The Eagle Cliff. Robert Michael Ballantyne
was the remark of one of the boys.
“Pancakes is plump to ’er,” was the observation of the other.
The ragged girl said nothing, but looked unspeakable things.
Burning with shame, trembling with anxiety, covered with dust and considerably bruised, Barret sprang up, left his fallen steed, and, raising the little old lady with great tenderness in his arms, sat her on the pavement with her back against the railings, while he poured out abject apologies and earnest inquiries.
Strange to say the old lady was not hurt in the least—only a good deal shaken and very indignant.
Stranger still, a policeman suddenly appeared in the distance. At the same time a sweep, a postman, and a servant girl joined the group.
Young Barret, as we have said, was sensitive. To become the object and centre of a crowd in such circumstances was overwhelming. A climax was put to his confusion, when one of the street arabs, observing the policeman, suddenly exclaimed:—
“Oh! I say, ’ere’s a bobby! What a lark. Won’t you be ’ad up before the beaks? It’ll be a case o’ murder.”
“No, it won’t,” retorted the other boy; “it’ll be a case o’ manslaughter an’ attempted suicide jined.”
Barret started up, allowing the servant maid to take his place, and saw the approaching constable. Visions of detention, publicity, trial, conviction, condemnation, swam before him.
“A reg’lar Krismas panty-mime for nuffin’!” remarked the ragged girl, breaking silence for the first time.
Scarcely knowing what he did, Barret leaped towards his bicycle, set it up, vaulted into the saddle, as he well knew how, and was safely out of sight in a few seconds.
Yet not altogether safe. A guilty conscience pursued, overtook, and sat upon him. Shame and confusion overwhelmed him. Up to that date he had been honourable, upright, straightforward; as far as the world’s estimation went, irreproachable. Now, in his own estimation, he was mean, false, underhand, sneaking!
But he did not give way to despair. He was a true hero, else we would not have had anything to write about him. Suddenly he slowed, frowned, compressed his lips, described a complete circle—in spite of a furniture van that came in his way—and deliberately went back to the spot where the accident had occurred; but there was no little lady to be seen. She had been conveyed away, the policeman was gone, the little boys were gone, the ragged girl, sweep, postman, and servant maid—all were gone, “like the baseless fabric of a vision,” leaving only new faces and strangers behind to wonder what accident and thin old lady the excited youth was asking about—so evanescent are the incidents that occur; and so busily pre-occupied are the human torrents that rush in the streets of London!
The youth turned sadly from the spot and continued his journey at a slower pace. As he went along, the thought that the old lady might have received internal injuries, and would die, pressed heavily upon him: Thus, he might actually be a murderer, at the best a man-slaughterer, without knowing it, and would carry in his bosom a dreadful secret, and a terrible uncertainty, to the end of his life!
Of course he could go to that great focus of police energy—Scotland Yard—and give himself up; but on second thoughts he did not quite see his way to that. However, he would watch the daily papers closely. That evening, in a frame of mind very different from the mental condition in which he had set out on his sixty miles’ ride in the afternoon John Barret presented himself to his friend and old schoolfellow, Bob Mabberly.
“You’re a good fellow, Barret; I knew you would come; but you look warm. Have you been running?” asked Mabberly, opening the door of his lodging to his friend. “Come in: I have news for you. Giles Jackman has agreed to go. Isn’t that a comfort? for, besides his rare and valuable sporting qualities, he is more than half a doctor, which will be important, you know, if any of us should get ill or come to grief. Sit down and we’ll talk it over.”
Now, it was a telegram from Bob Mabberly which led John Barret to suddenly undertake a sixty miles’ ride that day, and which was thus the indirect cause of the little old lady being run down. The telegram ran as follows:—
“Come instanter. As you are. Clothes unimportant. Yacht engaged. Crew also. Sail, without fail, Thursday. Plenty more to say when we meet.”
“Now, you see, Bob, with your usual want of precision, or care, or some such quality—”
“Stop, Barret. Do be more precise in the use of language. How can the want of a thing be a quality?”
“You are right, Bob. Let me say, then, that with your usual unprecision and carelessness you sent me a telegram, which could not reach me till late on Wednesday night, after all trains were gone, telling me that you sail, without fail, on Thursday, but leaving me to guess whether you meant Thursday morning or evening.”
“How stupid! My dear fellow, I forgot that!”
“Just so. Well to make sure of losing no time, instead of coming here by trains, which, as you know, are very awkward and slow in our neighbourhood, besides necessitating long waits and several changes, I just packed my portmanteau, gun, rods, etcetera, and gave directions to have them forwarded here by the first morning train, then took a few winks of sleep, and at the first glimmer of daylight mounted my wheel and set off across country as straight as country roads would permit of—and—here I am.”
“True, Barret, and in good time for tea too. We don’t sail till morning, for the tide does not serve till six o’clock, so that will give us plenty of time to put the finishing touches to our plans, allow your things to arrive, and permit of our making—or, rather, renewing—our acquaintance with Giles Jackman. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Yes, faintly. He was a broad, sturdy, good-humoured, reckless, little boy when I last saw him at old Blatherby’s school.”
“Just so. Your portrait is correct. I saw him last month, after a good many years’ interval, and he is exactly what he was, but considerably exaggerated at every point. He is not, indeed, a little, but a middle sized man now; as good-humoured as ever; much more reckless; sturdier and broader a great deal, with an amount of hair about his lip, chin, and head generally that would suffice to fit out three or four average men. He has been in India—in the Woods and Forests Department, or something of that sort—and has killed tigers, elephants, and such-like by the hundred, they say; but I’ve met him only once or twice, and he don’t speak much about his own doings. He is home on sick-leave just now.”
“Sick-leave! Will he be fit to go with us?” asked Barret, doubtfully.
“Fit!” cried Mabberly. “Ay, much more fit than you are, strong and vigorous though you be, for the voyage home has not only cured him; it has added superabundant health. Voyages always do to sick Anglo-Indians, don’t you know? However ill a man may be in India, all he has to do is to obtain leave of absence and get on board of a ship homeward bound, and straightway health, rushing in upon him like a river, sends him home more than cured. So now our party is made up, yacht victualled, anchor tripped; and—‘all’s well that ends well.’”
“But all is not ended, Bob. Things have only begun, and, as regards myself, they have begun disastrously,” said Barret, who thereupon related the incident of the little old lady being run down.
“My dear fellow,” cried Mabberly, laughing, “excuse me, don’t imagine me indifferent to the sufferings of the poor old thing; but do you really suppose that one who was tough enough, after such a collision, to sit up at all, with or without the support of the railings, and give way to indignant abuse—”
“Not abuse, Bob, indignant looks and sentiments; she was too thorough a lady to think of abuse—”
“Well, well; call it what you please; but you may depend upon it that she is not much hurt, and you will hear nothing more about the matter.”
“That’s it! That’s the very thing that I dread,” returned Barret, anxiously. “To go through life with the possibility that I may be an uncondemned and unhung murderer is terrible to think of. Then I can’t