That Stick

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE CLUE

‘BEST OF ROSES,—

‘I don’t know where my uncle is, so please send him this.  I got to Toronto all right, and had not much trouble in finding out the steady-going Jones, who is rather a swell, chief mate on board the British Empress.  He was a good deal taken aback by my story, and said that his brother had come out with his wife, but no child.  It was quite plain that he was a good deal disappointed in the Rattler, and not at all prepared for Mrs. Louisa, whom neither he nor his wife admired at all, at all.  He had got his brother a berth on a summer steamer that had just been set up on Lake Winnipeg—being no doubt glad to get rid of such an encumbrance as the wife, and he looked very blue when he heard that I was quite certain that she had taken the kid away with her, and been paid for it.  There was nothing for it but to go after them, and find out from them what they had done with poor little Mite.  He is a right good fellow, and would have gone with me, but that he is bound to his boat, and a stunner she is; but he gave me a letter to Sam, so I had to get on the Canadian Pacific Railway, so that I should have been nonplussed but for your loan.  Splendid places it goes through, you never saw such trees, nor such game.

‘As good luck would have it, I was in the same car with an Englishman—a gentleman, one could see with half an eye, and we fraternised, so that I told him what I was come about.  He was awfully good-natured, and told me he lived a mile or two out of Winnipeg, and had a share in the steam company, and if I found any difficulty I was to come to him, Mr. Forman, at Northmoor.  I stared at the name, as you may guess!  There was a fine horse and buggy waiting for him at the station, and off he went.  I put up at the hotel—there’s sure to be that whatever there is not—and went after the Joneses next.  I got at the woman first, she looked ill and fagged, as if she didn’t find life with Rattler very jolly.  She cried bucketsful, and said she didn’t know anything, since she put the poor little Mite to sleep after supper in a public-house at Liverpool.  She was dead tired, and when she woke he was gone, and her husband swore at her, and never would tell her what he had done with the boy, except that he had not hurt him.  Then I interviewed Sam Rattler himself.  He cut up rough, as he said my Lord had done him an ill turn, and he had the game in his hands now, and was not going to let him know what was become of his child, without he came down handsome enough to make up for what he had done him out of.  So then I had to go off to Mr. Forman.  He has such a place, a house such as any one might be delighted to have—pine trees behind, a garden in front, no end of barns and stables, with houses and cows, fine wheat fields spreading all round, such as would do your heart good.  That is what Mr. Forman and his brother-in-law, Captain Alder, have made, and there’s a sweet little lady as ever you saw, Alder’s sister.  The Captain was greatly puzzled to hear it was Lord Northmoor’s son I was looking for.  He is not up in the peerage like your father, you see, and I had to make him understand.  He thought Lord N. must be either the old man, or Lady Adela’s little boy.  He said some of his happiest days had been at Northmoor, and he asked after Lady Adela, and if Miss Morton was married.  He came with me, and soon made Mr. Rattler change his note, by showing him that it would be easy to give him the sack, even if he was not laid hold of by the law on my information for stealing the child.  They are both magistrates and could do it.  So at last the fellow growled out that he wasn’t going to be troubled with another man’s brat, and just before embarking, he had laid it down asleep at the door of Liverpool Workhouse!  So no doubt poor little Michael is there!  I would have telegraphed at once; but I don’t know where my uncle is, or whether he knows about it, but you can find out and send him this letter at once.  I have asked him to pay your advance out of my quarter; and as to the rest of it, it is all owing to you that the poor little kid is not to grow up a pauper.

‘I am staying on at Northmoor—it sounds natural; they want another hand for their harvesting, so I am working out my board, as is the way here, at any rate till I hear from my uncle, and I shall ask him to let me stay here for good as a farming-pupil.  It would suit me ever so much better than the militia, even if I could get into it, which I suppose I haven’t done.  It is a splendid country, big enough to stretch oneself in, and I shall never stand being cramped up in an island after it; besides that I don’t want to see Ida again in a hurry, though there is some one I should like no end to see again.  There, I must not say any more, but send this on to my uncle.  I wish I could see his face.  I did look to bring Mite back to him, but that can’t be, as I have not tin enough to carry me home.  I hope your loan has not got you into a scrape.

The letter to Lord Northmoor, which the servant put into his hand, was shorter, and began with the more important sentence—’The rascal dropped Michael at Liverpool Workhouse.’

The father read it with an ejaculation of ‘Thank God,’ the aunt answered with a cry of horror, so that he thought for a moment she had supposed he said ‘dropped him into the sea,’ and repeated ‘Liverpool Workhouse.’

‘Oh, yes, yes; but that is so dreadful.  The Honourable Michael Morton in a workhouse!’

‘He is safe and well taken care of there, no doubt,’ said Frank.  ‘I have no fears now.  There are much worse places than the nurseries of those great unions.’  Then, as he read on, ‘There, Emma, your boy has acted nobly.  He has fully retrieved what his sister has done.  Be happy over that, dear sister, and be thankful with me.  My Mary, my Mary, will the joy be too much?  Oh, my boy!  How soon can I reach Liverpool?  There, you will like to read it.  I must go and thank that good girl who found him the means.’

He was gone, and found Rose in the act of reading her letter aloud (all but certain bits, that made her falter as if the writing was bad) to her parents and Mr. Deyncourt.  And there, in full assembly, he found himself at a loss for words.  No one was so much master of the situation as Mr. Rollstone.

‘My Lord, I have the honour to congratulate your Lordship,’ he said, with a magnificence only marred by his difficulty in rising.

‘I—I,’ stammered his Lordship, with an unexpected choke in his throat, ‘have to congratulate you, Mr. Rollstone, on having such a daughter.’  Then, grasping Rose’s hand as in a vice, ‘Miss Rollstone, what we owe to you—is past expression.’

‘I am sure she is very happy, my Lord, to have been of service,’ said her mother, with a simper.

Mr. Deyncourt, to relieve the tension of feeling, said, ‘Miss Rollstone was reading the letter about Mr. Morton’s adventures.  Would you not like her to begin again?’

And while Rose obeyed, Lord Northmoor was able to extract his cheque-book from his pocket-book, and as Rose paused, to say—

‘I have a debt of which my nephew reminds me.  Miss Rollstone furnished the means for his journey.  Will you let me fill this up?  This can be repaid,’ he added, with a smile, ‘the rest, never.’

Mr. Rollstone might have been distressed at the venture on which his daughter’s savings had gone; but he was perfectly happy and triumphant now, except that, even more than Mrs. Morton, he suffered from the idea of the Honourable Michael being exposed to the contamination of a workhouse, and was shocked at his Lordship’s thinking it would have been worse for him to be with the Rattler.  Then, hastily looking at his watch, Lord Northmoor asked when the post went out, and hearing there was but half an hour to spare, begged Mr. Deyncourt to let him lose no time by giving him the wherewithal to write to his wife.

‘She would miss a note and be uneasy,’ he said.  ‘Yet I hardly know what I dare tell her.  Only not mourning paper!’ he added, with an exultant smile.

In the curate’s room he wrote—

‘Dearest Wife,—

‘I have been out all day, and have only a moment to say that I am quite well, and trust to have some most thankworthy news for you.  Don’t be uneasy if you do not hear to-morrow.—Your own

There was still time to scribble—

‘Dear Lady Adela,—

‘I trust to you to prepare Mary for well-nigh incredible joy, but do not agitate her too soon.  I cannot come till Friday afternoon.

Having sent this off, his next search was for a time-table.  He would fain have gone by the mail train that very night, but Mr. Deyncourt and Mrs. Morton united in persuading him that his strength was not yet equal to such a pull upon it, and he yielded.  They hardly knew the man, usually so equable and quiet as to be almost stolid.

He smiled, and declared he could neither eat nor sleep, but he actually did both, sleeping, indeed, better and longer than he had done since his illness, and coming down in the morning a new man, as he called himself, but the old one still in his kindness to Mrs. Morton.  He promised to telegraph to her as soon as he knew all was well, assured her that he would do his best to keep the scandal out of the papers, that he would never forget his obligations to Herbert’s generosity, and that if she made up her mind to leave Westhaven he would facilitate her so doing.

Ida was not up.  She had had a very bad night, and indeed she had confessed that she had been miserable under dreams worse than waking, ever since the child was carried off.  Her mother had observed her restlessness and nervousness, but had set a good deal down to love, and perhaps had not been entirely wrong.  At any rate, she was now really ill, and could not bear the thought of seeing her uncle, though he sent a message to her that now he did not find it nearly so hard to forgive her, and that he felt for her with all his heart.

It was this gentleness that touched Mrs. Morton above all.  Years had softened her; perhaps, too, his patience, and the higher tone of Mr. Deyncourt’s ministry, and she was, in many respects, a different woman from her who had so loudly protested against his marrying Mary Marshall.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE HONOURABLE PAUPER

Lord Northmoor’s card was given to the porter with an urgent request for an interview with the Master of the workhouse.

He steadied his voice with difficulty when, on entering the office, he said that he had come to make inquiry after his son, a child of three and a half years old, who had been supposed to be drowned, but he had now discovered had been stolen by a former nurse, and left at the gate of the workhouse, and as the Master paused with an interrogative ‘Yes, my Lord?’ he added—‘On the night between the Wednesday and Thursday of Whitsun week, May the—’

‘Children are so often left,’ said the Master.  ‘I will ascertain from the books as to the date.’

After an interval really of scarcely a minute, but which might have been hours to the father’s feeling, he read—

‘May 18th.—Boy, of apparently four years old, left on the steps, asleep, apparently drugged.’

‘Ah!’

‘Calls himself Mitel Tent—name probably Michael Trenton.’

‘Michael Kenton Morton.’  Then he reflected, ‘No doubt he thought he was to say his catechism.’

‘Does not seem to know parents’ name nor residence.  Dress—man’s old rough coat over a brown holland pinafore—no mark—feet bare; talks as if carefully brought up.  May I ask you to describe him.’

‘Brown eyes, light hair, a good deal of colour, sturdy, large child,’ said Lord Northmoor, much agitated.  ‘There,’ holding out a photograph.

‘Ah!’ said the Master, in assent.

‘And where—is he here?’

‘He is at the Children’s Home at Fulwood Lodge.  Perhaps I had better ask one of the Guardians, who lives near at hand, to accompany you.’

This was done, the Guardian came, much interested in the guest, and a cab was called.  Lord Northmoor learnt on the way that the routine in such cases, which were only too common, was the child was taken by the police to the bellman’s office till night and there taken care of, in case he should be a little truant of the place, but being unclaimed, he spent a few days at the Union, and then was taken to the Children’s Home at Fulwood.  Inquiries had been made, but the little fellow had been still under the influence of the drug that had evidently been administered to him at first, and then was too much bewildered to give a clear account of himself.  He was in confusion between his real home and Westhaven, and the difference between his appellation and that of his parents was likewise perplexing, nor could he make himself clear, even as to what he knew perfectly well, when interrogated by official strangers who alarmed him.

Lord Northmoor was himself a Poor Law Guardian, and had no vague superstitions to alarm him as to the usage of children in workhouses; but he was surprised at the pleasant aspect of the nursery of the Liverpool Union, a former gentleman’s house and grounds, with free air and beautiful views.

The Matron, on being summoned, said that she had from the first been sure, in spite of his clothes, that little Mike was a well-born, tenderly-nurtured child, with good manners and refined habits, and she had tried in vain to understand what he said of himself, though night and morning, he had said his prayers for papa and mamma, and at first added that ‘papa might be well,’ and he might go home; but where home was there was no discovering, except that there had been journeys by puff puff; and Louey, and Aunt Emma, and Nurse, and sea, and North something, and ‘nasty man,’ were in an inextricable confusion.

She took them therewith into a large airy room, where the elder children, whole rows of little beings in red frocks, were busied under the direction of a lively young nurse, in building up coloured cubes, ‘gifts’ in Kindergarten parlance.

There was a few moments of pause, as all the pairs of eyes were raised to meet the new-comers.  With a little sense of disappointment, but more of anxiety, Frank glanced over them, and encountered a rounded, somewhat puzzled stare from two brown orbs in a rosy face.  Then he ventured to say ‘Mite,’ and there followed a kind of laughing yell, a leap over the structure of cubes, and the warm, solid, rosy boy was in his arms, on his breast, the head on his shoulder in indescribable ecstasy of content on both sides, of thankfulness on that of the father.

‘No doubt there!’ said the Guardian and the Matron to one another, between smiles and tears.

Mite asked no questions.  Fate had been far beyond his comprehension for the last five months, and it was quite enough for him to feel himself in the familiar arms, and hear the voice he loved.

‘Would he go to mamma?’

The boy raised his head, looked wonderingly over his father’s face, and said in a puzzled voice—

‘Louey said she would take me home in the puff puff.’

‘Come now with father, my boy.  Only kiss this good lady first, who has been so kind to you.

‘Kiss Tommy too, and Fanny,’ said Michael, struggling down, and beginning a round of embraces that sufficiently proved that his nursery had been a happy one, while his father could see with joy that he was as healthy and fresh-looking as ever, perhaps a little less plump, but with the natural growth of the fourth year, and he was much the biggest of the party, with the healthfulness of country air and wholesome tendance, while most of the others were more or less stunted or undergrown.

Lord Northmoor’s longing was to take his recovered son at once to gladden his mother’s eyes; but Michael’s little red frock would not exactly suit with the manner of his travels.

So he accepted the Guardian’s invitation to come to his house and let Michael be fitted out there, an invitation all the more warmly given because it would have been a pity to let wife and daughters miss the interest of the sight of the lost child and his father.  So, all formalities being complied with and in true official spirit, the account for the boy’s maintenance having been asked for, a hearty and cordial leave was taken of the Matron, and Michael Kenton Morton was discharged from Liverpool Union.

The lady and her daughters were delighted to have him, and would have made much of him, but the poor little fellow proved that his confidence in womankind had been shaken, by clinging tight to his father, and showing his first inclination to cry when it was proposed to take him into another room to be dressed.  Indeed, his father was as little willing to endure a moment’s separation as he could be, and looked on and assisted to see him made into a little gentleman again in outward costume.

After luncheon there was still time to reach Malvern by a reasonable hour of the evening, and Frank felt as if every moment of sorrow were almost a cruelty to his wife.  The Guardian’s wife owned that she ought not to press him to sleep at her house, and forwarded his departure with strong fellow-feeling for the mother’s hungry bosom.

From the station Frank sent telegrams to Herbert, to Mrs. Morton, and to Rose Rollstone; besides one to Lady Adela, containing only the reference, Luke xv. 32.

People looked somewhat curiously at the thin, worn-looking, elderly man, with the travelling bag in one hand, and the little boy holding tight by the other, each with a countenance of radiant gladness; and again, to see how, when seated, he allowed himself to be climbed over and clasped by the sturdy being, who seemed almost overwhelming to one so slight.