CHAPTER IV

A Crippled Knight

MISS GUBBINS had a difficult time for those first few weeks in the old house, and she longed for the advent of the master. Mrs. Peck ruled the household with a rod of iron. The old butler, Smythe by name, was her abject slave. He was a kind old man, and took a great fancy to the children, but his kindness was shown only in Mrs. Peck's absence. He would call them into his pantry, and give them all kinds of dainties such as children love, but let but the silk dress of Mrs. Peck rustle by, and he would drive them out in surly fright, muttering as he did so: "Away with you, ye young plagues, a-comin' and a-worryin' round and a-drivin' a body nearly crazy!"

Mrs. Peck did not like children, and made no secret of her dislike to them. Perhaps, if they had been more docile and respectful to her, she would not have been so hard on them. As it was, there was perpetual contention between them, and Miss Gubbins could not keep the peace. Miss Gubbins herself was preoccupied and absorbed. The old house appealed to her poetic feelings, and she would wander through the empty rooms saying to herself:

"We have gone back a century here. No reminders of the prosaic age in which we live, except the post and newspapers."

And with her poetry books in hand she dreamed away her days, only subject to rude awakenings by the incivility and neglect of the housekeeper, and the mischief and scrapes of her pupils.

Donald and Claud were enjoying themselves as they had never done before, and their imaginations were busy from morning to night planning tournaments and games of all kinds. There were as many resources indoors as out of doors, and most of the servants enjoyed hearing the merry shouts and laughter echoing through the house.

The old coachman, Mills, declared sourly that they had "destroyed his peace of mind for evermore"; but there was cause for such a speech after he was fetched out by the young groom to see each of the boys mounted on one of the fat old carriage-horses, with long poles in their hands, and tearing up the smooth gravel drive in front of the house by charging one another in the orthodox knightly fashion.

"We're King Arthur's knights, Mills; stand out of the way, or we'll ride you down!"

And it was some time before Mills could rescue his beloved horses from the hands of such fiery young warriors.

One afternoon Miss Gubbins was lying down with a bad headache, and the children had the schoolroom to themselves. Donald and Gypsy were perched on the top of the large square table, and Claud was seated on the old window-seat, making a boat out of a piece of wood, and watching the other two furtively, and rather disconsolately.

The table was a desert island, Donald was Robinson Crusoe, and Gypsy his man Friday; the carpet had turned into a raging sea, chairs and stools were crocodiles and fish of all sorts, and with a hooked walking-stick Donald was hoisting various articles on to the island.

"I'll be a cannibal king, and come across to you in a boat," suggested Claud presently.

"We don't want you; there's no room on the table for three," said Donald. "You wouldn't be Friday, and Gypsy makes a much better Friday, because she does what she is told."

"I don't want to get on your old island," said Claud crossly. Then after a minute, very persuasively:

"I could make a lovely earthquake under the table; you could be swaying and falling and clinging hold of the rocks—"

"We don't want an earthquake. Now, Friday, my gun; lie down; let me put my foot on you to take aim. I see a bear on a crocodile's back."

Claud hacked away at his piece of wood with a clouded brow. At last he jumped up.

"This is a stupid old house!" he announced. "I wish we were back at the sea; we always had heaps of children to play with there, and I shall go out and see if there aren't any about here. I shall find some one to play with."

He took up his straw hat and marched off; the other two were so engrossed in their game that they did not notice his disappearance.

When tea-time came, and Miss Gubbins came out of her room, refreshed by her rest, no Claud was to be found. She was not alarmed, and it was not till it was nearly the children's bedtime that she began to make inquiries.

"He's run away," suggested Gypsy cheerfully. "He said he liked the seaside best; p'raps he's gone back there."

"Have you been quarrelling again?"

"No; but we didn't want him, and he went away to play by himself."

Miss Gubbins went downstairs out into the garden and round the stables with a worried face. When she asked Mills if he had seen him, the old man gave an indignant snort.

"Seed him! 'Tis the only blessed time in my life when I don't see any of 'em; but such times is rare indeed! 'Afore five o'clock in the mornin' they're always shoutin' and a tearin' round, and just where you last expec's to see 'em, there they'll sure to be. And if my 'pinion is axed, he's most likely took up by the perleece for robbin' orchards, or climbin' over gen'lemen's garden-walls, to pick whatever he can lay his hands on, and sauce and mock his elders and betters, if they do but say a rummonstratin' word!"

Then Miss Gubbins went through the grounds and out into the high road down to the little village, about a mile distant, Donald and Gypsy following her, and making anything but reassuring suggestions.

"He had a boat he was making. He's found the sea somewhere, and tumbled in and got drowned!"

"He's climbed a tree to get a rook's nest, and fallen down and broken both his legs!"

"He's lost his way in a wood, and got caught in a trap!"

And so on, till Miss Gubbins hushed them rather sharply. Only one person in the village seemed to have seen him, and that was the baker's wife.

"The little fair-haired chap? Yes; I seed him a trottin' through the street this afternoon, and he were a talkin' to hisself like mad. He went straight along the road, and he hasn't come back to my knowledge."

"That's Claud!" exclaimed Donald. "He always talks to himself when he isn't pleased. Come on, Gubby, we shall find him."

It was getting dark now, and Miss Gubbins was most uneasy. Not one of the servants had offered to search for her missing pupil, and she felt helpless and hopeless. At length, coming towards them along the dusty road, they spied a cart, and as it came nearer, a little form in it jumped up, and throwing up his arms shouted out:

"Hulloo, Gubby! Here I am! And I've had such fun."

It was Claud. The good-natured baker, coming back very late from his round, had overtaken a little tired, dusty figure plodding along, and recognising who it was, had lifted him into his cart and brought him back.

When Miss Gubbins found him safe and well she almost cried, the relief was so great, and Donald and Gypsy danced round him in the greatest excitement.

"Where have you been? What have you seen? Did you lose yourself? Mrs. Peck said she hoped you had, to give you a lesson. Tell us what you've been doing!"

But Claud, revelling in his importance now, pursed up his mouth and refused to say a word till he had got home and had had a good supper. Then his tongue was unloosed.

"I went out for a walk to find some children," he said, "and I peeped into three gardens on the road, and I asked a gardener about them, and he said no gentlefolk's children—that's what he called them—lived nearer than a white house high up on a hill that he showed me, and he said there were two there, only they were away from home; and then I left him, and I saw a farm across some fields, and I thought I'd like to go and see the inside of it. And when I got up, one side of the house was all a dirty yard, with pigs and fowls and cows, and the other side was a jolly garden with a lot of grass and apple trees at the bottom, and there was a window opening right out on the grass, and when I got up, I saw—guess!"

"A lovely tea-table with cakes and buns, and a nice little girl in the middle of it," suggested Gypsy.

"Two cross old ladies with a cat and a dog," guessed Donald.

"You're both wrong. It was a man, and he was on a sofa, and over his legs was a lovely wolf-skin, with a wolf's head, and tongue, and teeth showing, and long claws to his feet, and no one else was in the room except the man, and he was drawing a picture, an awfully funny one. And when he saw me, he said,—

"'Halloo, youngster, have you dropped from the moon?'

"And so then I pretended I had, and then he laughed out, and told me to come in, for he said he was longing for some one to talk to. And I told him I was wanting some one to play with, and he said he knew some lovely games, and he taught me one on paper, about a fox and a goose. I'll show you to-morrow."

Claud stopped for breath, and Donald eagerly demanded, "Did he give you anything to eat?"

"Yes; a huge slice of cake out of a cupboard. He said he had an old aunt who loved him so much, and spoilt him so much, and talked, and wrapped him up so much, that he was obliged to run away from her every summer, because if he didn't, he would turn into a stuffed old image that could only nod and smile, with nothing to think about but kittens' illnesses, and flannel petticoats for old women! He was very funny, and I liked him."

"And what else?" asked Gypsy. "Did he shoot the wolf that was over his legs? And what was he lying on a sofa for?"

"He's got something the matter with his legs, and he can't walk. He got lost on a mountain in the rain, and he was very ill, and he's a cripple, he says. He didn't seem to mind; he is staying there because his nurse lives there. I asked him if he was a nursery boy when he was little, and he said yes, and fancy! He had a father and mother and four brothers and sisters, and now they're all dead!"

"Who killed them?" asked Gypsy quickly.

"God did, I suppose," was Claud's reply. Then after a pause he went on, "I told him I would come and see him again. He can tell lovely stories, and I think he likes some one to listen to them. He has a chair on wheels, and he wheels himself out on the grass, and he says he feels like an old cow sometimes, because he has nothing to do but to munch his food, look up at the blue sky, and move round and round inside a small field, and to-day is always the same as yesterday, and to-morrow will be like to-day. I told him our days were never the same, and then he listened, and I talked, and when I was tired it was nearly dark, and so I came away."

"And now you are going to bed," said Miss Gubbins, "and you must never run away again without telling me where you're going."

Claud went off to bed obediently, but when Donald was half asleep, an hour later, he was awakened by his brother's call—

"Donald, look here; a man without legs can never be a knight, can he? Not a knight like King Arthur's?"

Donald rubbed his eyes.

"Don't bother!"

"Well, but just say. Would Arthur have had a cripple man, however brave he was?"

"Of course he wouldn't."

"Then my friend can't play that with us. I wish he could."

"Gubby said one of them got tired, and turned monk,"' murmured Donald. "Don't you remember?"

"Yes, I know; it was the one who told the story of Galahad. What was his name? Oh, I know, Sir Perceval. And that's what I shall call my friend. He wouldn't tell me his name—at least, he said was 'Bob Bogus.' That's what he puts at the bottom of his pictures—the funny ones I told you about. He sends them to 'Punch.' But that isn't his real name, and Sir Perceval is much nicer."

A grunt was Donald's only response, and Claud turned over on his pillow, seeing further conversation was useless. But as he, too, drifted into dreamland, he murmured, "A legless knight could be brave, I am sure."

It was not long before Claud visited his friend again. He slipped away quietly from the others at play, and confided in Miss Gubbins alone where he was going.

"You see, Gubby, I don't want them to come with me. He's my friend, not theirs, and Donald doesn't think much of him because his legs are all wrong."

"I don't know whether you ought to visit strangers so," said Miss Gubbins, hesitating. "Still, your brother will be here soon, and he can settle questions of that kind. Only don't come home late. You must be in time for tea."

Away trotted Claud. It was not very far, now he knew the way. He crept round to the front of the house facing the apple orchard, and there he saw, to his delight, the wheeled chair under the shade of an apple-tree.

Claud marched up with a radiant face.

"Good afternoon, Sir Perceval," he said, holding out his hand.

His friend started, and glanced up surprised at his new title. He was quite a young man, and rather a handsome one. His was a face that knew how to suffer and be strong, and perhaps the weary, sad look about his blue eyes was the only indication that he had known trouble. There was no sadness in tone or look as he exclaimed—

"Since when have I been knighted, may I ask?"

"Oh, I've knighted you myself. Gubby read us and told us about Sir Perceval, who left King Arthur and went into a monk's house to be quiet and good; at least the others were just as good, I'm sure, only I thought you'd do to be him, because you can't ride in tournaments."

"Thanks. I will answer to my name. May I prove worthy of it! When does the next tournament come off? Tell me some news of King Arthur's Court. I have been so long away from it that I've forgotten the manners and customs of it."

"We've been looking busily for the Holy Thing," said Claud, settling himself down on the grass and gazing up at the newly-made knight with shining eyes. "You saw it, didn't you, as well as Galahad? Only you weren't quite good enough to be caught away like he was."

The young man looked at the little speaker rather thoughtfully.

"Oh—ah, the Holy Grail, I remember; though it is years since I read it. Yes, you're right, though you don't know how near I was to being caught away a year or so ago. As you say, I 'wasn't quite good enough!'"

Then Claud relapsed into everyday talk.

"Yes, and there's Gypsy actually, who is always in mischief quite as bad as Donald and me, she pretends and sticks to it that she really did—honour bright—see the Holy Thing in a strange kind of church room in our house very early in the morning! And she says the room has disappeared. As girl would be good enough to see it!"

"I think a girl was the first one to see it. Wasn't it Sir Perceval's sister, the nun?"

"Oh, well, she was a grown-up person. Not a creature like Gypsy!"

"And what is this despised Gypsy like? A nutbrown maid?"

"No, she isn't brown; her hair is like mine, and always untidy, and she has only just given up wearing socks, and she's never still a minute."

"Poor little maiden! Do you think you are more to catch sight of it than she is?"

"I'm not very good myself," said Claud reflectively. "I don't think any of us are. Don and I try to be knights whenever we get a chance, and now we're in a proper kind of castle we feel much more like them. Then you see the Ogre will be coming back soon, and all kinds of things will happen. He is our grown-up brother—we call him the Ogre because he has a great moustache, which he pulls when he is angry, and he is a big, tall man, and I think he means to be very cruel to us when he comes back. At least we pretend he is going to be. It's more fun, you see!"

"We'll hope he won't disappoint you."

They chatted on, and when Claud left his friend an hour after, he said by way of farewell:

"I dare say I'll come and see you pretty often. I suppose you can't ever come and see us? Gubby would ask you to tea, if you could get up the stairs."

"Thanks, but I'm afraid my old legs couldn't do it. I tell them sometimes they've done their best to make me a decrepit old man, but I've got a little friend who won't let them have all their own way. He keeps them from worrying me."

"Who is he?"

"Ah, well, he has a variety of names. He is a little companion of mine, and helps me to do my sketches. Good-bye, and bring that little sister of yours to see me next time you come."

"Good-bye, Sir Perceval."