They were really very quiet for a little while.The sun was dropping lower.It was that hour when everything stills itself,and they really had had a busy and exciting afternoon.Colin looked as if he were resting luxuriously.Even the creatures had ceased moving about and had drawn together and were resting near them. Soot had perched on a low branch and drawn up one leg and dropped the gray film drowsily over his eyes. Mary privately thought he looked as if he might snore in a minute.
In the midst of this stillness it was rather startling when Colin half lifted his head and exclaimed in a loud suddenly alarmed whisper:
“Who is that man?”
Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet.
“Man!” they both cried in low quick voices.
Colin pointed to the high wall.
“Look!” he whispered excitedly. “Just look!”
Mary and Dickon wheeled about and looked.There was Ben Weatherstaff’s indignant face glaring at them over the wall from the top of a ladder!He actually shook his fist at Mary.
“If I wasn’t a bachelder, an’ tha’ was a wench o’ mine,” he cried, “I’d give thee a hidin’!”
He mounted another step threateningly as if it were his energetic intention to jump down and deal with her; but as she came toward him he evidently thought better of it and stood on the top step of his ladder shaking his fist down at her.
“I never thowt much o’ thee!” he harangued. “I couldna’ abide thee th’ first time I set eyes on thee.A scrawny buttermilk-faced young besom,allus askin’ questions an’ pokin’ tha’ nose where it wasna,wanted. I never knowed how tha’ got so thick wi’ me.If it hadna’ been for th’ robin— Drat him—”
“Ben Weatherstaff,” called out Mary, finding her breath.She stood below him and called up to him with a sort of gasp.“Ben Weatherstaff, it was the robin who showed me the way!”
Then it did seem as if Ben really would scramble down on her side of the wall, he was so outraged.
“Tha’ young bad ’un!” he called down at her.“Layin’ tha’ badness on a robin—not but what he’s impidint enow for anythin’.Him showin’ thee th’ way!Him!Eh!tha’ young nowt”—she could see his next words burst out because he was overpowered by curiosity—“however i’ this world did tha’ get in?”
“It was the robin who showed me the way,” she protested obstinately.“He didn’t know he was doing it but he did.And I can’t tell you from here while you’re shaking your fist at me. ”
He stopped shaking his fist very suddenly at that very moment and his jaw actually dropped as he stared over her head at something he saw coming over the grass toward him.
At the first sound of his torrent of words Colin had been so surprised that he had only sat up and listened as if he were spellbound. But in the midst of it he had recovered himself and beckoned imperiously to Dickon.
“Wheel me over there!” he commanded. “Wheel me quite close and stop right in front of him!”
And this, if you please,this is what Ben Weatherstaff beheld and which made his jaw drop.A wheeled chair with luxurious cushions and robes which came toward him looking rather like some sort of State Coach because a young Rajah leaned back in it with royal command in his great black-rimmed eyes and a thin white hand extended haughtily toward him. And it stopped right under Ben Weatherstaff’s nose. It was really no wonder his mouth dropped open.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded the Rajah.
How Ben Weatherstaff stared!His red old eyes fixed themselves on what was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded Colin still more imperiously. “Answer!”
Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.
“Who tha’ art?” he said. “Aye, that I do—wi’ tha’ mother’s eyes starin’ at me out o’ tha’ face. Lord knows how tha’ come here. But tha’rt th’ poor cripple.”
Colin forgot that he had ever had a back.His face flushed scarlet and he sat bolt upright.
“I’m not a cripple!” he cried out furiously. “I’m not!”
“He’s not!” cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce indignation.“He’s not got a lump as big as a pin!I looked and there was none there—not one!”
Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and he could only remember the things he had heard.
“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got a crooked back?” he said hoarsely.
“No!” shouted Colin.
“Tha’—tha’ hasn’t got crooked legs?” quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been accused of crooked legs—even in whispers—and the perfectly simple belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff’s voice was more than Rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and filled him with a power he had never known before, an almost unnatural strength.
“Come here!” he shouted to Dickon,and he actually began to tear the coverings off his lower limbs and disentangle himself. “Come here!Come here!This minute!”
Dickon was by his side in a second.Mary caught her breath in a short gasp and felt herself turn pale.
“He can do it!He can do it!He can do it!He can!” she gabbled over to herself under her breath as fast as ever she could.
There was a brief fierce scramble,the rugs were tossed on the ground,Dickon held Colin’s arm, the thin legs were out,the thin feet were on the grass.Colin was standing upright—upright—as straight as an arrow and looking strangely tall—his head thrown back and his strange eyes flashing lightning.
“Look at me!” he flung up at Ben Weatherstaff. “Just look at me—you!Just look at me!”
“He’s as straight as I am!” cried Dickon. “He’s as straight as any lad i’ Yorkshire!”
What Ben Weatherstaff did Mary thought queer beyond measure.He choked and gulped and suddenly tears ran down his weather-wrinkled cheeks as he struck his old hands together.
“Eh!” he burst forth, “th’ lies folk tells!Tha’rt as thin as a lath an’ as white as a wraith,but there’s not a knob on thee. Tha’lt make a mon yet. God bless thee!”
Dickon held Colin’s arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter.He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in the face.
“I’m your master,” he said, “when my father is away.And you are to obey me. This is my garden.Don’t dare to say a word about it!You get down from that ladder and go out to the Long Walk and Miss Mary will meet you and bring you here. I want to talk to you. We did not want you, but now you will have to be in the secret. Be quick!”
Ben Weatherstaff’s crabbed old face was still wet with that one queer rush of tears. It seemed as if he could not take his eyes from thin straight Colin standing on his feet with his head thrown back.
“Eh!lad,” he almost whispered. “Eh!my lad!” And then remembering himself he suddenly touched his hat gardener fashion and said, “Yes, sir!Yes, sir!” and obediently disappeared as he descended the ladder.
CHAPTER XXII. WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
When his head was out of sight Colin turned to Mary.
“Go and meet him,” he said;and Mary flew across the grass to the door under the ivy.
Dickon was watching him with sharp eyes.There were scarlet spots on his cheeks and he looked amazing,but he showed no signs of falling.
“I can stand,” he said,and his head was still held up and he said it quite grandly.
“I told thee tha’ could as soon as tha’ stopped bein’ afraid,” answered Dickon. “An’ tha’s stopped.”
“Yes, I’ve stopped,” said Colin.
Then suddenly he remembered something Mary had said.
“Are you making Magic?” he asked sharply.
Dickon’s curly mouth spread in a cheerful grin.