The Old Helmet Volume II Part 18

He did not however this time insist on going with her. He went by himself. It is certain that the misery of London disclosed to him by this drive to Field-Lane, the course of which gave him a good sample of it, did almost shake him in his opinion that Eleanor ought to be let alone. Mr. Carlisle had not seen such a view of London in his life before; he had not been in such a district of crime and wretchedness; or if by chance he had touched upon it, he had made a principle of not seeing what was before him. Now he looked; for he was going where Eleanor was accustomed to go, and what he saw she was obliged to meet also. He reached the building where the Field-Lane school was held, in a somewhat excited state of mind.

He found at the door several policemen, who warned him to guard well and in a safe place anything of value he might have about his person.

Then he was ushered up stairs to the place where the school was held.

He entered a very large room, looking like a factory room, with bare beams and rough sides, but s.p.a.cious and convenient for the purpose it was used for. Down the length of this room ran rows of square forms, with alleys left between the rows; and the forms were in good measure filled with the rough scholars. There must have been hundreds collected there; three-fourths of them perhaps were girls, the rest boys and young men, from seven years old and upwards. But the roughness of the scholars bore no proportion to the roughness of the room. _That_ had order, shape, and some decency of preparation. The poor young human creatures that cl.u.s.tered within it were in every stage of squalor, rags, and mental distortion. With a kind of wonder Mr. Carlisle's eye went from one to another to note the individual varieties of the general character; and as it took in the details, wandered horror-stricken, from the nameless dirt and shapeless rags which covered the person, to the wild or stupid or cunning or devilish expression of vice in the face. Beyond description, both. There were many there who had never slept in a bed in their lives; many who never had their clothes off from one month's end to another; the very large proportion lived day and night by a course of wickedness. There they were gathered now, these wretches, eight or ten in a form, listening with more or less of interest to the instructions of their teachers who sat before them; and many, Mr. Carlisle saw, were shewing deep interest in face and manner. Others were full of mischief, and shewed that too.

And others, who were interested, were yet also restless; and would manifest it by the occasional irregularity of jumping up and turning a somerset in the midst of the lesson. That frequently happened.

Suddenly, without note or warning, in the midst of the most earnest deliverances of the teacher, a boy would leap up and throw himself over; come up all right; and sit down again and listen, as if he had only been making himself comfortable; which was very likely the real state of the case in some instances. When however a general prevalence of somersets throughout the room indicated that too large a proportion of the a.s.semblage were growing uneasy in their minds, or their seats, the director of the school stood up and gave the signal for singing.

Instantly the whole were on their feet, and some verse or two of a hymn were shouted heartily by the united lungs of the company. That seemed to be a great safety valve; they were quite brought into order, and somersets not called for, till some time had pa.s.sed again.

In the midst of this great a.s.semblage of strange figures, small and large, Mr. Carlisle's eye sought for Eleanor. He could not immediately find her, standing at the back of the room as he was; and he did not choose the recognition to be first on her side, so would not go forward. No bonnet or cloak there recalled the image of Eleanor; he had seen her once in her school trim, it is true, but that signified nothing. He had seen her only, not her dress. It was only by a careful scrutiny that he was able to satisfy himself which bonnet and which outline of a cloak was Eleanor's. But once his attention had alighted on the right figure, and he was sure, by a kind of instinct. The turns of the head, the fine proportions of the shoulders, could be none but her's; and Mr. Carlisle moved somewhat nearer and took up a position a little in the rear of that form, so that he could watch all that went on there.

He scanned with infinite disgust one after another of the miserable figures ranged upon it. They were well-grown boys, young thieves some of them, to judge by their looks; and dirty and ragged so as to be objects of abhorrence much more than of anything else to his eye. Yet to these squalid, filthy, hardened looking little wretches, scarcely decent in their rags, Eleanor was most earnestly talking; there was no avoidance in her air. Her face he could not see; he could guess at its expression, from the turns of her head to one and another, and the motions of her hands, with which she was evidently helping out the meaning of her words; and also from the earnest gaze that her unpromising hearers bent upon her. He could hear the soft varying play of her voice as she addressed them. Mr. Carlisle grew restless. There was a more evident and tremendous gap between himself and her than he had counted upon. Was she doing this like a Catholic, for penance, or to work out good deeds to earn heaven like a philanthropist? While he pondered the matter, in increasing restlessness, mind and body helping each other; for the atmosphere of the room was heavy and stifling from the foul human beings congregated there, and it must require a very strong motive in anybody to be there at all; he could hardly bear it himself; an incident occurred which gave a little variety to his thoughts. As he stood in the alley, leaning on the end of a form where no one sat, a boy came in and pa.s.sed him; brushing so near that Mr.

Carlisle involuntarily shrank back. Such a looking fellow-creature he had never seen until that day. Mr. Carlisle had lived in the other half of the world. This was a half-grown boy, inexpressibly forlorn in his rags and wretchedness. An old coat hung about him, much too large and long, that yet did not hide a great rent in his trowsers which shewed that there was no shirt beneath. But the face! The indescribable brutalized, stolid, dirty, dumb look of badness and hardness! Mr.

Carlisle thought he had never seen such a face. One round portion of it had been washed, leaving the dark ring of dirt all circling it like a border, where the blessed touch of water had not come. The boy moved on, with a shambling kind of gait, and to Mr. Carlisle's horror, paused at the form of Eleanor's cla.s.s. Yes,--he was going in there, he belonged there; for she looked up and spoke to him; Mr. Carlisle could hear her soft voice saying something about his being late. Then came a transformation such as Mr. Carlisle would never have believed possible.

A light broke upon that brutalized face; actually a light; a smile that was like a heavenly sunbeam in the midst of those rags and dirt irradiated; as a rough thick voice spoke out in answer to her--"Yes--if I didn't come, I knowed you would be disappointed."

Evidently they were friends, Eleanor and that boy; young thief, young rascal, though Mr. Carlisle's eye p.r.o.nounced him. They were on good terms, even of affection; for only love begets love. The lesson went on, but the gentleman stood in a maze till it was finished. The notes of Eleanor's voice in the closing hymn, which he was sure he could distinguish, brought him quite back to himself. Now he might speak to her again. He had felt as if there were a barrier between them. Now he would test it.

He had to wait yet a little while, for Eleanor was talking to one or two elderly gentlemen. n.o.body to move his jealousy however; so Mr.

Carlisle bore the delay with what patience he could; which in that stifling atmosphere was not much. How could Eleanor endure it? As at last she came down the room, he met her and offered his arm. Eleanor took it, and they went out together.

"I did not know you were in the school," she said.

"I would not disturb you. Thomas is not here--Mrs. Powle wanted him at home."

Which was Mr. Carlisle's apology for taking his place. Or somewhat more than Thomas's place; for he not only put Eleanor in a carriage, but took a seat beside her. The drive began with a few moments of silence.

"How do you do?" was his first question.

"Very well."

"Must I take it on trust? or do you not mean I shall see for myself?"

said he. For there had been a hidden music in Eleanor's voice, and she had not turned her face from the window of the carriage. At this request however she gave him a view of it. The hidden sweetness was there too; he could not conceive what made her look so happy. Yet the look was at once too frank and too deep for his personal vanity to get any food from it; no surface work, but a lovely light on brow and lip that came from within. It had nothing to do with him. It was something though, that she was not displeased at his being there; his own face lightened.

"What effect does Field-Lane generally have upon you?" said he.

"It tires me a little--generally. Not to-day."

"No, I see it has not; and how you come out of that den, looking as you do, I confess is an incomprehensible thing to me. What has pleased you there?"

A smile came upon Eleanor's face, so bright as shewed it was but the outbreaking of the light he had seen there before. His question she met with another.

"Did nothing there please you?"

"Do you mean to evade my inquiry?"

"I will tell you what pleased me," said Eleanor. "Perhaps you remarked--whereabouts were you?"

"A few feet behind you and your scholars."

"Then perhaps you remarked a boy who came in when the lesson was partly done--midway in the time--a boy who came in and took his seat in my cla.s.s."

"I remarked him--and you will excuse me for saying, I do not understand how pleasure can be connected in anybody's mind with the sight of him."

"Of course you do not. That boy has been a most notorious pickpocket and thief."

"Exactly what I should have supposed."

"Did you observe that he had washed his face?"

"I think I observed how imperfectly it was done."

"Ah, but it is the first time probably in years that it has touched water, except when his lips touched it to drink. Do you know, that is a sign of reformation?"

"Water?"

"Washing. It is the hardest thing in the world to get them to forego the seal and the bond of dirt. It is a badge of the community of guilt.

If they will be brought to wash, it is a sign that the bond is broken--that they are willing to be out of the community; which will I suppose regard them as suspected persons from that time. Now you can understand why I was glad."

Hardly; for the fire and water sparkling together in Eleanor's eyes expressed so much gladness that it quite went beyond Mr. Carlisle's power of sympathy. He remained silent a few moments.

"Eleanor, I wish you would answer one question, which puzzles me. Why do you go to that place?"

"You do not like it?"

"No, nor do you. What takes you there?"

"There are more to be taught than there are teachers for," said Eleanor looking at her questioner. "They want help. You must have seen, there are none too many to take care of the crowds that come; and many of those teachers are fatigued with attendance in the week."

"Do you go in the week?"

"No, not hitherto."

"You must not think of it! It is as much as your life is worth to go Sundays. I met several companies of most disorderly people on my way--do you not meet such?"

"Yes."

"What takes you there, Eleanor, through such horrors?"

"I have no fear."

"No, I suppose not; but will you answer my question?"

"You will hardly be able to understand me," said Eleanor hesitating. "I like to go to these poor wretches, because I love them. And if you ask me why I love them,--I know that the Lord Jesus loves them; and he is not willing they should be in this forlorn condition; and so I go to try to help get them out of it."

"If the Supreme Ruler is not willing there should be this cla.s.s of people, Eleanor, how come they to exist?"

"You are too good a philosopher, Mr. Carlisle, not to know that men are free agents, and that G.o.d leaves them the exercise of their free agency, even though others as well as themselves suffer by it. I suppose, if those a little above them in the social scale had lived according to the gospel rule, this cla.s.s of people never would have existed."