Essential Novelists - Dinah Craik. August Nemo
that came up from the alleys which lay between the High Street and the Avon. In those alleys were hundreds of our poor folk living, huddled together in misery, rags, and dirt. Was John Halifax living there too?
My father’s tan-yard was in an alley a little further on. Already I perceived the familiar odour; sometimes a not unpleasant barky smell; at other times borne in horrible wafts, as if from a lately forsaken battle-field. I wondered how anybody could endure it — yet some did; and among the workmen, as we entered, I looked round for the lad I knew.
He was sitting in a corner in one of the sheds, helping two or three women to split bark, very busy at work; yet he found time to stop now and then, and administered a wisp of sweet hay to the old blind mare, as she went slowly round and round, turning the bark mill. Nobody seemed to notice him, and he did not speak to anybody.
As we passed John did not even see us. I asked my father, in a whisper, how he liked the boy.
“What boy? — eh, him? — Oh, well enough — there’s no harm in him that I know of. Dost thee want him to wheel thee about the yard? Here, I say, lad — bless me! I’ve forgot thy name.”
John Halifax started up at the sharp tone of command; but when he saw me he smiled. My father walked on to some pits where he told me he was trying an important experiment, how a hide might be tanned completely in five months instead of eight. I stayed behind.
“John, I want you.”
John shook himself free of the bark-heap, and came rather hesitatingly at first.
“Anything I can do for you, sir?”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’; if I say ‘John,’ why don’t you say ‘Phineas’?”
And I held out my hand — his was all grimed with bark-dust.
“Are you not ashamed to shake hands with me?”
“Nonsense, John.”
So we settled that point entirely. And though he never failed to maintain externally a certain gentle respectfulness of demeanour towards me, yet it was more the natural deference of the younger to the elder, of the strong to the weak, than the duty paid by a serving-lad to his master’s son. And this was how I best liked it to be.
He guided me carefully among the tan-pits — those deep fosses of abomination, with a slender network of pathways thrown between — until we reached the lower end of the yard. It was bounded by the Avon only, and by a great heap of refuse bark.
“This is not a bad place to rest in; if you liked to get out of the carriage I’d make you comfortable here in no time.”
I was quite willing; so he ran off and fetched an old horserug, which he laid upon the soft, dry mass. Then he helped me thither, and covered me with my cloak. Lying thus, with my hat over my eyes, just distinguishing the shiny glimmer of the Avon running below, and beyond that the green, level Ham, dotted with cows, my position was anything but unpleasant. In fact, positively agreeable — ay, even though the tan-yard was close behind; but here it would offend none of my senses.
“Are you comfortable, Phineas?”
“Very, if you would come and sit down too.”
“That I will.”
And we then began to talk. I asked him if he often patronised the bark-heap, he seemed so very much at home there.
“So I am,” he answered, smiling; “it is my castle — my house.”
“And not unpleasant to live at, either.”
“Except when it rains. Does it always rain at Norton Bury?”
“For shame, John!” and I pointed to the bluest of autumn skies, though in the distance an afternoon mist was slowly creeping on.
“All very fine now, but there’s a fog coming over Severn; and it is sure to rain at nightfall. I shall not get my nice little bit of October evening.”
“You must spend it within doors then.” John shook his head. “You ought; it must be dreadfully cold on this bark-heap after sunset.”
“Rather, sometimes. Are you cold now? Shall I fetch — but I haven’t anything fit to wrap you in, except this rug.”
He muffled it closer round me; infinitely light and tender was his rough-looking boy’s hand.
“I never saw anybody so thin as you; thinner much since I saw you. Have you been very, very ill, Phineas? What ailed you?”
His anxiety was so earnest, that I explained to him what I may as well explain here, and dismiss, once for all; the useless topic, that from my birth I had been puny and diseased; that my life had been a succession of sicknesses, and that I could hope for little else until the end.
“But don’t think I mind it; John;” for I was grieved to see his shocked and troubled look. “I am very content; I have a quiet home, a good father, and now I think and believe I have found the one thing I wanted — a good friend.”
He smiled, but only because I did. I saw he did not understand me. In him, as in most strong and self-contained temperaments, was a certain slowness to receive impressions, which, however, being once received, are indelible. Though I, being in so many things his opposite, had none of this peculiarity, but felt at once quickly and keenly, yet I rather liked the contrary in him, as I think we almost always do like in another those peculiarities which are most different from our own. Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become, and all that I meant him to become, to me. I knew from every tone of his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below; a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all liking and all love — DEPENDABLENESS. He was one whom you may be long in knowing, but whom the more you know the more you trust; and once trusting, you trust for ever.
Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.
“Come,” said I, changing the conversation, “we have had enough of me; how goes the world with you? Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard? Answer frankly.”
He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to whistle a tune.
“Don’t shirk the question, please, John. I want to know the real truth.”
“Well, then, I hate the tan-yard.”
Having relieved his mind by this ebullition, and by kicking a small heap of tan right down into the river, he became composed.
“But, Phineas, don’t imagine I intend to hate it always; I intend to get used to it, as many a better fellow than I has got used to many a worse thing. It’s wicked to hate what wins one’s bread, and is the only thing one is likely to get on in the world with, merely because it’s disagreeable.”
“You are a wise lad of your age, John.”
“Now don’t you be laughing at me.” (But I was not, I was in solemn earnest). “And don’t think I’m worse than I am; and especially that I’m not thankful to your good father for giving me a lift in the world — the first I ever really had. If I get one foot on the ladder, perhaps I may climb.”
“I should rather believe so,” answered I, very confidently. “But you seem to have thought a good deal about these sort of things.”
“Oh, yes! I have plenty of time for thinking, and one’s thoughts travel fast enough lying on this bark-heap — faster than indoors. I often wish I could read — that is, read easily. As it is, I have nothing to do but to think, and nothing to think of but myself, and what I should like to be.”