Chapter 77
"Another one--your master, you mean?"
Jabez grinned from ear to ear.
"Didsta hear owt?"
"I heard the gentleman say they had to be at St. Pancras at midnight."
Paul fumbled at his breast for his watch. It was gone.
"What's o'clock?" he asked.
"Fifteen after eleven, master," said Jabez. "I've just bolted up."
Paul's face was full of resolution.
"I'll follow," he said; "I've lost time enough already."
"What, man! you'll never manish it--and you as weak as watter forby.
You'll be falling swat in the road like a wet sack."
Paul had pulled the door open. Excitement lent him strength. The next moment he was gone.
"Where's the master off to? St. Pancras?" asked Jabez.
"Fadge-te-fadge, gang out of my gate! Away, and lig down your daft head in bed!" said Gubblum.
Jabez did not act on the peddler's advice. He returned to the bar to await the return of Mrs. Drayton, whose unaccustomed absence gave rise to many sapient conjectures in the boy's lachrymose noddle. He found the door to the road open, and from this circ.u.mstance his swift intelligence drew the conclusion that his master had already gone. His hand was on the door to close and bolt it, when he heard rapid footsteps approaching. In an instant two men pushed past him and into the house.
"Where's Mr. Drayton," said one, panting from his run.
"He's this minute gone," said Jabez.
"Is that true, my lad?" the man asked, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"He's gone to St. Pancras, sir. He's got to be there at midnight," said Jabez.
The boy had recognized the visitors, and was trembling.
The men glanced into each other's faces.
"That was Drayton--the man that ran past us down the road," said one.
"Make sure of it," said the other. "Search the place; I'll wait for you here."
In two minutes more the men had left the house together.
A quarter of an hour later the night porter at the Hendon railway station saw a man run across the platform and leap into the up train just as the carriages were moving away. He remarked that the man was bareheaded, and wore his clothes awry, and that a rent near
The train had barely cleared the platform when two men ran up and came suddenly to a stand in front of the porter.
"Gone!" said one of them, with vexation.
"That would be the 11:35," said the other, "to King's Cross. Did any one get into it here, porter?"
"Yes, sergeant--Drayton, of the Hawk and Heron," said the porter.
"Your next up is 11:45 to St. Pancras?"
"Yes, sir, due at twelve."
"Is it prompt?"
"To the second."
The two men faced about.
"Time enough yet," said one.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the sea--now here, now there, now a straight flight, and now a backward swirl. As she rattled over the dark roads of Child Hill and the New End, she puzzled her confused brain to understand the business on which she had been sent. Why had the gentleman been brought out to Hendon? Why, being ill, was he so soon to be removed? Why, being removed, was he not put back into this cab, and driven to the station for c.u.mberland? What purpose could be served by sending her to the convent for the gentleman's wife, when the gentleman himself might have been driven there? Why was the lady in a convent? The landlady pursed up her lips and contracted her wrinkled brows in a vain endeavor to get light out of the gloom of these mysteries.
The thought of the gentleman lying ill at her house suggested many thoughts concerning her son. Paul was not her son, and his name was not Drayton. Whose son he was she never knew, and what his name was she had never heard. But she had fixed and done for him since he was a baby, and no mother could have loved a son more than she had loved her Paul. What a poor, puling little one he was, and how the neighbors used to shake their heads and say:
"You'll never rear it; there's a fate on it, poor, misbegotten mite!"
That was thirty long years ago, and now Paul was the l.u.s.tiest young man in Hendon. Ah! it was not Hendon then, but London, and her husband, the good man, was alive and hearty.
"It'll thrive yet, Martha," he would say, and the little one would seem to know him, and would smile and crow when he cracked his fingers over its cot.
Then the landlady thought of the dark days that followed, when bread was scarce and the gossips would say:
"Serve you right. What for do you have an extra mouth to feed?--take the brat to the foundling."
But her husband, G.o.d bless him, had always said:
"What's bite and sup for a child? Keep him, Martha; he'll be a comfort to ye yet, old woman."
Mrs. Drayton wiped her eyes as she drove in the dark.
Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a week, and when the end came he cried for the child.