A Rough Shaking
Home - George MacDonald - A Rough ShakingChapter XXIX.
The baker.
Clare went over the wall and the well without a notion of what he was
going to do, except look for work. He had eaten half a loaf, and now
drew in his cap some water from the well and drank. He felt better
than any moment since leaving the farm. He was full of hope.
All his life he had never been other than hopeful. To the human being hope is as natural as hunger; yet how few there are that hope as they hunger! Men are so proud of being small, that one wonders to what pitch their conceit will have arrived by the time they are nothing at all. They are proud that they love but a little, believe less, and hope for nothing. Every fool prides himself on not being such a fool as believe what would make a man of him. For dread of being taken in, he takes himself in ridiculously. The man who keeps on trying to do his duty, finds a brighter and brighter gleam issue, as he walks, from the lantern of his hope.
Clare was just breaking into a song he had heard his mother sing to his sister, when he was checked by the sight of a long skinny mongrel like a hairy worm, that lay cowering and shivering beside a heap of ashes put down for the dust-cart--such a dry hopeless heap that the famished little dog did not care to search it: some little warmth in it, I presume, had kept him near it. Clare's own indigence made him the more sorry for the indigent, and he felt very sorry for this member of the family; but he had neither work nor alms to give him, therefore strode on. The dog looked wistfully after him, as if recognizing one of his own sort, one that would help him if he could, but did not follow him.
A hundred yards further, Clare came to a baker's shop. It was the first he felt inclined to enter, and he went in. He did not know it was the shop from whose cart Tommy had pilfered. A thin-faced, bilious-looking, elderly man stood behind the counter.
"Well, boy, what do you want?" he said in a low, sad, severe, but not unkindly voice.
"Please, sir," answered Clare, "I want something to do, and I thought perhaps you could help me."
"What can you do?"
"Not much, but I can try to do anything."
"Have you ever learned to do anything?"
"I've been working on a farm for the last six months. Before that I went to school."
"Why didn't you go on going to school?"
"Because my father and mother died."
"What was your father?"
"A parson."
"Why did you leave the farm?"
"Because they didn't want me. The mistress didn't like me."
"I dare say she had her reasons!"
"I don't know, sir; she didn't seem to like anything I did. My mother used to say, 'Well done, Clare!' my mistress never said 'Well done!"'
"So the farmer sent you away?"
"No, sir; but he boxed my ears for something--I don't now remember what."
"I dare say you deserved it!"
"Perhaps I did; I don't know; he never did it before."
"If you deserved it, you had no right to run away for that."
The baker taught in a Sunday-school, and was a good teacher, able to make a class mind him.
"I didn't run away for that, sir; I ran away because he was tired of me. I couldn't stay to make him uncomfortable! He had been very kind to me; I fancy it was mistress made him change. I've been thinking a good deal about it, and that's how it looks to me. I'm very sorry not to have him or the creatures any more."
"What creatures?"
"The bull, and the horses, and the cows, and the pigs--all the creatures about the farm. They were my friends. I shall see them all again somewhere!"
He gave a great sigh.
"What do you mean by that?" asked the baker.
"I hardly know what I mean," answered Clare.
"When I'm loving anybody I always feel I shall see that person again some time, I don't know when--somewhere, I don't know where."
"That don't apply to the lower animals; it's nothing but a foolish imagination," said the baker.
"But if I love them!" suggested Clare.
"Love a bull, or a horse, or a pig! You can't!" asserted the baker.
"But I do," rejoined Clare. "I love my father and mother much more than when they were alive!"
"What has that to do with it?" returned the baker.
"That I know I love my father and mother, and I know I love that fierce bull that would always do what I told him, and that dear old horse that was almost past work, and was always ready to do his best.--I'm afraid they've killed him by now!" he added, with another sigh.
"But beasts 'ain't got souls, and you can't love them. And if you could, that's no reason why you should see them again."
"I do love them, and perhaps they have souls!" rejoined Clare.
"You mustn't believe that! It's quite shocking. It's nowhere in the Bible."
"Is everything that is not in the Bible shocking, sir?"
"Well, I won't say that; but you're not to believe it."
"I suppose you don't like animals, sir! Are you afraid of their going to the same place as you when they die?"
"I wouldn't have a boy about me that held such an unscriptural notion! The Bible says--the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward!"
"Is that in the Bible, sir?"
"It is," answered the baker with satisfaction, thinking he had proved his point.
"I'm so glad!" returned Clare. "I didn't know there was anything about it in the Bible! Then when I die I shall only have to go down somewhere, and look for them till I find them!"
The baker was silenced for a moment.
"It's flat atheism!" he cried. "Get out of my shop! What is the world coming to!"
Clare turned and went out.
But though a bilious, the baker was not an unreasonable or unjust man except when what he had been used to believe all his life was contradicted. Clare had not yet shut the door when he repented. He was a good man, though not quite in the secret of the universe. He vaulted over the counter, and opened the door with such a ringing of its appended bell as made heavy-hearted Clare turn before he heard his voice. The long spare white figure appeared on the threshold, framed in the doorway.
"Hi!" it shouted.
Clare went meekly back.
"I've just remembered hearing--but mind I know nothing, and pledge myself to nothing----"
He paused.
"I didn't say I was sure about it," returned Clare, thinking he referred to the fate of the animals, "but I fear I'm to blame for not being sure."
"Come, come!" said the baker, with a twist of his mouth that expressed disgust, "hold your tongue, and listen to me.--I did hear, as I was saying, that Mr. Maidstone, down the town, had one of his errand-boys laid up with scarlet fever. I'll take you to him, if you like. Perhaps he'll have you,--though I can't say you look respectable!"
"I 'ain't had much chance since I left home, sir. I had a bit of soap, but----"
He bethought him that he had better say nothing about his family. Tommy had picked his pocket of the soap the night before, and tried to eat it, and Clare had hidden it away: he wanted it to wash the baby with as soon as he could get some warm water; but when he went to find it to wash his own face, it was gone. He suspected Tommy, but before long he had terrible ground for a different surmise.
"You see, sir," he resumed, "I had other things to think of. When your tummy's empty, you don't think about the rest of you--do you, sir?"
The baker could not remember having ever been more than decently, healthily hungry in his life; and here he had been rough on a well-bred boy too hungry to wash his face! Perhaps the word one of these little ones came to him. He had some regard for him who spoke it, though he did talk more about him on Sundays than obey him in the days between.
"I don't know, my boy," he answered. "Would you like a piece of bread?"
"I'm not much in want of it at this moment," replied Clare, "but I should be greatly obliged if you would let me call for it by and by. You see, sir, when a man has no work, he can't help having no money!"
"A man!" thought the baker. "God pity you, poor monkey!"
He called to some one to mind the shop, removed his apron and put on a coat, shut the door, and went down the street with Clare.