Читать книгу Old Father Christmas and Other Holiday Tales - Juliana Horatia Ewing - Страница 15

When John Broom did get home he did not go to sea again. He lived from hand to mouth in the seaport town, and slept, as he was well accustomed to sleep, in holes and corners.

Every day and every night, through the long months of the voyage, he had dreamed of begging his way barefoot to Miss Betty’s door. But now he did not go. His life was hard, but it was not cruel. He was very idle, and there was plenty to see. He wandered about the country as of old. The ships and shipping too had a fascination for him now that the past was past, and here he could watch them from the shore; and, partly for shame and partly for pride, he could not face the idea of going back. If he had been taunted with being a vagrant boy before, what would be said now if he presented himself, a true tramp, to the farm-bailiff? Besides, Miss Betty and Miss Kitty could not forgive him. It was impossible!

He was wandering about one day when he came to some fine high walls with buildings inside. There was an open gateway, at which stood a soldier with a musket. But a woman and some children went in, and he did not shoot them; so when his back was turned, and he was walking stiffly to where he came from, John Broom ran in through the gateway.

The first man he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen. Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man, a big bird, with a big black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the feathered feet of some plumy bird; his legs were bare and brown and hairy. He was clothed in many colors. He had fur in front, which swung as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head very high, and from it dropped great black plumes. His face looked as if it had been cut—roughly but artistically—out of a block of old wood, and his eyes were the color of a summer sky. And John Broom felt as he had felt when he first saw Miss Betty’s cockatoo.

In repose the Highlander’s eye was as clear as a cairngorm and as cold, but when it fell upon John Broom it took a twinkle not quite unlike the twinkle in the one eye of the sailor; and then, to his amazement, this grand creature beckoned to John Broom with a rather dirty hand.

“Yes, sir,” said John Broom, staring up at the splendid giant, with eyes of wonder.

“I’m saying,” said the Highlander, confidentially (and it had a pleasant homely sound to hear him speak like the farm-bailiff)—“I’m saying, I’m confined to barracks, ye ken; and I’ll gi’e ye a hawpenny if ye’ll get the bottle filled wi’ whusky. Roun’ yon corner ye’ll see the ‘Britain’s Defenders.’ ”

But at this moment he erected himself, his turquoise eyes looked straight before them, and he put his hand to his head and moved it slowly away again, as a young man with more swinging grandeur of colors and fur and plumes, and with greater glittering of gems and silver, passed by, a sword clattering after him.

Meanwhile John Broom had been round the corner and was back again.

“What for are ye standin’ there ye fule?” asked his new friend. “What for didna ye gang for the whusky?”

“It’s here, sir.”

“My certy, ye dinna let the grass grow under your feet,” said the Highlander; and he added, “If ye want to run errands, laddie, ye can come back again.”

It was the beginning of a fresh life for John Broom. With many other idle or homeless boys he now haunted the barracks, and ran errands for the soldiers. His fleetness of foot and ready wit made him the favorite. Perhaps, too, his youth and his bright face and eyes pleaded for him, for British soldiers are a tender-hearted race.

He was knocked about, but never cruelly, and he got plenty of coppers and broken victuals, and now and then an old cap or a pair of a boots, a world too large for him. His principal errands were to fetch liquor for the soldiers. In arms and pockets he would sometimes carry a dozen bottles at once, and fly back from the canteen or public-house without breaking one.

Before the summer was over he was familiar with every barrack-room and guard-room in the place; he had food to eat and coppers to spare, and he shared his bits with the mongrel dogs who lived, as he did, on the good-nature of the garrison.

It must be confessed that neatness was not among John Broom’s virtues. He looped his rags together with bits of string, and wasted his pence or lost them. The soldiers standing at the bar would often give him a drink out of their pewter-pots. It choked him at first, and then he got used to it, and liked it. Some relics of Miss Betty’s teaching kept him honest. He would not condescend to sip by the way out of the soldiers’ jugs and bottles as other errand-boys did, but he came to feel rather proud of laying his twopence on the counter, and emptying his own pot of beer with a grimace to the by-standers through the glass at the bottom.

One day he was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the canteen sergeant’s daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander’s hand was laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place in one swoop.

“I’ll trouble ye to give me your attention,” said the Highlander, when they came to a standstill, “and to speak the truth. Did ye ever see me the worse of liquor?”

John Broom had several remembrances of the clearest kind to that effect, so he put up his arms to shield his head from the probable blow, and said, “Yes, McAlister.”

“How often?” asked the Scotchman.

“I never counted,” said John Broom; “pretty often.”

“How many good-conduct stripes do ye ken me to have lost of your ain knowledge?”

“Three, McAlister.”

“Is there a finer man than me in the regiment?” asked the Highlander, drawing up his head.

“That there’s not,” said John Broom, warmly.

“Our sairgent, now,” drawled the Scotchman, “wad ye say he was a better man than me?”

“Nothing like so good,” said John Broom, sincerely.

“And what d’ye suppose, man,” said the Highlander, firing with sudden passion, till the light of his clear blue eyes seemed to pierce John Broom’s very soul—“what d’ye suppose has hindered me that I’m not sairgent, when yon man is? What has keepit me from being an officer, that has served my country in twa battles when oor quartermaster hadn’t enlisted? Wha gets my money? What lost me my stripes? What loses me decent folks’ respect, and waur than that, my ain? What gars a hand that can grip a broadsword tremble like a woman’s? What fills the canteen and the kirkyard? What robs a man of health and wealth and peace? What ruins weans and women, and makes mair homes desolate than war? Drink, man, drink! The deevil of drink!”

It was not till the glare in his eyes had paled that John Broom ventured to speak. Then he said,—

“Why don’t ye give it up, McAlister?”

The man rose to his full height, and laid his hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder, and his eyes seemed to fade with that pitiful, weary look, which only such blue eyes show so well, “Because I canna,” said he; “because, for as big as I am, I canna. But for as little as you are, laddie, ye can, and, Heaven help me, ye shall.”

That evening he called John Broom into the barrack-room where he slept. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and had a little wooden money-box in his hands.

“What money have ye, laddie?” he asked.

John Broom pulled out three halfpence lately earned, and the Scotchman dropped them slowly into the box. Then he turned the key, and put it into his pocket, and gave the box to the boy.

“Ye’ll put what you earn in there,” said he, “I’ll keep the key, and ye’ll keep the box yourself; and when its opened we’ll open it together, and lay out your savings in decent clothes for ye against the winter.”

At this moment some men passing to the canteen shouted, “McAlister!” The Highlander did not answer, but he started to the door. Then he stood irresolute, and then turned and reseated himself.

“Gang and bring me a bit o’ tobacco,” he said, giving John Broom a penny. And when the boy had gone he emptied his pocket of the few pence left, and dropped them into the box, muttering, “If he manna, I wunna.”

And when the tobacco came, he lit his pipe, and sat on the bench, outside and snarled at every one who spoke to him.