Chapter Twenty One.
In the Forest.
Miss Carr started slightly on seeing my companion, and it seemed to me that she coloured for the moment, but she recovered her composure on the instant, responded to Mr Hallett’s salute with a quiet bend of the head, and turned at once to me, talking in a sweet grave way, as if there were no one else present, though Mr Hallett stood close by me, hat in hand.
“Antony,” she said, laying; her hand upon my shoulder, “I am very glad to see you again. Mr Ruddle tells me that you are striving very hard, and that you have already made a step upwards. Mind, though I do not see you, I always hear how you progress, and, now that you have begun so well, I have no fear for your future. Are you happy and comfortable where you are?”
“Oh yes, ma’am,” I said, flushing red with pride and pleasure, as I gazed in her face; “and—and I have made such good friends.”
“Indeed!” she said quickly. “I hope you are careful.”
“Oh yes, ma’am; Mr Revitts is very good to me, and Mr Hallett, here.”
Miss Carr turned her face to him for the moment, and once more there was a slight flush upon her cheeks; then she seemed very pale.
“I am glad to hear it,” she said, in a firm, distinct tone; “and I hope your friend Mr Hallett will remember your unprotected position, and advise you for your good.”
Mr Hallett was about to speak, but she had turned from him, and now laid her other hand upon my shoulder.
“Good-bye, Antony,” she said; “you know where I live; come to me if ever you should require help. And mind this, I shall expect you to fight hard and rise. It is no disgrace to be a common workman,”—she glanced hastily, and as if in apology, towards Mr Hallett, as she spoke—“My dead father was but a workman, but he rose to a higher position in life, and I think those who fight the battle well and are self-made, are quite as worthy of honour and respect as those who are born to wealth. Good-bye.”
I could not speak, but I stood there gazing in her bright animated face, and listened to the sweet grave voice, whose every word seemed to fix itself in my mind. I was only recalled from my dreamy state by those words “good-bye,” and the sight of the soft white hand that she held out.
It was from no sentimental feeling of politeness that I acted as I did, for I felt moved to my very soul, and the same feelings came over me that had animated me in the past days in my pleasant old home. I loved Miss Carr—loved her with the same sweet wholesome love that, a boy feels towards a tender mother, and my eyes felt suffused, and things looked dim, as with quite a natural effort I took the hand extended to me, kissed it, and held it for a moment against my cheek. Then it seemed to glide from my hold, there was a faint rustle of silken garments over the heath and grass, and Mr Hallett and I were alone.
I turned to speak to him, to find that he was still standing, hat in hand, gazing down the path by which the sisters had gone; then it seemed to me that he drew a long breath as he stood looking at me apparently, but evidently recalling that which was past.
“Oh, Mr Hallett!” I cried enthusiastically, and with all the impulsiveness of a boy; “isn’t she beautiful?”
“As beautiful as true, Grace,” he said softly, and his manner seemed reverent and strange.
“She was so kind to me—spoke so kindly for me when I first came to the office,” I cried.
“Yes, my boy,” he said in the same low, soft voice; “you are very fortunate—you have found a true friend.”
“And I will try,” I cried. “She shall find that I have remembered what she told me.”
“Come and sit down here, my boy,” he said, throwing himself upon a patch of heath and fern. “Let’s forget the smell of oil and steam and printing-ink for a time. Come and tell me all about your meeting with Miss Carr.”
I was eager to tell him, and I had a willing listener, and as I sat there at his feet I told him of the interview at the office, and all about how Mr Lister seemed so attentive to Miss Carr: what he had said, and how he seemed to love her. In my ignorance I dwelt at length upon even Mr Ruddle’s words of congratulation, talking rapidly and well in my enthusiasm—blind and ignorant that I was—for I could not read then why the lines in Stephen Hallett’s face grew deeper and more marked, nor yet why his eyelids should droop down, and then his head, till it rested upon one hand, while the other plucked slowly at the strands of grass and scraps of heath.
Once or twice I thought he was asleep, but if I stopped he spoke to me softly, asking some questions till I had done, when he startled me again with inquiries about myself and my old life, gradually winning from me all I had to tell.
The sun had set, and the soft evening shadows were descending as we still sat there drinking in the moist fresh air of the forest, till, as if rousing himself from a dream, Mr Hallett rose hastily, and I too sprang to my feet.
“Come, Grace,” he said, with an effort to be cheerful, “we must get back to the inn, or we shall be left behind. One minute, though; let us walk along here.”
I looked at him wonderingly as he strode hastily to where we had met the ladies, and I saw that he had removed his hat as he stood gazing slowly around.
It might have been from the heat, but I do not think so now; and he was just turning away, when I saw him stoop hastily and snatch from among the ferns a grey kid glove.
“Why, that must be Miss Carr’s,” I said eagerly.
“Yes,” he replied softly; “it is Miss Carr’s.”
He stood holding it pressed in his hand; and his brow was knit, and he stood gazing straight before him, struggling with himself before saying, as he doubled the glove:
“You must take it back, my boy. You will see her again; perhaps I never shall.”
I looked at him curiously as I took the glove, for he seemed so strange, but the next moment his dreamy manner was cast aside, as he clapped me on the shoulder.
“Come, Grace,” he said; “no, I will not call you Grace,” he added, laughing; “it sounds as if you were a girl, and you are rather too girlish, my boy; I will call you Antony in future.”
“Yes, do, please, Mr Hallett,” I said; though I flushed a little at being called girlish.
“Come along, then. Our pleasant day has nearly come to an end.”
“Yes,” I said with a sign; “pleasant days do so soon come to an end.”
“To be sure they do,” he cried; “but never mind, my boy; others will come.”
“Yes,” I sighed; “and miserable ones, too, full of Grimstone, and Jem Smith, and pie, and mistakes.”
“Of course,” he cried; “bitters, all of them, to make life the sweeter. Why, Antony—no, Tony’s better—why, Tony, if you could be always revelling in good things, such a day as this would not have seemed so delightful as it has.”
“And it has been delightful!” I cried, as we walked on, my friend resting his hand almost affectionately upon my shoulder.
“Yes,” he said softly; “a day to be marked with a white stone—a tombstone over the grave of one’s brightest hopes,” he added, very, very softly; but I caught the import of his words, and I turned to him quite a troubled look, when there was a sound of cheering some distance away. “Come, Tony,” he said cheerfully, “there are our men hurrahing. We must join them now.”
“Do you know what time we were to start back, sir?” I said.
“Eight o’clock,” he replied, taking out an old-fashioned gold watch, and then starting. “Why, Tony, my lad, it’s past nine. Come along, let’s run.”
We started off, and ran at a steady trot till we reached the inn, to find that the cheering had been when the vans set out.
“Yes, they was a-cheerin’ away like fun,” said our informant, a rather beery-looking public-house hanger-on. “What, are you two left behind?”
“Yes,” said Mr Hallett, shortly. “How long have they been gone?”
“More’n quarter of ’n ’our,” said the man; “and I say, they just was on—all of ’em. The driver o’ the last one couldn’t hardly hold his reins.”
“What time did Messrs Ruddle and Lister go?”
“Who?” said the man.
“The gentlemen with the waggonette.”
“What, with them two gals? Oh! more’n ’n ’our ago. They wasn’t on.”
“How can we get back to town?”
“Walk,” said the man; “’less you like to take a fly.”
“It is very tiresome, Tony,” said Mr Hallett. “Are you a good walker?”
“Pretty well,” I said. “How far is it?”
“Twelve or thirteen miles. Shall we try it?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “It’s a beautiful night, and we shall see plenty of moths.”
“Come along, then, my boy,” he cried; and away we went.
Our long rest since dinner had made me better able to manage the task; and I noticed that Mr Hallett did all he could to lighten the way by talking, and he could talk well. As, then, we trudged along the wide, firm road, he told me a little about himself and his home; and so it was that I learned that he had an invalid mother and a sister, who were dependent upon him; that his early life had been in the country, where his father had been a surgeon, and that on his father’s death he had been compelled to come to London.
“To seek your fortune, Mr Hallett?” I asked.
“Well, yes, if you like to call it so, Tony,” he said, laughing. “Ah, my boy, let me give you advice that I am only too loth to take myself—don’t degenerate into a dreamer.”
“A dreamer, Mr Hallett?”
“Yes, boy; one whose mind is set on what people call making a fortune—that miserable style of enthusiast, who ignores the present in his search for something that he may never find, and which, even if he does, he may never enjoy. Tony, my boy, don’t heed what people say about this being a miserable world and a vale of tears; it is a very beautiful and a very glorious world with heights and mountains bright in the sunshine of truth. We all have to wander down into the valley sometimes, but there are other times when we are in the sunshine on the heights. When we are there, let’s take it and enjoy it, and not sit down and grumble, and strive to climb to another mountain, close by, that seems higher and brighter than the one we are on. Take what fate sends you, my dear boy, and take it patiently. Use your strength to bear it, and—there, let’s come back out of the imaginary into the rear—go on setting up your pied type, and enjoy the pleasure after of having won a victory, or, in the present case, stride out manfully. Every step takes us nearer to London; and when we have got there, and have slept off our fatigue, we can laugh at our adventure. Why, we must be halfway there now. But how you limp!”
“I’m afraid it’s my boot rubs my foot, sir,” I said, wincing.
“Tut, tut!” he exclaimed. “This won’t do. Sit down and have a rest, and let’s think, Tony.”
“Oh, I can go on yet, sir,” I said hastily.
“No, no; sit down, my boy, sit down,” he said; and I sat down upon a bank. “I can’t carry you, Tony,” he said kindly. “I could manage you for a couple of miles or so; I don’t think I could get you right up home. We are unlucky to-night, and—there is something turning up.”
“On ahead, Tony. Yonder is a roadside inn, with a couple of hay-carts. Come along, my lad, and well see if one of them cannot be turned into a chariot to convey us to London Town.”
I limped on beside him to where the hay-carts were standing by a water-trough at the roadside, the horses tossing their nose-bags so as to get at the oats at the bottom, and the carters just coming out of the public-house.
“Can you give us a lift on to London?” said Mr Hallett. “This boy has turned lame.”
“What’ll you stand?” said the man heavily.
“A couple of pints,” said Mr Hallett.
“All right; up you get,” said the man. “You must lie atop o’ the hay. I only goes to Whitechapel, you know.”
“That will do,” said Mr Hallett. And together we climbed up, and lay down, twelve or fifteen feet above the road, on the top of the sweet-scented trusses of hay; the carter cracked his whip, and away we went jolting over the road, with the stars above us, and my couch seeming delicious to my weary limbs, as the scent seemed to bring up my sleeping place by the hay-rick, when I ran away from Rowford and my slavery at Mr Blakeford’s house.
“That’s one of the peculiarities of the true-born Briton, Tony,” said Mr Hallett, after a pause.
“What is, sir?”
“The love and reverence for beer. If I had offered that man sixpence or a shilling to give us a ride, he would have laughed me to scorn. Two pints of beer, you see, carry us right to town, and another pint would have acted like a return ticket to bring us back.”
“To bring us back?” I said in drowsy accents; and, trusting to my companion to save me from a fall, I dropped into a heavy dreamless sleep, from which I was aroused by Mr Hallett, who shook my arm and told me that we were once more in town.