True Tilda Part 18

THE FOUR DIAMONDS.

"_Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the cl.u.s.tering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me._"--JAMES HOGG.

The spot was a hollow between two gra.s.sy meadows, where a brook came winding with a gentle fall, under coverts of hazel, willow and alder, to feed the ca.n.a.l. It was a quite diminutive brook, and its inflow, by the wharf known as Ibbetson's, troubled the stagnant ca.n.a.l water for a very short distance. But it availed, a mile above, to turn a mill, and-- a marvel in this country of factories--it had escaped pollution.

Below the mill-dam it hurried down a pretty steep declivity, dodging its channel from side to side, but always undercutting the bank on one side, while on the other it left miniature creeks or shoals and spits where the minnows played and the water-flies dried their wings on the warm pebbles; always, save that twice or thrice before finding its outlet it paused below one of these pebbly spits to widen and deepen itself into a pool where it was odds that the sun, slanting through the bushes, showed a brown trout lurking.

By such a pool--but they had scared away the trout--our two children were busy. Tilda, her ablutions over, had handed the cake of soap to Arthur Miles, scrambled out on the deeper side, and ensconced herself in the fork of an overhanging hazel-mote; where, having reached for a cl.u.s.ter of nuts and cracked them, she sat and munched, with petticoat dripping and bare legs dangling over the pool.

"Be sure you don't fergit be'ind the ears," she admonished the boy.

"You may think you're on'y a small boy an' n.o.body's goin' to search yer corners; but back at the Good Samaritan there was a tex' nailed up-- _Thou Gawd seest me_; and Sister said 'E was most partic'lar just in the little places you wouldn't think."

By her orders the boy had stripped off s.h.i.+rt and stockings, and stood now almost knee-deep in the water, lathering his hair and face and neck and shoulders with vigour. Tilda observed that his skin was delicately fair and white. She had never seen a more beautiful boy. But he was slender, and would need mothering.

"You're comin' to it nicely," she called down to him. "It feels funny to start with, but in the end you'll a'most get to like it."

"I _do_ like it."

She considered for a while.

"If that's so," she said, "you 'd better strip all over an' 'ave done with it. I was bringin' you to it gradual."

"But--"

"Oh, _that's_ all right. I knows my manners. Be quick as you can, so's not to catch cold, an' I'll take a stroll up the bank an' give a call if anyone's comin'."

She scrambled back to firm ground and set off for a saunter up stream, pausing here to reach for a nut, there to pluck a ripe blackberry, and again to examine a tangle of bryony, or the deep-red fruit of the honey-suckle; for almost all her waking life had been spent in towns among crowds, and these things were new and strange to her. She met no one on her way until, where the stream twisted between a double fold of green pasture slopes, she came to the mill--a tall rickety building, with a tiled roof that time had darkened and greened with lichens, and a tall wheel turning slowly in a splash of water, and bright water dancing over a weir below. In the doorway leaned a middle-aged man, powdered all over with white, even to the eyelids. He caught sight of her, and she was afraid he would be angry, and warn her off for trespa.s.sing; but he nodded and called out something in a friendly manner--"Good day,"

perhaps. She could not hear the words for the hum of the weir and the roaring of the machinery within the building.

It was time to retrace her steps, and she went back leisurably, peering for trout and plucking on the way a trail of the bryony, berried with orange and scarlet and yellow and palest green, to exhibit to Arthur Miles. She found him seated on the near bank, close beside her hazel-mote. He did not hear her barefooted approach, being absorbed in the movements of a wagtail that had come down to the pebbly spit for its bath; and Tilda started scolding forthwith. For he sat there naked to the waist, with his s.h.i.+rt spread to dry on the gra.s.s. He had given it a thorough soaping, and washed it and wrung it out: his stockings too.

"You'll catch yer death!" threatened Tilda.

But he was not s.h.i.+vering--so blandly fell the sun's rays, and so gently played the breeze.

"I can't make you out," she confessed. "First when I came on yer--an'

that was on'y yestiddy--you was like a thing afraid o' yer own shadder.

An' now you don't appear to mind nothin'--not even the chance o' bein'

found an' took back."

The boy drew a long breath.

"You're shakin' with cold, though. There! What did I tell yer?" But a moment later she owned herself mistaken. He was not cold at all.

"It's all so--so good," he murmured, more to himself than to her.

"What's good?"

He reached out for the trail of bryony in her lap and fingered it wonderingly, without speaking for a while. Then, lifting his hand, he laid it for a moment against her upper arm--the lightest touch--no more.

"You," he said. "You--and everything."

"Of all the queer boys--" she began, and broke off with a catch of the breath. "Hulloa!"

The boy looked up to see her eyes fixed, round and wide, on his naked shoulder.

"What's that mark you got there?" she demanded.

"This?" He put up a hand to a pattern of four diamonds joined in a horizontal line. "I don't know. I've wondered sometimes--"

"But you must 'ave come by it some'ow. Can't you remember?"

He shook his head.

"It has been there always. And yet I couldn't have been born with it."

"'Course yer couldn'," she agreed

The mark was pencilled in thin lines of red a little below the right shoulder, across the width of the deltoid muscle, and in figures about half an inch tall. "'Course yer couldn'," she repeated. "That's tattooin', if ever there was tattooin'; an', what's more," she went on, nodding her head with great positiveness, "I know who done it, leastways I know part of 'is name . . . Don't stare, now; lemme _think_ . . . Yes, it's plain as plain. 'Four di'monds,' she said; an' di'monds they are, same as on a pack o' cards--me all the time thinkin' of them as the ladies wear on their fingers. But 'on his coat,' she said; nothin'

about yer shoulder."

"'She'? Who was 'she'?" asked the boy. "Never you mind," said Tilda hurriedly. "But him as done it was called Ned. Now try to think if you ever came across a party as was called Ned?"

"There was a boy called Ned at Holy Innocents; but he died in the time we all had sore throats--and, besides, he was the youngest of us.

I don't remember any other."

"Any sailor-man, then? It's mostly sailors that know about tattooin'."

"Oh, yes," he answered promptly, to her surprise. "There were lots of sailors--five or six, I think. They had long gla.s.ses, and used to watch the sea. And one played music on a thing that went _so_."

He brought his hands together, drew them wide, and brought them together again--the palms open.

"That would be a concertina," nodded Tilda, "or elst an accordion. Now try to think, becos' all this is very important . . . Where was this place? and what like was it?"

He considered for a while, frowning to help his memory.

"There was a line of white houses, and one had red flowers in the window . . . and a pole, with flags on it . . . and s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing . . . and from the houses a path went down to the sea. I remember quite well what it was like down there . . . with waves coming in, but not reaching to us, and sand where I played, and rocks, and pools full of sh.e.l.ls and brown flowers. There were sh.e.l.ls, too, on the rocks, with live things inside--though they never moved. I don't think I knew their name; but I know it now. They were called 'scammels.'"

"I've ate limpets," said Tilda; "limpets an' whelks. But I never 'eard o' scammels. An' you don't remember the name o' this place?"

"It must have been the Island," said the boy slowly.

"Wot Island? Island's a sort o' place, but no place in partic'lar."

"I don't know . . . It must have been the Island, though."

"Now listen. Did you ever 'appen to 'ear tell of 'Olmness?"

She asked it eagerly, watching his face. But it gave no answer to her hopes. His eyes were dreamy. The word, if it struck at all on his hearing, struck dully.