Chapter Forty Five.
A Startling Discovery.
The rough loft had been turned into a kind of dwelling-place, for there was a bed close under the tiles, composed of hay, upon which, neatly spread, were a couple of blankets. On the other side were a plate, a knife, a piece of bread, and a jam-pot, while in the centre were some rough boxes and an old cage, on the top of which sat the ragged squirrel.
“There,” said Peter triumphantly, as he pointed to the squirrel.
The doctor was looking eagerly round in search of the dweller in this dismal loft, but there was no one visible.
“Found him, sir?” came from below.
“No, not yet,” replied the doctor. “Here, Peter, go up that other place.”
There was no hesitation on the groom’s part now. He sprang up the second ladder and went along under the roof, but only to come back shaking his head.
“No one up there, sir.”
“Are you sure he did not come down!” cried the doctor, as Peter lifted a rough trap at the side, through which, in bygone days, the horses’ hay had been thrust down.
“Quite sure, sir,” shouted back Dan’l. “I just see his legs coming down, and he snatched ’em up again, and slammed the trap.”
“The young rascal!” said the doctor; “he’s here somewhere. There must be some loose boards under which he is hidden.”
But there was not a loose board big enough to hide Bob Dimsted; and after another search the doctor rubbed his head in a perplexed manner.
“Shall I come up, sir, and have a look?” said Dan’l.
“No, no. Stay where you are, and keep a sharp look-out,” cried the doctor. “Why, look here,” he continued to Helen; “the young scoundrel has been leading a nice life here, like a Robinson Crusoe in an uninhabited island. Ah! at last!” shouted the doctor, staring straight before him; “there he is. Here, Peter, hand me the gun!”
Peter stared at his master, whose eyes twinkled with satisfaction, for his feint had had the desired effect—that of startling the hiding intruder.
As the doctor’s words rang out there was a strange rustling sound overhead; and, as they all looked up, there came a loud crack, then another and another, and right up, nearly to the ridge of the roof, a leg came through, and then its fellow, in company with a shower of broken tiles, which rattled upon the rough floor of the loft.
The owner of the legs began to make a desperate effort to withdraw them, and they kicked about in a variety of peculiar evolutions; but before they could be extricated, Peter had climbed up to an oaken beam, which formed one of the roof ties, and from there reached out and seized one of the legs by the ankle.
“I’ve got him,” he cried gleefully. “Which shall we do, sir—pull him through, or get the ladder up to the roof and drag him out?”
“Here, Daniel! Come up,” said the doctor.
The old gardener came up eagerly; and one of his cast-iron grins expanded his face as he grasped the situation.
“Brayvo, Peter!” he cried. “That’s the way to ketch a ghost. Hold him tight, lad!”
The doctor smiled.
“Don’t let them hurt him, papa,” whispered Helen.
“Oh no; they shall not hurt him,” said the doctor quietly. Then, raising his voice—“Now, sir, will you come down quietly, or shall I send for the police to drag you out on to the roof?”
An indistinct murmur came down, after a vigorous struggle to get free.
“Woho! Woho, kicker!” cried Peter, speaking as if to a horse.
“What does he say!” said the doctor.
“Says he’ll come down if I’ll let go.”
“Don’t you trust him, sir,” cried Dan’l excitedly.
“I do not mean to,” said the doctor. “Will you come down quietly?” he shouted.
There was another murmur.
“Says ‘yes,’ sir,” cried Peter.
“Then, look here,” said the doctor, “you hold him tight, and you,” he continued to the gardener, “climb up on that beam and push off a few tiles. Then you can draw him down through there.”
“All right, sir,” cried Dan’l; and as Peter held on to the leg, the old gardener, after a good deal of grunting and grumbling, climbed to his side, and began to let in daylight by thrusting off tile after tile, which slid rattling down the side of the roof into the leaden guttering.
The opening let in so much daylight that the appearance of the old loft was quite transformed, but the group on the worm-eaten beam was the principal object of attention till just as Dan’l thrust off the fourth tile, when there was a loud crack, a crash, and gardener, groom, and their prisoner lay in a heap on the floor of the loft, while pieces of lath and tile rattled about their heads.
The old tie had given way, and they came down with a rush, to the intense astonishment of all; but the distance to fall was only about five feet, and the wonder connected with the fall was as nothing to that felt by Helen and her father, as the smallest figure of the trio struggled to his feet, and revealed the dusty, soot-smeared face of Dexter, with his eyes staring wildly from the Doctor to Helen and back again.
“Dexter!” cried Helen.
“You, sir!” cried the doctor.
“Well, I ham!” ejaculated Peter, getting up and giving his thigh a slap.
Dan’l sat on the floor rubbing his back, and he uttered a grunt as his face expanded till he displayed all his front teeth—a dismal array of four, and not worth a bite.
“Are you hurt?” cried Helen.
Dexter shook his head.
“Are either of you hurt?” said the doctor frowning.
“Screwed my off fetlock a bit, sir,” said Peter, stooping to feel his right ankle.
“Hurt?” growled Dan’l. “Well, sir, them’s ’bout the hardest boards as ever I felt.”
“Go and ask Mrs Millett to give you both some ale,” said the doctor; and the two men smiled as they heard their master’s prescription. “Then go on and tell the builder to come and patch up this old roof. Here, Dexter, come in.”
Dexter gave Peter a reproachful look, and limped after the doctor.
“Well, let’s go and have that glass o’ beer Peter,” said Dan’l. “Talk about pickles!”
“My!” said Peter, slapping his leg again. “Why, it were him we see every night, and as swum across the river. Why, he must ha’ swum back when I’d gone. I say, Dan’l, what a game!”
“Hah!” ejaculated the old gardener, wiping his mouth in anticipation. “It’s my b’lief, Peter, as that there boy’ll turn out either a reg’lar good un, or ’bout the wust as ever stepped.”
“Now, sir!” said the doctor, as he closed the door of the library, and then with a stern look at the grimy object before him took a seat opposite Helen. “What have you to say for yourself!”
Dexter glanced at Helen, who would not meet his gaze.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Oh, you have nothing to say! Let me see, now. You were sent to a good school to be taught by a gentleman, and treated as a special pupil. You behaved badly. You ran away. You came here and made yourself a den; you have been living by plunder ever since, and you have nothing to say!”
Dexter was silent, but his face was working, his lips quivering, and his throat seemed to swell as his breath came thick and fast.
At last his words came in a passionate appeal, but in a broken, disjointed way; and it seemed as if the memory of all he had suffered roused his nature into a passionate fit of indignation against the author of all the trouble.
“I—I couldn’t bear it,” he cried; “I tried so hard—so cruel—said he was to break my spirit—that I was bad—he beat me—seven times—I did try—you wanted me to—Miss Grayson wanted me to—I was always trying—punished me because—so stupid—but I tried—I took a bit of candle—I was trying to learn the piece—the other boys were asleep—he came up—he caned me till I—till I couldn’t bear it—break my spirit—he said he’d break it—I dropped from the window—fell down and sprained my ankle—but I walked—back here—then I was—afraid to tell you, and I hid up there.”
There were no tears save in the boy’s voice; but there was a ring of passionate agony and suffering in every tone and utterance; and, as Helen read in the gaunt figure, hollow eyes, and pallor of the cheeks what the boy must have gone through, she turned in her chair, laid her arm on the back, her face went down upon it, and the tears came fast.
The doctor was silent as the boy went on; his lips were compressed and his brow rugged; but he did not speak, till, with wondering eyes, he saw Dexter turn, go painfully toward where Helen sat with averted face, look at her as if he wanted to speak, but the words would not come, and, with a sigh, he limped toward the door.
“Where are you going, sir!” said the doctor roughly.
“Up there, sir,” said Dexter, in a low-toned weary voice, which sounded as if all the spirit had gone.
“Up there!” cried the doctor.
“Yes,” said Dexter feebly; and without turning round—“to Mr Hippetts, and to Mr Sibery, sir. To take me back. It’s no good. I did try so—hard—so hard—but I never had—no mother—no father—not like—other boys—and—and—”
He looked wildly round, clutching at vacancy, and then reeled and fell heavily upon the carpet.
For Mr Mastrum had done his work well. His system for breaking the spirit of unruly boys, and making them perfectly tame, seemed to have reached perfection.
With a cry of horror Helen Grayson sprang from her seat, and sank upon her knees by Dexter’s side, to catch his head to her breast, while the doctor tore at the bell.
“Bring brandy—water, quick!” he said; “the boy has fainted.”
It was quite true, and an hour elapsed before he looked wildly round at those about him.
He tried to rise, and struggled feebly. Then as they held him back he began to talk in a rapid disconnected way.
“’Bliged to take it—so hungry—yes, sir—please, sir—I’ve come back, sir—come back, Mr Sibery, sir—if Mr Hippetts will let me stay—where’s Mother Curdley—where’s nurse!”
“O father!” whispered Helen excitedly! “Poor, poor boy! what does this mean?”
“Fever,” said the doctor gently, as he laid his hand upon the boy’s burning forehead and looked down in his wild eyes. “Yes,” he said softly, “fever. He must have suffered terribly to have been brought to this.”
Chapter Forty Six.
Fever works Wonders.
Doctor Grayson’s book stood still.
For many years past he had given up the practice of medicine, beyond writing out a prescription for his daughter or servants, but he called in the services of no other medical man for poor Dexter.
“No, my dear,” he said. “It is my fault entirely that the boy is in this state, and if such knowledge as I possess can save him, he shall come down hale and strong once more.”
So Dexter had the constant attention of a clever physician and two nurses, who watched by him night and day, the doctor often taking his turn to relieve Helen or Mrs Millett, so that a little rest might be theirs.
And all through that weary time, while the fever was culminating, those who watched learned more of the poor fellow’s sufferings at the scholastic establishment, during his flight, when he toiled homeward with an injured foot, and afterwards when he had taken possession of his old den, and often nearly starved there, in company with his squirrel—his old friend whom he found established in the loft, whence it sallied forth in search of food, as its master was obliged to do in turn.
One night Helen went up to relieve Mrs Millett, and found Maria leaning against the door outside, crying silently, and this impressed her the more, from the fact that Peter and Dan’l had each been to the house three times that day to ask how Master Dexter was.
Maria hurried away, and Helen entered, to find old Mrs Millett standing by the bedside, holding one of the patient’s thin white hands, and watching him earnestly.
“Don’t say he’s worse,” whispered Helen.
“Hush, my dear,” whispered the old woman. “Ring, please, Miss; master said I was to if I saw any change.”
Helen glided to the bell, and then ran back to the bed, to stand trembling with her hands clasped, and her eyes tearless now.
The doctor’s step was heard upon the stairs, and he entered breathlessly, and without a word crossed to the bed, to bend down over the sufferer as he held his wrist.
The silence in that room was terrible to two of the inmates, and the suspense seemed to be drawn out until it was almost more than could be borne.
At last the doctor turned away, and sank exhausted in a chair; and as Helen caught his hand in hers, and questioned him with her eyes, he said in a low and reverent voice—
“Yes, Helen, our prayers have been heard. Poor fellow! he will live.”
Chapter Forty Seven.
Convalescence.
“Get out,” said Dan’l, some weeks later. “Tired? Why, I could pull this here inv’lid-chair about the garden all day, my lad, and not know it.”
“But why not rest under one of the trees for a bit?” said Dexter.
“’Cause I don’t want to rest; and if I did, it might give you a chill. Why, you’re light as light, and this is nothing to the big roller.”
“I’m afraid I’m a great deal of trouble to you all,” said Dexter, as he sat back, supported by a pillow, and looking very white, while from time to time he raised a bunch of Dan’l’s choicest flowers to his nose.
“Trouble? Tchah! And, look here! master said you was to have as much fruit as you liked. When’ll you have another bunch o’ grapes!”
“Oh, not yet,” said Dexter smiling, and he looked at the grim face of the old gardener, who walked slowly backwards as he drew the chair.
“Well, look here,” said Dan’l, after a pause. “You can do as you like, but you take my advice. Peter’s gone ’most off his head since master said as you might go out for a drive in a day or two; but don’t you be in no hurry. I can draw you about here, where it’s all nice and warm and sheltered, and what I say is this: if you can find a better place for a inv’lid to get strong in than my garden, I should like to see it. Humph! There’s Missus Millett working her arms about like a mad windmill. Got some more jelly or blammondge for you, I s’pose. Lookye here, Master Dexter, just you pitch that sorter thing over, and take to beef underdone with the gravy in it. That’ll set you up better than jelleries and slops.”
Dan’l was right. Mrs Millett was waiting with a cup of calves’-feet jelly; and Maria had brought out a rug, because it seemed to be turning cold.
Two days later Dan’l was called away to visit a sick relative, and Peter’s face was red with pleasure as he brought the invalid chair up to the door after lunch, and helped deposit the convalescent in his place, Helen and the doctor superintending, and Mrs Millett giving additional orders, as Maria formed herself into a flesh and blood crutch.
“There, Dexter,” said the doctor; “we shall be back before it’s time for you to come in.”
He nodded, and Helen bent down and kissed the boy. Then there was the crushing of the wheels on the firm gravel, and Dexter lay back breathing in health.
“Thought I was never going to have a pull at the chair, Mas’ Dexter,” said Peter. “Old Dan’l gets too bad to live with. Thinks nobody can’t take care of you but him. Let’s see, though; he said I was to cut you a bunch of them white grapes in Number 1 house, and there was two green figs quite ripe if you liked to have them.”
Peter pulled the carriage up and down the garden half a dozen times, listening the while till he heard the dull bang of the front door.
“They’re gone,” he said gleefully. “Come on!”
He went down the garden at a trot, and then carefully drew the wheeled-chair on to the grass at the bottom.
“Peter, did you feed the squirrel!” said Dexter suddenly.
Peter looked round very seriously, and shook his head.
“Oh!” ejaculated Dexter. “Why didn’t you feed the poor thing?”
“Wait a minute and you’ll see,” said the groom; and, drawing the chair a little further, until it was close to the brink of the bright river, he turned round—
“Thought you’d like to feed him yourself, so I brought him down.”
There, on a willow branch, hung the old cage, with the squirrel inside, and Peter thrust his hand into his pocket to withdraw it full of nuts.
But Peter had not finished his surprise, for he left the chair for a few moments and returned with Dexter’s rod and line, and a bag of worms.
“Going to fish?” said Dexter eagerly.
“No, but I thought you’d like to now you was better,” said Peter. “There, you can fish as you sit there, and I’ll put on your bait, and take ’em off the hook.”
Dexter fished for half an hour, but he did not enjoy it, for he could not throw in his line without expecting to see Bob Dimsted on the other side. So he soon pleaded fatigue, and was wheeled out into the sunshine, and to the door of the vinery, up which he had scrambled when he first came to the doctor’s house.
A week later he was down at Chale, in the Isle of Wight, where the doctor had taken a house; and here, upon the warm sands, Dexter sat and lay day after day, drinking in the soft sea air, and gaining strength, while the doctor sat under an umbrella to think out fresh chapters for his book, and Helen either read to her invalid or worked.
Chapter Forty Eight.
The Proof of the Doctor’s Theory.
Three years, as every one knows, look like what they are—twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty long hours from one side, and they look like nothing from the other. They had passed pleasantly and well, for the doctor had been so much pleased with his Isle of Wight house that he had taken it for three years, and transported there the whole of his household, excepting Dan’l, who was left in charge at Coleby.
“You see, my dear,” the doctor had said; “it’s a mistake for Dexter to be at Coleby until he has gone through what we may call his caterpillar stage. We’ll take him back a perfect—”
“Insect, papa?” said Helen, smiling.
“No, no. You understand what I mean.”
So Dexter did not see Coleby during those three years, in which he stayed his terms at a school where the principal did not break the spirit of backward and unruly boys. On the contrary, he managed to combine excellent teaching with the possession of plenty of animal spirits, and his new pupil gained credit, both at home and at the school.
“Now,” said the doctor, on the day of their return to the old home, as he ran his eye proudly over the sturdy manly-looking boy he was taking back; “I think I can show Sir James I’m right, eh, my dear?”
Old Dan’l smiled a wonderful smile as Dexter went down the garden directly he got home.
“Shake hands with you, my lad?” he said, in answer to an invitation; “why, I’m proud. What a fine un you have growed! But come and have a look round. I never had such a year for fruit before.”
Chuckling with satisfaction, the doctor was not content until he had brought Sir James and Lady Danby to the house to dinner, in company with their son, who had grown up into an exceedingly tall, thin, pale boy with a very supercilious smile.
No allusion was made to the doctor’s plan, but the dinner-party did not turn out a success, for the boys did not seem to get on together; and Sir James said in confidence to Lady Danby that night, precisely what Dr Grayson said to Helen—
“They never shall be companions if I can help it. I don’t like that boy.”
Over the dessert, too, Sir James managed to upset Dexter’s equanimity by an unlucky speech, which brought the colour to the boy’s cheeks.
“By the way, young fellow,” he said, “I had that old friend of yours up before me, about a month ago, for the second time.”
Dexter looked at him with a troubled look, and Sir James went on, as he sipped his claret.
“You know—Bob Dimsted. Terrible young blackguard. Always poaching. Good thing if they had a press-gang for the army, and such fellows as he were forced to serve.”
It was at breakfast the next morning that the doctor waited till Dexter had left the table, and then turned to Helen—
“I shall not forgive Danby that unkind remark,” he said. “I could honestly do it now, and say, ‘There, sir, I told you I could make a gentleman out of any material that I liked to select; and I’ve done it.’ But no: I’ll wait till Dexter has passed all his examinations at Sandhurst, and won his commission, and then— Yes, Maria—what is it!”
“Letter, sir, from the Union,” said Maria.
“Humph! Dear me! What’s this? Want me to turn guardian again, and I shall not. Eh, bless my heart! Well, well, I suppose we must.”
He passed the letter to Helen, and she read Mr Hippetts formal piece of diction, to the effect that one of the old inmates, a Mrs Curdley, was in a dying state, and she had several times asked to see the boy she had nursed—Obed Coleby. During the doctor’s absence from the town the master had not felt that he could apply; but as Dr Grayson had returned, if he would not mind his adopted son visiting the poor old woman, who had been very kind to him as a child, it would be a Christian-like deed.
“Yes; yes, of course, of course,” said the doctor; and he called Dexter in.
“Oh yes!” cried the lad, as he heard the request. “I remember all she did for me so well, and—and—I have never been to see her since.”
“My fault—my fault, my boy,” said the doctor hastily. “There, we shall go and see her now.”
There were only two familiar faces for Dexter to encounter, first, namely, those of Mr Hippetts and the schoolmaster, both of whom expressed themselves as being proud to shake their old pupil’s hand.
Then they ascended to the infirmary, where the old nurse lay very comfortable and well cared for, and looking as if she might last for months.
Her eyes lit up as she saw Dexter; and, when he approached, she held out her hand, and made him sit down beside her.
“And growed such a fine chap!” she said, again and again.
She had little more to say, beyond exacting a promise that he would come and see her once again, and when he was about to leave she put a small, dirty-looking, brown-paper packet in his hand.
“There,” she said. “I’d no business to, and he’d ha’ took it away if he’d ha’ known; but he didn’t; and it’s yours, for it was in your father’s pocket when he come here and died.”
The “he” the poor old woman meant was the workhouse master, and the packet was opened in his presence, and found to contain a child’s linen under-garment plainly marked—“Max Vanburgh, 12,” and a child’s highly-coloured toy picture-book, frayed and torn, and further disfigured by having been doubled in half and then doubled again, so that it would easily go in a man’s pocket.
It was the familiar old story of Little Red Riding-Hood, but the particular feature was an inscription upon the cover written in a delicate feminine hand—
“For my darling Max on his birthday, June 30th, 18—.
Alice Vanburgh, The Beeches, Daneton.”
“But you told me the boy’s father was a rough, drunken tramp, who died in the infirmary.”
“Yes, sir, I did,” said Mr Hippetts, when he had a private interview with the doctor next day. “But it seems strange.”
“Very,” said the doctor.
Helen also agreed that it was very strange, and investigations followed, the result of which proved, beyond doubt, that Dexter Grayson, otherwise Obed Coleby, was really Maximilian Vanburgh, the son of Captain Vanburgh and Alice, his wife, both of whom died within two years of the day when, through the carelessness of a servant, the little fellow strayed away out through the gate and on to the high-road, where he was found far from home, crying, by the rough, tipsy scoundrel who passed that way.
The little fellow’s trouble appealed to what heart there was left in the man’s breast, and he carried him on, miles away, careless as to whom he belonged to, and, day by day, further from the spot where the search was going on. The child amused him; and in his way he was kind to it, while the little fellow was of an age to take to any one who played with and petted him. Rewards and advertisements were vain, for they never reached the man’s eyes, and his journeyings were on and on through a little-frequented part of the country, where it was nobody’s business to ask a rough tramp how he came by the neglected-looking, ragged child, who clung to him affectionately enough. The little fellow was happy with him for quite three months, as comparison of dates proved, and what seemed strange became mere matter of fact—to wit, that Dexter was a gentleman by birth.
All this took time to work out, but it was proved incontestably, the old nurse having saved all that the rough fellow had left of his little companion’s belongings; and when everything was made plain, there was the fact that Dexter was an orphan, and that he had found a home that was all a boy could desire.
“There, papa! what have you to say now?” said Helen to the doctor one day.
“Say?” he said testily. “Danby will laugh at me when he knows, and declare my theory is absurd. I shall never finish that book.”
“But you will not try such an experiment again?” said Helen laughingly.
Just then Dexter came in sight, bright, frank, and manly, and merrily whistling one of Helen’s favourite airs.
“No,” said the doctor sharply; and then—“God bless him! Yes: if it was to be the making of such a boy as that!”