A Rough Shaking, page 13
Clare hastened after him.
“Gi’ me the kid, an’ you get in; you can reach up for it better, ‘cause ye’re taller,” said Tommy.
“Is it much of a drop?” asked Clare.
“Nothing much,” answered Tommy.
Clare handed him the baby, instructing him how to hold it, and threatening him if he hurt it; then laid himself on his front, shoved his legs across the area through the window, and followed with his body. Holding on to the edge of the window-sill, he let his feet as far down as he could, then dropped, and fell on a heap of coals, whence he tumbled to the floor of the cellar.
“You should have told me of the coals!” he said, rising, and calling up through the darkness.
“I forgot,” answered Tommy.
“Give me the baby,” said Clare.
When Tommy took the baby, he renewed that moment, and began to cherish the sense of an injury done him by the poor helpless thing. He did not pinch it, only because he dared not, lest it should cry. When he heard Clare fall on the coals, and then heard him call up from the depth of the cellar, he was greatly tempted to turn with it to the other end of the house, and throw it in the pool, then make for the wall and the fields, leaving Clare to shift for himself. But he durst not go near the pool, and Clare would be sure to get out again and be after him! so he stood with the hated creature in his unprotective arms. When Clare called for it, he got into the shallow area, and pushed the baby through the window, grasping the extreme of its garment, and letting it hang into the darkness of the cellar, head downward. I believe then the baby was sick, for, a moment after, and before Clare could get a hold of it, it began to cry. The sound thrilled him with delight.
“Oh, the darling!—Can’t you let her down a bit farther, Tommy?” he said, with suppressed eagerness.
He had climbed on the heap of coals, and was stretching up his arms to receive her. In the faint glimmer from the diffused light of the moon, he could just distinguish the window, blocked up by Tommy; the baby he could not see.
“No, I can’t,” answered Tommy. “Catch! There!”
So saying he yielded to his spite, and waiting no sign of preparedness on the part of Clare, let go his hold, and dropped the little one. It fell on Clare and knocked him over; but he clasped it to him as he fell, and they hurtled to the bottom of the coals without much damage.
“I have her!” he cried as he got up. “Now you come yourself, Tommy.”
He had known no baby but his lost sister, and thought of all babies as girls.
“You’ll catch me, won’t you, Clare?” said Tommy.
“The thing you’ve done once you can do again! I can’t set down the baby to catch you!” replied the unsuspicious Clare, and turned to seek an exit from the cellar. He had not had time yet to wonder how Tommy had got out.
Tommy came tumbling on the top of the coals: he dared not be left with the water-but and the pool and the moon.
“Where are you, Clare?” he called.
Clare answered him from the top of the stone stair that led to the cellar, and Tommy was soon at his heels. Going along a dark passage, where they had to feel their way, they arrived at the kitchen. The loose outside shutter belonged to it, and as it was open, a little of the moonlight came in. The place looked dreary enough and cold enough with its damp brick-floor and its rusty range; but at least they were out of the air, and out of sight of the moon! If only they had some of that coal alight!
“I don’t see as we’re much better off!” said Tommy. “I’m as cold as pigs’ trotters!”
“Then what must baby be like!” said Clare, whose heart was brimful of anxiety for his charge. It seemed to him he had never known misery till now. Life or death for the baby—and he could do nothing! He was cold enough himself, what with hunger, and the night, and the wet and deadly cold little body in his arms; but whatever discomfort he felt, it seemed not himself but the baby that was feeling it; he imputed it all to the baby, and pitied the baby for the cold he felt himself.
“We needn’t stay here, though,” he said. “There must be better places in the house! Let’s try and find a bedroom!”
“Come along!” responded Tommy.
They left the kitchen, and went into the next room. It seemed warmer, because it had a wooden floor. There was hardly any light in it, but it felt empty. They went up the stair. When they turned on the landing half-way, they saw the moon shining in. They went into the first room they came to. Such a bedroom!—larger and grander than any at the parsonage!
“Oh baby! baby!” cried Clare, “now you’ll live—won’t you?”
He seemed to have his own Maly an infant again in his arms. The thought that the place was not his, and that he might get into trouble by being there, never came to him. Use was not theft! The room and its contents were to him as the water and the fire which even pagans counted every man bound to hand to his neighbour. There was the bed! Through all the cold time it had been waiting for them! The counterpane was very dusty; and oh, such moth-eaten blankets! But there were sheets under them, and they were quite clean, though dingy with age! The moths—that is, their legs and wings and dried-up bodies—flew out in clouds when they moved the blankets. Not the less had they discovered Paradise! For the moths, they must have found it an island of plum-cake!
I do not know the history of the house—how it came to be shut up with so much in it. I only know it was itself shut up in chancery, and chancery is full of moths and dust and worms. I believe nobody in the town knew much about it—not even the thieves. It was of course said to be haunted, which had doubtless done something for its protection. No one knew how long it had stood thus deserted. Nobody thought of entering it, or was aware that there was furniture in it. It was supposed to be somebody’s property, and that it was somebody’s business to look after it: whether it was looked after or not, nobody inquired. Happily for Clare and the baby and Tommy, that was nobody’s business.
With deft hands—for how often had he not seen his baby-sister undressed!—Clare hurried off the infant’s one garment, gently rubbed her little body till it was quite dry, if not very clean, and laid her tenderly in the heart of the blankets, among the remains and eggs and grubs of the mothy creatures—they were not wild beasts, or even stinging things—and covered her up, leaving a little opening for her to breathe through. She had not cried since Clare took her; she was too feeble to cry; but, alas, there was no question about feeding her, for he had no food to give her, were she crying ever so much! He threw off his clothes, and got into the mothy blankets beside her. In a few minutes he began to glow, for there was a thick pile of woolly salvation atop of him. He took the naked baby in his arms and held her close to his body, and they grew warmer together.
“Now, Tommy,” he said, “you may take off your clothes, and get in on the other side of me.”
Tommy did not need a second invitation, and in a moment they were all fast asleep. A few months, even a few days before, it would have been a right painful thing to Clare to lie so near a boy like Tommy, but suffering had taken the edge off nicety and put it on humanity. The temple of the Lord may need cleansing, but the temple of the Lord it is. Clare had in him that same spirit which made the son of man go beyond the healingly needful, and lay his hand—the Sinaitic manuscript says his hands—upon the leper, where a word alone would have served for the leprosy: the hands were for the man’s heart. Repulsive danger lay in the contact, but the flesh and bones were human, and very cold.
CHAPTER XXV. A NEW QUEST.
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THOUGH AS COMFORTABLE AS ONE could be who so sorely lacked food, Clare slept lightly. His baby was heavy on his mind, and he woke very early—woke at once to the anxious thought of a boy without food, money, or friends, and with a hungry baby. He woke, however, with a new train of reasoning in his mind. Babies could not work; babies always had their food given them; therefore babies who hadn’t food had a right to ask for it; babies couldn’t ask for it; therefore those who had the charge of them, and hadn’t food to give them, had a right to do the asking for them. He could not beg for himself as long as he was able to ask for work; but for baby it was his duty to beg, because she could not wait: she would not live till he found work. If he got work that very day, he would have to work the whole day before he got the money for it, and baby would be dead by that time! He crept out, so as not to awake the sleepers, and put on his clothes. They were not dry, but they would dry when the sun rose. He did not at all like leaving his baby with Tommy, but what was he to do? She might as well die of Tommy as of hunger! Perhaps it might be easier!
He thought over the nature of the boy, and what it would be best to say to him. He saw what many genial persons are slow to see, that kindness, in its natural shape, is to certain dispositions a great barrier in the way of learning either love or duty. With multitudes, nothing but undiluted fear or pain or shame can open the door for love to enter.
He searched the house for a medicine-bottle, such as he had seen plenty of at the parsonage, and found two. He chose the smaller, lest size should provoke disinclination. Then he woke Tommy, and said to him,
“Tommy, I’m going out to get baby’s breakfast.”
“Ain’t you going to give me any? Is the kid to have everything?”
“Tommy!” said Clare, with a steady look in his eyes that frightened him, “your turn will come next. You won’t die of want for a day or two yet. I’ll see to you as soon as I can. Only, remember, baby comes first! I’m going to leave her with you. You needn’t take her up. You’re not able to carry her. You would let her fall. But if, when I come home, I find anything has happened to her, I’ll put you in the water-butt—I WILL. And I’ll do it when the moon is in it.”
Tommy pulled a hideous face, and began to yell. Clare seized him by the throat.
“Make that noise again, you rascal, and I’ll choke you. If you’re good to baby while I’m away, I won’t eat a mouthful till you’ve had some; if you’re not good to her, you know what will happen! You’ve got the thing in your own hands!”
“She’ll go an’ do something I can’t help, an’ then you’ll go for to drown me!”
Again he began to howl, but Clare checked him as before. “If you wake her up, I’ll—” He had no words, and shook him for lack of any. “I see,” he resumed, “I shall have to lock you up in the coal-cellar till I come back! Here! come along!”
Tommy was quiet instantly, and fell to pleading. Clare lent a gracious ear, and yielding to Tommy’s protestations, left him with his treasure, and set out on his quest.
He got out through the kitchen, the rustiness of the fastenings of its door delaying him a little, and over the wall by the imprisoned door, taking care to lift as little as possible of his person above the coping as he crossed. He dared not go along the wall in the daylight, or get down in the smith’s yard; he dropped straight to the ground.
The country was level, and casting his eyes about, he saw, at no great distance, what looked like a farmstead. He knew cows were milked early, but did not know what time it was. Hoping anyhow to reach the place before the milk was put away in the pans, he set out to run straight across the fields. But he soon found he could not run, and had to drop into a walk.
When he got into the yard, he saw a young woman carrying a foaming pail of milk across to the dairy. He ran to her, and addressed her with his usual “Please, ma’am;” but the pail was heavy, and she kept on without answering him. Clare followed her, and looking into the dairy, saw an elderly woman.
“Please, ma’am, could you afford me as much fresh milk as would fill that bottle?” he said, showing it.
“Well, my man,” she answered pleasantly, “I think we might venture as far without fear of the workhouse! But what on earth made you bring such a thimble of a bottle as that?”
“I have no money to pay for it, you see, ma’am; and I thought a little bottle would be better to beg with; it wouldn’t be so hard on the farmer!”
“Bless the boy! Much good a drop of milk like that will do him!” said the woman, turning to the girl “Is it for your mother’s tea?”
“No, ma’am; it’s for a baby—a very little baby, ma’am!—I think it will hold enough,” he added, giving an anxious glance at the bottle in his hand, “to keep her alive till I get work.”
The woman looked, and her heart was drawn to the boy who stood gazing at her with his whole solemn, pathetic yet strong face—with his wide, clear eyes, his decided nose, large and straight, his rather long, fine mouth, trembling with eager anxiety, and his confident chin. She saw hunger in his grimy cheeks; she saw that his manners were those of a gentleman, and his clothes poor enough for any tramp, though evidently not made for a tramp. She would have concluded him escaped from cruel guardians, for she was a reader of The Family Herald; but that would not account for the baby! The baby did not tally!
“How old’s the baby?” she asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am; she only came to us last night.”
“Who brought her?”
She imagined the boy a simpleton, and expected one of such answers as inconvenient questions in natural history receive from nurses.
“I don’t know, ma’am. I took her out of the water-butt.”
The thing grew bewildering.
“Who put her there?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Whose baby is she, then?”
“Mine, I think, ma’am.”
“God bless the boy!” said the woman impatiently, and stared at him speechless.
Her daughter in the meantime had filled the phial with new milk. She handed it to him. He grasped it eagerly. Tears of joy came in his big hungry eyes.
“Oh, thank you, ma’am!” he said. “But, please, would you tell me,” he continued, looking from the one to the other, “how much water I must put in the milk to make it good for baby? I know it wants water, but I don’t know how much!”
“Oh, about half and half,” answered the elder woman. “‘Ain’t she got no mother?” she resumed.
“I think she must have a mother, but I daresay she’s a tramp,” answered Clare.
“I don’t want to give my good milk to a tramp!” she rejoined.
“I’m not a tramp, please, ma’am!—at least I wasn’t till the day before yesterday.”
The woman looked at him out of motherly eyes, and her heart swelled into her bosom.
“Wouldn’t you like some milk yourself?” she said.
“Oh, yes, ma’am!” answered Clare, with a deep sigh.
She filled a big cup from the warm milk in the pail, and held it out to him. He took it as a man on the scaffold might a reprieve from death, half lifted it to his lips, then let his hand sink. It trembled so, as he set the cup down on a shelf beside him, that he spilled a little. He looked ruefully at the drops on the brick floor.
“Please, ma’am, there’s Tommy!” he faltered.
His promise to Tommy had sprung upon him like a fiery flying serpent.
“Tommy! I thought you said the baby was a girl?”
“Yes, the baby’s a girl; but there’s Tommy as well! He’s another of us.”
“Your brother, of course!”
“No, ma’am; I’m afraid he’s a tramp. But there he is, you see, and I must share with him!”
It grew more and more inexplicable!
A gruff, loud voice came from the yard. It was the farmer’s. He was a bitter-tempered man, and his dislike of tramps was almost hatred. His wife and daughter knew that if he saw the boy he would be worse than rude to him.
“There’s the master!” cried the mother. “Drink, and make haste out of his way.”
“If it’s stealing,—” said Clare.
“Stealing! It’s no stealing! The dairy’s mine! I can give my milk where I please!”
“Well, ma’am, if the milk’s mine because you gave it me, it’s not begging to ask you to give me a piece of bread for it! I could take a share of that to Tommy!”
“Run, Chris,” cried the mother, hurriedly; “take the innocent with you—round outside the yard. Give him a hunch of bread, and let him go. For God’s sake don’t let your father see him! Run, my boy, run! There’s no time to drink the milk now!”
She poured it back into the pail, and set the cup out of the way.
There was a little passage and another door, by which they left as the farmer entered. The kick he would have given Clare with his heavy boot would, in its consequences, have reached the baby too. The girl ran with him to the back of the house.
“Wait a moment at that window,” she said.
Now whether it was loving-kindness all, or that she dared not take the time to divide it, I cannot tell, but she handed Clare a whole loaf, and that a good big one, of home-made bread, and disappeared before he could thank her, telling him to run for his life.
He was able now. With the farmer behind, and the hungry ones before him, he must run; and with the phial in his pocket and the loaf in his hands, he could run. Happily the farmer did not catch sight of him. His wife took care he should not. I believe, indeed, she got up a brand-new quarrel with him on the spur of the moment, that he might not have a chance.
CHAPTER XXVI. A NEW ENTRANCE.
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CLARE SPED JUBILANT. BUT SOON came a check to his jubilation: it was one thing to drop from the wall, and quite another to climb to the top of it without the help of the door! The same moment he heard the clink of the smith’s hammer on his anvil, and to go by his yard in daylight would be to risk too much! For what would become of them if their retreat was discovered! He stood at the foot of the brick precipice, and stared up with helpless eyes and failing strength. Baby was inside, hungry, and with no better nurse than ill conditioned Tommy; her milk was in his pocket, Tommy’s bread in his hand, the insurmountable wall between him and them! He had the daylight now, however, and there was hardly any one about: perhaps he could find another entrance! Round the outside of the wall, therefore, like the Midianite in the rather comical hymn, did Clare prowl and prowl. But the wall rose straight and much too smooth wherever he looked. Searching its face he went all along the bottom of the garden, and then up the narrow lane between it and the garden of the next house, with increasing fear that there was no way but by the smith’s yard, and no choice but risk it.
