“Would He have taken so much pains to fashion it if it were not? You see it all around you, Hal, in your daily practice—heroism, self-sacrifice, love stronger than death. Can you think He will waste it, He who uses again even the dead leaf?”
“Shall the new leaf remember the new flower?”
“Yes, if it ever knew it. Shall memory be the only thing to die?”
Often of an evening I would accompany Hal upon his rounds. By the savage tribe he both served and ruled he had come to be regarded as medicine man and priest combined. He was both their tyrant and their slave, working for them early and late, yet bullying them unmercifully, enforcing his commands sometimes with vehement tongue, and where that would not suffice with quick fists; the counsellor, helper, ruler, literally of thousands. Of income he could have made barely enough to live upon; but few men could have enjoyed more sense of power; and that I think it was that held him to the neighbourhood.
“Nature laid me by and forgot me for a couple of thousand years,” was his own explanation of himself. “Born in my proper period, I should have climbed to chieftainship upon uplifted shields. I might have been an Attila, an Alaric. Among the civilised one can only climb by crawling, and I am too impatient to crawl. Here I am king at once by force of brain and muscle.” So in Poplar he remained, poor in fees but rich in honour.
The love of justice was a passion with him. The oppressors of the poor knew and feared him well. Injustice once proved before him, vengeance followed sure. If the law would not help, he never hesitated to employ lawlessness, of which he could always command a satisfactory supply. Bumble might have the Board of Guardians at his back, Shylock legal support for his pound of flesh; but sooner or later the dark night brought punishment, a ducking in dock basin or canal, “Brutal Assault Upon a Respected Resident” (according to the local papers), the “miscreants” always making and keeping good their escape, for he was an admirable organiser.
One night it seemed to him necessary that a child should go at once into the Infirmary.
“It ain't no use my taking her now,” explained the mother, “I'll only get bullyragged for disturbing 'em. My old man was carried there three months ago when he broke his leg, but they wouldn't take him in till the morning.”
“Oho! oho! oho!” sang Hal, taking the child up in his arms and putting on his hat. “You follow me; we'll have some sport. Tally ho! tally ho!” And away we went, Hal heading our procession through the streets, shouting a rollicking song, the baby staring at him openmouthed.
“Now ring,” cried Hal to the mother on our reaching the Workhouse gate. “Ring modestly, as becomes the poor ringing at the gate of Charity.” And the bell tinkled faintly.