A SILENT FAREWELL.
At Noulton Farm each day was like its brother. Inflexible hours,
inflexible duties, all proceeded with a regimental punctuality. At
meals not a word was spoken, and while the master of the house was in
it, all conversation was carried on, even in remote rooms, in an
undertone.
Our little friend used to see the workhouse boy at prayers, morning
and evening, and occasionally to pass his pale disquieted face on the
stairs or lobbies when his duties brought him there. They eyed one
another wistfully, but dared not speak. Mr. Archdale had so ordained
it.
That workhouse boy--perhaps he was inefficient, perhaps too much was
expected from him--but he had the misfortune perpetually to incur--I
can hardly say his master’s displeasure, for the word implies
something emotional, whereas nothing could be at all times more
tranquil and cold than that master--but his correction.
These awful proceedings occurred almost daily, and were conducted with
the absolute uniformity which characterised the system of Noulton
Farm. At eleven o’clock the cold voice of the Sergeant-Major called
“Tony!” and Tony appeared, writhing and whimpering by anticipation.
“My cane,” said the master, stepping into the room which he called the
workshop, where the organ, half finished, stood, stop-diapason,
dulciana, and the rest in deal rows, with white chips, chisels, lead,
saws, and glue-pots, in industrious disorder, round. Then Tony’s pale,
miserable face was seen in the “parlour,” and Miss Mary would look
down on the floor in pale silence, and our little friend’s heart would
flutter over his lesson-book as he saw the lank boy steal over to the
chimney-piece, and take down the cane, and lingeringly disappear.
Then was heard the door of the workshop close, and then very faint the
cold clear voice of the master. Then faint and slow the measured cut
of the cane, and the whine of the boy rising to a long hideous yell,
and, “Oh, sir, dear--oh, sir, dear; oh, Mr. Archdale, oh, master,
dear, oh, master, dear!” And this sometimes so protracted that Mary
used to get up and walk round the room in a kind of agony
whispering--“Oh, poor boy. Oh, poor Tony. Oh mercy--oh goodness. Oh!
my good Lord, when will it be over!” And, sitting apart, the little
boy’s eyes as they followed her would fill with tears of horror.
The little fellow said lessons to Mr. Archdale. There was nothing
unreasonable in their length, and his friend Mary helped him. It was
well for him, however, that he was a bright little fellow, with a good
memory, for the Sergeant was not a teacher to discriminate between
idleness and dulness.
No one ever heard Mr. Archdale use a violent expression, or utter a
curse. He was a silent, cold, orderly person, and I think the most
cruel man I ever saw in my life.
He had a small active horse, and a gig, in which he drove upon his
outdoor business. He had fixed days and hours for everything, except
where he meditated a surprise.
One day the Sergeant-Major entered the room where the boy was reading
at his lessons, and, tapping him on the shoulder, put the county
newspaper into his hand; and, pointing to a paragraph, desired him to
read it, and left the room.
It was a report of the proceedings against Tom Orange, and gave a
rather disreputable character of that amusing person. There was a
great pain at the boy’s affectionate heart as he read the hard words
dealt to his old friend, and worse still, the sentence. He was crying
silently when the Sergeant returned. That stern man took the paper,
and said in his cold, terrible tones--
“You’ve read that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And understand it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I find you speaking to Thomas Orange, I’ll tie you up in the
workshop, and give you five dozen.” And with this promise he serenely
left him.
Children are unsuspicious of death, and our little friend, who every
night used to cry in his bed silently, with a bursting heart, thinking
of his mammy and old happy times, till he fell asleep in the dark,
never dreamed that his poor friend Mary was dying--she, perhaps,
herself did not think so any more than he, but every one else said it.
They two grew to be great friends. Each had a secret, and she trusted
hers to the little friend whom God had sent her.
It was the old story--the troubled course of true love. Willie
Fairlace was the hero. The Sergeant-Major had found it all out, and
locked up his daughter, and treated her, it was darkly rumoured, with
cruel severity.
He was proud of his daughter’s beauty, and had ambitious plans, I dare
say; and he got up Willie’s farm, and Willie was ruined, and had
enlisted and was gone.
The Sergeant-Major knew the post-office people in the village, and the
lovers dared not correspond directly. But Willie’s cousin, Mrs. Page,
heard from him regularly, and there were long messages to Mary. His
letters were little else. And _now at last_ had come a friend to bear
her messages to trusty Mrs. Page, and to carry his back again to
Noulton Farm.
After her father had gone out, or in the evening when he was at the
organ in the “workshop,” and sometimes as, wrapped in her cloak, on a
genial evening, she sat on the rustic seat under the great ash tree,
and the solemn and plaintive tones of the distant organ floated in old
church music from the open window through the trees and down the
fragrant field toward the sunset sky, filling the air with grand and
melancholy harmony, she would listen to that whispered message of the
boy’s, looking far away, and weeping, and holding the little fellow’s
hand, and asking him to say it over again, and telling him she felt
better, and thanking him, and smiling and crying bitterly.
One evening the Sergeant was at his organ-pipes as usual. The boy as
he stood in the garden at his task, watering the parched beds, heard a
familiar laugh at the hedge, and the well-known refrain--
“Tag-rag-merry-derry-perrywig and hatband-hic-hoc-horum-genetivo!”
It was Tom Orange himself!
In spite of his danger the boy was delighted. He ran to the hedge, and
he and Tom, in a moment more, were actually talking.
It became soon a very serious conversation. The distant booming of the
organ-pipes assured him that the light grey eye and sharp ear of the
Sergeant were occupied still elsewhere.
Tom Orange was broaching a dreadful conspiracy.
It was no less than that the boy should meet him at the foot of the
field where the two oziers grow, at eleven o’clock, on the night
following, and run away with him, and see mammy again, and come to a
nice place where he should be as happy as the day is long, and mammy
live with him always, and Tom look in as often as his own more
important business would permit.
“I will, Tom,” said the boy, wildly and very pale.
“And oh! Tom, I was so sorry about the trial, and what lies they
told,” said the boy, after they had talked a little longer; “and
saying that you had been with gipsies, and were a poacher; and oh!
Tom, is mammy quite well?”
“Yes.”
“And all my ships were lost on the moor; and how is little Toozie the
cat?”
“Very well; blooming--blushing.”
“And, Tom, _you_ are quite well?”
“Never better, as I lately told Squire Harry Fairfield; and mind ye,
I’ll be even yet with the old boy in there,” and he indicated the
house with a jerk of his thumb.
“I don’t hear the organ, Tom. Good-bye.”
And Tom was off in a moment, and the boy had resumed his watering-pot.
And that evening he sat down with, for the first time, a tremendous
secret at his heart.
There was one grief even in the hope of his liberation. When he
looked at poor Mary, and thought how lonely she would be. Oh! if poor
Mary could come with him! But some time or other he and Tom would come
and take her away, and she would live with him and mammy, and be one
of that happy family.
She did not know what thoughts were in the boy’s mind as his sad
earnest eyes were fixed on her, and she smiled with a little languid
nod.
But he need not have grieved his gentle heart on this account. There
was not to be a seeming desertion of his friend; nor anything she
could mistake for a treacherous slight.
That morning, at two o’clock, Mary died.
About ten minutes before, an alarm from the old servant, who slept in
the room, called up her father.
Her faithful little friend was on his knees sobbing beside the bed,
with her wasted hand in his, as the Sergeant-Major, hastily dressed,
walked in, and stood by the curtain looking down into those large,
deep eyes. She was conscious, though she could not speak. She saw, as
she looked up her last look, a few sullen drops gather in those proud
eyes, and roll down his cheeks. Perhaps the sad, wondering look with
which she returned these signs of tenderness, smote him, and haunted
him afterwards. There was a little motion in her right hand as if she
would have liked him to take it--in sign of reconciliation--and with
those faint tokens of the love that might have been, the change of
death came, and the troubled little heart was still, and the image of
Willie Fairlace was lost in the great darkness.
Then the little boy cried aloud wildly--
“Oh! Mary, pretty Mary. Oh! Mary, are you dead? Oh! isn’t it a pity;
isn’t it a pity! Oh! is she dead?”
The Sergeant dried his eyes hastily. He hoped, I dare say, that no one
had seen his momentary weakness. He drew a long breath. With a stern
face he closed the pretty eyes that Willie Fairlace, far away now,
will never forget; and closed the little mouth that never will
complain, or sigh, or confess its sad tale more.
“You had better get to your room, boy. Get to your bed,” said the
Sergeant, not ungently laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’ll
take cold. Give him a candle.”