Part 12

So he ran on through Bonchurch and out of it, leaving its pleasant green shade with a little sigh, half of impatience, half of hunger. He did not go on by the sea, for he knew by hearsay that this way would take him to Ventnor, and he was afraid people in a town would know him and stop him; so he set forth inland, where the deep lanes delve through the grassy downs, and here, sitting on a stile, the little Earl saw the ploughboy eating something white and round and big that he himself had never seen before.

“It must be something very delicious to make him enjoy it so much,” thought the little Earl, and then curiosity entered so into him, and he longed so much to taste this wonderful unknown thing, that he went up to the boy and said to him,—

“Will you be so kind as to let me know what you are eating?”

The ploughboy grinned from ear to ear.

“For certain, little zurr,” he said, with a burr and a drawl in his speech, and he gave the thing to Bertie, which was neither more nor less than a peeled turnip.

The little Earl looked at it doubtfully, for he did not much fancy what the other had handled with his big brown hands and bitten with his big yellow teeth. But then, to enjoy anything as much as that other had enjoyed it, and to taste something quite unknown!—this counterbalanced his disgust and over-ruled his delicacy. One side of the great white thing was unbitten; he took an eager tremulous little bite out of that.

“But, oh!” he cried in dismay as he tasted, “it has no taste at all, and what there is is nasty!”

“Turnips is main good,” said the boy.

“Oh, _no_!” said the little Earl, with intense horror; and he threw the turnip down amongst the grass, and went away sorely puzzled.

“Little master,” roared Hodge after him, “I’ll bet as you aren’t hungry.”

That was it, of course.

The little Earl was not really hungry,—never had been really hungry in all his life. But this explanation of natural philosophy did not occur to him, not even when the boy hallooed it after him. He only said to himself, “How can that boy eat that filthy thing? and he really did look as if he liked it so!”

Presently, after trotting a mile or so, he passed a little shop set all by itself at the end of a lane,—surely the tiniest, loneliest shop in Great Britain. But a cheery-looking old woman kept it, and he saw it had bread in it, as well as many other stuffs, and tin canisters that were to him incomprehensible.

“If you please,” he said, rather timidly, offering the gold anchor off the ribbon of his hat, “I have lost my money, and could you be so kind as to give me any breakfast for this?”

The old woman smelt the anchor, bit it, twinkled her eyes, and then drew a long face. “It ain’t worth tuppence, master,” she said; “but ye’re mighty small to be out by yourself, and puny like: I don’t say as how I won’t feed yer.”

“Thanks,” said Bertie, who did not know at all what his anchor was worth.

“Come in out o’ dust,” said the old woman, smartly, and then she bustled about and set him down in her little den to milk, bread, and some cold bacon.

That he had no appetite was the despair of his people and physician at home, and cod-liver oil, steel, quinine, and all manner of nastiness had been administered to provoke hunger in him, with no effect: by this time, however, he had almost as much hunger as the boy who had munched the turnip.

Nothing had ever tasted to him half so good in his life.

The old woman eyed him curiously. “You’s a runaway,” she thought; “but I’ll not raise the cry after ye, or they’ll come spying about this bit o’ gold.”

She said to herself that the child would come to no harm, and when a while had gone by she would step over to Ryde or Newport and get a guinea on the brooch.

Her little general shop was not a very prosperous business, though useful to the field-folk; and sanding her sugar, and putting clay in her mustard, and adding melted fat to her butter, had not strengthened her moral principles.

As Bertie was eating, there came a very thin, scantily-clad, miserable-looking woman, who held out a halfpenny. “A sup o’ milk for Susy, missus,” she said, in a very pitiful faint voice.

“How be Sue?” asked the mistress of the shop. The woman shook her head with tears running down her hollow cheeks.

“My boy he’s gone in spinney,” she murmured, “to try and catch summat, if he can: will you change it, missus, if he git a good bird?”

The old woman winked, frowned, and glanced at Bertie.

“Birds aren’t good eatin’ on fust of July,” she observed, as she handed the milk. The woman paid the halfpenny and hurried away with the milk.

“I think that woman is very poor,” said Bertie, questioningly and solemnly.

The old dame chuckled.

“No doubts o’ that, master.”

“Then you are cruel to take her money: you should have _given_ her the milk.”

“Ho, ho, little sir! be you a parson in a gownd? I’m mappen poor as she, and _she_ hiv desarved all she gits, for her man he were a poacher, and he died in jail last Jannivery.”

“A poacher!” said Bertie, with the natural instinctive horror of a landed gentleman. “And her son was going to snare a bird!” he cried, with light breaking in on him; “and you would give them things in exchange for the bird! Oh, what a very cruel, what a very _wicked_ woman you are!”

For an answer she shied at him a round wooden trencher, which missed its aim and struck a basket of eggs and smashed them, and one of the panes of her shop-window as well.

Bertie got up and walked slowly out of the door, keeping his eyes upon her.

“When I see a magistrate, I shall tell him about you,” he said, solemnly: “you tempt poor people: that is very dreadful.”

The enraged woman, in her outraged feelings, threw a pail of dirty water after him, some of which splashed him and completed the disfigurement of his white suit. He looked up and down to see for the poor woman with the milk, that he might console her poverty and open her eyes to her sins; but she was not within sight; and Bertie reflected that if he stopped to correct other people’s errors he should never see the world and find his kingdom.

He had eaten a hearty meal, and his spirits rose and his heart was full of hope and valor; and if he had only had Ralph with him, he would have been quite happy.

So he went away valorously across a broad rolling down, and about half a mile farther on he came to a little shed. In the shed were a fire, and a man, and a pig; in the fire was an iron, and the pig was tied by a rope to a ring. Bertie saw the man take the red-hot iron and go up to the pig: Bertie’s face grew blanched with horror.

“Stop, stop! what are you doing to the pig?” he screamed, as he ran in to the man, who looked up and stared.

“I be branding the pig. Get out, or I’ll brand you!” he cried. Bertie held his ground; his eyes were flashing.

“You wicked, wicked man! Do you not know that poor pig was made by God?”

“Dunno,” said the wretch, with a grin. “She’ll be eat by men, come Candlemas! I be marking of her, ’cos I’ll turn her out on the downs with t’other. Git out, youngster! you’ve no call here.”

Bertie planted himself firmly on his feet, and doubled his little fists.

“I will not see you do such a cruelty to a poor dumb thing,” he said, while he grew white as death, “_I will not._”

The man scowled and yet grinned.

“Will you beat me, little Hop-o’-my-thumb?”

Bertie put himself before the poor black pig, who was squealing from mere fright and the scorch of the fire.

“You shall not get the pig without killing me first. You are a cruel man.”

The man grew angry.

“Tell you what, youngster: I’ve a mind to try the jumping-irons on you for your impudence. You look like a drowned white kitten. Clear off, if you don’t want to taste something right red hot.”

Bertie’s whole body grew sick, but he did not move and he did not quail.

“I would rather you did it to me than to this poor thing,” he answered.

“I’m blowed!” said the man, relaxing his wrath from sheer amazement. “Well, you’re a good plucked one, you are.”

“I do not know what you mean,” said Bertie, a little haughtily; “but you shall not hurt the pig.”

“Darn me!” yelled the man; “I’ll burn you, sure as you live, if you don’t kneel on your bare bones and beg my pardon.”

“I will not do that.”

“You won’t beg my pardon for cheeking me?”

“No: you are a wicked man.”

Bertie’s eyes closed; he grew faint; he fully believed that in another instant he would feel the hissing fire of the brand. But he did not yield.

The man’s hand dropped to his side.

“You _are_ a plucked one,” he said, once more. “Lord, child, it was a joke. You’re such a rare game un, to humor you, there, I’ll let the crittur go without marking her. But you’re a rare little fool, if you’re not an angel down from on high.”

Bertie’s eyes filled with tears. He held his hand out royally to be kissed, as he was used to do at Avillion.

The big, black-looking man crushed it in his own brown paw.

“My! you’re a game un!” he muttered, with wonder and awe.

“And you will never, never, never burn pigs any more?” said Bertie, searching his face with his own serious large eyes.

“I’ll ne’er brand this un,” said the man, with a shamefaced laugh. “Lord, little sir, you’re the first is ever got as much as that out of me!”

“But you _never_ must do it,” said Bertie, solemnly. “It is wicked of you, and God is angry; and it is very mean for you, such a big man and so strong, to hurt a defenceless dumb thing. You must _never_ do it.”

“What is your name, little master?” said the big man, humbly.

“They call me Avillion.”

“William? Then I’ll say William all the days of my life at my prayers o’ Sundays,” said the man, with some emotion, and murmured to himself, “Such a game un I never seed.”

“Thanks very much,” said Bertie, gently, and then he lifted his hat politely, and went out of the shed before the man could recover from his astonishment. When the little Earl looked back, he saw the giant pouring water on the fire, and the pig was loose.

“I _was_ afraid,” thought Bertie. “But he should have burnt me all up every bit: I never would have given in.”

And something seemed to say in his ear, “The loveliest thing in all the world is courage that goes hand in hand with mercy; and these two together can work miracles, like magicians.”

By this time Bertie, except for a certain inalienable grace and refinement that were in his little face and figure, had few marks of a young gentleman. His snowy serge was smirched and stained with blackberries; his red stockings, from the sea-water and the field-mud, had none of their original color; his hat had been bent and crumpled by his fall, and his hair was rough. Nobody passing him could have dreamt that this sorry wanderer was a little earl. Nevertheless, when he had been dressed in his little court suit and had been taken to see the queen once at Balmoral, he had never been a quarter so proud nor a tenth part so happy. He longed to meet Cromwell, and Richard the Third, and Gessler, and Nero. He began to feel like all the knights he had ever read of, and those were many.

Presently he saw a little maiden weeping. She was an ugly little maiden, with a shock head of red hair, and a wide mouth, and a brickdust skin; but she was crying. In his present heroic mood, he could not pass her by unconsoled.

“Little girl, why do you cry?” he said, stopping in the narrow green lane.

She looked at him out of a sharp little eye, and her face puckered up afresh.

“I’se going to schule, little master!”

“To school, do you mean? And why does that make you cry? Can you read?”

“Naw,” said the maiden, and sobbed loudly.

“Then why are you not glad to go and learn?” said Bertie, in his superior wisdom.

“There’s naebody to do nowt at home,” said the red-haired one, with a howl. “Mother’s abed sick, and Tam’s hurt his leg, and who’ll mind baby? He’ll tumble the kittle o’er hisself, I know he will, and he’ll be scalt to death, ’ll baby!”

“Dear, dear!” said Bertie, sympathetically. “But why do you go to school then?”

“’Cos I isn’t thirteen,” sobbed the shock-haired nymph: “I’se only ten. And daddy was had up las’ week and pit in prison ’cos he kept me at home. And if I ain’t at home, who’ll mind baby, and who’ll bile the taters, and who’ll——? Oh, how I wish I was thirteen!”

Bertie did not understand. He had never heard of the School Board.

“What does your father do?” he asked.

“Works i’ brick-field. All on us work i’ brick-field. I can take baby to brick-field; he sit in the clay beautiful, but they awn’t let me take him to schule, and he’ll be scalt, I know he’ll be scalt. He’ll allers get a-nigh the kittle if he can.”

“But it is very shocking not to know how to read,” said the little Earl, very gravely. “You should have learned that as soon as you could speak. I did.”

“Maybe yours aren’t brick-field folk,” said the little girl, stung by her agony to sarcasm. “I’ve allers had a baby to mind, ever since I toddled; first ’twas Tam, and then ’twas Dick, and now ’tis this un. I dunno want to read; awn’t make bricks a-readin’.”

“Oh, but you will learn such beautiful things,” said Bertie. “I do think, you know, that you _ought_ to go to school.”

“So the gemman said as pit dad in th’ lock-up,” said the recalcitrant one, doggedly. “Butiful things aren’t o’ much count, sir, when one’s belly’s empty. I oodn’t go to the blackguds now, if ’tweren’t as poor dad says as how I must, ’cos they lock him up.”

“It seems very hard to lock him up,” said Bertie, with increasing sympathy; “and I think you ought to obey him and go. I will see if I can find the baby. Where do you live?”

She pointed vaguely over the copses and pastures: “Go on a mile, and you’ll see Jim Bracken’s cottage; but, Lord love you! _you_’ll ne’er manage baby.”

“I will try,” said Bertie, sweetly. His fancy as well as his charity was stirred; for he had never, that he knew of, seen a baby. “But indeed you should go to school.”

“I’m a-going,” said the groaning and blowsy heroine with a last sob, and then she set off running as quickly as a pair of her father’s boots, ten times too large, allowed her, her slate and her books making a loud clatter as she struggled on her way.

He was by this time very tired, for he was not used to such long walks; but curiosity and compassion put fresh spirit into his heart, and his small legs pegged valorously over the rough ground, the red stockings and the silver buckles becoming by this time much begrimed with mud.

He knocked at one cottage door, and saw only a very cross old woman, who flourished a broom at him.

“No, it bean’t Jim Bracken’s. Get you gone!—you look like a runaway.”

Now, a runaway he was; and, as truth when we are guilty is always even as a two-edged sword, Bertie colored up to the roots of his hair, and bolted off as fast as he could to the only other cottage visible, beyond a few acres of mangel-wurzel and all the lucern family, which the little Earl fancied were shamrocks. For he was far on in Euclid, could speak German well, and could spell through Tacitus fairly, but about the flowers of the field and the grasses no one had ever thought it worth while to tell him anything at all. Indeed, to tell you the truth, I do not think his tutors knew anything about them themselves.

This other cottage was so low, so covered up in its broken thatch, which in turn was covered with lichen, and was so tumble-down and sorrowful-looking, that Bertie thought it was a ruined cow-shed. However, it stood where the school-girl had pointed: so he took his courage in both hands, as we say in French, and advanced to it. The rickety door stood open, and he saw a low miserable bed with a miserable woman lying on it; a shock-headed boy sprawled on the floor, another crouched before a fire of brambles and sods, and between the legs of this last boy was a strange, uncouth, shapeless object, which, but for the fact that it was crying loudly, never would have appeared to his astonished eyes as the baby for whom was prophesied a tragic and early end by the kettle. The boy who had this object in charge stared with two little round eyes.

“Mamsey, there’s a young gemman,” he said, in an awed voice.

Bertie took off his hat, and went into the room with his prettiest grace.

“If you please, are you very ill?” he said, in his little soft voice, to the woman in bed. “I met—I met—a little girl who was so anxious about the baby, and I said I would come and see if I could be of any use——”

The woman raised herself on one elbow, and looked at him with eager, haggard eyes.

“Lord, little sir, there’s naught to be done for us;—leastways, unless you had a shillin’ or two——”

“I have no money,” murmured Bertie, feeling very unlike a little earl in that moment. The woman gave a weary angry sigh and sank back indifferent.

“Can I do nothing?” said Bertie, wistfully.

“By golly!” said the boy on the floor, “unless you’ve got a few coppers, little master——”

“Coppers?” repeated the little Earl.

“Pence,” said the boy, shortly; then the baby began to howl, and the boy shook it.

“Do please not make it scream so,” said Bertie. “That is what you call the baby, is it not?”

“Iss,” said the boy Dick, sullenly. “This here’s baby, cuss him! and what bisness be he of yourn?”

For interference without coppers to follow was a barren intruder that he was disposed to resent.

“I thought I could amuse him,” said Bertie, timidly. “I told your sister I would.”

Dick roared into loud guffaws.

“Baby’d kick you into middle o’ next week, you poor little puny spindle-shanks!” said this rude boy; and Bertie felt that he was very rude, though he had no idea what was meant by spindle-shanks.

The other boy, who was lying on his stomach,—a sadly empty little stomach,—here reversed his position and stared up at Bertie.

“I think you’re a kind little gemman,” he said, “and Dick’s cross ’cos he’s broke his legs, and we’ve had no vittles since yesternoon, and only a sup o’ tea Peg made afore she went, and mother’s main bad, that she be.”

And tears rolled down this gentler little lad’s dirty cheeks.

“Oh, dear, what shall I do?” said Bertie, with a sigh: if he had only had the money and the watch that had fallen into the sea! He looked round him and felt very sick; it was all so dirty, so dirty!—and he had never seen dirt before; and the place smelt very close and sour, and the children’s clothes were mere rags, and the woman was all skin and bone, on her wretched straw bed; and the unhappy baby was screaming loudly enough to be heard right across the sea to the French coast.

“Baby, poor baby, don’t cry so!” said Bertie, very softly, and he dangled the ends of his red sash before its tearful eyes, and shook them up and down: the attention of the baby was arrested, it ceased to howl, and put out its hands, and began to laugh instead! Bertie was very proud of his success, and even the sullen Dick muttered, “Well, I never!”

The little Earl undid his scarf and let the baby pull it towards itself. Dick’s eyes twinkled greedily.

“Master, that’d _sell_ for summat!”

“Oh, you must not sell it,” said the little Earl, eagerly. “It is to amuse the poor baby. And what pretty big eyes he has! how he laughs!”

“Your shoes ’ud sell,” muttered Dick.

“Dick! don’t, Dick! that’s begging,” muttered Tam. Bertie stared in surprise. To sell his shoes seemed as odd as to be asked to sell his hair or his hands. The woman opened her fading, glazing eyes.

“They’re honest boys, little sir: you’ll pardon of ’em; they’ve eat nothing since yesternoon, and then ’twas only a carrot or two, and boys is main hungry.”

“And have you nothing?” said Bertie, aghast at the misery in this unknown world.

“How’d we have anything?” said the sick woman, grimly. “They’ve locked up my man, and Peg’s sent to school while we starve; and nobody earns nothin’, for Dick’s broke his leg, and I’ve naught in my breasts for baby——”

“But would not somebody you work for—or the priest—?” began Bertie.

“Passon don’t do nowt for us,—my man’s a Methody; and at brick-field they don’t mind us; if we be there, well an’ good,—we work and get paid; and if we isn’t there, well—some un else is. That’s all.” Then she sank back, gasping.

Bertie stood woe-begone and perplexed.

“Did you say my shoes would sell?” he murmured, very miserably, his mind going back to the history of St. Martin and the cloak.

Dick brightened up at once.

“Master, I’ll get three shillin’ on ’em, maybe more, down in village yonder.”

“You mus’n’t take the little gemman’s things,” murmured the mother, feebly; but faintness was stealing on her, and darkness closing over her sight.

“Three shillings!” said Bertie, who knew very little of the value of shillings; “that seems very little! I _think_ they cost sovereigns. Could you get a loaf of bread with three shillings?”

“Gu-r-r-r!” grinned Dick, and Bertie understood that the guttural sound meant assent and rapture.

“But I cannot walk without shoes.”

“Walk! yah! ye’ll walk better. We niver have no shoes,” said Dick.

“Don’t you, _really_?”

“Golly! no! Ye’ll walk ten times finer; ye won’t trip, nor stumble, nor nothin’, and ye’ll run as fast again.”

“Oh, no, I shall not,” murmured Bertie, and he was going to say that he would be ashamed to be seen without shoes, only he remembered that, as these boys had none, that would not be kind. A desperate misery came over him at the thought of being shoeless, but then he reasoned with himself, “To give was no charity if it cost you nothing: did not the saints strip themselves to the uttermost shred for the poor?”

He stooped and took off his shoes with the silver buckles on them, and placed them hastily on the floor.

“Take them, if they will get you bread,” he said, with the color mounting in his face.

Dick seized them with a yell of joy. “Tarnation that I can’t go mysel’. Here, Tam, run quick and sell ’em to old Nan; and get bread, and meat, and potatoes, and milk for baby, and Lord knows what; p’raps a gill of gin for mammy.”

“I don’t think we ought to rob little master, Dick,” murmured little Tam. His brother hurled a crutch at him, and Tam snatched up the pretty shoes and fled.

“My blazes, sir,” said Dick, with rather a shamefaced look, “if you’d a beast like a lot of fire gnawing at your belly all night long, yer wouldn’t stick at nowt to get bread.”

Bertie only imperfectly comprehended. The baby, tired of the sash, began to cry again; and Dick, grown good-natured, danced it up and down.

“How old are you?” said Bertie.

“Nigh on eight,” said Dick.

“Dear me!” sighed the little Earl; this rough, masterful, coarse-tongued boy seemed like a grown man to him.

“You won’t split on us?” said Dick, sturdily.

“What is that?” asked Bertie.

“Not tell anybody you give us the shoes: there’d be a piece of work.”

“As if one _told_ when one did any kindness!” murmured Bertie, with a disgust he could not quite conceal. “I mean, when one does one’s duty.”

“But what’ll you gammon ’em with at home?—they’ll want to know what you’ve done with your shoes.”

“I am not going home,” said the little Earl, and there was a something in the way he spoke that silenced Dick’s tongue,—which he would have called his clapper.

“What in the world be the little swell arter?” thought Dick.

Bertie meanwhile, with some awe and anxiety, was watching the livid face of the sick woman: he had never seen illness or death, but it seemed to him that she was very ill indeed.

“Are you not anxious about your mother?” he asked of the rough boy.

“Yes,” said Dick, sulkily, with the water coming in his eyes. “Dad’s in the lock-up: that’s wuss still, young sir.”

“Not worse than death,” said Bertie, solemnly. “He will come back.”

“Oh, she’ll come round with a drop of gin and a sup of broth,” said Dick, confidently. “’Tis all hunger and frettin’, hers is.”