My Friend Smith Part 66

"Be sure and call if you want anything."

Then everything was silent and dark, and I began to realise that I was ill. I shall never forget that night. I tossed restlessly and ceaselessly all through it. In whatever position I lay I found no relief. My arm seemed to pain me more than ever before, my head ached, I was nearly suffocated with heat. And my mind was as restless as my body. One after another the follies and meannesses, the failures and sins of my life in London, rose up before me and stared me in the face.

Try all I would, I could not get rid of them. I tried to think of other things--of books I had read, of stories I had heard, of places I had seen, of Stonebridge House, of Brownstroke--but no, the thought of my pitiful career in London, my debts, my evil acquaintances, my treachery to my friend, would come and come and come, and drive out all else. And all the while I seemed to see Jack's solemn face looking reproachfully at me from the bottom of the bed, just as it had looked at me that morning weeks ago at Hawk Street. Once, instead of being at the bottom of the bed, I found it close beside me, saying--

"What is it, old boy?"

"Eh? nothing. I didn't call."

"Yes you did. Do try and lie still and get some rest."

Lie still! As soon tell the waves to lie still in the storm as expect me, with my fever-tossed body and mind, to rest!

So the night wore on, and when the morning light struggled through the window it found me in a raging fever and delirious.

I must pa.s.s over the weeks that followed. I was very ill--as ill, so they told me afterwards, as I well could be, and live.

Jack watched me incessantly. I don't know what arrangement he came to at Hawk Street, but while I was at my worst he never left my bedside day or night.

No one else was allowed up, except occasionally Billy, to relieve guard.

With these two nurses to tend me--and never a patient had two such guardian angels!--I battled with my fever, and came through it.

I came through it an altered being.

Surely--this was the thought with which I returned to health--we boys, sent up to rough it in London, are not, after all, mere slung stones.

There _is_ One who cares for us, some One who comes after us when we go astray, some One who saves us when we are at the point of falling, if we will but cry, in true penitence, to Him!

I had had many and grievous lessons before I had found it out; but now I had, life seemed a new thing to me!

As my convalescence advanced and my bodily strength returned, my spirits rose within me, and I felt eager to be back at my post at Hawk Street.

However, I had to exercise some patience yet. Meanwhile, with Billy (and occasionally Mr Smith), as my companion by day, and Jack by night, the time could hardly hang heavily.

"Well, Billy," I said one morning when the doctor had been and told me that next week I might be allowed to sit up for an hour or so a day, "I shall soon be rid of this bed. I don't know what would have become of me if it hadn't been for you and Jack Smith."

"Ga on," said Billy, who, with his tongue in one cheek and his face twisting into all sorts of contortions, was sitting writing an exercise in a copy-book, "you don't know what you're torkin' about."

"Oh yes, I do, though," I replied, understanding that this was Billy's modest way of disclaiming any merit.

"More'n you didn't when you was 'avin' the fever!" observed the boy.

"What?" I inquired. "Was I talking much when I was ill?"

"You was so," said Billy, "a-joring and a-joring and a-joring same as you never heard a bloke."

"What was I saying?" I asked, feeling a little uneasy as to what I might have said in my delirium.

"You was a swearin' tremenjus," said the boy.

"Was I?" Alas! Jack would have heard it all.

"Yes, and you was a-torkin' about your Crowses, and Wollopses, and Doubledaisies, and sich like. And you was a-tellin' that there 'Orksbury (which I'd like to do for, the animal, so I would), as you was a convex son, and he wasn't to tell no one for fear Mas.h.i.+ng should 'ear of it. And you was a-crying out for your friend Smith to s.h.i.+ne your boots, and tellin' him you wouldn't do it never no more. And you was a- singin' out that there was a little gal a-bein' run away with on a pony, and you must go and stop 'im. You was a-jawin', rather."

I could hardly help laughing at his description, though its details reminded me sadly of my old follies and their consequences.

The most extraordinary raving of all, however, was that which referred to my stopping the little girl's runaway pony at Packworth years ago--an incident I don't believe I had ever once thought of since.

It was curious, too, that, now it was called to memory, I thought of the adventure a good deal, and wished I knew what had become of the owner of that restive little pony. I determined to tell Jack about it when he came home.

"What do you think, Jack?" I said, as he was tucking me up for the night. "Billy has been telling me what I was talking about in my fever, and says one thing I discoursed about was a little girl who was being run away with by a pony."

"Yes," said Jack, laughing; "I heard that. It was quite a new light for you, old man, to be dreaming of that sort of romantic thing."

"But it really happened once," I said.

"No! where? I thought the Henniker and Mrs Nash were the only lady friends you ever had? Where was it?"

"At Packworth, of all places," I said. "It was that day I went over to try and find you out--just before we came up to London, you know. I was walking back to Brownstroke, and met the pony bolting down the road."

Jack seemed suddenly very much interested. "What sort of little girl was it?" he asked.

"I can't exactly tell you. She was so frightened I had hardly time to look at her. But--"

"What sort of pony?" asked Jack.

"A grey one--and a jolly little animal, too!" I said. "But why do you ask?"

"Only," said Jack, with a peculiar smile, "because it strikes me very forcibly the young person in question was my sister, that's all!"

"What!" I exclaimed, in amazement, "your sister!--the little girl of the photograph! Oh, Jack, how extraordinary!"

"It is queer," said Jack; "but it's a fact all the same. I heard about it when I was last home. The pony took fright, so they told me, and-- wasn't there a nurse with her?"

"Yes, there was."

"Yes; that was Mrs s.h.i.+eld. The pony took fright as she was walking beside it, and Mary would have come to grief to a dead certainty, so they both say, if a young gentleman hadn't rushed up and stopped it.

Why, Fred, old man," said he, taking my hand, "I little thought I owed you all that!"

I took his hand warmly, but humbly.

"Jack," I said, "I think it's almost time you and I gave up talking about what we owe to one another. But," I added, after a moment, "if you do want to do me a favour, just let us have a look at that photograph again, will you, old man?"

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

HOW I FOUND MYSELF ONCE MORE AT HAWK STREET.