John Halifax, Gentleman

D >> Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik) >> John Halifax, Gentleman

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This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN

by Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik)

CHAPTER I

"Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little--"

"Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Watkins, once my nurse), was
going to say, but she changed her mind.

My father and I both glanced round, surprised at her unusual
reticence of epithets: but when the lad addressed turned, fixed his
eyes on each of us for a moment, and made way for us, we ceased to
wonder. Ragged, muddy, and miserable as he was, the poor boy looked
anything but a "vagabond."

"Thee need not go into the wet, my lad. Keep close to the wall, and
there will be shelter enough both for us and thee," said my father,
as he pulled my little hand-carriage into the alley, under cover,
from the pelting rain. The lad, with a grateful look, put out a hand
likewise, and pushed me further in. A strong hand it was--roughened
and browned with labour--though he was scarcely as old as I. What
would I not have given to have been so stalwart and so tall!

Sally called from her house-door, "Wouldn't Master Phineas come in
and sit by the fire a bit?"--But it was always a trouble to me to
move or walk; and I liked staying at the mouth of the alley, watching
the autumnal shower come sweeping down the street: besides, I wanted
to look again at the stranger-lad.

He had scarcely stirred, but remained leaning against the wall--
either through weariness, or in order to be out of our way. He took
little or no notice of us, but kept his eyes fixed on the pavement--
for we actually boasted pavement in the High Street of our town of
Norton Bury--watching the eddying rain-drops, which, each as it fell,
threw up a little mist of spray. It was a serious, haggard face for
a boy of only fourteen or so. Let me call it up before me--I can,
easily, even after more than fifty years.

Brown eyes, deep-sunken, with strongly-marked brows, a nose like most
other Saxon noses, nothing particular; lips well-shaped, lying one
upon the other, firm and close; a square, sharply outlined, resolute
chin, of that type which gives character and determination to the
whole physiognomy, and without which in the fairest features, as in
the best dispositions, one is always conscious of a certain want.

As I have stated, in person the lad was tall and strongly-built; and
I, poor puny wretch! so reverenced physical strength. Everything in
him seemed to indicate that which I had not: his muscular limbs, his
square, broad shoulders, his healthy cheek, though it was sharp and
thin--even to his crisp curls of bright thick hair.

Thus he stood, principal figure in a picture which is even yet as
clear to me as yesterday--the narrow, dirty alley leading out of the
High Street, yet showing a glimmer of green field at the further end;
the open house-doors on either side, through which came the drowsy
burr of many a stocking-loom, the prattle of children paddling in the
gutter, and sailing thereon a fleet of potato parings. In front the
High Street, with the mayor's house opposite, porticoed and grand:
and beyond, just where the rain-clouds were breaking, rose up out of
a nest of trees, the square tower of our ancient abbey--Norton Bury's
boast and pride. On it, from a break in the clouds, came a sudden
stream of light. The stranger-lad lifted up his head to look at it.

"The rain will be over soon," I said, but doubted if he heard me.
What could he be thinking of so intently?--a poor working lad, whom
few would have given credit for thinking at all.

I do not suppose my father cast a second glance or thought on the
boy, whom, from a sense of common justice, he had made take shelter
beside us. In truth, worthy man, he had no lack of matter to occupy
his mind, being sole architect of a long up-hill but now thriving
trade. I saw, by the hardening of his features, and the restless way
in which he poked his stick into the little water-pools, that he was
longing to be in his tan-yard close by.

He pulled out his great silver watch--the dread of our house, for it
was a watch which seemed to imbibe something of its master's
character; remorseless as justice or fate, it never erred a moment.

"Twenty-three minutes lost by this shower. Phineas, my son, how am I
to get thee safe home? unless thee wilt go with me to the tan-yard--"

I shook my head. It was very hard for Abel Fletcher to have for his
only child such a sickly creature as I, now, at sixteen, as helpless
and useless to him as a baby.

"Well, well, I must find some one to go home with thee." For though
my father had got me a sort of carriage in which, with a little
external aid, I could propel myself, so as to be his companion
occasionally in his walks between our house, the tanyard, and the
Friends' meeting-house--still he never trusted me anywhere alone.
"Here, Sally--Sally Watkins! do any o' thy lads want to earn an
honest penny?"

Sally was out of earshot; but I noticed that as the lad near us heard
my father's words, the colour rushed over his face, and he started
forward involuntarily. I had not before perceived how wasted and
hungry-looking he was.

"Father!" I whispered. But here the boy had mustered up his courage
and voice.

"Sir, I want work; may I earn a penny?"

He spoke in tolerably good English--different from our coarse, broad,
G---shire drawl; and taking off his tattered old cap, looked right up
into my father's face, The old man scanned him closely.

"What is thy name, lad?"

"John Halifax."

"Where dost thee come from?"

"Cornwall."

"Hast thee any parents living?"

"No."

I wished my father would not question thus; but possibly he had his
own motives, which were rarely harsh, though his actions often
appeared so.

"How old might thee be, John Halifax?"

"Fourteen, sir."

"Thee art used to work?"

"Yes."

"What sort of work?"

"Anything that I can get to do."

I listened nervously to this catechism, which went on behind my back.

"Well," said my father, after a pause, "thee shall take my son home,
and I'll give thee a groat. Let me see; art thee a lad to be
trusted?" And holding him at arm's length, regarding him meanwhile
with eyes that were the terror of all the rogues in Norton Bury, Abel
Fletcher jingled temptingly the silver money in the pockets of his
long-flapped brown waistcoat. "I say, art thee a lad to be trusted?"

John Halifax neither answered nor declined his eyes. He seemed to
feel that this was a critical moment, and to have gathered all his
mental forces into a serried square, to meet the attack. He met it,
and conquered in silence.

"Lad, shall I give thee the groat now?"

"Not till I've earned it, sir."

So, drawing his hand back, my father slipped the money into mine, and
left us.

I followed him with my eyes, as he went sturdily plashing down the
street; his broad, comfortable back, which owned a coat of true
Quaker cut, but spotless, warm, and fine; his ribbed hose and
leathern gaiters, and the wide-brimmed hat set over a fringe of grey
hairs, that crowned the whole with respectable dignity. He looked
precisely what he was--an honest, honourable, prosperous tradesman.
I watched him down the street--my good father, whom I respected
perhaps even more than I loved him. The Cornish lad watched him
likewise.

It still rained slightly, so we remained under cover. John Halifax
leaned in his old place, and did not attempt to talk. Once only,
when the draught through the alley made me shiver, he pulled my cloak
round me carefully.

"You are not very strong, I'm afraid?"

"No."

Then he stood idly looking up at the opposite--the mayor's--house,
with its steps and portico, and its fourteen windows, one of which
was open, and a cluster of little heads visible there.

The mayor's children--I knew them all by sight, though nothing more;
for their father was a lawyer, and mine a tanner; they belonged to
Abbey folk and orthodoxy, I to the Society of Friends--the mayor's
rosy children seemed greatly amused by watching us shivering
shelterers from the rain. Doubtless our position made their own
appear all the pleasanter. For myself it mattered little; but for
this poor, desolate, homeless, wayfaring lad to stand in sight of
their merry nursery window, and hear the clatter of voices, and of
not unwelcome dinner-sounds--I wondered how he felt it.

Just at this minute another head came to the window, a somewhat older
child; I had met her with the rest; she was only a visitor. She
looked at us, then disappeared. Soon after, we saw the front door
half opened, and an evident struggle taking place behind it; we even
heard loud words across the narrow street.

"I will--I say I will."

"You shan't, Miss Ursula."

"But I will!"

And there stood the little girl, with a loaf in one hand and a
carving-knife in the other. She succeeded in cutting off a large
slice, and holding it out.

"Take it, poor boy!--you look so hungry. Do take it." But the
servant forced her in, and the door was shut upon a sharp cry.

It made John Halifax start, and look up at the nursery window, which
was likewise closed. We heard nothing more. After a minute he
crossed the street, and picked up the slice of bread. Now in those
days bread was precious, exceedingly. The poor folk rarely got it;
they lived on rye or meal. John Halifax had probably not tasted
wheaten bread like this for months: it appeared not, he eyed it so
ravenously;--then, glancing towards the shut door, his mind seemed to
change. He was a long time before he ate a morsel; when he did so,
it was quietly and slowly; looking very thoughtful all the while.

As soon as the rain ceased, we took our way home, down the High
Street, towards the Abbey church--he guiding my carriage along in
silence. I wished he would talk, and let me hear again his pleasant
Cornish accent.

"How strong you are!" said I, sighing, when, with a sudden pull, he
had saved me from being overturned by a horseman riding past--young
Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, who never cared where he galloped
or whom he hurt--"So tall and so strong."

"Am I? Well, I shall want my strength."

"How?"

"To earn my living."

He drew up his broad shoulders, and planted on the pavement a firmer
foot, as if he knew he had the world before him--would meet it
single-handed, and without fear.

"What have you worked at lately?"

"Anything I could get, for I have never learned a trade."

"Would you like to learn one?"

He hesitated a minute, as if weighing his speech. "Once I thought I
should like to be what my father was."

"What was he?"

"A scholar and a gentleman."

This was news, though it did not much surprise me. My father, tanner
as he was, and pertinaciously jealous of the dignity of trade, yet
held strongly the common-sense doctrine of the advantages of good
descent; at least, in degree. For since it is a law of nature,
admitting only rare exceptions, that the qualities of the ancestors
should be transmitted to the race--the fact seems patent enough, that
even allowing equal advantages, a gentleman's son has more chances of
growing up a gentleman than the son of a working man. And though he
himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still,
I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good
stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of
our forefathers, not unknown--Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple
Island."

Thus it seemed to me, and I doubted not it would to my father, much
more reasonable and natural that a boy like John Halifax--in whom
from every word he said I detected a mind and breeding above his
outward condition--should come of gentle than of boorish blood.

"Then, perhaps," I said, resuming the conversation, "you would not
like to follow a trade?"

"Yes, I should. What would it matter to me? My father was a
gentleman."

"And your mother?"

And he turned suddenly round; his cheeks hot, his lips quivering:
"She is dead. I do not like to hear strangers speak about my
mother."

I asked his pardon. It was plain he had loved and mourned her; and
that circumstances had smothered down his quick boyish feelings into
a man's tenacity of betraying where he had loved and mourned. I,
only a few minutes after, said something about wishing we were not
"strangers."

"Do you?" The lad's half amazed, half-grateful smile went right to
my heart.

"Have you been up and down the country much?"

"A great deal--these last three years; doing a hand's turn as best I
could, in hop-picking, apple-gathering, harvesting; only this summer
I had typhus fever, and could not work."

"What did you do then?"

"I lay in a barn till I got well--I'm quite well now; you need not be
afraid."

"No, indeed; I had never thought of that."

We soon became quite sociable together. He guided me carefully out
of the town into the Abbey walk, flecked with sunshine through
overhanging trees. Once he stopped to pick up for me the large brown
fan of a horse-chestnut leaf.

"It's pretty, isn't it?--only it shows that autumn is come."

"And how shall you live in the winter, when there is no out-of-door
work to be had?"

"I don't know."

The lad's countenance fell, and that hungry, weary look, which had
vanished while we talked, returned more painfully than ever. I
reproached myself for having, under the influence of his merry talk,
temporarily forgotten it.

"Ah!" I cried eagerly, when we left the shade of the Abbey trees, and
crossed the street; "here we are, at home!"

"Are you?" The homeless lad just glanced at it--the flight of
spotless stone-steps, guarded by ponderous railings, which led to my
father's respectable and handsome door. "Good day, then--which means
good-bye."

I started. The word pained me. On my sad, lonely life--brief
indeed, though ill health seemed to have doubled and trebled my
sixteen years into a mournful maturity--this lad's face had come like
a flash of sunshine; a reflection of the merry boyhood, the youth and
strength that never were, never could be, mine. To let it go from me
was like going back into the dark.

"Not good-bye just yet!" said I, trying painfully to disengage myself
from my little carriage and mount the steps. John Halifax came to my
aid.

"Suppose you let me carry you. I could--and--and it would be great
fun, you know."

He tried to turn it into a jest, so as not to hurt me; but the
tremble in his voice was as tender as any woman's--tenderer than any
woman's _I_ ever was used to hear. I put my arms round his neck; he
lifted me safely and carefully, and set me at my own door. Then with
another good-bye he again turned to go.

My heart cried after him with an irrepressible cry. What I said I do
not remember, but it caused him to return.

"Is there anything more I can do for you, sir?"

"Don't call me 'sir'; I am only a boy like yourself. I want you;
don't go yet. Ah! here comes my father!"

John Halifax stood aside, and touched his cap with a respectful
deference, as the old man passed.

"So here thee be--hast thou taken care of my son? Did he give thee
thy groat, my lad?"

We had neither of us once thought of the money.

When I acknowledged this my father laughed, called John an honest
lad, and began searching in his pocket for some larger coin. I
ventured to draw his ear down and whispered something--but I got no
answer; meanwhile, John Halifax for the third time was going away.

"Stop, lad--I forget thy name--here is thy groat, and a shilling
added, for being kind to my son."

"Thank you, but I don't want payment for kindness."

He kept the groat, and put back the shilling into my father's hand.

"Eh!" said the old man, much astonished, "thee'rt an odd lad; but I
can't stay talking with thee. Come in to dinner, Phineas. I say,"
turning back to John Halifax with a sudden thought, "art thee
hungry?"

"Very hungry." Nature gave way at last, and great tears came into
the poor lad's eyes. "Nearly starving."

"Bless me! then get in, and have thy dinner. But first--" and my
inexorable father held him by the shoulder; "thee art a decent lad,
come of decent parents?"

"Yes," almost indignantly.

"Thee works for thy living?"

"I do, whenever I can get it."

"Thee hast never been in gaol?"

"No!" thundered out the lad, with a furious look. "I don't want your
dinner, sir; I would have stayed, because your son asked me, and he
was civil to me, and I liked him. Now I think I had better go. Good
day, sir."

There is a verse in a very old Book--even in its human histories the
most pathetic of all books--which runs thus:

"And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,
that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and
Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

And this day, I, a poorer and more helpless Jonathan, had found my
David.

I caught him by the hand, and would not let him go.

"There, get in, lads--make no more ado," said Abel Fletcher, sharply,
as he disappeared.

So, still holding my David fast, I brought him into my father's
house.

CHAPTER II

Dinner was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlour,
where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows
across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery
as glass. Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock,
there was no other furniture.

I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's
especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard I sent
for John.

Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us,
and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no
indication of her sex in its softness and tenderness. There had
evidently been wrath in the kitchen.

"Phineas, the lad ha' got his dinner, and you mustn't keep 'un long.
I bean't going to let you knock yourself up with looking after a
beggar-boy."

A beggar-boy! The idea seemed so ludicrous, that I could not help
smiling at it as I regarded him. He had washed his face and combed
out his fair curls; though his clothes were threadbare, all but
ragged, they were not unclean; and there was a rosy, healthy
freshness in his tanned skin, which showed he loved and delighted in
what poor folk generally abominate--water. And now the sickness of
hunger had gone from his face, the lad, if not actually what our
scriptural Saxon terms "well-favoured," was certainly "well-liking."
A beggar-boy, indeed! I hoped he had not heard Jael's remark. But
he had.

"Madam," said he, with a bow of perfect good-humour, and even some
sly drollery, "you mistake: I never begged in my life: I'm a person
of independent property, which consists of my head and my two hands,
out of which I hope to realise a large capital some day."

I laughed. Jael retired, abundantly mystified, and rather cross.
John Halifax came to my easy chair, and in an altered tone asked me
how I felt, and if he could do anything for me before he went away.

"You'll not go away; not till my father comes home, at least?" For I
had been revolving many plans, which had one sole aim and object, to
keep near me this lad, whose companionship and help seemed to me,
brotherless, sisterless, and friendless as I was, the very thing that
would give me an interest in life, or, at least, make it drag on less
wearily. To say that what I projected was done out of charity or
pity would not be true; it was simple selfishness, if that be
selfishness which makes one leap towards, and cling to, a possible
strength and good, which I conclude to be the secret of all those
sudden likings that spring more from instinct than reason. I do not
attempt to account for mine: I know not why "the soul of Jonathan
clave to the soul of David." I only know that it was so, and that
the first day I beheld the lad John Halifax, I, Phineas Fletcher,
"loved him as my own soul."

Thus, my entreaty, "You'll not go away?" was so earnest, that it
apparently touched the friendless boy to the core.

"Thank you," he said, in an unsteady voice, as leaning against the
fire-place he drew his hand backwards and forwards across his face:
"you are very kind; I'll stay an hour or so, if you wish it."

"Then come and sit down here, and let us have a talk."

What this talk was, I cannot now recall, save that it ranged over
many and wide themes, such as boys delight in--chiefly of life and
adventure. He knew nothing of my only world--books.

"Can you read?" he asked me at last, suddenly.

"I should rather think so." And I could not help smiling, being
somewhat proud of my erudition.

"And write?"

"Oh, yes; certainly."

He thought a minute, and then said, in a low tone, "I can't write,
and I don't know when I shall be able to learn; I wish you would put
down something in a book for me."

"That I will."

He took out of his pocket a little case of leather, with an under one
of black silk; within this, again, was a book. He would not let it
go out of his hands, but held it so that I could see the leaves. It
was a Greek Testament.

"Look here."

He pointed to the fly-leaf, and I read:

"Guy Halifax, his Book.

"Guy Halifax, gentleman, married Muriel Joyce, spinster, May 17, in
the year of our Lord 1779.

"John Halifax, their son, born June 18, 1780."

There was one more entry, in a feeble, illiterate female hand: "Guy
Halifax, died Jannary 4, 1781."

"What shall I write, John?" said I, after a minute or so of silence.

"I'll tell you presently. Can I get you a pen?"

He leaned on my shoulder with his left hand, but his right never once
let go of the precious book.

"Write--'Muriel Halifax, died January 1, 1791.'"

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing more."

He looked at the writing for a minute or two, dried it carefully by
the fire, replaced the book in its two cases, and put it into his
pocket. He said no other word but "Thank you," and I asked him no
questions.

This was all I ever heard of the boy's parentage: nor do I believe
he knew more himself. He was indebted to no forefathers for a family
history: the chronicle commenced with himself, and was altogether
his own making. No romantic antecedents ever turned up: his lineage
remained uninvestigated, and his pedigree began and ended with his
own honest name--John Halifax.

Jael kept coming in and out of the parlour on divers excuses, eyeing
very suspiciously John Halifax and me; especially when she heard me
laughing--a rare and notable fact--for mirth was not the fashion in
our house, nor the tendency of my own nature. Now this young lad,
hardly as the world had knocked him about even already, had an
overflowing spirit of quiet drollery and healthy humour, which was to
me an inexpressible relief. It gave me something I did not possess--
something entirely new. I could not look at the dancing brown eyes,
at the quaint dimples of lurking fun that played hide-and-seek under
the firm-set mouth, without feeling my heart cheered and delighted,
like one brought out of a murky chamber into the open day.

But all this was highly objectionable to Jael.

"Phineas!"--and she planted herself before me at the end of the
table--"it's a fine, sunshiny day: thee ought to be out."

"I have been out, thank you, Jael." And John and I went on talking.

"Phineas!"--a second and more determined attack--"too much laughing
bean't good for thee; and it's time this lad were going about his own
business."

"Hush!--nonsense, Jael."

"No--she's right," said John Halifax, rising, while that look of
premature gravity, learned doubtless out of hard experience, chased
all the boyish fun from his face. "I've had a merry day--thank you
kindly for it! and now I'll be gone."

Gone! It was not to be thought of--at least, not till my father came
home. For now, more determinedly than ever, the plan which I had
just ventured to hint at to my father fixed itself on my mind.
Surely he would not refuse me--me, his sickly boy, whose life had in
it so little pleasure.

"Why do you want to go? You have no work?"

"No; I wish I had. But I'll get some."

"How?"

"Just by trying everything that comes to hand. That's the only way.
I never wanted bread, nor begged it, yet--though I've often been
rather hungry. And as for clothes"--he looked down on his own, light
and threadbare, here and there almost burst into holes by the stout
muscles of the big growing boy--looked rather disconsolately. "I'm
afraid SHE would be sorry--that's all! She always kept me so tidy."

By the way he spoke, "SHE" must have meant his mother. There the
orphan lad had an advantage over me; alas! I did not remember mine.

"Come," I said, for now I had quite made up my mind to take no
denial, and fear no rebuff from my father; "cheer up. Who knows what
may turn up?"

"Oh yes, something always does; I'm not afraid!" He tossed back his
curls, and looked smiling out through the window at the blue sky;
that steady, brave, honest smile, which will meet Fate in every turn,
and fairly coax the jade into good humour.

"John, do you know you're uncommonly like a childish hero of mine--
Dick Whittington? Did you ever hear of him?"

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