Chapter Eleven.
Wildtree Towers.
Jeffreys spoke truly when he wrote to Mr Frampton that he did not know and did not care where he was going next. When he awoke in his heathery bed next morning, he lay indolently for a whole hour for no other reason than because he did not know whether to walk north, south, east or west. He lacked the festive imagination which helps many people under similar circumstances. It did not occur to him to toss up, nor was he aware of the value of turning round three times with his eyes closed and then marching straight before him. Had he been an errant knight, of course his horse would have settled the question; but as it was, he was not a knight and had not a horse. He had a dog, though. He had found Julius in possession of the caretaker at his guardian’s house, and had begged her to let him have him.
“Which way are we going, Julius?” inquired the dog’s master, leaning upon his elbow, and giving no sign which the dog could possibly construe into a suggestion.
Julius was far too deep an animal not to see through an artless design like this. But for all that he undertook the task of choosing. He rose from his bed, shook himself, rubbed a few early flies off his face, and then, taking up the bundle in his teeth, with a rather contemptuous sniff, walked sedately off, in the direction of the North Pole. Jeffreys dutifully followed; and thus it was that one of the most momentous turns in his life was taken in the footsteps of a dog.
Let us leave him, reader, tramping aimlessly thus o’er moor and fell, and hill and dale, leaving behind him the smoke of the cotton country and the noisy shriek of the railway, and losing himself among the lonely valleys and towering hills of Westmoreland—let us leave him, footsore, hungry, and desponding, and refresh ourselves in some more cheery scene and amidst livelier company.
Where shall we go? for we can go anywhere. That’s one of the few little privileges of the storyteller. Suppose, for instance, we take farewell of humble life altogether for a while, and invite ourselves into some grand mansion, where not by the remotest possibility could Jeffreys or Jeffreys’ affairs be of the very slightest interest.
What do you say to this tempting-looking mansion, marked in the map as Wildtree Towers, standing in a park of I should not like to say how many acres, on the lower slopes of one of the grandest mountains in the Lake country?
On the beautiful summer afternoon on which we first see it, it certainly looks one of the fairest spots in creation. As we stand on the doorstep, the valley opens out before us, stretching far to the south, and revealing reaches of lake and river, broad waving meadows and clustering villages, wild crags and pine-clad fells.
We, however, do not stand on the doorstep to admire the view, or even to ask admission. We have the storyteller’s latchkey and invisible cap. Let us enter. As we stand in the great square hall, hung round in baronial style with antlers, and furnished in all the luxury of modern comfort, wondering through which of the dozen doors that open out of the square it would be best worth our while to penetrate, a footman, bearing a tray with afternoon tea, flits past us. Let us follow him, for afternoon tea means that living creatures are at hand.
We find ourselves in a snug little boudoir, furnished and decorated with feminine skill and taste, and commanding through the open French windows a gorgeous view down the valley. Two ladies, one middle-aged, one young, are sitting there as the footman enters. The elder, evidently the mistress of the mansion, is reading a newspaper; the younger is dividing her time between needlework and looking rather discontentedly out of the window.
It is quite evident the two are not mother and child. There is not the slightest trace of resemblance between the handsome aquiline face of the elder, stylishly-dressed woman, and the rounder and more sensitive face of her quietly-attired companion. Nor is there much in common between the frank eyes and mock-demure mouth of the girl, and the half-imperious, half-worried look of her senior.
“Tell Mr Rimbolt, Walker,” says the mistress, as she puts down her paper, and moves her chair up to the tea-table, “and Master Percy.”
A handsome gentleman, just turning grey, with an intellectual and good-humoured face, strolls into the room in response to Walker’s summons.
“I was positively nearly asleep,” he says; “the library gets more than its share of the afternoon sun.”
“It would be better for you, dear, if you took a drive or a walk, instead of shutting yourself up with your old books.”
The gentleman laughs pleasantly, and puts some sugar in his tea.
“You are not very respectful to my old friends,” said he. “You forget how long we’ve been parted. Where’s Percy?”
“Walker has gone to tell him.”
“I think he is out,” said the young lady; “he told me he was going down to the river.”
“I consider,” said Mrs Rimbolt rather severely, “he should tell me what he is going to do, not you.”
“But, aunt, I didn’t ask him. He volunteered it.”
“Fetch your uncle’s cup, Raby.”
Raby’s mouth puckers up into a queer little smile as she obeys.
Walker appears in a minute to confirm the report of Master Percy’s absence. “He’s been gone this three hours, mem.”
“Let some one go for him at once, Walker.”
“I get so terrified when he goes off like this,” says the mother; “there’s no knowing what may happen, and he is so careless.”
“He has a safe neck,” replies the father; “he always does turn up. But if you are so fidgety, why don’t you send Raby to look after him?”
“If any one went with him, it would need to be some one who, instead of encouraging him in his odd ways, would keep him in hand, and see he did not come to any harm.”
“Oh,” says Raby, laughing, “he wouldn’t take me with him if I paid him a hundred pounds. He says girls don’t know anything about science and inventions.”
“He is probably right,” observes Mrs Rimbolt severely.
“Certainly, as regards the science he practises,” says her husband. “What was it he had in hand last week? Some invention for making people invisible by painting them with invisible paint? Ha! ha! He invited me to let him try it on me.”
“He did try it on me,” chimes in Raby.
“It is nothing to laugh about,” says the mother; “it is much better for him to be of an inquiring turn of mind than—idle,” adds she, looking significantly at her niece’s empty hand.
“It strikes me it is we who are of an inquiring turn of mind just now,” said the father. “I fancy he’ll turn up. He generally does. Meanwhile, I will go and finish my writing.” And he politely retires.
“Raby, my dear,” says Mrs Rimbolt—Raby always knows what is coming when a sentence begins thus—“Raby, my dear, it does not sound nice to hear you making fun of your cousin. Percy is very good to you—”
“Oh yes!” interrupts Raby, almost enthusiastically.
“Which makes it all the less nice on your part to make a laughing-stock of him in the presence of his own father. It may seem unlikely that people should be rendered invisible—”
Mrs Rimbolt stops, conscious she is about to talk nonsense, and Raby gallantly covers her retreat.
“I’m sure I wish I knew half what he does about all sorts of things.”
“I wish so too,” replies the aunt, severely and ungratefully.
Several hours pass, and still Master Percy does not put in an appearance. As Mrs Rimbolt’s uneasiness increases, half a dozen servants are sent out in various directions to seek the prodigal. It is an almost daily ceremony, and the huntsmen set about their task as a matter of course. No one can recollect an occasion on which Master Percy has ever come home at the right time without being looked for. If the appointed hour is four, every one feels well treated if his honour turns up at five. Nor, with the exception of his mother, and now and then Raby, does any one dream of becoming agitated for three or four hours later.
When therefore, just as the family is sitting down to dinner at half-past six, Walker enters radiant to announce that Master Percy has come in, no one thinks any more about his prolonged absence, and one or two of the servants outside say to one another that the young master must be hungry to come home at this virtuous hour.
This surmise is probably correct, for Percy presents himself in a decidedly dishevelled condition, his flannel costume being liberally bespattered with mud, and his hair very much in need of a brush and comb.
You cannot help liking the boy despite the odd, self-willed solemnity of his face. He is between fourteen and fifteen apparently, squarely built, with his mother’s aquiline features and his father’s strong forehead. The year he has spent at Rugby has redeemed him from being a lout, but it is uncertain whether it has done anything more. The master of his house has been heard to predict that the boy would either live to be hanged or to become a great man. Some of his less diplomatic school-fellows had predicted both things, and when at the end of a year he refused point blank to return to school, and solemnly assured his father that if he was sent back he should run away on the earliest opportunity, it was generally allowed that for a youth of his age he had some decided ideas of his own.
The chief fault about him, say some, is that he has too many ideas of his own, and tries to run them all together. But we are digressing, and keeping him from his dinner.
“My dear boy, where have you been?” says the mother; “we have been looking for you everywhere.”
“Oh, out!” replies Percy, hastily taking stock of the bill of fare.
“Well, run and dress yourself, or dinner will be cold.”
“I’m too fagged,” says Percy, coolly taking a seat. “Some soup, please.”
“I can’t have you sit down in that state, Percy,” says Mr Rimbolt; “it is not polite to your mother and Raby.”
“If the poor boy is tired,” says Mrs Rimbolt, “we must excuse him this once.”
So Mr Rimbolt, as has happened more than once before, gives in, and Percy does as he pleases.
He does full justice to his dinner, and takes no part in the conversation, which is chiefly carried on by Mr Rimbolt, sometimes with his wife, sometimes with Raby. At length, however, the first cravings of appetite being subdued, he shows a readiness to put in his oar.
“How goes the invisible paint, Percy?” asks his father, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Used up,” replies the boy solemnly. “I’m sure it would answer. I painted Hodge with it, and could scarcely see him at all from a distance.”
“I believe you paint yourself,” says Raby, laughing, “and that’s why the men can’t find you.”
Percy is pleased at this, and takes it as a recognition of his genius. He has great faith in his own discovery, and it is everything to him to find some one else believing in it too.
“If you like to come to the river to-morrow, I’ll show you something,” says he condescendingly. “It licks the paint into fits!”
“Raby will be busy in the village to-morrow,” says her aunt. “What is it you are doing at the river?”
“Oh, ah!” solemnly responds the son, whose year at a public-school has not taught him the art of speaking respectfully to his parents; “wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I wish you’d play somewhere else, dear. It makes me so uneasy when you are down by the river.”
“Play!” says Percy rather scornfully; “I don’t play there—I work!”
“I fear you are neglecting one sort of work for another, my boy,” says Mr Rimbolt; “we never got through Virgil yet, you know—at least, you didn’t. I’ve been through three books since you deserted our readings.”
“Oh, Virgil’s jolly enough,” replied the boy; “I’m going to finish it as soon as my experiments are over.”
“What experiments?”
“Oh, it’s a dodge to—I’d show it you as soon as it’s finished. It’s nearly done now, and it will be a tremendous tip.”
This is all that can be extracted from the youthful man of science—at least, by the elders. To Raby, when the family retires to the drawing-room, the boy is more confidential, and she once more captivates him by entering heart and soul into his project and entreating to be made a party in the experiments.
“I’d see,” says he; “but mind you don’t go chattering!”
Mr Rimbolt gravitates as usual to his library, and here it is that half an hour later his son presents himself, still in his working garb.
“Father,” says the hopeful, “please can you give me some money?”
“Why, you have had ten shillings a week since you came home!”
“Aren’t you a millionaire, father?”
“Some people say so.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’ve got a million pounds?”
“That’s what ‘millionaire’ means.”
“Ten shillings a week is only twenty-six pounds a year.”
“Quite right, and few boys get such good pocket-money.”
“When I come into the property I shall allow my son more than that,” says Percy gravely.
“Not if you love him as much as I love my son,” says Mr Rimbolt, with a pleasant smile.
“Good-night, father.”
“Good-night! Why, it’s only half-past seven.”
“I know. I’m going to get up early; I’ve got a lot of work to do. Besides, I’m miserable.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t get any money.”
“Why not earn some? I want some one to catalogue my books for me. What do you say to doing it? I shall pay half a crown a shelf.”
Percy hesitates a bit, and looks at the bookcases, and makes a mental calculation.
“That will be about twelve pounds, won’t it? Have you got a book to write the names on?”
“What! Are you going to begin now?”
“Yes.”
And Percy sits up till eleven o’clock, and succeeds in that time in cataloguing after a fashion, and not badly for a first attempt, two of the smallest shelves in the library, for which he receives then and there five shillings, much to his own comfort and to his father’s amusement.
Mrs Rimbolt comes into the library just as the business is concluded.
“Why, Percy, not in bed—and so tired too!”
“Oh, I’ve been doing some work for father,” says the boy, chinking the two half-crowns in his pocket.
“But your father, I’m sure, would not wish you to injure your health.”
“Certainly not. Percy was hard up, and has just been earning five shillings.”
“What do you mean—earning five shillings?”
“Yes—father’s been tipping me for cataloguing his books. Jolly hard work, but he pays on the nail, don’t you, father?”
“My dear boy,” said the mother, as she and her son walks across the hall, “why did you not tell me you wanted money? You know I do not grudge it. I don’t like you to stay up so late to earn it, when you ought to be resting.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind another five shillings, mother.”
The mother gives him a half-sovereign and kisses him.
Percy, as he walks up the stairs, ruminating on his good luck, feels considerably more self-respect when he looks at the two half-crowns than when looking at the half-sovereign.
At the top of the stairs he shouts down to Walker:—
“I say, wake me at six, will you? and leave my waterproof and top-boots on the hall table; and, I say, tell Mason to cut me a dozen strong ash sticks about a yard long; and, I say, leave a hammer and some tacks on the hall table too; and tell Appleby to go by the early coach to Overstone and get me a pound of cork, and some whalebone, and some tar. Here’s five shillings to pay for them. Don’t forget. Tell him to leave them at the lodge before twelve, and I’ll fetch them. Oh, and tell Raby if she wants to see what I was telling her about, she had better hang about the lodge till I come. I’m sure to be there somewhere between twelve and four.”
With which the young lord of creation retires to his cubicle, leaving Walker scratching his head, and regarding the five shillings in his hand in anything but a joyful mood.
“He ought to be put on the treadmill a week or two; that’s what would do him good,” observed the sage retainer to himself; “one thing at a time, and plenty of it. A dozen ash sticks before six o’clock in the morning! What does he want with ash sticks? Now his schoolmaster, if he’d got one, would find them particular handy.”
With which little joke Walker goes off to agitate Appleby and Mason with the news of their early morning duties, and to put the servants’ hall in a flutter by announcing for the fiftieth time that summer that either he or the young master would have to leave Wildtree Towers, because, positively—well, they would understand—a man’s respect for himself demanded that he should draw the line somewhere, and that was just what Master Percy would not allow him to do.
We have changed the scene once already in this chapter. Just before we finish let us change it once more, and leaving beautiful Wildtree and its happy family, let us fly to a sorry, tumbledown, desolate shed five miles away, on the hill-side. It may have once belonged to a farm, or served as a shelter for sheep on the mountain-slopes. But it now scarcely possesses a roof, and no sign of a habitation is anywhere visible.
The night has come on rainy and dark, and a weary tramp with his dog has been thankful to crawl into its poor shelter and rest his limbs. The wind has risen and howls dismally round the shed, breaking every now and then through the loose planks, and stirring up the straw which carpets the place. But the traveller is too weary to heed it or the rain which intrudes along with it, and crouching with his dog in the darkest corner, curls himself up in true tramp fashion, and settles down to sleep.
He has lain there two hours or more, and the mountain storm begins to abate. The dog has been uneasy for some time, and now in the midst of a peal of thunder awakens his master with a gruff yap. The sleeper sits up in an instant. It is not the thunder that has disturbed the dog, nor is it thunder that the tramp now listens to close at hand. It is the sound of voices, either inside the shed or just outside it.
Not a strange thing, perhaps, in a storm like this, for two wayfarers like himself to seek shelter—and yet the tramp seems startled by the sound, and signals to the dog to lie down and hold his peace.
“Will it do?” says one voice; and the tramp perceives that the speakers are standing outside the shed under the shelter of the projecting eaves.
“No. No good. Too well looked after, and the people about the wrong sort.”
“There’s a pile of swag there—heaps.”
“Know that. Better wait till the family are away.”
“There’s a child, isn’t there?”
“A boy—fourteen—only child.”
“Might work it that way; eh? Get a trifle for him eh?”
“A thousand, and no questions asked. It’s settled.”
“It is! Why didn’t you say so? How are you going to do it?”
“Never you mind. Corporal and I have worked it out. It will be done to-night. Moon’s down at ten. You be here at midnight, and have your hay-cart handy. Corporal and I will bring him here. We know where to find him in daylight, and can keep him quiet in the woods till dark.”
“What then? Who’s to keep him?”
“Wait till you’ve got him.”
“Are you sure they’ll go a thousand for him?”
“Probably two. Sheer off now, and don’t forget, twelve o’clock.”
The footsteps move away through the wet heather, and the tramp, waiting motionless till the last sound has faded away, draws a long breath and curls himself back into his roost.
But not to sleep—to meditate a campaign.
“Julius,” says he to the dog, who appears to be fully alive to the brewing storm, “you and I will have to stop this business. There’ll be three to two, unless the boy fights too. We must be here at eleven, and tackle one of them before the other two come. What do you say to that?”
Julius looks only sorry the business is not to begin at once.
Then the tramp and he go carefully into the plan of their little campaign, and, as soon as day dawns, go out for a walk, Julius taking care before quitting the shed to acquaint himself with the scent of the two gentlemen who had lately sheltered outside it.
The tramp spends a quiet day on the mountain, reading Homer, and admiring the view. Towards nightfall he descends to Overstone and spends a few of his remaining pence in a frugal meal. Then, as the moon dips behind the shoulder of Wild Pike, he betakes himself, with the faithful Julius close at his heels, to the shed on the mountain-side.