True Tilda Part 19

"I don't see that the name matters," he said after a long pause, "so long as it's the Island. We 're going there, and we shall find out all about it when we get to Stratford."

"Shall we?" asked Tilda, considerably astonished. "But _why,_ in the world?"

"Because . . . Didn't you hear Mr. Mortimer say that Shakespeare was born there?"

"I did," said Tilda. "'Ow's that goin' to 'elp us?"

"I don't know," the boy confessed, dragging a book from his pocket.

It was a ragged copy of the "Globe" Shakespeare, lacking its covers and smeared with dirt and blacking. "But he knows all about the Island."

"So _that,_" said Tilda, "is what 'urt me in the night! It made my ribs all sore. I fergot the book, an' thought you must be sufferin' from some kind o' growth; but didn't like to arsk till I knew yer better-- deformed folks bein' mostly touchy about it. When you stripped jus'

now, an' nothin' the matter, it puzzled me more'n ever. 'Ere--show me where 'e tells about it," she demanded, taking the volume and opening it on her lap.

"It's all at the beginning, and he calls it _The Tempest_ . . . But it will take you ever so long to find out. There was a s.h.i.+p wrecked, with a wicked duke on board, and he thought his son was drowned, but really it was all brought about by magic . . . In the book it's mostly names and speeches, and you only pick up here and there what the Island was like."

"But what makes you sure it's _your_ Island?"

"You wait till we get to Stratford and ask him," said the boy, nodding, bright and confident.

"Arsk'oo? Shakespeare? Sakes alive, child! Don't yer know 'e's been dead these 'undreds o' years?"

"Has he?" His face fell, but after a moment grew cheerful again.

"But that needn't matter. There must be heaps of people left to tell us about it."

Tilda closed the book. She had learnt a little, but had been disappointed in more. She felt desperately sorry for the child with this craze in his head about an Island. She had a suspicion that the memories he related were all mixed up with fictions from the play.

As she put it to herself, "'E don't mean to kid, but 'e can't 'elp 'isself." But there was one question she had omitted and must yet ask.

"You said, jus' now, you used to play by the sea, somewheres beneath that line o' white houses you was tellin' of. Well, you couldn' a-got down there on your own, at that age--could yer, now? W'ich means you must a-been carried."

"I suppose so."

"No supposin' about it. You _must_ a-been. Wot's more, you talked about the waves comin' in an' not reachin'--'us,' you said. 'Oo was it with yer? Think now! Man or woman?"

"A woman," he answered after a pause, knitting his brows.

"Wot like?"

Then happened something for which--so quiet his words had been--Tilda was in no wise prepared. He turned his eyes on her, and they were as the eyes of a child born blind; blank, yet they sought; tortured, yet dry of tears. His head was tilted back, and a little sideways. So may you see an infant's as he nuzzles to his mother's breast. The two hands seemed to grope for a moment, then fell limp at his side.

"Oh, 'us.h.!.+" besought Tilda, though in fact he had uttered no sound.

"'Ush, an' put on your s.h.i.+rt, an' come 'ome! We'll get Mrs. Mortimer to dry it off by the stove."

She helped him on with it, took him by the hand, and led him back unresisting.

They reached the ca.n.a.l bank in time to see Sam Bossom leading Old Jubilee down the towpath, on his way to borrow a cart at Ibbetson's.

And 'Dolph--whom Tilda had left with strict orders to remain on board-- no sooner caught sight of the children than he leapt ash.o.r.e and came cringing.

The dog appeared to be in mortal terror; a terror at which the children no longer wondered as they drew near the boat. Terrible sounds issued from the cabin--cries of a woman imploring mercy, fierce guttural oaths of a man determined to grant none.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Tilda, gripping Arthur Miles more tightly by the hand and hurrying him into a run. "Whatever's taken the couple?"

She paused at the gangway and listened, peering forward.

"Oh, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!" wailed the voice of Mrs.

Mortimer.

"Down, base one!" shouted her husband's.

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!"

"Nay, if you strive--a little more stress, dear, on 'to-night,' if I may suggest--Nay, if you strive--!"

"Shall we take it again, Stanislas? You used to take the pillow at 'Kill me not.'"

"I believe I did, my bud. We are rusty--a trifle rusty--the both of us."

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live--" entreated Mrs. Mortimer.

"What's all this, you two?" demanded Tilda, springing down the cabin steps and hurling herself between them.

"Hullo! Come in!" answered Mr. Mortimer genially. "This? Well, I hope it is an intellectual treat. I have always looked upon Mrs. Mortimer's Desdemona as such, even at rehearsal."

CHAPTER XI.

THE "STRATFORD-ON-AVON"

"_Day after day, day after day We stuck._"--COLERIDGE, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Well, and 'ow did the performance go off?"

When Tilda awoke at seven o'clock next morning, the _Success to Commerce_ had made three good miles in the cool of the dawn, and come to anchor again (so to speak) outside the gates of Knowsley top lock, where, as Sam Bossom explained later, the ca.n.a.l began to drop from its summit level. Six locks, set pretty close together, here formed a stairway for its descent, and Sam would hear no word of breakfast until they had navigated the whole flight.

The work was laborious, and cost him the best part of an hour. For he had to open and shut each pair of gates single-handed, using a large iron key to lift and close the sluices; and, moreover, Mr. Mortimer, though he did his best, was inexpert at guiding the boat into the lock-chamber and handling her when there. A dozen times Sam had to call to him to haul closer down towards the bottom gates and avoid fouling his rudder.

The children watched the whole operation from sh.o.r.e, now and then lending their small weight to push open the long gate-beams. 'Dolph, too, watched from sh.o.r.e; suspiciously at first, afterwards with a studied air of boredom, which he relieved by affecting, whenever the heel of a stern-post squeaked in its quoin, to mistake it for a rat--an excuse for aimless snuffling, whining and barking. And Mrs. Mortimer looked on from the well by the cabin door, saucepan in hand, prepared to cook at the shortest notice. It was fascinating to see her, at first in the almost br.i.m.m.i.n.g lock, majestically erect (she was a regal figure) challenging the horizon with a gaze at once proud, prescient of martyrdom, and prepared; and then, as Sam opened the sluices, to watch her descend, inch by inch, into the dark lock-chamber. Each time this happened Mr. Mortimer exhorted her--"Courage, my heart's best!"--and she made answer each time, "Nay, Stanislas, I have no terrors."

Mr. Mortimer, at the fifth lock, left Old Jubilee and walked around to remark to Tilda that on the boards some such apparatus--"if it could be contrived at moderate expense"--would be remarkably effective in the drowning scene of _The Colleen Bawn_; or, in the legitimate drama, for the descent of Faustus into h.e.l.l; "or, by means of a gauze transparency, the death of Ophelia might be indicated. I mention Ophelia because it was in that part my Arabella won what--if the expression may be used without impropriety--I will term her spurs. I am given to understand, however," added Mr. Mortimer, "that the apparatus requires a considerable reservoir, and a reservoir of any size is only compatible with fixity of tenure. An Ishmael--a wanderer upon the face of the earth--buffeted this way and that by the chill blast of man's ingrat.i.tude, more keenly toothed (as our divine Shakespeare observed) than winter's actual storm--but this by the way; it is not mine to antic.i.p.ate more stable fortune, but rather to say with Lear--"

"'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!'"

"I merely drop the suggestion--and I pa.s.s on."

He folded his arms and pa.s.sed on. That is to say, he strode off in a hurry at a summons from Sam to stand by and pole the boat clear as the lower lock-gates were opened.