Chapter XXI: A Warm Welcome

For two days Eager raked over the sand-hills, from morning till night, with all the men he could press into the service, and all the ardour he could rouse in them.

In long, undulating lines, rising and falling over the hummocks like the long sea-rollers, they scoured the wastes till they were satisfied that no Jim was there.

Each night Sir Denzil met him, when he came upstairs to report, with a repressed eagerness which gave way to cynical satisfaction the moment he saw his face.

"So!" he would say, with a gratified nod, as he helped himself to snuff with studied elegance. "No result, Mr. Eager. I really begin to think we must give him up. You are simply wasting your time and that of all your--er--friends."

"Supposing, after all, the poor lad should be lying, unable to move, in some hollow----"

"Let us hope that his sufferings would be over long before this!"

"It is too horrible to think of. I cannot sleep at night for the thought of it."

"Ah, I am sorry. You should cultivate a spirit of equanimity--as I do. If he is found--well! If he is not found, I am bound to say--better! The problem that has puzzled us these ten years is then solved--in a way, of course, though, as I think I have explained myself to you before, not in the right way. Still we have got only one boy to deal with, and we must make the best of him. I have been considering the idea of a public school. You would endorse that, I presume?"

"Undoubtedly--for both of them, if we can only find Jim."

"We are considering the one we have. Now, which school would you advise--Rugby, Harrow, Eton? There's a new place just opened at Marlborough. I see----"

"Harrow," said Eager decisively. "They are both meant for the army, of course?"

"You will speak in the plural still," said Sir Denzil, with a smile.

"I cannot bring myself to think of Jim as dead and gone."

"Well, well! Let us hope you have more foundation for your higher beliefs, Mr. Eager. Meanwhile, and to lose no time, I will write to my lawyer in London to have this boy entered at Harrow. What delay will it entail?"

"None, I should say. The numbers are low there just now, but Vaughan will soon pull things round, and meanwhile they will stand the better chance."

"They--they--they!" said Sir Denzil, eyeing him quizzically. "You really still hope, then?"

"I shall hope until it is impossible to hope any longer. Have you considered the idea of his having been kidnapped, Sir Denzil?"

"It has occurred to me, of course. But why should any one kidnap him?"

"If it should be so--to leave the other in full possession, of course. But we have no grounds to go upon. I have made inquiries as to all the gipsies who have been within ten miles of us lately. They are all here yet, and know nothing of the boy."

"H'm!" said Sir Denzil thoughtfully. "If it should be that--as you say, it would prove beyond doubt that the boy we have is the wrong one. Gad!" he said presently, "I'm beginning to have a hankering after the other. However----"

Sir George Herapath had seconded all Eager's efforts to discover the missing boy. He and Margaret had ridden with the other searchers each day, and in addition had sought out every gipsy camp in the neighbourhood and made rigorous inquisition as to its doings and membership. Sir George was favourably known to the nomads as a strict but clement justice of the peace so long as they kept within the law, and they satisfied him that they had had no hand in this matter.

He and Margaret were to and fro constantly between Knoyle and Wyvveloe, eager for news, or downcastly bringing none, and when Eager himself was not there it was a very crushed and sober little lady who received them with a sadness greater even than their own.

"It is quite beyond me, Sir George," you would have heard her say, with a gloomy shake of the head. "What can have become of him I can't think. And we do miss him so dreadfully. I always liked old Jim, but I never liked him so much as I do now. It's just breaking Charles's heart."

"It's beyond me too, Gracie," said Sir George, with a worried pinch of the brows. "Where _can_ the boy be? I'm really beginning to be afraid we've seen the last of him."

"Charles says we must go on hoping for the best," said the Little Lady forlornly. "But it is not easy when you've nothing to go on."

And to them, talking so, on the afternoon of the fourth day of the search, came in Eager, very weary both of mind and body, and anything but an embodiment of the hope he enjoined on others.

"Nothing," he said dejectedly. "And I do not know what to do next. I'm beginning----"

And then the Little Lady's eyes, which had wandered past him from sheer dread of looking on his hopelessness, opened wider than ever they had done before.

"Charles! Charles!" she shrieked, pointing past him down the path. "Jim!" And she began to dance and scream in a very allowable fit of hysterics.

Eager thought it was that--that her overwrought feelings had broken down, and it was to her that he sprang.

But the others had turned at her words, and had run out of the cottage, and now they came in dragging--as though having got him they would never let him go again--a very lean and dirty and draggled, but decidedly happy, Jim.

Gracie broke from her brother and rushed at him with a whole-hearted "Oh, Jim! Jim!" and flung her arms round his neck and kissed him many times. And Jim, grinning joyously through his dirt, seemed to find it good, but presently wiped off the kisses with the back of his grimy hand.

"Dear lad, where have you been?" cried Eager, all his weariness gone in the joy of recovery. "We have been near breaking all our hearts over you. Thank God, you are back again! . . . Now, tell us!"

And Jim summed up his adventures in very few words.

"I was on the shore. Some men carried me off in a ship. We were wrecked at a place called Morecambe, and I've come home as quick as I could."

"Who were the men? Did you know them?" asked Sir George sternly.

"I can't tell you, sir." And then, looking at Eager, as though he would understand. "It was a promise, a very solemn promise"--and Eager nodded. "You see I was locked up in a little cabin when the ship was wrecked, and I should have been drowned in there----"

"And they let you out on your promising not to tell on them," said Eager.

Jim nodded.

"A promise extorted under such conditions is not binding," said Sir George brusquely. "I want those men. Come, my boy, you must tell us all you know." And Eager watched him anxiously.

"I cannot tell, sir. I promised."

And nothing would move him from this. Sir George, with much warmth, explained to him that no one was safe if such things were permitted to pass unpunished, said that it was his bounden duty to tell all he knew. But to all he simply shook his head and said, "I promised, sir."

And Eager, much as he would have liked to lay hands on the rascals, could not but rejoice in the boy's staunchness. And Sir George gave it up at last, and rode away with Margaret, baffled and outwardly very angry. But as they rode up the avenue at Knoyle, he said:

"Eager has done well with those boys. They'll turn out men."

Jim was very hungry. They fed him, and then Eager went off with him to break the news to Sir Denzil, and the villagers flocked out and cheered them as they went.

"Well, yo're back!" was Mrs. Lee's greeting when they came into the kitchen at Carne. And Jim, in the joy of his return, ran up and kissed her, but her face was like that of a graven image.

Jack jumped up with a glad shout, and "Hello, Jim! Where you been?" and circled round and round the wanderer with endless questions.

Sir Denzil's reception of him was characteristic.

"Well, I'm ----! So you've turned up again." And he eyed his grandson, over a pinch of snuff, as though he were some new and offensive reptile. "What is the meaning of this, sir?" And his hankering after the boy whom, in his innermost mind, he had come to think of as his legitimate heir, and his thwarted satisfaction at what he had hoped was in any case the cutting of his Gordian knot, and a certain anxiety in the matter, which he had very successfully concealed from every one else--all these in combination resulted in an explosion.

He listened blackly to such explanation as Jim vouchsafed, peremptorily demanded more, and the boy refused.

"You will tell me all you know," said the old man sternly--hoping through fuller knowledge to arrive, perchance, at some clue to the great problem behind.

"I promised, sir!" said Jim.

"Hang your promise, sir! I absolve you from any such promise. You will tell me all you know."

But Jim set his lips stolidly and would not say another word.

"You won't? Then, by----, I'll teach you to do what you're told." And laying hold of the boy by the neck of his blue guernsey, he caught up his ebony stick and rained savage blows on the quivering little back before Eager could attempt rescue.

"Stop, sir! Stop!" cried Eager, in great distress at this outbreak, and caught at the flailing arm.

"---- you, sir! Keep off, or I'll thrash you too!" shouted the furious old man, and turned and threatened the interrupter with the heavy silver knob.

"You are forgetting yourself, Sir Denzil," said Eager hotly. "The boy has given his solemn promise in return for his life. Would you have him break it?" And he caught the descending stick with a hand that ached for days afterwards, twisted it deftly out of the trembling old hand, and held it in safe keeping.

"Kennet!" shouted Sir Denzil, "throw this ---- parson out!" And Kennet came from an adjoining room and looked doubtfully at Eager.

"Kennet will think several times before he tries it," said Eager quietly, swinging the stick in his hand.

And then Eager, eyeing the old man keenly, saw that the fit had passed and reason had resumed her sway.

"Your stick, sir!" and he handed it to him with a bow.

"Your servant, sir!" and the stick was flung into a corner, and a shaking hand dived down into a deep-flapped pocket after its necessary snuff-box. "Kennet, leave us! You've been drinking. And you, boy--damme, but you're a good plucked one! Of the right stock, surely. Go down and get something to eat--and here's a guinea for you." And Jim, who had never seen a guinea in his life, gripped it tight in his dirty paw as a remarkable curiosity, and went out agape, with squirming shoulders.

The old white hand shook so much that the snuff went all awry, and brown-powdered the waxen face in quite a humorous fashion.

"Mr. Eager, I apologise--and that is not my habit. But you must acknowledge that the provocation was great."

"Not if you had considered the matter. Would you have a Carron break his pledged word?"

"Ay!" said the old man, following his own train of thought, "a true Carron! Surely that is our man! . . . Well, what do you advise next?"

"Send them both to Harrow, and trust the rest to Providence."

And after a brooding silence, punctuated with more than one thoughtful pinch, "We will try Harrow, anyway," said the oracle, and Eager shook hands with him and went downstairs well satisfied.