Chapter X: Growing Freemen

The Rev. Charles was greatly uplifted as he tramped through the sand to keep his appointment with the boys. He had succeeded beyond his hopes, and a most congenial field of work and study lay open to his hand.

"Catch them young," had been hammered into his heart and brain by his five years' work in East London. With heart and brain he had fought against the stolid indifference and active evil-mindedness of the grown-ups, till heart and brain grew sick at times. His greatest hopes had settled on the children, and here were two, of a different caste indeed, but as ignorant of the essentials as any he had met with--and they were given into his hand for the moulding. By God's help he would make men of them, high-born or baseborn. The side-issue was nothing to him, but it would add zest to the work.

When he got, as he believed, into the neighbourhood of his previous day's adventure, he examined the ridge of sand-hills with care. But they were all so much alike that he could not be sure. He had hoped to find the boys on the look-out for him, but he saw no signs of them.

He struggled up the yielding side of the nearest hill and looked round. If he could find their hole he would probably find them inside it or not far away.

It was close on midday, baking hot, and the sand-hills seemed as deserted as Sahara. The sea lay fast asleep behind its banks, which reached to the horizon. When he looked back across the flats to Carne, he rubbed his eyes at sight of its stout walls bending and bowing and jigging spasmodically in an uncouth dance. The very wire-grass drooped listlessly. The only sound was the cheerful creak of a cricket.

The width, length, and height of it, the gracious spaciousness of it all filled him with fresh delight. It was all so very different from the heart-crushing straitness of the slums and alleys in which his last years had been spent. He stood drinking it all in, and then, seeing no signs of the boys, he turned his back to the shore and strode inland.

But within a few steps he caught sight of recent traces of them in fresh-turned yellow sand which the sun had not had time to whiten. He whistled shrilly, if perchance the sound might penetrate to their hold.

And then, to his astonishment, the ground in front of him cracked and heaved, and first one and then another dark sanded head and laughing face came out, and the boys sprang up from the shallow holes in which they had buried themselves and stood before him.

"You young rabbits," he laughed. "I had just about given you up. Thought I wasn't coming, I suppose."

Decisive nods from both black heads.

"Well, we'll make a start on that. Remember that I never break a promise, and I want you to do the same. The boy who makes up his mind that he'll never break his word is half a brave man."

They stared up at him with wide eyes, and whether they understood it he did not know. But he knew better than to say more just then.

"Now--why----?" And he looked from one to the other and then began to laugh. "Which of you is Jack and which is Jim? I was to remember Jack by a bump on the forehead, and now you've both got bumps. Been fighting again?"

Gleaming nods from both boys.

"We must find you something better to do. I've been seeing your grandfather, and he says I may teach you to swim."

Squirms of anticipation in the active brown bodies, and glances past him at the distant sea.

"No, not to-day. It's too late now, but it was worth spending the morning on. We'll make a start to-morrow. Can you be here at eight o'clock?"

Their energetic heads intimated that they could be there very much before eight if desired.

"Right! I'll be here. In the meantime you can be practising a bit on dry land. Here's the stroke"--and he laid himself flat on a convenient hummock and kicked out energetically, while the black eyes watched intently.

"Now try it. You first, Jack. That's right. Keep your hands a bit more sloped, and your toes more down. Thrust back with the flat of your feet as though you were trying to kick some one. First rate! Now, Jim!" But Jim was already hard at work on his own account. "That's right. Hands sloped, toes down. Draw your knees well up under your body. You'll find it easier in the water. Oh, you'll do. You'll be swimmers in no time. That'll do for just now. Now--Jack," he looked at them both, but his eyes finally settled on Jim--"if you'll fetch Robinson out well make a start on him."

Jim turned to dive down the hill-side, and was instantly tripped by Jack, who flung himself on top of him. They rolled down together, fighting like cats, amid a cloud of flying sand. Eager sprang after them, found it useless, as before, to attempt to separate them by any ordinary means, so spanked them indiscriminately till they fell apart and stood up panting. And the odd thing about it all was that no slightest ill-will seemed born of their strife. The moment it was over they were friends again.

"He told me," panted Jack in self-justification.

"He looked at me," panted Jim.

"My fault, boys. I must tie a string round one of your arms till I get to know you. Now trot along one of you--no, you "--grabbing one by the shoulder as both started off again. "We haven't much time to-day. If I'm not home by one Mrs. Jex will be eating all my dinner."

So they sat in the soft sand, and he read, and explained what he read, till Robinson Crusoe came alive and began to be as real to them as one of themselves, and they knew him as they had never known him before.

When Eager was dodging about his sheepfold that afternoon he came upon Dr. Yool in the yellow-wheeled gig. "Well, I've got 'em," said the curate.

"Got what? Measles, jumps----?"

"Those boys. I bearded the old man in his den this morning, and he has given me a free hand with them."

"You'll do," said Dr. Yool. "They'll keep you busy. Don't forget I want your help with these stinks"--pointing with his whip to the heaps of refuse lying about.

"I'm tackling stinks now. Tiger-pups in the morning, stinks in the afternoon, Dr. Yool in the evening. That's the order of service at present." And they parted the better for the meeting.

Eager had a chat with some of the wise men of Wynsloe, and got points from them as to shifting sands, and the tucking sands, and the other dangers of that treacherous coast, and in return incidentally dropped into their minds some seeds of wisdom respecting stinks and their consequences.

Five minutes to eight next morning found him a-perch of the highest sand-hill in the neighbourhood, on the look-out for his pupils.

Five minutes past eight found him somewhat disappointed at their non-appearance. They had seemed eager enough too, the day before. Perhaps the old man had thought better of it. Then he remembered his cynical hope that the swimming might prove of service in the solution of his great problem. And then a couple of war-whoops at each of his ears jerked him off his perch with so sudden a leap that the whoopers squirmed in the sand with delight.

"Thought we weren't coming?" grinned Jack.

"Well, I began to fear you'd been stopped----"

"We promised," grinned Jim; and Eager rejoiced to think that that seed at all events had taken root.

In two minutes they were trotting across the flats, and presently they were in the tide-way, and the little savages were revelling in a fresh acquirement and a new sense of motion.

There was little teaching needed. Eager took them out, one after the other, neck-deep, and turned their faces to the shore, and they swam home like rats, and yelled hilariously from pure enjoyment as soon as they found their breath.

Then he carried them out of their depths, and loosed them, and they paddled away back without a sign of fear. Fear, in fact, seemed absolutely lacking in them. The only thing on earth of which they stood in any fear, as far as he could make out, was the grim old man in the upper room at Carne, and even in his case it seemed to be as much distrust and dislike as actual fear.

But even fearlessness has its dangers, and, mindful of his trust, Eager exacted from each of them a solemn promise not to go into the sea except when he was with them, for he had no mind to solve the old man's riddle for him in the way he had so hopefully suggested.

Those mornings on the sands and in the water proved the foundation on which he slowly and surely built the boys' characters.

A very few days of so close an intimacy stamped their individualities on his mind. After the third day he never again mistook one for the other. Time and again they tried to mislead him, but he saw deeper than they knew and never failed to detect them.

They were, at this time, remarkably alike in every way, and though, later on, each developed marked characteristics of his own, there all along remained between them resemblance enough to put strangers to confusion, a matter in which they at all times found extreme enjoyment.

But even now, like as they were, in face and body and the wild naturalness of their primeval ways, their respective personalities began to disclose themselves, as Eager broke them, bit by bit, to the harness of civilisation. And if their harnessing was no easy matter, either for themselves or their teacher, they came to realise very quickly that, though it might mean less of freedom in some ways, it meant also an immensely wider reach and outlook. Whereas their life had hitherto revolved in narrow grooves--with which indeed no man had taken the trouble to meddle, now it ran in courses that were ordered, but which also were spacious and lofty and filled with novelty and enterprise.

And as their natural characteristics began to develop in these more reasonable ways, Eager watched and studied them with intensest interest.

But little savages they remained in certain respects for a considerable time, and it was only by slow degrees that he managed to lead them out of darkness into something approaching twilight.

Jim, for instance, had a rooted detestation of every living thing he came across on the shore, and promptly proceeded to squash it with his bare foot or to pound it into jelly with his prehistoric club. From tiny delicate crab to senseless jelly-fish or screaming gull, if Jim came across it it must die if he could manage it.

To counteract, if he might, this innate lust for slaughter Eager took to explaining to them some of the more simple wonders and beauties of seashore life. He brought down a small pocket microscope and showed them things they had never dreamed of.

This appealed to Jack immensely. He became a devoted slave of the wonderful glasses, and never tired of poring over and peering into things. Jim, however, drew a double satisfaction from them. He smashed things first and then delighted in the examination of the pieces, and many a pitched battle they fought over the destruction and defence of flotsam and jetsam which formerly they would both have destroyed with equal zest.

It was all education, however, and Eager rejoiced in them greatly. He found them, in varying degrees and with notable exceptions, fairly easy to lead, but almost impossible to drive. He led them step by step from darkness towards the light, and meanwhile studied them with as microscopic a care as that with which he endeavoured to get them to study the tiny things of the shore.

Their wild free life about the sand-hills had trained their powers of observation to an unusual degree. True, the observation had generally tended to destruction, but the faculty was good, and the end and aim of it was a matter to be slowly brought within control.

They could tell him many strange things about the manners and customs of rabbits, and gulls, and peewits, and sandpipers, and bull-frogs, and tadpoles, and so on. They could forecast the weather from the look of the sky and the smell of the wind, with the accuracy of a barometer. They could run as fast and farther than he could, for they had been breathing God's sweetest air all their lives, while he had been travelling alley-ways, with tightened lips and compressed nostrils. And they could fling their little stone clubs with an aim that was deadly. Jim indeed vaunted himself on having once brought down a seagull on the wing, but the actual fact rested on his sole testimony and Jack cast doubts on it, and thereupon they fought each time it was mentioned, but proved nothing thereby.

Eager told them of the wonders of the black man's boomerang; and they laboured long and practised much, but could not compass it. It was their ideal weapon, a thing to dream of and strive after, but it always lay beyond them.

One day he brought home under his arm, from the shop in Wyvveloe, a small parcel which he took up into his own room. He borrowed Mrs. Jex's scissors, and spent a very much longer time planning and cutting than the result seemed to warrant. Then he got Mrs. Jex, who would have shaved her scanty locks to please him, to do some hemming and stitching and to sew on some bits of tape, and next day he astonished his little savages by attiring himself and them in bright-red loin-cloths, before they started for their mile sprint to the water.

The boys were inclined to resist this innovation as an unnecessary cramping of their freedom. Jim averred that he couldn't stretch his legs, and that his garment burnt him, though when it was on it looked no bigger than his hand. Jack demanded reasons, and was told to wait and he would see. However, the brilliancy of the little garments somewhat condoned their offence, and once in the water they were soon forgotten, and as they flashed back and forth across the sands the startling effects they produced in the sunny pools by degrees reconciled their wearers to their use.

About a week after this, the boys were sitting one morning in the hollow Mr. Eager used as a dressing-room, wondering why he was later than usual,

"Gone to see HIM, maybe, 'bout yon books we brought out," growled Jack gloomily.

"Hmph!" grunted Jim. "I don't care--'sides, he wouldn't."

And then Eager strode in with a brighter face even than usual.

"Afraid I wasn't coming, were you?" he laughed.

"Thought maybe you'd gone to see HIM again," said Jack.

"Your grandfather? No; I've been seeing some one very much nicer. Jim, did you say your verse this morning?"

This was a gigantic innovation, and still much of a mere ritual. But it was a beginning, and the rest would follow. It was the first upward step towards those higher things which Charles Eager kept ever steadily in view.

"Forgot," grunted Jim.

This again was mighty gain. A month ago--if such a contingency had been possible--he would never have owned up. To his grandfather it is doubtful if he would have owned up even now.

"Well, oblige me by going behind that sand-hill and saying it now, and think what you're saying as well as you can. And you, Jack?"

"Said um," said Jack dutifully.

"Never saw you," said Jim, on his knees. Whereupon Jack dashed at him and rolled him over prayer and all, and they had a regular former-state set-to.

The Rev. Charles, grave of face, but internally convulsed, got them separated at last, and as soon as Jim had performed his devotions they turned their faces towards the sea. Before the two boys could start out, as they usually did, like bolts from a cross-bow, however, he laid a detaining hand on each brown shoulder, and to their surprise whistled shrilly across the hills. In reply, a tiny figure in brilliant scarlet sped out from an adjacent nook, and shot, with flowing hair, and little white feet going like drumsticks, across the flats towards the sea.

The boys caught their breath and gaped in amazement.

"What is it?" gasped Jim.

"Whow! Who?" from Jack.

"My little sister. She only arrived last night. Now let's see if we can catch her! Off you go!" And they tore away across the long ribbed sands after the flying streak of scarlet in front.

They caught her long before she reached the tide-lip, and her eyes flashed merriment as they raced alongside.

She had rare beauty even as a child--and no beauty of after-life ever quite equals that of a lovely child--and the two boys had never in their lives seen anything like her. They stumbled alongside, careless of holes and lumps, with sidelong glances for nothing but that radiant vision--scarlet-wrapped, streaming nut-brown hair, dancing blue eyes, white skin flushed with the run like a hedge-rose, little teeth gleaming pearls between panting, laughing lips, a little rainbow of beauty.

"Well run, Gracie! Keep it up, old girl!" panted Eager, almost pumped himself. And then they were in the water.

Grace, it appeared, could not swim yet. The boys fell to at once and fought for the honour of helping her, though neither would have dared to touch her. She screamed at sight of their brown bodies thrashing to and fro in the foam, but was comforted at sight of her brother's laughing face.

"Come along, Gracie. Never mind the boys. They enjoy a fight more than anything. Now kick away, and strike out as I showed you how on the footstool. I'll hold your chin up. That's it! Bravo, little one! You'll be a swimmer in a week."