Part 12

"My kind mother,--for a true mother you have been to me," replied the youth, forcibly subduing his feelings, and addressing Dame Deborah with a degree of animation and a fervency of look she had seldom witnessed in him,--"it is high time I became acquainted with the world. Believe me,--I do not desire to leave you through ingratitude for your unremitted kindness to a poor orphan,--but I feel I am fitted for other scenes than these. More than all, man is the great book I wish to read; and the few humble pages of his history which lie around me here I have turned over, till I am weary of the writing. I shall be useless to you if I remain, for I shall never be content, or at rest. I go from you, for a season; but never, never, dear mother, shall I cease to think of you!"

Joe bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands, in deep emotion; and the dame, moved utterly beyond self-possession, arose with trembling haste, and clasping her foster-child in her aged arms, kissed his fair forehead, while the unwonted tears trickled down her furrowed cheeks.

"My dear bairn! my pratty bairn! my noble bairn!" exclaimed she with a bounding heart, as she stood over him in affectionate admiration.

Joe wept, in spite of his efforts to master tears,--but, at length, recovered sufficient self-possession to lead his aged protectress back to her chair, and to recommence the conversation.

"You will consent, then, I hope, to let me go, kind mother," he said, still holding her hand.

"The Lord's will be done, bairn!" replied Deborah, in a tone of calm and natural piety. "Yes," added she, with resumed cheerfulness, and in her customary firm under-tone,--"thou shal' go, Joey, lad! and thy pocket shall not be empty, nayther!"

"Nay, dear mother," answered the high-minded lad,--"I have already burdened you too heavily, and I will never consent to rob you of the refuge of your old age:--remember, I have hands and health, and can work for my own support."

"God forbid thou should'st be idle!" answered the dame;--"for idleness leads to sin and crime, while honest labour needs never be ashamed. But a few guineas in thy pocket will do thee no harm, an' thou husbands 'em well. More than that, 'There's no knowing what a man may have to meet when he leaves home,' thou know'st is an old saying, and thou'lt find it so apt, that thou'lt think on't when thou has left me, mayhap."

A calm and provident conversation ensued, during which Joe agreed to accept a purse of twenty spade-aces from the good old dame, after she had assured him it would by no means straiten her means either of subsistence or plenty.

"And now, dear Joey," said the kind old woman, "let me persuade thee to throw aside some o' thy whirligig notions. Do not contradict every body thou meets who are so old-fashioned as to believe what their forefathers taught 'em. More than all, Joey," continued Deborah, with some warmth, "I'm shocked at your stubbornness in trying to deny what the Scripter says about foul spirits:--the Lord keep us from them!--and, especially at your daring to threap so stoutly that the dead never come again!"

"Indeed, dame," replied Joe, in a tone of conciliation and respect, "I never denied these things out of stubbornness, but because they are opposed to all experience:--who, and where, is the person, now living, that has really seen a ghost?"

"Who--and where--Joe?" echoed Deborah, with a strange and solemn look.

Joe felt amazed that he had not, before he had asked the last question, called to mind the dame's serious observations in the ferry-boat, five years before, and sat gazing upon the changed countenance of his aged mistress with intense earnestness.

"Joe," continued Deborah, after a deep pause succeeding her emphatic echo of the youth's sceptical question,--"I thought to have kept what I am about to reveal of the dead as a solemn secret, and to have buried it with me, in my grave; but to save thee from foul unbelief about such solemn things, I will reveal it to thee.

"Wedded husband and wife could not live in greater happiness than my dear Barachiah and I," continued the aged woman, in a voice faltering with affection:--"the stroke which took him from me raised a murmuring spirit within me, and day after day, as I moved about this dwelling, my rebellious heart dared to say that He who lives on high, and does all things well, had stricken me in wrath that I deserved not. My neighbours would often attempt to soothe me; and some of them treated my sorrow with lightness, and said, I would soon forget my dead husband, and seek another. But they who uttered this mockery little knew me. Added days and nights only served to increase my grief; and, at length, I began to watch through the night, until my strength failed, and, as I watched, I prayed, in sinful stubbornness and presumption, that my Maker would either take me away to join the dear being that I loved, or bring him once more to me. It was done unto me according to my wicked prayer;--for, one midnight, about ten months after my dear Barachiah's death, as I sat up in bed, with the burning desire in my heart to see my husband once more, and giving full vent to my rebelliousness by the utterance of words which I remember with horror,--behold! he whom I had lost stood at the foot of my bed, but with such a piercing look of reproof as I never saw him wear when alive. He wore a garment of lovely light, and I could have delighted for ever to gaze on him, had it not been for that severe look which ran through my heart, and told me I had done wrong. I sank away, senseless. When I came to myself, and the vision was gone, I vowed that I would never pray more as I had done that night. But, my will was perverse; and, on the next night, I was tempted again to desire, and then to pray, that I might, yet once more, see my departed husband. I was punished as before;--but such was my wickedness, or my weakness, I cannot tell which, that I prayed yet a third time, as presumptuously as ever, and was visited by another and still more reproving apparition of him God gave to me, and whom He had taken away. The next morning I was unable to attend to my daily cares, and was compelled to send for a physician. I took medicines, but I think they helped less to heal me, than did the kind counsel of the aged man who administered them, and who is now in his grave. I prayed no more the prayer of the presumptuous, but asked for resignation, till He who has promised to be a husband to the widow, filled my bosom therewith."

Deborah ceased, as it seemed, disabled by the fullness of her heart, from prolonging her narrative. Joe had not only listened to her revelation with the profoundest attention, but felt an irresistible awe under the recital. Deborah had never risen so much above her ordinary self, in his eyes, as while she was thus unbosoming a secret she had kept for years. Her attitude, and the expression of her features, her tone of voice, and the very words in which she conveyed her solemn story, indicated an unusual frame of mind, and formed a combined and undeniable proof that the utterer of such unearthly news was as fully persuaded, as of her own existence, that she was delivering truths.

Joe's strong affection for his aged protectress, and his reverence for her sterling uprightness, contributed to fix his mind more absorbingly on what he heard. The relation of the apparition of Barachiah Thrumpkinson, although authenticated solely by this solemn averment of his aged relict, thus made a stronger impression on the faith of the youthful listener than any former narrative of the supernatural, written or oral. The united reasonings of five years seemed to be shaken to atoms; and Joe remained answerless, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Nor had his reasoning faculty re-asserted its dominion, ere the aged dame rose, and looking parentally upon him, while she uttered her usual evening farewell, "Good night, bairn!" took the way to her rustic couch.

Joe returned the salutation with a faltering voice, and hasted, likewise, to seek his place of repose; but sleep was long ere it visited his eyes, even when he had overcome, in some degree, the strange over-awed feeling which had crept over him while listening to Deborah's story. Amid the solemn stillness of the night, Memory ran through her beaten paths, and Imagination arose, and mingled therewith the scenes of the future. The great event of to-morrow,--the greatest, hitherto, in the life of the humble shoemaker's apprentice,--soon dissipated all other excitements. Would he be happier when he was free, and had entered the world, as a personal observer, instead of learning its varied character from books? Something whispered a doubt. But would he not be wiser? Yes; that, he thought, was certain. He would be able, by the practice of close observation, to compare men with each other: he would have the opportunity of trying, as upon a touch-stone, the truth or fallacy of the peculiar hypotheses he had framed: he would learn to read the human heart. And then he thought of the probability, nay, certainty, of his finding some kindred mind, but farther advanced in great truths, that would be able to set him right where he was wrong; who would teach him the true secret of perfecting his moral nature, and would lead him on to the acquirement of intellectual stores, of the very existence of which, it might be that he had scarcely a faint conception,--thoughts that enfevered him with pleasurable anticipation.

Then, reverting to the past, he reminded himself of his orphan condition, of the gratitude he owed his affectionate foster-mother, and of the kind and parental assistance she had offered him, although he was about to desert her. Often he felt the melting mood come over him so conqueringly, that he was all but resolved to tell the aged dame, in the morning, that he would remain with her, and try to comfort her old age. And then he thought of the many sensible lessons she had given for his future conduct in the world,--till, wearied out with the variety of his thoughts, and physically, as well as mentally exhausted, he sunk to slumber.

Joe awoke early, after a dreamless and refreshing sleep, and again his mind laboured with its difficulties about Deborah's relation of the apparition; but its labour was vain. The more he reasoned the greater were his difficulties. The healthful effect of these baffled and perplexed thinkings upon Joe's intellect was, the deterring of its powers from precipitant and immature conclusions,--the throwing of its energies back upon fresh and deeper inquiry,--and the in-fixing of a humiliating consciousness that, after all his struggles in pursuit of knowledge, he scarcely knew any thing yet as he ought to know it. Thus, his conscious ignorance for the present was really beneficial to him; and when the voice of his affectionate mistress was heard summoning him to breakfast, he stept down the ladder, shaking his head at himself for a conceited puppy, and applying homeward to his own case the significant rebuke--

"There are more things in heaven and earth, _Joe_, Than are dreamt of in _your_ philosophy."

Labour, the honest dame declared, should not be thought of, in her house, the day that Joe was of age,--according to her reckoning by guess,--and free. And she bustled about, as old as she was, to place her best earthen jugs, filled with mead and ale, in goodly array, on the white and well-scoured table, that every visiter might drink the young freeman's health; and she hasted to prepare a large plumb-pudding, and other homely eates, for dinner,--all the while holding up her head, and striving to look as blythe and merry as if she had been in her teens.

At length, the hour of parting came; and when Joe rose and took up his hat,--and his fellow-apprentices that were,--but a few hours before,--took each a bundle to accompany him a few miles on the way,--Dame Deborah's aged frame shook violently, and the tears streamed, unchecked, down her time-worn face.

"God speed thee, my dear bairn!" she cried,--"and help thee to take heed of thy ways, that no harm may befall thee!"

Joe felt completely unmanned, and mingled his tears with those of his beloved and revered benefactress, while he bent to receive her parting benediction.

* * * * *

The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe! A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery--contention--competition--avarice--oppression--and suffering--and famine--that he had never supposed to exist! As for his religious opinions they changed, and changed again,--amidst varnished, high-sounding professors of sanctity, on the one hand,--and starving thousands, who in the pangs of despair charged God with the authorship of their wretchedness, on the other. Had Joe been asked, ten years afterwards, what were _now_ his religious sentiments, he would have answered:--"I am wearied with talking about creeds, and I am trying,--by relieving misery as much as I can, and diffusing all the happiness I can,--to show that I believe all men to be my brethren: I think _that_ is the best religion."

TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL:

A DEVOTEE OF THE MARVELLOUS.

Among the most remarkable events which took place in Haxey, towards the close of the last century, was the settlement, in that ancient village, of curious Toby Lackpenny, the philosophical tailor. Toby's coat was usually out at the elbows, but he had long held, throughout the whole Isle of Axholme, a high reputation as a man of deep and singular learning. His "library" was the theme of marvel unceasing to his plain and unsophisticated customers; and though it consisted but of forty or fifty ragged volumes, it constituted a wealth that the philosophical Toby, himself, priced above rubies. To this treasury of wisdom he, nightly, resorted, with ever-fresh delight, as regularly as his manual labour closed; and many an ecstatic hour did he live over his books in the sweet stillness and solitude of early morning. There were tractates on the whole circle of science, in his bibliographical collection, Toby asserted; for, like all other great philosophers, he aspired to be an encyclopedist in knowledge: but, up to the time at which we are commencing this brief record of Toby's history, it was simply, by his mastery of the erudite pages of Nicholas Culpepper,--and of a very ancient volume comprising treatises on Astrology, Geomancy, Palmistry, and other kindred occult studies,--that Toby had won for himself, throughout the length and breadth of Axholmian land, so high a character for wisdom. None could doubt the profundity of Toby's acquirements; for whoever took a wild flower to his door was sure to be told its name,--its healing virtues,--and the names of its presiding influences, the planets and zodiacal constellations,--those celestial potencies from which, he assured the visiter, every herb and flower derived their medicinal virtues. And, oh! the decoctions, and the salves, and the ointments, and the plasters, and the poultices, and the liniments, and the electuaries, and the simples, and the compounds, that were made by the old women of Haxey, and all Axholme, by Toby Lackpenny's oracular direction! And then the exultant looks and honied words with which some would return thanks to Toby, and assure him all their tooth-ache, or head-ache, or elbow-ache, had vanished, like magic, by their diligent attention to his prescription; and then the reach and shrewdness he displayed in answering such as complained that his advice had not been of the service they had apprehended, namely, that they had not plucked the flower in the hour when its own planet presided,--or they had not boiled it before the Moon rose,--and she was in opposition to Jupiter, the lord of the plant wormwood,--or some other convincing reason why the device had not succeeded.

Toby's advancement in the "astral science," also brought him an increasing number of customers,--though the naked condition of his elbows told the fact that this growing knowledge was somewhat profitless in a substantial sense. Nevertheless, every successive day strengthened his confidence that he would soon be "even with Booker, or Lilly, or Gadbury, or any of 'em that his grandfather used to talk about;"--for he had also been eager, in his day, to be able to prognosticate future events by tracing "the stars in their courses." And, now, as surely as the evening returned, Toby might be seen at his own door, seated on a low stool, drawing astrological diagrams on a fragment of slate, and placing the symbols of the planets and signs of the zodiac in due position in the "table of houses."

The vagueness which Toby found to be so characteristic of what astrologers call the "rules of judgment" often brought the zealous student to a pause, as to the real utility of his pursuit; but the extreme credulousness of his constitution usually urged him to put an end to the dubious reasonings that often rose within him. Now and then, a sharp stroke from the village parson,--levelled, in full canonicals, from the pulpit of a Sunday forenoon,--with the marksman's stern eye fixed, meanwhile, on poor Toby,--made him stagger a little. It was a guilty act,--the clergyman asserted,--to rend away the natural veil which the Creator had drawn over man's discernment of futurity: it was a controversion of the order of His Providence: it was an attempt to seize upon the Almighty's own attributes, and wield a power that belonged solely to Himself. Such eloquent sentences bothered Toby still more, when the well-intentioned shepherd rounded them by exclaiming, as he beat the

"----drum ecclesiastic With fist instead of a stick,"

that "star-gazers, and wizards, and enchanters, were, each and all, an abomination to the Lord!"

But, alas! for poor Toby,--when his favourite disciple Joe, after being torn from him by Dame Deborah's commandment in obedience to Toby's great foe,--the vicar,--alas! for Toby, when Joe, filled with zeal to discharge his conscience, re-entered the tailor's cottage one evening at dusk, and attacked his old teacher in the very heart and centre of his predilections, declaring there would be no salvation for him in this world, till he had followed the example of the Ephesian Christians, and burnt his cabalistical books; nor any happiness for him in the prospect of a future life, until he had eschewed all his delusive vanities, and cried at the footstool of his Maker for the pardon of his sins! Never was the might with which a mind sinewed by some strong enthusiasm controls even an elder and more experienced intellect more signally evinced than in the contest between the orphan Joe, under his religious frenzy, and his old teacher, the soothsaying tailor. In the outset of this strange opposition and aggression on the part of his late scholar, Toby Lackpenny stoutly parried the blows of his unexpected adversary by returning text for text, and argument for argument.

"Is it not plainly declared in the Book of Judges, that 'the stars in their courses fought against Sisera?'" asked Toby, with all the emphasis which his zeal for the hereditary honour and power of the stars prompted;--"can any thing prove more clearly that they sway human affairs? And the inspired Psalmist saith of the heavenly bodies, that 'Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.' Which word _line_, according to Aben Ezra, and the most skilful cabalists," continued Toby, diving into the profoundest depths of his learning for the defence of his beloved theories, "ought to be rendered _rule_ or _direction_, and evidently sets forth the fact that the planets exercise lordship in their respective houses,--while the latter part of the passage makes known the precious truth that the wise and skilful student will learn to understand their language."

"But you have studied their language a long time without understanding it a whit the surer,--you know you have,--for you have told me so more than once, neighbour Toby," replied Joe, with honest and unshrinking fervour; "and as your head is fast becoming grey, and as flowers are often nipped though but in the bud,--I think it would be wiser in you as an aged man, and in me as a frail youth, to get prepared for death;--therefore, I conjure you, Toby, as you value your own soul, to forsake these vanities!"

This simple and sincere language, from one who was then little more than a child in years, shook the old man's heart more than all the clergyman's hortatory thunderbolts had shaken his reason. Toby attempted to renew his sophistries, at Joe's succeeding visits; but felt, at length, thoroughly subdued under the heartfelt and persevering enthusiasm of a mere boy.

"Verily!" Toby Lackpenny often exclaimed in after-times, when relating the progress of his conversion,--"although my will was stubborn, I often trembled before the spirit of that child, like Felix before Paul, or like the gaoler in the prison at Philippi!"

The astrologer burnt his books of the astral science, and all the other occult, and therefore satanical sciences; and he and Joe were thenceforth united in a novel and more elevated pursuit,--the acquirement of a purified and spiritual nature. But the distinctness of minds, and the force of habit in different natures, were strikingly discoverable in the relative degrees of zeal with which the youth and Toby followed their new object. Joe's ascetic fervour has been described. But Toby's bent was of a diverse character: he found it impossible to enter with Joe's vehemence into the quest of an entire renewal of heart,--and could not resist the tendency to seek for enlightenment among the curious treasures of his little library. With indescribable rapture Toby found, as he thought, exactly what he wanted, in the abstruse pages of Jacob Boehmen. He had long kept the volumes of the mystical German on his shelves; but he assured himself that he never saw the true meaning of the high mysteries developed in the "Forty Questions," with so clear a vision as he did now the films of the "old Adam" were beginning to fall from his eyes.

It need scarcely be observed that Joe heard Toby's announcement of these abstract discoveries with rigid indifference. Neither when the lad's fervour had abated, and disgust and melancholy succeeded, did he feel able to receive the tailor's assurances of the superior consolation to be derived from these puzzling studies. Toby's exhilaration of spirits, happily for himself, suffered little interruption after the full growth of his devoted attachment to the cloudy exercitations of the old quietest.--"Of a truth," he would often say to his customers, "I can never be sufficiently thankful that a merciful Providence showed me the spiritual lantern of Jacob Boehmen, wherewith I might find, and possess, the pearl of great price!"