Weighed and Wanting, George MacDonald [ebook reader android txt] 📗

came to a part where seemed to be only small houses and mews. Presently they found themselves in a little lane with no thoroughfare, at the back of some stables, and had to return along the rough-paved, neglected way. Such was the quiet and apparent seclusion of the spot, that it struck Franks they had better find its most sheltered corner, in which to sit down and rest awhile, possibly sleep. Scarcely would policeman, he thought, enter such a forsaken place! The same moment they heard the measured tread of the enemy on the other side of the stables. Instinctively, hurriedly, they looked around for some place of concealment, and spied, at the end of a blank wall, belonging apparently to some kind of warehouse, a narrow path between that and the wall of the next property. Careless to what it led, anxious only to escape the annoyance of the policeman, they turned quickly into it. Scarcely had they done so when the Serpent, whose hand his father had let go, disappeared with a little cry, and a whimper ascended through the darkness.

"Hold your n'ise, you rascal!" said his father sharply, but under his breath; "the bobby will hear you, and have us all to the lock-up!"

Not a sound more was heard. Neither did the boy reappear.

"Good heavens, John!" cried the mother in an agonized whisper, "the child has fallen down a sewer! Oh, my God! he is gone for ever!"

"Hold your n'ise," said Franks again, "an' let's all go down a'ter him! It's better down anywheres than up where there ain't nothing to eat an' nowheres to lie down in."

"'Tain't a bad place," cried a little voice in a whisper broken with repressed sobs. "'Tain't a bad place, I don't think, only I broken one o' my two legs; it won't move to fetch of me up again."

"Thank God in heaven, the child's alive!" cried the mother. "-You ain't much hurt, are you, Moxy?"

"Rather, mother!"

By this time the steps of the policeman, to which the father had been listening with more anxiety than to the words of wife or child, were almost beyond hearing. Franks turned, and going down a few steps found his child, where he half lay, half sat upon them. But when he lifted him, he gave a low cry of pain. It was impossible to see where or how much he was hurt. The father sat down and took him on his knees.

"You'd better come an' sit here, wife," he said in a low dull voice. "There ain't no one a sittin' up for us. The b'y's a bit hurt, an' here you'll be out o' the wind at least."

They all got as far down the stair as its room would permit-the elder boys with their heads hardly below the level of the wind. But by and by one of them crept down past his mother, feebly soothing the whimpering baby, and began to feel what sort of a place they were in.

"Here's a door, father!" he said.

"Well, what o' that?" returned his father. "'Taint no door open to us or the likes on us. There ain't no open door for the likes of us but the door o' the grave."

"Perhaps this is it, father," said Moxy.

"If it be," answered his father with bitterness, "we'll find it open, I'll be bound."

The boy's hand had come upon a latch; he lifted it, and pushed.

"Father," he cried with a gasp, " it is open !"

"Get in then," said his father roughly, giving him a push with his foot.

"I daren't. It's so dark!" he answered.

"Here, you come an' take the Sarpint," returned the father, with faintly reviving hope, "an' I'll see what sort of a place it is. If it's any place at all, it's better than bein' i' the air all night at this freezin' time!"

So saying he gave Moxy to his bigger brother and went to learn what kind of a place they had got to. Ready as he had been a moment before for the grave, he was careful in stepping into the unknown dark. Feeling with foot and hand, he went in. He trod upon an earthen floor, and the place had a musty smell: it might be a church vault, he thought. In and in he went, with sliding foot on the soundless floor, and sliding hand along the cold wall-on and on, round two corners, past a closed door, and back to that by which he had entered, where, as at the grave's mouth, sat his family in sad silence, waiting his return.

"Wife," he said, "we can't do better than to take the only thing that's offered. The floor's firm, an' it's out o' the air. It's some sort of a cellar-p'r'aps at the bottom of a church. It do look as if it wur left open jest for us!-You used to talk about him above, wife!"

He took her by the hand and led the way into the darkness, the boys following, one of them with a hold of his mother, and his arm round the other, who was carrying Moxy. Franks closed the door behind them, and they had gained a refuge. Feeling about, one of the boys came upon a large packing-case; having laid it down against the inner wall, Franks sat, and made his wife lie upon it, with her head on his knees, and took Moxy again in his arms, wrapt in one of their three thin blankets. The boys stretched themselves on the ground, and were soon fast asleep. The baby moaned by fits all the night long.

In about an hour Franks, who for long did not sleep, heard the door open softly and stealthily, and seemed aware of a presence besides themselves in the place. He concluded some other poor creature had discovered the same shelter; or, if they had got into a church-vault, it might be some wandering ghost; he was too weary for further speculation, or any uneasiness. When the slow light crept through the chinks of the door, he found they were quite alone.

It was a large dry cellar, empty save for the old packing-case. They must use great caution, and do their best to keep their hold of this last retreat! Misfortune had driven them into the earth; it would be fortune to stay there.

When his wife woke, he told her what he had been thinking. He and the boys would creep out before it was light, and return after dark. She must not put even a finger out of the cellar-door all day. He laid Moxy down beside her, woke the two elder boys, and went out with them.

They were so careful that for many days they continued undiscovered. Franks and the boys went and returned, and gained bread enough to keep them alive, but it may well seem a wonder they did not perish with cold. It is amazing what even the delicate sometimes go through without more than a little hastening on the road the healthiest are going as well.


CHAPTER XLI.

DIFFERENCE.


About noon the next day, lord Gartley called. Whether he had got over his fright, or thought the danger now less imminent, or was vexed that he had appeared to be afraid, I do not know. Hester was very glad to see him again.

"I think I am a safe companion to-day," she said. "I have not been out of the house yet. But till the bad time is over among my people, we had better be content not to meet, I think."

Lord Gartley mentally gasped. He stood for a moment speechless, gathering his thoughts, which almost refused to be gathered.

"Do I understand you, Hester?" he said. "It would trouble me more than I can tell to find I do."

"I fear I understand you, Gartley!" said Hester. "Is it possible you would have me abandon my friends to the small-pox, as a hireling his sheep to the wolf?"

"There are those whose business it is to look after them."

"I am one of those," returned Hester.

"Well," answered his lordship, "for the sake of argument we will allow it has been your business; but how can you imagine it your business any longer?"

Indignation, a fire always ready "laid" in Hester's bosom, but seldom yet lighted by lord Gartley, burst into flame, and she spoke as he had never heard her speak before.

"I am aware, my lord," she said, "that I must by and by have new duties to perform, but I have yet to learn that they must annihilate the old. The claims of love cannot surely obliterate those of friendship! The new should make the old better, not sweep it away."

"But, my dear girl, the thing is preposterous!" exclaimed his lordship. "Don't you see you will enter on a new life! In the most ordinary cases even, the duties of a wife are distinct from those of an unmarried woman."

"But the duties of neither can supersede those of a human being. If the position of a wife is higher than that of an unmarried woman, it must enable her to do yet better the things that were her duty as a human being before."

"But if it be impossible she should do the same things?"

"Whatever is impossible settles its own question. I trust I shall never desire to attempt the impossible."

"You have begun to attempt it now."

"I do not understand you."

"It is impossible you should perform the duties of the station you are about to occupy, and continue to do as you are doing now. The attempt wuld be absurd."

"I have not tried it yet."

"But I know what your duties will be, and I assure you, my dear Hester, you will find the thing cannot be done."

"You set me thinking of more things than I can manage all at once," she replied in a troubled way. "I must think."

"The more you think, the better satisfied you will be of what I say. All I want of you is to think; for I am certain if you do, your good sense will convince you I am right."

He paused a moment. Hester did not speak. He resumed:

"Just think," he said, "what it would be to have you coming home to go out again straight from one of these kennels of the small-pox! The idea is horrible! Wherever you were suspected of being present, the house would be shunned like the gates of death."

"In such circumstances I should not go out."

"The suspicion of it would be enough. And in your absence, as certainly as in your presence, though not so fatally, you would be neglecting your duty to society."

"Then," said Hester, "the portion of society that is healthy, wealthy, and-merry, has stronger claims than the portion that is poor and sick and in prison!"

Lord Gartley was for a moment bewildered-not from any feeling of the force of what she said, but from inability to take it in. He had to turn himself about two or three times mentally before he could bring himself to believe she actually meant that those to whom she alluded were to be regarded as a portion of the same society that ruled his life. He thought another moment, then said:

"There are the sick in every class: you would have those of your own to visit. Why not leave others