d.i.c.kie could hardly believe the beautiful hope that whispered in his ear.
"I almost think I remember," he said. "Father--did you promise----?"
"I promised, if thou wast a good lad and biddable and constant at thy book and thy manly exercises, to give thee, so soon as thou should"st have learned to ride him----"
"A little horse?" said d.i.c.kie breathlessly; "oh, father, not a little horse?" It was good to hear one"s father laugh that big, jolly laugh--to feel one"s father"s arm laid like that across one"s shoulders.
The little horse turned round to look at them from his stall in the big stables. It was really rather a big horse.
What colored horse would you choose--if a horse were to be yours for the choosing? d.i.c.kie would have chosen a gray, and a gray it was.
"What is his name?" d.i.c.kie asked, when he had admired the gray"s every point, had had him saddled, and had ridden him proudly round the pasture in his father"s sight.
"We call him Rosinante," said his father, "because he is so fat," and he laughed, but d.i.c.kie did not understand the joke. He had not read "Don Quixote," as you, no doubt, have.
"I should like," said d.i.c.kie, sitting square on the gray, "to call him Crutch. May I?"
"_Crutch?_" the father repeated.
"Because his paces are so easy," d.i.c.kie explained. He got off the horse very quickly and came to his father. "I mean even a lame boy could ride him. Oh! father, I am so happy!" he said, and burrowed his nose in a velvet doublet, and perhaps snivelled a little. "I am so glad I am not lame."
"Fancy-full as ever," said his father; "come, come! Thou"rt weak yet from the fever. Be a man. Remember of what blood thou art. And thy mother--she also hath a gift for thee--from thy grandfather. Hast thou forgotten that? It hangs to the book learning. A reward--and thou hast earned it."
"I"ve forgotten that, too," said d.i.c.kie. "You aren"t vexed because I forget? I can"t help it, father."
"That I"ll warrant thou cannot. Come, now, to thy mother. My little son!
The Earl of Scilly chid me but this summer for sparing the rod and spoiling the child. But thy growth in all things bears out in what I answered him. I said: "The boys of our house, my lord, take that pride in it that they learn of their own free will what many an earl"s son must be driven to with rods." He took me. His own son is little better than an idiot, and naught but the rod to blame for it, I verily believe."
They found the lady-mother and her babe by a little fire in a wide hearth.
"Our son comes to claim the guerdon of learning," the father said. And the lady stood up with the babe in her arms.
"Call the nurse to take him," she said. But d.i.c.kie held out his arms.
"Oh, mother," he said, and it was the first time in all his life that he had spoken that word to any one. "Mother, do let me hold him."
A warm, stiff bundle was put into his careful arms, and his little brother instantly caught at his hair. It hurt, but d.i.c.kie liked it.
The lady went to one of the carved cabinets and with a bright key from a very bright bunch unlocked one of the heavy panelled doors. She drew out of the darkness within a dull-colored leather bag embroidered in gold thread and crimson silk.
"He has forgot," said Sir Richard in an undertone, "what it was that the grandfather promised him. Though he has well earned the same. "Tis the fever."
The mother put the bag in d.i.c.kie"s hands.
"Count it out," she said, taking her babe from him; and d.i.c.kie untied the leathern string, and poured out on to the polished long table what the bag held. Twenty gold pieces.
"And all with the image of our late dear Queen," said the mother; "the image of that incomparable virgin Majesty whose example is a beacon for all time to all virtuous ladies."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT HURT, BUT d.i.c.kIE LIKED IT"
[_Page 157_]
"Ah, yes, indeed," said the father; "put them up in the bag, boy. They are thine own to thee, to spend as thou wilt."
"Not unwisely," said the mother gently.
"As he wills," the father firmly said; "wisely or unwisely. As he wills.
And none," he added, "shall ask how they be spent."
The lady frowned; she was a careful housewife, and twenty gold pieces were a large sum.
"I will not waste it," said d.i.c.kie. "Mother, you may trust me not to waste it."
It was the happiest moment of his life to d.i.c.kie. The little horse--the gold pieces.... Yes, but much more, the sudden, good, safe feeling of father and mother and little brother; of a place where he belonged, where he loved and was loved. And by his equals. For he felt that, as far as a child can be the equal of grown people, he was the equal of these. And Beale was not his equal, either in the graces of the body or in the inner treasures of mind and heart. And hitherto he had loved only Beale; had only, so far as he could remember, been loved by Beale and by that shadowy father, his "Daddy," who had died in hospital, and dying, had given him the rattle, his Tinkler, that was Harding"s Luck. And in the very heart of that happiest moment came, like a sharp dagger p.r.i.c.k, the thought of Beale. What wonders could be done for Beale with those twenty-five gold sovereigns? For d.i.c.kie thought of them just as sovereigns--and so they were.
And as these people who loved him, who were his own, drew nearer and nearer to his heart--his heart, quickened by love of them, felt itself drawn more and more to Mr. Beale. Mr. Beale, the tramp, who had been kind to him when no one else was. Mr. Beale, the tramp and housebreaker.
So when the nurse took him, tired with new happinesses, to that beautiful tapestried room of his, he roused himself from his good soft sleepiness to say--
"Nurse, you know a lot of things, don"t you?"
"I know what I know," she answered, undoing b.u.t.tons with speed and authority.
"You know that other dream of mine--that dream of mine, I mean, the dream of a dreadful place?"
"And then?"
"Could I take anything out of this dream--I mean out of this time into the other one?"
"You could, but you must bring it back when you come again. And you could bring things thence. Certain things: your rattle, your moon-seeds, your seal."
He stared at her.
"You _do_ know things," he said; "but I want to take things there and leave them there."
She knitted thoughtful brows.
"There"s three hundred thick years between now and then," she said. "Oh, yes, I know. And if you held it in your hand, you"d lose it like as not in some of the years you go through. Money"s mortal heavy and travels slow. Slower than the soul of you, my lamb. Some one would have time to see it and s.n.a.t.c.h it and hold to it."
"Isn"t there any way?" d.i.c.kie asked, insisting to himself that he wasn"t sleepy.
"There"s the way of everything--the earth," she said; "bury it, and lie down on the spot where it"s buried, and then, when you get back into the other dream, the kind, thick earth will have hid your secret, and you can dig it up again. It will be there ... unless other hands have dug there in the three hundred years. You must take your chance of that."
"Will you help me?" d.i.c.kie asked. "I shall need to dig it very deep if I am to cheat three hundred years. And suppose," he added, struck by a sudden and unpleasing thought, "there"s a house built on the place. I should be mixed up with the house. Two things can"t be in the same place at the same time. My tutor told me that. And the house would be so much stronger than me--it would get the best of it, and where should I be then?"
"I"ll ask where thou"d be," was the very surprising answer. "I"ll ask some one who knows. But it"ll take time--put thy money in the great press, and I"ll keep the key. And next Friday as ever is, come your little cousins."
They came. It was more difficult with them than it was with the grown-ups to conceal the fact that he had not always been the d.i.c.kie he was now; but it was not so difficult as you might suppose. It was no harder than not talking about the dreams you had last night.