Frank Oldfield | Page 5

yon teetottal chap as come a-lecturing and got our Sammul and Betty to sign the pledge, so just about an hour since he slips out in his Sunday hat and shoes, when Alice were down the yard, and when she comes back she finds a bit of papper on the table with a five-shilling piece and a bit of his hair lapped up in it, and there was writ on it, `From Sammul, for dear mother.' Oh, Jenny, I'm afraid for my life he's gone off to Americay; or, worse still, he may have drowned or hanged himself."
"Nay, nay; don't say so, Thomas," said Jenny; "he'll think better of it; you'll see him back again in the morning. Don't fret, man; he's a good lad, and he'll turn up again all right, take my word for it. He'd ne'er have taken his Sunday shoes if he'd meant to drown or hang himself; he could have done it just as well in his clogs."
But Johnson could not be comforted.
"I must be going," he said. "I guess there'll be rare crying at our house if Sammul's gone off for good; it'll drive Alice and our Betty clean crazy."
With a sorrowful "good night" he stepped out again into the darkness, and set his face homewards. He had not gone many paces when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he turned out of the road by which he had come, and crossing by a little foot-bridge a stream which ran at the bottom of a high bank on his right hand, climbed up some steep ground on the other side, and emerged into a field, from which a footpath led along the border of several meadows into the upper part of Langhurst. Here he paused and looked around him--the darkness had begun to yield to the pale beams of the moon. His whole frame shook with emotion as he stood gazing on the trees and shrubs around him; and no wonder, for memory was now busy again, and brought up before him a life-like picture of his strolls in springtime with his boy, when Samuel was but a tiny lad. 'Twas in this very field, among these very trees, that he had gathered bluebells for him, and had filled his little hands with their lovely flowers. Oh, there was something more human in him then! Drunkard he was, but not the wretched degraded creature into which intemperance had kneaded and moulded him, till it left him now stiffened into a walking vessel of clay, just living day by day to absorb strong drink. Yet was he not even now utterly hardened, for his tears fell like rain upon that moonlit grass--thoughts of the past made his whole being tremble. He thought of what his boy had been to him; he thought of what he had been to his boy. He seemed to see his past life acted out before him in a moving picture, and in all he saw himself a curse and not a blessing--time, money, health, peace, character, soul, all squandered. And still the picture moved on, and passed into the future: he saw his utterly desolate home--no boy was there; he saw two empty chairs--his Betty was gone, dead of want and a broken heart. The picture still moved on: now he was quite alone, the whole hearth-stone was his; he sat there very old and very grey, cold and hunger-bitten; a little while, and a pauper's funeral passed from that hearth into the street--it was his own--and what of his soul? He started as if bitten by a serpent, and hurried on.
The village was soon reached; whither should he go? Conscience said, "home;" but home was desolate. He was soon at the public-house door; he could meet with a rude sympathy there--he could tell his tale, he could cheer him with the blaze and the gas, he could stupify down his remorse with the drink. Conscience again whispered, "Home," but so feebly, that his own footstep forward quenched its voice. He entered, and sat down among the drinkers.
And what of his poor wife and daughter?
Johnson had not left his home many minutes when Betty came in.
"Where's Sammul?" she asked, not noticing her mother's agitation; "and where's fayther? We're like to have weary work in our house just now, I reckon."
"Betty!"--was all that her mother could say, but in such a voice that her daughter started round and cried,--
"Eh, mother, what is't? what ails you?"
"See there," replied the poor woman, pointing to the little packet still lying on the table; "that's what ails me."
Betty took it up; she saw the money and the lock of hair; she read the words--it was all plain to her in a moment. She stood open-mouthed, with her eyes staring on the paper as