Afterwards, as my pain abated, I began to be haunted by occasional memories of something pleasant that had crossed my dreary life; visions of a brave, bright young face, ready alike to battle with and enjoy the world. I could hear the voice that, speaking to me, was always tender with pity—yet not pity enough to wound: I could see the peculiar smile just creeping round his grave mouth—that irrepressible smile, indicating the atmosphere of thorough heart-cheerfulness, which ripens all the fruits of a noble nature, and without which the very noblest has about it something unwholesome, blank, and cold.
I wondered if John had ever asked for me. At length I put the question.
Jael "thought he had—but wasn't sure. Didn't bother her head about such folk."
"If he asked again, might he come up-stairs?"
"No."
I was too weak to combat, and Jael was too strong an adversary; so I lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never speaking, about the lad. Never once asking for him to come to me; not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face—I longed after him so.
At last I broke the bonds of sickness—which Jael always riveted as long and as tightly as she could—and plunged into the outer world again.
It was one market-day—Jael being absent—that I came down-stairs. A soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the thinned trees of the Abbey yard. I opened the window to hear him, though all the while in mortal fear of Jael. I listened, but caught no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came painfully from the back regions of the house; it would ill have harmonised with the sweet autumn day and the robin's song. I sat, idly thinking so, and wondering whether it were a necessary and universal fact that human beings, unlike the year, should become harsh and unlovely as they grow old.
My robin had done singing, and I amused myself with watching a spot of scarlet winding down the rural road, our house being on the verge where Norton Bury melted into "the country." It turned out to be the cloak of a well-to-do young farmer's wife riding to market in her cart beside her jolly-looking spouse. Very spruce and self-satisfied she appeared, and the market-people turned to stare after her, for her costume was a novelty then. Doubtless, many thought as I did, how much prettier was scarlet than duffle grey.
Behind the farmer's cart came another, which at first I scarcely noticed, being engrossed by the ruddy face under the red cloak. The farmer himself nodded good-humouredly, but Mrs. Scarlet-cloak turned up her nose. "Oh, pride, pride!" I thought, amused, and watched the two carts, the second of which was with difficulty passing the farmer's, on the opposite side of the narrow road. At last it succeeded in getting in advance, to the young woman's evident annoyance, until the driver, turning, lifted his hat to her with such a merry, frank, pleasant smile.
Surely, I knew that smile, and the well-set head with its light curly hair. Also, alas! I knew the cart with relics of departed sheep dangling out behind. It was our cart of skins, and John Halifax was driving it.
"John! John!" I called out, but he did not hear, for his horse had taken fright at the red cloak, and required a steady hand. Very steady the boy's hand was, so that the farmer clapped his two great fists, and shouted "Bray-vo!"
But John—my John Halifax—he sat in his cart, and drove. His appearance was much as when I first saw him—shabbier, perhaps, as if through repeated drenchings; this had been a wet autumn, Jael had told me. Poor John!—well might he look gratefully up at the clear blue sky to-day; ay, and the sky never looked down on a brighter, cheerier face, the same face which, whatever rags it surmounted, would, I believe, have ennobled them all.
I leaned out, watching him approach our house; watching him with so great pleasure that I forgot to wonder whether or no he would notice me. He did not at first, being busy over his horse; until, just as the notion flashed across my mind that he was passing by our house—also, how keenly his doing so would pain me—the lad looked up.
A beaming smile of surprise and pleasure, a friendly nod, then all at once his manner changed; he took off his cap, and bowed ceremoniously to his master's son.
For the moment I was hurt; then I could not but respect the honest pride which thus intimated that he knew his own position, and wished neither to ignore nor to alter it; all advances between us must evidently come from my side. So, having made his salutation, he was driving on, when I called after him,
"John! John!"
"Yes, sir. I am so glad you're better again."
"Stop one minute till I come out to you." And I crawled on my crutches to the front door, forgetting everything but the pleasure of meeting him—forgetting even my terror of Jael. What could she say? even though she held nominally the Friends' doctrine—obeyed in the letter at least, 'Call no man your master'—what would Jael say if she found me, Phineas Fletcher, talking in front of my father's respectable mansion with the vagabond lad who drove my father's cart of skins?
But I braved her, and opened the door. "John, where are you?"
"Here" (he stood at the foot of the steps, with the reins on his arm); "did you want me?"
"Yes. Come up here; never mind the cart."
But that was not John's way. He led the refractory horse, settled him comfortably under a tree, and gave him in charge to a small boy. Then he bounded back across the road, and was up the steps to my side in a single leap.
"I had no notion of seeing you. They said you were in bed yesterday." (Then he HAD been inquiring for me!) "Ought you to be standing at the door this cold day?"
"It's quite warm," I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.
"Please go in."
"If you'll come too."
He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child. Well nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing, tenderness. A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest found in men. John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man, that I ever knew.
"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more. But one look of his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other people.
"And how have you been, John? How do you like the tan-yard? Tell me frankly."
He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily, "Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread. It's a grand thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days."
"Poor John!" I put my hand on his wrist—his strong, brawny wrist. Perhaps the contrast involuntarily struck us both with the truth—good for both to learn—that Heaven's ways are not so unequal as we sometimes fancy they seem.
"I have so often wanted to see you, John. Couldn't you come in now?"
He shook his head, and pointed to the cart. That minute, through the open hall-door, I perceived Jael sauntering leisurely home from market.
Now, if I was a coward, it was not for myself this time. The avalanche
