John Halifax, Gentleman. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Dinner was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlour, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery as glass. Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock, there was no other furniture.
I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard I sent for John.
Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us, and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no indication of her sex in its softness and tenderness. There had evidently been wrath in the kitchen.
"Phineas, the lad ha' got his dinner, and you mustn't keep 'un long. I bean't going to let you knock yourself up with looking after a beggar-boy."
A beggar-boy! The idea seemed so ludicrous, that I could not help smiling at it as I regarded him. He had washed his face and combed out his fair curls; though his clothes were threadbare, all but ragged, they were not unclean; and there was a rosy, healthy freshness in his tanned skin, which showed he loved and delighted in what poor folk generally abominate—water. And now the sickness of hunger had gone from his face, the lad, if not actually what our scriptural Saxon terms "well-favoured," was certainly "well-liking." A beggar-boy, indeed! I hoped he had not heard Jael's remark. But he had.
"Madam," said he, with a bow of perfect good-humour, and even some sly drollery, "you mistake: I never begged in my life: I'm a person of independent property, which consists of my head and my two hands, out of which I hope to realise a large capital some day."
I laughed. Jael retired, abundantly mystified, and rather cross. John Halifax came to my easy chair, and in an altered tone asked me how I felt, and if he could do anything for me before he went away.
"You'll not go away; not till my father comes home, at least?" For I had been revolving many plans, which had one sole aim and object, to keep near me this lad, whose companionship and help seemed to me, brotherless, sisterless, and friendless as I was, the very thing that would give me an interest in life, or, at least, make it drag on less wearily. To say that what I projected was done out of charity or pity would not be true; it was simple selfishness, if that be selfishness which makes one leap towards, and cling to, a possible strength and good, which I conclude to be the secret of all those sudden likings that spring more from instinct than reason. I do not attempt to account for mine: I know not why "the soul of Jonathan clave to the soul of David." I only know that it was so, and that the first day I beheld the lad John Halifax, I, Phineas Fletcher, "loved him as my own soul."
Thus, my entreaty, "You'll not go away?" was so earnest, that it apparently touched the friendless boy to the core.
"Thank you," he said, in an unsteady voice, as leaning against the fire-place he drew his hand backwards and forwards across his face: "you are very kind; I'll stay an hour or so, if you wish it."
"Then come and sit down here, and let us have a talk."
What this talk was, I cannot now recall, save that it ranged over many and wide themes, such as boys delight in—chiefly of life and adventure. He knew nothing of my only world—books.
"Can you read?" he asked me at last, suddenly.
"I should rather think so." And I could not help smiling, being somewhat proud of my erudition.
"And write?"
"Oh, yes; certainly."
He thought a minute, and then said, in a low tone, "I can't write, and I don't know when I shall be able to learn; I wish you would put down something in a book for me."
"That I will."
He took out of his pocket a little case of leather, with an under one of black silk; within this, again, was a book. He would not let it go out of his hands, but held it so that I could see the leaves. It was a Greek Testament.
"Look here."
He pointed to the fly-leaf, and I read:
"Guy Halifax, his Book.
"Guy Halifax, gentleman, married Muriel Joyce, spinster, May 17, in the year of our Lord 1779.
"John Halifax, their son, born June 18, 1780."
There was one more entry, in a feeble, illiterate female hand: "Guy Halifax, died January 4, 1781."
"What shall I write, John?" said I, after a minute or so of silence.
"I'll tell you presently. Can I get you a pen?"
He leaned on my shoulder with his left hand, but his right never once let go of the precious book.
"Write—'Muriel Halifax, died January 1, 1791.'"
"Nothing more?"
"Nothing more."
He looked at the writing for a minute or two, dried it carefully by the fire, replaced the book in its two cases, and put it into his pocket. He said no other word but "Thank you," and I asked him no questions.
This was all I ever heard of the boy's parentage: nor do I believe he knew more himself. He was indebted to no forefathers for a family history: the chronicle commenced with himself, and was altogether his own making. No romantic antecedents ever turned up: his lineage remained uninvestigated, and his pedigree began and ended with his own honest name—John Halifax.
Jael kept coming in and out of the parlour on divers excuses, eyeing very suspiciously John Halifax and me; especially when she heard me laughing—a rare and notable fact—for mirth was not the fashion in our house, nor the tendency of my own nature. Now this young lad, hardly as the world had knocked him about even already, had an overflowing spirit of quiet drollery and healthy humour, which was to me an inexpressible relief. It gave me something I did not possess—something entirely new. I could not look at the dancing brown eyes, at the quaint dimples of lurking fun that played hide-and-seek under the firm-set mouth, without feeling my heart cheered and delighted, like one brought out of a murky chamber into the open day.
But all this was highly objectionable to Jael.
"Phineas!"—and she planted herself before me at the end of the table—"it's a fine, sunshiny day: thee ought to be out."
"I have been out, thank you, Jael." And John and I went on talking.
"Phineas!"—a second and more determined attack—"too much laughing bean't good for thee; and it's time this lad were going about his own business."
"Hush!—nonsense, Jael."
"No—she's right," said John Halifax, rising, while that look of premature gravity, learned doubtless out of hard experience, chased all the boyish fun from his face. "I've had a merry day—thank you kindly for it! and now I'll be gone."
Gone! It was not to be thought of—at least, not till my father came home. For now, more determinedly than ever, the plan which I had just ventured to hint at to my father fixed itself on my mind. Surely he would not refuse me—me, his sickly boy, whose life had in it so little pleasure.
"Why do you want to go? You have no work?"
"No; I wish I had. But I'll get some."
"How?"
"Just by trying everything that comes to hand. That's the only way. I never wanted bread, nor begged it, yet—though I've often been rather hungry. And as for clothes"—he looked down on his own, light and threadbare, here and there almost burst into holes by the stout muscles of the big growing boy—looked rather disconsolately. "I'm afraid SHE would be sorry—that's all! She always kept me so tidy."
By the way he spoke, "SHE" must have meant his mother. There the orphan lad had an advantage over me; alas! I did not remember mine.
"Come," I said, for now I had quite made up my mind to take no denial, and fear no rebuff from my father; "cheer up. Who knows what may turn up?"