What dreams of liberty in the tree-tops, with John Broom for a playfellow, passed through his crested head, who shall say? But when he found that his friend meant to take him prisoner, he became very angry and much alarmed. And when John Broom grasped him by both legs and began to descend, Cocky pecked him vigorously. But the boy held the back of his head towards him, and went steadily down.
“Weel done!” roared the farm-bailiff. “Gently lad! Gude save us! ha’e a care o’ yoursen. That’s weel. Keep your pow at him. Didna let the beast get at your een.”
But when John Broom was so near the ground as to be safe, the farm-bailiff turned wrathfully upon his son, who had been gazing open-mouthed at the sight which had so interested his father.
“Ye look weel standing gawping here, before the leddies,” said he, “wasting the precious hours, and bringing your father’s gray hairs wi’ sorrow to the grave; and John Broom yonder shaming ye, and you not so much as thinking to fetch the perch for him, ye lazy loon. Away wi’ ye and get it before I lay a stick about your shoulders.”
And when his son had gone for the perch, and John Broom was safely on the ground, laughing, bleeding, and triumphant, the farm-bailiff said,—
“Ye’re a bauld chil, John Broom, I’ll say that for ye.”
Unfortunatelythe favorable impression produced by “the gipsy lad’s” daring soon passed from the farm-bailiff’s mind. It was partly effaced by the old jealousy of the little ladies’ favor. Miss Betty gave the boy no less than four silver shillings, and he ungraciously refused to let the farm-bailiff place them in a savings bank for him.
Matters got from bad to worse. The farming man was not the only one who was jealous, and John Broom himself was as idle and reckless as ever. Though, if he had listened respectfully to the Scotchman’s counsels, or shown any disposition to look up to and be guided by him, much might have been overlooked. But he made fun of him and made a friend of the cowherd. And this latter most manifest token of low breeding vexed the respectable taste of the farm-bailiff.
John Broom had his own grievances too, and he brooded over them. He thought the little ladies had given him over to the farm-bailiff, because they had ceased to care for him, and that the farm-bailiff was prejudiced against him beyond any hope of propitiation. The village folk taunted him, too, with being an outcast, and called him Gipsy John, and this maddened him. Then he would creep into the cowhouse and lie in the straw against the white cow’s warm back, and for a few of Miss Betty’s coppers, to spend in beer or tobacco, the cowherd would hide him from the farm-bailiff and tell him country-side tales. To Thomasina’s stories of ghosts and gossip, he would add strange tales of smugglers on the near-lying coast, and as John Broom listened, his restless blood rebelled more and more against the sour sneers and dry drudgery that he got from the farm-bailiff.
Nor were sneers the sharpest punishment his misdemeanors earned. The farm-bailiff’s stick was thick and his arm was strong, and he had a tendency to believe that if a flogging was good for a boy, the more he had of it the better it would be for him.
And John Broom, who never let a cry escape him at the time would steal away afterwards and sob out his grief into the long soft coat of the sympathizing sheep dog.
Unfortunately he never tried the effect of deserving better treatment as a remedy for his woes. The parson’s good advice and Miss Betty’s entreaties were alike in vain. He was ungrateful even to Thomasina. The little ladies sighed and thought of the lawyer. And the parson preached patience.
“Cocky has been tamed,” said Miss Kitty, thoughtfully, “perhaps John Broom will get steadier by-and-by.”
“It seems a pity we can’t chain him to a perch, Miss Kitty,” laughed the parson; “he would be safe then, at any rate.”
Miss Betty said afterwards that it did seem so remarkable that the parson should have made this particular joke on this particular night—the night when John Broom did not come home.
He had played truant all day. The farm-bailiff had wanted him, and he had kept out of the way.
The wind was from the east, and a white mist rolled in from the sea, bringing a strange invigorating smell, and making your lips clammy with salt. It made John Broom’s heart beat faster, and filled his head with dreams of ships and smugglers; and rocking masts higher than the willow tree, and winds wilder than this wind, and dancing waves.
Then something loomed through the fog. It was the farm-bailiff’s speckled hat. John Broom hesitated—the thick stick became visible.
Then a cloud rolled between them, and the child turned, and ran, and ran, and ran, coastwards, into the sea mist.
John Broomwas footsore when he reached the coast, but that keen, life-giving smell had drawn him on and held him up. The fog had cleared off, and he strained his black eyes through the darkness to see the sea.
He had never seen it—that other world within this, on which one lived out of doors, and climbed about all day, and no one blamed him.
When he did see it, he thought he had got to the end of the world. If the edge of the cliff were not the end, he could not make out where the sky began; and if that darkness were the sea, the sea was full of stars.
But this was because the sea was quiet and reflected the color of the night sky, and the stars were the lights of the herring-boats twinkling in the bay.
When he got down by the water he saw the vessels lying alongside, and they were dirtier than he had supposed. But he did not lose heart, and remembering, from the cowherd’s tales, that people who cannot pay for their passage must either work it out or hide themselves on board ship, he took the easier alternative, and got on to the first vessel which had a plank to the quay, and hid himself under some tarpaulin on the deck.
The vessel was a collier bound for London, and she sailed with the morning tide.
When he was found out he was not ill-treated. Indeed, the rough skipper offered to take him home again on his return voyage. He would have liked to go, but pride withheld him, and home sickness had not yet eaten into his very soul. Then an old sailor with one eye (but that a sly one) met him, and told him tales more wonderful than the cowherd’s. And with him he shipped as cabin-boy, on a vessel bound for the other side of the world.
* * * * * *
A great many sins bring their own punishment in this life pretty clearly, and sometimes pretty closely; but few more directly or more bitterly than rebellion against the duties, and ingratitude for the blessings, of home.
There was no playing truant on board ship; and as to the master poor John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in hard corners, it had never occurred to him that when one has got good food and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than many people, and enough to be thankful for.
He did everything he was told now as fast as he could do it, in fear for his life. The one-eyed sailor had told him that the captain always took orphans and poor friendless lads to be his cabin-boys, and John Broom thought what a nice kind man he must be, and how different from the farm-bailiff, who thought nobody could be trustworthy unless he could show parents and grandparents, and cousins to the sixth degree. But after they had sailed, when John Broom felt very ill, and asked the one-eyed sailor where he was to sleep, the one-eyed sailor pleasantly replied that if he hadn’t brought a four-post bed in his pocket he must sleep where he could, for that all the other cabin-boys were sleeping in Davy’s Locker, and couldn’t be disturbed. And it was not till John Broom had learned ship’s language that he found out that Davy’s Locker meant the deep, and that the other cabin-boys were dead. “And as they’d nobody belonging to ’em, no hearts was broke,” added the sailor, winking with his one eye.
John Broom slept standing sometimes for weariness, but he did not sleep in Davy’s Locker. Young as he was he had dauntless courage, a careless hopeful heart, and a tough little body; and that strong, life-giving sea smell bore him up instead of food, and he got to the other side of the world.
Why he did not stay there, why he did not run away into the wilderness to find at least some easier death than to have his bones broken by the cruel captain, he often wondered afterwards. He was so much quicker and braver than the boys they commonly got, that the old sailor kept a sharp watch over him with his one eye whilst they were ashore; but one day he was too drunk to see out of it, and John Broom ran away.
It was Christmas day, and so hot that he could not run far, for it was at the other side of the world, where things are upside down, and he sat down by the roadside on the outskirts of the city; and as he sat, with his thin, brown face resting on his hands, a familiar voice beside him said, “Pretty Cocky!” and looking up he saw a man with several cages of birds. The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of cream-color, salmon, and rose, and he had a rose-colored crest. But lovely as he was, John Broom’s eyes were on another cage, where, silent, solemn and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-colored trimmings and fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty’s pet, that the poor child’s heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.
“If you let him get at you, you’ll not do it a second time, mate,” said the man. “He’s the nastiest-tempered beast I ever saw. I’d have wrung his neck long ago if he hadn’t such a fine coat.”
But John Broom said as he had said before, “I like him, and he’ll like me.”
When the cockatoo bit his finger to the bone, the man roared with laughter, but John Broom did not draw his hand away. He kept it still at the bird’s beak, and with the other he gently scratched him under the crest and wings. And when the white cockatoo began to stretch out his eight long toes, as cats clutch with their claws from pleasure, and chuckled, and sighed, and bit softly without hurting, and laid his head against the bars till his snow and sulphur feathers touched John Broom’s black locks, the man was amazed.
“Look here, mate,” said he, “you’ve the trick with birds, and no mistake. I’ll sell you this one cheap, and you’ll be able to sell him dear.”
“I’ve not a penny in the world,” said John Broom.
“You do look cleaned out, too,” said the man scanning him from head to foot. “I tell you what, you shall come with me a bit and tame the birds, and I’ll find you something to eat.”
Ten minutes before, John Broom would have jumped at this offer, though he now refused it. The sight of the cockatoo had brought back the fever of home sickness in all its fierceness. He couldn’t stay out here. He would dare anything, do anything, to see the hills about Lingborough once more before he died; and even if he did not live to see them, he might live to sleep in that part of Davy’s Locker which should rock him on the shores of home.
The man gave him a shilling for fastening a ring and chain on to the cocky’s ankle, and with this he got the best dinner he had eaten since he lost sight of the farm-bailiff’s speckled hat in the mist.
And then he went back to the one-eyed sailor, and shipped as cabin-boy again for the homeward voyage.
WhenJohn Broom did get home he did not go to sea again. He lived from hand to mouth in the seaport town, and slept, as he was well accustomed to sleep, in holes and corners.
Every day and every night, through the long months of the voyage, he had dreamed of begging his way barefoot to Miss Betty’s door. But now he did not go. His life was hard, but it was not cruel. He was very idle, and there was plenty to see. He wandered about the country as of old. The ships and shipping too had a fascination for him now that the past was past, and here he could watch them from the shore; and, partly for shame and partly for pride, he could not face the idea of going back. If he had been taunted with being a vagrant boy before, what would be said now if he presented himself, a true tramp, to the farm-bailiff? Besides, Miss Betty and Miss Kitty could not forgive him. It was impossible!
He was wandering about one day when he came to some fine high walls with buildings inside. There was an open gateway, at which stood a soldier with a musket. But a woman and some children went in, and he did not shoot them; so when his back was turned, and he was walking stiffly to where he came from, John Broom ran in through the gateway.
The first man he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen. Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man, a big bird, with a big black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the feathered feet of some plumy bird; his legs were bare and brown and hairy. He was clothed in many colors. He had fur in front, which swung as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head very high, and from it dropped great black plumes. His face looked as if it had been cut—roughly but artistically—out of a block of old wood, and his eyes were the color of a summer sky. And John Broom felt as he had felt when he first saw Miss Betty’s cockatoo.
In repose the Highlander’s eye was as clear as a cairngorm and as cold, but when it fell upon John Broom it took a twinkle not quite unlike the twinkle in the one eye of the sailor; and then, to his amazement, this grand creature beckoned to John Broom with a rather dirty hand.
“Yes, sir,” said John Broom, staring up at the splendid giant, with eyes of wonder.
“I’m saying,” said the Highlander, confidentially (and it had a pleasant homely sound to hear him speak like the farm-bailiff)—“I’m saying, I’m confined to barracks, ye ken; and I’ll gi’e ye a hawpenny if ye’ll get the bottle filled wi’ whusky. Roun’ yon corner ye’ll see the ‘Britain’s Defenders.’ ”
But at this moment he erected himself, his turquoise eyes looked straight before them, and he put his hand to his head and moved it slowly away again, as a young man with more swinging grandeur of colors and fur and plumes, and with greater glittering of gems and silver, passed by, a sword clattering after him.
Meanwhile John Broom had been round the corner and was back again.
“What for are ye standin’ there ye fule?” asked his new friend. “What for didna ye gang for the whusky?”
“It’s here, sir.”
“My certy, ye dinna let the grass grow under your feet,” said the Highlander; and he added, “If ye want to run errands, laddie, ye can come back again.”
It was the beginning of a fresh life for John Broom. With many other idle or homeless boys he now haunted the barracks, and ran errands for the soldiers. His fleetness of foot and ready wit made him the favorite. Perhaps, too, his youth and his bright face and eyes pleaded for him, for British soldiers are a tender-hearted race.
He was knocked about, but never cruelly, and he got plenty of coppers and broken victuals, and now and then an old cap or a pair of a boots, a world too large for him. His principal errands were to fetch liquor for the soldiers. In arms and pockets he would sometimes carry a dozen bottles at once, and fly back from the canteen or public-house without breaking one.
Before the summer was over he was familiar with every barrack-room and guard-room in the place; he had food to eat and coppers to spare, and he shared his bits with the mongrel dogs who lived, as he did, on the good-nature of the garrison.
It must be confessed that neatness was not among John Broom’s virtues. He looped his rags together with bits of string, and wasted his pence or lost them. The soldiers standing at the bar would often give him a drink out of their pewter-pots. It choked him at first, and then he got used to it, and liked it. Some relics of Miss Betty’s teaching kept him honest. He would not condescend to sip by the way out of the soldiers’ jugs and bottles as other errand-boys did, but he came to feel rather proud of laying his twopence on the counter, and emptying his own pot of beer with a grimace to the by-standers through the glass at the bottom.
One day he was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the canteen sergeant’s daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander’s hand was laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place in one swoop.
“I’ll trouble ye to give me your attention,” said the Highlander, when they came to a standstill, “and to speak the truth. Did ye ever see me the worse of liquor?”
John Broom had several remembrances of the clearest kind to that effect, so he put up his arms to shield his head from the probable blow, and said, “Yes, McAlister.”
“How often?” asked the Scotchman.
“I never counted,” said John Broom; “pretty often.”
“How many good-conduct stripes do ye ken me to have lost of your ain knowledge?”
“Three, McAlister.”
“Is there a finer man than me in the regiment?” asked the Highlander, drawing up his head.
“That there’s not,” said John Broom, warmly.
“Our sairgent, now,” drawled the Scotchman, “wad ye say he was a better man than me?”
“Nothing like so good,” said John Broom, sincerely.
“And what d’ye suppose, man,” said the Highlander, firing with sudden passion, till the light of his clear blue eyes seemed to pierce John Broom’s very soul—“what d’ye suppose has hindered me that I’m not sairgent, when yon man is? What has keepit me from being an officer, that has served my country in twa battles when oor quartermaster hadn’t enlisted? Wha gets my money? What lost me my stripes? What loses me decent folks’ respect, and waur than that, my ain? What gars a hand that can grip a broadsword tremble like a woman’s? What fills the canteen and the kirkyard? What robs a man of health and wealth and peace? What ruins weans and women, and makes mair homes desolate than war? Drink, man, drink! The deevil of drink!”
It was not till the glare in his eyes had paled that John Broom ventured to speak. Then he said,—
“Why don’t ye give it up, McAlister?”
The man rose to his full height, and laid his hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder, and his eyes seemed to fade with that pitiful, weary look, which only such blue eyes show so well, “Because Icanna,” said he; “because, for as big as I am, I canna. But for as little as you are, laddie, ye can, and, Heaven help me, ye shall.”
That evening he called John Broom into the barrack-room where he slept. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and had a little wooden money-box in his hands.
“What money have ye, laddie?” he asked.
John Broom pulled out three halfpence lately earned, and the Scotchman dropped them slowly into the box. Then he turned the key, and put it into his pocket, and gave the box to the boy.
“Ye’ll put what you earn in there,” said he, “I’ll keep the key, and ye’ll keep the box yourself; and when its opened we’ll open it together, and lay out your savings in decent clothes for ye against the winter.”
At this moment some men passing to the canteen shouted, “McAlister!” The Highlander did not answer, but he started to the door. Then he stood irresolute, and then turned and reseated himself.
“Gang and bring me a bit o’ tobacco,” he said, giving John Broom a penny. And when the boy had gone he emptied his pocket of the few pence left, and dropped them into the box, muttering, “If he manna, I wunna.”
And when the tobacco came, he lit his pipe, and sat on the bench, outside and snarled at every one who spoke to him.
Itwas a bitterly cold winter. The soldiers drank a great deal, and John Broom was constantly trotting up and down, and the box grew very heavy.
Bottles were filled and refilled, in spite of greatly increased strictness in the discipline of the garrison, for there were rumors of invasion, and penalties were heavy, and sentry posts were increased, and the regiments were kept in readiness for action.
The Highlander had not cured himself of drinking, though he had cured John Broom. But, like others, he was more wary just now, and had hitherto escaped the heavy punishments inflicted in a time of probable war; and John Broom watched over him with the fidelity of a sheep dog, and more than once had roused him with a can of cold water when he was all but caught by his superiors in a state of stupor, which would not have been credited to the frost alone.
The talk of invasion had become grave, when one day a body of men were ordered for outpost duty, and McAlister was among them. The officer had got a room for them in a farmhouse, where they sat round the fire, and went out by turns to act as sentries at various posts for an hour or two at a time.
The novelty was delightful to John Broom. He hung about the farmhouse, and warmed himself at the soldiers’ fire.
In the course of the day McAlister got him apart, and whispered, “I’m going on duty the night at ten, laddie. It’s fearsome cold, and I hav’na had a drop to warm me the day. If ye could ha’ brought me a wee drappie to the corner of the three roads—its twa miles from here I’m thinking—”
“It’s not the miles, McAlister,” said John Broom, “but you’re on outpost duty, and——”
“And you’re misdoubting what may be done to ye for bringing liquor to a sentry on duty! Aye, aye, lad, ye do weel to be cautious,” said the Highlander, and he turned away.
But it was not the fear of consequences to himself which had made John Broom hesitate, and he was stung by the implication.
The night was dark and very cold, and the Highlander had been pacing up and down his post for about half an hour, when his quick ear caught a faint sound of footsteps.
“Wha goes there?” said he.
“It’s I, McAlister,” whispered John Broom.
“Whisht, laddie,” said the sentry; “are ye there after all? Did no one see ye?”
“Not a soul; I crept by the hedges. Here’s your whisky, McAlister; but, oh, be careful!” said the lad.
The Scotchman’s eye glistened greedily at the bottle.
“Never fear,” said he, “I’ll just rub a wee drappie on the pawms of my hands to keep away the frost-bite, for it’s awsome cold, man. Now away wi’ ye, and take tent, laddie, keep off the other sentries.”
John Broom went back as carefully as he had come, and slipped in to warm himself by the guard-room fire.
It was a good one, and the soldiers sat close round it. The officer was writing a letter in another room, and in a low, impressive voice, the sergeant was telling a story which was listened to with breathless attention. John Broom was fond of stories, and he listened also.
It was of a friend of the sergeant’s, who had been a boy with him in the same village at home, who had seen active service with him abroad, and who had slept at his post on such a night as this, from the joint effects of cold and drink. It was war time, and he had been tried by court-martial, and shot for the offense. The sergeant had been one of the firing party to execute his friend, and they had taken leave of each other as brothers, before the final parting face to face in this last awful scene.
The man’s voice was faltering, when the tale was cut short by the jingling of the field officer’s accoutrements as he rode by to visit the outposts. In an instant the officer and men turned out to receive him; and, after the usual formalities, he rode on. The officer went back to his letter, and the sergeant and his men to their fireside.
The opening of the doors had let in a fresh volume of cold, and one of the men called to John Broom to mend the fire. But he was gone.
John Broom was fleet of foot, and there are certain moments which lift men beyond their natural powers, but he had set himself a hard task.
As he listened to the sergeant’s tale, an agonizing fear smote him for his friend McAlister. Was there any hope that the Highlander could keep himself from the whisky? Officers were making their rounds at very short intervals just now, and if drink and cold overcame him at his post!
Close upon these thoughts came the jingling of the field officer’s sword, and the turn out of the guard. “Who goes there?”—“Rounds.”—“What rounds?”—“Grand rounds?”—“Halt, grand rounds, advance one, and give the countersign!” The familiar words struck coldly on John Broom’s heart, as if they had been orders to a firing party, and the bandage were already across the Highlander’s blue eyes. Would the grand rounds be challenged at the three roads to-night? He darted out into the snow.
He flew, as the crow flies, across the fields, to where McAlister was on duty. It was a much shorter distance than by the road, which was winding; but whether this would balance the difference between a horse’s pace and his own was the question, and there being no time to question, he ran on.
He kept his black head down, and ran from his shoulders. The clatter, clatter, jingle, jingle, on the hard road came to him through the still frost on a level with his left ear. It was terrible, but he held on, dodging under the hedges to be out of sight, and the sound lessened, and by-and-by, the road having wound about, he could hear it faintly,but behind him.
And he reached the three roads, and McAlister was asleep in the ditch.
But when, with jingle and clatter, the field officer of the day reached the spot, the giant Highlander stood like a watch-tower at his post, with a little snow on the black plumes that drooped upon his shoulders.
John Broomdid not see the Highlander again for two or three days. It was Christmas week, and, in spite of the war panic, there was festivity enough in the barracks to keep the errand-boy very busy.
Then came New Year’s Eve—“Hogmenay,” as the Scotch call it—and it was the Highland regiment’s particular festival. Worn-out with whisky-fetching and with helping to deck barrack-rooms and carrying pots and trestles, John Broom was having a nap in the evening, in company with a mongrel deerhound, when a man shook him, and said, “I heard some one asking for ye an hour or two back; McAlister wants ye.”
“Where is he?” said John Broom, jumping to his feet.
“In hospital; he’s been there a day or two. He got cold on out-post duty, and it’s flown to his lungs, they say. Ye see he’s been a hard drinker, has McAlister, and I expect he’s breaking up.”
With which very just conclusion the speaker went on into the canteen, and John Broom ran to the hospital.
Stripped of his picturesque trappings, and with no plumes to shadow the hollows in his temples, McAlister looked gaunt and feeble enough, as he lay in the little hospital bed, which barely held his long limbs. Such a wreck of giant powers of body, and noble qualities of mind as the drink-shops are preparing for the hospitals every day!
Since the quickly-reached medical decision that he was in a rapid decline, and that nothing could be done for him, McAlister had been left a good deal alone. His intellect (and it was no fool’s intellect,) was quite clear, and if the long hours by himself, in which he reckoned with his own soul, had hastened the death-damps on his brow, they had also written there an expression which was new to John Broom. It was not the old sour look, it was a kind of noble gravity.
His light, blue eyes brightened as the boy came in, and he held out his hand, and John Broom took it with both his, saying,
“I never heard till this minute, McAlister. Eh, I do hope you’ll be better soon.”
“The Lord being merciful to me,” said the Highlander. “Butthisworld’s nearly past, laddie, and I was fain to see ye again. Dinna greet, man, for I’ve important business wi’ ye, and I should wish your attention. Firstly, I’m aboot to hand ower to ye the key of your box. Tak it, and put it in a pocket that’s no got a hole in it, if you’re worth one. Secondly, there’s a bit bag I made mysel, and it’s got a trifle o’ money in it that I’m giving and bequeathing to ye, under certain conditions, namely, that ye shall spend the contents of the box according to my last wishes and instructions, with the ultimate end of your ain benefit, ye’ll understand.”
A fit of coughing here broke McAlister’s discourse; but after drinking from a cup beside him, he put aside John Broom’s remonstrances with a dignified movement of his hand, and continued,—
“When a body comes of decent folk, he won’t just care, maybe, to have their names brought up in a barrack-room. Ye never heard me say aught of my father or my mither?”
“Never, McAlister.”
“I’d a good hame,” said the Highlander, with a decent pride in his tone. “It was a strict hame—I’ve no cause now to deceive mysel’, thinking it was a wee bit ower strict—but it was a good hame. I left it, man—I ran away.”
The glittering blue eyes turned sharply on the lad, and he went on:—
“A body doesna’ care to turn his byeganes oot for every fool to peck at. Did I ever speer about your past life, and whar ye came from?”
“Never, McAlister.”
“But that’s no to say that, if I knew manners, I dinna obsairve. And there’s been things now and again, John Broom, that’s gar’d me think that ye’ve had what I had, and done as I did. Did ye rin awa’, laddie?”
John Broom nodded his black head, but tears choked his voice.
“Man!” said the Highlander, “ane word’s as gude’s a thousand. Gang back! Gang hame! There’s the bit siller here that’s to tak ye, and the love yonder that’s waiting ye. Listen to a dying man, laddie, and gang hame!”
“I doubt if they’d have me,” sobbed John Broom, “I gave ’em a deal of trouble, McAlister.”
“And d’ye think, lad, that that thought has na’ cursedme, and keepit me from them that loved me? Aye, lad, and till this week I never overcame it.”
“Weel may I want to save ye, bairn,” added the Highlander tenderly, “for it was the thocht of a’ ye riskit for the like of me at the three roads, that made me consider wi’ mysel’ that I’ve aiblins been turning my back a’ my wilfu’ life on love that’s bigger than a man’s deservings. It’s near done now, and it’ll never lie in my poor power so much as rightly to thank ye. It’s strange that a man should set store by a good name that he doesna’ deserve; but if ony blessings of mine could bring ye good, they’re yours, that saved an old soldier’s honor, and let him die respected in his regiment.”
“Oh, McAlister, let me fetch one of the chaplains to write a letter to fetch your father,” cried John Broom.
“The minister’s been here this morning,” said the Highlander, “and I’ve tell’t him mair than I’ve tell’t you. And he’s jest directed me to put my sinful trust in the Father of us a’. I’ve sinned heaviest againstHim, laddie, but His love is stronger than the lave.”
John Broom remained by his friend, whose painful fits of coughing, and of gasping for breath, were varied by intervals of seeming stupor. When a candle had been brought in and placed near the bed, the Highlander roused himself and asked,—
“Is there a Bible on yon table? Could ye read a bit to me, laddie?”
There is little need to dwell on the bitterness of heart with which John Broom confessed,—
“I can’t read big words, McAlister.”
“Did ye never go to school?” said the Scotchman.
“I didn’t learn,” said the poor boy; “I played.”
“Aye, aye. Weel, ye’ll learn, when ye gang hame,” said the Highlander, in gentle tones.
“I’ll never get home,” said John Broom, passionately. “I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll never get over it, that I couldn’t read to ye when ye wanted me, McAlister.”
“Gently, gently,” said the Scotchman. “Dinna daunt yoursel’ owermuch wi’ the past, laddie. And for me—I’m not that presoomptious to think that I can square up a misspent life as a man might compound wi’s creditors. ’GinHeforgi’es me, He’ll forgi’e; but it’s not a prayer up or a chapter down that’ll stan’ between me and the Almighty. So dinna fret yoursel’, but let me think while I may.”
And so, far into the night, the Highlander lay silent, and John Broom watched by him.
It was just midnight when he partly raised himself, and cried,—
“Whist, laddie! do ye hear the pipes?”
The dying ears must have been quick, for John Broom heard nothing; but in a few moments he heard the bagpipes from the officers’ mess, where they were keeping Hogmenay. They were playing the old year out with “Auld lang syne,” and the Highlander beat the tune out with his hand, and his eyes gleamed out of his rugged face in the dim light, as cairngorms glitter in dark tartan.
There was a pause after the first verse, and he grew restless, and turning doubtfully to where John Broom sat, as if his sight were failing, he said, “Ye’ll mind your promise, ye’ll gang hame?” And after awhile he repeated the last word,
“Hame!”
But as he spoke there spread over his face a smile so tender and so full of happiness, that John Broom held his breath as he watched him. As the light of sunrise creeps over the face of some rugged rock, it crept from chin to brow, and the pale blue eyes shone tranquil, like water that reflects heaven.
And when it had passed it left them still open, but gems that had lost their ray.
Thespirit does not always falter in its faith because the flesh is weary with hope deferred. When week after week, month after month, and year after year, went by and John Broom was not found, the disappointment seemed to “age” the little ladies, as Thomasina phrased it. But yet they said to the parson, “We do not regret it.”
“God forbid that you should regret it,” said he.
And even the lawyer (whose heart was kinder than his tongue) abstained from taunting them with his prophecies, and said, “The force of the habits of early education is a power as well as that of inherent tendencies. It is only for your sake that I regret a too romantic benevolence.” And Miss Betty and Miss Kitty tried to put the matter quite away. But John Broom was very closely bound up with the life of many years past. Thomasina mourned him as if he had been her son, and Thomasina being an old and valuable servant, it is needless to say that when she was miserable no one in the house was permitted to be quite at ease.
As to Pretty Cocky, he lived, but Miss Kitty fancied that he grew less pretty and drooped upon his polished perch.
There were times when the parson felt almost conscience-stricken because he had encouraged the adoption of John Broom. Disappointments fall heavily upon elderly people. They may submit better than the young, but they do not so easily revive. The little old ladies looked grayer and more nervous, and the little old house looked grayer and gloomier than of old.
Indeed there were other causes of anxiety. Times were changing, prices were rising, and the farm did not thrive. The lawyer said that the farm-bailiff neglected his duties, and that the cowherd did nothing but drink; but Miss Betty trembled, and said they could not part with old servants.
The farm-bailiff had his own trouble, but he kept it to himself. No one knew how severely he had beaten John Broom the day before he ran away, but he remembered it himself with painful clearness. Harsh men are apt to have consciences, and his was far from easy about the lad who had been entrusted to his care. He could not help thinking of it when the day’s work was over, and he had to keep filling up his evening whisky-glass again and again to drown disagreeable thoughts.
The whisky answered this purpose, but it made him late in the morning; it complicated business on market days, not to the benefit of the farm, and it put him at a disadvantage in dealing with the drunken cowherd.
The cowherd was completely upset by John Broom’s mysterious disappearance, and he comforted himself as the farm-bailiff did, but to a larger extent. And Thomasina winked at many irregularities in consideration of the groans of sympathy with which he responded to her tears as they sat around the hearth where John Broom no longer lay.
At the time that he vanished from Lingborough the gossips of the country side said, “This comes of making pets of tramps’ brats, when honest folk’s sons may toil and moil without notice.” But when it was proved that the tramp-boy had stolen nothing, when all search for him was vain, and when prosperity faded from the place season by season and year by year, there were old folk who whispered that the gaudily-clothed child Miss Betty had found under the broom-bush had something more than common in him, and that whoever and whatever had offended the eerie creature, he had taken the luck of Lingborough with him when he went away.
It was early summer. The broom was shining in the hedges with uncommon wealth of golden blossoms. “The lanes look for all the world as they did the year that poor child was found,” said Thomasina, wiping her eyes. Annie the lass sobbed hysterically, and the cowherd found himself so low in spirits that after gazing dismally at the cow-stalls, which had not been cleaned for days past, he betook himself to the ale-house to refresh his energies for this and other arrears of work.
On returning to the farm, however, he found his hands still feeble, and he took a drop or two more to steady them, after which it occurred to him that certain new potatoes which he had had orders to dig were yet in the ground. The wood was not chopped for the next day’s use, and he wondered what had become of a fork he had had in the morning and had laid down somewhere.
So he seated himself on some straw in the corner to think about it all, and whilst he was thinking he fell fast asleep.
By his own account many remarkable things had befallen him in the course of his life, including that meeting with a Black Something to which allusion has been made, but nothing so strange as what happened to him that night.
When he awoke in the morning and sat up on the straw, and looked around him, the stable was freshly cleaned, the litter in the stalls was shaken and turned, and near the door was an old barrel of newly-dug potatoes, and the fork stood by it. And when he ran to the wood-house there lay the wood neatly chopped and piled to take away.
He kept his own counsel that day and took credit for the work, but when on the morrow the farm-bailiff was at a loss to know who had thinned the turnips that were left to do in the upper field, and Annie the lass found the kitchen-cloths she had left overnight to soak, rubbed through and rinsed, and laid to dry, the cowherd told his tale to Thomasina, and begged for a bowl of porridge and cream to set in the barn, as one might set a mouse-trap baited with cheese.
“For,” said he, “the luck of Lingborough’s come back, missis.It’s Lob Lie-by-the-fire!”
“It’sLob Lie-by-the-fire!”
So Thomasina whispered exultingly, and Annie the lass timidly. Thomasina cautioned the cowherd to hold his tongue, and she said nothing to the little ladies on the subject. She felt certain that they would tell the parson, and he might not approve. The farm-bailiff knew of a farm on the Scotch side of the Border where a brownie had been driven away by the minister preaching his last Sunday’s sermon over again at him, and as Thomasina said, “There’d been little enough luck at Lingborough lately, that they should wish to scare it away when it came.”
And yet the news leaked out gently, and was soon known all through the neighborhood—as a secret.
“The luck of Lingborough’s come back. Lob’s lying by the fire!”
He could be heard at his work any night, and several people had seen him, though this vexed Thomasina, who knew well that the Good People do not like to be watched at their labors.
The cowherd had not been able to resist peeping down through chinks in the floor of the loft above the barn, where he slept, and one night he had seen Lob fetching straw for the cowhouse. “A great, rough, black fellow,” said he, and he certainly grew bigger and rougher and blacker every time the cowherd told the tale.
The Lubber-fiend appeared next to a boy who was loitering at a late hour somewhere near the little ladies’ kitchen-garden, and whom he pursued and pelted with mud till the lad nearly lost his wits with terror. (It was the same boy who was put in the lock-up in the autumn for stealing Farmer Mangel’s Siberian crabs.)
For this trick, however, the rough elf atoned by leaving three pecks of newly-gathered fruit in the kitchen the following morning. Never had there been such a preserving season at Lingborough within the memory of Thomasina.
The truth is, hobgoblins, from Puck to Will-o’-the-wisp, are apt to play practical jokes and knock people about whom they meet after sunset. A dozen tales of such were rife, and folk were more amused than amazed by Lob Lie-by-the-fire’s next prank.
There was an aged pauper who lived on the charity of the little ladies, and whom it was Miss Betty’s practice to employ to do light weeding in the fields for heavy wages. This venerable person was toddling to his home in the gloaming with a barrow-load of Miss Betty’s new potatoes, dexterously hidden by an upper sprinkling of groundsel and hemlock, when the Lubber-fiend sprang out from behind an elder-bush, ran at the old man with his black head, and knocked him, heels uppermost into the ditch. The wheel-barrow was afterwards found in Miss Betty’s farmyard, quite empty.
And when the cowherd (who had his own opinion of the aged pauper, and it was a very poor one) went that evening, to drink Lob Lie-by-the-fire’s health from a bottle he kept in the harness-room window, he was nearly choked with the contents, which had turned into salt and water, as fairy jewels turn to withered leaves.
But luck had come to Lingborough. There had not been such crops for twice seven years past.
The lay-away hen’s eggs were brought regularly to the kitchen.
The ducklings were not eaten by rats.
No fowls were stolen.
The tub of pig-meal lasted three times as long as usual.
The cart-wheels and gate-hinges were oiled by unseen fingers.
The mushrooms in the croft gathered themselves and lay down on a dish in the larder.
It is by small savings that a farm thrives, and Miss Betty’s farm throve.
Everybody worked with more alacrity. Annie, the lass, said the butter came in a way that made it a pleasure to churn.
The neighbors knew even more than those on the spot. They said—That since Lob came back to Lingborough the hens laid eggs as large as turkeys’ eggs, and the turkeys’ eggs were—oh, you wouldn’t believe the size!
That the cows gave nothing but cream, and that Thomasina skimmed butter off it as less lucky folk skim cream from milk.
That her cheeses were as rich as butter.
That she sold all she made, for Lob took the fairy butter from the old trees in the avenue, and made it up into pats for Miss Betty’s table.
That if you bought Lingborough turnips, you might feed your cows on them all the winter and the milk would be as sweet as new-mown hay.
That horses foddered on Lingborough hay would have thrice the strength of others, and that sheep who cropped Lingborough pastures would grow three times as fat.
That for as good a watch-dog as it was the sheep dog never barked at Lob, a plain proof that he was more than human.
That for all its good luck it was not safe to loiter near the place after dark, if you wished to keep your senses. And if you took so much as a fallen apple belonging to Miss Betty, you might look out for palsy or St. Vitus’s dance, or to be carried off bodily to the underground folk.
Finally, that it was well that all the cows gave double, for that Lob Lie-by-the-fire drank two gallons of the best cream every day, with curds, porridge, and other dainties to match. But what did that matter, when he had been overheard to swear that luck should not leave Lingborough till Miss Betty owned half the country side?
Miss Bettyand Miss Kitty having accepted a polite invitation from Mrs. General Dunmaw, went down to tea with that lady one fine evening in this eventful summer.
Death had made a gap or two in the familiar circle during the last fourteen years, but otherwise it was quite the same except that the lawyer was married and not quite so sarcastic, and that Mrs. Brown Jasey had brought a young niece with her dressed in the latest fashion, which looked quite as odd as new fashions are wont to do, and with acoiffure“enough to frighten the French away,” as her aunt told her.
It was while this young lady was getting more noise out of Mrs. Dunmaw’s red silk and rosewood piano than had been shaken out of it during the last thirty years, that the lawyer brought his cup of coffee to Miss Betty’s side, and said, suavely, “I hear wonderful accounts of Lingborough, dear Miss Betty.”
“I am thankful to say, sir, that the farm is doing well this year. I am very thankful, for the past few years have been unfavorable, and we had begun to face the fact that it might be necessary to sell the old place. And, I will not deny, sir, that it would have gone far to break my heart, to say nothing of my sister Kitty’s.”
“Oh, we shouldn’t have let it come to that,” said the lawyer, “I could have raised a loan——”
“Sir,” said Miss Betty, with dignity; “If we have our own pride, I hope it’s an honest one. Lingborough will have passed out of our family when it’s kept up on borrowed money.”
“Icouldlive in lodgings,” added Miss Betty, firmly, “little as I’ve been accustomed to it, butnot in debt.”
“Well, well, my dear madam, we needn’t talk about it now. But I’m dying of curiosity as to the mainstay of all this good luck.”
“The turnips—” began Miss Betty.
“Bless my soul, Miss Betty!” cried the lawyer, “I’m not talking turnips. I’m talking of Lob Lie-by-the-fire, as all the country side is for that matter.”
“The country people have plenty of tales of him,” said Miss Betty, with some pride in the family goblin. “He used to haunt the old barns, they say, in my great-grandfather’s time.”
“And now you’ve got him back again,” said the lawyer.
“Not that I know of,” said Miss Betty.
On which the lawyer poured into her astonished ear all the latest news on the subject, and if it had lost nothing before reaching his house in the town, it rather gained in marvels as he repeated it to Miss Betty.
No wonder that the little lady was anxious to get home to question Thomasina, and that somewhat before the usual hour she said.—
“Sister Kitty, if it’s not too soon for the servant——”
And the parson, threading his way to where Mrs. Dunmaw’s china crape shawl (dyed crimson) shone in the bow window, said, “The clergy should keep respectable hours; especially when they are as old as I am. Will you allow me to thank you for a very pleasant evening, and to say good-night?”
“Doyou think there’d be any harm in leaving it alone, sister Betty?” asked Miss Kitty, tremulously.
They had reached Lingborough, and the parson had come in with them, by Miss Betty’s request, and Thomasina had been duly examined:
“Eh, Miss Betty, why should ye chase away good luck with the minister?” cried she.
“Sister Kitty! Thomasina!” said Miss Betty. “I would not accept good luck from a doubtful quarter to save Lingborough. But if It can face this excellent clergyman, the Being who haunted my great-grandfather’s farm is still welcome to the old barns, and you, Thomasina, need not grudge It cream or curds.”
“You’re quite right, sister Betty,” said Miss Kitty, “you always are; but oh dear, oh dear!”—
“Thomasina tells me,” said Miss Betty, turning to the parson, “that on chilly evenings It sometimes comes and lies by the kitchen fire after they have gone to bed, and I can distinctly remember my grandmother mentioning the same thing. Thomasina has of late left the kitchen door on the latch for Its convenience, as they had to sit up late for us, she and Annie have taken their work into the still-room to leave the kitchen free for Lob Lie-by-the-fire. They have not looked into the kitchen this evening, as such beings do not like to be watched. But they fancy that they heard It come in. I trust, sir, that neither in myself nor my sister Kitty does timidity exceed a proper feminine sensibility, where duty is concerned. If you will be good enough to precede us, we will go to meet the old friend of my great-grandfather’s fortunes, and we leave it entirely to your valuable discretion to pursue what course you think proper on the occasion.”
“Is this the door?” said the parson, cheerfully, after knocking his head against black beams and just saving his legs down shallow and unexpected steps on his way to the kitchen—beams so unfelt and steps so familiar to the women that it had never struck them that the long passage was not the most straightforward walk a man could take—“I think you said It generally lies on the hearth?”
The happy thought struck Thomasina that the parson might be frightened out of his unlucky interference.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said she from behind. “We’ve heard him rolling by the fire, and growling like thunder to himself. They say he’s an awful size, too, with the strength of four men, and a long tail, and eyes like coals of fire.”
But Thomasina spoke in vain, for the parson opened the door, and as they pressed in, the moonlight streaming through the lattice window showed Lob lying by the fire.
“There’s his tail! Ay——k!” screeched Annie the lass, and away she went, without drawing breath, to the top garret, where she locked and bolted herself in, and sat her bandbox flat, screaming for help.
But it was the plumy tail of the sheep dog, who was lying there with the Lubber-fiend. And Lob was asleep, with his arms round the sheep dog’s neck, and the sheep dog’s head lay on his breast, and his own head touched the dog’s.
And it was a smaller head than the parson had been led to expect, and it had thick black hair.
As the parson bent over the hearth, Thomasina took Miss Kitty round the waist, and Miss Betty clutched her black velvet bag till the steel beads ran into her hands, and they were quite prepared for an explosion, and sulphur, and blue lights, and thunder.
And then the parson’s deep round voice broke the silence, saying,—
“Is that you, lad? God bless you, John Broom. You’re welcome home!”
Somethings—such as gossip—gain in the telling, but there are others before which words fail, though each heart knows its own power of sympathy. And such was the joy of the little ladies and of Thomasina at John Broom’s return.
The sheep dog had his satisfaction out long ago, and had kept it to himself, but how Pretty Cocky crowed, and chuckled, and danced, and bowed his crest, and covered his face with his amber wings, and kicked his seed-pot over, and spilt his water-pot on to the Derbyshire marble chess-table, and screamed till the room rang again, and went on screaming, with Miss Kitty’s pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe.
The desire to atone for the past which had led John Broom to act the part of one of those Good-Fellows who have, we must fear, finally deserted us, will be easily understood. And to a nature of his type, the earning of some self-respect, and of a new character before others, was perhaps a necessary prelude to future well-doing.
He did do well. He became “a good scholar,” as farmers were then. He spent as much of his passionate energies on the farm as the farm would absorb, and he restrained the rest. It is not cockatoos only who have sometimes to live and be happy in this unfinished life with one wing clipped.
In fine weather, when the perch was put into the garden, Miss Betty was sometimes startled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head lovingly laid against Cocky’s white and yellow poll, talking in a low voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and, as Miss Betty justly feared, of that “other side of the world,” which they both knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.
Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long intervals) his “restless times,” when his good “missis” would bring out a little store laid by in one of the children’s socks, and would bid him “Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air,” but on condition that the sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his absence with that confidence in her knowledge of “the master,” which is so mysterious to the unmarried, and which Miss Betty looked upon as “want of feeling” to the end. She always dreaded that he would not return, and a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make bargains for foreign articles ofvertuwith the sailors, is responsible for many of the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlor.
“The sock’ll bring him home,” said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and never could say what he had been doing. Nor was the account given by Thomasina’s cousin, who was a tide-waiter down yonder, particularly satisfying to the women’s curiosity. He said that John Broom was always about; that he went aboard of all the craft in the bay, and asked whence they came and whither they were bound. That, being once taunted to it, he went up the rigging of a big vessel like a cat, and came down it looking like a fool. That, as a rule, he gossipped and shared his tobacco with sailors and fishermen, and brought out the sock much oftener than was prudent for the benefit of the ragged boys who haunt the quay.
He had two other weaknesses, which a faithful biographer must chronicle.
A regiment on the march would draw him from the ploughtail itself, and “With daddy to see the soldiers” was held to excuse any of Mrs. Broom’s children from household duties.
The other shall be described in the graphic language of that acute observer the farm-bailiff.
“If there cam’ an Irish beggar, wi’ a stripy cloot roond him and a bellows under’s arm, and ca’d himself a Hielander, the lad wad gi’e him his silly head off his shoulders.”
As to the farm-bailiff, perhaps no one felt more or said less than he did on John Broom’s return. But the tones of his voice had tender associations for the boy’s ears as he took off his speckled hat, and after contemplating the inside for some moments, put it on again, and said,—
“Aweel, lad, sae ye’ve cam hame?”
But he listened with quivering face when John Broom told the story of McAlister, and when it was ended he rose and went out, and “took the pledge” against drink, and—kept it.
Moved by similar enthusiasm, the cowherd took the pledge also, and if he didn’t keep it, he certainly drank less, chiefly owing to the vigilant oversight of the farm-bailiff, who now exercised his natural severity almost exclusively in the denunciation of all liquors whatsoever, from the cowherd’s whisky to Thomasina’s elder-flower wine.
The plain cousin left his money to the little old ladies, and Lingborough continued to flourish.
Partly perhaps because of this, it is doubtful if John Broom was ever looked upon by the rustics as quite “like other folk.”
The favorite version of his history is that he was Lob under the guise of a child; that he was driven away by new clothes; that he returned from unwillingness to see an old family go to ruin “which he had served for hundreds of years;” that the parson preached his last Sunday’s sermon at him; and that having stood that test, he took his place among Christian people.
Whether a name invented off-hand, however plain and sensible, does not stick to a man as his father’s does, is a question. But John Broom was not often called by his.
With Scotch caution, the farm-bailiff seldom exceeded the safe title of “Man!” and the parson was apt to address him as “My dear boy” when he had certainly outgrown the designation.
Miss Betty called him John Broom, but the people called him by the name that he had earned.
And long after his black hair lay white and thick on his head, like snow on the old barn roof, and when his dark eyes were dim in an honored old age, the village children would point him out to each other, crying, “There goes Lob Lie-by-the-fire, the Luck of Lingborough!”