The Captain's Bunk Part 12

IN THE MIRE

It was still darkish as the array of vans filed along the London road, and, in the confusion, Ned lost sight of the van in which Alick had got a lift beside the lady in curl-papers. And no wonder! for the fact was, the show had parted in two divisions--one going to be stationed in the East End, somewhere about Whitechapel, the other portion to traverse the suburbs south of the Thames.

It thus happened that the two Northbourne boys were separated, as they each discovered when the day wore on. Worse still: they found, to their dismay, that they had been entrapped artfully. A couple of useful boys were desperately needed, as a fever had been hanging about the show, breaking out at fitful intervals, and the chief victims had been the boy-helpers, who, one after another, dropped off, some to hospitals, others to die, like rats in the holes that were all the homes they knew.

The welcome accorded to Alick and Ned was thus explained. The showwoman was secretly overjoyed to give the strangers a lift on their journey. But before the first day closed in the pair of adventurers found out what real hard work meant. Even Ned Dempster, accustomed to the dilatory, easy-going life of sea-fishing, knew nothing indeed of the drudgery and hustling and flurry of such everyday work as he had stepped into, unawares, among the rough caravan folk.

Alick, of course, was thunderstruck and stupefied to find himself at everybody's rude beck and call. And to have his awkward, bewildered movements hurried on by hard cuffs and violent language was an unpleasantly new experience for a Carnegy to endure. His indignant attempts at rebelling were treated with loud jeers, and by savage threats of a horse-whipping. The latter menace was carried out before the week was over, on the unhappy boy obstinately refusing to clean out the animals' cages, to fetch and carry the food for birds and beasts, and to perform a hundred other distasteful offices.

'I'll teach ye; I'll conduct your education, young sir!' shouted the ring-master. 'And here's the lesson-book!' he sneered, flourishing a cruel-looking whip.

Stunned and crushed, Alick had asked repeatedly to see Ned, and also entreated to be permitted to leave the show at once. His requests were, of course, harshly refused. In addition, he was sternly warned that if he attempted to escape he would be horse-whipped again, and next-door to death.

'They're a catch for us, them two!' the brutal ring-master remarked to his wife, as he and she sat at their supper after the performance was over one evening. 'That tallest youngster's a swell as has run away from 'ome, judging from his looks and clothes. He's just what we've bin wantin' for a long time back. The fust thing to do is to break that 'igh speerit of his, and then we'll set to work to train him to show off with the leopards. That would draw famous with the public.'

'Not with the leopards! Not with them beasts! They're the worst and the fiercest in the show. 'Tis next-door to impossible to tame a leopard. I won't 'ave it, I tell you, so there!' the woman broke in, with a high-pitched voice.

'Well, well, we're not going to 'ave words about it!' The first speaker yielded; for his wife, the widow of the former proprietor, was the real owner of the circus. 'We needn't say no more about the leopards--for a bit. But I'll tell you what. 'Ee can do tricks with little Mike, the new pony, and the monkeys. We'll make up a sort of little performance a-purpose for 'im and them. I must invent a little somethink that would be taking.'

'I 'ope 'ee won't catch the fever, like the rest on 'em, that's all!'

muttered the mistress, shaking her head doubtfully.

That, however, was just what Alick Carnegy managed to do. After some weeks' slaving and knocking about at the hands of the ring-master, such as fairly stunned him, he fell sick. At once the poor, gaunt, dirty lad, whom Northbourne would have refused to recognise as the smart Alick Carnegy, always trig and trim, was hustled off to the squalid room of an old Whitechapel crone who, for the five shillings in the pocket of his torn coat, agreed to nurse him through his trouble. If he had the luck to live through it, the show-folk intended to have him back. If he died--well, there was the parish ready to bury him.

Ned, on the other hand, was by no means in such evil plight. He was still in the division of the show moving from one suburb to another, so he had, at least, fresh air to breathe. True, he had brought on himself one brutal thrashing by running away from the show on the first opportunity. He was easily enough traced to the Docks, where he had sped, hoping against hope to find Alick loitering there. Instead, he was captured by the ring-master himself, who had been informed of the boy's flight, and who thought it quite worth his while to look up such an intelligent, hard-working little chap as Ned. The truth was, Ned had made himself far too useful among the animals to be thus let slip.

All this time the dejected lad had been purposely kept in ignorance of the whereabouts of his companion. It was only by pure accident that he at last heard of Alick's collapse and speedy removal from the show--to die, for what anyone cared. One of the showmen had been despatched from the head-quarters of the establishment on an errand, and, knocking up against Ned, exclaimed--

'Hilloa! You ain't got the fever yet, then? Your chum has distanced you; for he's down with it.' Then the man told Ned that Alick was lying 'as ill as ill' in the house of an old crone who once belonged to the show herself.

It was a relief to hear even that much of his companion; it was better than the mystery of silence. But Ned's panic was pretty severe when he thought of Alick's perilous and deserted condition. A rush of mingled feelings came over the Northbourne lad. He felt as the prodigal son must have felt in the far country.

Yes, it was exactly like the Bible story which 'Miss Theedory' seemed to like best. At least, she told it to her cla.s.s-boys more often than any other, and Ned, listening to her, had grown to realise the unhappy youth's condition in that far-off land where he had 'wasted his substance in riotous living,' and to sympathise cordially with him when he 'came to himself.'

But Ned, hustled, driven, sworn at, from morning to night, could now, in those scanty moments allowed him to swallow his rough food, or before his tired eyes closed in sleep, still more vividly picture the prodigal's desolation and despair.

Then he remembered the outcome of that despair: the unhappy youth in the parable suddenly determined to arise and go to his father, to confess, with bitter remorse, his own mad wrong-doings. Would it not be well for himself to arise and return to Northbourne, and to confess the terrible folly of which he and Alick had been guilty? Again and again Ned imagined himself so doing. But the cruel whip which he had already tasted was another side to the question. No, he dare not again attempt to escape! He writhed still when he recollected the stinging lashes of the long, serpent-like whip. At last came an inspiration.

He could, and he would, write to the captain at the Bunk, entreating him to come and rescue his son, and also Ned himself. This resolve, however, was a work of no small difficulty. To procure an envelope and a postage-stamp were next door to impossible for the lad who was watched so keenly. Fortunately, some body coming out of the performance one evening, in pity for his unhappy looks, threw Ned a penny. A day or so after, when sweeping out the ring, he found in the sawdust an envelope unwritten upon, and tolerably clean. It was a prize: and that evening, when the public were shrieking with laughter over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for a stamp; the letter was pushed, with trembling haste, into a letter-box, and Ned had returned to his post among the squalid back-scenes of the gay performance before anybody had time to miss him.

His heart beat in mad throbs, so that the boy was scarce able to sleep a wink that night. Hopes and fears jostled themselves in his excited brain. If the postman, old 'Uncle Dan,' who trudged from Brattlesby town every day at noon with the Northbourne post-bag, only safely delivered the letter Ned had posted, all would be well. With the captain himself to the fore, every difficulty must, and would, be swept away. Then---- But with a sobbing catch in his breath Ned put aside the after. He was too weak from misery and ill-usage to finish the blissful result. So, over and over, he murmured, 'I have sinned against heaven and before thee!' until that refrain of all true penitence lulled him to sleep.

'Alick is found! My boy is alive!' The captain had been able to utter no more as he pushed the crumpled wisp of a letter into a thin hand eagerly outstretched to receive it. The tears were running unheeded down the old man's cheeks.

'Oh, father!' There was a glad cry. 'G.o.d is good indeed! He has heard our prayers.'

It was Theo--or was it Theo's ghost?--who sat by the open window drinking in the sea breezes she was still too weak to go out of doors and meet. Yes, Theo was, day by day, coming back to her old sweet self, after a long spell of illness. There was only weakness left to fight--weakness and anxiety about Alick. As long as possible the fact of Alick having run away from home was kept from the prostrate girl.

But in the end it abruptly leaked out, and nearly pushed her back through the gates of death.

Every means that the captain knew of had been set in motion to find the pair of runaways. But the searchers were checkmated at the outset by failing to find the boys at the Docks. The police in the end convinced themselves and the captain that the pair had stolen on board some foreign vessel on the eve of its departure, and, as stowaways, were already far off on the deep.

But which of the many hundreds of ships that had set sail since might the boys possibly be aboard? Again and again had the half-distracted father asked himself the maddening question as he paced the busy Docks.

He would return then to Northbourne, where his other beloved child lay in jeopardy of her young life. Through the anxious night-watches by her bed, the old sailor pictured his boy on board some barque ploughing the seas, the stormy winds roaring through the rigging, the decks wet and slippery, the rough sailors cuffing and jostling the unwelcome intruders who had stolen their pa.s.sages.

None knew better than the captain what the boys who had hidden themselves in some dark corner of an outward-bound vessel would be called upon to endure, when discovered; none knew better than he the hourly dangers to which they would be exposed in the perils of the deep--the risks of foundering, of collision, of tempests.

As the days wore on, and no word came of the runaways, the old sailor's heart sank to the lowest depths.

'Father, we must trust him to G.o.d; it's all we can do,' a low, weak voice whispered; and the old man took heart again. He would trust his boy to that--

'Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave.'

Perhaps of all mankind a sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of G.o.d. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in the hollow of His hand.

The captain knew that his girl was right. What he and she had to do was simply trust Alick to his Father in heaven.

Then came Ned's missive with its startling news.

'You will go, father, and fetch him home?'

'Yes, yes! If I can find him. Please G.o.d I may!'

That same day the captain started for London, and with him went Philip Price, who insisted on joining in the search for the hapless Alick.

The young tutor had proved himself a very friend in need in 'the day of trouble' that had befallen the Bunk. What more natural then that he should persist in helping the captain in what would be a ticklish piece of work, as both men knew?

Before the two set out, Philip Price brought his mother over from Brattlesby to establish her in Theo's sick-room. It was not the widow's first visit to the Bunk. The woman who never had a daughter of her own found in the serious, gentle Theo a realisation of those dream-daughters who had never been in real life.

And Theo, on her part, welcomed the quiet, soft-spoken widow--another bit of Philip Price, so similar were mother and son. It was a relief to the overwrought girl to restfully watch the household reins gathered up in other and abler hands than her own. As for the widow, she grew alert and brisk; so good is a little wholesome activity for others.

'We must have no fretting, no repining, dear Miss Carnegy,' she persisted cheerfully. 'Your young brother is sure to be found. The captain can't fail, now he has got my Philip to aid him in the search!'

The widow's text for every sermon was 'my Philip'; and it was one of which Theo Carnegy never tired, to judge by her intent listening to the subject-matter it produced.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN MULLINER'S RENTS

It was a hot, stifling summer day, and perhaps Whitechapel never looked more grimy, more squalid, more sorrowful, perforce from its pathetic contrast to the summer beauty of the skies.

The pavement was so hot that the heat seemed to rise up, flouting itself in your very face.

In one particular alley, known as Mulliner's Rents, the heat seemed almost tropical. Possibly the dense overcrowding of this quarter with human life enhanced the burning sensation of the thick air breathed out and breathed in again, unrefreshed, by mult.i.tudes of lungs. Here, there, and everywhere human beings stood about idly. Groups of untidy women, in twos and threes, gossiped; lazy men lolled against the houses, smoking in sullen silence; and for every grown-up person there were fully a dozen of squalid children playing, shouting, staring, and squabbling with a vigour no heat could abate.

There was little traffic, so to say, in Mulliner's Rents; it was quite select in that one single respect. Nothing on wheels penetrated the unlovely quarter save a coster's barrow of fruit; unwholesome little yellow pears and cruelly green apples of the lowest type of apple-kind being the wares of the moment. It was truly a sad and sorrowful haunt, this of the man-made town; and so it seemed to the two travellers fresh from the G.o.d-made country--from the wholesome breezes of the _caller_ salt air of Northbourne--when they plunged into its midst.

'Courage, captain!' said Philip Price, when he noticed the blanching of the elder man's brown face and the unutterable loathing of horror that spoke out of every feature. 'We've got to put our shoulder to the wheel, and leave no stone unturned to find Alick, and carry him out of this pestilent hole.'