Read Ebook: John's Lily by Price Eleanor C Eleanor Catherine Groome William H C Illustrator

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Ebook has 816 lines and 47533 words, and 17 pages

CHAP.

"In the Doorway stood a tall young Girl, dressed in white" ... Frontispiece

Mary searching for Lily

"In the Cart a Child was tied to the seat"

"A Lily among the Lilies"

JOHN'S LILY

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From GOD, Who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" --WORDSWORTH.

It was a sultry evening in summer, and John Randal was standing on the departure platform of a London railway station, looking at the train. He was a tall, fine-looking young fellow of three or four and twenty, brown and sunburnt, with dark stern eyes and an extremely grave expression. His clothes were good, though rustic-looking, and he carried a brown paper parcel in his hand. Any one who watched him might have thought there was something odd in the deep interest with which he gazed at the train, for his eyes were not attracted from it by the hurrying passengers, the porters with their loads of luggage, the ticket-collectors and guards in handsome uniform. It might have been thought that he was looking out for a friend; but no, it was the train itself which interested him. Except in one or two short trips that same week on the underground railway, John Randal had never seen a train before.

And yet his home was only thirty miles from London. But the small retired village where he had spent his whole life lay quite out of the world's track, in the quietest of valleys, sheltered among chalk hills and beech woods, ten miles at least from the nearest railway station. If the people in John's village wanted to go far from home they walked, or else they travelled in the carrier's cart which passed twice a week along the valley on its way to and from London. This state of things had lasted for many years, but its end was now drawing near. Already a new line of railway passed within four miles of John's home, and people thought that as soon as it was finished and opened, new times would dawn for that quiet country.

John did not care much about all this. He was an old-fashioned young man, and the life he knew was good enough for him--his cottage in the village street, his blacksmith's forge, his garden, where red roses and tall white lilies grew, his mother, with her gentle ways and slow movements. He did very well, it seemed to him, and he could not see that the railway would bring much good to a village like theirs. Noise, and smoke, and dirt; newspapers and bad characters. John thought and said that he and his neighbours could get on very well without the railway.

He was an ignorant fellow, you see. Till a week ago he had never left home for more than a day. Then his mother, who always thought that the world ought to know more of her John, persuaded him to go to London to see her brother, who was a printer. John tied up a change of clothes in a red handkerchief, and walked to London. His uncle and aunt were very kind to him, and took him about sight-seeing as far as they could. His aunt thought him a queer chap, for nothing seemed to surprise him much. Nothing tired him; he could walk for hours; but every day he grew more thoughtful and silent, as if his brain was oppressed by all he saw. When the day came for him to go home, his aunt packed his things, red handkerchief and all, with the presents he had bought for his mother, in a brown paper parcel, which she thought more respectable-looking than a bundle for a young man of her nephew's appearance; for no one would have taken John, by his looks, for a mere country lad. His uncle advised him to go home as far as he could by train, and John consented to this, as he would get home quicker. He came with him to the station, got his ticket for him, and left him on the platform to wait till the train started.

Here then John stood waiting, and all the fuss and noise and hurry of the station went crowding up and down without his taking much outward notice of it. Inwardly, he was rather nervous about the journey, wishing he had trusted to his own legs rather than to those carriages, solid as they looked, into which so many people seemed to be crowding.

Suddenly, in getting out of the way of a truck of luggage, a man and woman pushed up against him. The woman was holding a child by the hand, and as she pulled it hastily to one side, the little thing fell down on its face on the platform, catching its feet in the ends of a long shawl which was bundled round it. It cried, not loudly, but with low, frightened, broken-hearted sobs. The man spoke loudly and roughly--"What are you doing there?" and the woman dragged at the child's arm. John stooped and set her on her feet again; a fair little girl, not more than three years old, whose delicate prettiness struck him even at that first moment. She stretched out her arm and laid hold of his hand, lifting her face in the folds of the shawl and looking up with wet frightened eyes, sobbing low all the time. The man and woman were talking together, and took no notice of her. John caught a few words of their talk--"Take care what you're about--a big reward offered--a fine chance for us--keep your eyes open and mind what you're about--if anything happens you'll pay for it." Some scraps like these fell on his ears, for the man spoke loudly and desperately. The woman seemed half stupid, and her muttered answers were too low to be heard.

"Come, bring her along," said the man roughly.

The child's hand was snatched from John's, and her parents, or whatever they were, hurried her away to the train. They looked anything but respectable. The man, though his dress had an attempt at smartness, might have come out of the lowest slums, and the woman's dirty finery was even more repulsive. John remembered their faces afterwards: the man's white, with a pale moustache and a cunning expression; the woman's flushed, stupid, and sleepy. He watched them across the platform to the door of a carriage, into which the man hastily pushed the woman and child, turning round himself to look suspiciously up and down the train. Then the porters began to shut the doors, and one of them, passing John, looked up and asked if he was going by this train. "Then get in, and look sharp about it."

John crossed the platform with his free country stride, and stepped in at the first open door. Rather to his surprise, for he was not aware of having followed them, he found himself in the same compartment with the woman and child. The man had moved a few steps away, but as soon as the door was shut, he came back to the window.

"None of your games, you know," he said to the woman. "Write to the old shop, and you'll hear from me. You understand?"

She nodded. The man glanced sharply at John in the further corner, and then looked at her with a grin. He evidently thought him a very harmless fellow-passenger.

In another minute the train steamed slowly out of the great station into the lingering daylight of June, where towers and spires and roofs and bridges all stood out clear against a rosy evening sky, and sweet breaths of fresh reviving air blew in at the window, becoming sweeter and fresher as the train's speed increased, and before very long John saw green fields that looked greener than ever in coming twilight, and dark trees in motionless peace as the train thundered past them, and quiet streams, near whose banks the cows were lying down to sleep.

He leaned back in his corner, and looked round the comfortable carriage with a wonder and admiration that was not yet deadened by custom. Then his eyes lingered on his fellow-traveller. Almost immediately after leaving London she had fallen asleep, and her poor untidy head bobbed helplessly up and down on the cushion. At first she had stuffed the child, treating it like a bundle of shawls, into the corner between herself and the window, but presently it roused her by beginning to cry again with the same sad, frightened little moaning sound as before. She snatched it up, shook it, mumbled a few angry words, and laid it roughly at full length on the seat beside her. There it remained quite still, perhaps too much terrified to cry, while she settled herself in her corner and fell asleep once more.

John too, at the opposite end of the carriage, dozed off for a few minutes. He had had a tiring week, and it was the custom in his mother's house to go to bed early. When he awoke, suddenly startled by something that touched his knee, it was nearly dark outside, and the flickering lamp lighted the carriage dimly. On the floor stood a little figure all in white, with soft hair curling behind her ears, with one small hand outstretched, with a pale face, and large wistful eyes lifted towards John. The child had scrambled down from the seat, had struggled out of the shawl which was wrapped round her, and had crept along the floor with her little white feet, which John now saw were bare, to her friend of the platform.

She said nothing, she did not cry, though her eyelashes were wet with tears, but only stood with one hand on his knee, looking up expectantly. John looked at her, and then across the carriage at the woman--her mother, was she?--still in a heavy stupid sleep.

John was intelligent enough in some ways, but his wits were never quick, and his home at Markwood was not the place to sharpen them. He did not at that time make any guess about the child's story, though he thought the whole thing queer. The strangeness of the child's dress told him nothing. The shawl in which she had been huddled concealed nothing but a little white woollen garment, and her head had no covering but its own fair curls.

John stooped towards her; she held out both her arms, and he took her with his strong brown hands and lifted her to his knee. There she sat upright for a minute, looking at him with an odd mixture of confidence and curiosity. Still she did not speak, and he was afraid to ask her any question, not wishing to rouse the woman in the opposite corner.

Presently the child began to smile. John, gazing at her in the dim light, thought she really must be a little angel come straight from heaven, so full of peace and sweetness was her small face now. Then she nestled down in his arms, her soft cheek against his rough brown coat, her heavy eyelids sank suddenly, and she fell into a sweet and quiet sleep. John had nursed children before--all the village babies loved him--and he did not feel the awkwardness from which some young men would have suffered under the circumstances. He rocked the child very gently in his arms, and presently fearing that she would be chilled, reached across the carriage for the old shawl, and laid it over her.

Neither the child nor the woman woke till the train stopped at Moreton Road, the station where John was to get out. It was quite dark now. The woman looked round with a violent start, rubbed her eyes, and then burst out laughing. John, who did not feel at all inclined to be friendly with her, laid the child down on the seat with a very grave face, and without a word.

"Come along, my dear, we've got to get out," said the woman hurriedly. "There, I say, what a naughty child you be, to be sure, troubling the gentleman like that. Now then, come to mother, and let me pin your shawl. Never was such a troublesome brat as you. Thank you kindly, sir, I'm sure."

"You're welcome, ma'am. Is she your little girl?" said John gruffly, as he took down his parcel.

"That she is, and the youngest of nine, and her father out o' work, and me laid up for six weeks in the hospital with a broken leg. I'm going to take her to my mother, as lives at Fiddler's Green; but it's the awkwardest place to get at."

"So it is, if it's Fiddler's Green not far off Markwood. You won't get there to-night," said John.

"No, to be sure not; it would be bad travelling in the dark with this here precious child, wouldn't it? Come along, lovey."

John wondered where they were going for the night. He felt uneasy, though he was too innocent and unsuspicious to disbelieve the woman when she said the child was hers. But he was shy, and did not like to ask any more questions. He lifted the child out of the train; the woman seized her hand and dragged her away along the platform of the quiet, lonely station, where only a stray lamp here and there glimmered in the darkness. John, following them, thought that he had lost his ticket, and it was a few minutes before he found it, safely stowed away at the bottom of his safest pocket.

This delayed him, and when, coming out of the station, he looked up and down the dreary new-made road, the woman and child had long ago disappeared into the darkness.

He thought about them a good deal, however, as he walked on to the village of Moreton, where he was to spend the night with the old schoolmaster who had formerly been at Markwood, and had taught him all he knew. Presently, in talking to this old friend, telling him all the village news, and describing the wonderful sights of London, he did not find room to mention the odd adventure of his first railway journey. But he wondered several times that night what would become of the child, whose sweet little face haunted him. "Fiddler's Green?" Well, it would be easy to walk over there and see her again. It was true that he did not know her grandmother's name, but those few lonely cottages could not boast another child like her. "Why," said John to himself, "she was as white as a lily. And she smiled--she smiled like one o' them baby angels in a Bible picture."

"And shed on me a smile of beams, that told Of a bright world beyond the thunder-piles." --F. TENNYSON.

John's old friend would not part with him till late in the afternoon of the next day, which was Saturday. Though the time of year was late June, the heavy heat was like July; it wearied John, strong young man as he was, and he felt that Mrs. Bland, the schoolmaster's wife, was quite right when she insisted on his having tea before he started on his walk of ten miles. She also expressed an opinion that a thunderstorm was coming--her head ached, and that was a sure sign; John had much better stay where he was till Monday.

"Thank you, ma'am, but there's my mother," said John.

Mrs. Bland's grey curls and the pink ribbons in her cap wagged as she stood looking out of the window.

"Look at that sky," she said. "Those are thunderclouds coming up, as sure as I'm alive, and my poor head never deceives me. And surely you're old enough to please yourself; a grown-up man like you needn't be in such a hurry to run home to his mother."

"Ah, Mrs. Bland, you've never seen John's mother, or you'd know more about it," said the schoolmaster from his corner.

It was only two years since he, who always thought himself a confirmed old bachelor, had been fascinated by that smiling face, with its curls and pink ribbons. In some ways his marriage had made him much more comfortable. Mrs. Bland was a capital housekeeper, and he had never had any talent for taking care of himself. But she was small in mind and great in gossip, the schoolmaster's character being the contrary of both these, and thus his frame of mind towards her became gradually one of good-natured pity, which did not prevent him, being quick of tongue, from snubbing her sharply whenever she seemed to deserve it. But Mrs. Bland smiled through it all. She had a good home and a good husband, though the village was a little dull for her taste, and though he, she said, had all the silly fancies natural to a man of his age.

"I don't know Mrs. Randal, that's true," she said; "but if she expects her son in to the minute, and isn't ever disappointed, why, she's a lucky woman, I say."

"That's just what she is," said the schoolmaster, with his kind, sharp smile; "and her son John is a lucky lad. Well, John, my boy, start when you like. If there is a storm, you'll find plenty of shelter along the road."

John, who had been listening silently while his affairs were discussed, rose suddenly to his full height in the smart little parlour. "I'll be off at once, sir," he said.

A few minutes later they stood at their door and watched him striding off down the hot silent road on his way westward, into the depths of the quiet country, while in the south, as Mrs. Bland again pointed out to her husband, great threatening clouds climbed slowly up the sky.

"There goes a fine fellow," said Mr. Bland deliberately. "It's a real pleasure to see a young man walk like that, and John Randal is as well made in mind and soul, let me tell you, as he is in body. If that chap had lived in history, and had had a chance, he would have been a hero. He would have been a knight without fear and without reproach. No, we won't despair of England as long as a few men like that are left in her villages. Fellows like John are the backbone of England, mind you."

"And a pretty stiff backbone too," said Mrs. Bland half to herself. "Well, Isaac, you talk like a book, I'm sure. Your sort of hero is a bit too rough and dull and loutish for me, you know; but I wish him well, all the same, and I hope he won't catch rheumatic fever out of the storm that's coming. If that was the case, his mother might have reason to wish he'd stayed away a bit longer."

"Mrs. Randal is a worthy mother of a worthy son," said the schoolmaster. "Those two are the salt of Markwood, Jemima. You wouldn't believe me if I told you all I know of their influence in that ignorant village."

"I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it. There's a drop of rain, and didn't I hear thunder in the distance? I said so. John's got the start of it to be sure. We shall have it first, but if it don't catch him before he gets home never you believe me again."

"A very unpleasant alternative," said Mr. Bland, following her into the cottage.

The storm, once gathered and rising, broke rapidly, and overtook John before he was half-way home. It burst upon him in the middle of a long, bare hill, without even a hedge to give him a little shelter, the road being bounded on each side by wide-spreading slopes where wheat was growing. These stretched away to great dark woods, which looked almost black in their heavy midsummer foliage as the evening closed in unnaturally dark.

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