Читать книгу Sheer Off: A Tale - A. L. O. E. - Страница 7

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Bat Bell was a particular man, regular and precise in all his ways, who had, as it were, stiffened into his own mould, especially since the death of his wife, and who did not choose, as he often said, "to be put out for nobody." Bell hated a visitor at work-time, and he was so keen after making money that his work-time began early and ended late. He hated a visitor at meal-time, probably because he did not wish any one to share his meal. Franks was aware of this, and tried so to time his visit to the mill that he should catch Bell in that half-hour of rest which usually followed his early dinner.

"He'll be playing with his Bessy," thought Franks, "and there's nothing on earth that softens and opens a man's heart like hearing the voice of his own little child, or dancing it on his knee." Such was the conclusion to which the school-master came after his four weeks' experience of the feelings of a father.

Franks, however, found little Bessy, not with her parent, but amusing herself in the lane close by the mill. She ran up to him with open arms, and held up her little face for a kiss, for Ned was a prime favorite with every child who knew him, and, during her mother's last illness, Bessy had spent a week at a time under the care of the Franks. She was a plump, rosy-cheeked, merry little girl, of about five years of age.

"Is father at home, my little lass?" asked Ned.

"Yes; father's in there," replied Bessy, nodding in the direction of the door of the cottage attached to the mill; "but he lets me be here to look for the flowers."

"Mind you don't go near the water, little one," said Franks; "keep to the primroses under the hedge;" and, smiling a good-by to the child, he proceeded to the dwelling of her father.

Bat Bell was alone in his parlor, seated on his high-backed wooden chair before the solid deal table, on which appeared the remains of some bread and cheese, and the empty pewter pot which had held his beer. Bell was a tall, bony man, naturally of rather a dark complexion, but skin, hair, and dress were all powdered with the flour which showed what was his daily occupation, his shaggy black brows especially having formed a resting-place for the white dust, as the thatched eaves of a dwelling for snow.

"Good-day to you, Ned Franks, glad to see you; what brings you this way?" asked the miller, holding out his bony, whitened hand to his visitor, with as much of a smile on his face as the stiffness of the leathery skin would allow.

Franks was not one to approach any subject in a round about way; if there was any difficulty before him, he usually took what he called "a header" into the very middle of it. He did not say he had just looked in to see an old friend, or to ask if little Bessy would come and look at his baby, or utter any remark about the weather, or express any hope that business was brisk; he said what he had come to say the moment after he had taken a seat.

"I've called, neighbor, to talk to you about the almshouses yonder in Wild Rose Hollow;" through the window towards which Ned glanced as he spoke, the chimney of the nearest one could be seen. "I was up at Sarah Mason's early this morning, to try what I could do for her wall; but no patching of mine can make the place fit for a human being to live in, let alone a rheumatic old woman. You know well the state of the cottages; something must be done for them without much delay, or the old hulks will soon fall to pieces."

Every symptom of a smile had disappeared from the hard face of Bat Bell as soon as his visitor had mentioned Wild Rose Hollow; and when Ned paused, the miller's only reply was a "humph," uttered in a very discouraging tone.

"Don't you think that it would be a shame and disgrace to Colme, if dwellings that have afforded shelter for two hundred and fifty years to the aged respectable poor of our village were all suffered to go to utter decay from neglect, as one of them already has done?"

"Why don't young Sir Lacy mend 'em? He has money enough," said the miller, "and flings it away right and left, they say, in ways that are little to his credit."

"If he does not come forward, is his backwardness an example to be followed?" asked Franks.

"Let the clergy see to it; it's their business," said Bell, with a little disagreeable twitch of the nostril, which with him was always a sign that something was "putting him out."

"Mr. Leyton preached twice yesterday in aid of the work, but the collections made were wretched,—not one tenth of what is absolutely required."

"The parish overseers must do something."

"They refuse to stir a finger," said Franks; "they say it's no business of theirs."

"Then I'm sure that it's no business of mine," interrupted the miller.

"Is it no business of ours," said the school-master, earnestly, "that they whom we have known for years, they who have lived amongst us, and hoped to die amongst us, should be deprived of the comfort, the quiet, the independence which they so dearly prize?"

"I'm sorry for them," said the miller, carelessly; "the founder should have left something to keep the wheel going."

"What is wanted is the full stream of Christian love," observed Franks. "There are scores of charities in London kept constantly working by nothing but that stream."

The miller did not look as if he had a drop of such love within him. "It is clear," thought Franks, "that I'm not in the right tack yet. Let me try him on that of conscience. Why," he continued, aloud, "there's no plainer command in the Bible than To do good and to distribute, forget not; let us do good unto all men, and specially unto them that are of the household of faith."

"I know something of the Bible, too," replied Bat Bell, coldly, and the twitch was more unpleasant than before. "I'm a father, and I don't forget that it's written that He who provideth not for his own is worse than an infidel."

"Never let that text be repeated to justify hoarding!" exclaimed Franks, with some warmth, for it flashed across his mind how the devil himself can quote Scripture. "If we are to be content with food and raiment for ourselves, shall we not be content with them also for our children, without gathering up for them gold and silver, which may only prove a snare, as has happened in thousands of cases? I am a father, too," Ned added more mildly, for he saw on the countenance of Bell that he had spoken too warmly; "I am a father, and love my little one as much as a father can love; but if thoughts of saving for him made me close my hand and heart against the claims of God's poor, I should feel, that whatever else I might leave him, I dared not expect to leave him that blessing which alone giveth true riches. I should feel that my babe was coming between my soul and my God, and that I must look for God to punish me in him. Of whatever we make our idol, the Lord is wont to make his rod."

"I've no such superstitious fears!" cried Bat Bell, rising from his seat with a gesture of impatience. Had his visitor been any one but Ned Franks, from whom he had received kindness in time of sorrow, he would have given his guest a broader hint to depart.

"Let us not talk of fear, then, neighbor," said Franks, also rising, but with no intention of yet giving up his attempt to move that cold, hard heart. "Have patience with me a few moments more, while I speak of a nobler motive,—the love of God. Look around you, Bat Bell, look at this comfortable home, where want is unknown; you were ill last winter; look at the health and strength restored you now; listen to the merry voice of your child,"—a joyous carol was heard from without,—"and then ask yourself from whom came all these blessings, the loss of any one of which would throw you into sore distress. The goods that you have you owe"—

"To hard work, the labor of my hands in the sweat of my brow," interrupted the miller.

"Who gave the hand strength and the mind reason? whose power made the stream which turns your mill? whose sunshine ripens the corn on your fields? But why speak only of earthly blessings,—we have more, far more to thank God for! We have not only bodies but souls to care for; we have not only time but eternity to live for. Can we be content to sit still and do nothing for others, when we know what God's Son hath done for us; when we think at what a price he bought our salvation; how, though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor? He calls us to make no sacrifice for him that he has not first made a thousand-fold for us; and when he would teach us what charity should be, the Lord sums up all in the words, Love one another as I have loved you."

Ned Franks's appeal was interrupted by the door being thrown suddenly open, and little Bessy's running into the room. The white pinafore of the child, held up by one chubby hand, formed a receptacle for a number of wild flowers which she had been gathering in the lane. With her blue eyes sparkling with pleasure, the child ran up to her father.

"See, I've plucked 'em for you, every one!" she cried, emptying her pinafore on the chair from which Bat Bell had lately risen; "no,—all but this dead primrose,—it's withered and bad, it's not fit to give father!" Bessy threw the faded flower away. "I've brought you the first I could find; now, I'll run and get more for myself."

Bell caught up his girl, lifted her up high, and then kissed her again and again before he set her again on the floor. Bessy nodded merrily at Ned.

"You shall have some, too," she said; "but the first are always for father;" and away ran the happy child, leaving her spring flowers behind her.

And Bessy left something besides. The visit of the little one had seemed to bring sunshine with it. The hard lines on the parent's face were softened, every feature relaxed, the cold, money-making man was a parent, and a fond parent still. Franks felt that the unconscious Bessy had acted the part of a little ally; that she was helping to stir the deeply-imbedded vessel which he had been trying to move.

"Will that dear little girl enjoy her flowers less because the first are always for her father?" said Franks, as soon as the sound of the pattering feet was heard no longer. "Would that God's children were more like her, bringing their gifts with readiness, with joy, and not like too many of us, offering only the withered thing, the dead thing, that which we will not miss, to him whose goodness towards us has been greater than that of any father on earth!"

Bat Bell's hand approached his pocket, though he did not actually put it in. "Ned Franks," said the miller, "I tell you honestly, that I wouldn't stand this kind of talk from any man but yourself; but I know that your practice is better than your preaching; so, as you've set your heart on getting something for these cottages, just as a matter of favor to you"—Bell stopped short; he could not make up his mind either to finish his sentence, or to draw out his purse.

"I do not want you to give as a matter of favor to me," cried Franks, "nor is the state of the cottages what is uppermost now in my mind. I came here, indeed, anxious to get something for them, but I am a hundred-fold more anxious to get something for you!" The miller raised his dusty eyebrows with surprise, but Franks went on, without giving him time to interrupt the earnest flow of his speech. "If we knew that our Lord and Master had come down again to this earth, that he was in our land, our country, our village, nay, that he was deigning to dwell in one of these cottages, which, wretched as they are, are better than the Bethlehem stable, would we not deem it the first of honors to be allowed to bring gifts to him? Would not you and I be ready to pull down our own dwellings to get beams and rafters for his, and think the best that we have, yea, all that we have, too little to offer to our King? And it is all the same, Bat Bell: what we give to the poor for his sake, Christ receives as given to himself. Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me. Yes, my friend, I want help for the cottages, but I much more want something for you,—the joy of hearing at the last day the Saviour's welcome, Come, ye blessed of my Father."