A Rough Shaking
Home - George MacDonald - A Rough ShakingChapter LII.
Miss Tempest.
Without knowing it, he was approaching the sea. Walking along a chain
of downs, he saw suddenly from the top of one of them, for the first
time in his memory though not in his life, the sea--a pale blue cloud,
as it appeared, far on the horizon, between two low hills. The sight
of it, although he did not at first know what it was, brought with it
a strange inexplicable feeling of dolorous pleasure. For this he could
not account. It was the faintest revival of an all but obliterated
impression of something familiar to his childhood, lying somewhere
deeper than the memory, which was a blank in regard to it. But that
feeling was not all that the sight awoke in him. The pale blue cloud
bore to him such a look of the eternal, that it seemed the very place
for God to live in--the solemn, stirless region of calm in which the
being to whom now of late he had first begun in reality to pray, kept
his abode. The hungry, worn, tattered boy, with nothing to call his
own but a great hope and a little dog, fell down on his bare knees on
the hard road, and stretched out his hands in an ecstasy toward the
low cloud.
The far-off ringing tramp of a horse's feet aroused him. He rose light as an athlete, the great hope grown twice its former size, and hunger forgotten.
The blue cloud kept in sight, and by and by he knew it was the sea he saw, though how or at what moment the knowledge came to him he could not have told. The track was leading him toward one of the principal southern ports.
By this time he was again very thin; but he had brown cheeks and clear eyes, and, save when suffering immediately from hunger, felt perfectly well. Hunger is a sad thing notwithstanding its deep wholesomeness; but there is immeasurably more suffering in the world from eating too much than from eating too little.
Well able by this time to read the signs of the road, he perceived at length he must be drawing near a town. He had already passed a house or two with a little lawn in front, and indications of a garden behind; and he hoped yet again that here, after all, he might get work. To door after door he carried his modest request: some doors were shut in his face almost before he could speak; at others he had a civil word from maid, or a rough word from man; from none came sound of assent. It had become harder too to find shelter. Ever as he went, space was more and more appropriated and enclosed; less and less room was left for the man for whom had been made no special cubic provision of earth and air, and who had no money--the most disreputable of conditions in the eyes of such as would be helpless if they had none. A rare philosopher for eyes capable of understanding him, he was a despicable being in the eyes of the common man. To know a human being one must be human--that is, the divine must be strong in him.
For some days now, neither Clare nor Abdiel had come even within sight of food enough to make a meal. The dog was rather thinner than his master.
"Abdiel," said Clare to him one day, "I fear you will soon be a serpent! Your body gets longer and longer, and your legs get shorter and shorter: you'll be crawling presently, rubbing the hair off your useless little belly on the dusty road! Never mind, Abdiel; you'll be a good serpent. Satan was turned into a bad serpent because he was a bad angel; you will be a good serpent, because you are a good dog! I hope, however, we shall yet put a stop to the serpent-business!"
Abdiel wagged his tail, as much as to say, "All right, master!"
The nights were now very cold; winter was coming fast. Had Clare been long enough in one place for people to know him, he would never have been allowed to go so cold and hungry; but he had always to move on, and nobody had time to learn to care about him. So the terrible sunless season threatened to wrap him in its winding-sheet, and lay him down.
One evening, just before sunset, grown sleepy in spite of the gathering cold, he sat down on one of the two steep grassy slopes that bordered the road. His feet were bare now, bare and brown, for his shoes had come to such plight that it was a relief to throw them away; but his soles had grown like leather. They rested in the dry shallow rain-channel, and his body leaned back against the slope. Abdiel, instead of jumping on the bank and lying in the soft grass, lay down on the leathery feet, and covered them from the night with his long faithful body and its coat of tangled hair.
The sun was shooting his last radiance along the road, and its redness caressed the sleeping companions, when an elderly lady came to her gate at the top of the opposite slope, and looked along the road with the sun. Her reverting glance fell upon the sleepers--the Knight of Hope lying in rags, not marble, his feet not upon his dog, but his dog upon his feet. It was a touching picture, and the old lady's heart was one easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, or waste.
Her mere glance seemed to wake Abdiel, who took advantage of his waking to have a lick at the brown, dusty, brave, uncomplaining feet, so well used to the world's via dolorosa. She saw, and was touched yet more by this ministration of the guardian of the feet. Gently opening the gate she descended the slope, crossed the road, and stood silent, regarding the outcasts. No cloudy blanket covered the sky: ere morning the dew would lie frozen on the grass!
"You shouldn't be sleeping there!" she said.
Abdiel started to his four feet and would have snarled, but with one look at the lady changed his mind. Clare half awoke, half sat up, made an inarticulate murmur, and fell back again.
"Get up, my boy," said the old lady. "You must indeed!"
"Oh, please, ma'am, must I?" answered Clare, slowly rising to his feet. "I had but just lain down, and I'm so tired!--If I mayn't sleep there," he continued, "where am I to sleep?--Please, ma'am, why is everybody so set against letting a boy sleep? It don't cost them anything! I can understand not giving him work, if he looks too much in want of it; but why should they count it bad of him to lie down and sleep?"
The lady wisely let him talk; not until he stopped did she answer him.
"It's because of the frost, my boy!" she said. "It would be the death of you to sleep out of doors to-night!"
"It's a nice place for it, ma'am!"
"To sleep in? Certainly not!"
"I didn't mean that, ma'am. I meant a nice place to go away from--to die in, ma'am!"
"That is not ours to choose," answered the old lady severely, but the tone of her severity trembled.
"I sha'n't find anywhere so nice as this bank," said Clare, turning and looking at it sorrowfully.
"There are plenty of places in the town. It's but a mile farther on!"
"But this is so much nicer, ma'am! And I've no money--none at all, ma'am. When I came out of prison,--"
"Came out of where?"
"Out of prison, ma'am."
He had never been in prison in a legal sense, never having been convicted of anything; but he did not know the difference between detention and imprisonment.
"Prison!" she exclaimed, holding up her hands in horror. "How dare you mention prison!"
"Because I was in it, ma'am."
"And to say it so coolly too! Are you not ashamed of yourself?"
"No, ma'am."
"It's a shame to have been in prison."
"Not if I didn't do anything wrong."
"Nobody will believe that, I'm afraid!"
"I suppose not, ma'am! I used to feel very angry when people wouldn't believe me, but now I see they are not to blame. And now I've got used to it, and it don't hurt so much.--But," he added with a sigh, "the worst of it is, they won't give me any work!"
"Do you always tell people you've come out of prison?"
"Yes, ma'am, when I think of it."
"Then you can't wonder they won't give you work!"
"I don't, ma'am--not now. It seems a law of the universe!"
"Not of the universe, I think--but of this world--perhaps!" said the old lady thoughtfully.
"But there's one thing I do wonder at," said Clare. "When I say I've been in prison, they believe me; but when I say I haven't done anything wrong, then they mock me, and seem quite amused at being expected to believe that. I can't get at it!"
"I daresay! But people will always believe you against yourself.--What are you going to do, then, if nobody will give you work? You can't starve!"
"Indeed I can, ma'am! It's just the one thing I've got to do. We've been pretty near the last of it sometimes--me and Abdiel! Haven't we, Abby?"
The dog wagged his tail, and the old lady turned aside to control her feelings.
"Don't cry, ma'am," said Clare; "I don't mind it--not much. I'm too glad I didn't do anything, to mind it much! Why should I! Ought I to mind it much, ma'am? Jesus Christ hadn't done anything, and they killed him! I don't fancy it's so very bad to die of only hunger! But we'll soon see!--Sha'n't we, Abby?"
Again the dog wagged his tail.
"If you didn't do anything wrong, what did you do?" said the old lady, almost at her wits' end.
"I don't like telling things that are not going to be believed. It's like washing your face with ink!"
"I will try to believe you."
"Then I will tell you; for you speak the truth, ma'am, and so, perhaps, will be able to believe the truth!"
"How do you know I speak the truth?"
"Because you didn't say, 'I will believe you.' Nobody can be sure of doing that. But you can be sure of trying; and you said, 'I will try to believe you.'"
"Tell me all about it then."
"I will, ma'am.--The policeman came in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and took us all away, because we were in a house that was not ours."
"Whose was it then?"
"Nobody knew. It was what they call in chancery. There was nobody in it but moths and flies and spiders and rats;--though I think the rats only came to eat baby."
"Baby! Then the whole family of you, father, mother, and all, were taken to prison!"
"No, ma'am; my fathers and my mothers were taken up into the dome of the angels."--What with hunger and sleepiness, Clare was talking like a child.--"I haven't any father and mother in this world. I have two fathers and two mothers up there, and one mother in this world. She's the mother of the wild beasts."
The old lady began to doubt the boy's sanity, but she went on questioning him.
"How did you have a baby with you, then?"
"The baby was my own, ma'am. I took her out of the water-but."
Once more Clare had to tell his story--from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God's innocents, with an angel-haunted brain.
"And what's become of Tommy?" she asked.
"He's in the same workhouse with baby. I'm very glad; for what I should have done with Tommy, and nothing to give him to eat, I can't think. He would have been sure to steal! I couldn't have kept him from it!"
"You must be more careful of your company."
"Please, ma'am, I was very careful of Tommy. He had the best company I could give him: I did try to be better for Tommy's sake. But my trying wasn't much use to Tommy, so long as he wouldn't try! He was a little better, though, I think; and if I had him now, and could give him plenty to eat, and had baby as well as Abdiel to help me, we might make something of Tommy, I think.--You think so--don't you, Abdiel?"
The dog, who had stood looking in his master's face all the time he spoke, wagged his tail faster.
"What a name to give a dog! Where did you find it?"
"In Paradise Lost, ma'am. Abdiel was the one angel, you remember, ma'am, who, when he saw what Satan was up to, left him, and went back to his duty."
"And what was his duty?"
"Why of course to do what God told him. I love Abdiel, and because I love the little dog and he took care of baby, I call him Abdiel too. Heaven is so far off that it makes no confusion to have the same name."
"But how dare you give the name of an angel to a dog?"
"To a good dog, ma'am! A good dog is good enough to go with any angel--at his heels of course! If he had been a bad dog, it would have been wicked to name him after a good angel. If the dog had been Tommy--I mean if Tommy had been the dog, I should have had to call him Moloch, or Belzebub! God made the angels and the dogs; and if the dogs are good, God loves them.--Don't he, Abdiel?"
Abdiel assented after his usual fashion. The lady said nothing. Clare went on.
"Abdiel won't mind--the angel Abdiel, I mean, ma'am--he won't mind lending his name to my friend. The dog will have a name of his own, perhaps, some day--like the rest of us!"
"What is your name?"
"The name I have now is, like the dog's, a borrowed one. I shall get
my own one day--not here--but there--when--when--I'm hungry enough to
go and find it."
Clare had grown very white. He sat down, and lay back on the grass. He had talked more in those few minutes than for weeks, and want had made him weak. He felt very faint. The dog jumped up, and fell to licking his face.
"What a wicked old woman I am!" said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed the bank swiftly.
She disappeared within the gate, but to return presently with a tumbler of milk and a huge piece of bread.
"Here, boy!" she cried; "here is medicine for you! Make haste and take it."
Clare sat up feebly, and stared at the tumbler for a moment. Either he could hardly believe his eyes, or was too sick to take it at once. When he had it in his hand, he held it out to the dog.
"Here, Abdiel, have a little," he said.
This offended the old lady.
"You're never going to give the dog that good milk!" she cried.
"A little of it, please, ma'am!"
"--And feed him out of the tumbler too?"
"He's had nothing to-day, ma'am, and we're comrades!"
"But it's not clean of you!"
"Ah, you don't know dogs, ma'am! His tongue is clean as clean as anybody's."
Abdiel took three or four little laps of the milk, drew away, and looked up at his master--as much as to say, "You, now!"
"Besides," Clare went on, "he couldn't get at it so well in the bottom of the tumbler."
With that he raised it to his own lips, drank eagerly, and set it on the road half empty, looking his thanks to the giver with a smile she thought heavenly. Then he broke the bread, and giving the dog nearly the half of it, began to eat the rest himself. The old lady stood looking on in silence, pondering what she was to do with the celestial beggar.
"Would you mind sleeping in the greenhouse, if I had a bed put up for you?" she said at length, in tone apologetic.
"This is a better place--though I wish it was warmer!" said Clare, with another smile as he looked up at the sky, in which a few stars were beginning to twinkle, and thought of the gardeners he had met. "--Don't you think it better, ma'am?"
"No, indeed, I don't!" she answered crossly; for to her the open air at night seemed wrong, disreputable. There was something unholy in it!
"I would rather stay here," said Clare.
"Why?"
"Because you don't quite believe me, ma'am. You can't; and you can't help it. You wouldn't be able to sleep for thinking that a boy just out of prison was lying in the greenhouse. There would be no saying what he might not do! I once read in a newspaper how an old lady took a lad into her house for a servant, and he murdered her!--No, ma'am, thank you! After such a supper we shall sleep beautifully!--Sha'n't we, Abby? And then, perhaps, you could give me a job in the garden to-morrow! I daresay the gardener wants a little help sometimes! But if he knew me to have slept in the greenhouse, he would hate me."
The old lady said nothing, for, like most old ladies, she feared her gardener. She took the tumbler from the boy's hand, and went into the house. But in two minutes she came again, with another great piece of bread for Clare, and a bone with something on it which she threw to Abdiel. The dog's ears started up, erect and alive, like individual creatures, and his eyes gleamed; but he looked at his master, and would not touch the bone without his leave--which given, he fell upon it, and worried it as if it had been a rat.
Clare was now himself again, and when the old lady left them for the third time, he walked with her across the way, bread in hand, to open the gate for her. When she was inside, he took off his cap, and bade her good-night with a grace that won all that was left to be won of her heart.
Before she had taken three steps from the gate, the old lady turned.
"Boy!" she called; and Clare, who was making for his couch under the stars, hastened back at the sound of her voice.
"I shall not be able to sleep," she said, "for thinking of you out there in the bleak night!"
"I am used to it, ma'am!"
"Oh, I daresay! but you see I'm not! and I don't like the thought of it! You may like hoarfrost-sheets, for what I know, but I don't! You may like the stars for a tester--because you want to die and go to them, I suppose!--but I have no fancy for the stars! You are a foolish fellow, and I am out of temper with you. You don't give a thought to me--or to my feelings if you should die! I should never go to bed again with a good conscience!--Besides, I should have to nurse you!"
The last member of her expostulation was hardly in logical sequence, but it had not the less influence on Clare for that.
"I will do whatever you please, ma'am," he answered humbly. "--Come, Abdiel!"
The dog came running across the road with his bone in his mouth.
"You mustn't bring that inside the gate, Ab!" said Clare.
The dog dropped it.
"Good dog! It's a lady's garden, you know, Abdiel!" Then turning to his hostess, Clare added, "I always tell him when I'm pleased with him: don't you think it right, ma'am?"
"I daresay! I don't know anything about dogs."
"If you had a dog like Abdiel, he would soon teach you dogs, ma'am!" rejoined Clare.
By this time they were at the house-door. The lady told him to wait there, went in, and had a talk with her two maids. In half an hour, Clare and his four-footed angel were asleep--in an outhouse, it is true, but in a comfortable bed, such as they had not seen since their flight from the caravans. The cold breeze wandered moaning like a lost thing round the bare walls, as if every time it woke, it went abroad to see if there was any hope for the world; but it did not touch them; and if through their ears it got into their dreams, it made their sleep the sweeter, and their sense of refuge the deeper.
But although the bewitching boy and his good dog were not lying in the open air over against her gate, and although never a thought of murder or theft came to trouble her, it was long before the old lady found repose. Her heart had been deeply touched.