THE TRAMP'S CONFESSION.
Before "the Golden Shoemaker" had returned to his bed the doctor arrived,
and despotically demanded how he had dared to leave it without the
permission of his medical man. At first the doctor prognosticated serious
consequences from what he was pleased to call his patient's "intemperate
and unlicensed haste." But, when he came the next day, and found "Cobbler"
Horn considerably better, instead of worse, he changed his mind.
"My dear sir," he said, "what have you been doing?"
"I've been taking a new tonic, doctor," replied "Cobbler" Horn, with a
smile; and he told him the great news.
"Well, well," murmured the doctor; "so it has actually turned out like
that! I have often thought that there were many less likely things; and
ever since you told me how closely the young lady's early history
resembled that of your own child, I have had a sort of expectation that
I should one day hear the announcement you have just made. Well, my dear
sir, I congratulate you both--as much on the fitness of the fact, as on
the fact itself."
"Cobbler" Horn's "new tonic" acted liked magic, and he was soon out of the
doctor's hands. In a few days' time he was downstairs; and at the end of a
fortnight he had resumed his ordinary routine of life.
As far as outward appearances were concerned, the great discovery which
had been made produced but little difference in the house. The servants
had, indeed, been informed of the change in the position of the young
secretary. It was also understood that she was to have things pretty much
her own way. It was moreover tacitly admitted that almost unlimited
arrears of filial privilege were due to the newly-recovered daughter of
the house; and she herself evidently felt that the arrears of filial duty
lying to her charge were quite equal in amount. "The Golden Shoemaker"
regarded his new-found child with a very tender love; and even Miss Jemima
manifested towards her an indulgent, if somewhat prim, affection. The
gentle affectionateness of the girl towards both her father and her aunt
was beautiful in the extreme. Yet, even towards Miss Jemima, she was
delightfully free from constraint; and it would have been difficult to
decide whether to admire more the loving familiarity of the niece, or the
complaisancy of the aunt.
In the matter of the secretaryship Marian was firmness itself. "Cobbler"
Horn wished her to give it up; and Miss Jemima was shocked at the idea
that she should propose to retain it for a single day. But she dismissed
their remonstrances with a fine scorn. What did they take her for? Was
she any less fit for the post of secretary than she had been before? Her
duties had been a pleasure from the first; they would afford her greater
delight than ever now. And why should they bring in a stranger to pry into
their affairs? They might give her more salary, if they liked--and here
she laughed merrily; but she wasn't going to give up the work she liked
more than anything else in the world.
One perplexing question yet remained unsolved--What had happened to Marian
between the day when she had left home and the time when she had been
found by Mr. and Mrs. Burton? The girl's own vague memories of that
unhappy period, together with the condition in which she had been found,
indicated that she had fallen into the hands of bad characters of some
kind. Was the mystery ever to be fully solved? To this question the course
of events brought very speedily a complete reply.
One evening, about a fortnight after the last-recorded events, an elderly
tramp was sitting against a haystack upon some farm premises, at no great
distance from the town of Cottonborough. His age might be sixty, or,
allowing for the rough life he had led, something less. He looked jaded
and unwell. The day had been very warm, and the man was eating, with no
great appetite, a sumptuous supper of German sausage and bread. The
sausage had been wrapped in a piece of newspaper, which spread out upon
his knees, was now doing duty as a tablecloth. Having finished his meal,
the man lazily glanced at the paper; but finding its contents, at first,
to possess no particular interest, he was about to crumple it up and throw
it away, when his eye lighted on a paragraph which induced him to pause.
He smoothed out the paper, and raised it nearer to his eyes.
"Well," he muttered, "I ain't much of a scholard; but I means to get to
the bottom o' this 'ere."
With intense eagerness, he began to spell out the words of the paragraph
which had arrested his attention. It was headed, "'The Golden Shoemaker'
recovers his daughter, supposed to have been stolen by tramps in her
childhood." From line to line he laboured painfully on. Many times his
progress was stayed by some formidable word; and again and again he was
interrupted by a violent cough; but at length he had ascertained the
contents of the paragraph. It contained as much as was known of the
history of Marian Horn. It told how, at the age of five, she had, as was
supposed, run away from home, and, as recently-discovered circumstances
seemed to indicate, fallen into the hands of evil persons; and how all
trace of her had then been lost until a few weeks afterwards, when, as had
now become known, she was found, a wretched little waif, upon the highway,
and adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Burton. The circumstances of her after life
were then set forth; and the narrative concluded with a glowing account of
her re-union with her friends. The tramp deeply pondered this romantic
story.
"Ah," he said to himself, "that must ha' been the little wench as me and
the old woman took to. It was somewhere here away. I remember about the
shoe as she'd lost. They must ha' found it. The old woman cut the other
shoe, same as it says here. It were a bad thing of us to take the kid,
that it were."
At this point the man was seized with a violent fit of coughing. When it
had subsided, he resumed his half-muttered meditations. "Well, I'm glad as
the little 'un got took care on, arter all, and has got back to her own
natural born father at last; for she were a game little wench, and no
mistake. She were a poor people's child when we got hold on her. But I've
heerd tell o' 'the Golden Shoemaker,' as they calls him. It must ha' been
arter she was lost that he got his money. Well, I feels sorry, like, as we
didn't try to find her friends. But the old gal were that onscrupulous,
she didn't stick at nothink, she didn't. As sure as my name's Jake Dafty,
this 'ere's a queer go."
Thus mused Jake, the tramp, sitting against the haystack; and his musings
were, ever and anon, disturbed by his racking cough. He felt indisposed
to move. As he brooded over the past, his mind became uneasy, he was
conscious of a vague desire to make confession of the evil he had done.
Did he feel that the sands of his life were almost sped? And was
conscience waking at last?
At length, between his fits of coughing, he was overtaken by sleep. The
night was chilly after the warm day. The sun went down, and the stars
peeped out serenely upon the frowzy and wretched tramp asleep against the
haystack; and the dew settled thickly on his ragged beard and tattered
clothes. Every now and then he was shaken by his cough; but he was weary,
and remained asleep. And, in his sleep, the past came back more vividly
than it had ever re-visited him in his waking hours. He seemed to be
present at the despoiling and ill-using of a dark-eyed child, whom he
might have delivered, and did not; and, from time to time, he moved
uneasily in his sleep, and groaned aloud.
Thus passed the night; and, in the morning, Jake, being found by the farm
people, in his place against the haystack, delirious, and evidently ill,
was conveyed to the workhouse.
The next day "the Golden Shoemaker" received word that a man who was dying
in the workhouse begged to see him at once. "Cobbler" Horn ordered his
closed carriage, and drove to the workhouse without delay. The man, who
was Jake, the tramp, had not long to live. His delirium was over now, and
he was quite himself. His eyes were fixed eagerly upon the face of
"Cobbler" Horn, as the latter entered the room.
"Are you 'the Golden Shoemaker'?" he asked.
"So I am sometimes called," replied "Cobbler" Horn, with a smile.
"Well--I ain't got much time--I'm the bloke wot stole your little 'un; me
and the old woman."
"Cobbler" Horn uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"Yes. The old woman's gone. She died in quod. I don't know what they had
done to her. Perhaps nothink: maybe her time was come. I warn't that
sorry; she'd got to be a stroke too many for me. But I want to tell you
about the little 'un. I'm a going to die, and it 'ull be as well to get it
off my mind. There ain't no mistake; cos I see'd it in the paper, and it
tallies. I've got it here."
As he spoke, he drew from beneath his pillow the crumpled piece of
newspaper on which he had read of the restoration of Marian to her father.
"There," he said, "yer can read it for yerself."
"Cobbler" Horn took the paper, and glanced at its contents. He had seen
in various newspapers, if not this, several similar accounts of the
adventures of his child.
"Ah," he said, handing back to the man the greasy and crumpled paper,
"tell me about it."
"Well, you knows that field where you found one of her shoes?"
"Yes."
"Well, we wos a sitting under the hedge, near that field, one morning,
a-dining, when the kid came along. She stopped when she see'd us; and we
invited her to go along with us, and somehow she seemed as if she didn't
like to refuse. Arter that, we took her into the wood; and the old woman
stripped off her clothes, and did her up like as she was when she was
found. She'd lost one of her shoes, and I went back for it; but I couldn't
find it nowheres. You may be sure as we got out o' these parts as fast as
we could. We thought as the kid 'ud be a rare help in the cadging line.
But she was that stubborn and noisy, we soon got sorry as we'd ever taken
on with her; and, if she hadn't took herself right away, one arternoon
when we was having of our arter-dinner nap in a dry ditch, I do believe
as the old woman 'ud ha' found some means o' putting her on one side."
Having finished his story, the dying tramp lay still for awhile, with his
eyes closed.
"Cobbler" Horn looked down with pity upon the seamed and wrinkled face,
from which almost all expression, except that of utter weariness, seemed
to have been worn away.
Presently the dying man opened his eyes.
"That's all as I has to tell, master," he said faintly. "Do yer think,
now, as yer could find it in yer heart to forgive a cove, like? It 'ud be
none the worse for me, if yer could; nor, mayhap, for yourself neither.
I'se sorry I done it."
"Cobbler" Horn was deeply moved. But, as he now knew as much of what had
happened to Marian as was likely ever to come to light, he could afford to
let the matter rest; and already he found himself thinking more of the
miserable case of the dying waif before him, than of the confession the
poor creature had made. So he gave himself fully to the congenial task of
trying to bring this miserable being, into a fitting frame of mind in
which to meet the solemn change which he must so soon undergo.
"I forgive you freely," he said. "But won't you ask pardon of God? My
forgiveness will be of little use without His."
The dying tramp looked up with a listless stare.
"It's wery good o' yer," he said, "to say as yer forgives me. But, as for
God, I've never had much to do with Him, yer see; and it ain't likely as
He'll mind me now. And I don't seem to care about it a deal."
"Cobbler" Horn was troubled, but not surprised. Breathing a prayer for
Divine guidance and help, he set himself to make clear to this dark soul
the way of life. In the simplest words at his command, he strove to make
the wretched man understand and feel his need of a Saviour; and, when, at
length, he quitted the chamber of death, he had good reason to hope that
his efforts had not been altogether in vain.
Marian was profoundly interested to hear of the dying tramp and the story
he had told, which latter agreed so well with her own vague remembrances,
that she joined her father and aunt in regarding it as indicating what had
been the actual course of events.
Little, now, remains to be told. Father and daughter united to render the
vast wealth which God had intrusted to their charge a source of greater
and yet greater blessing to increasing multitudes of needy and suffering
people; and Aunt Jemima insisted on participating in all their generous
schemes.
Marian is still secretary; but, as she receives many offers of marriage,
it is possible the post may become vacant even yet.
* * * * *
FLETCHER AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, NORWICH.