A Rough Shaking

Chapter LIII. The gardener

From the fact that his hostess made him no answer when he breathed the hope of a job in her garden, Clare concluded that he had presumed in suggesting the thing to her, and that she would be relieved by their departure. When he woke in the morning, therefore, early after a grand sleep, he felt he had no right to linger: he had been invited to sleep, and he had slept! He also shrank from the idea of being supposed to expect his breakfast before he went. So, as soon as he got up, he walked out of the gate, crossed the road, and sat down on the spot he had occupied the night before, there to wait until the house should be astir. For, although he could not linger within gates where he was unknown, neither could he slink away without morning-thanks for the gift of a warm night.

As he sat, he grew drowsy, and leaning back, fell fast asleep.

The thoughts of his hostess had been running on very different lines, and she woke with feelings concerning the pauper very different from those the pauper imagined in her. She must do something for him; she must give or get him work! As to giving him work, her difficulty lay in the gardener. She resolved, however, to attempt over-coming it.

She rose earlier than usual, therefore, and as the man, who did not sleep in the house, was not yet come, she went down to the gate to meet him and have the thing over—so eager was she, and so nervous in prospect of such an interview with her dreaded servant.

“Good gracious!” she murmured aloud, “does it rain beggars?” For there, on the same spot, lay another beggar, another boy, with a dog in his bosom the facsimile of the ugly white thing named after Milton’s angel! She did not feel moved to go and make his acquaintance. It could not be another of the family, could it? that had already heard of his brother’s good luck, and come to see whether there might not be a picking for him too! She turned away hurriedly lest he should wake, and went back to the house.

But looking behind her as she mounted the steps, she caught sight of the gardener at the other gate, casting a displeased look across the road before he entered: he did not like to see tramps about! Her heart sank a little, but she was not to be turned aside.

The gardener came in, and his mistress joined him and walked with him to his work, telling him as much as she thought fit concerning the boy, and interspersing her narrative with hints of the duty of giving every one a chance. She took care not to mention that he had come out of a prison somewhere.

“No one should be driven to despair,” she said, little thinking she used almost the very words of the Lord, according to the Sinaitic reading of a passage in St. Luke’s gospel.

The argument had little force with the rough Scotchman: his mistress was soft-hearted! He shook his head ominously at the idea of giving a tramp the chance of doing decent work, but at last consented, with a show of being over-persuaded to an imprudent action, to let the boy help him for a day, and see how he got on, stipulating, however, that he should not be supposed to have pledged himself to anything.

Miss Tempest’s plans went beyond the gardener’s scope. She had for some months been inclined to have a boy to help in the house—an inclination justified by a late unexpected accession of income: if this boy were what he seemed, he would make a more than valuable servant; and nothing could clear her judgment of him better, she thought, than putting him to the test of a brief subjection to the cross-grained, exacting Scotchman. By that she would soon know whether to dismiss him, or venture with him farther!

She had but just wrung his hard consent from the gardener, when the cook came running, to say the boy was gone. Upon poor Miss Tempest’s heart fell a cold avalanche.

“But we’ve counted the spoons, ma’am, and they’re all right!” said the cook.

This additional statement, however, did not seem to give much consolation to the benevolent old lady. She stood for a moment with her eyes on the ground, too pained to move or speak. Then she started, and ran to the gate. The cook ran after, thinking her mistress gone out of her mind—and was sure of it when she saw her open the gate, and run straight down the bank to the road. But when she reached the gate herself, she saw her standing over a boy asleep on the grass of the opposite bank.

Abdiel, lying on his bosom, watched her with keen friendly eyes. Clare was dreaming some agreeable morning-dream; for a smile of such pleasure as could haunt only an innocent face, nickered on it like a sunny ripple on the still water of a pool.

“No!” said Miss Tempest to herself; “there’s no duplicity there! Otherwise, a tree is not known by its fruit!”

Clare opened his eyes, and started lightly to his feet, strong and refreshed.

“Good morning, ma’am!” he said, pulling off his cap.

“Good morning—what am I to call you?” she returned.

“Clare, if you please, ma’am.”

“What is your Christian name?”

“That is my Christian name, ma’am—Clare.”

“Then what is your surname?”

“I am called Porson, ma’am, but I have another name. Mr. Porson adopted me.”

“What is your other name?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I am going to know one day, I think; but the day is not come yet.”

He told her all he could about his adoptive parents, and little Maly; but the time before he went to the farm was growing strangely dreamlike, as if it had sunk a long way down in the dark waters of the past—all up to the hour when Maly was carried away by the long black aunt.

The story accounted to Miss Tempest both for his good speech and the name of his dog. The adopted child of a clergyman might well be acquainted with Paradise Lost, though she herself had never read more of it than the apostrophe to Light in the beginning of the third book! That she had learned at school without understanding phrase or sentence of it; while Clare never left passage alone until he understood it, or, failing that, had invented a meaning for it.

“Well, then, Clare, I’ve been talking to my gardener about you,” said Miss Tempest. “He will give you a job.”

“God bless you, ma’am! I’m ready!” cried Clare, stretching out his arms, as if to get them to the proper length for work. “Where shall I find him?”

“You must have breakfast first.”

She led the way to the kitchen.

The cook, a middle-aged woman, looked at the dog, and her face puckered all over with points of interrogation and exclamation.

“Please, cook, will you give this young man some breakfast? He wanted to go to work without any, but that wouldn’t do—would it, cook?” said her mistress.

“I hope the dog won’t be running in and out of my kitchen all day, ma’am!”

“No fear of that, cook!” said Clare; “he never leaves me.”

“Then I don’t think—I’m afraid,” she began, and stopped. “—But that’s none of my business,” she added. “John will look after his own—and more!”

Miss Tempest said nothing, but she almost trembled; for John, she knew, had a perfect hatred of dogs. Nor could anyone wonder, for, gate open or gate shut, in they came and ran over his beds. She dared not interfere! He and Clare must settle the question of Abdiel or no Abdiel between them! She left the kitchen.

The cook threw the dog a crust of bread, and Abdiel, after a look at his master, fell upon it with his white, hungry little teeth. Then she proceeded to make a cup of coffee for Clare, casting an occasional glance of pity at his garments, so miserably worn and rent, and his brown bare feet.

“How on the face of this blessed world, boy, do you expect to work in the garden without shoes?” she said at length.

“Most things I can do well enough without them,” answered Clare; “—even digging, if the ground is not very hard. My feet used to be soft, but now the soles of them are like leather.—They’ve grown their own shoes,” he added, with a smile, and looked straight in her eyes.

The smile and the look went far to win her heart, as they had won that of her mistress: she felt them true, and wondered how such a fair-spoken, sweet-faced boy could be on the tramp. She poured him out a huge cup of coffee, fried him a piece of bacon, and cut him as much bread and butter as he could dispose of. He had not often eaten anything but dry bread, in general very dry, since he left the menagerie, and now felt feasted like an emperor. Pleased with the master, the cook fed the dog with equal liberality; and then, curious to witness their reception by John, between whom and herself was continuous feud, she conducted Clare to the gardener. From a distance he saw them coming. With look irate fixed upon the dog, he started to meet them. Clare knew too well the meaning of that look, and saw in him Satan regarding Abdiel with eye of fire, and the words on his lips—

The moment he came near enough, without word, or show of malice beyond what lay in his eye, he made, with the sharp hoe he carried, a sudden downstroke at the faithful angel, thinking to serve him as Gabriel served Moloch. But Abdiel was too quick for him: he had read danger in his very gait the moment he saw him move, and enmity in his eyes when he came nearer. He kept therefore his own eyes on the hoe, and never moved until the moment of attack. Then he darted aside. The weapon therefore came down on the hard gravel, jarring the arm of his treacherous enemy. With a muttered curse John followed him and made another attempt, which Abdiel in like manner eluded. John followed and followed; Abdiel fled and fled—never farther than a few yards, seeming almost to entice the man’s pursuit, sometimes pirouetting on his hind legs to escape the blows which the gardener, growing more and more furious with failure, went on aiming at him. Fruitlessly did Clare assure him that neither would the dog do any harm, nor allow any one to hit him. It was from very weariness that at last he desisted, and wiping his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, turned upon Clare in the smothered wrath that knows itself ridiculous. For all the time the cook stood by, shaking with delighted laughter at his every fresh discomfiture.

“Awa’, ye deil’s buckie,” he cried, “an tak’ the little Sawtan wi’ ye! Dinna lat me see yer face again.”

“But the lady told me you would give me a job!” said Clare.

“I didna tell her I wad gie yer tyke a job! I wad though, gien he wad lat me!”

“He’s given you a stiff one!” said the cook, and laughed again.

The gardener took no notice of her remark.

“Awa’ wi’ ye!” he cried again, yet more wrathfully, “—or—”

He raised his hand.

Clare looked in his eyes and did not budge.

“For shame, John!” expostulated the cook. “Would you strike a child?”

“I’m no child, cook!” said Clare. “He can’t hurt me much. I’ve had a good breakfast!”

“Lat ‘im tak’ awa’ that deevil o’ a tyke o’ his, as I tauld him,” thundered the gardener, “or I’ll mak’ a pulp o’ ‘im!”

“I’ve had such a breakfast, sir, as I’m bound to give a whole day’s work in return for,” said Clare, looking up at the angry man; “and I won’t stir till I’ve done it. Stolen food on my stomach would turn me sick!”

“Gien it did, it wadna be the first time, I reckon!” said the gardener.

“It would be the first time!” returned Clara “You are very rude.—If Abdiel understood Scotch, he would bite you,” he added, as the dog, hearing his master speak angrily, came up, ears erect, and took his place at his side, ready for combat.

“Ye’ll hae to tak’ some ither mode o’ payin’ the debt!” said John. “Stick spaud in yird here, ye sall not! You or I maun flit first!”

With that he walked slowly away, shouldering his hoe.

“Come, Abdiel,” said Clare; “we must go and tell Miss Tempest! Perhaps she’ll find something else for us to do. If she can’t, she’ll forgive us our breakfast, and we’ll be off on the tramp again. I thought we were going to have a day’s rest—I mean work; that’s the rest we want! But this man is an enemy to the poor.”

The gardener half turned, as if he would speak, but changed his mind and went his way.

“Never mind John!” said the cook, loud enough for John to hear. “He’s an old curmudgeon as can’t sleep o’ nights for quarrellin’ inside him. I’ll go to mis’ess, and you go and sit down in the kitchen till I come to you.”

Chapter LIV. The Kitchen

Clare went into the kitchen, and sat down. The housemaid came in, and stood for a moment looking at him. Then she asked him what he wanted there.

“Cook told me to wait here,” he answered.

“Wait for what?”

“Till she came to me. She’s gone to speak to Miss Tempest.”

“I won’t have that dog here.”

“When I had a home,” remarked Clare, “our servant said the cook was queen of the kitchen: I don’t want to be rude, ma’am, but I must do as she told me.”

“She never told you to bring that mangy animal in here!”

“She knew he would follow me, and she said nothing about him. But he’s not mangy. He hasn’t enough to eat to be mangy. He’s as lean as a dried fish!”

The housemaid, being fat, was inclined to think the remark personal; but Clare looked up at her with such clear, honest, simple eyes, that she forgot the notion, and thought what a wonderfully nice boy he looked.

“He’s shamefully poor, though! His clothes ain’t even decent!” she remarked to herself.

And certainly the white skin did look through in several places.

“You won’t let him put his nose in anything, will you?” she said quite gently, returning his smile with a very pleasant one of her own.

“Abdiel is too much of a gentleman to do it,” he answered.

“A dog a gentleman!” rejoined the housemaid with a merry laugh, willing to draw him out.

“Abdiel can be hungry and not greedy,” answered Clare, and the young woman was silent.

Miss Tempest and Mrs. Mereweather had all this time been turning over the question of what was to be done with the strange boy. They agreed it was too bad that anyone willing to work should be prevented from earning even a day’s victuals by the bad temper of a gardener. But his mistress did not want to send the man away. She had found him scrupulously honest, as is many a bad-tempered man, and she did not like changes. The cook on her part had taken such a fancy to Clare that she did not want him set to garden-work; she would have him at once into the house, and begin training him for a page. Now Miss Tempest was greatly desiring the same thing, but in dread of what the cook would say, and was delighted, therefore, when the first suggestion of it came from Mrs. Mereweather herself. The only obstacle in the cook’s eyes was that same long, spectral dog. The boy could not be such a fool, however,—she said, not being a lover of animals—as let a wretched beast like that come betwixt him and a good situation!

“It’s all right, Clare,” said Mrs. Mereweather, entering her queendom so radiant within that she could not repress the outshine of her pleasure. “Mis’ess an’ me, we’ve arranged it all. You’re to help me in the kitchen; an’ if you can do what you’re told, an’ are willin’ to learn, we’ll soon get you out of your troubles. There’s but one thing in the way.”

“What is it, please?” asked Clare.

“The dog, of course! You must part with the dog.”

“That I cannot do,” returned Clare quietly, but with countenance fallen and sorrowful. “—Come, Abdiel!”

The dog started up, every hair of him full of electric vitality.

“You don’t mean you’re going to walk yourself off in such a beastly ungrateful fashion—an’ all for a miserable cur!” exclaimed the cook.

“The lady has been most kind to us, and we’re grateful to her, and ready to work for her if she will let us;—ain’t we, Abdiel? But Abdiel has done far more for me than Miss Tempest! To part with Abdiel, and leave him to starve, or get into bad company, would be sheer ingratitude. I should be a creature such as Miss Tempest ought to have nothing to do with: I might serve her as that young butler I told her of! It’s just as bad to be ungrateful to a dog as to any other person. Besides, he wouldn’t leave me. He would be always hanging about.”

“John would soon knock him on the head.”

“Would he, Abdiel?” said Clare.

The dog looked up in his master’s face with such a comical answer in his own, that the cook burst out laughing, and began to like Abdiel.

“But you don’t really mean to say,” she persisted, “that you’d go off again on the tramp, to be as cold and hungry again to-morrow as you were yesterday—and all for the sake of a dog? A dog ain’t a Christian!”

“Abdiel’s more of a Christian than some I know,” answered Clare: “he does what his master tells him.”

“There’s something in that!” said the cook.

“If I parted with Abdiel, I could never hold up my head among the angels,” insisted Clare. “Think what harm it might do him! He could trust nobody after, his goodness might give way! He might grow worse than Tommy!—No; I’ve got to take care of Abdiel, and Abdiel’s got to take care of me!—‘Ain’t you, Abby?”

“We can’t have him here in the kitchen nohow!” said the cook in relenting tone.

“Poor fellow!” said the housemaid kindly.

The dog turned to her and wagged his tail

“What wouldn’t I give for a lover like that!” said the housemaid—but whether of Clare or the dog I cannot say.

“I know what I shall do!” cried Clare, in sudden resolve. “I will ask Miss Tempest to have him up-stairs with her, and when she is tired of either of us, we will go away together.”

“A probable thing!” returned the cook. “A lady like Miss Tempest with a dog like that about her! She’d be eaten up alive with fleas! In ten minutes she would!”

“No fear of that!” rejoined Clare. “Abdiel catches all his own fleas!—Don’t you, Abby?”

The dog instantly began to burrow in his fell of hair—an answer which might be taken either of two ways: it might indicate comprehension and corroboration of his master, or the necessity for a fresh hunt. The women laughed, much amused.

“Look here!” said Clare. “Let me have a tub of water—warm, if you please—he likes that: I tried him once, passing a factory, where a lot of it was running to waste. Then, with the help of a bit of soap, I’ll show you a body of hair to astonish you.”

“What breed is he?” asked the housemaid.

“He’s all the true breeds under the sun, I fancy,” returned his master; “but the most of him seems of the sky-blue terrier sort.”

The more they talked with Clare, the better the women liked him. They got him a tub and plenty of warm water. Abdiel was nothing loath to be plunged in, and Clare washed him thoroughly. Taken out and dried, he seemed no more for a lady’s chamber unmeet.

“Now,” said Clare, “will you please ask Miss Tempest if I may bring him on to the lawn, and show her some of his tricks?”

The good lady was much pleased with the cleverness and instant obedience of the little animal. Clare proposed that she should keep him by her.

“But will he stay with me? and will he do what I tell him?” she asked.

Clare took the dog aside, and talked to him. He told him what he was going to do, and what he expected of him. How much Abdiel understood, who can tell! but when his master laid him down at Miss Tempest’s feet, there he lay; and when Clare went with the cook, he did not move, though he cast many a wistful glance after the lord of his heart. When his new mistress went into the house, he followed her submissively, his head hanging, and his tail motionless. He soon recovered his cheerfulness, however, and seemed to know that his friend had not abandoned him.

Chapter LV. The wheel rests for a time

That part of the human race which is fond of dolls, may now imagine the pleasure of the cook in going to the town in the omnibus to buy everything for a live doll so big as Clare! In a very few days she had him dressed to her heart’s content, and the satisfaction of her mistress, who would not have him in livery, but in a plain suit of dark blue cloth: for she loved blue, all her men-people being, or having been in the navy. Thus dressed, he looked as much of a gentleman as before: his look of refinement had owed nothing to the contrast of his rags. Better clothes make not a few seem commoner.

When Mrs. Mereweather came back from the town the first day, she found that the ragged boy had got her kitchen and scullery as nice and clean, and everything as ready to her hand, as if she had got her work done before she went, which the omnibus would not permit. This rejoiced her much; but being a woman of experience, she continued a little anxious lest his sweet ways should go after his rags, lest his new garments should breed bumptiousness and bad manners. For such a change is no unfrequent result of prosperity. But such had been Mr. Porson’s teaching and example, such Mrs. Person’s management, and such the responsiveness of the boy’s disposition, that the thought never came to him whether this or that was a thing fit for him to do: if the thing was a right thing, and had to be done, why should not he do it as well as another! To earn his own and Abdiel’s bread, he would do anything honest, setting up his back at nothing. But when about a thing, he forgot even his obligation to do it, in the glad endeavour to do it well.