"O father! my dear father!" and I drew him in, holding fast his hands—faster and closer than I had done since I was a child. He did not repel me.

"Thee'rt up early, and it's a cold morning for thee, my son. Go back to the fire."

His voice was gentle; his ruddy countenance pale; two strange things in Abel Fletcher.

"Father, tell me what has befallen thee?"

"Nothing, my son, save that the Giver of all worldly goods has seen fit to take back a portion of mine. I, like many another in this town, am poorer by some thousands than I went to bed last night."

He sat down. I knew he loved his money, for it had been hardly earned. I had not thought he would have borne its loss so quietly.

"Father, never mind; it might have been worse."

"Of a surety. I should have lost everything I had in the world—save for—Where is the lad? What art thee standing outside for? Come in, John, and shut the door."

John obeyed, though without advancing. He was cold and wet. I wanted him to sit down by the fireside.

"Ay! do, lad," said my father, kindly.

John came.

I stood between the two—afraid to ask what they had undergone; but sure, from the old man's grave face, and the lad's bright one—flushed all over with that excitement of danger so delicious to the young—that the peril had not been small.

"Jael," cried my father, rousing himself, "give us some breakfast; the lad and me—we have had a hard night's work together."

Jael brought the mug of ale and the bread and cheese; but either did not or could not notice that the meal had been ordered for more than one.

"Another plate," said my father, sharply.

"The lad can go into the kitchen, Abel Fletcher: his breakfast is waiting there."

My father winced—even her master was sometimes rather afraid of Jael. But conscience or his will conquered.

"Woman, do as I desired. Bring another plate, and another mug of ale."

And so, to Jael's great wrath, and to my great joy, John Halifax was bidden, and sat down to the same board as his master. The fact made an ineffaceable impression on our household.

After breakfast, as we sat by the fire, in the pale haze of that February morning, my father, contrary to his wont, explained to me all his losses; and how, but for the timely warning he had received, the flood might have nearly ruined him.

"So it was well John came," I said, half afraid to say more.

"Ay, and the lad has been useful, too: it is an old head on young shoulders."

John looked very proud of this praise, though it was grimly given. But directly after it some ill or suspicious thought seemed to come into Abel Fletcher's mind.

"Lad," suddenly turning round on John Halifax, "thee told me thee saw the river rising by the light of the moon. What wast THEE doing then, out o' thy honest bed and thy quiet sleep, at eleven o'clock at night?"

John coloured violently; the quick young blood was always ready enough to rise in his face. It spoke ill for him with my father.

"Answer. I will not be hard upon thee—to-night, at least."

"As you like, Abel Fletcher," answered the boy, sturdily. "I was doing no harm. I was in the tan-yard."

"Thy business there?"

"None at all. I was with the men—they were watching, and had a candle; and I wanted to sit up, and had no light."

"What didst thee want to sit up for?" pursued my father, keen and sharp as a ferret at a field-rat's hole, or a barrister hunting a witness in those courts of law that were never used by, though often used against, us Quakers.

John hesitated, and again his painful, falsely-accusing blushes tried him sore. "Sir, I'll tell you; it's no disgrace. Though I'm such a big fellow I can't write; and your son was good enough to try and teach me. I was afraid of forgetting the letters; so I tried to make them all over again, with a bit of chalk, on the bark-shed wall. It did nobody any harm that I know of."

The boy's tone, even though it was rather quick and angry, won no reproof. At last my father said gently enough—

"Is that all, lad?"

"Yes."

Again Abel Fletcher fell into a brown study. We two lads talked softly to each other—afraid to interrupt. He smoked through a whole pipe—his great and almost his only luxury, and then again called out—

"John Halifax."

"I'm here."

"It's time thee went away to thy work."

"I'm going this minute. Good-bye, Phineas. Good day, sir. Is there anything you want done?"

He stood before his master, cap in hand, with an honest manliness pleasant to see. Any master might have been proud of such a servant—any father of such a son. My poor father—no, he did not once look from John Halifax to me. He would not have owned for the world that half-smothered sigh, or murmured because Heaven had kept back from him—as, Heaven knows why, it often does from us all!—the one desire of the heart.

"John Halifax, thee hast been of great service to me this night. What reward shall I give thee?"

And instinctively his hand dived down into his pocket. John turned away.

"Thank you—I'd rather not. It is quite enough reward that I have been useful to my master, and that he acknowledges it."

My father thought a minute, and then offered his hand. "Thee'rt in the right, lad. I am very much obliged to thee, and I will not forget it."

And John—blushing brightly once more—went away, looking as proud as an emperor, and as happy as a poor man with a bag of gold.

"Is there nothing thou canst think of, Phineas, that would pleasure the lad?" said my father, after we had been talking some time—though not about John.

I had thought of something—something I had long desired, but which seemed then all but an impossibility. Even now it was with some doubt and hesitation that I made the suggestion that he should spend every Sunday at our house.

"Nonsense!—thee know'st nought of Norton Bury lads. He would not care. He had rather lounge about all First-day at street corners with his acquaintance."

"John has none, father. He knows nobody—cares for nobody—but me. Do let him come."

"We'll see about it."

My father never broke or retracted his word. So after that John Halifax came to us every Sunday; and for one day of the week, at least, was received in his master's household as our equal and my friend.



CHAPTER V

Summers and winters slipped by lazily enough, as the years seemed always to crawl round at Norton Bury. How things went in the outside world I little knew or cared. My father lived his life, mechanical and steady as clock-work, and we two, John Halifax and Phineas Fletcher, lived our lives—the one so active and busy, the other so useless and dull. Neither of us counted the days, nor looked backwards or forwards.

One June morning I woke to the consciousness that I was twenty years old, and that John Halifax was—a man: the difference between us being precisely as I have expressed it.

Our birthdays fell within a week of each other, and it was in remembering his—the one which advanced him to the dignity of eighteen—that I called to mind my own. I say, "advanced him to the dignity"—but in truth that is an idle speech; for any dignity which the maturity of eighteen may be supposed to confer he had already in possession. Manhood had come to him, both in character and demeanour, not as it comes to most young lads, an eagerly-desired and presumptuously-asserted claim, but as a rightful inheritance, to be received humbly, and worn simply and naturally. So naturally, that I never seemed to think of him as anything but a boy, until this one June Sunday, when, as before stated, I myself became twenty years old.

I was talking over that last fact, in a rather dreamy mood, as he and I sat in our long-familiar summer seat, the clematis arbour by the garden wall.

"It seems very strange, John, but so it is—I am actually twenty."

"Well, and what of that?"

I sat looking down into the river, which flowed on, as my years were flowing, monotonous, dark, and slow,—as they must flow on for ever. John asked me what I was thinking of.

"Of myself: what a fine specimen of the noble genus homo I am."

I spoke bitterly, but John knew how to meet that mood. Very patient he was with it and with every ill mood of mine. And I was grateful, with that deep gratitude we feel to those who bear with us, and forgive us, and laugh at us, and correct us,—all alike for love.

"Self-investigation is good on birthdays. Phineas, here goes for a catalogue of your qualities, internal and external."

"John, don't be foolish."

"I will, if I like; though perhaps not quite so foolish as some other people; so listen:—'Imprimis,' as saith Shakspeare—Imprimis, height, full five feet four; a stature historically appertaining to great men, including Alexander of Macedon and the First Consul."

"Oh, oh!" said I, reproachfully; for this was our chief bone of contention—I hating, he rather admiring, the great ogre of the day, Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Imprimis, of a slight, delicate person, but not lame as once was."

"No, thank God!"

"Thin, rather-"

"Very—a mere skeleton!"

"Face elongated and pale-"

"Sallow, John, decidedly sallow."

"Be it so, sallow. Big eyes, much given to observation, which means hard staring. Take them off me, Phineas, or I'll not lie on the grass a minute longer. Thank you. To return: Imprimis and finis (I'm grand at Latin now, you see)—long hair, which, since the powder tax, has resumed its original blackness, and is—any young damsel would say, only we count not a single one among our acquaintance—exceedingly bewitching."

I smiled, feeling myself colour a little too, weak invalid as I was. I was, nevertheless, twenty years old; and although Jael and Sally were the only specimens of the other sex which had risen on my horizon, yet once or twice, since I had read Shakspeare, I had had a boy's lovely dreams of the divinity of womanhood. They began, and ended—mere dreams. Soon dawned the bare, hard truth, that my character was too feeble and womanish to be likely to win any woman's reverence or love. Or, even had this been possible, one sickly as I was, stricken with hereditary disease, ought never to seek to perpetuate it by marriage. I therefore put from me, at once and for ever, every feeling of that kind; and during my whole life—I thank God!—have never faltered in my resolution. Friendship was given me for love—duty for happiness. So best, and I was satisfied.

This conviction, and the struggle succeeding it—for, though brief, it was but natural that it should have been a hard struggle—was the only secret that I had kept from John. It had happened some months now, and was quite over and gone, so that I could smile at his fun, and shake at him my "bewitching" black locks, calling him a foolish boy. And while I said it, the notion slowly dawning during the long gaze he had complained of, forced itself upon me, clear as daylight, that he was not a "boy" any longer.

"Now let me turn the tables. How old are YOU, John?"

"You know. Eighteen next week."

"And how tall?"

"Five feet eleven inches and a half." And, rising, he exhibited to its full advantage that very creditable altitude, more tall perhaps than graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet quite know what to do with his legs and arms. But he was—

I cannot describe what he was. I could not then. I only remember that when I looked at him, and began jocularly "Imprimis," my heart came up into my throat and choked me.

It was almost with sadness that I said, "Ah! David, you are quite a young man now."

He smiled, of course only with pleasure, looking forward to the new world into which he was going forth; the world into which, as I knew well, I could never follow him.

"I am glad I look rather old for my years," said he, when, after a pause, he had again flung himself down on the grass. "It tells well in the tan-yard. People would be slow to trust a clerk who looked a mere boy. Still, your father trusts me."

"He does, indeed. You need never have any doubt of that. It was only yesterday he said to me that now he was no longer dissatisfied with your working at all sorts of studies, in leisure hours, since it made you none the worse man of business."

"No, I hope not, or I should be much ashamed. It would not be doing my duty to myself any more than to my master, if I shirked his work for my own. I am glad he does not complain now, Phineas."

"On the contrary; I think he intends to give you a rise this Midsummer. But oh!" I cried, recurring to a thought which would often come when I looked at the lad, though he always combated it so strongly, that I often owned my prejudices were unjust: "how I wish you were something better than a clerk in a tan-yard. I have a plan, John."

But what that plan was, was fated to remain unrevealed. Jael came to us in the garden, looking very serious. She had been summoned, I knew, to a long conference with her master the day before—the subject of which she would not tell me, though she acknowledged it concerned myself. Ever since she had followed me about, very softly, for her, and called me more than once, as when I was a child, "my dear." She now came with half-dolorous, half-angry looks, to summon me to an interview with my father and Doctor Jessop.

I caught her parting mutterings, as she marched behind me: "Kill or cure, indeed,"—"No more fit than a baby,"—"Abel Fletcher be clean mad,"—"Hope Thomas Jessop will speak out plain, and tell him so," and the like. From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I guessed what was looming in the distance—a future which my father constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had kept it in abeyance. Alas! I knew that my poor father's hopes and plans were vain! I went into his presence with a heavy heart.

There is no need to detail that interview. Enough, that after it he set aside for ever his last lingering hope of having a son able to assist, and finally succeed him in his business, and that I set aside every dream of growing up to be a help and comfort to my father. It cost something on both our parts; but after that day's discussion we tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.

I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all. He listened with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look—dearer sympathy than any words! Though he added thereto a few, in his own wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.

When my father, Dr. Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the subject had passed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards revived.

But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window maintained that respectful and decorous silence which in my young days was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my father's eyes frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John Halifax. Could it be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine, given faintly that morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered my mind, instead of having for months continually dwelt there, until a fitting moment should arrive?—Could it be that this hint, which he had indignantly scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute brain, and might bear fruit in future days? I hoped so—I earnestly prayed so. And to that end I took no notice, but let it silently grow.

The June evening came and went. The service-bell rang out and ceased. First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over the Abbey-tower. We watched it from the garden, where, Sunday after Sunday, in fine weather, we used to lounge, and talk over all manner of things in heaven and in earth, chiefly ending with the former, as on Sunday nights, with stars over our head, was natural and fit we should do.

"Phineas," said John, sitting on the grass with his hands upon his knees, and the one star, I think it was Jupiter, shining down into his eyes, deepening them into that peculiar look, worth any so-called "handsome eyes;"—"Phineas, I wonder how soon we shall have to rise up from this quiet, easy life, and fight our battles in the world? Also, I wonder if we are ready for it?"

"I think you are."

"I don't know. I'm not clear how far I could resist doing anything wrong, if it were pleasant. So many wrong things are pleasant—just now, instead of rising to-morrow, and going into the little dark counting-house, and scratching paper from eight till six, shouldn't I like to break away!—dash out into the world, take to all sorts of wild freaks, do all sorts of grand things, and perhaps never come back to the tanning any more."

"Never any more?"

"No! no! I spoke hastily. I did not mean I ever should do such a wrong thing; but merely that I sometimes feel the wish to do it. I can't help it; it's my Apollyon that I have to fight with—everybody keeps a private Apollyon, I fancy. Now, Phineas, be content; Apollyon is beaten down."

He rose up, but I thought that, in the red glow of the twilight, he looked rather pale. He stretched his hand to help me up from the grass. We went into the house together, silently.

After supper, when the chimes struck half-past nine, John prepared to leave as usual. He went to bid good-night to my father, who was sitting meditatively over the fireless hearth-place, sometimes poking the great bow-pot of fennel and asparagus, as in winter he did the coals: an instance of obliviousness, which, in my sensible and acute father, argued very deep cogitation on some subject or other.

"Good-night," said John, twice over, before his master heard him.

"Eh?—Oh, good-night, good-night, lad! Stay! Halifax, what hast thee got to do to-morrow?"

"Not much, unless the Russian hides should come in; I cleared off the week's accounts last night, as usual."

"Ay, to-morrow I shall look over all thy books and see how thee stand'st, and what further work thou art fit for. Therefore, take a day's holiday, if thee likes."

We thanked him warmly. "There, John," whispered I, "you may have your wish, and run wild to-morrow."

He said, "the wish had gone out of him." So we planned a sweet lazy day under the Midsummer sky, in some fields about a mile off, called the Vineyards.

The morning came, and we took our way thither, under the Abbey walls, and along a lane, shaded on one side by the "willows in the water-courses." We came out in those quiet hay-fields, which, tradition says, had once grown wine for the rosy monks close by, and history avers, were afterwards watered by a darker stream than the blood of grapes. The Vineyards had been a battle-field; and under the long wavy grass, and the roots of the wild apple trees, slept many a Yorkist and Lancastrian. Sometimes an unusually deep furrow turned out a white bone—but more often the relics were undisturbed, and the meadows used as pastures or hay-fields.

John and I lay down on some wind-rows, and sunned ourselves in the warm and delicious air. How beautiful everything was! so very still! with the Abbey-tower—always the most picturesque point in our Norton Bury views—showing so near, that it almost seemed to rise up out of the fields and hedge-rows.

"Well, David," and I turned to the long, lazy figure beside me, which had considerably flattened the hay, "are you satisfied?"

"Ay."

Thus we lounged out all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had something to say. Often—as on this day—we sat for hours in a pleasant dreaminess, scarcely exchanging a word; nevertheless, I could generally track John's thoughts, as they went wandering on, ay, as clearly as one might track a stream through a wood; sometimes—like to-day—I failed.

In the afternoon, when we had finished our bread and cheese—eaten slowly and with graceful dignity, in order to make dinner a more important and lengthy affair—he said abruptly—

"Phineas, don't you think this field is rather dull? Shall we go somewhere else? not if it tires you, though."

I protested the contrary, my health being much above the average this summer. But just as we were quitting the field we met two rather odd-looking persons entering it, young-old persons they seemed, who might own to any age or any occupation. Their dress, especially that of the younger, amused us by its queer mixture of fashionableness and homeliness, such as grey ribbed stockings and shining paste shoe-buckles, rusty velvet small-clothes and a coatee of blue cloth. But the wearer carried off this anomalous costume with an easy, condescending air, full of pleasantness, humour, and grace.

"Sir," said he, approaching John Halifax with a bow that I feel sure the "first gentleman of his day," as loyal folk then entitled the Prince Regent, could not have surpassed—"Sir, will you favour me by informing us how far it is to Coltham?"

"Ten miles, and the stage will pass here in three hours."

"Thank you; at present I have little to do with the—at least with THAT stage. Young gentlemen, excuse our continuing our dessert, in fact, I may say our dinner. Are you connoisseurs in turnips?"

He offered us—with a polite gesture—one of the "swedes" he was munching. I declined; but John, out of a deeper delicacy than I could boast, accepted it.

"One might dine worse," he said; "I have done, sometimes."

"It was a whim of mine, sir. But I am not the first remarkable person who has eaten turnips in your Norton Bury fields—ay, and turned field-preacher afterwards—the celebrated John Philip—"

Here the elder and less agreeable of the two wayfarers interposed with a nudge, indicating silence.

"My companion is right, sir," he continued. "I will not betray our illustrious friend by mentioning his surname; he is a great man now, and might not wish it generally known that he had dined off turnips. May I give you instead my own humble name?"

He gave it me; but I, Phineas Fletcher, shall copy his reticence, and not indulge the world therewith. It was a name wholly out of my sphere, both then and now; but I know it has since risen into note among the people of the world. I believe, too, its owner has carried up to the topmost height of celebrity always the gay, gentlemanly spirit and kindly heart which he showed when sitting with us and eating swedes. Still, I will not mention his surname—I will only call him "Mr. Charles."

"Now, having satisfactorily 'munched, and munched, and munched,' like the sailor's wife who had chestnuts in her lap—are you acquainted with my friend, Mr. William Shakspeare, young gentleman?—I must try to fulfil the other duties of existence. You said the Coltham mail passed here in three hours? Very well. I have the honour of wishing you a very good day, Mr.—"

"Halifax."

"And yours?"

"Fletcher."

"Any connection with him who went partnership with the worthy Beaumont?"

"My father has no partner, sir," said I. But John, whose reading had lately surpassed mine, and whom nothing ever puzzled, explained that I came from the same old stock as the brothers Phineas and Giles Fletcher. Upon which Mr. Charles, who till now had somewhat overlooked me, took off his hat, and congratulated me on my illustrious descent.

"That man has evidently seen a good deal of the world," said John, smiling; "I wonder what the world is like!"

"Did you not see something of it as a child?"

"Only the worst and lowest side; not the one I want to see now. What business do you think that Mr. Charles is? A clever man, anyhow; I should like to see him again."

"So should I."

Thus talking at intervals and speculating upon our new acquaintance, we strolled along till we came to a spot called by the country people, "The Bloody Meadow," from being, like several other places in the neighbourhood, the scene of one of those terrible slaughters chronicled in the wars of the Roses. It was a sloping field, through the middle of which ran a little stream down to the meadow's end, where, fringed and hidden by a plantation of trees, the Avon flowed. Here, too, in all directions, the hay-fields lay, either in green swathes, or tedded, or in the luxuriously-scented quiles. The lane was quite populous with waggons and hay-makers—the men in their corduroys and blue hose—the women in their trim jackets and bright calamanco petticoats. There were more women than men, by far, for the flower of the peasant youth of England had been drafted off to fight against "Bonyparty." Still hay-time was a glorious season, when half our little town turned out and made holiday in the sunshine.

"I think we will go to a quieter place, John. There seems a crowd down in the meadow; and who is that man standing on the hay-cart, on the other side the stream?"

"Don't you remember the bright blue coat? 'Tis Mr. Charles. How he's talking and gesticulating! What can he be at?"

Without more ado John leaped the low hedge, and ran down the slope of the Bloody Meadow. I followed less quickly.

There, of a surety, stood our new friend, on one of the simple-fashioned hay-carts that we used about Norton Bury, a low framework on wheels, with a pole stuck at either of the four corners. He was bare-headed, and his hair hung in graceful curls, well powdered. I only hope he had honestly paid the tax, which we were all then exclaiming against—so fondly does custom cling to deformity. Despite the powder, the blue coat, and the shabby velvet breeches, Mr. Charles was a very handsome and striking-looking man. No wonder the poor hay-makers had collected from all parts to hear him harangue.

What was he haranguing upon? Could it be, that like his friend, "John Philip," whoever that personage might be, his vocation was that of a field preacher? It seemed like it, especially judging from the sanctified demeanour of the elder and inferior person who accompanied him; and who sat in the front of the cart, and folded his hands and groaned, after the most approved fashion of a methodistical "revival."

We listened, expecting every minute to be disgusted and shocked: but no! I must say this for Mr. Charles, that in no way did he trespass the bounds of reverence and decorum. His harangue, though given as a sermon, was strictly and simply a moral essay, such as might have emanated from any professor's chair. In fact, as I afterwards learnt, he had given for his text one which the simple rustics received in all respect, as coming from a higher and holier volume than Shakspeare—

"Mercy is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest."

And on that text did he dilate; gradually warming with his subject, till his gestures—which at first had seemed burthened with a queer constraint, that now and then resulted in an irrepressible twitch of the corners of his flexible mouth—became those of a man beguiled into real earnestness. We of Norton Bury had never heard such eloquence.

"Who CAN he be, John? Isn't it wonderful?"

But John never heard me. His whole attention was riveted on the speaker. Such oratory—a compound of graceful action, polished language, and brilliant imagination, came to him as a positive revelation, a revelation from the world of intellect, the world which he longed after with all the ardour of youth.

What that harangue would have seemed like, could we have heard it with maturer ears, I know not; but at eighteen and twenty it literally dazzled us. No wonder it affected the rest of the audience. Feeble men, leaning on forks and rakes, shook their old heads sagely, as if they understood it all. And when the speaker alluded to the horrors of war—a subject which then came so bitterly home to every heart in Britain—many women melted into sobs and tears. At last, when the orator himself, moved by the pictures he had conjured up, paused suddenly, quite exhausted, and asked for a slight contribution "to help a deed of charity," there was a general rush towards him.

"No—no, my good people," said Mr. Charles, recovering his natural manner, though a little clouded, I thought, by a faint shade of remorse; "no, I will not take from any one more than a penny; and then only if they are quite sure they can spare it. Thank you, my worthy man. Thanks, my bonny young lass—I hope your sweetheart will soon be back from the wars. Thank you all, my 'very worthy and approved good masters,' and a fair harvest to you!"

He bowed them away, in a dignified and graceful manner, still standing on the hay-cart. The honest folk trooped off, having no more time to waste, and left the field in possession of Mr. Charles, his co-mate, and ourselves; whom I do not think he had as yet noticed.

He descended from the cart. His companion burst into roars of laughter; but Charles looked grave.

"Poor, honest souls!" said he, wiping his brows—I am not sure that it was only his brows—"Hang me if I'll be at this trick again, Yates."

"It was a trick then, sir," said John, advancing. "I am sorry for it."

"So am I, young man," returned the other, no way disconcerted; indeed, he seemed a person whose frank temper nothing could disconcert. "But starvation is—excuse me,—unpleasant; and necessity has no law. It is of vital consequence that I should reach Coltham to-night; and after walking twenty miles one cannot easily walk ten more, and afterwards appear as Macbeth to an admiring audience."

"You are an actor?"

"I am, please your worship—

'A poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is seen no more.'"

There was inexpressible pathos in his tone, and his fine face looked thin and worn—it did not take much to soften both John's feelings and mine towards the "poor player." Besides, we had lately been studying Shakspeare, who for the first time of reading generally sends all young people tragedy-mad.

"You acted well to-day," said John; "all the folk here took you for a methodist preacher."

"Yet I never meddled with theology—only common morality. You cannot say I did."

John thought a moment, and then answered—

"No. But what put the scheme into your head?"

"The fact that, under a like necessity, the same amusing play was played out here years ago, as I told you, by John Philip—no, I will not conceal his name, the greatest actor and the truest gentleman our English stage has ever seen—John Philip Kemble."

And he raised his hat with sincere reverence. We too had heard—at least John had—of this wonderful man.

I saw the fascination of Mr. Charles's society was strongly upon him. It was no wonder. More brilliant, more versatile talent I never saw. He turned "from grave to gay, from lively to severe"—appearing in all phases like the gentleman, the scholar, and the man of the world. And neither John nor I had ever met any one of these characters, all so irresistibly alluring at our age.

I say OUR, because though I followed where he led, I always did it of my own will likewise.

The afternoon began to wane, while we, with our two companions, yet sat talking by the brook-side. Mr. Charles had washed his face, and his travel-sore, blistered feet, and we had induced him, and the man he called Yates, to share our remnants of bread and cheese.

"Now," he said, starting up, "I am ready to do battle again, even with the Thane of Fife—who, to-night, is one Johnson, a fellow of six feet and twelve stone. What is the hour, Mr. Halifax?"

"Mr. Halifax"—(I felt pleased to hear him for the first time so entitled)—had, unfortunately, no watch among his worldly possessions, and candidly owned the fact. But he made a near guess by calculating the position of his unfailing time-piece, the sun.—It was four o'clock.

"Then I must go. Will you not retract, young gentlemen? Surely you would not lose such a rare treat as 'Macbeth,' with—I will not say my humble self—but with that divine Siddons. Such a woman! Shakspeare himself might lean out of Elysium to watch her. You will join us?"

John made a silent, dolorous negative; as he had done once or twice before, when the actor urged us to accompany him to Coltham for a few hours only—we might be back by midnight, easily.

"What do you think, Phineas?" said John, when we stood in the high-road, waiting for the coach; "I have money—and—we have so little pleasure—we would send word to your father. Do you think it would be wrong?"

I could not say; and to this minute, viewing the question nakedly in a strict and moral sense, I cannot say either whether or no it was an absolute crime; therefore, being accustomed to read my wrong or right in "David's" eyes, I remained perfectly passive.

We waited by the hedge-side for several minutes—Mr. Charles ceased his urging, half in dudgeon, save that he was too pleasant a man really to take offence at anything. His conversation was chiefly directed to me. John took no part therein, but strolled about plucking at the hedge.

When the stage appeared down the winding of the road I was utterly ignorant of what he meant us to do, or if he had any definite purpose at all.

It came—the coachman was hailed. Mr. Charles shook hands with us and mounted—paying his own fare and that of Yates with their handful of charity-pennies, which caused a few minutes' delay in counting, and a great deal of good-humoured joking, as good-humouredly borne.

Meanwhile, John put his two hands on my shoulders, and looked hard into my face—his was slightly flushed and excited, I thought.

"Phineas, are you tired?"

"Not at all."

"Do you feel strong enough to go to Coltham? Would it do you no harm? Would you LIKE to go?"

To all these hurried questions I answered with as hurried an affirmative. It was sufficient to me that he evidently liked to go.

"It is only for once—your father would not grudge us the pleasure, and he is too busy to be out of the tan-yard before midnight. We will be home soon after then, if I carry you on my back all the ten miles. Come, mount, we'll go."

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Charles, and leaned over to help me up the coach's side. John followed, and the crisis was past.

But I noticed that for several miles he hardly spoke one word.



CHAPTER VI

Near as we lived to Coltham, I had only been there once in my life; but John Halifax knew the town pretty well, having latterly in addition to his clerkship been employed by my father in going about the neighbourhood buying bark. I was amused when the coach stopped at an inn, which bore the ominous sign of the "Fleece," to see how well accustomed he seemed to be to the ways of the place. He deported himself with perfect self-possession; the waiter served him respectfully. He had evidently taken his position in the world—at least, our little world—he was no longer a boy, but a man. I was glad to see it; leaving everything in his hands, I lay down where he placed me in the inn parlour, and watched him giving his orders and walking about. Sometimes I thought his eyes were restless and unquiet, but his manner was as composed as usual.

Mr. Charles had left us, appointing a meeting at Coffee-house Yard, where the theatre then was.

"A poor barn-like place, I believe," said John, stopping in his walk up and down the room to place my cushions more easy; "they should build a new one, now Coltham is growing up into such a fashionable town. I wish I could take you to see the "Well-walk," with all the fine people promenading. But you must rest, Phineas."

I consented, being indeed rather weary.

"You will like to see Mrs. Siddons, whom we have so often talked about? She is not young now, Mr. Charles says, but magnificent still. She first came out in this same theatre more than twenty years ago. Yates saw her. I wonder, Phineas, if your father ever did."

"Oh, no my father would not enter a play-house for the world."

"What!"

"Nay, John, you need not look so troubled. You know he did not bring me up in the Society, and its restrictions are not binding upon me."

"True, true." And he resumed his walk, but not his cheerfulness. "If it were myself alone, now, of course what I myself hold to be a lawful pleasure I have a right to enjoy; or, if not, being yet a lad and under a master—well, I will bear the consequences," added he, rather proudly; "but to share them—Phineas," turning suddenly to me, "would you like to go home?—I'll take you."

I protested earnestly against any such thing; told him I was sure we were doing nothing wrong—which was, indeed, my belief; entreated him to be merry and enjoy himself, and succeeded so well, that in a few minutes we had started in a flutter of gaiety and excitement for Coffee-house Yard.

It was a poor place—little better than a barn, as Mr. Charles had said—built in a lane leading out of the principal street. This lane was almost blocked up with play-goers of all ranks and in all sorts of equipages, from the coach-and-six to the sedan-chair, mingled with a motley crowd on foot, all jostling, fighting, and screaming, till the place became a complete bear-garden.

"Oh, John! take care!" and I clung to his arm.

"Never mind! I'm big enough and strong enough for any crowd. Hold on, Phineas." If I had been a woman, and the woman that he loved, he could not have been more tender over my weakness. The physical weakness—which, however humiliating to myself, and doubtless contemptible in most men's eyes—was yet dealt by the hand of Heaven, and, as such, regarded by John only with compassion.

The crowd grew denser and more formidable. I looked beyond it, up towards the low hills that rose in various directions round the town; how green and quiet they were, in the still June evening! I only wished we were safe back again at Norton Bury.

But now there came a slight swaying in the crowd, as a sedan-chair was borne through—or attempted to be—for the effort failed. There was a scuffle, one of the bearers was knocked down and hurt. Some cried "shame!" others seemed to think this incident only added to the frolic. At last, in the midst of the confusion, a lady put her head out of the sedan and gazed around her.

It was a remarkable countenance; once seen, you could never forget it. Pale, rather large and hard in outline, an aquiline nose—full, passionate, yet sensitive lips—and very dark eyes. She spoke, and the voice belonged naturally to such a face. "Good people, let me pass—I am Sarah Siddons."

The crowd divided instantaneously, and in moving set up a cheer that must have rang through all the town. There was a minute's pause, while she bowed and smiled—such a smile!—and then the sedan curtain closed.

"Now's the time—only hold fast to me!" whispered John, as he sprang forward, dragging me after him. In another second he had caught up the pole dropped by the man who was hurt; and before I well knew what we were about we both stood safe inside the entrance of the theatre.

Mrs. Siddons stepped out, and turned to pay her bearers—a most simple action—but so elevated in the doing that even it, I thought, could not bring her to the level of common humanity. The tall, cloaked, and hooded figure, and the tones that issued thence, made her, even in that narrow passage, under the one flaring tallow-candle, a veritable Queen of tragedy—at least so she seemed to us two.

The one man was paid—over-paid, apparently, from his thankfulness—and she turned to John Halifax.

"I regret, young man, that you should have had so much trouble. Here is some requital."

He took the money, selected from it one silver coin, and returned the rest.

"I will keep this, madam, if you please, as a memento that I once had the honour of being useful to Mrs. Siddons."

She looked at him keenly, out of her wonderful dark eyes, then curtsied with grave dignity—"I thank you, sir," she said, and passed on.

A few minutes after some underling of the theatre found us out and brought us, "by Mrs. Siddons' desire," to the best places the house could afford.

It was a glorious night. At this distance of time, when I look back upon it my old blood leaps and burns. I repeat, it was a glorious night!

Before the curtain rose we had time to glance about us on that scene, to both entirely new—the inside of a theatre. Shabby and small as the place was, it was filled with all the beau monde of Coltham, which then, patronized by royalty, rivalled even Bath in its fashion and folly. Such a dazzle of diamonds and spangled turbans and Prince-of-Wales' plumes. Such an odd mingling of costume, which was then in a transition state, the old ladies clinging tenaciously to the stately silken petticoats and long bodices, surmounted by the prim and decent bouffantes, while the younger belles had begun to flaunt in the French fashions of flimsy muslins, shortwaisted—narrow-skirted. These we had already heard Jael furiously inveighing against: for Jael, Quakeress as she was, could not quite smother her original propensity towards the decoration of "the flesh," and betrayed a suppressed but profound interest in the same.

John and I quite agreed with her, that it was painful to see gentle English girls clad, or rather un-clad, after the fashion of our enemies across the Channel; now, unhappy nation! sunk to zero in politics, religion, and morals—where high-bred ladies went about dressed as heathen goddesses, with bare arms and bare sandalled feet, gaining none of the pure simplicity of the ancient world, and losing all the decorous dignity of our modern times.

We two—who had all a boy's mysterious reverence for womanhood in its most ideal, most beautiful form, and who, I believe, were, in our ignorance, expecting to behold in every woman an Imogen, a Juliet, or a Desdemona—felt no particular attraction towards the ungracefully attired, flaunting, simpering belles of Coltham.

But—the play began.

I am not going to follow it: all the world has heard of the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons. This, the first and last play I ever witnessed, stands out to my memory, after more than half a century, as clear as on that night. Still I can see her in her first scene, "reading a letter"—that wondrous woman, who, in spite of her modern black velvet and point lace, did not act, but WAS, Lady Macbeth: still I hear the awe-struck, questioning, weird-like tone, that sent an involuntary shudder through the house, as if supernatural things were abroad—"THEY MADE THEMSELVES—AIR!" And still there quivers through the silence that piteous cry of a strong heart broken—"ALL THE PERFUMES OF ARABIA WILL NEVER SWEETEN THIS LITTLE HAND!"

Well, she is gone, like the brief three hours when we hung on her every breath, as if it could stay even the wheels of time. But they have whirled on—whirled her away with them into the infinite, and into earthly oblivion! People tell me that a new generation only smiles at the traditional glory of Sarah Siddons. They never saw her. For me, I shall go down to the grave worshipping her still.

Of him whom I call Mr. Charles I have little to say. John and I both smiled when we saw his fine, frank face and manly bearing subdued into that poor, whining, sentimental craven, the stage Macbeth. Yet I believe he acted it well. But we irresistibly associated his idea with that of turnip munching and hay-cart oratory. And when, during the first colloquy of Banquo with the witches, Macbeth took the opportunity of winking privately at us over the foot-lights, all the paraphernalia of the stage failed to make the murderous Thane of Cawdor aught else than our humorous and good-natured Mr. Charles. I never saw him after that night. He is still living—may his old age have been as peaceful as his youth was kind and gay!

The play ended. There was some buffoonery still to come, but we would not stay for that. We staggered, half-blind and dazzled, both in eyes and brain, out into the dark streets, John almost carrying me. Then we paused, and leaning against a post which was surmounted by one of the half-dozen oil lamps which illumined the town, tried to regain our mental equilibrium.

John was the first to do it. Passing his hand over his brow he bared it to the fresh night-air, and drew a deep, hard breath. He was very pale, I saw.

"John?"

He turned, and laid a hand on my shoulder. "What did you say? Are you cold?"

"No." He put his arm so as to shield the wind from me, nevertheless.

"Well," said he, after a pause, "we have had our pleasure, and it is over. Now we must go back to the old ways again. I wonder what o'clock it is?"

He was answered by a church clock striking, heard clearly over the silent town. I counted the strokes—ELEVEN!

Horrified, we looked at one another by the light of the lamp. Until this minute we had taken no note of time. Eleven o'clock! How should we get home to Norton Bury that night?

For, now the excitement was over, I turned sick and faint; my limbs almost sank under me.

"What must we do, John?"

"Do! oh! 'tis quite easy. You cannot walk—you shall not walk—we must hire a gig and drive home. I have enough money—all my month's wages—see!" He felt in his pockets one after the other; his countenance grew blank. "Why! where is my money gone to?"

Where, indeed! But that it was gone, and irretrievably—most likely stolen when we were so wedged in the crowd—there could be no manner of doubt. And I had not a groat. I had little use for money, and rarely carried any.

"Would not somebody trust us?" suggested I.

"I never asked anybody for credit in my life—and for a horse and gig—they'd laugh at me. Still—yes—stay here a minute, and I'll try."

He came back, though not immediately, and took my arm with a reckless laugh.

"It's of no use, Phineas—I'm not so respectable as I thought. What's to be done?"

Ay! what indeed! Here we were, two friendless youths, with not a penny in our pockets, and ten miles away from home. How to get there, and at midnight too, was a very serious question. We consulted a minute, and then John said firmly:

"We must make the best of it and start. Every instant is precious. Your father will think we have fallen into some harm. Come, Phineas, I'll help you on."

His strong, cheery voice, added to the necessity of the circumstances, braced up my nerves. I took hold of his arm, and we marched on bravely through the shut-up town, and for a mile or two along the high-road leading to Norton Bury. There was a cool fresh breeze: and I often think one can walk so much further by night than by day. For some time, listening to John's talk about the stars—he had lately added astronomy to the many things he tried to learn—and recalling with him all that we had heard and seen this day, I hardly felt my weariness.

But gradually it grew upon me; my pace lagged slower and slower—even the scented air of the midsummer-night imparted no freshness. John wound his young arm, strong and firm as iron, round my waist, and we got on awhile in that way.

"Keep up, Phineas. There's a hayrick near. I'll wrap you in my coat, and you shall rest there: an hour or two will not matter now—we shall get home by daybreak."

I feebly assented; but it seemed to me that we never should get home—at least I never should. For a short way more, I dragged myself—or rather, was dragged—along; then the stars, the shadowy fields, and the winding, white high-road mingled and faded from me. I lost all consciousness.

When I came to myself I was lying by a tiny brook at the roadside, my head resting on John's knees. He was bathing my forehead: I could not see him, but I heard his smothered moan.

"David, don't mind. I shall be well directly."

"Oh! Phineas—Phineas; I thought I had killed you."

He said no more; but I fancied that under cover of the night he yielded to what his manhood might have been ashamed of—yet need not—a few tears.

I tried to rise. There was a faint streak in the east. "Why, it is daybreak! How far are we from Norton Bury?"

"Not very far. Don't stir a step. I shall carry you."

"Impossible!"

"Nonsense; I have done it for half-a-mile already. Come, mount! I am not going to have Jonathan's death laid at David's door."

And so, masking command with a jest, he had his way. What strength supported him I cannot tell, but he certainly carried me—with many rests between, and pauses, during which I walked a quarter of a mile or so—the whole way to Norton Bury.

The light broadened and broadened. When we reached my father's door, haggard and miserable, it was in the pale sunshine of a summer morning.

"Thank God!" murmured John, as he set me down at the foot of the steps. "You are safe at home."

"And you. You will come in—you would not leave me now?"

He thought a moment—then said, "No!"

We looked up doubtfully at the house; there were no watchers there. All the windows were closed, as if the whole peaceful establishment were taking its sleep, prior to the early stirring of Norton Bury households. Even John's loud knocking was some time before it was answered.

I was too exhausted to feel much; but I know those five awful minutes seemed interminable. I could not have borne them, save for John's voice in my ear.

"Courage! I'll bear all the blame. We have committed no absolute sin, and have paid dearly for any folly. Courage!"

At the five minutes' end my father opened the door. He was dressed as usual, looked as usual. Whether he had sat up watching, or had suffered any anxiety, I never found out.

He said nothing; merely opened the door, admitted us, and closed it behind us. But we were certain, from his face, that he knew all. It was so; some neighbour driving home from Coltham had taken pains to tell Abel Fletcher where he had seen his son—at the very last place a Friend's son ought to be seen—the play-house. We knew that it was by no means to learn the truth, but to confront us with it, that my father—reaching the parlour, and opening the shutters that the hard daylight should shame us more and more—asked the stern question—

"Phineas, where hast thee been?"

John answered for me. "At the theatre at Coltham. It was my fault. He went because I wished to go."

"And wherefore didst thee wish to go?"

"Wherefore?" the answer seemed hard to find. "Oh! Mr Fletcher, were you never young like me?"

My father made no reply; John gathered courage.

"It was, as I say, all my fault. It might have been wrong—I think now that it was—but the temptation was hard. My life here is dull; I long sometimes for a little amusement—a little change."

"Thee shall have it."

That voice, slow and quiet as it was, struck us both dumb.

"And how long hast thee planned this, John Halifax?"

"Not a day—not an hour! it was a sudden freak of mine." (My father shook his head with contemptuous incredulity.) "Sir!—Abel Fletcher—did I ever tell you a lie? If you will not believe me, believe your own son. Ask Phineas—No, no, ask him nothing!" And he came in great distress to the sofa where I had fallen. "Oh, Phineas! how cruel I have been to you!"

I tried to smile at him, being past speaking—but my father put John aside.

"Young man, I can take care of my son. Thee shalt not lead him into harm's way any more. Go—I have been mistaken in thee!"

If my father had gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us, and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, "I have been mistaken in thee!" was ten times worse.

John lifted to him a mute look, from which all pride had ebbed away.

"I repeat, I have been mistaken in thee! Thee seemed a lad to my mind; I trusted thee. This day, by my son's wish, I meant to have bound thee 'prentice to me, and in good time to have taken thee into the business. Now—"

There was silence. At last John muttered, in a low broken-hearted voice, "I deserve it all. I can go away. I might perhaps earn my living elsewhere; shall I?"

Abel Fletcher hesitated, looked at the poor lad before him (oh, David! how unlike to thee), then said, "No—I do not wish that. At least, not at present."

I cried out in the joy and relief of my heart. John came over to me, and we clasped hands.

"John, you will not go?"

"No, I will stay to redeem my character with your father. Be content, Phineas—I won't part with you."

"Young man, thou must," said my father, turning round.

"But—"

"I have said it, Phineas. I accuse him of no dishonesty, no crime, but of weakly yielding, and selfishly causing another to yield, to the temptation of the world. Therefore, as my clerk I retain him; as my son's companion—never!"

We felt that "never" was irrevocable.

Yet I tried, blindly and despairingly, to wrestle with it; I might as well have flung myself against a stone wall.

John stood perfectly silent.

"Don't, Phineas," he whispered at last; "never mind me. Your father is right—at least so far as he sees. Let me go—perhaps I may come back to you some time. If not—"

I moaned out bitter words—I hardly knew what I was saying. My father took no notice of them, only went to the door and called Jael.

Then, before the woman came, I had strength enough to bid John go.

"Good-bye—don't forget me, don't!"

"I will not," he said; "and if I live we shall be friends again. Good-bye, Phineas." He was gone.

After that day, though he kept his word, and remained in the tan-yard, and though from time to time I heard of him—always accidentally,—after that day for two long years I never once saw the face of John Halifax.



CHAPTER VII

It was the year 1800, long known in English households as "the dear year." The present generation can have no conception of what a terrible time that was—War, Famine, and Tumult stalking hand-in-hand, and no one to stay them. For between the upper and lower classes there was a great gulf fixed; the rich ground the faces of the poor, the poor hated, yet meanly succumbed to, the rich. Neither had Christianity enough boldly to cross the line of demarcation, and prove, the humbler, that they were men,—the higher and wiser, that they were gentlemen.

These troubles, which were everywhere abroad, reached us even in our quiet town of Norton Bury. For myself, personally, they touched me not, or, at least, only kept fluttering like evil birds outside the dear home-tabernacle, where I and Patience sat, keeping our solemn counsel together—for these two years had with me been very hard.

Though I had to bear so much bodily suffering that I was seldom told of any worldly cares, still I often fancied things were going ill both within and without our doors. Jael complained in an under-key of stinted housekeeping, or boasted aloud of her own ingenuity in making ends meet: and my father's brow grew continually heavier, graver, sterner; sometimes so stern that I dared not wage, what was, openly or secretly, the quiet but incessant crusade of my existence—the bringing back of John Halifax.

He still remained my father's clerk—nay, I sometimes thought he was even advancing in duties and trusts, for I heard of his being sent long journeys up and down England to buy grain—Abel Fletcher having added to his tanning business the flour-mill hard by, whose lazy whirr was so familiar to John and me in our boyhood. But of these journeys my father never spoke; indeed, he rarely mentioned John at all. However he might employ and even trust him in business relations, I knew that in every other way he was inexorable.

And John Halifax was as inexorable as he. No under-hand or clandestine friendship would he admit—no, not even for my sake. I knew quite well, that until he could walk in openly, honourably, proudly, he never would re-enter my father's doors. Twice only he had written to me—on my two birthdays—my father himself giving me in silence the unsealed letters. They told me what I already was sure of—that I held, and always should hold, my steadfast place in his friendship. Nothing more.

One other fact I noticed: that a little lad, afterward discovered to be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or gardener's boy; and being "cute," and a "scholard," was greatly patronized by Jael. I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he came in my way, in house or garden, was the most capital "little foot-page" that ever invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs, and serving me with an unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and puzzled me at the time. It did not afterwards.

Summer was passing. People began to watch with anxious looks the thin harvest-fields—as Jael often told me, when she came home from her afternoon walks. "It was piteous to see them," she said; "only July, and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four shillings a peck."

And then she would glance at our flour-mill, where for several days a week the water-wheel was as quiet as on Sundays; for my father kept his grain locked up, waiting for what, he wisely judged, might be a worse harvest than the last. But Jael, though she said nothing, often looked at the flour-mill and shook her head. And after one market-day—when she came in rather "flustered," saying there had been a mob outside the mill, until "that young man Halifax" had gone out and spoken to them—she never once allowed me to take my rare walk under the trees in the Abbey-yard; nor, if she could help it, would she even let me sit watching the lazy Avon from the garden-wall.

One Sunday—it was the 1st of August, for my father had just come back from meeting, very much later than usual, and Jael said he had gone, as was his annual custom on that his wedding-day, to the Friends' burial ground in St. Mary's Lane, where, far away from her own kindred and people, my poor young mother had been laid,—on this one Sunday I began to see that things were going wrong. Abel Fletcher sat at dinner wearing the heavy, hard look which had grown upon his face not unmingled with the wrinkles planted by physical pain. For, with all his temperance, he could not quite keep down his hereditary enemy, gout; and this week it had clutched him pretty hard.

Dr. Jessop came in, and I stole away gladly enough, and sat for an hour in my old place in the garden, idly watching the stretch of meadow, pasture, and harvest land. Noticing, too, more as a pretty bit in the landscape than as a fact of vital importance, in how many places the half-ripe corn was already cut, and piled in thinly-scattered sheaves over the fields.

After the doctor left, my father sent for me and all his household: in the which, creeping humbly after the woman-kind, was now numbered the lad Jem. That Abel Fletcher was not quite himself was proved by the fact that his unlighted pipe lay on the table, and his afternoon tankard of ale sank from foam to flatness untouched.

He first addressed Jael. "Woman, was it thee who cooked the dinner to-day?"

She gave a dignified affirmative.

"Thee must give us no more such dinners. No cakes, no pastry kickshaws, and only wheaten bread enough for absolute necessity. Our neighbours shall not say that Abel Fletcher has flour in his mill, and plenty in his house, while there is famine abroad in the land. So take heed."

"I do take heed," answered Jael, staunchly. "Thee canst not say I waste a penny of thine. And for myself, do I not pity the poor? On First-day a woman cried after me about wasting good flour in starch—to-day, behold."

And with a spasmodic bridling-up, she pointed to the bouffante which used to stand up stiffly round her withered old throat, and stick out in front like a pouter pigeon. Alas! its glory and starch were alike departed; it now appeared nothing but a heap of crumpled and yellowish muslin. Poor Jael! I knew this was the most heroic personal sacrifice she could have made, yet I could not help smiling; even my father did the same.

"Dost thee mock me, Abel Fletcher?" cried she angrily. "Preach not to others while the sin lies on thy own head."

And I am sure poor Jael was innocent of any jocular intention, as advancing sternly she pointed to her master's pate, where his long-worn powder was scarcely distinguishable from the snows of age. He bore the assault gravely and unshrinkingly, merely saying, "Woman, peace!"

"Nor while"—pursued Jael, driven apparently to the last and most poisoned arrow in her quiver of wrath—"while the poor folk be starving in scores about Norton Bury, and the rich folk there will not sell their wheat under famine price. Take heed to thyself, Abel Fletcher."

My father winced, either from a twinge of gout or conscience; and then Jael suddenly ceased the attack, sent the other servants out of the room, and tended her master as carefully as if she had not insulted him. In his fits of gout my father, unlike most men, became the quieter and easier to manage the more he suffered. He had a long fit of pain which left him considerably exhausted. When, being at last relieved, he and I were sitting in the room alone, he said to me—

"Phineas, the tan-yard has thriven ill of late, and I thought the mill would make up for it. But if it will not it will not. Wouldst thee mind, my son, being left a little poor when I am gone?"

"Father!"

"Well, then, in a few days I will begin selling my wheat, as that lad has advised and begged me to do these weeks past. He is a sharp lad, and I am getting old. Perhaps he is right."

"Who, father?" I asked, rather hypocritically.

"Thee knowest well enough—John Halifax."

I thought it best to say no more; but I never let go one thread of hope which could draw me nearer to my heart's desire.

On the Monday morning my father went to the tan-yard as usual. I spent the day in my bed-room, which looked over the garden, where I saw nothing but the waving of the trees and the birds hopping over the smooth grass; heard nothing but the soft chime, hour after hour, of the Abbey bells. What was passing in the world, in the town, or even in the next street, was to me faint as dreams.

At dinner-time I rose, went down-stairs, and waited for my father; waited one, two, three hours. It was very strange. He never by any chance overstayed his time, without sending a message home. So after some consideration as to whether I dared encroach upon his formal habits so much, and after much advice from Jael, who betrayed more anxiety than was at all warranted by the cause she assigned, viz. the spoiled dinner, I despatched Jem Watkins to the tan-yard to see after his master.

He came back with ill news. The lane leading to the tan-yard was blocked up with a wild mob. Even the stolid, starved patience of our Norton Bury poor had come to an end at last—they had followed the example of many others. There was a bread-riot in the town.

God only knows how terrible those "riots" were; when the people rose in desperation, not from some delusion of crazy, blood-thirsty "patriotism," but to get food for themselves, their wives, and children. God only knows what madness was in each individual heart of that concourse of poor wretches, styled "the mob," when every man took up arms, certain that there were before him but two alternatives, starving or—hanging.

The riot here was scarcely universal. Norton Bury was not a large place, and had always abundance of small-pox and fevers to keep the poor down numerically. Jem said it was chiefly about our mill and our tan-yard that the disturbance lay.

"And where is my father?"

Jem "didn't know," and looked very much as if he didn't care.

"Jael, somebody must go at once, and find my father."

"I am going," said Jael, who had already put on her cloak and hood. Of course, despite all her opposition, I went too.

The tan-yard was deserted; the mob had divided, and gone, one half to our mill, the rest to another that was lower down the river. I asked of a poor frightened bark-cutter if she knew where my father was? She thought he was gone for the "millingtary;" but Mr. Halifax was at the mill now—she hoped no harm would come to Mr. Halifax.

Even in that moment of alarm I felt a sense of pleasure. I had not been in the tan-yard for nearly three years. I did not know John had come already to be called "Mr. Halifax."

There was nothing for me but to wait here till my father returned. He could not surely be so insane as to go to the mill—and John was there. Terribly was my heart divided, but my duty lay with my father.

Jael sat down in the shed, or marched restlessly between the tan-pits. I went to the end of the yard, and looked down towards the mill. What a half-hour it was!

At last, exhausted, I sat down on the bark heap where John and I had once sat as lads. He must now be more than twenty; I wondered if he were altered.

"Oh, David! David!" I thought, as I listened eagerly for any sounds abroad in the town; "what should I do if any harm came to thee?"

This minute I heard a footstep crossing the yard. No, it was not my father's—it was firmer, quicker, younger. I sprang from the barkheap.

"Phineas!"

"John!"

What a grasp that was—both hands! and how fondly and proudly I looked up in his face—the still boyish face. But the figure was quite that of a man now.

For a minute we forgot ourselves in our joy, and then he let go my hands, saying hurriedly—

"Where is your father?"

"I wish I knew!—Gone for the soldiers, they say."

"No, not that—he would never do that. I must go and look for him. Good-bye."

"Nay, dear John!"

"Can't—can't," said he, firmly, "not while your father forbids. I must go." And he was gone.

Though my heart rebelled, my conscience defended him; marvelling how it was that he who had never known his father should uphold so sternly the duty of filial obedience. I think it ought to act as a solemn warning to those who exact so much from the mere fact and name of parenthood, without having in any way fulfilled its duties, that orphans from birth often revere the ideal of that bond far more than those who have known it in reality. Always excepting those children to whose blessed lot it has fallen to have the ideal realized.

In a few minutes I saw him and my father enter the tan-yard together. He was talking earnestly, and my father was listening—ay, listening—and to John Halifax! But whatever the argument was, it failed to move him. Greatly troubled, but staunch as a rock, my old father stood, resting his lame foot on a heap of hides. I went to meet him.

"Phineas," said John, anxiously, "come and help me. No, Abel Fletcher," he added, rather proudly, in reply to a sharp, suspicious glance at us both; "your son and I only met ten minutes ago, and have scarcely exchanged a word. But we cannot waste time over that matter now. Phineas, help me to persuade your father to save his property. He will not call for the aid of the law, because he is a Friend. Besides, for the same reason, it might be useless asking."

"Verily!" said my father, with a bitter and meaning smile.

"But he might get his own men to defend his property, and need not do what he is bent on doing—go to the mill himself."

"Surely," was all Abel Fletcher said, planting his oaken stick firmly, as firmly as his will, and taking his way to the river-side, in the direction of the mill.

I caught his arm—"Father, don't go."

"My son," said he, turning on me one of his "iron looks," as I used to call them—tokens of a nature that might have ran molten once, and had settled into a hard, moulded mass, of which nothing could afterwards alter one form, or erase one line—"My son, no opposition. Any who try that with me fail. If those fellows had waited two days more I would have sold all my wheat at a hundred shillings the quarter; now they shall have nothing. It will teach them wisdom another time. Get thee safe home, Phineas, my son; Jael, go thou likewise."

But neither went. John held me back as I was following my father.

"He will do it, Phineas, and I suppose he must. Please God, I'll take care no harm touches him—but you go home."

That was not to be thought of. Fortunately, the time was too brief for argument, so the discussion soon ended. He followed my father and I followed him. For Jael, she disappeared.

There was a private path from the tan-yard to the mill, along the river-side; by this we went, in silence. When we reached the spot it was deserted; but further down the river we heard a scuffling, and saw a number of men breaking down our garden wall.

"They think he is gone home," whispered John; "we'll get in here the safer. Quick, Phineas."

We crossed the little bridge; John took a key out of his pocket, and let us into the mill by a small door—the only entrance, and that was barred and trebly barred within. It had good need to be in such times.

The mill was a queer, musty, silent place, especially the machinery room, the sole flooring of which was the dark, dangerous stream. We stood there a good while—it was the safest place, having no windows. Then we followed my father to the top story, where he kept his bags of grain. There were very many; enough, in these times, to make a large fortune by—a cursed fortune wrung out of human lives.

"Oh! how could my father—"

"Hush!" whispered John, "it was for his son's sake, you know."

But while we stood, and with a meaning but rather grim smile Abel Fletcher counted his bags, worth almost as much as bags of gold—we heard a hammering at the door below. The rioters were come.

Miserable "rioters!"—A handful of weak, starved men—pelting us with stones and words. One pistol-shot might have routed them all—but my father's doctrine of non-resistance forbade. Small as their force seemed, there was something at once formidable and pitiful in the low howl that reached us at times.

"Bring out the bags!—Us mun have bread!"

"Throw down thy corn, Abel Fletcher!"

"Abel Fletcher WILL throw it down to ye, ye knaves," said my father, leaning out of the upper window; while a sound, half curses, half cheers of triumph, answered him from below.

"That is well," exclaimed John, eagerly. "Thank you—thank you, Mr. Fletcher—I knew you would yield at last."

"Didst thee, lad?" said my father, stopping short.

"Not because they forced you—not to save your life—but because it was right."

"Help me with this bag," was all the reply.

It was a great weight, but not too great for John's young arm, nervous and strong. He hauled it up.

"Now, open the window—dash the panes through—it matters not. On to the window, I tell thee."

"But if I do, the bag will fall into the river. You cannot—oh, no!—you cannot mean that!"

"Haul it up to the window, John Halifax."

But John remained immovable.

"I must do it myself, then;" and, in the desperate effort he made, somehow the bag of grain fell, and fell on his lame foot. Tortured into frenzy with the pain—or else, I will still believe, my old father would not have done such a deed—his failing strength seemed doubled and trebled. In an instant more he had got the bag half through the window, and the next sound we heard was its heavy splash in the river below.

Flung into the river, the precious wheat, and in the very sight of the famished rioters! A howl of fury and despair arose. Some plunged into the water, ere the eddies left by the falling mass had ceased—but it was too late. A sharp substance in the river's bed had cut the bag, and we saw thrown up to the surface, and whirled down the Avon, thousands of dancing grains. A few of the men swam, or waded after them, clutching a handful here or there—but by the mill-pool the river ran swift, and the wheat had all soon disappeared, except what remained in the bag when it was drawn on shore. Over even that they fought like demons.

We could not look at them—John and I. He put his hand over his eyes, muttering the Name that, young man as he was, I had never yet heard irreverently and thoughtlessly on his lips. It was a sight that would move any one to cry for pity unto the Great Father of the human family.

Abel Fletcher sat on his remaining bags, in an exhaustion that I think was not all physical pain. The paroxysm of anger past, he, ever a just man, could not fail to be struck with what he had done. He seemed subdued, even to something like remorse.

John looked at him, and looked away. For a minute he listened in silence to the shouting outside, and then turned to my father.

"Sir, you must come now. Not a second to lose—they will fire the mill next."

"Let them."

"Let them?—and Phineas is here!"

My poor father! He rose at once.

We got him down-stairs—he was very lame—his ruddy face all drawn and white with pain; but he did not speak one word of opposition, or utter a groan of complaint.

The flour-mill was built on piles, in the centre of the narrow river. It was only a few steps of bridge-work to either bank. The little door was on the Norton Bury side, and was hid from the opposite shore, where the rioters had now collected. In a minute we had crept forth, and dashed out of sight, in the narrow path which had been made from the mill to the tan-yard.

"Will you take my arm? we must get on fast."

"Home?" said my father, as John led him passively along.

"No, sir, not home: they are there before you. Your life's not safe an hour—unless, indeed, you get soldiers to guard it."

Abel Fletcher gave a decided negative. The stern old Quaker held to his principles still.

"Then you must hide for a time—both of you. Come to my room. You will be secure there. Urge him, Phineas—for your sake and his own."

But my poor broken-down father needed no urging. Grasping more tightly both John's arm and mine, which, for the first time in his life, he leaned upon, he submitted to be led whither we chose. So, after this long interval of time, I once more stood in Sally Watkins' small attic; where, ever since I first brought him there, John Halifax had lived.

Sally knew not of our entrance; she was out, watching the rioters. No one saw us but Jem, and Jem's honour was safe as a rock. I knew that in the smile with which he pulled off his cap to "Mr. Halifax."

"Now," said John, hastily smoothing his bed, so that my father might lie down, and wrapping his cloak round me—"you must both be very still. You will likely have to spend the night here. Jem shall bring you a light and supper. You will make yourself easy, Abel Fletcher?"

"Ay." It was strange to see how decidedly, yet respectfully, John spoke, and how quietly my father answered.

"And, Phineas"—he put his arm round my shoulder in his old way—"you will take care of yourself. Are you any stronger than you used to be?"

I clasped his hand without reply. My heart melted to hear that tender accent, so familiar once. All was happening for the best, if it only gave me back David.

"Now good-bye—I must be off."

"Whither?" said my father, rousing himself.

"To try and save the house and the tan-yard—I fear we must give up the mill. No, don't hold me, Phineas. I run no risk: everybody knows me. Besides, I am young. There! see after your father. I shall come back in good time."

He grasped my hands warmly—then unloosed them; and I heard his step descending the staircase. The room seemed to darken when he went away.

The evening passed very slowly. My father, exhausted with pain, lay on the bed and dozed. I sat watching the sky over the housetops, which met in the old angles, with the same blue peeps between. I half forgot all the day's events—it seemed but two weeks, instead of two years ago, that John and I had sat in this attic-window, conning our Shakspeare for the first time.

Ere twilight I examined John's room. It was a good deal changed; the furniture was improved; a score of ingenious little contrivances made the tiny attic into a cosy bed-chamber. One corner was full of shelves, laden with books, chiefly of a scientific and practical nature. John's taste did not lead him into the current literature of the day: Cowper, Akenside, and Peter Pindar were alike indifferent to him. I found among his books no poet but Shakspeare.

He evidently still practised his old mechanical arts. There was lying in the window a telescope—the cylinder made of pasteboard—into which the lenses were ingeniously fitted. A rough telescope-stand, of common deal, stood on the ledge of the roof, from which the field of view must have been satisfactory enough to the young astronomer. Other fragments of skilful handiwork, chiefly meant for machinery on a Lilliputian scale, were strewn about the floor; and on a chair, just as he had left it that morning, stood a loom, very small in size, but perfect in its neat workmanship, with a few threads already woven, making some fabric not so very unlike cloth.

I had gone over all these things without noticing that my father was awake, and that his sharp eye had observed them likewise.

"The lad works hard," said he, half to himself. "He has useful hands and a clear head." I smiled, but took no notice whatever.

Evening began to close in—less peacefully than usual—over Norton Bury; for, whenever I ventured to open the window, we heard unusual and ominous sounds abroad in the town. I trembled inwardly. But John was prudent, as well as brave: besides, "everybody knew him." Surely he was safe.

Faithfully, at supper-time, Jem entered. But he could tell us no news; he had kept watch all the time on the staircase by desire of "Mr. Halifax"—so he informed me. My father asked no questions—not even about his mill. From his look, sometimes, I fancied he yet beheld in fancy these starving men fighting over the precious food, destroyed so wilfully—nay, wickedly. Heaven forgive me, his son, if I too harshly use the word; for I think, till the day of his death, that cruel sight never wholly vanished from the eyes of my poor father.

Jem seemed talkatively inclined. He observed that "master was looking sprack agin; and warn't this a tidy room, like?"

I praised it; and supposed his mother was better off now?

"Ay, she be. Mr. Halifax pays her a good rent; and she sees 'un made comfortable. Not that he wants much, being out pretty much all day."

"What is he busy about of nights?"

"Larning," said Jem, with an awed look. "He's terrible wise. But for all that, sometimes he'll teach Charley and me a bit o' the Readamadeasy." (Reading-made-easy, I suppose, John's hopeful pupil meant.) "He's very kind to we, and to mother too. Her says, that her do, Mr. Halifax—"

"Send the fellow away, Phineas," muttered my father, turning his face to the wall.

I obeyed. But first I asked, in a whisper, if Jem had any idea when "Mr. Halifax" would be back?

"He said, maybe not till morning. Them's bad folk about. He was going to stop all night, either at your house or at the tan-yard, for fear of a BLAZE."

The word made my father start; for in these times well we knew what poor folk meant by "a blaze."

"My house—my tan-yard—I must get up this instant—help me. He ought to come back—that lad Halifax. There's a score of my men at hand—Wilkes, and Johnson, and Jacob Baines—I say, Phineas—but thee know'st nothing."

He tried to dress, and to drag on his heavy shoes; but fell back, sick with exhaustion and pain. I made him lie down again on the bed.

"Phineas, lad," said he, brokenly, "thy old father is getting as helpless as thee."

So we kept watch together, all the night through; sometimes dozing, sometimes waking up at some slight noise below, or at the flicker of the long-wicked candle, which fear converted into the glare of some incendiary fire—doubtless our own home. Now and then I heard my father mutter something about "the lad being safe." I said nothing. I only prayed.

Thus the night wore away.



CHAPTER VIII

After Midnight—I know not how long, for I lost count of the hours by the Abbey chimes, and our light had gone out—after midnight I heard by my father's breathing that he was asleep. I was thankful to see it for his sake, and also for another reason.

I could not sleep—all my faculties were preternaturally alive; my weak body and timid mind became strong and active, able to compass anything. For that one night, at least, I felt myself a man.

My father was a very sound sleeper. I knew nothing would disturb him till daylight; therefore my divided duty was at an end. I left him, and crept down-stairs into Sally Watkins' kitchen. It was silent, only the faithful warder, Jem, dozed over the dull fire. I touched him on the shoulder—at which he collared me and nearly knocked me down.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Phineas—hope I didn't hurt 'ee, sir?" cried he, all but whimpering; for Jem, a big lad of fifteen, was the most tender-hearted fellow imaginable. "I thought it were some of them folk that Mr. Halifax ha' gone among."

"Where is Mr. Halifax?"

"Doan't know, sir—wish I did! wouldn't be long a finding out, though—on'y he says: 'Jem, you stop 'ere wi' they'" (pointing his thumb up the staircase). "So, Master Phineas, I stop."

And Jem settled himself with a doggedly obedient, but most dissatisfied air down by the fire-place. It was evident nothing would move him thence: so he was as safe a guard over my poor old father's slumber as the mastiff in the tan-yard, who was as brave as a lion and as docile as a child. My last lingering hesitation ended.

"Jem, lend me your coat and hat—I'm going out into the town."

Jem was so astonished, that he stood with open mouth while I took the said garments from him, and unbolted the door. At last it seemed to occur to him that he ought to intercept me.

"But, sir, Mr. Halifax said—"

"I am going to look for Mr. Halifax."

And I escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after me with a hopeless expression.

"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said, 'Jem, you stop y'ere,'—and y'ere I stop."

He went in, and I heard him bolting the door, with a sullen determination, as if he would have kept guard against it—waiting for John—until doomsday.

I stole along the dark alley into the street. It was very silent—I need not have borrowed Jem's exterior, in order to creep through a throng of maddened rioters. There was no sign of any such, except that under one of the three oil-lamps that lit the night-darkness at Norton Bury lay a few smouldering hanks of hemp, well resined. They, then, had thought of that dreadful engine of destruction—fire. Had my terrors been true? Our house—and perhaps John within it!

On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur, which I fancied I heard; but still there was no one in the street—no one except the Abbey-watchman lounging in his box. I roused him, and asked if all was safe?—where were the rioters?

"What rioters?"

"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now—"

"Ay, I think they be."

"And will not one man in the town help him; no constables—no law?"

"Oh! he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers."

That was the truth—the hard, grinding truth—in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand was turned against them.

I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So wasting no more words, I flew along the church-yard, until I saw, shining against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light. It was one of the hempen torches. Now, at last, I had got in the midst of that small body of men, "the rioters."

They were a mere handful—not above two score—apparently the relics of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough-lads from the country around. But they were desperate; they had come up the Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur, neither I nor any one in the town could have told they were near. Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my father's house; it stood up on the other side the road—barred, black, silent.

I heard a muttering—"Th' old man bean't there."—"Nobody knows where he be." No, thank God!

"Be us all y'ere?" said the man with the torch, holding it up so as to see round him. It was well then that I appeared as Jem Watkins. But no one noticed me, except one man, who skulked behind a tree, and of whom I was rather afraid, as he was apparently intent on watching.

"Ready, lads? Now for the rosin! Blaze 'un out."

But, in the eager scuffle, the torch, the only one alight, was knocked down and trodden out. A volley of oaths arose, though whose fault it was no one seemed to know; but I missed my man from behind the tree—nor found him till after the angry throng had rushed on to the nearest lamp. One of them was left behind, standing close to our own railings. He looked round to see if none were by, and then sprang over the gate. Dark as it was I thought I recognized him.

"John?"

"Phineas?" He was beside me in a bound. "How could you do—"

"I could do anything to-night. But you are safe; no one has harmed you. Oh, thank God, you are not hurt!"

And I clung to his arm—my friend, whom I had missed so long, so sorely.

He held me tight—his heart felt as mine, only more silently.

"Now, Phineas, we have a minute's time. I must have you safe—we must get into the house."

"Who is there?"

"Jael; she is as good as a host of constables; she has braved the fellows once to-night, but they're back again, or will be directly."

"And the mill?"

"Safe, as yet; I have had three of the tan-yard men there since yesterday morning, though your father did not know. I have been going to and fro all night, between there and here, waiting till the rioters should come back from the Severn mills. Hist!—here they are—I say, Jael?"

He tapped at the window. In a few seconds Jael had unbarred the door, let us in, and closed it again securely, mounting guard behind it with something that looked very like my father's pistols, though I would not discredit her among our peaceful society by positively stating the fact.

"Bravo!" said John, when we stood all together in the barricaded house, and heard the threatening murmur of voices and feet outside. "Bravo, Jael! The wife of Heber the Kenite was no braver woman than you."

She looked gratified, and followed John obediently from room to room.

"I have done all as thee bade me—thee art a sensible lad, John Halifax. We are secure, I think."

Secure? bolts and bars secure against fire? For that was threatening us now.

"They can't mean it—surely they can't mean it," repeated John, as the cry of "Burn 'un out!" rose louder and louder.

But they did mean it. From the attic window we watched them light torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the house,—but it fell harmless against the staunch oaken door, and blazed itself out on our stone steps. All it did was to show more plainly than even daylight had shown, the gaunt, ragged forms and pinched faces, furious with famine.

John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.

"I'll speak to them," he said. "Unbar the window, Jael;" and before I could hinder, he was leaning right out. "Holloa, there!"

At his loud and commanding voice a wave of up-turned faces surged forward, expectant.

"My men, do you know what you are about? To burn down a gentleman's house is—hanging."

There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.

"Not a Quaker's! nobody'll get hanged for burning out a Quaker!"

"That be true enough," muttered Jael between her teeth. "We must e'en fight, as Mordecai's people fought, hand to hand, until they slew their enemies."