A Rough Shaking
by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #8886 · 602,490 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Rough Shaking
Author: George MacDonald
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8886]
Most recently updated: May 20, 2023
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8886
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROUGH SHAKING ***
A ROUGH SHAKING
By George MacDonald
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. HOW I CAME TO KNOW CLARE SKYMER.
II. WITH HIS PARENTS.
III. WITHOUT HIS PARENTS.
IV. THE NEW FAMILY.
V. HIS NEW HOME.
VI. WHAT DID DRAW OUT HIS FIRST SMILE.
VII. CLARE AND HIS BROTHERS.
VIII. CLARE AND HIS HUMAN BROTHERS.
IX. CLARE THE DEFENDER.
X. THE BLACK AUNT.
XI. CLARE ON THE FARM.
XII. CLARE BECOMES A GUARDIAN OF THE POOR.
XIII. CLARE THE VAGABOND.
XIV. THEIR FIRST HELPER.
XV. THEIR FIRST HOST.
XVI. ON THE TRAMP.
XVII. THE BAKER’S CART.
XVIII. BEATING THE TOWN.
XIX. THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS FORGE.
XX. TOMMY RECONNOITRES.
XXI. TOMMY IS FOUND AND FOUND OUT.
XXII. THE SMITH IN A RAGE.
XXIII. TREASURE TROVE.
XXIV. JUSTIFIABLE BURGLARY.
XXV. A NEW QUEST.
XXVI. A NEW ENTRANCE.
XXVII. THE BABY HAS HER BREAKFAST.
XXVIII. TREACHERY.
XXIX. THE BAKER.
XXX. THE DRAPER.
XXXI. AN ADDITION TO THE FAMILY.
XXXII. SHOP AND BABY.
XXXIII. A BAD PENNY.
XXXIV. HOW THINGS WENT FOR A TIME.
XXXV. CLARE DISREGARDS THE INTERESTS OF HIS EMPLOYERS.
XXXVI. THE POLICEMAN.
XXXVII. THE MAGISTRATE.
XXXVIII. THE WORKHOUSE.
XXXIX. AWAY.
XL. MALY.
XLI. THE CARAVANS.
XLII. NIMROD.
XLIII. ACROSS COUNTRY.
XLIV. A THIRD MOTHER.
XLV. THE MENAGERIE.
XLVI. THE ANGEL OF THE WILD BEASTS.
XLVII. GLUM GUNN.
XLVIII. THE PUMA.
XLIX. GLUM GUNN’S REVENGE.
L. CLARE SEEKS HELP.
LI. CLARE A TRUE MASTER.
LII. MISS TEMPEST.
LIII. THE GARDENER.
LIV. THE KITCHEN.
LV. THE WHEEL RESTS FOR A TIME.
LVI. STRATEGY.
LVII. ANN SHOTOVER.
LVIII. CHILD-TALK.
LIX. LOVERS’ WALKS.
LX. THE SHOE-BLACK.
LXI. A WALK WITH CONSEQUENCES.
LXII. THE CAGE OF THE PUMA.
LXIII. THE DOME OF THE ANGELS.
LXIV. THE PANTHER.
LXV. AT HOME.
LXVI. THE END OF CLARE SKYMER’S BOYHOOD.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
MRS. PORSON FINDS CLARE BY THE SIDE OF HIS DEAD MOTHER
CLARE IS HEARD TALKING TO MALY
CLARE MAKES FRIENDS DURING MR. PORSON’S ABSENCE
THE BLACKSMITH GIVES CLARE AND TOMMY A ROUGH GREETING
CLARE, TOMMY, AND THE BABY IN CUSTODY
CLARE AND ABDIEL AT THE LOCKED PUMP
CLARE PROCEEDS TO UNTIE THE ROPES FROM THE RING IN THE BULL’S NOSE
CLARE FINDS THE ADVANTAGE OF A POWERFUL FRIEND
THE GARDENER’S DISCOMFITURE
CLARE ASKS MISS SHOTOVER TO LET HIM CARRY ANN HOME
CLARE IS FOUND GIVING THE SHOE-BLACK A LESSON
CLARE ASLEEP IN THE PUMA’S CAGE
Dedicated
to my great-nephew,
Norman MacKay Binney,
aged seven,
because his Godfather and Godmother
love him dearly.
Hampstead, August 26, 1890.
A ROUGH SHAKING.
Chapter I.
HOW I CAME TO KNOW CLARE SKYMER.
It was a day when everything around seemed almost perfect: everything
does, now and then, come nearly right for a moment or two, preparatory
to coming all right for good at the last. It was the third week in
June. The great furnace was glowing and shining in full force, driving
the ship of our life at her best speed through the ocean of space. For
on deck, and between decks, and aloft, there is so much more going on
at one time than at another, that I may well say she was then going at
her best speed, for there is quality as well as rate in motion. The
trees were all well clothed, most of them in their very best. Their
garments were soaking up the light and the heat, and the wind was
going about among them, telling now one and now another, that all was
well, and getting through an immense amount of comfort-work in a
single minute. It said a word or two to myself as often as it passed
me, and made me happier than any boy I know just at present, for I was
an old man, and ought to be more easily made happy than any mere
beginner.
I was walking through the thin edge of a little wood of big trees,
with a slope of green on my left stretching away into the sunny
distance, and the shadows of the trees on my right lying below my
feet. The earth and the grass and the trees and the air were together
weaving a harmony, and the birds were leading the big orchestra--which
was indeed on the largest scale. For the instruments were so
different, that some of them only were meant for sound; the part of
others was in odour, of others yet in shine, and of still others in
motion; while the birds turned it all as nearly into words as they
could. Presently, to complete the score, I heard the tones of a man’s
voice, both strong and sweet. It was talking to some one in a way I
could not understand. I do not mean I could not understand the words:
I was too far off even to hear them; but I could not understand how
the voice came to be so modulated. It was deep, soft, and musical,
with something like coaxing in it, and something of tenderness, and
the intent of it puzzled me. For I could not conjecture from it the
age, or sex, or relation, or kind of the person to whom the words were
spoken. You can tell by the voice when a man is talking to himself; it
ought to be evident when he is talking to a woman; and you can,
surely, tell when he is talking to a child; you could tell if he were
speaking to him who made him; and you would be pretty certain if he
was holding communication with his dog: it made me feel strange that I
could not tell the kind of ear open to the gentle, manly voice saying
things which the very sound of them made me long to hear. I confess to
hurrying my pace a little, but I trust with no improper curiosity, to
see--I cannot say the interlocutors, for I had heard, and still heard,
only one voice.
About a minute’s walk brought me to the corner of the wood where it
stopped abruptly, giving way to a field of beautiful grass; and then I
saw something it does not need to be old to be delighted withal: the
boy that would not have taken pleasure in it, I should count half-way
to the gallows. Up to the edge of the wood came, I say, a large
field--acres on acres of the sweetest grass; and dividing it from both
wood and path stood a fence of three bars, which at the moment
separated two as genuine lovers as ever wall of “stones with lime and
hair knit up” could have sundered. On one side of the fence stood a
man whose face I could not see, and on the other one of the loveliest
horses I had ever set eyes upon. I am no better than a middling fair
horseman, but, for this horse’s sake, I may be allowed to mention that
my friends will all have me look at any horse they think of buying.
He was over sixteen hands, with well rounded barrel, clean limbs,
small head, and broad muzzle; hollows above his eyes of hazy blue, and
delicacy of feature, revealed him quite an old horse. His ears pointed
forward and downward, as if they wanted on their own account to get a
hold of the man the nose was so busily caressing. Neither, I presume,
had heard my approach; for all true-love-endearments are shy, and the
man had his arm round the horse’s neck, and was caressing his face,
talking to him much as Philip Sidney’s lady, whose lips “seemed at
once to kiss and speak,” murmured to her pet sparrow, only here the
voice was a musical baritone. That there was something between them
more than an ordinary person would be likely to understand appeared
patent.
Whether or not I made an involuntary sound I cannot tell: I was so
taken with the sight, bearing to me an aspect of something eternal,
that I do not know how I carried myself; but the horse gave a little
start, half lifted his head, saw me, threw it up, uttered a shrill
neigh of warning, stepped back a pace, and stood motionless, waiting
apparently for an order from his master--if indeed I ought not rather
to call them friends than master and servant.
The man looked round, saw me, turned toward me, and showing no sign
that my appearance was unexpected, lifted his hat with a courtesy most
Englishmen would reserve for a lady, and advanced a step, almost as if
to welcome a guest. I may have owed something of this reception to the
fact that he saw before him a man advanced in years, for my beard is
very gray, and that by no means prematurely. I saw before me one
nearly, if not quite as old as myself. His hair and beard, both rather
long, were quite white. His face was wonderfully handsome, with the
stillness of a summer sea upon it. Its features were very marked and
regular and fine, for the habit of the man was rather spare. What with
his white hair and beard, and a certain radiance in his pale
complexion, which, I learned afterward, no sun had ever more than
browned a little, he reminded me for a moment as he turned, of Cato on
the shore of Dante’s purgatorial island.
“I fear,” I said, “I have intruded!” There was no path where I had
come along.
The man laughed--and his laugh was more friendly than an invitation to
dinner.
“The land is mine,” he answered; “no one can say you intrude.”
“Thank you heartily. I live not very far off, and know the country
pretty well, but have got into a part of which I am ignorant.”
“You are welcome to go where you will on my property,” he answered.
“I could not close a field without some sense of having thrown a
fellow-being into a dungeon. Whatever be the rights of land, space can
belong to the individual only ‘_as it were_,’ to use a Shakspere-phrase.
All the best things have to be shared. The house plainly was designed
for a family.”
While he spoke, I scarce heeded his words for looking at the man, so
much he interested me. His face was of the palest health, with a faint
light from within. He looked about sixty years of age. His forehead
was square, and his head rather small, but beautifully modelled; his
eyes were of a light hazel, friendly as those of a celestial
dog. Though slender in build, he looked strong, and every movement
denoted activity.
I was not ready with an answer to what he said. He turned from me, and
as if to introduce a companion and so render the interview easier, he
called, in tone as gentle as if he spoke to a child, but with that
peculiar intonation that had let me understand it was not to a child
he was speaking, “Memnon! come;” and turned again to me. His movement
and words directed my attention again to the horse, who had stood
motionless. At once, but without sign of haste, the animal walked up
to the rails, rose gently on his hind legs, came over without
touching, walked up to his master, and laid his head on his shoulder.
I bethought me now who the man was. He had been but a year or two in
the neighbourhood, though the property on which we now stood had been
his own for a good many years. Some said he had bought it; others knew
he had inherited it. All agreed he was a very peculiar person, with
ways so oddly unreasonable that it was evident he had, in his
wanderings over the face of the earth, gradually lost hold of what
sense he might at one time have possessed, and was in consequence a
good deal cracked. There seemed nothing, however, in his behaviour or
appearance to suggest such a conclusion: a man could hardly be counted
beside himself because he was on terms of friendship with his
horse. It took me but a moment to recall his name--Skymer--one odd
enough to assist the memory. I caught it ere he had done mingling
fresh caresses with those of his long-tailed friend. When I came to
know him better, I knew that he had thus given me opportunity--such as
he would to a horse--of thinking whether I should like to know him
better: Mr. Skymer’s way was not to offer himself, but to give easy
opportunity to any who might wish to know him. I learned afterward
that he knew my name and suspected my person: being rather prejudiced
in my favour because of the kind of thing I wrote, he was now waiting
to see whether approximation would follow.
“Pardon my rude lingering,” I said; “that lovely animal is enough to
make one desire nearer acquaintance with his owner. I don’t think I
ever saw such a perfect creature!”
I remembered the next moment that I had heard said of Mr. Skymer that
he liked beasts better than men, but I soon found this was only one of
the foolish things constantly said of honest men by those who do not
understand them.
There are women even who love dogs and dislike children; but, nauseous
fact as this is, it is not so nauseous as the fact that there are men
who believe in no animal rights, or in any God of the animals, and
think we may do what we please with them, indulging at their cost an
insane thirst after knowledge. Injustice may discover facts, but never
truth.
“I grant him nearly a perfect creature,” he answered, “But he is far
more nearly perfect than you yet know him! Excuse me for speaking so
confidently; but if we were half as far on for men, as Memnon is for a
horse, the kingdom of heaven would be a good deal nearer!”
“He seems an old horse!”
“He is an old horse--much older than you can think after seeing him
come over that paling as he did. He is forty.”
“Is it possible!”
“I know and can prove his age as certainly as my own. He is the son of
an Arab mare and an English thoroughbred.--Come here, Memnon!”
The horse, who had been standing behind like a servant in waiting, put
his beautiful head over his master’s shoulder.
“Memnon,” said Mr. Skymer, “go home and tell Mrs. Waterhouse I hope to
bring a gentleman with me to lunch.”
The horse walked gently past us, then started at a quick trot, which
almost immediately became a gallop.
“The dear fellow,” said his master, “would not gallop like that if he
were on the hard road; he knows I would not like it.”
“But, excuse me, how can the animal convey your message?--how
communicate what he knows, if he does understand what you say to him?”
“He will at least take care that the housekeeper look in his mane for
the knot which perhaps you did not observe me tie in it.”
“You have a code of signals by knots then?”
“Yes--comprising about half a dozen possibilities.--I hope you do not
object to the message I sent! You will do me the honour of lunching
with me?”
“You are most kind,” I answered--with a little hesitation, I suppose,
fearing to bore my new acquaintance.
“Don’t make me false to horse and housekeeper, Mr. Gowrie,” he
resumed.--“I put the horse first, because I could more easily explain
the thing to Mrs. Waterhouse than to Memnon.”
“Could you explain it to Memnon?”
“I should have a try!” he answered, with a peculiar smile.
“You hold yourself bound then to keep faith with your horse?”
“Bound just as with a man--that is, as far as the horse can understand
me. A word understood is binding, whether spoken to horse, or man, or
pig. It makes it the more important that we can do so little, must
work so slowly, for the education of the lower animals. It seems to me
an absolute horror that a man should lie to an inferior creature. Just
think--if an angel were to lie to us! What a shock to find we had been
reposing faith in a devil.”
“Excuse me--I thought you said _an angel_!”
“When he lied, would he not be a devil?--But let us follow Memnon, and
as we walk I will tell you more about him.”
He turned to the wood.
“The horse,” I said, pointing, “went that way!”
“Yes,” answered his master; “he knew it was nearer for him to take the
long way round. If I had started him and one of the dogs together, the
horse would have gone that way, and the dog taken the path we are now
following.”
We walked a score or two of yards in silence.
“You promised to tell me more about your wonderful horse!” I said.
“With pleasure. I delight in talking about my poor brothers and
sisters! Most of them are only savages yet, but there would be far
fewer such if we did not treat them as slaves instead of friends. One
day, however, all will be well for them as for us--thank God.”
“I hope so,” I responded heartily. “But please tell me,” I said,
“something more about your Memnon.”
Mr. Skymer thought for a moment.
“Perhaps, after all,” he rejoined, “his best accomplishment is that he
can fetch and carry like a dog. I will tell you one of his feats that
way. But first you must know that, having travelled a good deal, and
in some wild countries, I have picked up things it is well to know,
even if not the best of their kind. A man may fail by not knowing the
second best! I was once out on Memnon, five and twenty miles from
home, when I came to a cottage where I found a woman lying ill. I saw
what was wanted. The country was strange to me, and I could not have
found a doctor. I wrote a little pencil-note, fastened it to the
saddle, and told the horse to go home and bring me what the
housekeeper gave him--and not to spare himself. He went off at a
steady trot of ten or twelve miles an hour. I went into the cottage,
and, awaiting his return, did what I could for the woman. I confess I
felt anxious!”
“You well might,” I said: “why should you say _confess_?”
“Because I had no business to be anxious.”
“It was your business to do all for her you could.”
“I was doing that! If I hadn’t been, I should have had good cause to
be anxious! But I knew that another was looking after her; and to be
anxious was to meddle with his part!”
“I see now,” I answered, and said nothing more for some time.
“What a lather poor Memnon came back in! You should have seen him! He
had been gone nearly five hours, and neither time nor distance
accounted for the state he was in. I did not let him do anything for a
week. I should have had to sit up with him that night, if I had not
been sitting up at any rate. The poor fellow had been caught, and had
made his escape. His bridle was broken, and there were several long
skin wounds in his belly, as if he had scraped the top of a wall set
with bits of glass. How far he had galloped, there was no telling.”
“Not in vain, I hope! The poor woman?”
“She recovered. The medicine was all right in a pocket under the flap
of the saddle. Before morning she was much better, and lived many
years after. Memnon and I did not lose sight of her.--But you should
have seen the huge creature lying on the floor of that cabin like a
worn-out dog, abandoned and content! I rubbed him down carefully, as
well as I could, and tied my poncho round him, before I let him go to
sleep. Then as soon as my patient seemed quieted for the night, I made
up a big fire of her peats, and they slept like two babies, only they
both snored.--The woman beat,” he added with a merry laugh. “It was
the first, almost the only time I ever heard a horse snore.--As we
walked home next day he kept steadily behind me. In general we walked
side by side. Either he felt too tired to talk to me, or he was not
satisfied with himself because of something that had happened the day
before. Perhaps he had been careless, and so allowed himself to be
taken. I do not think it likely.”
“What a loss it will be to you when he dies!” I said.
He looked grave for an instant, then replied cheerfully--
“Of course I shall miss the dear fellow--but not more than he will
miss me; and it will be good for us both.”
“Then,” said I,--a little startled, I confess, “you really think--”
and there I stopped.
“Do _you_ think, Mr. Gowrie,” he rejoined, answering my unpropounded
question, “that a God like Jesus Christ, would invent such a delight
for his children as the society and love of animals, and then let
death part them for ever? I don’t.”
“I am heartily willing to be your disciple in the matter,” I replied.
“I know well,” he resumed, “the vulgar laugh that serves the poor
public for sufficient answer to anything, and the common-place retort:
‘You can’t give a shadow of proof for your theory!’--to which I
answer, ‘I never was the fool to imagine I could; but as surely as you
go to bed at night expecting to rise again in the morning, so surely
do I expect to see my dear old Memnon again when I wake from what so
many Christians call the sleep that knows no waking.’--Think,
Mr. Gowrie, just think of all the children in heaven--what a
superabounding joy the creatures would be to them!--There is one
class, however,” he went on, “which I should like to see wait a while
before they got their creatures back;--I mean those foolish women who,
for their own pleasure, so spoil their dogs that they make other
people hate them, doing their best to keep them from rising in the
scale of God’s creation.”
“They don’t know better!” I said. For every time he stopped, I wanted
to hear what he would say next.
“True,” he answered; “but how much do they want to know the right way
of anything? They have good and lovely instincts--like their dogs, but
do they care that there is a right way and a wrong way of following
them?”
We walked in silence, and were now coming near the other side of the
small wood.
“I hope I shall not interfere with your plans for the day!” I said.
“I seldom have any plans for the day,” he answered. “Or if I have,
they are made to break easily. In general I wait. The hour brings its
plans with it--comes itself to tell me what is wanted of me. It has
done so now. And see, there is Memnon again in attendance on us!”
There, sure enough, was the horse, on the other side of the paling
that here fenced the wood from a well-kept country-road. His long neck
was stretched over it toward his master.
“Memnon,” said Mr. Skymer as we issued by the gate, “I want you to
carry this gentleman home.”
I had often enough in my youth ridden without a saddle, but seldom
indeed without some sort of bridle, however inadequate: I did not, at
the first thought of the thing, relish mounting without one a horse of
which all I knew was that he and his master were on better terms than
I had ever seen man and horse upon before. But even while the thought
was passing through my head, Memnon was lying at my feet, flat as his
equine rotundity would permit. Ashamed of my doubt, I lost not a moment
in placing myself in the position suggested by Sir John Falstaff to
Prince Hal for the defence of his own bulky carcase--astride the body
of the animal, namely. At once he rose and lifted me into the natural
relation of man and horse. Then he looked round at his master, and they
set off at a leisurely pace.
“You have me captive!” I said.
“Memnon and I,” answered Mr. Skymer, “will do what we can to make your
captivity pleasant.”
A silence followed my thanks. In this procession of horse and foot, we
went about half a mile ere anything more was said worth setting
down. Then began evidence that we were drawing nigh to a house: the
grassy lane between hedges in which we had been moving, was gradually
changing its character. First came trees in the hedge-rows. Then the
hedges gave way to trees--a grand avenue of splendid elms and beeches
alternated. The ground under our feet was the loveliest sward, and
between us and the sun came the sweetest shadow. A glad heave but
instant subsidence of the live power under me, let me know Memnon’s
delight at feeling the soft elastic turf under his feet: he had said
to himself, “Now we shall have a gallop!” but immediately checked the
thought with the reflection that he was no longer a colt ignorant of
manners.
“What a lovely road the turf makes!” I said. “It is a lower
sky--solidified for feet that are not yet angelic.”
My host looked up with a brighter smile than he had shown before.
“It is the only kind of road I really like,” he said, “--though turf
has its disadvantages! I have as much of it about the place as it will
bear. Such roads won’t do for carriages!”
“You ride a good deal, I suppose?”
“I do. I was at one time so accustomed to horseback that, without
thinking, I was not aware whether I was on my horse’s feet or my own.”
“Where, may I ask, does my friend who is now doing me the favour to
carry ‘this weight and size,’ come from?”
“He was born in England, but his mother was a Syrian--of one of the
oldest breeds there known. He was born into my arms, and for a week
never touched the ground. Next month, as I think I mentioned, he will
be forty years old!”
“It is a great age for a horse!” I said.
“The more the shame as well as the pity!” he answered.
“Then you think horses might live longer?”
“Much longer than they are allowed to live in this country,” he
answered. “And a part of our punishment is that we do not know them. We
treat them so selfishly that they do not live long enough to become our
friends. At present there are but few men worthy of their friendship.
What else is a man’s admiration, when it is without love or respect or
justice, but a bitter form of despite! It is small wonder there should
be so many stupid horses, when they receive so little education, have
such bad associates, and die so much too young to have gained any ripe
experience to transmit to their posterity. Where would humanity be now,
if we all went before five-and-twenty?”
“I think you must be right. I have myself in my possession at this
moment, given me by one who loved her, an ink-stand made from the hoof
of a pony that died at the age of at least forty-two, and did her part
of the work of a pair till within a year or two of her death.--Poor
little Zephyr!”
“Why, Mr. Gowrie, you talk of her as if she were a Christian!”
exclaimed Mr. Skymer.
“That’s how you talked of Memnon a moment ago! Where is the
difference? Not in the size, though Memnon would make three of
Zephyr!”
“I didn’t say _poor Memnon_, did I? You said _poor Zephyr_! That is
the way Christians talk about their friends gone home to the grand old
family mansion! Why they do, they would hardly like one to tell them!”
“It is true,” I responded. “I understand you now! I don’t think I ever
heard a widow speak of her departed husband without putting _poor_, or
_poor dear_, before his name.--By the way, when you hear a woman speak
of her _late_ husband, can you help thinking her ready to marry
again?”
“It does sound as if she had done with him! But here we are at the
gate!--Call, Memnon.”
The horse gave a clear whinny, gentle, but loud enough to be heard at
some distance. It was a tall gate of wrought iron, but Memnon’s
summons was answered by one who could clear it--though not open it any
more than he: a little bird, which I was not ornithologist enough to
recognize--mainly because of my short-sightedness, I hope--came
fluttering from the long avenue within, perched on the top of the
gate, looked down at our party for a moment as if debating the
prudent, dropped suddenly on Memnon’s left ear, and thence to his
master’s shoulder, where he sat till the gate was opened. The little
one went half-way up the inner avenue with us, making several flights
and returns before he left us.
The boy that opened the gate, a chubby little fellow of seven, looked
up in Mr. Skymer’s face as if he had been his father and king in one,
and stood gazing after him as long as he was in sight. I noticed
also--who could have failed to notice?--that every now and then a bird
would drop from the tree we were passing under, and alight for a
minute on my host’s head. Once when he happened to uncover it, seven
or eight perched together upon it. One tiny bird got caught in his
beard by the claws.
“You cannot surely have tamed _all_ the birds in your grounds!” I
said.
“If I have,” he answered, “it has been by permitting them to be
themselves.”
“You mean it is the nature of birds to be friendly with man?”
“I do. Through long ages men have been their enemies, and so have
alienated them--they too not being themselves.”
“You mean that unfriendliness is not natural to men?”
“It cannot be human to be cruel!”
“How is it, then, that so many boys are careless what suffering they
inflict?”
“Because they have in them the blood of men who loved cruelty, and
never repented of it.”
“But how do you account for those men loving cruelty--for their being
what you say is contrary to their nature?”
“Ah, if I could account for that, I should be at the secret of most
things! All I meant to half-explain was, how it came that so many who
have no wish to inflict suffering, yet are careless of inflicting it.”
I saw that we must know each other better before he would quite open
his mind to me. I saw that though, hospitable of heart, he threw his
best rooms open to all, there were others in his house into which he
did not invite every acquaintance.
The avenue led to a wide gravelled space before a plain, low, long
building in whitish stone, with pillared portico. In the middle of the
space was a fountain, and close to it a few chairs. Mr. Skymer begged
me to be seated. Memnon walked up to the fountain, and lay down, that
I might get off his back as easily as I had got on it. Once down, he
turned on his side, and lay still.
“The air is so mild,” said my host, “I fancy you will prefer this to
the house.”
“Mild!” I rejoined; “I should call it hot!”
“I have been so much in real heat!” he returned. “Notwithstanding my
love of turf, I keep this much in gravel for the sake of the desert.”
I took the seat he offered me, wondering whether Memnon was
comfortable where he lay; and, absorbed in the horse, did not see my
host go to the other side of the basin. Suddenly we were “clothed
upon” with a house which, though it came indeed from the earth, might
well have come direct from heaven: a great uprush of water spread
above us a tent-like dome, through which the sun came with a cool,
broken, almost frosty glitter. We seemed in the heart of a huge
soap-bubble. I exclaimed with delight.
“I thought you would enjoy my sun-shade!” said Mr. Skymer. “Memnon and
I often come here of a hot morning, when nobody wants us. Don’t we,
Memnon?”
The horse lifted his nose a little, and made a low soft noise, a chord
of mingled obedience and delight--a moan of pleasure mixed with a
half-born whinny.
We had not been seated many moments, and had scarcely pushed off the
shore of silence into a new sea of talk, when we were interrupted by
the invasion of half a dozen dogs. They were of all sorts down to no
sort. Mr. Skymer called one of them Tadpole--I suppose because he had
the hugest tail, while his legs were not visible without being looked
for.
“That animal,” said his master, “--he looks like a dog, but who would
be positive what he was!--is the cleverest in the pack. He seems to me
a rare individuality. His ancestors must have been of all sorts, and
he has gathered from them every good quality possessed by each. Think
what a man might be--made up that way!”
“Why is there no such man?” I said.
“There may be some such men. There must be many one day,” he answered,
“--but not for a while yet. Men must first be made willing to be
noble.”
“And you don’t think men willing to be made noble?”
“Oh yes! willing enough, some of them, to be _made_ noble!”
“I do not understand. I thought you said they were not!”
“They are willing enough _to be made_ noble; but that is very
different from being willing _to be_ noble: that takes trouble. How
can any one become noble who desires it so little as not to fight for
it!”
The man drew me more and more. He had a way of talking about things
seldom mentioned except in dull fashion in the pulpit, as if he cared
about them. He spoke as of familiar things, but made you feel he was
looking out of a high window. There are many who never speak of real
things except in a false tone; this man spoke of such without an atom
of assumed solemnity--in his ordinary voice: they came into his mind
as to their home--not as dreams of the night, but as facts of the day.
I sat for a while, gazing up through the thin veil of water at the
blue sky so far beyond. I thought how like that veil was to our little
life here, overdomed by that boundless foreshortening of space. The
lines in Shelley’s _Adonais_ came to me:
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.”
Then I thought of what my host had said concerning the too short lives
of horses, and wondered what he would say about those of dogs.
“Dogs are more intelligent than horses,” I said: “why do they live a
yet shorter time?”
“I doubt if you would say so in an Arab’s tent,” he returned. “If you
had said, ‘still more affectionate,’ I should have known better how to
answer you.”
“Then I do say so,” I replied.
“And I return, that is just why they live no longer. They do not find
the world good enough for them, die, and leave it.”
“They have a much happier life than horses!”
“Many dogs than some horses, I grant.”
That instant arose what I fancied must be an unusual sound in the
place: two of the dogs were fighting. The master got up. I thought
with myself, “Now we shall see his notions of discipline!” nor had I
long to wait. In his hand was a small riding-whip, which I afterward
found he always carried in avoidance of having to inflict a heavier
punishment from inability to inflict a lighter; for he held that, in
all wrong-doing man can deal with, the kindest thing is not only to
punish, but, with animals especially, to punish at once. He ran to the
conflicting parties. They separated the moment they heard the sound of
his coming. One came cringing and crawling to his feet; the other--it
was the nondescript Tadpole--stood a little way off, wagging his tail,
and cocking his head up in his master’s face. He gave the one at his
feet several pretty severe cuts with the whip, and sent him off. The
other drew nearer. His master turned away and took no notice of him.
“May I ask,” I said, when he returned to his seat, “why you did not
punish both the animals for their breach of the peace?”
“They did not both deserve it.”
“How could you tell that? You were not looking when the quarrel
began!”
“Ah, but you see I know the dogs! One of them--I saw at a glance how
it was--had found a bone, and dog-rule about finding is, that what you
find is yours. The other, notwithstanding, wanted a share. It was
Tadpole who found the bone, and he--partly from his sense of
justice--cannot endure to have his claims infringed upon. Every dog of
them knows that Tadpole must be in the right.”
“He looked as if he expected you to approve of his conduct!”
“Yes, that is the worst of Tadpole! he is so self-righteous as to
imagine he deserves praise for standing on his rights! He is but a
dog, you see, and knows no better!”
“I noticed you disregarded his appeal.”
“I was not going to praise him for nothing!”
“You expect them to understand your treatment?”
“No one can tell how infinitesimally small the beginnings of
understanding, as of life, may be. The only way to make animals
reasonable--more reasonable, I mean--is to treat them as
reasonable. Until you can go down into the abysses of creation, you
cannot know when a nature begins to see a difference in quality
of action.”
“I confess,” I said, “Mr. Tadpole did seem a little ashamed as he went
away.”
“And you see Blanco White at my feet, taking care not to touch
them. He is giving time, he thinks, for my anger to pass.”
He laughed the merriest laugh. The dog looked up eagerly, but dropped
his head again.
If I go on like this, however, I shall have to take another book to
tell the story for which I began the present! In short, I was drawn to
the man as never to another since the friend of my youth went where I
shall go to seek and find him one day--or, more likely, one solemn
night. I was greatly his inferior, but love is a quick divider of
shares: he that gathers much has nothing over, and he that gathers
little has no lack. I soon ceased to think of him as my _new_ friend,
for I seemed to have known him before I was born.
I am going to tell the early part of his history. If only I could tell
it as it deserves to be told! The most interesting story may be so
narrated as that only the eyes of a Shakspere could spy the shine
underneath its dull surface.
He never told me any great portion of the tale of his life
continuously. One thing would suggest another--generally with no
connection in time. I have pieced the parts together myself. He did
indeed set out more than once or twice to give me his history, but
always we got discussing something, and so it was interrupted.
I will not write what I have set in order as if he were himself
narrating: the most modest man in the world would that way be put at a
disadvantage. The constant recurrence of the capital _I_, is apt to
rouse in the mind of the reader, especially if he be himself
egotistic, more or less of irritation at the egotism of the
narrator--while in reality the freedom of a man’s personal utterance
_may_ be owing to his lack of the egotistic. Partly for my
friend’s sake, therefore, I shall tell the story as--what indeed it
is--a narrative of my own concerning him.
Chapter II.
WITH HIS PARENTS.
The lingering, long-drawn-out _table d’hôte_ dinner was just over in
one of the inns on the _cornice_ road. The gentlemen had gone into the
garden, and some of the ladies to the _salotto_, where open windows
admitted the odours of many a flower and blossoming tree, for it was
toward the end of spring in that region. One had sat down to a
tinkling piano, and was striking a few chords, more to her own
pleasure than that of the company. Two or three were looking out into
the garden, where the diaphanous veil of twilight had so speedily
thickened to the crape of night, its darkness filled with thousands of
small isolated splendours--fire-flies, those “golden boats” never seen
“on a sunny sea,” but haunting the eves of the young summer, pulsing,
pulsing through the dusky air with seeming aimlessness, like sweet
thoughts that have no faith to bind them in one. A tall, graceful
woman stood in one of the windows alone. She had never been in Italy
before, had never before seen fire-flies, and was absorbed in the
beauty of their motion as much as in that of their golden
flashes. Each roving star had a tide in its light that rose and ebbed
as it moved, so that it seemed to push itself on by its own radiance,
ever waxing and waning. In wide, complicated dance, they wove a huge,
warpless tapestry with the weft of an ever vanishing aureate
shine. The lady, an Englishwoman evidently, gave a little sigh and
looked round, regretting, apparently, that her husband was not by her
side to look on the loveliness that woke a faint-hued fairy-tale in
her heart. The same moment he entered the room and came to her. He was
a man above the middle height, and from the slenderness of his figure,
looked taller than he was. He had a vivacity of motion, a readiness to
turn on his heel, a free swing of the shoulders, and an erect carriage
of the head, which all marked him a man of action: one that speculated
on his calling would immediately have had his sense of fitness
satisfied when he heard that he was the commander of an English
gun-boat, which he was now on his way to Genoa to join. He was
young--within the twenties, though looking two or three and thirty,
his face was so browned by sun and wind. His features were regular and
attractive, his eyes so dark that the liveliness of their movement
seemed hardly in accord with the weight of their colour. His wife was
very fair, with large eyes of the deepest blue of eyes. She looked
delicate, and was very lovely. They had been married about five
years. A friend had brought them in his yacht as far as Nice, and they
were now going on by land. From Genoa the lady must find her way home
without her husband.
The lights in the room having been extinguished that the few present
might better see the fire-flies, he put his arm round her waist.
“I’m so glad you’re come, Henry!” she said, favoured by the piano. “I
was uncomfortable at having the lovely sight all to myself!”
“It is lovely, darling!” he rejoined; then, after a moment’s pause,
added, “I hope you will be able to sleep without the sea to rock you!”
“No fear of that!” she answered. “The stillness will be delightful. I
was thoroughly reconciled to the motion of the yacht,” she went on,
“but there is a satisfaction in feeling the solid earth under you, and
knowing it will keep steady all night.”
“I am glad you like the change. I never sleep the first night on
shore.--I cannot tell what it is, but somehow I keep wishing Fyvie
could have taken us all the way.”
“Never mind, love. I will keep awake with you.”
“It’s not that! How could I mind lying awake with you beside me! Oh
Grace, you don’t know, you cannot know, what you are to me! I don’t
feel in the least that you’re my other half, as people say. You’re not
like a part of myself at all; to think so would be sacrilege! You are
quite another, else how could you be mine! You make me forget myself
altogether. When I look at you, I stand before an enchanted mirror
that cannot show what is in front of it.”
“No, Harry; I’m a true mirror, for I hold that inside me which remains
outside me.”
“I fear you’ve got beyond me!” said her husband, laughing. “You always
do!”
“Yes, at nonsense, Harry.”
“Then your speech was nonsense, was it?”
“No; it was full of sense. But think of something you would like me to
say; I must fetch the boy to see the fire-flies; when I come back I
will say it.”
She left the room. Her husband stood where he was, gazing out, with a
tender look in his face that deepened to sadness--whether from the
haunting thought of his wife’s delicate health and his having to leave
her, or from some strange foreboding, I cannot tell. When presently
she returned with their one child in her arms, he made haste to take
him from her.
“My darling,” he said, “he is much too heavy for you! How stupid of me
not to think of it! If you don’t promise me never to do that at home,
I will take him to sea with me!”
The child, a fair, bright boy, the sleep in whose eyes had turned to
wonder, for they seemed to see everything, and be quite satisfied with
nothing, went readily to his father, but looked back at his
mother. The only sign he gave that he was delighted with the
fire-flies was, that he looked now to the one, now to the other of his
parents, speechless, with shining eyes. He knew they were feeling just
like himself. Silent communion was enough.
The father turned to carry him back to bed. The mother turned to look
after them. As she did so, her eyes fell upon two or three delicate,
small-leaved plants--I do not know what they were--that stood in pots
on the balcony in front of the open window: they were shivering. The
night was perfectly still, but their leaves trembled as with an
ague-fit.
“Look, Harry! What is that?” she cried, pointing to them.
He turned and looked, said it must be some loaded wagon passing, and
went off with the child.
“I hope to-morrow will be just like to-day!” said his wife when he
returned. “What shall we do with it?--our one real holiday, you know!”
“I have a notion in my head,” he answered. “That little town Georgina
spoke of, is not far from here--among the hills: shall we go and see
it?”
Chapter III.
WITHOUT HIS PARENTS.
The sun in England seems to shine because he cannot help it; the sun
in Italy seems to shine because he means it, and wants to mean
it. Thus he shone the next morning, including in his attentions a
curious little couple, husband and wife, who, attended by a guide, and
borne by animals which might be mules and might be donkeys, and were
not lovely to look on except through sympathy with their ugliness,
were slowly ascending a steep terraced and zigzagged road, with olive
trees above and below them. They were on the south side of the hill,
and the olives gave them none of the little shadow they have in their
power, for the trees next the sun were always below the road. The man
often wiped his red, innocent face, and looked not a little
distressed; but the lady, although as stout as he, did not seem to
suffer, perhaps because she was sheltered by a very large bonnet. After
a silence of a good many minutes, she was the first to speak.
“I can’t say but I’m disappointed in the olives, Thomas,” she
remarked. “They ain’t much to keep the sun off you!”
“They wouldn’t look bad along a brookside in Essex!” returned her
husband. “Here they do seem a bit out of place!”
“Well, but, poor things! how are they to help it--with only a trayful
of earth under their feet! If you planted a priest on a terrace he
would soon be as thin as they!”
They had just passed a very stout priest, in a low broad hat, and
cassock, and she laughed merrily at her small joke. They were an
English country parson and his wife, abroad for the first time in
their now middle-aged lives, and happy as children just out of
school. Incapable of disliking anybody, there was no unkindness in
Mrs. Porson’s laughter.
“I don’t see,” she resumed, “how they ever can have a picnic in such a
country!”
“Why not?”
“There’s no place to sit down!”
“Here’s a whole hill-side!”
“But so hard!” she answered. “There’s not an inch of turf or grass in
any direction!”
The pair--equally plump, and equally good-natured--laughed together.
I need not give more of their talk. It was better than most talk, yet
not worth recording. Their guide, perceiving that they knew no more of
Italian than he did of English, had withdrawn to the rear, and stumped
along behind them all the way, holding much converse with his donkeys,
however, admonishing now this one, now that one, and seeming not a
little hurt with their behaviour, to judge from the expostulations
that accompanied his occasionally more potent arguments. Assuredly the
speed they made was small; but it was a festa, and hot.
They were on the way to a small town some distance from the shore, on
the crest of the hill they were now ascending. It would, from the
number of its inhabitants, have been in England a village, but there
are no villages in the Riviera. However insignificant a place may be,
it is none the less a town, possibly a walled town. Somebody had told
Mr. and Mrs. Porson they ought to visit Graffiacane, and to
Graffiacane they were therefore bound: why they ought to visit it, and
what was to be seen there, they took the readiest way to know.
The place was indeed a curious one, high among the hills, and on the
top of its own hill, with approaches to it like the trenches of a
siege. All the old towns in that region seem to have climbed up to
look over the heads of other things. Graffiacane saw over hills and
valleys and many another town--each with its church standing highest,
the guardian of the flock of houses beneath it; saw over many a
water-course, mostly dry, with lovely oleanders growing in the middle
of it; saw over multitudinous oliveyards and vineyards; saw over mills
with great wheels, and little ribbons of water to drive them--running
sometimes along the tops of walls to get at their work; saw over
rugged pines, and ugly, verdureless, raw hillsides--away to the sea,
lying in the heat like a heavenly vat in which all the tails of all
the peacocks God was making, lay steeped in their proper dye. Numerous
were the sharp turns the donkeys made in their ascent; and at this
corner and that, the sweetest life-giving wind would leap out upon the
travellers, as if it had been lying there in wait to surprise them
with the heavenliest the old earth, young for all her years, could
give them. But they were getting too tired to enjoy anything, and were
both indeed not far from asleep on the backs of their humble beasts,
when a sudden, more determined yet more cheerful assault of their
guide upon his donkeys, roused both them and their riders; and looking
sleepily up, with his loud _heeoop_ ringing in their ears, and a sense
of the insidious approach of two headaches, they saw before them the
little town, its houses gathered close for protection, like a brood of
chickens, and the white steeple of the church rising above them, like
the neck of the love-valiant hen.
Passing through the narrow arch of the low-browed gateway, hot as was
the hour, a sudden cold struck to their bones. For not a ray of light
shone into the narrow street. The houses were lofty as those of a
city, and parted so little by the width of the street that friends on
opposite sides might almost from their windows have shaken
hands. Narrow, rough, steep old stone-stairs ran up between and inside
the houses, all the doors of which were open to the air--here,
however, none of the sweetest. Everywhere was shadow; everywhere, one
or another evil odour; everywhere a look of abject and dirty
poverty--to an English eye, that is. Everywhere were pretty children,
young, slatternly mothers, withered-up grandmothers, the gleam of
glowing reds and yellows, and the coolness of subdued greens and fine
blues. Such at least was the composite first impression made on Mr.
and Mrs. Porson. As it was a festa, more men than usual were looking
out of cavern-like doorways or over hand-wrought iron balconies, were
leaning their backs against door-posts, and smoking as if too lazy to
stop. Many of the women were at prayers in the church. All was
orderly, and quieter than usual for a festa. None could have told the
reason; the townsfolk were hardly aware that an undefinable oppression
was upon them--an oppression that lay also upon their visitors, and
the donkeys that had toiled with them up the hills and slow-climbing
valleys.
It added to the gloom and consequent humidity of the town that the
sides of the streets were connected, at the height of two or perhaps
three stories, by thin arches--mere jets of stone from the one house
to the other, with but in rare instance the smallest superstructure to
keep down the key of the arch. Whatever the intention of them, they
might seem to serve it, for the time they had straddled there
undisturbed had sufficed for moss and even grass to grow upon those
which Mr. Porson now regarded with curious speculation. A bit of an
architect, and foiled, he summoned at last what Italian he could,
supplemented it with Latin and a terminational _o_ or _a_ tacked to
any French or English word that offered help, and succeeded, as he
believed, in gathering from a by-stander, that the arches were there
because of the earthquakes.
He had not language enough of any sort to pursue the matter, else he
would have asked his informant how the arch they were looking at could
be of any service, seeing it had no weight on the top, and but a
slight endlong pressure must burst it up. Turning away to tell his
wife what he had learned, he was checked by a low rumbling, like
distant thunder, which he took for the firing of festa guns, having
discovered that Italians were fond of all kinds of noises. The next
instant they felt the ground under their feet move up and down and
from side to side with confused motion. A sudden great cry arose. One
moment and down every stair, out of every door, like animals from
their holes, came men, women, and children, with a rush. The
earthquake was upon them.
But in such narrow streets, the danger could hardly be less than
inside the houses, some of which, the older especially, were ill
constructed--mostly with boulder-stones that had neither angles nor
edges, hence little grasp on each other beyond what the friction of
their weight, and the adhesion of their poor old friable cement, gave
them; for the Italians, with a genius for building, are careless of
certain constructive essentials. After about twenty seconds of
shaking, the lonely pair began to hear, through the noise of the cries
of the people, some such houses as these rumbling to the earth.
They were far more bewildered than frightened. They were both of good
nerve, and did not know the degree of danger they were in, while the
strangeness of the thing contributed to an excitement that helped
their courage. I cannot say how they might have behaved in an hotel
full of their countrymen and countrywomen, running and shrieking, and
altogether comporting themselves as if they knew there was no God. The
fear on all sides might there have infected them; but the terror of
the inhabitants who knew better than they what the thing meant, did
not much shake them. For one moment many of the people stood in the
street motionless, pale, and staring; the next they all began to run,
some for the gateway, but the greater part up the street, staggering
as they ran. The movement of the ground was indeed small--not more,
perhaps, than half an inch in any direction--but fear and imagination
weakened all their limbs. They had not run far, however, before the
terrible unrest ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
The English pair drew a long breath where they stood--for they had not
stirred a step, or indeed thought whither to run--and imagining it
over for a hundred years, looked around them. Their guide had
disappeared. The two donkeys stood perfectly still with their heads
hanging down. They seemed in deep dejection, and incapable of
movement. A few men only were yet to be seen. They were running up the
street. In a moment more it would be empty. They were the last of
those that had let the women go to church without them. They were
hurrying to join them in the sanctuary, the one safe place: the rest
of the town might be shaken in heaps on its foundations, but the
church would stand! Guessing their goal, the Porsons followed
them. But they were neither of a build nor in a condition to make
haste, and the road was uphill. No one place, however, was far from
another within the toy-town, and they came presently to an open
_piazza_, on the upper side of which rose the great church. It had a
square front, masking with its squareness the triangular gable of the
building. Upon this screen, in the brightest of colours, magenta and
sky-blue predominating, was represented the day of judgment--the
mother seated on the right hand of the judge, and casting a pitiful
look upon the miserable assembly on her left. The square was a good
deal on the slope, and as they went slowly up to the church, they kept
looking at the picture. The last tatters of the skirt of the crowd had
disappeared through the great door, and but for themselves the square
was empty. All at once the picture at which they were gazing, the
spread of wall on which it was painted, the whole bulk of the huge
building began to shudder, and went on shuddering--“just,” Mr. Porson
used to say when describing the thing to a friend, “like the skin of a
horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly.” The same moment the tiles
on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of
giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much
absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under
their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church
did not at most seem to cover more than a hand-breadth, but it was
enough. Down came the plaster surface, with the judge and his mother,
clashing on the pavement below, while the good and the bad yet stood
trembling. A few of the people came running out, thinking the open
square after all safer than the church, but there was no rush to the
open air. The shaking had lasted about twenty seconds, or at most half
a minute, when, without indication to the eyes watching the front,
there came a roaring crash and a huge rumbling, through and far above
which, rose a multitudinous shriek of terror, dismay, and agony, and a
number of men and women issued as if shot from a catapult. Then a few
came straggling out, and then--no more. The roof had fallen upon the
rest.
With the first rush from the church, the shaking ceased utterly, and
the still earth seemed again the immovable thing the English
spectators had conceived her. Of what had taken place there was little
sign on the earth, no sign in the blue sun-glorious heaven; only in
the air there was a cloud of dust so thick as to look almost solid,
and from the cloud, as it seemed, came a ghastly cry, mingled of
shrieks and groans and articulate appeals for help. The cry kept on
issuing, while the calm front of the church, dominated by that
frightful canopy, went on displaying the assembled nations delivered
from their awful judge. While the multitude groaned within, it spread
itself out to the sun in silent composure, welcoming and cherishing
his rays in what was left of its gorgeous hues.
The Porsons stood for a moment stunned, came to their senses, and made
haste to enter the building. With white faces and trembling hands,
they drew aside the heavy leather curtain that hung within the great
door, but could for a moment see nothing; the air inside seemed filled
with a solid yellow dust. As their eyes recovered from the sudden
change of sunlight for gloom, however, they began to distinguish the
larger outlines, and perceived that the floor was one confused heap of
rafters and bricks and tiles and stones and lime. The centre of the
roof had been a great dome; now there was nothing between their eyes
and the clear heaven but the slowly vanishing cloud of ruin. In the
mound below they could at first distinguish nothing human--could not
have told, in the dim chaos, limbs from broken rafters. Eager to help,
they dared not set their feet upon the mass--not that they feared the
walls which another shock might bring upon their heads, but that they
shuddered lest their own added weight should crush some live human
creature they could not descry. Three or four who had received little
or no hurt, were moving about the edges of the heap, vaguely trying to
lift now this, now that, but yielding each attempt in despair, either
from its evident uselessness, or for lack of energy. They would give a
pull at a beam that lay across some writhing figure, find it
immovable, and turn with a groan to some farther cry. How or where
were they to help? Others began to come in with white faces and
terror-stricken eyes; and before long the sepulchral ruin had little
groups all over it, endeavouring in shiftless fashion to bring rescue
to the prisoned souls.
The Porsons saw nothing they could do. Great beams and rafters which
it was beyond their power to move an inch, lay crossed in all
directions; and they could hold little communication with those who
were in a fashion at work. Alas, they were little better than vainly
busy, while the louder moans accompanying their attempts revealed that
they added to the tortures of those they sought to deliver! The two
saw more plainly now, and could distinguish contorted limbs, and here
and there a countenance. The silence, more and more seldom broken, was
growing itself terrible. Had they known how many were buried there,
they would have wondered so few were left able to cry out. At moments
there was absolute stillness in the dreadful place. The heart of
Mrs. Porson began to sink.
“Do come out,” she whispered, afraid of her own voice. “I feel so sick
and faint, I fear I shall drop.”
As she spoke something touched her leg. She gave a cry and started
aside. It was a hand, but of the body to which it belonged nothing
could be seen. It must have been its last movement; now it stuck there
motionless. Then they spied amid sad sights a sadder still. Upon the
heap, a little way from its edge, sat a child of about three, dressed
like a sailor, gazing down at something--they could not see
what. Going a little nearer, they saw it--the face of a fair woman,
evidently English, who lay dead, with a great beam across her
heart. The child showed no trace of tears; his white face seemed
frozen. The stillness upon it was not despair, but suggested a world
in which hope had never yet been born. Pity drove Mrs. Porson’s
sickness away.
[Illustration: MRS. PORSON FINDS CLARE BY THE SIDE OF HIS DEAD MOTHER.]
“My dear!” she said; but the child took no heed. Her voice, however,
seemed to wake something in him. He started to his feet, and rushing
at the beam, began to tug at it with his tiny hands. Mrs. Porson burst
into tears.
“It’s no use, darling!” she cried.
“Wake mamma!” he said, turning, and looking up at her.
“She will not wake,” sobbed Mrs. Porson.
Her husband stood by speechless, choking back the tears of which,
being an Englishman, he was ashamed.
“She _will_ wake,” returned the boy. “She always wakes when I kiss
her.”
He knelt beside her, to prove upon her white face the efficacy of the
measure he had never until now known to fail. That he had already
tried it was plain, for he had kissed away much of the dust, though
none of the death. When once more he found that she did not even close
her lips to return his passionate salute, he desisted. With that
saddest of things, a child’s sigh, and a look that seemed to Mrs.
Porson to embody the riddle of humanity, he reseated himself on the
beam, with his little feet on his mother’s bosom, where so often she
had made them warm. He did not weep; he did not fix his eyes on his
mother; his look was level and moveless and set upon nothing. He
seemed to have before him an utter blank--as if the outer wall of
creation had risen frowning in front, and he knew there was nothing
behind it but chaos.
“Where is your papa?” asked Mr. Porson.
The boy looked round bewildered.
“Gone,” he answered; nor could they get anything more from him.
“Was your papa with you here?” asked Mrs. Porson.
He answered only with the word _Gone_, uttered in a dazed fashion.
By this time all the men left in the town were doing their best, under
the direction of an intelligent man, the priest of a neighbouring
parish. They had already got one or two out alive, and their own
priest dead. They worked well, their terror of the lurking earthquake
forgotten in their eagerness to rescue. From their ignorance of the
language, however, Mr. Porson saw they could be of little use; and in
dread of doing more harm than good, he judged it better to go.
They stood one moment and looked at each other in silence. The child
had dropped from the beam, and lay fast asleep across his mother’s
bosom, with his head on a lump of mortar. Without a word spoken,
Mrs. Porson, picking her way carefully to the spot, knelt down by the
dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and
with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first
motherhood, bore him to her husband. The throes of the earthquake had
slain the parents, and given the child into their arms. Without look
of consultation, mark of difference, or sign of agreement, they turned
in silence and left the terrible church, with the clear summer sky
looking in upon its dead.
As they passed the door, the sun met them, shining with all his
might. The sea, far away across the tops of hills and the clefts of
valleys, lay basking in his glory. The hot air quivered all over the
wide landscape. From the flight of steps in front of the church they
looked down on the streets of the town, and beyond them into space. It
looked the best of all possible worlds--as neither plague, famine,
pestilence, earthquakes, nor human wrongs, persuade me it is not,
judged by the high intent of its existence. When a man knows that
intent, as I dare to think I do, _then_ let him say, and not till
then, whether it be a good world or not. That in the midst of the
splendour of the sunny day, in the midst of olives and oranges, grapes
and figs, ripening swiftly by the fervour of the circumambient air,
should lie that charnel-church, is a terrible fact, neither to be
ignored, nor to be explained by the paltry theory of the greatest good
to the greatest number; but the end of the maker’s dream is not this.
When they turned into the street that led to the gate, they found the
donkeys standing where they had left them. Their owner was not with
them. He had gone into the church with the rest, and was killed. When
they caught sight of the patient, dejected animals, unheeded and
unheeding, then first they spoke, whispering in the awful stillness of
the world: they must take the creatures, and make the best of their
way back without a guide! They judged that, as the road was chiefly
down hill, and the donkeys would be going home, they would not have
much difficulty with them. At the worst, short and stout as they were,
they were not bad walkers, and felt more than equal to carrying the
child between them. Not a person was in the street when they mounted;
almost all were in the church, at its strange, terrible service. Mrs.
Porson mounted the strongest of the animals, her husband placed the
sleeping child in her arms, and they started, he on foot by the side
of his wife, and his donkey following. No one saw them pass through
the gate of the town.
They were not sure of the way, for they had been partly asleep as they
came, but so long as they went downward, and did not leave the road,
they could hardly go wrong! The child slept all the way.
Chapter IV.
THE NEW FAMILY.
How shall a man describe what passed in the mind of a childless wife,
with a motherless boy in her arms! It is the loveliest provision,
doubtless, that every child should have a mother of his own; but there
is a mother-love--which I had almost called more divine--the love,
namely, that a woman bears to a child because he is a child,
regardless of whether he be her own or another’s. It is that they may
learn to love thus, that women have children. Some women love so
without having any. No conceivable treasure of the world could have
once entered into comparison with the burden of richness Mrs. Porson
bore. She told afterward, with voice hushed by fear of irreverence,
how, as they went down one of the hills, she slept for a moment, and
dreamed that she was Mary with the holy thing in her arms, fleeing to
Egypt on the ass, with Joseph, her husband, walking by her side. For
years and years they had been longing for a child--and here lay the
divinest little one, with every mark of the kingdom upon him! His
father and mother lying crushed under the fallen dome of that fearful
church, was it strange he should seem to belong to her?
But there might be some one somewhere in the world with a better
claim; possibly--horrible thought!--with more need of him than she! Up
started a hideous cupidity, a fierce temptation to dishonesty, such as
she had never imagined. We do not know what is in us until the
temptation comes. Then there is the devil to fight. And Mrs. Porson
fought him.
Mr. Porson was, in a milder degree, affected much as his wife. He
could not help wishing, nor was he wrong in wishing, that, since the
child’s father and mother were gone, they might take their place, and
love their orphan. They were far from rich, but what was one child!
They might surely manage to give him a good education, and set him
doing for himself! But, alas, there might be others--others with
love-property in the child! The same thoughts were working in each,
but neither dared utter them in the presence of the sleeping treasure.
As they descended the last slope above the town, with the wide
sea-horizon before them, they beheld such a glory of after-sunset as,
even on that coast, was unusual. A chord of colour that might have
been the prostrate fragment of a gigantic rainbow, lay along a large
arc of the horizon. The farther portion of the sea was an indigo blue,
save for a grayish line that parted it from the dusky red of the
sky. This red faded up through orange and dingy yellow to a pale green
and pale blue, above which came the depth of the blue night, in which
rayed resplendent the evening star. Below the star and nearer to the
west, lay, very thin and very long, the sickle of the new moon. If
death be what it looks to the unthinking soul, and if the heavens
declare the glory of God, as they do indeed to the heart that knows
him, then is there discord between heaven and earth such as no
argument can harmonize. But death is not what men think it, for
“Blessed are they that mourn for the dead.”
The sight enhanced the wonder and hope of the two honest good souls in
the treasure they carried. Out of the bosom of the skeleton Death
himself, had been given them--into their very arms--a germ of life, a
jewel of heaven! At the thought of what lay up the hill behind them,
they felt their joy in the child almost wicked; but if God had taken
the child’s father and mother, might they not be glad in the hope that
he had chosen them to replace them? That he had for the moment at
least, they were bound to believe!
They travelled slowly on, through the dying sunset, and an hour or two
of the star-bright night that followed, adorned rather than lighted by
the quaint boat of the crescent moon. Weary, but lapt in a voiceless
triumph, they came at last, guided by the donkeys, to their hotel.
All were talking of the earthquake. A great part of the English had
fled in a panic terror, like sheep that had no shepherd--hunted by
their own fears, and betrayed by their imagined faith. The steadiest
church-goer fled like the infidel he reviled. The fool said in his
heart, “There is no God,” and fled. The Christian said with his mouth,
“Verily there is a God that ruleth in the earth!” and fled--far as he
could from the place which, as he fancied, had shown signs of a
special presence of the father of Jesus Christ.
After the Porsons were in the house, there came two or three small
shocks. Every time, out with a cry rushed the inhabitants into the
streets; every time, out into the garden of the hotel swarmed such as
were left in it of Germans and English. But our little couple, who had
that day seen so much more of its terrors than any one else in the
place, and whose chamber was at the top of the house where the swaying
was worst, were too much absorbed in watching and tending their lovely
boy to heed the earthquake. Perhaps their hearts whispered, “Can that
which has given us such a gift be unfriendly?”
“If his father and mother,” said Mrs. Porson, as they stood regarding
him, “are permitted to see their child, they shall see how we love
him, and be willing he should love us!”
As they went up the stairs with him, the boy woke. When he looked and
saw a face that was not his mother’s, a cloud swept across the heaven
of his eyes. He closed them again, and did not speak. The first of the
shocks came as they were putting him to bed: he turned very white and
looked up fixedly, as if waiting another fall from above, but sat
motionless on his new mother’s lap. The instant the vibration and
rocking ceased, he drank from the cup of milk she offered him, as
quietly as if but a distant thunder had rolled away. When she put him
in the bed, he looked at her with such an indescribable expression of
bewildered loss, that she burst into tears. The child did not cry. He
had not cried since they took him. The woman’s heart was like to break
for him, but she managed to say,
“God has taken her, my darling. He is keeping her for you, and I am
going to keep you for her;” and with that she kissed him.
The same moment came the second shock.
Need wakes prophecy: the need of the child made of the parson a
prophet.
“It is God that does the shaking,” he said. “It’s all right. Nobody
will be the worse--not much, at least!”
“Not at all,” rejoined the boy, and turned his face away.
From the lips of such a tiny child, the words seemed almost awful.
He fell fast asleep, and never woke till the morning. Mrs. Porson lay
beside him, yielding him, stout as she was, a good half of the little
Italian bed. She scarcely slept for excitement and fear of smothering
him.
The Porsons were honest people, and for all their desire to possess
the child, made no secret of how and where they had found him, or of
as much of his name as he could tell them, which was only _Clare_. But
they never heard of inquiry after him. On the gunboat at Genoa they
knew nothing of their commander’s purposes, or where to seek him. Days
passed before they began to be uneasy about him, and when they did
make what search for him they could, it was fruitless.
Chapter V.
HIS NEW HOME.
The place to which the good people carried the gift of the
earthquake--carried him with much anxiety and more exultation--had no
very distinctive features. It had many fields in grass, many in crop,
and some lying fallow--all softly undulating. It had some trees, and
everywhere hedges dividing fields whose strange shapes witnessed to a
complicated history, of which few could tell anything. Here and there
in the hollows between the motionless earth-billows, flowed, but did
not seem to flow, what they called a brook. But the brooks there were
like deep soundless pools without beginning or end. There was no life,
no gaiety, no song in them, only a sullen consent to exist. That at
least is how they impress one accustomed to real brooks, lark-like,
always on the quiver, always on the move, always babbling and gabbling
and gamboling, always at their games, always tossing their pebbles
about, and telling them to talk. A man that loved them might say there
was more in the silence of these, than in the speech of those; but
what silence can be better than a song of delight that we are, that we
were, that we are to be! The stillness may be full of solemn fish,
mysterious as itself, and deaf with secrets; but blessed is the brook
that lets the light of its joy shine.
Dull as the place must seem in this my description, it was the very
country for the boy. He would come into more contact with its modest
beauty in a day than some of us would in a year. Nobody quite knows
the beauty of a country, especially of a quiet country, except one who
has been born in it, or for whom at least childhood and boyhood and
youth have opened door after door into the hidden phases of its
life. There is no square yard on the face of the earth but some one
can in part understand what God meant in making it; while the same
changeful skies canopy the most picturesque and the dullest
landscapes; the same winds wake and blow over desert and pasture land,
making the bosoms of youth and age swell with the delight of their
blowing. The winds are not all so full as are some of delicious odours
gathered as they pass from gardens, fields, and hill-sides; but all
have their burden of sweetness. Those that blew upon little Clare were
oftener filled with the smell of farmyards, and burning weeds, and
cottage-fires, than of flowers; but never would one of such odours
revisit him without bringing fresh delight to his heart. Its mere
memorial suggestion far out on the great sea would wake the old child
in the man. The pollards along the brooks grew lovely to his heart,
and were not the less lovely when he came to understand that they were
not so lovely as God had meant them to be. He was one of those who,
regarding what a thing _is_, and not comparing it with other things,
descry the thought of God in it, and love it; for to love what is
beautiful is as natural as to love our mothers.
The parsonage to which his new father and mother brought him was like
the landscape--humble. It was humble even for a parsonage--which has
no occasion to be fine. For men and women whose business it is to
teach their fellows to be true and fair, and not covet fine things,
are but hypocrites, or at best intruders and humbugs, if they want
fine things themselves. Jesus Christ did not care about fine
things. He loved every lovely thing that ever his father made. If any
one does not know the difference between fine things and lovely
things, he does not know much, if he has all the science in the world
at his finger-ends.
One good thing about the parsonage was, that it was old, and the
swallows had loved it for centuries. That way Clare learned to love
the swallows--and they are worth loving. Then it had a very old
garden, nearly as old-fashioned as it was old, and many flowers that
have almost ceased to be seen grew in it, and did not enjoy their
lives the less that they were out of fashion. All the furniture in the
house was old, and mostly shabby; it was possible, therefore, to love
it a little. Who on earth could be such a fool as to love a new piece
of furniture! One might prize it; one might admire it; one might like
it because it was pretty, or because it was comfortable; but only a
silly woman whose soul went to bed on her new sideboard, could say she
loved it. And then it would not be true. It is impossible that any but
an _old_ piece of furniture should be loved.
His father and mother had a charming little room made for him in the
garret, right up among the swallows, who soon admitted him a member of
their society--an honorary member, that is, who was not expected to
fly with them to Africa except he liked. His new parents did this
because they saw that, when he could not be with them, he preferred
being by himself; and that moods came upon him in which he would steal
away even from them, seized with a longing for loneliness. In general,
next to being with his mother anywhere, he liked to be with his father
in the study. If both went out, and could not take him with them, he
would either go to his own room, or sit in the study alone. It was a
very untidy room, crowded with books, mostly old and dingy, and in
torn bindings. Many of them their owner never opened, and they
suffered in consequence; a few of them were constantly in his hands,
and suffered in consequence. All smelt strong of stale tobacco, but
that hardly accounts for the fact that Clare never took to smoking.
Another thing perhaps does--that he was always too much of a man to
want to look like a man by imitating men. That is unmanly. A boy who
wants to look like a man is not a manly boy, and men do not care for
his company. A true boy is always welcome to a true man, but a
would-be man is better on the other side of the wall.
His mother oftenest sat in a tiny little drawing-room, which smelt of
withered rose-leaves. I think it must smell of them still. I believe
it smelt of them a hundred years before she saw the place. Clare loved
the smell of the rose-leaves and disliked the smell of the tobacco;
yet he preferred the study with its dingy books to the pretty
drawing-room without his mother.
There was a village, a very small one, in the parish, and a good many
farm-houses.
Such was the place in which Clare spent the next few years of his
life, and there his new parents loved him heartily. The only thing
about him that troubled them, besides the possibility of losing him,
was, that they could not draw out the tiniest smile upon his sweet,
moonlight-face.
Chapter VI.
WHAT DID DRAW OUT HIS FIRST SMILE.
Mr. Porson was a man about five and forty; his wife was a few years
younger. His theories of religion were neither large nor lofty; he
accepted those that were handed down to him, and did not trouble
himself as to whether they were correct. He did what was better: he
tried constantly to obey the law of God, whether he found it in the
Bible or in his own heart. Thus he was greater in the kingdom of
heaven than thousands that knew more, had better theories about God,
and could talk much more fluently concerning religion than he. By
obeying God he let God teach him. So his heart was always growing; and
where the heart grows, there is no fear of the intellect; there it
also grows, and in the best fashion of growth. He was very good to his
people, and not foolishly kind. He tried his best to help them to be
what they ought to be, to make them bear their troubles, be true to
one another, and govern themselves. He was like a father to them. For
some, of course, he could do but little, because they were locked
boxes with nothing in them; but for a few he did much. Perhaps it was
because he was so good to his flock that God gave him little Clare to
bring up. Perhaps it was because he and his wife were so good to
Clare, that by and by a wonderful thing took place.
About three years after the earthquake, Mrs. Porson had a baby-girl
sent her for her very own. The father and mother thought themselves
the happiest couple on the face of the earth--and who knows but they
were! If they were not, so much the better! for then, happy as they
were, there were happier yet than they; and who, in his greatest
happiness, would not be happier still to know that the earth held
happier than he!
When Clare first saw the baby, he looked down on her with solemn,
unmoved countenance, and gazed changeless for a whole minute. He
thought there had been another earthquake, that another church-dome
had fallen, and another child been found and brought home from the
ruin. Then light began to grow somewhere under his face. His mother,
full as was her heart of her new child, watched his countenance
anxiously. The light under his face grew and grew, till his face was
radiant. Then out of the midst of the shining broke the heavenliest
smile she had ever seen on human countenance--a smile that was a
clearer revelation of God than ten thousand books about him. For what
must not that God be, who had made the boy that smiled such a smile
and never knew it! After this he smiled occasionally, though it was
but seldom. He never laughed--that is, not until years after this
time; but, on the other hand, he never looked sullen. A quiet peace,
like the stillness of a long summer twilight in the north, dwelt upon
his visage, and appeared to model his every motion. Part of his life
seemed away, and he waiting for it to come back. Then he would be
merry!
He was never in a hurry, yet always doing something--always, that is,
when he was not in his own room. There his mother would sometimes find
him sitting absolutely still, with his hands on his knees. Nor was she
sorry to surprise him thus, for then she was sure of one of his rare
smiles. She thought he must then be dreaming of his own mother, and a
pang would go through her at the thought that he would one day love
her more than herself. “He will laugh then!” she said. She did not
think how the gratitude of that mother would one day overwhelm her
with gladness.
He never sought to be caressed, but always snuggled to one that drew
him close. Never once did he push any one away. He learned what
lessons were set him--not very fast, but with persistent endeavour to
understand. He was greatly given to reading, but not particularly
quick. He thus escaped much fancying that he knew when he did not
know--a quicksand into which fall so many clever boys and girls. Give
me a slow, steady boy, who knows when he does not know a thing! To
know that you do not know, is to be a small prophet. Such a boy has a
glimmer of the something he does not know, or at least of the place
where it is; while the boy who easily grasps the words that stand for
a thing, is apt to think he knows the thing itself when he sees but
the wrapper of it--thinks he knows the church when he has caught sight
of the weather-cock. Mrs. Porson could see the understanding of a
thing gradually burst into blossom on the boy’s face. It did not
smile, it only shone. Understanding is light; it needs love to change
light into a smile.
There was something in the boy that his parents hardly hoped to
understand; something in his face that made them long to know what was
going on in him, but made them doubt if ever in this life they
should. He was not concealing anything from them. He did not know that
he had anything to tell, or that they wanted to know anything. He
never doubted that everybody saw him just as he felt himself; his soul
seemed bare to all the world. But he knew little of what was passing
in him: child or man never knows more than a small part of that.
When first he was allowed to take the little Mary in his arms, he
sitting on a stool at his mother’s feet, it was almost a new start in
his existence. A new confidence was born in his spirit. Mrs. Porson
could read, as if reflected in his countenance, the pride and
tenderness that composed so much of her own conscious motherhood. A
certain staidness, almost sternness, took possession of his face as he
bent over the helpless creature, half on his knees, half in his
arms--the sternness of a protecting divinity that knew danger not
afar. He had taken a step upward in being; he was aware in himself,
without knowing it, of the dignity of fatherhood. Even now he knew
what so many seem never to learn, that a man is the defender of the
weak; that, if a man is his brother’s keeper, still more is he his
sister’s. She belonged to him, therefore he was hers in the slavery of
love, which alone is freedom. So reverential and so careful did he
show himself, that soon his mother trusted him, to the extent of his
power, more than any nurse.
By and by she made the delightful discovery that, when he was alone
with the baby, the silent boy could talk. Where was no need or hope of
being understood, his words began to flow--with a rhythmical cadence
that seemed ever on the verge of verse. When first his mother heard
the sweet murmur of his voice, she listened; and then first she
learned what a hold the terrible thing that had given him into her
arms had upon him. For she heard him half singing, half saying--
“Baby, baby, do not grow. Keep small, and lie on my lap, and dream of
walking, but never walk; for when you walk you will run, and when you
run you will go away with father and mother--away to a big place where
the ground goes up to the sky; and you will go up the ground that goes
up to the sky, and you will come to a big church, and you will go into
the church; and the ground and the church and the sky will go _hurr,
hurr, hurr_; and the sky, full of angels, will come down with a great
roar; and all the yards and sails will drop out of the sky, and tumble
down father and mother, and hold them down that they cannot get up
again; and then you will have nobody but me. I will do all I can, but
I am only brother Clare, and you will want, want, want mother and
father, mother and father, and they will be always coming, and never
be come, not for ever so long! Don’t grow a big girl, Maly!”
[Illustration: CLARE IS HEARD TALKING TO MALY.]
The mother could not think what to say. She went in, and, in the hope
of turning his thoughts aside, took the baby, and made haste to
consult her husband.
“We must leave it,” said Mr. Porson. “Experience will soon correct
what mistake is in his notion. It is not so very far wrong. You and I
must go from them one day: what is it but that the sky will fall down
on us, and our bodies will get up no more! He thinks the time nearer
at hand than for their sakes I hope it is; but nobody can tell.”
Clare never associated the church where the awful thing took place,
with the church to which he went on Sundays. The time for it, he
imagined, came to everybody. To Clare, nothing ever _happened_. The
way out of the world was a church in a city set on a hill, and there
an earthquake was always ready.
The heart of his adoptive mother grew yet more tender toward him after
the coming of her own child. She was not quite sure that she did not
love him even more than Mary. She could not help the feeling that he
was a child of heaven sent out to nurse on the earth; and that it was
in reward for her care of him that her own darling was sent her. That
their love to the boy had something to do with the coming of the girl,
I believe myself, though what that something was, I do not precisely
understand.
She left him less often alone with the child. She would not have his
thoughts drawn to the church of the earthquake; neither would she have
the mournfulness of his sweet voice much in the ears of her baby. He
never sang in a minor key when any one was by, but always and solely
when the baby and he were alone together.
Chapter VII.
CLARE AND HIS BROTHERS.
After a year or two, Mr. Porson became anxious lest the boy should
grow up too unlike other boys--lest he should not be manly, but of a
too gently sad behaviour. He began, therefore, to take him with him
about the parish, and was delighted to find him show extraordinary
endurance. He would walk many miles, and come home less fatigued than
his companion. To be sure, he had not much weight to carry; but it
seemed to Mr. Porson that his utter freedom from thought about himself
had a large share in his immunity from weariness. He continued slight
and thin--which was natural, for he was growing fast; but the muscles
of his little bird-like legs seemed of steel. The spindle-shanks went
striding, striding without a check, along the roughest roads, the pale
face shining atop of them like a sweet calm moon. To Mr. Porson’s
eyes, the moon, stooping, as she sometimes seems to do, downward from
the sky, always looked like him. The child woke something new in the
heart and mind of every one that loved him, but was himself
unconscious of his influence. His company was no check to his father
when meditating, after his habit as he walked, what he should say to
his people the next Sunday. For the good man never wrote or read a
sermon, but talked to his people as one who would meet what was in
them with what was in him. Hence they always believed “the parson
meant it.” He never said anything clever, and never said anything
unwise; never amused them, and never made them feel scornful, either
of him or of any one else.
Instead of finding the presence of Clare distract his thoughts, he had
at times a curious sense that the boy was teaching him--that his
sermon was running before, or walking sedately on this side of him or
that. For Clare could run like the wind; and did run after
butterflies, dragon-flies, or anything that offered a chance of seeing
it nearer; but he never killed, and seldom tried to catch anything, if
but for a moment’s examination. The swiftest run would scarcely
heighten the colour of his pale cheeks.
He soon came to be known in the farm-houses of the parish. The
farmer-families were a little shy of him at first, fancying him too
fine a little gentleman for them; but as they got to know him, they
grew fond of him. They called him “the parson’s man,” which pleased
Clare. But one old woman called him “the parson’s cherubim.”
One day Mr. Porson was calling at the house of the largest farm in the
parish, the nearest house to the parsonage. The farmer’s wife was ill,
and having to go to her room to see her, he said to the boy--
“Clare, you run into the yard. Give my compliments to any one you
meet, and ask him to let you stay with him.”
When the time came for their departure, Mr. Porson went to find
him. He did not call him; he wanted to see what he was about. Unable
to discover him, and coming upon no one of whom he might inquire, for
it was hay-time and everybody in the fields, he was at last driven to
use his voice.
He had not to call twice. Out of the covered part of the pigsty, not
far from which the parson stood, the boy came creeping on all fours,
followed by a litter of half-grown, grunting, gamboling pigs.
“Here I am, papa!” he cried.
“Clare,” exclaimed his father, “what a mess you have made of
yourself!”
“I gave them your compliments,” answered the boy, as he scrambled over
the fence with his father’s assistance, “and asked them if I might
stay with them till you were ready. They said yes, and invited me
in. I went in; and we’ve been having such games! They were very kind
to me.”
His father turned involuntarily and looked into the sty. There stood
all the pigs in a row, gazing after the boy, and looking as sorry as
their thick skins and bony snouts would let them. Their mother rose in
a ridge behind them, gazing too. Mr. Skymer always spoke of pigs as
about the most intelligent animals in the world.
[Illustration: CLARE MAKES FRIENDS DURING MR. PORSON’S ABSENCE.]
I do not know when or where or how his love of the animals began, for
he could not tell me. If it began with the pigs, it was far from
ending with them.
The next day he asked his father if he might go and call upon the
pigs.
“Have you forgotten, Clare,” said his mother, “what a job Susan and I
had with your clothes? I wonder still how you could have done such a
thing! They were quite filthy. When I saw you, I had half a mind to
put you in a bath, clothes and all. I doubt if they are sweet yet!”
“Oh, yes, they are, indeed, mamma!” returned Clare; “and you know I
shall be careful after this! I shall not go into their house, but get
the farmer to let them out. I’ve thought of a new game with them!”
His mother consented; the farmer did let the pigs out; and Clare and
they had a right good game together among the ricks in the yard.
His growing nature showed itself in a swiftly widening friendship for
live things. The spreading ripples of his affection took in the cows
and the horses, the hens and the geese, and every creature about the
place, till at length it had to pull up at the moles, because he could
not get at them. I doubt if he would have liked them if he had seen
one eat a frog! He called the pigs little brothers, and the horses and
cows big brothers, and was perfectly at home with them before people
knew he cared for their company. I think his absolute simplicity
brought him near to the fountain of life, or rather, prevented him
from straying from it; and this kept him so alive himself, that he was
delicately sensitive to all life. He felt himself pledged to all other
life as being one with it. Its forms were therefore so open to him as
to seem familiar from the first. He knew instinctively what went on in
regions of life differing from his own--knew, without knowing how,
what the animals were thinking and feeling; so was able to interpret
their motions, even the sudden changes in their behaviour.
There was one dangerous animal on the place--a bull, of which the
farmer had often said he must part with him, or he would be the death
of somebody. One morning he was struck with terror to find Clare in
the stall with Nimrod. The brute was chained up pretty short, but was
free enough for terrible mischief: Clare was stroking his nose, and
the beast was standing as still as a bull of bronze, with one curved
and one sharp, forward-set, wicked-looking horn in alarming proximity
to the angelic face. The farmer stood in dismay, still as the bull,
afraid to move. Clare looked up and smiled, but his delicate little
hand went on caressing the huge head. It was one of God’s small high
creatures visiting with good news of hope one of his big low
creatures--a little brother of Jesus Christ bringing a taste of his
father’s kingdom to his great dull bull of a brother. The farmer
called him. The boy came at once. Mr. Goodenough told him he must not
go near the bull; he was fierce and dangerous. Clare informed him that
he and the bull had been friends for a long time; and to prove it ran
back, and before the farmer could lay hold of him, was perched on the
animal’s shoulders. The bull went on eating the grass in the manger
before him, and took as little heed of the boy as if it were but a fly
that had lighted on him, and neither tickled nor stung him.
By degrees he grew familiar with all the goings on at the farm, and
drew nearer to a true relation with the earth that nourishes
all. Where the soil was not too heavy, the ploughman would set him on
the back of the near horse, and there he would ride in triumph to the
music of the ploughman’s whistle behind. His was not the pomp of the
destroyer who rides trampling, but the pomp of the saviour drawing
forth life from the earth. In the summer the hayfield knew him, and in
the autumn the harvest-field, where busily he gathered what the earth
gave, and for himself strength, a sense of wide life and large
relations. The very mould, not to say the grass-blades and the
daisies, was dear to him. He was more sympathetic with the daisies
ploughed down than was even Burns, for he had a strong feeling that
they went somewhere, and were the better for going; that this was the
way their sky fell upon them.
All the people on the farm, all the people of the village, every one
in the parish knew the boy and his story. From his gentleness and
lovingkindness to live things, there were who said he was half-witted;
others said he saw ghosts. The boys of the village despised, and some
hated him, because he was so unlike them. They called him a girl
because where they tormented he caressed. At this he would smile, and
they durst not lay hands on him.
The days are long in boyhood, and Clare could do a many things in
one. There was the morning, the forenoon, and the long afternoon and
evening! He could help on the farm; he could play with ever so many
animals; he could learn his lessons, which happily were not heavy; he
could read any book he pleased in his father’s library, where
_Paradise Lost_ was his favourite; he could nurse little “Maly.” He had
the more time for all these that he had no companion of his own age,
no one he wanted to go about with after school-hours. His father was
still his chief human companion, and neither of them grew tired of the
other.
The most remarkable thing in the child was the calm and gentle
greatness of his heart. You often find children very fond of one or
two people, who, perhaps, in evil return, want to keep them all to
themselves, and reproach them for loving others. Many persons count it
a sign of depth in a child that he loves only one or two. I doubt it
greatly. I think that only the child who loves all life can love right
well, can love deeply and strongly and tenderly the lives that come
nearest him. Low nurses and small-hearted mothers dwarf and pervert
their children, doing their worst to keep them from having big hearts
like God. Clare had other teaching than this. He had lost his father
and mother, but many were given him to love; and so he was helped to
wait patiently till he found them again. God was keeping them for him
somewhere, and keeping him for them here.
The good for which we are born into this world is, that we may learn
to love. I think Clare the most enviable of boys, because he loved
more than any one of his age I have heard of. There are people--oh,
such silly people they are!--though they may sometimes be
pleasing--who are always wanting people to love them. They think so
much of themselves, that they want to think more; and to know that
people love them makes them able to think more of themselves. They
even think themselves loving because they are fond of being loved!
You might as soon say because a man loves money he is generous;
because he loves to gather, therefore he knows how to scatter; because
he likes to read a story, therefore he can write one. Such lovers are
only selfish in a deeper way, and are more to blame than other selfish
people; for, loving to be loved, they ought the better to know what an
evil thing it is not to love; what a mean thing to accept what they
are not willing to give. Even to love only those that love us, is, as
the Lord has taught us, but a pinched and sneaking way of
loving. Clare never thought about being loved. He was too busy loving,
with so many about him to love, to think of himself. He was not the
contemptible little wretch to say, “What a fine boy I am, to make
everybody love me!” If he had been capable of that, not many would
have loved him; and those that did would most of them have got tired
of loving a thing that did not love again. Only great lovers like God
are able to do that, and they help God to make love grow. But there is
little truth in love where there is no wisdom in it. Clare’s father
and mother were wise, and did what they could to make Clare wise.
Also the animals, though they were not aware of it, did much to save
him from being spoiled by the humans whom the boy loved more than
them. For Clare’s charity began at home. Those who love their own
people will love other people. Those who do not love children will
never love animals right.
Here I will set down a strange thing that befell Clare, and caused him
a sore heart, making him feel like a traitor to the whole animal race,
and influencing his life for ever. I was at first puzzled to account
for the thing without attributing more imagination to the animals--or
some of them--than I had been prepared to do; but probably the main
factor in it was heart-disease.
He had seen men go out shooting, but had never accompanied any
killers. I do not quite understand how, as in my story, he came even
to imitate using a gun. There was nothing in him that belonged to
killing; and that is more than I could say for myself, or any other
man I know except Clare Skymer.
He was at the bottom of the garden one afternoon, where nothing but a
low hedge came between him and a field of long grass. He had in his
hand the stick of a worn-out umbrella. Suddenly a half-grown rabbit
rose in the grass before him, and bolted. From sheer unconscious
imitation, I believe, he raised the stick to his shoulder, and said
_Bang_. The rabbit gave a great bound into the air, fell, and lay
motionless. With far other feelings than those of a sportsman, Clare
ran, got through the hedge, and approached the rabbit trembling. He
could think nothing but that the creature was playing him a trick. Yet
he was frightened. Only how could he have hurt him!
“I dare say the little one knows me,” he said to himself, “and wanted
to give me a start! He couldn’t tell what a start it would be, or he
wouldn’t have done it.”
When he drew near, however, “the little one” did not, as he had hoped
and expected, jump up and run again. With sinking heart Clare went
close up, and looked down on it. It lay stretched out, motionless.
With death in his own bosom he stooped and tenderly lifted it. The
rabbit was stone-dead! The poor boy gazed at it, pressed it tenderly
to his heart, and went with it to find his mother. The tears kept
pouring down his face, but he uttered no cry till he came to her. Then
a low groaning howl burst from him; he laid the dead thing in her lap,
and threw himself on the floor at her feet in an abandonment of
self-accusation and despair.
It was long before he was able to give her an intelligible account of
what had taken place. She asked him if he had found it dead. In answer
he could only shake his head, but that head-shake had a whole tragedy
in it. Then she examined “the little one,” but could find no mark of
any wound upon it. When at length she learned how the case was, she
tried to comfort him, insisting he was not to blame, for he did not
mean to kill the little one. He would not hearken to her loving
sophistry.
“No, mother!” he said through his sobs; “I wouldn’t have blamed
myself, though I should have been very sorry, if I had killed him by
accident--if I had stepped upon him, or anything of that kind; but I
meant to frighten him! I looked bad at him! I made him think I was an
enemy, and going to kill him! I shammed bad--and so was real bad.”
He stopped with a most wailful howl.
“Perhaps he knew me,” he resumed, “and couldn’t understand it. It was
much worse than if I had shot him. He wouldn’t have known then till he
was dead. But to die of terror was horrible. Oh, why didn’t I think
what I was doing?”
“Nobody could have thought of such a thing happening.”
“No; but I ought to have thought, mother, of what I was doing. I was
trying to frighten him! I must have been in a cruel mood. Why didn’t I
think love to the little one when I saw him, instead of thinking death
to him? I shall never look a rabbit in the face again! My heart must
have grown black, mother!”
“I don’t believe there is another rabbit in England would die from
such a cause,” persisted his mother thoughtfully.
“Then what a superior rabbit he must have been!” said Clare. “To think
that I pulled down the roof of his church upon him!”
He burst into a torrent of tears, and ran to his own room. There his
mother thought it better to leave him undisturbed. She wisely judged
that a mind of such sensibility was alone capable of finding the
comfort to fit its need.
Such comfort he doubtless did find, for by the time his mother called
him to tea, calmness had taken the place of the agony on his
countenance. His mother asked him no questions, for she as well as her
husband feared any possible encouragement to self-consciousness. I
imagine the boy had reflected that things could not go so wrong that
nobody could set them right. I imagine he thought that, if he had done
the rabbit a wrong, as he never for a moment to the end of his life
doubted he had, he who is at the head of all heads and the heart of
all hearts, would contrive to let him tell the rabbit he was sorry,
and would give him something to do for the rabbit that would make up
for his cruelty to him. He did once say to his mother, and neither of
them again alluded to the matter, that he was sure the rabbit had
forgiven him.
“Little ones are _so_ forgiving, you know, mother!” he added.
Is it any wonder that my friend Clare Skymer should have been no
sportsman?
Chapter VIII.
CLARE AND HIS HUMAN BROTHERS.
Another anecdote of him, that has no furtherance of the story in it, I
must yet tell.
One cold day in a stormy March, the wind was wildly blowing broken
clouds across the heavens, and now rain, now sleet, over the shivering
blades of the young corn, whose tender green was just tinging the dark
brown earth. The fields were now dark and wintry, heartless and cold;
now shining all over as with repentant tears; one moment refusing to
be comforted, and the next reviving with hope and a sense of new
life. Clare was hovering about the plough. Suddenly he spied, from a
mound in the field, a little procession passing along the
highway. Those in front carried something on their shoulders which
must be heavy, for it took six of them to carry it. He knew it was a
coffin, for his home was by the churchyard, and a funeral was no
unfamiliar sight. Behind it one man walked alone. For a moment Clare
watched him, and saw his bowed head and heavy pace. His heart filled
from its own perennial fount of pity, which was God himself in him. He
ran down the hill and across the next field, making for a spot some
distance ahead of the procession. As it passed him, he joined the
chief mourner, who went plodding on with his arms hanging by his
sides. Creeping close up to him, he slid his little soft hand into the
great horny hand of the peasant. Instinctively the big hand closed
upon the small one, and the weather-beaten face of a man of fifty
looked down on the boy. Not a word was said between them. They walked
on, hand in hand.
Neither had ever seen the other. The man was following his wife and
his one child to the grave. “Nothing almost sees miracles but misery,”
says Kent in _King Lear_. Because this man was miserable, he saw a
miracle where was no miracle, only something very good. The thing was
true and precious, yea, a message from heaven. Those deep, upturned,
silent eyes; the profound, divine sympathy that shone in them; the
grasp of the tiny hand upon his large fingers, made the heart of the
man, who happened to be a catholic, imagine, and for a few moments
believe, that he held the hand of the infant Saviour. The cloud lifted
from his heart and brain, and did not return when he came to
understand that this was not _the_ lamb of God, only another lamb from
the same fold.
When they had walked about two miles, the boy began to fear he might
be intruding, and would have taken his hand from the other, but the
man held it tight, and stooping whispered it was not far now. The
child, who, without knowing it, had taken the man under the
protection of his love, yielded at once, went with him to the grave,
joined in the service, and saw the grave filled. They went again as
they had come. Not a word was spoken. The man wept a little now and
then, drew the back of his brown hand across his eyes, and pressed a
little closer the hand he held. At the gate of the parsonage the boy
took his leave. He said they would be wondering what had become of
him, or he would have gone farther. The man released him without a
word.
His mother had been uneasy about him, but when he told her how it was,
she said he had done right.
“Yes,” returned the boy; “I belong there myself.”
The mother knew he was not thinking of the grave.
One more anecdote I will give, serving to introduce the narrative of
the following chapter, and helping to show the character of the
boy. He was so unlike most boys, that one must know all he may about
him, if he would understand him.
Never yet, strange as the assertion must seem, had the boy shown any
anger. His father was a little troubled at the fact, fearing such
absence of resentment might indicate moral indifference, or, if not,
might yet render him incapable of coping with the world. He had
himself been brought up at a public school, and had not, with all his
experience of life, come to see, any more than most of the readers of
this story now see, or for a long time will see, that there lies no
nobility, no dignity in evil retort of any kind; that evil is evil
when returned as much as when given; that the only shining thing is
good--and the most shining, good for evil.
One day a coarse boy in the village gave him a sharp blow on the
face. It forced water from his eyes and blood from his nose. He was
wiping away both at once with his handkerchief, when a kindly girl
stopped and said to him--
“Never mind; don’t cry.”
“Oh, no!” answered Clare; “it’s only water, it’s not crying. It would
be cowardly to cry.”
“That’s a brave boy! You’ll give it him back one of these days.”
“No,” he returned, “I shall not. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it hurts so. My nose feels as if it were broken. I know it’s
not broken, but it feels like it.”
The girl, as well as the boys who stood around him, burst into
laughter. They saw no logic in his reasoning. Clare’s was the divine
reasoning that comes of loving your neighbour; theirs was the earthly
reasoning that came of loving themselves. They did not see that to
Clare another boy was another of himself; that he was carrying out the
design of the Father of men, that his creatures should come together
into one, not push each other away.
The next time he met the boy who struck him, so far was he both from
resentment and from the fear of being misunderstood, that he offered
him a rosy-cheeked apple his mother had given him as he left for
school. The boy was tyrant and sneak together--a combination to be
seen sometimes in a working man set over his fellows, and in a rich
man grown poor, and bent upon making money again. The boy took the
apple, never doubted Clare gave it him to curry favour, ate it up
grinning, and threw the core in his face. Clare turned away with a
sigh, and betook himself to his handkerchief again, The boy burst into
a guffaw of hideous laughter.
Chapter IX.
CLARE THE DEFENDER.
This enemy was a trouble, more or less, to every decent person in the
neighbourhood. It was well his mother was a widow, for where she was
only powerless to restrain, the father would have encouraged. He was a
big, idle, sneering, insolent lad--such that had there been two more
of the sort, they would have made the village uninhabitable. It was
all the peaceable vicar could do to keep his hands off him.
One day, little Mary being then about five years old, Clare had her
out for a walk. They were alone in a narrow lane, not far from the
farm where Clare was so much at home. To his consternation, for he had
his sister in charge, down the lane, meeting them, came the village
tyrant. He strolled up with his hands in his pockets, and barred their
way. But while, his eye chiefly on Clare, he “straddled” like
Apollyon, but not “quite over the whole breadth of the way,” Mary
slipped past him. The young brute darted after the child. Clare put
down his head, as he had seen the rams do, and as Simpson, who ill
deserved the name of the generous Jewish Hercules, was on the point of
laying hold of her, caught him in the flank, butted him into the
ditch, and fell on the top of him.
“Run, Maly!” he cried; “I’ll be after you in a moment.”
“Will you, you little devil!” cried the bully; and taking him by the
throat, so that he could not utter even a gurgle, got up and began to
beat him unmercifully. But the sounds of their conflict had reached
the ears of the bull Nimrod, who was feeding within the hedge. He
recognized Clare’s voice, perhaps knew from it that he was in trouble;
but I am inclined to think pure bull-love of a row would alone have
sent him tearing to the quarter whence the tyrant’s brutal bellowing
still came. There, looking over the hedge, he saw his friend in the
clutches of an enemy of his own, for Simpson never lost a chance of
teasing Nimrod when he could do so with safety. Over he came with a
short roar and a crash. Looking up, the bully saw a bigger bully than
himself, with his head down and horns level, retreating a step or two
in preparation for running at him. Simpson shoved the helpless Clare
toward the enemy and fled. Clare fell. Nimrod jumped over his
prostrate friend and tore after Simpson. Clare got up and would at
once have followed to protect his enemy, but that he must first see
his sister safe. He ran with her to a cottage hard by, handed her to
the woman at the door of it, and turning pursued Simpson and the bull.
Nimrod overtook his enemy in the act of scrambling over a five-barred
gate. Simpson saw the head of the bull coming down upon him like the
bows of a Dutchman upon a fishing-boat, and, paralyzed with terror,
could not move an inch further. Crash against the gate came the horns
of Nimrod, with all the weight and speed of his body behind them. Away
went the gate into the field, and away went Simpson and the bull with
it, the latter nearly breaking his neck, for his horns were entangled
in the bars, one of them by the diagonal bar. Simpson’s right leg was
jammed betwixt the gate and the head and horns of the bull. He roared,
and his roars maddened Nimrod, furious already that he could not get
his horns clear. Shake and pull as he might, the gate stuck to them;
and Simpson fared little the better that the bull’s quarrel was for
the moment with the gate, and not with the leg between him and it.
Clare had not seen the catastrophe, and did not know what had become
of pursuer or pursued, until he reached the gap where the gate had
been. He saw then the odd struggle going on, and ran to the aid of his
foe, in terror of what might already have befallen him. The moment he
laid hold of one of the animal’s horns, infuriated as Nimrod was with
his helpless entanglement, he knew at once who it was, and was quiet;
for Clare always took him by the horn when first he went up to
him. Without a moment’s demur he yielded to the small hands as they
pushed and pulled his head this way and that until they got it clear
of the gate. But then they did not let him go. Clare proceeded to take
him home, and Nimrod made no objection. Simpson lay groaning.
When Clare returned, his enemy was there still. He had got clear of
the gate, but seemed in much pain, for he lay tearing up the grass and
sod in handfuls. When Clare stooped to ask what he should do for him,
he struck him a backhanded blow on the face that knocked him
over. Clare got up and ran.
“Coward!” cried Simpson; “to leave a man with a broken leg to get home
by himself!”
“I’m going to find some one strong enough to help you,” said Clare.
But Simpson, after his own evil nature, imagined he was going to let
the bull into the field again, and fell to praying him not to leave
him. Clare knew, however, that, if his leg was broken, he could not
get him home, neither could he get home by himself; so he made haste
to tell the people at the farm, and Simpson lay in terror of the bull
till help came.
From that hour he hated Clare, attributing to him all the ill he had
brought on himself. But he was out of mischief for a while. The
trouble fell on his mother--who deserved it, for she would believe no
ill of him, because he was _hers_. One good thing of the affair was,
that the bully was crippled for life, and could do the less harm.
It was a great joy to Mr. Porson to learn how Clare had defended his
sister. Clergyman as he was, and knowing that Jesus Christ would never
have returned a blow, and that this spirit of the Lord was what saved
the world, he had been uneasy that his adopted child behaved just like
Jesus. That a man should be so made as not to care to return a blow,
never occurred to Mr. Porson as possible. It was therefore an
immeasurable relief to his feelings as an Englishman, to find that the
boy was so far from being destitute of pluck, that in defence of his
sister he had attacked a fellow twice his size.
“Weren’t you afraid of such a big rascal?” he said.
“No, papa,” answered the boy. “Ought I to have been?”
He put his hand to his forehead, as if trying to understand. His
father found he had himself something to think about.
There was a certain quiescence about Clare, ill to describe,
impossible to explain, but not the less manifest. Like an infant, he
never showed surprise at anything. Whatever came to him he received,
questioning nothing, marvelling at nothing, disputing nothing. What he
was told to do he went to do, never with even a momentary show of
disinclination, leaving book or game with readiness but no
eagerness. He would do deftly what was required of him, and return to
his place, with a countenance calm and sweet as the moon in highest
heaven. He seldom offered a caress except to little Mary; yet would
choose, before anything else, a place by his mother’s knee. The moment
she, or his father in her absence, entered the room and sat down, he
would rise, take his stool, and set it as near as he thought he
might. When caressed he never turned away, or looked as if he would
rather be let alone; at the same time he received the caress so
quietly, and with so little response, that often, when his heavenly
look had drawn the heart of some mother, or spinster with motherly
heart, he left an ache in the spirit he would have gone to the world’s
end to comfort. He never sought love--otherwise than by getting near
the loved. When anything was given him, he would look up and smile,
but he seldom showed much pleasure, or went beyond the regulation
thanks. But if at such a moment little Mary were by, he had a curious
way of catching her up and presenting her to the giver. Whether this
was a shape his thanks took, whether Mary was to him an incorporate
gratitude, or whether he meant to imply that she was the fitter on
whom to shower favour, it were hard to say. His mother observed, and
in her mind put the two things together, that he did not seem to prize
much any mere possession. He looked pleased with a new suit of
clothes, but if any one remarked on his care of them, he would answer,
“I mustn’t spoil what’s papa and mamma’s!” He made no hoard of any
kind. He did once hoard marbles till he had about a hundred; then it
was discovered that they were for a certain boy in the village who was
counted half-witted--as indeed was Clare himself by many. When he
learned that the boy had first been accused of stealing them--for no
one would believe that another boy had given them to him--and after
that robbed of them by the other boys, on the ground that he did not
know how to play with them, Clare saw that it was as foolish to hoard
for another as for himself.
He was a favourite with few beyond those that knew him well. Many who
saw him only at church, or about the village, did not take to him. His
still regard repelled them. In Naples they would have said he had the
evil eye. I think people had a vague sense of rebuke in his
presence. Even his mother, passionately loving her foundling, was
aware of a film between them through which she could not quite see
him, beyond which there was something she could not get at. Clare knew
nothing of such a separation. He seemed to himself altogether close to
his mother, was aware of nothing between to part them. The cause of
the thing was, that Clare was not yet in flower. His soul was a white
half-blown bud, not knowing that it was but half-blown. It basked in
the glory of the warm sun, but only with the underside of its
flower-leaves; it had not opened its heart, the sun-side of its
petals, to the love in which it was immerged. He received the love as
a matter of course, and loved it as a matter of course. But for the
cruel Simpson he would not have known there could be any other way of
things. He did not yet know that one must not only love but mean to
love, must not only bask in the warmth of love, but know it as love,
and where it comes from--love again the fountain whence it flows.
Chapter X.
THE BLACK AUNT.
Clare was yet in his tenth year when an unhealthy summer came. The sun
was bright and warm as in other summers, and the flowers in field and
garden appeared as usual when the hour arrived for them to wake and
look abroad; but the children of men did not fare so well as the
children of the earth. A peculiar form of fever showed itself in the
village. It was not very fatal, yet many were so affected as to be
long unable to work. There was consequently much distress beyond the
suffering of the fever itself. The parson and his wife went about from
morning to night among the cottagers, helping everybody that needed
help. They had no private fortune, but the small blanket of the
benefice they spread freely over as many as it could be stretched to
cover, depriving themselves of a good part of the food to which they
had been accustomed, and of several degrees of necessary warmth. When
at last the strength of the parson gave way, and the fever laid hold
of him, he had to do without many comforts his wife would gladly have
got for him. They were both of rather humble origin, having but one
relative well-to-do, a sister of Mrs. Porson, who had married a rich
but very common man. From her they could not ask help. She had never
sent them any little present, and had been fiercely indignant with
them for adopting Clare.
Neither of them once complained, though Mrs. Porson, whose strength
was much spent, could not help weeping sometimes when she was alone
and free to weep. They knew their Lord did not live in luxury, and a
secret gladness nestled in their hearts that they were allowed to
suffer a little with him for the sake of the flock he had given into
their charge.
The children of course had to share in the general gloom, but it did
not trouble them much. For Clare, he was not easily troubled with
anything. Always ready to help, he did not much realize what suffering
was; and he had Mary to look after, which was labour and pleasure,
work and play and pay all in one. His mother was at ease concerning
her child when she knew her in Clare’s charge, and was free to attend
to her husband. She often said that if ever any were paid for being
good to themselves, she and her husband were vastly overpaid for
taking such a child from the shuddering arms of the earthquake.
But John Porson’s hour was come. He must leave wife and children and
parish, and go to him who had sent him. If any one think it hard he
should so fare in doing his duty, let him be silent till he learn what
the parson himself thought of the matter when he got home. People talk
about death as the gosling might about life before it chips its
egg. Take up their way of lamentation, and we shall find it an
endless injustice to have to get up every morning and go to bed every
night. Mrs. Porson wept, but never thought him or herself
ill-used. And had she been low enough to indulge in self-pity, it
would have been thrown away, for before she had time to wonder how she
was to live and rear her children, she too was sent for. In this world
she was not one of those mothers of little faith who trust God for
themselves but not for their children, and when again with her
husband, she would not trust God less.
Clare was in the garden when Sarah told him she was dead. He stood
still for a moment, then looked up, up into the blue. Why he looked
up, he could not have told; but ever since that terrible morning of
which the vague burning memory had never passed, when the great dome
into which he was gazing, burst and fell, he had a way every now and
then of standing still and looking up. His face was white. Two slow
tears gathered, rolled over, and dried upon his face. He turned to
Mary, lifted her in his arms, and, carrying her about the garden, once
more told her his strange version of what had happened in his
childhood. Then he told her that her papa and mamma had gone to look
for his papa and mamma--“somewhere up in the dome,” he said.
When they wanted to take Mary to see what was left of her mother, the
boy contrived to prevent them. From morning till night he never lost
sight of the child.
One cold noon in October, when the clouds were miles deep in front of
the sun, when the rain was falling thick on the yellow leaves, and all
the paths were miry, the two children sat by the kitchen fire. Sarah
was cooking their mid-day meal, which had come from her own
pocket. She was the only servant either of them had known in the
house, and she would not leave it until some one should take charge of
them. The neighbours, dreading infection, did not come near
them. Clare sat on a little stool with Mary on his knees, nestling in
his bosom; but he felt dreary, for he saw no love-firmament over him;
the cloud of death hid it.
With a sudden jingle and rattle, up drove a rickety post-chaise to the
door of the parsonage. Out of it, and into the kitchen, came stalking
a tall middle-aged woman, in a long black cloak, black bonnet, and
black gloves, with a face at once stern and peevish.
“I am the late Mrs. Porson’s sister,” she said, and stood.
Sarah courtesied and waited. Clare rose, with Mary in his arms.
“This is little Maly, ma’am,” he said, offering her the child.
“Set her down, and let me see her,” she answered.
Clare obeyed. Mary put her finger in her mouth, and began to cry. She
did not like the look of the black aunt, and was not used to a harsh
voice.
“Tut! tut!” said the black aunt. “Crying already! That will never do!
Show me her things.”
Sarah felt stunned. This was worse than death! “If only the mistress
had taken them with her!” she said to herself.
Mary’s things--they were not many--were soon packed. Within an hour
she was borne off, shrieking, struggling, and calling “Clay.” The black
aunt, however,--as the black aunt Clare always thought of her--cared
nothing for her resistance; and Clare, who at her first cry was
rushing to the rescue, ready once more to do battle for her, was
seized and held back by Farmer Goodenough. Sarah had sent for him, and
he had come--just in time to frustrate Clare’s valour.
The carriage was not yet out of sight, when Farmer Goodenough began to
repent that he had come: his presence was an acknowledgment of
responsibility! Something must be done with the foundling! There was
nobody to claim him, and nobody wanted him! He had always liked the
boy, but he did not want him! His wife was not fond of the boy, nor of
any boy, and did not want him! He had said to her that Clare could not
be left to starve, and she had answered, “Why not?”! What was to be
done with him? Nobody knew--any more than Clare himself. But which of
us knows what is going to be done with him?
Clare was nobody’s business. English farmers no more than French are
proverbial for generosity; and Farmer Goodenough, no bad type of his
class, had a wife in whose thoughts not the pence but the farthings
dominated. She was one who at once recoiled and repelled--one of those
whose skin shrinks from the skin of their kind, and who are specially
apt to take unaccountable dislikes--a pitiable human animal of the
leprous sort. She “never took to the foundling,” she said. To have
neither father nor mother, she counted disreputable. But I believe the
main source of her dislike to Clare was a feeling of undefined reproof
in the very atmosphere of the boy’s presence, his nature was so
different from hers. What urged him toward his fellow-creatures, made
her draw back from him. In truth she hated the boy. The very look of
him made her sick, she said. It was only a certain respect for the
parson, and a certain fear of her husband, who, seldom angry, was yet
capable of fury, that had prevented her from driving the child, “with
his dish-clout face,” off the premises, whenever she saw him from door
or window. It was no wonder the farmer should be at his wits’ end to
know what, as churchwarden, guardian of the poor, and friend of the
late vicar--as friendly also to the boy himself--he was bound to do.
“Where are _you_ going?” he asked Sarah.
“Where the Lord wills,” answered the old woman. Her ark had gone to
pieces, and she hardly cared what became of her.
“We’ve got to look to ourselves!” said the farmer.
“Parson used to say there was One as took that off our hands!” replied
Sarah.
“Yes, yes,” assented Mr. Goodenough, fidgeting a little; “but the
Almighty helps them as helps themselves, and that’s sound
doctrine. You really must do something, Sarah! We can’t have you on
the parish, you know!”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but until the child here is provided for, or
until they turn us out of the parsonage, I will not leave the place.”
“The furniture is advertised for sale. You’ll have nothing but the
bare walls!”
“We’ll manage to keep each other warm!--Shan’t we, Clare?”
“I will try to keep you warm, Sarah,” responded the boy sadly.
“But the new parson will soon be here. Our souls must be cared for!”
said the farmer.
“Is the Lord’s child that came from heaven in an earthquake to be
turned out into the cold for fear the souls of big men should perish?”
“Something must be done about it!” said the farmer. “What it’s to
be I can’t tell! It’s no business o’ mine any way!”
“That’s what the priest, and the Levite, and the farmer says!”
returned Sarah.
“Won’t you ask Mr. Goodenough to stay to dinner?” said Clare.
He went up to the farmer, who in his perplexity had seated himself,
and laid his arm on his shoulder.
“No, I can’t,” answered Sarah. “He would eat all we have, and not have
enough!”
“Now Maly is gone,” returned Clare, “I would rather not have any
dinner.”
The farmer’s old feeling for the boy, which the dread of having him
left on his hands had for the time dulled, came back.
“Get him his dinner, Sarah,” he said. “I’ve something to see to in the
village. By the time I come back, he’ll be ready to go with me,
perhaps.”
“God bless you, sir!” cried Sarah. “You meant it all the time, an’ I
been behavin’ like a brute!”
The farmer did not like being taken up so sharply. He had promised
nothing! But he had nearly made up his mind that, as the friend of the
late parson, he could scarcely do less than give shelter to the child
until he found another refuge. True, he was not the parson’s child,
but he had loved him as his own! He would make the boy useful, and so
shut his wife’s mouth! There were many things Clare could do about the
place!
Chapter XI.
CLARE ON THE FARM.
When Mr. Goodenough appeared at the house-door with the boy, his
wife’s face expressed what her tongue dared not utter without some
heating of the furnace behind it. But Clare never saw that he was
unwelcome. He had not begun to note outward and visible signs in
regard to his own species; his observation was confined to the
animals, to whose every motion and look he gave heed. But he was
hardly aware of watching even them: his love made it so natural to
watch, and so easy to understand them! He was not drawn to study
Mrs. Goodenough, or to read her indications; he was content to hear
what she said.
True to her nature, Mrs. Goodenough, seeing she could not at once get
rid of the boy, did her endeavour to make him pay for his
keep. Nominally he continued to attend the village school, where the
old master was doing his best for him; but, oftener than not, she
interposed to prevent his going, and turned him to use about the
house, the dairy, and the poultry-yard.
His new mode of life occasioned him no sense of hardship. I do not
mean because of his patient acceptance of everything that came; but
because he had been so long accustomed to the ways of a farm, to all
the phases of life and work in yard and field, that nothing there came
strange to him--except having to stick to what he was put to, and
having next to no time to read. Many boys who have found much
amusement in doing this or that, find it irksome the moment it is
required of them: Clare was not of that mean sort; he was a
gentleman. Happily he was put to no work beyond his strength.
At first, and for some time, he had to do only with the creatures more
immediately under the care of “the mistress,” whence his acquaintance
with the poultry and the pigs, the pigeons and the calves--and
specially with such as were delicate or had been hurt--with their ways
of thinking and their carriage and conduct, rapidly increased.
By and by, however, having already almost ceased to attend school, the
farmer, requiring some passing help a boy could give, took him from
his wife--not without complaint on her part, neither without sense of
relief, and would not part with him again. He was so quick in doing
what was required, so intelligent to catch the meaning not always
thoroughly expressed, so cheerful, and so willing, that he was a
pleasure to Mr. Goodenough--and no less a pleasure to the farmer that
dwelt in Mr. Goodenough, and seemed to most men all there was of him;
for, instead of an expense, he found him a saving.
It was much more pleasant for Clare to be with his master than with
his mistress, but he fared the worse for it in the house. The woman’s
dislike of the boy must find outlet; and as, instead of flowing all
day long, it was now pent up the greater part of it, the stronger it
issued when he came home to his meals. I will not defile my page with
a record of the modes in which she vented her spite. It sought at
times such minuteness of indulgence, that it was next to impossible
for any one to perceive its embodiments except the boy himself.
He now came more into contact with the larger animals about the place;
and the comfort he derived from them was greater than most people
would readily or perhaps willingly believe. He had kept up his
relations with Nimrod, the bull, and there was never a breach of the
friendship between them. The people about the farm not unfrequently
sought his influence with the animal, for at times they dared hardly
approach him. Clare even made him useful--got a little work out of him
now and then. But his main interest lay in the horses. He had up to
this time known rather less of them than of the other creatures on the
place; now he had to give his chief attention to them, laying in love
the foundation of that knowledge which afterward stood him in such
stead when he came to dwell for a time among certain eastern tribes
whose horses are their chief gladness and care. He used, when alone
with them, to talk to this one or that about the friends he had
lost--his father and mother and Maly and Sarah--and did not mind if
they all listened. He would even tell them sometimes about his own
father and mother--how the whole sky full of angels fell down upon
them and took them away. But he said most about his sister. For her he
mourned more than for any of the rest. Her screams as the black aunt
carried her away, would sometimes come back to him with such
verisimilitude of nearness, that, forgetting everything about him, he
would start to run to her. He felt somehow that it was well with the
others, but Maly had always needed _him_, and more than ever in the
last days of their companionship. He wept for nobody but Maly. In the
night he would wake up suddenly, thinking he heard her crying out for
him. Then he would get out of bed, creep to the stable, go to
Jonathan, and to him pour out his low-voiced complaint. Jonathan was
the biggest and oldest horse on the farm.
How much he thought they understood of what he told them, I cannot
say. He was never silly; and where we cannot be sure, we may yet have
reason to hope. He believed they knew when he was in trouble, and
sympathized with him, and would gladly have relieved him of his
pain. I suspect most animals know something of the significance of
tears. More animals shed tears themselves than people think.
For dogs, bless them, they are everywhere, and the boy had known them
from time immemorial.
In the village, some of Clare’s old admirers began to remark that he
no longer “looked the little gentleman.” This was caused chiefly by
the state of his clothes. They were not fit for the work to which he
was put, and within a few weeks were very shabby. Besides, he was
growing rapidly, so that he and his garments were in too evident
process of parting company. Accustomed to a mother’s attentions, he
had never thought of his clothes except to take care of them for her
sake; now he tried to mend them, but soon found his labour of little
use. He had no wages to buy anything with. His clothes or his health
or his education were nothing to Mrs. Goodenough. It was no concern of
hers whether he looked decent or not. What right had such as he to
look decent? It was more than enough that she fed him! The shabbiness
of the beggarly creature was a consolation to her.
But Clare’s toil in the open air, and his constant and willing
association with the animals, had begun to give him a bucolic
appearance. He grew a trifle browner, and showed here and there a
freckle. His health was splendid. Nothing seemed to hurt him. Hardship
was wholesome to him. To the eyes that hated him, and grudged the hire
of the mere food by which he grew, he seemed every day to enlarge
visibly. Already he gave promise of becoming a man of more than
ordinary strength and vigour. Possibly the animals gave him something.
What may have been his outlook and hope all this time, who shall tell!
He never grumbled, never showed sign of pain or unwillingness, gave
his mistress no reason for fault-finding. She found it hard even to
discover a pretext. She seemed always ready to strike him, but was
probably afraid to do so without provocation her husband would count
sufficient. Clare never showed discomfort, never even sighed except he
were alone. Chequered as his life had been, if ever he looked forward
to a fresh change, it was but as a far possibility in the slow current
of events. But he was constantly possessed with a large dim sense of
something that lay beyond, waiting for him; something toward which the
tide of things was with certainty drifting him, but with which he had
nothing more to do than wait. He did not see that to do the things
given him to do was the only preparation for whatever, in the dim
under-world of the future, might be preparing for him; but he did feel
that he must do his work. He did not then think much about duty. He
was actively inclined, had a strong feeling for doing a thing as it
ought to be done; and was thoroughly loyal to any one that seemed to
have a right over him. In this blind, enduring, vaguely hopeful way,
he went on--sustained, and none the less certainly that he did not
know it, from the fountain of his life. When the winter came, his
sufferings, cared for as he had been, and accustomed to warmth and
softness, must at times have been considerable. In the day his work
was a protection, but at night the house was cold. He had, however,
plenty to eat, had no ailment, and was not to be greatly pitied.
Chapter XII.
CLARE BECOMES A GUARDIAN OF THE POOR.
Simpson, the bully of Clare’s childhood, went limping about on a
crutch, permanently lame, and full of hatred toward the innocent
occasion of the injury he had brought upon himself. Ever since his
recovery, he had, loitering about in idleness, watched the boy, to
waylay and catch him at unawares. Not until Clare went to the farm,
however, did he once succeed; for it was not difficult to escape him,
so long as he had not laid actual hold on his prey. But he grew more
and more cunning, and contrived at last, by creeping along hedges and
lying in ambush like a snake, to get his hands upon him. Then the poor
boy fared ill.
He went home bleeding and torn. The righteous churchwarden rebuked him
with severity for fighting. His mistress told him she was glad he had
met with some one to give him what he deserved, for she could hardly
keep her hands off him. He stared at her with wondering eyes, but said
nothing. She turned from them: the devil in her could not look in the
eyes of the angel in him. The next time he fell into the snare of his
enemy, he managed to conceal what had befallen him. After that he was
too wide awake to be caught.
There was in the village a child whom nobody heeded. He was far more
destitute than Clare, but had too much liberty. He lived with a
wretched old woman who called him her grandson: whether he was or not
nobody cared. She made her livelihood by letting beds, in a cottage, or
rather hovel, which seemed to be her own, to wayfarers, mostly tramps,
with or without trades. The child was thus thrown into the worst of
company, and learned many sorts of wickedness. He was already a thief,
and of no small proficiency in his art. Though village-bred, he could
pick a pocket more sensitive than a clown’s. Small and deft, he had
never stood before a magistrate. He was a miserable creature,
bare-footed and bare-legged; about eight years of age, but so stunted
that to the first glance he looked less than six--with keen ferret
eyes in red rims, red hair, pasty, freckled complexion, and a
generally unhealthy look; from which marks all, Clare conceived a
pitiful sympathy for him. Their acquaintance began thus:--
One day, during his father’s last illness, he happened to pass the
door of the grandmother’s hovel while the crone was administering to
Tommy a severe punishment with a piece of thick rope: she had been
sharp enough to catch him stealing from herself. Clare heard his
cries. The door being partly open, he ran in, and gave him such
assistance that they managed to bolt together from the hut. A
friendship, for long almost a silent one, was thus initiated between
them. Tommy--Clare never knew his other name, nor did the boy
himself--would off and on watch for a sight of him all day long, but
had the instinct, or experience, never to approach him if any one was
with him. He was careful not to compromise him. The instant the most
momentary _tête-à-tête_ was possible, he would rush up, offer him
something he had found or stolen, and hurry away again. That he was a
thief Clare had not the remotest suspicion. He had never offered him
anything to suggest theft.
By and by it came to the knowledge of Clare’s enemy that there was a
friendship between them, and the discovery wrought direness for
both. One day Simpson saw Clare coming, and Tommy watching him. He
laid hold of Tommy, and began cuffing him and pulling his hair, to
make him scream, thinking thus to get hold of Clare. But
notwithstanding the lesson he had received, the rascal had not yet any
adequate notion of the boy’s capacity for action where another was
concerned. He flew to the rescue, caught up the crutch Simpson had
dropped, and laid it across his back with vigour. The fellow let Tommy
go and turned on Clare, who went backward, brandishing the crutch.
“Run, Tommy,” he cried.
Tommy retreated a few steps.
“Run yourself,” he counselled, having reached a safe distance. “Take
his third leg with you.”
Clare saw the advice was good, and ran. But the next moment reflection
showed him the helplessness of his enemy. He turned, and saw him
hobbling after him in such evident pain and discomfiture, that he went
to meet him, and politely gave him his crutch. He might have thrown it
to him and gone on, but he had a horror of rudeness, and handed it to
him with a bow. Just as he regained his perpendicular, the crutch
descended on his head, and laid him flat on the ground. There the
tyrant belaboured him. Tommy stood and regarded the proceeding.
“The cove’s older an’ bigger an’ pluckier than me,” he said to
himself; “but he’s an ass. He’ll come to grief unless he’s looked
after. He’ll be hanged else. He don’t know how to dodge. I’ll have to
take him in charge!”
When he saw Clare free, an event to which he had contributed nothing,
he turned and ran home.
Simpson redoubled now his persecution of Clare, and persecuted Tommy
because of Clare. He lurked for Tommy now, and when he caught him,
tormented him with choice tortures. In a word, he made his life
miserable. After every such mischance Tommy would hurry to the farm,
and lie about in the hope of a sight of Clare, or possibly a chance of
speaking to him. His repute was so bad that he dared not show himself.
Hot tears would come into Clare’s eyes as he listened to the not
always unembellished tale of Tommy’s sufferings at the hands of
Simpson; but he never thought of revenge, only of protection or escape
for the boy. It comforted him to believe that he was growing, and
would soon be a match for the oppressor.
Whether at this time he felt any great interest in life, or recognized
any personal advantage in growing, I doubt. But he had the friendship
of the animals; and it is not surprising that creatures their maker
thinks worth making and keeping alive, should yield consolation to one
that understands them, or even fill with a mild joy the pauses of
labour in an irksome life.
Then each new day was an old friend to the boy. Each time the sun
rose, new hope rose with him in his heart. He came every morning fresh
from home, with a fresh promise. The boy read the promise in his great
shining, and believed it; gazed and rejoiced, and turned to his work.
But the hour arrived when his mistress could bear his presence no
longer. Some petty loss, I imagine, had befallen her. Nothing touched
her like the loss of money--the love of which is as dread a passion as
the love of drink, and more ruinous to the finer elements of the
nature. It was like the tearing out of her heart to Mrs. Goodenough to
lose a shilling. Her self-command forsook her, perhaps, in some such
moment of vexation; anyhow, she opened the sluices of her hate, and
overwhelmed him with it in the presence of her husband.
The farmer knew she was unfair, knew the orphan a good boy and a
diligent, knew there was nothing against him but the antipathy of his
wife. But, annoyed with her injustice, he was powerless to change her
heart. Since the boy came to live with them, he had had no pleasure in
his wife’s society. She had always been moody and dissatisfied, but
since then had been unbearable. Constantly irritated with and by her
because of Clare, he had begun to regard him as the destroyer of his
peace, and to feel a grudge against him. He sat smouldering with
bodiless rage, and said nothing.
Clare too was silent,--for what could he say? Where is the wisdom that
can answer hatred? He carried to his friend Jonathan a heart heavy and
perplexed.
“Why does she hate me so, Jonathan?” he murmured.
The big horse kissed his head all over, but made him no other answer.
Chapter XIII.
CLARE THE VAGABOND.
The next morning Clare happened to do something not altogether to the
farmer’s mind. It was a matter of no consequence--only cleaning that
side of one of the cow-houses first which was usually cleaned last. He
gave him a box on the ear that made him stagger, and then stand
bewildered.
“What do you mean by staring that way?” cried the farmer, annoyed with
himself and seeking justification in his own eyes. “Am I not to box
your ears when I choose?” And with that he gave him another blow.
Then first it dawned on Clare that he was not wanted, that he was no
good to anybody. He threw down his scraper, and ran from the
cow-house; ran straight from the farm to the lane, and from the lane
to the high road. Buffets from the hand of his only friend, and the
sudden sense of loneliness they caused, for the moment bereft Clare of
purpose. It was as if his legs had run away with him, and he had
unconsciously submitted to their abduction.
At the mouth of the lane, where it opened on the high road, he ran
against Tommy turning the corner, eager to find him. The eyes of the
small human monkey were swollen with weeping; his nose was bleeding,
and in size and shape scarce recognizable as a nose. At the sight, the
consciousness of his protectorate awoke in Clare, and he stopped,
unable to speak, but not unable to listen. Tommy blubbered out a
confused, half-inarticulate something about “granny and the other
devil,” who between them had all but killed him.
“What can I do?” said Clare, his heart sinking with the sense of
having no help in him.
Tommy was ready to answer the question. He had been hatching vengeance
all the way. Eagerly came his proposition--that they should, in their
turn, lie in ambush for Simpson, and knock his crutch from under
him. That done, Clare should belabour him with it, while he ran like
the wind and set his grandmother’s house on fire.
“She’ll be drunk in bed, an’ she’ll be burned to death!” cried
Tommy. “Then we’ll mizzle!”
“But it would hurt them both very badly, Tommy!” said Clare, as if
unfolding the reality of the thing to a foolish child.
“Well! all right! the worse the better! Ain’t they hurt _us_?” rejoined
Tommy.
“That’s how we know it’s not nice!” answered Clare. “If they set it a
going, we ain’t to keep it a going!”
“Then they’ll be at it for ever,” cried Tommy, “an’ I’m sick of it!
I’ll _kill_ granny! I swear I will, if I’m hanged for it! She’s said a
hundred times she’d pull my legs when I was hanged; but _she_ won’t be
at the hanging!”
“Why shouldn’t you run for it first?” said Clare. “Then they wouldn’t
want to hang you!”
“Then I shouldn’t have nobody!” replied Tommy, whimpering.
“I should have thought Nobody was as good as granny!” said Clare.
“A big bilin’ better!” answered Tommy bitterly. “I wasn’t meanin’
granny--nor yet stumpin’ Simpson.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” said Clare. Tommy burst into
tears.
“Ain’t you the only one I got, up or down?” he cried.
Tommy had a little bit of heart--not much, but enough to have a chance
of growing. If ever creature had less than that, he was not human. I
do not think he could even be an ape.
Some of the people about the parson used to think Clare had no heart,
and Mrs. Goodenough was sure of it. He had not a spark of gratitude,
she said. But the cause of this opinion was that Clare’s affection
took the shape of deeds far more than of words. Never were judges of
their neighbours more mistaken. The chief difference between Clare’s
history and that of most others was, that his began at the unusual
end. Clare began with loving everybody; and most people take a long
time to grow to that. Hence, those whom, from being brought nearest to
them, he loved specially, he loved without that outbreak of show which
is often found in persons who love but a few, and whose love is
defiled with partisanship. He loved quietly and constantly, in a
fashion as active as undemonstrative. He was always glad to be near
those he specially loved; beyond that, the signs of his love were
practical--it came out in ministration, in doing things for
them. There are those who, without loving, desire to be loved, because
they love themselves; for those that are worth least are most precious
to themselves. But Clare never thought of the love of others to
him--from no heartlessness, but that he did not think about
himself--had never done so, at least, until the moment when he fled
from the farm with the new agony in his heart that nobody wanted him,
that everybody would be happier without him. Happy is he that does not
think of himself before the hour when he becomes conscious of the
bliss of being loved. For it must be and ought to be a happy moment
when one learns that another human creature loves him; and not to be
grateful for love is to be deeply selfish. Clare had always loved, but
had not thought of any one as loving him, or of himself as being loved
by any one.
“Well,” rejoined Clare, struggling with his misery, “ain’t I going
myself?”
“You going!--That’s chaff!”
“’Tain’t chaff. I’m on my way.”
“What! Going to hook it? Oh golly! what a lark! Won’t Farmer
Goodenough look blue!”
“He’ll think himself well rid of me,” returned Clare with a sigh. “But
there’s no time to talk. If you’re going, Tommy, come along.”
He turned to go.
“Where to?” asked Tommy, following.
“I don’t know. Anywhere away,” answered Clare, quickening his pace.
In spite of his swollen visage, Tommy’s eyes grew wider.
“You ain’t cribbed nothing?” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You ain’t stole something?” interpreted Tommy.
Clare stopped, and for the first time on his own part, lifted his hand
to strike. It dropped immediately by his side.
“No, you poor Tommy,” he said. “I don’t steal.”
“Thought you didn’t! What are you running away for then?”
“Because they don’t want me.”
“Lord! what will you do?”
“Work.”
Tommy held his tongue: he knew a better way than that! If work was the
only road to eating, things would go badly with _him_! But he thought
he knew a thing or two, and would take his chance! There were degrees
of hunger that were not so bad as the thrashings he got, for in his
granny’s hands the rope might fall where it would; while all cripple
Simpson cared for was to make him squeal satisfactorily. But work was
worse than all! He would go with Clare, but not to work! Not he!
Clare kept on in silence, never turning his head--out into the
untried, unknown, mysterious world, which lay around the one spot he
knew as the darkness lies about the flame of the candle. They walked
more than a mile before either spoke.
Chapter XIV.
THEIR FIRST HELPER.
It was a lovely spring morning. The sun was about thirty degrees above
the horizon, shining with a liquid radiance, as if he had already
drawn up and was shining through the dew of the morning, though it lay
yet on all the grasses by the roadside, turning them into gem-plants.
Every sort of gem sparkled on their feathery or beady tops, and their
long slender blades. At the first cottages they passed, the women were
beginning their day’s work, sweeping clean their floors and
door-steps. Clare noted that where were most flowers in the garden,
the windows were brightest, and the children cleanest.
“The flowers come where they make things nice for them!” he said to
himself. “Where the flowers see dirt, they turn away, and won’t come
out.”
From childhood he had had the notion that the flowers crept up inside
the stalks until they found a window to look out at. Where the
prospect was not to their mind they crept down, and away by some door
in the root to try again. For all the stalks stood like watch-towers,
ready for them to go up and peep out.
They came to a pond by a farm-house. Clare had been observing with
pity how wretched Tommy’s clothes were; but when he looked into the
pond he saw that his own shabbiness was worse than Tommy’s downright
miserableness. Nobody would leave either of them within reach of
anything worth stealing! What he wore had been his Sunday suit, and it
was not even worth brushing!
“I’m ’orrid ’ungry,” said Tommy. “I ain’t swallered a plug this
mornin’, ’xcep’ a lump o’ bread out o’ granny’s cupboard. That’s what
I got my weltin’ for. It were a whole half-loaf, though--an’ none so
dry!”
Clare had eaten nothing, and had been up since five o’clock--at work
all the time till the farmer struck him: he was quite as hungry as
Tommy. What was to be done? Besides a pocket-handkerchief he had but
one thing alienable.
The very day she was taken ill, he had been in the store-room with his
mother, and she, knowing the pleasure he took in the scent of brown
Windsor-soap, had made him a present of a small cake. This he had kept
in his pocket ever since, wrapt in a piece of rose-coloured paper, his
one cherished possession: hunger deadening sorrow, the time was come
to bid it farewell. His heart ached to part with it, but Tommy and he
were so hungry!
They went to the door of the house, and knocked--first Clare very
gently, then Tommy with determination. It was opened by a matron who
looked at them over the horizon of her chin.
“Please, ma’am,” said Clare, “will you give us a piece of bread?--as
large a piece, please, as you can spare; and I will give you this
piece of brown Windsor-soap.”
As he ended his speech, he took a farewell whiff of his favourite
detergent.
“Soap!” retorted the dame. “Who wants your soap! Where did you get it?
Stole it, I don’t doubt! Show it here.”
She took it in her hand, and held it to her nose.
“Who gave it you?”
“My mother,” answered Clare.
“Where’s your mother?”
Clare pointed upward.
“Eh? Oh--hanged! I thought, so!”
She threw the soap into the yard, and closed the door. Clare darted
after his property, pounced upon it, and restored it lovingly to his
pocket.
As they were leaving the yard disconsolate, they saw a cart full of
turnips. Tommy turned and made for it.
“Don’t, Tommy,” cried Clare.
“Why not? I’m hungry,” answered Tommy, “an’ you see it’s no use
astin’!”
He flew at the cart, but Clare caught and held him.
“They ain’t ours, Tommy,” he said.
“Then why don’t you take one?” retorted Tommy.
“That’s why you shouldn’t.”
“It’s why you should, for then it ’ud be yours.”
“To take it wouldn’t make it ours, Tommy.”
“Wouldn’t it, though? I believe when I’d eaten it, it would be
mine--rather!”
“No, it wouldn’t. Think of having in your stomach what wasn’t yours!
No, you must pay for it. Perhaps they would take my soap for a
turnip. I believe it’s worth two turnips.”
He spied a man under a shed, ran to him, and made offer of the soap
for a turnip apiece.
“I don’t want your soap,” answered the man, “an’ I don’t recommend
cold turmits of a mornin’. But take one if you like, and clear
out. The master’s cart-whip ’ill be about your ears the moment he sees
you!”
“Ain’t you the master, sir?”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Then the turnips ain’t yours?” said Clare, looking at him with
hungry, regretful eyes, for he could have eaten a raw potato.
“You’re a deal too impudent to be hungry!” said the man, making a blow
at him with his open hand, which Clare dodged. “Be off with you, or
I’ll set the dog on you.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Clare. “I did not mean to offend you.”
“Clear out, I say. Double trot!”
Hungry as the boys were, they must trudge! No bread, no turnip for
them! Nothing but trudge, trudge till they dropped!
When they had gone about five miles further, they sat down, as if by
common consent, on the roadside; and Tommy, used to crying, began to
cry. Clare did not seek to stop him, for some instinct told him it
must be a relief.
By and by a working-man came along the road. Clare hesitated, but
Tommy’s crying urged him. He rose and stood ready to accost him. As
soon as he came up, however, the man stopped of himself. He questioned
Clare and listened to his story, then counselled the boys to go back.
“I’m not wanted, sir,” said Clare.
“They’d kill _me_,” said Tommy.
“God help you, boys!” returned the man. “You may be telling me lies,
and you may be telling me the truth!--A liar may be hungry, but
somehow I grudge my dinner to a liar!”
As he spoke he untied the knots of a blue handkerchief with white
spots, gave them its contents of bread and cheese, wiped his face with
it, and put it in his pocket; lifted his bag of tools, and went his
way. He had lost his dinner and saved his life!
The dinner, being a man’s, went a good way toward satisfying them,
though empty corners would not have been far to seek, had there been
anything to put in them. As it was, they started again refreshed and
hopeful. What had come to them once might reasonably come again!
Chapter XV.
THEIR FIRST HOST.
As the evening drew on, and began to settle down into night, a new
care arose in the mind of the elder boy. Where were they to pass the
darkness?--how find shelter for sleep? It was a question that gave
Tommy no anxiety. He had been on the tramp often, now with one party,
now with another of his granny’s lodgers, and had frequently slept in
the open air, or under the rudest covert. Tommy had not much
imagination to trouble him, and in his present moral condition was
possibly better without it; but to inexperienced Clare there was
something fearful in having the night come so close to him. Sleep out
of doors he had never thought of. To lie down with the stars looking
at him, nothing but the blue wind between him and them, was like being
naked to the very soul. Doubtless there would be creatures about, to
share the night with him, and protect him from its awful bareness; but
they would be few for the size of the room, and he might see none of
them! It was the sense of emptiness, the lack of present life that
dismayed him. He had never seen any creatures to shrink from. He
disliked no one of the things that creep or walk or fly. Before long
he did come to know and dislike at least one sort; and the sea held
creatures that in after years made him shudder; but as yet, not even
rats, so terrible to many, were a terror to Clare. It was Nothing that
he feared.
My reader may say, “But had no one taught him about God?” Yes, he had
heard about God, and about Jesus Christ; had heard a great deal about
them. But they always seemed persons a long way off. He knew, or
thought he knew, that God was everywhere, but he had never felt his
presence a reality. He seemed in no place where Clare’s eyes ever
fell. He never thought, “God is here.” Perhaps the sparrows knew more
about God than he did then. When he looked out into the night it
always seemed vacant, therefore horrid, and he took it for as empty as
it looked. And if there had been no God there, it would have been
reasonable indeed to be afraid; for the most frightful of notions is
_Nothing-at-all_.
It grew dark, and they were falling asleep on their walking legs, when
they came to a barn-yard. Very glad were they to creep into it, and
search for the warmest place. It was a quiet part of the country, and
for years nothing had been stolen from anybody, so that the people
were not so watchful as in many places.
They went prowling about, but even Tommy had innocent intent, eager
only after a little warmth, and as much sleep as they could find; they
came at length to an open window, through which they crawled into
what, by the smell and the noises, they knew to be a stable. It was
very dark, but Clare was at home, and felt his way about; while Tommy,
who was afraid of the horses, held close to him. Clare’s hand fell
upon the hind-quarters of a large well-fed horse. The huge animal was
asleep standing, but at the touch of the small hand he gave a low
whinny. Tommy shuddered at the sound.
“He’s pleased,” said Clare, and crept up on his near side into the
stall. There he had soon made such friends with him, that he did not
hesitate to get in among the hay the horse had for his supper.
“Here, Tommy!” he cried in a whisper; “there’s room for us both in the
manger.”
But Tommy stood shaking. He fancied the darkness full of horses’
heads, and would not stir. Clare had to get out again, and search for
a place to suit his fancy, which he found in an untenanted loose-box,
with remains of litter. There Tommy coiled himself up, and was soon
fast asleep.
Clare returned to the hospitality of the big horse. The great nostrils
snuffed him over and over as he lay, and the boy knew the horse made
him welcome. He dropped asleep stroking the muzzle of his
chamber-fellow, and slept all the night, kept warm by the horse’s
breath, and the near furnace of his great body.
In the morning the boys found they had slept too long, for they were
discovered. But though they were promptly ejected as vagabonds, and
not without a few kicks and cuffs, these were not administered without
the restraint of some mercy, for their appearance tended to move pity
rather than indignation.
Chapter XVI.
ON THE TRAMP.
With the new day came the fresh necessity for breakfast, and the fresh
interest in the discovery of it. But breakfast is a thing not always
easiest to find where breakfasts most abound; nor was theirs when
found that morning altogether of a sort to be envied, ill as they
could afford to despise it. Passing, on their goal-less way, a
flour-mill, the door of which was half-open, they caught sight of a
heap, whether floury dust or dusty flour, it would have been hard to
say, that seemed waiting only for them to help themselves from
it. Fain to still the craving of birds too early for any worm, they
swallowed a considerable portion of it, choking as it was, nor met
with rebuke. There was good food in it, and they might have fared
worse.
Another day’s tramp was thus inaugurated. How it was to end no one in
the world knew less than the trampers.
Before it was over, a considerable change had passed upon Clare; for a
new era was begun in his history, and he started to grow more
rapidly. Hitherto, while with his father or mother, or with his little
sister, making life happy to her--even while at the farm, doing hard
work--he had lived with much the same feeling with which he read a
story: he was in the story, half dreaming, half acting it. The
difference between a thing that passed through his brain from the
pages of a book, or arose in it as he lay in bed either awake or
asleep, and the thing in which he shared the life and motion of the
day, was not much marked in his consciousness. He was a dreamer with
open eyes and ready hands, not clearly distinguishing thought and
action, fancy and fact. Even the cold and hunger he had felt at the
farm had not sufficed to wake him up; he had only had to wait and they
were removed. But now that he did not know whence his hunger was to be
satisfied, or where shelter was to be had; now also that there was a
hunger outside him, and a cold that was not his, which yet he had to
supply and to frustrate in the person of Tommy, life began to grow
real to him; and, which was far more, he began to grow real to
himself, as a power whose part it was to encounter the necessities
thus presented. He began to understand that things were required of
him. He had met some of these requirements before, and had satisfied
them, but without knowing them as requirements. He did it half awake,
not as a thinking and willing source of the motion demanded. He did it
all by impulse, hardly by response. Now we are put into bodies, and
sent into the world, to wake us up. We might go on dreaming for ages
if we were left without bodies that the wind could blow upon, that the
rain could wet, and the sun scorch, bodies to feel thirst and cold and
hunger and wounds and weariness. The eternal plan was beginning to
tell upon Clare. He was in process of being changed from a dreamer to
a man. It is a good thing to be a dreamer, but it is a bad thing
indeed to be _only_ a dreamer. He began to see that everybody in the
world had to do something in order to get food; that he had worked for
the farmer and his wife, and they had fed him. He had worked willingly
and eaten gladly, but had not before put the two together. He saw now
that men who would be men must work.
His eyes fell upon a congregation of rooks in a field by the
roadside. “Are _they_ working?” he thought; “or are they stealing? If
it be stealing they are at, it looks like hard work as well. It can’t
be stealing though; they were made to live, and _how_ are they to live
if they don’t grub? that’s their work! Still the corn ain’t theirs!
Perhaps it’s only worms they take! Are the worms theirs? A man should
die rather than steal, papa said. But, if they are stealing, the crows
don’t know it; and if they don’t know it, they ain’t thieves! Is that
it?”
The same instant came the report of a gun. A crowd of rooks rose
cawing. One of them dropped and lay.
“He must have been stealing,” thought Clare, “for see what comes of
it! Would they shoot me if I stole? Better be shot than die of hunger!
Yes, but better die of hunger than be a thief!”
He had read stories about thieves and honest boys, and had never seen
any difficulty in the matter. Nor had he yet a notion of how difficult
it is not to be a thief--that is, to be downright honest. If anybody
thinks it easy, either he has not known much of life, or he has never
tried to be honest; he has done just like other people. Clare did not
know that many a boy whose heart sided with the honest boy in the
story, has grown up a dishonourable man--a man ready to benefit
himself to the disadvantage of others; that many a man who passes for
respectable in this disreputable world, is counted far meaner than a
thief in the next, and is going there to be put in prison. But he
began to see that it is not enough to mean well; that he must be
sharp, and mind what he was about; else, with hunger worrying inside
him, he might be a thief before he knew. He was on the way to discover
that to think rightly--to be on the side of what is honourable when
reading a story, is a very different thing from doing right, and being
honourable, when the temptation is upon us. Many a boy when he reads
this will say, “Of course it is!” and when the time comes, will be a
sneak.
Those crows set Clare thinking; and it was well; for if he had not
done as those thinkings taught him, he would have given a very
different turn to his history. Meditation and resolve, on the top of
honourable habit, brought him to this, that, when he saw what was
right, he just did it--did it without hesitation, question, or
struggle. Every man must, who would be a free man, who would not be
the slave of the universe and of himself.
Chapter XVII.
THE BAKER’S CART.
The sweepings of the mill-floor did not last them long, and by the
time they saw rising before them the spires and chimneys of the small
county town to which the road had been leading them, they were very
hungry indeed--as hungry as they well could be without having begun to
grow faint. The moment he saw them, Clare began revolving in his mind
once more, as many times on the way, what he was to do to get work:
Tommy of course was too small to do anything, and Clare must earn
enough for both. He could think of nothing but going into the shops,
or knocking at the house-doors, and asking for something to do. So
filled was he with his need of work, and with the undefined sense of a
claim for work, that he never thought how much against him must be the
outward appearance which had so dismayed himself when he saw it in the
pond; never thought how unwilling any one would be to employ him, or
what a disadvantage was the company of Tommy, who had every mark of a
born thief.
I do not know if, on his tramps, Tommy had been in a town before, but
to Clare all he saw bore the aspect of perfect novelty, notwithstanding
the few city-shapes that floated in faintest shadow, like memories of
old dreams, in his brain. He was delighted with the grand look of the
place, with its many people and many shops. His hope of work at once
became brilliant and convincing.
Noiselessly and suddenly Tommy started from his side, but so much
occupied was he with what he beheld and what he thought, that he
neither saw him go nor missed him when gone. He became again aware of
him by finding himself pulled toward the entrance of a narrow lane.
Tommy pulled so hard that Clare yielded, and went with him into the
lane, but stopped immediately. For he saw that Tommy had under his arm
a big loaf, and the steam of newly-baked bread was fragrant in his
nostrils. Never smoke so gracious greeted those of incense-loving
priest. Tommy tugged and tugged, but Clare stood stock-still.
“Where did you get that beautiful loaf, Tommy?” he asked.
“Off on a baker’s cart,” said Tommy. “Don’t be skeered; he never saw
me! That was my business, an’ I seed to ’t.”
“Then you stole it, Tommy?”
“Yes,” grumbled Tommy, “--if that’s the name you put upon it when your
trousers is so slack you’ve got to hold on to them or they’d trip you
up!”
“Where’s the cart?”
“In the street there.”
“Come along.”
Clare took the loaf from Tommy, and turned to find the baker’s
cart. Tommy’s face fell, and he was conscious only of bitterness. Why
had he yielded to sentiment--not that he knew the word--when he longed
like fire to bury his sharp teeth in that heavenly loaf? Love--not to
mention a little fear--had urged him to carry it straight to Clare,
and this was his reward! He was going to give him up to the baker!
There was gratitude for you! He ought to have known better than trust
_anybody_, even Clare! Nobody was to be trusted but yourself! It did
seem hard to Tommy.
They had scarcely turned the corner when they came upon the cart. The
baker was looking the other way, talking to some one, and Clare
thought to lay down the loaf and say nothing about it: there was no
occasion for the ceremony of apology where offence was unknown. But in
the very act the baker turned and saw him. He sprang upon him, and
collared him. The baker was not nice to look at.
“I have you!” he cried, and shook him as if he would have shaken his
head off.
“It’s quite a mistake, sir!” was all Clare could get out, so fierce
was the earthquake that rattled the house of his life.
“Mistaken am I? I like that!--Police!”
And with that the baker shook him again.
A policeman was not far off; he heard the man call, and came running.
“Here’s a gen’leman as wants the honour o’ your acquaintance, Bob!”
said the baker.
But Tommy saw that, from his size, he was more likely to get off than
Clare if he told the truth.
“Please, policeman,” he said, “it wasn’t him; it was me as took the
loaf.”
“You little liar!” shouted the baker. “Didn’t I see him with his hand
on the loaf?”
“He was a puttin’ of it back,” said Tommy. “I wish he’d been
somewheres else! See what he been an’ got by it! If he’d only ha’ let
me run, there wouldn’t ha’ been nobody the wiser. I _am_ sorry I
didn’t run. Oh, I _ham_ so ’ungry!”
Tommy doubled himself up, with his hands inside the double.
“’Ungry, are you?” roared the baker. “That’s what thieves off a
baker’s cart ought to be! They ought to be always ’ungry--’ungry to
all eternity, they ought! An’ that’s what’s goin’ to be done to ’em!”
“Look here!” cried a pale-faced man in the front of the crowd, who
seemed a mechanic. “There’s a way of tellin’ whether the boy’s
speakin’ the truth _now_!”
He caught up the restored loaf, halved it cleverly, and handed each of
the boys a part.
“Now, baker, what’s to pay?” he said, and drew himself up, for the man
was too angry at once to reply.
The boys were tearing at the delicious bread, blind and deaf to all
about them.
“P’r’aps you would like to give _me_ in charge?” pursued their
saviour.
“Sixpence,” said the man sullenly.
The mechanic laid sixpence on the cover of the cart.
“I ought to ha’ made you weigh and make up,” he said. “Where’s your
scales?”
“Mind your own business.”
“I mean to. Here! I want another sixpenny loaf--but I want it weighed
this time!”
“I ain’t bound to sell bread in the streets. You can go to the
shop. Them loaves is for reg’lar customers.”
He moved off with his cart, and the crowd began to disperse. The boys
stood absorbed, each in what remained of his half-loaf.
When he looked up, Clare saw that they were alone. But he caught sight
of their benefactor some way off, and ran after him.
“Oh, sir!” he said, “I was so hungry, I don’t know whether I thanked
you for the loaf. We’d had nothing to-day but the sweepings of a
mill.”
“God bless my soul!” said the man. “People say there’s a God!” he
added.
“I think there must be, sir, for you came by just then!” returned
Clare.
“How do you come to be so hard-up, my boy? Somebody’s to blame
somewheres!”
“There ain’t no harm in being hungry, so long as the loaf comes!”
rejoined Clare. “When I get work we shall be all right!”
“That’s your sort!” said the man. “But if there had been a God, as
people say, he would ha’ made me fit to gi’e you a job, i’stead o’
stan’in’ here as you see me, with ne’er a turn o’ work to do for
myself!”
“I’ll work my hardest to pay you back your sixpence,” said Clare.
“Nay, nay, lad! Don’t you trouble about that. I ha’ got two or three
more i’ my pocket, thank God!”
“You have two Gods, have you, sir?” said Clare; “--one who does things
for you, and one who don’t?”
“Come, you young shaver! you’re too much for me!” said the man
laughing.
Tommy, having finished his bread, here thought fit to join them. He
came slyly up, looking impudent now he was filled, with his hands
where his pockets should have been.
“It was you stole the loaf, you little rascal!” said the workman,
seeing thief in every line of the boy.
“Yes,” answered Tommy boldly, “an’ I don’t see no harm. The baker had
lots, and he wasn’t ’ungry! It was Clare made a mull of it! He’s such
a duffer you don’t know! He acshally took it back to the brute! He
deserved what he got! The loaf was mine. It wasn’t his! _I_ stole it!”
“Oh, ho! it wasn’t his! it was yours, was it?--Why do you go about
with a chap like this, young gentleman?” said the man, turning to
Clare. “I know by your speech you ain’t been brought up alongside o’
sech as him!”
“I had to go away, and he came with me,” answered Clare.
“You’d better get rid of him. He’ll get you into trouble.”
“I can’t get rid of him,” replied Clare. “But I shall teach him not to
take what isn’t his. He don’t know better now. He’s been ill-used all
his life.”
“You don’t seem over well used yourself,” said the man.
He saw that Clare’s clothes had been made for a boy in good
circumstances, though they had been long worn, and were much
begrimed. His face, his tone, his speech convinced him that they had
been made for _him_, and that he had had a gentle breeding.
“Look you here, young master,” he continued; “you have no right to be
in company with that boy. He’ll bring you to grief as sure as I tell
you.”
“I shall be able to bear it,” answered Clare with a sigh.
“He’ll be the loss of your character to you.”
“I ain’t got a character to lose,” replied Clare. “I thought I had;
but when nobody will believe me, where’s my character then?”
“Now you’re wrong there,” returned the man. “I’m not much, I know; but
I believe every word you say, and should be very sorry to find myself
mistaken.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Clare. “May I carry your bag for you?”
If Clare had seen what then passed in Tommy’s mind, at the back of
those glistening ferret-eyes of his, he would have been almost
reconciled to taking the man’s advice, and getting rid of him. Tommy
was saying to himself that his pal wasn’t such a duffer after all--he
was on the lay for the man’s tools!
Tommy never reasoned except in the direction of cunning self-help--of
fitting means and intermediate ends to the one main object of
eating. It is wonderful what a sharpener of the poor wits hunger is!
“I guess I’m the abler-bodied pauper!” answered the man; and picking
up the bag he had dropped at his feet while they conversed, he walked
away.
There are many more generous persons among the poor than among the
rich--a fact that might help some to understand how a rich man should
find it hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard for
everybody, but harder for the rich. Men who strive to make money are
unconsciously pulling instead of pushing at the heavy gate of the
kingdom.
“Tommy!” said Clare, in a tone new to himself, for a new sense of
moral protection had risen in him, “if ever you steal anything again,
either I give you a hiding, or you and I part company.”
Tommy bored his knuckles into his red eyes, and began to
whimper. Again it was hard for Tommy! He had followed Clare, thinking
to supply what was lacking to him; to do for him what he was not
clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous
partnership with him, to which he should furnish the faculty of
picking up unconsidered trifles. Tommy judged Clare defective in
intellect, and quite unpractical. He was of the mind of the
multitude. The common-minded man always calls the man who thinks of
righteousness before gain, who seeks to do the will of God and does
not seek to make a fortune, unpractical. He _will_ not see that the
very essence of the practical lies in doing the right thing.
Tommy, in a semi-conscious way, had looked to Clare to supply the
strength and the innocent look, while he supplied the head and the
lively fingers; and here was Clare knocking the lovely plan to pieces!
He did well to be angry! But Clare was the stronger; and Tommy knew
that when Clare was roused, though it was not easy to rouse him, he
could and would and did fight--not, indeed, as the little coward said
to himself _he_ could fight, like a wild cat--but like a blundering
hornless old cow defending her calf from a cur.
In the heart of all his selfishness, however, Tommy did a little love
Clare; and his love came, not from Tommy, but from the same source as
his desire for food, namely, from the God that was in Tommy, the God
in whom Tommy lived and had his being with Clare. Whether Tommy’s love
for Clare would one day lift him up beside Clare, that is, make him an
honest boy like Clare, remained to be seen.
Finding his demonstration make no impression, Tommy took his knuckles
out of his eye-holes and thrust them into his pocket-holes, turned his
back on his friend, and began to whistle--with a lump of self-pity in
his throat.
Chapter XVIII.
BEATING THE TOWN.
They turned their faces again toward the centre of the town, and
resumed their walk, taking in more of what they saw than while they
had not yet had the second instalment of their daily bread. What a
thing is food! It is the divineness of the invention--the need for the
food, and the food for the need--that makes those who count their
dinner the most important thing in the day, such low creatures:
nothing but what is good in itself can be turned into vileness. It is
a delight to see a boy with a good honest appetite; a boy that _loves_
his dinner is a loathsome creature. Eat heartily, my boy, but be ready
to share, even when you are hungry, and have only what you could eat
up yourself, else you are no man. Remember that you created neither
your hunger nor your food; that both came from one who cares for you
and your neighbours as well.
In the strength of the half-loaf he had eaten, the place looked to
Clare far more wonderful, and his hopes of earning his bread grew yet
more radiant. But he passed one shop after another, and always
something prevented him from going in. One after another did not look
just the right sort, did not seem to invite him: the next might be
better! I dare say but for that half-loaf, he would have made a trial
sooner, but I doubt if he would have succeeded sooner. He did not
think of going to parson, doctor, or policeman for advice; he went
walking and staring, followed by Tommy with his hands in his
pocketless pocket-holes. Clare was not yet practical in device, though
perfect in willingness, and thorough in design. Up one street and down
another they wandered, seeing plenty of food through windows, and in
carts and baskets, but never any coming their way, except in the form
of tempting odours that issued from almost every house, and grew in
keenness and strength toward one o’clock. Oh those odours!--agonizing
angels of invisible yet most material good! Of what joys has not the
Father made us capable, when the poorest necessity is linked with such
pain! What a tormenting thing--and what a good must be meant to come
out of it!--to be hungry, downright, cravingly hungry with the whole
microcosm, and not a halfpenny to buy a mouthful of assuagement!--to
be assailed with wafts of deliriously undefined promise, not one of
which seems likely to be fulfilled!--promise true to men hurrying home
to dinner or luncheon, but only rousing greater desire in such as
Clare and Tommy. Not one opportunity of appropriation presented
itself, else it would have gone ill with Tommy, now that the eyes and
ears of his guardian were on the alert. For Clare thought of him now
as a little thievish pup, for whose conduct, manners, and education he
was responsible.
The agony began at length to abate--ready to revive with augmented
strength when the next hour for supplying the human furnace should
begin to approach. Few even of those who know what hunger is,
understand to what it may grow--how desire becomes longing, longing
becomes craving, and craving a wild passion of demand. It must be
terrible to be hungry, and not know God!
As the evening came down upon them, worn out, faint with want,
shivering with cold, and as miserable in prospect as at the moment,
yet another need presented itself with equally imperative
requisition--that of shelter that they might rest. It was even more
imperative: they could not eat; they _must_ lie down!
Whether it be a rudiment retained from their remote ancestry, I cannot
tell, but any kind of suffering will wake in some a masterful impulse
to burrow; and as the boys walked about in their misery, white with
cold and hunger, Clare’s eyes kept turning to every shallowest
archway, every breach in wall or hedge that seemed to offer the least
chance of covert, while, every now and then, Tommy would bolt from his
side to peer into some opening whose depth was not immediately patent
to his ferret-gaze. Once, in a lane on the outskirts of the town, he
darted into a narrow doorway in the face of a wall, but instantly
rushed back in horror: within was a well, where water lay still and
dark. Then first Clare had a hint of the peculiar dread Tommy had of
water, especially of water dark and unexpected. Possibly he had once
been thrown into such water to be got rid of. But Clare at the moment
was too weary to take much notice of his dismay.
It was an old town in which they were wandering, and change in the
channels of traffic had so turned its natural nourishment aside, that
it was in parts withering and crumbling away. Not a few of the houses
were, some from poverty, some from utter disuse, yielding fast to
decay. But there were other causes for the condition of one, which,
almost directly they came out of the lane I have just mentioned, into
the end of a wide silent street, drew the roving, questing eyes of
Clare and Tommy. The moon was near the full and shining clear, so that
they could perfectly see the state it was in. Most of its windows were
broken; its roof was like the back of a very old horse; its
chimney-pots were jagged and stumped with fracture; from one of them,
by its entangled string, the skeleton of a kite hung half-way down the
front. But, notwithstanding such signs of neglect, the red-brick wall
and the wrought-iron gate, both seven feet high, that shut the place
off from the street, stood in perfect aged strength. The moment they
saw it, the house seemed to say to them, “There’s nobody here: come
in!” but the gate and the wall said, “Begone!”
Chapter XIX.
THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS FORGE.
At the end of the wall was a rough boarded fence, in contact with it,
and reaching, some fifty yards or so, to a hovel in which a
blacksmith, of unknown antecedents, had taken possession of a forsaken
forge, and did what odd jobs came in his way. The boys went along the
fence till they came to the forge, where, looking in, they saw the
blacksmith working his bellows. To one with the instincts of Clare’s
birth and breeding, he did not look a desirable acquaintance. Tommy
was less fastidious, but he felt that the scowl on the man’s brows
boded little friendliness. Clare, however, who hardly knew what fear
was, did not hesitate to go in, for he was drawn as with a cart-rope
by the glow of the fire, and the sparks which, as they gazed, began,
like embodied joys, to fly merrily from the iron. Tommy followed,
keeping Clare well between him and the black-browed man, who rained
his blows on the rosy iron in his pincers, as if he hated it.
“What do you want, gutter-toads?” he cried, glancing up and seeing
them approach. “This ain’t a hotel.”
[Illustration: THE BLACKSMITH GIVES CLARE AND TOMMY A ROUGH GREETING.]
“But it’s a splendid fire,” rejoined Clare, looking into his face with
a wan smile, “and we’re so cold!”
“What’s that to me!” returned the man, who, savage about something,
was ready to quarrel with anything. “I didn’t make my fire to warm
little devils that better had never been born!”
“No, sir,” answered Clare; “but I don’t think we’d better not have
been born. We’re both cold, and nobody but Tommy knows how hungry I
am; but your fire is so beautiful that, if you would let us stand
beside it a minute or two, we wouldn’t at all mind.”
“Mind, indeed! Mind what, you preaching little humbug?”
“Mind being born, sir.”
“Why do you say _sir_ to me? Don’t you see I’m a working man?”
“Yes, and that’s why. I think we ought to say _sir_ and _ma’am_ to
every one that can do something we can’t. Tommy and I can’t make iron
do what we please, and you can, sir! It would be a grand thing for us
if we could!”
“Oh, yes, a grand thing, no doubt!--Why?”
“Because then we could get something to eat, and somewhere to lie
down.”
“Could you? Look at me, now! I can do the work of two men, and can’t
get work for half a man!”
“That’s a sad pity!” said Clare. “I wish I had work! Then I would
bring you something to eat.”
The man did not tell them why he had not work enough--that his
drunkenness, and the bad ways to which it had brought him, with the
fact that he so often dawdled over the work that was given him, caused
people to avoid him.
“Who said I hadn’t enough to eat? I ain’t come to that yet, young ’un!
What made you say that?”
“Because when I had work, I had plenty to eat; and now that I have
nothing to do, I have nothing to eat. It’s well I haven’t work now,
though,” added Clare with a sigh, “for I’m too tired to do any. Please
may I sit on this heap of ashes?”
“Sit where you like, so long ’s you keep out o’ my way. I ain’t got
nothing to give you but a bar of iron. I’ll toast one for you if you
would like a bite.”
“No, thank you, sir,” answered Clare, with a smile. “I’m afraid it
wouldn’t be digestible. They say toasted cheese ain’t. I wish I had a
try though!”
“You’re a comical shaver, you are!” said the blacksmith. “You’ll come
to the gallows yet, if you’re a good boy! Them Sunday-schools is doin’
a heap for the gallows!--That ain’t your brother?”
By this time Tommy had begun to feel at home with the blacksmith, from
whose face the cloud had lifted a little, so that he looked less
dangerous. He had edged nearer to the fire, and now stood in the light
of it.
“No,” answered Clare, with an odd doubtfulness in his tone. “I ought
to say _yes_, perhaps, for all men are my brothers; but I mean I
haven’t any particular one of my very own.”
“That ain’t no pity; he’d ha’ been no better than you. I’ve a brother
I would choke any minute I got a chance.”
While they talked, the blacksmith had put his iron in the fire, and
again stood blowing the bellows, when his attention was caught by the
gestures of the little red-eyed imp, Tommy, who was making rapid signs
to him, touching his forehead with one finger, nodding mysteriously,
and pointing at Clare with the thumb of his other hand, held close to
his side. He sought to indicate thus that his companion was an
innocent, whom nobody must mind. In the blacksmith Tommy saw one of
his own sort, and the blacksmith saw neither in Tommy nor in Clare any
reason to doubt the hint given him. Not the less was he inclined to
draw out the idiot.
“Why do you let him follow you about, if he ain’t your brother?” he
said. “He ain’t nice to look at!”
“I want to make him nice,” answered Clare, “and then he’ll be nice to
look at. You mustn’t mind him, please, sir. He’s a very little boy,
and ain’t been well brought up. His granny ain’t a good woman--at
least not very, you know, Tommy!” he added apologetically.
“She’s a damned old sinner!” said Tommy stoutly.
The man laughed.
“Ha, ha, my chicken! you know a thing or two!” he said, as he took his
iron from the fire, and laid it again on the anvil.
But besides the brother he would so gladly strangle, there was an
idiot one whom he had loved a little and teazed so much, that, when he
died, his conscience was moved. He felt therefore a little tender
toward the idiot before him. He bethought himself also that his job
would soon be at a stage where the fewer the witnesses the better, for
he was executing a commission for certain burglars of his
acquaintance. He would do no more that night! He had money in his
pocket, and he wanted a drink!
“Look here, cubs!” he said; “if you ain’t got nowhere to go to, I
don’t mind if you sleep here. There ain’t no bed but the bed of the
forge, nor no blankets but this leather apron: you may have them, for
you can’t do them no sort of harm. I don’t mind neither if you put a
shovelful of slack and a little water now and then on the fire; and if
you give it a blow or two with the bellows now and then, you won’t be
stone-dead afore the mornin’!--Don’t be too free with the coals, now,
and don’t set the shed on fire, and take the bread out of my poor
innocent mouth. Mind what I tell you, and be good boys.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Clare. “I thought you would be kind to us! I’ve
one friend, a bull, that’s very good to me. So is Jonathan. He’s a
horse. The bull’s name is Nimrod. He wants to gore always, but he’s
never cross with me.”
The blacksmith burst into a roar of laughter at the idiotic
speech. Then he covered the fire with coal, threw his apron over
Clare’s head, and departed, locking the door of the smithy behind him.
The boys looked at each other. Neither spoke. Tommy turned to the
bellows, and began to blow.
“Ain’t you warm yet?” said Clare, who had seen his mother careful over
the coals.
“No, I ain’t. I want a blaze.”
“Leave the fire alone. The coal is the smith’s, and he told us not to
waste it.”
“He ain’t no count!” said Tommy, as heartless as any grown man or
woman set on pleasure.
“He has given us a place to be warm and sleep in! It would be a shame
to do anything he didn’t like. Have you no conscience, Tommy?”
“No,” said Tommy, who did not know conscience from copper. The germ of
it no doubt lay in the God-part of him, but it lay deep. Tommy--no
worse than many a boy born of better parents--was like a hill full of
precious stones, that grows nothing but a few little dry shrubs, and
shoots out cold sharp rocks every here and there.
“If you have no conscience,” answered Clare, “one must serve for
both--as far as it will reach! Leave go of that bellows, or I’ll make
you.”
Tommy let the lever go, turned his back, and wandered, in such dudgeon
as he was capable of, to the other side of the shed.
“Hello!” he cried, “here’s a door!--and it ain’t locked, it’s only
bolted! Let’s go and see!”
“You may if you like,” answered Clare, “but if you touch anything of
the blacksmith’s, I’ll be down on you.”
“All right!” said Tommy, and went out to see if there was anything to
be picked up.
Clare got on the stone hearth of the forge, and lay down in the hot
ashes, too far gone with hunger to care for the clothes that were
almost beyond caring for. He was soon fast asleep; and warmth and
sleep would do nearly as much for him as food.
Chapter XX.
TOMMY RECONNOITRES.
Tommy, out in the moonlight, found himself in a waste yard, scattered
over with bits of iron, mostly old and rusty. It was not an
interesting place, for it was not likely to afford him anything to
eat. Yet, with the instinct of the human animal, he went shifting and
prying and nosing about everywhere. Presently he heard a curious
sound, which he recognized as made by a hen. More stealthily yet he
went creeping hither and thither, feeling here and feeling there, in
the hope of laying his hand on the fowl asleep. Urged by his natural
impulse to forage, he had forgotten Clare’s warning. His hand did find
her, and had it been his grandmother instead of Clare in the smithy,
he would at once have broken the bird’s neck before she could cry out;
but with the touch of her feathers came the thought of Clare, and by
this time he understood that what Clare said, Clare would do.
He had some knowledge of fowls; he had heard too much talk about them
at his grandmother’s not to know something of their habits; and
finding she sat so still, he concluded that under her might be
eggs. To his delight it was so. The hen belonged to a house at some
distance, and had wandered from it, in obedience to the secretive
instinct of animal maternity, strong in some hens, to seek a hidden
shelter for her offspring. This she had found in the smith’s yard,
beneath the mould-board of a plough that had lain there for
years. Slipping his hand under her, Tommy found five eggs. In greedy
haste he took them, every one.
I must do him the justice to say that his first impulse was to dart
with them to Clare. But before he had taken a step toward him, again
he remembered his threat. With the eggs inside him, he could run the
risk; he would not mind a few blows--not much; but if he took them to
Clare, the unbearable thing was, that he would assuredly give every
one of them back to the hen. He was an idiot, and Tommy was there to
look after him; but, in looking after Clare, was Tommy to neglect
himself? If Clare would not eat the eggs Tommy carried him, as most
certainly he would not, the best thing was for Tommy to eat them
himself! What a good thing that it was no use to steal for Clare! The
steal would be all for himself! Not a step from the spot did Tommy
move till he had sucked every one of the five eggs. But he made one
mistake: he threw away the shells.
When he had sucked them, he found himself much lighter-hearted, but,
alas, nearly as hungry as before! The spirit of research began again
to move him: where were eggs, what might there not be beside?
The moon was nearly at the full; the smith’s yard was radiantly
illuminated. But even the moon could lend little enchantment to a
scene where nothing was visible but rusty, broken, deserted,
despairful pieces of old iron. Tommy lift
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