Our Frank Part 4

The boys consulted a little, and soon determined to leave the high-road, which seemed endless, as far as they could see, and try their fortune in Crowhurst for the night. It was not long before they came to it, lying in a hollow, and snugly sheltered by gently rising wooded ground. It was a very little village indeed. There was a small grey church with a stumpy square tower, and a cheerful red-brick inn called the Holly Bush, with a swinging sign in front of it; there were half a dozen little cottages with gay gardens, and, standing close to the road, there was a long, low, many-gabled house which was evidently the vicarage. It was such a snug, smiling little settlement altogether that Barney and Frank, slouching along dusty and tired, felt quite out of place and uneasy at the glances cast at them by the people standing at their open doors or in their trim gardens. However, there was a bench outside the inn, and there they presently sat down to rest and look about them. The vicarage was just opposite; and one of its wide lattice-windows being open, the boys could see plainly into the room, where the most prominent object was the figure of an old gentleman, with grey hair and a velvet skull-cap; he sat at a table writing busily, and everything was so quiet and still that they could even hear the scratch of his quill pen, and the rustle of the sheets of ma.n.u.script which he threw from time to time on the floor. Sometimes he looked vaguely out of the window, and sometimes he took off his skull-cap and rubbed his bald head with his pocket handkerchief--then he bent busily over his writing again. Frank, watching him lazily, wondered what he could have to write so much about, and then it occurred to him that perhaps he might be the schoolmaster correcting the boys' exercises; from that, his mind wandered back to Danecross and the school-room there, where it used to be so hot in summer, and the bees buzzed and murmured so in the garden outside, and the boys within. And gradually, his ideas becoming confused between bees and boys, and being very tired, he forgot the old gentleman and fell asleep.

But, meanwhile, the acute Barney, sitting by his side and apparently engrossed with his white mice, had been attentively observing the same scene. Unfortunately, whenever the old gentleman dipped his pen absently in the ink Barney's quick eye was attracted to a small object which glittered brightly, and presently he made out that this was a silver inkstand. The more he looked, the more his fingers longed to close round that shining object and make sure if it really could be silver, and I grieve to say that it was not from pressing necessity that he coveted it, but simply from a strong desire to exercise an inborn talent. It was as natural to him to steal, particularly if it required cleverness and ingenuity, as it is for an artist or a poet to paint or write poetry, so all the while he looked, his mind was busy with a plan to rob the old gentleman of his silver inkstand.

Presently he glanced round at Frank, whose head was nodding forward in an uncomfortable att.i.tude, and whose deep breathing showed him to be asleep. "If only he warn't sich a duffer," said Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he might rest easily. Meanwhile the old gentleman's pen went scribbling on at quite a furious pace, and the black skull-cap seemed to nod complacently, as though its owner were pleased with what he wrote.

Barney sat and waited with the sleeping boy's head on his shoulder-- waited patiently, without stirring a muscle, though after a time the stiff position became painful. Shadows were lengthening--the cows sauntered through the village to be milked--it began to get a little dusk, but still the old gentleman went on writing and Frank went on sleeping, and Barney's bright glance was fixed on the shining object opposite, much as a raven or a jackdaw will eye the silver spoon he means to steal by and by. "Everything comes to him who knows how to wait," and though Barney had never heard the proverb it was now verified in his case; the old gentleman paused in his writing, stuck his pen absently behind his ear, and proceeded to read over his ma.n.u.script. It pleased him evidently, for he smiled several times, and shook his head waggishly. Then he got up, yawned, stretched himself, and finally left the room, but only to reappear a moment later in the porch: thence he strolled down the narrow brick path to the gate, with his hands in the pockets of his flowered dressing-gown, and looked up and down the road, and up at the sky, and finally at the two dusty figures opposite on the bench. It was on Frank that his gaze rested, and just then, aided by a quiet poke from Barney's elbow, the boy roused himself, sat up, and rubbed his eyes.

"Jintleman wants yer," said Barney, whispering hoa.r.s.ely in his ear.

Hardly awake, Frank stumbled across the road, and mechanically touched his cap. The old gentleman stood beaming benignly at him through his spectacles.

"What do you want, my lad?" he said in a kind voice.

Directly Frank heard him speak he knew he could not be the schoolmaster, but the parson of the village. Parson at Danecross used to speak in the same sort of way. He felt ashamed to beg, and looked back at Barney for support, who immediately came slouching up with his white mice, and began to speak in his usual professional whine.

The old gentleman waved his hand impatiently.

"Stop," he said; "I don't want to hear any of those stories. You can't impose upon me, so you needn't try." Then he turned to Frank. "Are you willing to work for your supper and a bed in the hay-loft to-night?"

"Oh yes, sir," said Frank eagerly; "and so's Barney too."

The rector, for such he was, glanced somewhat doubtfully at Barney.

"Well," he said, "there's an hour's weeding in my kitchen-garden that you can easily do before dark, and then you shall have bread and cheese, and may sleep in the loft. Where have you come from?"

He spoke to Frank, but the boy did not answer; and Barney, coming glibly to the rescue, had in a few moments woven an ingenious fable, in which he frequently referred to his companion as "his little brother."

The rector listened without further question, but his shrewd grey eyes rested suspiciously on Barney when he had finished his story.

"Come this way," he said, and led them round to the back of the house, where there was a neatly kept kitchen-garden, with borders of homely flowers, and a small orchard at the end of it. Here he paused, and showed the boys that one of the gravel walks was thickly covered with gra.s.s weeds. A man leant on the orchard gate smoking a pipe.

"Andrew," said the rector, "when those two boys have weeded that path they are to have supper and a bed in the loft."

The man touched his cap with a very ill-pleased expression, and the old gentleman strolled back into the house and left the boys to their work, which they undertook with very different feelings. On Barney's side there was a distinct sense of injury, and he performed his task with great bitterness of soul; for to work for anything was contrary to his inmost nature, and to every principle of his life hitherto. So he sighed and groaned and held on to his long back with both hands at intervals, and managed to do as small a share of the weeding as possible. Frank, on the contrary, went to work with a will, with a pleasant sense that he was earning something, and he was careful to get the weeds up by the roots, instead of slicing them off neatly at the top, which was Barney's unprincipled method of gardening. Meanwhile Andrew's watchful eye never left the boys; and in answer to his master's inquiries that night his opinion of them was thus delivered:

"Long un's no good, but t'other's bin taught to use his hands. He's no tramp."

Frank lay awake long that night in the fragrant hay-loft thinking. The kind old rector, the work, the supper, had roused old memories in his mind, and his tramping life of late seemed suddenly distasteful. He longed to "work honest and get wage," and feel a respectable boy again.

If only this nice old gentleman would let him stay and work in his garden; but that, Frank remembered with a sigh, was hopeless, because he had "no carikter." And then, there was Barney--Barney, who had always been good to him, and who had helped him when he most wanted it, he could not desert him now; and as for trying to turn him from his present course of life, that was just the most hopeless thing of all. So, rather sorrowfully, he turned over on the other side, and very shortly fell fast asleep.

Barney slept too with the profound peacefulness of a mind at rest, as, indeed, it was; for with the morning's light he had firmly resolved to steal the old gentleman's silver inkstand, and he was troubled with no doubts either as to the propriety or success of the undertaking. The fastening of that lattice-window would be easily managed by a dexterous hand, and before any of the folks were about he and Frank would be beyond pursuit; only he must be careful not to wake the Nipper before he had secured his booty, as he might make foolish and troublesome objections.

So it came to pa.s.s that it was only just daylight next morning when Frank was waked from a deep sleep by some one shaking his arm, and by the dim grey light he saw Barney kneeling by him with an eager look in his dark face.

"Get up!" he whispered.

"'Tain't time," murmured Frank, rolling over sleepily.

But Barney renewed his shaking, and at last succeeded in thoroughly rousing his comrade, who sat up and stared at him with surprised blue eyes.

"Why, Barney," he said, "it's night still. What do yer want to go on fur? The old gentleman ull want to see us afore we start; we mustn't go yet."

Barney frowned darkly.

"I niver want to see that old cove, niver no more," he said; and this was truer than Frank thought. "I calls it a mean act to make a poor chap work for a bit o' supper. He's no jintleman, he isn't."

"Well," said Frank, "I should like to a said 'Thank yer;' it seems ongrateful."

"Then you'd better stop and do it," said Barney impatiently. "I'm off.

I'm not goin' to stay an work in that blessed old garding any more. You can come arter me."

He was already half-way down the loft steps as he spoke, with his mice's cage under his arm, when he looked back over his shoulder at his partner's slight figure standing at the top in the dim light watching him. Turning suddenly, he was by Frank's side again in two long-legged strides.

"Good-bye, Nipper," he whispered, "good-bye, old pal!"

He patted the boy on the shoulder gently, and soon with stealthy swiftness pa.s.sed from sight, and seemed to vanish in the grey morning mist.

Then Frank, wondering a little, but more sleepy than curious, crept back to his still warm nest in the hay, and fell asleep again without loss of time.

He dreamt that Barney had come back to fetch him, and opened his eyes some hours later expecting to see him; but he was not there. Instead of him there was Andrew the gardener just coming up the steps in a great hurry.

He seized Frank roughly by the arm.

"Oh, you're here, are you, young scamp?" he said. Then looking round the loft.

"Where's t'other?"

"He's gone on before," answered Frank, surprised and confused at this treatment.

"Oh, I daresay," said Andrew, giving him a shake. "And I suppose you don't even know what he's got in his pocket. You're a nice young innercent. You jest come along with me."

He hurried the boy along, holding him tight by the collar of his smock, and thrust him into the room with the lattice-window, where the rector had been writing the night before. He was there now, walking feverishly backwards and forwards, and looking thoroughly ill at ease.

"Here's one on 'em, sir," said Andrew triumphantly introducing the small trembling form of Frank, "an' t'other's not far off, I reckon."

The rector looked more than ever perturbed.

"Where was the boy, Andrew?" he asked. "Does he know anything of the matter?"

"He was in the loft, and he's just the most owdacious young rascal; says t'other one's gone on before. He'll know more about it, I fancy, after a day or two in the lock-up."

Andrew administered a rousing shake to his captive as he spoke. He was not ill-pleased that the rector should at last see the result of encouraging tramps.

Hitherto Frank had been in a state of puzzled misery, and had scarcely understood what was going on; but when Andrew mentioned the word lock-up, the whole matter was clear to him. Barney had stolen something; that was the meaning of his abrupt departure before daylight.

The rector looked at him pityingly.

"Where is your companion, my boy?" he said.