Wenderholme Part 5

"What! has little Jacob run away?"

"Ay, that he has; and he _can_ run, can little Jacob; and he knows all th' places about. I've no fears on him. Master's gone after him wi' a lantern wi' a hoile in it, and auve a hinch o' cannle. It's like catchin' a bird wi' a pinch o' salt."

"Little un's safe enough, I'se warrant him."

"We mun just stop quite[7] till th' ould un's i' bedd, and then we'll go and seech[8] little Jacob."

In a quarter of an hour Ogden came back again. His light had gone out, and he threw the lantern down on the kitchen-floor without a word, and shut himself up in his sitting-room.

The furniture was in great disorder. The chairs were all overturned, the mahogany table bore deep indentations from the blows of the hammer. Some pieces of old china that had ornamented the chimney-piece lay scattered on the hearth. He lifted up a chair and sat upon it. The disorder was rather pleasing to him than otherwise; he felt a bitter satisfaction in the harmony between it and the state of his own mind. A large fragment of broken china lay close to his foot. It belonged to a basin, which, having been broken only into three or four pieces, was still repairable.

Ogden put it under his heel and crushed it to powder, feeling a sort of grim satisfaction in making repair out of the question.

He sat in perfect inaction for about a quarter of an hour, and then rang the bell. "Bring me hot water, and, stop--put these things in their places, will you?"

Old Sarah restored some order in the room, removed the broken china, and brought the hot water.

"Now, bring me a bottle of rum."

"Please, Mestur Ogden, you've got no rum in the house."

"No, but you have."

"Please, sir, I've got very little. I think it's nearly all done."

"D'ye think I want to rob you? I'll pay ye for't, d.a.m.n you!"

"Mestur Ogden, you don't use drinkin' sperrits at Twistle Farm."

Ogden gave a violent blow on the table with his fist, and shouted, "Bring me a bottle of rum, a bottle of rum! D'ye think you're to have all the rum in the world to yourself, you drunken old witch?"

There was that in his look which cowed Sarah, and she reflected that he might be less dangerous if he were drunk. So she brought the rum.

Ogden was pouring himself a great dose into a tumbler, when a sudden hesitation possessed him, and he flung the bottle from him into the fireplace. There was a shivering crash, and then a vast sheet of intolerable flame. The intense heat drove Ogden from the hearth. He seized the candle, and went upstairs into his bedroom.

Sarah and Jim waited to see whether he would come down again, but he remained in his room, and they heard the boards creak as he walked from wall to wall. This continued an hour. At last old Sarah said,--

"I cannot bide no longer. Let's go and seech th' childt;" and she lighted two lanterns, which, doubtless, were in better condition, and better provided with candles, than the one she had lent to Mr. Ogden.

They went into the stable and cowhouse (or _mistle_ as it was called in that country), and called in the softest and most winning tones their voices knew how to a.s.sume. "Little Jacob, little Jacob, come, my lad, come; it's n.o.bbut old Sarah an' Jim. Mestur's i' bedd."

They went amongst the hay with their lanterns, in spite of the risk of setting it on fire, but he was not there. He was not to be found in any of the out-buildings. Suddenly an idea struck Jim.

"If we'd n.o.bbut his bit of a dog, who'd find him, sure enough."

But Feorach had disappeared. Feorach was with her young master.

They began to be rather alarmed, for it was very cold, and intensely dark. The lad was certainly not on the premises. They set off along the path that led to the rocks. They examined every nook and cranny of the huge ma.s.ses of sandstone, and their lanterns produced the most unaccustomed effects, bringing out the rough projections of the rock against the unfathomable black sky, and casting enormous shadows from one rock to another. Wherever their feet could tread they went, missing nothing; but the lad was not amongst the rocks. It began to be clear to them that he could not even be in a place of such shelter as that. He must be out on the open moor.

"We mun go and tell Mestur," said Jim. "If he's feared about th' childt, he willn't be mad at him."

So they returned straight to the house, and went to Mr. Ogden's room. He had gone to bed, but was not asleep. If he thought about little Jacob at all, his reflections were probably not of an alarming kind. The child would come back, of course.

"Please, sir," said Jim, "Master Jacob isn't come back, and we can't find him."

"He'll come back," said Ogden.

"Please, sir, I'm rather feared about him," said Jim; "it's nearly two hours sin' he left the house, and it's uncommon cold. We've been seekin'

him all up and down, old Sarah and me, and he's nowhere about th'

premises, and he isn't about th' rocks neither."

Mr. Ogden began to feel rather alarmed. The paroxysm of his irritation was over by this time, and he had become rational again; indeed his mind was clearer, and, in a certain sense, calmer, than it had been for two or three days. For the last half-hour he had been suffering only from great prostration, and a feeling of dulness and vacancy, which this new anxiety effectually removed. Notwithstanding the violence of his recent treatment of his son--a violence which had frequently broken out during several months, and which had culminated in the scene described in the last chapter, when it had reached the pitch of temporary insanity--he really had the deepest possible affection for his child, and this paternal feeling was more powerful than he himself had ever consciously known or acknowledged. When once the idea was realized that little Jacob might be suffering physically from the cold, and mentally from a dread of his father, which the events of the night only too fully justified, Mr. Ogden began to feel the tenderest care and anxiety. "I'll be down with you in a moment," he said. "See that the lanterns are in good order. Have the dogs ready to go with us--they may be of some use."

He came downstairs with a serious but quite reasonable expression on his face. He spoke quite gently to old Sarah, and said, with a half-smile, "You needn't give me a lantern with a hole in it this time;" and then he added, "I wasted all that rum you gave me."

"It 'ud 'ave been worst wasted if you'd swallowed it, Mestur."

"It would--it would; but we may need a little for the lad if we find him--very cold, you know. Give a little to Jim, if you have any; and take a railway rug, or a blanket from my bed, to wrap him in if he should need it."

The dogs were in the kitchen now--a large mastiff and a couple of pointers. Mr. Ogden took down a little cloak that belonged to Jacob, and made the dogs smell at it. Then he seemed to be looking about for something else.

"Are ye seekin' something, Mr. Ogden?"

"I want something to make a noise with, Sarah." She fetched the little silver horn that had been the Doctor's last present to his young friend.

"That's it," said Mr. Ogden; "he'll know the sound of that when he hears it."

The little party set out towards the moor. Mr. Ogden led it to the place where Jacob had crossed the wall; and as Jim was looking about with his lantern he called out, "Why, master, here's one of his shoes, and--summat else."

The "summat else" was the great whip.

Mr. Ogden took the shoe up, and the whip. They were within a few yards of the pond, and he went down to the edge of it. A slight splash was heard, and he came back without the whip. The weight of the steel hammer had sunk it, and hidden it from his eyes for ever. He carried the little shoe in his right hand.

When they had crossed the wall, Mr. Ogden bent down and put the shoe on the ground, and called the dogs. The pointers understood him at once, and went rapidly on the scent, whilst the little party followed them as fast as they could.

It led out upon the open moor. When they were nearly a mile from the house, Mr. Ogden told Sarah to go back and make a fire in little Jacob's room, and warm his bed. The two men then went forward in silence.

It was bitterly cold, and the wind began to rise, whistling over the wild moor. It was now eleven o'clock; Mr. Ogden looked at his watch.

Suddenly the dogs came to a standstill; they had reached the edge of a long sinuous bog with a surface of treacherous green, and little black pools of peat-water and mud. Mr. Ogden knew the bog perfectly, as he knew every spot on the whole moor that he was accustomed to shoot over, and he became terribly anxious. "We must mark this spot," he said; but neither he nor Jim carried a stick, and there was no wood for miles round. The only resource was to make a little cairn of stones.

When this was finished, Mr. Ogden stood looking at the bog a few minutes, measuring its breadth with his eye. He concluded that it was impossible for a child to leap over it even at the narrowest place, and suggested that little Jacob must have skirted it. But in which direction--to the right hand or the left? The dogs gave no indication; they were off the scent. Mr. Ogden followed the edge of the bog to the right, and after walking half a mile, turned the extremity of it, and came again on the other side till he was opposite the cairn he had made.

The dogs found no fresh scent; they were perfectly useless. "Make a noise," said Mr. Ogden to Jim; "make a noise with that horn."

Jim blew a loud blast. There came no answering cry. The wind whistled over the heather, and a startled grouse whirred past on her rapid wings.

An idea was forcing its way into Mr. Ogden's mind--a hateful, horrible, inadmissible idea--that the foul black pit before him might be the grave of his only son. How ascertain it? They had not the necessary implements; and what would be the use of digging in that flowing, and yielding, and unfathomable black mud? He could not endure the place, or the intolerable supposition that it suggested, and went wildly on, in perfect silence, with compressed lips and beating heart, stumbling over the rough land.

Old Sarah warmed the little bed, and made a bright fire in Jacob's room.

When Ogden came back, he went there at once, and found the old woman holding a small night-gown to the fire. His face told her enough. His dress was covered with snow.

"Th' dogs is 'appen mistaken," she said; "little Jacob might be at Milend by this time."