A Rough Shaking

“Come along!” responded Tommy.

They left the kitchen, and went into the next room. It seemed warmer, because it had a wooden floor. There was hardly any light in it, but it felt empty. They went up the stair. When they turned on the landing half-way, they saw the moon shining in. They went into the first room they came to. Such a bedroom!—larger and grander than any at the parsonage!

“Oh baby! baby!” cried Clare, “now you’ll live—won’t you?”

He seemed to have his own Maly an infant again in his arms. The thought that the place was not his, and that he might get into trouble by being there, never came to him. Use was not theft! The room and its contents were to him as the water and the fire which even pagans counted every man bound to hand to his neighbour. There was the bed! Through all the cold time it had been waiting for them! The counterpane was very dusty; and oh, such moth-eaten blankets! But there were sheets under them, and they were quite clean, though dingy with age! The moths—that is, their legs and wings and dried-up bodies—flew out in clouds when they moved the blankets. Not the less had they discovered Paradise! For the moths, they must have found it an island of plum-cake!

I do not know the history of the house—how it came to be shut up with so much in it. I only know it was itself shut up in chancery, and chancery is full of moths and dust and worms. I believe nobody in the town knew much about it—not even the thieves. It was of course said to be haunted, which had doubtless done something for its protection. No one knew how long it had stood thus deserted. Nobody thought of entering it, or was aware that there was furniture in it. It was supposed to be somebody’s property, and that it was somebody’s business to look after it: whether it was looked after or not, nobody inquired. Happily for Clare and the baby and Tommy, that was nobody’s business.

With deft hands—for how often had he not seen his baby-sister undressed!—Clare hurried off the infant’s one garment, gently rubbed her little body till it was quite dry, if not very clean, and laid her tenderly in the heart of the blankets, among the remains and eggs and grubs of the mothy creatures—they were not wild beasts, or even stinging things—and covered her up, leaving a little opening for her to breathe through. She had not cried since Clare took her; she was too feeble to cry; but, alas, there was no question about feeding her, for he had no food to give her, were she crying ever so much! He threw off his clothes, and got into the mothy blankets beside her. In a few minutes he began to glow, for there was a thick pile of woolly salvation atop of him. He took the naked baby in his arms and held her close to his body, and they grew warmer together.

“Now, Tommy,” he said, “you may take off your clothes, and get in on the other side of me.”

Tommy did not need a second invitation, and in a moment they were all fast asleep. A few months, even a few days before, it would have been a right painful thing to Clare to lie so near a boy like Tommy, but suffering had taken the edge off nicety and put it on humanity. The temple of the Lord may need cleansing, but the temple of the Lord it is. Clare had in him that same spirit which made the son of man go beyond the healingly needful, and lay his hand—the Sinaitic manuscript says his hands—upon the leper, where a word alone would have served for the leprosy: the hands were for the man’s heart. Repulsive danger lay in the contact, but the flesh and bones were human, and very cold.

Chapter XXV. A new quest

Though as comfortable as one could be who so sorely lacked food, Clare slept lightly. His baby was heavy on his mind, and he woke very early—woke at once to the anxious thought of a boy without food, money, or friends, and with a hungry baby. He woke, however, with a new train of reasoning in his mind. Babies could not work; babies always had their food given them; therefore babies who hadn’t food had a right to ask for it; babies couldn’t ask for it; therefore those who had the charge of them, and hadn’t food to give them, had a right to do the asking for them. He could not beg for himself as long as he was able to ask for work; but for baby it was his duty to beg, because she could not wait: she would not live till he found work. If he got work that very day, he would have to work the whole day before he got the money for it, and baby would be dead by that time! He crept out, so as not to awake the sleepers, and put on his clothes. They were not dry, but they would dry when the sun rose. He did not at all like leaving his baby with Tommy, but what was he to do? She might as well die of Tommy as of hunger! Perhaps it might be easier!

He thought over the nature of the boy, and what it would be best to say to him. He saw what many genial persons are slow to see, that kindness, in its natural shape, is to certain dispositions a great barrier in the way of learning either love or duty. With multitudes, nothing but undiluted fear or pain or shame can open the door for love to enter.

He searched the house for a medicine-bottle, such as he had seen plenty of at the parsonage, and found two. He chose the smaller, lest size should provoke disinclination. Then he woke Tommy, and said to him,

“Tommy, I’m going out to get baby’s breakfast.”

“Ain’t you going to give me any? Is the kid to have everything?”

“Tommy!” said Clare, with a steady look in his eyes that frightened him, “your turn will come next. You won’t die of want for a day or two yet. I’ll see to you as soon as I can. Only, remember, baby comes first! I’m going to leave her with you. You needn’t take her up. You’re not able to carry her. You would let her fall. But if, when I come home, I find anything has happened to her, I’ll put you in the water-butt—I WILL. And I’ll do it when the moon is in it.”

Tommy pulled a hideous face, and began to yell. Clare seized him by the throat.

“Make that noise again, you rascal, and I’ll choke you. If you’re good to baby while I’m away, I won’t eat a mouthful till you’ve had some; if you’re not good to her, you know what will happen! You’ve got the thing in your own hands!”

“She’ll go an’ do something I can’t help, an’ then you’ll go for to drown me!”

Again he began to howl, but Clare checked him as before. “If you wake her up, I’ll—” He had no words, and shook him for lack of any. “I see,” he resumed, “I shall have to lock you up in the coal-cellar till I come back! Here! come along!”

Tommy was quiet instantly, and fell to pleading. Clare lent a gracious ear, and yielding to Tommy’s protestations, left him with his treasure, and set out on his quest.

He got out through the kitchen, the rustiness of the fastenings of its door delaying him a little, and over the wall by the imprisoned door, taking care to lift as little as possible of his person above the coping as he crossed. He dared not go along the wall in the daylight, or get down in the smith’s yard; he dropped straight to the ground.

The country was level, and casting his eyes about, he saw, at no great distance, what looked like a farmstead. He knew cows were milked early, but did not know what time it was. Hoping anyhow to reach the place before the milk was put away in the pans, he set out to run straight across the fields. But he soon found he could not run, and had to drop into a walk.

When he got into the yard, he saw a young woman carrying a foaming pail of milk across to the dairy. He ran to her, and addressed her with his usual “Please, ma’am;” but the pail was heavy, and she kept on without answering him. Clare followed her, and looking into the dairy, saw an elderly woman.

“Please, ma’am, could you afford me as much fresh milk as would fill that bottle?” he said, showing it.

“Well, my man,” she answered pleasantly, “I think we might venture as far without fear of the workhouse! But what on earth made you bring such a thimble of a bottle as that?”

“I have no money to pay for it, you see, ma’am; and I thought a little bottle would be better to beg with; it wouldn’t be so hard on the farmer!”

“Bless the boy! Much good a drop of milk like that will do him!” said the woman, turning to the girl “Is it for your mother’s tea?”

“No, ma’am; it’s for a baby—a very little baby, ma’am!—I think it will hold enough,” he added, giving an anxious glance at the bottle in his hand, “to keep her alive till I get work.”

The woman looked, and her heart was drawn to the boy who stood gazing at her with his whole solemn, pathetic yet strong face—with his wide, clear eyes, his decided nose, large and straight, his rather long, fine mouth, trembling with eager anxiety, and his confident chin. She saw hunger in his grimy cheeks; she saw that his manners were those of a gentleman, and his clothes poor enough for any tramp, though evidently not made for a tramp. She would have concluded him escaped from cruel guardians, for she was a reader of The Family Herald; but that would not account for the baby! The baby did not tally!

“How old’s the baby?” she asked.

“I don’t know, ma’am; she only came to us last night.”

“Who brought her?”

She imagined the boy a simpleton, and expected one of such answers as inconvenient questions in natural history receive from nurses.

“I don’t know, ma’am. I took her out of the water-butt.”

The thing grew bewildering.

“Who put her there?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Whose baby is she, then?”

“Mine, I think, ma’am.”

“God bless the boy!” said the woman impatiently, and stared at him speechless.

Her daughter in the meantime had filled the phial with new milk. She handed it to him. He grasped it eagerly. Tears of joy came in his big hungry eyes.

“Oh, thank you, ma’am!” he said. “But, please, would you tell me,” he continued, looking from the one to the other, “how much water I must put in the milk to make it good for baby? I know it wants water, but I don’t know how much!”

“Oh, about half and half,” answered the elder woman. “‘Ain’t she got no mother?” she resumed.

“I think she must have a mother, but I daresay she’s a tramp,” answered Clare.

“I don’t want to give my good milk to a tramp!” she rejoined.

“I’m not a tramp, please, ma’am!—at least I wasn’t till the day before yesterday.”

The woman looked at him out of motherly eyes, and her heart swelled into her bosom.

“Wouldn’t you like some milk yourself?” she said.

“Oh, yes, ma’am!” answered Clare, with a deep sigh.

She filled a big cup from the warm milk in the pail, and held it out to him. He took it as a man on the scaffold might a reprieve from death, half lifted it to his lips, then let his hand sink. It trembled so, as he set the cup down on a shelf beside him, that he spilled a little. He looked ruefully at the drops on the brick floor.

“Please, ma’am, there’s Tommy!” he faltered.

His promise to Tommy had sprung upon him like a fiery flying serpent.

“Tommy! I thought you said the baby was a girl?”

“Yes, the baby’s a girl; but there’s Tommy as well! He’s another of us.”

“Your brother, of course!”

“No, ma’am; I’m afraid he’s a tramp. But there he is, you see, and I must share with him!”

It grew more and more inexplicable!

A gruff, loud voice came from the yard. It was the farmer’s. He was a bitter-tempered man, and his dislike of tramps was almost hatred. His wife and daughter knew that if he saw the boy he would be worse than rude to him.

“There’s the master!” cried the mother. “Drink, and make haste out of his way.”

“If it’s stealing,—” said Clare.

“Stealing! It’s no stealing! The dairy’s mine! I can give my milk where I please!”

“Well, ma’am, if the milk’s mine because you gave it me, it’s not begging to ask you to give me a piece of bread for it! I could take a share of that to Tommy!”

“Run, Chris,” cried the mother, hurriedly; “take the innocent with you—round outside the yard. Give him a hunch of bread, and let him go. For God’s sake don’t let your father see him! Run, my boy, run! There’s no time to drink the milk now!”

She poured it back into the pail, and set the cup out of the way.

There was a little passage and another door, by which they left as the farmer entered. The kick he would have given Clare with his heavy boot would, in its consequences, have reached the baby too. The girl ran with him to the back of the house.

“Wait a moment at that window,” she said.

Now whether it was loving-kindness all, or that she dared not take the time to divide it, I cannot tell, but she handed Clare a whole loaf, and that a good big one, of home-made bread, and disappeared before he could thank her, telling him to run for his life.

He was able now. With the farmer behind, and the hungry ones before him, he must run; and with the phial in his pocket and the loaf in his hands, he could run. Happily the farmer did not catch sight of him. His wife took care he should not. I believe, indeed, she got up a brand-new quarrel with him on the spur of the moment, that he might not have a chance.

Chapter XXVI. A new entrance

Clare sped jubilant. But soon came a check to his jubilation: it was one thing to drop from the wall, and quite another to climb to the top of it without the help of the door! The same moment he heard the clink of the smith’s hammer on his anvil, and to go by his yard in daylight would be to risk too much! For what would become of them if their retreat was discovered! He stood at the foot of the brick precipice, and stared up with helpless eyes and failing strength. Baby was inside, hungry, and with no better nurse than ill conditioned Tommy; her milk was in his pocket, Tommy’s bread in his hand, the insurmountable wall between him and them! He had the daylight now, however, and there was hardly any one about: perhaps he could find another entrance! Round the outside of the wall, therefore, like the Midianite in the rather comical hymn, did Clare prowl and prowl. But the wall rose straight and much too smooth wherever he looked. Searching its face he went all along the bottom of the garden, and then up the narrow lane between it and the garden of the next house, with increasing fear that there was no way but by the smith’s yard, and no choice but risk it.

A dozen yards or so, however, from the end of the lane, where it took a sharp turn before entering the street, he spied an opening in the wall—the same from which, the night before, Tommy had returned with such a frightened face. Clare went through, and found a narrow passage running to the left for a short distance between two walls. At the end, half on one side, half on the other of the second wall, lay the well that had terrified Tommy. The wall crossed it with a low arch. On the further side of the well was a third wall, with a space of about two feet and a half between it and the side of the round well. Through that wall there might be a door!—or, if not, there might be some way of getting over it! To cross the well would be awkward, but he must do it! He tied the loaf in his pocket-handkerchief—he was far past fastidiousness, and Tommy knew neither the word nor the thing—and knotted the ends of it round his neck. But his chief anxiety was not to break the bottle in his jacket-pocket. He got on his knees on the parapet. How deep and dark the water looked! For a moment he felt a fear of it something like Tommy’s. How was he to cross the awful gulf? It was not like a free jump; he was hemmed in before and behind, and overhead also. But the baby drew him over the well, as the name of Beatrice drew Dante through the fire. The baby was waiting for him, and it had to be done! He made a cat-leap through beneath the arch, reaching out with his hands and catching at the parapet beyond. He did catch it, just enough of it to hold on by, so that his body did not follow his legs into the water. Oh, how cold they found it after his run! He held on, strained and heaved up, made a great reach across the width of the parapet with one hand, laid hold of its outer edge, made good his grasp on it, and drew himself out of the water, and out of the well.

He was in a narrow space, closed in with walls much higher than his head, out of which he saw no way but that by which he had come in—across the fearful well, that seemed, so dark was its water, to go down and down for ever.

He felt in his pocket. If then he had found baby’s bottle broken, I doubt if Clare would ever have got out of the place, except by the door into the next world. What little strength he had was nearly gone, and I think it would then have gone quite. But the bottle was safe and his courage came back.

He examined his position, and presently saw that the narrowness of his threatened prison would make it no prison at all. He found that, by leaning his back against one wall, pushing his feet against the opposite wall, and making of the third wall a rack for his shoulder, he could worm himself slowly up. It was a task for a strong man, and Clare, though strong for his years, was not at that moment strong. But there was the baby waiting, and here was her milk! He fell to, and, with an agony of exertion, wriggled himself at last to the top—so exhausted that he all but fell over on the other side. He pulled himself together, and dropped at once into, the garden. Happier boy than Clare was not in all England then. Hunger, wet, incipient nakedness, for he had torn his clothes badly, were nowhere. Baby was within his reach, and the milk within baby’s!

He ran, dripping like a spaniel, to find her, and shot up the stair to the room that held his treasure. To his joy he found both Tommy and the baby fast asleep, Tommy tired out with the weary tramping of the day before, and the baby still under the influence of the opiate her mother had given her to make her drown quietly.

Chapter XXVII. The baby has her breakfast

He waked Tommy, and showed him the loaf. Tommy sprang from his lair and snatched at it.

“No, Tommy,” said Clare, drawing back, “I can’t trust you! You would eat it all; and if I died of hunger, what would become of baby, left alone with you? I don’t feel at all sure you wouldn’t eat her!”

Baby started a feeble whimper.

“You must wait now till I’ve attended to her,” continued Clare. “If you had got up quietly without waking her, I would have given you your share at once.”

As he spoke, he pulled a blanket off the bed to wrap her in, and made haste to take her up. A series of difficulties followed, which I will leave to the imagination of mothers and aunts, and nurses in general—the worst being that there was no warm water to wash her in, and cold water would be worse than dangerous after what she had gone through with it the night before. Clare comforted himself that washing was a thing non-essential to existence, however desirable for well-being.

Then came a more serious difficulty: the milk must be mixed with water, and water as cold as Clare’s legs would kill the drug-dazed shred of humanity! What was to be done? It would be equally dangerous to give her the strong milk of a cow undiluted. There was but one way: he must feed her as do the pigeons. First, however, he must have water! The well was almost inaccessible: to get to it and return would fearfully waste life-precious time! The rain-water in the little pool must serve the necessity! It was preferable to that in the butt!

Until many years after, it did not occur to Clare as strange that there should be even a drop of water in that water-butt. Whence was it fed? There was no roof near, from which the rain might run into it. If there had ever been a pipe to supply it, surely, in a house so long forsaken, its continuity must have given way One always sees such barrels empty, dry, and cracked: this one was apparently known to be full of water, for what woman in her senses, however inferior those senses, would throw her child into an empty butt! How did it happen to be full? Clare was almost driven to the conclusion that it had been filled for the evil purpose to which it was that night put. Against this was the fact that it would not have been easy to fill such a huge vessel by hand. I suggested that the blacksmith and his predecessors might have used it for the purposes of the forge, and kept it and its feeder in repair. Mr. Skymer endeavoured repeatedly to find out what had become of the blacksmith, but never with any approach to success; the probability being that he had left the world long before his natural time, by disease engendered or quarrel occasioned through his drunkenness.

Clare laid the baby down, and fetched water from the pool. Then he mixed the milk with what seemed the right quantity, again took the baby up, who had been whimpering a little now and then all the time, laid a blanket, several times folded, on his wet knees, and laid her in her blanket upon it. These preparations made, he took a small mouthful of the milk and water, and held it until it grew warm. It was the only way, I condescend to remind any such reader as may think it proper to be disgusted. When then he put his mouth to the baby’s, careful not to let too much go at once, they managed so between them that she successfully appropriated the mouthful. It was followed by a second, a third, and more, until, to Clare’s delight, the child seemed satisfied, leaving some of the precious fluid for another meal. He put her in the bed again, and covered her up warm. All the time, Tommy had been watching the loaf with the eyes of a wild beast.

“Now, Tommy,” said Clare, “how much of this loaf do you think you ought to have?”

“Half, of course!” answered Tommy boldly, with perfect conviction of his fairness, and pride in the same.

“Are you as big as I am?”

Tommy held his peace.

“You ain’t half as big!” said Clare.

“I’m a bloomin’ lot hungrier!” growled Tommy.

“You had eggs last night, and I had none!”

“That wurn’t my fault!”

“What did you do to get this bread?”

“I staid at home with baby.”

“That’s true,” answered Clare. “But,” he went on, “suppose a horse and a pony had got to divide their food between them, would the pony have a right to half? Wouldn’t the horse, being bigger, want more to keep him alive than the pony?”

“Don’t know,” said Tommy.

“But you shall have the half,” continued Clare; “only I hope, after this, when you get anything given to you, you’ll divide it with me. I try to be fair, and I want you to be fair.”

Tommy made no reply. He did not trouble himself about fair play; he wanted all he could get—like most people; though, thank God, I know a few far more anxious to give than to receive fair play. Such men, be they noblemen or tradesmen, I worship.

Clare carefully divided the loaf, and after due deliberation, handed Tommy that which seemed the bigger half. Without a word of acknowledgment, Tommy fell upon it like a terrier. He would love Clare in a little while when he had something more to give—but stomach before heart with Tommy! His sort is well represented in every rank. There are not many who can at the same time both love and be hungry.

Chapter XXVIII. Treachery

“Now, Tommy,” said Clare, having eaten his half loaf, “I’m going out to look for work, and you must take care of baby. You’re not to feed her—you would only choke her, and waste the good milk.”

“I want to go out too,” said Tommy.

“To see what you can pick up, I suppose?”

“That’s my business.”

“I fancy it mine while you are with me. If you don’t take care of baby and be good to her, I’ll put you in the water-butt I took her out of—as sure as you ain’t in it now!”

“That you shan’t!” cried Tommy; “I’ll bite first!”

“I’ll tie your hands and feet, and put a stick in your mouth,” said Clare. “So you’d better mind.”

“I want to go with you!” whimpered Tommy.

“You can’t. You’re to stop and look after baby. I won’t be away longer than I can help; you may be sure of that.”

With repeated injunctions to him not to leave the room, Clare went.

Before going quite, however, he must arrange for returning. To swarm up between the two walls as he had done before, would be to bid good-bye to his jacket at least, and he knew how appearances were already against him. Spying about for whatever might serve his purpose, he caught sight of an old garden-roller, and was making for it, when Tommy, never doubting he was gone, came whistling round the corner of the house with his hands in his pocket-holes, and an impudent air of independence. Clare away, he was a lord in his own eyes! He could kill the baby when he pleased! Plainly his mood was, “He thinks I’m going to do as he tells me! Not if I knows it!” Clare saw him before he saw Clare, and rushed at him with a roar.