Wise Saws and Modern Instances Part 7

The child clung more closely to his mother, and looked imploringly and pitifully in her face.

"Nay, I think I mustn't," replied the pale-looking woman, in a faint and somewhat irresolute tone, catching the wistful glance of her child, and then bending her eyes sorrowfully on the ground.

"Why, a golden guinea'll do thee some service," resumed the sweep; "and I'll warrant me, I'll take care o' thy little lad. He shall get plenty to eat and drink,--and I reckon he doesn't get overmuch of ayther with thee."

"I get as much as my mammy gets," said the child, adventuring to speak, but looking greatly affrighted.

"Why, thou art a tight little rogue," said the chimney sweep, smiling grimly through his soot, "and could run briskly up a chimney, I lay a wager.--Come, give us thy hand, and say thou wilt go with us."

The man's attempt at coaxing had a repulsive effect on the child, for he drew back, and trembled lest he should be laid hold of.

"Come, I'll make it two guineas," resumed the sweep, again addressing the mother; "and what canst thou do with him, now his father is dead,--as thou saidst when I met thee at Wroot, the other day? Thou wilt be obliged to throw thyself on some parish, soon,--for they'll never suffer thee to go sorning about in this way; and if thou art once in the workhouse, depend on't th' overseers will soon 'prentice the poor little fellow to somebody that may prove a hard master to him, mayhap.

Better take my offer, and let him be sure of kind usage."

The mother was silent and motionless, and tears began to fall fast, while the sense of her present dest.i.tution and fears for the impending future struggled like strong wrestlers, with natural affection:--a fearful antagonism within, of which none but Adversity's children can conceive the reality of the portraiture.

"Nay, prythee, do not fret," said the man, with affected pity; and then taking out his begrimed hempen purse under the confident expectation that he was about to gain his point at once from the heart-broken weakness of a woman, added, "Come, come, here's that that will get thee a new gown, and, maybe, put thee in the way of getting on in the world besides."

The woman did not put forth her hand to take the proffered price for her child, for her mind was now too deeply distracted to understand the sweep's meaning; or, if she understood him, her frame was now too weak with grief to permit her making any answer.

"Oh, mammy, mammy!--do not let the grimy man take me away!" exclaimed the child, bursting into violent weeping, and pulling forcibly at his mother's ap.r.o.n.

"What's the matter with your bairn, good woman?" cried the benevolent old Dame Deborah at this moment,--for she had heard too much to be longer a listener, merely;--and the Axholmians were not versed in those refinements of modern society which define a neighbourly and humane interposition to be an act of unmannerly officiousness.

"Mammy, mammy!--good old woman speaks you," said the eager child, striving to arouse his mother's attention, and to call off her mind from the intense conflict which seemed to have paralysed her consciousness.

"Ay, ay," observed the sweep, "Dame Thrumpkinson is a thrifty, sensible body: let us put it, now, to her, as a reasonable matter, and see if she does not say I speak fair."

The group drew near the dame's door, and the man recounted the terms of his proposal with a self-complacent emphasis which indicated that he believed the dame, being a well-reputed tradeswoman, would a.s.sent at once to the advisableness of his scheme, and a.s.sist him in its immediate accomplishment.

"Now, what d'ye think, dame?" he said in conclusion; "d'ye not think that I speak fair?"

"Think!" answered the aged woman, fixing her keen grey eyes upon the trafficker with an expression which withered his hopes in a moment;--"think!--why I think it would be a sinful shame to soil that bairn's pratty face wi' soot; and I think, beside, that thou hast so little of a man in thee, to wring a widowed-woman's heart by tempting her to barter the body and soul of her own bairn for gold, that if I were twenty years younger, I would shake thy liver in thee for what thou hast said to her."

The man's countenance fell, and he looked, for a moment, as if about to return an answer of abuse; but the dame kept her keen eye bent unblenchingly upon him;--and it seemed as if his courage failed, for he put up the guineas hastily into his purse, and turned from the spot, without daring to attempt an answer, followed by the two diminutive slaves whose hard lot it was to call him "Master."

"Ah, poor woman!" exclaimed Dame Deborah to the weeping and speechless mother;--"what a sorry sight it would have been to see you take yon hard-hearted rascal's money, while this poor faytherless innocent trudged away with a bag o' soot on his feeble back! No, no, it isn't come to that, nayther," she continued, vacating her arm-chair, and gently forcing the distressed woman into it; "sit thee down, poor heart!

the bairn shall not want a friend, if aught should ail thee. I'll take care of him myself, if G.o.d Almighty should take thee away as well as his poor fayther."

"G.o.d bless you, dame!" sobbed the cheered mother, clasping her hands, and bursting anew into tears, which were now tears of joy.

"G.o.d bless good old woman!" shouted the little fellow, with the real heaven of guileless childhood in his face.

"My poor child may soon need your goodness, kind dame," rejoined the melancholy mother, turning very deadly pale,--"for I feel I am not long for this world: my strength is nearly gone."

"Well, well, poor heart, cheer up!" said the dame, in a tone of sincere condolence:--"remember, that there is One above, who hath said, He will be "a husband to the widow, and a"----but I'll fetch thee and thy pratty bairn a bite o' bread and cheese, and a horn o' mead.--Lord bless me!

how white the poor creature is turning! G.o.d Almighty save her soul!

she's going!"

The kind old woman hastened to support the sinking head of the dying stranger, and the child clung, convulsively, to the cold and helpless hand of his mother,--and uttered his wailing agony. All was soon over,--for the poor wanderer died almost instantaneously in Dame Deborah's arm-chair.

Reader, if thou hast a heart to love thy mother, I need not attempt to describe to thee how deep was the grief and horror felt by the orphan as he gazed upon his dead mother's face. And if thou hast not such a heart, I will not give thee an occasion to slight a feeling so holy as a child's absorbed love for its loving mother.

Suffice it to say, that after three days of almost unmitigated grief, the child, led by Dame Deborah, followed his mother's corpse, sobbing, to the grave; but the aged hand that conducted him to witness the laying of his heart-broken parent in her last resting-place led him back to a comfortable home. The sudden and striking circ.u.mstances of his mother's death saddened the orphan's spirits for some time; but he soon recovered the natural gaiety of childhood, notwithstanding his transference from the care of an affectionate and over-indulgent mother, to that of a guardian of advanced age and grave manners.

Deborah Thrumpkinson in vain inquired after the orphan's full name. He only knew that he had been called "Joe." She guessed that he must be about four years old; and, fearful that a ceremony which she conceived to be an indispensable preparative for his eternal salvation might have been neglected, she took him to the font of the parish church, and had him baptized "Joseph--in a Christian way," as she termed it: the good dame, herself, becoming surety for the child's fulfilment of the vows thus taken upon himself by proxy.

Joe's G.o.dmother and protectress taught him to read. And no benefit she conferred upon him in after-life was more thankfully remembered by him than this, her humane and patient initiation of his infantile understanding into the mystery of the alphabet, and the formation of syllables. Here her labour ended, for her science extended little further; but a Bible with the Apocrypha, ornamented with plates,--a valued family possession of the Thrumpkinsons,--was within his reach, and, at any hour of Sunday,--and sometimes on other days of the week when he had washed his hands very clean,--he was privileged with the growing pleasure of turning over the pages of the folio of wonders ever new.

The good old Dame was not disposed to mar her act of genuine charity,--the adoption of an orphan,--by imprisoning his young limbs too early in the bonds of labour. She did not place him on the humble _stall_ to bend over the _last_, till she supposed he had reached the age of fourteen. The ten preceding years of his orphanage pa.s.sed away in a course of happy quietude. The staid age of his venerated protectress forbade any outbreaks of juvenile buoyancy in her sedate presence; but in Joe's lonely wanderings through the fields and lanes, as well as in his silent readings of the pictured Scriptures, he found pleasures which abundantly repaid the irksomeness of occasional restraint. His simple heart danced with joy at each return of the gladsome Spring, when his beloved acquaintances, the wild flowers, shewed their beautiful faces by brook and hedgerow; and he became familiar with all their localities, and felt a glowing and mysterious rapture in the renewed survey of their glorious tints and delicate pencillings, long before he learnt their names.

The commencement of his apprentices.h.i.+p was marked by an event of no less importance than his introduction to Toby Lackpenny,--the most learned tailor in the Isle of Axholme,--and a personage of such exalted merit, that we purpose to pluck a sprig of "immortal amaranth," by making the world acquainted with his separate history:--"but let that pa.s.s."

Toby,--from the rich immensity--for such it seemed to Joe--of his "library,"--furnished the young disciple of St. Crispin with two books which completely fascinated him: they were--the immortal fables of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Robinson Crusoe,"--by the immortal toilers, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe. Joe was a.s.sured by his new friend that Crusoe's adventures were no less veritable true than wonderful,--while the "Pilgrim" had a hidden and all-important meaning, which he must endeavour to discover, and apply to his own spiritual state as he went along.

During the season of his intense and enamoured pursuit of these absorbing studies, an incident occurred which produced some uneasiness both to teacher and disciple. Joe was seated, one evening, on a stool at the tailor's door, fervently engaged in his usual recreation,--the tailor meanwhile plying his needle,--when the clergyman of the village pa.s.sing by, and observing the boy's studious deportment as something unusual, stepped towards him, and desired to know what he was so intent upon. Joe naturally felt some diffidence in returning an answer, and turned towards his friend on the shop-board with a glance that was meant to entreat his kind offices in the formation of a reply. But the tailor, to Joe's utter confusion, hung down his head doggedly, and struck his needle into a nether garment that lay upon his knees, with singular vehemence. In default of this expected help, Joe gave his two precious volumes, silently and resignedly, into the hands of the vicar,--a reverend gentleman held in deserved respect by his humble flock for the rigid purity of his morals, but of small skill in the waywardness of the human mind.

After a very few minutes' examination of the books, the spiritual overseer crimsoned with apparent displeasure, shook his head very expressively at the boy, and returning the volumes into his hands, a.s.sured him he was very sorry to see him so ill employed,--"for one of the books," he said, "contained only a foolish tale,--and the other was as whimsical a dream as ever ran through the brains of a fanatic." So saying, the well-intentioned, but ill-informed, teacher turned away,--leaving the boy to his own reflections, and the hot criticism of the tailor on what they had just heard from the village parson. These by no means led Joe into a coincidence with the vicar's way of thinking; and, whenever opportunity served, he was sure, as before, to be wandering, ideally, with the romantic and intrepid adventurer on the desert island, or to be found absorbed in the effort to penetrate the spiritual mysteries he had been directed to discover in the remaining volume whose enchanting imagery had captivated his young understanding.

"A foolish tale,"--he could not conceive the narrative of the s.h.i.+pwrecked and eremite mariner to be: it was too full of sober earnestness, he thought, to be fantastic: it created before him a verisimilitude in which he himself lived all the wild yet truthful adventures of the cast-a-way seaman over again. And if he had not been told that the story of the Pilgrim was a parable, his simple and eager phantasy would have, primarily, set it down for a literal truth,--however after-reflection might have qualified his first conclusion.

But the accident of his evening's occupation having been scrutinised by the clergyman had not yet expended its influence on Joe's thoughts and feelings. On the first ensuing visit made by Dame Deborah to pay her t.i.thes, she was solemnly admonished to forbid her G.o.dson's unprofitable studies, and to interdict his future a.s.sociation with the tailor. The good dame's reverence for her spiritual guide inclined her, at once, to yield obedience to his recommendation; more especially as she had for some time noted that the boy did not, as formerly, eagerly resort, at every leisure opportunity, to the old family Bible.

Accordingly, on her return home, she sharply reproved him for his neglect of the sacred book, and insisted that he should discontinue his communings at the tailor's cottage, and read no more of his books. Joe returned not a word in answer to the reproof of his aged mistress, for mingled grat.i.tude, under a sense of her tender kindness, and reverence for her authority, rendered him incapable of disobeying her orders. He returned, dutifully, to the perusal of his first book; but though the rich variety of its histories, and the sublime interest of its matchless poetry, did not fail to keep alive his attention while he bent over its pages, yet, in the long hours of daily labour, his desire strongly thirsted for the more exciting intellectual draught of which he had lately partaken, and a dreary and monotonous feeling of weariness consumed his spirit. Dame Deborah little knew the evil she was doing when she bereaved her foster-child of his innocent pleasures. In the lapse of a few weeks she became sensible that it was not always wise to pursue the counsel even of the village parson too strictly.

Among the visiters to the dame's domicile, there had long been some who professed the tenets of Wesley,--the great heresiarch who drew his first breath in the Isle of Axholme. Of the peculiar doctrines set forth by this celebrated religious teacher, Joe, like Deborah herself, knew nought, save that the parson said they were "heresies." The st.u.r.dy intelligence of Dame Deborah led her to turn a deaf ear to all innovations in religion. She had been bred a strict church-woman, and never conceived the slightest idea of the fallibility of the orthodox and established Protestant faith. Her apprentices were not permitted to attend meeting or conventicle; and she steadfastly repelled and discouraged all attempts, on the part of her visiters, to introduce religious novelties in their daily gossip. But the restlessness and disquietude of his mind, now its faculties were once more without a fixed object of attachment, impelled Joe to discard, imperceptibly at first, the rules on religious matters, which had been tacitly observed by every member of the dame's household ever since he had entered it.

With those who manifested a disposition to enlarge on the merits of the new religious system, he entered eagerly into discussion; and the result was, a determination to pay a secret attendance on one of the meetings of the sect, and thus form a judgment for himself.

A preacher of considerable rhetorical powers occupied the meeting-house pulpit, during his first stolen visits; and the skill with which pa.s.sages from the book which had been his first source of instruction were quoted and applied, rivetted his attention and inflamed his fancy.

The speaker gave ill.u.s.trations of some of the patriarchal histories, and founded on them, and upon the sacrifices under the Mosaic law, such hypotheses as were exactly calculated to awe, and yet to lead captive, Joe's active imagination. To tell, in one sentence, the history of numberless hours of mental revolution, Joe brooded over these theories and their consequences while engaged at his daily labour, and repeated his secret visits to the meeting-house, until his young and earnest mind was filled with the one pervading idea that the only true happiness for the human soul was to be found in some sudden and ecstatic change to be received by what his new teachers called "an act of faith in the atonement."

From the period in which this conviction took entire hold of his judgment, the alteration in Joe's conduct was so decided as to become serious cause of alarm, even to the firm common-sense of Dame Deborah.

He spurned the thought of any longer concealing his attendance at the sectarian meeting-house; and at every brief cessation from labour, as well as at prolonged hours in the night, and early in the morning, he was overheard in a weeping agony of prayer. His humble bed-room, an out-house, or the corner of a field, served the young devotee alike, for a place of "spiritual wrestling;" and whoever gave him an opportunity was sure to receive from Joe an earnest warning to "flee from the wrath to come!" Days,--weeks rolled on,--and the ardour of the lad's enthusiasm was approaching its meridian,--for he had given up himself so completely to its power, that not only did he consume the night more fully in prolonged acts of ascetic and almost convulsive devotion,--but his mind was so entirely wrapt up in the effort to "pray without ceasing,"--that he was scarcely conscious of what pa.s.sed in the dame's cottage during the hours of work.

The visit of a "Revivalist" to the new religious community at Haxey thus found Joe fully prepared to hail the event as one fraught with unspeakable benefits. The narrow meeting-house was crammed with villagers attracted by the loud and unusual noises, and affected by the agonised looks and gestures, of their neighbours. Many of these stray visiters, in the language of the initiated, "came to scoff, but remained to pray." The "Revivalist" crept from form to form,--for the humble meeting-house was unhonoured with a pew,--urging the weeping and kneeling penitents to "press into mercy;" and pouring forth successive pet.i.tions for their salvation until the perspiration dropped from his brows like rain.

Joe was too intensely absorbed in the burning desire to obtain the immediate purification of his nature to be able to reflect, for a moment, on the question,--whether, in all this boisterous procedure, there was not an appalling violation of every principle of wors.h.i.+p. And when the preacher approached the form at which he was kneeling, the workings of his spirit shook his whole frame with expectation. The preacher, at length, addressed him:--

"Believe, my young brother," said he, in a voice naturally musical, and rendered wonderfully influential by enthusiasm,--"believe, for the pardon of your sins!"

"Oh! I would believe in a moment, if I felt they were pardoned!" cried Joe, in all the earnestness of excitement.

"Nay, but you must believe first!" rejoined the preacher; "only believe that your sins are pardoned, and you will feel your burden gone!"

The boy's reason, for a moment, a.s.serted its own majesty, at the broaching of this wild doctrine; and he returned an instant answer to the preacher which would have confounded a less practised casuist.

"That would be pardoning myself," he said: "I want the Lord to pardon me: if believing that my sins were forgiven, while I feel they are not, would produce a real pardon, I need never have asked the Almighty to perform the work."

"Ah, my dear young brother!" quickly replied the preacher,--"I waited, as you have, no doubt, for weeks and weeks, expecting some miracle to be performed for me; but I found, at last, that there was no other refuge but believing. You _must_ believe: _that_ is your only way! All the direction that the word gives you is, '_Believe_, and thou shalt be saved!' You have nothing else to do but to believe; and the moment you do believe--that moment you will be happy! Try it!"--and, so saying, the "Revivalist" hastened on to make proof of the efficacy of his wild notional catholicon upon the comfortless spirit of some less hesitating patient or penitent.

Joe's distress, when the preacher left him, became greater than ever. He felt fearful, on the one hand, of becoming a victim to self-deceit; and was horrified, on the other, with the terrible dread of losing his soul through the sin of unbelief. But the combat between his imagination and his understanding was one in which the former faculty had all the vantage-ground of his youthful age and his tendency to the marvellous,--and was immeasurably a.s.sisted by the overwhelming energy of his desire. The attainment of the new spiritual state had become his sole idea; and his reason succ.u.mbed beneath the combined strength of his wishes and the prurience of his ideality.