Tom, Dick and Harry Part 58

"Will you tell him about the shilling?"

"Yes, if you like."

"Mother, why are you crying? Is Tempest ill too?"

"No, dear--but--"

"Tell us, mother."

"If it had not been for Tempest," said she, "I should have had no boy to-day."

"Did he get me out, then?" said I, getting thoroughly aroused.

"Yes, Heaven bless him for it!" she replied, kissing my forehead.

"That'll be a score for him," said I; "I'm so glad."

My mother evidently did not quite understand this point of view, and concluded I had been talking more than was good for me, and once more implored me to be silent.

But I had no notion of giving up my inquiries at this stage.

"Did he get hurt doing it?" I asked.

"Only his hand a little."

"How did he get at me?"

"Every one thought you were safe out of the burning room with the others. When it was found you were not, Tempest rushed back before any one could stop him, and carried you out. He had not got outside with you more than a second or two when the roof and staircase and all fell in."

Here she shuddered as once more she bent over me and kissed me.

This was all I wanted to hear at present, and I closed my eyes in order to think it over the better.

My chief sensation was one of exultation that Tempest should risk his life for me. It meant that I had won him back in spite of myself. Then when I recalled the frightful blaze and noise of that night, I began to realise what my rescue must have meant to any one. No one but a fellow utterly scornful of danger, and utterly determined to save a life in peril at all cost, could have ventured into that place. _He_ would have done it for any one, I knew; but to come deliberately after me, who had ruined his chances last term, and whom he despised as a pilferer and a sneak--this was an act of heroism which it baffled me to contemplate, and in the contemplation of which consequently I succ.u.mbed once more to sleep and forgot everything.

As I slowly got better (and, after all, I was not much damaged, as soon as I had got over the effects of the suffocation and terror of that awful night) I heard more about the fire. Permission was given me to see one friend a day for ten minutes at a time, and the reader may imagine the wild excitement of those ten minutes.

I naturally called for d.i.c.ky Brown as my first man. He came, looking rather scared, and was evidently relieved to find I was something better than a ma.s.s of burns, and able to do my share in the conversation.

"It was a close shave for you, I can tell you," he said. "All the other fellows hopped out long before the fire got bad, and no one fancied you weren't out too. You must have been sleeping jolly sound. All of a sudden one of your lot yelled out that you were missing. It was so hot then the fellows were all standing back, but old Tempest, almost before the chap had shouted, nipped into the middle of it, and made a dash for your cubicle. My word! I wish I'd been there to see it! You were as good as done for when he collared you and hauled you out. He fell with you half-way down the stairs, but Sharpe and Pridgin and one or two others caught him and fished him out with you over his shoulder. He swears he's not damaged, but he's got his hand in a sling. I say, old chap, it's no use blubbing; it's all right how."

"I wasn't blubbing," said I. "When you've got a cold in your head your eyes water sometimes, don't they?"

"Rather, buckets," said the magnanimous d.i.c.ky.

Langrish was my next interviewer; and his account as an eye-witness was graphic, and not calculated entirely to cure my "cold in the head."

"You see, it's this way," said he. "Jarman was smoking in Sharpe's room, and chucked his cigar into the waste-paper basket or somewhere by mistake, and while he and Sharpe toddled across the quad, the thing flared up and went up the curtains, and when old Sharpe came back the whole place was in a blaze. I twigged it pretty sharp, and so did Trim, and there was a regular stampede. No one ever supposed you'd go snoring all through it. Crofter and Wales were first outside, looking as white as milk. Bless you, it was such a rush and shindy, no one could see anybody. Of course we made sure you were all serene. Think of you sleeping through it!"

"I was in the end cubicle, you see," said I.

"For all that, you might have stuck your head out to see what the fun was about," said Langrish, in rather an aggrieved tone. "Sharpe turned up presently, with his face all grimy with smoke, and yelled, 'Is every one here?' 'Yes,' said Crofter--silly a.s.s, how could he tell? Then c.o.xhead said to me, 'Where's Sarah got to?' That made me look round, and I can tell you I was pretty sick when I couldn't see you. Just fancy a chap sleeping away through it all! Why, the ant and the sluggard," said Langrish, getting a little mixed in his proverbs, "weren't in it with you. So I yelled 'Sarah!' with all my might. You should have seen the chaps sit up when they heard your name. Then old Tempest, with his mouth shut and looking middling pasty about the face, broke through the scrimmage and sent us right and left, and made a regular header into the place. Sharpe yelled to him to come back; some tried to yell, but couldn't for lumps in their throats, and we all closed up. I can tell you it was a hot place. The smoke rolled out and got in our eyes, and the wood and stuff cracked and blazed, and sounded like the waves at Dover. We never expected to see him or you come back.

The stairs were going to bits as fast as they could, and great bits of burning wood were tumbling off the roof. Then the smoke shifted somehow, and we heard Sharpe yell, 'Heavens!' Then there was a dull row like something tumbling, and Pridgin and Sharpe dashed in. We got kept back, or we'd have given you a leg-up too. Then you strolled in, fast asleep still--I never saw such a snoozer!--on Tempest's arm. He was pretty well done, and couldn't have pulled it off if Sharpe and Pridgin hadn't hiked him out. Even then he couldn't stand. So I hope you're jolly well pleased with yourself. I hope it will be a lesson to you, young Sarah, to keep one eye open while you're asleep. We were jolly glad you got canted out, though you _are_ a bit of a mule. But it would have been rough on you to miss the Sports. They say Tempest's burned his hand pretty bad, but he means to have a shot at the Mile. I say, Redwood was asking after you. Jarman's jolly sick that it was his fault about the fire. He's been quite civil, and been to ask about you every day. Look sharp and get right, I say, or it'll rot the Sports if you don't. Hullo, there comes your _mater_. Ta, ta, old hoss. It's rather ripping you sc.r.a.ped through all right."

He was a good sort, Langrish. He did not tell me, what I heard later, that at the time of the fire he had to be held back by main force from following Tempest in quest of me; and that he had rather a "cold in his head" when he saw me hauled out safe and sound.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

"SMALL AND EARLY" IN THE SANATORIUM.

My recovery was far too rapid to please me. I never had such a jolly time in all my life. My mother was in and out all day; there were no lessons. I was allowed to summon any chum I liked to my bedside. I was receiving messages daily from masters and seniors, and, best of all, I had nothing the matter with me except, a strong disinclination to exert myself, and an occasional headache or dizziness when I sat up.

I had come up to Low Heath that term with the honest determination to "lie low." I little expected, however, that I should find myself quite so literally adhering to my resolution.

My one trouble was that all this time I had not seen Tempest. I did not like to send for him, in case he should not appreciate the compliment.

And he, as I guessed, would not care to come of his own accord for the uncomfortable ceremony of receiving my thanks. My mother told me he had often asked about me; but when she asked him to come and see me he had replied,--"I'll see him as soon as he gets about again." When she inquired about his hand he had replied airily that it was all right, and he was only keeping it in the sling to get it right for the Sports.

"But," said my mother, "I wish he would let the doctor see it, or give up running till it is well."

"But," said I, "he's a chance of winning off Redwood." This argument, which in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred in Low Heath would have been absolutely conclusive, failed to impress my mother in the least.

She attached no importance to "winning off Redwood" compared with a boy's health, and obdurately protested that if she were Tempest's mother she would not allow him to think of running.

It was only my agitated appeals to her not to interpose that prevented her speaking to Dr England about the matter, and so knocking the race on the head altogether.

I took it as a compliment to myself that the Sports had been put off a fortnight in consequence of the fire. That warm event had so upset everything and monopolised so much attention that Low Heath would not have come up to scratch at all on the day originally fixed. And whereas the new date permitted of my being present to a.s.sist--though, alas I not to compete--in the day's proceedings, I felt specially satisfied with the alteration.

I had naturally heard a good deal of Philosophical gossip during my convalescence. On my last evening in hospital especially, there was quite a symposium.

My mother, in an innocent moment, had remarked, "I should so like to have one or two of your friends to tea, sonny, before I go home. The doctor says it will not do you any harm--and we can have them in here, as you are the only invalid in hospital."

"That'll be ten, with you and me," said I.

"Do you want quite so many?" asked she, beginning to get a little concerned.

"Must have the lot or none," said I decisively. "We can cut out Rackstraw and Walsh, if you like--they're paupers."

"Oh, Tommy!" said the dear, tender-hearted one, "if they are not as well off as--"

"Oh, that's not it. They can sh.e.l.l out as well as anybody; only they got on our club for nothing on condition of towing the boats, cleaning up, and that sort of thing."

"At any rate, let us have them," said my mother.

"All serene. Will you write the invitations? I say, mother, do you mind writing as well as you can? Our chaps are rather particular, you know, and I wouldn't like them to snuff up at you."

My poor dear mother began, I think, to repent of her hospitable offer, but decided to go through with it now.

So she got eight nice little sheets of scented invitation note, with envelopes to match, and wrote,--