[CHAPTER VI.]
FIVE YEARS.
SO five years went on, and still Ishmael was not a man. There was little hope now of his even making a strong, hardy, capable man. The privations he was compelled to undergo had told upon his undersized, thin, and feeble frame. But still more had the anxieties and the mortifications he had to endure borne down his spirit.
No one but his mother cared for him. Suspicion dogged him, and the doubtful companions necessity forced upon him strengthened suspicion. He was losing heart, and growing hopeless. His mother had called him Ishmael, because the Lord had heard her affliction; but she might have called him Ishmael because every man's hand was against him. Would the day come, dreaded by his mother, when his hand would be against every man?
The last few years had weighed more heavily upon Ruth than ten might have done if Ishmael had been at home. She could no longer help her old husband up the ladder when he came home drunk; and many a night he had lain on the damp floor, groaning with rheumatic pains, for want of a strong young arm such as Ishmael's would have been. Still every Sunday brought her a gleam of gladness. As yet Ishmael had not gone astray amid his manifold temptations; and she was comforted for her own sorrow and his. But what would become of him when she was no longer there?
It was a hard trial to her, when she heard Ishmael's call, plaintive and low, sounding round and round the hut through the stillness of a winter's night, and she could not answer it. It would come nearer and nearer, until it seemed as if it were under the very eaves; but if her husband was crouching over the fire, she dared not even open the door to look out. In the black darkness outside the little casement, she could see for a moment the dim outline of her boy's white face gazing through the lattice-panes; and then the long, low, plaintive cry grew fainter, and died away in the woods behind.
"I must tell Nutkin of that owl," said old Humphrey, peevishly.
At last Ruth could go out no more to her hard work, but lay still and almost helpless in her close loft, scarcely able to creep down the ladder to the hearth below.
Old Humphrey could not understand that she was no longer the willing drudge she had been so long. That she should get free from him by death never once crossed his dull brain, soddened by drink. Many a moan he made over his wife's idleness in the sanded kitchen of the Labour in Vain, where he sat now on a corner of a bench farthest from the fire, having only a few pence to spend; he who in better days had been welcome to the best seat, and been most lavish with his money.
But whenever Sunday came, new life seemed to visit Ruth. Whence the strength arose she could not tell; but it never failed her when she got up from her bed, and crept downstairs, and out into the spring sunshine to meet Ishmael. Everybody knew now, except Humphrey, that Ishmael haunted the old home where his mother was dying, but they took no notice except by carrying food, as they said, for old Ruth, though they knew well she could not eat it. Some of the women offered to do any washing they could for her, and made no remark when Ishmael's clothing was among it.