Chapter XXXIII. A bad penny
Before Clare had done his thinking, darkness had fallen, and, weary to the very bones, he threw himself on the bed beside the baby. The dog jumped up and laid himself at his feet, as if the place had been his from time immemorial—as it had perhaps been, according to time in dog-land. The many pleasures of that blessed day would have kept Clare awake had they not brought with them so much weariness. He fell fast asleep. Tommy had not had a happy day: he had been found out in evil-doing, had done more evil, and had all the day been in dread of punishment. He did not foresee how ill things would go for him—did not see that a rat had taken his place beside the baby, and that he would not get back before Clare; but the vision of the water-butt had often flashed upon his inner eye, and it had not been the bliss of his solitude. He deserted his post in the hope of finding something to eat, and had not had a mouthful of anything but spongy turnip, and dried-up mangel-wurzel, or want-root. If he had been minding his work, he would have had a piece of good bread—so good that he would have wanted more of it, whereas, when he had eaten the turnip and the beetroot, he had cause to wish he had not eaten so much! He had been set upon by boys bigger than himself, and nearly as bad, who, not being hungry, were in want of amusement, and had proceeded to get it out of Tommy, just as Tommy would have got it out of the baby had he dared. They bullied him in a way that would have been to his heart’s content, had he been the bully instead of the bullied. They made him actually wish he had stayed with the baby—and therewith came the thought that it was time to go home if he would get back before Clare. As to what had taken place in the morning, he knew Clare’s forgivingness, and despised him for it. If he found the baby dead, or anything happened to her that he could not cover with lying, it would be time to cut and run in earnest! So the moment he could escape from his tormenters, off went Tommy for home. But as he ran he remembered that there was but one way into the house, and that was by the very lip of the water-butt.
Clare woke up suddenly—at a sound which all his life would wake him from the deepest slumber: he thought he heard the whimpering of a child. The baby was fast asleep. Instantly he thought of Tommy. He seemed to see him shut out in the night, and knew at once how it was with him: he had gone out without thinking how he was to get back, and dared not go near the water-butt! He jumped out of bed, put on his shoes, and in a minute or two was over the wall and walking along the lane outside of it, to find the deserter.
The moon was not up, and the night was dark, yet he had not looked long before he came upon him, as near the house as he could get, crouching against the wall.
“Tommy!” said Clare softly.
Tommy did not reply. The fear of the water-butt was upon him—a fear darker than the night, an evil worse than hunger or cold—and Clare and the water-butt were one.
“You needn’t think to hide, Tommy; I see you, you bad boy!” whispered Clare. “After all I said, you ran away and left the baby to the rats! They’ve been biting her horribly—one at least has. You can stay away as long as you like now; I’ve got a better nurse. Good-night!” Tommy gave a great howl.
“Hold your tongue, you rascal!” cried Clare, still in a whisper. “You’ll let the police know where we are!”
“Do let me in, Clare! I’m so ‘ungry and so cold!”
“Then I shall have to put you in the water-butt! I said I would!”
“If you don’t promise not to, I’ll go straight to the police. They’ll take the brat from you, and put her in the workhouse!”
Clare thought for a moment whether it would not be right to kill such a traitor. His mind was full of history-tales, and, like Dante, he put treachery in its own place, namely the deepest hell. But with the thought came the words he had said so many times without thinking what they meant—“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” and he saw that he was expected to forgive Tommy.
“Tommy, I forgive you,” he said solemnly, “and will be friends with you again; but I have said it, and I was right to say it, and into the water-butt you must go! I can’t trust your word now, and I think I shall be able to trust it after that.”
Ere he had finished the words, Tommy lifted up his voice in a most unearthly screech.
Instantly Clare had him by the throat, so that he could not utter a sound.
“Tommy,” he said, “I’m going to let you breathe again, but the moment you make a noise, I’ll choke you as I’m doing now.”
With that he relaxed his hold. But Tommy had paid no heed to what he said, and began a second screech the moment he found passage for it. Immediately he was choked, and after two or three attempts, finally desisted.
“I won’t!” he said.
“You shall, Tommy. You’re going head over in the butt. We’re going to it now!”
Tommy threw himself upon the ground and kicked, but dared not scream. It was awful! He would drop right through into the great place where the moon was!
Clare threw him over his shoulder, and found him not half the weight of the parcel of linen. Tommy would have bitten like a weasel, but he feared Clare’s terrible hands. He was on the back of Giant Despair, in the form of one of the best boys in the world. Clare took him round the wall, and over the fence into the blacksmith’s yard. The smithy was quite dark.
“Please, I didn’t mean to do it!” sobbed Tommy from behind him, as Clare bore him steadily up the yard. It was all he could do to say the words, for the thought of what they were approaching sent a scream into his throat every time he parted his lips to speak.
Clare stopped.
“What didn’t you mean to do?” he asked.
“I didn’t mean to leave the baby.”
“How did you do it then?”
“I mean I didn’t mean to stay away so long. I didn’t know how to get back.”
“I told you not to leave her! And you could have got back perfectly, you little coward!”
Tommy shuddered, and said no more. Though hanging over Clare’s back he knew presently, by his stopping, that they had come to the heap. There was only that heap and the wall between him and the water-butt! Up and up he felt himself slowly, shakingly carried, and was gathering his breath for a final utterance of agony that should rouse the whole neighbourhood, when Clare, having reached the top, seated himself upon the wall, and Tommy restrained himself in the hope of what a parley might bring. But he sat down only to wheel on the pivot of his spine, as he had seen them do on the counter in the shop, and sit with his legs alongside of the water-butt. Then he drew Tommy from his shoulder, in spite of his clinging, and laid him across his knees; and Tommy, divining there were words yet to be said, and hoping to get off with a beating, which he did not mind, remained silent.
“Your hour is come, Tommy!” said Clare. “If you scream, I will drop you in, and hold you only by one leg. If you don’t scream, I will hold you by both legs. If you scream when I take you out, in you go again! I do what I say, Tommy!”
The wretched boy was nearly mad with terror. But now, much as he feared the water, he feared yet more for the moment him in whom lay the power of the water. Clare took him by the heels.
“I’m sorry there’s no moon, as I promised you,” he said; “she won’t come up for my calling. I should have liked you to see where you were going. But if you ain’t an honest boy after this, you shall have another chance; and next time we will wait for the moon!”
With that he lifted Tommy’s legs, holding him by the ankles, and would have shoved his body over the edge of the butt into the water. But Tommy clung fast to his knees.
“Leave go, Tommy,” he said, “or I’ll tumble you right in.”
Tommy yielded, his will overcome by a greater fear. Clare let him hang for a moment over the black water, and slowly lowered him. Tommy clung to the side of the butt. Clare let go one leg, and taking hold of his hands pulled them away. Tommy’s terror would have burst in a frenzied yell, but the same instant he was down to the neck in the water, and lifted out again. He spluttered and gurgled and tried to scream.
“Now, Tommy,” said Clare, “don’t scream, or I’ll put you in again.”
But Tommy never believed anything except upon compulsion. The moment he could, that moment he screamed, and that moment he was in the water again. The next time he was taken out, he did not scream. Clare laid him on the wall, and he lay still, pretending to be drowned. Clare got up, set him on his feet in front of him, and holding him by the collar, trotted him round the top of the wall to the door, and dropped him into the garden. He was quiet enough now—more than subdued—incapable even of meditating revenge. But when they entered the nursery, the dog, taking Tommy for a worse sort of rat, made a leap at him right off the bed, as if he would swallow him alive, and the start and the terror of it brought him quite to himself again.
“Quiet, Abdiel!” said Clare.
The dog turned, jumped up on the bed, and lay down again close to the baby.
Clare, who, I have said, was in old days a reader of Paradise Lost, had already given him the name of Abdiel.
“Please, I couldn’t help yelling!” said Tommy, very meekly. “I didn’t know you’d got him!”
“I know you couldn’t help it!” answered Clare. “What have you had to eat to-day?”
“Nothing but a beastly turnip and a wormy beet,” said Tommy. “I’m awful hungry.”
“You’d have had something better if you’d stuck by the baby, and not left her to the rats!”
“There ain’t no rats,” growled Tommy.
“Will you believe your own eyes?” returned Clare, and showed him the skin of the rat Abdiel had slain. “I’ve a great mind to make you eat it!” he added, dangling it before him by the tail.
“Shouldn’t mind,” said Tommy. “I’ve eaten a rat afore now, an’ I’m that hungry! Rats ain’t bad to eat. I don’t know about their skins!”
“Here’s a piece of bread for you. But you sha’n’t sleep with honest people like baby and Abdiel. You shall lie on the hearth-rug. Here’s a blanket and a pillow for you!”
Clare covered him up warm, thatching all with a piece of loose carpet, and he was asleep directly.
The next day all terror of the water-butt was gone from the little vagabond’s mind. He was now, however, thoroughly afraid of Clare, and his conceit that, though Clare was the stronger, he was the cleverer, was put in abeyance.
Chapter XXXIV. How things went for a time
Clare’s next day went much as the preceding, only that he was early at the shop. When his dinner-hour came, he ran home, and was glad to find Tommy and the dog mildly agreeable to each other. He had but time to give baby some milk, and Tommy and Abdiel a bit of bread each.
His look when he returned, a look of which he was unaware, but which one of the girls, who had a year ago been hungry for weeks together, could read, made her ask him what he had had for dinner. He said he had had no dinner.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because there wasn’t any.”
“Didn’t your mother keep some for you?”
“No; she couldn’t.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Go without,” answered Clare with a smile.
“But you’ve got a mother?” said the girl, rendered doubtful by his smile.
“Oh, yes! I’ve got two mothers. But their arms ain’t long enough,” replied Clare.
The girl wondered: was he an idiot, or what they called a poet? Anyhow, she had a bun in her pocket, which she had meant to eat at five o’clock, and she offered him that.
“But what will you do yourself? Have you another?” asked Clare, unready to take it.
“No,” she answered; “why shouldn’t I go without as well as you?”
“Because it won’t make things any better. There will be just as much hunger. It’s only shifting it from me to you. That will leave it all the same!”
“No, not the same,” she returned. “I’ve had a good dinner—as much as I could eat; and you’ve had none!”
Clare was persuaded, and ate the girl’s bun with much satisfaction and gratitude.
When he had his wages in the evening, he spent them as before—a penny for the baby, and fivepence at Mr. Ball’s for Tommy, Abdiel, and himself.
Observing that he came daily, and spent all he earned, except one penny, on bread; seeing also that the boy’s cheeks, though plainly he was in good health, were very thin, Mr. Ball wondered a little: a boy ought to look better than that on five pennyworth of bread a day!
They were a curious family—Clare, and Tommy, and the baby, and Abdiel. But the only thing sad about it was, that Clare, who was the head and the heart of it, and provided for all, should be upheld by no human sympathy, no human gratitude; that he should be so high above his companions that, though he never thought he was lonely, he could not help feeling lonely. Not once did he wish himself rid of any single member of his adopted family. It was living on his very body; he was growing a little thinner every day; if things had gone on so, he must before long have fallen ill; but he never thought of himself at all, body or soul.
He had no human sympathy or gratitude, I say, but he had both sympathy and gratitude from Abdiel. The dog never failed to understand what Clare wished and expected him to understand. In Clare’s absence he took on himself the protection of the establishment, and was Tommy’s superior.
Though Tommy was of no use to earn bread, Clare did not therefore allow him to be idle. He insisted on his keeping the place clean and tidy, and in this respect Tommy was not quite a failure. He even made him do some washing, though not much could be accomplished in that way where there was so little to wash. Now that Abdiel was nurse, Tommy had the run of the garden, and often went beyond it for an hour or two without Clare’s knowledge, but always took good care to be back before his return.
A bale of goods happening to be unpacked in his presence one day, Clare begged the head-shopman, who was also a partner, for a piece of what it was wrapped in; and he, having noted how well he worked, and being quite aware they could not get another such boy at such wages, gave him a large piece of the soiled canvas. Now Mrs. Person had taught Clare to work,—as I think all boys ought to be taught, so as not to be helpless without mother or sister,—and with the help of a needle and some thread the friendly girl gave him, he soon made of the packing-sheet a pair of trousers for Tommy, of a primitive but not unserviceable cut, and a shirt for himself, of fashion more primitive still. He managed it this way: he cut a hole in the middle of a piece of the stuff, through which to put his head, and another hole on each side of that, through which to put his arms, and hemmed them all round. Then, having first hemmed the garment also, he indued it, and let the voluminous mass arrange itself as it might, under as much of his jacket and trousers as cohered.
My reader may well wonder how, in what was called a respectable shop, he could be permitted to appear in such poverty; but Mr. Maidstone disliked the boy so much that he meant to send him away the moment he found another to do his work, and gave orders that he should never come up from the basement except when wanted to carry a parcel. The fact was that his still, solemn, pure face was a haunting rebuke to his master, although he did not in the least recognize the nature, or this as the cause, of his dislike.
Chapter XXXV. Clare disregards the interests of his employers
Things went on for nearly a month, every one thriving but Clare. Yet was Clare as peaceful as any, and much happier than Tommy, to whose satisfaction adventure was needful.
One day, a lady, attracted by a muff in the shop-window labelled with a very low price, entered, and requested to see it.
“We can offer you a choice from several of the sort, madam,” said the shopman. “It is one of a lot we bought cheap, but quite uninjured, after a fire.”
“I want to see the one in the window,” the lady answered.
“I hope you will excuse me, madam,” returned the shopman. “The muff is in a position hard to reach. Besides, we must ask leave to take anything down after the window is dressed for the day, and the master is out. But I will bring you the same fur precisely.”
So saying, he went, and returned presently with a load of muffs and other furs, which he threw on the counter. But the lady had heard that “there’s tricks i’ the world,” and persisted in demanding a sight of the muff in the window. Being a “tall personage” and cool, she carried her point. The muff was hooked down and brought her—not graciously. She glanced at it, turned it over, looked inside, and said,
“I will take it. Please bring a bandbox for it.”
“I will, madam,” said the man, and would have taken the muff. But she held it fast, sought her purse, and laid the price on the counter. The shopman saw that she knew what both of them were about, took up the money, went and fetched a bandbox, put the muff in it before her eyes, and tied it up. The lady held out her hand for it.
“Shall I not send it for you, madam?” he said.
“I do not live here,” she answered. “I am on my way to the station.”
“Here, Jack,” cried the shopman to Clare, whom he caught sight of that moment going down to the basement, “take this bandbox, and go with the lady to the station.”
If his transaction with the lady had pleased the man, he would not have sent such a scarecrow to attend her, although she did not belong to the town, and they might never see her again! The lady, on her part, was about to insist on carrying the bandbox herself; but when Clare came forward, and looked up smiling in her face, she was at once aware that she might trust him. The man stood watching for the moment when she should turn her back, that he might substitute another bandbox for the one Clare carried; but Clare never looked at him, and when the lady walked out of the shop, walked straight out after her. Along the street he followed her steadily, she looking round occasionally to see that he was behind her.
They had gone about half-way to the station, when from a side street came a lad whom Clare knew as one employed in the packing-room. He carried a box exactly like that Clare had in his hand, and came softly up behind him. Clare did not turn his head, for he did not want to talk to him while he was attending on the lady.
“Look spry!” he said in a whisper. “She don’t twig! It’s all right! Maidstone sent me.”
Clare looked round. The lad held out his bandbox for him to take, and his empty hand to take Clare’s instead. But Clare had by this time begun to learn a little caution. Besides, the lady’s interests were in his care, and he could be party to nothing done behind her back! He had not time to think, but knew it his duty to stick by the bandbox. If we have come up through the animals to be what we are, Clare must have been a dog of a good, faithful breed, for he did right now as by some ancient instinct. He held fast to the box, neither slackening his pace nor uttering a word. The lad gave him a great punch. Clare clung the harder to the box. The lady heard something, and turned her head. The boy already had his back to her, and was walking away, but she saw that Clare’s face was flushed.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“I don’t rightly know, ma’am. He wanted me to give him my bandbox for his, and said Mr. Maidstone had sent him. But I couldn’t, you know!—except he asked you first. You did pay for it—didn’t you, ma’am?”
“Of course I did, or he wouldn’t have let me take it away! But if you don’t know what it means, I do.—You haven’t been in that shop long, have you?”
“Not quite a month, ma’am.”
“I thought so!”
She said no more, and Clare followed in silence, wondering not a little. When they reached the station, she took the bandbox, and looked at the boy. He returned her gaze, his gray eyes wondering. She searched her purse for a shilling, but, unable to find one, was not sorry to give him a half-crown instead.
“You had better not mention that I gave you anything?” she said.
“I will not, ma’am, except they ask me,” he answered.
“But,” he added, his face in a glow of delight, “is all this for me?”
“To be sure,” she answered. “I am much obliged to you for—carrying my parcel. Be a honest boy whatever comes, and you will not repent it.”
“I will try, ma’am,” said Clare.
But, to speak accurately, he did not know what it was to try to be honest: he had never been tempted to be anything else, and had scarcely had the idea of dishonesty in his mind except in relation to Tommy. Do you say, “Then it was no merit to him”? Certainly it was none. Who was thinking of merit? Not Clare. He is a sneak who thinks of merit. He is a cad who can’t do a gentlemanly action without thinking himself a fine fellow! It might be a merit in many a man to act as Clare did, but in Clare it was pure rightness—or, if you like the word better, righteousness.
Clare as little thought what awaited him. Had there been any truth, any appreciation of honesty in his vulgar heart, Mr. Maidstone could not have done as now he did. When his messenger came back with the tale of how he had been foiled, he said nothing, but his lips grew white. He closed them fast, and went and stood near the door. When Clare, unsuspecting as innocent, opened it, he was met by a blow that dazed him, and a fierce kick that sent him on his back to the curbstone. Almost insensible, but with the impression that something was interfering between him and his work, he returned to the door. As he laid his hand on it, it opened a little, and his master’s face, with a hateful sneer upon it, shot into the crack, and spit in his. Then the door shut so sharply that his fingers caught an agonizing pinch. At last he understood: he was turned off, and his day’s wages were lost!
What would have become of him now but for the half-crown the lady had given him! She was not quite a lady, or she would have walked out of the shop, and declined to gain by frustrating a swindle; but she was a good-hearted woman, and God’s messenger to Clare. He bought a bigger loaf than usual, at which, and the time of the day when he bought it, and the half-crown presented in payment, Mr. Ball wondered; but neither said anything—Mr. Ball from indecision, Clare from eagerness to get home to his family.