What Will He Do with It? Part 49

"I will help, heart and soul! slight indeed any service to her or to you compared with such service to me. Free this wretched tongue from its stammer, and thought and zeal will not stammer whenever you say, 'Keep your promise.' I am so glad your little girl is still with you."

Waife looked surprised, "Is still with me!--why not?" The scholar bit his tongue. That was not the moment to confess; it might destroy all Waife's confidence in him. He would do so later. "When shall I begin my lesson?"

"Now, if you like. But have you a book in your pocket?"

"I always have."

"Not Greek, I hope, sir?"

"No, a volume of Barrow's Sermons. Lord Chatham recommended those sermons to his great son as a study for eloquence."

"Good! Will you lend me the volume, sir? and now for it. Listen to me; one sentence at a time; draw your breath when I do."

The three magpies p.r.i.c.ked up their ears again, and, as they listened, marvelled much.

CHAPTER III.

Could we know by what strange circ.u.mstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for it.

At the end of the very first lesson George Morley saw that all the elocution masters to whose skill he had been consigned were blunderers in comparison with the basketmaker.

Waife did not puzzle him with scientific theories. All that the great comedian required of him was to observe and to imitate. Observation, imitation, lo! the groundwork of all art! the primal elements of all genius! Not there, indeed to halt, but there ever to commence. What remains to carry on the intellect to mastery? Two steps,--to reflect, to reproduce. Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction. In these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to cope with all labour, achieve all success.

At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was possible. Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he came thither stealthily and so on day by day. At the end of a week he felt that the cure was nearly certain; at the end of a month the cure was self-evident. He should live to preach the Word. True, that he practised incessantly in private. Not a moment in his waking hours that the one thought, one object, was absent from his mind! True, that with all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never be entirely overcome. Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance. But the relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a drawback. "Nay," quoth Waife, "instead of a drawback, become but an orator, and you will convert a defect into a beauty."

Thus justly sanguine of the accomplishment of his life's chosen object, the scholar's grat.i.tude to Waife was unspeakable. And seeing the man daily at last in his own cottage,--Sophy's health restored to her cheeks, smiles to her lip, and cheered at her light fancy-work beside her grandsire's elbow-chair, with fairy legends instilling perhaps golden truths,--seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with grat.i.tude a strange tenderness of respect. He knew nought of the vagrant's past, his reason might admit that in a position of life so at variance with the gifts natural and acquired of the singular basketmaker, there was something mysterious and suspicious. But he blushed to think that he had ever ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of glorious Humour,--abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering. And sure I am that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the one-eyed cripple, George Morley--the well-born gentleman, the refined scholar, the spotless Churchman--would have given him his arm to lean upon, and walked by his side unashamed.

CHAPTER IV.

To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.

Numa Pimpilius did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the basketmaker. Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy; pretty story it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning how to preach a sermon from an old basketmaker! But he had a n.o.bler and more imperious motive for discretion: his honour was engaged to it. Waife exacted a promise that he would regard the intercourse between them as strictly private and confidential.

"It is for my sake I ask this," said Waife, frankly, "though I might say it was for yours;" the Oxonian promised, and was bound. Fortunately Lady Montfort quitted the great house the very day after George had first encountered the basketmaker, and writing word that she should not return to it for some weeks, George was at liberty to avail himself of her lord's general invitation to make use of Montfort Court as his lodgings when in the neighbourhood; which the proprieties of the world would not have allowed him to do while Lady Montfort was there without either host or female guests. Accordingly, he took up his abode in a corner of the vast palace, and was easily enabled, when he pleased, to traverse un.o.bserved the solitudes of the park, gain the waterside, or stroll thence through the thick copse leading to Waife's cottage, which bordered the park pales, solitary, sequestered, beyond sight of the neighbouring village. The great house all to himself, George was brought in contact with no one to whom, in unguarded moments, he could even have let out a hint of his new acquaintance, except the clergyman of the parish, a worthy man, who lived in strict retirement upon a scanty stipend. For the Marquess was the lay impropriator; the living was therefore but a very poor vicarage, below the acceptance of a Vipont or a Vipont's tutor, sure to go to a worthy man forced to live in strict retirement. George saw too little of this clergyman, either to let out secrets or pick up information. From him, however, George did incidentally learn that Waife had some months previously visited the village, and proposed to the bailiff to take the cottage and osier land, which he now rented; that he represented himself as having known an old basketmaker who had dwelt there many years ago, and as having learned the basket craft of that long deceased operative. As he offered a higher rent than the bailiff could elsewhere obtain, and as the bailiff was desirous to get credit with Mr. Carr Vipont for improving the property, by reviving thereon an art which had fallen into desuetude, the bargain was struck, provided the candidate, being a stranger to the place, could furnish the bailiff with any satisfactory reference. Waife had gone away, saying he should shortly return with the requisite testimonial. In fact, poor man, as we know, he was then counting on a good word from Mr. Hartopp. He had not, however, returned for some months. The cottage, having been meanwhile wanted for the temporary occupation of an under-gamekeeper, while his own was under repair, fortunately remained unlet. Waife, on returning, accompanied by his little girl, had referred the bailiff to a respectable house-agent and collector of street rents in Bloomsbury, who wrote word that a lady, then abroad, had authorized him, as the agent employed in the management of a house property from which much of her income was derived, not only to state that Waife was a very intelligent man, likely to do well whatever he undertook, but also to guarantee, if required, the punctual payment of the rent for any holding of which he became the occupier. On this the agreement was concluded, the basketmaker installed. In the immediate neighbourhood there was no custom for basket-work, but Waife's performances were so neat, and some so elegant and fanciful, that he had no difficulty in contracting with a large tradesman (not at Humberston, but a more distant and yet more thriving town about twenty miles off) for as much of such work as he could supply. Each week the carrier took his goods and brought back the payments; the profits amply sufficed for Waife's and Sophy's daily bread, with even more than the surplus set aside for the rent. For the rest, the basketmaker's cottage being at the farthest outskirts of the straggling village inhabited by a labouring peasantry, his way of life was not much known nor much inquired into. He seemed a harmless, hard-working man; never seen at the beer-house; always seen with his neatly-dressed little grandchild in his quiet corner at church on Sundays; a civil, well-behaved man too; who touched his hat to the bailiff and took it off to the vicar.

An idea prevailed that the basketmaker had spent much of his life in foreign countries, favoured partly by a sobriety of habits which is not altogether national, partly by something in his appearance, which, without being above his lowly calling, did not seem quite in keeping with it,--outlandish in short,--but princ.i.p.ally by the fact that he had received since his arrival two letters with a foreign postmark. The idea befriended the old man,--allowing it to be inferred that he had probably outlived the friends he had formerly left behind him in England, and, on his return, been sufficiently fatigued with his rambles to drop contented in any corner of his native soil wherein he could find a quiet home, and earn by light toil a decent livelihood.

George, though naturally curious to know what had been the result of his communication to Mrs. Crane,--whether it had led to Waife's discovery or caused him annoyance,--had hitherto, however, shrunk from touching upon a topic which subjected himself to an awkward confession of officious intermeddling, and to which any indirect allusion might appear an indelicate attempt to pry into painful family affairs. But one day he received a letter from his father which disturbed him greatly, and induced him to break ground and speak to his preceptor frankly. In this letter, the elder Mr. Morley mentioned incidentally, amongst other sc.r.a.ps of local news, that he had seen Mr. Hartopp, who was rather out of sorts, his good heart not having recovered the shock of having been abominably "taken in" by an impostor for whom he had conceived a great fancy, and to whose discovery George himself had providentially led (the father referred here to what George had told him of his first meeting with Waife, and his visit to Mrs. Crane); the impostor, it seemed, from what Mr. Hartopp let fall, not being a little queer in the head, as George had been led to surmise, but a very bad character. "In fact,"

added the elder Morley, "a character so bad that Mr. Hartopp was too glad to give up to her lawful protectors the child, whom the man appears to have abducted; and I suspect, from what Hartopp said, though he does not like to own that he was taken in to so gross a degree, that he had been actually introducing to his fellow-townsfolk and conferring familiarly with a regular jail-bird,--perhaps a burglar. How lucky for that poor, soft-headed, excellent Jos Hartopp, whom it is positively as inhuman to take in as it would be to defraud a born natural, that the lady you saw arrived in time to expose the snares laid for his benevolent credulity. But for that, Jos might have taken the fellow into his own house (just like him!), and been robbed by this time, perhaps murdered,--Heaven knows!"

Incredulous and indignant, and longing to be empowered to vindicate his friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the path towards the basketmaker's cottage. As he gained the water-side, he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a soft mellow tune,--the tune of an old English border-song. The deer lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes towards the opposite bank, whence the note came, listening and wistful.

As George's step crushed the wild thyme, which the thorn-tree shadowed, "Hus.h.!.+" said Waife, "and mark how the rudest musical sound can affect the brute creation." He resumed the whistle,--a clearer, louder, wilder tune,--that of a lively hunting-song. The deer turned quickly round,--uneasy, restless, tossed its antlers, and bounded through the fern. Waife again changed the key of his primitive music,--a melancholy belliny note, like the belling itself of a melancholy hart, but more modulated into sweetness. The deer arrested its flight, and, lured by the mimic sound, returned towards the water-side, slowly and statelily.

"I don't think the story of Orpheus charming the brutes was a fable; do you, sir?" said Waife. "The rabbits about here know me already; and, if I had but a fiddle, I would undertake to make friends with that reserved and unsocial water-rat, on whom Sir Isaac in vain endeavours at present to force his acquaintance. Man commits a great mistake in not cultivating more intimate and amicable relations with the other branches of earth's great family. Few of them not more amusing than we are; naturally, for they have not our cares. And such variety of character too, where you would least expect it!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Very true. Cowper noticed marked differences of character in his favourite hares."

WAIFE.--"Hares! I am sure that there are not two house-flies on a window-pane, two minnows in that water, that would not present to us interesting points of contrast as to temper and disposition.

If house-flies and minnows could but coin money, or set up a manufacture,--contrive something, in short, to buy or sell attractive to Anglo-Saxon enterprise and intelligence,--of course we should soon have diplomatic relations with them; and our despatches and newspapers would instruct us to a T in the characters and propensities of their leading personages. But, where man has no pecuniary nor ambitious interests at stake in his commerce with any cla.s.s of his fellow-creatures, his information about them is extremely confused and superficial. The best naturalists are mere generalizers, and think they have done a vast deal when they cla.s.sify a species. What should we know about mankind if we had only a naturalist's definition of man? We only know mankind by knocking cla.s.sification on the head, and studying each man as a cla.s.s in himself. Compare Buffon and Shakspeare! Alas, sir! can we never have a Shakspeare for house-flies and minnows?"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"With all respect for minnows and house-flies, if we found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his predecessor, in selecting individualities from the cla.s.sifications of man."

WAIFE.--"Being yourself a man, you think so: a housefly might be of a different opinion. But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness, though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual amus.e.m.e.nt and social interests. Poor Shakspeare! How much he must have suffered!"

GEORGE MORLEY.--"You mean that he must have been racked by the pa.s.sions he describes,--bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects. That is not necessary to genius. The judge on his bench, summing up evidence and charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations or been privy to the acts of the prisoner at the bar. Yet how consummate may be his a.n.a.lysis!"

"No," cried Waife, roughly. "No! Your ill.u.s.tration destroys your argument. The judge knows nothing of the prisoner. There are the circ.u.mstances; there is the law. By these he generalizes, by these he judges,--right or wrong. But of the individual at the bar, of the world--the tremendous world--within that individual heart, I repeat, he knows nothing. Did he know, law and circ.u.mstances might vanish, human justice would be paralyzed. Ho, there! place that swart-visaged, ill-looking foreigner in the dock, and let counsel open the case; hear the witnesses depose! Oh, horrible wretch! a murderer! unmanly murderer!--a defenceless woman smothered by caitiff hands! Hang him up!

hang him up! 'Softly,' whispers the POET, and lifts the veil from the a.s.sa.s.sin's heart. 'Lo! it is Oth.e.l.lo the Moor!' What jury now dare find that criminal guilty? what judge now put on the black cap? who now says, 'Hang him up! hang him up!"

With such lifelike force did the Comedian vent this pa.s.sionate outburst that he thrilled his listener with an awe akin to that which the convicted Moor gathers round himself at the close of the sublime drama.

Even Sir Isaac was startled; and leaving his hopeless pursuit of the water-rat, uttered a low bark, came to his master, and looked into his face with solemn curiosity.

WAIFE (relapsing into colloquial accents).--"Why do we sympathize with those above us more than with those below? why with the sorrows of a king rather than those of a beggar? why does Sir Isaac sympathize with me more than (let that water-rat vex him ever so much) I can possibly sympathize with him? Whatever be the cause, see at least, Mr. Morley, one reason why a poor creature like myself finds it better employment to cultivate the intimacy of brutes than to prosecute the study of men.

Among men, all are too high to sympathize with me; but I have known two friends who never injured nor betrayed. Sir Isaac is one; Wamba was another. Wamba, sir, the native of a remote district of the globe (two friends civilized Europe is not large enough to afford any one man), Wamba, sir, was less gifted by nature, less refined by education, than Sir Isaac; but he was a safe and trustworthy companion: Wamba, sir, was--an opossum."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Alas, my dear Mr. Waife, I fear that men must have behaved very ill to you."

WAIFE.--"I have no right to complain. I have behaved very ill to myself.

When a man is his own enemy, he is very unreasonable if he expect other men to be his benefactors."

GEORGE MORLEY (with emotion).--"Listen, I have a confession to make to you. I fear I have done you an injury, where, officiously, I meant to do a kindness." The scholar hurried on to narrate the particulars of his visit to Mrs. Crane. On concluding the recital, he added, "When again I met you here, and learned that your Sophy was with you, I felt inexpressibly relieved. It was clear then, I thought, that your grandchild had been left to your care unmolested, either that you had proved not to be the person of whom the parties were in search, or family affairs had been so explained and reconciled that my interference had occasioned you no harm. But to-day I have a letter from my father which disquiets me much. It seems that the persons in question did visit Gatesboro', and have maligned you to Mr. Hartopp. Understand me, I ask for no confidence which you may be unwilling to give; but if you will arm me with the power to vindicate your character from aspersions which I need not your a.s.surance to hold unjust and false, I will not rest till that task be triumphantly accomplished."

WAIFE (in a tone calm but dejected).--"I thank you with all my heart.

But there is nothing to be done. I am glad that the subject did not start up between us until such little service as I could render you, Mr.

Morley, was pretty well over. It would have been a pity if you had been compelled to drop all communication with a man of attainted character, before you had learned how to manage the powers that will enable you hereafter to exhort sinners worse than I have been. Hush, sir! you feel that, at least now, I am an inoffensive old man, labouring for a humble livelihood. You will not repeat here what you may have heard, or yet hear, to the discredit of my former life. You will not send me and my grandchild forth from our obscure refuge to confront a world with which we have no strength to cope. And, believing this, it only remains for me to say, Fare-you-well, sir."

"I should deserve to lose spe-spe-speech altogether," cried the Oxonian, gasping and stammering fearfully as he caught Waife firmly by the arm, "if I suffered--suff-suff-suff--"

"One, two! take time, sir!" said the Comedian, softly. And with a sweet patience he reseated himself on the bank. The Oxonian threw himself at length by the outcast's side; and, with the n.o.ble tenderness of a nature as chivalrously Christian as Heaven ever gave to priest, he rested his folded hands upon Waife's shoulder, and looking him full and close in the face, said thus, slowly, deliberately, not a stammer, "You do not guess what you have done for me; you have secured to me a home and a career; the wife of whom I must otherwise have despaired; the Divine Vocation on which all my earthly hopes were set, and which I was on the eve of renouncing: do not think these are obligations which can be lightly shaken off. If there are circ.u.mstances which forbid me to disabuse others of impressions which wrong you, imagine not that their false notions will affect my own grat.i.tude,--my own respect for you!"

"Nay, sir! they ought; they must. Perhaps not your exaggerated grat.i.tude for a service which you should not, however, measure by its effects on yourself, but by the slightness of the trouble it gave to me; not perhaps your grat.i.tude, but your respect, yes."

"I tell you no! Do you fancy that I cannot judge of a man's nature without calling on him to trust me with all the secrets--all the errors, if you will--of his past life? Will not the calling to which I may now hold myself destined give me power and commandment to absolve all those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe? Oh, Mr. Waife! if in earlier days you have sinned, do you not repent? and how often, in many a lovely gentle sentence dropped unawares from your lips, have I had cause to know that you unfeignedly believe! Were I now clothed with sacred authority, could I not absolve you as a priest? Think you that, in the meanwhile, I dare judge you as a man? I,--Life's new recruit, guarded hitherto from temptation by careful parents and favouring fortune,--I presume to judge, and judge harshly, the gray-haired veteran, wearied by the march, wounded in the battle!"

"You are a n.o.ble-hearted human being," said Waife, greatly affected.

"And, mark my words, a mantle of charity so large you will live to wear as a robe of honour. But hear me, sir! Mr. Hartopp also is a man infinitely charitable, benevolent, kindly, and, through all his simplicity, acutely shrewd; Mr. Hartopp, on hearing what was said against me, deemed me unfit to retain my grandchild, resigned the trust I had confided to him, and would have given me alms, no doubt, had I asked them, but not his hand. Take your hands, sir, from my shoulder, lest the touch sully you."

George did take his hands from the vagrant's shoulder, but it was to grasp the hand that waived them off and struggled to escape the pressure. "You are innocent! you are innocent! forgive me that I spoke to you of repentance as if you had been guilty. I feel you are innocent,--feel it by my own heart. You turn away. I defy you to say that you are guilty of what has been laid to your charge, of what has darkened your good name, of what Mr. Hartopp believed to your prejudice.

Look me in the face and say, 'I am not innocent; I have not been belied."'

Waife remained voiceless, motionless.

The young man, in whose nature lay yet unproved all those grand qualities of heart, without which never was there a grand orator, a grand preacher,--qualities which grasp the results of argument, and arrive at the end of elaborate reasoning by sudden impulse,--here released Waife's hand, rose to his feet, and, facing Waife, as the old man sat with face averted, eyes downcast, breast heaving, said loftily,