CHAPTER VI
Where has He Gone?
It was quite late in the afternoon when the two girls reached the house again. They were both of them tired out, for the day was fiercely hot. They had come upon no trace of the old man, but of one thing they had made quite certain: he was not lying in a dying or dead condition in any of his fields, which was, as Pam said, a comfort of a sort.
They heard the dog barking wildly as they reached the house, and a man was turning away from the door as if he had been trying to get admission and had failed.
“Who is that?” cried Pam. At the first sight of the man she had jumped to the conclusion that it was her grandfather, but a second glance had shown her that this man was young, or comparatively young.
“It is Mose Paget,” Sophy whispered hurriedly, and there was so much disapproval in her tone that Pam gathered the arrival was something of a detrimental. And indeed he looked it, from the torn brim of his weather-beaten hat to the burst boots on his feet.
“Good afternoon!” said Pam politely. She would have supposed the man to be a tramp, only her companion knew his name, and so far as she knew tramps had no names, or if they had no one knew them. To her surprise the man swept off his ragged hat with a flourish, and he spoke like an educated man when he returned her greeting, and asked if Mr. Wrack Peveril was at home.
Pam’s face clouded. She had hoped that the man had come to give her news of her grandfather, and here he was asking where he was, just like all the other folks! She would have poured out the story of their long search that afternoon, only Sophy’s hand dropped with a warning touch on her arm, and instead of being confidential she merely said:
“I do not think that he has come back yet. If you will wait a moment I will go into the house and see.”
The man nodded, then leaned against the fence very much at his ease, while Pam, with Sophy at her side, walked to the door of the house and opened it. With a howl of rage the dog burst out, but seeing it was the two girls who were there the creature at once mended its manners, the growls died in its throat, and it came to fawn upon them with every appearance of joyfulness. Then, catching sight of the shabby figure leaning on the fence, it began growling again, and would have dashed away to do the man a serious injury, only Pam caught it round its neck and held it fast.
One glance into the room showed her that it was just as they had left it. The paper still lay on the table. No one had been there, and the old man had not returned.
“My grandfather has not come home yet. Is there any message you would like to leave for him?” she asked, raising her voice a little so that it might reach the man who leaned against the fence. The dog still struggled in her grasp, being plainly anxious to rend the man if only it could reach him.
“Well, no, I can’t say that I have,” he answered. As he spoke he drew himself erect from his leaning posture, and there was so much relief in his face that both girls noticed it and wondered. “Perhaps I shall meet him at The Corner in a day or two, or I may be round this way again soon. It ain’t no sort of consequence. Good afternoon!”
“Didn’t you think he seemed very glad to find that Grandfather was not at home?” said Pam, turning to Sophy as the retreating figure of Mose Paget was hid by the winding of the trail. She was still gripping the dog, and that sagacious beast was being nearly choked with its own growls. Plainly the man did not appeal to the dog, or perhaps the wise animal had some past grudge against him.
“Yes, I think that his wanting to see Mr. Peveril was only an excuse. It was a good thing we left the dog shut in the house, or we might have found the place had been ransacked while we were away. Mose Paget has not much of a reputation, though folks do say he is very kind to his half-brother, Reggie Furness.”
“A man would have to be very bad indeed if he had no good points,” remarked Pam, as the two turned into the house. Then she asked: “Do you suppose that there would be anything here worth stealing?”
“Not by the look of the place,” said Sophy, gazing round the wide, bare room. The solid furniture was mostly home-made, very clumsy, and only worth firewood price, which in that part of the world would not be worth consideration. Of household plenishing of the more movable sort, such as plate, glass, and cutlery, there was almost nothing; in fact, it was the most hopeless wilderness, from the point of view of a burglar, that could be imagined. “But Mose Paget might have heard that your grandfather was not at home, and so just happened round to see if there were any money to be picked up. When a man lives in the fashion Mr. Peveril has done people are apt to think that there must be money hidden somewhere close at hand, and to be had for the finding; and it is these people who find it almost impossible to believe that it is poverty and not miserliness which accounts for the barren look of things.”
Pam nodded, and was conscious of some secret sinking of heart. Sophy had spoken of the old man’s poverty by way of reassuring Pam, who might have been afraid to be compelled to guard the secret hoards of a miser. Besides, everyone believed that Wrack Peveril was very poor, and even in the wilderness people can make a very fair guess at the business of their neighbours. If Pam’s grandfather were so poor, it would be madly impracticable for her mother to give up the London boarding-house and come to the old home in New Brunswick. But Pam was longing for her family, and feeling that she could never be really happy while the wide Atlantic rolled between herself and them.
The two girls did the evening “chores” between them, only to-night it was Pam who sat on the stool and milked the cow under the able tuition of Sophy, whose best frock was still the barrier to happiness in work. Pam had to learn, however, and there was no time like the present, for without doubt Sophy was a more patient teacher than the old man would be when he came back; and Pam made up her mind to imbibe as much information as was possible in the time. The pigs and the poultry had fed themselves with the harvest of field and forest, but they had to be shut up because of the nocturnal marauders, to whom a chicken, or even a small porker, would not come amiss.
“We are all farmers more or less,” exclaimed Sophy, when Pam openly wondered at her cleverness and the extent of her knowledge. “That is to say, there is land under cultivation round most of the houses; and so we all grow our own milk and butter, and rear our own pigs and poultry.”
“I feel so dreadfully ignorant now that I am here, for the sort of knowledge I possess seems of no use at all,” said Pam, who had even to be instructed in the art of lighting a fire with a back stick.[1] She had never seen a cooking-stove of such a pattern before, and she would have been very much at a loss in her new surroundings had it not been for Sophy.
“You will soon pick up the ways of daily living that are most suited to this part of the world,” Sophy said in a comforting tone. Then the two proceeded to set supper. The food left over from the surprise party would keep them supplied with provisions for several days to come, which was just as well, for a house more bare of things to eat it would be hard to imagine. There was no tea, no coffee, only a little dust of sugar screwed up in a grimy paper bag, and a little meal in a tub. Pam was ready to cry, thinking that her grandfather must have been on the brink of starvation. Sophy reminded her of the cow, and pointed out that, supposing he lived on new milk, with meal porridge, he would be even better nourished than people who had tea, coffee, and all sorts of groceries.
“Poor old man!” wailed Pam, as she inspected that bare house, “I feel as if I could nearly break my heart over him. But if he comes back, and is fearfully hard to live with, then I shall feel like breaking it from another standpoint altogether.”
“Just so; and neither way will do any good, so it is much better to keep cheerful,” said Sophy, who was of a very literal turn of mind. “Here comes Don with some garments for me. Shall