“Father, We Want You!”
Rupert was so much better when he
woke from his long sleep that the doctor told Nealie
she might be quite easy to leave him to the care of
Sylvia on the following day and go in search of her
father if she wished.
“You will be able to look after
him too, will you not?” asked Nealie wistfully,
for in her heart she rather doubted Sylvia’s
nursing skill.
“No, I am coming with you,”
he answered, looking at her with a smile.
Nealie flushed hotly and burst into
vigorous protest. “Please, please do not
take so much trouble for me; and besides, think of
your patients, and what you may lose by being away.”
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
“Doctors have very hard times in the back blocks,
Miss Plumstead. Those who are really ill cannot
as a rule afford to pay for medical skill, and everyone
is too busy to have time for imaginary complaints.
I have no patients at the moment that I cannot leave,
except the man who lives out in the direction of Pig
Hill, and I thought that I would ride over there this
afternoon, and then we would start at dawn to-morrow
morning. You don’t ride, do you?”
“Not much, and I am sure that
I could not sit on Rockefeller, because he is so clumsy,”
said Nealie.
“Then I will borrow Jim Brown’s
two-wheeled cart; but I think that we shall have to
take your horse, because mine is rather worn.
The track out to Pig Hill is a heavy one, and I have
been there every day of late,” said the doctor,
and then he hurried away to see his patients in the
town, while Nealie did her best to arrange for leaving
the others for a few days.
There was one thing which Nealie had
to do that she could not speak of to the doctor, who
had been so truly good to them. Her money was
exhausted save for a few shillings, and, being face
to face with destitution, and not sure of finding
her father even when she reached Mostyn, she must
have money from somewhere.
In her extremity she thought of Mr.
Runciman, and although it would take most of her remaining
shillings to cable to him, she had determined to do
it.
When Dr. Plumstead had started for
Pig Hill she found her way to the telegraph office
and dispatched her pitiful request.
“Please send us some money,
we have not found Father here.
“Cornelia
Plumstead.”
But cables are expensive things, and
when she came to send it she found that she would
not have enough money for the whole, and had to shorten
it, so that when it actually went it was more a demand
than a plea:
“Send us money; Father not here.”
“And if he does not send it,
whatever shall we do?” cried Sylvia, who had
to be told, if only for the sake of sobering her and
making her more keenly alive to the responsibilities
of the situation.
“He will send it, I am quite
sure,” replied Nealie, with a beautiful faith
in Mr. Runciman’s real goodness of heart that
was justified in due course by the arrival of a cablegram
authorizing her to draw fifty pounds from the Hammerville
bank as she needed it.
But she had to start off in the grey
dawn of the next morning, in company with the usurping
Dr. Plumstead as Sylvia would persist in
calling him without knowing that her need
was to be met in this generous manner. It was
perhaps the very darkest hour in her life, and her
face was drawn and pinched with the weight of her care
as she lifted it to the cold grey of the sky when
she mounted into the high two-wheeled cart which the
doctor had borrowed for the journey. But even
as she looked, all the grey was flushed with rose colour
from the rising sun, and the sight brought back her
courage with a rush, so that she was able to turn
and smile at the little group gathered at the door
of the doctor’s house to see her drive away.
“Mind you take good care of
Rupert, Sylvia,” she called, feeling that her
next sister was really not old enough for such a heavy
responsibility; only, as there was no one else to take
it, of course Sylvia would have to do her best.
“I will see that she looks after
him properly,” said Rumple, with a wag of his
head, at which the doctor laughed; for when sleep seized
upon Rumple he was of little use in looking after
other people.
Don and Billykins flung up their caps
and shouted hurrah as Rockefeller moved off, and Ducky
joined in with her shrill treble, so that Nealie felt
they were doing their very best to keep her spirits
up at the moment of parting, and she could not let
them think their efforts were wasted in the least;
therefore she waved her hand and tried to appear as
free from care as the rest of them.
After the heavy wagon, Rockefeller
made short work of the light-weight cart, and went
along at such a tremendous pace that Nealie would
certainly have been afraid if anyone but Dr. Plumstead
had been driving. His treatment of Rupert, however,
had inspired her with such confidence in him that
she sat smiling and untroubled while the big, clumsy,
vanhorse cut capers in the road, and then danced on
all-fours because a small boy rushed out of one of
the little wooden houses on the other side of the
town and blew a blast on a bugle right under the horse’s
nose.
“It really looks as if the creature
had not had enough work for the last three or four
weeks,” said the doctor, with a laugh, as he
proceeded to get pace out of Rocky in preference to
pranks.
“It is a very good horse and
has done us good service,” said Nealie, in a
rather breathless fashion, as a sudden swerve on the
part of Rocky sent her flying against the doctor,
and then, as she settled back into her own corner
and clutched at the side of the cart to keep from being
tossed out, she went on in an anxious tone: “I
wonder what Mr. Wallis will say to our keeping Rocky
to go this journey instead of at once handing him
over to the nearest agent of the firm?”
“If he is the wise and just
man that I take him to be he will say that you have
done quite right,” replied the doctor. “You
have not reached your father yet, and you must have
the horse for this extra journey, don’t you
see?”
Nealie shook her head as if in doubt
about this sort of reasoning, and then she sat silent
for so long that the doctor might have believed her
to be asleep, if he had not seen that her gaze was
fixed on the landscape.
The district outside Hammerville on
the Mostyn track was at first mainly composed of rich
pasture, mostly settled by dairy farmers, although
farther away on the higher ground it was sheep farming
that was most in evidence.
Twenty miles out of Hammerville the
road had dwindled to a grassy track, and as they were
now on the northern side of the Murrumbidgee River
the country grew very wild and mountainous, the track
cut through forests which the doctor told Nealie had
only been half-explored, and the hilltops were so
solitary that it did not seem as if there were any
people in the world at all.
But it was a well-watered country,
and on every side there were brawling little streams
rushing down precipitous heights or scurrying away
through woody valleys, as if anxious to find the very
nearest way to the sea.
By the time the hottest part of the
day had arrived Rockefeller had done half the journey
to Mostyn, and driving up to a lone house the doctor
was so fortunate as to find a woman living there, to
whose care he confided Nealie for a few hours’
rest and refreshment while he took a siesta lying
on the ground under the cart, which had been drawn
close under the shade of the willows fringing the
river at this part.
It was sundown before they reached
Mostyn, and then it was only to be met with disappointment,
for the doctor had been sent for to cope with an outbreak
of smallpox at Latimer.
“That settles it!” exclaimed
the doctor. “I shall drive you back to
Hammerville to-morrow morning, for certainly I cannot
take you to a disease-stricken town, and equally I
cannot leave you here.”
“I shall not go back until I
have found Father,” said Nealie, smiling up
at him in a way that somehow robbed her words of their
mutinous flavour. “And there is no need
to worry about the danger of taking me to a smallpox
place, because I had the complaint when I was a little
girl, before I was old enough to remember, so there
is no danger for me.”
The doctor was very hard to convince
on this score, and was even inclined to throw doubt
on her statement, and to declare that she must be
mistaken, as it was so extremely unlikely that a child
in her position would contract the disease.
Nealie met all his arguments in silence
until he came to his doubts about her really having
had the disease, and then she quietly rolled up the
left sleeve of her thin blouse and showed him two distinct
marks on the soft flesh above the elbow, which any
doctor must know were pock marks.
“I must go until I find my father,
and if you will not take me I must go alone,”
she said, when he left off arguing because he had no
more to say; but her gaze was very wistful, for Mostyn
was so much rougher than Hammerville that her heart
sank very low as she thought of how rough Latimer
might be.
“If you must go I must certainly
go too, for I cannot let you out of my care in places
like this,” he said in a tone as decided as her
own.
For that one night she was lodged
with a good woman who cleaned the church and school,
and who kept her awake for half the night telling her
gruesome stories of happenings in disease-stricken
towns, such as Latimer was at that moment supposed
to be. But if she thought to frighten Nealie
into consenting to go back to Hammerville without
finding her father she made a very great mistake indeed.
Bad as had been the journey of the
doctor and his escort when he rode from Mostyn to
Latimer through the fierce heat, the experiences of
young Dr. Plumstead and Nealie were still worse.
Rockefeller had lost the fine vigour displayed on
the first part of the journey, and went at a slow
trot, hanging his head and stumbling so often that
Dr. Plumstead was forced into a pretty liberal use
of the whip to keep the creature on his feet at all.
There was a strong wind blowing to-day,
but luckily it came from behind, and so Nealie opened
a big umbrella, which kept off some of the dust and
also acted as a sail and helped them along. Sun,
wind, and dust seemed to bring on a sort of fever
in Nealie; her hands burned like coals of fire, she
had a lightheaded sensation, and saw so many visions
during the last miles of that trying journey that
she could never after determine which was real and
which was fancy of all the incidents and happenings
of that long, weary day.
“Hullo, look at that smoke yonder;
is it a bush fire, I wonder, or is it possible they
have been having a big blaze at Latimer?” said
the doctor, pointing with his whip to the crest of
a long hill up which the track wound its dusty way.
“Are we near to Latimer?” asked Nealie
in a languid tone.
“I think we ought to be by this
time, unless we have come wrong. But what a hill!
I fancy Rockefeller expects me to walk up here,”
said the doctor, who was secretly very anxious concerning
that smoke which was hanging in a cloud about the
crest of the hill.
“Shall I walk too?” she
asked, wondering whether the act of walking would
tend to steady her wavering fancies, and to stop that
horrible tendency to light-headedness which bothered
her so badly.
“I think not; you must be quite
tired enough without adding to your fatigue by scrambling
along this dusty track. Hullo!”
Nealie saw a sudden swerve on the
part of Rocky, then the doctor’s cane came cutting
through the air, and there was a great wriggling and
commotion on the dusty ground; but the doctor was so
busy soothing the horse that he did not even answer
when she called out to know what was the matter.
“Was it a snake?” she
asked, as the cart was dragged forward at a jerk,
and Rocky, prancing along on two legs, snorting and
plunging, took all the doctor’s skill to keep
him from bolting in sheer fright.
“Yes; and I am very glad that
you were not walking, for they are not pleasant creatures
to meet,” replied the doctor, thinking how fortunate
it was that he happened to be on foot at the moment,
and with a stick in his hand, for the snake was of
a very deadly kind, and the horse would have stood
no chance at all against the poison of its forked tongue.
Nealie shivered and sat suddenly straight
up; it seemed as if the little shock had restored
her in some strange way. The fiercest heat of
the sun was past, and the raging of that terrible wind
had dropped to a gentle breeze which blew cool and
refreshing from another quarter. Indeed she would
have felt quite cheerful had it not been for the menace
of that smoke haze lying in a cloud along the line
of the hills.
Another half-hour and they were crossing
the top of the ridge, while Latimer, most snugly placed,
lay on the slope of the other side. But at first
sight of the town both Nealie and the doctor had burst
into exclamations of horror, for it looked as if it
had been burned out. A cloud of smoke from the
ruined houses hung thickly over the place, and Rockefeller,
with a horse’s objection to facing fire, turned
about on the track and showed so much disposition
to go back by the way he had come that the doctor
had to get down again and lead the scared creature.
Presently they saw a man just ahead
of them, the first human being they had glimpsed for
hours, and calling to him the doctor asked what had
happened.
“It has been a fire,”
said the man, which, considering the smoke rising
in all directions from the ruins, was rather an unnecessary
explanation.
“So I see; but what started it?” asked
the doctor.
“No one will admit knowing much
about that,” replied the man grimly, “but
we have our thoughts all the same. We have got
smallpox in the town, you know, and one case was lodged
in Jowett’s hotel. The doctor that we fetched
from Mostyn said pretty decidedly that the one at
Jowett’s was certainly not smallpox whatever
the other two might be, but some people won’t
be convinced, try how you will. So when the doctor’s
back was turned it is supposed that someone, either
by accident or design, set the place on fire where
the sick man was lying. In a drought such as
we are having now you may guess how the place burned.
The doctor happened to catch sight of it starting;
but though he ran at the top of his speed, all that
he could do was to get there in time to see the place
one mass of fire, and he might easily have been forgiven
if he had turned his back on it then. He is made
of brave stuff, though, and they said he dashed straight
into that blazing place, and, with the flames and
smoke all around him, he brought his patient out in
the nick of time, for the whole show collapsed just
as he got to the doorway, the sheets of red-hot corrugated
roofing fell down upon him, and he was so badly burned
that someone will have to go and find a doctor to cure
up the one we’ve got, for I’m thinking
that Latimer won’t let a hero of that sort die
without making an attempt to save him.”
“I am a doctor; I can look after
him. Just lead on, and show me where he is, will
you, please?” said young Dr. Plumstead brusquely.
He would have spared Nealie the ugly story if he could,
but on the whole it was good for her to hear that
her father had played the part of a hero. If
he had only known it, the hearing was good for him
too, for he had been very ready to despise the man
who had given up his practice in Hammerville and rushed
away because he had not the moral courage to live
down a scandal. He had despised Nealie’s
father, too, because of his treatment of his children,
and altogether had decided that the poor man was very
much of a detrimental, so that this story of heroism
had a mighty effect on him as he walked by the side
of the loquacious person who had first given them
the news; while Nealie sat perched up in the cart
behind, straining her ears to catch what they were
saying, and feeling so thankful that she had insisted
on coming all the way that she could have shouted
with joyfulness in spite of her anxiety.
The man told Dr. Plumstead that the
fire had spread from building to building with such
awful rapidity that it had been as much as anyone
could do to get the people out of their houses, so
many of them having gone to bed when the outbreak
started.
“What about the smallpox patients?” asked
the doctor.
“We have looked everywhere,
but can’t find a trace of them, and we should
have thought that they had lost their lives in the
fire, only the building where they lay was not touched,
and they had not merely disappeared, but they had
taken their clothes with them, and as much else as
they could lay hands on,” replied the man, and
the doctor was so tickled that he burst out laughing
at the story.
“It does not look as if the
outbreak of smallpox could have been very serious,”
he remarked.
“Just what everyone is saying,
and the boys are downright mad with old Mother Twiney
because the old woman could not tell whether it was
really smallpox or not; but, as I said, you could
not expect an ignorant woman to know a disease of
that sort, and we had better have a scare that ended
in smoke than let the real thing gain ground without
our taking any steps to stamp it out,” said
the man, and then he turned off short between two
heaps of smoking ruins, and the doctor led Rocky, snuffing
and snorting, past the smouldering fire to the cool
shadow of the forest beyond.
“The doctor and his patient
are in that hut yonder. It is where the smallpox
patients were lying; but there was no other place,
and so we had to put them there,” said the man;
and the doctor, turning round, said to Nealie:
“You had better get down now
and wait here by the horse while I go and have a look
at your father. Oh yes, I will come back for you
in a few minutes, and then I shall be able to arrange
with this good man about somewhere to shelter you
for the night. I dare say the accommodation will
not be very grand, seeing the condition of things here.”
“I don’t mind about accommodation,
but I do want to go to my father,” said Nealie,
her voice breaking in a sob as she scrambled down from
the cart, ignoring the hand her companion stretched
out to help her, and then she stood beside Rocky leaning
her head against his side, while her heart beat so
furiously that it seemed to her the man who told them
the news, and was still lingering near, must hear
it thumping away against her side.
Would Dr. Plumstead never come?
How could he be so cruel as to keep her waiting so
long?
“Ah, what news have you for
me?” she asked, as the doctor emerged from the
hut with a quick step and a very grave face indeed.
“Nothing very good, I fear,”
he said quietly, and then turned to the man and asked
him to see that the horse was fed and cared for without
delay.
“Tell me, please, is Father
very bad? I can bear anything better than suspense,”
she said, keeping her voice steady by a great effort.
“I think you can, and you have
already proved yourself a girl of mettle; but you
will want all your courage now, for I fear that you
have found your father only to bid him goodbye,”
replied the doctor; and then he caught her by the
arm and held her fast while the first dizziness of
the shock was upon her.
“I am all right now,”
she said, moving forward in the direction of the door,
and he walked beside her, still holding her arm, as
if he doubted her strength to stand alone.
There was an old woman, very snuffy
and dirty to look at, but with a face of genuine kindness,
who came forward to meet her, and, leading her past
the first bed, where a man was lying who had a much-bandaged
head, she took her to another bed in the far corner,
whispering: “That is your pa, Miss dear,
and you had better speak to him quick, for we think
that he is going fast, poor brave gentleman!”
Going fast, and she had only just found him!
Nealie gave a frightened gasp, and
crept closer, falling on her knees by the bed, and
trembling so that she could hardly clasp the fingers
of the uninjured hand which lay outside the thin coverlet.
“Father, dear Father, I am Nealie,
your own daughter, and I have come all the way from
England to find you, and to help make home again!
Oh, you cannot go away and leave me now!” she
wailed in passionate protest against his dying.
“Hush, Missy dear, it may scare
him if you speak so loud!” said the old woman
in a warning tone, for Nealie’s voice had unconsciously
risen almost to a scream.
The heavy eyelids opened, and the
eyes looked straight into Nealie’s face with
blank amazement in their gaze.
“Who are you?” he asked,
his voice so faint that it was hardly more than a
whisper.
“I am your child, dear Father;
I am Nealie! We have come to Hammerville to live
with you. You should have had a letter weeks ago
to warn you that we were all coming, only it was forgotten
to be posted,” she said, being determined to
take half the blame of that omission on her own shoulders,
for surely it was as much her fault as Rumple’s,
seeing that she had never thought to remind him of
the letter or to ask if it had been safely posted.
“All seven of you?” he
asked, and now there was a shocked expression in his
face which cut Nealie to the heart; only, for once,
she was quite mistaken as to its cause, and the shocked
look did not mean that he was angry with them for
coming, but was solely because of what their plight
would be if he slipped out of life just then.
“Yes, we are all here,”
she admitted, feeling more guilty than in all her
life before; and then, almost against her will, her
voice rose again in a passionate plea to him to get
better. “Dear Father, do try and get better,
for we all want you so badly!”
“I will try. All seven
of you! I can’t go and leave you yet!”
he exclaimed, with so much more strength in his tone
that Nealie was amazed at the change.
At that moment young Dr. Plumstead,
who had come close to the bed, touched her on the
shoulder, saying quietly: “Go and sit on
that bench just outside the door until I call you
in again. You have done him good already, and
perhaps now we may pull him through, if God wills;
but Mrs. Twiney is going to help me dress his wounds
properly now, and then perhaps he will be more comfortable.”
And Nealie went obediently to sit
on the bench outside the door, where the air was heavy
with the tarry smell of burning pine and the strong
eucalyptus odours; then, clasping her hands, she prayed
fervently that her father might be restored to health,
so that they might let him know how much they loved
him.