Читать книгу Sheer Off: A Tale - A. L. O. E. - Страница 8

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The fervent appeal, coming as it did from the very heart of the pleader, had stirred the stubborn hearer a little, though but a little way from his first position. Bat Bell could not help remembering that there was a reverse to the blessing, a "Depart ye cursed," for those of whom Christ would witness, "Ye did it not unto me." Bell feared that he might have lived all his life under the shadow of that curse; so, anxious to justify himself to his own conscience even more than to Franks, he took refuge in the remembrance of what he deemed a good deed.

"I can give,—I have given, and largely, too," said the miller, leaning his head against the wall. "There's my nephew, Rob Gates; did I not pay fifty pounds to 'prentice him out,—fifty pounds," repeated the miller emphatically, "of which I have not had one penny back, though the ungrateful dog has been in business these three years?"

Upon this one act of generosity Bell always fell back when any call on his charity was made, as if he considered that the lent fifty pounds covered every claim which could be made on his purse by religion or by humanity. It always gave him an opportunity of declaiming against the ingratitude of mankind; because his nephew had not repaid his loan, all who needed aid from the miller became in his eyes covetous and thankless, if not dishonest. Bat Bell tried to believe that in hazarding fifty pounds he had already given enough to God; it would have startled him to have been told that not one farthing of the money could be reckoned as real charity. Bell had helped his nephew from natural affection, and from family pride. The miller had acted exactly as he would have acted if he had been a Turk or an Infidel,—exactly as he would have acted had he never heard the name of the Lord. Tried by this test, of how small a part of our alms, alas! will the Master be able to say, Ye did it unto me!

"That miserable fifty pounds," thought Ned, who had heard of it often before, and who knew too well that the miller used its loss as a perpetual argument to silence conscience, and excuse his neglect of the poor.

"You see, Ned Franks," continued the miller, "a man who has once made sacrifices for others, and has only met with ingratitude; who has spent upon a good-for-nothing scapegrace of a nephew—"

The miller suddenly stopped and started. Ned, whose back was towards the open door, only knew by the change on the face of Bell, the look of surprise that flashed across it, that a third party had unexpectedly joined them. Turning round he saw a stout young man, in a shaggy coat, with a knapsack on his shoulders, and a broad grin on his good-humored face, who advanced with both hands extended to the miller, exclaiming in a loud, hearty tone, "Here's the good-for-nothing scapegrace to answer for himself."

"Here's the good-for-nothing scapegrace to answer for himself." p. 58.

Bell gave his nephew a cordial welcome both with hand and voice, and Franks was so glad to see the hearty greeting, that he did not ask himself whether it were possible that the uncle's pleasure at seeing the young man might partly be owing to the hope of his now having the old debt cleared off.

"So you were giving me a pretty character, uncle," cried Rob Gates, after he had thrown himself on a chair; "well, I can't grumble at that, as you've neither seen nor heard from me for many a long year; but I never was much of a scribe, and don't trouble the postman from January to December. I don't care to write till I've something to say, so I waited till I could play the postman myself, and bring a kind of notes that are easily read, and will tell more of gratitude, duty, and that sort of thing, than reams of foolscap scribbled all over."

With a look of honest satisfaction, the young man pulled a large leathern pocket-book from his breast-pocket. His movements were watched with keen interest by the miller, as Rob opened the clasp, and then slowly drew out, one after another, unfolding and smoothing out each as he did so, ten five-pound notes of the Bank of England. He spread them with his broad, rough hands over the table, as if he took a boyish pleasure in making the greatest possible show of his wealth.

"Uncle, here's the fifty pounds which I owe you," said Rob; "you're not sorry now, I hope, that you lent a helping hand to your scapegrace of a nephew? I can't believe that a fellow ever has cause to be sorry for doing a kindness; it always in one way or other comes back."

Franks glanced at the miller, and fancied that he saw his thin lip quiver a little, and that something like moisture rose in the usually dark, cold eye. Ned could not tell what was passing in the mind of that man, as he laid his hand on one of the notes. Slowly, half reluctantly, the miller raised it, and then, as if moved by an impulse, which even his selfish nature could not withstand, Bell handed that note to the sailor, saying, "You came at a lucky time; take that,—it's for Wild Rose Hollow."

Ned stood amazed at success so far beyond all his hopes. He had indeed been led to that dwelling in a happy moment, when Bell's hard heart had been softened and touched, or, to use his own simile, "when a spring-tide had set in so strongly as to help the stranded craft off the shoal." His words of thanks were hearty, and while the miller set about preparing a meal for his hungry guest, the one-armed sailor joyously started on his homeward way.

Merrily Franks sped up the glen, his blithe whistle mingling with the chord of the lark that hung quivering over his head. Ben Stone, the carpenter, who had just returned from the hall, was standing at the door of his shop, on the lookout for Ned Franks.

"Why, he looks as gladsome as if he'd just come in for a fortune himself," muttered the carpenter, "and he's whistling away like a bird! But all that jollity must be put on to cover disappointment, for if he got more than a crooked four-penny bit from that miserly miller, I'm a Dutchman, that's all! Well, Ned Franks," cried the jovial carpenter aloud, "how many brass farthings has Bat Bell pulled out of his hoard to prop up the houses in Wild Rose Hollow?"

Franks waved the crisp, fluttering bank-note in reply.

"You don't mean—what—no—not a bank-note—a five-pound note!" exclaimed the astonished Stone, scarcely able to credit his eyes. His exclamation was echoed by his wife and two neighbors who joined him at the moment.

"It must be a toy-note," suggested Mrs. Stone.

"No," laughed Ned, "it is a good honest note of the Bank of England, worth five sovereigns of any man's money. Bat Bell was unexpectedly repaid a large loan at the very time when I was with him to ask help for Wild Rose Hollow; the first note which he touched he gave to God, and I trust that God will bless him for it," added Franks, with fervor; "it was more from him than a much larger sum would have been from another man."

"The sum's pretty large from anybody," said the carpenter, with rather a rueful face, for Bat Bell's generosity had taken him by surprise in an inconvenient way. "I hope that I'm not expected to hold to my unlucky offer; where Bell gives once, I give a hundred times; he may plump out a five-pound note and not miss it, but I've not the knack of turning deal shavings into gold."

"No, no, neighbor," cried Franks, "no one would think of holding you to such a bargain. You have not suddenly come into money like Bell, or, I've not a doubt, you'd give to the full as large as he."

"But I'm not the man to flinch from my word," said Stone; "if I can't give the money, I'll give the money's worth in work when I've time to spare; so you may count that five pounds as fairly doubled, my friend."

"That will be a lucky bank-note to you, Mr. Franks," observed the carpenter's wife; "for now that you've brought in such a sum to help the collection, I'm sure and certain that you'll be the man fixed upon to be clerk at our church, instead of John Sands."

"Instead of Sands! why, he's not going to resign the place, surely?" cried Franks.

"He'll have to give it up; he could not for shame stand up just below the reading-desk, give out the psalms, and lead the singing, as if nothing had happened," observed Ben Stone, with a shake of his head.

"Why, Sands is the most quiet, steady, sober—"

"But his wife, she's the mischief, she's the ruin of him; a man is what a woman makes him," quoth the jovial carpenter, giving a self-complacent nod towards his own partner. "Parsons, we're told, must have their own houses in subjection, and I guess the same rule holds with their clerks. All Colme is talking about it. We'll have you, our one-armed sailor, clerk as well as school-master; there's no one so fit for the place!"