 | CHAPTER XXXIII.
“CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS.” John Brent |  |
33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
“CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS.”
“I am short, and I shall try to make a long
story short,” said Padiham. “I wish to tell you,
in as few words as I may, why Mr. Clitheroe and
his daughter are in my house.
“Look at me, a stunted man! Life in a coal-mine
stunted me. I suppose I was born underground.
I know that I never remember when I
was not at work, either harnessed like a dog, and
dragging coals through a shop where I could not
stand upright, or, when I grew stronger, — bigger
I was not to grow, — down in the darkest holes,
beating out with a pickaxe stuff to make other
men's houses warm and cheery. If I had had
air and sun and light and hope, I might have
been a shapely man.
“It was in Lancashire, the coal-mine where
I had been shut up, boy and man, some twenty
years, as I reckon. There came one day a
weakly man, who had n't been used to work
hard, into the shaft, and they put him at drawing
out the coals I dug. Hugh was the name he
to get his face black, before we 'd baptized
him Gentleman Hugh. I had never seen a gentleman
to know him, but I had a feeling of what
one ought to be, and so had my mates in the pit.
Gentleman Hugh seemed to us to suit the nickname
we gave him. We 're roughs down in the
coal-pits, and some of us are brutes enough; but
Gentleman Hugh managed to get us all on his
side, and there was n't a man of us that would n't
give him a lift.
“Gentleman Hugh took a fancy to me, and so
did I to him. Nature had misused me, and life
had misused him. We had something to pity
each other for. But I had the advantage in the
dark damp hole where we worked. I had lost
nothing; I knew of nothing better; I was healthy
and strong, if I was stunted; I could help Gentleman
Hugh, and save him wearing himself out.
And so I did. He was the first person or creature
I had ever cared for.
“I did what I could for him in lightening his
work; but he gave me back a hundred times
what I could give. I was hands without head,
or without any head that could make my hands
of use. He had head enough, and things in his
head, but his hands were never meant for tools to
get a living. Gentleman Hugh waked up my
brains. I knew how to pick and dig, and sometimes
at. But air and daylight seemed as if they did
not belong to me. I was a drudge, and never
thought of anything but drudging, until Gentleman
Hugh came down into my shaft and began
to tell me what there was outside of coal-mines.
“He told me about himself; that he was Hugh
Clitheroe, a gentleman, and how he had been
ruined by factories and coal speculations. It
was his losing his fortune in a coal-mine that set
him on coming into ours to make his bread, and
poor bread too, for a gentleman. He said he
was sick of daylight. It was better to be a
drudge, so he said, down in the blackest and
wettest hole of any coal-pit in Lancashire, than
to beg bread of men that pretended to be his
friends when he was rich, and sneered at him for
his folly in losing his wealth. I found out that
there were wrongs and brutality above ground as
well as under it.
“By and by, when Gentleman Hugh and I had
got to be friends, he took me one holiday and
showed me his daughter. She was a sweet little
lass. He had left her with the rough women, the
miners' wives. But she had her own way with
them, just as he had had with us. They called
her little Lady Ellen, and would have cut up their
own brats, if they had n't been too tough, if she
had wanted such diet. Little Ellen, sweet lass!
George as they called me. She did not run
away and cry, or point and laugh at me as the
other children did. She was picking daisies on
the edge of an old coal-pit when we first saw
her, — a little curly-haired lass of five years old.
She was crowned with daisies, and she did n't
seem to me to belong to the same class of beings
as the grimy things I had been among all my
days. She gave me a daisy, and asked me if I
knew who made it. And when I said I did n't
know, unless it came of itself, she named God to
me. Nobody had named God to me before except
in oaths.
“Do I tire you, sir,” said Padiham, “with this
talk about myself?”
“Certainly not; you interest me greatly.”
“The old gentleman will hardly be ready to
see you yet. It is almost nine, and at the stroke
of nine he has his breakfast. I always go up
then to give him good morning. You can go
with me.”
“Meantime, tell me how you found them
again.”
“I found them by a drawing of hers. But I
will go on straightforward with my story.
“I could n't stay a dolt, though I had to
drudge for many a day after I first saw little
Ellen, and she gave me the daisy and named God
was only once a quarter or a half-year, I went up
to see her. She made a friend of me, and told
me to take care of her father. He was very
much down, quite broken and helpless, with just
enough strength to do half his appointed work.
So I helped him with the rest.
“After a long time the owners found out that
he had education, and they took him into the
office. All the men were sorry to lose Gentleman
Hugh, and when he went, I lost heart, and
took to drinking up my miserable earnings with
the rest. There I was, a drudge in the dark, and
getting to be a drunkard, when Gentleman Hugh
came to me and told me how some one had left
him a legacy, and I must get out of the pit and
share with him. He said little Ellen would not
be happy unless she had me.
“So he took me up into the air and sun, and
put me to school. But I could never learn much
out of books. Put tools in my hands and I can
make things, and that is what my business is in
the world. You see those arms, well made as
your own. You see those hands, strong as a
vice, and those fingers, fine as a woman's. They
are tools, and able to handle tools. The rest of
my body is stunted; my brain is stunted. I 'm
no fool; but I 'm not the man I ought to be.
Every day I feel that I cannot put my thoughts
into the highest form.”
“Every man of any power feels that,” I said,
“by whatever machinery his power finds expression.”
“Perhaps so. Well, when Mr. Clitheroe had
once given me a start in the open air, and I had
got tools in my hands, pretty soon they began to
talk of me as one of the masters in Lancashire.
There 's a great call in England for thorough
workmen. I came up to London. I fell in with
the gentleman who sent you here, and I got on
well. There 's as much good work goes out of
this little shop as out of some big establishments
with great names over the door. People try to
get me to start a great shop, and make a great
fortune, and have George Padiham talked about.
But I 'm Dwarf George, born in a coal-mine and
stunted in a coal-mine; and Lamely Court, with
my little shop in the basement, suits me best.
“I never forgot how I owed all my good luck
to Gentleman Hugh and my dear little Ellen. If
it had not been for them, I should have died
underground of hard work, before thirty, as most
of my mates did. Their help of me gave me a
kindly feeling toward broken-down gentlefolks.
I owed the class my luck, and when I got on and
had money to spend, having no one of my own
to spend it for, I looked up people as badly off
as Gentleman Hugh was when I first knew him,
and helped them. They are a hard class to help,
kind. I took this house here, out of the way as
much as any spot in London. Whenever I knew
of a gentleman, or a gentlewoman, given out, or
worn out, so that they could n't take care of
themselves, I brought them in here. If they
were only given out, I put stuff into them again,
cheered them up, and found some work for them
to do. Gentlefolks are not such fools, if they
only had education. If I found one that was
worn out beyond all patching, I packed him into
a snug corner up-stairs, and let him lie there.
They like it better than public hospitals and
retreats.
“All the while I was getting on and getting
rich in a small way, with some small shares in
patents I own. But I kept my eye on Gentleman
Hugh. I knew what would come to him,
and I never took in ten shillings that I did not
put away one for him and his daughter.
“I knew of his going to America with the Mormons,
— damn 'em! I went down to Clitheroe to
persuade him to give up the plan. He would
not. He quarrelled with me, — our first hard
words. He forbade his daughter to write to me.
“I knew he would come back some time or
other, stripped and needy. I watched the packet's
lists of passengers. He did not come under
his own name; but I saw last winter an old Lancashire
that worn-out shaft where Ellen had picked the
daisy for me. It was a favorite spot of his.
Part of his money had gone down it, and he used
to sit and stare into it as if the money was going
to bubble up again. I traced them by that to
London. Here for a time I lost them.
“He got very low in London, — poor old man!”
continued Padiham.
“Nothing dishonest, I hope,” said I.
“No, no. Only gambling, with a crazy hope of
getting even with the world again. In this way
he spent all that he had left, and Ellen's hard
earnings beside. It made him wild for her to refuse
him; so she was forced to give him all that
she could spare, — all except just enough to pay
for a poor place to live in and poorer fare. She
never knew where he spent the long nights; she
only saw him creep back to his garret in the early
morning destitute and half alive. Richard Wade,
you may read books, and hear tales, and go
through the world looking for women that help
and hope, and never give up helping and hoping;
but you 'll never find another like her, — no, not
like my dear lass, — as grand a beauty, too, as
any at the Queen's court.”
“You are right, Padiham. None like her.”
“But I promised you to talk as short as I
could. I must tell you how I found them. The
know something of ornamental work that they
learnt to do, for play, when they were better off.
I set them at doing what they can do best, and
sell it for them. There is always some one
among my family can draw. What of their
drawings I can't dispose of at the print-shops I
buy myself, and scatter 'em round among mechanics
to light up their benches. You were
right when you said a man cannot be a good
artisan unless he has a bit of the artist in him.
“It was by going to a print-shop with drawings
to sell that I found my dear lass. She had
painted me, and sold the picture to the dealer
for bread. I would n't have noticed the picture
except for the dwarf in it, and now I would n't
be a finished man for the world. Yes, there I
was, Dwarf George, picking daisies on the edge
of a coal-pit; there I was, just as I used to look,
with the coal-dust ground into me, trying to
make friends with the fresh innocent daisies in
the sunshine.
“By that picture I found them just in time.
When I got to their garret, Ellen was lying sick,
ill in body, and tired and sorrowed out. Their
money was all gone, for Gentleman Hugh had
been robbed of his last the night before. I
brought my dear child and her father here. What
I had was theirs.
“As soon as her father was safe with me, his
old friend, she got well. As soon as his daughter
was out of the way of harm and want, and the
old gentleman had nothing to be crazy about and
nothing to run away from, he stopped dead. He
fell into a palsy.
“There he is now up-stairs. Ellen chose the
upper room, where they could look over the
house-tops and of clear days see the Surrey Hills.
I 've got some skill in my fingers for mending
broken men, but Hugh Clitheroe can't be mended.
It 's as well for him that he can't. He 's
been off track too long ever to run steady in this
world. But he has come to himself, and sees
things clearer at last. He lies there contented
and patient, waiting for his end. He sees his
daughter, who has gone with him though thick
and thin, by his side, and knows she will love
him closer every day. And he knows that his
old mate, Dwarf George, is down here in the
basement, strong enough to keep all up and all
together.”
“Let me be the one, Mr. Padiham,” said I,
“to ask the honor of shaking hands with you.
I think better of the world for your sake.”
“Young man,” said he, with his clear, frank
voice, “a noble woman like my Ellen betters
every true man. There strikes nine. A pleasant
church-clock that! I gave it to 'em. Now
Ellen will have all she has missed when she sees
you and your friend. Many times she has told
me of that ride of yours. Many times she has
cried, as a woman only cries for one loss, when
she told me how day after day she waited to hear
from you, and had never heard.”
“She wrote?”
“Repeatedly.”
“We never heard.”
“Her father took her letters from her to
post.”
“And kept them or destroyed them for some
crazy suspicion.”
“She dreaded you might have been chased
and cut off by the Mormons. She would not
believe that you had forgotten her.”
“Forgotten! Come, I 'll follow you.”
| CHAPTER XXXIII.
“CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS.” John Brent | |