Harding's Luck Part 13

"Then," said d.i.c.kie, "I think I will stay here, and try to remember who I am--I mean who you say I am--and not try to dream any more about New Cross and Mr. Beale. If this is a dream, it's a better dream than the other. I want to stay here, Nurse. Let me stay here and see my mother and my little brother."

"And shalt, my lamb--and shalt," the nurse said.

And after that there was more food, and more sleep, and nights, and days, and talks, and silences, and very gradually, yet very quickly, d.i.c.kie learned about this new boy who was, and wasn't, himself. He told the nurse quite plainly that he remembered nothing about himself, and after he had told her she would sit by his side by the hour and tell him of things that had happened in the short life of the boy whose place he filled, the boy whose name was _not_ d.i.c.kie Harding. And as soon as she had told him a thing he found he remembered it--not as one remembers a tale that is told, but as one remembers a real thing that has happened.

And days went on, and he became surer and surer that he was really this other Richard, and that he had only dreamed all that old life in New Cross with his aunt and in the pleasant country roads with Mr. Beale.

And he wondered how he could ever have dreamed such things.

Quite soon came the day when the nurse dressed him in clothes strange, but strangely comfortable and fine, and carried him to the window, from which, as he sat in a big oak chair, he could see the green fields that sloped down to the river, and the rigging and the masts of the ships that went up and down. The rigging looked familiar, but the shape of the ships was quite different. They were shorter and broader than the ships that d.i.c.kie Harding had been used to see, and they, most of them, rose up much higher out of the water.

"I should like to go and look at them closer," he told the nurse.

"Once thou'rt healed," she said, "thou'lt be forever running down to the dockyard. Thy old way--I know thee, hearing the master mariners' tales, and setting thy purpose for a galleon of thine own and the golden South Americas."

"What's a galleon?" said d.i.c.kie. And was told. The nurse was very patient with his forgettings.

He was very happy. There seemed somehow to be more room in this new life than in the old one, and more time. No one was in a hurry, and there was not another house within a quarter of a mile. All green fields. Also he was a person of consequence. The servants called him "Master Richard,"

and he felt, as he heard them, that being called Master Richard meant not only that the servants respected him as their master's son, but that he was somebody from whom great things were expected. That he had duties of kindness and protection to the servants; that he was expected to grow up brave and n.o.ble and generous and unselfish, to care for those who called him master. He felt now very fully, what he had felt vaguely and dimly at Talbot Court, that he was not the sort of person who ought to do anything mean and dishonorable, such as being a burglar, and climbing in at pantry windows; that when he grew up he would be expected to look after his servants and laborers, and all the men and women whom he would have under him--that their happiness and well-being would be his charge. And the thought swelled his heart, and it seemed that he was born to a great destiny. He--little lame d.i.c.kie Harding of Deptford--he would hold these people's lives in his hand. Well, he knew what poor people wanted; he had been poor--or he had dreamed that he was poor--it was all the same. Dreams and real life were so very much alike.

So d.i.c.kie changed, every hour of every day and every moment of every hour, from the little boy who lived at New Cross among the yellow houses and the ugliness, who tramped the white roads, and slept at the Inn of the Silver Moon, to Richard of the other name who lived well and slept softly, and knew himself called to a destiny of power and helpful kindness. For his nurse had told him that his father was a rich man; and that father's riches would be his one day, to deal with for the good of the men under him, for their happiness and the glory of G.o.d. It was a great and beautiful thought, and d.i.c.kie loved it.

He loved, indeed, everything in this new life--the shapes and colors of furniture and hangings, the kind old nurse, the friendly, laughing maids, the old doctor with his long speeches and short smiles, his bed, his room, the ships, the river, the trees, the gardens--the very sky seemed cleaner and brighter than the sky that had been over the Deptford that d.i.c.kie Harding had known.

And then came the day when the nurse, having dressed him, bade him walk to the window, instead of being carried, as, so far, he had been.

"Where ..." he asked, hesitatingly, "where's my...? Where have you put the crutch?"

Then the old nurse laughed.

"Crutch?" she said. "Come out of thy dreams. Thou silly boy! Thou wants no crutch with two fine, straight, strong legs like thou's got. Come, use them and walk."

d.i.c.kie looked down at his feet. In the old New Cross days he had not liked to look at his feet. He had not looked at them in these new days.

Now he looked. Hesitated.

"Come," said the nurse encouragingly.

He slid from the high bed. One might as well try. Nurse seemed to think.... He touched the ground with both feet, felt the floor firm and even under them--as firm and even under the one foot as under the other.

He stood up straight, moved the foot that he had been used to move--then the other, the one that he had never moved. He took two steps, three, four--and then he turned suddenly and flung himself against the side of the bed and hid his face in his arms.

"What, weeping, my lamb?" the nurse said, and came to him.

"Oh, Nurse," he cried, clinging to her with all his might. "I dreamed that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn't!--it isn't!--it isn't!"

Quite soon d.i.c.kie was able to walk down-stairs and out into the garden along the gra.s.sy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to play at bowls on the long bowling-green behind the house. The house was by far the finest house d.i.c.kie had ever been in, and the garden was more beautiful even than the garden at Talbot Court. But it was not only the beauty of the house and garden that made d.i.c.kie's life a new and full delight. To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any d.i.c.kie had ever known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he could run in the arched alleys--run and jump as he had seen other children do, and as he had never thought to do himself. Imagine what you would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who could fly. That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run.

And now d.i.c.kie was lame no more.

His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith's at the village on the hill--to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to the dockyard.

Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions, and watch him ply his trade? d.i.c.kie at New Cross had spent many an hour watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know.

And when he got to the dockyard his obliging feet carried him to a man in a great leather ap.r.o.n, busy with great beams of wood and tools that d.i.c.kie had never seen. And the man greeted him as an old friend, kissed him on both cheeks--which he didn't expect, and felt much too old for--and spread a sack for him that he might sit in the sun on a big baulk of timber.

"Thou'rt a sight for sore eyes, Master Richard," he said; "it's many a long day since thou was here to pester me with thy questions. And all's strong again--no bones broken? And now I'll teach thee to make a galleon, like as I promised."

"Will you, indeed?" said d.i.c.kie, trembling with joy and pride.

"That will I," said the man, and threw up his pointed beard in a jolly laugh. "And see what I've made thee while thou'st been lazying in bed--a real English ship of war."

He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next moment came out with a little ship in his hand--a perfect model of the strange high-built ships d.i.c.kie could see on the river.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'TIS THE PICTURE,' SAID HE PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP, "THE GOLDEN VENTURE"'"

[_Page 97_]

"'Tis the picture," said he, proudly, "of my old ship, _The Golden Venture_, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his beard."

"The Armada!" said d.i.c.kie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather like going down unexpectedly in a lift. "The _Spanish_ Armada?"

"What other?" asked the ship-builder. "Thou'st heard the story a thousand times."

"I want to hear it again," d.i.c.kie said. And heard the story of England's great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the one you read in your history book--and yet how different, when it was told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. d.i.c.kie held his breath.

"And so," the story ended, "the breath of the Lord went forth and the storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure, their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards, to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England."

"How long ago was it, all this?" d.i.c.kie asked. If his memory served it was hundreds of years ago--three, five--he could not remember how many, but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with gray, be hundreds of years old?

"How long?--a matter of twenty years or thereabouts," said the ship-builder. "See, the pretty little ship; and thy very own, for I made it for thee."

It was indeed a pretty little ship, being a perfect model of an Elizabethan ship, built up high at bow and stern, "for," as Sebastian explained, "majesty and terror of the enemy", and with deck and orlop, waist and p.o.o.p, hold and masts--all complete with forecastle and cabin, masts and spars, port-holes and guns, sails, anchor, and carved figure-head. The woodwork was painted in white and green and red, and at bow and stern was richly carved and gilded.

"For me," d.i.c.kie said--"really for me? And you made it yourself!"

"Truth to tell, I began it long since in the long winter evenings," said his friend, "and now 'tis done and 'tis thine. See, I shall put an ap.r.o.n on thee and thou shalt be my 'prentice and learn to build another quaint ship like her--to be her consort; and we will sail them together in the pond in thy father's garden."

d.i.c.kie, still devouring the little _Golden Venture_ with his eyes, submitted to the leather ap.r.o.n, and felt in his hand the smooth handle of the tool Sebastian put there.

"But," he said, "I don't understand. You remember the Armada--twenty years ago. I thought it was hundreds and hundreds."

"Twenty years ago--or nearer eighteen," said Sebastian; "thou'lt have to learn to reckon better than that if thou'st to be my 'prentice. 'Twas in the year of grace 1588, and we are now in the year 1606. This makes it eighteen years, to my reckoning."

"It was 1906 in my dream," said d.i.c.kie--"I mean in my fever."

"In fever," Sebastian said, "folk travel far. Now, hold the wood so, and the knife thus."

Then every day d.i.c.kie went down to the dockyard when lessons were done.

For there were lessons now, with a sour-faced tutor in a black gown, whom d.i.c.kie disliked extremely. The tutor did not seem to like d.i.c.kie either. "The child hath forgot in his fever all that ever he learned of me," he complained to the old nurse, who nodded wisely and said he would soon learn all afresh. And he did, very quickly, learn a great deal, and always it was more like remembering than learning. And a second tutor, very smart in red velvet and gold, with breeches like balloons and a short cloak and a ruff, who was an extremely jolly fellow, came in the mornings to teach him to fence, to dance, and to run and to leap and to play bowls, and promised in due time to teach him wrestling, catching, archery, pall-mall, rackets, riding, tennis, and all sports and games proper for a youth of gentle blood.