Black Hearts in Battersea (18 page)

"Who am I, my precious? Why, I'm your own ma, Dolly Buckle, that's who I am, and you're my precious little Justin Sebastian Buckle! Where's your pa, then, all these years, what's he a-doing now? I'll lay
he's
feathered his nest. Always a cold, cunning schemer was Eustace Buckle, planning on next Sunday's joint before this one was fairly into the oven."

"B-b-buckle?" stammered Justin. "You're trying to tell me he's my
father?
Oh, what a piece of stuff! I
won't
believe it! My father was Lord Henry Bayswater."

"Oh, no, he wasn't, dearie. And don't speak like that of Eustace. A good husband he may not have been, but a careful father he
was.
It was on account of that that I felt free to go off with Nat Dark (ah, and a snake in the grass
he
turned out to be, dumping me on this island because he said I talked too much). Oh, no, Master Henry Bayswater wasn't your father—who should know better than I, as
dandled his lordship on my knee? He had two children, Master Henry did, or so I did hear, off in them Hanoverian parts, two children, a boy and a girl. You," she said to Simon, "you must be the boy, my precious lordship. What's your name?"

"Simon," he told her weakly.

"Simon? O' course it would be—after your dear Ma. Simone, she was, Simone Rivière, Lady Helen Bayswater's daughter, and own cousin to her husband."

"
What?
You mean I'm—But why should I—Oh, no, it can't be true," said Simon, sinking back on his pillow.

"Of course it isn't true!" exclaimed Justin angrily.

Nursie, or Mrs. Buckle, gave them a placid smile. "You'll allow I ought to know," she said. "I as is ma to one of you, and was nurserymaid in the castle when t'other one's Pa was a boy, until the black day I married Eustace Buckle."

"But I don't understand," Simon said. "If this mix-up happened—which I still can't believe—how did it come about?"

"Why, dearie, it's plain as plain. It's all along o' that scheming, artful Buckle. Always off on some plot or ploy, he was, leaving me lonesome with the babby. One time he goes off to Hanover. Well, my lad, thinks I,
I'm
off this time, too, so I goes on a cruise with Nat Dark."

"Leaving
me?
" exclaimed Justin in a voice squeaky with indignation. "Your own
child?
"

"Well, I couldn't take you on a ship, dearie. Puny little thing you were in those days. I left you in good care—with your Pa's sister Twite. Ah, I never did care for that shovel-faced Ella Twite," she added reflectively.

"So what happened?" Simon asked.

"Why, Nat Dark took a sudden dislike to me, dropped me on this island, and here I've been ever since. But what I'd guess happened to you is that Buckle got charge of Master Henry's children somehow—"

"Lord Henry died," Simon put in. "He and his wife both died in the Hanoverian wars." It seemed strange to think he might be speaking of his own parents.

"Eh, the poor young things! That'll be it, then. Buckle took the children, managed to cast 'em off somewhere (the hard-hearted villain,
I'd
tell him what I thought of him) and handed his own babby over to his Grace at Chippings Castle. But what happened to your sister, I wonder?" she said to Simon.

"I think I can guess."

"That Buckle, he's a deep one," she pursued. "Didn't he ever
tell
you he was your own father?" she asked Justin.

"No." Justin looked sick, as if, against his own wishes, he found himself forced to believe the story.

"I'll lay he would have when you got to be Duke.
Then
he'd have been in the driver's seat. Eh, would you ever believe such wickedness? Now I daresay you can do with a bite to eat, and you too, your lordship."

She bustled about, and presently fed them on ham and eggs.

"Mrs. Buckle," said Simon presently.

"Yes, my lovey? (Call me Nursie, do, it sounds so comfortable.)"

"Nursie, if Captain Dark left you on this island, what, fourteen years ago, how have you managed to live?"

"Eh, bless you, love, Nat Dark calls by from time to time on his way to Hanover, with a load of flour, or a pig, or a couple of pullets. I'll say this for him, he's a considerate rogue. But he always lies half a mile offshore and floats the things in on a raft for fear I'd scratch his eyes out if I caught him."

"I see," Simon said. He guessed that, once the conspiracy was under way, both Mr. Buckle and Captain Dark would have an interest in keeping the talkative Mrs. Buckle marooned for fear she should spill the beans.

"Is there nobody else on the island?"

"Only one other." Mrs. Buckle began to laugh. "Eh, he's a rum chap, if you like. I call him the Hermit. Captain Dark dropped him with the groceries last summer. I thought he'd be company, but, bless you! he's not one for a chat. Always painting, he is. 'Mrs. Buckle,' he says to me, 'forgive me, but you're interrupting my train of thought.' Eh, well, it takes all sorts to make a world."

Simon was on his feet with excitement. After the meal of ham and eggs he felt much stronger, almost his own self again.

"Where is he? Is he far from here?"

"Bless the lad, no, nubbut up at top of hill. But mind those legs, now, lovey, you're full weak yet—"

Clucking distractedly Mrs. Buckle followed Simon to the door, trying to fling a pea jacket around his shoulders. He hardly noticed. Behind the cabin was a heathery slope,
grazed by a few sheep and goats. He ran up it, found it led to another, and that to a third, which ended in a high crag. At the foot of the crag someone had built a small shack—someone was sitting outside it, wrapped in a cloak, sketching.

"Dr. Field!" Simon shouted. "Dr. Field! Dr. Field! It's me—Simon! Oh, Dr. Field, I'm so glad to see you again! I thought I'd never, never find you!"

"Bless me," said the Duke, "you mean there was nothing left at all?"

He stepped into the charcoal burner's hut. The door was half off its hinges. Inside, the place was bare; as the man had said, completely ransacked.

"But what about the little gal's bracelet, eh? Have you noticed a small bracelet anywhere, my man?"

"No, sir. Most likely the thieves'll have taken it," said young Turveytop gloomily, but Sophie noticed him dart a sharp glance around the log walls, as if looking for possible hiding places.

"I believe—" she began, and then checked herself.

"Hark—what was that sound?" exclaimed the Duke.

Sophie turned her head, listening, and became very pale. Young Turveytop rushed to the door. The Duke, following, saw him dart across the clearing to where the open carriage stood, with the driver still on the box.

"Mizzle, you fool! Don't you know what that is?" Turveytop shouted at him, and threw himself onto one of
the two carriage horses, slashing at the traces with a knife. In a moment he had galloped off down the track; an instant later the driver had followed him on the other horse.

"Hey! Come back! Stop!" shouted the Duke.

"Good gracious! What very extraordinary behavior! Sophie, what can be the meaning of it? Why have they taken our horses?"

Sophie cast a desperate glance around the open clearing. It was in a coign of the valley: on three sides the forest climbed steeply up an almost perpendicular slope. The fourth side, from which the baleful cry proceeded, was the way they had come.

"Sophie, child, why are you looking so anxious? What is the matter?"

"It is wolves, ma'am, and coming this way. We must take refuge in the hut until they are gone by" Sophie said, trying to maintain a calm voice and appearance.

"Wolves? But—
Oh,
those craven wretches!" exclaimed the Duchess.

'"Pon my soul! Have the men just made off and left us in the lurch? I shall write to
The Times
about this!"

"Please, ma'am—your Grace—
please
go into the hut!" Sophie was almost dancing with impatience; she practically pushed their Graces through the narrow doorway. The threatening, eager cry swelled louder and louder.

Sophie cast about for a weapon. The driver had gone off with his musket, but luckily some luggage had been fastened at the rear of the carriage. She seized a bunch of croquet mallets, a bag of billiard balls, and, as an after-thought, the Duchess' embroidery.

"Sophie! Make haste!" the Duchess called anxiously. Sophie ran back to the hut, where the Duke was vainly trying to adjust the broken door.

"Infernal thing!" he muttered. "Dangles kitty-corner-wise—any wolf could nip through the gap. Have you a notion how we could fix it, Sophie my lass? Ah, croquet mallets, that was well thought of—those should keep the brutes at arm's length."

"I think we can block the doorway—if your Grace would not object to my using your embroidery once again?"

"No, no, take it, take it by all means!" the Duchess cried distractedly.

Sophie quickly folded the massive piece of material into three, and hung it over the door hole, pegging it with slivers of wood into chinks in the log walls.

"What about the windows, my child?"

"My foster father made them small and high on purpose," Sophie said. "Ah! here come the wolves—you can hear the patter of their feet on the dead leaves—"

In spite of her calm and confident manner Sophie's heart beat frantically as the terrible howling swelled around the hut; it sounded like a hurricane of wolves. Soon the hut began to shake as wolves dashed themselves against the wooden walls. Sophie trembled for the precariously fastened tapestry, but the Duke, showing unwonted courage and resource, seized a pair of croquet mallets and stood guard behind it. Sometimes a shaggy head or a pair
of glaring eyes appeared at the windows, but the Duchess and Sophie pelted these attackers with a vigorous rain of billiard balls until they dropped back again. Once a corner of the tapestry came loose, as a wolf hurtled against it, and the front half of its body thrust into the room, with fangs bared and slavering tongue, but the Duke and Duchess fell upon it simultaneously and belabored it with croquet mallets until it retreated, yelping, and Sophie with desperate haste pegged the curtain back in position.

How long the battle continued it would he hard to say; it seemed an eternity to Sophie—an eternity of darting from point to point, hurling a ball at one window, reaching up with a mallet to thrust back an attacker at another or strike at a paw that had found foothold on the sill. There was never an instant's rest. But at last the wolves, many of them hurt, evidently decided that this quarry was not to be easily captured. The whole pack ran limping off into the forest; Sophie, on tiptoe at the window, saw them disappear down the track the way they had come.

For many minutes longer none of the three in the hut dared to hope that the wolves had gone for good, but they took advantage of the lull to rest; Sophie and the Duke leaned panting against the walls, while the Duchess sat plump down on the floor and fanned herself with the
Instructions for the Game of Billiards.

"Sophie! Sophie!" she sighed. "I do not know how it can be, but when we are with you we always contrive to run into such adventures!"

"Come, come, Hettie," his Grace said gruffly. "Admit
that the lass always rescues us, too. It's thanks to Sophie we aren't vanishing down the gullets of twenty wolves at this instant. By Jehoshaphat, my child, you're a well-plucked 'un, and with your wits about you, too; you should ha' been a boy! I'd a thousand times sooner have you at my side in a pinch than that whey-faced Justin."

"Thank you, your Grace." Sophie curtsied absently, but her expression was worried. She knew they must not remain in the hut much longer, for the wolves might return, and night was not far distant.

Regardless of the Duchess's little shriek of dismay, she put aside a corner of the tapestry and slipped out of the hut. Many billiard balls were lying on the grass round about, and she hastily gathered up as many as would go into her skirt and passed them in to the Duke.

"Now, your Graces, I am going to run to the main road for help, so do you, pray peg up the tapestry again, and do not take it down until you hear me call."

"But supposing you meet with a wolf, my child?"

"I'll make him regret the day he was born," Sophie said grimly, taking another croquet mallet from the carriage. She picked up her skirts and ran like the wind. She met with no wolves along the path but to her dismay, as she neared the turnpike, she began to hear a sound of howling and snarling, mixed with terrified whinnies. She collected a number of small rocks into her skirt and went on cautiously.

Coming around a thicket she saw that, although the main body of the wolf pack had evidently gone elsewhere, half a dozen stragglers remained, and were attacking the
baggage coach which still stood in the road. The coachman and one of the horses was missing—it was plain that he had followed the example of his cowardly companion and made off. The other three horses, half mad with fright, were rearing and striking out at the wolves with their hooves. Sophie lost no time in coming to their aid.

"Shoo! You brutes!" she shouted in a loud angry voice. "For shame! Leave the poor defenseless horses alone or it will be the worse for you! Attacking them when they are harnessed up, indeed!" and she followed this up with a hail of rocks, several of which, at such close quarters, found their targets and effectually startled and scattered the wolves. Before they could recover, Sophie rushed among them, whirling the croquet mallet around and around, striking first one, then another, until she won her way through to the coach and jumped up on the box. There, to her delight, she found the driver's blunderbuss, which in his fright he had forgotten to take. She discharged it among the wolves, and this completed their rout entirely; they made off at top speed. Sophie was so much amused at the doleful spectacle they presented as they fled that she burst out laughing, and then applied herself to soothing and making much of the three horses, who were sweating and trembling with fear.

After waiting a few moments to make sure the wolves did not return, Sophie mounted the leading horse, unfastened the traces, and made him gallop back along the track. Arriving at the clearing she harnessed him to the light carriage and called to their Graces to come
quickly, for the way was clear.