The Arrival
Never had any of the seven seen a
storm to equal the one that followed. The thunder
was almost incessant, while the lightning played in
blue forks and flashes round a couple of stringy barks
growing by the side of the road a little farther on,
darting in and out like live things at play, until
Nealie forgot half of her fear in the fascination of
watching them.
Ducky had crept under the roll of
mattresses at the back of the wagon, and was hiding
there in the dark from the terror of the storm, while
Rupert and Rumple were doing valiant service, one at
either end of the wagon, in holding the curtains together,
as the fierce wind kept ripping them open, letting
in sheets of rain upon the group cowering within.
Rocky had been tied by his halter
to the lee side of the wagon to prevent him from wandering
under the trees and courting speedy destruction there.
He stood with bent head and bunched hindquarters, as
if in stolid resignation, although Ducky cried because
he was too big to be taken into the shelter of the
tilt to be made comfortable, as she said.
It was quite in vain that Don and Billykins sought
to console her by saying that horses rather enjoyed
being out in the rain. She was quite positive
that they knew nothing about it, and told them so with
brisk decision that left them without anything more
to say on the subject. But the interest of the
argument had dried her tears and taken away so much
of her fear of the storm that everyone felt it was
well worth while to have roused her to such a pitch.
It was dark before the rain ceased,
and by then Rupert and Rumple were just about wet
through from their efforts at keeping the rain from
the others. There was no question of who should
sleep under the wagon to-night, for by the time sundown
came they were surrounded by about two feet of water,
and although this would doubtless run off before very
long, the mud which was left behind was every bit as
bad as the water when considered in the light of a
foundation for one’s mattress.
So they all sat in chilly discomfort
in the wagon, making a frugal supper from damper left
over from breakfast, eked out with biscuits.
Then, leaning against each other’s shoulders,
they tried to forget their discomfort in sleep.
Nealie had insisted that Rupert and
Rumple should strip off their wet jackets and wrap
themselves in blankets; but the worst of it was that
Rupert was wet below his jacket, which was thin, to
suit the heat of the day, and so, as might be expected,
he took a violent chill, and as he had been very unwell
on the day before, his condition, when morning dawned,
fairly frightened Nealie. For he was blazing with
fever, and talking all sorts of nonsense about his
mother and Aunt Judith.
It was his constant harping on the
people who had died which so worried her; because,
of course, she very naturally thought that he was going
to die too.
The driving on this day was left to
Sylvia and Rumple, who put Rockefeller along at his
very best pace, for they were all frightened at Rupert’s
sad plight, which was to rob their arrival of all the
delight they had pictured when they should drive up
to their father’s house and personally announce
to him the arrival of his family.
Don and Billykins trotted along the
road by the side of Sylvia and Rumple, all four walking
to ease the load, so that the wagon might get along
faster. Ducky sat on the front seat, her small
face pinched to a wistful anxiety, while Nealie knelt
at the back end of the wagon trying to soothe Rupert,
who lay on a mattress wildly declaring that he must
get up, because his mother and Aunt Judith were in
trouble and calling out to him for help.
“Will dear Father be able to
cure Rupert quick?” asked the little girl, leaning
forward to let her voice reach Sylvia, who walked on
one side of the horse while Rumple walked on the other.
Sylvia held up her hand with a warning
gesture. “Sit up, Ducky darling, or you
will be tumbling off your perch, and we do not want
any more disasters this trip if we can help it,”
she said, adding: “Of course Father will
be able to make Rupert well. The poor, dear boy
is only running a temperature, you know, and the shaking
of the wagon aggravates it.”
“Then it will only walk when
we get home?” asked Ducky wistfully, with a
scared backward glance over her shoulder as Rupert
burst into a wild peal of laughter, and told Nealie
that he had taken an engagement as a circus rider.
“What will only walk when we
get home?” asked Rumple, who had noticed the
noise Rupert was making, and was anxious to distract
the attention of Ducky if he could.
“Why, the temperature, of course.
Didn’t Sylvia say that it was running now?”
enquired Ducky innocently, and then was highly indignant
with Sylvia and Rumple because they burst into a peal
of laughter.
“What is the joke?” demanded
Don, arriving alongside in a rather breathless condition,
for he had been investigating a cross track, and then
had to hurry to catch up the wagon.
But by this time they were grave again,
and, truth to tell, a little ashamed of having laughed
so much when Rupert was so ill. Then Ducky had
to be pacified, for, frightened by the nonsense her
eldest brother was talking, she had begun to cry,
until Sylvia hit on the grand idea of making her the
postilion, and, helping her to scramble on to the back
of Rockefeller, let her sit there in state, pretending
to drive, while the last weary miles of the long journey
slid by.
They reached the outskirts of Hammerville
in the late afternoon, and stopped at the very first
house to enquire where Dr. Plumstead lived.
The woman who opened the door to them
declared that she did not know.
“I don’t hold with doctors,
and physic, and that sort of stuff, so I don’t
know nothing about them,” she said ungraciously,
and then shut the door in their faces.
“Disagreeable old thing; I hope
that she will be ill and want the doctor very soon,”
said Billykins, shaking an indignant fist in the direction
of the closed door.
“That is very uncharitable of
you,” said Sylvia, “and besides, she does
not look as if she would be at all a good paying patient,
and so it would only be a bit more drudgery for dear
Father, for, of course, a doctor must go to everyone
who has need of him, whether the patient can pay or
not.”
“Then I shall not be a doctor,
for I don’t want to do things for people who
can’t pay me,” said Don; and then he ran
up to a pleasant-faced girl, who was weeding the garden
of the next house, and asked her if she could tell
him where Dr. Plumstead lived.
“Why, yes, he has got a house
on the Icksted Road, that is on the Pig Hill side
of the town,” she said, standing up to survey
the wagon and as many of its occupants as chanced
to be visible.
“Is it far?” demanded Don anxiously.
“Oh, somewhere about a mile!
You must turn to the left when you have passed Dan
Potter’s saloon; that is right in the middle
of the town, so you can’t miss it. What
do you want the doctor for? Is anyone bad?”
“We have come to live with him;
we are his children, you know,” explained Don,
with the engaging frankness which he could display
sometimes, although as a rule he was more reserved
with strangers than Rumple or Billykins.
“His children? I didn’t
know that he had got any!” exclaimed the girl,
staring harder than ever at the wagon, although at
present there was not much to see, except Ducky perched
astride on the big horse that Rumple was leading,
for Sylvia had retired under shelter of the tilt to
make some sort of a toilet in honour of reaching the
end of the journey, and Nealie was still ministering
to the wants of Rupert to the best of her ability.
“That is not wonderful, because,
you see, we have been living in England. But
I must hurry on, and I will come to see you another
day. There are seven of us, and we are just on
the tiptoe of expectation about what Father will say
when he sees the lot of us,” said Don, with a
friendly nod, and then trotted away in pursuit of the
wagon, which had passed on while the girl leaned against
the fence and feebly gasped, as if her astonishment
were too much for her.
Dan Potter’s saloon was quite
an imposing place, and very tawdry with gilt adornments
and coloured glass. They turned into a road at
the left, according to the direction given by the
girl, and then followed a road which was scarcely
more than a track, and that abounded in mud puddles
of a deep and dangerous sort, where the going was so
bad that Nealie was forced to leave Rupert in the
care of Sylvia, and come herself to guide Rocky from
the pitfalls of that evil place.
There were newly finished buildings
that looked as if they had been run up in the night;
there were buildings in course of erection that looked
as if they would tumble down before they were finished;
and there were other buildings in process of being
planned, but of which not much was to be seen saving
a forest of scaffold poles.
“What a big place it looks,”
said Nealie, as with an abrupt jerk she pulled Rocky’s
head round in time to save him from pitching into an
unexpected hole that yawned in the path. “I
had somehow got the idea that it was only a little
town, not much bigger than a village.”
“It is awfully ugly though,”
replied Rumple, wrinkling his nose with an air of
extreme dissatisfaction. “The man that built
those houses at the end of the street ought to be
condemned to live opposite to them.”
“That might not be a hard sort
of punishment at all,” laughed Nealie; “because,
you see, if he had no eye for beauty or artistic fitness
the ugliness would not trouble him, he might even
take a great deal of satisfaction in thinking how
nicely he had done them.”
“There is no accounting for
tastes,” grumbled Rumple, who was really more
an admirer of what was beautiful than even Sylvia,
who had the reputation of being artistic.
Then he dashed off to ask a man if
they were going right for Dr. Plumstead’s house,
and, being told that it was the next small house that
stood alone, he rushed back to the wagon with his information.
“I wonder if Father will be
at home,” cried Billykins, with an eager look
on his face. “May we run forward and knock
at the door, Nealie?”
“No, no; we will all go together,”
answered Nealie hurriedly, while a flush rose in her
cheeks, and there was a nervous look in her eyes, for
suddenly she was dreading the reception they might
receive.
How forlorn they really were, those
seven whom no one seemed to really want! And
yet how kind people had been to them in all that long,
long journey from Beechleigh in England. Of course,
but for that bit of absent-mindedness on the part
of Rumple, Dr. Plumstead would have known that his
children were coming, and then he could have had a
welcome of a sort ready for them. As it was,
it would be the naked truth which they would have
to face, and it was the fear that perhaps he would
wish they had not come that made Nealie feel so nervous,
as she led Rocky along the few remaining yards of
that very bad stretch of road leading to the doctor’s
house.
Sylvia had left Rupert for a few minutes
and was hanging out of the front of the wagon.
Ducky still perched astride Rockefeller’s broad
back, while the three younger boys were grouped close
to Nealie, who led the horse.
There was a bit of rising ground before
the house, and so of necessity the pace was slow;
but at last they halted, and then stood for a moment
as if uncertain what to do next.
“Rumple, you had better knock,”
said Nealie in a choked tone, and then was instantly
sorry for what she had said, remembering that but for
Rumple’s forgetfulness there might have been
no need to knock at all.
“Let me knock,” pleaded
Don, wondering why Nealie looked so pale, and Rumple
seemed so scared.
“Yes, dear, you can knock, and
Billykins will go with you,” she said, with
a little gasp of relief.
The two small boys dashed through
the gate and up the path to the door. There had
once been a garden in front of the house, but it was
wilderness pure and simple now, a choked jumble of
weeds, and flowers struggling for existence in the
garden beds, and a wattle bush filled the air with
a sweet perfume which always afterwards reminded Nealie
of that moment of waiting before the house.
“There is no one at home, and
the door is locked,” cried Don, and then he
tried to peep in the window, but was not high enough
to reach the lowest pane.
“I expect he has been called
out to a case,” said Sylvia from her perch in
front of the wagon. “Nealie, can’t
you send the boys to find out where Father keeps the
key? I am sure that we ought to get Rupert out
of the wagon as soon as possible, for he seems to
get more ill every minute, poor dear!”
Ah, there was Rupert to be considered!
Of choice Nealie would have remained standing out
in front of the house until her father’s return,
however long she might have to wait, but Rupert must
be cared for, and because she feared that his life
might hang on his having prompt attention just now,
she gave way to Sylvia’s suggestion, and told
Don to run to the next house to ask where Dr. Plumstead
kept his key when he had to go away.
Away sped Don, nothing loath, and,
entering the gate of the next garden, rushed up to
the house door and knocked loudly.
The houses in this part of Hammerville
were older than those of the more crowded streets,
indeed it looked as if the place had started as a
village at the first and then on second thoughts had
grown out at one side into a busy town, while the
other side remained sleepy and village-like, each
abode having its own garden and orchard in the rear.
There was a minute of waiting, and
then the door was opened to Don by a sleepy-looking
Irishwoman, garbed in a very dirty pinafore.
“I don’t want any firewood
to-day at all, at all, thank you,” she said
pleasantly, her kindly face expanding into a genial
smile.
“I have not brought you firewood,
but I want to know where Dr. Plumstead keeps his key
when he is called away to a patient?” asked Don,
lifting his hat with so much courtesy that the good
woman was tremendously impressed.
“He has only got one key, sir,
and he always takes that with him, except when he
leaves it at home,” she said, with a sudden change
of manner, because she decided that this was one of
the quality, and no errand boy, as she at first imagined.
“Can you tell us how to get
in?” asked Don rather desperately. “We
are Dr. Plumstead’s children, all seven of us,
and I am afraid that he was not expecting us at this
minute, so he is not at home, you see.”
“Dr. Plumstead with sivin children!
The saints preserve us! What next!” cried
the woman, flinging up her hands in such profound amazement
that Don could not help laughing, she looked so funny.
“The what next is that we want
to get into the house as quickly as possible, because
Rupert, that is my eldest brother, is not well,”
he explained, wondering why everyone should be so
amazed because Dr. Plumstead had children.
“I will let you in with my key.
It fits the doctor’s door, which is very convenient,
because you see I do for him, and real hard work it
is, for he is a dreadful particular gentleman.
But sivin children, and you not the eldest! My
word, what is the world coming to?”
As Don could not answer this question
it had to go unanswered, and instead he waited in
silence while the Irishwoman took her key from a nail
in the wall, and set off across her garden, which was
only one degree less untidy than the doctor’s,
to open the door for the children.
“Why, the others are bigger
than you, most of them!” she exclaimed in still
growing amazement, as she surveyed the group standing
by the head of the horse. “The saints preserve
us! What is the world coming to?”
Again Don had to let the question
go unanswered, although it seemed to him rather rude.
The woman unlocked the door of the little wooden house,
which was plain and ugly, and did not even boast a
veranda, then, dropping a curtsy to Nealie, she stood
back for them to enter.