第 四十六 章 · 第46章

It was the poor schoolmaster. No other than the poor schoolmaster.

Scarcely less moved and surprised by the sight of the child than she

had been on recognising him, he stood, for a moment, silent and

confounded by this unexpected apparition, without even the presence of

mind to raise her from the ground.

But, quickly recovering his self-possession, he threw down his stick

and book, and dropping on one knee beside her, endeavoured, by such

simple means as occurred to him, to restore her to herself; while her

grandfather, standing idly by, wrung his hands, and implored her with

many endearing expressions to speak to him, were it only a word.

‘She is quite exhausted,’ said the schoolmaster, glancing upward into

his face. ‘You have taxed her powers too far, friend.’

‘She is perishing of want,’ rejoined the old man. ‘I never thought how

weak and ill she was, till now.’

Casting a look upon him, half-reproachful and half-compassionate, the

schoolmaster took the child in his arms, and, bidding the old man

gather up her little basket and follow him directly, bore her away at

his utmost speed.

There was a small inn within sight, to which, it would seem, he had

been directing his steps when so unexpectedly overtaken. Towards this

place he hurried with his unconscious burden, and rushing into the

kitchen, and calling upon the company there assembled to make way for

God’s sake, deposited it on a chair before the fire.

The company, who rose in confusion on the schoolmaster’s entrance, did

as people usually do under such circumstances. Everybody called for

his or her favourite remedy, which nobody brought; each cried for more

air, at the same time carefully excluding what air there was, by

closing round the object of sympathy; and all wondered why somebody

else didn’t do what it never appeared to occur to them might be done by

themselves.

The landlady, however, who possessed more readiness and activity than

any of them, and who had withal a quicker perception of the merits of

the case, soon came running in, with a little hot brandy and water,

followed by her servant-girl, carrying vinegar, hartshorn,

smelling-salts, and such other restoratives; which, being duly

administered, recovered the child so far as to enable her to thank them

in a faint voice, and to extend her hand to the poor schoolmaster, who

stood, with an anxious face, hard by. Without suffering her to speak

another word, or so much as to stir a finger any more, the women

straightway carried her off to bed; and, having covered her up warm,

bathed her cold feet, and wrapped them in flannel, they despatched a

messenger for the doctor.

The doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman with a great bunch of seals

dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black satin, arrived with all

speed, and taking his seat by the bedside of poor Nell, drew out his

watch, and felt her pulse. Then he looked at her tongue, then he felt

her pulse again, and while he did so, he eyed the half-emptied

wine-glass as if in profound abstraction.

‘I should give her,’ said the doctor at length, ‘a tea-spoonful, every

now and then, of hot brandy and water.’

‘Why, that’s exactly what we’ve done, sir!’ said the delighted landlady.

‘I should also,’ observed the doctor, who had passed the foot-bath on

the stairs, ‘I should also,’ said the doctor, in the voice of an

oracle, ‘put her feet in hot water, and wrap them up in flannel. I

should likewise,’ said the doctor with increased solemnity, ‘give her

something light for supper--the wing of a roasted fowl now--’

‘Why, goodness gracious me, sir, it’s cooking at the kitchen fire this

instant!’ cried the landlady. And so indeed it was, for the

schoolmaster had ordered it to be put down, and it was getting on so

well that the doctor might have smelt it if he had tried; perhaps he

did.

‘You may then,’ said the doctor, rising gravely, ‘give her a glass of

hot mulled port wine, if she likes wine--’

‘And a toast, Sir?’ suggested the landlady.

‘Ay,’ said the doctor, in the tone of a man who makes a dignified

concession. ‘And a toast--of bread. But be very particular to make it

of bread, if you please, ma’am.’

With which parting injunction, slowly and portentously delivered, the

doctor departed, leaving the whole house in admiration of that wisdom

which tallied so closely with their own. Everybody said he was a very

shrewd doctor indeed, and knew perfectly what people’s constitutions

were; which there appears some reason to suppose he did.

While her supper was preparing, the child fell into a refreshing sleep,

from which they were obliged to rouse her when it was ready. As she

evinced extraordinary uneasiness on learning that her grandfather was

below stairs, and as she was greatly troubled at the thought of their

being apart, he took his supper with her. Finding her still very

restless on this head, they made him up a bed in an inner room, to

which he presently retired. The key of this chamber happened by good

fortune to be on that side of the door which was in Nell’s room; she

turned it on him when the landlady had withdrawn, and crept to bed

again with a thankful heart.

The schoolmaster sat for a long time smoking his pipe by the kitchen

fire, which was now deserted, thinking, with a very happy face, on the

fortunate chance which had brought him so opportunely to the child’s

assistance, and parrying, as well as in his simple way he could, the

inquisitive cross-examination of the landlady, who had a great

curiosity to be made acquainted with every particular of Nell’s life

and history. The poor schoolmaster was so open-hearted, and so little

versed in the most ordinary cunning or deceit, that she could not have

failed to succeed in the first five minutes, but that he happened to be

unacquainted with what she wished to know; and so he told her. The

landlady, by no means satisfied with this assurance, which she

considered an ingenious evasion of the question, rejoined that he had

his reasons of course. Heaven forbid that she should wish to pry into

the affairs of her customers, which indeed were no business of hers,

who had so many of her own. She had merely asked a civil question, and

to be sure she knew it would meet with a civil answer. She was quite

satisfied--quite. She had rather perhaps that he would have said at

once that he didn’t choose to be communicative, because that would have

been plain and intelligible. However, she had no right to be offended

of course. He was the best judge, and had a perfect right to say what

he pleased; nobody could dispute that for a moment. Oh dear, no!

‘I assure you, my good lady,’ said the mild schoolmaster, ‘that I have

told you the plain truth. As I hope to be saved, I have told you the

truth.’

‘Why then, I do believe you are in earnest,’ rejoined the landlady,

with ready good-humour, ‘and I’m very sorry I have teazed you. But

curiosity you know is the curse of our sex, and that’s the fact.’

The landlord scratched his head, as if he thought the curse sometimes

involved the other sex likewise; but he was prevented from making any

remark to that effect, if he had it in contemplation to do so, by the

schoolmaster’s rejoinder.

‘You should question me for half-a-dozen hours at a sitting, and

welcome, and I would answer you patiently for the kindness of heart you

have shown to-night, if I could,’ he said. ‘As it is, please to take

care of her in the morning, and let me know early how she is; and to

understand that I am paymaster for the three.’

So, parting with them on most friendly terms (not the less cordial

perhaps for this last direction), the schoolmaster went to his bed, and

the host and hostess to theirs.

The report in the morning was, that the child was better, but was

extremely weak, and would at least require a day’s rest, and careful

nursing, before she could proceed upon her journey. The schoolmaster

received this communication with perfect cheerfulness, observing that

he had a day to spare--two days for that matter--and could very well

afford to wait. As the patient was to sit up in the evening, he

appointed to visit her in her room at a certain hour, and rambling out

with his book, did not return until the hour arrived.

Nell could not help weeping when they were left alone; whereat, and at

sight of her pale face and wasted figure, the simple schoolmaster shed

a few tears himself, at the same time showing in very energetic

language how foolish it was to do so, and how very easily it could be

avoided, if one tried.

‘It makes me unhappy even in the midst of all this kindness’ said the

child, ‘to think that we should be a burden upon you. How can I ever

thank you? If I had not met you so far from home, I must have died,

and he would have been left alone.’

‘We’ll not talk about dying,’ said the schoolmaster; ‘and as to

burdens, I have made my fortune since you slept at my cottage.’

‘Indeed!’ cried the child joyfully.

‘Oh yes,’ returned her friend. ‘I have been appointed clerk and

schoolmaster to a village a long way from here--and a long way from the

old one as you may suppose--at five-and-thirty pounds a year.

Five-and-thirty pounds!’

‘I am very glad,’ said the child, ‘so very, very glad.’

‘I am on my way there now,’ resumed the schoolmaster. ‘They allowed me

the stage-coach-hire--outside stage-coach-hire all the way. Bless you,

they grudge me nothing. But as the time at which I am expected there,

left me ample leisure, I determined to walk instead. How glad I am, to

think I did so!’

‘How glad should we be!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the schoolmaster, moving restlessly in his chair,

‘certainly, that’s very true. But you--where are you going, where are

you coming from, what have you been doing since you left me, what had

you been doing before? Now, tell me--do tell me. I know very little

of the world, and perhaps you are better fitted to advise me in its

affairs than I am qualified to give advice to you; but I am very

sincere, and I have a reason (you have not forgotten it) for loving

you. I have felt since that time as if my love for him who died, had

been transferred to you who stood beside his bed. If this,’ he added,

looking upwards, ‘is the beautiful creation that springs from ashes,

let its peace prosper with me, as I deal tenderly and compassionately

by this young child!’

The plain, frank kindness of the honest schoolmaster, the affectionate

earnestness of his speech and manner, the truth which was stamped upon

his every word and look, gave the child a confidence in him, which the

utmost arts of treachery and dissimulation could never have awakened in

her breast. She told him all--that they had no friend or

relative--that she had fled with the old man, to save him from a

madhouse and all the miseries he dreaded--that she was flying now, to

save him from himself--and that she sought an asylum in some remote

and primitive place, where the temptation before which he fell would

never enter, and her late sorrows and distresses could have no place.

The schoolmaster heard her with astonishment. ‘This child!’--he

thought--‘Has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and

dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by

strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And yet the

world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest

and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any

earthly record, and are suffered every day! And should I be surprised

to hear the story of this child!’

What more he thought or said, matters not. It was concluded that Nell

and her grandfather should accompany him to the village whither he was

bound, and that he should endeavour to find them some humble occupation

by which they could subsist. ‘We shall be sure to succeed,’ said the

schoolmaster, heartily. ‘The cause is too good a one to fail.’

They arranged to proceed upon their journey next evening, as a

stage-waggon, which travelled for some distance on the same road as

they must take, would stop at the inn to change horses, and the driver

for a small gratuity would give Nell a place inside. A bargain was

soon struck when the waggon came; and in due time it rolled away; with

the child comfortably bestowed among the softer packages, her

grandfather and the schoolmaster walking on beside the driver, and the

landlady and all the good folks of the inn screaming out their good

wishes and farewells.

What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of travelling, to lie inside

that slowly-moving mountain, listening to the tinkling of the horses’

bells, the occasional smacking of the carter’s whip, the smooth rolling

of the great broad wheels, the rattle of the harness, the cheery

good-nights of passing travellers jogging past on little short-stepped

horses--all made pleasantly indistinct by the thick awning, which

seemed made for lazy listening under, till one fell asleep! The very

going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, as the head jogged to

and fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue,

and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, lulling to the

senses--and the slow waking up, and finding one’s self staring out

through the breezy curtain half-opened in the front, far up into the

cold bright sky with its countless stars, and downward at the driver’s

lantern dancing on like its namesake Jack of the swamps and marshes,

and sideways at the dark grim trees, and forward at the long bare road

rising up, up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a sharp high ridge as

if there were no more road, and all beyond was sky--and the stopping at

the inn to bait, and being helped out, and going into a room with fire

and candles, and winking very much, and being agreeably reminded that

the night was cold, and anxious for very comfort’s sake to think it

colder than it was!--What a delicious journey was that journey in the

waggon.

Then the going on again--so fresh at first, and shortly afterwards so

sleepy. The waking from a sound nap as the mail came dashing past like

a highway comet, with gleaming lamps and rattling hoofs, and visions of

a guard behind, standing up to keep his feet warm, and of a gentleman

in a fur cap opening his eyes and looking wild and stupefied--the

stopping at the turnpike where the man was gone to bed, and knocking at

the door until he answered with a smothered shout from under the

bed-clothes in the little room above, where the faint light was

burning, and presently came down, night-capped and shivering, to throw

the gate wide open, and wish all waggons off the road except by day.

The cold sharp interval between night and morning--the distant streak

of light widening and spreading, and turning from grey to white, and

from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red--the presence of

day, with all its cheerfulness and life--men and horses at the

plough--birds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields,

frightening them away with rattles. The coming to a town--people busy

in the markets; light carts and chaises round the tavern yard;

tradesmen standing at their doors; men running horses up and down the

street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting in the dirty distance,

getting off with long strings at their legs, running into clean

chemists’ shops and being dislodged with brooms by ‘prentices; the

night coach changing horses--the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and

discontented, with three months’ growth of hair in one night--the

coachman fresh as from a band-box, and exquisitely beautiful by

contrast:--so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of

incidents--when was there a journey with so many delights as that

journey in the waggon!

Sometimes walking for a mile or two while her grandfather rode inside,

and sometimes even prevailing upon the schoolmaster to take her place

and lie down to rest, Nell travelled on very happily until they came to

a large town, where the waggon stopped, and where they spent a night.

They passed a large church; and in the streets were a number of old

houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed and re-crossed in

a great many directions with black beams, which gave them a remarkable

and very ancient look. The doors, too, were arched and low, some with

oaken portals and quaint benches, where the former inhabitants had sat

on summer evenings. The windows were latticed in little diamond panes,

that seemed to wink and blink upon the passengers as if they were dim

of sight. They had long since got clear of the smoke and furnaces,

except in one or two solitary instances, where a factory planted among

fields withered the space about it, like a burning mountain. When they

had passed through this town, they entered again upon the country, and

began to draw near their place of destination.

It was not so near, however, but that they spent another night upon the

road; not that their doing so was quite an act of necessity, but that

the schoolmaster, when they approached within a few miles of his

village, had a fidgety sense of his dignity as the new clerk, and was

unwilling to make his entry in dusty shoes, and travel-disordered

dress. It was a fine, clear, autumn morning, when they came upon the

scene of his promotion, and stopped to contemplate its beauties.

‘See--here’s the church!’ cried the delighted schoolmaster in a low

voice; ‘and that old building close beside it, is the schoolhouse, I’ll

be sworn. Five-and-thirty pounds a-year in this beautiful place!’

They admired everything--the old grey porch, the mullioned windows, the

venerable gravestones dotting the green churchyard, the ancient tower,

the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of cottage, barn, and

homestead, peeping from among the trees; the stream that rippled by the

distant water-mill; the blue Welsh mountains far away. It was for such

a spot the child had wearied in the dense, dark, miserable haunts of

labour. Upon her bed of ashes, and amidst the squalid horrors through

which they had forced their way, visions of such scenes--beautiful

indeed, but not more beautiful than this sweet reality--had been always

present to her mind. They had seemed to melt into a dim and airy

distance, as the prospect of ever beholding them again grew fainter;

but, as they receded, she had loved and panted for them more.

‘I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes,’ said the schoolmaster,

at length breaking the silence into which they had fallen in their

gladness. ‘I have a letter to present, and inquiries to make, you

know. Where shall I take you? To the little inn yonder?’

‘Let us wait here,’ rejoined Nell. ‘The gate is open. We will sit in

the church porch till you come back.’

‘A good place too,’ said the schoolmaster, leading the way towards it,

disencumbering himself of his portmanteau, and placing it on the stone

seat. ‘Be sure that I come back with good news, and am not long gone!’

So, the happy schoolmaster put on a bran-new pair of gloves which he

had carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way, and hurried

off, full of ardour and excitement.

The child watched him from the porch until the intervening foliage hid

him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the old

churchyard--so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress upon the

fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps noiseless,

seemed an invasion of its silence. It was a very aged, ghostly place;

the church had been built many hundreds of years ago, and had once had

a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel

windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while

other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen

down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass,

as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes

with the dust of men. Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and

forming a part of the ruin which some pains had been taken to render

habitable in modern times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows

and oaken doors, fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate.

Upon these tenements, the attention of the child became exclusively

riveted. She knew not why. The church, the ruin, the antiquated

graves, had equal claims at least upon a stranger’s thoughts, but from

the moment when her eyes first rested on these two dwellings, she could

turn to nothing else. Even when she had made the circuit of the

enclosure, and, returning to the porch, sat pensively waiting for their

friend, she took her station where she could still look upon them, and

felt as if fascinated towards that spot.