[Illustration]
Two children were playing on a lawn in front of a pleasant cottage.
Roses and honeysuckles climbed up the windows, smooth walks, bordered
with flowers, ran through the lawn; and everything about the cottage
and the grounds had an air of taste and comfort.
A little way off, and very different in appearance, stood another
cottage; the lawn in front was overgrown with weeds, and the walks
with coarse grass. The fence that enclosed the lawn was broken in many
places, and the gate, held only by the lower hinge, stood half open and
awry. No roses or vines hung their green and crimson curtains about the
windows, or clambered up the porch. This cottage had once been white
also, white as that before which the children were playing; but it was
now dirty and soiled and looked forlorn and comfortless.
There was as much difference in the appearance of the children as in
the two cottages. One was neatly and cleanly dressed, and had a happy
face. The clothes of the other were poor and soiled, and his face pale
and sad. One played with hearty enjoyment, laughing and shouting; the
other in a quiet and subdued manner, as if afraid to raise his voice,
in the happy sports of childhood.
“Jim, isn’t that your father?” asked the well-dressed boy, as a man
appeared coming down the road a little way off.
Jim started in a half-scared manner, and turned toward the road. He
stood very still for a moment or two, looking at the man, and then,
with a face now red, and now very pale, hurried away and laid himself
close down upon the grass under some currant bushes, whispering as he
did so, in a choking voice:--
“Don’t, Freddy, please don’t tell him I’m here.”
Light and joy went out of Freddy’s face also. He understood too well
what all this meant.
Staggering down the road came Mr. Harwood, Jim’s father.
What a sight it was! As he drew nearer, Freddy Wilson saw his red and
swollen face, and heard him muttering and cursing to himself, and he
shuddered with horror.
As Mr. Harwood passed the gate, he saw Freddy, and stopped. Freddy
began to tremble. His first thought was to run back to the house; but
he was a brave little boy, and it went against his feelings to run away
from anything. So he did not move.
“Is my boy, Jim, here?” asked Mr. Harwood, in an angry voice. Some men,
when drunk, are always ill-natured and cruel, and Jim’s father was one
of these. Seeing Freddy, and knowing that the two boys played much
together, he naturally thought of his son.
Freddie did not answer. He could not tell a lie, and so he said nothing.
“Did you hear me?” growled Mr. Harwood.
Still Freddy looked at him and said nothing. He knew that if Jim’s
father found him there, he would kick and beat him all the way home.
Not because the child had disobeyed his father, or was in any mischief,
but Mr. Harwood, as I have said, was full of anger and cruelty when
drunk, and took a savage pleasure in abusing his little boy.
Freddy began to be brave now, because he wished to save his little
playmate from harm.
There was a bolt on the inside of the gate near which the child was
standing. With a stealthy motion, he slipped this bolt and fastened the
gate. It was not done an instant too soon, for Mr. Harwood, growing
furious, made a dash toward the boy, and tried to get at him through
the gate.
“You young dog!” he growled, “I’ll teach you manners! Why don’t you
answer me? Where’s Jim?”
The drunken man shook the gate violently, and tried, with his unsteady
hands, to find the bolt on the inside. But his efforts were in vain.
He could not reach the little fellow, who stood up close to him, with
a brave but sorrowful face. “You’d better go home, sir; I’ll tell my
father of this.”
There was a manly firmness in the manner of the child, as well as in
his words, that had their effect upon the drunken man.
“Who cares for your father? I don’t!” he replied, moving back a step or
two from the gate, muttering and cursing.
“But I say, youngster!” and he staggered a little nearer, with a scowl
on his disfigured face, “just answer me one thing. Say yes or no. Is
that young scamp of mine here?”
“I don’t know any young scamp of yours, Mr. Harwood.”
“You don’t, eh! Now that’s cool for a model young gentleman, like
Master Wilson. Don’t you know my Jim?”
“I know your Jim very well,” said Freddie. “But he’s a good little boy,
and not a young scamp; and I don’t think you’re a kind father to call
him such an ugly name.”
This rebuke was felt by Mr. Harwood, drunk as he was. He could not
endure the steady, fearless glance of Freddy’s blue eyes. Then, away
down in his heart, almost covered up and lost, was an old feeling
of fatherly pride, and this was stirred at the praise spoken about
Jim,--“a good little boy.”
The anger went out of Mr. Harwood’s face.
“He was a good little boy once,” said he, with something so like
tenderness in his voice, that Jim, who was lying close by, hidden under
the currant bushes, sobbed aloud.
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Harwood, leaning forward and looking toward
the currant bushes. But the sound was hushed in a moment.
“He’s a good little boy now,” said Freddy, speaking in a very firm
voice and not seeming to hear the sob. “A good little boy,” he
repeated; and added, to make his assertion stronger, “there isn’t a
better one anywhere about here, and you let him go ragged, when he
ought to have good clothes like the rest of us.”
Mr. Harwood didn’t stop to hear anything further, but turned from the
gate and hurried toward the poor cottage across the road, walking more
steadily than he had done a few minutes before. Then Freddy went behind
the currant bushes where Jim still lay on the ground.
“He’s gone,” said Freddy.
The pent up grief in Jim’s sad heart could be restrained no longer. He
burst into a wild fit of crying that continued for several minutes.
Freddy said all that he could to comfort his little friend; and when he
had grown calm, asked with all the earnestness of a grown-up man:--
“Can’t something be done, Jim?”
Jim shook his head in a hopeless way.
“Something ought to be done, and I am sure something _could_ be done,
if we only knew what it was. Oh! isn’t drinking an awful thing!”
“It’s the worst thing in the world,” sobbed Jim. “When father is
sober,” he went on, “he’s just as kind as he can be; but when he’s
drunk--O dear! it’s dreadful to think of.”
“Does he get drunk often?” asked Freddy.
“Now he does. He’s drunk ’most all the time. But it wasn’t so always. O
dear! He used to be so good to us,” he sobbed, “and take us out with
him sometimes, and buy us nice things. He never does now. Most all
of the money he gets, he spends at the tavern. But I must run home.
Mother is almost sick, and father is so cross when he’s been drinking;
and she’s weak and can’t bear it,” and Jim’s tears ran over his cheeks
again.
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll beat you?” asked Freddy.
“May be he will, and may be he won’t,” answered Jim. “But I must not
stop to think of that. Mother is sick and weak, and father will be
cross to her,” and Jim hurried away.
All at once Freddy remembered how his defense and praise of Jim had
cooled Mr. Harwood’s anger, and he said to himself: “May be I can do
some good,--and keep Mr. Harwood from beating poor Jim, or--”
But Freddy didn’t stop to reason the case any longer, but hurried after
his young friend, resolved to face the drunken man again in the hope of
turning away his wrath.
The two lads entered Jim’s poor home together, and stood face to face
with Mr. Harwood.
“O father!” exclaimed Jim, as he saw, with glad surprise, a look of
almost tender pity on his father’s face; and as the child spoke, he
sprang forward and caught his father’s hand, clinging to it tightly.
This was too much for Mr. Harwood, who was not yet sober enough to
control his feelings, and he turned away with a choking sob, trying to
draw his hand out of Jim’s; but the boy would not let go his hold. And
now Freddy spoke out in behalf of his little friend.
“Jim’s a good boy, Mr. Harwood. I know all the boys around here, and
there isn’t one of them better than Jim. Father says so too; and lets
me have him over at our house whenever I please.”
“Who said he wasn’t a good boy,” answered Mr. Harwood, turning around
upon Freddy with a half angry manner. “I’d just like to hear anybody
speak against him, I would.”
[Illustration: “_He sprang forward and caught his father’s hand_”]
And he sat down, drawing Jim between his knees as he spoke.
A pale, thin, half-frightened woman, Jim’s mother, wondering what all
this could mean, came into the room. Her eager eyes ran hurriedly from
face to face.
“Don’t be scared, Ellen,” said Mr. Harwood, “There isn’t anything
wrong. I’m only having a talk with these boys.”
He was almost sober now. Excitement had cleared his stupid brain.
Looking from one to the other of the lads, he could not help noticing
the painful contrast; one so clean and well dressed, the other soiled
and ragged.
He knit his brows closely, and sat very still, like one arguing for
himself.
“I’ll tell you what it is, mother,” said he, turning his eyes toward
Mrs. Harwood, “I’m not going to have our Jim running about, looking
like a beggar’s child. He’s just as good as any of the boys around
here, and I’ll not have him ashamed to be seen with the best of them.
I will drink nothing stronger than coffee, while I live, God being my
helper!”
“Oh, thank God!” exclaimed the poor woman, dropping upon her knees and
clasping her husband’s neck. “Oh, thanks be to God!” she repeated. “He
will be your helper. In Him is all compassion and all strength; but
without Him our poor resolves are as nothing.”
Freddy stood looking on for a little while, greatly moved by what was
passing, then he walked quietly to the door and was going out, when Mr.
Harwood called to him:--
“Just one word before you go. I’m sorry to say it; but it’s in my
thought now, and I feel that it would better come out. May be I
wouldn’t say it another time.”
Freddy stopped and turned toward Mr. Harwood.
“I’m sorry to say it, Freddy, I am, for you are a nice boy, and have
always been good to Jim. But you’ll thank me for it, may be, some of
these days.”
There was something in Mr. Harwood’s manner that sent a feeling of
alarm to Freddy’s heart. He stood still, waiting, every pulse-beat
sounding in his ears.
“May be your father’s head is stronger than mine was five years ago,”
said Mr. Harwood, “but I’ve seen him at the “Black Horse” too often of
late, going on just as I began. It isn’t safe, Freddy! It isn’t safe,
and I don’t like to see him there. Look what I have come to! But there
was a time when I could hold my head as high as Mr. Wilson or anybody
else in the neighborhood.”
[Illustration: “_I will not believe it_”]
Freddy waited to hear no more. It seemed as if night had fallen
suddenly on his young spirit, and as if the air would suffocate him. He
turned and ran wildly away, such a weight and pain in his heart, that
it seemed as if he would die. Mr. Wilson was coming along the road,
and was near his own gate, when he saw Freddy hurrying across from Mr.
Harwood’s cottage, his face white as a sheet and strongly agitated.
“My son! what ails you?” he cried in alarm.
“O father!” was all that Freddy could say, as he stopped before him,
and looked up with a strange, frightened face.
“I will not believe it,” he sobbed, bursting into tears and hiding his
face in his father’s hands. “It’s all a lie of Mr. Harwood’s!”
“Won’t believe what? my boy,--what has happened to grieve you so? A lie
of Mr. Harwood’s? What has that drunken wretch dared to say?” His voice
changed to an angry tone.
“I can’t tell you, father. It would choke me, but it’s all a lie. Oh, I
wish I hadn’t said anything about it! But I felt so miserable, and you
came right on me.”
Mr. Wilson led Freddy within the gate to a seat under one of the trees.
“Now, my son,” he said in a kind, firm voice, “tell me just what Mr.
Harwood said.”
Freddy then related all about the drunken man coming to the gate, and
what had occurred there, and all that he saw and heard when he went
home with Jim, and at last he sobbed out the awful, warning words of
Mr. Harwood.
As Freddy came to this last part, Mr. Wilson turned his face so far
away that his son could not see it; but he felt his father’s arm that
was around him clasp him more tightly. Then Mr. Wilson placed his lips
fondly and with a long pressure, on Freddy’s forehead.
“I will talk with Mr. Harwood about this,” he said in subdued tones, as
they rose and went toward the house.
Mr. Wilson went to see Mr. Harwood that very day. Their interview was
affecting to both, and good for both. The warning words had not come a
moment too soon, and Mr. Wilson felt this so deeply that he could not
be angry with his poor friend.
No one ever saw either of them at the “Black Horse” after that, nor did
they ever again permit the cup of confusion to come near their lips.
[Illustration]