True Tilda Part 6

"Sarah 'Uggins."

"Miss or Missis?"

"What's that to you?"

The blood surged into the woman's face, and she eyed the child suspiciously under lowered brows. Tilda slipped down from her chair.

She had a sense of standing dangerously on the edge of something evil, forbidden. If only she could scream aloud and rush out--anywhere--into the open air!

"I--I was only wantin' to speak polite," she stammered. "I been impident to yer. But O, Sarah 'Uggins--O, ma'am--'elp me see 'im an'

get away, an' I'll bless yer name fur ever and ever! Amen."

"Nip in front o' me," said the woman, "and be quick, then! First turnin' to the right down the stairs, an' don't clatter yer boots."

Tilda obeyed breathlessly, and found herself in a dark stone stairway.

It led down steeply to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and here her guide overtook and stepped ahead of her. They pa.s.sed through two dirty kitchens, through a wash-house littered with damp linen and filled with steam from a copper in the corner, and emerged upon a well-court foetid with sink-water and decaying sc.r.a.ps of vegetables. They had met no one on their way, and it crossed Tilda's mind--but the thought was incredible--that Sarah Huggins served this vast barracks single-handed. A flight of stone steps led up from this area to the railed coping twenty feet aloft, where the sky shone pure and fresh.

"Up there, an' you 're in the garden." Tilda ran, so fast that at the head of the steps she had to clutch at the railing and draw breath.

The garden, too, was deserted. A gravelled path, scarcely four feet wide, ran straight to the end of it, and along this she hurried, not daring to look back, but aware that all the back windows were following her--watching and following her--with horrible curtainless eyes.

The garden, planted for utility, was pa.s.sably well kept. It contained, in all its parcelled length, not a single flower. At the very end a few currant bushes partially hid the front of the shed and gla.s.s-house.

They were the one sc.r.a.p of cover, and when she reached them she had a mind to crouch and hide, if only for a moment, from the staring windows.

Her own eyes, as she pa.s.sed these bushes, were fastened on the shed.

But it seemed that someone else had discovered shelter here; for with a quick, half-guttural cry, like that of a startled animal, a small figure started up, close by her feet, and stood and edged away from her with an arm lifted as if to ward off a blow.

It was a small boy--a boy abominably ragged and with smears of blacking thick on his face, but for all that a good-looking child. Tilda gazed at him, and he gazed back, still without lowering his arm. He was trembling, too.

"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" said Tilda, lifting the brim of her chip hat and quoting from one of Mr. Maggs's most effective dramatic sketches. But as the boy stared, not taking the allusion, she went on, almost in the same breath, "Is your name Arthur--Arthur Miles?"

It seemed that he did not hear. At any rate he still backed and edged away from her, with eyes distended--she had seen their like in the ring, in beautiful terrified horses, but never in human creatures.

--"Because, if you 're Arthur Miles, I got a message for you."

A tattered book lay on the turf at her feet. She picked it up and held it out to him. For a while he looked at her eyes, and from them to the book, unable to believe. Then, with a noise like a sob, he sprang and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, and hid it with a hug in the breast of his coat.

"I got a message for you," repeated Tilda. "There's someone wants to see you, very bad."

"You go away!" said the boy sullenly. "You don't know. If _he_ catches you, there's no chance."

Tilda had time in her distress to be astonished by his voice. It was pure, distinct, with the tone of a sphere not hers. Yet she recognised it. She had heard celestial beings--ladies and gentlemen in Maggs's three-s.h.i.+lling seats--talk in voices like this boy's.

"I've took a 'eap o' trouble to find yer," she said. "An' now I've done it, _all_ depends on our gettin' out o' this. Ain't there no way? _Do_ try to think a bit!"

The boy shook his head.

"There isn't any way. You let me alone, and clear."

"He can't do worse'n kill us," said Tilda desperately, with a look back at the house. "S'help me, let's try!"

But her spirit quailed.

"He won't kill you. He'll catch you, and keep you here for ever and ever."

"We'll try, all the same."

Tilda shut her teeth and held out a hand--or rather, was beginning to extend it--when a sound arrested her. It came from the door of the gla.s.s-house, and as she glanced towards it her heart leapt and stood still.

"'Dolph!"

Yes, it was 'Dolph, dirty, begrimed with coal; 'Dolph fawning towards her, cringing almost on his belly, but wagging his stump of a tail ecstatically. Tilda dashed upon him.

"Oh, 'Dolph!--_how?_"

The dog strangled down a bark, and ran back to the gla.s.s-house, but paused in the doorway a moment to make sure that she was following.

It was all right. Tilda had caught the boy's hand, and was dragging him along. 'Dolph led them through the gla.s.s-house and down a flight of four steps to the broken door of a furnace-room. They pushed after him.

Behind the furnace a second doorway opened upon a small coal-cellar, through the ceiling of which, in the right-hand corner, poured a circular ray of light. The ray travelled down a moraine of broken coal, so broad at the base that it covered the whole cellar floor, but narrowing upwards and towards the manhole through which the daylight shone.

Down through the manhole, too--O bliss!--came the sound of a man's whistle.

"_Ph'ut! Phee-ee--uht!_ Darn that fool of a dog! _Ph'w_--"

"For the Lord's sake!" called Tilda, pus.h.i.+ng the boy up the coal-shute ahead of her and panting painfully as her feet sank and slid in the black pile.

"Eh? . . . Hullo!" A man's face peered down, shutting off the daylight.

"Well, in all my born days--"

He reached down a hand.

"The boy first," gasped Tilda, "--and quick!"

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH CHILDE ARTHUR LOSES ONE MOTHER AND GAINS ANOTHER.

"_But and when they came to Easter Gate, Easter Gate stood wide; 'y' are late, y' are late,' the Porter said; 'This morn my Lady died.'_"--OLD BALLAD.

"Well, in all my born days!" said the young coalheaver again, as he landed the pair on the ca.n.a.l bank.

He reached down a hand and drew up 'Dolph by the scruff of his neck.

The dog shook himself, and stood with his tail still wagging.

"Shut down the hole," Tilda panted, and catching sight of the iron cover, while the young man hesitated she began to drag at it with her own hands.

"Steady on there!" he interposed. "I got five hundred more to deliver."