A NIGHT WALK.
The moon had set when Harry Joscelyn left the White House; and the night
was very dark, as it is so often after the setting of the moon. The sky
was cloudy, and scarcely a star was visible. The wind blew cold in his
face when he got beyond the shelter of the walls. He looked up at the
house as he passed it with a sensation of rage and contempt which it is
only possible to reach when the object we thus hate and despise is one
that ought to be beloved. He lifted a handful of gravel and threw it
violently at his mother’s window. There was no softening of feeling, no
wish to say a farewell, even if an angry one in this. It was done in
boyish rage, with a simple desire to strike. He was glad to think the
stones struck sharply, and might, perhaps, have broken a pane and
fallen like shot upon the floor. This was what he would have wished.
When he had discharged that parting volley, he pulled down his hat over
his ears, and put up his coat-collar. It was all he could do against the
wind, which blew through and through him. Not even an overcoat! They
were determined that he should have nothing; that he should be expelled
without even the poorest covering; that he should be exposed to
everything dangerous, everything disagreeable. To be sure, that was what
they wanted! Revenge filled the young fellow’s heart as he went along in
the dark, shivering at first, till his rapid progress set his blood in
motion. Not only without a home, without a roof to shelter him, or a bed
to lie upon, but without even a coat. He turned his back upon his
father’s house with a bitterness that was indescribable. He could
remember the time when it was delightful to him to go home; but that was
long ago, when he was a boy and knew no better. Even then, what had his
father been to him? a terror even in his lighter moods, which might turn
into fury at any moment. His mother? oh, his mother had been kind
enough, poor soul! For a woman she had done what she could; but at the
best what could a woman do? Poor thing! yes she had been kind. But it is
very difficult for the young to see anyone, even when dear to them,
systematically undervalued without getting to share the sentiment in one
shape or another. Sometimes it rouses a generous mind to hot
partizanship; but Harry had never got that length. He had been indignant
sometimes and conscious, with a little pride, that he was the one who
stood up for his mother--but he had not gone further. And now he could
not help despising her as everybody else did. Just when it was essential
she should stand by him, she had failed him. Call this the consequence
of force which she could not resist, of natural bodily weakness--all
that was very well to say; but a mother worth anything will never run
the risk of bodily force in such an emergency. She will find some way of
getting out of it. She will stand by her son when he needs her, whatever
happens. And Harry’s mother had not done so--just at the critical moment
when he had been driven wild by opposition, when his future career had
been to all appearance cut short and his path shut in before him, she
had failed him! She was as weak as water; there was no faith to be put
in her. A woman like that, Harry reflected, is almost as bad as if she
were not a good woman. Oh, yes; she was a good woman! but what advantage
was it to anyone? What did it matter being good if you were of no use to
those belonging to you? Being good just for yourself, selfishly, that
was a poor sort of business. For her children she was no good. What had
she ever done for any of them? Made a fuss, as Joan said. She was very
good at doing that, was mother! But what more? These were the angry
thoughts that were surging through his mind as he turned his back upon
his home. His father’s image swept across him now and then, raising his
angry despair into momentary rage; but it was not his father, who had
always been hard upon him, but his mother, who had always been so tender
to him, whom Harry assailed with all these bitter thoughts. In her silly
dislike to the only poor little amusement he had, she had turned against
him at the decisive moment. It was just like a woman! Because he would
not tie himself to her apron-strings; because he would not spend his
evenings sitting with her and Joan--a pretty sort of position for a
young man, Harry said to himself, with a curl of his lip.
He went on shivering, straight before him as he happened to have turned
his face when he came round the corner of the house. He was not aware
that there was more choice in it than this, though all the while there
was a dormant intention in his mind of going to Wyburgh after all, and
trying, one last effort, what Uncle Henry would do for him. Uncle Henry
had been kind to him, as kind as he knew how. He was only an old
bachelor, not much good, a selfish old fellow, thinking most of his own
comfort; but still he had been kind; and perhaps if he knew fully the
state of the case, and how the people at White House had treated his
pupil and godson--This was lying underneath as it were the current of
Harry’s thoughts, and turned over and came uppermost for a moment now
and then; but it did not become at all a principal idea until he had
walked a long way, and had got warm with walking, and the sense of
absolute misery, physical and mental, had been slightly modified. At
first he kept to the side of the Fells, which was rough walking, and
where now and then there was a dyke to jump over or a beck to cross; but
by and by got down to the high road, almost groping the way with his
feet, if not with his hands, so black lay the night over the irregular
broken ground. He knew the road, every inch, he would have said; but
when that darkness comes down like a pall, confounding everything in one
gloom, there is little advantage in knowledge. Sometimes he found
himself right up against the grey uncemented stones of a dyke before he
was aware of any obstacle, and sometimes had almost plunged into an
invisible hill-side stream, before the little warning trickle it made
among the stones caught his ear. By the side of one of these little
streams he made his way to the road, and there for the first time asked
himself where he was going. What a strange walk it was, all blank about
him, sometimes a lonely tree rustling, betraying itself in the dark by
the wind in its spare branches, sometimes a cottage suggested on the
roadside, or away among the fields, by the cry of a child or the bark of
a dog. He knew he had passed through the first hamlet on his way,
because the dogs all woke at the unusual sound of a footstep, and barked
at him lustily. He was not a youth of much imagination, and yet this
incident had the most curious effect upon him. He was more startled,
more shocked and annoyed by it than by anything else that had happened
to him. The very dogs! was he already to them a tramp, a wandering
vagrant? At the very end of the “town” some one opened a window, and
Harry heard a querulous question, not addressed to himself, but to some
one inside, “Wha’s that wandering on the road in the dead o’ the night?”
Harry slunk by, trying to keep his steps from making so much noise. A
sense of disreputableness suddenly came over him, a recollection of what
people would think. Nobody would believe he had been turned out of his
home for no fault of his. And then in the midst of his fury and desire
for vengeance, there suddenly came over Harry that family pride which so
seldom abandons a Northcountryman. Was he going to let everybody know
what disgrace there was in the White House, and how his father had
turned him out of doors? Were all the tongues in the country-side to be
set wagging on this subject? The Joscelyns--people so well known! Harry
felt as if some one had struck him sharply with his hand in the
darkness. It would be all over the country in twenty-four hours.
Joscelyn of White House had turned his youngest son out of doors. There
was no second family of the name to confuse gossip. Harry felt as if
the barking of the dogs was but a foretaste of what was going to happen
to him. He felt as if some one had grasped him, choked him, tried to
strangle him in the dark.
Fortunately Wyburgh by this time showed, a long way off with its little
lights twinkling. They were but four little rustic lights, not many of
them--for when the moon shone the corporation felt itself at liberty to
dispense with lamps; and but for the lights at the railway-station, and
two or three which were indispensable, the little town would have been
invisible in the darkness, like those sleeping villages which Harry had
stumbled through almost without knowing. When he caught sight of the
first of these lights, it gave him a keen pleasure; it seemed to deliver
him from that world of blackness in which the only conscious and living
thing was himself and the sea of thoughts which surged up and down
within him, one wave sweeping over another, in a confusion and tumult
indescribable. Harry’s soul caught at the glow of that tall solitary
lamp, the first which marked the line of the railway, as at a guiding
light directing him into a known country, to solid ground and a familiar
shore. The darkness and the little inward world of thought were alike
strange to him, and he had no guide to direct him through them; but now
here was “kent ground,” a place which would be visible, where the dogs
would not bark at him in the dark, where there were all the safeguards
of an inhabited place. He was relieved beyond measure when he saw the
lights, and said to himself what they were. That was the tall light on
the line, that other lower one the lamp at the station, that the faint
little flare seen over the housetops of the market square, and yonder
the well-known lamp at the corner, which he had seen lit so often as he
left the Grammar-school. It made his heart light to count them at a
distance. But when he got to the outskirts of the town he was less
happy. It was still quite dark, between three and four o’clock, and he
could not go to Uncle Harry’s, or to any other house in which he was
known at such an hour. Nobody was stirring in Wyburgh, nor would be for
hours yet. As he went into the silent streets the sense of his desolate
position came over him more strongly than ever. All the houses were shut
up and silent, blinds drawn over the windows, feeble lamps burning here
and there like night-lights in a sick-chamber, the whole place breathing
low and noiselessly in its sleep. He met a policeman, the only one,
making his rounds with steady tramp, and the policeman looked at Harry
with suspicion, throwing the light of his dark lantern upon him as he
passed. He knew John Armstrong very well, and had played him many a
trick as a schoolboy; but he shrank from making himself known now; and
John looked with suspicion at the wayfarer, without even an overcoat,
buttoned up to the neck, and with his hat drawn over his eyes, who thus
invaded the town in the middle of the night. Harry knew that he was but
a tramp, all the more dangerous because better dressed than usual, in
John’s eyes. He felt the light of the lantern come after him, making a
long trail of light upon the pavement. And he did not know where to go.
If he went wandering about, which was the only thing he could think of,
no doubt he would meet John Armstrong again, and almost certainly be
questioned as to what he was doing, and who he was. And then the story
would run over Wyburgh, how young Harry Joscelyn, one of the Joscelyns
of the White House, had come in to Wyburgh before four o’clock in the
morning, walking like a vagrant, and was recognized by the policeman,
roaming about the street without any place to go to. He might almost be
taken up as a rogue and vagabond, Harry thought, with that exaggeration
which misfortune delights in. If he were called upon to give an account
of himself he could not do it, nor had he any place to go to, any home
waiting for him. The Wyburgh folk might form their own conclusions, and
so they would, could anyone doubt.
He walked straight through the town to the other end of it, as if he
were going on somewhere else, ashamed of himself, though he had nothing
to be ashamed of, avoiding the spots of feeble light round the lamps,
and walking as softly as he could not to make so much noise upon the
pavement. He had not felt this so much in the country, in the darkness,
but here, where everybody knew him, he became suddenly ashamed and
afraid of being seen. When the clock struck it made him jump as if it
had been some one calling his name. “Harry Joscelyn is roaming about the
country without a home to go to;” did he think that was what it was
going to say? Alas! it was but four o’clock that struck; four o’clock!
the night seemed to have been already twelve hours long; and here were
two hours more at the least that he must get through somehow before he
could hope that even Mrs. Eadie, Uncle Henry’s old housekeeper, would be
astir. He would not mind presenting himself to her; and the thought of
the kind unquestioning welcome she would give, the cheerful fire, the
breakfast, the warm room in which he could sit down, gave him sudden
encouragement. For it was very cold; those long, long hours of night,
which pass so quickly in sleep, sliding out of consciousness altogether,
how much goes on in them to those who are homeless! Harry had never
thought of anything of the kind before; a night without rest, even, far
less a night out of doors, had been unknown to him. The wretches who
wander about the roads, and sleep under a hedge, and have no home, were
out of his ken; they were poor wretches, and in all likelihood it was
“their own fault.” People would think the same of him. To be ashamed of
the position in which you find yourself, and yet to be quite innocent,
is a curious misery, but it is very poignant. He had done nothing wrong;
but the light of John Armstrong’s lantern made him shrink, and even
those pale little prying lamps, each making a hole in the darkness. He
went straight through Wyburgh, coming out at the further side. He
walked till he was quite clear of the houses, and then he turned and
looked back upon the spots of light which had cheered him so much when
he first caught sight of them. How cold it was! nobody would believe
that a spring morning could be so cold. It was like December. There was
the clock again, like some one shouting in his ear--but only sounding
the half after four; would the night never come to an end? He walked up
and down on this bit of quiet road, just outside the town, to keep
himself warm, pausing now and then to lean upon the wall and look at the
lights; though he dared not go back to them lest they should betray him
to the gossips, yet it was a kind of consolation to look at them still.
They delivered him a little from that close presence and wretched
company of himself.
An early cart from one of the neighbouring farms with vegetables for the
market, lumbering along the road just as the day began to break, was the
next thing that disturbed him. He fled from that too, wondering what the
carter would think to see him standing there like a ghost in the dim
dawn--and got over the wall into a field, to be out of the way, yet
could not help feeling, as he listened, holding his breath, to the
sound of the slow, jogging horses and the man’s heavy tread, that the
carter must have spied him, and must be peeping over the wall and
wondering who he could be. By this time Harry had got to feel very like
a criminal. He felt sure that everybody would think he was a criminal
and had done something desperate, to see him there in this guise. And
how he was to get courage to go back to Wyburgh again in full daylight,
in the sight of everybody, and knock at his uncle’s door, he did not
know.
“Lord bless us! Master Harry!” the housekeeper cried. He came upon her
suddenly as she opened the door to go out and feed her chickens, which
was the first thing she did every morning. She was so scared that she
let fall her apronful of seed, and held up her hands half to protect
herself, for this worn, pale, wearied apparition, with coat-collar up to
its ears, and hat drawn down over its brow, was like the ghost of Harry,
not himself. “Lord bless us! Master Harry! it’s never _you_?”
“It is me, though: and dreadfully tired, and so cold I don’t know what
to do with myself,” said Harry, with chattering teeth. “Let me come in
and look at a fire.”
“Let you come in, my bonny boy! you shall come in, and welcome; and the
kettle’s on, and I’ll soon make you some tea. Come into the kitchen,
it’s the warmest place. Bless the lad! What hour did ye start at to get
here so early? or has anything happened? You’ve not come for the doctor?
I’m that surprised you might blow me over with a puff of your breath.”
“I shall not try,” said Harry, recovering himself a little as he felt
the warmth of the fire. “There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Eadie, they’re all
well enough; but I want to see Uncle Henry, and I’m going back to
Liverpool to-day.”
“Bless my heart! I thought you had come for a real holiday, and its no’
above a week; but whisht! laddie, dinna chatter with your teeth like
that; come nearer to the fire. Dear, dear me, but you must be cold; not
a great-coat upon your back, nor a comforter, nor one thing to keep the
heat in ye. I hope you havena’ just gotten your death,” cried the
housekeeper, pouring the steaming water, which it was good even to see,
into her teapot; and in her anxiety to get him a comfortable meal she
forgot to ask any more questions.
Mrs. Eadie’s help, who was a young girl, did not live in the house, and
her late arrival in the mornings was one of the grievances of the
housekeeper’s life. There was nobody, therefore, but this good woman, in
whom Harry had perfect confidence, to witness his worn-out condition:
and by-and-by he got thawed and comfortable. Once within this legitimate
shelter too, his spirits came back to him. He forgot the painful
miseries he had conjured up, or, at least, he did not forget them, but
they went to his father’s account to swell his wrath. There were still
several hours to wait before he could see Uncle Henry, and Harry lay
down upon the bed where he had slept when he was a schoolboy, and
returned to common life and respectable usages through the medium of a
long sleep. It was a sort of moral bath to him, restoring him to
creditable ways. To think that he should have feared John Armstrong’s
lantern, and hid himself from the carter with his early vegetables! But
all that, and a great deal more, went to his father’s account. His rage
revived as the misery of the night ended. For those latter hours he had
been too much occupied by his personal feelings to dwell upon the cause
of them; now that he was comfortable once more the insult and the
cruelty that had been inflicted upon him came back with double force.
Turned from his father’s door, the key turned upon him, the house he was
born in shut up against him; himself disowned, like a beggar, left to
wander where he pleased, to die on the moors, if he liked, to get his
death, as Mrs. Eadie had suggested; and all this his father’s doing!
Harry clenched his fist with wild excitement, with a desire for
vengeance which startled himself. He thought he would almost consent to
have “got his death” if Joscelyn could be tried for manslaughter. He
would have almost liked to punish, to convict his father by dying, so
that the whole country might have pointed at him as the man who had
killed his son. But then he reflected that probably his father would not
care. “But I’ll make him care,” Harry said to himself. Few people
venture to express such vindictiveness; but Harry Joscelyn’s heart was
full of it; it was natural to his race.