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Quicksilver; The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 2. The Tramp's Legacy |
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_ CHAPTER TWO. THE TRAMP'S LEGACY The doctor shook his head as he stood beside a plain bed in a whitewashed ward where the tramp lay muttering fiercely, and the brisk-looking master of the workhouse and a couple of elderly women stood in a group. "No, Hippetts," said the doctor; "the machinery is all to pieces and beyond repair. No." Just then there was a loud cry, consequent upon one of the women taking the child from where it had been seated upon the foot of the bed, and carrying it toward the door. In a moment the sick man sprang up in bed, glaring wildly and stretching out his hands. "Quick! take the boy away," said the master; but the doctor held up his finger, watching the sick man the while. Then he whispered a few words to the master, who seemed to give an unwilling consent, and the boy was placed within the tramp's reach. The man had been trying to say something, but the words would not come. As he touched the child's hand, though, he gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction, and sank back upon the coarse pillow, while the child nestled to his side, sobbing convulsively, but rapidly calming down. "Against all rule and precedent, doctor," said the master, in an ill-used tone. "Yes, my dear Mr Hippetts," said the doctor, smiling; "but I order it as a sedative medicine. It will do more good than anything I can give. It will not be for long." The master nodded. "Mrs Curdley," continued the doctor, "you will sit up with him." "Yes, sir," said one of the old women with a curtsey. "Keep an eye to the child, in case he turns violent; but I don't think he will--I don't think he will." "And send for you, sir, if he do!" "Yes." The little party left the workhouse infirmary, all but Mrs Curdley, who saw to lighting a fire for providing herself with a cup of tea, to comfort her from time to time during her long night-watch, and then all was very still in the whitewashed place. The child took the bread and butter the old woman gave him, and sat on the bed smiling at her as he ate it hungrily, quite contented now; and the only sounds that broke the silence after a time were the mutterings of the sick man. But these did not disturb the child, who finished his bread and butter, and drank some sweet tea which the old woman gave him, after which his little head sank sidewise, his eyes closed, and he fell fast asleep on the foot of the bed. The night was warm, and he needed no coverlet, while from time to time the hard-faced old woman went to look at her patient, giving him a cursory glance, and then stopping at the bedside to gently stroke the child's round cheek with her rough finger, and as the little fellow once broke into a crowing laugh in his sleep, it had a strange effect upon the old nurse, who slowly wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron, and bent down and kissed him. Hour after hour was chimed and struck by the great clock in the centre of the town; and as midnight passed, the watchful old nurse did her watching in a pleasant dream, in which she thought that she was once more young, and that boy of hers who enlisted, went to India, and was shot in an encounter with one of the hill tribes, was young again, and that she was cutting bread and butter from a new loaf. It was a very pleasant dream, and lasted a long time, for the six o'clock bell was ringing before she awoke with a start and exclaimed-- "Bless me! must have just closed my eyes. Why, a pretty bairn!" she said softly, as her hard face grew soft. "Sleeping like a top, and-- oh!" She caught the sleeping child from the bed, and hurried out of the place to lay him upon her own bed, where about an hour after he awoke, and cried to go to the tramp. But there was no tramp there for him to join. The rough man had gone on a long journey, where he could not take the child, who cried bitterly, as if he had lost the only one to whom he could cling, till the old woman returned from a task she had had to fulfil, and with one of her pockets in rather a bulgy state. Her words and some bread and butter quieted the child, who seemed to like her countenance, or read therein that something which attracts the very young as beauty does those of older growth, and the addition of a little brown sugar, into which he could dip a wet finger from time to time, made them such friends that he made no objection to being washed. "Yes, sir; went off quite quiet in his sleep," said the old nurse in answer to the doctor's question. "And the child?" "Oh, I gave him a good wash, sir, which he needed badly," said the woman volubly. "Poor little wretch!" muttered the doctor as he went away. "A tramp's child--a waif cast up by the way. Ah, Hippetts, I was right, you see: it was not for long." _ |
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