CHAPTER IV

UP RIVER

Bordered by cities, and hoarse With a thousand cries, is its stream. And we on its breast, our minds Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and shot as the sights that we see. --MATTHEW ARNOLD.

The dawn was misty gray and the cold piercing when Doggett awoke his second-in-command. The barge flotilla was just passing under Hammersmith Bridge.

Felix, dazed with sleep, arose, and, as directed, lit a paraffin stove, boiled a kettle, and made tea. Then he frizzled bacon in a frying-pan, an accomplishment which was by no means new to him. He took his own breakfast, a few hurried mouthfuls, and then, carrying his mug and plate, went to relieve his master at the tiller.

As he passed, he stooped to where Rona slept, motionless in her nest of hay. She was lying quite still, her lashes, with a bronze luster on their blackness, penciled sharply upon her cheek, flushed with warm slumber. The rosy tint made the face appear far more pleasing than it had seemed last night. She panted now and then, as if it hurt her to draw breath. But, as far as he could tell, she was not feverish.

He went on to his post, wrapped himself up in old sacks, and set himself with determination to his work. The steersman of the barge immediately in front hailed him, and wanted to know, in a particularly rich vernacular, whether he were going to pursue the Old Man's policy of steering in the one exact way most calculated to annoy the man ahead. Felix had been in queer places, and though bargees were not among his experiences, convicts, it was to be presumed, ran them pretty close in the way of language. His reply was of the right kind, and given in the right tone. When Doggett, munching his bacon, heard it, he gave a hoarse, inward chuckle, and decided that his new "boy" was not such a green hand after all.

Having finished his breakfast, the Old Man turned in; and from that time until ten o'clock, when he had been bidden to call him, Felix sat guiding the heavy, sulky barge upstream. The mist cleared away little by little, the sun came up, and the day broke out clear and gay, though very cold. Just as he came off his watch, Rona awoke and called him. He hurried to her side, knelt down, and took the warm little hand thrust out to him.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

They looked at each other with curiosity. Felix was not an engaging object, with the lower half of his gaunt face shrouded in stubbly black beard. He had discarded his collar and tie, and Comrade Dawkes had lent him a very dirty blue jersey. The girl had the soiled, rumpled aspect of one who has slept in her clothes. Her hair was rough and tumbling down, and full of bits of hay. There were purple marks under her eyes, and her lids were red with the unavailing tears of many days.

The friendliness of the young man's heart was curiously unmixed with any feeling of sex attraction. Sex only entered into the question in so far that he was more sorry for Rona than he would have been for a boy in her case, on account of her greater helplessness.

"I feel very queer," said Rona, shyly, "and terribly stiff."

"I daren't let you get up and move about yet," he returned. "It is so cold, the wind cuts like a knife. I'll go and make you some hot tea. Could you eat some bacon?"

She said "No" to that, with an expression of loathing. He went to the cabin, and with infinite labor managed to make a bit of toast, which he took to her, fervently hoping that it did not taste of paraffin. She earnestly asserted that it did not, but could not eat it nevertheless. She drank the tea, however, and declared herself refreshed. But Felix could see that she felt very ill. He could not stay long with her, for he had to wash up, make the so-called bed, put the cabin tidy, etc.; all the time parrying with difficulty the intense interest and pointed questions of the steersman of the barge ahead.

When he next went to her, she wished to know where they were going. He told her Basingstoke, and that from thence they would have to tramp to Sempleton, where the Convent was situated. She was glad she had not to walk that day. She was sure she should be better to-morrow, if she lay quite still. She was warm, and not very uncomfortable.

They reached Teddington Lock at midday, and below it they waited forty-five minutes by Mr. Doggett's watch; which delay provoked a cataract of comment which left the listener stunned. At this place Felix bought a paper, which, to his relief, said nothing of any abduction or elopement, nor made any comment upon the disappearance of two such obscure persons as themselves. He cheered Rona with this news. Here he also persuaded the lock-keeper's wife to sell him a fresh egg for the sum of one halfpenny, since "his sister" was ill, and found herself quite unable to eat the pork chops which were, with fried greens, to form the midday repast of himself and Mr. Doggett.

His cooking gave his new master great satisfaction. Mr. Doggett consumed his succulent repast in full view of the envious crew of the _George Barnes_, who had some cold meat of the least appetizing description, and to whom the savory odor from the cabin of the _Sarah Dawkes_ was a provocation hard to be endured.

The lock-keeper's wife, charmed by Felix's persuasive tongue, herself toasted bread for Rona, who, stimulated by the fresh air and the rest cure she was undergoing, managed to eat both egg and toast, to the relief and triumph of the young man, whose only interest in life she had suddenly become.

He developed powers of ready invention, coupled with artistic restraint, in informing the crew of the _George Barnes_, in answer to their vast and avid desire for personal information, how his sister had worked in a pickle factory, and how the air was so bad that she had been attacked with anæmia, and how the doctors recommended a trip up the canal as the finest cure for this same dread complaint. The man had never heard of anæmia, and treated it with the awe-struck respect entertained by the scolding lady of Theodore Hook's story, for a parallelogram.

The process of getting the barges out of the lock was one which threatened to last forever. It was done at last, however, and they proceeded up the river reaches, passing slowly below the long red wall of Hampton Court. Mr. Doggett, his good dinner eaten, and his pipe in his mouth, was quite content to sit at the tiller all day. In fact, he never believed that anybody but himself could induce the _Sarah Dawkes_ to take the right course--an opinion which was not confined to his barge, but extended to the lady who was his wife, and in whose honor the craft was named.

His devotion to duty left Felix free, after washing up the dinner things, to try the effect of walking Rona up and down the deck. This was, however, so painful to her, that he was obliged to desist. The idea was growing in him that there was, as he at first feared, internal mischief. What were they to do?

Mr. Doggett presently confided to him his intention to part from the tug at Sunbury, and remain there that night, going on thence with a horse. A few more questions extracted a piece of information which was somewhat agitating to the young man. In his eagerness for flight the previous day he had jumped at the idea of going to Basingstoke, without having any clear notion of the waterway which would lead them thither. Now he ascertained that, at Weybridge, they would follow the Wey Navigation to the point where the Guildford and Basingstoke Canal flowed in--and afterwards, the sinuous curve of the quiet water would lead them within sight of the very uplands where Normansgrave stood among its pinewoods.

His heart leaped up at the idea of passing so near to his old home. His brow crimsoned with shame to think how any one of the villagers who in old days had petted him, would now pass him on the towing-path without recognition.

He plunged deeply into thought, into unavailing bitterness of heart towards his sorely tried half-brother. But in his thought was a new element. For the first time he began to see that Denzil might have some right on his side--that it was conceivable that their father's son might legitimately object to the use he had made of their father's name.

He was glad he had not told Rona who he was. The old name at least was not associated in her mind with the notion of a suicide and a convict.

He longed for, yet dreaded, the moment when they should reach the spot to which the poor heart that thought itself weaned from all ties now discovered that it clung with passionate desire.

It was dark by the time they were moored at Sunbury. Mr. Doggett went ashore to pass the evening with a few kindred spirits at the Waterman's Rest. As he would probably return to seek his couch in the cabin later on in the night hours, Felix made himself a shake-down with hay not far from where Rona lay, with the benevolent design of hearing her, should she call during the night.

But he slept like a log. The strain of body and mind through which he had passed was relaxed to the extent of permitting him to yield to an overmastering fatigue. There were clouds ahead. He still apprehended the necessity of depositing Rona in some hospital or infirmary. Every mile traversed by the barge was taking them farther from the north of England, and would increase the length, and consequently the expense, of their journey thither. Moreover, he was on ticket-of-leave for another fortnight, and he did not quite know what the police would make of his deserted room, his letter to his brother, and the empty mug. But, in spite of these things--in spite of the knowledge that his present route was slow and winding, and that pursuit might catch up at any moment--still, the fresh air and the food and the relaxation of tension had had their effect, and he slept ten hours without a break, and would have slept longer but for the ungentle touch of the Old Man's boot against his sparsely-clad ribs.

All that day he was tramping along the tow-path. They nearly went aground at the shallow just opposite Halliford, but, fortunately for the Old Man's state of mind, not more than a good shove with the pole would counteract.

Up to Weybridge, past Shepperton and the Island, and on to the narrow black mouth of the Wey between the old gaping lock gates into the deep jaws of the newer one. After that, they were in the region of locks which they had to work themselves, and progress was very slow.

Felix had hardly a moment in which to think of Rona, though he felt that she was growing worse instead of better. He had never been so tired in his life as he was when they moored near a small village called Dunhythe, where the night was to be spent.

Doggett had an errand for him. He was to go up to the village, which lay half a mile from the little hythe or wharf, and get the blacksmith to re-fix the iron point of the long pole, damaged at Halliford. Before starting on his errand he went to look at the girl, who had been unable to eat or drink anything but water at dinner-time. She was now delirious. To his horror, she did not know him. Her face was bright red, and her eyes preternaturally bright.

Felix determined that he must call in a doctor, if he could persuade one to come without a fee. He said nothing of his intention to the Old Man, but set out for the village as fast as he could go, with the long pole over his shoulder.

Having deposited his burden with the blacksmith, and promised to call for it, he asked the way to the doctor's house, and found himself obliged to run nearly a mile. A smart motor was at the door when he arrived, and the maid said the doctor was seeing a patient, but would speak to him when disengaged. The minutes seemed hours to Felix as he sat in the hall, filled with a vast and overwhelming depression. It was of no use to struggle against his destiny. Rona, the sole thing for which he was making this last stand, was going to die.

The door opened, the doctor came out, and advanced across the hall, accompanied by an elderly lady with a plain, humorous face, and a natural charm of manner.

"Well," she said, "that is reassuring, doctor. But mind, nothing is to be spared. Let the poor fellow have port wine or tonic, or anything he ought to have, and send in the bills to me."

"You are splendid!" was the reply, in a tone of deep feeling. "What would happen without you, I wonder? Hullo, my good man, what can I do for you?"

He spoke to Felix, who could not immediately reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling, and grew white. He had seen the lady from time to time in his boyish days. She was only sister to his father's first wife--her name was Miss Rawson. She lived at Normansgrave, and kept house for Denzil Vanston.