CHAPTER XLIV
FIRST WORDS
It was the spring of 1800. Old people yet can tell of the hardfamine of that year. The harvest of the autumn before had failed;the war and the corn laws had brought the price of corn up to afamine rate; and much of what came into the market was unsound, andconsequently unfit for food, yet hungry creatures bought it eagerly,and tried to cheat disease by mixing the damp, sweet, clammy flourwith rice or potato meal. Rich families denied themselves pastry andall unnecessary and luxurious uses of wheat in any shape; the dutyon hair-powder was increased; and all these palliatives were but asdrops in the ocean of the great want of the people.
Philip, in spite of himself, recovered and grew stronger; and as hegrew stronger hunger took the place of loathing dislike to food. Buthis money was all spent; and what was his poor pension of sixpence aday in that terrible year of famine? Many a summer's night he walkedfor hours and hours round the house which once was his, which mightbe his now, with all its homely, blessed comforts, could he but goand assert his right to it. But to go with authority, and in hispoor, maimed guise assert that right, he had need be other thanPhilip Hepburn. So he stood in the old shelter of the steep, crookedlane opening on to the hill out of the market-place, and watched thesoft fading of the summer's eve into night; the closing of the oncefamiliar shop; the exit of good, comfortable William Coulson, goingto his own home, his own wife, his comfortable, plentiful supper.Then Philip--there were no police in those days, and scarcely an oldwatchman in that primitive little town--would go round on the shadysides of streets, and, quickly glancing about him, cross the bridge,looking on the quiet, rippling stream, the gray shimmer foretellingthe coming dawn over the sea, the black masts and rigging of thestill vessels against the sky; he could see with his wistful, eagereyes the shape of the windows--the window of the very room in whichhis wife and child slept, unheeding of him, the hungry,broken-hearted outcast. He would go back to his lodging, and softlylift the latch of the door; still more softly, but never without anunspoken, grateful prayer, pass by the poor sleeping woman who hadgiven him a shelter and her share of God's blessing--she who, likehim, knew not the feeling of satisfied hunger; and then he laid himdown on the narrow pallet in the lean-to, and again gave Sylviahappy lessons in the kitchen at Haytersbank, and the dead werealive; and Charley Kinraid, the specksioneer, had never come totrouble the hopeful, gentle peace.
For widow Dobson had never taken Sylvia's advice. The tramp known toher by the name of Freeman--that in which he received hispension--lodged with her still, and paid his meagre shilling inadvance, weekly. A shilling was meagre in those hard days ofscarcity. A hungry man might easily eat the produce of a shilling ina day.
Widow Dobson pleaded this to Sylvia as an excuse for keeping herlodger on; to a more calculating head it might have seemed a reasonfor sending him away.
'Yo' see, missus,' said she, apologetically, to Sylvia, one evening,as the latter called upon the poor widow before going to fetchlittle Bella (it was now too hot for the child to cross the bridgein the full heat of the summer sun, and Jeremiah would take her upto her supper instead)--'Yo' see, missus, there's not a many as 'udtake him in for a shillin' when it goes so little way; or if theydid, they'd take it out on him some other way, an' he's not gettenmuch else, a reckon. He ca's me granny, but a'm vast mista'en ifhe's ten year younger nor me; but he's getten a fine appetite of hisown, choose how young he may be; an' a can see as he could eat adeal more nor he's getten money to buy, an' it's few as can mak'victual go farther nor me. Eh, missus, but yo' may trust me a'llsend him off when times is better; but just now it would be sendin'him to his death; for a ha' plenty and to spare, thanks be to Godan' yo'r bonny face.'
So Sylvia had to be content with the knowledge that the money shegladly gave to Kester's sister went partly to feed the lodger whowas neither labourer nor neighbour, but only just a tramp, who, shefeared, was preying on the good old woman. Still the cruel faminecut sharp enough to penetrate all hearts; and Sylvia, an hour afterthe conversation recorded above, was much touched, on her returnfrom Jeremiah Foster's with the little merry, chattering Bella, atseeing the feeble steps of one, whom she knew by description must bewidow Dobson's lodger, turn up from the newly-cut road which was tolead to the terrace walk around the North Cliff, a road which led tono dwelling but widow Dobson's. Tramp, and vagrant, he might be inthe eyes of the law; but, whatever his character, Sylvia could seehim before her in the soft dusk, creeping along, over the bridge,often stopping to rest and hold by some support, and then going onagain towards the town, to which she and happy little Bella werewending.
A thought came over her: she had always fancied that this unknownman was some fierce vagabond, and had dreaded lest in the lonely bitof road between widow Dobson's cottage and the peopled highway, heshould fall upon her and rob her if he learnt that she had moneywith her; and several times she had gone away without leaving thelittle gift she had intended, because she imagined that she had seenthe door of the small chamber in the 'lean-to' open softly while shewas there, as if the occupant (whom widow Dobson spoke of as neverleaving the house before dusk, excepting once a week) were listeningfor the chink of the coin in her little leathern purse. Now that shesaw him walking before her with heavy languid steps, this fear gaveplace to pity; she remembered her mother's gentle superstition whichhad prevented her from ever sending the hungry empty away, for fearlest she herself should come to need bread.
'Lassie,' said she to little Bella, who held a cake which Jeremiah'shousekeeper had given her tight in her hand, 'yon poor man theere ishungry; will Bella give him her cake, and mother will make heranother to-morrow twice as big?'
For this consideration, and with the feeling of satisfaction which agood supper not an hour ago gives even to the hungry stomach of achild of three years old, Bella, after some thought, graciouslyassented to the sacrifice.
Sylvia stopped, the cake in her hand, and turned her back to thetown, and to the slow wayfarer in front. Under the cover of hershawl she slipped a half-crown deep into the crumb of the cake, andthen restoring it to little Bella, she gave her her directions.
'Mammy will carry Bella; and when Bella goes past the poor man, sheshall give him the cake over mammy's shoulder. Poor man is sohungry; and Bella and mammy have plenty to eat, and to spare.'
The child's heart was touched by the idea of hunger, and her littlearm was outstretched ready for the moment her mother's hurried stepstook her brushing past the startled, trembling Philip.
'Poor man, eat this; Bella not hungry.'
They were the first words he had ever heard his child utter. Theechoes of them rang in his ears as he stood endeavouring to hide hisdisfigured face by looking over the parapet of the bridge down uponthe stream running away towards the ocean, into which his hot tearsslowly fell, unheeded by the weeper. Then he changed the intentionwith which he had set out upon his nightly walk, and turned back tohis lodging.
Of course the case was different with Sylvia; she would haveforgotten the whole affair very speedily, if it had not been forlittle Bella's frequent recurrence to the story of the hungry man,which had touched her small sympathies with the sense of anintelligible misfortune. She liked to act the dropping of the buninto the poor man's hand as she went past him, and would take up anyarticle near her in order to illustrate the gesture she had used.One day she got hold of Hester's watch for this purpose, as being ofthe same round shape as the cake; and though Hester, for whosebenefit the child was repeating the story in her broken language forthe third or fourth time, tried to catch the watch as it wasintended that she should (she being the representative of the'hungry man' for the time being), it went to the ground with a smashthat frightened the little girl, and she began to cry at themischief she had done.
'Don't cry, Bella,' said Hester. 'Niver play with watches again. Ididn't see thee at mine, or I'd ha' stopped thee in time. But I'lltake it to old Darley's on th' quay-side, and maybe he'll soon setit to rights again. Only Bella must niver play with watches
again.'
'Niver no more!' promised the little sobbing child. And that eveningHester took her watch down to old Darley's.
This William Darley was the brother of the gardener at the rectory;the uncle to the sailor who had been shot by the press-gang yearsbefore, and to his bed-ridden sister. He was a clever mechanician,and his skill as a repairer of watches and chronometers was greatamong the sailors, with whom he did a very irregular sort oftraffic, conducted, often without much use of money, but rather onthe principle of barter, they bringing him foreign coins and oddcuriosities picked up on their travels in exchange for his servicesto their nautical instruments or their watches. If he had ever hadcapital to extend his business, he might have been a rich man; butit is to be doubted whether he would have been as happy as he wasnow in his queer little habitation of two rooms, the front one beingboth shop and workshop, the other serving the double purpose ofbedroom and museum.
The skill of this odd-tempered, shabby old man was sometimes soughtby the jeweller who kept the more ostentatious shop in the HighStreet; but before Darley would undertake any 'tickle' piece ofdelicate workmanship for the other, he sneered at his ignorance, andtaunted and abused him well. Yet he had soft places in his heart,and Hester Rose had found her way to one by her patient, enduringkindness to his bed-ridden niece. He never snarled at her as he didat too many; and on the few occasions when she had asked him to doanything for her, he had seemed as if she were conferring the favouron him, not he on her, and only made the smallest possible charge.
She found him now sitting where he could catch the most light forhis work, spectacles on nose, and microscope in hand.
He took her watch, and examined it carefully without a word in replyto her. Then he began to open it and take it to pieces, in order toascertain the nature of the mischief.
Suddenly he heard her catch her breath with a checked sound ofsurprise. He looked at her from above his spectacles; she washolding a watch in her hand which she had just taken up off thecounter.
'What's amiss wi' thee now?' said Darley. 'Hast ta niver seen awatch o' that mak' afore? or is it them letters on t' back, as is sowonderful?'
Yes, it was those letters--that interlaced, old-fashioned cipher.That Z. H. that she knew of old stood for Zachary Hepburn, Philip'sfather. She knew how Philip valued this watch. She remembered havingseen it in his hands the very day before his disappearance, when hewas looking at the time in his annoyance at Sylvia's detention inher walk with baby. Hester had no doubt that he had taken this watchas a matter of course away with him. She felt sure that he would notpart with this relic of his dead father on any slight necessity.Where, then, was Philip?--by what chance of life or death had this,his valued property, found its way once more to Monkshaven?
'Where did yo' get this?' she asked, in as quiet a manner as shecould assume, sick with eagerness as she was.
To no one else would Darley have answered such a question. He made amystery of most of his dealings; not that he had anything toconceal, but simply because he delighted in concealment. He took itout of her hands, looked at the number marked inside, and themaker's name--'Natteau Gent, York'--and then replied,--
'A man brought it me yesterday, at nightfall, for t' sell it. It's amatter o' forty years old. Natteau Gent has been dead and in hisgrave pretty nigh as long as that. But he did his work well when hewere alive; and so I gave him as brought it for t' sell about asmuch as it were worth, i' good coin. A tried him first i' t'bartering line, but he wouldn't bite; like enough he wantedfood,--many a one does now-a-days.'
'Who was he?' gasped Hester.
'Bless t' woman! how should I know?'
'What was he like?--how old?--tell me.'
'My lass, a've summut else to do wi' my eyes than go peering intomen's faces i' t' dusk light.'
'But yo' must have had light for t' judge about the watch.'
'Eh! how sharp we are! A'd a candle close to my nose. But a didn'ttak' it up for to gaze int' his face. That wouldn't be manners, tomy thinking.'
Hester was silent. Then Darley's heart relented.
'If yo're so set upo' knowing who t' fellow was, a could, mebbe, putyo' on his tracks.'
'How?' said Hester, eagerly. 'I do want to know. I want to know verymuch, and for a good reason.'
'Well, then, a'll tell yo'. He's a queer tyke, that one is. A'll bebound he were sore pressed for t' brass; yet he out's wi' a goodhalf-crown, all wrapped up i' paper, and he axes me t' make a holein it. Says I, "It's marring good king's coin, at after a've made ahole in't, it'll never pass current again." So he mumbles, andmumbles, but for a' that it must needs be done; and he's left ithere, and is t' call for 't to-morrow at e'en.'
'Oh, William Darley!' said Hester, clasping her hands tighttogether. 'Find out who he is, where he is--anything--everythingabout him--and I will so bless yo'.'
Darley looked at her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on hisgrave face. 'My woman,' he said 'a could ha' wished as you'd niverseen t' watch. It's poor, thankless work thinking too much on one o'God's creatures. But a'll do thy bidding,' he continued, in alighter and different tone. 'A'm a 'cute old badger when need be.Come for thy watch in a couple o' days, and a'll tell yo' all asa've learnt.'
So Hester went away, her heart beating with the promise of knowingsomething about Philip,--how much, how little, in these firstmoments, she dared not say even to herself. Some sailor newly landedfrom distant seas might have become possessed of Philip's watch infar-off latitudes; in which case, Philip would be dead. That mightbe. She tried to think that this was the most probable way ofaccounting for the watch. She could be certain as to the positiveidentity of the watch--being in William Darley's possession. Again,it might be that Philip himself was near at hand--was here in thisvery place--starving, as too many were, for insufficiency of meansto buy the high-priced food. And then her heart burnt within her asshe thought of the succulent, comfortable meals which Sylviaprovided every day--nay, three times a day--for the household in themarket-place, at the head of which Philip ought to have been; buthis place knew him not. For Sylvia had inherited her mother's talentfor housekeeping, and on her, in Alice's decrepitude and Hester'sother occupations in the shop, devolved the cares of due provisionfor the somewhat heterogeneous family.
And Sylvia! Hester groaned in heart over the remembrance of Sylvia'swords, 'I can niver forgive him the wrong he did to me,' that nightwhen Hester had come, and clung to her, making the sad, shamefulconfession of her unreturned love.
What could ever bring these two together again? Could Hesterherself--ignorant of the strange mystery of Sylvia's heart, as thosewho are guided solely by obedience to principle must ever be of theclue to the actions of those who are led by the passionate ebb andflow of impulse? Could Hester herself? Oh! how should she speak, howshould she act, if Philip were near--if Philip were sad and inmiserable estate? Her own misery at this contemplation of the casewas too great to bear; and she sought her usual refuge in thethought of some text, some promise of Scripture, which shouldstrengthen her faith.
'With God all things are possible,' said she, repeating the words asthough to lull her anxiety to rest.
Yes; with God all things are possible. But ofttimes He does his workwith awful instruments. There is a peacemaker whose name is Death.