Part 12
Here he crouched with his legs tucked beneath him, his cap far back on his dishevelled yellow locks, big tears hanging on his eyelashes, and one little forefinger between his lips—the picture of childish woe.
Every now and then he would fancy he descried the burly figure of his father advancing towards him, and would crane his head with an eager cry; but when the figure drew near it would always prove to be that of a stranger, and then Johnny would sob, and sink back again—a mere little heap of misery.
After long waiting and fruitless watching, Johnny’s little head began to droop, and his heavy lids closed gradually over his blue eyes; he sank backwards in the low chair, and presently forgot all his troubles in sleep.
It was quite dark when he was suddenly startled into consciousness by the pressure of a heavy hand upon his shoulder, and the sound of a rough voice in his ear.
“Hullo—what’s this? What be you a-doin’ in my chair?”
Silverlocks herself could not have been more bewildered by the advent of the Three Bears than was Johnny as he sat up, blinking at what seemed to him a gigantic form dimly outlined in the dusk: he was positively voiceless with terror.
“Who gave ’ee leave to go to sleep in my chair, ye rascal?” continued the new-comer, and in another moment the little fellow’s seat was lifted up, and his own small person was sent sprawling on the ground.
Uttering a choked wail, the child scrambled to his feet and gazed about him; all was strange, dark, and terrifying; undefined shapes loomed through the dusk; the lights flashing out here and there intensified the prevailing gloom; a babel of voices intermingled with shouts and laughter sounded in the distance. Two or three unknown figures now drew near to him, and one stretched out its hand.
“Now, then, little man, who may you be?” said a thick voice which he had never heard before.
Johnny started back, gasped, and then, terror lending him wings, darted swiftly from the group and fled away into the darkness.
* * * * *
When the time came for the young folks to return home, they were much surprised to find that Reed did not appear to restore Johnny to their care. After long waiting and searching in the crowd, they decided that the little fellow must have prevailed upon his sire to allow him to remain with him.
“Be hoped he’ll not keep out the child too long,” said Maggie as she mounted the cart. “Mother ’ull be awful upset at our goin’ back wi’out him.”
“She will—jist about!” agreed Rosie gloomily, from the back seat. “I’m sure I don’t know however he’ll manage to get en home, without he carries en all the way, and he’s a pretty good weight, Johnny is.”
“Somebody ’ull give ’em a lift, you mid be sure,” said optimistic Tom, from his place next Rosie. “’Tis wonderful how things do fall out. There now, d’ye see, I never looked for gettin’ a ride in sich pleasant company.”
And he leered at Rosie in so meaning a manner that she tossed her head and forgot all about her little brother.
Mrs. Reed’s indignation and anxiety knew no bounds, and she was far from satisfied with the girls’ explanation. Indeed, she rated them both soundly, refused to hear any details of their doings, and dismissed them in dudgeon to their little attic room, where, infected by her alarm, they lay quaking as the hours passed without bringing their father.
Midnight had been proclaimed by the asthmatic cuckoo-clock, and one had struck before the sound of heavy footsteps on the path without awoke Maggie from the uneasy doze into which she had at length fallen.
“’Tis Father,” she cried, sitting up in her bed. “Lard! how he do fumble wi’ the latch. He do seem to be a bit drinky, and he can’t have been druv, after all. He must ha’ carried Johnny all the way. ’Tis a mercy if he haven’t dropped him.”
They could hear their mother unbolting the house door, her voice raised in querulous reproach.
“’Tis a shame for ’ee, John, to keep out the child to this time o’ night.” Then a sudden cry. “For mercy’s sake, what ha’ ye done wi’ him? Where be he?”
“Where be what?” returned the father good-humouredly, if a little thickly. “Johnny? Why he be at home and abed hours ago. I left en wi’ the maids. They be come home, sure?”
Maggie’s heart seemed to stand still; in a moment she had thrown a shawl over her nightgown, and was pattering down the narrow stairs, Rosie following and sobbing aloud. They burst into the kitchen. John Reed’s tall figure was standing in the open doorway, and though his wife, voiceless with terror, was clutching him by the arm, actually shaking him in her anxiety, he was smiling stupidly down at her, quite unconscious of the effect produced by his announcement.
“’Ees,” he repeated, “I left en wi’ the maids, and they must ha’ started long afore I. I’ll tell ye all about it—I did meet Charl’ Pollen—”
“Father!” shrieked Maggie, “ye don’t mean to say ye haven’t got Johnny! He wasn’t with us! He ran off to you late in the afternoon. I saw en close aside o’ you. Lard save us, what’s to be done! The child’s lost!”
“Lost!” repeated Reed, sobered in a minute. “Lost!”
He rushed towards the girls, his face working, his eyes bloodshot. “If you’ve been and lost that child I’ll be the death o’ you.”
His voice was harsh, absolutely unlike itself; he could scarcely articulate in his frenzy of rage and terror.
“I told ’ee,” he cried, “I told ’ee to look after en—my last words was, ‘Take care o’ Johnny, whatever ye do’. Don’t dare tell me ye’ve been and lost en!”
“Oh, Father, Father!” wailed Maggie, who had retreated to the farthest end of the room, and now stood gazing at him with eyes that seemed ready to start from her pallid face. “Oh, Father, you did say you was a-comin’ back for en, and he was a-cryin’ for you, and when he catched sight o’ you he wouldn’t be kept back all us could say. And we stood and watched en till he was close aside of ’ee. How could we but think he was safe!”
“Ye shouldn’t ha’ let go of en for a minute,” thundered the father. “I never set eyes on en, I tell ’ee. My God! the child’s lost, sure enough!”
He sank down on the nearest chair, covering his face with his hands, while the women stood huddled together with ghastly faces, weeping and lamenting. Suddenly he sprang up again, turning on them savagely:—
“How could ye be sich fools as to think I’d keep him out till this hour? D’ye fancy I’d no thought for en? D’ye really think I—I could go for to do anything as mid hurt en? Lard, to think on it! Keep them maids o’ yourn out of my sight, Missus, or upon my word I’ll be the death of ’em.”
Mrs. Reed’s very soul was pierced by the cruelty of the words “Them maids o’ yours,” which not only implied her responsibility for the catastrophe, but seemed to portend a kind of dissolution of partnership; but, nevertheless, she alone of all the family retained a remnant of self-possession.
“Let’s see,” she said tremulously, “what time was it when you see him last, maids?”
“Six o’clock, I think,” gasped Maggie.
“Six o’clock,” repeated Reed, dropping his voice suddenly to a despairing note. “Six o’clock and it’s nigh upon two now! That’s eight hours since he was seen or heard of.”
“Maybe he’s there yet,” cried the mother, still striving to be hopeful. “Don’t let’s lose another moment, Father—let’s go and look for en straight off. Maybe he’s crope into one o’ the tents and fell asleep, or maybe somebody’s found en and is a-taken care of en. I don’t believe,” added the poor woman wistfully, “I don’t believe as any one could find it in their hearts for to hurt a little chap like him—so pretty as he did look too! Oh, dear!”
Her face changed, and she caught her breath with a sudden gasp. Her lip began to tremble, and she pressed her finger to it to still it.
“He be too pretty,” she said falteringly; “that’s the worst on it! There be so many gipsy folk about, and play-actors, and all sorts.”
“Oh, Mother,” cried Maggie and Rosie together, “ye don’t think as anybody ’ud want to steal en?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she returned almost inarticulately; “there, maybe they wouldn’t, but they do tell sich tales, and Johnny did look sich a pictur’, ye know; we was a-sayin’ it ourselves.”
John Reed uttered such a heart-rending groan upon this that the girls, forgetful of their terror, ran towards him.
“Keep off, I say!” he cried savagely, springing from his chair. “Keep off!—keep out of my sight—I don’t know what I mid do to you.”
“There, my dears,” interposed their mother, in a tremulous aside, “best not anger him. He’s not himself, d’ye see. Run upstairs and get your things on, and see if ye can rouse up any of the neighbours to come and help look for the child.”
“I’ll not wait for nobody’s help!” growled her husband, catching at the words. “I be goin’ to look for my child myself. I’m not a-goin’ to take none o’ you wi’ me—ye don’t deserve it. Ye didn’t, none o’ ye, vally that child as ye did ought to ha’ vallyed him, and now he be lost, and ye don’t none o’ ye deserve to find en.”
The women-folk gazed at each other aghast, but before they could remonstrate he was gone.
* * * * *
Day was dawning in all the cool glamour of fine September; a milky sky, that would presently become brilliant blue, a dew-drenched landscape; trees and pasture alike silver-besprent. Robins were already singing in the boughs, and the sparrows had long been awake and busy, when a party of workmen, each with spade and pick on shoulder, sauntered across the fields to the scene of their daily labours. As they walked they could hear the stir and bustle at Shroton—no great distance away. The Fair had ended on the preceding night, and the travelling folk were busily collecting their gear, and preparing for the road. Many shows and gipsy vans had, indeed, departed long before it was light, and from time to time the clatter of a traction-engine, the shriek of a steam-whistle, a column of noisome smoke poisoning the air above the green-gold line of hedge which bordered the highway, indicated the retirement of some unusually important merry-go-round or switchback.
The men had all paid a visit to the fair on one or other of the two days previous, and were discussing with some eagerness and occasional bursts of laughter the various frolics in which each had taken part, when they arrived at their goal.
Their task, unusual enough in itself, did not seem strange to them. They were removing soil and rubbish from the recently discovered remains of a Roman villa.
Roman remains were common enough in that neighbourhood; antiquarians had even gloated over traces of still earlier times. Thigh-bones, which were recognised to be of Danish origin, skulls of ancient Britons, had been found and treasured; there were undeniable traces, not far from this particular spot, of a hamlet once occupied by some almost prehistoric race. No wonder, therefore, that the excavation of a mere Roman villa was an event comparatively unimportant!
Yet when the foremost workman reached the spot and looked down at the scene of his previous labours, he uttered a long, shrill whistle, and, turning to his comrades, exclaimed:—
“Well, I’m blowed!”
“What’s up?” cried another, pressing forward in his turn.
The rest hastened after him, and soon all were bending forward looking into the pit, the depth of which varied from five to six feet. What was it that had called forth their astonishment? The ancient walls, which each day’s toil exposed more fully, had now become familiar to them; they had often noticed the lines of colour traced by some alien hand so many centuries before, yet still bright and distinct where the sunshine caught them: they were not prone to marvel at these things at any time, and certainly not now when the modern wonders at the Fair were still fresh in their memory.
“Why, how ever did he get there?” cried the first speaker, pointing downwards with his thumb as the long-dead proprietor of those ancient walls might once have pointed at some doomed gladiator.
There, amid the relics of a bygone civilisation, lay the chubby form of a little nineteenth-century child—an extremely modern little Briton in a sailor-suit, with a mop of yellow curls tumbling over his sleeping face.
Yes, there lay Johnny! While his distracted father was scouring the roads; while his mother and sisters, frantic with grief, had passed the night in wandering from house to house beating up search-parties, Johnny was sleeping the sweet, sound sleep of the tired child, on a heap of soft earth at the bottom of the Roman villa.
On hearing the strange voices he sat up, and looked about him, rosy and dewy after his slumbers. The night had been mild, and he had rolled himself up so tightly that he had contrived to keep warm. He blinked in bewilderment at the bright sunshine and at the strange bearded faces. Then, with returning consciousness, the thought which had been last present to his mind before sleep had overtaken him leaped back to it.
“I want Dada,” said Johnny.
“Why, how in the name o’ fortun’ did you get here?” cried one of the men, swinging himself over the side, and taking the child up in his arms. “Have you been here all night?”
“Looks like it,” cried another. “What’s your name, little man?”
“Johnny,” said the child.
“How did ye come here, eh?”
“I thought the man was arter me, and I couldn’t find Dada,” said Johnny. “I looked and looked, an’ it was dark, and I was running, and I falled down here and I couldn’t get out again.”
“Well, what a tale! The little chap’s lost hisself, d’ye see, mates? There’s somebody in trouble about this ’ere, you mid be sure! Somebody’s lost en at the Fair.”
“Ah, he don’t look as if he belonged to any o’ the gipsy folk, or the shows, or sich as them,” said somebody. “Seems as if he did belong to decent folks. They be lookin’ for en at Shroton most like—we’d best take en back there. He don’t belong to nobody about here, that’s plain. Where d’ye live, Johnny?”
“Next door to Mrs. Short,” returned the child promptly.
“That’s tellin’ nothin’. What’s the name o’ the place?”
Johnny, who was chary of speech at all times, and was besides slightly alarmed at being interrogated by so many strangers, returned no answer to this query, and announced instead loudly, and with a hint of not far distant tears in his voice, that he wanted “_Dada_”.
“There, best take en to the Fair at once,” said the man who held him in his arms. “There’s sure to be some of his folks about. Come along, Johnny—we’ll go and look for Dada.”
He hoisted up the child to one of his comrades, clambered himself to the higher level, and, taking him again in his arms, set off for the scene of the Fair, the others looking after him curiously for a moment or two, and then leisurely setting about their work.
Johnny did not say much during the transit; he sat very upright, staring about him with all his eyes in his anxiety to catch the first glimpse of his father.
As they entered the field where the Fair had taken place, and where were still many groups of busy people, a sudden outcry sounded from the neighbourhood of one of the large gipsy-vans which stood horsed and ready for further progress. A great red-bearded man, with a white face and wild, bloodshot eyes, was struggling in the midst of the little crowd which had closed about him, while the proprietor of the van, a swarthy, thick-set fellow, was evidently denouncing him.
“That’s Dada!” cried Johnny eagerly. “There he is! What are they doing to en? Why are they holdin’ en? Dada!” he cried in a shrill scream. “Dada!”
Amid all his frenzy, aye, even amid the din about him, John Reed distinguished the little voice, and suddenly became as a lamb.
“’Tis him,” he cried brokenly. “’Tis Johnny! That’s him yonder,” and slipping from the loosened grasp of the hands which had been laid upon him, he staggered forward, paused, wavered, and then dropping to the ground burst into tears.
Johnny, having been set on his legs, ran gleefully to his father, and flung his arms about his neck; and John fondled him with one big trembling hand, and sobbed on, his broad shoulders heaving, the tears trickling through the brown fingers with which he sought to hide his face.
People who had been most ready to condemn him now gathered round, full of sympathy; even the policemen, fathers of families themselves, looked down with benign compassion. Only the van-proprietor stood aloof, indignantly surveying the tattered collar of his own rusty jacket, which seemed, indeed, to have recently sustained severe handling.
“He was near the death o’ me, I know that,” he remarked. “He’d no need to come assaultin’ and a-batterin’ of me, if he had a-lost his child.”
“He didn’t know what he was a-doin’,” returned a sympathetic bystander. “He’ve a-bin all night runnin’ after vans and sich, thinkin’ they’d a-carried off the little chap. Somebody went and told en there was a little kid wi’ yaller curls among your folks, and he made sure ’twas his, d’ye see?”
“Well, an’ if we do have a kid wi’ yaller curls, what’s that to he?” grumbled the other. “Us have got brats enough of our own wi’out wantin’ strangers. I’ll have compensation for this. I bain’t a-goin’ to be assaulted and a-battered for nothin’.”
The nearest policeman, a portly personage, and jealous of his prerogative, now turning in a dignified manner, informed the malcontent that he didn’t know nothin’ o’ what he was talkin’ of—compensation didn’t apply to no such case as this, and finally ordered him sternly to move on.
Meanwhile Reed had somewhat recovered, and was looking about him with red, swollen eyes, and explaining huskily to the crowd as he hugged Johnny in his arms:—
“I thought I’d lost en, d’ye see?—that’s it. I thought I’d lost en.”
Rising presently, he prepared to leave the field, Johnny’s whilom protector walking beside him, relating over and over again how he had come upon the child, how surprised he had been, how he had said to his mates that there was sure to be somebody in trouble about this, and how he had thought it best to come to the Fair at once. Reed, listening in a dazed kind of way, folded his arms tighter about Johnny, and stumbled along almost like a man in a dream.
“Shall I carry him?” said the other suddenly. “Ye do seem that upset I reckon ye’d get along easier.”
And then John woke up.
“Nay,” he said, “nay, sir. I thank ’ee kindly—I thank ’ee from my heart for findin’ en and all—but I can’t let go of en. I must have the feel of en, ye see.”
As they turned out of the gate a sudden rattle of wheels was heard and a trap came in sight, the horse proceeding at a kind of hobbling canter, and one of the occupants of the little vehicle actually standing upright and supporting herself by the shoulder of the driver.
“’Tis Mammy, I do believe,” said Reed. “See, Johnny—and there’s Maggie and Rosie at back. Call out to ’em, Sonny! Holler loud. I don’t know what’s come to me, I can’t seem to get my voice out.”
Johnny duly raised his shrill pipe, and in another moment, with a joyful whoop, Jim Fry had thrown the reins on the horse’s back, and the whole party had tumbled into the road.
Mrs. Reed and Rosie were beside Dada and his precious burden almost immediately, but Maggie hung back, looking at her father with piteous, appealing eyes.
“Come here, Maidy,” he said huskily, “come—all’s forgive and forgot—there be summat to forgive and forget on all sides. I were a bit rough to ’ee last night, but there, d’ye see, I were very nigh out o’ my mind.”
Maggie made a clutch at the nearest available portion of Johnny’s person, which happened to be a sturdy little mottled leg—for he was positively swamped by the caresses of his family—stooped, kissed it, and burst into tears.
Rosie followed suit, the mother had been long ago weeping, and now John Reed himself began to gulp and make contortions of the face as though in preparation for a fresh outburst of emotion.
Poor little Johnny looked from one to the other, utterly bewildered. The sight of his whole family simultaneously in tears was too much for him, and, lifting up his voice, he gave vent to his feelings in a volume of sound which left no doubt as to the unimpaired condition of his lungs even after a night under the stars.
Jim Fry had been circling round the group scratching his head, rubbing his nose, and screwing up his mouth in token of dissatisfaction. At this juncture he thought it was time to interfere.
“Well, I never,” he remarked irritably, “I never did see sich folk. Here we’ve all been a-trapesing over the county lookin’ for the child, and thinkin’ him dead or stole, or hurted some way; and now we’ve a-found en safe and sound, wi’out so much as a scratch on en, and ye must all begin a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’ enough to frighten en out of his wits. ’Tisn’t what ye’d like, be it, Johnny?”
“No,” said Johnny, with such a heave of his little chest that it very nearly lifted him out of his father’s arms. Again he looked from one to the other with tearful, bewildered eyes, and again the sense of his injuries was too much for him. “I’d like—summat—to eat!” he announced in a bellow of wrath and woe.
And thereupon the whole simple family fell a-laughing; and once again Johnny was hugged all round, and though eyes were still wet, and every now and then there would be a little catch in the voice of one or other speaker, the general equanimity was restored, and the party fell to discussing the little boy’s practical suggestion.
It was a very happy family that presently sat down to breakfast in a neighbouring cottage, Johnny being handed with respectful tenderness from one to the other, and being disposed before the meal was out to look upon himself quite in the light of a hero. And Maggie sat between her father and Jim Fry, and was perhaps the happiest of all.
THE ROUT OF THE CONQUEROR.
THE log fire burnt cheerily on the wide hearth, hissing and crackling every now and then, and sending showers of sparks dancing up the chimney; casting flickering shadows on the low ceiling, and sportively throwing little dots and rims of light from one to the other of Betty Sibley’s cherished treasures of crockery ware. But Betty herself looked very serious as she sat leaning forward in her arm-chair, her bony elbows resting on her knees, her pointed chin supported by her hands, her beady black eyes roving from one to the other of her two visitors.
They sat on the opposite side of the hearth. One a portly, middle-aged woman with a white apron much in evidence, and a little shawl crossed over her shoulders. The strings of her very flat straw bonnet were untied and thrown back, an infallible token of perturbation of mind in the class to which she belonged, her large fat hands tightly clasped together on the top of her apron, her woebegone face with its lack-lustre eyes and loosely-dropping lower lip, the very picture of helpless despondency. Close beside her, on the extreme edge of his chair, sat a young man sufficiently like her to be recognisable as her son, but with considerably more intelligence in his face—intelligence dashed at this moment by a marked expression of sullenness.
“Well, Aunt Betty, if you can’t help us, I’m sure I can’t think whatever we be to do. You was always so clever—they do say down yonder in village there bain’t nothing as Betty Sibley haven’t got some way o’ gettin’ round. She can very nigh make the dead alive again.”
“Nay now, I never went so far as that,” said old Betty, throwing herself back in her chair. “But I’ve brought back them as has gone to the New House just for a minute like to ax a question. Sometimes the end comes so suddent there bain’t no time for things to get settled as they should be settled, and as them as is gone ud’ wish to have them settled—well, then, there’s ways o’ makin’ them come back.”