The Mayor of Troy Part 40

"My dear," said a voice (the Doctor's), "bring the child to look, if he won't be frightened."

In the window they stood, all three--the Doctor, "Miss Marty," the child--a happy domestic group, framed there with the lamp behind them. Deep as he could squeeze himself back into the shadow, the Major cowered and watched them.

The child crowed and leapt with delight. His father and mother looked down at him, then at one another, and laughed happily.

Alas! poor Major!

They had no eyes to search the garden. What should they suspect, those two, there in the warm circle of the lamp, wrapped in their own security?

The rockets ceased to blaze and bang. At length the heavens resumed their dark peace, and the distant barrel-organ rea.s.serted itself from the Town Quay. The child's voice demanded more, but his father closed the window and drew the curtain close. Panting hard, his brow clammy with sweat, the Major stole forth and down to the boat with his poor spoils.

Half an hour later he found himself in the crowd, his pockets weighted with guineas. Whither should he go? In what direction set his face? Eastward for Plymouth, or westward for Falmouth?

He roamed the streets, letting the throng of merrymakers carry him for the while as it willed; and it ended, of course (you may make the experiment for yourself on a regatta night), in carrying him to the merry-go-round on the Town Quay.

He stared at it stupidly, his hands in his bulging pockets.

He feared no thieves. To begin with, his appearance was not calculated to invite the attention of pickpockets, and moreover, there are none in Troy. He stared at the whirling horses, the blazing naphtha jets, the revolving mirrors, the laughing, irresponsible faces as they swept by and away again, and reappeared and once again pa.s.sed laughing thither where, on the farther side of the circle, brooded (as it seemed to him) a great shadow of darkness.

Suddenly his heart stood still, and his few hairs stiffened under his tarpaulin hat. That sailor, riding with a happy grin on his face, and his face towards his horse's tail! Surely not--surely it could not be . . .? But as the sailor whirled round into view again, it surely was Ben Jope!

The music and the merry-go-round slowed down together and came to a standstill. A score of riders clambered off, and a score of onlookers surged up and took their places. The Major ran with them, pushing his way to the far side of the circle where Mr. Jope's horse had come to a stop. He arrived, but too late. Mr. Jope had disappeared.

A moment later, however, the Major caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the gut of a narrow lane leading off the Quay by the fish-market, and gave chase. But the weight in his pockets handicapped him, and the crowd seemed to take a malicious delight in blocking his way.

Nevertheless he kept his quarry in sight. A dozen times at least Mr.

Jope halted before a shop or a booth and dallied, staring, but ever on the point of capture he would start off again, threading the throng with extreme nimbleness. With a dexterity as marvellous as it was unconscious, he dodged his pursuer past the Broad Ship, up Custom House Hill, along Pa.s.sage Street, out through the Tollway Arch and among the greater shows--the menagerie, the marionettes, the travelling theatre--all in full blast, almost to the extreme edge of the fair, where it melted into the darkness of the woods and the high road winding up between them into open country. Here, hanging on his heel for a moment, he appeared to make a final choice between these many attractions, and dived into a booth over which a flaming board announced a conjuring entertainment by Professor Boscoboglio,-- "Prestidigitateur to the Allied Sovereigns."

The Major spied Mr. Jope's broad back as he dipped and entered beneath the flap of the tent; and followed, elate at having run his quarry to earth. A stout woman, seated at the entrance beside a drum on which she counted her change, thrust out an arm of no mean proportions to block his entrance, and demanded twopence, fee for admission.

The Major, who had forgotten this formality, dipped his hand into his breeches pocket and tendered her a guinea. She eyed it suspiciously, took it, rang it on the lid of her money-box, and, recognising it for a genuine coin, at once transferred her suspicions to him.

"Tuppence out of a guinea?" she sniffed. "Not likely, with a man of _your_ looks."

"It's genuine, ma'am."

"I ain't a fool," answered the lady. "I was wondering how you came by it. Well, anyway, I can't give you change; so take yourself off, please."

He argued, but she was obdurate. She hadn't the change about her, she affirmed, with a jerk of her thumb towards the interior of the tent. Their takings to-day hadn't amounted to five shillings, as she was a Christian woman.

The Major, glancing beneath the tent-cloth, spied a melancholy man extracting ribbons from his mouth before an audience of three men, a child and a woman. He heard Ben Jope's voice raised in approval.

He announced that he would wait outside until the performance concluded.

"Twenty minutes," said the stout woman nonchalantly.

"Good evening, ma'am," said he, and stepping back, began to pace to and fro in front of the tent.

Why had he followed this man who, if you looked at it in one way, had been the prime cause of all his calamity? He smiled grimly at the thought that, as justice went in this world, he should be tracking Ben Jope down in a cold pa.s.sion of revenge; whereas, in fact, he was hungry to grip the honest fellow's hand. From the panorama of these ten mischanced years the face of Ben Jope shone out as in a halo, wreathed with good-natured smiles. Ben Jope--

Here the Major flung up both hands and tottered back as, with a lift of the earth beneath his feet, a flame ripped the roof off the tent, and roaring, hurled it right and left into the night.

Under the shock of the explosion he dropped on hands and knees, and, still on hands and knees, crawled forward to a ditch, a full ten yards to the left of the spot where the tent had stood. In the darkness one of the victims lay groaning.

"Are--are you hurt?" The Major's teeth chattered as he crawled near and stretched out a hand towards the sufferer.

"d.a.m.n the fellow!" swore Ben Jope cheerfully, sitting up. "What'll be his next trick, I wonder?"

"You--you are not hurt?"

"Hurt? No, I reckon. Who are you?"

"Hymen, Ben--Solomon Hymen. You remember--in the Plymouth Theatre, ten years back. Oh, hush, man, hush!" for Ben, casting both hands up to his face, had let out a squeal like a rabbit's.

"An' I saw you die! Oh, take him away someone! With these very eyes! No, d.a.m.n it!" Mr. Jope pulled himself together and scrambled to his feet. "I paid for two pennyworth, but if this goes on I gets my money back!"

By this time showmen and merrymakers, startled out of the neighbouring tents by the explosion, as bees from their hives, were running to and fro with lanterns and naphtha flares, seeking for the victims. A ring of the searchers came to a halt around the Major and Ben Jope, and Ben, catching sight of his companion's face, let out another yell.

"It's all right." The Major clutched him by the arm and turned.

"It's all right, my good people. He can walk, you see. I'll take him along to the hospital."

He managed to rea.s.sure them, and they pa.s.sed on. He slipped an arm under Ben's and led him away into the darkness.

"But I seen you blowed into air, ten years ago, _with_ these very eyes," persisted Ben.

"And with these very eyes I saw you blown into air ten minutes ago; and yet we're both alive," the Major a.s.sured him.

"An' I come here o' purpose to look up your ha'nts, havin' been always pretty curious about that tale o' your'n, but kep' moderate busy all these years."

"And Bill Adams?"

"Wot?" Mr. Jope halted. "Haven't you 'eard? Bill's dead.

Drink done it--comin' upon it too 'asty. Simmons's boarding-house, Plymouth, that's where it was. _Quite_ a decent house, an' the proprietor behaved very well about it, I will say. But where on earth have you been hidin' all these years, that you never heard about Bill?"

"In a French war prison, Ben. And, Ben, you found me a berth once, you remember. I wonder if you could get me into another?"

"O' course I can," Mr. Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' me to Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, it is, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you can prop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir the soup with it between-times!"

They entered the hospital, and the Major packed his knapsack with hasty, eager hands.

"What's this mess on the floor?" asked Ben Jope, pointing to the fragments of plaster of Paris.

"That?" The Major looked up from his packing. "That's a sort of image I broke. Come along; we haven't time to pick up the pieces."

They crossed the harbour in Cai Tamblyn's boat, and moored her safely at the ferry slip. On the knap of the hill the Major turned for a last look.

From the Town Quay, far below and across the water, the lights of the merry-go-round winked at him gaily, knowingly.