John Halifax, Gentleman Part 2

"Thank you, but I don't want payment for kindness."

He kept the groat, and put back the s.h.i.+lling into my father's hand.

"Eh!" said the old man, much astonished, "thee'rt an odd lad; but I can't stay talking with thee. Come in to dinner, Phineas. I say,"

turning back to John Halifax with a sudden thought, "art thee hungry?"

"Very hungry." Nature gave way at last, and great tears came into the poor lad's eyes. "Nearly starving."

"Bless me! then get in, and have thy dinner. But first--" and my inexorable father held him by the shoulder; "thee art a decent lad, come of decent parents?"

"Yes," almost indignantly.

"Thee works for thy living?"

"I do, whenever I can get it."

"Thee hast never been in gaol?"

"No!" thundered out the lad, with a furious look. "I don't want your dinner, sir; I would have stayed, because your son asked me, and he was civil to me, and I liked him. Now I think I had better go. Good day, sir."

There is a verse in a very old Book--even in its human histories the most pathetic of all books--which runs thus:

"And it came to pa.s.s when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

And this day, I, a poorer and more helpless Jonathan, had found my David.

I caught him by the hand, and would not let him go.

"There, get in, lads--make no more ado," said Abel Fletcher, sharply, as he disappeared.

So, still holding my David fast, I brought him into my father's house.

CHAPTER II

Dinner was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlour, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, s.h.i.+ny and hard as marble, and slippery as gla.s.s.

Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock, there was no other furniture.

I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard I sent for John.

Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us, and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no indication of her s.e.x in its softness and tenderness. There had evidently been wrath in the kitchen.

"Phineas, the lad ha' got his dinner, and you mustn't keep 'un long. I bean't going to let you knock yourself up with looking after a beggar-boy."

A beggar-boy! The idea seemed so ludicrous, that I could not help smiling at it as I regarded him. He had washed his face and combed out his fair curls; though his clothes were threadbare, all but ragged, they were not unclean; and there was a rosy, healthy freshness in his tanned skin, which showed he loved and delighted in what poor folk generally abominate--water. And now the sickness of hunger had gone from his face, the lad, if not actually what our scriptural Saxon terms "well-favoured," was certainly "well-liking." A beggar-boy, indeed! I hoped he had not heard Jael's remark. But he had.

"Madam," said he, with a bow of perfect good-humour, and even some sly drollery, "you mistake: I never begged in my life: I'm a person of independent property, which consists of my head and my two hands, out of which I hope to realise a large capital some day."

I laughed. Jael retired, abundantly mystified, and rather cross. John Halifax came to my easy chair, and in an altered tone asked me how I felt, and if he could do anything for me before he went away.

"You'll not go away; not till my father comes home, at least?" For I had been revolving many plans, which had one sole aim and object, to keep near me this lad, whose companions.h.i.+p and help seemed to me, brotherless, sisterless, and friendless as I was, the very thing that would give me an interest in life, or, at least, make it drag on less wearily. To say that what I projected was done out of charity or pity would not be true; it was simple selfishness, if that be selfishness which makes one leap towards, and cling to, a possible strength and good, which I conclude to be the secret of all those sudden likings that spring more from instinct than reason. I do not attempt to account for mine: I know not why "the soul of Jonathan clave to the soul of David." I only know that it was so, and that the first day I beheld the lad John Halifax, I, Phineas Fletcher, "loved him as my own soul."

Thus, my entreaty, "You'll not go away?" was so earnest, that it apparently touched the friendless boy to the core.

"Thank you," he said, in an unsteady voice, as leaning against the fire-place he drew his hand backwards and forwards across his face: "you are very kind; I'll stay an hour or so, if you wish it."

"Then come and sit down here, and let us have a talk."

What this talk was, I cannot now recall, save that it ranged over many and wide themes, such as boys delight in--chiefly of life and adventure. He knew nothing of my only world--books.

"Can you read?" he asked me at last, suddenly.

"I should rather think so." And I could not help smiling, being somewhat proud of my erudition.

"And write?"

"Oh, yes; certainly."

He thought a minute, and then said, in a low tone, "I can't write, and I don't know when I shall be able to learn; I wish you would put down something in a book for me."

"That I will."

He took out of his pocket a little case of leather, with an under one of black silk; within this, again, was a book. He would not let it go out of his hands, but held it so that I could see the leaves. It was a Greek Testament.

"Look here."

He pointed to the fly-leaf, and I read:

"Guy Halifax, his Book.

"Guy Halifax, gentleman, married Muriel Joyce, spinster, May 17, in the year of our Lord 1779.

"John Halifax, their son, born June 18, 1780."

There was one more entry, in a feeble, illiterate female hand: "Guy Halifax, died January 4, 1781."

"What shall I write, John?" said I, after a minute or so of silence.

"I'll tell you presently. Can I get you a pen?"

He leaned on my shoulder with his left hand, but his right never once let go of the precious book.

"Write--'Muriel Halifax, died January 1, 1791.'"

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing more."