Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition (_The Works of Charles
Dickens_, volume 28) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES
* * * * *
By CHARLES DICKENS
* * * * *
_With Illustrations by Harry Furniss and A. J. Goodman_
* * * * *
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
IN the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the
long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away
from their employer. They were bound to a highly meritorious lady (named
Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must be acknowledged,
not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might be. This is the
more remarkable, as there is nothing against the respectable lady in that
quarter, but quite the contrary; her family having rendered eminent
service to many famous citizens of London. It may be sufficient to name
Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard II., at the time of
Wat Tyler’s insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington: which latter
distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady’s
family for the gift of his celebrated cat. There is also strong reason
to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for him with their own
hands.
The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress from
whom they had received many favours, were actuated by the low idea of
making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction. They had no intention of
going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see nothing, they wanted to
know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted to do nothing.
They wanted only to be idle. They took to themselves (after HOGARTH),
the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but there was not
a moral pin to choose between them, and they were both idle in the last
degree.
Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of
character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself
any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in
short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry.
Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or
Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent
idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too
idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.
The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of their
escape, walking down into the North of England, that is to say, Thomas
was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over
a distant viaduct—which was _his_ idea of walking down into the North;
while Francis was walking a mile due South against time—which was _his_
idea of walking down into the North. In the meantime the day waned, and
the milestones remained unconquered.
‘Tom,’ said Goodchild, ‘the sun is getting low. Up, and let us go
forward!’
‘Nay,’ quoth Thomas Idle, ‘I have not done with Annie Laurie yet.’ And
he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for
the bonnie young person of that name he would ‘lay him doon and
dee’—equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die.
‘What an ass that fellow was!’ cried Goodchild, with the bitter emphasis
of contempt.
‘Which fellow?’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘The fellow in your song. Lay him doon and dee! Finely he’d show off
before the girl by doing _that_. A sniveller! Why couldn’t he get up,
and punch somebody’s head!’
‘Whose?’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘Anybody’s. Everybody’s would be better than nobody’s! If I fell into
that state of mind about a girl, do you think I’d lay me doon and dee?
No, sir,’ proceeded Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the
Scottish accent, ‘I’d get me oop and peetch into somebody. Wouldn’t
you?’
‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with her,’ yawned Thomas Idle. ‘Why
should I take the trouble?’
‘It’s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,’ said Goodchild, shaking his
head.
‘It’s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you’re in it,’ retorted Tom.
‘So I keep out of it altogether. It would be better for you, if you did
the same.’
Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently
with several objects at once, made no reply. He heaved a sigh of the
kind which is termed by the lower orders ‘a bellowser,’ and then, heaving
Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged him
northward.
These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining
each a knapsack. Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting the
train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw’s Guide, and
finding out where it is now—and where now—and where now—and to asking
what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such a pace as that.
Was it to see the country? If that was the object, look at it out of the
carriage windows. There was a great deal more of it to be seen there
than here. Besides, who wanted to see the country? Nobody. And again,
whoever did walk? Nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never did
it. They came back and said they did, but they didn’t. Then why should
he walk? He wouldn’t walk. He swore it by this milestone!
It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the North.
Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild proposed a return
to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston Square Terminus.
Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked down into the North by
the next morning’s express, and carried their knapsacks in the
luggage-van.
It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be. It
bore through the harvest country a smell like a large washing-day, and a
sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power
in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the
sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and
unreally as a light miniature plaything. Now, the engine shrieked in
hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the men who
had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring her to;
now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so
confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues of
darkness. Here, were station after station, swallowed up by the express
without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley
of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays, and
three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again,
bang, bang, bang! At long intervals were uncomfortable
refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards
Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in the
story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were fed,
with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were
stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set
aloft on great posts, shaving the air. In these fields, the horses,
sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor, and didn’t
mind; in those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs
scoured after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, became
smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved again, grew
rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge,
a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miserable
black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of chimneys; now, a
trim garden, where the flowers were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of
hideous altars all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy
rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant
town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week. The
temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got
sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so
quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had
not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his
shiny little pouch, or read his newspaper.
Carlisle! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It looked congenially
and delightfully idle. Something in the way of public amusement had
happened last month, and something else was going to happen before
Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those
who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did not. Likewise, by those who
liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints,
going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted
to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For those who
wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist’s proofs, thirty shillings), here
was Mr. Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr.
Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth
and nail. Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and
eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many
physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies
to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large
impression of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even
something gross. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with
their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast,
and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else
to do. The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of
twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and
rallied the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young
women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player, from
among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared
to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by
giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.
On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the two
Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy. There were its
cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by the river,
with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses
beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals, and
flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey. There was its corn market down
the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks. There was its
general market in the street too, with heather brooms on which the purple
flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive and fresh to
behold. With women trying on clogs and caps at open stalls, and ‘Bible
stalls’ adjoining. With ‘Doctor Mantle’s Dispensary for the cure of all
Human Maladies and no charge for advice,’ and with Doctor Mantle’s
‘Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science’—both healing
institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one
sun-blind. With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging to be
favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to
whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations ‘enabling
him or her to know themselves.’ Through all these bargains and
blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread
of War in the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints
that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine
active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished
corps is full six feet, ‘growing lads of five feet eleven’ need not
absolutely despair of being accepted.
Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of
Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at eight
o’clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket, Newmarket, some
fourteen miles distant. Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt
whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing to do) had
read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called Carrock,
or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be the
culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle,
dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed
the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the sanity, of the
enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away.
Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to the
left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal more
than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake country),
dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner. Good,
weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed, scantily dotting
the road. Clean children coming out to look, carrying other clean
children as big as themselves. Harvest still lying out and much rained
upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped. Well-cultivated gardens
attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard
soil. Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and
buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there as
elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild’s remark.) By-and-by, the village.
Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases,
like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up hill and round
the corner, by way of street. All the children running out directly.
Women pausing in washing, to peep from doorways and very little windows.
Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their
conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker’s. Old Carrock gloomed down
upon it all in a very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.
The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock. No
visitors went up Carrock. No visitors came there at all. Aa’ the world
ganged awa’ yon. The driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper
had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in,
to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving,
entered the Innkeeper’s house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.
The Innkeeper was not idle enough—was not idle at all, which was a great
fault in him—but was a fine specimen of a north-country man, or any kind
of man. He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an
immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad
look. He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth a visit to
the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild’s opinion, in
which Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.)
The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by beams of
unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that it looked
like a broken star-fish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished
with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, and a couple
of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the
house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little
ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number.
They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with
their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental
affections from under little cupping glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there,
in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew
out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile
propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunt’s country boy, before and after his
pie, were on the wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the
subject of which had all her colours (and more) flying, and was making
great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady’s collar. A
benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head,
kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture
on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular
knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires,
exactly like David’s harp packed for travelling. Everything became a
nick-nack in this curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to
the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the
greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and said: ‘By your leave,
not a kettle, but a bijou.’ The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the
cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a
worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed
there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be
chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments
of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland
Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa,
and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and
liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though,
truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least
successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and
dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of
some corpulent member of the family.
There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on the
chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner. Fielding was there,
and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed
volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships,
for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good books for rainy
days or fine. It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a
lonesome by-place—so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste,
however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness
of the house—so fanciful to imagine what a wonder a room must be to the
little children born in the gloomy village—what grand impressions of it
those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and
how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die,
cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in
the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland—it was such a charmingly
lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice oatcake
and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked
themselves how it came to pass that the men in the fields were never
heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced them without
explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how
everything was arranged without the least arrangement for climbing to old
Carrock’s shoulders, and standing on his head.
Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted
out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got
into the landlord’s light dog-cart, and rattled off through the village
for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable.
The Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; the Cumberland
curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the
Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it
was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of
the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains
all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew
gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the sides of the
mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more
difficult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house. The
landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the
character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to
the ascent. Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain,
and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed,
shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the
contentment within and the moisture without. Only in the bosom of Mr.
Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a
secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent
began, to have been back again at the inn. The sides of Carrock looked
fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in mist. The rain was
falling faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idle—always weak on walking
excursions—shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was already
penetrating through the young man’s outer coat to a brand-new
shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two
guineas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but
a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an
arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in
front, nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent,
the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable
folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there
is level ground within reach to walk on instead. Was it for this that
Thomas had left London? London, where there are nice short walks in
level public gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient
distances for weary travellers—London, where rugged stone is humanely
pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into
smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was not for the laborious ascent
of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and travelled
to Cumberland. Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had
committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself
standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the
responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the
top of it.
The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
mournful Idle brought up the rear. From time to time, the two foremost
members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the
rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the
mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs,
skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always
the man who had to be looked after and waited for. At first the ascent
was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the
material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender
and pleasant to walk upon. After a hundred yards or so, however, the
verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not
noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in
their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but
little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow, by Nature;
treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small
sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. When
these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed. Here the
steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring
party of three turned round to look at the view below them. The scene of
the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half
sponged out. The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees
were dotted about like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which
mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely
farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey
light like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world.
Was this a sight worth climbing to see? Surely—surely not!
Up again—for the top of Carrock is not reached yet. The land-lord, just
as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom of the mountain.
Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full
of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a springiness of
step wonderful to behold. Mr. Idle, farther and farther in the rear,
with the water squeaking in the toes of his boots, with his two-guinea
shooting-jacket clinging damply to his aching sides, with his overcoat so
full of rain, and standing out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence,
from his shoulders downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a
gigantic extinguisher—the despairing spirit within him representing but
too aptly the candle that had just been put out. Up and up and up again,
till a ridge is reached and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of
Carrock is darkly and drizzingly near. Is this the top? No, nothing
like the top. It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that,
although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always
to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false
tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his
way for the purpose of ascending them. Carrock is but a trumpery little
mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and
even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc. No matter; Goodchild enjoys
it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of being left behind by
himself, must follow. On entering the edge of the mist, the landlord
stops, and says he hopes that it will not get any thicker. It is twenty
years since he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the
mist increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain. Goodchild
hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it.
He marches for the top that is never to be found, as if he was the
Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything. The
landlord faithfully accompanies him. The two, to the dim eye of Idle,
far below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants,
mounting the steps of some invisible castle together. Up and up, and
then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level ground,
and then up again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows
keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn
of stones appears. The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all
round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then
dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a
magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble. Goodchild
sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle,
drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains
distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with all the little
curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view
of—Nothing!
The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring party
is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to which the
sight of it points—the said conclusion being that the mountain mist has
actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared it would. It now
becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation of the
farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has been left, before the
travellers attempt to descend. While the landlord is endeavouring to
make this discovery in his own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under
his wet coat, draws out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays
to the view of his companions a neat pocket-compass. The north is found,
the point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent
begins. After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his
fellow-travellers turn aside sharply—tries to follow them—loses them in
the mist—is shouted after, waited for, recovered—and then finds that a
halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the purpose of
again consulting the compass.
The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the
landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but
marching straight forward round the slope of it. The difficulty of
following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds the
hardship of walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his
feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural
tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight
down the declivity. Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along
the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact
idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now
involved themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance
again, was shouted for, waited for, recovered as before; found Goodchild
repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against
the sideway route that his companions persisted in following. It
appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to
get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and
he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some
irritability. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the
compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful
chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into
which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked
continuing the descent from the place where they had now halted. Idle
received this answer with the silent respect which was due to the
commanders of the expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or
rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assurance which he
received on starting again, that the object of the party was only to gain
‘a certain point,’ and, this haven attained, to continue the descent
afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached. Though quite
unexceptionable as an abstract form of expression, the phrase ‘a certain
point’ has the disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is
pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a
London fog. Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the
clue the party had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as
hopefully as he could.
More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points
reached except the ‘certain point;’ third loss of Idle, third shouts for
him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild
draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone.
Something falls on the turf—it is the glass. Something else drops
immediately after—it is the needle. The compass is broken, and the
exploring party is lost!
It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive
all great disasters in dead silence. Mr. Goodchild restored the useless
compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the
landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing for it
now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of chances.
Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still walking round the
slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved to avoid the Black
Arches, and to succeed in reaching the ‘certain point.’
A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the bottom
of which there flowed a muddy little stream. Here another halt was
called, and another consultation took place. The landlord, still
clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the ‘point,’ voted for
crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of the mountain. Mr.
Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another view
of the case, and backed Mr. Idle’s proposal to descend Carrock at once,
at any hazard—the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to follow
from the mountain to the valley. Accordingly, the party descended to the
rugged and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost ground
sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions. Not much more than
six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of his ankles, and he
began to feel this same ankle getting rather weak when he found himself
among the stones that were strewn about the running water. Goodchild and
the landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him. He saw them
cross the stream and disappear round a projection on its banks. He heard
them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were
waiting for him. Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the
stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite
bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist
outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment,
and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled in an
instant.
The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger. There lay
Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as ever, there
was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom he was
conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild’s pocket. To
leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly impossible; and
to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of the
question. However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged
the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the landlord,
raised the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to
lean on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to try if he
could walk. Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on
the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can imagine
who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it afterwards. At a
pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party
moved on, perfectly ignorant whether they were on the right side of the
mountain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able
to contend with the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and
fell down again, unable to stir another step.
Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily
and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers
followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked
cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left. After a
little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road
in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle
could be left in safety. It was now getting on towards the afternoon,
and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the party, delayed in
their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by the darkness
before the right route was found, and be condemned to pass the night on
the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes.
The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out
altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid. The
landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it must be
flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock; and
the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while, in the
hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way. After walking
forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a
mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but
the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it. Here, there
were a few sheep feeding. The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought
he recognised the marks on them—then thought he did not—finally gave up
the sheep in despair—and walked on just as ignorant of the whereabouts of
the party as ever.
The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the dark,
had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the time when
the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all
the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the
power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes at most
would find him at the end of his last physical resources. He had just
made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal
result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist suddenly
brightened, and begun to lift straight ahead. In another minute, the
landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree. Before
long, other trees appeared—then a cottage—then a house beyond the
cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind it. Last of all,
Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand. The
party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but had
wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why—away, far down on
the very moor by which they had approached the base of Carrock that
morning.
The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the
travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction,
to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house
was situated, restored Mr. Idle’s sinking spirits and reanimated his
failing strength. While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas
was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first
building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against
the garden wall, like an artist’s lay figure waiting to be forwarded,
until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below. In due
time—and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle—the rattle of wheels was
heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into the seat. As the
dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord related an anecdote
which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been
lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; who had passed the
night there alone; who had been found the next morning, ‘scared and
starved;’ and who never went out afterwards, except on his way to the
grave. Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one useful
impression from it. Bad as the pain in his ankle was, he contrived to
bear it patiently, for he felt grateful that a worse accident had not
befallen him in the wilds of Carrock.