The Old Helmet. Volume II

"Answer me only one thing. Do you like any one else better? He is as jealous as a bear, and afraid you do."

"Mamma," said Eleanor, a burning colour again rising to her brow, – "you know yourself that I see no one that I favour more than I do Mr. Carlisle. I do not hold him just in the regard he wishes, nevertheless."

"But do you like any one else better? tell me that. I just want that question answered."

"Mamma, why? Answering it will not help the matter. In all England there is not a person out of my own family whom I like so well; – but that does not put Mr. Carlisle in the place where he wishes to be."

"I just wanted that question answered," said Mrs. Powle.

CHAPTER VI

AT FIELD-LANE

"Still all the day the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark."

"She declares there is not anybody in the world she likes better than she does you – nor so well."

Mrs. Powle's fair curls hung on either side of a perplexed face. Mr. Carlisle stood opposite to her. His eye brightened and fired, but he made no answer.

"It is only her absurd fanaticism that makes all the trouble."

"There will be no trouble to fear, my dear madam, if that is true."

"Well I asked her the question, and she told me in so many words; and you know Eleanor. What she says she means."

Mr. Carlisle was silent, and Mrs. Powle went on. He was seldom loquacious in his consultations with her.

"For all that, she is just as fixed in her ways as a mountain; and I don't know how to manage her. Eleanor always was a hard child to manage; and now she has got these fanatical notions in her head she is worse than ever."

There was a slight perceptible closing in of the fingers of Mr.

Carlisle's hand, but his words were quiet.

"Do not oppose them. Fanaticism opposed grows rigid, and dies a martyr. Let her alone; these things will all pass away by and by. I am not afraid of them."

"Then you would let her go on with her absurd Ragged schools and such flummery? I am positively afraid she will bring something dreadful into the house, or be insulted herself some day. I do think charity begins at home. I wish Lord Cushley, or whoever it is, had been in better business. Such an example of course sets other people wild."

"I will be there myself, and see that no harm comes to Eleanor. I think

I can manage that."

"Eleanor of all girls!" said Mrs. Powle. "That she should be infected with religious fanaticism! She was just the girl most unlike it that could possibly be; none of these meek tame spirits, that seem to have nothing better to do."

"No, you are wrong," said Mr. Carlisle. "It is the enthusiastic character, that takes everything strongly, that is strong in this as in all the rest. Her fanaticism will give me no trouble – if it will once let her be mine!"

"Then you would let her alone?" said Mrs. Powle.

"Let her alone."

"She is spoiling Julia as fast as she can; but I stopped that. Would you believe it? the minx objected to taking lessons in dancing, because her sister had taught her that dancing assemblies were not good places to go to! But I take care that they are not together now. Julia is completely under her influence."

"So am I," said Mr. Carlisle laughing; "so much that I believe I cannot bear to hear any more against her than is necessary. I will be with her at Field-Lane next Sunday."

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 spacious 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 clustered 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 assemblage 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 passed again.

In the midst of this great assemblage 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 passed 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 class. 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 pronounced 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. Nobody 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 class."

"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."