Harding's Luck/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
GOING HOME
In Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important out of a swirling sea—of dogs.
For the dog-trade prospered exceedingly, and Mr. Beale had grown knowing in thorough-breeds and the prize bench, had learned all about distemper and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog sal-volatile and when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank grew till it, so to speak, burst the bank-book, and had to be allowed to overflow into a vast sea called Consols.
The dogs also grew, in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbours, who had borne a good deal very patiently, began, as Mr. Beale said, to "pass remarks."
"It ain't so much the little uns they jib at," said Mr. Beale, taking his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the back-yard, "though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin'. It's the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."
"The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the indiarubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of colour—creeping-jenny, Brompton stocks, stone-crop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show.
"I don't say as they're actin' unneighbourly in talking about the pleece, so long as they don't do no more than talk," said Beale, with studded fairness and moderation. "What I do say is, I wish we 'ad more elbow-room for 'em. An' as for exercisin' of 'em all every day, like the books say—well, 'ow's one pair of 'ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to 'em?"
"I wish we had a bigger place, too," said Dickie; "we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We've 'ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain't us?" He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth."
"You lay to it we 'as," said Mr. Beale; "but this 'ere back-yard, it ain't a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?"
"Well, then," said Dickie, "let's get a move on us."
"Ah," said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee, "now you're talkin'. Get a move on us. That's what I 'oped you'd say. 'Member what I says to you in the winter-time that night Mr. Fuller looked in for his bit o' rent—about me gettin' of the fidgets in my legs? An' I says, 'Why not take to the road a bit, now and again?' an' you says, 'We'll see about that, come summer.' And 'ere is come summer. What if we was to take the road a bit, mate—where there's room to stretch a chap's legs without kickin' a dog or knockin' the crockery over? There's the ole pram upstairs in the back room as lively as ever she was—only wants a little of paint to be fit for a dook, she does. An' 'ere's me, an' 'ere's you, an' 'ere's the pick of the dogs. Think of it, matey—the bed with the green curtains, and the good smell of the herrings you toasts yerself and the fire you makes outer sticks, and the little starses a-comin' out and a-winkin' at you, and all so quiet, a-smokin' yer pipe till it falls outer yer mouth with sleepiness, and no fear o' settin' the counterpin a-fire. What you say, matey, eh?"
Dickie looked lovingly at the smart back of the little house—its crisp white muslin blinds, its glimpses of neat curtains, its flowers; and then another picture came to him—he saw the misty last light fainting beyond the great shoulders of the downs, and the "little starses" shining so bright and new through the branches of fir-trees that interlaced above, a sweet-scented bed of soft fallen brown pine-needles.
"What say, mate?" Mr. Beale repeated; and Dickie answered—
"Soon as ever you like's what I say. And what I say is, the sooner the better."
Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Beale at once found a dozen reasons why he could not leave home, and all the reasons were four-footed, and wagged loving tails at him. He was anxious, in fact, about the dogs. Could he really trust Amelia?
"Dunno oo you can trust then?" said Amelia, tossing a still handsome head. "Anybody 'ud think the dogs was babbies, to hear you."
"So they are—to me—as precious as, anyway. Look here, you just come and live 'ere, 'Melia—see? An' we'll give yer five bob a week. An' the nipper 'e shall write it all down in lead-pencil on a bit o' paper for you, what they're to 'ave to eat an' about their physic and which of 'em's to have what."
This took some time to settle, and some more time to write down. And then, when the lick of paint was nearly dry on the perambulator and all their shirts and socks were washed and mended, and lying on the kitchen window-ledge ready for packing, what did Mr. Beale do but go out one morning and come back with a perfectly strange dachshund.
"An' I can't go and leave the little beast till he knows 'imself a bit in 'is noo place," said Mr. Beale, "an' 'ave 'im boltin' off gracious knows where, and being pinched or carted off to the Dogs' Home, or that. Can I, now?"
The new dog was very long, very brown, very friendly and charming. When it had had its supper it wagged its tail, turned a clear and gentle eye on Dickie, and without any warning stood on its head.
"Well," said Mr. Beale, "if there ain't money in that beast! A trick dog 'e is. 'E's wuth wot I give for 'im, so 'e is. Knows more tricks than that 'ere, I'll be bound."
He did. He was a singularly well-educated dog. Next morning Mr. Beale, coming down stairs, was just in time to bang the front door in the face of Amelia coming in, pail-laden, from "doing" the steps, and this to prevent the flight of the new dog. The door of one of the dog-rooms was open, and a fringe of inquisitive dogs ornamented the passage.
"What you open that door at all for?" Mr. Beale asked Amelia.
"I didn't," she said, and stuck to it.
That afternoon Beale, smoking in the garden, got up, as he often did, to look through the window at the dogs. He gazed a moment, muttered something, and made one jump to the back door. It was closed. Amelia was giving the scullery floor a "thorough scrub over," and had fastened the door to avoid having it opened with suddenness against her steaming pail or her crouching form.
But Mr. Beale got in at the back-door and out at the front just in time to see the dachshund disappearing at full speed, "like a bit of brown toffee-stick," as he said, round the end of the street. They never saw that dog again.
"Trained to it," Mr. Beale used to say sadly whenever he told the story; "trained to it from a pup, you may lay your life. I see 'im as plain as I see you. 'E listens an' he looks, and 'e doesn't 'ear nor see nobody. An' 'e ups on his 'ind legs and turns the 'andle with 'is little twisty front pawses, clever as a monkey, and hout 'e goes like a harrow in a bow. Trained to it, ye see. I bet his master wot taught 'im that's sold him time and again, makin' a good figure every time, for 'e was a 'andsome dawg as ever I see. Trained the dawg to open the door and bunk 'ome. See? Clever, I call it."
"It's a mean trick," said Dickie when Beale told him of the loss of the dog; "that's what I call it. I'm sorry you've lost the dog."
"I ain't exactly pleased myself," said Beale, "but no use crying over broken glass. It's the cleverness I think of most," he said admiringly. "Now I'd never a thought of a thing like that myself—not if I'd lived to a hundred, so I wouldn't. You might 'ave," he told Dickie flatteringly, "but I wouldn't myself."
"We don't need to," said Dickie hastily. "We earns our livings. We don't need to cheat to get our livings."
"No, no, dear boy," said Mr. Beale, more hastily still; "course we don't. That's just what I'm a-saying, ain't it ? We shouldn't never 'ave thought o' that. No need to, as you say. The cleverness of it!"
This admiration of the cleverness by which he himself had been cheated set Dickie thinking. He said, very gently and quietly, after a little pause—
"This 'ere walking tower of ours. We pays our own way? No cadging?"
"I should 'ope you know me better than that," said Beale virtuously; "not a patter have I done since I done the Bally and started in the dog line."
"Nor yet no dealings with that red-headed chap what I never see?"
"Now, is it likely?" Beale asked reproachfully. "I should 'ope we're a cut above a low chap like wot 'e is. The pram's dry as a bone and shiny as yer 'at, and we'll start the first thing in the morning."
And in the early morning, which is fresh and sweet even in Deptford, they bade farewell to Amelia and the dogs and set out.
Amelia watched them down the street and waved a farewell as they turned the corner.
"It'll be a bit lonesome," she said. "One thing, I shan't be burgled, with all them dogs in the house."
The voices of the dogs, as she went in and shut the door, seemed to assure her that she would not even be so very lonely.
And now they were really on the road. And they were going to Arden—to that place by the sea where Dickie's uncle, in the other life, had a castle, and where Dickie was to meet his cousins, after his seven months of waiting.
You may think that Dickie would be very excited by the thought of meeting, in this workaday, nowadays world, the children with whom he had had such wonderful adventures in the other world, the dream world—too excited, perhaps, to feel really interested in the little everyday happenings of "the road." But this was not so. The present was after all the real thing. The dreams could wait. The knowledge that they were there, waiting, made all the ordinary things more beautiful and more interesting. The feel of the soft dust underfoot, the bright, dewy grass and clover by the way side, the lessening of houses and the growing wideness of field and pasture, all contented and delighted Dickie. He felt to the full all the joy that Mr. Beale felt, in "oofing it," and when as the sun was sinking they overtook a bent, slow-going figure, it was with a thrill of real pleasure that Dickie recognised the woman who had given him the blue ribbon for True.
True himself, now grown large and thick of coat, seemed to recognise a friend, gambolled round her dreadful boots, sniffed at her withered hand.
"Give her a lift with her basket, shall us?" Dickie whispered to Mr. Beale and climbed out of the perambulator. "I can make shift to do this last piece."
So the three went on together, in friendly silence, As they neared Orpington the woman said, "Our road parts here; and thank you kindly. A kindness is never wasted, so they say."
"That ain't nothing," said Beale; "besides, there's the blue ribbon."
"That the dog?" the woman asked.
"Same ole dawg," said Beale, with pride.
"A pretty beast," she said. "Well—so long."
She looked back to smile and nod to them when she had taken her basket and the turning to the right, and Dickie suddenly stiffened all over, as a pointer does when it sees a partridge.
"I say," he cried, "you're the nurse"
"I've nursed a many in my time," she called back.
"But in the dream . . . you know."
"Dreams is queer things," said the woman. "And," she added, "least said is soonest mended."
"But . . ." said Dickie.
"Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut's a good motto," said she, nodded again, and turned resolutely away.
"Not very civil, I don't think," said Beale, "considerin'"
"Oh, she's all right," said Dickie, wondering very much, and very anxious that Beale should not wonder. "May I ride in the pram, farver? My foot's a bit blistered, I think. We ain't done so much walkin' lately, 'ave us?"
"Ain't tired in yourself, are you?" Mr. Beale asked, "'cause there's a place called Chevering Park, pretty as a picture—I thought we might lay out there. I'm a bit 'ot in the 'oof meself; but I can stick it if you can."
Dickie could; and when they made their evening camp in a deep gully soft with beech-leaves, and he looked out over the ridge—cautiously, because of keepers—at the smoothness of a mighty slope, green-grey in the dusk, where rabbits frisked and played, he was glad that he had not yielded to his tiredness and stopped to rest the night anywhere else. Chevering Park is a very beautiful place, I would have you to know. And the travellers were lucky. The dogs were good and quiet, and no keeper disturbed their rest or their masters. Dickie slept with True in his arms, and it was like a draught of soft magic elixir to lie once more in the still, cool night and look up at the stars through the trees.
"Can't think why they ever invented houses," he said, and then he fell asleep.
By short stages, enjoying every step of every day's journey, they went slowly and at their ease through the garden-land of Kent. Dickie loved every minute of it, every leaf in the hedge, every blade of grass by the roadside. And most of all he loved the quiet nights when he fell alseep under the stars with True in his arms.
It was all good, all. . . . And it was worth waiting and working for seven long months, to feel the thrill that Dickie felt when Beale, as they topped a ridge of the great South Downs, said suddenly, "There's the sea," and, a dozen yards further on, "There's Arden Castle."
There it lay, grey and green, with its old stones and ivy—the same Castle which Dickie had seen on the day when they lay among the furze bushes and waited to burgle Talbot Court There were red roofs at one side of the Castle where a house had been built among the ruins. As they drew nearer, and looked down at Arden Castle, Dickie saw two little figures in its green courtyard, and wondered whether they could possibly be Edred and Elfrida, the little cousins whom he had met in King James the First's time, and who, the nurse said, really belonged to the times of King Edward the Seventh, or Nowadays, just as he did himself. It seemed as though it could hardly be true; but, if it were true, how splendid! What games he and they could have! And what a play-place it was that spread out before him—green and glorious, with the sea on one side and the downs on the other, and in the middle the ruins of Arden Castle.
But as they went on through the furze bushes Dickie perceived that Mr. Beale was growing more and more silent and uneasy.
"What's up?" Dickie asked at last. "Out with it, farver."
"It ain't nothing," said Mr. Beale.
"You ain't afraid those Talbots will know you again?"
"Not much I ain't. They never see my face; and I 'adn't a beard that time like what I've got now."
"Well, then?" said Dickie.
"Well, if you must 'ave it," said Beale, "we're a-gettin' very near my ole dad's place, and I can't make me mind up."
"I thought we was settled we'd go to see 'im."
"I dunno. If 'e's under the daisies I shan't like it—I tell you straight I shan't like it. But we're a long-lived stock—p'raps 'e's all right. I dunno."
"Shall I go up by myself to where he lives and see if he's all right?"
"Not much," said Mr. Beale; "if I goes I goes, and if I stays away I stays away. It's just the not being able to make me mind up."
"If he's there," said Dickie, "don't you think you ought to go, just on the chance of him being there and wanting you?"
"If you come to oughts," said Beale, "I oughter gone 'ome any time this twenty year. Only I ain't. See?"
"Well," said Dickie, "it's your look out. I know what I should do if it was me."
Remembrance showed him the father who had leaned on his shoulder as they walked about the winding walks of the pleasant garden in old Deptford—the father who had given him the little horse, and insisted that his twenty gold pieces should be spent as he chose.
"I dunno," said Beale. "What you think? Eh, matey?"
"I think let's," said Dickie. "I lay if he's alive it 'ud be as good as three Sundays in the week to him to see you. You was his little boy once, wasn't you?"
"Ay," said Beale; "he was wagoner's mate to one of Lord Arden's men. 'E used to ride me on the big cart-horses. 'E was a fine set-up chap."
To hear the name of Arden on Beale's lips gave Dickie a very odd, half-pleasant, half-frightened feeling. It seemed to bring certain things very near.
"Let's," he said again.
"All right," said Beale, "only if it all goes wrong it ain't my fault—an' there used to be a footpath a bit further on. You cut through the copse and cater across the eleven-acre medder, and bear along to the left by the hedge an' it brings you out under Arden Knoll, where my old man's place is."
So they cut and catered and bore along, and came out under Arden Knoll, and there was a cottage, with a very neat garden full of gay flowers, and a brick pathway leading from the wooden gate to the front door. And by the front door sat an old man in a Windsor chair, with a brown spaniel at his feet and a bird in a wicker cage above his head, and he was nodding, for it was a hot day, and he was an old man and tired.
"Swelp me, I can't do it!" whispered Beale. "I'll walk on a bit. You just arst for a drink, and sort of see 'ow the land lays. It might turn 'im up seeing me so sudden. Good old dad!"
He walked quickly on, and Dickie was left standing by the gate. Then the brown spaniel became aware of True, and barked, and the old man said, "Down,Trusty!" in his sleep, and then woke up.
His clear old eyes set in many wrinkles turned full on Dickie by the gate.
"May I have a drink of water?" Dickie asked.
"Come in," said the old man.
And Dickie lifted the latch of smooth, brown, sun-warmed iron, and went up the brick path, as the old man slowly turned himself about in the chair.
"Yonder's the well," he said; "draw up a bucket, if thy leg'll let thee, poor little chap!"
"I draws water with my arms, not my legs," said Dickie cheerfully.
"There's a blue mug in the wash-house window-ledge," said the old man. "Fetch me a drop when you've had your drink, my lad."
Of course, Dickie's manners were too good for him to drink first. He drew up the dripping oaken bucket from the cool darkness of the well, fetched the mug, and offered it brimming to the old man. Then he drank, and looked at the garden ablaze with flowers—blush-roses and damask roses, and sweet-williams and candytuft, white lilies and yellow lilies, pansies, larkspur, poppies, bergamot, and sage.
It was just like a play at the Greenwich Theatre, Dickie thought. He had seen a scene just like that, where the old man sat in the sun and the Prodigal returned.
Dickie would not have been surprised to see Beale run up the brick path and throw himself on his knees, exclaiming, "Father, it is I—your erring but repentant son! Can you forgive me? If a lifetime of repentance can atone . . ." and so on.
If Dickie had been Beale he would certainly have made the speech, beginning, "Father, it is I." But as he was only Dickie, he said—
"Your name's Beale, ain't it?"
"It might be," old Beale allowed.
"I seen your son in London. 'E told me about yer garden."
"I should a thought 'e'd a-forgot the garden same as 'e's forgot me," said the old man.
"'E ain't forgot you, not 'e," said Dickie; "'e's come to see you, an' 'e's waiting outside now to know if you'd like to see 'im."
"Then 'e oughter know better," said the old man, and shouted in a thin, high voice, "Jim, Jim, come along in this minute!"
Even then Beale didn't act a bit like the prodigal in the play. He just unlatched the gate without looking at it—his hand had not forgotten the way of it, for all it was so long since he had passed through that gate. And he walked slowly and heavily up the path and said, "Hullo, dad!—how goes it?"
And the old man looked at him with his eyes half shut and said, "Why, it is James—so it is," as if he had expected it to be some one quite different.
And they shook hands, and then Beale said, "The garden's looking well."
And the old man owned that the garden 'ud do all right if it wasn't for the snails.
That was all Dickie heard, for he thought it polite to go away. Of course, they could not be really affectionate with a stranger about. So he shouted from the gate something about "back presently," and went off along the cart track towards Arden Castle and looked at it quite closely. It was the most beautiful and interesting thing he had ever seen. But he did not see the children.
When he went back the old man was cooking steak over the kitchen fire, and Beale was at the sink straining summer cabbage in a colander, as though he had lived there all his life and never anywhere else. He was in his shirt-sleeves too, and his coat and hat hung behind the back-door.
So then they had dinner, when the old man had set down the frying-pan expressly to shake hands with Dickie, saying, "So this is the lad you told me about. Yes, yes." It was a very nice dinner, with cold gooseberry pastry as well as the steak and vegetables. The kitchen was pleasant and cosy though rather dark, on account of the white climbing rose that grew round the window. After dinner the men sat in the sun and smoked, and Dickie occupied himself in teaching the spaniel and True that neither of them was a dog who deserved to be growled at. Dickie had just thrown back his head in a laugh at True's sulky face and stiffly planted paws, when he felt the old man's dry, wrinkled hand under his chin.
"Let's 'ave a look at you," he said, and peered closely at the child. "Where'd you get that face, eh? What did you say your name was?"
"Harding's his name," said Beale. "Dickie Harding."
"Dickie Arden, I should a-said if you'd asked me," said the old man. "Seems to me it's a reg'lar Arden face he's got. But my eyes ain't so good as wot they was. What d'you say to stopping along of me a bit, my boy? There's room in the cottage for all five of us. My son James here tells me you've been's good as a son to him."
"I'd love it," said Dickie. So that was settled. There were two bedrooms for Beale and his father, and Dickie slept in a narrow, white washed slip of a room that had once been a larder. The brown spaniel and True slept on the rag hearth rug in the kitchen. And everything was as cosy as cosy could be.
"We can send for any of the dawgs any minute if we feel we can't stick it without 'em," said Beale, smoking his pipe in the front garden.
"You mean to stay a long time, then," said Dickie.
"I dunno. You see, I was born and bred 'ere. The air tastes good, don't it? An' the water's good. Didn't you notice the tea tasted quite different from what it does anywhere else? That's the soft water, that is. An' the old chap . . . Yes—and there's one or two other things—yes—I reckon us'll stop on 'ere a bit."
And Dickie was very glad. For now he was near Arden Castle, and could see it any time that he chose to walk a couple of hundred yards and look down. And presently he would see Edred and Elfrida. Would they know him? That was the question. Would they remember that he and they had been cousins and friends when James the First was King?