nearly as sad as Lease's.
"Will you take it to them yourself, Johnny, in a covered basket, and not
let it be seen? That is, make it your own doing?"
"Yes."
"Go to the kitchen then, and ask Molly. There are some odds and ends of
things in the larder that will not be particularly wanted. You see,
Johnny, I do not like to take an active part in this; it would seem like
opposing the Squire."
Molly was stooping before the big fire, basting the meat, in one of her
vile humours. If I wanted to rob the larder, I must do it, she cried;
it was my business, not hers; and she dashed the basting spoon across
the table by way of accompaniment.
I gave a good look round the larder, and took a raised pork-pie that had
a piece cut out of it, and a leg of mutton three parts eaten. On the
shelf were a dozen mince-pies, just out of their patty-pans; I took six
and left six. Molly, screwing her face round the kitchen-door, caught
sight of them as they went into the basket, and rushing after me out of
the house, shrieked out for her mince-pies.
The race went on. She was a woman not to be daunted. Just as we turned
round by the yellow barn, I first, she raving behind, the Squire pounced
upon us, asking what the uproar meant. Molly told her tale. I was a
thief, and had gone off with the whole larder, more particularly with
her mince-pies.
"Open the basket, Johnny," said the Squire: which was the one Tod and I
used when we went fishing.
No sooner was it done than Molly marched off with the pies in triumph.
The Pater regarded the pork-pie and the meat with a curious gaze.
"This is for you and Joe, I suppose. I should like to know for how many
more."
I was one of the worst to conceal things, when taken-to like this, and
he got it all out of me in no time. And then he put his hand on my
shoulder and ordered me to say _who_ the things were for. Which I had to
do.
Well, there was a row. He wanted to know what I meant by being wicked
enough to give food to Lease. I said it was for the children. I'm afraid
I almost cried, for I did not like him to be angry with me, but I know I
promised not to eat any dinner at home for three days if he would let me
take the meat. Molly's comments, echoing through the house, betrayed to
Mrs. Todhetley what had happened, and she came down the road with a
shawl over her head. She told the Squire the truth then: that she had
sanctioned it. She said she feared the Leases were quite in extremity,
and begged him to let the meat go.
"Be off for this once, you young thief," stamped the Squire, "but don't
let me catch you at anything of this sort again."
So the meat went to the Leases, and two loaves that Mrs. Todhetley
whispered me to order for them at Ford's. When I reached home with the
empty basket, they were going in to dinner. I took a book and stayed in
the parlour. In a minute or two the Squire sent to ask what I was doing
that for.
"It's all right, Thomas. I don't want any dinner to-day."
Old Thomas went away and returned again, saying the master ordered me to
go in. But I wouldn't do anything of the sort. If he forgot the bargain,
I did not.
Out came the Squire, his face red, napkin in hand, and laid hold of me
by the shoulders.
"You obstinate young Turk! How dare you defy me? Come along."
"But it is not to defy you, sir. It was a bargain, you know; I
promised."
"What was a bargain?"
"That I should not have any dinner for three days. Indeed I meant it."
The Squire's answer was to propel me into the dining-room. "Move down,
Joe," he said, "I'll have him by me to-day. I'll see whether he is to
starve himself out of bravado."
"Why, what's up?" asked Tod, as he went to a lower seat. "What have you
been doing, Johnny?"
"Never mind," said the Squire, putting enough mutton on my plate for
two. "You eat that, Mr. Johnny?"
It went on so throughout dinner. Mrs. Todhetley gave me a big share of
apple pudding; and, when the macaroni came on, the Squire heaped my
plate. And I know it was all done to show he was not really angry with
me for having taken the things to the Leases.
Mr. Cole, the surgeon, came in after dinner, and was told of my
wickedness. Lena ran up to me and said might she send her new sixpence
to the poor little children who had no bread to eat.
"What's that Lease about, that he does not go to work?" asked the
Squire, in loud tones. "Letting folks hear that his young ones are
starving!"
"The man can't work," said Mr. Cole. "He is out on probation, you know,
waiting for the verdict, and the sentence on him that is to follow."
"Then why don't they return their verdict and sentence him?" demanded
the Squire, in his hot way.
"Ah!" said Mr. Cole, "it's what they ought to have done long ago."
"What will it be! Transportation?"
"I should take care it was _not_, if I were on the jury. The man had too
much work on him that day, and had had nothing to eat or drink for too
many hours."
"I won't hear a word in his defence," growled the Squire.
* * * * *
When the jury met for the last time, Lease was ill. A day or two before
that, some one had brought Lease word that Roberts, who had been
lingering all that time in the infirmary at Worcester, was going at
last. Upon which Lease started to see him. It was not the day for
visitors at the infirmary, but he gained admittance. Roberts was lying
in the accident ward, with his head low and a blue look in his face;
and the first thing Lease did, when he began to speak, was to burst out
crying. The man's strength had gone down to nothing and his spirit was
broken. Roberts made out that he was speaking of his distress at having
been the cause of the calamity, and asking to be forgiven.
"Mate," said Roberts, putting out his hand that Lease might take it,
"I've never had an ill thought to ye. Mishaps come to all of us that
have to do with rail-travelling; us drivers get more nor you pointsmen.
It might have happened to me to be the cause, just as well as to you.
Don't think no more of it."
"Say you forgive me," urged Lease, "or I shall not know how to bear it."
"I forgive thee with my whole heart and soul. I've had a spell of it
here, Lease, waiting for death, knowing it must come to me, and I've got
to look for it kindly. I don't think I'd go back to the world now if I
could. I'm going to a better. It seems just peace, and nothing less.
Shake hands, mate."
They shook hands.
"I wish ye'd lift my head a bit," Roberts said, after a while. "The
nurse she come and took away my pillow, thinking I might die easier, I
suppose: I've seen her do it to others. Maybe I was a'most gone, and the
sight of you woke me up again like."
Lease sat down on the bed and put the man's head upon his breast in the
position that seemed most easy to him; and Roberts died there.
It was one of the worst days we had that winter. Lease had a night's
walk home of many miles, the sleet and wind beating upon him all the
way. He was not well clad either, for his best things had been pawned.
So that when the inquest assembled two days afterwards, Lease did not
appear at it. He was in bed with inflammation of the chest, and Mr. Cole
told the coroner that it would be dangerous to take him out of it. Some
of them called it bronchitis; but the Squire never went in for new
names, and never would.
"I tell you what it is, gentlemen," broke in Mr. Cole, when they were
quarrelling as to whether there should be another adjournment or not,
"you'll put off and put off, until Lease slips through your fingers."
"Oh, will he, though!" blustered old Massock. "He had better try at it!
We'd soon fetch him back again."
"You'd be clever to do it," said the doctor.
Any way, whether it was this or not, they thought better of the
adjournment, and gave their verdict. "Manslaughter against Henry
Lease." And the coroner made out his warrant of committal to Worcester
county prison: where Lease would lie until the March assizes.
"I am not sure but it ought to have been returned Wilful Murder,"
remarked the Squire, as he and the doctor turned out of the Bull, and
picked their way over the slush towards Crabb Lane.
"It might make no difference, one way or the other," answered Mr. Cole.
"Make no difference! What d'ye mean? Murder and manslaughter are two
separate crimes, Cole, and must be punished accordingly. You see,
Johnny, what your friend Lease has come to!"
"What I meant, Squire, was this: that I don't much think Lease will live
to be tried at all."
"Not live!"
"I fancy not. Unless I am much mistaken, his life will have been claimed
by its Giver long before March."
The Squire stopped and looked at Cole. "What's the matter with him? This
inflammation--that you went and testified to?"
"That will be the cause of death, as returned to the registrar."
"Why, you speak just as if the man were dying now, Cole!"
"And I think he is. Lease has been very low for a long time," added Mr.
Cole; "half clad, and not a quarter fed. But it is not that, Squire:
heart and spirit are alike broken: and when this cold caught him, he had
no stamina to withstand it; and so it has seized upon a vital part."
"Do you mean to tell me to my face that he will die of it?" cried the
Squire, holding on by the middle button of old Cole's great-coat.
"Nonsense, man! you must cure him. We--we did not want him to die, you
know."
"His life or his death, as it may be, are in the hands of One higher
than I, Squire."
"I think I'll go in and see him," said the Squire, meekly.
Lease was lying on a bed close to the floor when we got to the top of
the creaky stairs, which had threatened to come down with the Squire's
weight and awkwardness. He had dozed off, and little Polly, sitting on
the boards, had her head upon his arm. Her starting up awoke Lease. I
was not in the habit of seeing dying people; but the thought struck me
that Lease must be dying. His pale weary face wore the same hue that
Jake's had worn when he was dying: if you have not forgotten him.
"God bless me!" exclaimed the Squire.
Lease looked up with his sad eyes. He supposed they had come to tell
him officially about the verdict--which had already reached him
unofficially.
"Yes, gentlemen, I know it," he said, trying to get up out of respect,
and falling back. "Manslaughter. I'd have been present if I could. Mr.
Cole knows I wasn't able. I think God is taking me instead."
"But this won't do, you know, Lease," said the Squire. "We don't want
you to die."
"Well, sir, I'm afraid I am not good for much now. And there'd be the
imprisonment, and then the sentence, so that I could not work for my
wife and children for some long years. When people come to know how I
repented of that night's mistake, and that I have died of it, why,
they'll perhaps befriend them and forgive me. I think God has forgiven
me: He is very merciful."
"I'll send you in some port wine and jelly and beef-tea--and some
blankets, Lease," cried the Squire quickly, as if he felt flurried.
"And, Lease, poor fellow, I am sorry for having been so angry with you."
"Thank you for all favours, sir, past and present. But for the help from
your house my little ones would have starved. God bless you all, and
forgive me! Master Johnny, God bless _you_."
"You'll rally yet, Lease; take heart," said the Squire.
"No, sir, I don't think so. The great dark load seems to have been
lifted off me, and light to be breaking. Don't sob, Polly! Perhaps
father will be able to see you from up there as well as if he stayed
here."
The first thing the Squire did when we got out, was to attack Mr. Cole,
telling him he ought not to have let Lease die. As he was in a way about
it, Cole excused it, quietly saying it was no fault of his.
"I should like to know what it is that has killed him, then?"
"Grief," said Mr. Cole. "The man has died of what we call a broken
heart. Hearts don't actually sever, you know, Squire, like a china
basin, and there's always some ostensible malady that serves as a reason
to talk about. In this case it will be bronchitis. Which, in point of
fact, is the final end, because Lease could not rally against it. He
told me yesterday that his heart had ached so keenly since November, it
seemed to have dried up within him."
"We are all a pack of hard-hearted sinners," groaned the Squire, in his
repentance. "Johnny, why could you not have found them out sooner? Where
was the use of your doing it at the eleventh hour, sir, I'd like to
know?"
Harry Lease died that night. And Crabb Lane, in a fit of repentance as
sudden as the Squire's, took the cost of the funeral off the parish
(giving some abuse in exchange) and went in a body to the grave. I and
Tod followed.
VII.
AUNT DEAN.
Timberdale was a small place on the other side of Crabb Ravine. Its
Rector was the Reverend Jacob Lewis. Timberdale called him Parson Lewis
when not on ceremony. He had married a widow, Mrs. Tanerton: she had a
good deal of money and two boys, and the parish thought the new lady
might be above them. But she proved kind and good; and her boys did not
ride roughshod over the land or break down the farmers' fences. She died
in three or four years, after a long illness.
Timberdale talked about her will, deeming it a foolish one. She left all
she possessed to the Rector, "in affectionate confidence," as the will
worded it, "knowing he would do what was right and just by her sons." As
Parson Lewis was an upright man with a conscience of his own, it was
supposed he would do so; but Timberdale considered that for the boys'
sake she should have made it sure herself. It was eight-hundred a year,
good measure.
Parson Lewis had a sister, Mrs. Dean, a widow also, who lived near
Liverpool. She was not left well-off at all; could but just make a
living of it. She used to come on long visits to the Parsonage, which
saved her cupboard at home; but it was said that Mrs. Lewis did not like
her, thinking her deceitful, and they did not get on very well together.
Parson Lewis, the meekest man in the world and the most easily led,
admitted to his wife that Rebecca had always been a little given to
scheming, but he thought her true at heart.
When poor Mrs. Lewis was out of the way for good in Timberdale
churchyard, Aunt Dean had the field to herself, and came and stayed as
long as she pleased, with her child, Alice. She was a little woman with
a mild face and fair skin, and had a sort of purring manner with her.
Scarcely speaking above her breath, and saying "dear" and "love" at
every sentence, and caressing people to their faces, the rule was to
fall in love with her at once. The boys, Herbert and Jack, had taken to
her without question from the first, and called her "Aunt." Though she
was of course no relation whatever to them.
Both the boys made much of Alice--a bright-eyed, pretty little girl with
brown curls and timid, winsome ways. Herbert, who was very studious
himself, helped her with her lessons: Jack, who was nearer her age,
but a few months older, took her out on expeditions, haymaking and
blackberrying and the like, and would bring her home with her frock torn
and her knees damaged. He told her that brave little girls never cried
with him; and the child would ignore the smart of the grazed knees
and show herself as brave as a martyr. Jack was so brave and fearless
himself and made so little of hurts, that she felt a sort of shame at
giving way to her natural timidity when with him. What Alice liked best
was to sit indoors by Herbert's side while he was at his lessons, and
read story books and fairy tales. Jack was the opposite of all that, and
a regular renegade in all kinds of study. He would have liked to pitch
the books into the fire, and did not even care for fairy tales. They
came often enough to Crabb Cot when we were there, and to our neighbours
the Coneys, with whom the Parsonage was intimate. I was only a little
fellow at the time, years younger than they were, but I remember I
liked Jack better than Herbert. As Tod did also for the matter of that.
Herbert was too clever for us, and he was to be a parson besides. He
chose the calling himself. More than once he was caught muffled in the
parson's white surplice, preaching to Jack and Alice a sermon of his own
composition.
Aunt Dean had her plans and her plots. One great plot was always at
work. She made it into a dream, and peeped into it night and day, as if
it were a kaleidoscope of rich and many colours. Herbert Tanerton was to
marry her daughter and succeed to his mother's property as eldest son:
Jack must go adrift, and earn his own living. She considered it was
already three parts as good as accomplished. To see Herbert and Alice
poring over books together side by side and to know that they had the
same tastes, was welcome to her as the sight of gold. As to Jack, with
his roving propensities, his climbing and his daring, she thought it
little matter if he came down a tree head-foremost some day, or pitched
head over heels into the depths of Crabb Ravine, and so threw his life
away. Not that she really wished any cruel fate for the boy; but she did
not care for him; and he might be terribly in the way, when her foolish
brother, the parson, came to apportion the money. And he _was_ foolish
in some things; soft, in fact: she often said so.
One summer day, when the fruit was ripe and the sun shining, Mr. Lewis
had gone into his study to write his next Sunday's sermon. He did not
get on very quickly, for Aunt Dean was in there also, and it disturbed
him a little. She was of restless habits, everlastingly dusting books,
and putting things in their places without rhyme or reason.
"Do you wish to keep out all _three_ of these inkstands, Jacob? It is
not necessary, I should think. Shall I put one up?"
The parson took his eyes off his sermon to answer. "I don't see that
they do any harm there, Rebecca. The children use two sometimes. Do as
you like, however."
Mrs. Dean put one of the inkstands into the book-case, and then looked
round the room to see what else she could do. A letter caught her eye.
"Jacob, I do believe you have never answered the note old Mullet brought
this morning! There it is on the mantelpiece."
The parson sighed. To be interrupted in this way he took quite as a
matter of course, but it teased him a little.
"I must see the churchwardens, Rebecca, before answering it. I want to
know, you see, what would be approved of by the parish."
"Just like you, Jacob," she caressingly said. "The parish must approve
of what you approve."
"Yes, yes," he said hastily; "but I like to live at peace with every
one."
He dipped his pen into the ink, and wrote a line of his sermon. The open
window looked on to the kitchen-garden. Herbert Tanerton had his back
against the walnut-tree, doing nothing. Alice sat near on a stool, her
head buried in a book that by its canvas cover Mrs. Dean knew to be
"Robinson Crusoe." Just then Jack came out of the raspberry bushes with
a handful of fruit, which he held out to Alice. "Robinson Crusoe" fell
to the ground.
"Oh, Jack, how good they are!" said Alice. And the words came distinctly
to Aunt Dean's ears in the still day.
"They are as good again when you pick them off the trees for yourself,"
cried Jack. "Come along and get some, Alice."
With the taste of the raspberries in her mouth, the temptation was not
to be resisted; and she ran after Jack. Aunt Dean put her head out at
the window.
"Alice, my love, I cannot have you go amongst those raspberry bushes;
you would stain and tear your frock."
"I'll take care of her frock, aunt," Jack called back.
"My darling Jack, it cannot be. That is her new muslin frock, and she
must not go where she might injure it."
So Alice sat down again to "Robinson Crusoe," and Jack went his way
amongst the raspberry bushes, or whither he would.
"Jacob, have you begun to think of what John is to be?" resumed Aunt
Dean, as she shut down the window.
The parson pushed his sermon from him in a sort of patient
hopelessness, and turned round on his chair. "To be?--In what way,
Rebecca?"
"By profession," she answered. "I fancy it is time it was thought of."
"Do you? I'm sure I don't know. The other day when something was being
mentioned about it, Jack said he did not care what he was to be,
provided he had no books to trouble him."
"I only hope you will not have trouble with him, Jacob, dear," observed
Mrs. Dean, in ominous tones, that plainly intimated she thought the
parson would.
"He has a good heart, though he is not so studious as his brother. Why
have you shut the window, Rebecca? It is very warm."
Mrs. Dean did not say why. Perhaps she wished to guard against the
conversation being heard. When any question not quite convenient to
answer was put to her, she had a way of passing it over in silence; and
the parson was too yielding or too inert to ask again.
"_Of course_, Brother Jacob, you will make Herbert the heir."
The parson looked surprised. "Why should you suppose that, Rebecca? I
think the two boys ought to share and share alike."
"My dear Jacob, how _can_ you think so? Your dead wife left you in
charge, remember."
"That's what I do remember, Rebecca. She never gave me the slightest
hint that she should wish any difference to be made: she was as fond of
one boy as of the other."
"Jacob, you must do your duty by the boys," returned Mrs. Dean, with
affectionate solemnity. "Herbert must be his mother's heir; it is
right and proper it should be so: Jack must be trained to earn his
own livelihood. Jack--dear fellow!--is, I fear, of a roving, random
disposition: were you to leave any portion of the money to him, he would
squander it in a year."
"Dear me, I hope not! But as to leaving all to his brother--or even a
larger portion than to Jack--I don't know that it would be right. A
heavy responsibility lies on me in this charge, don't you see, Rebecca?"
"No doubt it does. It is full eight-hundred a year. And _you_ must be
putting something by, Jacob."
"Not much. I draw the money yearly, but expenses seem to swallow it up.
What with the ponies kept for the boys, and the cost of the masters from
Worcester, and a hundred a year out of it that my wife desired the poor
old nurse should have till she died, there's not a great deal left. My
living is a poor one, you know, and I like to help the poor freely. When
the boys go to the university it will be all wanted."
Help the poor freely!--just like him! thought Aunt Dean.
"It would be waste of time and money to send Jack to college. You should
try and get him some appointment abroad, Jacob. In India, say."
The clergyman opened his eyes at this, and said he should not like
to see Jack go out of his own country. Jack's mother had not had any
opinion of foreign places. Jack himself interrupted the conversation. He
came flying up the path, put down a cabbage leaf full of raspberries on
the window-sill, and flung open the window with his stained fingers.
"Aunt Dean, I've picked these for you," he said, introducing the leaf,
his handsome face and good-natured eyes bright and sparkling. "They've
never been so good as they are this year. Father, just taste them."
Aunt Dean smiled sweetly, and called him her darling, and Mr. Lewis
tasted the raspberries.
"We were just talking of you, Jack," cried the unsophisticated man--and
Mrs. Dean slightly knitted her brows. "Your aunt says it is time you
began to think of some profession."
"What, yet awhile?" returned Jack.
"That you may be suitably educated for it, my boy."
"I should like to be something that won't want education," cried Jack,
leaning his arms on the window-sill, and jumping up and down. "I think
I'd rather be a farmer than anything, father."
The parson drew a long face. This had never entered into his
calculations.
"I fear that would not do, Jack. I should like you to choose something
higher than that; some profession by which you may rise in the world.
Herbert will go into the Church: what should you say to the Bar?"
Jack's jumping ceased all at once. "What, be a barrister, father? Like
those be-wigged fellows that come on circuit twice a year to Worcester?"
"Like that, Jack."
"But they have to study all their lives for it, father; and read up
millions of books before they can pass! I couldn't do it; I couldn't
indeed."
"What do you think of being a first-class lawyer, then? I might place
you with some good firm, such as----"
"Don't, there's a dear father!" interrupted Jack, all the sunshine
leaving his face. "I'm afraid if I were at a desk I should kick it over
without knowing it: I must be running out and about.--Are they all gone,
Aunt Dean? Give me the leaf, and I'll pick you some more."