CHAPTER XXIV.

HARO!

A STRANGE thing befell me on my way home, which I would have avoided describing if I could; for my adventures have but little interest, except so far as they are concerned with Kitty. But this one unluckily did concern her deeply, inasmuch as it brought great affliction on her, and left her without my assistance, at a time when she stood in especial need of it.

She had made me promise that I would not attempt to walk all the way to Sunbury in such a bitter night, and with the storm increasing, till no one could tell what might come of it. Accordingly I made my way to Notting Hill, intending to get into an omnibus there, which would take me at least as far as Richmond. There I meant to have a mutton chop or two, and perhaps a pint of Mortlake ale, which is generally of good substance, and thus be set up for the cold walk home. And if this had been done, as was really intended, probably I might have been at home in good time to tell my uncle all about it, before he had finished his go-to-bed pipe.

But as it happened, when I came out at last, from all this brick and mortar skittle-ground, into the broad Western road, and knew pretty well where I was and how the land lay, not an omnibus was to be found anywhere, except those that had travelled out before the storm began, and were bound to get home again somehow. And these had some trouble in getting along, with the snow clouding up in the horses’ faces, and forming great balls on their feet, and clogging the dumb, heavy roll of the frozen wheels. All the ’busses that should have been ploughing and rolling towards Shepherd’s Bush and Turnham Green, had resolved to remain in their yards for the night. Let other horses tug, and wallow, and smoke like beds of mortar; let other coachmen flap their breasts and scowl instead of answering; and let other threepenny fares look blue and stamp in the straw to thaw their toes. It was worth much more than the money would fetch, to cross their legs by the taproom fire, or whisk their tails in stable.

At first I took it as a wholesome joke, that the fourteen miles of road before me must be overcome by toe and heel. As for a cab, I had never been inside any feminine bandbox of that name, and if I would have condescended to it, there was no such thing to be got to-night. I was young, and strong, and full of spirit, with the sweet words kindling in my heart, as memory stirred it from time to time; and if any one had bidden me look out for danger, I should have said, “Let me see it first.” And in this humour, I strode on, without even turning my collar up.

But the world became wrapped up more and more in deep white darkness, as I trudged on. As the houses along the road grew scarcer, they seemed to go by me more heavily and slowly, and with less and less power of companionship. There was scarcely a man to say “Good-night” to; and the one or two I met would not open mouth to answer. And when I came through a great open space, with a white spire standing like a giant’s ghost, I could hardly be sure that it was Turnham Green, so entirely was distance huddled up with snow. But I ran into a white thing in the middle of the road, and the gleam of an ostler’s lantern showed me that it was a brewer’s dray, with the horses taken out, and standing with their heads between their legs close by a sign-post. “You better turn in, mate,” the ostler shouted; “you’re a fool if you go further, such a night as this.” I saw a red steam in the bar, and knew that this must be the _Old Pack-Horse Inn_, whose landlord had raised a famous apple; and my better sense told me to follow advice. But the pride of fool’s strength drove me on, and without slacking a foot I lost sight of it in the solid daze.

There was nothing to be afraid of yet, and I felt no kind of misgiving, but began to let my legs go on, instead walking consciously. At one time I began to count, as if they were a machine of which I was no longer master. I counted up to a thousand, and thought—“About seven thousand more will do it, and that they can manage without much trouble.” Then I gave up counting, and must have passed through Brentford, as in a dream, and so to Twickenham, and through that again.

There were nearer ways in better weather; but although I could not think clearly now (through cold, and clogging feet, and constant dazzle of white fall around me) I had sense enough to stick to highways, as long as they would stick to me. At Twickenham I had a mind to stop and get something to eat, being faint with hunger, for I had seven and sixpence in my waistcoat pocket. I cannot tell why I did not stop, and only know that I went on.

The snow must have been ten inches deep on the level, and as many feet in the drifts, for a strong wind urged it fiercely, when I came at last to the _Bear_ at Hanworth, an old-established and good hotel. The principal entrance was snowed up, from the sweep of the roads that meet there, for every road running east and west was like a cannon exploding snow. But I went in by the little door round the corner, and finding only the barman there—for all neighbours had been glad to get home while they could—I contrived, with some trouble, to ask for a glass of hot brandy and water. So great was the change from the storm and the whirl, that my brain seemed to beat like a flail in a barn, and the chairs were all standing on the ceiling.

“Don’t you go no further, sir; you stop here,” said the man, who seemed to know me, though I did not know him. “It would take a male helephant to get to Sunbury to-night There’s been no such snow for six and forty year; old Jim the ostler can call it to mind; and then it was over the roof, he saith. You look uncommon queer already, seem to be standing on your head a’most. Why, bless me, you be drinking from the empty glass!”

But I found the right glass with his help, and swallowed the hot brown draught without knowing it. Then I asked him the time, and he said, “Nigh on ten o’clock. You take my advice, and have a bed here. Well, wilful will, and woeful won’t, when it’s too late to mend it.” He cast this at me as I said “Good night,” and without sitting down, staggered out again.

I believe that even now I should have reached home safely, not having so very much further to go, if the roads had been wide and straight as they were thus far. But two things were very much against me now, and both of them made a great difference. I had turned from the main road into twisting narrow lanes, and my course was across the wind instead of right before it. Without that strong wind at my back I could scarcely have reached Hanworth by that time, though it seemed a very long time to take from Notting Hill, compared with the usual rate of walking. But now the fierce wind was on my left side quite as often as behind me, and it drove me from my line, as I grew more feeble, and knocked my weary legs into one another. Moreover, it seemed to go through me twice as much, and to rattle me like splinter shaken up, and to drive the spikes of snow to my heart almost.

If I had walked as in a dream before, I was moving as in a deep sleep now. I had some sort of sense of going on for ever, as a man has a knowledge of his own snoring; and I have some weak remembrance of beating with my hands—for my stick must have gone away long ago—to keep off a blanket that was smothering me. Then I seemed to be lifted, and set down somewhere, and it did not matter where it was. And what happened after that was not to me, but to people who told me of it afterwards.

For my Uncle Corny went to bed that night, in a very bad worry of mind, and fitter to grumble at the Lord than to say his prayers. Not from anxiety about his nephew, who was sure to turn up somehow; but because he had frightful misgivings about his glass, and his trees, and his premises at large. The roof of his long vinery was buckled in already, when he went with a lantern to look at it; and many of his favourite apple-trees, which he loved to go and gaze at on a Sunday, were bowed with the wind and the snow, and hanging in draggles, like so much mistletoe. He never swore much at the weather; because it seemed like swearing at heaven, and he had found it grow worse under that sort of treatment. But our Tabby Tapscott (who feared to go home, and tried to sleep on two chairs in the kitchen) declared that he used some expressions that night, which were quite enough to account for anything.

In the morning, however, there was no fault to find with him, as soon as he had done a good hour’s work in the deep snow and the nipping wind, and improved his circulation by convincing everybody that he was still as young as he ever was. He relieved the laden trees, wherever it was wise to do so, and with the back of a hay-rake fetched the white incumbrance from the glass, and stamped his feet and shook his coat, and had a path swept here and there, and told himself and Selsey Bill, that a good old-fashioned winter was the thing to send all prices up. But when he sat down to breakfast, he kept looking at the door, as if for me; and at last he said to Mrs. Tapscott, who was shaking in her apron—“Why, where’s that lazy Kit again? Is he frozen to his pillow? Go and give him a good rattle up. He deserves cold victuals, and he shall have nothing else.”

“Her bain’t coom home,” replied Tabby, looking as crossly as she dared at him. “Much you care for the poor boy, measter. I rackon the znow be his winding-shate. No more coortin’ for he, this zide of kingdom coom, I’d lay a penny.”

“Kit not come home! Kit out all night, and you let me go on with my trees and roofs! But you know where he is, or you would not take it so, and you snoring away by the kitchen fire. None of your secrets about him. Where is Kit?”

“The Lord A’mighty know’th where a’ be.” Poor Tabby began to whine and cry. “The zecret be with Him, not me. A’ wor to coom home, but her never didn’t. A vaine job for e’e to zake for ’un. Vaind un dade as a stone, I reckon.”

“Nonsense! Kit can take care of himself. He is the strongest young fellow for miles and miles, and accustomed to all sorts of weather. What’s a bit of snow to a young man like Kit? You women always make the worst of everything.”

“But her bain’t coom home;” answered Tabby with all reason. “Her would ’a coom home, if so be her worn’t drowned in the znow, I tull ’e, sir. No more coortin’ for Measter Kit, in this laife. A’ may do what a’ wool, in kingdom coom.”

“Stuff!” cried my uncle, not caring to discuss this extreme test of my constancy. “He has stopped at some house on the road, or up there. Perhaps the Professor would not let him go, when he saw how bad the weather was. There is nothing to be done, till the post comes in; though I am not sure that the post will be able to get in. If the letters are not here by ten o’clock, I shall go to Hampton to look for them. They are pretty sure to get that far.”

The morning was fine, though bitterly cold after that very heavy fall; and people began to get about again, though the drifts were too deep in many places for a carriage to pass till they had been cleared. My uncle set out on foot for Hampton, and there found the mail cart just come in. The postmaster was in a state of flurry, and would not open the Sunbury bag, but sent it on by special messenger, as the cart could get no further. My uncle had the pleasure of walking with it as far as our post-office; and after all that there was nothing for him. “Well, a man must eat,” was his sound reflection. “I shall have a bit of dinner, and consider what to do.”

It was getting on for two o’clock, as they told me, when a man who had come from the Bear at Hanworth, upon some particular business in our village, knocked at my uncle’s door on his return, to say that I had forgotten (which was the truth) to pay for what I had the night before. He was also to ask how I got home, because I looked “uncommon dickey,” as he beautifully expressed it. In half an hour every man in Sunbury, owning a good pair of legs, and even a number of women and boys, set forth to search the roads and fields, for it was hard sometimes to tell which was which, in the direction of Hanworth. This was no small proof of the good-will and brave humanity of our neighbourhood; for any of these people might have lost themselves in the numb frost, and the depth of drift; and there were signs of another storm in the north-east.

My uncle, with a big shovel on his shoulder, and a bottle of brandy in his pocket, put a guinea upon me at first, and then two, and then jumped to five pounds, and even ten, as the hope of discovery waned; and at last, when some had abandoned the search, and others were muffling themselves against the new snowstorm, he mounted a gate and with both hands to his mouth shouted—“Five and twenty pounds for my nephew Kit—dead or alive; twenty-five pounds reward to any one who finds Christopher Orchardson.”

This may appear a great deal of money for anybody to put me at (except my own mother, if I had one), and the people who heard it were of that opinion, none of them being aware perhaps that the reward would come out of my mother’s property, which had no trustees to prevent it. And for many years afterwards, if I dared to think anything said or done by my uncle was anything short of perfection, the women, and even the men would ask—as if I were made of ingratitude—“Who offered five and twenty pounds for you?”

And they felt the effect of it now so strongly that a loud hurrah went along the white plain, and several stout fellows who were turning home turned back again, and flapped themselves, saying, “Never say die!” With one accord a fresh pursuit began, though perhaps of a ghost even whiter than the snow; and taking care to keep in sight of one another, they began to poke more holes, wherever they could poke them. For some had kidney-bean sticks, and some had garden forks, and some had sharp pitch-forks from the stable; and if they had found me, I had surely been riddled, and perhaps had both my eyes poked out. But the Lord was good to me once more, and I escaped being trussed, as I might have been.

For just when it was growing dark, and another bitter night was setting in, with spangles of hard snow driving, as they said, like a glazier’s diamond into their eyes, and even the heartiest man was saying that nothing more could be done for it; through the drifting of the white, and the lowering of the gray, a high-mettled horse came churning. It was beautiful, everybody thought, to see him scattering the snow like highway dust, flinging from his nostrils scornful volumes, with his great eyes flashing like a lighthouse in the foam. Men huddled aside, lest he should spurn them like a drift, for his courage was roused, and he knew no fear, but gloried in the power of his leap and plunge.

“Giving it over, are you all?” Sam Henderson shouted, as he drew the rein, and his favourite stallion _Haro_ stood, and looked with the like contempt at them. “Then a horse and dog shall shame your pluck.”

From beneath the short rough cloak he wore, a pair of sharp eyes shone like jewels, and two little ears pricked up like thorns.

“_Spike_ is the best man here,” said Sam, as the wiseacres crowded round him. “All you have done is to spoil the track. Keep behind me, and let me see things for myself.”

My uncle, who never had been fond of Sam, said something disdainful and turned away; but Henderson, without even looking at him, rode on, and the best men followed him. He took them almost to the _Bear_ Hotel, watching both sides of the road, as he went, and still keeping his dog before him. Then he turned back, and said, “Keep you all on my left. None of you tread any gap on the right. I saw the place as I came along. When the moon gets clear, we shall find him.”

The snow-cloud in the east began to lift, and the moon came out with a bronzy flush, as my uncle told me afterwards, and the broad expanse of snow was flickered with wan light and with gliding shades. Then all came back to the place where Sam, being mounted and able to command the slope, had discovered certain dimples—for they were nothing more—which might be the trace of footsteps snowed over. Here he gave his horse to be held, and leaving the road with his little Scotch terrier _Spike_, scooped the light surface from one of the marks, and found a hard clot beneath it. He put the dog’s nose in, and patted him, and _Spike_ gave a yelp, as if a rat were in prospect.

“Let him alone. Don’t say a word to him,” cried Sam, as our people grew eager. “He don’t want you to teach him his business. If you knew your own half as well, there’d be less money in London than in Sunbury. Keep back, I say, all of you.”

The little dog led them across a broad meadow, two or three hundred yards from the highway, yet in a straighter line towards Sunbury, and nearly in the track of an old foot-path. Then he stopped in a dip, where a great rise of snow, like a surge of ground-swell, swung away from them, and combed over into the field beyond without breaking, like the ground-swell frozen. They said that it was a most beautiful sight, such as they never had seen before, and could scarcely hope to see again in one lifetime; reminding them of the great wax-works, when the wax is being bleached, at Teddington. But they could not stop to look at it; and the little dog went round, and dived into the tunnel on the further side.

Presently he yapped, as if in hot chase of a rabbit; and an active young fellow jumped through the great wave, and was swallowed up, leaving his hat behind. Then they heard him crying faintly, “Here he is! Come round, and dig us out to this side.”

It is a strange thing, and I have not the smallest remembrance of having done it; but I must have dragged my frozen body through the hedge, in the cope of life with death, and got on the leeward side of a stiff bulwark of newly bill-hooked ashplant, which stopped the sweep of drift, and served to cast it like the lap of a counterpane over me. In the bottom where I lay there was scarcely any snow, but a soft bed of fallen leaves, upon which they found me lying like a gate-post flung by, to season.

“Dead as a doornail!” said Rasp the baker.

“Stiff as a starfish!” cried Pluggs the grocer, who had spent his last holidays at the seaside.

“Ay, and colder than a skinned eel!” added Jakes, the barrowman.

But my uncle said—“Out with you, coward lot of curs! Our Kit shall outlive every one of you. The Lord hath not put him in that nest for nothing.”

Then Sam Henderson pulled off his cloak, like the Good Samaritan, and threw it over me. And taking me by the shoulders, with my uncle at the feet, he helped to bear my stiff body back to the road; where they set me upon _Haro_, with my head upon his mane; and the young man who had jumped into the drift was sent ahead, to fetch Dr. Sippets to my uncle’s house.