and don’t belong to these parts, and we do.”
“Well, of all the impudence,” cried Aleck, “when my uncle bought the whole of the Den estate right down to the sea! Don’t you know that you’re intruders and trespassers when you come laying your crab-pots under our cliff and shooting your seine on the sandy patch off the little harbour?”
“No, youngster, I don’t; but I do know as you’re getting a deal too sarcy, and that I’m going to stop it, and my mates too.”
“Get out! Who are you?” cried the boy, indignantly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you want to fish off our shore and wants a man to help with your boat you’ve got to ask some of us to help, and not get bringing none o’ your wooden-legged cripples spying and poking about our ground.”
“Spy? What is there to spy?” said Aleck, giving the man a peculiar look.
“Never you mind about that. You be off home, and don’t you come spying about here with none of your glasses.”
Aleck laughed derisively.
“Ah, you may grin, my lad; but I’ve been a-watching of yer this morning,” said the man, fiercely. “You’ve been busy with that glass, prying and peering about, and I caught yer at it.”
Aleck laughed again.
“Oh! that’s what you think, is it?” he said.
“Yes, and it’s what I says; so be off home.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind, Eben,” said the boy, hotly. “I’ve a better right here than you have, and I shall come whenever I please. Spying, eh?”
“Ay, spying, youngster; and I won’t have it.”
“Then it’s all true, eh?” said the boy, mockingly.
“What’s true?” snarled the man.
“You know. What have you got hidden away among the caverns—Hollands gin or French brandy? Perhaps it’s silk or velvet. No, no; I know. But you can’t think that. How do you manage to land the great casks?”
“I dunno what you’re talking about, youngster—do you?”
“Thoroughly. But aren’t the tobacco casks too big and too heavy to haul up the cliffs?”
“Look here, young fellow,” growled the man; “none o’ your nonsense. You’d better be off before you get hurt. That’s your way back.”
“Is it?” said Aleck. “Then I’m not going back till I choose. I say, should you talk like this to one of the Revenue sloop’s men if he came ashore?”
“Oh, we know how to talk to that sort if he comes our way,” said the man, with a chuckling laugh; “and they knows it, too, and don’t come.”
“Nor the press-gang either, eh?” said Aleck, mockingly.
Up to that moment the man’s fierce face had alone been seen, but at the word press-gang he gave a violent start and rose to his knees, upon which he hobbled close up to the edge of the shelf upon which he had perched himself.
“Oh, that’s it, is it, my lad, eh?” he growled, shaking his fist savagely. “Then, look here. If the press-gang—cuss ’em!—ever does come along here we shall know who put ’em up to it, and if they take any of our chaps—mind yer they won’t take all, and them behind’ll know what to do. I’m not going to threaten, but if someone wasn’t sunk in his boat, or had a bit o’ rock come tumbling down on him when he was taking up his net under the cliffs, it would be strange to me. D’yer hear that?”
“Oh, yes, I hear that,” retorted Aleck. “So you won’t threaten, eh? What do you call that?”
“Never you mind what I call it, youngster; and what I says I means. So now you know.”
“Yes,” said Aleck, coolly; “now I know that what people say about you and your gang up at Eilygugg is quite true.”
“What do people say?” shouted the man. “What people?”
“The Rockabie folk.”
“And what do they say?”
“That you’re a set of smugglers, and, worse still, wreckers when you get a chance, and don’t stop at robbery or murder. One of the fishermen—I won’t say his name—said you were a regular gang of pirates.”
“The Rockabie fishermen are a set o’ soft-headed fools,” snarled the man. “But what do I care for all they say? Let ’em prove it; and, look here, if we’re as bad as that you folk up at the Den aren’t safe.”
“Which means that you threaten the captain, my uncle,” cried Aleck, defiantly.
“Are you going to tell him what I said?”
“Perhaps I am,” said Aleck; “perhaps I’m not. I’m going to do just as I please all along this coast, for it’s free to everybody, and my uncle has ten times the rights here that you people at the fishermen’s cottages have. You’ve just been talking insolence to me, so let’s have no more of it. This comes of the captain, my uncle, being kind and charitable to you people time after time when someone has been ill.”
The man growled out something in a muttering way.
“Ah, you know it, Eben Megg! It’s quite true.”
“Who said it warn’t?” growled the man; “but if he’d done ten times as much I’m not going to have you spying and prying about here. What is it you want to know?”
“That’s my business,” said Aleck, defiantly. “I say, you haven’t made a fortune out of smuggling, have you, and bought the estate?”
“You keep your tongue quiet, will yer?” growled the man, fiercely. “What do you know about smuggling?”
“Just as much as you do, Eben Megg,” cried the boy, laughing. “Just as much as everyone else does who lives here. Didn’t our old maid come in scared one night after a holiday and walking across from Rockabie and go into a fit because she had seen, as she said, a whole regiment of ghosts walking over the moor, leading ghostly horses, which came out of the sea fog and crossed the road without making a sound? Jane said they were the spirits of the old soldiers who were killed in the big fight and buried by the four stones on Black Hill, and that as soon as they were across the stony road they were all swallowed up in a mist. She keeps to it till now, and believes it.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she?” growled the man. “She arn’t the first as has seen a ghost. Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because it’s so silly, when it was a party of smugglers leading their horses, with kegs slung across their backs and bales on pack saddles.”
“Bah!” cried the man. “Horses loaded like that would clatter over the rough stones.”
“Yes,” said Aleck, “if their hoofs weren’t covered over with bits of canvas and a few handfuls of hay.”
“What!”
“I found one that a horse had kicked off on the road one morning, Eben,” said the boy. “Ah! I see now.”
“See—see what?” said the rough, fisherman-like fellow, sharply.
“See why Ness Dunning was so anxious that I shouldn’t come along the cliff this side.”
“Ness Dunning?” cried the man, scowling. “What did he say?”
“That I’d better go the other way. Behaved just like a silly plover which wants to prove to you that it has no nest on the moor, and sets you looking for it.”
“Ness Dunning’s an old fool,” cried the man, fiercely.
“Yes, he is a thick-headed old noodle, Eben; I wouldn’t trust him.”
“Then because he did that he made you think there was something hid somewhere and come to hunt for it, did you?” cried the man, angrily.
“No, I didn’t think anything of the kind till just this minute, but I see now. You’re not much wiser than old Ness, Eben, for you’ve been trying to throw me off the scent too, and now I know as well as if I could see it that you people have been running a cargo, and you’ve got it hidden in one of the caves or sunk in one of the holes.”
“What yer talking about?”
“Smuggled goods, Eben. I could find it if I tried now.”
The man stepped down from the shelf on which he had been standing, and made a great show of being exceedingly ferocious, evidently thinking that the boy would turn and run away. But Aleck stood fast, not even stirring when the man was close up, planting his doubled fists upon his hips and thrusting out his lower jaw in a peculiarly animal-like way.
“So you’re going to look and see if you can find something hidden, and when you’ve found it you’re going to send word to the Revenue cutter men to fetch it, are yer?”
“Who says I am?” said Aleck, sharply.
“Who says it? Why, I do, my lad. So that’s what you think you’re going to do, is it?”
“No,” said the lad, coolly enough. “Why should I? It’s no business of mine.”
“Ho!” growled the man, frowning, and raising one hand to rub his short, crisp, black beard. “No,” he said, after a pause, “it arn’t no business of yours, is it?”
“Of course not,” said the boy, coolly. “I don’t want to know where the run cargo’s hidden, and I wasn’t looking for it. I only came to watch the birds and get a few eggs if I saw any that I hadn’t got.”
The man made a sudden quick movement and caught Aleck’s right wrist tightly, leaning forward as if to pierce his eyes with the fierce look he gave.
“Don’t do that—you hurt!” cried Aleck, sharply.
“Yes, I mean to hurt,” growled the man. “Now, then, look at me! Is that true?”
“Do you hear, Eben Megg? You hurt me. Let go, or I shall hit out.”
“You’ll do what?” cried the big fellow, mockingly, as he tightened his grasp to a painful extent, whenspank! Aleck’s left fist flew out, striking the man full on the right cheek, not a heavy blow, but as hard as the boy could deliver, hampered as he was, being dragged close to his assailant’s breast.
“Why, you—” roared the man. He did not say what, but flung the arm he had at liberty round the boy’s waist and lifted him, kicking and struggling, from the ground, perfectly helpless, with the great muscular arm acting like a band of iron, to do more than try to deliver some ineffective blows, which his assailant easily avoided.
“Ah! Would you?” he growled, fiercely. “You’re a nice young game cock chick, you are. Hold still!” he roared, taking a step forward, to stand on the very edge of the shelf. “Keep that hand quiet, or I’ll hurl you down among the rocks. You’ll look worse then than you do now.”
“Do, if you dare,” cried the lad, defiantly.
“You tell me what I asked,” growled the man; “is what you said true?”
“I won’t tell you while you grip my wrist.”
“You’d better speak,” cried the man. “D’yer see, you’re like a feather to me. I could pitch you right out so as you’d go to the bottom yonder.”
“You could, but you daren’t?” cried Aleck, grinding his teeth and striving hard to bear the pain he suffered.
“Oh, I dare—I could if I liked! Nobody would see out here. It would kill yer, and nobody would know how it happened; but they’d say when they found you that you’d slipped and fell when you was egging. They would, wouldn’t they? That’s true, arn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said the boy, huskily.
“And that’s what I’m going to do for hitting me, unless you tell me whether that was true what you said. Now, then, beg me not to hurl yer down.”
“I—shan’t,” ground out the boy through his set teeth, and a grim smile crossed the man’s dark face, making it look for the moment open and manly—a smile caused by something akin to admiration.
“Well, you’re a nice-tempered sort of a young fellow,” growled the man.
“Let go of my wrist.”
“Will yer promise not to hit?”
Aleck nodded.
“Nor yet kick?”
The boy nodded again.
“There,” said the man, loosening the prisoned wrist. “Now, tell me, is it true?”
“Of course it is,” said the boy, haughtily.
“I’ll believe yer,” growled the man. “There,” he continued, dropping the boy to his feet. “Then you won’t look for where the stuff’s stowed?”
Aleck burst into a hoarse laugh.
“Then there is some stowed?”
The man gave himself a wrench, and his face puckered up again with anger.
“Lookye here,” he said, more quietly, “I don’t say there is, and I don’t say there arn’t; but suppose there is, you’re going to swear as you won’t take no notice.”
“No, I’m not,” said Aleck, boldly.
“Then you do want me to chuck you down yonder?”
“You’ve got to catch me first,” cried the boy, making a backward bound which took him ten feet downward before he landed and kept his feet, following up his leap by running along the ledge of stony slate he had reached and then beginning to climb rapidly.
The man had followed him at once, leaping boldly, but without Aleck’s success, for he slipped, through the stones giving way, and went down quite five-and-twenty feet in a rough scramble before he checked himself and took up the pursuit, which he soon found would be useless, for his young adversary was lighter and far more active, and soon showed that he was leaving him behind.
“There, hold hard, Master Aleck,” he growled, looking up at the lad. “I won’t hurt yer now.”
“Thankye,” said the boy, mockingly, as he stopped, holding on by a projecting rock in the stiff slope, and well on his guard to go on climbing if there was the slightest sign of pursuit.
“You made me wild by hitting out at me.”
“Serve you right, you great lumbering coward, to serve me like that!”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Yes, you did—brute! You squeezed my wrist as hard as you could.”
“Well, I didn’t want to hurt you much. But you did make me wild, you know, hitting me like you did.”
“Look here,” cried Aleck, fiercely, as the man took a step to continue climbing to where the boy stood, some thirty feet above him, “you come another step, and I’ll send this big stone down at you—it is loose.”
“I don’t want to ketch you now, only to talk quiet without having to shout.”
“I can hear you plainly enough. Sit down.”
The great muscular fellow dropped at once, seating himself upon the slope and digging his heels into the loose screes to keep from sliding down.
“There y’are,” he growled.
“Now, then,” said Aleck, “what do you want to say?”
“Only about you coming along here to-day. You warn’t trying to spy out nowt, was yer?”
“No,” cried Aleck; “of course I wasn’t. I’ve known for long enough that you people at Eilygugg do a lot of smuggling. I’ve stood with the captain, my uncle, of a night and seen you signal with a lanthorn, and then after a bit seen a light shown out at sea.”
“You’ve seen that, youngster?”
“Lots of times; and the boats going and coming and the lights showing up against the cliff. Of course we know what goes on, but my uncle doesn’t care to interfere, and I’ve never tried to find out where you hide the smuggled goods; but I shouldn’t be long finding out if I tried.”
“Hum!” growled the man, gazing up searchingly. “P’raps you’re right, youngster, p’raps you arn’t; but there is a deal o’ smuggling goes on along this coast.”
“Especially about here,” said Aleck, with a smile.
“Well, what’s the harm, eh? A man must live, and if one didn’t do it another would.”
“Look here; I don’t want to know or hear anything about it,” cried Aleck. “Only I shall come along these cliffs, egging or watching the birds, as often as I like.”
“Well, I don’t know as anyone’ll mind, Master Aleck, if I speaks to ’em and says as you says as a young gentleman that you’ll never take no notice of anything as you sees or hears—”
“What! How can a gentleman promise anything of the kind about people breaking the law?”
“How? Why, by just saying as he won’t.”
“A gentleman can’t, I tell you. There, I won’t promise anything.”
The man gave his rough head a vicious scratch, before saying, sharply:
“Then how’s a man to trust yer?”
“I don’t know,” said Aleck, carelessly, “but I’ll tell you this. If I’d wanted to I could have found out whether you’ve got a place to hide your stuff, as you call it, long enough ago.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said the man, with a grin.
“Well, then, I could have told the Revenue cutter’s men where they had better look.”
“But you won’t, Master Aleck? We are neighbours, you know.”
“Neighbours!” said Aleck, scornfully. “Pretty neighbours! There, I’m not going to alter my words. I shall make no promises at all.”
“Well, you are a young gentleman, and I’ll trust yer,” said the man; “for I s’pose I must. But I don’t know what some of our lads’ll say.”
“Then I’d better tell my uncle that if anything happens to me he’d better get the Revenue cutter’s men to hunt out the Eilygugg smugglers, because they pushed me off the cliff.”
“Nay, don’t you go and do that,” said the man, anxiously. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Am I to believe that, Eben?” said the boy, sharply.
The man showed his teeth in a laugh, and put his hands round his neck in a peculiar way.
“Look here, Master Aleck,” he said; “man who goes to sea has to take his chance o’ being drownded.”
“Of course.”
“And one who tries to dodge the Revenue sailors has to take his chance of getting a cut from a bit o’ steel or a bullet in him.”
“I suppose so.”
“That’s quite bad enough, arn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Bad enough for me, sir, so I’m not going to do what might mean being—you know what I mean?”
“What—”
“Yes, that’s it. A bit o’ smuggling’s not got much harm in it, but they call it murder when a man kills a man.”
“By pushing him off a cliff, Eben?” said Aleck. “Yes.”