A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald (simple ebook reader TXT) 📖

feet, and covered them from the night with his long faithful body and its coat of tangled hair.

The sun was shooting his last radiance along the road, and its redness caressed the sleeping companions, when an elderly lady came to her gate at the top of the opposite slope, and looked along the road with the sun. Her reverting glance fell upon the sleepers-the Knight of Hope lying in rags, not marble, his feet not upon his dog, but his dog upon his feet. It was a touching picture, and the old lady's heart was one easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, or waste.

Her mere glance seemed to wake Abdiel, who took advantage of his waking to have a lick at the brown, dusty, brave, uncomplaining feet, so well used to the world's via dolorosa . She saw, and was touched yet more by this ministration of the guardian of the feet. Gently opening the gate she descended the slope, crossed the road, and stood silent, regarding the outcasts. No cloudy blanket covered the sky: ere morning the dew would lie frozen on the grass!

"You shouldn't be sleeping there!" she said.

Abdiel started to his four feet and would have snarled, but with one look at the lady changed his mind. Clare half awoke, half sat up, made an inarticulate murmur, and fell back again.

"Get up, my boy," said the old lady. "You must indeed!"

"Oh, please, ma'am, must I?" answered Clare, slowly rising to his feet. "I had but just lain down, and I'm so tired!-If I mayn't sleep
there ," he continued, "where am I to sleep?-Please, ma'am, why is everybody so set against letting a boy sleep? It don't cost them anything! I can understand not giving him work, if he looks too much in want of it; but why should they count it bad of him to lie down and sleep?"

The lady wisely let him talk; not until he stopped did she answer him.

"It's because of the frost, my boy!" she said. "It would be the death of you to sleep out of doors to-night!"

"It's a nice place for it, ma'am!"

"To sleep in? Certainly not!"

"I didn't mean that, ma'am. I meant a nice place to go away from-to die in, ma'am!"

"That is not ours to choose," answered the old lady severely, but the tone of her severity trembled.

"I sha'n't find anywhere so nice as this bank," said Clare, turning and looking at it sorrowfully.

"There are plenty of places in the town. It's but a mile farther on!"

"But this is so much nicer, ma'am! And I've no money-none at all, ma'am. When I came out of prison,-"

"Came out of where ?"

"Out of prison, ma'am."

He had never been in prison in a legal sense, never having been convicted of anything; but he did not know the difference between detention and imprisonment.

"Prison!" she exclaimed, holding up her hands in horror. "How dare you mention prison!"

"Because I was in it, ma'am."

"And to say it so coolly too! Are you not ashamed of yourself?"

"No, ma'am."

"It's a shame to have been in prison."

"Not if I didn't do anything wrong."

"Nobody will believe that, I'm afraid!"

"I suppose not, ma'am! I used to feel very angry when people wouldn't believe me, but now I see they are not to blame. And now I've got used to it, and it don't hurt so much.-But," he added with a sigh, "the worst of it is, they won't give me any work!"

"Do you always tell people you've come out of prison?"

"Yes, ma'am, when I think of it."

"Then you can't wonder they won't give you work!"

"I don't, ma'am-not now. It seems a law of the universe!"

"Not of the universe, I think-but of this world-perhaps!" said the old lady thoughtfully.

"But there's one thing I do wonder at," said Clare. "When I say I've been in prison, they believe me; but when I say I haven't done anything wrong, then they mock me, and seem quite amused at being expected to believe that. I can't get at it!"

"I daresay! But people will always believe you against yourself.-What are you going to do, then, if nobody will give you work? You can't starve!"

"Indeed I can , ma'am! It's just the one thing I've got to do. We've been pretty near the last of it sometimes-me and Abdiel! Haven't we, Abby?"

The dog wagged his tail, and the old lady turned aside to control her feelings.

"Don't cry, ma'am," said Clare; "I don't mind it-not much . I'm too glad I didn't do anything, to mind it much! Why should I! Ought I to mind it much, ma'am? Jesus Christ hadn't done anything, and they killed him ! I don't fancy it's so very bad to die of only hunger! But we'll soon see!-Sha'n't we, Abby?"

Again the dog wagged his tail.

"If you didn't do anything wrong, what did you do?" said the old lady, almost at her wits' end.

"I don't like telling things that are not going to be believed. It's like washing your face with ink!"

"I will try to believe you."

"Then I will tell you; for you speak the truth, ma'am, and so, perhaps, will be able to believe the truth!"

"How do you know I speak the truth?"

"Because you didn't say, 'I will believe you.' Nobody can be sure of doing that. But you can be sure of trying ; and you said, 'I will
try to believe you.'"

"Tell me all about it then."

"I will, ma'am.-The policeman came in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and took us all away, because we were in a house that was not ours."

"Whose was it then?"

"Nobody knew. It was what they call in chancery. There was nobody in it but moths and flies and spiders and rats;-though I think the rats only came to eat baby."

"Baby! Then the whole family of you, father, mother, and all, were taken to prison!"

"No, ma'am; my fathers and my mothers were taken up into the dome of the angels."-What with hunger and sleepiness, Clare was talking like a child.-"I haven't any father and mother in this world. I have two fathers and two mothers up there, and one mother in this world. She's the mother of the wild beasts."

The old lady began to doubt the boy's sanity, but she went on questioning him.

"How did you have a baby with you, then?"

"The baby was my own, ma'am. I took her out of the water-but."

Once more Clare had to tell his story-from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God's innocents, with an angel-haunted brain.

"And what's become of Tommy?" she asked.

"He's in the same workhouse with baby. I'm very glad; for what I should have done with Tommy, and nothing to give him to eat, I can't think. He would have been sure to steal! I couldn't have kept him from it!"

"You must be more careful of your company."

"Please, ma'am, I was very careful of Tommy. He had the best company I could give him: I did try to be better for Tommy's sake. But my trying wasn't much use to Tommy, so long as he wouldn't try! He was a little better, though, I think; and if I had him now, and could give him plenty to eat, and had baby as well as Abdiel to help me, we might make something of Tommy, I think.- You think so-don't you, Abdiel?"

The dog, who had stood looking in his master's face all the time he spoke, wagged his tail faster.

"What a name to give a dog! Where did you find it?"

"In Paradise Lost, ma'am. Abdiel was the one angel, you remember, ma'am, who, when he saw what Satan was up to, left him, and went back to his duty."

"And what was his duty?"

"Why of course to do what God told him. I love Abdiel, and because I love the little dog and he took care of baby, I call him Abdiel too. Heaven is so far off that it makes no confusion to have the same name."

"But how dare you give the name of an angel to a dog?"

"To a good dog, ma'am! A good dog is good enough to go with any angel-at his heels of course! If he had been a bad dog, it would have been wicked to name him after a good angel. If the dog had been Tommy-I mean if Tommy had been the dog, I should have had to call him Moloch, or Belzebub! God made the angels and the dogs; and if the dogs are good, God loves them.-Don't he, Abdiel?"

Abdiel assented after his usual fashion. The lady said nothing. Clare went on.

"Abdiel won't mind-the angel Abdiel, I mean, ma'am-he won't mind lending his name to my friend. The dog will have a name of his own, perhaps, some day-like the rest of us!"

"What is your name?"

"The name I have now is, like the dog's, a borrowed one. I shall get my own one day-not here-but there-when-when-I'm hungry enough to go and find it."

Clare had grown very white. He sat down, and lay back on the grass. He had talked more in those few minutes than for weeks, and want had made him weak. He felt very faint. The dog jumped up, and fell to licking his face.

"What a wicked old woman I am!" said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed the bank swiftly.

She disappeared within the gate, but to return presently with a tumbler of milk and a huge piece of bread.

"Here, boy!" she cried; "here is medicine for you! Make haste and take it."

Clare sat up feebly, and stared at the tumbler for a moment. Either he could hardly believe his eyes, or was too sick to take it at once. When he had it in his hand, he held it out to the dog.

"Here, Abdiel, have a little," he said.

This offended the old lady.

"You're never going to give the dog that good milk!" she cried.

"A little of it, please, ma'am!"

"-And feed him out of the tumbler too?"

"He's had nothing to-day, ma'am, and we're comrades!"

"But it's not clean of you!"

"Ah, you don't know dogs, ma'am! His tongue is clean as clean as anybody's."

Abdiel took three or four little laps of the milk, drew away, and looked up at his master-as much as to say,