Читать книгу The Coil of Carne - John Oxenham - Страница 11

Now we take ten years at a leap.

So small a span of time has made no difference in the great house of Carne, or in its surroundings. Many times have the sand-hills sifted and shifted hither and thither. Many times have the great yellow banks out beyond lazily uncoiled themselves like shining serpents, and coiled themselves afresh into new entanglements for unwary mariners. In the narrow channels the bones of the unwary roll to and fro, and some have sunk down among the quicksands. Times without number have the mighty flats gleamed and gloomed. And the great house has watched it all stonily, and it all looks just the same.

But ten years work mighty changes in men and women, and still greater ones in small boys.

A tall straight-limbed young man strode swiftly among the sand-hummocks and came out on the flats, and stood gazing round him, with a great light in his eyes, and a towel round his neck.

He had a lean, clean-shaven face, to which the hair brushed back behind his ears lent a pleasant eagerness. But the face was leaner and whiter than it should have been, and the eyes seemed unnaturally deep in their hollows.

"Whew!" he whistled, as the wonder of the flats struck home. "A change, changes, and half a change, and no mistake! And all very much for the better--in most respects. The bishop said I'd find it rather different from Whitechapel, and he was right! Very much so! Dear old chap!"

It was ten o'clock of a sweet spring morning. The brown ribbed flats gleamed and sparkled and laughed back at the sun with a thousand rippling lips. The cloudless blue sky was ringing with the songs of many larks.

The young man stood with his braces slipped off his shoulders, and looked up at the larks. Then he characteristically, flung up a hand towards them, and cried them a greeting in the famous words of that rising young poet, Mr. Robert Browning, "God's in His heaven! All's well with the world!--Well! Well! Ay--very, very well!" And then, with a higher flight, in the words of the old sweet singer which had formed part of the morning lesson--"Praise Him, all His host!" And then, as his eye caught the gleam of the distant water, he resumed his peeling in haste.

"Ten thousand souls--and bodies, which are very much worse--to the square mile there, and here it looks like ten thousand square miles to this single fortunate body. . . . That sea must be a good mile away. . . . The run alone will be worth coming for. . . ."

He had girt himself with a towel by this time, and fastened it with a scientific twist. . . . "Now for a dance on the Doctor's nose," and he sped off on the long stretch to the water.

The kiss of the salt air cleansed him of the travail of the slums as no inland bathing had ever done. The sun which shone down on him, and the myriad broken suns which flashed up at him from every furrow of the rippled sand, sent new life chasing through his veins. He shouted aloud in his gladness, and splashed the waters of the larger pools into rainbows, and was on and away before they reached the ground.

And so, to the sandy scum of the tide, and through it to deep water, and a manful breasting of the slow calm heave of the great sea; with restful pauses when he lay floating on his back gazing up into the infinite blue; and deep sighs of content for this mighty gift of the freedom of the shore and the waves. And a deeper sigh at thought of the weary toilers among whom he had lived so long, to whom such things were unknown, and must remain so.

But there!--he had done his duty among them to the point almost of final sacrifice. There was duty no less exigent here, though under more God-given conditions. So--one more ploughing through deep waters, arm over arm, side stroke with a great forward reach and answering lunge. Then up and away, all rosy-red and beaded with diamonds, to the clothing and duty of the work-a-day world.

"Grim old place," he chittered as he ran, and his eye fell on Carne for the first time. "Grand place to live . . . if she lived there too. . . . Great saving in towels that run home. . . . Now where the dickens . . . ?"

He looked about perplexedly, then began casting round, hither and thither, like a dog on a lost scent.

"Hang it! I'm sure this was the place. . . . I remember that sand-hill with its hair all a-bristle."

He poked and searched. He scraped up the sand with his hands in case they should have got buried, but not a rag of his clothes could he find.

Stay! Not a rag? What's that? Away down a gully between two hummocks, as if it had attempted escape on its own account--a blue sock which he recognised as his own.

He pounced on it with a whoop, dusted one foot free of the dry, soft sand, and put the sock on.

"It's a beginning," he said, quaintly enough, "but----!" But obviously more was necessary before he could return home. He searched carefully all round, but could not find another thread. He climbed the sliding side of the nearest sand-hill, and looked cautiously about him. But the whole place was a honeycomb of gullies, and the clothing of a thousand men might have hidden in them and never been seen again.

He sat down in the warm sand and cogitated. He looked at his single towel, and at the wire-grass bristling sparsely through the sand, and wondered if it might be possible to construct a primitive raiment out of such slight materials. But his deep-set eyes never ceased their vigilant outlook.

Something moved behind the rounded shoulder of a hill in front. It might be only the loping brown body of a rabbit, but he was after it like a shot.

When he topped the hill he saw a naked white foot slipping out of sight into a dark hole like a big burrow. He leaped down the hill, and stretched a groping arm into the hole. It lighted on squirming flesh. His hand gripped tightly that which it had caught, and a furious assault of blows, scratches, bites, and the frantic tearings of small fingers strove to loosen it. But he held tight, and inch by inch drew his prisoner out--a small boy with dark hair thick with sand, and dark eyes blazing furiously.

He was stark naked, and held in his hand a small weapon consisting of a round stone with a hole in the centre, into which a wooden handle had been thrust and bound with string. With this, as he lay on his back, now that he had space to use it, he proceeded to lash out vigorously at his captor, who still held on to his ankle in spite of the punishment his wrist and arm were receiving.

"Well, I'll be hanged!" said the young man in the towel, dodging the blows as well as he could. "What in Heaven's name are you? Ancient Briton? Bit of the Stone Age?"

"Le' me go or I'll kill you," howled the prisoner.

"No, don't! You're strong: be merciful. Hello!" as a fresh attack took him in the rear, and his bare back resounded to the blows of a weapon similar to the one that was pounding his arm. "You young savages! Two to one, and an unarmed man!"

He loosed the ankle and made a quick dive at the brown thrashing arm, and, having secured it, lifted the wriggling youngster and tucked him under his arm like a parcel. Then, in spite of the struggles of his prisoner, he turned on the new-comer and presently held him captive in similar fashion.

They bit and tore and wriggled like a pair of little tiger-cats, but the arms that held them were strong ones if the face above was thin and worn and gentle.

"Stop it!" He knocked their heads together, and squeezed the slippery little bodies under his arms till the breath was nearly out of them, and took advantage of the moment of gasping quiescence to ask, "Will you be quiet if I let you down?"

They intimated in jerks that they would be quiet.

"Drop those drumsticks, then."

First one, then the other weapon dropped into the sand. He put his foot on them and stood the boys on their feet.

"Drumsticks!" snorted one, his sandy little nose all a-quiver.

"Well, neither am I a drum," said their captor good-humouredly. "Now what's the meaning of all this? Who are you? Or what are you?"

They were fine sturdy little fellows, of ten or eleven, he judged, their skins tanned brown and coated with dry sand, quick dark eyes and dark flushed faces all aglow still with the light of battle. They stood panting before him, no whit abashed either by their defeat or their lack of clothing. He saw their eyes settle longingly on the clubs under his feet. He stooped and picked them up, and the dark eyes followed them anxiously.

"Promise not to use them on me and I'll give them back to you."

The brown hands reached out eagerly, and he handed the weapons over.

"Now sit down and tell me all about it." And he sat down himself in the sand.

He saw them glance towards the mouth of their retreat, and shook his head.

"You can't manage it. I'd have you out before you were half way in. You're prisoners of war on parole. Now then, who are you?"

"Carr'ns."

"Carr'ns, are you? Well, you look it, whatever it means. Do you live in that hole?"

"Sometimes."

"Never wear any clothes?"

"Sometimes."

"I see. Much jollier without, isn't it? But, you see, I can't go home like this. So perhaps you won't mind telling me why you stole my things and where they are?"

"Carr'ns don't steal," jerked one.

"Carr'ns only take things," jerked the other.

"I see. It's a fine point, but it comes to much the same thing unless you return what you take. So perhaps you'll be so good as to turn up my things. Where are they?"

One of the boys nodded towards the burrow.

"That's the stronghold, is it? Not much room to turn about in, I should say."

They declined to express an opinion.

"May I go in and have a look?"

But that was not in the terms of their parole, and they sprang instantly to the defence of their hold. The young man of the towel was beginning to wonder if another pitched battle would be necessary before he could recover his missing property, when a diversion was suddenly created by an innocent outsider.

A foolish young rabbit hopped over the shoulder of a neighbouring sand-hill to see what all the disturbance was about. In a moment the round stone clubs flew and the sense was out of him before he had time to twinkle an eye or form any opinion on the subject. With a whoop the boys sprang at him and resolved themselves instantly into a pyrotechnic whirl of arms and legs and red-hot faces and flying sand, as they fought for their prey.

"Little savages!" said the young man, and did his best to separate them.

But he might as well have attempted argument with a Catherine wheel in the full tide of its short life. And so he took to indiscriminate spanking wherever bare slabs of tumbling flesh gave him a chance, and presently, under the influence of his gentle suasion the combatants separated and stood panting and tingling. The causus belli had disappeared beneath the turmoil of the encounter, but suddenly it came to light again under the workings of twenty restless little toes. They both instantly dived for it, and the fight looked like beginning all over again, when the long white arm shot in and secured it and held it up above their reach.

"I say! Are you boys or tiger-cats?" he asked, as he examined them again curiously.

"Carr'ns," panted one, while both gazed at the rabbit like hounds at the kill.

"Yes, you said that before, but I'm none the wiser. Where do you live when you're clothed and in your right minds?--if you ever are," he added doubtfully.

One of them jerked his head sharply in the direction of the great gray house away along the shore.

"There?"

Another curt nod. He had rarely met such unnatural reserve, even in Whitechapel, where pointed questions from a stranger are received with a very natural suspicion. Here, as there, it only made him the more determined to get to the bottom of it. But Whitechapel had taught him, among other things, that round-about is sometimes the only way home.

"Why do you want to fight over a dead rabbit?"

"I killed it."

"Didn't. 'Twas me."

"Well now, if you ask me, I should say you both killed it. How did you become such capital shots?"

But to tell that would have needed much talk, so they only stared up at him. He saw he must go slowly.

"Those are first-rate clubs. Did you make them?"

Nods from both.

"Do you know?"--he picked one up and examined it carefully--"these are exactly what the wild men used to make when they lived here a couple of thousand years ago and used to go about naked just as you do." They listened eagerly, with wide unwinking eyes, which asked for more. "They used to stain themselves all blue"--the idea so evidently commended itself to them that he hastened to add--"but you'd better not try that or you'll be killing yourselves. They used the juice of a plant which you can't get and it did them no harm. Can you swim?"

Both heads shook a reluctant negative.

"Can't? Oh, you ought to swim. You can fight, I know, and you are splendid shots--and good runners, I'll be bound. Why haven't you learnt to swim?"

"Won't let us."

"Who won't let you?"

"HIM."

"Who's 'him'?"

"Sir Denzil."

"Is that your father?"

"Gran'ther

"I see. I wonder if he'd let me teach you. Every boy ought to learn to swim. You'd like to?"

The black heads left no possible doubt on that point.

"Well, I'll call on him and ask his permission. Now, what are your names?"

"Denzil Carr'n."

"And you?"

"Denzil Carr'n."

"But you can't both be Denzil Carr'n."

"I'm Jack."

"I'm Jim."

"And how am I to tell who from which? You're as like as two peas."

They looked at one another as if it had never struck them.

"Stand up and let me see who's the biggest. No"--with a shake of the head, as they stood side by side--"that doesn't help. You're both of a tires Now, let me see. Jack's got a big bump on the forehead,"--at which Jim grinned with reminiscent enjoyment. "That will identify him for a few days, anyhow, and by that time I shall have got to know you. Why hasn't your grandfather let you learn to swim?"

"Devil of a coast," said Jack, loosing his tongue at last.

"Damned quicksands," said Jim in emulation. "Suck and suck and never let go."

"We must be careful, then. You must tell me all about them. My name's Eager--Charles Eager. I've come to take Mr. Smythe's place at Wyvveloe. Do you two go to school?"

Emphatically No from both shaggy heads, and undisguised aversion to the very thought of such a thing.

"But you can't go on like this, you know. What will you do when you grow up?"

"Go fighting," said Jack of the bumped forehead.

"Quite so. But you don't want to go as privates, I suppose. And to be officers you must learn many things."

This was a new view of the matter. It seemed to make a somewhat unfavourable impression. It provided food for thought to Eager himself also, and he sat looking at them musingly with new and congenial vistas opening before him.

He had in him a great passion for humanity--for the uplifting and upbuilding of his fellows. Here apparently was virgin soil ready to his hand, and he wanted to set to work on it at once.

"You know how to read and write, I suppose?"

"We can read Robinson Crusoe--round the pictures."

"Of course. Good old Robinson Crusoe! He's taught many a boy to read."

"He's in there," said Jim, nodding vaguely in the direction of their burrow.

"That's a good ides. Let us have a look at him." And Jim started off to fetch Robinson out. "And you might bring my things out too, Jim. My back's getting raw with the sun."

Jim grinned and crept into the hole, and reappeared presently with an armful of clothing and a richly bound volume.

Eager put on his other sock and his shirt and trousers, and then sat down again and picked up the book. It was an unusually fine edition of the old story, with large coloured plates, and had not been improved by its sojourn in the land.

"Does your grandfather know you have this out here?"

Most decidedly not.

"I should take it back if I were you, or keep it wrapped in paper. It's spoiling with the sand and damp. It always hurts me to see a good book spoiled. Are there many more like this at the house?"

"Heaps,"--which opened out further pleasant prospects if the mine proved workable.

"Have you gone right through it?"

"Only 'bout the pictures."

"Well, if you're here to-morrow I'll begin reading it to you from the beginning. There must be quite three-quarters of it that you know nothing about. And as soon as I can, I'll call on your grandfather and have a talk with him about, the swimming and the rest. Can you write?"

"Not much," said Jack.

"Sums?"

Nothing of the kind and no slightest inclination that way.

"Now I must get back to my work," said Eager, as he finished dressing. "This is my first morning, and it's been holiday. I've been living for the last five years in the East End of London, where the people are all crowded into dirty rooms in dirty streets, and I came to have a took at the sea and the sands. It's like a new life. Now, good-bye," and he shook hands politely with each in turn. "I shall be on the look-out for you to-morrow."

He strode away through the sand-hills towards Wyvveloe, and the boys stood watching till he disappeared.

"My rabbit!" cried Jim, as his eye lighted on the old gage of battle lying on the sand, and he dashed at it.

"Mine!" and in a moment they were at it hammer and tongs. And the Rev. Charles went on his way, not a little elated at thoughts of this new field that lay open before him.