Читать книгу Old Father Christmas and Other Holiday Tales - Juliana Horatia Ewing - Страница 22

Some things—such as gossip—gain in the telling, but there are others before which words fail, though each heart knows its own power of sympathy. And such was the joy of the little ladies and of Thomasina at John Broom’s return.

The sheep dog had his satisfaction out long ago, and had kept it to himself, but how Pretty Cocky crowed, and chuckled, and danced, and bowed his crest, and covered his face with his amber wings, and kicked his seed-pot over, and spilt his water-pot on to the Derbyshire marble chess-table, and screamed till the room rang again, and went on screaming, with Miss Kitty’s pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe.

The desire to atone for the past which had led John Broom to act the part of one of those Good-Fellows who have, we must fear, finally deserted us, will be easily understood. And to a nature of his type, the earning of some self-respect, and of a new character before others, was perhaps a necessary prelude to future well-doing.

He did do well. He became “a good scholar,” as farmers were then. He spent as much of his passionate energies on the farm as the farm would absorb, and he restrained the rest. It is not cockatoos only who have sometimes to live and be happy in this unfinished life with one wing clipped.

In fine weather, when the perch was put into the garden, Miss Betty was sometimes startled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head lovingly laid against Cocky’s white and yellow poll, talking in a low voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and, as Miss Betty justly feared, of that “other side of the world,” which they both knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.

Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long intervals) his “restless times,” when his good “missis” would bring out a little store laid by in one of the children’s socks, and would bid him “Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air,” but on condition that the sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his absence with that confidence in her knowledge of “the master,” which is so mysterious to the unmarried, and which Miss Betty looked upon as “want of feeling” to the end. She always dreaded that he would not return, and a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make bargains for foreign articles of vertu with the sailors, is responsible for many of the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlor.

“The sock’ll bring him home,” said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and never could say what he had been doing. Nor was the account given by Thomasina’s cousin, who was a tide-waiter down yonder, particularly satisfying to the women’s curiosity. He said that John Broom was always about; that he went aboard of all the craft in the bay, and asked whence they came and whither they were bound. That, being once taunted to it, he went up the rigging of a big vessel like a cat, and came down it looking like a fool. That, as a rule, he gossipped and shared his tobacco with sailors and fishermen, and brought out the sock much oftener than was prudent for the benefit of the ragged boys who haunt the quay.

He had two other weaknesses, which a faithful biographer must chronicle.

A regiment on the march would draw him from the ploughtail itself, and “With daddy to see the soldiers” was held to excuse any of Mrs. Broom’s children from household duties.

The other shall be described in the graphic language of that acute observer the farm-bailiff.

“If there cam’ an Irish beggar, wi’ a stripy cloot roond him and a bellows under’s arm, and ca’d himself a Hielander, the lad wad gi’e him his silly head off his shoulders.”

As to the farm-bailiff, perhaps no one felt more or said less than he did on John Broom’s return. But the tones of his voice had tender associations for the boy’s ears as he took off his speckled hat, and after contemplating the inside for some moments, put it on again, and said,—

“Aweel, lad, sae ye’ve cam hame?”

But he listened with quivering face when John Broom told the story of McAlister, and when it was ended he rose and went out, and “took the pledge” against drink, and—kept it.

Moved by similar enthusiasm, the cowherd took the pledge also, and if he didn’t keep it, he certainly drank less, chiefly owing to the vigilant oversight of the farm-bailiff, who now exercised his natural severity almost exclusively in the denunciation of all liquors whatsoever, from the cowherd’s whisky to Thomasina’s elder-flower wine.

The plain cousin left his money to the little old ladies, and Lingborough continued to flourish.

Partly perhaps because of this, it is doubtful if John Broom was ever looked upon by the rustics as quite “like other folk.”

The favorite version of his history is that he was Lob under the guise of a child; that he was driven away by new clothes; that he returned from unwillingness to see an old family go to ruin “which he had served for hundreds of years;” that the parson preached his last Sunday’s sermon at him; and that having stood that test, he took his place among Christian people.

Whether a name invented off-hand, however plain and sensible, does not stick to a man as his father’s does, is a question. But John Broom was not often called by his.

With Scotch caution, the farm-bailiff seldom exceeded the safe title of “Man!” and the parson was apt to address him as “My dear boy” when he had certainly outgrown the designation.

Miss Betty called him John Broom, but the people called him by the name that he had earned.

And long after his black hair lay white and thick on his head, like snow on the old barn roof, and when his dark eyes were dim in an honored old age, the village children would point him out to each other, crying, “There goes Lob Lie-by-the-fire, the Luck of Lingborough!”