Stories Told to a Child. Jean Ingelow
several doors; at length I came to the upper room so often mentioned, advanced to the red curtain and looked in. There I saw him and the grandmother sitting side by side, perfectly composed, but with somewhat awe-struck faces; the son was holding his mother by the hand, and they were quite silent. I came in and stood beside him for a few minutes; the storm was clearing off with magical celerity, and two minutes after the last tremendous clap of thunder, the rain ceased, and the sun shone out over the sodden grass and the ruined garden, all strewed with broken branches, fallen fruit, and dead nestlings flung from the nests, and over which the mother rooks were piteously lamenting. The great fear of God so lately suffered, had taken away for a time all fear of man; and though the grandmother was present, I did not feel afraid when I asked Lucy's father if he would hear something that I wanted to tell him.
Some few things in our childhood make such a deep impression on the mind that they are never forgotten. I still remember how I told my story to Lucy's father, and almost the very words in which I told him.
I remember his benign face, which, to my great surprise, never once became in the least displeased all through the broken narrative. I remember the grandmother's manner, which, stranger still, never reproached me as it did at other times. I remember the touch of her aged hand, as once or twice she passed it softly over my hair; and, more than all, I remember the quiet kindness of Lucy's father, and how gently he said, when I had finished, and he had reflected for a few moments on my tale, 'Well, well, let him that is without sin among us first cast a stone at thee.'
From that day forward the grandmother was particularly kind to me.
TWO WAYS OF TELLING A STORY.
WHO is this? A careless little midshipman, idling about in a great city, with his pockets full of money.
He is waiting for the coach: it comes up presently, and he gets on the top of it, and begins to look about him.
They soon leave the chimney-pots behind them; his eyes wander with delight over the harvest fields, he smells the honeysuckle in the hedge-row, and he wishes he was down among the hazel bushes, that he might strip them of the milky nuts; then he sees a great wain piled up with barley, and he wishes he was seated on the top of it; then they go through a little wood, and he likes to see the checkered shadows of the trees lying across the white road; and then a squirrel runs up a bough, and he cannot forbear to whoop and halloo, though he cannot chase it to its nest.
The other passengers are delighted with his simplicity and childlike glee; and they encourage him to talk to them about the sea and ships, especially Her Majesty's ship The Asp, wherein he has the honor to sail. In the jargon of the sea, he describes her many perfections, and enlarges on her peculiar advantages; he then confides to them how a certain middy, having been ordered to the mast-head as a punishment, had seen, while sitting on the top-mast cross-trees, something uncommonly like the sea-serpent—but, finding this hint received with incredulous smiles, he begins to tell them how he hopes that, some day, he shall be promoted to have charge of the poop. The passengers hope he will have that honor; they have no doubt he deserves it. His cheeks flush with pleasure to hear them say so, and he little thinks that they have no notion in what ' that honor' may happen to consist.
The coach stops: the little midshipman, with his hands in his pockets, sits rattling his money, and singing. There is a poor woman standing by the door of the village inn; she looks careworn, and well she may, for, in the spring, her husband went up to London to seek for work. He got work, and she was expecting soon to join him there, when, alas! a fellow-workman wrote her word how he had met with an accident, how he was very ill, and wanted his wife to come and nurse him. But she has two young children, and is destitute; she must walk up all the way, and she is sick at heart when she thinks that perhaps he may die among strangers before she can reach him.
She does not think of begging, but seeing the boy's eyes attracted to her, she makes him a courtesy, and he withdraws his hand and throws her down a sovereign. She looks at it with incredulous joy, and then she looks at him.
'It's all right,' he says, and the coach starts again, while, full of gratitude, she hires a cart to take her across the country to the railway, that the next night she may sit by the bedside of her sick husband.
The midshipman knows nothing about that; and he never will know.
The passengers go on talking—the little midshipman has told them who he is, and where he is going; but there is one man who has never joined in the conversation; he is dark-looking and restless; he sits apart; he has seen the glitter of the falling coin, and now he watches the boy more narrowly than before.
He is a strong man, resolute and determined; the boy with the pockets full of money will be no match for him. He has told the other passengers that his father's house is the parsonage at Y———, the coach goes within five miles of it, and he means to get down at the nearest point, and walk, or rather run over to his home, through the great wood.
The man decides to get down too, and go through the wood; he will rob the little midshipman; perhaps, if he cries out or struggles, he will do worse. The boy, he thinks, will have no chance against him; it is quite impossible that he can escape; the way is lonely, and the sun will be down.
No. There seems indeed little chance of escape; the half-fledged bird just fluttering down from its nest has no more chance against the keen-eyed hawk, than the little light-hearted sailor boy will have against him.
And now they reach the village where the boy is to alight. He wishes the other passengers 'good evening,' and runs lightly down between the scattered houses. The man has got down also, and is following.
The path lies through the village churchyard; there is evening service, and the door is wide open, for it is warm. The little midshipman steals up the porch, looks in, and listens. The clergyman has just risen from his knees in the pulpit, and is giving out his text. Thirteen months have passed since the boy was within a house of prayer; and a feeling of pleasure and awe induces him to stand still and listen.
'Are not two sparrows (he hears) sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.'
He hears the opening sentences of the sermon; and then he remembers his home, and comes softly out of the porch, full of a calm and serious pleasure. The clergyman has reminded him of his father, and his careless heart is now filled with the echoes of his voice and of his prayers. He thinks on what the clergyman said, of the care of our heavenly Father for us; he remembers how, when he left home, his father prayed that he might be preserved through every danger; he does not remember any particular danger that he has been exposed to, excepting in the great storm; but he is grateful that he has come home in safety, and he hopes whenever he shall be in danger, which he supposes he shall be some day, he hopes, that then the providence of God will watch over him and protect him. And so he presses onward to the entrance of the wood.
The man is there before him. He has pushed himself into the thicket, and cut a heavy stake; he suffers the boy to go on before, and then he comes out, falls into the path, and follows him.
It is too light at present for his deed of darkness, and too near the entrance of the wood, but he knows that shortly the path will branch off into two, and the right one for the boy to take will be dark and lonely.
But what prompts the little midshipman, when not fifty yards from the branching of the path, to break into a sudden run? It is not fear, he never dreams of danger. Some sudden impulse, or some wild wish for home, makes him dash off suddenly after his saunter, with a whoop and a bound. On he goes, as if running a race; the path bends, and the man loses sight of him. 'But I shall have him yet,' he thinks; 'he cannot keep this pace up long.'
The boy has nearly reached the place where the path divides, when he puts