True Tilda Part 26

"I 'opes yer likes it! . . . We're in a tight corner, Arthur Miles, an'

nothing for it but bolt while they're talkin'."

"We might hide here in the dark--but, of course, you know best."

"O' course I do," Tilda agreed. "'Ide 'ere? An' who's to warn the Mortimers?"

She stooped and again caught 'Dolph under her arm. Then she straightened herself up and stood listening to the voices, clearly audible from the entrance of the store below.

"Tip-toe, mind! There's on'y a board between us--and quiet, for your life!"

They stole to the steps and paused for a moment, peering into the gloom.

Here too their enemies' voices were audible, but around the corner of the store, the coast was clear. They crept down the steps and gained the road. In the highway Tilda drew breath.

"Things look pretty bad," she said; "but things ain't altogether so bad as they look. Where we're goin' we'll find Bill; an' Bill's a tower o'

strength."

"But we don't even know the way," objected Arthur Miles.

"No, but 'Dolph does. 'Ere, 'Dolph"--she set down the dog--"you got to lead us where the others went; an' at the end of it there's a little surprise for yer. 'Ear?"

'Dolph heard, shook himself, wagged his tail, and padded forward into the gathering darkness; ran a little way and halted, until they overtook him. He understood.

"If they catch up with us we must nip into a gateway," panted Tilda.

But as yet there was no sound of wheels on the road behind. They pa.s.sed the Hollys' cottage and stable, and braved the undiscovered country.

The road twisted between tall hedgerows, black in the shadow of elms.

No rain had fallen for many days, and the powdered dust lay so thick underfoot, that twice or thrice Tilda halted--still holding the boy's hand--in doubt if they had wandered off upon turf. But always, as they hesitated thus, 'Dolph came trotting back to rea.s.sure them.

In this manner, trotting and pausing, they had covered a bare three-quarters of a mile when there smote on their ears a throbbing of the air--a thud-thud which Arthur Miles took for the beat of a factory engine, so like it was to the echoes that had floated daily, and all day long, across the Orphanage wall; but Tilda, after hearkening a moment, announced it to be the ba.s.s of Gavel's steam organ. The hoot of a whistle presently confirmed her guess.

'Dolph was steering them steadily towards the sound; and a glow in the sky, right ahead and easily discernible, would have guided them even without his help. Tilda recognised that glow also.

"And the best is, it means Bill," she promised.

But they did not catch the tune itself until they were close upon the meadow. At the top of a rise in the road it broke on them, the scene almost simultaneously with its music; and a strange scene it was, and curiously beautiful--a slope, and below the slope a gra.s.sy meadow set with elms; a blaze of light, here and there in the open s.p.a.ces; in one s.p.a.ce a steam roundabout revolving with mirrors, in another the soft glow of naphtha-lamps through tent cloth; glints of light on the boughs, dark shadows of foliage, a moving crowd, its murmur so silenced by music and the beat of a drum that it seemed to sway to and fro without sound, now pressing forward into the glare, now dissolving into the penumbra.

Arthur Miles paused, trembling. He had never seen the like. But Tilda had recovered all her courage.

"This," she a.s.sured him, "is a little bit of all right," and taking his hand, led him down the slope and posted him in the shadow of a thorn-bush.

"Wait here," she enjoined; and he waited, while she descended cautiously towards the roundabout with its revolving mirrors.

He lost sight of her. He lay still where she had commanded him to lie, watching the many twinkling lights, watching the roundabout turn and flash and come to a stop, watching the horseplay of boys and maidens as one set clambered off laughing and another pressed forward into their places. The tune droned in his ears, came to an end, went on again.

He drowsed to its recurrent beat. From his couch in the wet shadow he gazed up at the stars riding overhead, above the elms.

At the end of twenty minutes Tilda stole back to him; and, softly though she came, her footfall woke him out of his dreams with a start.

Yet, and though he could barely discern her from the shadow of the thorn-bush, he knew on the instant that she brought disappointment.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Everything's the matter. Bill's gone!"

CHAPTER XIV.

ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMROSE FETE.

"_Confusion and Exeunt._"--OLD STAGE DIRECTION.

"Gone?" echoed the boy blankly.

"'Ad a row with Gavel this very aft'rnoon. Got the sack, with a week's pay, an' packed up his kit after tea an' 'ooked it. Bess Burton told me all about it, knowin' me an' Bill to be friends--she's the woman sits at the pay-table an' gives the change. 'E wouldn' tell n.o.body where 'e was goin'. Ain't cryin' about it, are yer?"

"No," he answered, as she peered close to him in the darkness.

"Only we'd built everything on Bill, hadn't we?"

Tilda did not answer this question.

"That's the way with Bill," she said loyally. "Folks never know 'is worth till they miss 'im. Bess allowed to me that before the evenin's out Gavel will be offerin' 'is s.h.i.+rt to 'ave 'im back--an' Bess don't know the worst neither. They've put on a boy to work the engine, an'

Bill 'as told me things about that boiler o' Gavel's . . . I couldn' get near enough to read the pressure, but by the way 'e was pilin' in coal--"

She broke off and gazed down the slope. Even as once the poet Gray looked down from the Windsor's heights up the distant prospect of Eton College, so did she regard the cl.u.s.ter of naphtha lights around the galloping horses on which, unconscious of their doom, the little victims played.

"But there's no call to give up an' cry about it," she resumed bravely.

"We're in a tight place, but it's our turn to play. (That's another sayin' o' Bill's. Oh, dear, I wish you'd known 'im!) You see, we know where Gla.s.son is an' what 'e's up to, an' can look out accordin'.

That's one card to us. An' the next is, I've seen Sam Bossom an' warned 'im. 'E was standin' outside 'is show, an' not darin' to go in; the reason bein' Mortimer 'ad picked up a girl from the shootin' gallery, that used to belong to 'is company, and 'e an' she an' Mrs. Mortimer are doing the last act of _Oth.e.l.lo_ life size an' tuppence coloured, an' Sam says 'e can't look on an' command 'is feelin's. 'E was considerable surprised to see me, an' started scoldin'; but I left 'im promisin' that 'e'd put a stop to Gla.s.son some'ow, if it had to be on the point o' the jaw; an' we're to nip across and 'ide under the Grand Stand until he comes for us or sends word. See it?"

She pointed across to a crowded platform on the farther slope--a structure of timber draped with scarlet cloth, and adorned with palms and fairy lamps. It stood on the rise a little above and to the left of the roundabout, the flares of which lit up the faces and gay dresses of Sir Elphinstone's guests gathered there to watch the show.

The two children made down the slope towards it, very cautiously, fetching a circuit of the crowd. But as they reached the bottom of the dip, on a sudden the crowd spread itself in lines right across their path. Along these lines three or four men ran shouting, with ropes and lanterns in their hands; and for one horrible moment it flashed on Tilda that all this agitation must be the hue-and-cry.

"Clear the course! Course, course! Just startin'--the great Ladies'

Race! Clear the course!"

So it was only a race, after all! Tilda gripped the boy's hand tightly, and held him at stand-still some paces in rear of the crowd. But of this caution there was little need. All the faces were turned the other way; all the crowd pressed forwards against the ropes which the lantern-bearers drew taut to fence off the course. A pistol-shot cracked out. Someone cried, "They're off!" and a murmur grew and rolled nearer--rising, as it approached, from a murmur into great waves--waves of Homeric laughter.

The race went by, and a stranger race Tilda had never beheld.

The compet.i.tors were all women, of all ages--village girls, buxom matrons, withered crones--and each woman held a ladle before her in which an egg lay balanced. Some were in sun-bonnets, others in their best Sunday headdress. Some had kilted their skirts high. Others were all dishevelled with the ardour of the race. The leader--a gaunt figure with spoon held rigidly before her, with white stockinged legs, and a truly magnificent stride--had come and pa.s.sed before Tilda could believe her eyes. After a long interval three others tottered by in a cl.u.s.ter. The fifth dropped her egg and collapsed beside it, to be hauled to her feet and revived by the stewards amid inextinguishable laughter from the crowd. In all, fourteen compet.i.tors rolled in, some with empty ladles, some laughing and protesting that not a step farther could they stir. But, long before the crowd closed in, Tilda saw the winner breast a glimmering line of tape stretched at the end of the course, and heard the shouts saluting her victory.

"But who is it?"

"Miss Sally!"

"Miss Sally, if ever you heard the like! . . . But there! blood will tell."

"It's years since I seen her," said a woman.