Part 10 (2/2)
”Did he teach you to disobey your mother?” asked my mother.
I did not answer; and the old man, after turning over a few leaves, as if he knew the book well, looked up.
”I think, madam, you might let the youth keep these books, if he will promise, as I am sure he will, to see no more of Mr. Mackaye.”
I was ready to burst out crying, but I made up my mind and answered,
”I must see him once again, or he will think me so ungrateful. He is the best friend that I ever had, except you, mother. Besides, I do not know if he will lend me any, after this.”
My mother looked at the old minister, and then gave a sullen a.s.sent.
”Promise me only to see him once--but I cannot trust you. You have deceived me once, Alton, and you may again!”
”I shall not, I shall not,” I answered proudly. ”You do not know me”--and I spoke true.
”You do not know yourself, my poor dear foolish child!” she replied--and that was true too.
”And now, dear friends,” said the dark man, ”let us join in offering up a few words of special intercession.”
We all knelt down, and I soon discovered that by the special intercession was meant a string of bitter and groundless slanders against poor me, twisted into the form of a prayer for my conversion, ”if it were G.o.d's will.” To which I responded with a closing ”Amen,” for which I was sorry afterwards, when I recollected that it was said in merely insolent mockery.
But the little faith I had was breaking up fast--not altogether, surely, by my own fault. [Footnote: The portraits of the minister and the missionary are surely exceptions to their cla.s.s, rather than the average. The Baptists have had their Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall, and among missionaries Dr.
Carey, and n.o.ble spirits in plenty. But such men as those who excited Alton Locke's disgust are to be met with, in every sect; in the Church of England, and in the Church of Rome. And it is a real and fearful scandal to the young, to see such men listened to as G.o.d's messengers, in spite of their utter want of any manhood or virtue, simply because they are ”orthodox,” each according to the s.h.i.+bboleths of his hearers, and possess that vulpine ”discretion of dulness,” whose miraculous might Dean Swift sets forth in his ”Essay on the Fates of Clergymen.” Such men do exist, and prosper; and as long as they are allowed to do so, Alton Lockes will meet them, and be scandalized by them.--ED.]
At all events, from that day I was emanc.i.p.ated from modern Puritanism. The ministers both avoided all serious conversation with me; and my mother did the same; while, with a strength of mind, rare among women, she never alluded to the scene of that Sunday evening. It was a rule with her never to recur to what was once done and settled. What was to be, might be prayed over. But it was to be endured in silence; yet wider and wider ever from that time opened the gulf between us.
I went trembling the next afternoon to Mackaye and told my story. He first scolded me severely for disobeying my mother. ”He that begins o' that gate, laddie, ends by disobeying G.o.d and his ain conscience. Gin ye're to be a scholar, G.o.d will make you one--and if not, ye'll no mak' yoursel' ane in spite o' Him and His commandments.” And then he filled his pipe and chuckled away in silence; at last he exploded in a horse-laugh.
”So ye gied the ministers a bit o' yer mind? 'The deil's amang the tailors'
in gude earnest, as the sang says. There's Johnnie Crossthwaite kicked the Papist priest out o' his house yestreen. Puir ministers, it's ill times wi'
them! They gang about keckling and screighing after the working men, like a hen that's hatched ducklings, when she sees them tak' the water. Little Dunkeld's coming to London sune, I'm thinking.
”Hech! sic a parish, a parish, a parish; Hech! sic a parish as little Dunkeld!
They hae stickit the minister, hanged the precentor, Dung down the steeple, and drucken the bell.”
”But may I keep the books a little while, Mr. Mackaye?”
”Keep them till ye die, gin ye will. What is the worth o' them to me? What is the worth o' anything to me, puir auld deevil, that ha' no half a dizen years to live at the furthest. G.o.d bless ye, my bairn; gang hame, and mind your mither, or it's little gude books'll do ye.”
CHAPTER IV.
TAILORS AND SOLDIERS.
I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources. I read and re-read Milton's ”Poems” and Virgil's ”aeneid” for six more months at every spare moment; thus spending over them, I suppose, all in all, far more time than most gentlemen have done. I found, too, in the last volume of Milton, a few of his select prose works: the ”Areopagitica,” the ”Defence of the English People,” and one or two more, in which I gradually began to take an interest; and, little of them as I could comprehend, I was awed by their tremendous depth and power, as well as excited by the utterly new trains of thought into which they led me. Terrible was the amount of bodily fatigue which I had to undergo in reading at every spare moment, while walking to and fro from my work, while sitting up, often from midnight till dawn, st.i.tching away to pay for the tallow-candle which I burnt, till I had to resort to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself awake, even at the expense of bodily pain--Heaven forbid that I should weary my readers by describing them! Young men of the upper cla.s.ses, to whom study--pursue it as intensely as you will--is but the business of the day, and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,--to live at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,--to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. G.o.d forbid, though, that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, with still fewer advantages than mine. Hundreds more, an ever-increasing army of martyrs, are doing it at this moment: of some of them, too, perhaps you may hear hereafter.
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