John Halifax, Gentleman Read online

  Where, indeed! But that it was gone, and irretrievably—most likely stolen when we were so wedged in the crowd—there could be no manner of doubt. And I had not a groat. I had little use for money, and rarely carried any.

  “Would not somebody trust us?” suggested I.

  “I never asked anybody for credit in my life—and for a horse and gig—they’d laugh at me. Still—yes—stay here a minute, and I’ll try.”

  He came back, though not immediately, and took my arm with a reckless laugh.

  “It’s of no use, Phineas—I’m not so respectable as I thought. What’s to be done?”

  Ay! what indeed! Here we were, two friendless youths, with not a penny in our pockets, and ten miles away from home. How to get there, and at midnight too, was a very serious question. We consulted a minute, and then John said firmly:

  “We must make the best of it and start. Every instant is precious. Your father will think we have fallen into some harm. Come, Phineas, I’ll help you on.”

  His strong, cheery voice, added to the necessity of the circumstances, braced up my nerves. I took hold of his arm, and 83we marched on bravely through the shut-up town, and for a mile or two along the high-road leading to Norton Bury. There was a cool fresh breeze: and I often think one can walk so much further by night than by day. For some time, listening to John’s talk about the stars—he had lately added astronomy to the many things he tried to learn—and recalling with him all that we had heard and seen this day, I hardly felt my weariness.

  But gradually it grew upon me; my pace lagged slower and slower—even the scented air of the midsummer-night imparted no freshness. John wound his young arm, strong and firm as iron, round my waist, and we got on awhile in that way.

  “Keep up, Phineas. There’s a hayrick near. I’ll wrap you in my coat, and you shall rest there: an hour or two will not matter now—we shall get home by daybreak.”

  I feebly assented; but it seemed to me that we never should get home—at least I never should. For a short way more, I dragged myself—or rather, was dragged—along; then the stars, the shadowy fields, and the winding, white high-road mingled and faded from me. I lost all consciousness.

  When I came to myself I was lying by a tiny brook at the roadside, my head resting on John’s knees. He was bathing my forehead: I could not see him, but I heard his smothered moan.

  “David, don’t mind. I shall be well directly.”

  “Oh! Phineas—Phineas; I thought I had killed you.”

  He said no more; but I fancied that under cover of the night he yielded to what his manhood might have been ashamed of—yet need not—a few tears.

  I tried to rise. There was a faint streak in the east. “Why, it is daybreak! How far are we from Norton Bury?”

  “Not very far. Don’t stir a step. I shall carry you.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Nonsense; I have done it for half-a-mile already. Come, mount! I am not going to have Jonathan’s death laid at David’s door.”

  84And so, masking command with a jest, he had his way. What strength supported him I cannot tell, but he certainly carried me—with many rests between, and pauses, during which I walked a quarter of a mile or so—the whole way to Norton Bury.

  The light broadened and broadened. When we reached my father’s door, haggard and miserable, it was in the pale sunshine of a summer morning.

  “Thank God!” murmured John, as he set me down at the foot of the steps. “You are safe at home.”

  “And you. You will come in—you would not leave me now?”

  He thought a moment—then said, “No!”

  We looked up doubtfully at the house; there were no watchers there. All the windows were closed, as if the whole peaceful establishment were taking its sleep, prior to the early stirring of Norton Bury households. Even John’s loud knocking was some time before it was answered.

  I was too exhausted to feel much; but I know those five awful minutes seemed interminable. I could not have borne them, save for John’s voice in my ear.

  “Courage! I’ll bear all the blame. We have committed no absolute sin, and have paid dearly for any folly. Courage!”

  At the five minutes’ end my father opened the door. He was dressed as usual, looked as usual. Whether he had sat up watching, or had suffered any anxiety, I never found out.

  He said nothing; merely opened the door, admitted us, and closed it behind us. But we were certain, from his face, that he knew all. It was so; some neighbour driving home from Coltham had taken pains to tell Abel Fletcher where he had seen his son—at the very last place a Friend’s son ought to be seen—the play-house. We knew that it was by no means to learn the truth, but to confront us with it, that my father—reaching 85the parlour, and opening the shutters that the hard daylight should shame us more and more—asked the stern question—

  “Phineas, where hast thee been?”

  John answered for me. “At the theatre at Coltham. It was my fault. He went because I wished to go.”

  “And wherefore didst thee wish to go?”

  “Wherefore?” the answer seemed hard to find. “Oh! Mr. Fletcher, were you never young like me?” My father made no reply; John gathered courage.

  “It was, as I say, all my fault. It might have been wrong—I think now that it was—but the temptation was hard. My life here is dull; I long sometimes for a little amusement—a little change.”

  “Thee shall have it.”

  That voice, slow and quiet as it was, struck us both dumb.

  “And how long hast thee planned this, John Halifax?”

  “Not a day—not an hour! it was a sudden freak of mine.” (My father shook his head with contemptuous incredulity.) “Sir!—Abel Fletcher—did I ever tell you a lie? If you will not believe me, believe your own son. Ask Phineas—No, no, ask him nothing!” And he came in great distress to the sofa where I had fallen. “Oh, Phineas! how cruel I have been to you!”

  I tried to smile at him, being past speaking—but my father put John aside.

  “Young man, I can take care of my son. Thee shalt not lead him into harm’s way any more. Go—I have been mistaken in thee!”

  If my father had gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us, and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, “I have been mistaken in thee!” was ten times worse.

  John lifted to him a mute look, from which all pride had ebbed away.

  86“I repeat, I have been mistaken in thee! Thee seemed a lad to my mind; I trusted thee. This day, by my son’s wish, I meant to have bound thee ’prentice to me, and in good time to have taken thee into the business. Now—”

  There was silence. At last John muttered, in a low broken-hearted voice, “I deserve it all. I can go away. I might perhaps earn my living elsewhere; shall I?”

  Abel Fletcher hesitated, looked at the poor lad before him (oh, David! how unlike to thee), then said, “No—I do not wish that. At least, not at present.”

  I cried out in the joy and relief of my heart. John came over to me, and we clasped hands.

  “John, you will not go?”

  “No, I will stay to redeem my character with your father. Be content, Phineas—I won’t part with you.”

  “Young man, thou must,” said my father, turning round.

  “But—”

  “I have said it, Phineas. I accuse him of no dishonesty, no crime, but of weakly yielding, and selfishly causing another to yield, to the temptation of the world. Therefore, as my clerk I retain him; as my son’s companion—never!”

  We felt that “never” was irrevocable.

  Yet I tried, blindly and despairingly, to wrestle with it; I might as well have flung myself against a stone wall.

  John stood perfectly silent.

  “Don’t, Phineas,” he whispered at last; “never mind me. Your father is right—at least so far as he sees. Let me go—perhaps I may come back to you some time. If not—”

  I moaned ou
t bitter words—I hardly knew what I was saying. My father took no notice of them, only went to the door and called Jael.

  Then, before the woman came, I had strength enough to bid John go.

  “Good-bye—don’t forget me, don’t!”

  87“I will not,” he said; “and if I live we shall be friends again. Good-bye, Phineas.” He was gone.

  After that day, though he kept his word, and remained in the tan-yard, and though from time to time I heard of him—always accidentally,—after that day for two long years I never once saw the face of John Halifax.

  88CHAPTER VII

  It was the year 1800, long known in English households as “the dear year.” The present generation can have no conception of what a terrible time that was—War, Famine, and Tumult stalking hand-in-hand, and no one to stay them. For between the upper and lower classes there was a great gulf fixed; the rich ground the faces of the poor, the poor hated, yet meanly succumbed to, the rich. Neither had Christianity enough boldly to cross the line of demarcation, and prove, the humbler, that they were men,—the higher and wiser, that they were gentlemen.

  These troubles, which were everywhere abroad, reached us even in our quiet town of Norton Bury. For myself, personally, they touched me not, or, at least, only kept fluttering like evil birds outside the dear home-tabernacle, where I and Patience sat, keeping our solemn counsel together—for these two years had with me been very hard.

  Though I had to bear so much bodily suffering that I was seldom told of any worldly cares, still I often fancied things were going ill both within and without our doors. Jael complained in an under-key of stinted housekeeping, or boasted aloud of her own ingenuity in making ends meet: and my father’s brow grew continually heavier, graver, sterner; sometimes so stern that I dared not wage, what was, openly or secretly, the quiet 89but incessant crusade of my existence—the bringing back of John Halifax.

  He still remained my father’s clerk—nay, I sometimes thought he was even advancing in duties and trusts, for I heard of his being sent long journeys up and down England to buy grain—Abel Fletcher having added to his tanning business the flour-mill hard by, whose lazy whirr was so familiar to John and me in our boyhood. But of these journeys my father never spoke; indeed, he rarely mentioned John at all. However he might employ and even trust him in business relations, I knew that in every other way he was inexorable.

  And John Halifax was as inexorable as he. No under-hand or clandestine friendship would he admit—no, not even for my sake. I knew quite well, that until he could walk in openly, honourably, proudly, he never would re-enter my father’s doors. Twice only he had written to me—on my two birthdays—my father himself giving me in silence the unsealed letters. They told me what I already was sure of—that I held, and always should hold, my steadfast place in his friendship. Nothing more.

  One other fact I noticed: that a little lad, afterward discovered to be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or gardener’s boy; and being “cute,” and a “scholard,” was greatly patronized by Jael. I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he came in my way, in house or garden, was the most capital “little foot-page” that ever invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs, and serving me with an unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and puzzled me at the time. It did not afterwards.

  Summer was passing. People began to watch with anxious looks the thin harvest-fields—as Jael often told me, when she came home from her afternoon walks. “It was piteous to see them,” she said; “only July, and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four shillings a peck.”

  90And then she would glance at our flour-mill, where for several days a week the water-wheel was as quiet as on Sundays; for my father kept his grain locked up, waiting for what, he wisely judged, might be a worse harvest than the last. But Jael, though she said nothing, often looked at the flour-mill and shook her head. And after one market-day—when she came in rather “flustered,” saying there had been a mob outside the mill, until “that young man Halifax” had gone out and spoken to them—she never once allowed me to take my rare walk under the trees in the Abbey-yard; nor, if she could help it, would she even let me sit watching the lazy Avon from the garden-wall.

  One Sunday—it was the 1st of August, for my father had just come back from meeting, very much later than usual, and Jael said he had gone, as was his annual custom on that his wedding-day, to the Friends’ burial ground in St. Mary’s Lane, where, far away from her own kindred and people, my poor young mother had been laid,—on this one Sunday I began to see that things were going wrong. Abel Fletcher sat at dinner wearing the heavy, hard look which had grown upon his face not unmingled with the wrinkles planted by physical pain. For, with all his temperance, he could not quite keep down his hereditary enemy, gout; and this week it had clutched him pretty hard.

  Dr. Jessop came in, and I stole away gladly enough, and sat for an hour in my old place in the garden, idly watching the stretch of meadow, pasture, and harvest land. Noticing, too, more as a pretty bit in the landscape than as a fact of vital importance, in how many places the half-ripe corn was already cut, and piled in thinly-scattered sheaves over the fields.

  After the doctor left, my father sent for me and all his household: in the which, creeping humbly after the womankind, was now numbered the lad Jem. That Abel Fletcher was not quite himself was proved by the fact that his unlighted pipe lay on the table, and his afternoon tankard of ale sank from foam to flatness untouched.

  91He first addressed Jael. “Woman, was it thee who cooked the dinner to-day?”

  She gave a dignified affirmative.

  “Thee must give us no more such dinners. No cakes, no pastry kickshaws, and only wheaten bread enough for absolute necessity. Our neighbours shall not say that Abel Fletcher has flour in his mill, and plenty in his house, while there is famine abroad in the land. So take heed.”

  “I do take heed,” answered Jael, staunchly. “Thee canst not say I waste a penny of thine. And for myself, do I not pity the poor? On First-day a woman cried after me about wasting good flour in starch—to-day, behold.”

  And with a spasmodic bridling-up, she pointed to the bouffante which used to stand up stiffly round her withered old throat, and stick out in front like a pouter pigeon. Alas! its glory and starch were alike departed; it now appeared nothing but a heap of crumpled and yellowish muslin. Poor Jael! I knew this was the most heroic personal sacrifice she could have made, yet I could not help smiling; even my father did the same.

  “Dost thee mock me, Abel Fletcher?” cried she angrily. “Preach not to others while the sin lies on thy own head.”

  And I am sure poor Jael was innocent of any jocular intention, as advancing sternly she pointed to her master’s pate, where his long-worn powder was scarcely distinguishable from the snows of age. He bore the assault gravely and unshrinkingly, merely saying, “Woman, peace!”

  “Nor while”—pursued Jael, driven apparently to the last and most poisoned arrow in her quiver of wrath—“while the poor folk be starving in scores about Norton Bury, and the rich folk there will not sell their wheat under famine price. Take heed to thyself, Abel Fletcher.”

  My father winced, either from a twinge of gout or conscience; and then Jael suddenly ceased the attack, sent the other servants out of the room, and tended her master as carefully as 92if she had not insulted him. In his fits of gout my father, unlike most men, became the quieter and easier to manage the more he suffered. He had a long fit of pain which left him considerably exhausted. When, being at last relieved, he and I were sitting in the room alone, he said to me—

  “Phineas, the tan-yard has thriven ill of late, and I thought the mill would make up for it. But if it will not it will not. Wouldst thee mind, my son, being left a little poor when I am gone?”

  “Father!”

  “Well, then, in a few days I will begin selling my wheat, as that lad has advised and beg
ged me to do these weeks past. He is a sharp lad, and I am getting old. Perhaps he is right.”

  “Who, father?” I asked, rather hypocritically.

  “Thee knowest well enough—John Halifax.”

  I thought it best to say no more; but I never let go one thread of hope which could draw me nearer to my heart’s desire.

  On the Monday morning my father went to the tan-yard as usual. I spent the day in my bed-room, which looked over the garden, where I saw nothing but the waving of the trees and the birds hopping over the smooth grass; heard nothing but the soft chime, hour after hour, of the Abbey bells. What was passing in the world, in the town, or even in the next street, was to me faint as dreams.

  At dinner-time I rose, went down-stairs, and waited for my father; waited one, two, three hours. It was very strange. He never by any chance overstayed his time, without sending a message home. So after some consideration as to whether I dared encroach upon his formal habits so much, and after much advice from Jael, who betrayed more anxiety than was at all warranted by the cause she assigned, viz. the spoiled dinner, I despatched Jem Watkins to the tan-yard to see after his master.

  He came back with ill news. The lane leading to the tan-yard was blocked up with a wild mob. Even the stolid, starved 93patience of our Norton Bury poor had come to an end at last—they had followed the example of many others. There was a bread-riot in the town.

  God only knows how terrible those “riots” were; when the people rose in desperation, not from some delusion of crazy, blood-thirsty “patriotism,” but to get food for themselves, their wives, and children. God only knows what madness was in each individual heart of that concourse of poor wretches, styled “the mob,” when every man took up arms, certain that there were before him but two alternatives, starving or—hanging.

  The riot here was scarcely universal. Norton Bury was not a large place, and had always abundance of small-pox and fevers to keep the poor down numerically. Jem said it was chiefly about our mill and our tan-yard that the disturbance lay.