The Stokesley Secret

The children readily believed her; they were too young to go on dwelling long on what was not in sight; and even Susan was cheerful, and able to think about other things after her night’s rest, and the relief of not hearing a worse account.

The children might do as they pleased about going to church on saints’ days, and on this day all the three girls wished to go, as soon as it had been made clear that even if the message should come before the short service would be over, there would be ample time to reach the station before the next train.  Miss Fosbrook was glad to prove this, for not only did she wish to have them in church, but she thought the weary watching for the telegram was the worst thing possible for Susan.  Sam was also going to church, but Henry hung back, after accompanying them to the end of the kitchen-garden.  “I wouldn’t go, Sam; just suppose if the message came without anyone at home, and you had to set out at once!”

“We couldn’t,” said Sam; “there’s no train.”

“Oh, but they always put on a special train whenever anyone is ill.”

“Then there would be plenty!”

“At least they did when Mr. Greville’s mother was ill, so they will now; and then you may ride upon the engine, for there won’t be any carriages, you know.  I say, Sam, if you go to church, and the telegraph comes, I shall set off.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” said Sam.  “You had much better come to church.”

“No, I sha’n’t.  It is like a girl to go to church on a week-day.”

“It is much more like a girl to mind what a couple of asses, like the Grevilles, say,” returned Sam, taking up his cap and running after his sisters and their governess.

“It is quite right,” observed Henry to John and David, who alone remained to listen to him, “that one of us should stay in case the telegraph comes in, and there are any orders to give.  I can catch the pony, you know, and ride off to Bonchamp, and if the special train is there, I shall get upon the engine.”

“But it is Sam and Susan who are going.”

“Oh, that’s only because Sam is eldest.  I know Mamma would like to have me much better, because I don’t walk hard like Sam; and when I get there, she will be so much better already, and we shall be all right; and Admiral Penrose will be so delighted at my courage in riding on the engine and putting out the explosion, or something, that he will give me my appointment as naval cadet at once, and I shall have a dirk and a uniform, and a chest of my own, and be an officer, and get promoted for firing red-hot shot out of the batteries at Gibraltar.”

“Master Hal!” exclaimed Purday, “don’t throw them little apples about.”

“They are red-hot shot, Purday!”

“I’ll red-hot shot you if you break my cucumber frames, young gentleman!  Come, get out with you.”

Probably anxiety made Purday cross as well as everyone else, or else he distrusted Henry’s discretion without Sam, for he hunted the little boys away wherever they went.  Now they would break the cucumber frames; now they would meddle with the gooseberries, or trample on the beds; and at last he only relented so far as to let David stay with him on condition of being very good, and holding the little cabbages as he planted them out.

“Master Davie was a solemn one,” Purday said, and they were great friends; but Hal and Johnnie were fairly turned out, as their idle hands were continually finding fresh mischief to do in their sauntering desultory mood.

“I think,” said Hal, “since Purday is so savage, we’ll go and look out at the gate, and then we shall see if the telegraph comes.”

Johnnie had no clear idea what a telegraph was, and was curious to know how it would come, rather expecting it to be a man in a red coat on horseback, blowing a horn—a sight that certainly was not to be missed; so he willingly strolled down after Henry to the gate leading to the lane.

“I can’t see any way at all,” said Henry, looking out into the lane.  “I shall get up, and so see over into the bend of the road;” and Hal mounted to the topmost bar of the gate, and sat astride there, John scrambling after him not quite so easily, his legs being less long, and his dress less convenient.  Both knew that their Papa strongly objected to their climbing on this iron gate, the newest and handsomest thing about the place; but thought Hal, “Of course no one will care what I do when I am so anxious about poor Mamma!” and thought Johnnie, “What Hal does, of course I may do!”

So there the two young gentlemen sat perched, each with one leg on either side of the new iron gate.  It was rather like sitting on the edge of a knife; and John could scarcely reach his toes down to rest them on the bar below, but he held on by the spikes, and it was so new and glorious a position, that it made up for a good deal to be five feet above the road; moreover, Hal said it was just like the mast-head of a man-of-war—at least, when the waves didn’t dash right overhead, like the picture of the Eddystone Lighthouse.

“Hollo! what, a couple of cherubs aloft!” cried a voice from the road; and looking round, Henry beheld the two Grevilles.

“Yes,” he answered; “it’s very jolly up here.”

“Eh! is it?  Riding on a razor, to my mind.  Come down, and have a lark,” said Osmond; while Martin, undoing the gate, proceeded to swing it backwards and forwards, to John’s extreme terror; but the more he clung to the spikes, and cried for mercy, the quicker Martin swung it, shouting with laughter at his fright.  Henry meanwhile scrambled and tumbled to the ground, and caught the gate and held it fast, while he asked what his friends had been about.  One held up a scarlet flask of powder, the other a bag of shot.

“You haven’t got a gun!”

“No, but we know where gardener keeps his; and the governor’s out for the day.  Come along, Hal: you shall have your turn.”

“I don’t want to go far from home to-day.”

“Oh, stuff!  What was it Mamma heard, Osmond?  That your mother was ever so much better, wasn’t it?”

“I thought it was worse,” said Osmond.

“Well, never mind: your hanging about here won’t do her any good, I suppose.”

“No; but—”

“Oh, he’ll catch it from the governess!—I say, how many seams shall you have to sew to-day, Hal?”

“I don’t sew seams: I do as I please.”

“Ha!  Is that them coming out of church!”

“Oh, it is! it is!” cried John from his elevation.  “Oh, help me down, Hal!”

But Henry did not want Miss Fosbrook to find him partaking in gate-climbing; and either that desire, or the general terror a bad conscience, made him and the Grevilles run helter-skelter the opposite way, leaving poor little John stuck on the top of the gate, quite giddy at the thought of coming down alone, and almost as much afraid of being there caught by Miss Fosbrook coming home from church.

It was a false alarm after all, that the congregation were coming out.  John would have been glad if they had; for nothing could be more miserable than sitting up there, his fingers tired of clutching the spikes, his feet strained with reaching down to the bar, his legs chilled with the wind, his head almost giddy when he thought of climbing down.  He would have cried, could he have spared a hand to rub his eyes with; he had a great mind to have roared for help, especially when he heard feet upon the road; but these turned out to belong to five little village boys, still smaller than himself, who, when they saw the young gentleman on his perch, all stood still in a row, with their mouths wide open, staring at him.  Johnnie scorned to let them think he was not riding there for his own pleasure; so he tried to put a bold face of the matter, and look as much at ease and indifferent as he could, under great bodily fear and discomfort, the injury of his brother’s desertion, the expectation of disgrace, and the reflection that he was being disobedient to his parents in the height of their trouble!

There is nothing in grief that of necessity makes children or grown people good.  Sometimes, especially when there is suspense, it fills them with excitement, as well as putting them out of their usual habits; and thus it often happens that there are tremendous explosions of naughtiness just when some one is ill in a house, and the children ought to be most good.  But it is certain that unless trouble be taken in the right way, it makes people worse instead of better.

CHAPTER XI

Hal had got into a mood in which he was tired of fears and of waiting for tidings, and was glad to shake off the thought, and be carried along to something new, he and the Grevilles were rather fond of one another’s company, in an idle sort of way.  They “put him up to things,” as he said; they made a variety; and he was always glad of listeners to his wonderful stories, which rather diverted the other boys, who, though they sometimes made game of them, were much less apt to pick them to pieces than was Sam.

Poor Captain Merrifield! what had not befallen him, according to his son?  He had been stuck on to a rock of loadstone; he had been bitten by mosquitos as big as jackdaws—at least as jack-snipes; he had sat down to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, and it whisked him over on his face, and turned out to be a rattle-snake—at least, a boa-constrictor!  Nay, Henry discoursed on the ponies he had himself tamed, the rabbits he had shot, the trees he had climbed, the nests he had found, the rats he had killed, in terms he durst not use when his brother was by; or if he did, and Sam brought him to book, he always said “it was all fun.”  It often seemed as if he did not himself know whether he meant to be believed or otherwise; and as to his intentions for his sailor life, they were, as has been already seen, of the most splendid character!  Sometimes he shot the French admiral dead from the mast-head; sometimes he sailed into Plymouth with the whole enemy’s fleet behind him; sometimes he, the youngest midshipman, rescued the whole crew in a wreck where all the other officers were drowned; sometimes he shot a shark through the head, just as it was about to make a meal of Prince Alfred!

He certainly was thus an entertaining companion to those who did not pay heed to truth, and liked to hear or laugh at great swelling words; and the Grevilles, on their idle day, were glad to have him with them, and were rather curious to prove how much fact there was in his boast of being a most admirable shot.

Meddling with guns was absolutely forbidden to all the three, except by special permission and with an elder looking on; but the Grevilles were not in the habit of obeying, except when they were forced to do so; and Henry, having once begun to think no one would heed his present doings, was ready to go on rather than be accused of minding his governess.

So the gardener’s gun was taken from the hiding-place, whither it had been conveyed from the tool-house; and the three boys ran off together, their first object being to get out of the Greville grounds, where they could be met by any of the men.  They got quite out into the fields, before they ventured to stop that Osmond might load the gun.  Each was to take a shot in turn; Osmond tried first, at a poor innocent young thrush, newly come out for his earliest flight.  Happily he missed it; Martin claimed the next, and for want of anything better to shoot, took aim at the scare-crow in the middle of Farmer Grice’s beans.  He was sure that he had hit it, and showed triumphantly the great holes in its hat; but the other boys were strongly persuaded that they had been there before.

“Well, come away,” said Osmond; “this is a great deal too near old Grice’s farm-yard.  If we go popping about here, we shall have him out upon us, for an old tiger as he is!”

“Come along, then,” said Martin.

But Hal had just got the gun, and saw something so black and shiny through the hedge, that he was persuaded that a flock of rooks were feeding in the next field, and he fired!

Such a cackling and screeching as arose! and with it one dying gobble, and a very loud “Hollo! you rascal!”

“My eyes! you’ve been and gone and done it!” cried Osmond.

“Cut! cut!” screamed Martin; and Hal, not exactly knowing what he had done, but sure that it was something dreadful, and hearing voices in pursuit, threw down the gun, and took to his heels; but the others had the start of him, and were over the gap long before he could get to it.  And even as he did reach it, a hand was on his throat, almost choking him, and a tremendous voice cried, “You young poacher, you sha’n’t get off that way!  I’ll have you up to the Bench, that I will, for shooting the poor old turkey-cock before my very eyes.”