Rumple’s Discovery
Day after day of unbroken fine weather
followed. There was the halt of twelve hours
at Cape Town, and the seven earnestly desired to be
allowed to go ashore. But the captain refused
to allow them off the vessel, as they had been placed
in his charge by Mr. Runciman, and so they had to
content themselves with gazing at Table Mountain from
the deck of the ship, or rather at the tablecloth,
as the brooding cloud was called, which hid the mountain
from their view.
The shipping in the bay, and the distant
glimpses of the town, gave them plenty to look at,
however; and although the little boys and Rumple were
in a state of simmering rebellion against the dictates
of the kindly but rather autocratic commander, Rupert
and Nealie were so well amused that they had no room
for grumbling, while Sylvia had taken to drawing as
a pastime, and spent the hours in making an ambitious
sketch of the scene. It was a little out in drawing,
naturally as she had had no lessons, and it was difficult
to determine whether the ships were sailing up Table
Mountain, or the houses taking short voyages across
the bay; but she was so thoroughly happy and satisfied
with her performance that it would have been almost
cruel to have found any fault with it; and, as Rupert
said, there was the fun of finding out whether any
particular object stood for a ship, a warehouse, or
a clump of trees, the fun being increased when the
artist herself was not sure on the subject.
When they were a week out from Cape
Town the weather changed and became wet and stormy.
The rolling was dreadful, and great was the groaning
and the lamentation when they were not allowed on
deck for three whole days in succession.
The fourth day broke without wind,
although the sea was still very rough. But, having
gained permission to go on deck, the three younger
boys were out, steadying themselves by anything which
came handy, and vastly enjoying the fun of seeing
other people lurching about in all sorts of funny
antics, all involuntary ones of course.
Then suddenly something happened which
might easily have been a tragedy. Rumple and
Billykins were rounding the curve of one of the lower
decks, when a heavy sea struck the vessel as she pitched
nose first down into a deep valley of foam, and a
stout old lady, who had been rashly trying to ascend
the stairs to the upper deck, was hit by the shower
of spray and knocked off the stairs. She must
have fallen with great violence, and would probably
have been very badly hurt, had it not been for Rumple,
who ran in to her, as if she had been an extra big
cricket ball which he was trying to catch. Of
course she descended upon him with an awful smash,
and nearly knocked the wind out of him, and equally
of course they both rolled over together, and were
drenched by the showers of spray. But he had
broken her fall, and although she was badly shaken
there were no limbs broken, as there must have been
had she fallen with full force on to the slippery
boards. A steward who was passing ran to pick
up the old lady, while a passenger sorted Rumple out
from under the old lady’s skirts, and, draining
some of the water out of him, held him up so that
the air might revive him.
Meanwhile Billykins, who had been
a horrified spectator of his brother’s rash
heroism, and had remained speechless until Rumple was
picked up, burst into the very noisiest crying of
which he was capable, and, standing with his legs
very wide apart and his mouth as far open as it would
go, howled his very loudest, the sound of his woe speedily
bringing a crowd to see what was the matter.
“I don’t think that he
is very much the worse for his fall, only a little
bit dazed by having the old lady come flop down upon
him; but if he had not been there to break her fall,
it is quite likely that she would have broken her
neck,” said the gentleman who had picked Rumple
up, as he handed him over to the care of Nealie.
“Poor, poor boy, how frightened
he must have been when she fell upon him!” cried
Nealie, who thought that the whole affair was an accident,
and had no idea of Rumple’s bravery.
Then Billykins promptly stopped howling
to explain, which he did in jerks, being rather breathless
from his vocal efforts.
“Rumple saw her fall, and rushed
in to save her. It was just splendid heroism the
sort that gets the Victoria Cross; but so dreadful
hopeless you see, because she was so big, and she
came down flop on the top of him, and he was just just
extinguished, you know, like the candle flame when
we used to put the tin extinguishers on them when we
lived at Beechleigh.”
“I’ll be all right in
a minute, only my wind is gone,” gasped Rumple,
who looked rather flattened, and was not at all pleased
to find himself momentarily famous.
The old lady’s daughter, a thin,
angular person with a long nose, rushed up at this
juncture, and, seizing upon Rumple, hugged and kissed
him in the presence of everyone, declaring that she
would always love him for having saved her dear mother’s
life in such a noble fashion.
“I am wet through, Nealie; help
me to get into dry clothes,” panted Rumple,
struggling to escape from this unexpected and wholly
unwelcome embrace.
Nealie rose to the occasion, and swept
him off to their own quarters, where Rupert met them
and undertook the task of getting him rubbed down
and into dry clothes as quickly as possible, while
Nealie went back to the deck for news of the old lady.
Everyone was full of praises of Rumple’s
action in breaking the old lady’s fall; but
Nealie was secretly uneasy as to whether he had received
more damage from the impact than had at first appeared.
So, when she had been assured that Mrs. Barrow, who
apparently weighed about fourteen stone, was only
shaken, and not otherwise hurt, she hurried back again
to satisfy herself that Rumple was sound in wind and
limb.
She found Rupert hanging the wet garments
up to drain, and was talking to him about Rumple,
when the door of the boys’ cabin was pushed open
and they heard Rumple calling to them in a tone of
such dismay that a sudden cold shiver went all over
Nealie, making her turn white to the lips.
“Something is wrong; come along,
Nealie,” said Rupert curtly, and he turned to
limp toward the door of the cabin, which stood ajar.
But Nealie passed him with a fleet
tread, and, pushing open the door, stood on the threshold
transfixed with surprise. It was not clear to
her what she expected to see, her one thought being
that Rumple must certainly have been much more hurt
than they had imagined.
What she did see was Rumple sitting
on the lower berth partly dressed, and holding a letter
in his hand, a letter which had a stamp upon it which
had not been through a post office, but that even at
the first glance struck her as having a familiar look,
a something she had seen before.
“Rumple, what is it? What
is the matter, laddie?” she asked in the very
tenderest tone of which she was capable; for there
was that in his face which warned her the trouble
was one of magnitude.
“I don’t expect that you
will any of you ever be able to forgive me, and I
haven’t a word to say in excuse, and however
I came to be such a goat I can’t think,”
he replied in a shaken tone as he held the envelope
out for her to take.
But even now she did not understand,
and only stared at it in a stupid fashion, then read
the address aloud in a bewildered tone:
“Dr. Plumstead,
“Hammerville,
“Clayton,
“New
South Wales,
“Australia.”
“What letter is it?” asked
Rupert in a shocked voice. He was standing close
to Nealie now, and looking to the full as amazed as
she did herself.
“It is the letter that Mr. Runciman
wrote to tell Father that we were to be sent out to
him,” replied Rumple in a hollow tone. “Don’t
you remember that we asked to be allowed to post it
ourselves, just because we were so afraid that he
would forget to write it unless we waited until it
was done? And now it is just the same as if it
had never been written at all.”
Twice, three times, Nealie tried to
speak, but no sound came, and she plumped down upon
the berth beside Rumple with a shocked bewilderment
upon her face which was dreadful to see.
“Don’t look like that,
Nealie; buck up, old lady, we’ll find a way out
of the muddle somehow,” said Rupert, slapping
her on the back, with a harsh laugh that had a weird
sound; it was so far removed from merriment.
But Nealie only shook her head, as
much as to say that it was quite beyond her power
to do anything in the way of bucking up just then,
and they were all three staring at each other in dismayed
silence, when there came a rush of feet outside, and
the door was flung open by Don, who was followed by
Sylvia and Ducky, while Billykins, still snorting
heavily, brought up the rear.
“Billykins told us how brave
Rumple had been in saving the life of that fat old
woman ” began Sylvia, then
stopped suddenly, scared by the look on the faces
of the three; then she asked in a hushed tone:
“Oh, whatever can be the matter! Is Rumple
very badly hurt?”
“I am not hurt at all, except
in my feelings,” replied Rumple, who was nursing
his old jacket, as if it were a troublesome infant
which he had to put to sleep.
“Was she horrid to you?
And after you had saved her life, fourteen stone of
it?” demanded Sylvia, with a stormy note in her
tone.
“It is not the woman at all,”
here Rumple waved the old jacket with a tragic air.
“The fault lies with me, and you had all better
know about it at once, and if you decide to disown
me for the future, I can’t complain, for I deserve
to be sent to Coventry for evermore.”
“Oh, drop your figures of speech,
and tell us in plain English what the trouble is all
about!” exclaimed Sylvia impatiently. “Nealie
looks as if she had seen a ghost, and Rupert is glum,
so out with it, Rumple, old boy, and own up like a
man.”
“I have owned up,” he
answered gloomily, and again he waved the old jacket
to and fro, then hugged it closely in his arms again.
“When I changed my clothes I thought that I
would put this jacket on, though it is rather tight
across the back, and I always hate wearing it for that
reason. I have not put it on since the day we
all went down to the Paddock to ask Mr. Runciman to
send us to Australia. We stopped eating cakes
in the housekeeper’s room, you remember, and
then when he had written the letter he sent it to
us to put in the post as we came home. It was
given to me. I put it in my pocket, and here it
is!”
Sylvia gasped as if a whole bucket
of water had suddenly been shot over her from some
unexpected quarter, and then she burst into a ringing
laugh, and clapped her hands. “Oh, what
a joke! Then I suppose that Father has not a
notion that his family are on the way to make him
happy?”
“That is about it, and whatever
we can do to get out of the muddle is more than I
can imagine,” said Rupert in a strained tone,
while his face looked pinched and worn from the burden
of worry that had suddenly descended upon him.
“Do?” cried Sylvia.
“Why, of course we shall just do as we are doing,
and go straight forward, until we reach Hammerville,
when we will walk in upon dear Father some fine evening,
and announce our own arrival. Nothing could be
simpler, and we shall give him the surprise of his
life, bless his heart! There is no need to look
so tragic that I can see.”
“But we must tell the captain,
and there will be a great fuss. He will very
likely keep us on board ship until Father can reach
Sydney to claim us,” said Nealie in a voice
of distress.
“We won’t tell the captain;
he is as meddlesome as an old woman!” cried
Sylvia, who very much resented the commander’s
kindly meant endeavours to take care of them.
“He would not let us go ashore
at Cape Town, and I did so want to go to the top of
Table Mountain, and see for myself what the tablecloth
was made of,” said Don in an aggrieved tone.
His ideas of distance were rather vague, and he had
an impression that half an hour’s brisk walking
from the docks at Cape Town would have landed him on
the top of the mountain.
“No, we won’t tell the
captain, we certainly won’t,” put in Billykins,
with a mutinous look on his chubby face. He had
had his own views on the way in which he had meant
to spend the time ashore, and having one shilling
and threepence in his pocket, to spend as he chose,
had laid out a pretty full programme for the occasion.
“We won’t tell the captain;
I don’t like him, because he calls me Goosey
instead of Ducky,” pouted the youngest of the
family, who had had her feelings very much hurt on
more than one occasion, and was simply thirsting for
revenge upon the disturber of her peace.
“Do you hear? The majority
have decided on silence,” said Sylvia triumphantly,
as she sat down by the side of Nealie, and slipped
her arm round her sister’s waist.
“Oh, I don’t know what
to do, and it was dreadful of Rumple to forget!”
cried Nealie, and at the reproach in her words Rumple
fairly doubled up, muttering, in a resigned fashion:
“Lay it on, and spare not.
There is one comfort about the beastly business, you
cannot blame me more than I blame myself.”
“It might have been worse,”
said Sylvia, who always championed Rumple through
thick and thin. “And of course no one expects
quite so much from a poet as from a more ordinary
person. People with teeming ideas are always
rather absent-minded I find; it is one of the penalties
of the artistic temperament. I suffer from it
myself, and Rumple is far cleverer than I am.”
“I don’t know about that;
you have got the colour sense, even though you don’t
seem to get the hang of perspective,” said Rumple,
looking visibly cheered. “When I begin
to sell my poems you shall have the money to have
lessons in art, old girl, for I fancy you are worth
developing.”
“I hope I am,” rejoined
Sylvia, tossing her head with a saucy air. “But
I am afraid that the process will be rather delayed
if it has to wait until your poetry brings the money
for doing it, for everyone says that there is no money
in poetry. Now, Nealie, darling, do cheer up and
be happy; poor Rumple will have no peace at all while
you look like that.”
“I will try; but you must give
me time. But I am so disappointed, for I had
hoped that Father would be at Sydney to meet us,”
answered Nealie, with a sigh.