第 五 章 · Prisoners and captives.

. Prisoners and captives.

It was one day when Mother had gone to Maidbridge. She had gone alone,

but the children were to go to the station to meet her. And, loving the

station as they did, it was only natural that they should be there a

good hour before there was any chance of Mother's train arriving, even

if the train were punctual, which was most unlikely. No doubt they would

have been just as early, even if it had been a fine day, and all the

delights of woods and fields and rocks and rivers had been open to them.

But it happened to be a very wet day and, for July, very cold. There was

a wild wind that drove flocks of dark purple clouds across the sky “like

herds of dream-elephants,” as Phyllis said. And the rain stung sharply,

so that the way to the station was finished at a run. Then the rain fell

faster and harder, and beat slantwise against the windows of the booking

office and of the chill place that had General Waiting Room on its door.

“It's like being in a besieged castle,” Phyllis said; “look at the

arrows of the foe striking against the battlements!”

“It's much more like a great garden-squirt,” said Peter.

They decided to wait on the up side, for the down platform looked very

wet indeed, and the rain was driving right into the little bleak shelter

where down-passengers have to wait for their trains.

The hour would be full of incident and of interest, for there would be

two up trains and one down to look at before the one that should bring

Mother back.

“Perhaps it'll have stopped raining by then,” said Bobbie; “anyhow, I'm

glad I brought Mother's waterproof and umbrella.”

They went into the desert spot labelled General Waiting Room, and the

time passed pleasantly enough in a game of advertisements. You know the

game, of course? It is something like dumb Crambo. The players take

it in turns to go out, and then come back and look as like some

advertisement as they can, and the others have to guess what

advertisement it is meant to be. Bobbie came in and sat down under

Mother's umbrella and made a sharp face, and everyone knew she was the

fox who sits under the umbrella in the advertisement. Phyllis tried to

make a Magic Carpet of Mother's waterproof, but it would not stand out

stiff and raft-like as a Magic Carpet should, and nobody could guess

it. Everyone thought Peter was carrying things a little too far when he

blacked his face all over with coal-dust and struck a spidery attitude

and said he was the blot that advertises somebody's Blue Black Writing

Fluid.

It was Phyllis's turn again, and she was trying to look like the Sphinx

that advertises What's-his-name's Personally Conducted Tours up the Nile

when the sharp ting of the signal announced the up train. The children

rushed out to see it pass. On its engine were the particular driver

and fireman who were now numbered among the children's dearest friends.

Courtesies passed between them. Jim asked after the toy engine, and

Bobbie pressed on his acceptance a moist, greasy package of toffee that

she had made herself.

Charmed by this attention, the engine-driver consented to consider her

request that some day he would take Peter for a ride on the engine.

“Stand back, Mates,” cried the engine-driver, suddenly, “and horf she

goes.”

And sure enough, off the train went. The children watched the

tail-lights of the train till it disappeared round the curve of the

line, and then turned to go back to the dusty freedom of the General

Waiting Room and the joys of the advertisement game.

They expected to see just one or two people, the end of the procession

of passengers who had given up their tickets and gone away. Instead, the

platform round the door of the station had a dark blot round it, and the

dark blot was a crowd of people.

“Oh!” cried Peter, with a thrill of joyous excitement, “something's

happened! Come on!”

They ran down the platform. When they got to the crowd, they could, of

course, see nothing but the damp backs and elbows of the people on the

crowd's outside. Everybody was talking at once. It was evident that

something had happened.

“It's my belief he's nothing worse than a natural,” said a

farmerish-looking person. Peter saw his red, clean-shaven face as he

spoke.

“If you ask me, I should say it was a Police Court case,” said a young

man with a black bag.

“Not it; the Infirmary more like--”

Then the voice of the Station Master was heard, firm and official:--

“Now, then--move along there. I'll attend to this, if YOU please.”

But the crowd did not move. And then came a voice that thrilled the

children through and through. For it spoke in a foreign language. And,

what is more, it was a language that they had never heard. They had

heard French spoken and German. Aunt Emma knew German, and used to sing

a song about bedeuten and zeiten and bin and sin. Nor was it Latin.

Peter had been in Latin for four terms.

It was some comfort, anyhow, to find that none of the crowd understood

the foreign language any better than the children did.

“What's that he's saying?” asked the farmer, heavily.

“Sounds like French to me,” said the Station Master, who had once been

to Boulogne for the day.

“It isn't French!” cried Peter.

“What is it, then?” asked more than one voice. The crowd fell back a

little to see who had spoken, and Peter pressed forward, so that when

the crowd closed up again he was in the front rank.

“I don't know what it is,” said Peter, “but it isn't French. I know

that.” Then he saw what it was that the crowd had for its centre. It

was a man--the man, Peter did not doubt, who had spoken in that strange

tongue. A man with long hair and wild eyes, with shabby clothes of a cut

Peter had not seen before--a man whose hands and lips trembled, and who

spoke again as his eyes fell on Peter.

“No, it's not French,” said Peter.

“Try him with French if you know so much about it,” said the farmer-man.

“Parlay voo Frongsay?” began Peter, boldly, and the next moment the

crowd recoiled again, for the man with the wild eyes had left leaning

against the wall, and had sprung forward and caught Peter's hands,

and begun to pour forth a flood of words which, though he could not

understand a word of them, Peter knew the sound of.

“There!” said he, and turned, his hands still clasped in the hands of

the strange shabby figure, to throw a glance of triumph at the crowd;

“there; THAT'S French.”

“What does he say?”

“I don't know.” Peter was obliged to own it.

“Here,” said the Station Master again; “you move on if you please. I'LL

deal with this case.”

A few of the more timid or less inquisitive travellers moved slowly and

reluctantly away. And Phyllis and Bobbie got near to Peter. All three

had been TAUGHT French at school. How deeply they now wished that they

had LEARNED it! Peter shook his head at the stranger, but he also shook

his hands as warmly and looked at him as kindly as he could. A person

in the crowd, after some hesitation, said suddenly, “No comprenny!” and

then, blushing deeply, backed out of the press and went away.

“Take him into your room,” whispered Bobbie to the Station Master.

“Mother can talk French. She'll be here by the next train from

Maidbridge.”

The Station Master took the arm of the stranger, suddenly but not

unkindly. But the man wrenched his arm away, and cowered back coughing

and trembling and trying to push the Station Master away.

“Oh, don't!” said Bobbie; “don't you see how frightened he is? He thinks

you're going to shut him up. I know he does--look at his eyes!”

“They're like a fox's eyes when the beast's in a trap,” said the farmer.

“Oh, let me try!” Bobbie went on; “I do really know one or two French

words if I could only think of them.”

Sometimes, in moments of great need, we can do wonderful things--things

that in ordinary life we could hardly even dream of doing. Bobbie had

never been anywhere near the top of her French class, but she must have

learned something without knowing it, for now, looking at those wild,

hunted eyes, she actually remembered and, what is more, spoke, some

French words. She said:--

“Vous attendre. Ma mere parlez Francais. Nous--what's the French for

'being kind'?”

Nobody knew.

“Bong is 'good,'” said Phyllis.

“Nous etre bong pour vous.”

I do not know whether the man understood her words, but he understood

the touch of the hand she thrust into his, and the kindness of the other

hand that stroked his shabby sleeve.

She pulled him gently towards the inmost sanctuary of the Station

Master. The other children followed, and the Station Master shut the

door in the face of the crowd, which stood a little while in the booking

office talking and looking at the fast closed yellow door, and then by

ones and twos went its way, grumbling.

Inside the Station Master's room Bobbie still held the stranger's hand

and stroked his sleeve.

“Here's a go,” said the Station Master; “no ticket--doesn't even know

where he wants to go. I'm not sure now but what I ought to send for the

police.”

“Oh, DON'T!” all the children pleaded at once. And suddenly Bobbie

got between the others and the stranger, for she had seen that he was

crying.

By a most unusual piece of good fortune she had a handkerchief in

her pocket. By a still more uncommon accident the handkerchief was

moderately clean. Standing in front of the stranger, she got out the

handkerchief and passed it to him so that the others did not see.

“Wait till Mother comes,” Phyllis was saying; “she does speak French

beautifully. You'd just love to hear her.”

“I'm sure he hasn't done anything like you're sent to prison for,” said

Peter.

“Looks like without visible means to me,” said the Station Master.

“Well, I don't mind giving him the benefit of the doubt till your Mamma

comes. I SHOULD like to know what nation's got the credit of HIM, that I

should.”

Then Peter had an idea. He pulled an envelope out of his pocket, and

showed that it was half full of foreign stamps.

“Look here,” he said, “let's show him these--”

Bobbie looked and saw that the stranger had dried his eyes with her

handkerchief. So she said: “All right.”

They showed him an Italian stamp, and pointed from him to it and back

again, and made signs of question with their eyebrows. He shook his

head. Then they showed him a Norwegian stamp--the common blue kind it

was--and again he signed No. Then they showed him a Spanish one, and

at that he took the envelope from Peter's hand and searched among the

stamps with a hand that trembled. The hand that he reached out at last,

with a gesture as of one answering a question, contained a RUSSIAN

stamp.

“He's Russian,” cried Peter, “or else he's like 'the man who was'--in

Kipling, you know.”

The train from Maidbridge was signalled.

“I'll stay with him till you bring Mother in,” said Bobbie.

“You're not afraid, Missie?”

“Oh, no,” said Bobbie, looking at the stranger, as she might have looked

at a strange dog of doubtful temper. “You wouldn't hurt me, would you?”

She smiled at him, and he smiled back, a queer crooked smile. And then

he coughed again. And the heavy rattling swish of the incoming train

swept past, and the Station Master and Peter and Phyllis went out to

meet it. Bobbie was still holding the stranger's hand when they came

back with Mother.

The Russian rose and bowed very ceremoniously.

Then Mother spoke in French, and he replied, haltingly at first, but

presently in longer and longer sentences.

The children, watching his face and Mother's, knew that he was telling

her things that made her angry and pitying, and sorry and indignant all

at once.

“Well, Mum, what's it all about?” The Station Master could not restrain

his curiosity any longer.

“Oh,” said Mother, “it's all right. He's a Russian, and he's lost his

ticket. And I'm afraid he's very ill. If you don't mind, I'll take him

home with me now. He's really quite worn out. I'll run down and tell you

all about him to-morrow.”

“I hope you won't find you're taking home a frozen viper,” said the

Station Master, doubtfully.

“Oh, no,” Mother said brightly, and she smiled; “I'm quite sure I'm

not. Why, he's a great man in his own country, writes books--beautiful

books--I've read some of them; but I'll tell you all about it

to-morrow.”

She spoke again in French to the Russian, and everyone could see the

surprise and pleasure and gratitude in his eyes. He got up and politely

bowed to the Station Master, and offered his arm most ceremoniously to

Mother. She took it, but anybody could have seen that she was helping

him along, and not he her.

“You girls run home and light a fire in the sitting-room,” Mother said,

“and Peter had better go for the Doctor.”

But it was Bobbie who went for the Doctor.

“I hate to tell you,” she said breathlessly when she came upon him

in his shirt sleeves, weeding his pansy-bed, “but Mother's got a very

shabby Russian, and I'm sure he'll have to belong to your Club. I'm

certain he hasn't got any money. We found him at the station.”

“Found him! Was he lost, then?” asked the Doctor, reaching for his coat.

“Yes,” said Bobbie, unexpectedly, “that's just what he was. He's been

telling Mother the sad, sweet story of his life in French; and she said

would you be kind enough to come directly if you were at home. He has a

dreadful cough, and he's been crying.”

The Doctor smiled.

“Oh, don't,” said Bobbie; “please don't. You wouldn't if you'd seen him.

I never saw a man cry before. You don't know what it's like.”

Dr. Forrest wished then that he hadn't smiled.

When Bobbie and the Doctor got to Three Chimneys, the Russian was

sitting in the arm-chair that had been Father's, stretching his feet

to the blaze of a bright wood fire, and sipping the tea Mother had made

him.

“The man seems worn out, mind and body,” was what the Doctor said; “the

cough's bad, but there's nothing that can't be cured. He ought to go

straight to bed, though--and let him have a fire at night.”

“I'll make one in my room; it's the only one with a fireplace,” said

Mother. She did, and presently the Doctor helped the stranger to bed.

There was a big black trunk in Mother's room that none of the children

had ever seen unlocked. Now, when she had lighted the fire, she unlocked

it and took some clothes out--men's clothes--and set them to air by the

newly lighted fire. Bobbie, coming in with more wood for the fire, saw

the mark on the night-shirt, and looked over to the open trunk. All

the things she could see were men's clothes. And the name marked on the

shirt was Father's name. Then Father hadn't taken his clothes with him.

And that night-shirt was one of Father's new ones. Bobbie remembered its

being made, just before Peter's birthday. Why hadn't Father taken his

clothes? Bobbie slipped from the room. As she went she heard the key

turned in the lock of the trunk. Her heart was beating horribly. WHY

hadn't Father taken his clothes? When Mother came out of the room,

Bobbie flung tightly clasping arms round her waist, and whispered:--

“Mother--Daddy isn't--isn't DEAD, is he?”

“My darling, no! What made you think of anything so horrible?”

“I--I don't know,” said Bobbie, angry with herself, but still clinging

to that resolution of hers, not to see anything that Mother didn't mean

her to see.

Mother gave her a hurried hug. “Daddy was quite, QUITE well when I heard

from him last,” she said, “and he'll come back to us some day. Don't

fancy such horrible things, darling!”

Later on, when the Russian stranger had been made comfortable for the

night, Mother came into the girls' room. She was to sleep there in

Phyllis's bed, and Phyllis was to have a mattress on the floor, a

most amusing adventure for Phyllis. Directly Mother came in, two white

figures started up, and two eager voices called:--

“Now, Mother, tell us all about the Russian gentleman.”

A white shape hopped into the room. It was Peter, dragging his quilt

behind him like the tail of a white peacock.

“We have been patient,” he said, “and I had to bite my tongue not to

go to sleep, and I just nearly went to sleep and I bit too hard, and it

hurts ever so. DO tell us. Make a nice long story of it.”

“I can't make a long story of it to-night,” said Mother; “I'm very

tired.”

Bobbie knew by her voice that Mother had been crying, but the others

didn't know.

“Well, make it as long as you can,” said Phil, and Bobbie got her arms

round Mother's waist and snuggled close to her.

“Well, it's a story long enough to make a whole book of. He's a writer;

he's written beautiful books. In Russia at the time of the Czar one

dared not say anything about the rich people doing wrong, or about the

things that ought to be done to make poor people better and happier. If

one did one was sent to prison.”

“But they CAN'T,” said Peter; “people only go to prison when they've

done wrong.”

“Or when the Judges THINK they've done wrong,” said Mother. “Yes, that's

so in England. But in Russia it was different. And he wrote a beautiful

book about poor people and how to help them. I've read it. There's

nothing in it but goodness and kindness. And they sent him to prison for

it. He was three years in a horrible dungeon, with hardly any light, and

all damp and dreadful. In prison all alone for three years.”

Mother's voice trembled a little and stopped suddenly.

“But, Mother,” said Peter, “that can't be true NOW. It sounds like

something out of a history book--the Inquisition, or something.”

“It WAS true,” said Mother; “it's all horribly true. Well, then they

took him out and sent him to Siberia, a convict chained to other

convicts--wicked men who'd done all sorts of crimes--a long chain of

them, and they walked, and walked, and walked, for days and weeks, till

he thought they'd never stop walking. And overseers went behind them

with whips--yes, whips--to beat them if they got tired. And some of them

went lame, and some fell down, and when they couldn't get up and go on,

they beat them, and then left them to die. Oh, it's all too terrible!

And at last he got to the mines, and he was condemned to stay there for

life--for life, just for writing a good, noble, splendid book.”

“How did he get away?”

“When the war came, some of the Russian prisoners were allowed to

volunteer as soldiers. And he volunteered. But he deserted at the first

chance he got and--”

“But that's very cowardly, isn't it”--said Peter--“to desert? Especially

when it's war.”

“Do you think he owed anything to a country that had done THAT to him?

If he did, he owed more to his wife and children. He didn't know what

had become of them.”

“Oh,” cried Bobbie, “he had THEM to think about and be miserable about

TOO, then, all the time he was in prison?”

“Yes, he had them to think about and be miserable about all the time he

was in prison. For anything he knew they might have been sent to prison,

too. They did those things in Russia. But while he was in the mines some

friends managed to get a message to him that his wife and children had

escaped and come to England. So when he deserted he came here to look

for them.”

“Had he got their address?” said practical Peter.

“No; just England. He was going to London, and he thought he had to

change at our station, and then he found he'd lost his ticket and his

purse.”

“Oh, DO you think he'll find them?--I mean his wife and children, not

the ticket and things.”

“I hope so. Oh, I hope and pray that he'll find his wife and children

again.”

Even Phyllis now perceived that mother's voice was very unsteady.

“Why, Mother,” she said, “how very sorry you seem to be for him!”

Mother didn't answer for a minute. Then she just said, “Yes,” and then

she seemed to be thinking. The children were quiet.

Presently she said, “Dears, when you say your prayers, I think you might

ask God to show His pity upon all prisoners and captives.”

“To show His pity,” Bobbie repeated slowly, “upon all prisoners and

captives. Is that right, Mother?”

“Yes,” said Mother, “upon all prisoners and captives. All prisoners and

captives.”