A Rough Shaking, page 18
“Is the infant there your sister?”
“She’s my sister the big way: God made her. She’s not my sister any other way.”
“How does she come to be with you then?”
“I took her out of the water-butt. Some one threw her in, and I heard the splash, and went and got her out.”
“Why did you not take her to the police?”
“I never thought of that. It was all I could do to keep her alive. I couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t got into the house.”
“How long ago is that?”
“Nearly a month, sir.”
“And you’ve kept her there ever since?”
“Yes, sir—as well as I could. I had only sixpence a day.”
“And what’s that boy’s name?”
“Tommy, sir.—I don’t know any other.”
“Nice respectable company you keep for one who has evidently been well brought up!”
“Baby’s quite respectable, sir!”
“Hum!”
“And for Tommy, if I didn’t keep him, he would steal. I’m teaching him not to steal.”
“What woman have you got with you?”
“Baby’s the only woman we’ve got, sir.”
“But who attends to her?”
“I do, sir. She only wants washing and rolling round in the blanket; she’s got no clothes to speak of. When I’m away, Tommy and Abdiel take care of her.”
“Abdiel! Who on earth is that? Where is he?” said the magistrate, looking round for some fourth member of the incomprehensible family.
“He’s not on earth, sir; he’s in heaven—the good angel, you know, sir, that left Satan and came back again to God.”
“You must take him to the county-asylum, James!” said the magistrate, turning to the tall policeman.
“Oh, he’s all right, sir!” said James.
“Please, sir,” interrupted Clare eagerly, “I didn’t mean the dog was in heaven yet. I meant the angel I named him after!”
“They had a little dog with them, sir!”
“Yes—Abdiel. He wanted to be a prisoner too, but they wouldn’t let him in. He’s a good dog—better than Tommy.”
“So! like all the rest of you, you can keep a dog!”
“He followed me home because he hadn’t anybody to love,” said Clare. “He don’t have much to eat, but he’s content. He would eat three times as much if I could give it him; but he never complains.”
“Have you work of any sort?”
“I had till yesterday, sir.”
“Where?”
“At Mr. Maidstone’s shop.”
“What wages had you?”
“Sixpence a day.”
“And you lived, all three of you, on that?”
“Yes; all four of us, sir.”
“What do you do at the shop?”
“Please your worship,” interposed policeman James, “he was sent about his business yesterday.”
“Yes,” rejoined Clare, who did not understand the phrase, “I was sent with a lady to carry her bandbox to the station.”
“And when you came back, you was turned away, wasn’t you?” said James.
“Yes, sir.”
“What had you done?” asked the magistrate.
“I don’t quite know, sir.”
“A likely story!”
Clare made no reply.
“Answer me directly.”
“Please, sir, you told me not to speak unless you asked me a question.”
“I said, ‘A likely story!’ which meant, ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’”
“Of course I do, sir.”
“Why?”
“Because it is true.”
“How am I to believe that?”
“I don’t know, sir. I only know I’ve got to speak the truth. It’s the person who hears it that’s got to believe it, ain’t it, sir?”
“You’ve got to prove it.”
“I don’t think so, sir; I never was told so; I was only told I must speak the truth; I never was told I must prove what I said.—I’ve been several times disbelieved, I know.”
“I should think so indeed!”
“It was by people who did not know me.”
“Never by people who did know you?”
“I think not, sir. I never was by the people at home.”
“Ah! you could not read what they were thinking!”
“Were you not believed when you were at home, sir?”
The magistrate’s doubt of Clare had its source in the fact that, although now he was more careful to speak the truth than are most people, it was not his habit when a boy, and he had suffered severely in consequence. He was annoyed, therefore, at his question, set him down as a hypocritical, boastful prig, and was seized with a strong desire to shame him.
“I remand the prisoner for more evidence. Take the children to the workhouse,” he said.
Tommy gave a sudden full-sized howl. He had heard no good of the workhouse.
“The baby is mine!” pleaded Clare.
“Are you the father of it?” said the big policeman.
“Yes, I think so: I saved her life.—She would have been drowned if I hadn’t looked for her when I heard the splash!” reasoned Clare, his face drawn with grief and the struggle to keep from crying.
“She’s not yours,” said the magistrate. “She belongs to the parish. Take her away, James.”
The big policeman came up to take her. Clare would have held her tight, but was afraid of hurting her. He did draw back from the outstretched hands, however, while he put a question or two.
“Please, sir, will the parish be good to her?” he asked.
“Much better than you.”
“Will it let me go and see her?” he asked again, with an outbreaking sob.
“You can’t go anywhere till you’re out of this,” answered the big policeman, and, not ungently, took the baby from him.
“And when will that be, please?” asked Clare, with his empty arms still held out.
“That depends on his worship there.”
“Hold your tongue, James,” said the magistrate. “Take the boy away, John.”
“Please, sir, where am I going to?” asked Clare.
“To prison, till we find out about you.”
“Please, sir, I didn’t mean to steal her. I didn’t know the parish wanted her!”
“Take the boy away, I tell you!” cried the magistrate angrily. “His tongue goes like the hopper of a mill!”
James, carrying the baby on one arm, was already pushing Tommy before him by the neck. Tommy howled, and rubbed his red eyes with what was left him of cuffs, but did not attempt resistance.
“Please, don’t let anybody hold her upside down, policeman!” cried Clare. “She doesn’t like it!—Oh, baby! baby!”
John tightened his grasp on his arm, and hurried him away in another direction.
Where the big policeman issued with his charge, there was Abdiel hovering about as if his spring were wound up so tight that it wouldn’t go off. How he came to be at that door, I cannot imagine.
When he spied Tommy, he rushed at him. Tommy gave him a kick that rolled him over.
“Don’t want you, you mangy beast!” he said, and tried to kick him again.
Abdiel kept away from him after that, but followed the party to the workhouse, where also, to his disgust, plainly expressed, he was refused admittance. He returned to the entrance by which Clare had vanished from his eyes the night before, and lay down there. I suspect he had an approximate canine theory of the whole matter. He knew at least that Clare had gone in with the others at that door; that he had not come out with them at the other door; that, therefore, in all probability, he was within that door still.
The police made inquiry at Mr. Maidstone’s shop. Reasons for his dismissal were there given involving no accusation: there was little desire in that quarter to have the matter searched into. There was therefore nothing to the discredit of the boy, beyond his running to earth in the neglected house like a wild animal. After three days he was set at liberty.
As the big policeman led the way to the door to send him out, Clare addressed him thus:
“Please, Mr. James, may I go back to the house for a little while?”
“Well, you are an innocent!” said James; “—or,” he added, “the biggest little humbug ever I see!—No, it’s not likely!”
“I only wanted,” explained Clare, “to set things straight a bit. The house is cleaner than it was, I know, but it is not in such good order as when we went into it. I don’t like to leave it worse than we found it.”
“Never you heed,” said James, believing him perfectly before he knew what he was about. “The house don’t belong to nobody, so far as ever I heerd, an’ the things’ll rot all the same wherever they stand.”
“But I should like,” persisted Clare.
“I couldn’t do it off my own hook, an’ his worship would think you only wanted to steal something. The best thing you can do is to leave the place at once, an’ go where nobody knows nothing agin you.”
Thought Clare with himself, “If the house doesn’t belong to anybody, why wouldn’t they let me stay in it?”
But the policeman opened the door, and as he was turning to say good-bye to him, gave him a little shove, and closed it behind him.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE WORKHOUSE.
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HE WENT INTO THE STREET with a white face and a dazed look—not from any hardship he had experienced during his confinement, for he had been in what to him was clover, but because he had lost the baby and Abdiel, and because his mind had been all the time in perplexity with regard to the proceedings of justice: he did not and could not see that he had done anything wrong. Throughout his life it never mattered much to Clare to be accused of anything wrong, but it did trouble him, this time at least, to be punished for doing what was right. He took it very quietly, however.
Indignation may be a sign of innocence, but it is no necessary consequence of innocence any more than it is a proof of righteousness. A man will be fiercely indignant at an accusation that happens to be false, who did the very thing last week, and is ready to do it again. Indignation against wrong to another even, is no proof of a genuine love of fair play. Clare hardly resented anything done to himself. His inward unconscious purity held him up, and made him look events in the face with an eye that was single and therefore at once forgiving and fearless. The man who has no mote in his own eye cannot be knocked down by the beam in his neighbour’s; while he who is busy with the mote in his neighbour’s may stumble to destruction over the beam in his own.
White and dazed as he came out, the moment he stepped across the threshold, Clare met the comfort of God waiting for him. His eyes blinded with the great light, for it was a glorious morning in the beginning of June, he found himself assailed in unknightly fashion below the knee: there, to his unspeakable delight, was Abdiel, clinging to him with his fore-legs, and wagging his tail as if, like the lizards for terror, he would shake it off for gladness! What a blessed little pendulum was Abdiel’s tail! It went by that weight of the clock of the universe called devotion. It was the escapement of that delight which is of the essence of existence, and which, when God has set right “our disordered clocks,” will be its very consciousness.
Clare stood for a moment and looked about him. The needle of his compass went round and round. It had no north. He could not go back to the shop; he could not go back to the house; baby was in the workhouse, but he could not stay there even if they would let him! Neither could he stop in the town; the policeman said he must go away! Where was he to go? There was not in the world one place for him better than another! But they would let him see baby before he went!—and off he set to find the workhouse.
Abdiel followed quietly at his heel, for his master walked lost in thought, and Abdiel was too hungry to make merry without his notice. Clare, fresh to the world, had been a great reader for one so young, and could encounter new experience with old knowledge. In his mind stood a pile of fir-cones, and dried sticks, and old olive wood, which the merest touch of experience would set in a blaze of practical conclusion. But the workhouse was so near that his reflections before he reached it amounted only to this—that there are worse places than a prison when you have done nothing to deserve being put in it. A palace may be one of them. You get enough to eat in a prison; in a palace you do not; you get too much!
The porter at the workhouse informed him it was not the day for seeing the inmates; but the tall policeman had given Clare a hint, and he requested to see the matron. After much demur and much entreaty, the man went and told the matron. She, knowing the story of the baby, wanted to see Clare, and was so much pleased with his manners and looks, that his sad clothes pleaded for and not against him. She took him at once to the room where the baby was with many more, telling him he must prove she was his by picking her out. It was not wonderful that Clare, who knew the faces of animals so well, should know his own baby the moment he saw her, notwithstanding that she was decently clothed, and had already improved in appearance. But the nurses declared they had never before seen a man, not to say a boy, who could tell one baby from another.
“Why,” rejoined Clare, “my dog Abdiel could pick out the baby he was nurse to!”
“Ah, but he’s a dog!”
“And I’m a boy!” said Clare.
He descried her on the lap of an old woman, seeming to him very old, who was at the head of the nursery-department. Old as she was, however, she had a keen eye, and a handsome countenance, with a quantity of white hair. Unlike the rest of the women, though not far removed from them socially, she knew several languages, so far as to read and enjoy books in them. Now and then a great woman may be found in a workhouse, like a first folio of Shakspere on a bookstall, among—oh, such companions!
“Let me take her,” said Clare modestly, holding out his hands for the baby.
“Are you sure you will not let her drop?”
“Why, ma’am,” answered Clare, “she’s my own baby! It was I took her out of the water-butt! I washed and fed her every day!—not that I could do it so well as you, ma’am!”
She gave him the baby, and watched him with the eye of a seeress, for she had a wonderful insight into character, and that is one of the roots of prophecy.
“You are a good and true lad,” she said at length, “and a hard success lies before you. I don’t know what you will come to, but, with those eyes, and that forehead, and those hands, if you come to anything but good, you will be terribly to blame.”
“I will try to be good, ma’am,” said Clare simply. “But I wish I knew what they put me in prison for!”
“What, indeed, my lamb!” she returned; and her eyes flashed with indignation under the cornice of her white hair. “They’ll be put in prison one day themselves that did it!”
“Oh, I don’t mind!” said Clare. “I don’t want them to be punished. You see I’m only waiting!”
“What are you waiting for, sonny?” asked the old woman.
“I don’t exactly know—though I know better than what I was put in prison for. Nobody ever told me anything, but I’m always waiting for something.”
“The something will come, child. You will have what you want! Only go on as you’re doing, and you’ll be a great man one day.”
“I don’t want to be a great man,” answered Clare; “I’m only waiting till what is coming does come.”
The woman cast down her eyes, and seemed lost in thought. Clare dandled the baby gently in his arms, and talked loving nonsense to her.
“Well,” said the old woman, raising at length her eyes, with a look of reverence in them, to Clare’s, “I can’t help you, and you want no help of mine. I’ve got no money, but—”
“I’ve got plenty of money, ma’am,” interrupted Clare. “I’ve got a whole shilling in my pocket!”
“Bless the holy innocent!” murmured the woman. “—Well, I can only promise you this—that as long as I live, the baby sha’n’t forget you; and I ain’t so old as I look.”
Here the matron came up, and said he had better be going now; but if he came back any day after a month, he should see the baby again.
“Thank you, ma’am,” replied Clare. “Keep her a good baby, please. I will come for her one day.”
“Please God I live to see that day!” said the old woman. “I think I shall.”
She did live to see it, though I cannot tell that part of the story now.
CHAPTER XXXIX. AWAY.
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SO CLARE WENT ONCE MORE into the street, where Abdiel was again watching for him, and stood on the pavement, not knowing which way to turn. The big policeman had told him that no one there would give him work after what had happened; and now, therefore, he was only waiting for a direction to present itself. In a moment it occurred to him that, having come in at one end of the town, he had better go out at the other. He followed the suggestion, and Abdiel followed him—his head hanging and his tail also, for the joy of recovering his master had used up all the remnant of wag there was in his clock. He had no more frolic or scamper in him now than when Clare first saw him. How the poor thing had subsisted during the last few days, it were hard to tell. It was much that he had escaped death from ill-usage. Meanest of wretches are the boys or men that turn like grim death upon the helpless. Except they change their way, helplessness will overtake them like a thief, and they will look for some one to deliver them and find none. Traitors to those whom it is their duty to protect, they will one day find themselves in yet more pitiful plight than ever were they. But I fear they will not believe it before their fate has them by the throat.
Clare saw that the dog was famished. He stopped at a butcher’s and bought him a scrap of meat for a penny. Then he had elevenpence with which to begin the world afresh, and was not hungry.
Out on the highway they went, in a perfect English summer day, with all the world before them. It was not an oyster for Clare to open with sword, pen, or sesame; but he might find a place on the outside of it for all that, and a way over it into a better—one that he could open and get at the heart of. The sun shone as on the day of the earthquake—deep in Clare’s dimmest memorial cavern;—shone as if he knew, come what might, that all was well; that if he shone his heart out and went dark, nothing would go wrong; while, for the present, everything depended on his shining his glorious best.
