John Halifax, Gentleman Read online

  “I’ve seen that!” cried John, with a bright look. “Ah, I like the Severn.”

  He stood gazing at it a good while, a new expression dawning in his eyes. Eyes in which then, for the first time, I watched a thought grow, and grow, till out of them was shining a beauty absolutely divine.

  All of a sudden the Abbey chimes burst out, and made the lad start.

  “What’s that?”

  “Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London,” I sang to the bells; and then it seemed such a commonplace history, and such a very low degree of honour to arrive at, that I was really glad I had forgotten to tell John the story. I merely showed him where, beyond our garden wall, and in the invisible high road that interposed, rose up the grim old Abbey tower.

  “Probably this garden belonged to the Abbey in ancient time—our orchard is so fine. The monks may have planted it; they liked fruit, those old fellows.”

  19“Oh! did they!” He evidently did not quite comprehend, but was trying, without asking, to find out what I referred to. I was almost ashamed, lest he might think I wanted to show off my superior knowledge.

  “The monks were parsons, John, you know. Very good men, I dare say, but rather idle.”

  “Oh, indeed. Do you think they planted that yew hedge?” And he went to examine it.

  Now, far and near, our yew-hedge was noted. There was not its like in the whole country. It was about fifteen feet high, and as many thick. Century after century of growth, with careful clipping and training, had compacted it into a massive green barrier, as close and impervious as a wall.

  John poked in and about it—peering through every interstice—leaning his breast against the solid depth of branches; but their close shield resisted all his strength.

  At last he came back to me, his face glowing with the vain efforts he had made.

  “What were you about? Did you want to get through?”

  “I wanted just to see if it were possible.”

  I shook my head. “What would you do, John, if you were shut up here, and had to get over the yew-hedge? You could not climb it?”

  “I know that, and, therefore, should not waste time in trying.”

  “Would you give up, then?”

  He smiled—there was no “giving up” in that smile of his. “I’ll tell you what I’d do—I’d begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced my way through, and got out safe at the other side.”

  “Well done, lad!—but if it’s all the same to thee, I would rather thee did not try that experiment upon MY hedge at present.”

  My father had come behind, and overheard us, unobserved. We were both somewhat confounded, though a grim 20kindliness of aspect showed that he was not displeased—nay, even amused.

  “Is that thy usual fashion of getting over a difficulty, friend— what’s thy name?”

  I supplied the answer. The minute Abel Fletcher appeared, John seemed to lose all his boyish fun, and go back to that premature gravity and hardness of demeanour which I supposed his harsh experience of the world and of men had necessarily taught him; but which was very sad to see in a lad so young.

  My father sat down beside me on the bench—pushed aside an intrusive branch of clematis—finally, because it would come back and tickle his bald pate, broke it off, and threw it into the river: then, leaning on his stick with both hands, eyed John Halifax sharply, all over, from top to toe.

  “Didn’t thee say thee wanted work? It looks rather like it.”

  His glance upon the shabby clothes made the boy colour violently.

  “Oh, thee need’st not be ashamed; better men than thee have been in rags. Hast thee any money?”

  “The groat you gave, that is, paid me; I never take what I don’t earn,” said the lad, sticking a hand in either poor empty pocket.

  “Don’t be afraid—I was not going to give thee anything—except, maybe—Would thee like some work?”

  “O sir!”

  “O father!”

  I hardly know which was the most grateful cry.

  Abel Fletcher looked surprised, but on the whole not ill-pleased. Putting on and pulling down his broad-brimmed hat, he sat meditatively for a minute or so; making circles in the gravel walk with the end of his stick. People said—nay, Jael herself, once, in a passion, had thrown the fact at me—that the wealthy Friend himself had come to Norton Bury without a shilling in his pocket.

  21“Well, what work canst thee do, lad?”

  “Anything,” was the eager answer.

  “Anything generally means nothing,” sharply said my father; “what hast thee been at all this year?—The truth, mind!”

  John’s eyes flashed, but a look from mine seemed to set him right again. He said quietly and respectfully, “Let me think a minute, and I’ll tell you. All spring I was at a farmer’s, riding the plough-horses, hoeing turnips; then I went up the hills with some sheep: in June I tried hay-making, and caught a fever—you needn’t start, sir, I’ve been well these six weeks, or I wouldn’t have come near your son—then—”

  “That will do, lad—I’m satisfied.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thee need not say ‘sir’—it is folly. I am Abel Fletcher.” For my father retained scrupulously the Friend’s mode of speech, though he was practically but a lax member of the Society, and had married out of its pale. In this announcement of his plain name appeared, I fancy, more pride than humility.

  “Very well, I will remember,” answered the boy fearlessly, though with an amused twist of his mouth, speedily restrained. “And now, Abel Fletcher, I shall be willing and thankful for any work you can give me.”

  “We’ll see about it.”

  I looked gratefully and hopefully at my father—but his next words rather modified my pleasure.

  “Phineas, one of my men at the tan-yard has gone and ’listed this day—left an honest livelihood to be a paid cut-throat. Now, if I could get a lad—one too young to be caught hold of at every pot-house by that man of blood, the recruiting sergeant—Dost thee think this lad is fit to take the place?”

  “Whose place, father?”

  “Bill Watkins’.”

  I was dumb-foundered! I had occasionally seen the said 22Bill Watkins, whose business it was to collect the skins which my father had bought from the farmers round about. A distinct vision presented itself to me of Bill and his cart, from which dangled the sanguinary exuviae of defunct animals, while in front the said Bill sat enthroned, dirty-clad, and dirty-handed, with his pipe in his mouth. The idea of John Halifax in such a position was not agreeable.

  “But, father—”

  He read deprecation in my looks—alas! he knew too well how I disliked the tan-yard and all belonging to it. “Thee’rt a fool, and the lad’s another. He may go about his business for me.”

  “But, father, isn’t there anything else?”

  “I have nothing else, or if I had I wouldn’t give it. He that will not work neither shall he eat.”

  “I will work,” said John, sturdily—he had listened, scarcely comprehending, to my father and me. “I don’t care what it is, if only it’s honest work.”

  Abel Fletcher was mollified. He turned his back on me—but that I little minded—and addressed himself solely to John Halifax.

  “Canst thee drive?”

  “That I can!” and his eyes brightened with boyish delight.

  “Tut! it’s only a cart—the cart with the skins. Dost thee know anything of tanning?”

  “No, but I can learn.”

  “Hey, not so fast! still, better be fast than slow. In the meantime, thee can drive the cart.”

  “Thank you, sir—Abel Fletcher, I mean—I’ll do it well. That is, as well as I can.”

  “And mind! no stopping on the road. No drinking, to find the king’s cursed shilling at the bottom of the glass, like poor Bill, for thy mother to come crying and pestering. Thee hasn’t got one, eh? So much the better, all women are born fools, especially mothers.”

  23“Sir!
” The lad’s face was all crimson and quivering; his voice choked; it was with difficulty he smothered down a burst of tears. Perhaps this self-control was more moving than if he had wept—at least, it answered better with my father.

  After a few minutes more, during which his stick had made a little grave in the middle of the walk, and buried something there—I think something besides the pebble—Abel Fletcher said, not unkindly:

  “Well, I’ll take thee; though it isn’t often I take a lad without a character of some sort—I suppose thee hast none.”

  “None,” was the answer, while the straightforward, steady gaze which accompanied it unconsciously contradicted the statement; his own honest face was the lad’s best witness—at all events I thought so.

  “’Tis done then,” said my father, concluding the business more quickly than I had ever before known his cautious temper settle even such a seemingly trifling matter. I say SEEMINGLY. How blindly we talk when we talk of “trifles.”

  Carelessly rising, he, from some kindly impulse, or else to mark the closing of the bargain, shook the boy’s hand, and left in it a shilling.

  “What is this for?”

  “To show I have hired thee as my servant.”

  “Servant!” John repeated hastily, and rather proudly. “Oh yes, I understand—well, I will try and serve you well.”

  My father did not notice that manly, self-dependent smile. He was too busy calculating how many more of those said shillings would be a fair equivalent for such labour as a lad, ever so much the junior of Bill Watkins, could supply. After some cogitation he hit upon the right sum. I forget how much—be sure it was not over much; for money was scarce enough in this war-time; and besides, there was a belief afloat, so widely that it tainted even my worthy father, that plenty was not good for the working-classes; they required to be kept low.

  24Having settled the question of wages, which John Halifax did not debate at all, my father left us, but turned back when half-way across the green-turfed square.

  “Thee said thee had no money; there’s a week in advance, my son being witness I pay it thee; and I can pay thee a shilling less every Saturday till we get straight.”

  “Very well, sir; good afternoon, and thank you.”

  John took off his cap as he spoke—Abel Fletcher, involuntarily almost, touched his hat in return of the salutation. Then he walked away, and we had the garden all to ourselves—we, Jonathan and his new-found David.

  I did not “fall upon his neck,” like the princely Hebrew, to whom I have likened myself, but whom, alas! I resembled in nothing save my loving. But I grasped his hand, for the first time, and looking up at him, as he stood thoughtfully by me, whispered, “that I was very glad.”

  “Thank you—so am I,” said he, in a low tone. Then all his old manner returned; he threw his battered cap high up in the air, and shouted out, “Hurrah!”—a thorough boy.

  And I, in my poor, quavering voice, shouted too.

  25CHAPTER III

  When I was young, and long after then, at intervals, I had the very useless, sometimes harmful, and invariably foolish habit of keeping a diary. To me, at least, it has been less foolish and harmful than to most; and out of it, together with much drawn out of the stores of a memory, made preternaturally vivid by a long introverted life, which, colourless itself, had nothing to do but to reflect and retain clear images of the lives around it—out of these two sources I have compiled the present history.

  Therein, necessarily, many blank epochs occur. These I shall not try to fill up, but merely resume the thread of narration as recollection serves.

  Thus, after this first day, many days came and went before I again saw John Halifax—almost before I again thought of him. For it was one of my seasons of excessive pain; when I found it difficult to think of anything beyond those four grey-painted walls; where morning, noon, and night slipped wearily away, marked by no changes, save from daylight to candle-light, from candle-light to dawn.

  Afterwards, as my pain abated, I began to be haunted by occasional memories of something pleasant that had crossed my dreary life; visions of a brave, bright young face, ready alike to battle with and enjoy the world. I could hear the voice 26that, speaking to me, was always tender with pity—yet not pity enough to wound: I could see the peculiar smile just creeping round his grave mouth—that irrepressible smile, indicating the atmosphere of thorough heart-cheerfulness, which ripens all the fruits of a noble nature, and without which the very noblest has about it something unwholesome, blank, and cold.

  I wondered if John had ever asked for me. At length I put the question.

  Jael “thought he had—but wasn’t sure. Didn’t bother her head about such folk.”

  “If he asked again, might he come up-stairs?”

  “No.”

  I was too weak to combat, and Jael was too strong an adversary; so I lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never speaking, about the lad. Never once asking for him to come to me; not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face—I longed after him so.

  At last I broke the bonds of sickness—which Jael always riveted as long and as tightly as she could—and plunged into the outer world again.

  It was one market-day—Jael being absent—that I came down-stairs. A soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the thinned trees of the Abbey yard. I opened the window to hear him, though all the while in mortal fear of Jael. I listened, but caught no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came painfully from the back regions of the house; it would ill have harmonised with the sweet autumn day and the robin’s song. I sat, idly thinking so, and wondering whether it were a necessary and universal fact that human beings, unlike the year, should become harsh and unlovely as they grow old.

  My robin had done singing, and I amused myself with watching a spot of scarlet winding down the rural road, our 27house being on the verge where Norton Bury melted into “the country.” It turned out to be the cloak of a well-to-do young farmer’s wife riding to market in her cart beside her jolly-looking spouse. Very spruce and self-satisfied she appeared, and the market-people turned to stare after her, for her costume was a novelty then. Doubtless, many thought as I did, how much prettier was scarlet than duffle grey.

  Behind the farmer’s cart came another, which at first I scarcely noticed, being engrossed by the ruddy face under the red cloak. The farmer himself nodded good-humouredly, but Mrs. Scarlet-cloak turned up her nose. “Oh, pride, pride!” I thought, amused, and watched the two carts, the second of which was with difficulty passing the farmer’s, on the opposite side of the narrow road. At last it succeeded in getting in advance, to the young woman’s evident annoyance, until the driver, turning, lifted his hat to her with such a merry, frank, pleasant smile.

  Surely, I knew that smile, and the well-set head with its light curly hair. Also, alas! I knew the cart with relics of departed sheep dangling out behind. It was our cart of skins, and John Halifax was driving it.

  “John! John!” I called out, but he did not hear, for his horse had taken fright at the red cloak, and required a steady hand. Very steady the boy’s hand was, so that the farmer clapped his two great fists, and shouted “Bray-vo!”

  But John—my John Halifax—he sat in his cart, and drove. His appearance was much as when I first saw him—shabbier, perhaps, as if through repeated drenchings; this had been a wet autumn, Jael had told me. Poor John!—well might he look gratefully up at the clear blue sky to-day; ay, and the sky never looked down on a brighter, cheerier face, the same face which, whatever rags it surmounted, would, I believe, have ennobled them all.

  I leaned out, watching him approach our house; watching him with so great pleasure that I forgot to wonder whether or 28no he would notice me. He did not at first, being busy over his horse; until, just as the notion flashed across my mind that he was passing by our house—also, how keenly his doing so would pain me—t
he lad looked up.

  A beaming smile of surprise and pleasure, a friendly nod, then all at once his manner changed; he took off his cap, and bowed ceremoniously to his master’s son.

  For the moment I was hurt; then I could not but respect the honest pride which thus intimated that he knew his own position, and wished neither to ignore nor to alter it; all advances between us must evidently come from my side. So, having made his salutation, he was driving on, when I called after him,

  “John! John!”

  “Yes, sir. I am so glad you’re better again.”

  “Stop one minute till I come out to you.” And I crawled on my crutches to the front door, forgetting everything but the pleasure of meeting him—forgetting even my terror of Jael. What could she say? even though she held nominally the Friends’ doctrine—obeyed in the letter at least, ‘Call no man your master’—what would Jael say if she found me, Phineas Fletcher, talking in front of my father’s respectable mansion with the vagabond lad who drove my father’s cart of skins?

  But I braved her, and opened the door. “John, where are you?”

  “Here” (he stood at the foot of the steps, with the reins on his arm); “did you want me?”

  “Yes. Come up here; never mind the cart.”

  But that was not John’s way. He led the refractory horse, settled him comfortably under a tree, and gave him in charge to a small boy. Then he bounded back across the road, and was up the steps to my side in a single leap.

  “I had no notion of seeing you. They said you were in bed yesterday.” (Then he HAD been inquiring for me!) “Ought you to be standing at the door this cold day?”

  29“It’s quite warm,” I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.

  “Please go in.”

  “If you’ll come too.”

  He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child. Well nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing, tenderness. A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest found in men. John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man, that I ever knew.