Part 6

Sincere and strong as was the pity felt by the Frankses for the sufferings of Nancy, a letter, which came by the post a few minutes after Ned's return from his visit to the hospital, diverted their attention to a subject of still closer interest to themselves.

"Why, Ned, here's a letter to you from our Norah!" cried Persis to her husband, who, wearied with his long, early walk, was snatching a hasty breakfast.

"That will be something pleasant; Norah's letters are always pleasant," said Ned Franks, as he broke open the envelope with the help of his hook. "It's come to cheer us a bit, for I don't feel up to much this morning."

"You're not looking well, Ned," said the wife, glancing anxiously at his pale and haggard face. "That plunge into the mill-stream yesterday to save poor drowning Nancy has, I fear, given you a chill, and all your extra work to repair the almshouses after school-hours are over is too much for your strength."

"Yes, if one is to be kept awake half the night with a squalling baby," added Franks. "Our little man seemed determined that we should have enough of his music. I suppose that one will get used to it some time, just as one gets used at sea to the noise of the winds and the waves. Why, there he's at it again!"

The baby, which Persis held in her arms, began crying loudly, as he had been doing at intervals all the night through.

"I'm afraid that the darling has something the matter with him," said Persis, rocking the child gently to and fro to hush his cries.

"Nothing the matter with his lungs, anyhow," observed the sailor, who, though fondly loving his boy, had become somewhat weary of his roaring, and who had awoke with a headache,--a bad preparation for playing school-master to a swarm of noisy young rustics. "But let's see what Norah has to say for herself; dear girl, her letters are always like sunshine!" and the sailor began reading to himself the note from his young orphan niece.

"I fear there is not much sunshine in that letter," thought Persis, as she saw a cloud gathering on her husband's brow, usually so open and clear.

"I don't know what to make of this!" exclaimed Ned, in a tone of irritation, starting up from the table on which lay his unfinished breakfast. "Just listen to this, Persis. Oh, can't you stop the child's crying for a minute? It's enough to drive a fellow distracted!" and the sailor read aloud the letter from Norah, with the accompaniment of little Ned's squalling.

"DEAR UNCLE,--I am so grieved, but mistress has given me warning, and I'm to go to-morrow. I hope you won't be very angry, after all you've taught me, and all my resolutions. I can't stop in London just now, as I would not know where to go to; so I'm coming down to you by the train that arrives at half-past three. I hope that you won't mind; that it won't put auntie out much. My love to her and the baby. Your sorrowful niece,

"NORAH PEELE."

"When we thought her so comfortably settled in a good situation, doing so well," muttered Franks. "What can Mrs. Lowndes mean by cutting the poor lass adrift at a day's notice!"

"Norah must have got into some scrape," observed Persis.

"Ay, that's plain as a flag-staff. She might have given us a notion of what the scrape is, instead of writing about my teaching and her own resolutions, which we knew all about before. But poor Bessy's motherless girl must always find a home under our roof."

"Oh, yes," said Persis, cheerfully. "While you are busy with the boys, I'll see to clearing out the little room, and having all right and tight for our Norah. I think that she is as dear to me as to you, and that is saying a good deal."

"I loved the lass from the first day I saw her, and I thought there was the making of a very good girl in her, too, only she and her brother had been brought up so badly, scarce knowing a lie from the truth. But poor Bessy,--she's gone, and it's not for her brother to be diving down to bring up her failings to the light. She loved her children, anyhow, and couldn't teach them what she didn't know clearly herself. But who's to meet Norah at the station?" added Ned Franks, abruptly. "You can't go because of baby, and I can't go because of the boys."

"I am afraid that Norah must find her way home by herself," observed Persis, "unless the miller is going to the town. I'll walk over to the dell and ask him. But Norah knows the road so well that her coming alone matters less."

"It matters a great deal," cried Franks, with impatience. "Here the lass is returning with a wet sail and a heavy heart, I warrant ye, and she finds no one to take her by the hand and welcome her to port, or to carry her bundle for her. I'd not have minded it if she'd been coming with colors flying to pay us a visit. Why on earth should she choose an hour when she knows I'm always in the school-room?"

Persis did not know how to answer the question, and had no time to do so had she known, for the sound of young voices, and the trampling of heavy boots in the adjoining room, told that the boys were beginning to assemble. Never had Franks been less inclined to begin his daily labor; never had he met his scholars with less of kindly good-humor.

For Ned was no model of perfection. He was naturally of a hot and hasty spirit; and though, from Christian principle, he usually held his temper under such command that he had the reputation of possessing a good one, it had cost him many a struggle to make it obey the rein. On this particular morning, with an aching head, weary frame, and worried mind, he felt irritable and impatient. He was angry with the dull lad who could not remember that _seven times eight_ is not _seventy-eight_; and when Bill Doyle, repeating his natural-history lesson, said that horses ran wild on the _staircase_ in Russia, instead of the _steppes_, Ned, who at another time might have smiled at the blunder, which was probably made half in fun, muttered something about "blockhead," and sent the boy to the bottom of the class.

Bill, the son of Sir Lacy Barton's groom, being a sharp, pert little fellow, was not disposed to take his punishment quietly, or to be called blockhead on any subject connected with horses. He whispered to the boy who sat next him, "He don't know nothing about horses hisself."

"What's that?" exclaimed Ned Franks, whose sharp ear had caught the whisper.

"Father says sailors have never no notion of riding," said the saucy little urchin, "and when they mounts a horse, are as likely to get up with their face to the tail as the head." At which observation a little titter ran round the school.

It has been remarked that few things nettle a man so much as to doubt his skill in riding; and Ned, who was always jealous for the honor of his old profession, was in no humor to take as a jest the slight thus cast on the whole of the navy.

"Then you may tell your father, when you go home," he said, angrily, "that there are no better horsemen than some of our blue-jackets; and as for riding,--when we were lying off Alexandria, every day that we could get leave ashore, I and my messmates mounted and galloped at a pace that would have made your jockeys stare."

As the word of the one-armed school-master was always implicitly believed, Ned could see that he had raised himself not a little in the eyes of his pupils, especially those of Bill Doyle, by the accomplishment of horsemanship to which he had thus laid claim. But Ned had hardly spoken the hasty sentence, when he was angry with himself for having been betrayed by foolish pride into uttering it. He felt that for once he had been guilty both of exaggeration, and of (without actually speaking untruth) misleading the boys as to his meaning.

Any one of a soul less transparently candid than that of Ned Franks might have thought it weak scrupulosity to let the mind dwell for a moment on such a seeming trifle as this. There is a marvellous difference between the consciences of men. Some have become hard as the horny hoof of an ass; little short of a bullet (by which figure I would represent some open act of wickedness) can make them feel pain at all. Other consciences are tender and sensitive as the apple of the human eye, and what to many would seem an almost invisible speck of sin greatly disturbs and troubles them. This is one of the reasons why holiness and humility are so often found together; while the hardened offender, whose conscience is seared, seems almost past feeling remorse. Franks knew that he had spoken very idle words, and though he was inclined, as most people are, to make excuses for himself, his honest soul could not rest at ease until he had openly repaired his error as well as he could.

When lessons were over, and the boys were about to disperse, Ned stopped their going out of the school-room by a gesture of his hand. He stood up with his honest face a good deal more flushed than usual, for the acknowledgment which he was forcing himself to make was humiliating and painful.

"Boys," said he, in that clear voice which always commanded attention, "there's something which I want to say to you before you go home. There's nothing that I have more warned you against than the iceberg of falsehood. A man who habitually lies will, we know from the Word of God, be shut out from heaven. Now, an iceberg is a thing clear enough to be seen, and, unless he come across it at night, one might say that a pilot had no excuse for running a vessel upon one; but there's a part of the mass which one can't see,--that's the part hidden beneath the green waves, and as that may stretch out much wider than the white peak glistening above, it is clear that a ship might strike on the sunken ice while seeming to give a wide berth to the berg. Now, it's just the same with falsehood. There's an upper part, easily seen, and I hope that we all try to steer clear of it; that no boy here is so mean and base as to tell a downright lie. Every boy here knows that _lying lips are an abomination to the Lord_. But not all are on their guard against the _sunken ice_ stretching below. We strike on it when we exaggerate, or when in any way we deceive, though not a word may be spoken, or what is spoken may be literal truth. My own keel grated against the sunken ice to-day." Ned felt a good deal embarrassed as he went on, all the more so from the profound silence of the listening boys. "I said that there were no better riders than some of our own blue-jackets. Now, that may be true, or it may not, but I certainly did not speak from my knowledge, and I'm afraid that I ran foul of exaggeration. And I said that when our ship was lying off Alexandria, we tars rode about on shore as often as we'd a chance,--and that was true enough, though the chance came but seldom; but I suppose that you fancied, from what I said, that we galloped about upon horses?" There was a general murmur of assent. "Now, I never mounted a horse in my life; the beasts which we rode were _donkeys_." There was a laugh from some of the boys, almost instantly suppressed, however, for Ned Franks looked unusually grave. "Now, my lads, I've thought it best to say all this to you openly, both for my own sake and for yours. I want you to feel how hard it is to keep off altogether from that same smooth, slippery ice of deceit,--to know how treacherously it lies under the surface; and I want you to resolve, if ever you find yourselves touching it, be it ever so slightly, to sheer off at once, like honest Christians, and let no temptation draw you from the straight course of perfect truth."

The school-master's effort was over; painful as it had been, Ned Franks was glad that he had made it. His frank confession of so small a deviation from that straight course, had made a deeper impression on the minds of his boys than hours of lecturing on the perils of falsehood would have done.

"If our master said one thing, and half the village said another, I'd take Ned Franks's word against all the rest," was the observation of one of the lads as he left the school-house.

"I never knew any one so partic'lar about truth," said Bill Doyle. "Franks has such a sharp eye for the least bit of deceit, that I guess he'd catch sight of that there slippery ice that he talked of, if it be'd fifty feet down under the waves!"

XIII.

The Return Home.

A sweet, pleasing-looking girl, of between seventeen and eighteen years of age, occupied a place that day in a third-class carriage of the down train from London. Norah Peele--for it was she--was on her way to her native village of Colme; but she had none of the joyousness which she would have felt, under other circumstances, in making a journey home. All the brightness was gone from that young face, the drooping eyelids were red with the traces of tears, and she looked rather embarrassed than glad at finding that the Clerk of Colme chanced to be one of her travelling companions.

Certainly, John Sands was not one to enliven any society, though he served as a very good protector to the young maiden whom he had known from her childhood. He made a few attempts at conversation, and gave Norah the latest news of the village, casting--as was natural with him--a melancholy hue over all. Mr. Curtis continued ill; the clerk was sure that he would not recover, and that his wife would break down with the nursing; the almshouses were rotting to pieces where they stood, and the collection made for them at church had been smaller than he had ever known one to be before. After these not very cheerful communications, John Sands relapsed into silence, keeping his eyes gravely fixed on the knob of his gingham umbrella, while a melancholy train of thought was evidently flowing through his mind.

"Here we are," he said at last, slowly raising his head, as the shrill whistle announced their approach to B----; "if you're going to the village on foot, Norah Peele, we may as well walk there together."

John Sands, with stiff politeness, helped Norah out of the train. She had hardly stepped on the platform, when they were met by Bat Bell, the miller, whose hard, dry features wore a graver expression than usual.

"Mr. Sands," he said, addressing himself to the clerk, with merely a nod of recognition to Norah, "as Ned Franks could not come here to-day, and I had business in town, Persis asked me to wait here and tell you"--the miller dropped his voice as he added the words--"about your wife."

Painful anxiety agitated the sallow face of John Sands; no news of her was likely to be good news. The clerk nervously clutched his umbrella; his pale lips moved, but they framed no question.

"She'd an accident last evening; fell into my pond,--no, no, not drowned; Ned Franks got her out; but her arm is badly hurt, and she's in the hospital here."

The clerk waited to hear no more; turning round, without uttering a word, he went off with long strides in the direction of the place where his wretched wife lay on her bed of pain.

"Her arm is smashed, has been taken off," said the miller to Norah; "but for your brave uncle, the poor, intoxicated wretch would have been torn limb from limb by my wheel."

"And he--oh, is he hurt?" cried the shuddering girl.

"He'd a narrow shave for his life," said the miller, "but he got off without even a scratch. He's a gallant fellow, is your uncle; but I say it was folly in him, a husband and father, to risk his life for a ranting vixen, who'll drink herself to death one of these days. But you'll come with me now, Norah Peele; my cart's waiting near here, and will carry you and your bundle; like a sensible girl, you don't sport much luggage, I see."

As the miller's cart rattled on its way, Bell went on with his talking, at every second sentence giving a cut with his whip to his horse; for the miller liked rapid motion, to "get on" being a ceaseless impulse with him.

"You'll find changes in Colme, Norah Peele. Misfortunes never come single; there was Nancy Sands struggling in the mill-pond yesterday, and to-day, Ben Stone the carpenter, as strong and hale a man as one could find in the county, is struck down, just as he had finished breakfast, with a kind of a fit. They say that something has given way within him, and that though he may live weeks or months, he'll not last to the end of the year. Now, there's a man who looked likely to see ninety; only a little too full-blooded perhaps," added the miller, who had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones.

Tears came into the eyes of Norah. The carpenter was a popular man in Colme; every one knew so well the portly form, the good-humored, self-complacent smile, the loud voice, the jovial chuckle of Ben, it was difficult to associate with him any idea of sickness or of death. But Bell saw that his news had saddened his young companion, and as his light cart rapidly wheeled round a corner of the road, he as rapidly turned the current of conversation.

"You've chosen a pleasant time of the year for your visit to the country, Norah. How long are you likely to stay with your uncle?"

"I don't know; I can't say,--I suppose till I get another place," answered the girl.

"Ah, you've tired of London, after a village life; I always thought that you would. Noise, bustle, and bother! Talk of the clack of my mill-wheel,--why, in London there are thousands of wheels perpetually going, and streams of people perpetually flowing; there's something always on the grind. I like you the better for getting away as fast as you possibly can from London."

"I'd have stopped there if I could," said the young servant in a scarcely audible voice.

"Then why did you give warning?" asked the miller.

"I did not give warning," replied poor Norah, blushing and hanging down her head; "my mistress gave warning to me."

"There's simple truth, anyways," said the miller, a grim smile rising to his lips. "You are just like your sailor uncle: Franks is his name, and frank's his nature. I don't believe he ever told an untruth in his life."

Norah turned her head, and gazed sadly on the meadows and groves, clad in spring's fresh green, by which she was rapidly passing; but her thoughts did not follow her eyes. The miller's remark had awakened a train of painful reflections.

"Oh, that it had indeed been so with me!" thought poor Norah; "that I had always kept my lips pure from falsehood; I would not then be returning to be a burden upon my kind and generous uncle. I, whose character stood so high, sent away in disgrace! I, whose word was at once believed! I feel as if I could not bear to tell uncle all,--to let him know of the direct falsehood, and the deceit carried on for months, my mistress's trust so abused by his niece! Uncle will think that all his care and kindness have been thrown away upon Norah; that I am still the foolish, deceitful, bad girl that I was when he first came to Colme, and tried to teach me to be honest and truthful, and straightforward, as a Christian should be. It seems as if I could endure anything rather than the loss of his good opinion, and that of dear Aunt Persis! And yet,"--thus Norah pursued her reflections, to which the miller now left her, his mind being occupied in reckoning up the amount of his savings deposited in the county bank of B----,--"and yet, the safest, the best course for me now, must be to be perfectly frank and open. Alas! I cannot recall the past, but I can draw from bitter experience a lesson for the future. I will confess everything to my uncle, conceal nothing, make no excuses; and oh, may the God of truth help me from this time forward indeed to _take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue_!"

I will not dwell on the kindly welcome given to Norah Peele by Persis and Ned Franks. She was received as a daughter, no questions asked, no painful inquiries made as to the cause of her leaving her place. "Leave the lass to tell her own story when and how she likes," the one-armed sailor had said to his wife. So the baby now happily sleeping, was shown and admired; topics of general interest were alone spoken of at the evening meal which followed Franks's day of toil; the state of the almshouses in Wild Rose Hollow, the progress made in their repair, the accident to the clerk's wife, the sudden and serious illness of Stone the carpenter, the good report of improvement in the health of the vicar,--all these were made subjects of conversation, everything being avoided which might possibly embarrass the guest. All was done to make her feel at her ease. Norah, it was said, would be so useful in helping to nurse the baby; Norah would look after the flowers, now that her uncle was too busy all day to have time to work in his garden. How delighted old Sarah Mason would be to have Norah to read the Bible to her again!

The poor girl felt grateful for the kindness and consideration thus shown her, and thankful that such a home was left to her still; but a burden was weighing on her mind, and even while conversation was going on, in which she appeared to join, a smothered sigh, or a sudden moistening of her eyes, showed that her thoughts were wandering to something painful. When the tea-things had been cleared away by the active Persis, assisted by Norah, when cups and saucers had been washed and replaced on the shelf, and the outer door closed for the night (it never was bolted or barred), Norah sat down on a little wooden stool at the feet of her aunt, and recounted, with simple truthfulness, all the circumstances that had led to her hasty dismissal from the service of Mrs. Lowndes. I shall give you the story, not in Norah's words, but my own, beginning it by a short account of her early days in Colme.

XIV.

Norah's Story.

Norah and her brother were the only children of the half-sister of Ned Franks, Bessy Peele, a woman who, in every important respect, had been an utter contrast to her brother. While Ned's maxim was to do everything in clear daylight, Bessy was one who, if possible, always took an underground way. He considered the straight road always the shortest; she wound and doubled like a fox. He was convinced that honesty is the best policy; she looked upon cunning as wisdom. One of the earliest lessons learned by Mrs. Peele's unfortunate children was that the great thing in life is to pick up money by any _safe_ means; by "safe" being meant whatever would not lead to the prison or the gallows. There was no harm, she said, in telling a lie,--at least a _white_ lie, that hurt no one, and helped one's self on in the world. What need was there to be so very particular about a little slip of the tongue? She was sure, for her part, that God would not notice such trifles as these.

It is said that some Chinese parents are actually so inhuman as to blind their children, that the poor, wretched creatures may earn more money by begging. Mrs. Peele, a fond though a foolish parent, would have been horrified at the idea of inflicting such an injury upon her children, while actually doing them a wrong yet more cruel. For was it not such to _blind their consciences_, to make them unable to distinguish the wrong from the right, at the risk of their walking, through the darkness of their souls, into everlasting destruction? And this all for the sake of paltry gain, miserable profits of sin, more dearly bought than the alms given to the poor blinded Chinese beggars!