What Will He Do With It? (Belford)/Book 10/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
Waife fell on the floor of his threshold, exclaiming, sobbing, moaning, as voice itself gradually died away. The dog, who had been shut out from the house, and remained ears erect, head drooping, close at the door, rushed in as Jasper burst forth. The two listeners at the open casement now stole round; there was the dog, its paw on the old man's shoulder, trying to attract his notice, and whining low.
Tenderly—reverentially, they lift the poor martyr—evermore cleared in their eyes from stain, from question; the dishonoring brand transmuted into the hallowing cross! And when the old man at length recovered consciousness, his head was pillowed on the breast of the spotless, noble preacher; and the decorous English trader, with instinctive deference for repute and respect for law, was kneeling by his side, clasping his hand; and as Waife glanced down, confusedly wondering, Hartopp exclaimed, half sobbing, "Forgive me; you said I should repent if I knew all! I do repent! I do! Forgive me—I shall never forgive myself."
"Have I been dreaming? What is all this? You here, too, Mr. George! But—but there was Another. Gone! ah—gone—gone! lost, lost! Ha! did you overhear us?"
"We overheard you—at that window! See, spite of yourself, Heaven lets your innocence be known, and in that innocence your sublime self-sacrifice."
"Hush! you will never betray me, either of you—never! A father turn against his son!—horrible!"
Again he seemed on the point of swooning. In a few moments more his mind began evidently to wander somewhat; and just as Merle (who with his urchin-guide had wandered vainly over the whole town in search of the peddler, until told that he had been seen in a by-street, stopped and accosted by a tall man in a rough great-coat, and then hurrying off, followed by the stranger)—came back to report his ill success, Hartopp and George had led Waife upstairs into his sleeping-room, laid him down on his bed, and were standing beside him watching his troubled face, and whispering to each other in alarm.
Waife overheard Hartopp proposing to go in search of medical assistance, and exclaimed, piteously, "No, that would scare me to death. No doctors—no eavesdroppers. Leave me to myself—quiet and darkness; I shall be well to-morrow."
George drew the curtains round the bed, and Waife caught him by the arm. "You will not let out what you heard, I know; you understand how little I can now care for men's judgments; but how dreadful it would be to undo all I have done—I to be witness against my Lizzy's child! I—I! I trust you—dear, dear Mr. Morley; make Mr. Hartopp sensible that, if he would not drive me mad, not a syllable of what he heard must go forth—'twould be base in him."
"Nay!" said Hartopp, whispering also through the dark—"Don't fear me; I will hold my peace, though 'tis very hard not to tell Williams, at least, that you did not take me in. But you shall be obeyed."
They drew away Merle, who was wondering what the whispered talk was about, catching a word or two here and there, and left the old man not quite to solitude—Waife's hand, in quitting George's grasp, dropped on the dog's head.
Hartopp went back to his daughter's home in a state of great excitement, drinking more wine than usual at dinner, talking more magisterially than he had ever been known to talk, railing quite misanthropically against the world; observing that Williams had become insufferably overbearing, and should be pensioned off: in short, casting the whole family into the greatest perplexity to guess what had come to the mild man. Merle found himself a lodging, and cast a horary scheme as to what would happen to Waife and himself for the next three months, and found all the aspects so perversely contradictory, that he owned he was no wiser as to the future than he was before the scheme was cast. George Morley remained in the Cottage, stealing up, from time to time, to Waife's room, but not fatiguing him with talk. Before midnight the old man slept, but his slumber was much disturbed, as if by fearful dreams. However, he rose early, very weak, but free from fever, and in full possession of his reason. To George's delight, Waife's first words to him then were expressive of a wish to return to Sophy. "He had dreamed," he said, "that he had heard her voice calling out to him to come to her help." He would not revert to the scene with Jasper. George once ventured to touch on that reminiscence, but the old man's look became so imploring that he desisted. Nevertheless, it was evident to the Pastor that Waife's desire of return was induced by his belief that he had become necessary to Sophy's protection. Jasper, whose remorse would probably be very short-lived, had clearly discovered Sophy's residence, and as clearly Waife, and Waife alone, still retained some hold over his rugged breast. Perhaps, too, the old man had no longer the same dread of encountering Jasper; rather, perhaps, a faint hope that, in another meeting, he might more availingly soften his son's heart. He was not only willing, then—he was eager to depart, and either regained or assumed much of his old cheerfulness in settling with his hostess, and parting with Merle, on whom he forced his latest savings, and the tasteful contents of his pannier. Then he took aside George, and whispered in his ear, "A very honest, kind-hearted man, Sir; can you deliver him from the Planets!—they bring him into sad trouble. Is there no opening for a cobbler at Humberston?"
George nodded, and went back to Merle, who was wiping his eyes with his coat-sleeve. "My good friend," said the scholar, "do me two favors besides the greater one you have already bestowed in conducting me back to a revered friend. First, let me buy of you the contents of that basket; I have children among whom I would divide them as heir-looms; next, as we were traveling thither, you told me that, in your younger days, ere you took to a craft which does not seem to have, prospered, you were brought up to country pursuits, and knew all about cows and sheep, their cure and their maladies. Well, I have a few acres of glebe-land on my own hands, not enough for a bailiff—too much for my gardener—and a pretty cottage, which once belonged to a schoolmaster, but we have built him a larger one; it is now vacant, and at your service. Come and take all trouble of land and stock off my hands; we shall not quarrel about the salary. But, hark ye, my friend—on one proviso—give up the Crystal, and leave the Stars to mind their own business."
"Please your Reverence," said Merle, who, at the earlier part of the address, had evinced the most grateful emotion, but who, at the proviso which closed it, jerked himself up, dignified and displeased, "Please your Reverence, no! Kit Merle is not so unnatural as to swop away his Significator at Birth for a mess of porritch! There was that forrin chap, Gally-Leo—he stuck to the stars, or the sun, which is the same thing—and the stars stuck by him, and brought him honor and glory, though the Parsons war dead agin him. He had Malefics in his Ninth House, which belongs to Parsons."
"Can't the matter be compromised, dear Mr. George?" said Waife, persuasively. "Suppose Merle promises to keep his crystal and astrological schemes to himself, or at least only talk of them to you; they can't hurt you, I should think, Sir? And science is a sacred thing, Merle; and the Chaldees, who were the great star-gazers, never degraded themselves by showing off to the vulgar. Mr. George, who is a scholar, will convince you of that fact."
"Content," said George. "So long as Mr. Merle will leave my children and servants, and the parish generally, in happy ignorance of the future, I give him the fullest leave to discuss his science with myself whenever we chat together on summer noons or in winter evenings; and perhaps I may—"
"Be converted?" said Waife, with a twinkling gleam of the playful Humor which had ever sported along his thorny way by the side of Sorrow.
"I did not mean that," said the Parson, smiling; "rather the contrary. What say you, Merle? Is it not a bargain?"
"Sir—God bless you!" cried Merle, simply; "I see you won't let me stand in my own light. And what Gentleman Waife says as to the vulgar, is uncommon true."
This matter settled, and Merle's future secured in a way that his stars, or his version of their language, had not foretold to him, George and Waife walked on to the station, Merle following with the Parson's small carpet-bag, and Sir Isaac charged with Waife's bundle. They had not gone many yards before they met Hartopp, who indeed was on his way to Prospect Row. He was vexed at learning Waife was about to leave so abruptly; he had set his heart on coaxing him to return to Gatesboro' with himself—astounding Williams and Mrs. H., and proclaiming to Market Place and High Street, that, in deeming Mr. Chapman a good and a great man disguised, he, Josiah Hartopp, had not been taken in. He consoled himself a little for Waife's refusal of this kind invitation and unexpected departure, by walking proudly beside him to the station, finding it thronged with passengers—some of them great burgesses of Ouzelford—in whose presence he kept bowing his head to Waife with every word he uttered; and, calling the guard—who was no stranger to his own name and importance—he told him pompously to be particularly attentive to that elderly gentleman, and see that he and his companion had a carriage to themselves all the way, and that Sir Isaac had a particularly comfortable box. "A very great man," he said, with his finger to his lip, "only he will not have it known—just at present." The guard stares, and promises all deference—opens the door of a central first-class carriage—assures Waife that he and his friend shall not be disturbed by other passengers. The train heaves into movement—Hartopp runs on by its side along the stand—his hat off—kissing his hand; then, as the convoy shoots under yon dark tunnel, and is lost to sight, he turns back, and seeing Merle, says to him: "You know that gentleman—the old one?"
"Yes, a many year."
"Ever heard anything against him?"
"Yes, once—at Gatesboro'."
"At Gatesboro'!—ah! and you did not believe it?"
"Only jist for a moment—transiting."
"I envy you," said Hartopp; and he went off with a sigh.