Quicksilver Part 16

But Dan'l grumbled, as gardeners will.

"Blights is offle," he said. "It's the blightiest garden I ever see, and a man might spend all his life keeping the birds down with a gun."

But Dan'l did not spend any part of his life, let alone all, keeping the birds down with a gun. The doctor caught him shooting one day, and nearly shot him out of the place.

"How dare you, sir?" he cried. "I will not have a single bird destroyed."

"Then you won't get no peace, sir, nor not a bit of fruit."

"I shall have the place overrun with slugs and snails, and all kinds of injurious blight, sir, if you use that gun. No, sir, you'll put nets over the fruit when it's beginning to ripen. That will do."

The doctor walked away with Helen, and as soon as they were out of sight, behind the great laurustinus clump, Helen threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him for saving her pet birds.

Consequently, in addition to abundance of fruit, and although it was so close in the town, there was always a chorus of song in the season; and even the nightingale came from the woodlands across the river and sang within the orchard, through which the river ran.

That river alone half made the place, for it was one of those useless rivers, so commercial men called it, where the most you could do was pleasure-boating; barges only being able to ascend to Coleby Bridge, a sort of busy colony from the town, two miles nearer the sea.

"Yes, sir," Sir James Danby had been known to say, "if the river could be deepened right through the town it would be the making of the place."

"And the spoiling of my grounds," said the doctor, "so I'm glad it runs over the solid rock."

This paradise of a garden was the one into which Dexter darted, and in which Dan'l Copestake was grumbling that morning--

"Like a bear with a sore head, that's what I say," said Peter Cribb to the under-gardener. "Nothing never suits him."

"Yes, it do," said Dan'l, showing a very red face over a clump of rhododendron. "Master said you was to come into the garden three days a week, and last week I only set eyes on you twice, and here's half the week gone and you've only been once."

"Look here," said Peter Cribb, a hard-looking bullet-headed man of five-and-twenty; and he leaned on his broom, and twisted one very tightly trousered leg round the other, "do you think I can sit upon the box o' that there wagginette, drivin' miles away, and be sweeping this here lawn same time!"

"Master said as it was your dooty to be in this garden three days a week; and t'other three days you was to do your stable-work--there."

"Didn't I go out with the carriage every day this week?"

"I don't know when you went out with the carriage, and when you didn't,"

said Dan'l; "all I know is as my lawn didn't get swept; and how the doctor expects a garden like this here to be kept tidy without help, I should be glad to know."

"Well, you'd better go and grumble at him, and not worry me, and--pst!

Lookye there."

He pointed with his broom, and both men remained paralysed at the sight which met their eyes.

It was not so much from its extraordinary nature as from what Dan'l afterwards spoke of as its "imperence." That last, he said, was what staggered him, that any human boy should, in the very middle of the day, dare to do such a thing in his garden.

He said _his_ garden, for when speaking of it the doctor seemed to be only some one who was allowed to walk through it for a treat.

What the two men gazed at was the figure of a boy, in s.h.i.+rt and trousers, going up the vinery roof, between where the early and the late houses joined and there was a sloping brick coping. From this they saw him reach the big wall against which the vinery was built, and there he sat for a few moments motionless.

"Why, who is he?" said Peter, in a whisper. "He went up that vinery just like a monkey."

Peter had never seen a monkey go up the roof of a vinery, but Dan'l did not notice that.

"Hold your row," said Dan'l, in a low voice; "don't speak, and we'll ketch my nabs. Now we know where my peaches went last year."

"But who is he!" whispered Peter.

"I don't know, and I don't care, but I mean to have him as sure as he's there. Now if master hadn't been so precious 'tickler about a gun, I could ha' brought him down like a bird."

"Lookye there," cried Peter. "See that?"

"Oh yes, I see him," said Dan'l, as the figure ran easily along the top of the twelve-foot wall on all-fours. "I see my gentleman. Nice little game he's having. I'll bet a s.h.i.+lling he's about gorged with grapes, and now he's on the look-out for something else. But let him alone; wait a bit and we'll put salt on his tail before he can say what's what.

I knowed some grapes was a-going. I could about feel it, like."

"Well, I never!" whispered Peter, peering through the laurustinus, and watching the boy. "See that?"

"Oh yes, I see him. Nice un he is."

This last was consequent upon the boy running a few yards, and then holding tightly with his hands, and kicking both legs in the air two or three times before trotting on along the wall again as easily as a tomcat.

"See that?" said Peter.

"Oh yes, I can see," said Dan'l. "He's so full o' grapes it makes him lively," and he stared at the boy, who had suddenly stopped, and planting his hands firmly, stood up on them, balancing himself, with his legs spread wide in the air.

"He'll break his neck, that's what he'll do," said Peter.

"Good job too, I says," grumbled Dan'l. "Boys like that ought to be done away with. He's one on 'em out o' the town. Now look here, Peter, we've got to get him, that's what we've got to do."

"Ah, that's better," said Peter, who had been nervous ever since a horse ran away with him. "I don't like to see a boy doing dangerous things that how."

"Don't call a thing like that a boy, do yer!" said Dan'l. "I calls it monkey rubbidge. Now you step round the house, and through the stable, and get down that side o' the wall, and I'll go this. Don't you seem to see him till you hear me whistle. Then grab."

"But how am I to grab when he's up there!" said Peter.

"Ah! 'tis high up," said Dan'l. "Wish I'd got one o' them grappling-irons as hangs down by the bridge; I'd fetch him off pretty quick."

"Shall I get a fruit-ladder?" suggested Peter.

"Nay, we don't want no fruit-ladders," grumbled Dan'l. "We'll soon fetch his lords.h.i.+p down. Now then, you be off."

"Stop a moment," said Peter, as he watched the boy intently. "Look at him! Well, I never did!"

It was a very true remark. Peter certainly never did, and very few boys would have cunning enough to perform such a feat with so much ease.

For, after running about fifty yards along the top of the wall, the little fellow turned quickly and ran back again, made offers as if he were going to leap down, and then suddenly squatted down in exact imitation of a cat, and began licking his arms, and pa.s.sing them over his head.

"Well, he caps me!" cried Peter. "I never see a boy do anything like that since I was at a show at Exeter, and then it was a bigger chap than him."

"Look here," said Dan'l; "I've got it. You get a big strong clothes-prop, and I'll get another, and we'll poke him off. If he comes down your side, mind this: he'll be like a rat, and off as quick as quick; but don't you let him go. Drop your prop, and throw yourself on him; we'll ketch him, and take him in to the gov'nor, and he'll know now where the fruit goes. You couldn't net chaps like this."

In happy ignorance of the doctor's plans, Peter and Dan'l each provided himself with a clothes-prop, and in due time made for the appointed sides of the wall; but no sooner did the boy catch sight of his pursuers than he started off on another all-fours run; but this took him away from the house, and before he had gone far he turned and ran back.