Theold folk can’t go on living always. The King’s messenger had called at Wyvern, and the old Squire must needs get up and go.
Sickness was a cross he had never been used to bear, and now that it was laid on his old shoulders he knew that he could not keep his feet very long.
He had the Wyvern lawyer, who did the business of the estate, up to his room, and the parson and his own son, Harry Fairfield. He made the attorney read the will, which he had told him to bring up with him, and the Squire listened as it was read slowly.
After the clergyman had gone—
“Have ye ought to say to that, son Harry?” said the old Squire.
“’Tis an old will, father,” said Harry.
“It ain’t,” said the Squire.
“Eight years less two months,” said the lawyer.
“About the age rum’s fit to drink,” said the old Squire. “What say ye to it—now’s your time, son?”
“Priests, women, and poultry, they say, has never enough. There’s bin changes since, and I don’t see why Wyvern should be charged so heavy.”
“There’s three hundred a year to Alice, that’s what ye mean!” said the old Squire.
His son was silent.
“Well, I don’t owe her nothin’, that’s true, but I’ll let it stand, mind. And Harry, lad, the day ye do a good thing there will be seven new moons.”
“What was parson a whisperin’ about in the window wi’ ye?” he asked of the attorney after a time.
“Some claim upon the vicarage which he thought you said you meant to remit by will.”
“I ’a thought upon it, and I won’t.Paternosterbuilt churches, and Our Father pulled ’em down. There’s o’er many parsons for the churches, and o’er many churches for the people—tell him I won’t.”
“What the devil made you talk about that to him?” said Harry, with a dark look, when he and the attorney had got out of the room.
“My dear sir,” said the lawyer, “we must be true to our clients, and beside, don’t you remember the clergyman said he’d be here to-morrow at one to administer the Lord’s Supper, and he’ll be certain to speak of it then to our client.”
At nightfall the Squire grew worse, and his head wandered.
“Tell that white-faced Vicar Maybell, there’s never a one but the thankless in hell—I’ll not sit under none o’ his sermons—Ay, he frowns at that.”
“Hey, dear?” whispered the housekeeper, gazing at him from the hearth where they were sitting.
“And who does he mean, ma’am?” asked the nurse.
“God knows—old times, I suppose,” she answered.
“There’s a glass broke, Tom, who’s kicking up the row?” mumbled the Squire,—“Play, women, and wine undoes men, laughin’—Ay, light it, I’m very dark—Who’s he, ye fool?—Joan and my lady’s all one in the dark.”
“That’s Tom Ward he’s thinkin’ on?” said the nurse.
“Ay, he liked Tom ever. He wouldn’t think ’twas Wyvern without Tom,” answered the housekeeper.
In a little time he said more distinctly and sternly—
“The dead should do nothing.—So that’s the bishop.—Ay—ay—The devil, mind ye, isn’t always at one door.—If there was a good man here he’d put a clout over that face—Ye’ll never do it.”
Then it would sink into mumbling, and then again grow more distinct.
At last the morning came, and the Squire so many hours nearer death, was, nevertheless, now like himself.
In due course the clergyman arrived, and the housekeeper, and serious Jim Hopper of the mill, close by, attended to make up a little congregation with whom the dying Squire was to receive that most “comfortable” Sacrament, before setting out on his long journey.
“You’re distinctly a Church of England man?” inquired the clergyman gently.
“Ay, what do you take me for?”
“I make it a rule, dear sir, to inquire. I have once or twice found Presbyterians and other Dissenters among the attendants at my church at Nottingham before I came here, and I am happy to hear so clear an answer to my inquiry,” said the clergyman with a gracious solemnity.
“The crow thinks her own bird fairest—go on,” said Squire Harry.
After these rites were over, the Squire needed rest.
Then, after an hour or so, he called for Tom Ward.
“Well, Tom, we a’ lived a long while together—here in Wyvern—you and me, and ‘be the day never so long, at last cometh even’-song,’ as they say, and now the doctor thinks my time be come, and I sent for ye to shake hands, Tom, and bid ye good-bye.”
Tom was drying his eyes hastily, and his old face was more puckered than ever.
“Yer honour was always kind to me——”
“Come, Tom, ye mustn’t be cryin’, man. Penny in pocket’s a merry companion, and I wrote ye down for somethin’ in my will, and ye a’ brewed me many a tankard, Tom—ye’ll never brew me another—and I wouldn’t go without a word and a shake by the hand.”
When this was over, the nurse signed to Tom to go.
I wonder how the grim old man, with near a week’s white stubble on his chin, felt as he saw Tom Ward glide away softly, with tears on his rugged cheeks. For Tom, it was the breaking up and foundering of old Wyvern in the deep. He was too old to live in the new Wyvern that was coming, mayhap.
“I’ll never get the old days out o’ my head, nor ever like the new, and ’twon’t be long, I’m thinkin’, before I follow him down the ash-tree road to Wyvern churchyard.”
And so for the old Squire it came, the last day of light, and the first of death.
It was a stately funeral in the old-fashioned way. All the good old houses of the county were represented there. The neighbours, great and small, mustered; the shops in the town were all shut, and the tenants attended in masses.
This solemn feast and pageant over, the fuss subsided, and Harry entered upon his reign with a gravity becoming his new prerogative and responsibilities.
Sergeant-Major Archdale was an influential, and prosperous, and reserved minister under the newrégime. He had a snug berth at Warhampton, as Harry Fairfield had promised, and from that distant legation he was summoned every now and then to Wyvern, and there conferred with the Squire. I have called him Sergeant-Major, but he was so no longer. He had retired some time before from the militia and was now plain Mr. Archdale.
Inorder to throwing a light upon the nature of some of the duties of Mr. Archdale, we must convey the reader in spirit, to some little distance.
In the sequestered country, about twelve miles south of Twyford, in a pretty nook formed by a wooded hollow close by the old by-road to Warhampton, stands an antique cottage, with a loft and two little windows peeping through the very steep thatched roof and high narrow gable—gable and wall alike streaked and crossed with those black oak beams which formed the cage into whose interstices our ancestors built their brick and plaster. The steep roof runs out over a little porch which has a bench in one side of it. Another stone bench stands under the lattice window, the woodwork of which casement, as well as the black spars crossed and morticed in the walls, and even the curved brick chimney, look shrunk and warped by time, by which, too, the hatch at the door is rounded and furrowed, and the stone seat and window stones worn into curves and hollows, and such and so venerable is the air of the structure, with its ivy-bound porch, that one might fancy it the very farmhouse in which Anne Hathaway passed her girlhood.
Here dwelt good Mrs. Marjory Trevellian, some fifty years old and upward, with, I think, the kindest face and pleasantest laugh in that part of the country; a widow of many years; not very happy in her marriage, and quite content with her experience of the wedded state; quiet, cheerful, very industrious; with a little farm of three acres, and a cow; spinning sometimes, knitting at others, and when she could, taking in washing, and in all things approving herself diligent, cheerful, and honest.
With this kind, cheery, honest dame lived a little boy, the son of a Mr. Henry—that was all she knew distinctly about his people. She called him her Fairy, and her Prince, and when curious people questioned her closely, she said that his father was a merchant, “unfortunate in business,” as the phrase is; that he was living perhaps in concealment, and in distressed circumstances, or possibly was dead. All she could say for certain was, that she received a very small allowance for maintaining him, which was paid punctually every three months in advance, and that as to the name of the boy, his Christian name was William and his surname Henry, and that she called him her “Prince” or her “Fairy,” and he called her “Granny.”
She idolised this pretty boy, and he loved her with the tenderness which a child bestows upon a loving nurse, something more than filial.
The boy remembers no other home but this, and no other friend but “Granny.” He was now a little past eleven. His life had been solitary, but cheerful. Was there not the pond only thirty yards away from their door-step, in which he sailed his fleet of ships, made of corks, which old Peter Durdon gave him? He was a cousin of Marjory Trevellian’s, and lived in the village two miles away. He used to call every Sunday and to bring these corks in his pocket, and a bit of such lead as tea is wrapped in to make the keels of their navy. He was dressed in a blue “swallow-tailed” coat with brass buttons; his drab trousers were very short; his stockings faded sky-blue; and his shoes clumsy and clouted, and highly polished. He wore a chestnut wig of a long and lank cut, and his forehead slanted back very much, and his nose came forward, and a perpetual smile expanded his cheeks, which were as red and smooth as a ripe apple. His countenance was not wise, though very good-natured—rather silly, I’m afraid—and I think he took more interest in this sort of shipping than was quite compatible with strength of mind.
As these ships glided with thin paper sails across the pond, while Master Henry watched them in grave absorption, Peter’s raptures expressed themselves in continuous peals of laughter.
These were great occasions in the solitary life of Fairy.
There were a set of big box-wood ninepins—skittles, I suppose, with balls—battered and discoloured—I never knew how they got into the cottage, but they looked a hundred years old if a day. Many a game with these on the smooth patch of sward at the other side of the pond had pleasant old Marjory with her darling.
In its seclusion its life was monastic, but not in its liberty. The boy was, on the whole, very happy.
Looking on honest Marjory as mistress of all she surveyed, it never struck him, that in the points in which her dietary differed from his she was practising a compulsory economy. The article of meat was not often found in her bill of fare. But conscientiously she placed the little fellow’s bit of broiled meat before him every day, and told him when he inquired why she had none for herself that she did not like it, and that it did not agree with her, which he accepted as undoubted truths, and wondered and regretted secretly.
On winter evenings their tea was very cosy. A wheaten cake baked on the griddle, a new-laid egg each, and a cup of tea from the many-coloured delf teapot—a good deal burnt on the side next the fire. With the door barred and the window carefully closed, the fire burning cheerfully, and their candle lighting the party—who so happy? And was there not the old Robinson Crusoe, with binding black with age, and a frontispiece showing the hero with his grave countenance and beard, his tall cap and goat-skin dress, his musket over one shoulder and his umbrella over the other, and recounting his marvellous life in the quaint old type of Queen Anne? And was there not that other literary treasure, the old folio volume of Captain Cook’s, Commodore Anson’s, and other seafaring worthies’ voyages round or up and down the world, with no end of careful old copperplates, showing Pacific islands, curious volcanoes, flotillas of armed canoes, thick-lipped miscreants with rings in their noses and birds’ tails enlivening their foreheads, and long processions of official people, priests, &c., with a small white pocket-handkerchief each by way of dress? But better far than these, which together with her Bible and Prayer-Book, constituted Marjory’s library, was that good creature’s inexhaustible collection of fairy tales, received traditionally and recountedvivâ voce, and prefaced with the rhyme which even at this distance recalls me to the nursery fireside with the far-off tones of a kindly voice that I shall hear no more.
“Once upon a time there was a king and a queen,As many have been,But few I have seen,Except in pictures!”
“Once upon a time there was a king and a queen,As many have been,But few I have seen,Except in pictures!”
“Once upon a time there was a king and a queen,
As many have been,
But few I have seen,
Except in pictures!”
And starting with this little trumpeting and summons to attention—the “oyes-oyes-oyes” and immutable prelude of an ever-varying sequel, good Marjory, the herald of ever new wonders, would tell her tale of dwarfs and castles, of godmother fairies, and malignant enchantresses, broken-hearted princes and persecuted princesses, and enchanted palaces and awful forests, till the hour came for the little fellow to get to his bed and enter the no less wonderful land of dreams.
Another person who contributed to the regular entertainment of the boy was Tom Orange.
Tom Orange called at the cottage sometimes at intervals of three months, sometimes, for perhaps half a year, on the first of every month, and was always made welcome by Marjory Trevellian, and feasted with rashers and whatever else her humble larder afforded, and on going had established a mysterious right to a shilling “tip,” which he always made it a point should be an honourable secret among them.
What might be the nature of his business the little boy neither knew nor cared, but Tom Orange was in the boy’s eyes the ideal and epitome of all that was enchanting, brilliant, and exhilarating.
Tom was somewhat long and lean, with a face also long and always smiling, except when it was making a grimace, an art in which he excelled almost every other blackguard I have heard of. His clothes and hat were seedy, and, for so merry a person, he was wonderfully poor.
Tom Orange’s accomplishments were infinite, he could dance a hornpipe with all the well-known airs and graces of a sailor; he could protrude his mouth till it assumed a shape quite unknown to physiognomists, and with a delicate finger, turning his eyelids inside out, make the pupils of those organs quiver strangely, while he uttered a sound like the call of a jackdaw. He could sing a variety of comic songs, with refrains delivered with a volubility which distanced admiration, and made his very audience breathless, and some of these were relieved with occasional dialogue of matchless character and humour. He could swallow any number of pennies you pleased, and take them all out at different angles of his body; he could put several potatoes under his hat, and withdraw them all without touching either the hat or the potatoes. He could keep three balls always in the air together, and he could balance two chairs upon his chin.
In short, as I have said, his accomplishments were innumerable and extraordinary, and the only wonder was how so universal a genius could possibly possess so few shillings and so many seedy articles of dress.
Tom Orange, too, was great at skittles, and gave his pupil wonderful new lights.
He taught him also how to guard, stop, and strike according to the principles of “the noble art of self-defence.” In fact, it would have been difficult to discover a more fascinating companion and instructor of youth. Possibly it was as well, however, that his visits were so far between, and as brief as fortune ordained them to be. It was no wonder, however, that these visits were looked for by the boy, as the return of the life and excitement of an annual fair might have been by the ingenuous youth of some other rural district.
There was but one point on which Marjory was obliged to impose a prohibition upon the child. It seemed a trifle, but in reality was a gigantic privation.
“No, darling, you mustn’t talk to any other boys, nor play with them, nor go near them; if you do you’ll be took away by your friends, and I’ll never see you again; and what will poor Granny do then without her darling?”
And Granny’s eyes filled with tears, and the boy cried and hugged her passionately, and this little agony gave place to wild affection and a glow of unspeakable delight and happiness, and was celebrated by a hot cake that evening, and new-laid eggs and a great tea, and stories to no end.
And she found her darling that night crying in his sleep, and was sure he was dreaming of leaving the old cottage, and she wakened him with kisses, herself crying.
So these two persons, notwithstanding some disparity of years, were wonderfully happy in one another’s society and if they had each their will, would have fixed things as they were, and neither grown older nor younger, but just gone on living so for ever.
Marjory Trevellianwas what is accounted among her class “a good scholar,” and she had taught the little boy to read and write, to “say his tables,” and to “cypher,” as she termed the initiatory arithmetical exercises.
It was plain, however, that the boy was not abandoned to chance, but that an eye was upon him, and some friendly, if not conscientious direction, controlling his destiny.
In one of his visits Tom Orange handed her a letter, written in the same neat clerk’s hand in which the short memorandum that accompanied each remittance was penned. Having read the letter she was thoughtful.
When Tom had gone away, she said—
“You are to be taught like a gentleman, as you are, my darling, and you’re not to be sent to school for three or four years, and in the meantime Mr. Wharton—he’s a kind, good gentleman—is to teach you for two hours every evening after the school is over. You know his house. It is about a mile away from this; just half-way on the road to the grammar school.”
“But I’m to live at home, Granny, all the same?” inquired the boy in great trepidation.
“Lord love it, to be sure he is,” she answered, beaming on him with great affection. “Only two hours, and every one likes Mr. Wharton, and I’m desired to go to his house to take his orders, to-morrow.”
So she did, and the new order of things was established with very little disturbance of the old.
The narrow road which the boy every afternoon passed to and from Doctor Wharton’s house makes, about half-way, a sudden curve. It is a wooded road, not without little ups and downs, and formidable ruts, and blocks of worn old stone, so large as to shock all the rules of modern road-making.
Upon this curve, so as nearly to front the boy’s line of march, is a very old fruit garden, with a discoloured ivy-grown wall, on which are growing moss and house-leek, and here and there tufts of grass and wall-flower. Over the wall are seen ancient standard plum and cherry and pear-trees, and beyond them the upper windows, and the steep, grey roof, and slender chimneys of a house as much out of date as the garden.
In the garden-wall is a tall door with worn fluted pilasters corresponding in antiquity with the rest of the building and its belongings. This stone framework has an iron door, old-fashioned and fancifully wrought into arabesques of spikes, leaves, and stars, facing the quiet road, and within this a strong wooden door.
Fruit-trees are, of course, always interesting to boys, but quite another interest mingled in the feeling with which little Willie viewed such glimpses of the old grey house and its background of dark and towering timber as his approach afforded, and he often wished, as he passed, that a hole in the wall might afford him a peep into the old garden and a glimpse of its owners. He sometimes heard their voices.
A clear, childish laugh he had heard more than once, from among the tall fruit-trees and climbing roses that over-topped the wall, and a sweet female voice also faintly prattling with the child.
One evening, as he returned from Doctor Wharton’s, with his books buckled in his strap swinging from his hand, having slackened his pace as usual when he found himself under the garden wall, to his infinite delight the inner wooden door, which had always obstructed his curiosity, was open. The outer gate of iron rails and foliage was locked, but through its bars he could see at last the garden. Its trees were old and overgrown. It was wonderfully dark, with roses and other flowers glowing here and there, and one straight walk leading up to the house, and continuing the line of the narrow bridge which, at the iron door, crossed what seemed a sort of moat, whose banks were overgrown with docks and nettles. He could see part of the steps leading up to the door of the house, and a portion of one of its windows. The rest was concealed by the thick foliage, and the effect of this little glimpse was increased by the deep shadow of the foreground.
It was not very far from sunset, and the small birds were already singing among the boughs, and the deep shadow—the antique and neglected air and the silence of the place—gave it, in his romantic eyes, a character of monastic mystery and enchantment.
As he gazed straight up the dark walk towards the house, suddenly a man turned the corner of the yew hedge that met the bridge’s parapet close to him, and walking straight up to the door, with a gruff look at the little boy, shut and locked the wooden door in his face.
So all was gone for the present. He knew there was no good in looking through the key-hole, for envious fortune had hung a spray of sweetbriar so as effectually to intercept the view, and nothing remained but the dingy chocolate-coloured planks before him, and the foliage and roses trembling over the old wall.
Many a time again he passed and re-passed the door without a like good hap.
At length, however, one evening he found the envious wooden door once more open, and the view again disclosed through the iron bars.
A very pretty little girl, with golden hair, was standing on tip-toe near, and with all her soul was striving to reach an apple with a stick which she held in her tiny fingers.
Seeing him she fixed her large eyes on him, and said, with an air of command—
“Come, and climb up the tree and get me that apple.”
His heart beat quick—there was nothing he liked better.
“But I can’t get in,” he said, blushing; “the door is locked.”
“Oh! I’ll call mamma—she’ll let you in. Don’t you know mamma?”
“No, I never saw her,” answered the boy.
“Wait there, and I’ll fetch her.”
And so she was gone.
The first flutter of his excitement was hardly over when he heard steps and voices near, and the little girl returned, holding the hand of a slight, pale lady, with a very pretty face, dressed all in black. She had the key in her hand, and smiled gently on the little boy as she approached. Her face was kind, and at once he trusted her.
“Oh! he has left the inner door open again,” she said, and with a little nod and smile of welcome she opened the door, and the boy entered the garden.
Both doors were now shut.
“Look up, little boy,” said the lady in black, with a very sweet voice.
She liked his face. He was a very handsome little fellow, and with an expression earnest, shy, and bright, and the indescribable character of refinement too in his face. She smiled more kindly still, and placing just the tip of her finger under his chin she said—
“You are a gentleman’s son, and you are nicely dressed. What is your name?”
“My papa’s name is Mr. Henry,” he answered.
“And where do you go to school?”
“I don’t go to school. I say lessons to Mr. Wharton—about half a mile from this.”
“It is great fun, I suppose, playing with the little boys—cricket, and all that?”
“I’m not allowed to play with the little boys.”
“Who forbids you?”
“My friends won’t allow me.”
“Who are your friends?”
“I never saw them.”
“Really! and don’t you live with your papa?”
“No, I live with Marjory.”
“Do you mean with your mamma?”
“Oh, no. She died a long time ago.”
“And is your papa rich—why aren’t you with him?”
“He was rich, Granny says, but he grew poor.”
“And where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I’m to go to school,” he said, acquiring confidence the more he looked in that sweet face. “My friends will send me, in three years, Granny says.”
“You are a very nice little boy, and I’m sure a good little fellow. We’ll have tea in a few minutes—you must stay and drink tea with us.”
The little fellow held his straw hat in his hand, and was looking up in the face of the lady, whose slender fingers were laid almost caressingly on his rich brown hair as she looked down smiling, with eyes in which “the water stood.” Perhaps these forlorn childhoods had a peculiar interest for her.
“And it is very polite of you taking off your hat to a lady, but put it on again, for I’m not a bit better than you; and I’ll go and tell them to get tea now. Dulcibella,” she called. “Dulcibella, this little friend is coming to drink tea with us, and Amy and he will play here till it comes, and don’t mind getting up, sit quiet and rest yourself.”
And she signed with her hand, smiling, to repress her attempt to rise.
“Well, darling, play in sight o’ me, till your mamma comes back,” said the rheumatic old woman, addressing the little girl; “and ye mustn’t be pulling at that great rolling-stone; ye can’t move it, and ye may break your pretty back trying.”
With these and similar injunctions the children were abandoned to their play.
He found this pretty young lady imperious, but it was pleasant to be so commanded, and the little boy climbed trees to gather her favourite apples, and climbed the garden wall to pluck a bit of wallflower, and at last she said—
“Now, we’ll play ninepins. There’s the box, set them up on the walk. Yes, that’s right; youhaveplayed; who taught you?”
“Granny.”
“Has Granny ninepins?”
“Yes, ever so much bigger than these.”
“Really! So Granny is rich, then?”
“I think so.”
“As rich as mamma?”
“Her garden isn’t so big.”
“Begin, doyou; ah, ha! you’ve hit one, and who plays best?”
“Tom Orange does; does your mamma know Tom Orange?”
“I dare say she does. Dulcibella, does mamma know Tom Orange?”
“No, my dear.”
“No, she doesn’t,” echoed the little girl, “who is he?”
What, not know Tom Orange! How could that be? So he narrated on that brilliant theme.
“Tom Orange must come to tea with mamma, I’ll tell her to ask him,” decided the young lady.
So these little wiseacres pursued their game, and then had their tea, and in about an hour the little boy found himself trudging home, with a sudden misgiving, for the first time, as to the propriety of his having made these acquaintances without Granny’s leave.
The kind voice, the beloved smile of Granny received him before the cottage door.
“Welcome, darlin’, and where was my darlin’, and what kept him from his old Granny?”
So they hugged and kissed, and then he related all that had happened, and asked “was it any harm, Granny?”
“Not a bit, darlin’, that’s a good lady, and a grand lady, and a fit companion for ye, and see how she knew the gentle blood in your pretty face; and yemaygo, as she has asked you, to-morrow evening again, and as often as she asks ye; for it was only the little fellows that’s going about without edication or manners, that your friends, and who can blame them, doesn’t like ye to keep company with—and who’d blame them, seeing they’re seldom out of mischief, and that’s the beginning o’ wickedness, and you’re going, but oh! darlin’, not for three long years, thank God, to a grand school where there’s none but the best.”
So this chance acquaintance grew, and the lady seemed to take every week a deeper interest in the fine little boy, so sensitive, generous, and intelligent, and he very often drank tea with his new friends.
I amgoing now to describe the occurrences of a particular evening on which my young friend drank tea at Stanlake Farm, which was the name of the house with the old garden to which I have introduced the reader.
A light shower had driven the party in from the garden, and so the boy and Amy were at their ninepins in the great hall, when, the door being open, a gentleman rode up and dismounted, placing the bridle in the hand of a groom who accompanied him.
A tall man he was, with whiskers and hair dashed with white, and a slight stoop. He strode into the hall, his hat on, and a whip still in his hand.
“Hollo! So there you are—and how is your ladyship?” said he. “Skittles, by the law! Brayvo! Two down, by Jove! I’d rather that young man took you in hand than I. And tell me—where’s Ally?”
“Mamma’s in the drawing-room,” said the young lady, scarcely regarding his presence. “Now play, it’s your turn,” she said, addressing her companion.
The new arrival looked at the boy and paused till he threw the ball.
“That’s devilish good too,” said the stranger—“very near the nine. Eh? But a miss is as good as a mile; and I don’t think he’s quite as good as you—and she’s in the drawing-room; which is the drawing-room?”
“Don’t you know the drawing-room! Well,thereit is,” and the young lady indicated it with her finger. “My turn now.”
And while the game was pursued in the hall, the visitor pushed open the drawing-room door and entered.
“And how is Miss Ally?”
“Oh, Harry! Really!”
“Myself as large as life. You don’t look half pleased, Ally. But I have nout but good news for you to-day. You’re something richer this week than you were last.”
“What is it, Harry? Tell me what you mean?”
“So I will. You know that charge on Carwell—a hundred and forty pounds a year—well, that’s dropped in. That old witch is dead—ye might ’a seen it in the newspaper, if you take in one—Bertha Velderkaust. No love lost between ye. Eh?”
“Oh, Harry! Harry!don’t,” said poor Alice, pale, and looking intensely pained.
“Well, Iwon’tthen; I didn’t think ’twould vex you. Only you know what a head devil that was—and she’s dead in the old place, Hoxton. I read the inquest in theTimes. She was always drinkin’. I think she was a bit mad. She and the people in the back room were always quarrelling; and the father’s up for that and forgery. But ’twasn’t clear how it came about. Some swore she was out of her mind with drink, and pitched herself out o’ the window; and some thought it might ’a bin that chap as went in to rob her, thinkin’ she was stupid; and so there was a tussle for’t—she was main strong, ye know—and he chucked her out. Anyhow she got it awful, for she fell across the spikes of the area-rails, and she hung on them with three lodged in her side—the mad dog-fox, she was!”
“Oh, Harry! How shocking! Oh! pray don’t!” exclaimed Alice, who looked as if she was going to faint.
“Well, she lay there, without breath enough to screech, twistin’ like a worm—for three hours, it’s thought.”
“Oh! Harry—pray don’t describe it; don’t, I implore. I feel so ill.”
“Well, I won’t, if you say so, only she’s smashed, and cold in her wooden surtout; and her charge is reverted to you, now; and I thought I’d tell ye.”
“Thank you, Harry,” she said, very faintly.
“And when did you come here? I only heard this morning,” asked Harry.
“Five weeks ago.”
“Do you like it; ain’t it plaguy lonesome?”
“I like the quiet—at least for a time,” she answered.
“And I’m thinkin’ o’ gettin’ married—upon my soul I am. What do you think o’ that?”
“Really!”
“Sure as you’re there, but it won’t be none o’ your love-matches.
‘Bring something, lass, along wi’ thee,If thou intend to live wi’ me.’
‘Bring something, lass, along wi’ thee,If thou intend to live wi’ me.’
‘Bring something, lass, along wi’ thee,
If thou intend to live wi’ me.’
That’s my motto. Sweetheart and honey-bird keeps no house, I’ve heard say. I like a body that can look after things, and that would rather fund fifty pounds than spend a hundred.
‘A nice wife and a back doorHath made many a rich man poor,’
‘A nice wife and a back doorHath made many a rich man poor,’
‘A nice wife and a back door
Hath made many a rich man poor,’
as they say; and besides, I’m not a young fellow no longer. I’m pushin’ sixty, and I should be wise. And who’s the little chap that’s playin’ skittles wi’ Amy in the hall?”
“Oh, that’s such a nice little boy. His father’s name is Henry, and his mother has been dead a long time. He lives with a good old woman named Marjory Trevellian. What’s the matter, Harry?”
“Nothing. I beg your pardon. I was thinkin’ o’ something else, and I didn’t hear. Tell me now, and I’ll listen.”
So she repeated her information, and Harry yawned and stretched his arms.
“‘For want o’ company,Welcome trumpery,’
“‘For want o’ company,Welcome trumpery,’
“‘For want o’ company,
Welcome trumpery,’
and I must be goin’ now. I wouldn’t mind drinkin’ a glass o’ sherry, as you’re so pressing, for I’ve had a stiff ride, and dust’s drouthy.”
So Harry, having completed his visit characteristically, took his leave, and mounted his nag and rode away.
LittleMiss Amy had a slight cold, and the next tea-party was put off for a day. On the evening following Harry’s visit at Stanlake Farm, Marjory Trevellian being at that time absent in the village to make some frugal purchases, who should suddenly appear before the little boy’s eyes, as he lifted them from his fleet upon the pond, but his friend, Tom Orange, as usual in high and delightful spirits.
Need I say how welcome Tom was? He asked in a minute or two for Marjory, and took her temporary absence with great good humour. Tom affected chilliness, and indeed the evening was a little sharp, and proposed that they should retire to the cottage, and sit down there.
“How soon do you suppose, youngster, the old hen will come home?”
“Who?”
“Marjory Daw, down the chimney.”
“Oh, Granny?”
This nickname was the only pleasantry of Mr. Orange which did not quite please the boy.
Tom Orange here interpolated his performance of the jackdaw, with his eyelids turned inside out and the pupils quivering, which, although it may possibly have resembled the jackdaw of heraldry, was not an exact portraiture of the bird familiar to us in natural history; and when this was over he asked again—“How soon will she be home?”
“She walked down to the town, and I think she can’t be more than about half-way back again.”
“That’s a mile, and three miles an hour is the best of her paces if she was runnin’ for a pound o’ sausages and a new cap. Heigh ho! and alas and alack-a-day. No one at home but the maid, and the maid’s gone to church! I wrote her a letter the day before yesterday, and I must read it again before she comes back. Where does she keep her letters?”
“In her work-box on the shelf.”
“This will be it, the wery identical fiddle!” said Tom Orange, playfully, setting it down upon the little deal table, and, opening it, he took out the little sheaf of letters from the end, and took them one by one to the window, where he took the liberty of reading them.
I think he was disappointed, for he pitched them back again into their nook in the little trunk-shaped box contemptuously.
The boy regarded Tom Orange as a friend of the family so confidential, and as a man in all respects so admirable and virtuous, that nothing appeared more desirable and natural than that excellent person’s giving his attention to the domestic correspondence.
He popped the box back again in its berth. Then he treated the young gentleman to Lingo’s song with the rag-tag-merry-derry perrywig and hat-band, &c., and at the conclusion of the performance admitted that he was “dry,” and with a pleasant wink, and the tip of his finger pushing the end of his nose a good deal to the left, he asked him whether he could tell him where Mrs. Trevellian, who would be deeply grieved if she thought that Tom was detained for a drink till her return, kept her liquor.
“Yes, I can show you,” said the boy.
“Wait a minute, my guide, my comforter, and friend,” said Tom Orange; and he ascertained from the door-stone that no one was inconveniently near.
The boy was getting a tea-cup off the shelf.
“Never mind sugar, my hero, I’ll sweeten it with a thought of Marjory Daw.”
The boy explained, and led him into the dark nook by the hall door. Tom Orange, well pleased, moved almost on tiptoe, and looked curiously and spoke under his breath, as he groped in this twilight.
“Here it is,” said the boy, frankly.
“Where?”
“Here.”
“This!” said Tom, for his friend had uncovered a crock of water.
Tom Orange glared at him and at the water with grotesque surprise, and thebona fidesof the boy and the simplicity of the situation struck Tom comically, and, exploding good-humouredly, he sat down in Marjory’s chair and laughed hilariously.
Having satisfied himself by a confidential dialogue that Marjory Daw had no private bottle of comfort anywhere, this agreeable fellow so far forgot his thirst, that he did not mind drawing water from the crock, and talked on a variety of subjects to the young gentleman. In the course of this conversation he asked him two topographical questions. One was—
“Did you ever hear of a place called Carwell Grange?”
And the other resembled it.
“Did you ever hear of a place called Wyvern?”
“No.”
“Think, lad. Did you never hear Mrs. Trevellian speak of Wyvern? Or of Carwell Grange?”
“No.”
“Because there is the tallest mushroom you ever saw in your life growing there, and it is grown to that degree that it blocks the door so that the Squire can’t get into his own house, and the mushroom is counted one of the wonders of the world upon my little word of honour as a gentleman! And
‘Since there’s neither drink nor victuals,Suppose, my lord, we play at skittles?’
‘Since there’s neither drink nor victuals,Suppose, my lord, we play at skittles?’
‘Since there’s neither drink nor victuals,
Suppose, my lord, we play at skittles?’
And if she’s not back by the end of the game, tell her I had to go on to the bridge to see lame Bill Withershins, and I’ll be back again this evening, I think, or in the morning at latest.”
The game was played, but Marjory did not appear, and Tom Orange, entertaining his young friend with a ludicrous imitation of Bill Withershins’ knock-knees, took his departure, leaving his delighted companion in the state which Moore describes as being usual—
“When the lamp that lightedThe traveller at first goes out.”
“When the lamp that lightedThe traveller at first goes out.”
“When the lamp that lighted
The traveller at first goes out.”
So, having watched Tom till he was quite out of sight, he returned to his neglected navy on the pond, and delivered his admirable Crichton’s message to Marjory Daw on her return.
Supper-timecame, and Tom Orange did not return. Darkness closed over the old cottage, the poplar trees and the town, and the little boy said his prayers under the superintendence of worthy Marjory, and went to his bed.
He was disturbed in his sleep by voices talking in the room. He could only keep his eyes open for a little time, and he saw Tom Orange talking with mammy. He was at one side of the little table and she at another, and his head was leaning forward so as to approach uncomfortably near to the mutton-fat with a long snuff in the middle. Mammy, as he indiscriminately called “Granny,” was sobbing bitterly into her apron, and sometimes with streaming eyes, speaking so low that he could not hear, to Tom Orange.
Interesting as was the scene, slumber stole him away, and when he next wakened, Tom was gone, and mammy was sitting on the bed, crying as if her heart would break. When he opened his eyes, she said—
“Oh, darlin’! darlin’! My man—my own, own blessed man—my darlin’!” and she hugged him to her heart.
He remembered transports similar when two years ago he was very ill of a fever.
“I’m not sick, mammy, indeed; I’m quite well,” and with these assurances and many caresses, he again fell asleep.
In the morning his Sunday clothes, to his wonder, were prepared for him to put on. The little old faded crimson carpet-bag, which she had always told him, to the no small content of his self-importance, was his own, stood plump and locked on the little table under the clock. His chair was close beside mammy’s. She had all the delicacies he liked best for his breakfast. There was a thin little slice of fried bacon, and a new-laid egg, and a hot cake, and tea—quite a grand breakfast.
Mammy sat beside him very close. Her arm was round him. She was very pale. She tried to smile at his prattle, and her eyes filled up as often as she looked at him, or heard him speak.
Now and then he looked wonderingly in her face, and she tried to smile her old smile and nodded, and swallowed down some tea from her cup.
She made belief of eating her breakfast, but she could not.
When the wondering little man had ended his breakfast, with her old kind hands she drew him towards her.
“Sit down on my lap, my precious—my own man—my beautiful boy—my own angel bright. Oh, darlin’—darlin’—darlin’!” and she hugged the boy to her heart, and sobbed over his shoulder as if her heart was bursting.
He remembered that she cried the same way when the doctor said he was safe and sure to recover.
“Mammy,” he said, kissing her, “Amy has birthdays—and I think this is my birthday—is it?”
“No, darlin’; no, no,” she sobbed, kissing him. “No, my darlin’, no. Oh, no, ’taint that.”
She got up hastily, and brought him his little boots that she had cleaned. The boy put them on, wondering, and she laced them.
With eyes streaming she took up one of the little cork boats, which he kept on the window-stool floating in a wooden bowl.
“You’ll give me one of them, darlin’—to old mammy—for a keepsake.”
“Oh! yes. Choose a good one—the one with the gold paper on the pin; that one sails the best of all.”
“And—and”—she cried bitterly before she could go on—“and this is the little box I’ll put them in,” and she picked them out of the bowl and laid them in a cardboard box, which she quickly tied round. “And this is the last day of poor mammy with her bright only darlin’—for your friends are sending for you to-day, and Mr. Archdale will be here in ten minutes, and you’re to go with him. Oh, my precious—the light o’ the house—and to leave me alone.”
The boy stood up, and with a cry, ran and threw his arms round her, where she stood near the clock.
“Oh! no, no, no. Oh! mammy, you wouldn’t; you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“Oh, darlin’, you’re breaking my heart. What can I do?”
“Don’t let me go. Oh, mammy, don’t. Oh, you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
“But what can I do, darlin’? Oh, darlin’, what can I do?”
“I’ll run away, mammy, I’ll run away; and I’ll come back when they’re gone, and stay with you.”
“Oh, God Almighty!” she cried, “here he’s coming. I see him coming down the hazel road.”
“Hide me, mammy; hide me in the press. Oh, mammy, mammy, you wouldn’t give me to him!”
The boy had got into this large old-painted press, and coiled himself up between two shelves. There was hardly a moment to think; and yielding to the instinct of her desperate affection, and to the child’s wild appeal, she locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.
She sat down. She was half stunned by her own audacity. She scarcely knew what she had done. Before she could recover herself, the door darkened, a hand crossed the hatch and opened it, and ex-Sergeant-Major Archdale entered the cottage.
In curt military fashion he announced himself, and demanded the boy.
She was looking straight in this formidable man’s face, and yet it seemed as if he were vanishing from before her eyes.
“Where’s the boy?” inquired the chill stern voice of the Sergeant.
It seemed to her like lifting a mountain this effort to speak. She felt as if she were freezing as she uttered the denial.
“He aint here.”
“Where is he?” demanded the Sergeant’s imperturbably clear cold voice.
“He’s run away,” she said with an effort, and the Sergeant seemed to vanish quite away, and she thought she was on the point of fainting.
The Sergeant glanced at the breakfast table, and saw that two had taken tea together; he saw the carpet-bag packed.
“H’m?” intimated Archdale, with closed lips. He looked round the cottage room, and the Sergeant sat down wonderfully composed, considering the disconcerting nature of the announcement.
The ex-Sergeant-Major had in his time commanded parties in search of deserters, and he was not a bad slaught-hound of that sort.
“He breakfasted with you?” said he, with a cool nod toward the table.
There was a momentary hesitation, and she cleared her voice and said—
“Yes.”
Archdale rose and placed his fingers on the teapot.
“That’s hot,” said the Sergeant with the same inflexible dignity.
Marjory was awfully uneasy.
“He can’t be far. Which way did he go?”
“Out by the door. I can’t tell.”
The ex-Sergeant-Major might have believed her the goddess of truth itself, or might have thought her the most impudent liar in England. You could not have gathered in the least from his countenance toward which view his conclusions tended.
The Sergeant’s light cold grey eye glided again round the room, and there was another silence awfully trying to our good friend Marjory.
“I think, ma’am, the boy’s in the house. You’d best give him up, for I’ll not go without him. How many rooms have you?”
“Three and a loft, sir.”
The Sergeant stood up.
“I’ll search the house first, ma’am, and if he’s not here I’ll inform the police and have him in the Hue-and-Cry; and if you have had anything to do with the boy’s deserting, or had a hand in making away with him anyhow, I’ll have you in gaol and punished. I must secure the door, and you can leave the house first, if you like best.”
“Very well, sir,” answered she.
But at this moment came a knocking and crying from within the press.
“Oh! no—’twasn’t mammy; ’twas I that did it. Don’t take mammy.”
“You see, ma’am, you give useless trouble. Please open that door—I shall have to force it, otherwise,” he added, as very pale and trembling she hesitated.
Standing as he might before his commanding officer, stiff, with his heels together, with his inflexibly serene face, full before her, he extended his hand, and said simply, “The key, ma’am.”
In all human natures—the wildest and most stubborn—there is a point at which submission follows command, and there was that in the serenity of the ex-Sergeant-Major which went direct to the instinct of obedience.
It was quite idle any longer trying to conceal the boy. With a dreadful ache at her heart she put her hand in her pocket and handed him the key.
As the door opened the little boy shrank to the very back of the recess, from whence he saw the stout form of the Sergeant stooped low, as his blue, smooth fixed countenance peered narrowly into the dark. After a few seconds he seemed to discern the figure of the boy.
“Come, you sir, get out,” said the commanding voice of the visitor, as the cane which he carried in his hand, paid round with wax-end for some three inches at the extremity, began switching his little legs smartly.
“Oh, sir, for the love of God!” cried Marjory, clinging to his hand. “Oh, sir, he’s the gentlest little creature, and he’ll do whatever he’s bid, and the lovingest child in the world.”
The boy had got out by this time, and looking wonderingly in the man’s face, was unconsciously, with the wincing of pain, lifting his leg slightly, for the sting of the cane was quite new to him.
“If I catch you at that work again I’ll give you five dozen,” said his new acquaintance.
“Is this his?” said he, touching the carpet-bag with his cane.
“Yes, sir, please.”
He took it in his hand, and glanced at the boy—I think it was in his mind to make him carry it. But the child was slender, and the bag, conscientiously packed with everything that had ever belonged to him, was a trifle too heavy.
“Anything else?” demanded the Sergeant-Major.
“This—this, God bless him.”
It was the little box with his ships.
“And this;” and she thrust the griddle cake, broken across and rolled up in brown paper, into the boy’s pocket.
“And these;” and three apples she had ready, she thrust after them.
“And ho! my blessed darlin’, my darlin’, darlin’, darlin’.”
He was lifted up against her heart, folded fast, and hugging her round the neck, they kissed and cried and cried and kissed, and at last she let him down; and the Sergeant-Major, with the cane under his arm, the carpet-bag in one hand, and the boy’s wrist firmly held in the other, marched out of the door.
“That’s enough—don’t follow, woman,” said he, after they had gone about twenty yards on the path; “and I’ll report you,” he added with a nod which, with these pleasant words, she might take as a farewell or not as she pleased.
She stood on the little rising ground by the hawthorn-tree, kissing her hands wildly after him, with streaming eyes.
“I’ll be sure to see you soon. I’d walk round the world barefoot to see my pretty man again,” she kept crying after him; “and I’ll bring the ninepins, I’ll be sure. Mammy’s comin’, my darlin’.”
And the receding figure of the little boy was turned toward her all it could. He was gazing over his shoulder, with cheeks streaming with tears, and his little hand waving yearningly back to her until he was out of sight. And after a while she turned back, and there was their ninepins’ ground, and the tarn, and her sobs quickened almost to a scream; and she sat down on the stone bench under the window—for she could not bear to enter the dark cottage—and there, in Irish phrase, she cried her fill.
In the meantime Archdale and his companion, or prisoner—which you will—pursued their march. He still held the boy’s wrist, and the boy cried and sobbed gently to himself all the way.
When they came down to the little hamlet called Maple Wickets he hired a boy to carry the carpet-bag to Wunning, four miles further on, where the Warhampton ’bus passes, as everybody knows, at half-past twelve o’clock daily.
They resumed their march. The Sergeant was a serenely taciturn man. He no more thought of addressing the boy than he did of apostrophising the cane or the carpet-bag. He let him sob on, and neither snubbed nor consoled him, but carried his head serene and high, looking straight before him.
At length the novelty of the scene began to act upon the volatility of childhood.
As he walked by the Sergeant he began to prattle, at first timidly, and then more volubly.
The first instinct of the child is trust. It was a kind of consolation to the boy to talk a great deal of his home, and Tom Orange was of course mentioned with the usual inquiry, “Do you know Tom Orange?”
“Why so?”
Then followed the list of that facetious and brilliant person’s accomplishments.
“And are we to go near a place called Wyvern or Carwell Grange?” asked the boy, whose memory, where his fancy was interested, was retentive.
“Why so?” again demanded the Sergeant, looking straight before him.
“Because Tom Orange told me there’s the biggest mushroom in the world grown up there, and that the owner of the house can’t get in, for it fills up the door.”
“Tom Orange told you that?” demanded the Sergeant in the same way.
And the boy, supposing it incredulity on his part, assured him that Tom, who was truth itself,hadtold him so only yesterday.
The Sergeant said no more, and you could not have told in the least by his face that he had made a note of it and was going to “report” Tom Orange in the proper quarter. And in passing, I may mention that about three weeks later Tom Orange was peremptorily dismissed from his desultory employments under Mr. Archdale, and was sued for stealing apples from Warhampton orchard, and some minor peccadillos, and brought before the magistrates, among whom sat, as it so happened, on that occasion, Squire Fairfield of Wyvern, who was “precious hard on him,” and got him in for more than a month with hard labour. The urchin hireling with the carpet-bag trudged on in front as the Sergeant-Major had commanded.
Our little friend, with many a sobbing sigh, and a great load at his heart, yet was looking about him.
They were crossing a moor with beautiful purple heather, such as he had never seen before. The Sergeant had let go his wrist. He felt more at his ease every way.
There were little pools of water here and there which attracted the boy’s attention, and made him open his box of cork boats and peep at them. He wondered how they would sail in these dark little nooks, and at last, one lying very conveniently, he paused at its margin, and took out a ship and floated it, and another, and another. How quickly seconds fly and minutes.
He was roused by the distant voice of the Sergeant-Major shouting, “Hollo, you sir, come here.”
He looked up. The Sergeant was consulting his big silver watch as he stood upon a little eminence of peat.
By the time he reached him the Sergeant had replaced it, and the two or three seals and watchkey he sported were dangling at the end of his chain upon his paunch. The Sergeant was standing with his heels together and the point of his cane close to the side of his boot.
“Come to the front,” said the Sergeant.
“Give up that box,” said he.
The boy placed it in his hand. He uncovered it, turned over the little navy with his fingers, and then jerked the box and its contents over the heath at his side.
“Don’t pick one of ’em up,” said he.
“Move half a pace to the right,” was his next order.
His next command was—
“Hold out your hand.”
The boy looked in his face, surprised.
The Sergeant’s face looked not a bit angrier or a bit kinder than usual. Perfectly serene.
“Hold out your hand, sir.”
He held it out, and the cane descended with a whistling cut across his fingers. Another. The boy’s face flushed with pain, and his deadened hand sunk downward. An upward blow of the cane across his knuckles accompanied the command, “Hold it up, sir,” and a third cut came down.
The Sergeant was strong, and could use his wrist dexterously.
“Hold out the other;” and the same discipline was repeated.
Mingled with and above the pain which called up the three great black weals across the slender fingers of each hand, was the sense of outrage and cruelty.
The tears sprang to his eyes, and for the first time in his life he cried passionately under that double anguish.
“Walk in front,” said the Sergeant, serenely.
And squeezing and wringing his trembling hands together, the still writhing little fellow marched along the path, with a bitterer sense of desolation than ever.
The ’bus was late at Wunning; and a lady in it, struck by the beauty and sadness of the little boy’s face, said some kind words, and seemed to take to him, he thought, with a tenderness that made his heart fuller; and it was a labour almost too great for him to keep down the rising sobs and the tears that were every moment on the point of flowing over. This good Samaritan bought a bag of what were called “Ginger-bread nuts”—quite a little store; which Archdale declined leaving at the boy’s discretion. But I am bound to say that they were served out to him, from day to day, with conscientious punctuality by the Sergeant-Major, who was strictly to be depended on in all matters of property; and would not have nibbled at one of those nuts though his thin lips had watered and not a soul had been near. He must have possessed a good many valuable military virtues, or he could not, I presume, have been where he was.
Noulton Farm is a melancholy but not an ugly place. There are a great many trees about it. They stand too near the windows. The house is small and old, and there is a small garden with a thick high hedge round it.
The members of the family were few. Miss Mary Archdale was ill when they arrived. She was the only child of the ex-Sergeant, who was a widower; and the new inmate of the house heard of her with a terror founded on his awe of her silent father.
They entered a small parlour, and the boy sat down in the chair indicated by the Sergeant. That person hung his hat on a peg in the hall, and placed his cane along the chimney-piece. Then he rang the bell.
The elderly woman who was the female staff of the kitchen entered. She looked frightened, as all that household did, in their master’s presence, and watched him with an alarmed eye.
“Where’s Miss Mary?”
“A-spitting blood, sir, please.”
“Bring in supper,” said the Sergeant.
The boy sat in fear at the very corner of the table. His grief would not let him eat, and he sipped a cup of tea that was too hot, and had neither milk nor sugar enough. The Sergeant snuffed his candle, and put on a pair of plated spectacles, and looked through his weekly paper.
While he was so employed there glided into the room a very slight girl, with large eyes and a very pale face. Her hair was brown and rich.
The hand with which she held her shawl across was very thin; and in her pale face and large eyes was a timid and imploring look that struck the little boy. She looked at him and he at her silently; her sad eyes lingered on his face for a moment, and he felt that he liked her.
She took a chair very softly and sat down without saying a word.
In a little while the Sergeant laid down his paper and looked at her. Her large eyes were raised toward him with timid expectation, but she did not speak.
“Not well just now?”
“No, sir.”
“You take the bottle regularly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be better in the morning belike.”
“I’m sure I shall, sir.”
He lighted a candle that stood on a side-table, and his dog Bion got up to attend him. It was a large pug-dog, gambouge-coloured, with a black nose. The boy often afterwards wished to play with Bion, and make his acquaintance. But he did not know how the attempt would be taken either by the dog or his master, and so he did not venture.
No caresses passed between the dog and the Sergeant. Each did his duty by the other, and they understood one another, I suppose, but no further signs of love appeared.
The Sergeant went out and shut the door, and the girl smiled very sweetly on the little guest, and put out her hand to welcome him.
“I’m very glad you are come here. I was very lonely. My father is gone to the work-room; he’s making an organ there, and he won’t come back till a quarter to nine. That’s an hour and three-quarters. Do you hear—listen.”
She raised her finger and looked toward the partition as she spoke, and he heard a booming of an organ through the wall.
“Tony blows the organ for him.”
Tony was a little boy from the workhouse, who cleaned knives, forks, shoes, and made himself generally useful, being the second servant, the only male one in their modest establishment.
“I wish I was better, I’m so out of breath talking. We’ll be very happy now. That’s tuning the pipes—that one’s wolving. I used to blow the bellows for him, but the doctor says I must not, and indeed I couldn’t now. You must eat something and drink more tea, and we’ll be great friends, shan’t we?”
So they talked a great deal, she being obliged to stop often for breath, and he could see that she was very weak, and also that she stood in indescribable awe of her father. But she said, “He’s a very good man, and he works very hard to earn his money, but he does not talk, and that makes people afraid of him. He won’t be back here until he comes here to read the Bible and prayers at a quarter to nine.”
So she talked on, but all the time in an undertone, and listening every now and then for the boom of the pipes, and the little boy opened his heart to her and wept bitterly, and she cried too, silently, as he went on, and they became very near friends. She looked as if she understood his griefs. Perhaps her own resembled them.
The old woman came in and took away the tea things, and shortly after the Sergeant entered and read the chapter and the prayers.