True Tilda Part 37

"It is to be 'oped!" said he, absent-mindedly dusting the back of a chair.

Just at this moment a strange throbbing noise drew him to the window, to gaze out into the street. It alarmed the children too, and they were about to follow and seek the cause of it, when Mr. Jessup appeared in the doorway.

"I've managed it!" he announced, and calling to the waiter, demanded the bill.

The waiter turned, whisked a silver-plated salver apparently out of nowhere, and presented a paper upon it.

"Nine-and-six--_and_ one is ten-and-six. I thank you, sir," said the waiter, bowing low.

He was good enough to follow them to the doorway, where Mr. Jessup waved a hand to indicate a motor standing ready beside the pavement, and told the children to tumble in.

"I've taken your tip, you see."

"My tip?" gasped Tilda.

"Well, you gave me the hint for it, like Sir Isaac Newton's apple.

I've hired the car for the afternoon; and now, if you'll tuck yourselves in with these rugs, you two'll have the time of your lives."

He shut the door upon them, and mounted to a seat in front. The car was already humming and throbbing, and the hired chauffeur, climbing to a seat beside him, started her at once. They were off.

They took the road that leads northward out of Evesham, and then, turning westward, rounds the many loops and twists of Avon in a long curve. In a minute or so they were clear of the town, and the car suddenly gathered speed. Tilda caught her breath and held tight; but the pace did not seem to perturb the boy, who sat with his lips parted and his gaze fixed ahead. As for Mr. Jessup, behind the shelter of the wind-gla.s.s he was calmly preparing to sketch.

They had left the pastures behind, and were racing now through a land of orchards and market gardens, ruled out and planted with plum trees and cabbages in stiff lines that, as the car whirled past them, appeared to be revolving slowly, like the spokes of a wheel. Below, on their left, the river wandered--now close beneath them, now heading south and away, but always to be traced by its ribbon of green willows. Thus they spun past Wyre, and through Persh.o.r.e--Persh.o.r.e, set by the waterside, with its plum orchards, and n.o.ble tower and street of comfortable red houses--and crossed Avon at length by Eckington Bridge, under Bredon Hill. Straight ahead of them now ran a level plain dotted with poplars, and stretched--or seemed to stretch--right away to a line of heights, far and blue, which Mr. Jessup (after questioning the chauffeur) announced to be the Malverns.

At Bredon village just below, happening to pa.s.s an old woman in a red shawl, who scurried into a doorway at the toot-toot of their horn, he leant back and confided that the main drawback of this method of sketching (he had discovered) was the almost total absence of middle distance. He scarcely saw, as yet, how it could be overcome.

"But," said he thoughtfully, "the best way, after all, may be to ignore it. When you come to consider, middle distance in landscape is more or less of a convention."

Nevertheless Mr. Jessup frankly owned that his experiments so far dissatisfied him.

"I'll get the first principles in time," he promised, "and the general hang of it. Just now I'm being fed up with its limitations."

He sat silent for a while gazing ahead, where the great Norman tower and the mill chimneys of Tewkesbury now began to lift themselves from the plain. And coming to the Mythe Bridge, he called a halt, bade the children alight, and sent the car on to await him at an hotel in the High Street, recommended by the chauffeur.

"This," said he, examining the bridge, "appears to be of considerable antiquity. If you'll allow me, I'll repose myself for twenty minutes in the h.o.a.ry past." Unfolding a camp stool, he sat down to sketch.

The children and 'Dolph, left to themselves, wandered across the bridge.

The road beyond it stretched out through the last skirts of the town, and across the head of a wide green level dotted with groups of pasturing kine; and again beyond this enormous pasture were glimpses of small white sails gliding in and out, in the oddest fas.h.i.+on, behind clumps of trees and--for aught they could see--on dry land.

The sight of these sails drew them on until, lo! on a sudden they looked upon a bridge, far newer and wider than the one behind them, spanning a river far more majestic than Avon. Of the white sails some were tacking against its current, others speeding down stream with a brisk breeze; and while the children stood there at gaze, a small puffing tug emerged from under the great arch of the bridge with a dozen barges astern of her in a long line--boats with masts, and bulkier than any known to Tilda. They seemed to her strong enough to hoist sail and put out to sea on their own account, instead of crawling thus in the wake of a tug.

There was an old road-mender busy by the bridge end, shovelling together the road sc.r.a.pings in small heaps. He looked up and nodded. His face was kindly, albeit a trifle foolish, and he seemed disposed to talk.

"Good day!" said Tilda. "Can you tell us where the boats are goin'?"

The old road mender glanced over the parapet.

"Eh? The trows, d'ee mean?"

"Trows? Is that what they are?"

"Aye; and they be goin' down to Glo'ster first, an' thence away to Sharpness Dock. They go through the Glo'ster an' Berkeley, and at Sharpness they finish."

"Is that anywhere in the Bristol Channel?" The old man ruminated for a moment.

"You may call it so. Gettin' on for that, anyway. Fine boats they be; mons'rously improved in my time. But where d'ee come from, you two?-- here in Tewkesbury, an' not to know about Severn trows?"

"We've--er--jus' run over here for the afternoon, in a motor," said Tilda--and truthfully; but it left the old man gasping.

The children strolled on, idling by the bridge's parapet, watching the strong current, the small boats as they tacked to and fro. Up stream another tug hove in sight, also with a line of trows behind her. This became exciting, and Tilda suggested waiting and dropping a stone--a very small one--upon the tug's deck as she pa.s.sed under the archway.

"If only she could take us on!" said Arthur Miles.

"We'd 'ave to drop a big stone for _that_," Tilda opined.

And with that suddenly 'Dolph, who had been chasing a robin, and immersed in that futile sport, started to bark--uneasily and in small yaps at first, then in paroxysms interrupted by eager whines.

"W'y wot the matter with 'im?" asked Tilda.

"Look now!"

For the dog had sprung upon the parapet and stood there, with neck extended and body quivering as he saluted the on-coming tug.

"'E can't see . . . No, surely, it can't be--" said Tilda, staring.

The tug was so near by this time that they could read her name, _Severn Belle_, on the bows. Two men stood on her deck--one aft at the tiller (for she had no wheel-house), the other a little forward of mids.h.i.+ps, leaning over the port bulwarks; this latter a stoker apparently, or an engineer, or a combination of both; for he was capless, and wore a smoke-grimed flannel s.h.i.+rt, open at the breast.

Tilda could see this distinctly as the tug drew near; for the man was looking up, staring steadily at the dog on the parapet. His chest was naked. A cake of coal-dust obscured his features.

"It can't be," said Tilda; and then, as the tug drew close, she flung herself against the parapet. "Bill! Oh, Bill!"

"Cheer-oh!" answered a voice, now already among the echoes of the arch.

"Oh, Bill! . . . _Where?_" She had run across the roadway. "Oh, Bill-- take us!"

The boy running too--yet not so quickly as 'Dolph--caught a vision of a face upturned in blankest amazement as tug and barges swept down stream out of reach. But still Tilda hailed, beating back the dog, to silence his barking.

"Oh, Bill! Where're yer goin'?"

As she had cried it, so in agony she listened for the response.

It came; but Arthur Miles could not distinguish the word, nor tell if Tilda had heard better. She had caught his hand, and they were running together as fast as their small legs could carry them.

The chase was hopeless from the first. The tug, in midstream, gave no sign of drawing to sh.o.r.e. Somehow--but exactly how the boy could never tell--they were racing after her down the immense length of the green meadow.

It seemed endless, did this meadow. But it ended at last, by a gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e where the two rivers met, cutting off and ending all hope.

And here, for the first and only time on their voyage, all Tilda's courage forsook her.

"Bill! Oh, Bill!" she wailed, standing at the water's edge and stretching forth her hands across the relentless flood.