Chapter Twenty Six.
How I fell badly, and was picked up in a way I little expected.
The delightful picnic to which I had looked forward with such satisfaction had certainly not come off as I expected. And it was not yet over, for the drive home under the conduct of Mr Whipcord promised to be the most exciting portion of the whole day.
As long as we were in the country roads the unsteadiness of our Jehu did not so much matter, for he was sober enough to keep the horse upon the road, though hardly fit to steer him past other vehicles. However, it was marvellous how we did get on. What hairbreadth escapes we had! It was useless attempting to remonstrate with the fellow. He was in that quarrelsome and mischievous humour which would brook no protest. Once, very soon after starting, in passing a country cart we as nearly as possible upset against it, a misadventure which Whipcord immediately set down as a deliberate insult intended for himself, and which nothing would satisfy him but to avenge then and there.
He leaped down off the dogcart, heedless of what became of the horse, and, throwing off his coat, shouted to the countryman to “Come on!” an invitation which the countryman answered with a crack of his whip which made the doughty hero leap as high into the air as he had ever done in his life.
As might be expected, this incident did not tend to pacify the outraged feelings of the tipsy Whipcord, who, disappointed of his vengeance on the countryman, was most pressing in his invitations to Hawkesbury or me or both of us to dismount and “have it out.” Indeed, he was so eager for satisfaction that he all but pulled me off my seat on to the road, and would have done so quite had not the horse given a start at the moment, which put me out of his reach, and nearly upset him in the dust.
Things certainly did not look promising for a nice quiet drive home. With difficulty we coaxed him back into the trap, where he at once began to vent his spleen on the horse in a manner which put that animal’s temper to a grand test.
He further insisted on pulling up at every wayside inn for refreshment, until it became quite evident, if we ever reached London at all, we should certainly not do so till nearly midnight.
I held a hurried consultation with Hawkesbury as to what ought to be done.
“Don’t you think,” suggested I, “we had almost better go on by ourselves and leave him behind?”
“Oh no,” said Hawkesbury; “that would never do. It wouldn’t be honourable.”
It occurred to me it would not be much less honourable than inviting a fellow to a quiet picnic and letting him in for an expedition like this.
“Well,” said I, “suppose we let him drive home, and you and I go back some other way?”
“You forget I’m responsible for the trap. No, we’d better go on as we are. We’ve not come to grief so far. Perhaps, though,” said he, “you’d sooner drive?”
“What’s that about sooner drive?” shouted Whipcord, coming up at this moment. “Who’d sooner drive? You, young Batchelor? All right; off with your coat!” And he threw himself on me in a pugilistic attitude.
After a long delay we got once more under way, the vehicle travelling more unsteadily than ever, and my misgivings as to ever reaching London becoming momentarily more numerous.
How we ever got back I can’t imagine, unless it was that after a time Whipcord finally dropped the reins and allowed the horse to find its own way home. He certainly thought he was driving, but I fancy the truth was that one of the ostlers on the road, seeing his condition, had cunningly looped the reins round the front rail of the trap, so that, drive all he would, he could not do much more harm than if he was sitting idle.
At length the lateness of the hour and the frequent lights announced that London must be near. It was fortunate it was so late, or we should certainly have come to grief in the first crowded street. As it was, Whipcord had already got command of the reins again, as the sudden jerks and shies of the horse testified.
My impulse was to avoid the danger by quietly jumping down from my seat and leaving the other two to proceed alone. But somehow it seemed a shabby proceeding to leave Hawkesbury in the lurch, besides which, even if I had overcome that scruple, the seat was so high that at the unsteady rate we were going I would run considerable risk by jumping. So I determined to hold on and hope for the best.
We got safely down Oxford Street, thanks to its emptiness, and were just proceeding towards Holborn, when Whipcord gave his horse a sudden turn down a side street to the right.
“Where are you going?” I cried; “it’s straight on.”
He pulled up immediately, and bidding Hawkesbury hold the reins, pulled off his coat for the twentieth time, and invited me to come and have it out on the pavement.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Hawkesbury; “drive on now, there’s a good fellow.”
“What does he want to tell me which way to drive for?” demanded the outraged charioteer.
“He didn’t mean to offend you—did you, Batchelor? Drive on now, Whipcord, and get out of this narrow street.”
With much persuasion Whipcord resumed his coat and seized the reins.
“Thinks I don’t know the way to drive,” he growled. “I’ll teach him!”
I had been standing up, adding my endeavours to Hawkesbury’s to pacify our companion, when he suddenly lashed furiously at the horse. The wretched animal, already irritated beyond endurance, gave a wild bound forward, which threw me off my feet, and before I could put out a hand to save myself pitched me backwards into the road.
I was conscious of falling with a heavy crash against the kerb with my arm under me, and of seeing the dogcart tearing down the street. Then everything seemed dark, and I remember nothing more.
When I did recover consciousness I was lying in a strange room on a strange bed. It took an effort to remember what had occurred. But a dull pain all over reminded me, and gradually a more acute and intense pain on my left side. I tried to move my arm, but it was powerless, and the exertion almost drove back my half-returning senses.
“Lie quiet,” said a voice at my side, “the doctor will be here directly.”
The voice was somehow familiar; but in my weak state I could not remember where I had heard it. And the exertion of turning my head to look was more than I could manage.
I lay there, I don’t know how long, with half-closed eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and feeling only the pain and an occasional grateful passing of a wet sponge across my forehead.
Then I became aware of more people in the room and a man’s voice saying—
“How was it?”
“I found him lying on the pavement. I think he must have been thrown out of a vehicle.”
That voice I had certainly heard, but where?
“It’s the arm—broken!” said the voice.
“Ah,” said the doctor, leaning over me and touching me lightly near the elbow.
I groaned with agony as he did so.
“Go round to the other side,” said he, hurriedly. “I must examine where the fracture is. I’m afraid, from what you say, it must be rather a bad one.”
I just remembered catching sight of a well-known face bending over me, and a familiar voice whispering—
“Steady, old man, try to bear it.”
The next moment I had fainted.
It may have been minutes or it may have been hours before I next came to myself, and then my arm lay bandaged by my side, and the sharpness of the pain had gone.
“Fred, old man,” was the first thing I heard as I opened my eyes. I knew the voice now, and the face with its two great eyes which bent over me.
I had found my friend at last!
“Hush, don’t talk now,” he said, as I tried to speak; “lie quiet now, there’s a dear fellow.”
“Jack!” I said. I could not resist uttering his name, his old familiar long-lost name.
“Yes, it’s Jack,” he whispered, “but don’t talk now.”
“You forgive me, Jack?” I murmured, heedless of his injunction.
“Yes, a hundred times!” he said, brushing back the hair from my forehead, and putting his finger to my lips.
Then I obeyed him, and lay silent and happy all day. Happier with all my pain than I had been for months.
The doctor came later on and looked at my arm.
“He’ll do now, I think,” said he, “but he will very likely be feverish after it. You should have him taken to the hospital.”
“Oh no,” cried Jack. “He must stay here, please. I can look after him quite well.”
“If it was only the arm,” said the doctor. “But he’s had a bad fall and is a good deal bruised and shaken besides. He would get better attention, I think, at the hospital.”
“I would so much sooner he stayed here,” said Jack; “but if he’d really be better at the hospital, I suppose I ought to let him go.”
“I won’t go to the hospital!” exclaimed I, making the longest speech I had yet made since my accident, with a vehemence that positively startled the two speakers.
This protest settled the question. If only a sick person threatens to get excited about anything, he is pretty sure to have his own way. And so it proved in my case.
“But will you be able to stay at home all day from business to look after him?” asked the doctor.
“No, I’m afraid not,” said Jack, “but I think I know some one who will. He sha’n’t be left alone, and I can always just run home in the dinner-hour to see how he’s getting on.”
The doctor left, only half satisfied with this arrangement, and repeating that it would have been far better to move me to the hospital.
When he was gone Jack came and smoothed my pillow. “I am glad you’re to stay,” he said. “Now, for fear you should begin to talk, I’m going out to Billy to get my boots blacked. So good-bye for a bit, old boy.”
“But, Jack—” I began, trying to keep him.
“Not a word now,” said he, going to the door. “Presently.”
I was too contented and comfortable to fret myself about anything, still more to puzzle my brains about what I couldn’t understand. So I lay still thinking of nothing, and knowing nothing except that I had found my friend once more, and that he was more to me than ever.
Nothing makes one so sleepy as thinking of nothing at all; and long before Jack returned from his visit to Billy I was asleep, and slept soundly all through the night.
Next morning I woke invigorated in body and mind. Jack was up and about before I opened my eyes. He was at my side in a moment as I moved.
“Well, you have had a sleep,” he said, cheerily. “I have,” replied I. “But, Jack, where am I?”
“Oh, this is my lodgings,” said he. “I’m pretty comfortable here.”
I looked round the room. It was a poor, bare apartment, with only two beds, a chair, a small table, and a washstand to furnish it. The table was covered with papers and books.
“You’ve got a sitting-room too, I suppose?” I said, after taking the room in.
He laughed.
“I find this quite as good a room to sit in as to lie in,” said he, “for the matter of that. But I have got the use of another room belonging to a fellow-lodger. He’s a literary man, and writes for the papers; but in his spare moments he coaches me in Latin and Greek, in consideration of which I give him half my room to sleep in.”
“Whatever’s he to do now when I’m here?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s going to have a shake-down in his own room. You’ll like him, Fred; he’s a very good-natured, clever man.”
“How old?” I asked.
“About fifty, I should think. And I fancy he’s seen a good deal of trouble in his time, though I don’t like to ask him.”
“I say, Jack,” I began in an embarrassed manner, “ever since that time—”
“Shut up, now,” said Jack, briskly. “The doctor says unless you obey me in everything you’re to go straight to the hospital. And one of my rules is, you’re to talk about nothing I don’t approve of.”
“I was only going to say—”
“There you go. I don’t approve of what you were going to say. I suppose you’ll be interested to hear I reported your case to the firm yesterday, and they were very sorry to hear of it, and told me there were other fellows in the office they could have spared better. There’s a compliment!”
“Was Hawkesbury at the office?” I asked.
Jack’s face clouded for a moment.
“Yes, Hawkesbury was there.”
“You know he was with me when the accident happened?” I said, by way of explanation.
“Oh,” said Jack. “Hullo! here comes Billy. I hope, you won’t be horrified to have him to look after you while I’m at the office. He’s the only person I could think of.”
“Billy and I are very good friends,” I said, somewhat taken aback, however, by the prospect of being consigned to that young gentleman’s charge for several hours every day.
“Here you are, Billy,” said Jack, as the boy entered. “You needn’t have brought your blacking-box with you, though.”
“What, ain’t none of the blokes here got no boots, then?” remarked the youth, depositing his burden.
“The bloke, as you call him, who lies there,” said Jack, pointing to me, “won’t be putting on his boots for a good many days yet.”
Billy approached my bed with his most profuse grin.
“I say, ain’t you been and done it? Do you hear? you’ve broke your arm!”
This piece of news being so remarkably unexpected visibly affected me.
“Yes,” said Jack, “and I want you to sit here while I’m away, and see nobody breaks it again.”
“I’ll give the fust bloke that tries it on a topper, so I will,” said Billy, fiercely, sitting down on his box and preparing to mount guard.
“I quite believe you,” said Jack, laughing. “But mind, Billy, you mustn’t make a noise or disturb him when he’s resting. And if anything special happens and I’m badly wanted, you must run to my office and fetch me. You know where it is?”
“Yaas, I know,” said Billy.
“If Mr Smith comes up, you may let him in and make yourself scarce till he goes away again.”
“What Mr Smith?” I asked.
“Oh, my fellow-lodger. Isn’t it funny his name’s Smith? At least, wouldn’t it be funny if every other person weren’t called Smith?”
“It is rather a large family,” said I, laughing.
Billy having received his full instructions, including the serving of certain provisions out of a cupboard in a corner of the room, made himself comfortable on his perch, and sat eyeing me, after Jack had gone, as if I were a criminal of some sort whom it was his duty to prevent from escaping.
It was a queer situation to be in, certainly. Left alone in a friend’s lodging with a broken arm and other contusions, and a small shoeblack to look after me, who had once robbed me of my penknife and a sixpence!
I was rather doubtful whether his new employment was quite as congenial to him as his old. Indeed, I rather pitied him as he sat there silent and motionless like a watch-dog on guard.
“You may stand on your hands if you like, Billy,” I said, presently.
He eyed me sharply and doubtfully.
“You’re ’avin’ a lark with me,” he said.
“No, I’m not. You really may do it.”
“Ain’t a-goin’ to do it,” replied he, decisively.
“Why not?” I asked.
“T’other bloke ain’t said I’m to do it,” replied he.
“Well,” said I, “if you don’t think he’d like it, don’t do it. For I’m sure he’s very good to you, Billy, isn’t he?”
“’Tain’t no concern of yourn,” responded my genial guardian.
After this there was a long silence, and I was getting drowsy, when Billy said, “That there ’orse was a-goin’ it.”
“What horse?”
“Why, as if you didn’t know! That there ’orse as was drivin’ you blokes a’ Monday night.”
“What, did you see us, then?” I asked.
“In corse I did. I seen you as I was a-comin’ back from the racket school. My eye, wasn’t you tidy and screwed though! You don’t ought to be trusted with ’orses, you don’t.”
“I wasn’t screwed, Billy,” said I, “and I wasn’t driving.”
“No, that you wasn’t driving. But I knows the bloke as was.”
“Do you know Mr Whipcord?”
“Yaas, I knows the animal,” he replied, with a grin. “He gave me a doin’ with his stick once, he did.”
“But did you see me pitched out?” I asked, not feeling particularly interested in the last reminiscence.
“In corse I did. I seen you. Thought you was dead, and I fetches the bloke to yer, and the bloke sends me for the doctor, and the doctor—”
At this moment the door opened and a stranger entered.