The Minister's Charge Part 12

"No, I think you'd better have it all, now. There can't be anything worse. It's funny, yes, with that truly infernal drollery which the newspaper wits seem to have the art of." He read on--"--'when a case was called that brought the breath of clover blossoms and hay-seed into the sultry court-room, and warmed the c.o.c.kles of the habitues' toughened pericardiums with a touch of real poetry. This was a case of a.s.sault, with intent to rob, in which a lithe young blonde, answering to the good old Puritanic name of Statira Dudley, was the complainant, and the defendant an innocent-looking, bucolic youth, yclept--'"

Sewell stopped and put his hand to his forehead.

"What is it, David?" demanded his wife. "Why don't you go on? Is it too scandalous?"

"No, no," murmured the minister.

"Well?"

"I can't go on. But you must read it, Lucy," he said, in quite a pa.s.sion of humility. "And you must try to be merciful. That poor boy--that--"

He handed the paper to his wife, and made no attempt to escape from judgment, but sat submissive while she read the report of Lemuel's trial. The story was told throughout in the poetico-jocular spirit of the opening sentences; the reporter had felt the simple charm of the affair, only to be ashamed of it and the more offensive about it.

When she had finished Mrs. Sewell did not say anything. She merely looked at her husband, who looked really sick.

At last he said, making an effort to rise from his chair, "I must go and see him, I suppose."

"Yes, if you can find him," responded his wife, with a sigh.

"Find him?" echoed Sewell.

"Yes. Goodness knows what more trouble the wretched creature's got into by this time. You saw that he was acquitted, didn't you?" she demanded, in answer to her husband's stare.

"No, I didn't. I supposed he was convicted, of course."

"Well, you see it isn't so bad as it might be," she said, using a pity which she did not perhaps altogether feel. "Eat your breakfast now, David, and then go and try to look him up."

"Oh, I don't want any breakfast," pleaded the minister.

He offered to rise again, but she motioned him down in his chair.

"David, you shall! I'm not going to have you going about all day with a headache. Eat! And then when you've finished your breakfast, go and find out which station that officer Baker belongs to, and he can tell you something about the boy, if any one can."

Sewell made what s.h.i.+ft he could to grasp these practical ideas, and he obediently ate of whatever his wife bade him. She would not let him hurry his breakfast in the least, and when he had at last finished, she said, "Now you can go, David. And when you've found the boy, don't you let him out of your sight again till you've put him aboard the train for Willoughby Pastures, and seen the train start out of the depot with him.

Never mind your sermon. I will be setting down the heads of a sermon, while you're gone, that will do _you_ good, if you write it out, whether it helps any one else or not."

Sewell was not so sure of that. He had no doubt that his wife would set down the heads of a powerful sermon, but he questioned whether any discourse, however potent, would have force to benefit such an abandoned criminal as he felt himself, in walking down his brown-stone steps, and up the long brick sidewalk of Bolingbroke Street toward the Public Garden. The beds of geraniums and the clumps of scarlet-blossomed salvia in the little gra.s.s-plots before the houses, which commonly flattered his eye with their colour, had a suggestion of penal fires in them now, that needed no lingering superst.i.tion in his nerves to realise something very like perdition for his troubled soul. It was not wickedness he had been guilty of, but he had allowed a good man to be made the agency of suffering, and he was sorely to blame, for he had sinned against himself. This was what his conscience said, and though his reason protested against his state of mind as a phase of the religious insanity which we have all inherited in some measure from Puritan times, it could not help him. He went along involuntarily framing a vow that if Providence would mercifully permit him to repair the wrong he had done, he would not stop at any sacrifice to get that unhappy boy back to his home, but would gladly take any open shame or obloquy upon himself in order to accomplish this.

He met a policeman on the bridge of the Public Garden, and made bold to ask him at once if he knew an officer named Baker, and which station he could be found at. The policeman was over-rich in the acquaintance of two officers of the name of Baker, and he put his hand on Sewell's shoulder, in the paternal manner of policemen when they will be friendly, and advised him to go first to the Neponset Street station, to which one of these Bakers was attached, and inquire there first.

"Anyway, that's what I should do in your place."

Sewell was fulsomely grateful, as we all are in the like case, and at the station he used an urbanity with the captain which was perhaps not thrown away upon him, but which was certainly disproportioned to the trouble he was asking him to take in saying whether he knew where he could find officer Baker.

"Yes, I do," said the captain. "You can find him in bed, upstairs, but I'd rather you wouldn't wake a man off duty, if you don't have to, especially if you don't know he's the one. What's wanted?"

Sewell stopped to say that the captain was quite right, and then he explained why he wished to see officer Baker.

The captain listened with nods of his head at the names and facts given.

"Guess you won't have to get Baker up for that. I can tell you what there is to tell. I don't know where your young man is now, but I gave him an order for a bed at the Wayfarer's Lodge last night, and I guess he slept there. You a friend of his?"

"Yes," said Sewell, much questioning inwardly whether he could be truly described as such. "I wish to befriend him," he added savingly. "I knew him at home, and I am sure of his innocence."

"Oh, I guess he's _innocent_ enough," said the captain. "Well, now, I tell you what you do, if you want to befriend him; you get him home quick as you can."

"Yes," said Sewell, helpless to resent the officer's authoritative and patronising tone. "That's what I wish to do. Do you suppose he's at the Wayfarer's Lodge now?" asked Sewell.

"Can't say," said the captain, tilting himself back in his chair, and putting his quill toothpick between his lips like a cigarette. "The only way is to go and see."

"Thank you very much," said the minister, accepting his dismissal meekly, as a man vowed to ignominy should, but feeling keenly that he was dismissed, and dismissed in disgrace.

At the Lodge he was received less curtly. The manager was there with a long morning's leisure before him, and disposed to friendliness that Sewell found absurdly soothing. He turned over the orders for beds delivered by the vagrants the night before, and "Yes," he said, coming to Lemuel's name, "he slept here; but n.o.body knows where he is by this time. Wait a bit, sir!" he added to Sewell's fallen countenance. "There was one of the young fellows stayed to help us through with the dishes, this morning. I'll have him up; or may be you'd like to go down and take a look at our kitchen? You'll find him there if it's the one. Here's our card, We can supply you with all sorts of firewood at less cost than the dealers, and you'll be helping the poor fellows to earn an honest bed and breakfast. This way, sir!"

Sewell promised to buy his wood there, put the card respectfully into his pocket, and followed the manager downstairs, and through the bas.e.m.e.nt to the kitchen. He arrived just as Lemuel was about to lift a trayful of clean soup-bowls, to carry it upstairs. After a glance at the minister, he stood still with dropped eyes.

Sewell did not know in what form to greet the boy on whom he had unwillingly brought so much evil, and he found the greater difficulty in deciding as he saw Lemuel's face hardening against him.

"Barker!" he said at last. "I'm very glad to find you--I have been very anxious to find you."

Lemuel made no sign of sympathy, but stood still in his long check ap.r.o.n, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, and the minister was obliged to humble himself still further to this figure of lowly obstinacy.

"I should like to speak with you. Can I speak with you a few moments?"

The manager politely stepped into the storeroom, and affected to employ himself there, leaving Lemuel and the minister alone together.

X.

Sewell lost no time. "I want you to go home, Barker. I feel that I am wholly to blame, and greatly to blame, for your coming to Boston with the expectation that brought you; and that I am indirectly responsible for all the trouble that has befallen you since you came. I want to be the means of your getting home, in any way you can let me."

This was a very different way of talking from the smooth superiority of address which the minister had used with him the other day at his own house. Lemuel was not insensible to the atonement offered him, and it was not from sulky stubbornness that he continued silent, and left the minister to explore the causes of his reticence unaided.

"I will go home _with_ you, if you like," pursued the minister, though his mind misgave him that this was an extreme which Mrs. Sewell would not have justified him in. "I will go with you, and explain all the circ.u.mstances to your friends, in case there should be any misunderstanding--though in that event I should have to ask you to be my guest till Monday." Here the unhappy man laid hold of the sheep, which could not bring him greater condemnation than the lamb.

"I guess they won't know anything about it," said Lemuel, with whatever intention.

It seemed hardened indifference to the minister, and he felt it his disagreeable duty to say, "I am afraid they will. I read of it in the newspaper this morning, and I'm afraid that an exaggerated report of your misfortunes will reach Willoughby Pastures, and alarm your family."

A faint pallor came over the boy's face, and he stood again in his impenetrable, rustic silence. The voice that finally spoke from, it said, "I guess I don't want to go home, then."

"You _must_ go home!" said the minister, with more of imploring than imperiousness in his command. "What will they make of your prolonged absence?"

"I sent a postal to mother this morning. They lent me one."

"But what will you do here, without work and without means? I wish you to go home with me--I feel responsible for you--and remain with me till you can hear from your mother. I'm sorry you came to Boston--it's no place for you, as you must know by this time, and I am sure your mother will agree with me in desiring your return."

"I guess I don't want to go home," said Lemuel.