A Rough Shaking

“You thought I was gone!” he cried. “I told you not to leave the room! Come along to the water-butt!”

Tommy shivered when he heard him, and gave a shriek when he saw him coming. He shook till his teeth chattered. But terror not always paralyzes instinct in the wild animal. As Clare came running, he took one step toward him, and dropped on the ground at his feet. Clare shot away over his head, struck his own against a tree, and lay for a minute stunned. Tommy’s success was greater than he had hoped. He scudded into the house, and closed and bolted the door to the kitchen.

When Clare came to himself, he found he had a cut on his head. It would never do to go asking for work with a bloody face! The little pool served at once for basin and mirror, and while he washed he thought.

He had no inclination to punish Tommy for the trick he had played him; he had but done after his kind! It would serve a good end too: Tommy would imagine him lurking about to have his revenge, and would not venture his nose out. He discovered afterward that the little wretch had made fast the cellar-door, so that, if he had entered that way, he would have been caught in a trap, and unable to go or return.

He got the iron roller to the foot of the wall, where he had come over the night before, and where now first he perceived there had once been a door; managed, with its broken handle for a lever, to set it up on end, filled it with earth, and heaped a mound of earth about it to steady it, placed a few broken tiles and sherds of chimney-pots upon it, and from this rickety perch found he could reach the top easily.

The next thing was to arrange for getting up from the other side. For this he threw over earth and stones and whatever rubbish came to his hand, the sole quality required in his material being, that it should serve to lift him any fraction of an inch higher. The space was so narrow that his mound did not require to be sustained by the width of its base except in one direction; everywhere else the walls kept in the heap, and he made good speed. At length he descended by it, sure of being able to get up again.

He had been gone an hour before Tommy dared again leave the room where the baby was. He had planned what to do if Clare got into it: he would threaten, if he came a step nearer, to kill the baby! But if he had him in the coal-cellar, he would make his own conditions! A tramp would not keep a promise, but Clare would! and until he promised not to touch him, he should not come out—not if he died of hunger!

At length he could bear imprisonment no longer. He opened the room-door with the caution of one who thought a tiger might be lying against it. He saw no one, and crept out with half steps. By slow degrees, interrupted by many an inroad of terror and many a swift retreat, he got down the stair and out into the garden; whence, after closest search, he was at length satisfied his enemy had departed. For a time he was his own master! To one like Tommy—and such are not rare—it is a fine thing to be his own master. But the same person who is the master is the servant—and what a master to serve! Tommy, however, was quite satisfied with both master and servant, for both were himself. What was he to do? Go after something to eat, of course! He would be back long before Clare! He had gone to look for work—and who would give him work? If Tommy were as big as Clare, lots of people would give him work! But catch him working! Not if he knew it!—not Tommy!

Never till she was grown up, never, indeed, until she was a middle-aged woman and Mr. Skymer’s housekeeper, did the baby know in what danger she was that morning, alone with surnameless Tommy.

His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature. But in this case the exercise of the power brought him into another relation, one with the water-butt! He went back to the room where the child lay in her blankets like a human chrysalis, and stood for a moment regarding her with a hatred far from mild: was he actually expected to give time and personal notice to that contemptible thing lying there unable to move? He wasn’t a girl or an old woman! He must go and get something to eat! that was what a man was for! Better twist her neck at once and go!

But he could not forget the water-butt—proximate mother of the child. Its idea came sliding into Tommy’s range, grew and grew upon Tommy, came nearer and nearer, until the baby was nowhere, and nothing in the world but the water-butt. His consciousness was possessed with it. It was preparing to swallow him in its loathsome deep! All at once it jumped back from him, and stood motionless by the side of the wall. Now was his chance! Now he must mizzle! Not a moment longer would he stop in the same place with the horrible thing!

But the baby! Clare would bring him back and put him in the butt! No, he wouldn’t! What harm would come to the brat? She was not able to roll herself off the bed! She could do nothing but go to sleep again! Out he must and would go! He wanted something to eat! He would be in again long before Clare could get back!

He left the room and the house, ran down the garden, scrambled up the door, got on the top of the wall, and dropped into the waste land behind it—nor once thought that the only way back was by the very jaws of the water-butt.

Chapter XXIX. The baker

Clare went over the wall and the well without a notion of what he was going to do, except look for work. He had eaten half a loaf, and now drew in his cap some water from the well and drank. He felt better than any moment since leaving the farm. He was full of hope.

All his life he had never been other than hopeful. To the human being hope is as natural as hunger; yet how few there are that hope as they hunger! Men are so proud of being small, that one wonders to what pitch their conceit will have arrived by the time they are nothing at all. They are proud that they love but a little, believe less, and hope for nothing. Every fool prides himself on not being such a fool as believe what would make a man of him. For dread of being taken in, he takes himself in ridiculously. The man who keeps on trying to do his duty, finds a brighter and brighter gleam issue, as he walks, from the lantern of his hope.

Clare was just breaking into a song he had heard his mother sing to his sister, when he was checked by the sight of a long skinny mongrel like a hairy worm, that lay cowering and shivering beside a heap of ashes put down for the dust-cart—such a dry hopeless heap that the famished little dog did not care to search it: some little warmth in it, I presume, had kept him near it. Clare’s own indigence made him the more sorry for the indigent, and he felt very sorry for this member of the family; but he had neither work nor alms to give him, therefore strode on. The dog looked wistfully after him, as if recognizing one of his own sort, one that would help him if he could, but did not follow him.

A hundred yards further, Clare came to a baker’s shop. It was the first he felt inclined to enter, and he went in. He did not know it was the shop from whose cart Tommy had pilfered. A thin-faced, bilious-looking, elderly man stood behind the counter.

“Well, boy, what do you want?” he said in a low, sad, severe, but not unkindly voice.

“Please, sir,” answered Clare, “I want something to do, and I thought perhaps you could help me.”

“What can you do?”

“Not much, but I can try to do anything.”

“Have you ever learned to do anything?”

“I’ve been working on a farm for the last six months. Before that I went to school.”

“Why didn’t you go on going to school?”

“Because my father and mother died.”

“What was your father?”

“A parson.”

“Why did you leave the farm?”

“Because they didn’t want me. The mistress didn’t like me.”

“I dare say she had her reasons!”

“I don’t know, sir; she didn’t seem to like anything I did. My mother used to say, ‘Well done, Clare!’ my mistress never said ‘Well done!”’

“So the farmer sent you away?”

“No, sir; but he boxed my ears for something—I don’t now remember what.”

“I dare say you deserved it!”

“Perhaps I did; I don’t know; he never did it before.”

“If you deserved it, you had no right to run away for that.”

The baker taught in a Sunday-school, and was a good teacher, able to make a class mind him.

“I didn’t run away for that, sir; I ran away because he was tired of me. I couldn’t stay to make him uncomfortable! He had been very kind to me; I fancy it was mistress made him change. I’ve been thinking a good deal about it, and that’s how it looks to me. I’m very sorry not to have him or the creatures any more.”

“What creatures?”

“The bull, and the horses, and the cows, and the pigs—all the creatures about the farm. They were my friends. I shall see them all again somewhere!”

He gave a great sigh.

“What do you mean by that?” asked the baker.

“I hardly know what I mean,” answered Clare.

“When I’m loving anybody I always feel I shall see that person again some time, I don’t know when—somewhere, I don’t know where.”

“That don’t apply to the lower animals; it’s nothing but a foolish imagination,” said the baker.

“But if I love them!” suggested Clare.

“Love a bull, or a horse, or a pig! You can’t!” asserted the baker.

“But I do,” rejoined Clare. “I love my father and mother much more than when they were alive!”

“What has that to do with it?” returned the baker.

“That I know I love my father and mother, and I know I love that fierce bull that would always do what I told him, and that dear old horse that was almost past work, and was always ready to do his best.—I’m afraid they’ve killed him by now!” he added, with another sigh.

“But beasts ‘ain’t got souls, and you can’t love them. And if you could, that’s no reason why you should see them again.”

“I do love them, and perhaps they have souls!” rejoined Clare.

“You mustn’t believe that! It’s quite shocking. It’s nowhere in the Bible.”

“Is everything that is not in the Bible shocking, sir?”

“Well, I won’t say that; but you’re not to believe it.”

“I suppose you don’t like animals, sir! Are you afraid of their going to the same place as you when they die?”

“I wouldn’t have a boy about me that held such an unscriptural notion! The Bible says—the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward!”

“Is that in the Bible, sir?”

“It is,” answered the baker with satisfaction, thinking he had proved his point.

“I’m so glad!” returned Clare. “I didn’t know there was anything about it in the Bible! Then when I die I shall only have to go down somewhere, and look for them till I find them!”

The baker was silenced for a moment.

“It’s flat atheism!” he cried. “Get out of my shop! What is the world coming to!”

Clare turned and went out.

But though a bilious, the baker was not an unreasonable or unjust man except when what he had been used to believe all his life was contradicted. Clare had not yet shut the door when he repented. He was a good man, though not quite in the secret of the universe. He vaulted over the counter, and opened the door with such a ringing of its appended bell as made heavy-hearted Clare turn before he heard his voice. The long spare white figure appeared on the threshold, framed in the doorway.

“Hi!” it shouted.

Clare went meekly back.

“I’ve just remembered hearing—but mind I know nothing, and pledge myself to nothing–”

He paused.

“I didn’t say I was sure about it,” returned Clare, thinking he referred to the fate of the animals, “but I fear I’m to blame for not being sure.”

“Come, come!” said the baker, with a twist of his mouth that expressed disgust, “hold your tongue, and listen to me.—I did hear, as I was saying, that Mr. Maidstone, down the town, had one of his errand-boys laid up with scarlet fever. I’ll take you to him, if you like. Perhaps he’ll have you,—though I can’t say you look respectable!”

“I ‘ain’t had much chance since I left home, sir. I had a bit of soap, but–”

He bethought him that he had better say nothing about his family. Tommy had picked his pocket of the soap the night before, and tried to eat it, and Clare had hidden it away: he wanted it to wash the baby with as soon as he could get some warm water; but when he went to find it to wash his own face, it was gone. He suspected Tommy, but before long he had terrible ground for a different surmise.

“You see, sir,” he resumed, “I had other things to think of. When your tummy’s empty, you don’t think about the rest of you—do you, sir?”

The baker could not remember having ever been more than decently, healthily hungry in his life; and here he had been rough on a well-bred boy too hungry to wash his face! Perhaps the word one of these little ones came to him. He had some regard for him who spoke it, though he did talk more about him on Sundays than obey him in the days between.

“I don’t know, my boy,” he answered. “Would you like a piece of bread?”

“I’m not much in want of it at this moment,” replied Clare, “but I should be greatly obliged if you would let me call for it by and by. You see, sir, when a man has no work, he can’t help having no money!”

“A man!” thought the baker. “God pity you, poor monkey!”

He called to some one to mind the shop, removed his apron and put on a coat, shut the door, and went down the street with Clare.

Chapter XXX. The draper

At the shop of a draper and haberdasher, where one might buy almost anything sold, Clare’s new friend stopped and walked in. He asked to see Mr. Maidstone, and a shopman went to fetch him from behind. He came out into the public floor.

“I heard you were in want of a boy, sir,” said the baker, who carried himself as in the presence of a superior; and certainly fine clothes and a gold chain and ring did what they could to make the draper superior to the baker.

“Hm!” said Mr. Maidstone, looking with contempt at Clare.

“I rather liked the look of this poor boy, and ventured to bring him on approval,” continued the baker timidly. “He ain’t much to look at, I confess!”

“Hm!” said the draper again. “He don’t look promising!”

“He don’t. But I think he means performing,” said the baker, with a wan smile.

“Donnow, I’m sure! If he ‘appened to wash his face, I could tell better!”

Clare thought he had washed it pretty well that morning because of his cut, though he had, to be sure, done it without soap, and had been at rather dirty work since!

“He says he’s been too hungry to wash his face,” answered the baker.

“Didn’t ‘ave his ‘ot water in time, I suppose!—Will you answer for him, Mr. Ball?”

“I can’t, Mr. Maidstone—not one way or another. I simply was taken with him. I know nothing about him.”

Here one of the shopmen came up to his master, and said,

“I heard Mr. Ball’s own man yesterday accuse this very boy of taking a loaf from his cart.”

“Yesterday!” thought Clare; “it seems a week ago!”

“Oh! this is the boy, is it?” said the baker. “You see I didn’t know him! All the same, I don’t believe he took the loaf.”

“Indeed I didn’t, sir! Another boy took it who didn’t know better, and I took it from him, and was putting it back on the cart when the man turned round and saw me, and wouldn’t listen to a word I said. But a working-man believed me, and bought the loaf, and gave it between us.”

“A likely story!” said the draper.

“I’ve heard that much,” said the baker, “and I believe it. At least I have no reason to believe my man against him, Mr. Maidstone. That same night I discovered he had been cheating me to a merry tune. I discharged him this morning.”

“Well, he certainly don’t look a respectable boy,” said the draper, who naturally, being all surface himself, could read no deeper than clothes; “but I’m greatly in want of one to carry out parcels, and I don’t mind if I try him. If he do steal anything, he’ll be caught within the hour!”

“Oh, thank you, sir!” said Clare.

“You shall have sixpence a day,” Mr. Maidstone continued, “—not a penny more till I’m sure you’re an honest boy.”

“Thank you, sir,” iterated Clare. “Please may I run home first? I won’t be long. I ‘ain’t got any other clothes, but–”

“Hold your long tongue. Don’t let me hear it wagging in my establishment. Go and wash your face and hands.” Clare turned to the baker.

“Please, sir,” he said softly, “may I go back with you and get the piece of bread?”

“What! begging already!” cried Mr. Maidstone.

“No, no, sir,” interposed the baker. “I promised him a piece of bread. He did not ask for it.”

The good man was pleased at his success, and began to regard Clare with the favour that springs in the heart of him who has done a good turn to another through a third. Had he helped him out of his own pocket, he might not have been so much pleased. But there had been no loss, and there was no risk! He had beside shown his influence with a superior!

“I am so much obliged to you, sir!” said Clare as they went away together. “I cannot tell you how much!”

He was tempted to open his heart and reveal the fact that three people would live on the sixpence a day which the baker’s kindness had procured him, but prudence was fast coming frontward, and he saw that no one must know that they were in that house! If it were known, they would probably be turned out at once, which would go far to be fatal to them as a family. For, if he had to pay for lodgings, were it no more than the tramps paid Tommy’s grandmother, sixpence a day would not suffice for bare shelter. So he held his tongue.

“Thank me by minding Mr. Maidstone’s interests,” returned his benefactor. “If you don’t do well by him, the blame will come upon me.”

“I will be very careful, sir,” answered Clare, who was too full of honesty to think of being honest; he thought only of minding orders.

They reached the shop; the baker gave him a small loaf, and he hurried home with it The joy in his heart, spread over the days since he left the farm, would have given each a fair amount of gladness.

Taking heed that no one saw him, he darted through the passage to the well, got across it better this time, rushed over the wall like a cat, fell on the other side from the unsteadiness of his potsherds, rose and hurried into the house, with the feeble wail of his baby in his ears.

Chapter XXXI. An addition to the family

The door to the kitchen was open: Tommy must be in the garden again! When he reached the nursery, as he called it to himself, he found the baby as he had left her, but moaning and wailing piteously. She looked as if she had cried till she was worn out. He threw down the clothes to take her. A great rat sprang from the bed. On one of the tiny feet the long thin toes were bleeding and raw. The same instant arose a loud scampering and scuffling and squealing in the room. Clare’s heart quivered. He thought it was a whole army of rats. He was not a bit afraid of them himself, but assuredly they were not company for baby! Already they had smelt food in the house, and come in a swarm! What was to be done with the little one? If he stayed at home with her, she must die of hunger; if he left her alone, the rats would eat her! They had begun already! Oh, that wretch, Tommy! Into the water—but he should go!

I hope their friends will not take it ill that, all his life after, Clare felt less kindly disposed toward rats than toward the rest of the creatures of God.

But things were not nearly so bad as Clare thought: the scuffling came from quite another cause. It suddenly ceased, and a sharp scream followed. Clare turned with the baby in his arms. Almost at his feet, gazing up at him, the rat hanging limp from his jaws, stood the little castaway mongrel he had seen in the morning, his eyes flaming, and his tail wagging with wild homage and the delight of presenting the rat to one he would fain make his master.

“You darling!” cried Clare, and meant the dog this time, not the baby. The animal dropped the dead rat at his feet, and glared, and wagged, and looked hunger incarnate, but would not touch the rat until Clare told him to take it. Then he retired with it to a corner, and made a rapid meal of it.

He had seen Clare pass the second time, had doubtless noted that now he carried a loaf, and had followed him in humble hope. Clare was too much occupied with his own joy to perceive him, else he would certainly have given him a little peeling or two from the outside of the bread. But it was decreed that the dog should have the honour of rendering the first service. Clare was not to do all the benevolences.

What a happy day it had been for him! It was a day to be remembered for ever! He had work! he had sixpence a day! he had had a present of milk for the baby, and two presents of bread—one a small, and one a large loaf! And now here was a dog! A dog was more than many meals! The family was four now! A baby, and a dog to take care of the baby!—It was heavenly!

He made haste and gave his baby what milk and water was left. Then he washed her poor torn foot, wrapped it in a pillow-case, for he would not tear anything, and laid her in the bed. Next he cut a good big crust from the loaf and gave it to the dog, who ate it as if the rat were nowhere. The rest he put in a drawer. Then he washed his face and hands—as well as he could without soap. After that, he took the dog, talked to him a little, laid him on the bed beside the baby and talked to him again, telling him plainly, and impressing upon him, that his business was the care of the baby; that he must give himself up to her; that he must watch and tend, and, if needful, fight for the little one. When at length he left him, it was evident to Clare, by the solemnity of the dog’s face, that he understood his duty thoroughly.

Chapter XXXII. Shop and baby

Once clear of the well and the wall, Clare set off running like a gaze-hound. Such was the change produced in him by joy and the satisfaction of hope, that when he entered the shop, no one at first knew him. His face was as the face of an angel, and none the less beautiful that it shone above ragged garments. But Mr. Maidstone, the moment he saw him, and before he had time to recognize him, turned from the boy with dislike.

“What a fool the beggar looks!” he said to himself;—then aloud to one of the young men, “Hand over that parcel of sheets.—Here, you!—what’s your name?”

“Clare, sir.”

“I declare against it!” he rejoined, with a coarse laugh of pleasure at his own fancied wit. “I shall call you Jack!”

“Very well, sir!”

“Don’t you talk.—Here, Jack, take this parcel to Mrs. Trueman’s. You’ll see the address on it.—And look sharp.—You can read, can’t you?”

The people in the shop stood looking on, some pitifully, all curiously, for the parcel was of considerable size, and linen is heavy, while the boy looked pale and thin. But Clare was strong for his age, and present joy made up for past want. He scarcely looked at the parcel which the draper proceeded to lay on his shoulder, stooped a little as he felt its weight, heaved it a little to adjust its balance, and holding it in its place with one hand, started for the door, which the master himself held open for him.

“Please, sir, which way do I turn?” he asked.

“To the left,” answered Mr. Maidstone. “Ask your way as you go.”

Clare forgot that he had heard only the lady’s name. Her address was on the parcel, no doubt, but if he dropped it to look, he could not get it up again by himself. A little way on, therefore, meeting a boy about his own age returning from school, he asked him to be kind enough to read the address on his back and direct him. The boy read it aloud, but gave him false instructions for finding the place. Clare walked and walked until the weight became almost unendurable, and at last, though loath, concluded that the boy must have deceived him. He asked again, but this time of a lady. She took pains not only to tell him right, but to make him understand right: she was pleased with the tired gentle face that looked up from beneath the heavy burden. Perhaps she thought of the proud souls growing pure of their pride, in Dante’s Purgatorio. Following her directions, he needed no further questioning to find the house. But it was hours after the burden was gone from his shoulder before it was rid of the phantom of its weight.