Waife listened very attentively. “I can make very good baskets,” said he, rubbing his chin, “famous baskets (if one could hire a bit of osier ground), and, as you say, there might be other fancy articles I could turn out prettily enough, and you could work samplers, and urn-rugs, and doileys, and pincushions, and so forth; and what with a rood or two of garden ground, and poultry (the Mayor says poultry is healthy for children), upon my word, if we could find a safe place, and people would not trouble us with their gossip, and we could save a little money for you when I am—”
“Bees too,—honey?” interrupted Sophy, growing more and more interested and excited.
“Yes, bees,—certainly. A cottage of that kind in a village would not be above L6 a year, and L20 spent on materials for fancy-works would set us up. Ah but furniture, beds and tables,—monstrous dear!”
“Oh, no! very little would do at first.”
“Let us count the money we have left,” said Waife, throwing himself down on a piece of sward that encircled a shady mulberry-tree. Old man and child counted the money, bit by bit, gayly yet anxiously,—babbling, interrupting each other,—scheme upon scheme: they forgot past and present as much as in acting plays; they were absorbed in the future,—innocent simple future,—innocent as the future planned by two infants fresh from “Robinson Crusoe” or fairy tales.
“I remember, I remember, just the place for us,” cried Waife, suddenly. “It is many, many, many years since I was there; I was courting my Lizzy at the time,—alas! alas. But no sad thoughts now!—just the place, near a large town, but in a pretty village quite retired from it. ‘T was there I learned to make baskets. I had broken my leg; fall from a horse; nothing to do. I lodged with an old basketmaker; he had a capital trade. Rivulet at the back of his house; reeds, osiers, plentiful. I see them now, as I saw them from my little casement while my leg was setting. And Lizzy used to write to me such dear letters; my baskets were all for her. We had baskets enough to have furnished a house with bask’ts; could have dined in baskets, sat in baskets, slept in baskets. With a few lessons I could soon recover the knack of the work. I should like to see the place again; it would be shaking hands with my youth once more. None who could possibly recognize me could be now living. Saw no one but the surgeon, the basketmaker, and his wife; all so old they must be long since gathered to their fathers. Perhaps no one carries on the basket trade now. I may revive it and have it all to myself; perhaps the cottage itself may be easily hired.” Thus, ever disposed to be sanguine, the vagabond chattered on, Sophy listening fondly, and smiling up in his face. “And a fine large park close by: the owners, great lords, deserted it then; perhaps it is deserted still. You might wander over it as if it were your own, Sophy. Such wonderful trees,—such green solitudes; and pretty shy hares running across the vistas,—stately deer too! We will make friends with the lodge-keepers, and we will call the park yours, Sophy; and I shall be a genius who weaves magical baskets, and you shall be the enchanted princess concealed from all evil eyes, knitting doileys of pearl under leaves of emerald, and catching no sound from the world of perishable life, except as the boughs whisper and the birds sing.”
“Dear me, here you are; we thought you were lost,” said the bailiff’s wife; “tea is waiting for you, and there’s husband, sir, coming up from his work; he’ll be proud and glad to know you, sir, and you too, my dear; we have no children of our own.”
It is past eleven. Sophy, worn out, but with emotions far more pleasurable than she has long known, is fast asleep. Waife kneels by her side, looking at her. He touches her hand, so cool and soft; all fever gone: he rises on tiptoe; he bends over her forehead,—a kiss there, and a tear; he steals away, down, down the stairs. At the porch is the bailiff holding Sir Isaac.
“We’ll take all care of her,” said Mr. Gooch. “You’ll not know her again when you come back.”
Waife pressed the hand of his grandchild’s host, but did not speak.
“You are sure you will find your way,—no, that’s the wrong turn,—straight onto the town. They’ll be sitting up for you at the Saracen’s Head, I suppose, of course, sir? It seems not hospitable like, your going away at the dead of night thus. But I understand you don’t like crying, sir, we men don’t; and your sweet little girl I dare say would sob ready to break her heart if she knew. Fine moonlight night, sir,—straight on. And I say, don’t fret about her: wife loves children dearly,—so do I. Good-night.”
On went Waife,—lamely, slowly,—Sir Isaac’s white coat gleaming in the moon, ghostlike. On he went, his bundle strapped across his shoulder, leaning on his staff, along by the folded sheep and the sleeping cattle. But when he got into the high road, Gatesboro’ full before him, with all its roofs and spires, he turned his back on the town, and tramped once more along the desert thoroughfare,—more slowly and more, more lamely and more, till several milestones were passed; and then he crept through the gap of a hedgerow to the sheltering eaves of a haystack; and under that roof-tree he and Sir Isaac lay down to rest.
CHAPTER XXIV
Laugh at forebodings of evil, but tremble after day-dreams of happiness.
Waife left behind him at the cottage two letters,—one entrusted to the bailiff, with a sealed bag, for Mr. Hartopp; one for Sophy, placed on a chair beside her bed.
The first letter was as follows:—
“I trust, dear and honoured sir, that I shall come back safely; and when I do, I may have found perhaps a home for her, and some way of life such as you would not blame. But, in case of accident, I have left with Mr. Gooch, sealed up, the money we made at Gatesboro’, after paying the inn bill, doctor, etc., and retaining the mere trifle I need in case I and Sir Isaac fail to support ourselves. You will kindly take care of it. I should not feel safe with more money about me, an old man.
“I might be robbed; besides, I am careless. I never can keep money; it slips out of my hands like an eel. Heaven bless you, sir; your kindness seems like a miracle vouchsafed to me for that child’s dear sake. No evil can chance to her with you; and if I should fall ill and die, even then you, who would have aided the tricksome vagrant, will not grudge the saving hand to the harmless child.”
The letter to Sophy ran thus:—
“Darling, forgive me; I have stolen away from you, but only for a few days, and only in order to see if we cannot gain the magic home where I am to be the Genius, and you the Princess. I go forth with such a light heart, Sophy dear, I shall be walking thirty miles a day, and not feel an ache in the lame leg: you could not keep up with me; you know you could not. So think over the cottage and the basket-work, and practise at samplers and pincushions, when it is too hot to play; and be stout and strong against I come back. That, I trust, will be this day week, —-’t is but seven days; and then we will only act fairy dramas to nodding trees, with linnets for the orchestra; and even Sir Isaac shall not be demeaned by mercenary tricks, but shall employ his arithmetical talents in casting up the weekly bills, and he shall never stand on his hind legs except on sunny days, when he shall carry a parasol to shade an enchanted princess. Laugh; darling,—let me fancy I see you laughing; but don’t fret,—don’t fancy I desert you. Do try and get well,—quite, quite well; I ask it of you on my knees.”
The letter and the bag were taken over at sunrise to Mr. Hartopp’s villa. Mr. Hartopp was an early man. Sophy overslept herself: her room was to the west; the morning beams did not reach its windows; and the cottage without children woke up to labour noiseless and still. So when at last she shook off sleep, and tossing her hair from her blue eyes, looked round and became conscious of the strange place, she still fancied the hour early. But she got up, drew the curtain from the window, saw the sun high in the heavens, and, ashamed of her laziness, turned, and lo! the letter on the chair! Her heart at once misgave her; the truth flashed upon a reason prematurely quick in the intuition which belongs to the union of sensitive affection and active thought. She drew a long breath, and turned deadly pale. It was some minutes before she could take up the letter, before she could break the seal. When she did, she read on noiselessly, her tears dropping over the page, without effort or sob. She had no egotistical sorrow, no grief in being left alone with strangers: it was the pathos of the old man’s lonely wanderings, of his bereavement, of his counterfeit glee, and genuine self-sacrifice; this it was that suffused her whole heart with unutterable yearnings of tenderness, gratitude, pity, veneration. But when she had wept silently for some time, she kissed the letter with devout passion, and turned to that Heaven to which the outcast had taught her first to pray.
Afterwards she stood still, musing a little while, and the sorrowful shade gradually left her face. Yes; she would obey him: she would not fret; she would try and get well and strong. He would feel, at the distance, that she was true to his wishes; that she was fitting herself to be again his companion: seven days would soon pass. Hope, that can never long quit the heart of childhood, brightened over her meditations, as the morning sun over a landscape that just before had lain sad amidst twilight and under rains.
When she came downstairs, Mrs. Gooch was pleased and surprised to observe the placid smile upon her face, and the quiet activity with which, after the morning meal, she moved about by the good woman’s side assisting her in her dairywork and other housewife tasks, talking little, comprehending quickly,—composed, cheerful.
“I am so glad to see you don’t pine after your good grandpapa, as we feared you would.”
“He told me not to pine,” answered Sophy, simply, but with a quivering lip.
When the noon deepened, and it became too warm for exercise, Sophy timidly asked if Mrs. Gooch had any worsted and knitting-needles, and being accommodated with those implements and materials, she withdrew to the arbour, and seated herself to work,—solitary and tranquil.
What made, perhaps, the chief strength in this poor child’s nature was its intense trustfulness,—a part, perhaps, of its instinctive appreciation of truth. She trusted in Waife, in the future, in Providence, in her own childish, not helpless, self.
Already, as her slight fingers sorted the worsteds and her graceful taste shaded their hues into blended harmony, her mind was weaving, not less harmoniously, the hues in the woof of dreams,—the cottage home, the harmless tasks, Waife with his pipe in the armchair under some porch, covered like that one yonder,—why not?—with fragrant woodbine, and life if humble, honest, truthful, not shrinking from the day, so that if Lionel met her again she should not blush, nor he be shocked. And if their ways were so different as her grandfather said, still they might cross, as they had crossed before, and—the work slid from her hand—the sweet lips parted, smiling: a picture came before her eyes,—her grandfather, Lionel, herself; all three, friends, and happy; a stream, fair as the Thames had seemed; green trees all bathed in summer; the boat gliding by; in that boat they three, borne softly on,—away, away,—what matters whither?—by her side the old man; facing her, the boy’s bright kind eyes. She started. She heard noises,—a swing ing gate, footsteps. She started,—she rose,—voices; one strange to her,—a man’s voice,—then the Mayor’s. A third voice,—shrill, stern; a terrible voice,-heard in infancy, associated with images of cruelty, misery, woe. It could not be! impossible! Near, nearer, came the footsteps. Seized with the impulse of flight, she sprang to the mouth of the arbour. Fronting her glared two dark, baleful eyes. She stood,—arrested, spellbound, as a bird fixed rigid by the gaze of a serpent.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor; all right! it is our little girl,—our dear Sophy. This way, Mr. Losely. Such a pleasant surprise for you, Sophy, my love!” said Mrs. Crane.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
In the kindliest natures there is a certain sensitiveness, which, when wounded, occasions the same pain, and bequeaths the same resentment, as mortified vanity or galled self-love.
It is exactly that day week, towards the hour of five in the evening, Mr. Hartopp, alone in the parlour behind his warehouse, is locking up his books and ledgers preparatory to the return to his villa. There is a certain change in the expression of his countenance since we saw it last. If it be possible for Mr. Hartopp to look sullen,—sullen he looks; if it be possible for the Mayor of Gatesboro’ to be crestfallen, crestfallen he is. That smooth existence has surely received some fatal concussion, and has not yet recovered the shock. But if you will glance beyond the parlour at Mr. Williams giving orders in the warehouse, at the warehousemen themselves, at the rough faces in the tan-yard,-nay, at Mike Callaghan, who has just brought a parcel from the railway, all of them have evidently shared in the effects of the concussion; all of them wear a look more or less sullen; all seem crestfallen. Could you carry your gaze farther on, could you peep into the shops in the High Street, or at the loungers in the city reading-room; could you extend the vision farther still,—to Mr. Hartopp’s villa, behold his wife, his little ones, his men-servants, and his maid-servants, more and more impressively general would become the tokens of disturbance occasioned by that infamous concussion. Everywhere a sullen look,—everywhere that ineffable aspect of crestfallenness! What can have happened? is the good man bankrupt? No, rich as ever! What can it be? Reader! that fatal event which they who love Josiah Hartopp are ever at watch to prevent, despite all their vigilance, has occurred! Josiah Hartopp has been TAKEN IN! Other men may be occasionally taken in, and no one mourns; perhaps they deserve it! they are not especially benevolent, or they set up to be specially wise. But to take in that lamb! And it was not only the Mayor’s heart that was wounded, but his pride, his self-esteem, his sense of dignity, were terribly humiliated. For as we know, though all the world considered Mr. Hartopp the very man born to be taken in, and therefore combined to protect him, yet in his secret soul Mr. Hartopp considered that no man less needed such protection; that he was never taken in, unless he meant to be so. Thus the cruelty and ingratitude of the base action under which his crest was so fallen jarred on his whole system. Nay, more, he could not but feel that the event would long affect his personal comfort and independence; he would be more than ever under the affectionate tyranny of Mr. Williams, more than ever be an object of universal surveillance and espionage. There would be one thought paramount throughout Gatesboro’. “The Mayor, God bless him! has been taken in: this must not occur again, or Gatesboro’ is dishonoured, and Virtue indeed a name!” Mr. Hartopp felt not only mortified but subjugated,—he who had hitherto been the soft subjugator of the hardest. He felt not only subjugated, but indignant at the consciousness of being so. He was too meekly convinced of Heaven’s unerring justice not to feel assured that the man who had taken him in would come to a tragic end. He would not have hung that man with his own hands: he was too mild for vengeance. But if he had seen that man hanging he would have said piously, “Fitting retribution,” and passed on his way soothed and comforted. Taken in!—taken in at last!—he, Josiah Hartopp, taken in by a fellow with one eye!
CHAPTER II
The Mayor is so protected that he cannot help himself.
A commotion without,—a kind of howl, a kind of hoot. Mr. Williams, the warehousemen, the tanners, Mike Callaghan, share between them the howl and the hoot. The Mayor started: is it possible! His door is burst open, and, scattering all who sought to hold him back,—scattering them to the right and left from his massive torso in rushed the man who had taken in the Mayor,—the fellow with one eye, and with that fellow, shaggy and travel-soiled, the other dog!
“What have you done with the charge I intrusted to you? My child! my child! where is she?”
Waife’s face was wild with the agony of his emotions, and his voice was so sharply terrible that it went like a knife into the heart of the men, who, thrust aside for the moment, now followed him, fearful, into the room.
“Mr.—Mr. Chapman, sir,” faltered the Mayor, striving hard to recover dignity and self-possession, “I am astonished at your—your—”
“Audacity!” interposed Mr. Williams.
“My child! my Sophy! my child! answer me, man!” “Sir,” said the Mayor, drawing himself up, “have you not got the note which I left at my bailiff’s cottage in case you called there?”
“Your note! this thing!” said Waife, striking a crumpled paper with his hand, and running his eye over its contents. “You have rendered up, you say, the child to her lawful protector? Gracious heavens! did I trust her to you, or not?”
“Leave the room all of you,” said the Mayor, with a sudden return of his usual calm vigour.
“You go,—you, sirs; what the deuce do you do here?” growled Williams to the meaner throng. “Out! I stay, never fear, men, I’ll take care of him!”
The bystanders surlily slunk off: but none returned to their work; they stood within reach of call by the shut door. Williams tucked up his coat-sleeves, clenched his fists, hung his head doggedly on one side, and looked altogether so pugnacious and minatory that Sir Isaac, who, though in a state of great excitement, had hitherto retained self-control, peered at him under his curls, stiffened his back, showed his teeth, and growled formidably.
“My good Williams, leave us,” said the Mayor; “I would be alone with this person.”
“Alone,—you! out of the question. Now you have been once taken in, and you own it,—it is my duty to protect you henceforth; and I will to the end of my days.”
The Mayor sighed heavily. “Well, Williams, well!—take a chair, and be quiet. Now, Mr. Chapman, so to call you still; you have deceived me.”
“I? how?”
The Mayor was puzzled. “Deceived me,” he said at last, “in my knowledge of human nature. I thought you an honest man, sir. And you are—but no matter.”
WAIFE (impatiently).—“My child! my child! you have given her up to—to—”
MAYOR.—“Her own father, sir.”
WAIFE (echoing the words as he staggers back).—“I thought so! I thought it!”
MAYOR.—“In so doing I obeyed the law: he had legal power to enforce his demand.” The Mayor’s voice was almost apologetic in its tone; for he was affected by Waife’s anguish, and not able to silence a pang of remorse. After all, he had been trusted; and he had, excusably perhaps, necessarily perhaps, but still he had failed to fulfil the trust. “But,” added the Mayor, as if reassuring himself, “but I refused at first to give her up even to her own father; at first insisted upon waiting till your return; and it was only when I was informed what you yourself were that my scruples gave Way.”
Waife remained long silent, breathing very hard, passing his hand several times over his forehead; at last he said more quietly than he had yet spoken, “Will you tell me where they have gone?”
“I do not know; and, if I did know, I would not tell you! Are they not right when they say that that innocent child should not be tempted away by—by—a—in short by you, sir?”
“They said! Her father—said that!—he said that!—Did he—did he say it? Had he the heart?”
MAYOR.—“No, I don’t think he said it. Eh, Mr. Williams? He spoke little to me!”
MR. WILLIAMS.—“Of course he would not expose that person. But the woman,—the lady, I mean.”
WAIFE.—“Woman! Ah, yes. The bailiff’s wife said there was a woman. What woman? What’s her name?”
MAYOR.—“Really you must excuse me. I can say no more. I have consented to see you thus, because whatever you might have been, or may be, still it was due to myself to explain how I came to give up the child; and, besides, you left money with me, and that, at least, I can give to your own hand.”
The Mayor turned to his desk, unlocked it, and drew forth the bag which Waife had sent to him.
As he extended it towards the Comedian, his hand trembled, and his cheek flushed. For Waife’s one bright eye had in it such depth of reproach, that again the Mayor’s conscience was sorely troubled; and he would have given ten times the contents of that bag to have been alone with the vagrant, and to have said the soothing things he did not dare to say before Williams, who sat there mute and grim, guarding him from being once more “taken in.” “If you had confided in me at first, Mr. Chapman,” he said, pathetically, “or even if now, I could aid you in an honest way of life!”
“Aid him—now!” said Williams, with a snort. “At it again! you’re not a man: you’re an angel!”
“But if he is penitent, Williams.”
“So! so! so!” murmured Waife. “Thank Heaven it was not he who spoke against me: it was but a strange woman. Oh!” he suddenly broke off with a groan. “Oh—but that strange woman,—who, what can she be? and Sophy with her and him. Distraction! Yes, yes, I take the money. I shall want it all. Sir Isaac, pick up that bag. Gentlemen, good day to you!” He bowed; such a failure that bow! Nothing ducal in it! bowed and turned towards the door; then, when he gained the threshold, as if some meeker, holier thought restored to him dignity of bearing, his form rose, though his face softened, and stretching his right hand towards the Mayor, he said, “You did but as all perhaps would have done on the evidence before you. You meant to be kind to her.”
“If you knew all, how you would repent! I do not blame,—I forgive you.”
He was gone: the Mayor stood transfixed. Even Williams felt a cold comfortless thrill. “He does not look like it,” said the foreman. “Cheer up, sir, no wonder you were taken in: who would not have been?”
“Hark! that hoot again. Go, Williams, don’t let the men insult him. Go, do,—I shall be grateful.”
But before Williams got to the door, the cripple and his dog had vanished; vanished down a dark narrow alley on the opposite side of the street. The rude workmen had followed him to the mouth of the alley, mocking him. Of the exact charge against the Comedian’s good name they were not informed; that knowledge was confined to the Mayor and Mr. Williams. But the latter had dropped such harsh expressions, that bad as the charge might really be, all in Mr. Hartopp’s employment probably deemed it worse, if possible, than it really was. And wretch indeed must be the man by whom the Mayor had been confessedly taken in, and whom the Mayor had indignantly given up to the reproaches of his own conscience. But the cripple was now out of sight, lost amidst those labyrinths of squalid homes which, in great towns, are thrust beyond view, branching off abruptly behind High Streets and Market Places, so that strangers passing only along the broad thoroughfares, with glittering shops and gaslit causeways, exclaim, “Ah here do the poor live?”