A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

B. M. Bower - "The Flying U's Last Stand"

Arthur Conan Doyle - "A Study In Scarlet"

Melvin L. Severy - "The Darrow Enigma"

Max Beerbohm - "James Pethel"

John Halifax, Gentleman

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




"No."

"Come into the garden then"--for I caught another ominous vision of
Jael in the doorway, and I did not want to vex my good old nurse;
besides, unlike John, I was anything but brave. "You'll hear the
Abbey bells chime presently--not unlike Bow bells, I used to fancy
sometimes; and we'll lie on the grass, and I'll tell you the whole
true and particular story of Sir Richard Whittington."

I lifted myself, and began looking for my crutches. John found and
put them into my hand, with a grave, pitiful look.

"You don't need those sort of things," I said, making pretence to
laugh, for I had not grown used to them, and felt often ashamed.

"I hope you will not need them always."

"Perhaps not--Dr. Jessop isn't sure. But it doesn't matter much;
most likely I shan't live long." For this was, God forgive me,
always the last and greatest comfort I had.

John looked at me--surprised, troubled, compassionate--but he did not
say a word. I hobbled past him; he following through the long
passage to the garden door. There I paused--tired out. John Halifax
took gentle hold of my shoulder.

"I think, if you did not mind, I'm sure I could carry you. I carried
a meal-sack once, weighing eight stone."

I burst out laughing, which maybe was what he wanted, and forthwith
consented to assume the place of the meal-sack. He took me on his
back---what a strong fellow he was!--and fairly trotted with me down
the garden walk. We were both very merry; and though I was his
senior I seemed with him, out of my great weakness and infirmity, to
feel almost like a child.

"Please to take me to that clematis arbour; it looks over the Avon.
Now, how do you like our garden?"

"It's a nice place."

He did not go into ecstasies, as I had half expected; but gazed about
him observantly, while a quiet, intense satisfaction grew and
diffused itself over his whole countenance.

"It's a VERY nice place."

Certainly it was. A large square, chiefly grass, level as a
bowling-green, with borders round. Beyond, divided by a low hedge,
was the kitchen and fruit garden--my father's pride, as this
old-fashioned pleasaunce was mine. When, years ago, I was too weak
to walk, I knew, by crawling, every inch of the soft, green, mossy,
daisy-patterned carpet, bounded by its broad gravel walk; and above
that, apparently shut in as with an impassable barrier from the outer
world, by a three-sided fence, the high wall, the yew-hedge, and the
river.

John Halifax's comprehensive gaze seemed to take in all.

"Have you lived here long?" he asked me.

"Ever since I was born."

"Ah!--well, it's a nice place," he repeated, somewhat sadly. "This
grass plot is very even--thirty yards square, I should guess. I'd
get up and pace it; only I'm rather tired."

"Are you? Yet you would carry--"

"Oh--that's nothing. I've often walked farther than to-day. But
still it's a good step across the country since morning."

"How far have you come?"

"From the foot of those hills--I forget what they call them--over
there. I have seen bigger ones--but they're steep enough--bleak and
cold, too, especially when one is lying out among the sheep. At a
distance they look pleasant. This is a very pretty view."

Ay, so I had always thought it; more so than ever now, when I had
some one to say to how "very pretty" it was. Let me describe it--
this first landscape, the sole picture of my boyish days, and vivid
as all such pictures are.

At the end of the arbour the wall which enclosed us on the riverward
side was cut down--my father had done it at my asking--so as to make
a seat, something after the fashion of Queen Mary's seat at Stirling,
of which I had read. Thence, one could see a goodly sweep of
country. First, close below, flowed the Avon--Shakspeare's Avon--
here a narrow, sluggish stream, but capable, as we at Norton Bury
sometimes knew to our cost, of being roused into fierceness and foam.
Now it slipped on quietly enough, contenting itself with turning a
flour-mill hard by, the lazy whirr of which made a sleepy, incessant
monotone which I was fond of hearing.

From the opposite bank stretched a wide green level, called the Ham--
dotted with pasturing cattle of all sorts. Beyond it was a second
river, forming an arch of a circle round the verdant flat. But the
stream itself lay so low as to be invisible from where we sat; you
could only trace the line of its course by the small white sails that
glided in and out, oddly enough, from behind clumps of trees, and
across meadow lands.

They attracted John's attention. "Those can't be boats, surely. Is
there water there?"

"To be sure, or you would not see the sails. It is the Severn;
though at this distance you can't perceive it; yet it is deep enough
too, as you may see by the boats it carries. You would hardly
believe so, to look at it here--but I believe it gets broader and
broader, and turns out a noble river by the time it reaches the
King's Roads, and forms the Bristol Channel."

"I've seen that!" cried John, with a bright look. "Ah, I like the
Severn."

He stood gazing at it a good while, a new expression dawning in his
eyes. Eyes in which then, for the first time, I watched a thought
grow, and grow, till out of them was shining a beauty absolutely
divine.

All of a sudden the Abbey chimes burst out, and made the lad start.

"What's that?"

"Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London," I sang to the bells;
and then it seemed such a commonplace history, and such a very low
degree of honour to arrive at, that I was really glad I had forgotten
to tell John the story. I merely showed him where, beyond our garden
wall, and in the invisible high road that interposed, rose up the
grim old Abbey tower.

"Probably this garden belonged to the Abbey in ancient time--our
orchard is so fine. The monks may have planted it; they liked fruit,
those old fellows."

"Oh! did they!" He evidently did not quite comprehend, but was
trying, without asking, to find out what I referred to. I was almost
ashamed, lest he might think I wanted to show off my superior
knowledge.

"The monks were parsons, John, you know. Very good men, I dare say,
but rather idle."

"Oh, indeed. Do you think they planted that yew hedge?" And he went
to examine it.

Now, far and near, our yew-hedge was noted. There was not its like
in the whole country. It was about fifteen feet high, and as many
thick. Century after century of growth, with careful clipping and
training, had compacted it into a massive green barrier, as close and
impervious as a wall.

John poked in and about it--peering through every interstice--leaning
his breast against the solid depth of branches; but their close
shield resisted all his strength.

At last he came back to me, his face glowing with the vain efforts he
had made.

"What were you about? Did you want to get through?"

"I wanted just to see if it were possible."

I shook my head. "What would you do, John, if you were shut up here,
and had to get over the yew-hedge? You could not climb it?"

"I know that, and, therefore, should not waste time in trying."

"Would you give up, then?"

He smiled--there was no "giving up" in that smile of his. "I'll tell
you what I'd do--I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced
my way through, and got out safe at the other side."

"Well done, lad!--but if it's all the same to thee, I would rather
thee did not try that experiment upon MY hedge at present."

My father had come behind, and overheard us, unobserved. We were
both somewhat confounded, though a grim kindliness of aspect showed
that he was not displeased--nay, even amused.

"Is that thy usual fashion of getting over a difficulty, friend--
what's thy name?"

I supplied the answer. The minute Abel Fletcher appeared, John
seemed to lose all his boyish fun, and go back to that premature
gravity and hardness of demeanour which I supposed his harsh
experience of the world and of men had necessarily taught him; but
which was very sad to see in a lad so young.

My father sat down beside me on the bench--pushed aside an intrusive
branch of clematis--finally, because it would come back and tickle
his bald pate, broke it off, and threw it into the river: then,
leaning on his stick with both hands, eyed John Halifax sharply, all
over, from top to toe.

"Didn't thee say thee wanted work? It looks rather like it."

His glance upon the shabby clothes made the boy colour violently.

"Oh, thee need'st not be ashamed; better men than thee have been in
rags. Hast thee any money?"

"The groat you gave, that is, paid me; I never take what I don't
earn," said the lad, sticking a hand in either poor empty pocket.

"Don't be afraid--I was not going to give thee anything--except,
maybe--Would thee like some work?"

"O sir!"

"O father!"

I hardly know which was the most grateful cry.

Abel Fletcher looked surprised, but on the whole not ill-pleased.
Putting on and pulling down his broad-brimmed hat, he sat
meditatively for a minute or so; making circles in the gravel walk
with the end of his stick. People said--nay, Jael herself, once, in
a passion, had thrown the fact at me--that the wealthy Friend himself
had come to Norton Bury without a shilling in his pocket.

"Well, what work canst thee do, lad?"

"Anything," was the eager answer.

"Anything generally means nothing," sharply said my father; "what
hast thee been at all this year?--The truth, mind!"

John's eyes flashed, but a look from mine seemed to set him right
again. He said quietly and respectfully, "Let me think a minute, and
I'll tell you. All spring I was at a farmer's, riding the
plough-horses, hoeing turnips; then I went up the hills with some
sheep: in June I tried hay-making, and caught a fever--you needn't
start, sir, I've been well these six weeks, or I wouldn't have come
near your son--then--"

"That will do, lad--I'm satisfied."

"Thank you, sir."

"Thee need not say 'sir'--it is folly. I am Abel Fletcher." For my
father retained scrupulously the Friend's mode of speech, though he
was practically but a lax member of the Society, and had married out
of its pale. In this announcement of his plain name appeared, I
fancy, more pride than humility.

"Very well, I will remember," answered the boy fearlessly, though
with an amused twist of his mouth, speedily restrained. "And now,
Abel Fletcher, I shall be willing and thankful for any work you can
give me."

"We'll see about it."


I looked gratefully and hopefully at my father--but his next words
rather modified my pleasure.

"Phineas, one of my men at the tan-yard has gone and 'listed this
day--left an honest livelihood to be a paid cut-throat. Now, if I
could get a lad--one too young to be caught hold of at every
pot-house by that man of blood, the recruiting sergeant--Dost thee
think this lad is fit to take the place?"

"Whose place, father?"

"Bill Watkins'."

I was dumb-foundered! I had occasionally seen the said Bill Watkins,
whose business it was to collect the skins which my father had bought
from the farmers round about. A distinct vision presented itself to
me of Bill and his cart, from which dangled the sanguinary exuviae of
defunct animals, while in front the said Bill sat enthroned,
dirty-clad, and dirty-handed, with his pipe in his mouth. The idea
of John Halifax in such a position was not agreeable.

"But, father--"

He read deprecation in my looks--alas! he knew too well how I
disliked the tan-yard and all belonging to it. "Thee'rt a fool, and
the lad's another. He may go about his business for me."

"But, father, isn't there anything else?"

"I have nothing else, or if I had I wouldn't give it. He that will
not work neither shall he eat."

"I will work," said John, sturdily--he had listened, scarcely
comprehending, to my father and me. "I don't care what it is, if
only it's honest work."

Abel Fletcher was mollified. He turned his back on me--but that I
little minded--and addressed himself solely to John Halifax.

"Canst thee drive?"

"That I can!" and his eyes brightened with boyish delight.

"Tut! it's only a cart--the cart with the skins. Dost thee know
anything of tanning?"

"No, but I can learn."

"Hey, not so fast! still, better be fast than slow. In the meantime,
thee can drive the cart."

"Thank you, sir--Abel Fletcher, I mean--I'll do it well. That is, as
well as I can."

"And mind! no stopping on the road. No drinking, to find the king's
cursed shilling at the bottom of the glass, like poor Bill, for thy
mother to come crying and pestering. Thee hasn't got one, eh? So
much the better, all women are born fools, especially mothers."

"Sir!" The lad's face was all crimson and quivering; his voice
choked; it was with difficulty he smothered down a burst of tears.
Perhaps this self-control was more moving than if he had wept--at
least, it answered better with my father.

After a few minutes more, during which his stick had made a little
grave in the middle of the walk, and buried something there--I think
something besides the pebble--Abel Fletcher said, not unkindly:

"Well, I'll take thee; though it isn't often I take a lad without a
character of some sort--I suppose thee hast none."

"None," was the answer, while the straightforward, steady gaze which
accompanied it unconsciously contradicted the statement; his own
honest face was the lad's best witness--at all events I thought so.

"'Tis done then," said my father, concluding the business more
quickly than I had ever before known his cautious temper settle even
such a seemingly trifling matter. I say SEEMINGLY. How blindly we
talk when we talk of "trifles."

Carelessly rising, he, from some kindly impulse, or else to mark the
closing of the bargain, shook the boy's hand, and left in it a
shilling.

"What is this for?"

"To show I have hired thee as my servant."

"Servant!" John repeated hastily, and rather proudly. "Oh yes, I
understand--well, I will try and serve you well."

My father did not notice that manly, self-dependent smile. He was
too busy calculating how many more of those said shillings would be a
fair equivalent for such labour as a lad, ever so much the junior of
Bill Watkins, could supply. After some cogitation he hit upon the
right sum. I forget how much--be sure it was not over much; for
money was scarce enough in this war-time; and besides, there was a
belief afloat, so widely that it tainted even my worthy father, that
plenty was not good for the working-classes; they required to be kept
low.

Having settled the question of wages, which John Halifax did not
debate at all, my father left us, but turned back when half-way
across the green-turfed square.

"Thee said thee had no money; there's a week in advance, my son being
witness I pay it thee; and I can pay thee a shilling less every
Saturday till we get straight."

"Very well, sir; good afternoon, and thank you."

John took off his cap as he spoke--Abel Fletcher, involuntarily
almost, touched his hat in return of the salutation. Then he walked
away, and we had the garden all to ourselves--we, Jonathan and his
new-found David.

I did not "fall upon his neck," like the princely Hebrew, to whom I
have likened myself, but whom, alas! I resembled in nothing save my
loving. But I grasped his hand, for the first time, and looking up
at him, as he stood thoughtfully by me, whispered, "that I was very
glad."

"Thank you--so am I," said he, in a low tone. Then all his old
manner returned; he threw his battered cap high up in the air, and
shouted out, "Hurrah!"--a thorough boy.

And I, in my poor, quavering voice, shouted too.



CHAPTER III

When I was young, and long after then, at intervals, I had the very
useless, sometimes harmful, and invariably foolish habit of keeping a
diary. To me, at least, it has been less foolish and harmful than to
most; and out of it, together with much drawn out of the stores of a
memory, made preternaturally vivid by a long introverted life, which,
colourless itself, had nothing to do but to reflect and retain clear
images of the lives around it--out of these two sources I have
compiled the present history.

Therein, necessarily, many blank epochs occur. These I shall not try
to fill up, but merely resume the thread of narration as recollection
serves.

Thus, after this first day, many days came and went before I again
saw John Halifax--almost before I again thought of him. For it was
one of my seasons of excessive pain; when I found it difficult to
think of anything beyond those four grey-painted walls; where
morning, noon, and night slipped wearily away, marked by no changes,
save from daylight to candle-light, from candle-light to dawn.

Afterwards, as my pain abated, I began to be haunted by occasional
memories of something pleasant that had crossed my dreary life;
visions of a brave, bright young face, ready alike to battle with and
enjoy the world. I could hear the voice that, speaking to me, was
always tender with pity--yet not pity enough to wound: I could see
the peculiar smile just creeping round his grave mouth--that
irrepressible smile, indicating the atmosphere of thorough
heart-cheerfulness, which ripens all the fruits of a noble nature,
and without which the very noblest has about it something
unwholesome, blank, and cold.

I wondered if John had ever asked for me. At length I put the
question.

Jael "thought he had--but wasn't sure. Didn't bother her head about
such folk."

"If he asked again, might he come up-stairs?"

"No."

I was too weak to combat, and Jael was too strong an adversary; so I
lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never
speaking, about the lad. Never once asking for him to come to me;
not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face--I
longed after him so.

At last I broke the bonds of sickness--which Jael always riveted as
long and as tightly as she could--and plunged into the outer world
again.

It was one market-day--Jael being absent--that I came down-stairs. A
soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering
robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the
thinned trees of the Abbey yard. I opened the window to hear him,
though all the while in mortal fear of Jael. I listened, but caught
no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came painfully from the
back regions of the house; it would ill have harmonised with the
sweet autumn day and the robin's song. I sat, idly thinking so, and
wondering whether it were a necessary and universal fact that human
beings, unlike the year, should become harsh and unlovely as they
grow old.

My robin had done singing, and I amused myself with watching a spot
of scarlet winding down the rural road, our house being on the verge
where Norton Bury melted into "the country." It turned out to be the
cloak of a well-to-do young farmer's wife riding to market in her
cart beside her jolly-looking spouse. Very spruce and self-satisfied
she appeared, and the market-people turned to stare after her, for
her costume was a novelty then. Doubtless, many thought as I did,
how much prettier was scarlet than duffle grey.

Behind the farmer's cart came another, which at first I scarcely
noticed, being engrossed by the ruddy face under the red cloak. The
farmer himself nodded good-humouredly, but Mrs. Scarlet-cloak turned
up her nose. "Oh, pride, pride!" I thought, amused, and watched the
two carts, the second of which was with difficulty passing the
farmer's, on the opposite side of the narrow road. At last it
succeeded in getting in advance, to the young woman's evident
annoyance, until the driver, turning, lifted his hat to her with such
a merry, frank, pleasant smile.

Surely, I knew that smile, and the well-set head with its light curly
hair. Also, alas! I knew the cart with relics of departed sheep
dangling out behind. It was our cart of skins, and John Halifax was
driving it.

"John! John!" I called out, but he did not hear, for his horse had
taken fright at the red cloak, and required a steady hand. Very
steady the boy's hand was, so that the farmer clapped his two great
fists, and shouted "Bray-vo!"

But John--my John Halifax--he sat in his cart, and drove. His
appearance was much as when I first saw him--shabbier, perhaps, as if
through repeated drenchings; this had been a wet autumn, Jael had
told me. Poor John!--well might he look gratefully up at the clear
blue sky to-day; ay, and the sky never looked down on a brighter,
cheerier face, the same face which, whatever rags it surmounted,
would, I believe, have ennobled them all.

I leaned out, watching him approach our house; watching him with so
great pleasure that I forgot to wonder whether or no he would notice
me. He did not at first, being busy over his horse; until, just as
the notion flashed across my mind that he was passing by our house--
also, how keenly his doing so would pain me--the lad looked up.

A beaming smile of surprise and pleasure, a friendly nod, then all at
once his manner changed; he took off his cap, and bowed ceremoniously
to his master's son.

For the moment I was hurt; then I could not but respect the honest
pride which thus intimated that he knew his own position, and wished
neither to ignore nor to alter it; all advances between us must
evidently come from my side. So, having made his salutation, he was
driving on, when I called after him,

"John! John!"

"Yes, sir. I am so glad you're better again."

"Stop one minute till I come out to you." And I crawled on my
crutches to the front door, forgetting everything but the pleasure of
meeting him--forgetting even my terror of Jael. What could she say?
even though she held nominally the Friends' doctrine--obeyed in the
letter at least, 'Call no man your master'--what would Jael say if
she found me, Phineas Fletcher, talking in front of my father's
respectable mansion with the vagabond lad who drove my father's cart
of skins?

But I braved her, and opened the door. "John, where are you?"

"Here" (he stood at the foot of the steps, with the reins on his
arm); "did you want me?"

"Yes. Come up here; never mind the cart."

But that was not John's way. He led the refractory horse, settled
him comfortably under a tree, and gave him in charge to a small boy.
Then he bounded back across the road, and was up the steps to my side
in a single leap.

"I had no notion of seeing you. They said you were in bed
yesterday." (Then he HAD been inquiring for me!) "Ought you to be
standing at the door this cold day?"

"It's quite warm," I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.

"Please go in."

"If you'll come too."

He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he
had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child. Well
nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first
time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing,
tenderness. A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness,
or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and
undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest
found in men. John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man,
that I ever knew.

"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more. But one look of
his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other
people.

"And how have you been, John? How do you like the tan-yard? Tell me
frankly."

He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily,
"Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread. It's a
grand thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days."

"Poor John!" I put my hand on his wrist--his strong, brawny wrist.
Perhaps the contrast involuntarily struck us both with the truth--
good for both to learn--that Heaven's ways are not so unequal as we
sometimes fancy they seem.

"I have so often wanted to see you, John. Couldn't you come in now?"

He shook his head, and pointed to the cart. That minute, through the
open hall-door, I perceived Jael sauntering leisurely home from
market.

Now, if I was a coward, it was not for myself this time. The
avalanche of ill-words I knew must fall--but it should not fall on
him, if I could help it.

"Jump up on your cart, John. Let me see how well you can drive.
There--good-bye, for the present. Are you going to the tan-yard?"

"Yes--for the rest of the day." And he made a face as if he did not
quite revel in that delightful prospect. No wonder!

"I'll come and see you there this afternoon."

"No?"--with a look of delighted surprise. "But you must not--you
ought not."

"But I WILL!" And I laughed to hear myself actually using that
phrase. What would Jael have said?

What--as she arrived just in time to receive a half-malicious,
half-ceremonious bow from John, as he drove off--what that excellent
woman did say I have not the slightest recollection. I only remember
that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do;
that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at
t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of
the bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road--then shut
the front door, and crept in, content.

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.