THE curate and his pupil trudged along in the dark, guided by the lantern which threw a gleam along the road and showed them the irregularities in it, which indeed they both knew very well, avoiding by instinct the bit of broken causeway before the schoolhouse, and the heap of crates and packages that were always to be found in front of the shop. The darkness of the village was not like the modified darkness to which dwellers in towns are accustomed. It was a blackness which could be felt; without any relief. But then both of these people knew every step of the way. The drawback of the darkness, however, was that one could not see who might be listening, and had, therefore, no guidance to tone one’s voice or change the subject when there were people passing by, to whom one did not care to confess all one’s thoughts. This, however, very little affected John and the curate, who knew everybody, and had nothing in the world to conceal.
‘I’m very glad, John,’ said the curate, as they trudged along, speaking a little louder than usual because of the night; for it was so heavy and depressing that it seemed to require more cheer than usual in the human voices, ‘very glad that your grandfather and grandmother take it so well. It’s a very fine profession, the best you can have.’
‘Yes, that is just what I think,’ said John, ‘it’s not a mere trade to make one’s living by. It means more than that.’
‘Yes, a great deal; but, all the same, a sure trade to make one’s living by is something. You must not be contemptuous——’
‘I, sir!’ said John. ‘I hope I’m not contemptuous of anything; but if you can make your living and do something for your fellow-creatures at the same time—like yourself,’ the boy said, lowering his voice, ‘though not in such a fine way——’
‘Ah, my boy,’ said the curate, in a tone which implied that he was shaking his head ‘when you’re older even you, perhaps, won’t think so much of my way of serving my fellow-creatures. It is not very much one can do. If I were in the East-End of London, perhaps, or on a mission—but never mind about that. You must remember that building lighthouses is the heroic part, but learning to survey and to calculate, or having to work at machinery, as you would do if you went to my brother——’
‘I’d like the one for the sake of the other,’ said John.
‘But you might never, perhaps, get to the other. You may have to grind for years at the mechanical part. You must not form too high expectations. We all have our dreams of lighthouses—and then, perhaps, never get any further than to make a bit of railway or to look after the fall of the water in a lock.’
‘You always say,’ cried the boy, ‘that a firm resolution is half the battle.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the curate, and once more there was that in his voice which sounded as if he were shaking his head. ‘Ah, yes,’ he went on, with a laugh, ‘that’s the greatest part of the battle. I never said a wiser thing (if I said it) than that. Solomon himself couldn’t teach you anything better. Stick to it with a determination that you are going to succeed, and, unless you are very unfortunate indeed, you will succeed. Ah! what is that! Who is there? The lantern, John.’
They had just passed the village public-house, which was a thorn in the curate’s flesh, and had dimly perceived, by the light of the half-open door, dim figures striding out and flitting into the darkness; for the hour of closing was near. Perhaps one of the times Mr. Cattley shook his head, it was at this headquarters of opposition to all he was trying to do. He was not of different clay from other men, and he hated the place, as those who have had to contend against an evil influence, whose headquarters they cannot reach, are apt to do, with more vehemence than perfect justice demands. Some one had addressed him, as he spoke to John, with a hoarse, ‘I say, master,’ out of the darkness, and there had come along with the voice into the fresh, chill, and wide air round them that overpowering smell of drink which sickens both the senses and the heart. It must have been a very bold parishioner, indeed, who could have addressed the curate at that stage, and it was with a voice much sterner than usual that he said,
‘The lantern, John!’
John raised the lantern quickly, sharing his master’s indignation, and, the light suddenly shifting, fell upon a figure which, happily, was not that of a village toper. It was a tall man, in rough clothes, with a red spotted handkerchief tied round his neck, and a hat slouched over his eyes. If there had been any possibility of violence in Edgeley, the curate, who was a slim man, and, notwithstanding his height, not very strong, might have shrunk from such a meeting in the dark; but he was in his own kingdom, and there was not one even of the worst characters in the village who did not more or less acknowledge his authority. And Mr. Cattley, besides, was not the sort of man to be afraid. He said, with a voice which changed at once from the friendly softness with which he had been talking to the boy,
‘Who are you? and what do you want?’
His tone, John thought, was enough to strike terror to the most obdurate heart.
‘No offence, master,’ said the man. ‘I was only wishful to ask if you know’d of a Missis May, that I’ve been told lived about here.’
‘No. I know no one of that name,’ said the curate. ‘There is no Mrs. May in this village. You seem to be a stranger here. Wherever you’re lodging, I advise you to go home and go to bed. It’s too late to be asking for anyone at this hour of the night.’
‘You think I’m drunk, and so do a many; but I’m not drunk. I’ve only a drop of beer on board,’ said the man. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve had the chance, and I’m a-making up for lost time.’
‘Where are you lodging?’ said the curate, in his stern voice.
‘They said they’d give me a bed there,’ said the stranger, pointing with a hand towards the public-house; ‘but, now they’ve found out about me, they say they won’t. And it’s drefful hard upon a man as has come out of his way for nothing, as ye may say, but to do a good turn. And that’s the reason as I was asking for Missis May; for she’ll put me up if he won’t, a good lady as her husband was my mate, and I’m come to bring her news out of my way.’
‘Sir,’ said Johnson of the public-house, coming up on the other side, ‘he’s a man as has let out as he’s fresh from Portland, just served out his time; and he’s looking for a woman as is the wife of another of ’em. There ain’t no such person here. I’ve told him over and over again. And I’ve told him to move on, and be off to the station afore the last train goes by. But I can’t get him to do neither one thing nor the other. And I can’t be expected to put up a fellow like that in my house.’
‘Was it in your house he got all the drink he has swallowed?’ said the curate. ‘If you will not give him a bed to sleep it off in, why did you give him the drink?’
‘Oh, that’s a different thing. Every man is free to have his glass,’ said Johnson, with a growl of insolence. Then he added, ‘And it only came out in his drink who he was, and all this bother about his Mrs. May. There’s nobody here or hereabout of that name.’
‘It’s none of you or your miserable holes I want. It’s my mate’s wife as I want,’ said the man. ‘You tell me where she lives, or I’ll—I’ll break all your windows and pull your old barracks about your ears.’
He said this with an interlarding of many oaths, and, swaying back and forward, finally lost his balance and dropped upon the roadside, where John, changing the level of the lantern, poured a stream of light upon him, as he sat up with tipsy gravity, leaning against a low wall which bordered the path, and looking up at the group before him with blank, lacklustre eyes.
‘He can’t be left out here in the cold, whatever he is,’ the curate said.
‘That’s all very well for you, Mr. Cattley. Them as hasn’t got to do a thing never see any difficulty in it,’ said the master of the public-house.
‘I can’t stand here bandying words,’ said the curate; ‘if you will not take him in, I must do it. He can’t be left to be frozen to death in the public road. Some of those fellows who are skulking away in the dark not to face me—but I see them well enough.’ Mr. Cattley raised his voice, and terror ran through the loiterers who had been lingering to see what would come of this exciting incident. ‘Some of them can help me along with him to my house. Come along, and lend a hand, before he goes to sleep.’
‘I ain’t a-going to sleep,’ said the stranger, haranguing from what he evidently felt to be a point of ‘vantage. ‘I’m as steady as a church, and a deal soberer nor e’er a one of you. I wants Missis May, as’ll take me in and do for me thankful, along of her husband, as was my mate.’
‘Come along, men,’ said Mr. Cattley, sharply. ‘I’m not strong enough to do it myself, and you won’t leave the boy to drag him, will you, not the boy——’
‘If it’s come to that, sir,’ said the man of the public-house, ‘I’d rather do it nor trouble you. After all, it’s more fit for me to have him than you. Supposing as he can’t pay, I take it you’d rather pay for him than have him in your house. Hey, man, get up and get to bed!’
‘All I’m wishful for,’ said the man, growing more and more solemn, ‘is for some one to direct me where Missis May’s living. It’s she as will be glad to see me wi’ news—news of her man—as was my mate.’
‘Thank you, Johnson,’ said Mr. Cattley, with a reluctance which he felt to be unjust. ‘I will certainly pay, and I’m obliged to you, which is more. Do you want the lantern? Then come along, John, you’ve had enough of this dismal sight.’
He went along the remainder of the way, which was not long, in silence, and it was only at his own door that he spoke.
‘John,’ he said, ‘that’s such a spectacle as the Spartans, don’t you remember, gave to their boys.’
‘It was awfully cruel, sir,’ cried John, ‘they made the Helots drink—and then—it wasn’t the fault of the poor brutes. I would rather go without the lesson than have it like that.’
‘And I’d rather you had gone without this lesson. I’d rather you knew nothing about it. But we can’t abstract ourselves from the world, and we can’t live in the world without seeing many horrible things. I wonder now whether there was a bit of faithfulness and human feeling at the bottom of all that? Heaven knows!—or it might be the reverse—an attempt to get something out of some poor decent woman to cover her shame. Did you ever hear the name of May about here?’
‘No,’ said John, ‘never;’ and then he paused for a moment. ‘I seem to know something about the name; but I’m sure there’s no one called May here.’
‘Not down by Feather Lane?’ said the curate, thoughtfully. ‘I must speak to Miss Summers about it. She will know. Now, here we are at my door, and I shouldn’t have let you come so far. Go quickly home, my dear boy.’
John obeyed, yet did not obey, this injunction. He went home without lingering, but he did not go quickly. Why there should be a particular pleasure in lingering out of doors in the dark in a world unseen, where there is nothing to please either mind or eye, it would be difficult to say. But that there is, every imaginative spirit must have felt. The boy strolled along in a meditative way, dangling his lantern at his cold fingers’ end, throwing stray gleams upon the road, which gave him a fantastic half-conscious amusement but no aid, though, indeed, he did not require that, in seeing his way. The landlord of the ‘Green Man’ was still outside discoursing upon the hardship of being compelled to take a drunken brute fresh out of prison into his respectable house.
‘We’ll maybe wake up in the morning all dead corpses,’ he said, unconscious of the warrant of Scripture for the words, ‘all along of a clergyman as just fancies things.’
‘Put him in the barn,’ said one of the loungers about, slow spirits excited by the stir of something happening, who had returned and hung about the door discussing it after the curate had passed. ‘Put him in the stable, that’s good enough for the likes of him.’
‘I’ll put him in the loft and turn the key upon him, so as he’ll do no harm,’ said the landlord. The man, as John made out with a gleam of his lantern, was still seated on the edge of the pathway, supported against the wall, his red handkerchief showing in the light. He was muttering on in a long hoarse monologue, in which there was still audible from time to time the name of May.
May! John asked himself, as he went on, how was it that he knew that name? It seemed to be so familiar to him, and yet he could not recall distinctly what the association was. Then he pondered on what the curate had said, whether by any chance there might be what he had called ‘a bit of faithfulness and human feeling’ at the bottom of the miserable fellow’s persistence. Nobody but Mr. Cattley would have thought of that, the boy said to himself; and there rose before his half-dreaming eyes a picture of some poor creature waiting for news, blessing even this wretched man for bringing them to her.
John had read ‘Les Miserables’ (in the original; for Mr. Cattley knew so much! and had taught him French as well as Latin), and a comparison between the incidents rose in his mind. He felt, as one feels at that age, that it was rather grand to be going along in the dark, thinking of Victor Hugo’s great book and comparing French and English sentiment, he who was only a country boy; and this feeling mingled with the comparison he was making. Mr. Cattley was not an ideal saint like Monseigneur Bienvenu, but neither were the English village-folks so hard-hearted as the French ones. They would not have left even a returned convict to perish in the cold. This suggestion of perishing in the cold, which made him shiver, sent John’s imagination all abroad upon shipwrecks at sea, and tales of desolate places, the martyrs of the Arctic regions and those in the burning deserts; his fancy flitting from one to another without coherence or any close connection as thoughts do. And then, with a sudden pang, as if an arrow had gone into his heart, he remembered what had been told him only this evening, that his own father, papa, who had been a sort of god to his infancy, was dead. How was it possible that he could forget it as he had done, letting any trifling incident take possession of his mind and banish that great fact from the foreground? He felt more guilty than could be said, and yet, while feeling so, his mind flitted off again in spite of him to a hundred other subjects. The recollection returned with a fluctuating thrill, at intervals, but it would not remain. It linked itself even with this question about Mrs. May. May! what had that to do with the revelation which had been made to him?—that, a mere vulgar incident seen on the roadside—the other an event which ought to make everything sad to him.
He went on a little quicker, spurred by the thought. His father’s death had not made everything sad to him. It was but one incident among many which came back from time to time; but the other incidents—he felt ashamed to think they had interested him quite as much. It had been altogether an exciting evening. First that intimation, and then the talk about what he was going to be, and the consent of his grandparents to his plan. Either of these facts had been quite enough to fill up an evening, or, indeed, many evenings, and now they all came together; and then, as if that were not enough, the startling scene in the darkness of the night, the returned convict just like ‘Les Miserables,’ but so different, the ‘bit of faithfulness,’ perhaps, and ‘human feeling.’ John said to himself that this was a poor little outside affair, not worth to be mentioned beside the others, but yet he could not help wondering whether the poor fellow, though he was so little worthy of interest, would ever find his Mrs. May.
He got home before he expected, in the multiplicity of these thoughts; and when the door was opened to him noiselessly, without anyone appearing, he knew it was grandmamma, who was always on the watch for him. She said, in a whisper,
‘You’ve been a long time, dear. Hush, don’t make any noise, grandfather has gone up to bed.’
‘I was kept by a strange thing,’ said John. ‘Come into the parlour, and I’ll tell you, grandmamma. Why, the fire is nearly out, though it’s so cold!’
‘There’s a fire in your room, my dear. You forget how late it is—near eleven o’clock. And what was the strange thing, Johnnie? There are not many strange things in our village at this hour of the night.’
She was wrapped up in a great white shawl, and the pretty old face smiled over this, her complexion relieved and brightened by it, a picture of an old lady, beaming with tender love and cheerful calm.
‘It was very strange,’ said John, ‘though it seemed at first only a drunken fellow at the door of the “Green Man.”’
‘Mr. Cattley shouldn’t have taken you that way. I don’t like to have you mixed up with drunken men.’
‘How could I be mixed up?’ said John, with a laugh. ‘But the strange thing is that he says he’s a returned convict, and that he was calling out and asking everyone for some woman, a Mrs. May.’
Mrs. Sandford clutched at John with her hand. Her lips fell apart with horror, the colour fled from her face.
‘Oh, good Lord! What is it you are saying?’ she gasped, scarcely able to speak.
‘You don’t mean to say you are frightened, with the doors locked and all the windows fastened! Why, grandmamma,’ said John, laughing, ‘you are as bad as the people in “Les Miserables,” that I read to you, you know—— ’
‘Oh, yes, I’m frightened!’ she said, leaning upon him, and putting her hand to her heart, as if she had received a blow.
He felt the throbbing which went all through the slight frame as if it had been a machine vibrating with the quickened movement.
‘Why, grandmamma,’ he said again. ‘You to be frightened! He can’t, if he were a demon, do any harm to you. And shall I tell you what Mr. Cattley said? He said it might be a bit of faithfulness and human feeling, his coming to look for this poor woman, to bring her news of her husband.’
‘What had he to do with her husband?’ said the old lady, almost in a whisper, turning away from him her scared and panic-stricken face.
‘Oh, he had been in the same prison with him,’ said John. ‘He said her husband was his mate—that means, you know—but of course you know what it means. And, by-the-by,’ said the boy, ‘can you tell me, grandmamma, how it is that I seem to have some association or other—I can’t tell what it is—with the name of May?’