A Rough Shaking, page 25
Again the dog wagged his tail.
“If you didn’t do anything wrong, what did you do?” said the old lady, almost at her wits’ end.
“I don’t like telling things that are not going to be believed. It’s like washing your face with ink!”
“I will try to believe you.”
“Then I will tell you; for you speak the truth, ma’am, and so, perhaps, will be able to believe the truth!”
“How do you know I speak the truth?”
“Because you didn’t say, ‘I will believe you.’ Nobody can be sure of doing that. But you can be sure of trying; and you said, ‘I will try to believe you.’”
“Tell me all about it then.”
“I will, ma’am.—The policeman came in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and took us all away, because we were in a house that was not ours.”
“Whose was it then?”
“Nobody knew. It was what they call in chancery. There was nobody in it but moths and flies and spiders and rats;—though I think the rats only came to eat baby.”
“Baby! Then the whole family of you, father, mother, and all, were taken to prison!”
“No, ma’am; my fathers and my mothers were taken up into the dome of the angels."—What with hunger and sleepiness, Clare was talking like a child.—"I haven’t any father and mother in this world. I have two fathers and two mothers up there, and one mother in this world. She’s the mother of the wild beasts.”
The old lady began to doubt the boy’s sanity, but she went on questioning him.
“How did you have a baby with you, then?”
“The baby was my own, ma’am. I took her out of the water-butt.”
Once more Clare had to tell his story—from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God’s innocents, with an angel-haunted brain.
“And what’s become of Tommy?” she asked.
“He’s in the same workhouse with baby. I’m very glad; for what I should have done with Tommy, and nothing to give him to eat, I can’t think. He would have been sure to steal! I couldn’t have kept him from it!”
“You must be more careful of your company.”
“Please, ma’am, I was very careful of Tommy. He had the best company I could give him: I did try to be better for Tommy’s sake. But my trying wasn’t much use to Tommy, so long as he wouldn’t try! He was a little better, though, I think; and if I had him now, and could give him plenty to eat, and had baby as well as Abdiel to help me, we might make something of Tommy, I think.—You think so—don’t you, Abdiel?”
The dog, who had stood looking in his master’s face all the time he spoke, wagged his tail faster.
“What a name to give a dog! Where did you find it?”
“In Paradise Lost, ma’am. Abdiel was the one angel, you remember, ma’am, who, when he saw what Satan was up to, left him, and went back to his duty.”
“And what was his duty?”
“Why of course to do what God told him. I love Abdiel, and because I love the little dog and he took care of baby, I call him Abdiel too. Heaven is so far off that it makes no confusion to have the same name.”
“But how dare you give the name of an angel to a dog?”
“To a good dog, ma’am! A good dog is good enough to go with any angel—at his heels of course! If he had been a bad dog, it would have been wicked to name him after a good angel. If the dog had been Tommy—I mean if Tommy had been the dog, I should have had to call him Moloch, or Belzebub! God made the angels and the dogs; and if the dogs are good, God loves them.—Don’t he, Abdiel?”
Abdiel assented after his usual fashion. The lady said nothing. Clare went on.
“Abdiel won’t mind—the angel Abdiel, I mean, ma’am—he won’t mind lending his name to my friend. The dog will have a name of his own, perhaps, some day—like the rest of us!”
“What is your name?”
“The name I have now is, like the dog’s, a borrowed one. I shall get my own one day—not here—but there—when—when—I’m hungry enough to go and find it.”
Clare had grown very white. He sat down, and lay back on the grass. He had talked more in those few minutes than for weeks, and want had made him weak. He felt very faint. The dog jumped up, and fell to licking his face.
“What a wicked old woman I am!” said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed the bank swiftly.
She disappeared within the gate, but to return presently with a tumbler of milk and a huge piece of bread.
“Here, boy!” she cried; “here is medicine for you! Make haste and take it.”
Clare sat up feebly, and stared at the tumbler for a moment. Either he could hardly believe his eyes, or was too sick to take it at once. When he had it in his hand, he held it out to the dog.
“Here, Abdiel, have a little,” he said.
This offended the old lady.
“You’re never going to give the dog that good milk!” she cried.
“A little of it, please, ma’am!”
“—And feed him out of the tumbler too?”
“He’s had nothing to-day, ma’am, and we’re comrades!”
“But it’s not clean of you!”
“Ah, you don’t know dogs, ma’am! His tongue is clean as clean as anybody’s.”
Abdiel took three or four little laps of the milk, drew away, and looked up at his master—as much as to say, “You, now!”
“Besides,” Clare went on, “he couldn’t get at it so well in the bottom of the tumbler.”
With that he raised it to his own lips, drank eagerly, and set it on the road half empty, looking his thanks to the giver with a smile she thought heavenly. Then he broke the bread, and giving the dog nearly the half of it, began to eat the rest himself. The old lady stood looking on in silence, pondering what she was to do with the celestial beggar.
“Would you mind sleeping in the greenhouse, if I had a bed put up for you?” she said at length, in tone apologetic.
“This is a better place—though I wish it was warmer!” said Clare, with another smile as he looked up at the sky, in which a few stars were beginning to twinkle, and thought of the gardeners he had met. “—Don’t you think it better, ma’am?”
“No, indeed, I don’t!” she answered crossly; for to her the open air at night seemed wrong, disreputable. There was something unholy in it!
“I would rather stay here,” said Clare.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t quite believe me, ma’am. You can’t; and you can’t help it. You wouldn’t be able to sleep for thinking that a boy just out of prison was lying in the greenhouse. There would be no saying what he might not do! I once read in a newspaper how an old lady took a lad into her house for a servant, and he murdered her!—No, ma’am, thank you! After such a supper we shall sleep beautifully!—Sha’n’t we, Abby? And then, perhaps, you could give me a job in the garden to-morrow! I daresay the gardener wants a little help sometimes! But if he knew me to have slept in the greenhouse, he would hate me.”
The old lady said nothing, for, like most old ladies, she feared her gardener. She took the tumbler from the boy’s hand, and went into the house. But in two minutes she came again, with another great piece of bread for Clare, and a bone with something on it which she threw to Abdiel. The dog’s ears started up, erect and alive, like individual creatures, and his eyes gleamed; but he looked at his master, and would not touch the bone without his leave—which given, he fell upon it, and worried it as if it had been a rat.
Clare was now himself again, and when the old lady left them for the third time, he walked with her across the way, bread in hand, to open the gate for her. When she was inside, he took off his cap, and bade her good-night with a grace that won all that was left to be won of her heart.
Before she had taken three steps from the gate, the old lady turned.
“Boy!” she called; and Clare, who was making for his couch under the stars, hastened back at the sound of her voice.
“I shall not be able to sleep,” she said, “for thinking of you out there in the bleak night!”
“I am used to it, ma’am!”
“Oh, I daresay! but you see I’m not! and I don’t like the thought of it! You may like hoarfrost-sheets, for what I know, but I don’t! You may like the stars for a tester—because you want to die and go to them, I suppose!—but I have no fancy for the stars! You are a foolish fellow, and I am out of temper with you. You don’t give a thought to me—or to my feelings if you should die! I should never go to bed again with a good conscience!—Besides, I should have to nurse you!”
The last member of her expostulation was hardly in logical sequence, but it had not the less influence on Clare for that.
“I will do whatever you please, ma’am,” he answered humbly. “—Come, Abdiel!”
The dog came running across the road with his bone in his mouth.
“You mustn’t bring that inside the gate, Ab!” said Clare.
The dog dropped it.
“Good dog! It’s a lady’s garden, you know, Abdiel!” Then turning to his hostess, Clare added, “I always tell him when I’m pleased with him: don’t you think it right, ma’am?”
“I daresay! I don’t know anything about dogs.”
“If you had a dog like Abdiel, he would soon teach you dogs, ma’am!” rejoined Clare.
By this time they were at the house-door. The lady told him to wait there, went in, and had a talk with her two maids. In half an hour, Clare and his four-footed angel were asleep—in an outhouse, it is true, but in a comfortable bed, such as they had not seen since their flight from the caravans. The cold breeze wandered moaning like a lost thing round the bare walls, as if every time it woke, it went abroad to see if there was any hope for the world; but it did not touch them; and if through their ears it got into their dreams, it made their sleep the sweeter, and their sense of refuge the deeper.
But although the bewitching boy and his good dog were not lying in the open air over against her gate, and although never a thought of murder or theft came to trouble her, it was long before the old lady found repose. Her heart had been deeply touched.
CHAPTER LIII. THE GARDENER.
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FROM THE FACT THAT HIS hostess made him no answer when he breathed the hope of a job in her garden, Clare concluded that he had presumed in suggesting the thing to her, and that she would be relieved by their departure. When he woke in the morning, therefore, early after a grand sleep, he felt he had no right to linger: he had been invited to sleep, and he had slept! He also shrank from the idea of being supposed to expect his breakfast before he went. So, as soon as he got up, he walked out of the gate, crossed the road, and sat down on the spot he had occupied the night before, there to wait until the house should be astir. For, although he could not linger within gates where he was unknown, neither could he slink away without morning-thanks for the gift of a warm night.
As he sat, he grew drowsy, and leaning back, fell fast asleep.
The thoughts of his hostess had been running on very different lines, and she woke with feelings concerning the pauper very different from those the pauper imagined in her. She must do something for him; she must give or get him work! As to giving him work, her difficulty lay in the gardener. She resolved, however, to attempt over-coming it.
She rose earlier than usual, therefore, and as the man, who did not sleep in the house, was not yet come, she went down to the gate to meet him and have the thing over—so eager was she, and so nervous in prospect of such an interview with her dreaded servant.
“Good gracious!” she murmured aloud, “does it rain beggars?” For there, on the same spot, lay another beggar, another boy, with a dog in his bosom the facsimile of the ugly white thing named after Milton’s angel! She did not feel moved to go and make his acquaintance. It could not be another of the family, could it? that had already heard of his brother’s good luck, and come to see whether there might not be a picking for him too! She turned away hurriedly lest he should wake, and went back to the house.
But looking behind her as she mounted the steps, she caught sight of the gardener at the other gate, casting a displeased look across the road before he entered: he did not like to see tramps about! Her heart sank a little, but she was not to be turned aside.
The gardener came in, and his mistress joined him and walked with him to his work, telling him as much as she thought fit concerning the boy, and interspersing her narrative with hints of the duty of giving every one a chance. She took care not to mention that he had come out of a prison somewhere.
“No one should be driven to despair,” she said, little thinking she used almost the very words of the Lord, according to the Sinaitic reading of a passage in St. Luke’s gospel.
The argument had little force with the rough Scotchman: his mistress was soft-hearted! He shook his head ominously at the idea of giving a tramp the chance of doing decent work, but at last consented, with a show of being over-persuaded to an imprudent action, to let the boy help him for a day, and see how he got on, stipulating, however, that he should not be supposed to have pledged himself to anything.
Miss Tempest’s plans went beyond the gardener’s scope. She had for some months been inclined to have a boy to help in the house—an inclination justified by a late unexpected accession of income: if this boy were what he seemed, he would make a more than valuable servant; and nothing could clear her judgment of him better, she thought, than putting him to the test of a brief subjection to the cross-grained, exacting Scotchman. By that she would soon know whether to dismiss him, or venture with him farther!
She had but just wrung his hard consent from the gardener, when the cook came running, to say the boy was gone. Upon poor Miss Tempest’s heart fell a cold avalanche.
“But we’ve counted the spoons, ma’am, and they’re all right!” said the cook.
This additional statement, however, did not seem to give much consolation to the benevolent old lady. She stood for a moment with her eyes on the ground, too pained to move or speak. Then she started, and ran to the gate. The cook ran after, thinking her mistress gone out of her mind—and was sure of it when she saw her open the gate, and run straight down the bank to the road. But when she reached the gate herself, she saw her standing over a boy asleep on the grass of the opposite bank.
Abdiel, lying on his bosom, watched her with keen friendly eyes. Clare was dreaming some agreeable morning-dream; for a smile of such pleasure as could haunt only an innocent face, nickered on it like a sunny ripple on the still water of a pool.
“No!” said Miss Tempest to herself; “there’s no duplicity there! Otherwise, a tree is not known by its fruit!”
Clare opened his eyes, and started lightly to his feet, strong and refreshed.
“Good morning, ma’am!” he said, pulling off his cap.
“Good morning—what am I to call you?” she returned.
“Clare, if you please, ma’am.”
“What is your Christian name?”
“That is my Christian name, ma’am—Clare.”
“Then what is your surname?”
“I am called Porson, ma’am, but I have another name. Mr. Porson adopted me.”
“What is your other name?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. I am going to know one day, I think; but the day is not come yet.”
He told her all he could about his adoptive parents, and little Maly; but the time before he went to the farm was growing strangely dreamlike, as if it had sunk a long way down in the dark waters of the past—all up to the hour when Maly was carried away by the long black aunt.
The story accounted to Miss Tempest both for his good speech and the name of his dog. The adopted child of a clergyman might well be acquainted with Paradise Lost, though she herself had never read more of it than the apostrophe to Light in the beginning of the third book! That she had learned at school without understanding phrase or sentence of it; while Clare never left passage alone until he understood it, or, failing that, had invented a meaning for it.
“Well, then, Clare, I’ve been talking to my gardener about you,” said Miss Tempest. “He will give you a job.”
“God bless you, ma’am! I’m ready!” cried Clare, stretching out his arms, as if to get them to the proper length for work. “Where shall I find him?”
“You must have breakfast first.”
She led the way to the kitchen.
The cook, a middle-aged woman, looked at the dog, and her face puckered all over with points of interrogation and exclamation.
“Please, cook, will you give this young man some breakfast? He wanted to go to work without any, but that wouldn’t do—would it, cook?” said her mistress.
“I hope the dog won’t be running in and out of my kitchen all day, ma’am!”
“No fear of that, cook!” said Clare; “he never leaves me.”
“Then I don’t think—I’m afraid,” she began, and stopped. “—But that’s none of my business,” she added. “John will look after his own—and more!”
Miss Tempest said nothing, but she almost trembled; for John, she knew, had a perfect hatred of dogs. Nor could anyone wonder, for, gate open or gate shut, in they came and ran over his beds. She dared not interfere! He and Clare must settle the question of Abdiel or no Abdiel between them! She left the kitchen.
The cook threw the dog a crust of bread, and Abdiel, after a look at his master, fell upon it with his white, hungry little teeth. Then she proceeded to make a cup of coffee for Clare, casting an occasional glance of pity at his garments, so miserably worn and rent, and his brown bare feet.
