Frank Oldfield | Page 5

ails you, Thomas?"
The other could not speak, but sinking down into a chair, buried his
face in his hands.
"Summat ails you, I'm sure," said the kind woman.
"Oh, Jenny," replied the unhappy father, "our Sammul's gone off--gone
off for good and all. I black-guarded him last night about 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