Chapter XIV. Their first helper
It was a lovely spring morning. The sun was about thirty degrees above the horizon, shining with a liquid radiance, as if he had already drawn up and was shining through the dew of the morning, though it lay yet on all the grasses by the roadside, turning them into gem-plants. Every sort of gem sparkled on their feathery or beady tops, and their long slender blades. At the first cottages they passed, the women were beginning their day’s work, sweeping clean their floors and door-steps. Clare noted that where were most flowers in the garden, the windows were brightest, and the children cleanest.
“The flowers come where they make things nice for them!” he said to himself. “Where the flowers see dirt, they turn away, and won’t come out.”
From childhood he had had the notion that the flowers crept up inside the stalks until they found a window to look out at. Where the prospect was not to their mind they crept down, and away by some door in the root to try again. For all the stalks stood like watch-towers, ready for them to go up and peep out.
They came to a pond by a farm-house. Clare had been observing with pity how wretched Tommy’s clothes were; but when he looked into the pond he saw that his own shabbiness was worse than Tommy’s downright miserableness. Nobody would leave either of them within reach of anything worth stealing! What he wore had been his Sunday suit, and it was not even worth brushing!
“I’m ‘orrid ‘ungry,” said Tommy. “I ‘ain’t swallered a plug this mornin’, ‘xcep’ a lump o’ bread out o’ granny’s cupboard. That’s what I got my weltin’ for. It were a whole half-loaf, though—an’ none so dry!”
Clare had eaten nothing, and had been up since five o’clock—at work all the time till the farmer struck him: he was quite as hungry as Tommy. What was to be done? Besides a pocket-handkerchief he had but one thing alienable.
The very day she was taken ill, he had been in the store-room with his mother, and she, knowing the pleasure he took in the scent of brown Windsor-soap, had made him a present of a small cake. This he had kept in his pocket ever since, wrapt in a piece of rose-coloured paper, his one cherished possession: hunger deadening sorrow, the time was come to bid it farewell. His heart ached to part with it, but Tommy and he were so hungry!
They went to the door of the house, and knocked—first Clare very gently, then Tommy with determination. It was opened by a matron who looked at them over the horizon of her chin.
“Please, ma’am,” said Clare, “will you give us a piece of bread?—as large a piece, please, as you can spare; and I will give you this piece of brown Windsor-soap.”
As he ended his speech, he took a farewell whiff of his favourite detergent.
“Soap!” retorted the dame. “Who wants your soap! Where did you get it? Stole it, I don’t doubt! Show it here.”
She took it in her hand, and held it to her nose.
“Who gave it you?”
“My mother,” answered Clare.
“Where’s your mother?”
Clare pointed upward.
“Eh? Oh—hanged! I thought, so!”
She threw the soap into the yard, and closed the door. Clare darted after his property, pounced upon it, and restored it lovingly to his pocket.
As they were leaving the yard disconsolate, they saw a cart full of turnips. Tommy turned and made for it.
“Don’t, Tommy,” cried Clare.
“Why not? I’m hungry,” answered Tommy, “an’ you see it’s no use astin’!”
He flew at the cart, but Clare caught and held him.
“They ain’t ours, Tommy,” he said.
“Then why don’t you take one?” retorted Tommy.
“That’s why you shouldn’t.”
“It’s why you should, for then it ‘ud be yours.”
“To take it wouldn’t make it ours, Tommy.”
“Wouldn’t it, though? I believe when I’d eaten it, it would be mine—rather!”
“No, it wouldn’t. Think of having in your stomach what wasn’t yours! No, you must pay for it. Perhaps they would take my soap for a turnip. I believe it’s worth two turnips.”
He spied a man under a shed, ran to him, and made offer of the soap for a turnip apiece.
“I don’t want your soap,” answered the man, “an’ I don’t recommend cold turmits of a mornin’. But take one if you like, and clear out. The master’s cart-whip ‘ill be about your ears the moment he sees you!”
“Ain’t you the master, sir?”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Then the turnips ain’t yours?” said Clare, looking at him with hungry, regretful eyes, for he could have eaten a raw potato.
“You’re a deal too impudent to be hungry!” said the man, making a blow at him with his open hand, which Clare dodged. “Be off with you, or I’ll set the dog on you.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Clare. “I did not mean to offend you.”
“Clear out, I say. Double trot!”
Hungry as the boys were, they must trudge! No bread, no turnip for them! Nothing but trudge, trudge till they dropped!
When they had gone about five miles further, they sat down, as if by common consent, on the roadside; and Tommy, used to crying, began to cry. Clare did not seek to stop him, for some instinct told him it must be a relief.
By and by a working-man came along the road. Clare hesitated, but Tommy’s crying urged him. He rose and stood ready to accost him. As soon as he came up, however, the man stopped of himself. He questioned Clare and listened to his story, then counselled the boys to go back.
“I’m not wanted, sir,” said Clare.
“They’d kill me,” said Tommy.
“God help you, boys!” returned the man. “You may be telling me lies, and you may be telling me the truth!—A liar may be hungry, but somehow I grudge my dinner to a liar!”
As he spoke he untied the knots of a blue handkerchief with white spots, gave them its contents of bread and cheese, wiped his face with it, and put it in his pocket; lifted his bag of tools, and went his way. He had lost his dinner and saved his life!
The dinner, being a man’s, went a good way toward satisfying them, though empty corners would not have been far to seek, had there been anything to put in them. As it was, they started again refreshed and hopeful. What had come to them once might reasonably come again!
Chapter XV. Their first host
As the evening drew on, and began to settle down into night, a new care arose in the mind of the elder boy. Where were they to pass the darkness?—how find shelter for sleep? It was a question that gave Tommy no anxiety. He had been on the tramp often, now with one party, now with another of his granny’s lodgers, and had frequently slept in the open air, or under the rudest covert. Tommy had not much imagination to trouble him, and in his present moral condition was possibly better without it; but to inexperienced Clare there was something fearful in having the night come so close to him. Sleep out of doors he had never thought of. To lie down with the stars looking at him, nothing but the blue wind between him and them, was like being naked to the very soul. Doubtless there would be creatures about, to share the night with him, and protect him from its awful bareness; but they would be few for the size of the room, and he might see none of them! It was the sense of emptiness, the lack of present life that dismayed him. He had never seen any creatures to shrink from. He disliked no one of the things that creep or walk or fly. Before long he did come to know and dislike at least one sort; and the sea held creatures that in after years made him shudder; but as yet, not even rats, so terrible to many, were a terror to Clare. It was Nothing that he feared.
My reader may say, “But had no one taught him about God?” Yes, he had heard about God, and about Jesus Christ; had heard a great deal about them. But they always seemed persons a long way off. He knew, or thought he knew, that God was everywhere, but he had never felt his presence a reality. He seemed in no place where Clare’s eyes ever fell. He never thought, “God is here.” Perhaps the sparrows knew more about God than he did then. When he looked out into the night it always seemed vacant, therefore horrid, and he took it for as empty as it looked. And if there had been no God there, it would have been reasonable indeed to be afraid; for the most frightful of notions is Nothing-at-all.
It grew dark, and they were falling asleep on their walking legs, when they came to a barn-yard. Very glad were they to creep into it, and search for the warmest place. It was a quiet part of the country, and for years nothing had been stolen from anybody, so that the people were not so watchful as in many places.
They went prowling about, but even Tommy with innocent intent, eager only after a little warmth, and as much sleep as they could find, and came at length to an open window, through which they crawled into what, by the smell and the noises, they knew to be a stable. It was very dark, but Clare was at home, and felt his way about; while Tommy, who was afraid of the horses, held close to him. Clare’s hand fell upon the hind-quarters of a large well-fed horse. The huge animal was asleep standing, but at the touch of the small hand he gave a low whinny. Tommy shuddered at the sound.
“He’s pleased,” said Clare, and crept up on his near side into the stall. There he had soon made such friends with him, that he did not hesitate to get in among the hay the horse had for his supper.
“Here, Tommy!” he cried in a whisper; “there’s room for us both in the manger.”
But Tommy stood shaking. He fancied the darkness full of horses’ heads, and would not stir. Clare had to get out again, and search for a place to suit his fancy, which he found in an untenanted loose-box, with remains of litter. There Tommy coiled himself up, and was soon fast asleep.
Clare returned to the hospitality of the big horse. The great nostrils snuffed him over and over as he lay, and the boy knew the horse made him welcome. He dropped asleep stroking the muzzle of his chamber-fellow, and slept all the night, kept warm by the horse’s breath, and the near furnace of his great body.
In the morning the boys found they had slept too long, for they were discovered. But though they were promptly ejected as vagabonds, and not without a few kicks and cuffs, these were not administered without the restraint of some mercy, for their appearance tended to move pity rather than indignation.
Chapter XVI. On the tramp
With the new day came the fresh necessity for breakfast, and the fresh interest in the discovery of it. But breakfast is a thing not always easiest to find where breakfasts most abound; nor was theirs when found that morning altogether of a sort to be envied, ill as they could afford to despise it. Passing, on their goal-less way, a flour-mill, the door of which was half-open, they caught sight of a heap, whether floury dust or dusty flour, it would have been hard to say, that seemed waiting only for them to help themselves from it. Fain to still the craving of birds too early for any worm, they swallowed a considerable portion of it, choking as it was, nor met with rebuke. There was good food in it, and they might have fared worse.
Another day’s tramp was thus inaugurated. How it was to end no one in the world knew less than the trampers.
Before it was over, a considerable change had passed upon Clare; for a new era was begun in his history, and he started to grow more rapidly. Hitherto, while with his father or mother, or with his little sister, making life happy to her; even while at the farm, doing hard work, he had lived with much the same feeling with which he read a story: he was in the story, half dreaming, half acting it. The difference between a thing that passed through his brain from the pages of a book, or arose in it as he lay in bed either awake or asleep, and the thing in which he shared the life and motion of the day, was not much marked in his consciousness. He was a dreamer with open eyes and ready hands, not clearly distinguishing thought and action, fancy and fact. Even the cold and hunger he had felt at the farm had not sufficed to wake him up; he had only had to wait and they were removed. But now that he did not know whence his hunger was to be satisfied, or where shelter was to be had; now also that there was a hunger outside him, and a cold that was not his, which yet he had to supply and to frustrate in the person of Tommy, life began to grow real to him; and, which was far more, he began to grow real to himself, as a power whose part it was to encounter the necessities thus presented. He began to understand that things were required of him. He had met some of these requirements before, and had satisfied them, but without knowing them as requirements. He did it half awake, not as a thinking and willing source of the motion demanded. He did it all by impulse, hardly by response. Now we are put into bodies, and sent into the world, to wake us up. We might go on dreaming for ages if we were left without bodies that the wind could blow upon, that the rain could wet, and the sun scorch, bodies to feel thirst and cold and hunger and wounds and weariness. The eternal plan was beginning to tell upon Clare. He was in process of being changed from a dreamer to a man. It is a good thing to be a dreamer, but it is a bad thing indeed to be only a dreamer. He began to see that everybody in the world had to do something in order to get food; that he had worked for the farmer and his wife, and they had fed him. He had worked willingly and eaten gladly, but had not before put the two together. He saw now that men who would be men must work.
His eyes fell upon a congregation of rooks in a field by the roadside. “Are they working?” he thought; “or are they stealing? If it be stealing they are at, it looks like hard work as well. It can’t be stealing though; they were made to live, and how are they to live if they don’t grub? that’s their work! Still the corn ain’t theirs! Perhaps it’s only worms they take! Are the worms theirs? A man should die rather than steal, papa said. But, if they are stealing, the crows don’t know it; and if they don’t know it, they ain’t thieves! Is that it?”
The same instant came the report of a gun. A crowd of rooks rose cawing. One of them dropped and lay.
“He must have been stealing,” thought Clare, “for see what comes of it! Would they shoot me if I stole? Better be shot than die of hunger! Yes, but better die of hunger than be a thief!”
He had read stories about thieves and honest boys, and had never seen any difficulty in the matter. Nor had he yet a notion of how difficult it is not to be a thief—that is, to be downright honest. If anybody thinks it easy, either he has not known much of life, or he has never tried to be honest; he has done just like other people. Clare did not know that many a boy whose heart sided with the honest boy in the story, has grown up a dishonourable man—a man ready to benefit himself to the disadvantage of others; that many a man who passes for respectable in this disreputable world, is counted far meaner than a thief in the next, and is going there to be put in prison. But he began to see that it is not enough to mean well; that he must be sharp, and mind what he was about; else, with hunger worrying inside him, he might be a thief before he knew. He was on the way to discover that to think rightly—to be on the side of what is honourable when reading a story, is a very different thing from doing right, and being honourable, when the temptation is upon us. Many a boy when he reads this will say, “Of course it is!” and when the time comes, will be a sneak.
Those crows set Clare thinking; and it was well; for if he had not done as those thinkings taught him, he would have given a very different turn to his history. Meditation and resolve, on the top of honourable habit, brought him to this, that, when he saw what was right, he just did it—did it without hesitation, question, or struggle. Every man must, who would be a free man, who would not be the slave of the universe and of himself.
Chapter XVII. The baker’s cart
The sweepings of the mill-floor did not last them long, and by the time they saw rising before them the spires and chimneys of the small county town to which the road had been leading them, they were very hungry indeed—as hungry as they well could be without having begun to grow faint. The moment he saw them, Clare began revolving in his mind once more, as many times on the way, what he was to do to get work: Tommy of course was too small to do anything, and Clare must earn enough for both. He could think of nothing but going into the shops, or knocking at the house-doors, and asking for something to do. So filled was he with his need of work, and with the undefined sense of a claim for work, that he never thought how much against him must be the outward appearance which had so dismayed himself when he saw it in the pond; never thought how unwilling any one would be to employ him, or what a disadvantage was the company of Tommy, who had every mark of a born thief.
I do not know if, on his tramps, Tommy had been in a town before, but to Clare all he saw bore the aspect of perfect novelty, notwithstanding the few city-shapes that floated in faintest shadow, like memories of old dreams, in his brain. He was delighted with the grand look of the place, with its many people and many shops. His hope of work at once became brilliant and convincing.
Noiselessly and suddenly Tommy started from his side, but so much occupied was he with what he beheld and what he thought, that he neither saw him go nor missed him when gone. He became again aware of him by finding himself pulled toward the entrance of a narrow lane. Tommy pulled so hard that Clare yielded, and went with him into the lane, but stopped immediately. For he saw that Tommy had under his arm a big loaf, and the steam of newly-baked bread was fragrant in his nostrils. Never smoke so gracious greeted those of incense-loving priest. Tommy tugged and tugged, but Clare stood stock-still.
“Where did you get that beautiful loaf, Tommy?” he asked.
“Off on a baker’s cart,” said Tommy. “Don’t be skeered; he never saw me! That was my business, an’ I seed to ‘t.”
“Then you stole it, Tommy?”
“Yes,” grumbled Tommy, “—if that’s the name you put upon it when your trousers is so slack you’ve got to hold on to them or they’d trip you up!”
“Where’s the cart?”
“In the street there.”
“Come along.”
Clare took the loaf from Tommy, and turned to find the baker’s cart. Tommy’s face fell, and he was conscious only of bitterness. Why had he yielded to sentiment—not that he knew the word—when he longed like fire to bury his sharp teeth in that heavenly loaf? Love—not to mention a little fear—had urged him to carry it straight to Clare, and this was his reward! He was going to give him up to the baker! There was gratitude for you! He ought to have known better than trust anybody, even Clare! Nobody was to be trusted but yourself! It did seem hard to Tommy.
They had scarcely turned the corner when they came upon the cart. The baker was looking the other way, talking to some one, and Clare thought to lay down the loaf and say nothing about it: there was no occasion for the ceremony of apology where offence was unknown. But in the very act the baker turned and saw him. He sprang upon him, and collared him. The baker was not nice to look at.
“I have you!” he cried, and shook him as if he would have shaken his head off.
“It’s quite a mistake, sir!” was all Clare could get out, so fierce was the earthquake that rattled the house of his life.
“Mistaken am I? I like that!—Police!”
And with that the baker shook him again.
A policeman was not far off; he heard the man call, and came running.
“Here’s a gen’leman as wants the honour o’ your acquaintance, Bob!” said the baker.
But Tommy saw that, from his size, he was more likely to get off than Clare if he told the truth.
“Please, policeman,” he said, “it wasn’t him; it was me as took the loaf.”
“You little liar!” shouted the baker. “Didn’t I see him with his hand on the loaf?”
“He was a puttin’ of it back,” said Tommy. “I wish he’d been somewheres else! See what he been an’ got by it! If he’d only ha’ let me run, there wouldn’t ha’ been nobody the wiser. I am sorry I didn’t run. Oh, I ham so ‘ungry!”
Tommy doubled himself up, with his hands inside the double.
“‘Ungry, are you?” roared the baker. “That’s what thieves off a baker’s cart ought to be! They ought to be always ‘ungry—‘ungry to all eternity, they ought! An’ that’s what’s goin’ to be done to ‘em!”
“Look here!” cried a pale-faced man in the front of the crowd, who seemed a mechanic. “There’s a way of tellin’ whether the boy’s speakin’ the truth now!”
He caught up the restored loaf, halved it cleverly, and handed each of the boys a part.
“Now, baker, what’s to pay?” he said, and drew himself up, for the man was too angry at once to reply.
The boys were tearing at the delicious bread, blind and deaf to all about them.
“P’r’aps you would like to give me in charge?” pursued their saviour.
“Sixpence,” said the man sullenly.
The mechanic laid sixpence on the cover of the cart.
“I ought to ha’ made you weigh and make up,” he said. “Where’s your scales?”
“Mind your own business.”
“I mean to. Here! I want another sixpenny loaf—but I want it weighed this time!”
“I ain’t bound to sell bread in the streets. You can go to the shop. Them loaves is for reg’lar customers.”
He moved off with his cart, and the crowd began to disperse. The boys stood absorbed, each in what remained of his half-loaf.
When he looked up, Clare saw that they were alone. But he caught sight of their benefactor some way off, and ran after him.
“Oh, sir!” he said, “I was so hungry, I don’t know whether I thanked you for the loaf. We’d had nothing to-day but the sweepings of a mill.”
“God bless my soul!” said the man. “People say there’s a God!” he added.
“I think there must be, sir, for you came by just then!” returned Clare.
“How do you come to be so hard-up, my boy? Somebody’s to blame somewheres!”
“There ain’t no harm in being hungry, so long as the loaf comes!” rejoined Clare. “When I get work we shall be all right!”
“That’s your sort!” said the man. “But if there had been a God, as people say, he would ha’ made me fit to gi’e you a job, i’stead o’ stan’in’ here as you see me, with ne’er a turn o’ work to do for myself!”
“I’ll work my hardest to pay you back your sixpence,” said Clare.
“Nay, nay, lad! Don’t you trouble about that. I ha’ got two or three more i’ my pocket, thank God!”
“You have two Gods, have you, sir?” said Clare;”—one who does things for you, and one who don’t?”
“Come, you young shaver! you’re too much for me!” said the man laughing.
Tommy, having finished his bread, here thought fit to join them. He came slyly up, looking impudent now he was filled, with his hands where his pockets should have been.
“It was you stole the loaf, you little rascal!” said the workman, seeing thief in every line of the boy.
“Yes,” answered Tommy boldly, “an’ I don’t see no harm. The baker had lots, and he wasn’t ‘ungry! It was Clare made a mull of it! He’s such a duffer you don’t know! He acshally took it back to the brute! He deserved what he got! The loaf was mine. It wasn’t his! I stole it!”
“Oh, ho! it wasn’t his! it was yours, was it?—Why do you go about with a chap like this, young gentleman?” said the man, turning to Clare. “I know by your speech you ‘ain’t been brought up alongside o’ sech as him!”
“I had to go away, and he came with me,” answered Clare.
“You’d better get rid of him. He’ll get you into trouble.”
“I can’t get rid of him,” replied Clare. “But I shall teach him not to take what isn’t his. He don’t know better now. He’s been ill-used all his life.”
“You don’t seem over well used yourself,” said the man.
He saw that Clare’s clothes had been made for a boy in good circumstances, though they had been long worn, and were much begrimed. His face, his tone, his speech convinced him that they had been made for him, and that he had had a gentle breeding.
“Look you here, young master,” he continued; “you have no right to be in company with that boy. He’ll bring you to grief as sure as I tell you.”
“I shall be able to bear it,” answered Clare with a sigh.
“He’ll be the loss of your character to you.”
“I ‘ain’t got a character to lose,” replied Clare. “I thought I had; but when nobody will believe me, where’s my character then?”
“Now you’re wrong there,” returned the man. “I’m not much, I know; but I believe every word you say, and should be very sorry to find myself mistaken.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Clare. “May I carry your bag for you?”
If Clare had seen what then passed in Tommy’s mind, at the back of those glistening ferret-eyes of his, he would have been almost reconciled to taking the man’s advice, and getting rid of him. Tommy was saying to himself that his pal wasn’t such a duffer after all—he was on the lay for the man’s tools!
Tommy never reasoned except in the direction of cunning self-help—of fitting means and intermediate ends to the one main object of eating. It is wonderful what a sharpener of the poor wits hunger is!
“I guess I’m the abler-bodied pauper!” answered the man; and picking up the bag he had dropped at his feet while they conversed, he walked away.
There are many more generous persons among the poor than among the rich—a fact that might help some to understand how a rich man should find it hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard for everybody, but harder for the rich. Men who strive to make money are unconsciously pulling instead of pushing at the heavy gate of the kingdom.
“Tommy!” said Clare, in a tone new to himself, for a new sense of moral protection had risen in him, “if ever you steal anything again, either I give you a hiding, or you and I part company.”
Tommy bored his knuckles into his red eyes, and began to whimper. Again it was hard for Tommy! He had followed Clare, thinking to supply what was lacking to him; to do for him what he was not clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous partnership with him, to which he should furnish the faculty of picking up unconsidered trifles. Tommy judged Clare defective in intellect, and quite unpractical. He was of the mind of the multitude. The common-minded man always calls the man who thinks of righteousness before gain, who seeks to do the will of God and does not seek to make a fortune, unpractical. He will not see that the very essence of the practical lies in doing the right thing.
Tommy, in a semi-conscious way, had looked to Clare to supply the strength and the innocent look, while he supplied the head and the lively fingers; and here was Clare knocking the lovely plan to pieces! He did well to be angry! But Clare was the stronger; and Tommy knew that, when Clare was roused, though it was not easy to rouse him, he could and would and did fight—not, indeed, as the little coward said to himself he could fight, like a wild cat, but like a blundering hornless old cow defending her calf from a cur.
In the heart of all his selfishness, however, Tommy did a little love Clare; and his love came, not from Tommy, but from the same source as his desire for food, namely, from the God that was in Tommy, the God in whom Tommy lived and had his being with Clare. Whether Tommy’s love for Clare would one day lift him up beside Clare, that is, make him an honest boy like Clare, remained to be seen.
Finding his demonstration make no impression, Tommy took his knuckles out of his eye-holes and thrust them into his pocket-holes, turned his back on his friend, and began to whistle—with a lump of self-pity in his throat.