Chapter VIII.
Clare and his human brothers
Another anecdote of him, that has no furtherance of the story in it, I
must yet tell.
One cold day in a stormy March, the wind was wildly blowing broken
clouds across the heavens, and now rain, now sleet, over the shivering
blades of the young corn, whose tender green was just tinging the dark
brown earth. The fields were now dark and wintry, heartless and cold;
now shining all over as with repentant tears; one moment refusing to
be comforted, and the next reviving with hope and a sense of new
life. Clare was hovering about the plough. Suddenly he spied, from a
mound in the field, a little procession passing along the
highway. Those in front carried something on their shoulders which
must be heavy, for it took six of them to carry it. He knew it was a
coffin, for his home was by the churchyard, and a funeral was no
unfamiliar sight. Behind it one man walked alone. For a moment Clare
watched him, and saw his bowed head and heavy pace. His heart filled
from its own perennial fount of pity, which was God himself in him. He
ran down the hill and across the next field, making for a spot some
distance ahead of the procession. As it passed him, he joined the
chief mourner, who went plodding on with his arms hanging by his
sides. Creeping close up to him, he slid his little soft hand into the
great horny hand of the peasant. Instinctively the big hand closed
upon the small one, and the weather-beaten face of a man of fifty
looked down on the boy. Not a word was said between them. They walked
on, hand in hand.
Neither had ever seen the other. The man was following his wife and
his one child to the grave. "Nothing almost sees miracles but misery,"
says Kent in _King Lear_. Because this man was miserable, he saw a
miracle where was no miracle, only something very good. The thing was
true and precious, yea, a message from heaven. Those deep, upturned,
silent eyes; the profound, divine sympathy that shone in them; the
grasp of the tiny hand upon his large fingers, made the heart of the
man, who happened to be a catholic, imagine, and for a few moments
believe, that he held the hand of the infant Saviour. The cloud lifted
from his heart and brain, and did not return when he came to
understand that this was not _the_ lamb of God, only another lamb from
the same fold.
When they had walked about two miles, the boy began to fear he might
be intruding, and would have taken his hand from the other, but the
man held it tight, and stooping whispered it was not far now. The
child, who, without knowing it, had taken the man under the
protection of his love, yielded at once, went with him to the grave,
joined in the service, and saw the grave filled. They went again as
they had come. Not a word was spoken. The man wept a little now and
then, drew the back of his brown hand across his eyes, and pressed a
little closer the hand he held. At the gate of the parsonage the boy
took his leave. He said they would be wondering what had become of
him, or he would have gone farther. The man released him without a
word.
His mother had been uneasy about him, but when he told her how it was,
she said he had done right.
"Yes," returned the boy; "I belong there myself."
The mother knew he was not thinking of the grave.
One more anecdote I will give, serving to introduce the narrative of
the following chapter, and helping to show the character of the
boy. He was so unlike most boys, that one must know all he may about
him, if he would understand him.
Never yet, strange as the assertion must seem, had the boy shown any
anger. His father was a little troubled at the fact, fearing such
absence of resentment might indicate moral indifference, or, if not,
might yet render him incapable of coping with the world. He had
himself been brought up at a public school, and had not, with all his
experience of life, come to see, any more than most of the readers of
this story now see, or for a long time will see, that there lies no
nobility, no dignity in evil retort of any kind; that evil is evil
when returned as much as when given; that the only shining thing is
good--and the most shining, good for evil.
One day a coarse boy in the village gave him a sharp blow on the
face. It forced water from his eyes and blood from his nose. He was
wiping away both at once with his handkerchief, when a kindly girl
stopped and said to him--
"Never mind; don't cry."
"Oh, no!" answered Clare; "it's only water, it's not crying. It would
be cowardly to cry."
"That's a brave boy! You'll give it him back one of these days."
"No," he returned, "I shall not I couldn't."
"Why?"
"Because it hurts so. My nose feels as if it were broken. I know it's
not broken, but it feels like it."
The girl, as well as the boys who stood around him, burst into
laughter. They saw no logic in his reasoning. Clare's was the divine
reasoning that comes of loving your neighbour; theirs was the earthly
reasoning that came of loving themselves. They did not see that to
Clare another boy was another of himself; that he was carrying out the
design of the Father of men, that his creatures should come together
into one, not push each other away.
The next time he met the boy who struck him, so far was he both from
resentment and from the fear of being misunderstood, that he offered
him a rosy-cheeked apple his mother had given him as he left for
school. The boy was tyrant and sneak together--a combination to be
seen sometimes in a working man set over his fellows, and in a rich
man grown poor, and bent upon making money again. The boy took the
apple, never doubted Clare gave it him to curry favour, ate it up
grinning, and threw the core in his face. Clare turned away with a
sigh, and betook himself to his handkerchief again, The boy burst into
a guffaw of hideous laughter.
