Part 42 (2/2)

Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks for a fiddle!

Joe was diligent every Sat.u.r.day sweeping the drive. He was ordered whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in a gentleman's grounds.

Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.

The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to reply.

”Poor fellow,” said the squire to the gardener. ”I suppose it is a charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing,” said the squire, ”no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make four, which I learn he has not yet mastered.”

Every Sat.u.r.day evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.

”Your edication costs such a lot of money,” she said.

”Steppy, need I go to school any more?” He never could frame his mouth to call her mother.

”Of course you must. You haven't pa.s.sed your standard.”

”But I don't think that I ever shall.”

”Then,” said Mrs. Lambole, ”what ma.s.ses of good food you do eat. You're perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow.”

”Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!”

”Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick,” said Mrs. Lambole.

So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.

”The child will always be a discredit to us,” said Lambole. ”He don't look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had only given his heart to it!”

”I've heard of changelings,” said Mrs. Lambole; ”and with this creetur on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens, and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe.”

”I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us,” said Lambole, thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.

”I don't suppose it would,” said Mrs. Lambole. ”And yet we call this a land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich.”

”It is wickedness,” argued the father. ”It is just the same with colts--all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick.”

And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the violin. The fas.h.i.+on for ladies to play on this instrument had come in, and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an accompaniment.

Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.

Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.

No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows and see the pretty sights within.

He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe should not forget.

”These sort of chaps,” said the gardener, ”have no senses like rational beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the Polar bears--with the end of a stick.”

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