CHAPTER I.
Barnabas Thorpe stood preaching by the river. He had preached innorthern manufacturing towns, where the struggle for life is hard; hehad preached by the sea shore, and in little outlying hamlets in themining districts; but he had spoken nowhere as he spoke to-day inLondon.
This city, of great wealth and great poverty; of idlers and slaves;these churches, where the rich man sat on cushioned seats, and the poorman on benches hard as charity; these women, with hoarse voices andhungry eyes, who followed him in the streets; these children, for whomthe Kingdom of Heaven might indeed be open, but for whom earth had morekicks than blessings--all these stung him to a passionate eloquence thatalmost touched despair.
Did Luxury never look backwards over her shoulder at the black miserytreading close at her heel? he wondered. Would the men of Sodom andGomorrah rise up in judgment on this place?
Perhaps (though he did not know it, being little given to analysis), asharp personal want pointed his realisation of the contrast between theDives and the Lazarus of London; for his wife at this moment was withher father.
He stood on a barrel by the water's edge--the Thames was neither sweetnor clean at Stepney--and preached of Heaven in the midst of, whatseemed to him, an uncommonly good imitation of hell.
It was a close evening; but there was a fine drizzling rain falling,that damped everything except the preacher's ardour, which always burntmore fiercely for opposition, either physical or moral.
Even without his barrel he would have been a head taller than most ofhis hearers. His vigorous manhood was in strong contrast to the stuntedspecimens of riverside humanity gathered round him--under-sized,unhealthy youths, who looked as if they had done nothing but "loaf" fromthe day they were born; girls with straight fringes, and paper feathersstuck in their hats, and just a sprinkling of navvies, a burlier andmore hopeful, though brutal, element.
Barnabas Thorpe's voice rang through the heavy air, and all these faceswere upturned towards him, as if under a spell. To his left stood agroup of swarthy-complexioned foreign sailors; black-haired, withearrings in their ears. One of them wore a saffron-coloured handkerchiefround his throat, and had a green parrot on his wrist; he made a spot ofbrightness in the prevailing dun colour of the crowd.
Probably these strangers understood hardly one word in ten of thatvehement discourse, delivered with a strong L----shire drawl; but theyalso listened, as if something in the man's personality, the somethingstronger than words, held their attention.
With those closely packed squalid houses on the one side of him; withthe slowly flowing river, whose waters had given the quietus to so manya miserable body (as for the desperate souls, God only knew what hadbecome of them), on the other, he painted that second coming, when theglory of the Lord shall flash from East to West, and His judgment shalltarry no longer.
There was a mark on the preacher's left shoulder where some one hadplayfully thrown a rotten egg at him, and a cut across his forehead, towhich he put his handkerchief once or twice; both were visible signsthat, in spite of the present breathless lull, Barnabas was not likelyto suffer from too much adulation. Indeed, he was a fighter born, and itwas, perhaps, the impress of strenuous effort that made his rugged facea striking and rather refreshing sight in the midst of men who looked,for the most part, as if the beast had decidedly got the better of theangel in them.
He stood bare-headed, his hand stretched out, his gaunt figuresilhouetted against the leaden sky, pleading with passionate force. Hefelt the misery of London too strong for him at times; the atmosphereoppressed him both mentally and physically; but the very sense ofoppression made preaching a relief. Better wear himself out strivingagainst this horror, than acquiesce, letting it stifle and choke him.
There was a stir, a movement; the preacher lost hold of his audience.Suddenly, as the snapping of the thread of a necklace which has beenstrained tight sends each bead a different way, so attention was snapt,the spell broken.
The preacher, looking over the heads of the people, saw, first, aconfused mass of jeering, struggling lads, coming towards him, shoutinghoarsely; then, that they had in their midst some poor creature whomthey were baiting mercilessly, some one either drunk or mad; then, thatthey scattered a little to the right and left, and the man (he could seeit was a man now) had broken loose and made a dash forward, panting andstumbling.
Instinctively, Barnabas shouted encouragingly, and jumping off hisbarrel, held out his hands. He could never, for the life of him, keepclear of a fray--especially if it were a case of overwhelming odds.
The victim, when he heard the shout, looked up; his face ghastly, hiseyes wide open, with the strained, agonised look of a hunted hare. Hispersecutors were closing on him again; when, with an inarticulate cry,he shook himself free once more, and, running desperately forward, fellat the preacher's feet, clinging to his knees. "Doan't let them!" hecried; and Barnabas recognised him as Timothy.
For one moment the preacher hesitated; he had a horror of the man.
Then, "They'll shut me up!" cried Timothy; and there was a ring ofmortal terror in his voice.
Barnabas himself would, any day, have preferred to face death to a longimprisonment. He freed himself from Timothy's grasp, and stepped betweenhunter and hunted.
"I think ye should be 'shamed!" he said. "Ha' ye nought better to dothan to hound that poor creature to death or to Bedlam? which, happen,is a deal worse! Let him be; he's past doin' any harm. Any way, ye'llha' to do wi' me first."
There was a pause; the united strength of all this riff-raff would,probably, have been more than a match for the preacher; but no one quitecared to be the first to make the rush and "do wi' him".
A big coalheaver in the background shouted derisively: "A nice,white-livered set you are! Blessed if the Methody ain't a match for allof you!"
And then, all at once, the group broke up and scuttled away, dividingitself among the labyrinth of squalid streets that sloped down to theriver; and tramp, tramp, with heavy, warning steps, in their tightlybuttoned swallow-tail coats and white trousers, came a detachment offour City police, who promptly arrested Barnabas for making adisturbance, and Timothy for being drunk, on the king's highway.
"_That_ he's not," remarked the preacher. "He's got too little, not toomuch, aboard this time."
But he went to the police station without remonstrance, for he didn'tmean to lose sight of Timothy.
Certainly Barnabas ought to have had enough of taking uncalled-forresponsibilities on his shoulders; but there were some simple lessonswhich Dame Experience never could teach him, though she tried herhardest, and punished him well for his denseness in learning. He nevercould turn a deaf ear to a cry for mercy, nor refrain from burning hisown fingers in attempts to save other people's from fire. If hisdoctrines were narrow, his pity was wide. It is a combination ofcharacteristics that gives an infinity of trouble--especially to theowner.
Timothy complicated matters by dropping on the floor of the policestation in an exhausted heap; but the officer in charge, having at lastarrived at the conclusion that the idiot was ill, not drunk, and thatthe preacher had protected, not assaulted him, dismissed both with awarning; and Barnabas found himself saddled with this mostunprepossessing incubus, whose present helplessness was his onlyrecommendation.
It was as well, after all, that Margaret was not with him, he reflected;he could not have borne to have had Timothy under the same roof withher. The preacher had said many times, in the course of his experiencesin London, that it was "as well"; and said it with a sigh.
He lodged at this time in one of the streets turning out of CommercialRoad. He always seemed to have an extraordinary knack of gettingemployment. His fingers, which never _held_ money long, were seldom at aloss in making it; and, perhaps, his luck had something to do with thefact that no one ever forgot him, his personality being so stronglymarked.
He had made one friend in London during that short visit fifteen yearsbefore, namely Giles Potter, rat catcher, bird fancier, and b
irdstuffer; and some people whispered dog stealer as well. Why the tipsy,jolly, old reprobate was so fond of the preacher, of all men, no oneever knew.
The Barnabas Thorpe of the present, with his fanatical andwater-drinking earnestness, who preached in season and out of season,would seem to have little to do with the desperate and crack-brainedyoung sailor, whom Giles had held back from murdering the man who hadrobbed him of his sweetheart in the winter of 1834; but Giles hadrecognised and welcomed him.
The preacher worked all day in the back room of 33 Walton Street, curingand stuffing with fingers that were a good deal steadier than hiscompanion's, and in grave silence for the most part, till the lightfaded, when he would go out into the streets to preach; all thesuppressed energy of those long hours in a close atmosphere finding ventin sermons that attracted larger crowds daily, and were beginning to betalked about, even in the West End. Giles would go to hear himsometimes; a disreputable, slouching old figure, in a rough fur cap; afigure with loose thick lips and stubbled chin and kindly merry blackeyes.
"Lord bless you, I always knew Barnabas had something queer inside him!"he would say; "but I didn't reckon it would take this shape. To think ofhim turning Methody! But he was bound to be something. If he hadn'tturned saint, he'd have swung from the gallows by now; he's the sort whoserves any master hard, whether it's God, or the devil! Let's drink tohis being made archbishop! He'd wake them all up a bit."
Giles drank to that end pretty often, and Barnabas did the workmeanwhile: the business had not been so flourishing for years.
Possibly it was out of consideration for those services, or, possibly,because, with all his faults, a kinder-hearted old rascal neverbreathed, that Giles, after much grumbling, allowed Barnabas to bringTimothy under his roof.
"You'll repent it, Barnabas!" he said. "Mark my words, we shall have aninquest and no end of bother; and you'll wish you had taken good advice,which is always as much wasted on you as good beer. That's asevil-looking a sneak as ever I saw, and he's capable of dying on purposeto spite you. Bring him in, if you're a fool; but you'll live to repentit!"
Something in the words made the preacher's careworn face graver still.
"Happen I may," he said. "He said as bad luck was following me, but Iain't goin' to be stopped by that."
"Best turn him out again to make his ill prophecies in the gutter," saidGiles crossly.
The two men were standing in the doorway now, Barnabas having depositedTimothy on his own bed upstairs, and come down to breathe the cool nightair.
In Commercial Road the shops and warehouses were still alight; he couldhear the continual roar of the traffic, but this little off-street wasnearly dark, and the battered figure-head of a ship gleamed ghostly andwhite in the yard. The preacher stretched himself wearily and thensmiled.
"That old _Miranda_ must feel precious queer here," said he. He steppedinto the yard, and put his hand on it. He had been sickened by what hehad been hearing; his patient, in mortal terror of death, had beenpouring forth a crazy confession of iniquities that made the preacher'sbrain reel, though he had heard a good many "confessions" before now.
Was it possible that any human being could really have committed allthese unspeakable horrors, or were they the mad imaginings of a diseasedbrain? And was Timothy possessed by an unclean spirit, like the peoplein the Bible whom the Christ cured?
Barnabas at that moment felt that it would be easier to pray for firefrom Heaven to destroy, than for healing power to save. Surely it wastime for that second coming that should purge the world of its sins! Howhe hated this place!
Then the touch of the figure-head under his hand brought him a vision ofnights at sea; the hum of the great vans in Commercial Road changed tothe sound of water, and his soul was refreshed. The everlasting power hehad felt near in the salt strength of the sea, in the solemn wideness ofhis native marshes, in the cold stillness of many an early morning amongthe hills, was alive still. His heart went out to the strong Maker ofall things, with a cry for strength.
"What are you thinking of?" said Giles.
"I was thinking," said the preacher, "that if I was never to see thecountry again, still I'd ha' been luckier than most o' the people here,seein' I've been bred in it. An' that I've been an unprofitable servant,too easy disgusted and weary in His service; that I've been given muchan' done little. I've had a near sight o' the Maker as town folk miss;an' yet I ha' been cold an' out o' heart. I've been thinkin' I'll domore if He'll show me how."
Giles put his head on one side, like a wise old bird, and peered up atBarnabas through the gathering gloom.
"I wouldn't say that if I was you," he remarked. "Don't you be righteousovermuch; it ain't safe."
But the preacher went back to his post with fresh zeal.
Timothy was sitting upright, staring and pointing wildly at a corner ofthe room; he shrieked to Barnabas to come and stand between him and"it".
It was curious how, in his extremity, with the terror of death beforehim, he clung to Barnabas, whom he had always feared and hated, as theonly person capable of exorcising the horrors that surrounded him.Barnabas lighted a candle and examined the corner.
"There's naught there!" he said.
"It's shifted; it wur afeart o' ye; it's behind me now!" cried Timothy."It's makin' signs; it's pointin' to its head, and I didn't go to killhim. I only meant--it's comin' nearer--doan't, doan't! Ah!----"
There was another agonised shriek. Timothy tried to spring out of bed,the drops of sweat standing on his forehead.
Barnabas put his hands on the madman's shoulders and forced him back.This sort of thing had been going on at intervals for the last threehours, and the preacher began to feel as if he were the unwillingspectator of the tortures of the damned. Indeed, he believed, almost asfirmly as the miserable Timothy, that there was a devil in the room.
"It's no good doing that, man," he said at last, when Timothy madeanother frantic attempt to hide. "If it's a spirit ye are scared of, yecan't escape it so. If ye ha' done it a wrong, confess afore it's toolate; and the Lord will, mayhap, ha' mercy on ye an' lay it."
"You'll not call in any one to shut me up, and I'll tell ye," saidTimothy. "I'll be glad to get rid of 'em; but you'll not shut me up! Thestones wur burning through my cap into my brain; I see 'em all on firenow--there! blazin' away. Ye _must_ see 'em. Look inside the cap therein the corner, where it's standin' again."
The preacher glanced at Timothy's cloth cap, an ordinary enough article,such as nearly all the L----shire men of that part wore, himselfincluded. He picked it up and shook it. Needless to say, no burningstones fell out. Possibly the whole story was a delusion, but he couldnot look on at this agony of terror any longer.
"Tell me what ye ha' done, an' ease your mind," he said.
"Ye'll not let me hang: ye'll not tell!" said Timothy. "Swear ye'llnot."
"There's no need," said the preacher, "for _me_ to swear, who've neverbetrayed any man, nor never could. I'll not betray ye."
"It wur the back o' his skull," said Timothy, in an eager whisper; "justhere," putting his hand up to indicate the place. "He didn't bleed much,but went down straight; an' I turned him over an' tuk 'em out o' hispocket. I'd think it wur a dream, only he's followed me ever since.That's becos they've not buried him. Ye'll find him two stones' throwfrom the Pixies' Pond, lyin' very white an' quiet as if there weren't nomore mischief in him; but there be; he b'ain't one to forget, an' he'stryin' to drag me to hell. He's makin' signs now. Barnabas, Barnabas,he's----"
"How long ago did ye kill him?" said the preacher.
"Eh? how long? I should think it must ha' been a matter o' ninety-nineyears or maybe a hundred. Quite a hundred takin' it all round; what withthe time I was hidin' in the marshes, with him allus creepin' round andpeepin' behind bushes at me--tho' all the time pretendin' to lie quitestiff, for I kep' goin' back to see--an' the time I was gettin' to town,where they came hollerin' arter me an' said as I was mad. They allus saythat, if one speaks the truth."
"So they do," said Barnabas. "So ye knocked a man down in theCaulderwell marsh and robbed him, and ran away and came to London, eh?"
"That's it!" cried Timothy. He leaned forward and caught the preacher'scoat, holding him as a drowning man might clutch at an arm stretched outto save.
"An' he won't forget; he's been huntin' me ever since, like a cat amouse, an' he'll have me this night if ye won't lay him; for I feel himgettin' stronger every minute, an' I'm growin' weaker. He's a bit scaredo' ye, but if ye leave me a minute--there, there! he's yammerin' for mefrom behind that curtain. Oh, doan't let him, for God's sake, Barnabas!"
The poor wretch was shaking from head to foot. The spirit he feared wasthe mad creation of his own brain; yet, none the less, it _was_ huntinghim to death. Barnabas Thorpe stood upright, and lifted up his handssolemnly.
"If there is any evil spirit here," he said, and his voice rang withundoubting conviction, "I bid it begone, in the name of Jesus Christ theMaster." Timothy fell back panting, with a look of utter relief.
"Ay, it's gone; I seed it go!" he said.