THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING.
UPTOWN was not worthy of the name of town; it could hardly be called a
large village. But it was the centre of a wide agricultural district,
and a small market was held in it once a week, chiefly for the sale of
butter and eggs, as the farmers carried their corn to a more important
market farther away, in the county town. A magistrates' meeting was
held at Uptown at stated intervals; and there was a police-station just
outside the village, provided with two cells, but seldom occupied, in
one of which Ishmael had been safely kept since noonday on Saturday.
Heavy-hearted still, though with a fund of secret courage bearing her
up, Ruth entered Uptown on the Monday morning. There was more stir
than usual about the single street, as there always was on the days
when the magistrates came to hear the trivial cases which awaited
their judgment. Round the inn where the justices' room was, there
were several groups of somewhat discreditable folks hanging about in
readiness.
Nutkin was within the inn-yard, eagerly talking to one of the
magistrates who had arrived before the others, and had just dismounted
from his horse. Ruth saw him, but it was as if she did not see him, so
absorbed was her whole soul in watching for Ishmael to come along the
road between the town and the police-station. She was half unconscious
of the increasing crowd and stir, as the magistrates rode in one after
another; and the magistrates' clerk bustled down from his house with
his blue bag full of papers. Mrs. Clift had arrived too with Elsie; and
Squire Lansdowne was gone into the large room of the inn; but she only
half knew it.
At last Ishmael appeared, walking beside a policeman, who kept his hand
tightly on his collar, as if to remind him it was of no use to try to
escape. But could this sullen, scowling lad, with rough uncombed hair
and tear-stained face, be Ishmael? He was close beside her, yet he
never raised his eyes; and he would have passed her by, if she had not
cried out in a very lamentable voice, "Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael!"
[Illustration]
"It's my mother," he said, as the policeman tightened his grasp of his
collar. "Don't you come inside, mother dear. It 'ud do no good, and it
'ud make me cry. You go home again now you've seen me to say good-bye.
You'll loose me to kiss my mother?" he added, looking at the policeman.
"Ay, if you're sharp about it," he answered.
For a minute the young boy, scarcely more than a child, and the bent,
grey-haired woman stood with their arms fondly clinging about each
other. Ruth felt as if she could not let him go; it seemed but a few
days since he was but a baby in her bosom; and now he was a prisoner
charged with an offence against the laws of his country. But Ishmael
loosened his hands and let himself be led away inside the magistrates'
room.
Then she sat down on the lowest step of a horse-block below its
open window, through which she could hear the hum of voices coming
indistinctly to her ear. How long it was she did not know, but a
gaily-dressed, flaunting young woman came to her at length, and spoke
in a pitying tone.
"Don't you take on, Mrs. Medway," she said; "you're a good woman, I
know, but luck's agen you. Nutkin was very hard on him; and they've
give him three months in the county gaol."
"Is it my Ishmael?" she asked, looking up with a wandering and vacant
expression in her eyes.
"To be sure," answered the young woman. "'Ishmael Medway, thirteen
years of age; three months for stealing pheasant's eggs.'"
Ruth heard no more, saw nothing more. But bending forward, as if to
lift herself upon her feet, she fell heavily on the pavement, in a deep
swoon. There was a crowd clustering about her, when Ishmael was marched
out of the inn by the policeman; he looked round in vain for a last
glance at his mother's face.
"It were best for her to go away," he said to himself, with a sob; "but
I should ha' liked to ha' seen her again."
He felt as if he were going to die in the prison to which they were
sending him, and as if he should never see his mother's face again. His
young soul was in a bewilderment of grief and amazement. He had heard
himself described as an incorrigible thief and poacher. Everything
had gone against him: the notorious character of his father and elder
brothers; his own admission of having haunted the woods until he knew
every spot in them; even his tearful confession that he knew he had no
right to the eggs, and did not know why he should take them then for
the first time. All had been against him.
He was going away to gaol, a shame and disgrace to his poor mother.
To-day too; the very day he was to have begun to earn his own living,
and relieve her from the burden he had been upon her. He would be a
worse trouble to her than any of the others had been, even than his
father, who came home every night either drunk or angry. What could he
ever do to make it up to her now? He could do nothing better than to
die.
It was late before Ruth reached home in the evening, and she found her
husband awaiting her return, sober and sullen; a hard, tyrannical old
man, who looked upon her as a silent and spiritless drudge.
"So," he exclaimed, as she stepped feebly and weariedly over the
threshold, "this is what it's come to: thy fine lad's got hisself into
gaol! This comes o' book-learnin' and psalm-singin', eh? He brings
shame on all on us. Ne'er a one on us was iver up afore the justices
till now; and they say at the Labour in Vain as he's got three months.
And serve him right, I say. I takes sides with Nutkin, and th' squire,
and the justices, as are ivery one on 'em gentlemen. If I'd a bit o'
land, I'd hang every poacher as set foot on it. And a young little lad
o' his age! What 'll he be when he's a man? I'd ha' sent him to Botany
Bay, I would. I'm on the side o' justice. And if ever Ishmael crosses
o'er that door-sill agen, I'll thresh him to within an inch o' his
life! I'll break ivery bone in his body! And thine, too," he shouted,
with growing fury, "if thee don't open that cursed mouth o' thine, and
say somethink!"
"I'm ill, Humphrey," she answered, meekly; "I swoonded away dead when
they told me on it."
"Swoonded!" he repeated, sneeringly. "Don't tell me. It's only born
ladies as can do that, not a workin' woman like thee. But swound or no
swound, just hearken to my words. Ishmael niver sets his foot over yon
door-sill. I'll harbour no poachers or gaol-birds under my roof."
Very quietly Ruth went on lighting the fire and boiling the kettle.
It was a relief to her to be at home again, out of the stir and buzz
of the little town, and out of sight of inquisitive eyes. Even her
husband's threats and jeers could not altogether spoil the sense of
having found rest at her own fireside.
And when he was gone, the unbroken silence of the dark hut suited her.
Her harassed soul could recollect itself now. Even in dense darkness
our eyes, by eager gazing, begin to see a little, and so in the deepest
trouble the soul, by its earnest yearning towards God, begins to
discern light. As Ruth sat alone in the dark hut, there came back to
her memory the old story in the Bible, from which she had taken a name
for her youngest boy. She thought of Hagar in the wilderness, a runaway
slave, fleeing from her mistress, and how God heard her affliction; and
how once more she was driven into the wilderness, wandering up and down
homeless, until her son Ishmael was dying of thirst, and his mother
cast him under a shrub to die, and went away out of sight—a good way
off—lest she should see the death of her child; and how God heard the
voice of the lad, and once again sent His angel to succour Hagar.
Ruth shut her aching and swollen eyelids with a feeling of comfort and
awe, as she whispered, "'Thou God seest me.'"
Yes, God saw; God knew. There was unspeakable consolation in that.
She felt no bitterness of heart, even against Nutkin. She had nothing
to say against the law that had sent Ishmael to prison. She did not
try to justify her boy; he had done wrong, though in lightheartedness
and thoughtlessness, not in malice. None of these things occupied her
simple mind. God had seen all; and He knew all about it. It was in that
thought she was to find consolation and strength. She must endure, as
seeing Him who is invisible.