GENTLEMAN WAIFE DOES NOT FORGET AN OLD FRIEND. THE OLD FRIEND
RECONCILES ASTROLOGY TO PRUDENCE, AND IS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF
BENEFICE. MR. HARTOPP HAT IN HAND TO GENTLEMAN WAIFE.
Waife fell on the floor of his threshold, exclaiming, sobbing, moaning,
as voice itself gradually died away. The dog, who had been shut out from
the house, and remained, ears erect, head drooping, close at the door,
rushed in as Jasper burst forth. The two listeners at the open casement
now stole round; there was the dog, its paw on the old man's shoulder,
trying to attract his notice, and whining low.
Tenderly--reverentially, they lift the poor martyr--evermore cleared in
their eyes from stain, from question; the dishonouring brand transmuted
into the hallowing cross! And when the old man at length recovered
consciousness, his head was pillowed on the breast of the spotless, noble
Preacher; and the decorous English Trader, with instinctive deference for
repute and respect for law, was kneeling by his side, clasping his hand;
and as Wife glanced down, confusedly wondering, Hartopp exclaimed, half
sobbing: "Forgive me; you said I should repent, if I knew all! I do
repent! I do! Forgive me--I shall never forgive myself."
"Have I been dreaming? What is all this? You here, too, Mr. George!
But--but there was ANOTHER. Gone! ah--gone--gone! lost, lost! Ha!
Did you overhear us?"
"We overheard you-at that window! See, spite of yourself, Heaven lets
your innocence be known, and, in that innocence, your sublime self-
sacrifice."
"Hush! you will never betray me, either of you--never. A father turn
against his son!--horrible!"
Again he seemed on the point of swooning. In a few moments more, his
mind began evidently to wander somewhat; and just as Merle (who, with his
urchin-guide, had wandered vainly over the old town in search of the
pedlar, until told that he had been seen in a by-street, stopped and
accosted by a tall man in a rough great-coat, and then hurrying off,
followed by the stranger) came back to report his ill-success, Hartopp
and George had led Waife up-stairs into his sleeping-room, laid him down
on his bed, and were standing beside him watching his troubled face, and
whispering to each other in alarm.
Waife overheard Hartopp proposing to go in search of medical assistance,
and exclaimed piteously: "No, that would scare me to death. No doctors--
no eavesdroppers. Leave me to myself--quiet and darkness; I shall be
well tomorrow."
George drew the curtains round the bed, and Waife caught him by the arm.
"You will not let out what you heard, I know; you understand how little I
can now care for men's judgments; but how dreadful it would be to undo
all I have done--I to be witness against my Lizzy's child! I--I! I
trust you--dear, dear Mr. Morley; make Mr. Hartopp sensible that, if he
would not drive me mad, not a syllable of what he heard must go forth-
'twould be base in him."
"Nay!" said Hartopp, whispering also through the darkness, "don't fear
me; I will hold my peace, though 'tis very hard not to tell Williams at
least that you did not take me in. But you shall be obeyed."
They drew away Merle, who was wondering what the whispered talk was
about, catching a word or two here and there, and left the old man not
quite to solitude,--Waife's hand, in quitting George's grasp, dropped on
the dog's head.
Hartopp went back to his daughter's home in a state of great excitement,
drinking more wine than usual at dinner, talking more magisterially than
he had ever been known to talk, railing quite misanthropically against
the world; observing, that Williams had become unsufferably overbearing,
and should be pensioned off: in short, casting the whole family into the
greatest perplexity to guess what had come to the mild man. Merle found
himself a lodging, and cast a horary scheme as to what would happen to
Waife and himself for the next three months, and found all the aspects so
perversely contradictory, that he owned he was no wiser as to the future
than he was before the scheme was cast. George Morley remained in the
cottage, stealing up, from time to time, to Waife's room, but not
fatiguing him with talk. Before midnight, the old man slept, but his
slumber was much perturbed, as if by fearful dreams. However, he rose
early, very weak, but free from fever, and in full possession of his
reason. To George's delight, Waife's first words to him then were
expressive of a wish to return to Sophy. "He had dreamed," he said,
"that he had heard her voice calling out to him to come to her help." He
would not revert to the scene with Jasper. George once ventured to touch
on that reminiscence, but the old man's look became so imploring that he
desisted. Nevertheless, it was evident to the Pastor, that Waife's
desire to return was induced by his belief that he had become necessary
to Sophy's protection. Jasper, whose remorse would probably be very
short-lived, had clearly discovered Sophy's residence, and as clearly
Waife, and Waife alone, still retained some hold over his rugged breast.
Perhaps, too, the old man had no longer the same dread of encountering
Jasper; rather, perhaps, a faint hope that, in another meeting, he might
more availingly soften his son's heart. He was not only willing, then--
he was eager to depart, and either regained or assumed much of his old
cheerfulness in settling with his hostess, and parting with Merle, on
whom he forced his latest savings and the tasteful contents of his
pannier. Then he took aside George, and whispered in his ear: "A very
honest, kind-hearted man, sir; can you deliver him from the Planets?--
they bring him into sad trouble. Is there no opening for a cobbler at
Humberston?"
George nodded, and went back to Merle, who was wiping his eyes with his
coat-sleeve. "My good friend," said the scholar, "do me two favours,
besides the greater one you have already bestowed in conducting me back
to a revered friend. First, let me buy of you the contents of that
basket; I have children amongst whom I would divide them as heirlooms;
next, as we were travelling hither, you told me that, in your younger
days, ere you took to a craft which does not seem to have prospered, you
were brought up to country pursuits, and knew all about cows and sheep,
their care and their maladies. Well, I have a few acres of glebe-land on
my own hands, not enough for a bailiff--too much for my gardener--and a
pretty cottage, which once belonged to a schoolmaster, but we have built
him a larger one; it is now vacant, and at your service. Come and take
all trouble of land and stock off my hands; we shall not quarrel about
the salary. But harkye, my friend--on one proviso--give up the Crystal,
and leave the Stars to mind their own business."
"Please your Reverence," said Merle, who, at the earlier part of the
address, had evinced the most grateful emotion, but who, at the proviso
which closed it, jerked himself lip, dignified and displeased--"Please
your Reverence, no! Kit Merle is not so unnatural as to swop away his
Significator at Birth for a mess of porritch! There was that forrin
chap, Gally-Leo--he stuck to the stars, or the sun, which is the same
thing--and the stars stuck by him, and brought him honour and glory,
though the Parsons war dead agin him. He had Malefics in his Ninth
House, which belongs to Parsons."
"Can't the matter be compromised, dear Mr. George?" said Waife,
persuasively. "Suppose Merle promises to keep his crystal and
astrological sehemes to himself, or at least only talk of them to you;--
they can't hurt you, I should think, sir? And science is a sacred thing,
Merle; and the Chaldees, who were the great star-gazers, never degraded
themselves by showing off to the vulgar. Mr. George, who is a scholar,
will convince you of that fact."
"Content," said George. "So long as Mr. Merle will leave my children and
servants, and the parish generally, in happy ignorance of the future, I
give him the fullest leave to discuss his science with myself whenever we
chat together on summer moons or in winter evenings; and perhaps I may--"
"Be converted?" said Waife, with a twinkling gleam of the playful Humour
which had ever sported along his thorny way by the side of Sorrow.
"I did not mean that," said the Parson, smiling; "rather the contrary.
What say you, Merle? Is it not a bargain?"
"Sir--God bless you!" cried Merle, simply; "I see you won't let me stand
in my own light. And what Gentleman Waife says as to the vulgar, is
uncommon true."
This matter settled, and Merle's future secured in a way that his stars,
or his version of their language, had not foretold to him, George and
Waife walked on to the station, Merle following with the Parson's small
carpet-bag, and Sir Isaac charged with Waife's bundle. They had not gone
many yards before they met Hartopp, who was indeed on his way to Prospect
Row. He was vexed at learning Waife was about to leave so abruptly; he
had set his heart on coaxing him to return to Gatesboro' with himself-
astounding Williams and Mrs. H., and proclaiming to Market Place and High
Street, that, in deeming Mr. Chapman a good and a great man disguised,
he, Josiah Hartopp, had not been taken in. He consoled himself a little
for Waife's refusal of this kind invitation and unexpected departure, by
walking proudly beside him to the station, finding it thronged with
passengers--some of them great burgesses of Ouzelford--in whose presence
he kept bowing his head to Waife with every word he uttered; and, calling
the guard--who was no stranger to his own name and importance--he told
him pompously to be particularly attentive to that elderly gentleman, and
see that he and his companion had a carriage to themselves all the way,
and that Sir Isaac had a particularly comfortable box. "A very great
man," he said, with his finger to his lip, "only he will not have it
known--just at present." The guard stares, and promises all deference--
opens the door of a central first-class carriage--assures Waife that he
and his friend shall not be disturbed by other passengers. The train
heaves into movement--Hartopp runs on by its side along the stand--his
hat off-kissing his hand; then, as the convoy shoots under yon dark
tunnel, and is lost to sight, he turns back, and seeing Merle, says to
him, "You know that gentleman--the old one?"
"Yes, a many year."
"Ever heard anything against him?"
"Yes, once--at Gatesboro'."
"At Gatesboro'!--ah! and you did not believe it?"
"Only jist for a moment, transiting."
"I envy you," said Hartopp; and he went off with a sigh.