Chapter Twenty Eight.
Come Back.
Raby had come home with a strange story from Storr Alley that afternoon. She was not much given to romance, but to her there was something pathetic about this man “John” and his unceremonious adoption of those orphan children. She had not seen anything exactly like it, and it moved both her admiration and her curiosity.
She had heard much about “John” from the neighbours, and all she had heard had been of the right sort. Jonah had talked bitterly of him now and then, but before he died he had acknowledged that John had been his only friend. Little Annie had never mentioned him without a smile brightening her face; and even those who had complaints to pour out about everybody all round could find nothing to say about him. Yet she seemed destined never to see him.
The next day, at her usual time, Raby turned her steps to Storr Alley. Groups of people stood about in the court, and it was evident, since she was last there, something untoward had happened. A fireman’s helmet at the other end of the alley, in the passage leading to Driver’s Court, told its own tale; and if that was not enough, the smell of fire and the bundles of rags and broken furniture which blocked up the narrow pathway, were sufficient evidence.
The exiles from Driver’s stared hard at the young lady as she made her way through the crowd; but the people of Storr Alley treated her as a friend, and she had no lack of information as to the calamity of the preceding night.
Raby paid several visits on her way up. Then, with some trepidation, she knocked at the door of the garret. There was no reply from within till she turned the handle, and said—
“May I come in?”
Then a voice replied,—
“Yes, if you like,” and she entered.
It was a strange scene which met her eyes as she did so. A lad was stretched on the bed, awake, but, motionless, regarding with some anxiety a baby who slumbered, nestling close to his side. On the floor, curled up, with his face to the wall, lay a man sleeping heavily; while Tim, divided in his interest between the stranger on the bed and the visitor at the door, stood like a little watchdog suddenly put on his guard.
“May I come in?” said Raby again timidly.
“Here she is!” cried Tim, running to her; “John’s asleep, and he,”—pointing to the figure on the bed—“can’t run about.”
“Correct, Timothy,” said the youth referred to; “I can’t—hullo!”
This last exclamation was caused by his catching sight of Raby at the door. He had expected a lodger; but what was this apparition?
“Please come in,” said he, bewildered; “it’s a shocking room to ask you into, and—Timothy, introduce me to your friend.”
Raby smiled; and how the crippled lad thought it brightened the room! “Tim and I are friends,” said she, lifting up the child to give him a kiss. “I’m afraid you are very badly hurt. I heard of the fire as I came up.”
“No, I’m all right; I’m never very active. In fact, I can only move my hands and my head, as Timothy says. I can’t run, I’m a cripple. I shouldn’t be anything if it wasn’t for Jeff. Hullo, Jeff! wake up, old man!”
Raby started and turned pale as she raised her hand to prevent his waking the sleeper.
“No, please, don’t wake him; what did you say his name was?”
“Jeffreys—John Jeffreys—commonly called Jeff. He hauled me out of the fire last night, and guessed as little at the time who I was as I guessed who he was. I can’t believe it yet. It’s like a—”
“You haven’t told me your name,” said Raby faintly.
“Gerard Forrester, at your service. Hullo, I say, are you ill? Hi! Jeff, wake up, old man; you’re wanted.”
Raby had only time to sink on a chair and draw Tim to her when Jeffreys suddenly woke and rose to his feet.
“What is it, Forrester, old fellow? anything wrong?” said he, springing to the bedside.
“I don’t know what’s the matter—look behind you.”
“Why did she cry?” asked Tim presently, when she had gone. “I know; because of that ugly man,” added he, pointing to Forrester.
“Excuse me, young man, I have the reputation of being good-looking; that cannot have been the reason. But, Jeff, I’m all in a dream. Who is she? and how comes she to know you or me? And, as Timothy pertinently remarks, ‘Whence these tears?’ Tell us all about it before the baby wakes.”
Jeffreys told him. The story was the history of his life since he had left Bolsover; and it took long to tell, for he passed over nothing.
“Poor old man!” said Forrester, when it was done; “what a lot you have been through!”
“Have I not deserved it? That day at Bolsover—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t go back to that. You know it was an accident, and what was not an accident was the fault of my own folly. That night I awoke and saw you standing at the door, I knew that you had already suffered as much as I had.”
“That was the last time I saw you. You forget I have still to hear what happened to you afterwards.”
“It’s pretty easily told. But I say, Jeff, what did you say her name was?”
“Raby Atherton,” said Jeffreys, smiling. This was about the twentieth time the boy had broken in with some question about her. “She is the daughter of your guardian, Colonel Atherton, who was your father’s comrade in Afghanistan. Some day she will tell you the story of a battle out there which will make you proud of being Captain Forrester’s son. But I want to hear about you.”
“I was taken home to Grangerham, you know. My grandmother was ill at the time, and just starting South, so I was left in charge of my old nurse. She was an awful brick to me, was that old soul, and I don’t believe I know yet all she did and put up with for me.
“The doctors at Grangerham couldn’t make anything of me. One said I’d be cutting about again in a few weeks, and another said I’d be buried in a few days. It’s hard to decide when doctors disagree at that rate, and old Mary gave it up, and did what was the best thing—kept me quietly at home. Of course we thought that my grandmother had written to my father, but she hadn’t, so he can’t have heard for ages. We heard of my grandmother’s death presently, and then made the pleasant discovery that she had died in debt, and that the furniture of the house was hired. That pulled Mary and me up short. She had saved a little, and I believe she spent every penny of that to get me up to London to a hospital. I didn’t have a bad time of it there for a month or two. I was considered an interesting case, and had all sorts of distinguished fellows to come and look at me, and I lived like a fighting-cock all the time. I found, as long as I lay flat, and didn’t get knocked about, I was really pretty comfortable, and what was more, I could use my hands. That was no end of a blessing. I had picked up a few ideas about drawing you know, at Bolsover, and found now that I could do pretty well at it. I believe some of my sketches at the Middlesex were thought well of. Mary came to see me nearly every day. I could see she was getting poorer and poorer, and when at last I was discharged, the little rooms she took me to were about as poor as they could be to be respectable.
“I’d hardly been back a week, when one day after going out to try to sell some of my sketches, she came home ill and died quite suddenly. I was all up a tree then—no money, no friends, no legs. I wrote to Frampton, but he can’t have got my letter. Then I got threatened with eviction, and all but left out in the street, when the person old Mary had sold my sketches to called round and ordered some more. I didn’t see him, but a brute of a woman who lived in the house did, and was cute enough to see she could make a good thing out of me. So she took possession of me, and ever since then I’ve been a prisoner, cut off from the outside world as completely as if I had been in a dungeon, grinding out pictures by the dozen, and never seeing a farthing of what they fetched, except in the food which Black Sal provided to keep me alive. Now and then, in an amiable mood, she would get me a newspaper; and once I had to illustrate a cheap edition of Cook’s Voyages, and of course had the book to go by. But she never let me write to anybody or see anybody, and mounted guard over me as jealously as if I had been a veritable goose that laid golden eggs.
“You know the rest. We got turned out when they pulled down the old place, and took refuge in Driver’s Alley, a nice select neighbourhood; and there you found me, old man.”
“Think of being near one another so long,” said Jeffreys, “and never knowing it.”
“Ten to one that’s exactly what my guardian’s daughter is observing to herself at this moment. I say, Jeff, compared with Driver’s Court, this is a palatial apartment, and you are a great improvement on Black Sal; but for ah that, don’t you look forward to seeing a little civilisation—to eating with a fork, for instance, and hearing an ‘h’ aspirated; and—oh, Jeff, it will be heavenly to wear a clean collar!”
Jeffreys laughed.
“Your two years’ trouble haven’t cast out the spirit of irreverence, youngster,” said he.
“It is jolly to hear myself called youngster,” said the boy, in a parenthesis; “it reminds me of the good old days.”
“Before Bolsover?” said Jeffreys sadly.
“Look here! If you go back to that again, and pull any more of those long faces, Jeff, I’ll be angry with you. Wasn’t all that affair perhaps a blessing in the long run? It sent me to a school that’s done me more good than Bolsover; and as for you—well, but for it you’d never have had that sweet visitor this morning.”
“Don’t talk of that. That is one of the chief drawbacks to my going back into civilisation, as you call it.”
“A very nice drawback—if it’s the only one—”
“It’s not—there’s another.”
“What is that?”
“My babies!”
It was a strange, happy night, that last in the Storr Alley garret. Jeffreys had begged Raby to let them stay where they were in peace for that day; and she considerately kept their counsel till the morning. Then she told her father the strange story.
“Two birds with one stone, and such a stone!” ejaculated the bewildered colonel.
“Four birds, father—there are two babies as well.”
“Whew!” said the colonel, “what a holiday I am having!”
“Poor father,” said the girl, “it’s too bad!”
“Oh, well. The more the merrier. What’s to be done now? We’d better charter a coach and four and a brass band and go and fetch them home in state. If they’d wait till to-morrow we would have up a triumphal arch too.”
“How frivolous you are, father! We must get them away with as little fuss as possible. I arranged with Mr Jeffreys that he would bring Mr Forrester here in a cab this morning.”
“And the babies?”
“He will go back for them afterwards.”
“Well, as you like; but what about Percy and the Rimbolts?”
“Percy was to go out of town to-day, you know, and will not be back till to-morrow. By that time we shall be able to find out what Mr Jeffreys would like best.”
“Oh, very good. We’ll wait till his royal highness signifies his pleasure, and meanwhile our relatives and friends must be avoided—that’s what you mean.”
“No,” said Raby, colouring; “but you know how easily frightened he is.”
The colonel laughed pleasantly.
“All right, Raby; they shall be let down as easily as you like. Now shall I be in the way when they come, or shall I make myself scarce? And, by the way, I must go at once and get a perambulator, and feeding-bottles, and all that sort of thing. How many times a day am I to be sent out to take them walks?”
“You’re too silly for anything,” said Raby dutifully.
She was grateful to him for making things so easy, and for covering her own ill-disguised embarrassment by this adroit show of frivolity.
There was no frivolity in the manner in which the gallant soldier welcomed his old comrade’s son, when an hour later he entered the house, borne in the strong arms of his friend. A couch was ready for him, and everything was made as simple and homelike as possible. Jeffreys stayed long enough to help the boy into the civilised garments provided for him, and then quietly betook himself once more to Storr Alley.
The curiosity roused by the departure of ‘Black Sal’s Forrester’ in a cab was redoubled when, late that afternoon, Jeffreys was seen walking out of the alley with the baby in one arm and Tim holding onto the other. He had considered it best to make no public announcement of his departure. If he had, he might have found it more difficult than it was to take the important step. As it was, he had to run a gauntlet of a score of inquisitive idlers, who were by no means satisfied with the assurance that he was going to give the children an airing.
The general opinion seemed to be that he was about to take the children to the workhouse, and a good deal of odium was worked up in consequence. Some went so far as to say he was going to sell or drown the infants; and others, Driver’s Alley refugees, promised him a warm reception if he returned without them! He neither returned with nor without them. They saw him no more. But it was given to the respectable inhabitants of a crescent near Regent’s Park, about half an hour later, to witness the strange spectacle of a big young man, carrying a small baby in his arms and a big one on his shoulder—for Tim had turned restive on his hands—walk solemnly along the footpath till he reached the door of Colonel Atherton’s, where he rang.
The colonel and Raby had a queer tea-party that evening. When the meal was ended, Jeffreys was called upon to put his infants to bed, and a wonderful experience to those small mortals was the warm bath and the feather-bed to which they were severally introduced. Jeffreys was thankful that the baby was restless, and gave him an excuse for remaining in retirement most of the evening. At length, however, silence reigned; and he had no further excuse.
Entering the parlour, he perceived almost with a shock that Mr Rimbolt was there. He had called in accidentally, and had just been told the news.
“My dear fellow,” said he, as he took his old librarian’s hand, “how we have longed for this day!”
Raby and her father were occupied with Forrester, and Jeffreys and his old employer were left undisturbed.
What they talked about I need not repeat. It chiefly had reference to Storr Alley and to Percy.
“He is down at Watford seeing a friend to-night. We expect him back to-morrow morning. How happy he will be! By the way,” added Mr Rimbolt, a moment afterwards, “now I remember, there is a train leaves Euston for Overstone at 12:30, half an hour after Percy’s train comes in. How should you like to meet him, and run down with him for a week or two to Wildtree? He sadly wants a change, and my books sadly want looking after there. You will have the place to yourselves, but perhaps you won’t mind that.”
Jeffreys flushed with pleasure at the proposal. It was the very programme he would have selected. But for a moment his face clouded, as he glanced towards Forrester.
“I don’t know whether I ought to leave him?”
“He is with his guardian, you know, and could not be in better quarters.”
“Then—you know I have—that is, you know—there are two—babies.”
Raby, however, when the question was subsequently discussed, expressed herself fully equal to the care of these promising infants until a home could be found for them; and Forrester, for his part, declared that Jeffreys must and should go to Wildtree.
“Can’t you see I don’t want you any more?” said he. “This sofa’s so comfortable, I’m certain I shall sleep a fortnight straight away, and then my guardian and I have no end of business to talk over, haven’t we, guardian? and you’d really be in the way.”
So it was settled. The whole party retired early to bed after their exciting day. Jeffreys slept for the last time between the babies, and could scarcely believe, when he awoke, that he was not still in Storr Alley.
Still less could Tim when he awoke realise where he was. For the John he was accustomed to stood no longer in his weather-beaten, tattered garments, but in the respectable librarian’s suit which he had left behind him at Clarges Street, and which now, by some mysterious agency, found itself transferred to his present room.
Tim resented the change, and bellowed vehemently for the space of an hour, being joined at intervals by his younger brother, and egged on by the mocking laughter of young Forrester, who was enjoying the exhibition from the adjoining chamber.
For once Jeffreys could do nothing with his disorderly infants, and was compelled finally to carry them down one under each arm, to the sitting-room, where Raby came to the rescue, and thus established her claim on their allegiance for a week or so to come.
In a strange turmoil of feelings Jeffreys at mid-day walked to Euston. Mr Rimbolt was there with Percy’s travelling bag and the tickets, but he did not remain till the train from Watford came in.
“I may be running down to the North myself in about a fortnight,” said he, as he bade good-bye; “we can leave business till then—good-bye.”
The train came in at last. Jeffreys could see the boy pacing in a nonchalant way down the platform, evidently expecting anything but this meeting.
His eyes seemed by some strange perversity even to avoid the figure which stood waiting for him; nor was it till Jeffreys quietly stepped in front of him, and said “Percy,” that they took him in and blazed forth a delighted recognition.
“Jeff,” he said, “you’ve come back—really?”
“Yes, really.”
“To stay—for good?”
“For good—old fellow.”
Percy heaved a sight of mighty content as he slipped his arm into that of his friend. And half an hour later the two were whizzing northwards on their way to Wildtree, with their troubles all behind them.