Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

As the future began to look blacker and blacker, he instinctively turned his footsteps towards home.

That must be the last resource.

The means of staving off the day of reckoning were diminishing rapidly, and a bold move was necessary, unless his poor Bess was to know the real horrors of poverty.

‘Anything rather than that,’ he thought to himself. ‘I will go towards home, and then, if the worst comes, I must swallow my pride, throw myself on the old man’s generosity, and get enough to leave the country till this affair blows over, or I can devise some means of setting myself right without a public exposure.’

So it came about that after wandering up and down the country, and living as frugally as possible, George found himself, at the end of a fortnight, without money and without shelter, but within a few miles of his father’s estate.

The fierce winter had melted into the genial brightness of the early Spring, once the pleasantest part of the year, but now, alas! as uncommon in these islands as the dodo or the great auk. The first tender green leaves were peeping out shyly among the branches of the trees, as though they were half afraid that winter might not be quite gone, and the air was full of the sweet invigorating essence which lends elasticity to the step of the aged wayfarer, and tempts the young to pitch decorum to the winds and to scamper about and shout and laugh.

I pity the lad or the lass whose pulse does not beat quicker on a bright spring day, whose heart does not fill to overflowing with love for Nature as he gazes on the young earth quickening into life and beauty beneath the bright smile of the early spring sun.

It was on one of those spring days that Bess and George trod the old road towards the park for the first time since their marriage.

But George was nervous and ill, and Bess, oppressed with the idea that her husband had some secret trouble which he would not allow her to share, was profoundly miserable.

One idea alone consoled her. He had told her that morning, when further subterfuge was useless, and when he was bound to confess they were penniless, that he was going to see his father. Bess was delighted to hear it. She had not dared to say so, or to urge such a step, but she felt that anything was better than the wandering, miserable life they had led lately.