THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
PART 10
Chapter X. The terrible secret.
When they
first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had talked a great deal
about their Father, and had asked a great many questions about him, and what he
was doing and where he was and when he would come home. Mother always answered
their questions as well as she could. But as the time went on they grew to
speak less of him. Bobbie had felt almost from the first that for some strange
miserable reason these questions hurt Mother and made her sad. And little by
little the others came to have this feeling, too, though they could not have
put it into words.
One day,
when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave off even for ten
minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare room that they called
Mother's workshop. It had hardly any furniture. Just a table and a chair and a
rug. But always big pots of flowers on the window-sills and on the mantelpiece.
The children saw to that. And from the three long uncurtained windows the
beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland, the far violet of the hills, and the
unchanging changefulness of cloud and sky.
“Here's
your tea, Mother-love,” said Bobbie; “do drink it while it's hot.”
Mother
laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all over the table, pages
covered with her writing, which was almost as plain as print, and much
prettier. She ran her hands into her hair, as if she were going to pull it out
by handfuls.
“Poor dear
head,” said Bobbie, “does it ache?”
“No—yes—not
much,” said Mother. “Bobbie, do you think Peter and Phil are FORGETTING
Father?”
“NO,” said
Bobbie, indignantly. “Why?”
“You none
of you ever speak of him now.”
Bobbie
stood first on one leg and then on the other.
“We often
talk about him when we're by ourselves,” she said.
“But not
to me,” said Mother. “Why?”
Bobbie did
not find it easy to say why.
“I—you—”
she said and stopped. She went over to the window and looked out.
“Bobbie,
come here,” said her Mother, and Bobbie came.
“Now,”
said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her ruffled head against
Bobbie's shoulder, “try to tell me, dear.”
Bobbie
fidgeted.
“Tell
Mother.”
“Well,
then,” said Bobbie, “I thought you were so unhappy about Daddy not being here,
it made you worse when I talked about him. So I stopped doing it.”
“And the
others?”
“I don't
know about the others,” said Bobbie. “I never said anything about THAT to them.
But I expect they felt the same about it as me.”
“Bobbie
dear,” said Mother, still leaning her head against her, “I'll tell you. Besides
parting from Father, he and I have had a great sorrow—oh, terrible—worse than
anything you can think of, and at first it did hurt to hear you all talking of
him as if everything were just the same. But it would be much more terrible if
you were to forget him. That would be worse than anything.”
“The
trouble,” said Bobbie, in a very little voice—“I promised I would never ask you
any questions, and I never have, have I? But—the trouble—it won't last always?”
“No,” said
Mother, “the worst will be over when Father comes home to us.”
“I wish I
could comfort you,” said Bobbie.
“Oh, my
dear, do you suppose you don't? Do you think I haven't noticed how good you've
all been, not quarrelling nearly as much as you used to—and all the little kind
things you do for me—the flowers, and cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make
my bed before I get time to do it myself?”
Bobbie HAD
sometimes wondered whether Mother noticed these things.
“That's
nothing,” she said, “to what—”
“I MUST
get on with my work,” said Mother, giving Bobbie one last squeeze. “Don't say
anything to the others.”
That
evening in the hour before bed-time instead of reading to the children Mother
told them stories of the games she and Father used to have when they were
children and lived near each other in the country—tales of the adventures of
Father with Mother's brothers when they were all boys together. Very funny
stories they were, and the children laughed as they listened.
“Uncle
Edward died before he was grown up, didn't he?” said Phyllis, as Mother lighted
the bedroom candles.
“Yes,
dear,” said Mother, “you would have loved him. He was such a brave boy, and so
adventurous. Always in mischief, and yet friends with everybody in spite of it.
And your Uncle Reggie's in Ceylon—yes, and Father's away, too. But I think
they'd all like to think we'd enjoyed talking about the things they used to do.
Don't you think so?”
“Not Uncle
Edward,” said Phyllis, in a shocked tone; “he's in Heaven.”
“You don't
suppose he's forgotten us and all the old times, because God has taken him, any
more than I forget him. Oh, no, he remembers. He's only away for a little time.
We shall see him some day.”
“And Uncle
Reggie—and Father, too?” said Peter.
“Yes,”
said Mother. “Uncle Reggie and Father, too. Good night, my darlings.”
“Good
night,” said everyone. Bobbie hugged her mother more closely even than usual,
and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I do love you so, Mummy—I do—I do—”
When
Bobbie came to think it all over, she tried not to wonder what the great
trouble was. But she could not always help it. Father was not dead—like poor
Uncle Edward—Mother had said so. And he was not ill, or Mother would have been
with him. Being poor wasn't the trouble. Bobbie knew it was something nearer
the heart than money could be.
“I mustn't
try to think what it is,” she told herself; “no, I mustn't. I AM glad Mother
noticed about us not quarrelling so much. We'll keep that up.”
And alas,
that very afternoon she and Peter had what Peter called a first-class shindy.
They had
not been a week at Three Chimneys before they had asked Mother to let them have
a piece of garden each for their very own, and she had agreed, and the south
border under the peach trees had been divided into three pieces and they were
allowed to plant whatever they liked there.
Phyllis
had planted mignonette and nasturtium and Virginia Stock in hers. The seeds
came up, and though they looked just like weeds, Phyllis believed that they
would bear flowers some day. The Virginia Stock justified her faith quite soon,
and her garden was gay with a band of bright little flowers, pink and white and
red and mauve.
“I can't
weed for fear I pull up the wrong things,” she used to say comfortably; “it
saves such a lot of work.”
Peter
sowed vegetable seeds in his—carrots and onions and turnips. The seed was given
to him by the farmer who lived in the nice black-and-white, wood-and-plaster
house just beyond the bridge. He kept turkeys and guinea fowls, and was a most
amiable man. But Peter's vegetables never had much of a chance, because he
liked to use the earth of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and
earthworks for his toy soldiers. And the seeds of vegetables rarely come to
much in a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes of war and
irrigation.
Bobbie
planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new leaves of the
rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because she moved them from the
other part of the garden in May, which is not at all the right time of year for
moving roses. But she would not own that they were dead, and hoped on against
hope, until the day when Perks came up to see the garden, and told her quite
plainly that all her roses were as dead as doornails.
“Only good
for bonfires, Miss,” he said. “You just dig 'em up and burn 'em, and I'll give
you some nice fresh roots outer my garden; pansies, and stocks, and sweet
willies, and forget-me-nots. I'll bring 'em along to-morrow if you get the
ground ready.”
So next
day she set to work, and that happened to be the day when Mother had praised
her and the others about not quarrelling. She moved the rose-bushes and carried
them to the other end of the garden, where the rubbish heap was that they meant
to make a bonfire of when Guy Fawkes' Day came.
Meanwhile
Peter had decided to flatten out all his forts and earthworks, with a view to
making a model of the railway-tunnel, cutting, embankment, canal, aqueduct,
bridges, and all.
So when
Bobbie came back from her last thorny journey with the dead rose-bushes, he had
got the rake and was using it busily.
“I
was using the rake,” said Bobbie.
“Well, I'm
using it now,” said Peter.
“But I had
it first,” said Bobbie.
“Then it's
my turn now,” said Peter. And that was how the quarrel began.
“You're
always being disagreeable about nothing,” said Peter, after some heated
argument.
“I had the
rake first,” said Bobbie, flushed and defiant, holding on to its handle.
“Don't—I
tell you I said this morning I meant to have it. Didn't I, Phil?”
Phyllis
said she didn't want to be mixed up in their rows. And instantly, of course,
she was.
“If you
remember, you ought to say.”
“Of course
she doesn't remember—but she might say so.”
“I wish
I'd had a brother instead of two whiny little kiddy sisters,” said Peter. This
was always recognised as indicating the high-water mark of Peter's rage.
Bobbie
made the reply she always made to it.
“I can't
think why little boys were ever invented,” and just as she said it she looked
up, and saw the three long windows of Mother's workshop flashing in the red
rays of the sun. The sight brought back those words of praise:—
“You don't
quarrel like you used to do.”
“OH!”
cried Bobbie, just as if she had been hit, or had caught her finger in a door,
or had felt the hideous sharp beginnings of toothache.
“What's
the matter?” said Phyllis.
Bobbie
wanted to say: “Don't let's quarrel. Mother hates it so,” but though she tried
hard, she couldn't. Peter was looking too disagreeable and insulting.
“Take the
horrid rake, then,” was the best she could manage. And she suddenly let go her
hold on the handle. Peter had been holding on to it too firmly and pullingly,
and now that the pull the other way was suddenly stopped, he staggered and fell
over backward, the teeth of the rake between his feet.
“Serve you
right,” said Bobbie, before she could stop herself.
Peter lay
still for half a moment—long enough to frighten Bobbie a little. Then he
frightened her a little more, for he sat up—screamed once—turned rather pale,
and then lay back and began to shriek, faintly but steadily. It sounded exactly
like a pig being killed a quarter of a mile off.
Mother put
her head out of the window, and it wasn't half a minute after that she was in
the garden kneeling by the side of Peter, who never for an instant ceased to
squeal.
“What
happened, Bobbie?” Mother asked.
“It was
the rake,” said Phyllis. “Peter was pulling at it, so was Bobbie, and she let
go and he went over.”
“Stop that
noise, Peter,” said Mother. “Come. Stop at once.”
Peter used
up what breath he had left in a last squeal and stopped.
“Now,”
said Mother, “are you hurt?”
“If he was
really hurt, he wouldn't make such a fuss,” said Bobbie, still trembling with
fury; “he's not a coward!”
“I think
my foot's broken off, that's all,” said Peter, huffily, and sat up. Then he
turned quite white. Mother put her arm round him.
“He IS
hurt,” she said; “he's fainted. Here, Bobbie, sit down and take his head on
your lap.”
Then
Mother undid Peter's boots. As she took the right one off, something dripped
from his foot on to the ground. It was red blood. And when the stocking came
off there were three red wounds in Peter's foot and ankle, where the teeth of
the rake had bitten him, and his foot was covered with red smears.
“Run for
water—a basinful,” said Mother, and Phyllis ran. She upset most of the water
out of the basin in her haste, and had to fetch more in a jug.
Peter did
not open his eyes again till Mother had tied her handkerchief round his foot,
and she and Bobbie had carried him in and laid him on the brown wooden settle
in the dining-room. By this time Phyllis was halfway to the Doctor's.
Mother sat
by Peter and bathed his foot and talked to him, and Bobbie went out and got tea
ready, and put on the kettle.
“It's all
I can do,” she told herself. “Oh, suppose Peter should die, or be a helpless
cripple for life, or have to walk with crutches, or wear a boot with a sole
like a log of wood!”
She stood
by the back door reflecting on these gloomy possibilities, her eyes fixed on
the water-butt.
“I wish
I'd never been born,” she said, and she said it out loud.
“Why, lawk
a mercy, what's that for?” asked a voice, and Perks stood before her with a
wooden trug basket full of green-leaved things and soft, loose earth.
“Oh, it's
you,” she said. “Peter's hurt his foot with a rake—three great gaping wounds,
like soldiers get. And it was partly my fault.”
“That it
wasn't, I'll go bail,” said Perks. “Doctor seen him?”
“Phyllis
has gone for the Doctor.”
“He'll be
all right; you see if he isn't,” said Perks. “Why, my father's second cousin
had a hay-fork run into him, right into his inside, and he was right as ever in
a few weeks, all except his being a bit weak in the head afterwards, and they
did say that it was along of his getting a touch of the sun in the hay-field,
and not the fork at all. I remember him well. A kind-'earted chap, but soft, as
you might say.”
Bobbie
tried to let herself be cheered by this heartening reminiscence.
“Well,”
said Perks, “you won't want to be bothered with gardening just this minute, I
dare say. You show me where your garden is, and I'll pop the bits of stuff in
for you. And I'll hang about, if I may make so free, to see the Doctor as he
comes out and hear what he says. You cheer up, Missie. I lay a pound he ain't
hurt, not to speak of.”
But he
was. The Doctor came and looked at the foot and bandaged it beautifully, and
said that Peter must not put it to the ground for at least a week.
“He won't
be lame, or have to wear crutches or a lump on his foot, will he?” whispered
Bobbie, breathlessly, at the door.
“My aunt!
No!” said Dr. Forrest; “he'll be as nimble as ever on his pins in a fortnight.
Don't you worry, little Mother Goose.”
It was
when Mother had gone to the gate with the Doctor to take his last instructions
and Phyllis was filling the kettle for tea, that Peter and Bobbie found
themselves alone.
“He says
you won't be lame or anything,” said Bobbie.
“Oh,
course I shan't, silly,” said Peter, very much relieved all the same.
“Oh,
Peter, I AM so sorry,” said Bobbie, after a pause.
“That's
all right,” said Peter, gruffly.
“It was
ALL my fault,” said Bobbie.
“Rot,”
said Peter.
“If we
hadn't quarrelled, it wouldn't have happened. I knew it was wrong to quarrel. I
wanted to say so, but somehow I couldn't.”
“Don't
drivel,” said Peter. “I shouldn't have stopped if you HAD said it. Not likely.
And besides, us rowing hadn't anything to do with it. I might have caught my
foot in the hoe, or taken off my fingers in the chaff-cutting machine or blown
my nose off with fireworks. It would have been hurt just the same whether we'd
been rowing or not.”
“But I
knew it was wrong to quarrel,” said Bobbie, in tears, “and now you're hurt
and—”
“Now look
here,” said Peter, firmly, “you just dry up. If you're not careful, you'll turn
into a beastly little Sunday-school prig, so I tell you.”
“I don't
mean to be a prig. But it's so hard not to be when you're really trying to be
good.”
(The
Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered from this difficulty.)
“Not it,”
said Peter; “it's a jolly good thing it wasn't you was hurt. I'm glad it was
ME. There! If it had been you, you'd have been lying on the sofa looking like a
suffering angel and being the light of the anxious household and all that. And
I couldn't have stood it.”
“No, I
shouldn't,” said Bobbie.
“Yes, you
would,” said Peter.
“I tell
you I shouldn't.”
“I tell
you you would.”
“Oh,
children,” said Mother's voice at the door. “Quarrelling again? Already?”
“We aren't
quarrelling—not really,” said Peter. “I wish you wouldn't think it's rows every
time we don't agree!” When Mother had gone out again, Bobbie broke out:—
“Peter, I
AM sorry you're hurt. But you ARE a beast to say I'm a prig.”
“Well,”
said Peter unexpectedly, “perhaps I am. You did say I wasn't a coward, even
when you were in such a wax. The only thing is—don't you be a prig, that's all.
You keep your eyes open and if you feel priggishness coming on just stop in
time. See?”
“Yes,”
said Bobbie, “I see.”
“Then
let's call it Pax,” said Peter, magnanimously: “bury the hatchet in the fathoms
of the past. Shake hands on it. I say, Bobbie, old chap, I am tired.”
He was
tired for many days after that, and the settle seemed hard and uncomfortable in
spite of all the pillows and bolsters and soft folded rugs. It was terrible not
to be able to go out. They moved the settle to the window, and from there Peter
could see the smoke of the trains winding along the valley. But he could not
see the trains.
At first
Bobbie found it quite hard to be as nice to him as she wanted to be, for fear
he should think her priggish. But that soon wore off, and both she and Phyllis
were, as he observed, jolly good sorts. Mother sat with him when his sisters
were out. And the words, “he's not a coward,” made Peter determined not to make
any fuss about the pain in his foot, though it was rather bad, especially at
night.
Praise
helps people very much, sometimes.
There were
visitors, too. Mrs. Perks came up to ask how he was, and so did the Station
Master, and several of the village people. But the time went slowly, slowly.
“I do wish
there was something to read,” said Peter. “I've read all our books fifty times
over.”
“I'll go
to the Doctor's,” said Phyllis; “he's sure to have some.”
“Only
about how to be ill, and about people's nasty insides, I expect,” said Peter.
“Perks has
a whole heap of Magazines that came out of trains when people are tired of
them,” said Bobbie. “I'll run down and ask him.”
So the
girls went their two ways.
Bobbie
found Perks busy cleaning lamps.
“And how's
the young gent?” said he.
“Better,
thanks,” said Bobbie, “but he's most frightfully bored. I came to ask if you'd
got any Magazines you could lend him.”
“There,
now,” said Perks, regretfully, rubbing his ear with a black and oily lump of
cotton waste, “why didn't I think of that, now? I was trying to think of
something as 'ud amuse him only this morning, and I couldn't think of anything
better than a guinea-pig. And a young chap I know's going to fetch that over
for him this tea-time.”
“How
lovely! A real live guinea! He will be pleased. But he'd like the Magazines as
well.”
“That's
just it,” said Perks. “I've just sent the pick of 'em to Snigson's boy—him
what's just getting over the pewmonia. But I've lots of illustrated papers
left.”
He turned
to the pile of papers in the corner and took up a heap six inches thick.
“There!”
he said. “I'll just slip a bit of string and a bit of paper round 'em.”
He pulled
an old newspaper from the pile and spread it on the table, and made a neat
parcel of it.
“There,”
said he, “there's lots of pictures, and if he likes to mess 'em about with his
paint-box, or coloured chalks or what not, why, let him. I don't want
'em.”
“You're a
dear,” said Bobbie, took the parcel, and started. The papers were heavy, and
when she had to wait at the level-crossing while a train went by, she rested
the parcel on the top of the gate. And idly she looked at the printing on the
paper that the parcel was wrapped in.
Suddenly
she clutched the parcel tighter and bent her head over it. It seemed like some
horrible dream. She read on—the bottom of the column was torn off—she could
read no farther.
She never
remembered how she got home. But she went on tiptoe to her room and locked the
door. Then she undid the parcel and read that printed column again, sitting on
the edge of her bed, her hands and feet icy cold and her face burning. When she
had read all there was, she drew a long, uneven breath.
“So now I
know,” she said.
What she
had read was headed, 'End of the Trial. Verdict. Sentence.'
The name
of the man who had been tried was the name of her Father. The verdict was
'Guilty.' And the sentence was 'Five years' Penal Servitude.'
“Oh,
Daddy,” she whispered, crushing the paper hard, “it's not true—I don't believe
it. You never did it! Never, never, never!”
There was
a hammering on the door.
“What is
it?” said Bobbie.
“It's me,”
said the voice of Phyllis; “tea's ready, and a boy's brought Peter a
guinea-pig. Come along down.”
And Bobbie
had to.