True Tilda Part 38

But the dog, barking desperately beside her, drowned her voice, and no answer came.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE S.S. EVAN EVANS

"_Then three times round went our gallant s.h.i.+p._"--OLD SONG.

The time is next morning, and the first grey hour of daylight.

The scene, an unlovely tidal basin crowded with small s.h.i.+pping-- schooners and brigantines dingy with coal-dust, tramp steamers, tugs, Severn trows; a s.h.i.+p lock and beyond it the river, now grown into a broad flood all grey and milky in the dawn.

Tilda and Arthur Miles sat on the edge of the basin, with G.o.dolphus between them, and stared down on the deck of the _Severn Belle_ tug, waiting for some sign of life to declare itself on board. By leave of a kindly cranesman, they had spent the night in a galvanised iron shed where he stored his cinders, and the warmth in the cinders had kept them comfortable. But the dawn was chilly, and now they had only their excitement to keep them warm. For some reason best known to himself the dog did not share in this excitement, and only the firm embrace of Tilda's arm around his chest and shoulders held him from wandering.

Now and again he protested against this restraint.

Tilda's eyes never left the tug; but the boy kept intermittent watch only, being busy writing with the stump of a pencil on a sc.r.a.p of paper he had spread on the gritty concrete. Somewhere in the distance a hooter sounded, proclaiming the hour. Still but the thinnest thread of smoke issued from the tug's funnel.

"It's not like Bill," Tilda muttered. "'E was always partic'lar about early risin' . . . An' I don't know what _you_ feel like, Arthur Miles, but _I_ could do with breakfast."

"And a wash," suggested the boy.

"It don't look appetisin'--not even if we knew 'ow to swim," said Tilda, relaxing her watch for an instant only, and studying the water in the basin. "We must 'old on--'old on an' wait till the clouds roll by--that was one of Bill's sayin's. An' to think of 'im bein' so near!"

Tilda never laughed, but some mirth in her voice antic.i.p.ated Bill's astonishment. "Now read me what yer've written."

"It's no more than what you told me."

"Never mind; let's 'ear if it's c'rect."

Arthur Miles read--

'DEAR MR. HUCKS,--This comes to say that we are not at Holmness yet, but getting on. This place is called Sharpness, and does a big trade, and the size of the s.h.i.+pping would make you wonder, after Bursfield. We left S.B. and the M.'s at Stratford, as _per_ my favour--'

"What does that mean?" asked the scribe, looking up.

"It's what they always put into business letters."

"But what does it mean?"

"It means--well, it means you're just as sharp as th' other man, so 'e needn't try it on."

'--as _per_ my favour of yesterday. And just below Stratford we picked up with a painter from America, but quite the gentleman, as you will see by his taking us on to a place called Tukesberry in a real moter car.'

[Let it be pleaded for Arthur Miles that his spelling had been outstripped of late by his experience. His sentences were as Tilda had constructed them in dictation.]

'Which at Tukesberry, happening to come across a gentleman friend of mine, as used to work for Gavel, and by name William, this American gentleman--'

"Sounds odd, don't it?" interposed Tilda.

"There's too much about gentlemen in it," the boy suggested.

"Well, but _you're_ a gentleman. We shall find that out, right enough, when we get to 'Olmness. 'Ucks don't know that, and I'm tonin' 'im up to it. . . . You 'aven't put in what I told yer--about me tellin' Mr.

Jessup as Bill was my brother-in-law an' 'is callin' back to us that 'e'd look after us 'ere."

"No."

"W'y not?"

There was reason for Tilda's averted gaze. She had to watch the tug's deck. But why did her face flush?

"Because it isn't true."

"It got us 'ere," she retorted. "True or not, 'twouldn't do yer no 'arm to allow _that_, seemin' to me."

Although she said it defiantly, her tone carried no conviction.

Arthur Miles made no response, but read on--

'--this American gentleman paid our fares on by railway to join him, and gave us half a suffering for X.'s.'

"Is that right?"

"Sure," said Tilda. "Gold money is all sufferin's or 'arf-sufferin's.

I got it tied in a corner o' what Miss Montagu taught me to call my s.h.i.+mmy--s.h.i.+fts bein' vulgar, she said."

'--So here we are, and W.B. capital. Which we hope to post our next from Holmness, and remain,'

'Yours respectfully,'

'TILDA.

'William will post this.'

"But you're not sure of that, you know," he urged. Hereat Tilda found the excuse she wanted for losing her temper (for her falsehood--or, rather, the boy's pained disapproval of it--yet shamed her).

"'Oo brought yer 'ere, I'd like to know? And where'd yer be at this moment if 'twasn't for me an' 'Dolph? In Gla.s.son's black 'ole, that's where yer'd be! An' now sittin' 'ere so 'igh-an'-mighty, an'

lecturin'!"

The boy's eyes had filled with tears.

"But I'm not--I'm not!" he protested. "Tilda!--"

"As if," she jerked out between two hard, dry sobs (Tilda, by the way, never wept)--"as if I wasn' _sure_, after chasin' Bill all this way on purpose, and 'im the best of men!"

Just at this moment there emerged from the after-companion of the _Severn Belle_, immediately below them, a large head shaped like an enormous pear--shaped, that is, as if designed to persuade an upward pa.s.sage through difficult hatchways, so narrow was the cranium and so extremely full the jowl. It was followed by a short bull neck and a heavy pair of shoulders in a s.h.i.+rt of dirty grey flannel; and having emerged so far, the apparition paused for a look around. It was the steersman of yesterday afternoon.

"'Ullo, below there!" Tilda hailed him.

"'Ullo yerself!" The man looked up and blinked. "W'y, if you ain't the gel and boy?"