“I’ve heard it. My ears are quick, and for many a Sunday after I came I caught the whispers behind me as I went up the aisle, ‘Poor man!’ ‘Poor gentleman!’ ‘He looks bad, too!’ One morning an old woman, in a big black bonnet, said, ‘Poor
soul!’ so close to me, that I looked down, and met her withered eyes, full of tears—for me!—and I said, ‘Thank you, mother,’ and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with her trembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said, ‘I’ve knowed trouble myself, my dear. The Lord bless yours to you!’”
“It must have been Betty Johnson,” I interpolated; but the school-master did not even look at me.
“You and I,” he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, “have had our share of this life’s pain so dealt out to us that any one can see and pity us. My boy, take a fellow-sufferer’s word for it, it is wise and good not to shrink from the seeing and pitying. The weight of the cross spreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with others as well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it. And as one learns to be pained with the pains of others, one learns to be happy in their happiness and comforted by their sympathy, and then no man’s life can be quite empty of pleasure. I don’t know if my troubles have been lighter or heavier ones than yours——”
The school-master stopped short, and turned his head so that his face was almost hidden against his hand upon the wall. Charlie’s big eyes were full of tears, and I am sure I distinctly felt my ears poke
forwards on my head with anxious curiosity to catch what Mr. Wood would tell us about that dreadful time of which he had never spoken.
“When I was your age,” he said bluntly, “I was unusually lithe and active and strong for mine. When I was half as old again, I was stronger than any man I knew, and had many a boyish triumph out of my strength, because I was slender and graceful, and this concealed my powers. I had all the energies and ambitions natural to unusual vigour and manly skill. I wanted to be a soldier, but it was not to be, and I spent my youth at a desk in a house of business. I adapted myself, but none the less I chafed whenever I heard of manly exploits, and of the delights and dangers that came of seeing the world. I used to think I could bear anything to cross the seas and see foreign climes. I did cross the Atlantic at last—a convict in a convict ship (God help any man who knows what that is!), and I spent the ten best years of my manhood at the hulks working in chains. You’ve never lost freedom, my lad, so you have never felt what it is not to be able to believe you’ve got it back. You don’t know what it is to turn nervous at the responsibility of being your own master for a whole day, or to wake in a dainty room, with the birds singing at the open window, and to shut your eyes quickly and pray to
go on dreaming a bit, because you feel sure you’re really in your hammock in the hulks.”
The school-master lifted his other hand above his head, and pressed both on it, as if he were in pain. What Charlie was doing I don’t know, but I felt so miserable I could not help crying, and had to hunt for my pocket-handkerchief under the table. It was full of acorns, and by the time I had emptied it and dried my eyes, Mr. Wood was lifting Charlie in his arms, and arranging his cushions.
“Oh, thank you!” Charlie said, as he leant back; “how comfortable you have made me!”