CHAPTER IV.
“THE RED LION.”
THE parlour of the “Red Lion” was a room with a sanded floor, protected on the side next the door by wooden barriers with seats fixed into them, which acted the part at once of settles, and screens to keep out the draught. There was a bright fire which kept it in a blaze of ruddy light, outdoing the lamps, which were not remarkable for their brilliancy. This fire was the great attraction of the place. The very distant prospect of it, gleaming out into the night, warmed and cheered the passer-by. It was like a lantern ever so far down the river side, on which the back window, partially veiled with a bit of old red curtain which let the light shine through and added a tone of warmth the more, looked out. You saw this window from the Wyburgh Road, and from all the cold flats of the water-side. The poor women at the Smiddy-houses, which was the name of the hamlet to the west, thought it a snare of Satan, and compared it vindictively to the red glaring eye of some evil spirit lying in wait to devour the unwary. But unfortunately the men were not of that opinion. Old Isaac, who was on his way home when he encountered Harry, and who was perfectly sincere in his opinion that nothing could be worse for his young master than to go to such a place, felt, notwithstanding, in his own person a thrill of internal satisfaction when he saw that it was his duty to follow and watch over the young fellow. It was wrong—but it was exhilarating: instead of trudging another slow mile home, to get into the corner of one of those wooden settles and feel the glow of the generous fire, and imbibe slowly a glass of “summat,” and suck slowly at the tube of a long clay pipe, and make a remark once in five minutes to one of the neighbours, who each of them took an equally long time to produce an original observation—had all the delight of dissipation in it. Most strange of enjoyments! and yet an enjoyment it was. To Isaac’s eye Mr. Harry did not, by any means, get the same good out of it. He asked for “summat,” to be sure, like the others, but swallowed it as if it had been medicine; and, instead of reposing on the settle, sat with his head in his hands poring over an old local paper, or walked restlessly about the room, now looking out at the window, now penetrating into the bar; a disturbing influence, interfering fatally with the drowsy ease of the place. Isaac was a man who had a just confidence in his own power of setting things straight and giving good advice, and had boldly faced temptation in his own person in order to do a moral service to the young man, for whom he felt a certain responsibility. But having done so much, he could not but feel that the young sinner whom he had risked his soul for, should have enjoyed it more. All the influences about the fire, the rest, the pipe, the glass of “summat,” were adapted to produce a certain toleration and deadening of the moral sense. Still the “Red Lion” was wrong; Isaac knew that his missis gave forth no uncertain sound on this point, and, for himself, he was also of opinion that it was wrong; but there could be no doubt that it was pleasant. Mr. Harry, however, was not taking the good of it as a man fully aware of the attractions of the place ought to do, and this gave Isaac energy after a while to address certain remonstrances to him. He went so far as to get up at last out of that most desirable place in the corner of the settle near the fire. To abandon that was a piece of self-denial that proved his sincerity in the most striking way to himself, and could not fail, he thought, to overcome even the scepticism of his missis. “I got a fine warm corner just by t’ fire, wi’ a lean to my back and a table to hand, and aw as a mon could desire; but I oop, and I’s after Mr. Harry. ‘Mr. Harry,’ says I”—involuntarily this plea shaped itself in Isaac’s mind, as after much hesitation he rose. He took a long pipe from the table, not caring to give up his own, and put it in the corner to keep his place, though with many doubts of the efficacy of the proceeding; for how could it be expected that a new-comer, with the chill of the night upon him, would abstain from taking possession of the coveted place when protected only by so slight a sign of previous rights? “Keep an eye on t’ glass, will ye?” he said to his neighbour in the other corner—hoisting himself up with a suppressed groan. His clothes were hot to the touch with the intense glow of the fire; but a labouring man who has been at work in the cold all day can brave a great deal of warmth afterwards. Then he went up to Harry, who just then had thrown himself into a chair near the window, and tapped with his long pipe upon his arm.
“Mr. Harry—summat’s amiss more than ornary. Nobody blongin’ would approve to see ye here; but bein’ here, it’s expeckted as you’ll take the good on it—and you’re getting no good on’t, Mr. Harry. Lord bless ye, what’s gone wrong?”
“Nothing you can help me in, Isaac,” said the young man.
“Maybe no; but aw the same, maybe ay. I’ve put mysel’ in the way of harm to be of service to you, Mr. Harry. I hope it’ll no be counted again’ me. I’ve done what I donno do, not once in a three months. Not as there’s much harm to be got here; but it’s exciting, that’s what it is—carries a man off his feet that isn’t just settled and knows what he’s doing. And when you made a sacrifice for a friend,” said Isaac, with a wave of his pipe, “you donno like to think as it’s to be no use.”
All this time the drone of the slow rural talk was going on, now and then with an equally slow chuckle of laughter; a pipe waved occasionally to help out a more than usually difficult delivery; a glass set down with a little noise in the fervour of an address accomplished; a low tranquil hum, provocative of slumber than excitement one would have said; but Isaac thought otherwise. At a table in the room a few card-players were gathering. And somebody with a new newspaper full of novel information—the last was more than a week old—had just come in. The young fellow, gloomy behind backs, and his Mentor, who was so kindly devoting himself to his service, were losing all that was going on. To make a little moral slip like this, and yet lose all the advantage of it, was distracting.
“Come, come, Mr. Harry,” Isaac said, probing him in the shoulder with his pipe, partly encouraging, partly threatening, “out with it, man; or else let it a be and take your pleasure—take your pleasure, bein’ here. It’s not a place I’d bid you come—far from it. It’s running your head into temptation, that’s the truth; but Lord bless us, bein’ in for’t take the good on’t—that’s what I say.”
The man with the paper was hovering about Isaac’s seat; but he was not so habituated to extremes of temperature as Isaac. “No, no,” he said with a chuckle, “I’m not a-going to roast yet a bit. Maybbe that’ll come after; but I dunno who’d make a cinder of hissel’ as long as he can help it. No, no, I’ll keep my distance; it’s like the fiery furnace in the Bible—that’s what it’s like.”
“It’s none too warm for me,” said the man at the other corner of the fire—and then they all laughed, though why it would be hard to say. Isaac watched this little episode at a distance, his eyes following his inclinations, which were all with the humours of the “company.” He chuckled, too, in a kind of regretful echo of their laughter; but he was relieved to see that his place was still kept for him. He turned again to Harry with that sense of losing all the fun, which made him vehement. “Mr. Harry,” he said, “bein’ here, take your pleasure a bit! It don’t do no more harm to be lively like, when you’re here, than to be i’ th’ dumps. It’s again’ my principles; and it’ll be moor again’ me when the missis comes to hear on’t—but, gosh! when a man is here——”
“You think he might as well get tipsy when he’s about it? I am much obliged to you for your advice, but I don’t think I’ll take it, Isaac,” said Harry. “Mind yourself, my old man, or there’s no telling what the missis may say.”
“That’s all your fun, Mr. Harry,” said Isaac with dignity; “there’s some you might say that to; but I’m a moral man, and always was. You never heard nought of the sort o’ Isaac Oliver. Coming here as I’ve told ye is not a thing I hold wi’—short o’ a strong reason like the present—short o’ plucking a brand out o’ t’ burning like I’m doing now, you’ll not catch me night nor day, heat nor cold, in a public. I pass the door,” Isaac said with pride, “ten times in a week or more, but who e’er sees me turn in ’cept for a strong occasion like the present? Nay, nay, if you were outside I’d go on my knees to ye to bide outside; but I say again, master, bein’ here, why, it’s best to conduct yourself as if you were here. What is the good o’ looking as if ye were at t’kirk? You’re not at t’kirk, that’s the fac’. Bein’ here,” he continued, slowly waving his pipe in the air, and giving himself over to his oratorical impulse. “Bein’ here——”
“Isaac—t’auld maister as you call him—is he at home?”
This sudden interruption was very startling. Isaac had drunk little; but there was a sort of imaginative intoxication abroad in the genial atmosphere of the “Red Lion,” and he was infected with the drowsy conviviality of the place, to which half shut eyes and a sleepy complacency seemed habitual. This sudden question was like a douche of cold water in his face. He stopped short in his speech with a sort of gasp, and stared at his companion.
“Ay, master—he’s at home,” said Isaac, slowly; but being a prudent Northcountryman he was sorry for this admission as soon as he had made it; “if he haven’t started again,” he added, cautiously. “Now and again he’ll start off——”
“That’s nonsense,” said Harry, sharply. “I hope I know his ways as well as you do. I’ll go and see him to-morrow and have it out.”
“A man may change his ways,” said Isaac, oracularly. “Now and again he’ll start off—givin’ no notice,” he added, with gradual touches of invention; “restless like—old folks do get restless, and nobody can deny that.” Then he paused, shuffling and embarrassed. “I wouldn’t, Master Harry, if I was you,” he added, in a lower tone and with great earnestness. “I wouldn’t, Master Harry, if I was you. T’auld master’s a droll un. He’s fonder of you than e’er another; but he’ll never be drove—what he’s going to do he’ll do right straight away. He’ll not be asked. How do I know as you’re going to ask him for aught? I donno, and that’s the truth; but I wouldn’t if I was you. Hev patience, just hev a bit of patience, and ye’ll get it all. But he’ll never do what he’s bid to do. You was always his pet, bein’ named for him, and so on. He’ll leave you all he’s got if you’ll hev patience; but ask him and he’ll not give a penny, not for the best reasons in all the world.”
“Who said I wanted a penny from him?” said the young man, piqued. “You are too fond of guessing, Isaac, my good fellow—you go too far.”
Isaac made no immediate reply. He knocked out the ashes of his pipe carefully against the window-ledge. “I’m maybe good at guessing,” he said at length, slowly, with a grave countenance, “and maybe no. But I’m your friend, Master Harry, and I ken t’ auld master. Them that meddles with him does it at their peril. Don’t you go near him, that’s my advice. You’ll hev it all, every penny, if you’ll hev a little patience. He’s nearer eighty nor seventy, and he canno’ last for evermore.”
“Patience!” cried Harry, tilting back his chair against the wall. It was all very well for the elder people to have patience, for Uncle Henry, perhaps, who had nothing but Death to wait for that always comes too soon. But young Harry with life waiting for him, and advancement, and all that youth can give—youth that only comes once, and lasts but a little while; for him it was a very different matter. And his heart was hot with passion against his father, and against fate, which seemed to shut him in. He was too much excited to keep his voice under control as he had been doing. “Patience!” he cried. “Pah! if that’s all, you can keep your advice to yourself.”
This sounded something like a quarrel, and the “Red Lion” was too warm and drowsy and comfortable to like the idea of a quarrel. The people about looked dimly round from amid the smoke; and a good-humoured person at the card-table was amiable enough to put himself in the breach. “Nay, nay, my young gentleman,” he said; “patience, bless you’s for them that can’t play at nought else. Take a hand at cribbage, that’s your sort. Whist if ye like, that’s all the fashion; but to my mind cribbage is the game——”
“Ay, ay, master, a grand game,” said two or three together, wagging their beards in civil backing up of the first speaker, who stood smiling at the table, running the cards through his hands like a stream of water. They all looked vaguely at Harry with a general look of invitation and goodwill in their eyes. The atmosphere of the “Red Lion” was against all strenuous action. The warmth which was so cheerful and bright made them all drowsy. They sat and blinked at it with pleasure and peacefulness, purring softly in the pervading warmth. What had young Harry to do in such a sleepy place? He let his chair come down to the floor with a noise that made the convives jump, and laughed, chiefly at himself. “Come along, then,” he said; “I’ll take a hand since there’s nothing else to do.”
So rapid were the young man’s movements that Isaac, not so impetuous, was left, standing in the same spot looking at the chair now standing composedly on its four legs for a minute after Harry had taken his place at the card-table. Isaac was astonished, but he was relieved as well. He came back slowly to the corner of the settle, looking at his pipe with an air of remonstrance, but gradually feeling his cares relax, and the pleasure of coming back to the company. “I’m bound to say,” was his first utterance, as he put himself once more into the corner and stretched his legs in front of the fire, “as people couldn’t behave more honourable. I never expected to get my own place again.”
“Sommat oop?” asked his neighbour on the settle, with a thrust of his elbow towards Harry. Isaac thrust up his shoulders to his ears, and shook his head.
“There’s always summat oop,” said Isaac, oracularly, “as long as there’s lads at home.”
“And that’s true,” said another, who took the opportunity to illustrate the statement by a long and tedious story, which had been simmering in him all the evening. After this the place relapsed into its usual aspect. The two or three men about the fire basking in the warmth listened with a mild interest to the slow current of the tale, and supplemented it by anecdotes of their own of a like tedious and inconsequent kind. But nobody was bored; the talkers were pleased with themselves, and the listeners did their part very steadily, not troubled by any idea of dulness. Isaac, sitting well up in his corner, so warm that his corduroy almost burned him when he laid his hand accidentally upon it, felt for his part that if it had not been well understood to be the very doorway and vestibule of another place, the parlour of the “Red Lion” would be a kind of little Paradise. Perhaps it was the terribly wicked and risky character of the enjoyment which gave its humdrum drowsiness so great a charm. As the evening got on the drowse increased; one or two even fell half asleep in their seats, and a reflective air stole on the “coompany.” The gentleman who had the ear of the house prosed on, taking a minute’s rest between every two words; but nobody budged. An alarmed thought of the missis did indeed now and then come over Isaac’s mind, but he was too tranquil, too comfortable, too warm to take such a decisive step as would be necessary to raise himself from the embrace of the settle and get under weigh. All this time, however, there was a little stir at the card-table, which pleased the audience round. When there was any special success, they would pause in their anecdotes and listen, with drowsy smiles. This gave a sort of rollicking character, which would otherwise have been wanting to it, to the placid gaiety. One of the quiet drinkers now and then nudged his neighbour, and asked him what he thought the stakes were. “As much as would be a fortin for you or me,” Isaac said, and there was a flutter of respectful admiration. Perhaps Isaac knew that he was exaggerating. He did it for the honour of the family, of which he was through his master a kind of relation. It was in character with the wild immorality of an evening in the Red Lion that the young men should be playing for high stakes; and this idea made the others enjoy themselves still more. When they came out, the misty whiteness of the atmosphere had cleared off a little, and consolidated itself into dark shadows in all the corners, and a flood of faint moonlight dimly marking the gray fells and the dark treeless country, with its dim lines of dykes and square grey limestone houses. Harry Joscelyn was one of the last to leave; he stood upon the bridge for some time talking with young Selwyn, with whom he had been playing. Isaac thought it was for his own confusion that the young man lingered. The sentiments likely to be entertained by the Missis became more and more clear to Isaac with every step he took after he was forced to get up from his comfortable corner in the settle. But he was still warm without and within, his corduroys keeping the heat of the fire even to the touch after their long baking, and his heart kept up by the strengthened influence of all that he had swallowed. It confused his head a little too, making it drowsy but kindly. It was through a faint little steam as of “summat” warm, dispensing its odours liberally into the air, that he seemed in imagination to see his own door, and the wrathful countenance that would look out from it; but the cold outside made this picture a great deal clearer by degrees, though it did not clear his faculties. His partial obfuscation however did not make him less sensible of his duty towards his master’s godson. He had sacrificed himself, he had incurred all those expressions of the missis’s feelings, which were already prophetically sounding in his ears, for Harry’s sake—and he could not go away now without another word. “As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,” he said to himself, when the others went clattering over the bridge and along the branching ways with their heavy boots, almost all of them feeling a good deal of alarm about the sentiments of the missis; but as Isaac lingered in the cold moonlight kicking his heels, the uneasiness grew with every moment that passed. She would hear old Jack Smethurst stumble down the way to his cottage, and she would prepare a still sharper rod in pickle for Isaac later still. “As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,” he repeated to himself. How those young fellows did talk! and what could they have to talk about after spending all the blessed night playing their games. Ah! devil’s books those cards were, beguiling folks on and on. Isaac fell half asleep, leaning against a corner in the shadow of the “Red Lion.” The lights were already out in that deserted place. There would be no gleam from the window to keep him a little cheery as he plodded down the waterside. And what a clatter these young fellows made! What could they have to talk about? He leaned against the wall and let his head droop on his breast, and for a minute or two Isaac was blissfully unconscious of everything; but at the end of that time he came to himself suddenly, and felt that his corduroys had got quite cold, and that it was very chilly, that the young men were still talking, and that he had begun to shiver. It was cruelty to keep him there, kicking his heels. All the village seemed so still, no lights anywhere, and the landlord of the “Red Lion” turning the key in the door before he mounted up the creaking stairs to bed. The creaking of these stairs went to Isaac’s heart, and the idea of being up later than the landlord of the tavern, the abode of dissipation, of which the whole valley entertained a wholesome distrust—to be out too, at that terrible hour, and still to have a mile to walk, and a talk at the end of it, all for one unruly young fellow that would stand and jabber there with young Selwyn, whom he could see quite easily to-morrow if he pleased. “He’s drunk, that’s it,” Isaac, half asleep, chilled, frightened, and remorseful, and glad to think the worst he could of Mr. Harry, said to himself. And then there was an unexpected aggravation; all at once when he had got his back comfortable at a new angle of the wall, lo! the two shook hands, and went off in a moment, one to the right hand, the other to the left, without any warning to Isaac. He had to pull himself up with a start, and the trouble he had to get himself into motion was as great as if he had been a cranky steam-engine, one of those things (he reflected, muddled, but all the more ingenious) where you have to turn a wheel here and touch a spring there—while all the while Mr. Harry’s steps were audible, young and light, skimming along the road ahead of him. He had to call after him, waking all the echoes, and making the most portentous noise as he lumbered along in his heavy boots, doing what he could to run. Luckily Harry heard him and stopped, just as he came to the cross roads. “Who is that calling me?” he said.
“It’s me, Mr. Harry. Lord bless ye, stop a moment. I’ve got a—word to say—Mr. Harry,” cried Isaac, panting. “Is that a way to keep your friends easy in their minds, to stand aw that time i’ the’ dark at the dead hour o’ th’ night, jabbering nonsense with another as ill as yourself? How are ye to give an account for this night, if there were no more? and leading others into an ill gate. What would t’ auld maister say,—or your missis if ye’d got a missis?”
“Poor old Isaac!” said Harry, laughing; “so that’s what you’re thinking of. I haven’t got a missis. I am thankful. It is you that have got to be lectured to-night. Tell her it was all my fault.”
Isaac seemed to take no notice of this contemptuous recommendation. He stuck himself against the wall that bordered the road, as a precautionary measure against fatigue and sleep, and the effect of the not extravagant potations in which he had been indulging. “I want to say—a serious word to ye. I have got something to say.”
“Then say it and make haste,” Harry cried, “don’t you feel how cold it is, and the moon will set directly? I want to get home to bed.”
“Oh-h,” cried old Isaac: “as if I wasn’t colder and worrider than the like of you; and more burdened with a nervousness—like—what you might call a nervousness for—the walk at the dead o’ t’night and sich like. But I’ve got a word to say. Mr. Harry, you’ll no go near t’auld master? Try anybody but him. I’ve set my heart on’t that you should get his money at the end, and so you will if you’ll hev patience, just hev a little patience; but don’t ye go asking money of him now; don’t you do it, Mr. Harry, and spoil aw—”
“You old ——,” here Harry paused; “is this all you stopped me for? Well, you mean well, Isaac. Go home to bed, and let’s hope the missis will not tear all the hair out of your head.”
“I scorn aw that,” said Isaac with a wave of his hand, though his teeth chattered. “I winna take the trouble to give it a denial; nay, nay, settle your ain affairs atween you and her when ye hev got a missis o’ your ain; I can manage mine,” he said with a little rueful sigh and contraction of his breast. He thought he could see her looking out from the cottage door, and his very soul trembled. “Me, I can manage mine,” he repeated, then added, “but, Mr. Harry, come back to the right question. Hev a little patience; if it was to get me a beatin’ (and she has not the strength for that) I must say it afore we part. Let him be; hev a little patience. If it was my last breath I could give you no different advice.”
Harry paused a moment between offence and gratitude. Then he suddenly gripped Isaac’s hand, “You mean me well,” he said, “and I’ll take your advice, Isaac. Here, lad, you’ve always been a friend, wish me good luck and good-night.”
“And that I do from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Harry. But gang no more to the ‘Red Lion;’ it leads you into many a temptation. Good luck, to ye, my young gentleman, wherever you may go—so long as you’re no going to Wyburgh to fright t’auld master out of his wits.”
“And good night, Isaac, and I wish you well through with the missis,” cried Harry with a laugh, as he went on waving his hand. Isaac stood for a moment looking after him as his alert young figure went off into the distance; then he sighed a sigh, “I wish you well, my lad, if I should never see you again,” he said, with a perturbation which referred to his own troubled mind rather than Harry’s prospects; and so turned his face, alarmed yet sustained by conscious virtue, to his own house.
CHAPTER V.
OUTSIDE THE DOOR.
THE moon was getting low, and threw a level and somewhat sinister light into the lower windows of the White House as Harry came within sight of home. In that bare country, with so few trees to break the light, all the changes in the heavens had a direct influence upon the earth, darkening and lightening it with instantaneous sympathy, such as is not felt in regions less exposed. This special aspect of the light reflecting itself feebly in the lower windows, gave the house the appearance of wearing, as a human countenance sometimes does, a pale and unpleasant smile upon its lips, in which the rest of the face was not involved. The young man did not pay any attention to this at the moment, but when he thought afterwards of the aspect of the place, this was the look that occurred to him; a pale smile, full of mocking and derision; the smile of one cognizant of unknown evil which was about to overwhelm an unsuspecting victim, and taking pleasure in it.
He went up quite calmly to the door. On ordinary occasions it was not necessary for Harry even to knock; his mother, who disapproved as much of the “Red Lion” as Isaac Oliver himself, was always on the watch, stealing down through the dark house in noiseless slippers to let him in, lest he should disturb his father and a quarrel should ensue. Very often, Harry was aware, she was at the window looking out for him, sitting alone in the darkness waiting till she heard his step. He was aware that one way or another she was always on the watch. This, however, did not disturb him, or dispose him to give up his own way of spending the evening. He was not a bad son—certainly he had not the least intention of being so: but that he should change his habits, or do anything he wished not to do, because of his mother’s little feeble anxieties, was a thing which had not occurred to him. All the family knew that she was given to “making a fuss.” Harry supposed she liked to sit up and watch for him. Why should she do it if she didn’t like it? it would be a great deal easier to let him have the key, or tell a servant to sit up. But she liked it; she liked to wait for him at the window, and start up as soon as she heard any sound. Women do; or so, at least, Harry supposed. Joan, to be sure, had never shown the least inclination to do this; but then, one of Joan’s chief distinctions was that she was but little of a woman at all. He came up to the door as usual and stood there for a moment without excitement, listening for the little stir within, which had never failed him, the soft, hesitating, noiseless step, the little sweep of the dress. He stood for a minute looking about him; the moon was quite low in the sky, throwing his shadow before him upon the door, so black and close to him that he was startled for a moment as if it had been a ruffian facing him, and shining chilly, with that sinister look which he had already remarked, in the parlour window. That was his mother’s post when she watched, looking out for him; he had seen the bit of the shutter open, night after night, just enough to see through without being herself perceived, if (an unlikely hypothesis), anyone but Harry should pass that way. But the shutter was closed to-night, and did its share of reflection, sending out a dull glimmer from its dark paint. All was perfectly silent in the house.
He could not think what had happened. He walked back a little and contemplated the place, which now looked as if a hood had been drawn over the upper part, leaving that uncomfortable light below. Now that he was standing still, Harry felt the chill of the night air, which had been agreeable to him before. He began to stamp with his feet to keep them warm, and to attract, if possible, the notice of his mother. What did she mean by paying no attention? She had always heard him before he came near the house, always been ready for him before he reached the door. If she had not accustomed him to this, Harry thought, he would have found some other way of getting admission, though he scarcely knew how; and he grew impatient, and very much annoyed and angry with her. To keep him waiting out here at midnight in the cold; it was out of the question! what could she be thinking of? At the same time, he did not want to rouse his father, and run the risk of another encounter. To meet a woman’s reproaches, who is silenced if you speak a little loud, and is pretty sure to cry at the end, is one thing—but to meet a furious man is quite another. The first risk was not worth taking the trouble to avoid, but Harry felt that it was certainly wiser to keep clear of the other. He had no desire, accordingly, to arouse the house; but at the same time, to be left standing there, chilled to the bone, was out of the question. After he had walked about for a time, impatiently, but with some precaution, he went so far as to knock at the door. There was no bell, nor if there had been one would he have ventured to ring it, for a bell is alarming, pealing into the silence of a shut up house. His soft knocking, however, did no more good than his other attempts to make himself heard. What could it mean? He got colder and colder externally, while within him his temper kindled. What did she mean by leaving him in the lurch? If a mother was good for anything, surely it was to keep her son out of trouble, to shield him from another quarrel. She made fuss enough about the quarrel when it occurred, but now she was allowing things to take their chance, letting that happen as ill-luck directed, nay, bringing the quarrel on, her son felt, indignantly; for if she had never made a practice of opening to him, probably he would not have made a practice of going out, and would not have exposed himself to the storm, which was sure to come now. The moonlight stole away by degrees even from the lower windows, putting out one reflection after another, and disappearing at last with a sinister twinkle, as if of triumph. Though the moonlight had seemed the quintessence of cold and dreariness, yet the blackness of night seemed still colder and drearier after it was gone. He seemed to have been hours standing before that door: and it was out of the question! he would not bear it any longer, happen what might. He began to knock loudly, filling all the dreary echoes with sound; but still nobody stirred in the house.
He had not carried this on for above a minute, however, when a faint something seemed to stir in the darkness behind. There was the faint hiss of a “Hist!” and, he thought, his own name. He turned round to see if perhaps his mother had chosen this time to open the back-door instead of the front, and with a muttered denunciation of her caprice took his way to the supposed opening. It was so dark now that he stumbled even round those corners which were so well known to him. He was relieved, yet it made him angry to be obliged to have recourse to a back way. Could anything be more foolish, he thought, than to change thus without cause or warning?
“Where are you? What’s the matter that I can’t come in as usual?” he said, crossly, as he groped his way among tubs and piles of wood.
“Hush!” said some one, “hush, for heaven’s sake!”
It was not his mother’s voice. And there, in the corner among the washhouses and other offices, he saw a glimmer of something white.
“Good Lord! Joan! what’s the matter with my mother?” he cried.
“Hush! Nothing’s the matter with mother; father’s got her locked up, that is all; and it’s all your fault. Come on, and hold your tongue now you are here.”
It was a sort of little shed in which she stood, and he could see nothing but the whiteness of her nightdress, over which she had thrown a cloak.
“Things have gone just as wrong as can be,” she said; “warm your hands at the copper, you’ll not find a fire indoors. He’s cracked, I think; and so are you too, for ever running to that ‘Red Lion.’ What is there that’s so entertaining? If there’s any fun to be had I’d like to go too.”
“There’s no fun—that you could understand,” said Harry.
Joan laughed; she stood close to the copper in the dark, warming herself, and so did he. It was a kind of little excitement to her, she who had so few excitements, to have had to get up, as she expressed it, in the middle of the night to let her brother in. And though she was sagacious enough not to put much confidence in the “fun” of the “Red Lion,” still it represented jollity and wildness to her as well as to Isaac Oliver. She laughed.
“Oh, you’re very grand, I know; women folk can’t understand, you are cleverer than we are. But I wonder you can be so easy pleased; if young Selby and Jim Salkeld, and the common men of the village, are very entertaining at the ‘Red Lion,’ it’s more than they are in any other place.”
“What do you know about it?” cried Harry.
She laughed again, which was exasperating. Young men take nothing more amiss than an impertinent woman’s doubts as to the brilliancy of the entertainment in those haunts which are sacred to their own special enjoyment. He knew very well at bottom that the “Red Lion” was as dull as ditchwater; but nothing would have made him confess it; where else, he said to himself, had he to go?
“You had better mind your own concerns,” he said, “I’ll get my amusement my own way. Has there been a row that mother’s not here? I don’t mean to say that I am not obliged to you, Joan, for getting out of bed to let me in. By Jove, if I had been shut out I know what I’d have done! Was there a great row?”
“What would you have done?” said Joan, still half laughing; then she started and with a little cry, said, “What’s that?”
“What’s what? I’ll tell you this, I should never have crossed the door again in daylight, be sure of that, that was shut to me in the night.”
Before he had finished this speech, Joan clutched him by the arm.
“Don’t you hear something?” she said, “come in, come in, don’t lose a minute. What if he should lock the kitchen door? Harry, promise me you’ll not stop to say a word, but run up to your bed.”
She was hurrying while she spoke, through the series of outbuildings, dragging him with her, breathless, and speaking in gasps. But as they went on from one to another there could be no longer any doubt as to what had happened. The kitchen door, which opened from these offices, was shut with a loud jar, and the key turned.
“I dunno’ who’s out and about at this hour of the night,” Joscelyn was heard within, “but whoever it is they’ll stay there: some o’ the women out like the cats, dash them, or may be a good-for-nothing lad. I’ll teach them what it is to roam the country o’ nights. You’ll stay there whoever you are.”
Joan lost all her self-command in the emergency. She dropped Harry’s hand and threw herself against the door.
“Oh, father, father, open! do you hear me? It’s me, Joan. Open! will you let me bide out in the cold, in the dead of night? Father! let me in, let me in! you wouldn’t have the heart to shut me out all night. It’s me, me, Joan!”
There was no reply; his steps were heard going away mounting the stairs, and a faint outcry in the distance as of the mother weeping and protesting. Joan, who was a very simple person, though so self-commanded in emergencies which her mother could not face, was altogether taken by surprise by this. She flung herself against the door with a burst of weeping.
“Oh, open, open!” she said, beating upon it with her hands. Then she called out the names of the servants one after another. “I’ll not be left here all the night; open, open! do you hear! I’ll not be left here all the night. I’ll die if I am left out in the dark. I’ll not be left!” she cried with a shriek.
Harry was silenced by this loud and sudden passion so close to him. It alarmed him, for Joan was the impersonation of strength and calm; but the situation was uncomfortable enough, however it could be taken. The consciousness that he had some one else to think for, some one who for the present had lost her head, and all power to think for herself, changed his own position. He caught his sister by the arm.
“Don’t make such a row,” he said, “Joan, you! that was always against a fuss.”
“Oh,” cried Joan half wild, “did I ever think that I’d be shut out like a bad woman out of the house at the dead of night—me! that was always the most respectable, that never stirred a step even in the evening times, or said a word to a man. Open! it isn’t the cold, it’s the character: me! me!”
But all her beating and knocking, and all her prayers were in vain. The maids slept soundly, all but one trembling girl who heard the voice without knowing whose it was, and dared not get up to see what was the matter, especially as she heard mysterious steps going up and down stairs. And the mistress of the house sobbed in her chamber in the dark, wringing her hands. She had come almost to the length of personal conflict with her husband for the first time in her life; but poor Mrs. Joscelyn even in her despair was no sort of match for the man who lifted her, swearing and laughing, into her bed, and locked the door upon her when he went downstairs. He came up and fiercely ordered her to be silent.
“Dash you, hold your blanked tongue. I’ve taken it into my own hands, and if you venture to interfere I’ll pitch you out of window as soon as look at you,” he said, “a deal sooner for that matter—for you’re not tempting to look at, you dashed white-faced ——”
“Yes, do,” she cried, “throw me out of the window, throw me out to my children. I’d rather be dead with my children than living here.” And she rushed to the window and threw it open; but he caught her before she could throw herself out, and perhaps, poor woman, she would not have thrown herself out; for “I dare not” very often waits upon “I would” in such circumstances. He carried her back crying and struggling to her bed. Though he had not hesitated to turn the key upon his son and daughter, he had no desire to have it whispered in the country side that his wife had thrown herself out of window, because of his cruelty; but he could not resist giving her a shake as he threw her upon her bed.
“I’d never have had any fuss in my family if it hadn’t been for you; just you budge at your peril,” he said, threatening her with his fist. And there she lay with the cry of her daughter in her ears, and the sound of the knocking that seemed to be upon her heart. To tell the truth she was not very anxious about Joan. Joan would have a bad cold, that would be all the damage she would take; but Harry, Harry! what would Harry do?
When Joan had beat the door and her knuckles almost to a jelly, she came to a sudden pause. In a moment her mood changed; her passion wrought itself out almost as suddenly as it began.
“Well, if I can’t have the door opened I’d best give up trying,” she said all at once. Her hands were fatigued with knocking, and her feet with kicking. She was hoarse, and her eyes ached with the hot tears that had poured from them. She came to herself with a sudden sense of shame—she who was so strenuous in her opposition to a fuss. She had no sense of cold now, her shawl hung off her shoulders with the fervour of her efforts. “My word, but I’ll give it to those lasses,” was the next thing Joan said: and then she laughed at herself to carry off her sense of shame.
“We’re both in the same box, Harry,” she said, “well! two together isn’t so bad as one alone; come back to the washhouse. I’m glad I told them to light that copper—if it wasn’t a providence! we’ll sit us down there and keep warm; and don’t you take on, my lad. It’s not so very long to day.”
When she recovered, however, it was Harry’s turn. He followed her back to the copper without a word. He even pulled the bench on which the tubs stood close to that centre of warmth for her, and got her something on which to put her feet. By this time a certain pleasure in the novelty of the situation had arisen in Joan’s mind. “My word, I made a fine noise. Mother will be in a terrible way, that’s the worst of it. As for father I’ll pay him out. Don’t you be afraid; he’ll repent the night he meddled with Joan; and I’ll give it to the maids. Just as likely as not he’s taken away the key; but bless us all, what’s the good of being a woman if you can’t find out a way? I’d have done it if he’d stood over me with a drawn sword. But, Harry, you never speak a word. Are you cold? come and sit here by me on the warmest side. ’Twill be as cosy here as if you were in a pie; and I’ll give you a bit of my shawl. Come, lad! pluck up a heart: I’ve nigh cried my eyes out; but that does no good. I can’t see you, Harry; but I know you’re down, though I can’t see.”
“Down!” he said, “Can a fellow be anything but down with a raging wild beast for a father, and shut out of every shelter through a cold spring night.”
“That’s very true,” said Joan, “and I’m no example, as you’ve seen; but still I’m in the same box if that’s any consolation.”
“No, it is no consolation,” said Harry; “it makes it worse; for if you are here perishing of cold it’s all on my account.”
“I’m not perishing of cold. I’m as hearty as a cricket. If he thinks he’ll break my spirit he’s much mistaken; and that’s all about it. It did touch me the first minute. I feel that I was just a big baby. But after all, Harry, if you will stay out till all the hours of the night, and go to that ‘Red Lion,’ which is known to have ruined many a lad——”
“Oh, hold your tongue about the ‘Red Lion!’—you are as bad as old Isaac. Where am I to go?”
“What’s to prevent you biding at home?” said Joan. “Dear me, you’re not such a deal better than I am, Harry Joscelyn. Where do I ever go? I’ve been as young as you once upon a time, and what diversion was ever given to me? and I’m not to say so dreadful old yet. Can you not put up for a week with what I have put up with all my life?”
“You don’t understand—it’s quite different,” said Harry, hotly; “you’re a woman, you’re an old—Good Lord, can’t you see the difference? Where should you be but at home? but what would you have me do, stuck between two women and that—that father of mine?—” Harry here menaced the dark world with his fist, and burst, in his turn, into an outcry of passion. “I’ll neither sleep under his roof nor call him father, nor reckon myself to belong to him more! You hear what I say, Joan; you can bear witness. Not if I were to starve; not if I were to die; not if I were to cadge about the streets!—White House has seen the last of me. You can tell my mother I think upon her: but she must not expect ever to see me again.”
“Tut, tut,” said Joan, tranquilly; “to be sure you must have your fling. Ay, ay, say away, my lad; it’s always a relief: and we’ll not keep you to it when you come to yourself.”
“That’s well for you, Joan,” said her brother; “but for me, I don’t mean to come to myself. He’s done it, I can tell you. What did he ever do for me? but if he had been the best father in the world now he’s made an end of it. Am I to be treated like this, home on a visit and I cannot put my affairs before him, and ask for my share to buy me into the business, but I’m met with abuse: and when I go out for a little peace the door’s shut upon me. You can do what you please, but I’ll not stand it. We’ve all lived a wretched life, but I’ll make an end of it. Don’t you think it’s all a flash-in-the-pan, and that I don’t mean what I say.”
“Well, well, lad—if it keeps your spirits up a bit. Are you not sleepy? Let’s make the best of it. Harry: after all it’s but one night. Though this is not to call an easy seat. I’m that sleepy I shall go off, I know I shall. If you see me tumbling be sure you catch me. I cannot keep awake another minute. Good night, lad, good night.”
This was half real, on Joan’s part, and half put on to calm her brother down; but in that part of her intention she was not very successful. After a while she really did as she had threatened, and fell into a sound, if uneasy, sleep. But Harry had no inclination that way. He sat and pondered over all his wrongs, and as he mused the fire burned. What was home to him?—nothing. A place where there was no peace—a pandemonium—and when there was either quarrelling or dulness—dulness beyond description; either a fight with his father or a drowse by his mother’s side—that was all the comfort he had of his home. And after all, when he put the question to himself, and nobody else interfered, he was obliged to allow that the entertainment at the “Red Lion” was not of a very exciting character. There was not much in that to make up for the want of everything else. He sat upon the edge of the copper dangling his legs, and, notwithstanding that warmth, the chill of the night got into his heart. He had no overcoat, as his mother had remembered, when he went out; and as the slow moments passed on, the night became intolerable to Harry, and the sense that his enemy, his father, was chuckling in the warmth upstairs over his outcast condition, distracted him with impotent rage. Never again would he subject himself to such a shame. He clenched his fist and made a vow within himself, while Joan, leaning her head against him, slumbered uneasily. After a while Joan had a little shock in her sleep, half woke, and felt her pillow displaced, and dreaming, not knowing where she was, threw herself back against the copper and settled down somehow again. She dreamt there had been an earthquake, and that the copper itself was a volcano and had made an eruption and tumbled down upon her, catching her fast by the feet. A little after, poor Mrs. Joscelyn, lying awake crying silently and saying her prayers over and over again, heard a handful of gravel flung violently against her window and the sound of footsteps. What did it mean? The tyrant had gone to sleep a few minutes before, and he slept heavily. She crept out of bed with a sinking heart, and after a great deal of alarmed searching found the keys, of her own room first, and then of the doors below. She did not even turn to find something to cover her, but fled downstairs, like a ghost, with her naked feet and a wild flutter in her heart. When she made her way with some difficulty to the place where her children had found refuge, she came just in time to deliver Joan, who had almost broken her neck in her struggles to get out of the way of the earthquake, and was lying, with her head back and her mouth open, among the tubs. Though she was conscious of being in some convulsion of nature it was not easy to wake Joan, and there was no one else to be seen. Mrs. Joscelyn, with her candle in her hand, went searching into every corner while her daughter picked herself up. “Harry,” she cried, “Harry! oh where is my boy?” There was not a trace of him about; not even an impromptu couch, like Joan’s, made up of benches and washing tubs. The mother flitted about into all the offices, while Joan roused herself with many yawns, rubbing her stiff neck and knotting up her straggling locks, and gathering her shawl round her shoulders. “Oh that copper,” Joan was saying, “it’s been the saving of my life.”
“But where is my boy? Oh! Joan, what have you done with him? Where is my boy?”
“I have not got him in my pocket,” Joan said, with a sleepy smile. Then as she roused herself quite up, “To be sure, mother, the lad’s not a fool though we give him the credit of it. He’s gone back to his blessed ‘Red Lion,’ and is safe in his bed, as I would like to be. And if I had let him alone and not poked in where I wasn’t wanted, there’s where he would have been from the first. You see that’s just your way. I have a little bit of it in me, if not much; and, instead of letting him be, I must meddle. But he’s safe in his bed at the ‘Red Lion;’ and you’d better go back to yours, and let me go to mine, and make the best of a bad night.”
“I cannot think he has gone to the ‘Red Lion,’” said Mrs. Joscelyn, standing in her white nightdress, with her glaring candle, against the great darkness of the night in the doorway, and investigating the gloom by that poor assistance with her anxious eyes.
“Then where else would he go to?” Joan said.
CHAPTER VI.
A NIGHT WALK.
THE moon had set when Harry Joscelyn left the White House; and the night was very dark, as it is so often after the setting of the moon. The sky was cloudy, and scarcely a star was visible. The wind blew cold in his face when he got beyond the shelter of the walls. He looked up at the house as he passed it with a sensation of rage and contempt which it is only possible to reach when the object we thus hate and despise is one that ought to be beloved. He lifted a handful of gravel and threw it violently at his mother’s window. There was no softening of feeling, no wish to say a farewell, even if an angry one in this. It was done in boyish rage, with a simple desire to strike. He was glad to think the stones struck sharply, and might, perhaps, have broken a pane and fallen like shot upon the floor. This was what he would have wished. When he had discharged that parting volley, he pulled down his hat over his ears, and put up his coat-collar. It was all he could do against the wind, which blew through and through him. Not even an overcoat! They were determined that he should have nothing; that he should be expelled without even the poorest covering; that he should be exposed to everything dangerous, everything disagreeable. To be sure, that was what they wanted! Revenge filled the young fellow’s heart as he went along in the dark, shivering at first, till his rapid progress set his blood in motion. Not only without a home, without a roof to shelter him, or a bed to lie upon, but without even a coat. He turned his back upon his father’s house with a bitterness that was indescribable. He could remember the time when it was delightful to him to go home; but that was long ago, when he was a boy and knew no better. Even then, what had his father been to him? a terror even in his lighter moods, which might turn into fury at any moment. His mother? oh, his mother had been kind enough, poor soul! For a woman she had done what she could; but at the best what could a woman do? Poor thing! yes she had been kind. But it is very difficult for the young to see anyone, even when dear to them, systematically undervalued without getting to share the sentiment in one shape or another. Sometimes it rouses a generous mind to hot partizanship; but Harry had never got that length. He had been indignant sometimes and conscious, with a little pride, that he was the one who stood up for his mother—but he had not gone further. And now he could not help despising her as everybody else did. Just when it was essential she should stand by him, she had failed him. Call this the consequence of force which she could not resist, of natural bodily weakness—all that was very well to say; but a mother worth anything will never run the risk of bodily force in such an emergency. She will find some way of getting out of it. She will stand by her son when he needs her, whatever happens. And Harry’s mother had not done so—just at the critical moment when he had been driven wild by opposition, when his future career had been to all appearance cut short and his path shut in before him, she had failed him! She was as weak as water; there was no faith to be put in her. A woman like that, Harry reflected, is almost as bad as if she were not a good woman. Oh, yes; she was a good woman! but what advantage was it to anyone? What did it matter being good if you were of no use to those belonging to you? Being good just for yourself, selfishly, that was a poor sort of business. For her children she was no good. What had she ever done for any of them? Made a fuss, as Joan said. She was very good at doing that, was mother! But what more? These were the angry thoughts that were surging through his mind as he turned his back upon his home. His father’s image swept across him now and then, raising his angry despair into momentary rage; but it was not his father, who had always been hard upon him, but his mother, who had always been so tender to him, whom Harry assailed with all these bitter thoughts. In her silly dislike to the only poor little amusement he had, she had turned against him at the decisive moment. It was just like a woman! Because he would not tie himself to her apron-strings; because he would not spend his evenings sitting with her and Joan—a pretty sort of position for a young man, Harry said to himself, with a curl of his lip.
He went on shivering, straight before him as he happened to have turned his face when he came round the corner of the house. He was not aware that there was more choice in it than this, though all the while there was a dormant intention in his mind of going to Wyburgh after all, and trying, one last effort, what Uncle Henry would do for him. Uncle Henry had been kind to him, as kind as he knew how. He was only an old bachelor, not much good, a selfish old fellow, thinking most of his own comfort; but still he had been kind; and perhaps if he knew fully the state of the case, and how the people at White House had treated his pupil and godson—This was lying underneath as it were the current of Harry’s thoughts, and turned over and came uppermost for a moment now and then; but it did not become at all a principal idea until he had walked a long way, and had got warm with walking, and the sense of absolute misery, physical and mental, had been slightly modified. At first he kept to the side of the Fells, which was rough walking, and where now and then there was a dyke to jump over or a beck to cross; but by and by got down to the high road, almost groping the way with his feet, if not with his hands, so black lay the night over the irregular broken ground. He knew the road, every inch, he would have said; but when that darkness comes down like a pall, confounding everything in one gloom, there is little advantage in knowledge. Sometimes he found himself right up against the grey uncemented stones of a dyke before he was aware of any obstacle, and sometimes had almost plunged into an invisible hill-side stream, before the little warning trickle it made among the stones caught his ear. By the side of one of these little streams he made his way to the road, and there for the first time asked himself where he was going. What a strange walk it was, all blank about him, sometimes a lonely tree rustling, betraying itself in the dark by the wind in its spare branches, sometimes a cottage suggested on the roadside, or away among the fields, by the cry of a child or the bark of a dog. He knew he had passed through the first hamlet on his way, because the dogs all woke at the unusual sound of a footstep, and barked at him lustily. He was not a youth of much imagination, and yet this incident had the most curious effect upon him. He was more startled, more shocked and annoyed by it than by anything else that had happened to him. The very dogs! was he already to them a tramp, a wandering vagrant? At the very end of the “town” some one opened a window, and Harry heard a querulous question, not addressed to himself, but to some one inside, “Wha’s that wandering on the road in the dead o’ the night?” Harry slunk by, trying to keep his steps from making so much noise. A sense of disreputableness suddenly came over him, a recollection of what people would think. Nobody would believe he had been turned out of his home for no fault of his. And then in the midst of his fury and desire for vengeance, there suddenly came over Harry that family pride which so seldom abandons a Northcountryman. Was he going to let everybody know what disgrace there was in the White House, and how his father had turned him out of doors? Were all the tongues in the country-side to be set wagging on this subject? The Joscelyns—people so well known! Harry felt as if some one had struck him sharply with his hand in the darkness. It would be all over the country in twenty-four hours. Joscelyn of White House had turned his youngest son out of doors. There was no second family of the name to confuse gossip. Harry felt as if the barking of the dogs was but a foretaste of what was going to happen to him. He felt as if some one had grasped him, choked him, tried to strangle him in the dark.
Fortunately Wyburgh by this time showed, a long way off with its little lights twinkling. They were but four little rustic lights, not many of them—for when the moon shone the corporation felt itself at liberty to dispense with lamps; and but for the lights at the railway-station, and two or three which were indispensable, the little town would have been invisible in the darkness, like those sleeping villages which Harry had stumbled through almost without knowing. When he caught sight of the first of these lights, it gave him a keen pleasure; it seemed to deliver him from that world of blackness in which the only conscious and living thing was himself and the sea of thoughts which surged up and down within him, one wave sweeping over another, in a confusion and tumult indescribable. Harry’s soul caught at the glow of that tall solitary lamp, the first which marked the line of the railway, as at a guiding light directing him into a known country, to solid ground and a familiar shore. The darkness and the little inward world of thought were alike strange to him, and he had no guide to direct him through them; but now here was “kent ground,” a place which would be visible, where the dogs would not bark at him in the dark, where there were all the safeguards of an inhabited place. He was relieved beyond measure when he saw the lights, and said to himself what they were. That was the tall light on the line, that other lower one the lamp at the station, that the faint little flare seen over the housetops of the market square, and yonder the well-known lamp at the corner, which he had seen lit so often as he left the Grammar-school. It made his heart light to count them at a distance. But when he got to the outskirts of the town he was less happy. It was still quite dark, between three and four o’clock, and he could not go to Uncle Harry’s, or to any other house in which he was known at such an hour. Nobody was stirring in Wyburgh, nor would be for hours yet. As he went into the silent streets the sense of his desolate position came over him more strongly than ever. All the houses were shut up and silent, blinds drawn over the windows, feeble lamps burning here and there like night-lights in a sick-chamber, the whole place breathing low and noiselessly in its sleep. He met a policeman, the only one, making his rounds with steady tramp, and the policeman looked at Harry with suspicion, throwing the light of his dark lantern upon him as he passed. He knew John Armstrong very well, and had played him many a trick as a schoolboy; but he shrank from making himself known now; and John looked with suspicion at the wayfarer, without even an overcoat, buttoned up to the neck, and with his hat drawn over his eyes, who thus invaded the town in the middle of the night. Harry knew that he was but a tramp, all the more dangerous because better dressed than usual, in John’s eyes. He felt the light of the lantern come after him, making a long trail of light upon the pavement. And he did not know where to go. If he went wandering about, which was the only thing he could think of, no doubt he would meet John Armstrong again, and almost certainly be questioned as to what he was doing, and who he was. And then the story would run over Wyburgh, how young Harry Joscelyn, one of the Joscelyns of the White House, had come in to Wyburgh before four o’clock in the morning, walking like a vagrant, and was recognized by the policeman, roaming about the street without any place to go to. He might almost be taken up as a rogue and vagabond, Harry thought, with that exaggeration which misfortune delights in. If he were called upon to give an account of himself he could not do it, nor had he any place to go to, any home waiting for him. The Wyburgh folk might form their own conclusions, and so they would, could anyone doubt.
He walked straight through the town to the other end of it, as if he were going on somewhere else, ashamed of himself, though he had nothing to be ashamed of, avoiding the spots of feeble light round the lamps, and walking as softly as he could not to make so much noise upon the pavement. He had not felt this so much in the country, in the darkness, but here, where everybody knew him, he became suddenly ashamed and afraid of being seen. When the clock struck it made him jump as if it had been some one calling his name. “Harry Joscelyn is roaming about the country without a home to go to;” did he think that was what it was going to say? Alas! it was but four o’clock that struck; four o’clock! the night seemed to have been already twelve hours long; and here were two hours more at the least that he must get through somehow before he could hope that even Mrs. Eadie, Uncle Henry’s old housekeeper, would be astir. He would not mind presenting himself to her; and the thought of the kind unquestioning welcome she would give, the cheerful fire, the breakfast, the warm room in which he could sit down, gave him sudden encouragement. For it was very cold; those long, long hours of night, which pass so quickly in sleep, sliding out of consciousness altogether, how much goes on in them to those who are homeless! Harry had never thought of anything of the kind before; a night without rest, even, far less a night out of doors, had been unknown to him. The wretches who wander about the roads, and sleep under a hedge, and have no home, were out of his ken; they were poor wretches, and in all likelihood it was “their own fault.” People would think the same of him. To be ashamed of the position in which you find yourself, and yet to be quite innocent, is a curious misery, but it is very poignant. He had done nothing wrong; but the light of John Armstrong’s lantern made him shrink, and even those pale little prying lamps, each making a hole in the darkness. He went straight through Wyburgh, coming out at the further side. He walked till he was quite clear of the houses, and then he turned and looked back upon the spots of light which had cheered him so much when he first caught sight of them. How cold it was! nobody would believe that a spring morning could be so cold. It was like December. There was the clock again, like some one shouting in his ear—but only sounding the half after four; would the night never come to an end? He walked up and down on this bit of quiet road, just outside the town, to keep himself warm, pausing now and then to lean upon the wall and look at the lights; though he dared not go back to them lest they should betray him to the gossips, yet it was a kind of consolation to look at them still. They delivered him a little from that close presence and wretched company of himself.
An early cart from one of the neighbouring farms with vegetables for the market, lumbering along the road just as the day began to break, was the next thing that disturbed him. He fled from that too, wondering what the carter would think to see him standing there like a ghost in the dim dawn—and got over the wall into a field, to be out of the way, yet could not help feeling, as he listened, holding his breath, to the sound of the slow, jogging horses and the man’s heavy tread, that the carter must have spied him, and must be peeping over the wall and wondering who he could be. By this time Harry had got to feel very like a criminal. He felt sure that everybody would think he was a criminal and had done something desperate, to see him there in this guise. And how he was to get courage to go back to Wyburgh again in full daylight, in the sight of everybody, and knock at his uncle’s door, he did not know.
“Lord bless us! Master Harry!” the housekeeper cried. He came upon her suddenly as she opened the door to go out and feed her chickens, which was the first thing she did every morning. She was so scared that she let fall her apronful of seed, and held up her hands half to protect herself, for this worn, pale, wearied apparition, with coat-collar up to its ears, and hat drawn down over its brow, was like the ghost of Harry, not himself. “Lord bless us! Master Harry! it’s never you?”
“It is me, though: and dreadfully tired, and so cold I don’t know what to do with myself,” said Harry, with chattering teeth. “Let me come in and look at a fire.”
“Let you come in, my bonny boy! you shall come in, and welcome; and the kettle’s on, and I’ll soon make you some tea. Come into the kitchen, it’s the warmest place. Bless the lad! What hour did ye start at to get here so early? or has anything happened? You’ve not come for the doctor? I’m that surprised you might blow me over with a puff of your breath.”
“I shall not try,” said Harry, recovering himself a little as he felt the warmth of the fire. “There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Eadie, they’re all well enough; but I want to see Uncle Henry, and I’m going back to Liverpool to-day.”
“Bless my heart! I thought you had come for a real holiday, and its no’ above a week; but whisht! laddie, dinna chatter with your teeth like that; come nearer to the fire. Dear, dear me, but you must be cold; not a great-coat upon your back, nor a comforter, nor one thing to keep the heat in ye. I hope you havena’ just gotten your death,” cried the housekeeper, pouring the steaming water, which it was good even to see, into her teapot; and in her anxiety to get him a comfortable meal she forgot to ask any more questions.
Mrs. Eadie’s help, who was a young girl, did not live in the house, and her late arrival in the mornings was one of the grievances of the housekeeper’s life. There was nobody, therefore, but this good woman, in whom Harry had perfect confidence, to witness his worn-out condition: and by-and-by he got thawed and comfortable. Once within this legitimate shelter too, his spirits came back to him. He forgot the painful miseries he had conjured up, or, at least, he did not forget them, but they went to his father’s account to swell his wrath. There were still several hours to wait before he could see Uncle Henry, and Harry lay down upon the bed where he had slept when he was a schoolboy, and returned to common life and respectable usages through the medium of a long sleep. It was a sort of moral bath to him, restoring him to creditable ways. To think that he should have feared John Armstrong’s lantern, and hid himself from the carter with his early vegetables! But all that, and a great deal more, went to his father’s account. His rage revived as the misery of the night ended. For those latter hours he had been too much occupied by his personal feelings to dwell upon the cause of them; now that he was comfortable once more the insult and the cruelty that had been inflicted upon him came back with double force. Turned from his father’s door, the key turned upon him, the house he was born in shut up against him; himself disowned, like a beggar, left to wander where he pleased, to die on the moors, if he liked, to get his death, as Mrs. Eadie had suggested; and all this his father’s doing! Harry clenched his fist with wild excitement, with a desire for vengeance which startled himself. He thought he would almost consent to have “got his death” if Joscelyn could be tried for manslaughter. He would have almost liked to punish, to convict his father by dying, so that the whole country might have pointed at him as the man who had killed his son. But then he reflected that probably his father would not care. “But I’ll make him care,” Harry said to himself. Few people venture to express such vindictiveness; but Harry Joscelyn’s heart was full of it; it was natural to his race.