Chapter Seven.
A Tramp in the Snow.
“There is no dearth of kindness
In this world of ours,
Only in our blindness
We gather thorns for flowers!”
Gerald Massey.
A very cold winter morning, colder than is often the case before Christmas, and Christmas was still some days off. Snow had fallen in the night; and while some weather optimists were maintaining that on this account it would feel warmer now, others, more experienced, if less hopeful, were prophesying a much heavier fall before night—what lay on the ground was but the precursor of much more.
The family party round the breakfast table in the pretty Rectory of Thorncroft were discussing the question from various points of view.
“If it would stop snowing now, and go on freezing hard till the end of the holidays, so that we could have skating all the time, then I don’t care what it does after,” said Tom, a typical youth of fourteen, to be met with, it seems to me, in at least six of every seven English country families.
“No,” said Ralph, his younger brother, “I’d rather it’d go on snowing for about a week, so that we could have lots of snow-balling. I like that better than skating.”
“There wouldn’t be much of you or Tom left to skate or snowball either, if it went on snowing for a week. We’d be snowed up bodily,” remarked their father. “Have you forgotten grandpapa’s stories?” For Thorncroft was in an out-of-the-way part of the country, all hills and valleys, where snowings-up were not altogether legend. “But, independently of that, I don’t like you to talk quite so thoughtlessly. Either heavy snow or hard frost long prolonged brings terrible suffering.” And the kind-hearted clergyman sighed, as he rose from the table and walked over to the window, where he stood looking out for a few moments without speaking.
“I must tell cook to begin the winter soup at once,” said the mother, speaking to her eldest daughter. For in this family there was a sort of private soup kitchen in severe weather—independently of charity to their own parishioners—for the benefit of poor, storm-driven waifs and strays, many of whom passed this way on their tramp to the northern towns, which they were too poor to attain by the railway. It was an old custom, and had never been found productive of abuse.
“Yes,” replied the young girl; “for I am sure the weather is going to be dreadful. Shall I go and speak about it, mamma?”
“Do, dear; your father may want me for a few minutes.”
Daisy left the room, but only to reappear again very shortly with a troubled face.
“Papa, mamma,” she said, “there is a tramp at the door now. He seems nearly fainting, and cook says he must have been out in the snow all night. There is no soup ready; might I have a cup of tea for him?”
“Certainly,” said her mother. “Run, one of you boys, for a kitchen cup; it will taste just as good, and I don’t like to risk one of my dear old china ones.”
“Mamma,” said Daisy, in a low voice—she was always a little afraid of the boys laughing at her—“I don’t think it would have mattered about the cup. Do you know, he looks quite like a gentleman?”
Her father, who was standing near, overheard the last words. He had been reading a letter, which he threw aside.
“There is nothing from Ingram,” he remarked to his wife. “I had hoped for a letter. I am so sorry for him, just at Christmas time again the old disappointment. But what is Daisy saying?” The young girl repeated what she had told her mother, and Ralph just then appearing with a substantial cup and saucer, Mrs Winthrop poured out the tea, and Daisy, carrying it, went off with her father to the kitchen door.
“A gentleman, you say, Daisy?” he repeated.
“Yes, papa, and quite young. Cook says she is sure he is a gentleman.”
“And begging?” added her father.
“Oh no—at least, I don’t think so. He just knocked at the door and asked if he might warm himself at the fire. And she said he looks so ill. I did not quite see him. I just peeped in.”
“Well, wait a moment, I’ll speak to him first,” said her father; for by this time they had traversed the long passage which led to the kitchen and offices—the Rectory at Thorncroft was a large roomy old house, and the Winthrops were rich—and so saying the clergyman went in to have a look at the stranger.
Almost immediately, Daisy, waiting at the door, heard herself called.
“Quick, my child—the hot tea. He is nearly fainting, poor fellow!”
And Daisy, hurrying in, saw her father half lifting on to a chair a tall thin figure with white face and closed eyes; while cook stood by looking very frightened, and perhaps not altogether pleased at this desecration of her spotless kitchen. For the snow, melted by the heat, was running off the stranger in little rivulets.
He was only half-fainting, however. They made him swallow the tea, and sent for another cup, into which Mrs Winthrop put a spoonful of brandy. Then the young man sat up and looked about him confusedly. Recognising that he was among strangers, he thanked them earnestly for their kindness, and struggling to his feet said that he must be going on.
“Going on, my good fellow!” said Mr Winthrop. “You are not fit for it. You must stay here an hour or two at least, and get dried and have something to eat. Have you far to go to-day?”
The young man coloured.
“I wanted to get to Clough,” he said. “It is ten days since I started. I got on well enough, though it has been horribly cold,” and he shivered as he thought of it, “till last night.”
“Were you out in the snow?” asked the rector compassionately.
“Not all night. Oh no; I sheltered in a barn till early this morning. Then it looked as if it were clearing, and I set off again. I was anxious to get on as far as I could before it came on again; but I lost my way, I think; there was moonlight at first, but since daylight I have been wandering about, not able to find the road. Am I far from the high-road to Clough?”
“Not very; you must have taken the wrong turn a couple of miles off. We are accustomed to—people,”—“tramps,” he was going to have said, but he changed the word in time—“making that mistake. Now you had better take off your wet things and get them dried, and have something to eat; and, if you must go on, we will set you on your way. And,”—here the good rector hesitated—“you seem very young,” he went on; “if I can give you any counsel, remember, it is my business to do so.”
The young fellow coloured up again painfully. “You are very kind, sir,” he said.
“Think it over. I will see you again. Peters,” he called, and a man-servant, brimful of curiosity appeared, “this,”—again an instant’s almost imperceptible hesitation—“this young gentleman has lost his way. Take him to Master Tom’s old room and help him to change his things. We must find you a change while they are drying,” he went on. But the young fellow held up a small bag he had been carrying. “I have other things, thank you,” he said. “But I should be most thankful to have these dried.”
Mr Winthrop rejoined Daisy and her mother.
“He is a gentleman, is he not, papa?” said the former eagerly.
“He strikes me as more of a schoolboy than anything else. I hope he has not run away in any sort of disgrace. Still, whatever it is, one must be kind to him, poor boy. He is evidently not accustomed to roughing it, and as far as one could see through the plight he was in, he seemed well dressed. I hope he will tell me something about himself.”
The worst of the weather-prophets’ predictions were realised. Before noon the snow came down again, this time in most sober earnest, and long before dark Mr Winthrop, becoming convinced that they “were in for it,” began to take some necessary precautions. It was out of the question for the young stranger to pursue his foot-journey. His kind host insisted on his remaining where he was for the night, though somewhat embarrassed as to how to treat him.
“I cannot bring a complete stranger in among our own children,” he said to his wife, “and yet it seems impossible to tell him to sit with the servants.”
But the difficulty was solved by the young man’s unfitness to leave his room. He had caught a chill, and was, besides, suffering from exhaustion, both nervous and physical.
“Seems to me to have had a shock of some kind, and evidently very little food for some days past,” said the doctor whom Mr Winthrop was obliged to send for the next morning. “It may go on to rheumatic fever, or he may—being young and healthy enough—fight it off. But any way, you’ve got him on your hands for two or three days, unless you like to get a vehicle of some kind and send him to the hospital at Clough,” said the doctor, pitying the inconvenience to Mrs Winthrop.
“It would be a great risk, would it not?” said the rector.
“Yes, certainly it would be a risk. Still you are not obliged to give house-room to every benighted wanderer,” said the doctor, smiling.
But Mr Winthrop felt certain this was no common case, and his kindness was rewarded. Thanks to the care and nursing he received, the dreaded illness was warded off, and by the fourth day the young stranger was well enough to pursue his journey.
“I can never thank you enough for your goodness to me, an utter stranger,” he said to his host, with the tears in his eyes. “And I feel so ashamed, so—” But here he broke down altogether.
“My poor boy,” said the rector, “can you not give me your confidence? Why are you wandering about the world alone like this? I cannot believe you have done anything wrong—at least, seriously wrong. If you have left your friends hastily for some half-considered reason, it may not be too late to return. Can I do anything to help you? Can I write to your father so as to put things straight again?”
“I have no father and no mother,” said the lad.
“No, I have done nothing wrong; nothing disgraceful, in the usual sense, I mean. But I have done wrong in another way. I have disappointed every hope and effort that had been made for me, and I cannot face the result I cannot tell you all, for if I did, you would probably think it your duty to interfere—it is all so complicated and confused. All I can tell you is that I am going off like Whittington,” he added with a faint smile, “to seek my fortune. And if I find it, it will not be mine. I owe it to others, that is the worst of it.”
“And where do you think of going in the first place?” asked Mr Winthrop.
“To Hexton,” said the young man, naming the town he had been making for, before his misadventure, “and from there to Liverpool. I thought I would try in Liverpool to get something to do, and if I did not succeed, I thought perhaps I would go to America.”
“And how would you get there? Have you money?”
“I have a little that I left behind me in the charge of a friend to send after me with my clothes when I get to Liverpool. I thought it better not to carry it with me; I might have been robbed, or,”—and here he smiled again the same wintry little smile that seemed so pathetic on his thin young face—“tempted to spend it, perhaps.”
“And have you any one to go to at Liverpool—any introductions of any kind?”
“No one—none, whatever,” answered the poor boy sadly.
Mr Winthrop reflected a moment.
“I may be able to be of a little use to you in that way; at least, I might be if I knew even a little more about you. You cannot tell me your name?”
The young man coloured and looked down.
“I cannot,” he said. “I thought it all over, and I determined that my only chance was to tell nothing. No, sir, you cannot help me; but I thank you as much as if you had.”
And thus Mr Winthrop was forced to let him go. At the last moment an idea struck him. He gave the boy a few words of introduction to an old friend of his in Liverpool—a friend, though in a different rank of life—the son of a farmer in the neighbourhood, now holding a respectable position in a business house there, telling him all, or rather the exceedingly little, he knew of the stranger who had been three days his guest, and asking him if under the circumstances he could do anything to help, to do it.
“At the same time,” he said to the young man, “I really do not know that this will be of any service. I cannot ask Mr Simcox to take any responsibility in the matter. You have not even told me your name.”
“I know that,” replied the youth dejectedly, “but I cannot help it. I cannot expect others to take me on trust as generously as you have done.” And so saying he set off on his lonely journey, with kindly words from Daisy and her mother, the two boys accompanying him to the high-road.
The snow still lay on the ground, and Tom’s wish for a prolonged frost seemed likely to be fulfilled.
“We shall have splendid skating in a day or two,” he remarked to “the gentleman tramp,” as he and Ralph had dubbed the stranger. “Our pond isn’t very big, but it’s very good ice generally. You should see the lake at Uncle Ingram’s; that’s the best place, I know, for skating in England.”
The young man started at the name Tom mentioned.
“Where did you say?” he asked.
“At my uncle Ingram’s—Mr Morison’s,” said Tom. “It’s a long way from here.”
“But your name isn’t Morison. How can he be your uncle?”
“Why, his wife is our aunt. He married mamma’s sister. Uncles are often uncles that way,” said Tom with an air of superior wisdom.
“Of course,” said the young man; “how stupid of me.”
“Well, don’t be stupid about losing your way again,” said the boy patronisingly. “Look here now, here’s the high-road; you’ve nothing to do but go straight on for some hours—two or three—and when you come to a place where four roads meet, you’ll see ‘Clough’ marked on a finger-post. You can easily get there to-night.”
“Thank you; thank you very much,” said the stranger; and, as the boys turned from him, “Please thank your father and mother again for me,” he called out after them.
“He must be a gentleman,” said Ralph. “He speaks quite like one.”
“Of course he is,” said Tom. “But he’s rather queer. He was so stupid about Uncle Ingram. I wonder what he’s left his friends for.”
“P’raps,” said Ralph sagely, “he’d got a cruel stepmother that starved and beat him, like Hop-o’-my-Thumb, you know.”
“Nonsense,” reproved Tom. “That’s all fairy story rubbish; and you know papa says it’s very wrong to talk about cruel stepmothers, and that you’re not to read any more fairy stories if you mix them up with real.”
“Or,” pursued Ralph, sublimely indifferent to this elder-brotherly reproof, “it might have been a cruel uncle, like the babes in the wood’s uncle. And that’s not a fairy story—there,” he threw at Tom triumphantly.
Many a true word is spoken in jest!
Little thought the two light-hearted boys as they made their way back over the crisp, glittering snow to the happy, cheerful Rectory, how the words “uncle,” “my uncle Ingram,” kept ringing in the ears of the solitary traveller, but little older than they, as he pursued his weary journey. For in a sense it was truly from an uncle, or the distorted image of one, that he was fleeing.
“Uncle Ingram to be their uncle. How extraordinary!” he kept saying to himself. “And how near I was more than once to telling my name. If I had—supposing I had got very ill and delirious and had told it—it would all have come out. It would not have been my fault then. Lettice could not have reproached me, or written me any more of those dreadful letters;” and a sigh, almost a shiver, of suffering went through him as he thought of them. “If I had died, they would have had to hunt among my things, and they would have found my name. I think it would have been better. Perhaps Lettice would have been sorry; any way, it would have come to an end, and poor Nina would have been happier. Lettice could not speak to her as she has done to me. But I must not begin thinking. I must go on with it now.”
He had no misadventures that day, and reached the town he was bound for by the evening. There he looked about till he saw a modest little inn, where he put up for the night, remembering Mr Winthrop’s advice to play no tricks with himself in such severe weather, and when still not fully recovered from his exposure to the snowstorm.
It was the day but one before Christmas. Poor Arthur’s eyes filled with tears as he sat trying to warm himself on a bench at some little distance from the fire in the rough room of the inn, where a motley enough company of passers-by—small farmers from the neighbourhood, some of the inferior grades of commercial travellers, one or two nondescript figures, looking like wandering showmen, and a few others, were assembled, some talking, some silent, mostly smoking, and all getting as near the fire as they could, for it was again bitterly cold. What a contrast from last Christmas! Then, ill though their mother was, she had not seemed much worse than she had been for long, and had done her utmost to be cheerful for her children’s sake. Arthur recalled the pleasant little drawing-room at the Villa Martine, the bright sunshine and lovely blue sky—for the short, though often even in those climates sharp, winter had not set in till January—which almost seemed to laugh at the usual associations of Christmas. His brighter hopes, too, for he had not yet realised his distaste and unfitness for his chosen profession, and even if misgiving had now and then crossed his mind, there was his mother to confide in, should it ever take form.
“I can’t believe mamma would have been so hard on me,” he said to himself. “She might have been disappointed, but she wouldn’t have thought me disgraced for life. Oh, why did she not live till this was past? She would have been sorry for me; she would not have blamed me so—but then, she did not know all about the money. To think, as Lettice says, that all my education, everything, has in reality been paid for by the man we can’t—or won’t—be even commonly civil to! It is the most miserable complication. Not that it matters now to me. He wouldn’t be so ready to treat me as his son now that I’ve turned out such a fool, and worse than a fool. Lots of fools get on well enough, and nobody finds out they are fools; but I must needs go and make an exhibition of myself and my folly;” and he positively writhed at the remembrance. “However, that part of it is at an end. I’ll use no more of his money, and, if I live to make any of my own, the first thing I’ll do will be to repay what I have used, though without the least idea of all this.”
Then his thoughts wandered off again to the happy family he had just left. How kind they had been to him! How gladly, had they had the slightest notion of who he was, would they have made him welcome to pass his Christmas among them! Mrs Winthrop especially, whom, as his aunt’s sister, he thought of with a peculiar interest. How gentle and motherly she was, and, doubtless, his aunt was just the same.
“Ah!” sighed Arthur again, “if Lettice could but have seen things differently, I would not have been where I am to-day. I might have given up the attempt in time, before I had disgraced myself. I might—”
But his further reflections were cut short by a voice beside him. It came from a burly personage who had, without Arthur’s noticing, so absorbed had he been in his reflections, installed himself on the bench at his side, puffing away busily and contentedly at a clay pipe. He had not hitherto spoken, but had sat still, looking about him with a pair of shrewd but not unkindly eyes.
“And whur,”—with a broad accent—“may you be boun’, young man?” he inquired good-naturedly. “Better bide at home, say I, by such weather, if so be as one’s not forced to be on the roads.”