"No Place Like Home"

BY

HESBA STRETTON

AUTHOR OF

"JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER," "CAROLA," &c.

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD

BUTLER & TANNER THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS FROME, AND LONDON.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. AN OLD HOVEL

II. IN THE WOODS

III. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

IV. THE MAGISTRATES' MEETING

V. TURNED ADRIFT

VI. FIVE YEARS

VII. HER LAST COMMAND

VIII. GOING HOME

IX. A NEW HOME

"NO PLACE LIKE HOME"

CHAPTER I.

AN OLD HOVEL.

THERE was not another home like it in all the parish of Broadmoor. It was a half-ruined hut, with walls bulging outwards, and a ragged roof of old thatch, overgrown with moss and yellow stonecrop. A rusty iron pipe in one corner served as a chimney to the flat hearth, which was the only fireplace within; and a very small lattice-window of greenish glass, with a bull's-eye in each pane, let in but little of the summer sunshine, and hardly a gleam of the winter's gloomy light. Only a few yards off, the hut could not be distinguished from the ruins of an old lime-kiln, near which it had been built to shelter the lime-burners during their intervals of work.

There was but one room downstairs, with an earthen floor trodden hard by the trampling of heavy feet, whilst under the thatch there was a little loft, reached by a steep ladder and a square hole in the ceiling, where the roof came down on each side to the rough flooring, and nowhere was there height enough for even a short person to stand upright.

The furniture was as rude and simple as the home itself. The good household chattels, on which Ruth Medway had prided herself when she lived in her pretty cottage in the village street, had never come to this poor hovel. There was a broken chair or two, a table-top propped upon an unbarked trunk of a young fir-tree from the woods behind the lime-kiln, a little cracked crockery, two or three old boxes, and the indispensable saucepan and kettle in which she did all her cooking. Upstairs was a low pallet bedstead with a flock bed, and, on the floor beside it, a mattress stuffed with chaff, close under the roof, where the thatch must almost have touched the sleeper's face. There was no window into this loft; the only light came through the square hole in the floor.

"Home is home, be it never so homely;" and Ruth Medway had learned to love the quiet place where her youngest and her dearest child had been born. Behind the house lay the Lime-kiln Woods; once a busy place of quarries and kilns, but left long ago to the growth of trees and brushwood; the haunt of all kinds of wild woodland creatures, hollow with rabbit-burrows, and thickly peopled with singing birds, and with the game that the squire loved to preserve. Excepting in the shooting season, when the sharp crack of guns was to be heard all day long, there was no noise to drown the buzz of the humble-bee, and the low whirring of the unseen grasshopper, and the hundred faint and delicate sounds which fill the stillness of an unfrequented greenwood. Day and night, summer and winter, had their special signs and sounds there, all well-known to Ishmael, the youngest son of old Humphrey Medway.

He was the youngest son, and the most unwelcome to his father. Humphrey had given but a scanty welcome to his first-born child, and each successor had been received with growing surliness. Ishmael came the last, when his mother's hair was already grey, and her back bent with hard toil at out-door labour. The eldest son was grown up and married, and the little love he might have once felt for his mother had hardened into indifference, whilst the other children, those who were living, were scattered abroad, seldom caring to return home. Humphrey never mentioned any of them; but sometimes of an evening, when Ruth rested for a little while, and sat watching the kettle boil on the crackling fire of sticks, she would count their names over on her fingers; eight names over which she sighed, but at the ninth her brown wrinkled face wore a fleeting smile as she muttered, "Ishmael."

On the whole, Ruth was not given to brooding over the past; for she lived too hard a life to keep her memory green. She had grown fond of this lonely hut, where Ishmael had been born; and he had never known any other home. There was nothing in it to prevent him keeping pet dormice, and hedgehogs found in the hollows of the wood; though the gamekeeper would not let him have a rabbit, or allow Ruth to keep a cat; and a dog was not to be thought of. But a tame starling, and the white owl which had chosen its roost under their thatch, and answered his call in the dusk, swooping noiselessly through the air, made the place full of life and interest to him. All the woods behind had been his play-ground from his earliest childhood; and not the finest house in Broadmoor could have tempted Ishmael to exchange his home for it.

Ruth had taught herself to read after she was married; when Humphrey soon began to leave her alone in the evening, and kept her sitting up late for his return from the village inn. Her loneliness had led her to reading the Bible—the only book she possessed beside a Prayer-book and an old collection of hymns. She had learned to believe quite simply, with no doubt in her inmost heart, that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and that Jesus Christ had really "given His life as a ransom" for her. With these two thoughts firmly rooted in her mind she read the Bible eagerly; and it was from its old well-worn pages she had chosen the name of her youngest and dearest child, "Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction."

Ruth had never been a woman of many words; and she was very silent about those things which were deepest in her heart. Humphrey was accustomed to boast himself of her subjection to him, as not daring to "cheep" a word against him. In her young days she had been one of the village choir; and now Ishmael sat in the singing gallery in her old place. It was one of her greatest pleasures to creep just within the church door, where her poor clothing would be least noticed, and listen to the voices in the gallery overhead, and to join in singing "Glory be to the Father" at the close of each familiar Psalm. There her bent back seemed to ache less, and her wearied limbs felt rested.

Often in the week, as she picked stones or hoed thistles in the fields, her withered lips would murmur the words, "Glory be to the Father," and she would feel as a way-worn traveller feels in a hot and desert country, when he comes across a little fountain of fresh water springing up in his path. His journey is not over, but the living waters give him strength to go on with it.

So bad a name did Humphrey and his eldest son bear in the parish, as being idle and drunken vagabonds, that it overshadowed Ruth and Ishmael, and they found themselves banished by it from all intercourse with decent and friendly neighbours. Ishmael did not feel it until he went to the village school, where the other children were warned against Humphrey Medway's boy. The women who worked with Ruth in the fields kept aloof from her; not so much because they were better off than she was, but because she was so silent in her ways.

Thus there was no companionship for them but in each other; and it was sufficient. It was enough for Ruth to think of her boy all day, and to hear his regular healthful breathing beside her all night; and for Ishmael, the woods that lay all around his home gave him never-ending occupation and delight.

But though they were without friends, they were not without an enemy. The nearness of the low hovel to the woods was enough to arouse the suspicions of the squire's gamekeeper, even if he had had no reason to dislike Humphrey Medway and his family. But, before Ishmael was born, there had existed a bitter hatred between Nutkin, the gamekeeper, and young Humphrey, Ishmael's eldest brother.

Humphrey had succeeded in winning away from Nutkin the girl he had wished to make his wife; and though the keeper had himself married shortly afterwards, he had never forgiven the offence, or ceased to hold him and all belonging to him in bitter enmity. The very name of Medway was hateful to his ears. Of late, too, Ishmael had won two or three prizes at the village school over the head of his own boy, who was about the same age, and who lamented loudly over his defeat by old Humphrey's despised son.

Yet in spite of all Nutkin's efforts, he had been unable to dislodge old Humphrey from the miserable hut. The rent of a shilling a week was paid punctually by Ruth, who would rather have gone without food than omit its regular settlement, since nothing else could keep her drunken husband and herself from the parish workhouse. The farmer, who held a lease of the lime-kiln and the hut, found her work on his farmstead and showed her some little favour. So all the keeper could do was to suspect and to watch, ready to take advantage of any trespass that could be punished by the law.

For thirteen years now Ruth had worked upon the Willows Farm; and many a hot summer day had Ishmael, when a baby, lain all day long under the hedgerows, carefully swathed in an old shawl; while his mother toiled in the harvest fields. He had himself begun to earn a few pence as soon as he could scare crows from the springing corn, or could help to tend the sheep in the chilly days of spring during the lambing season.

For the last two years his father had been grumbling at his being an idle mouth to feed; though it was rarely Ruth saw a penny of his money, and it had been with difficulty that she had been able to keep her boy at school. But now the time was come when Ishmael must cease to be a child, and must begin to get his own living by regular work. Mr. Chipchase, the farmer, had consented to try him as waggoner's boy; and had promised if he was a good and steady lad, to "make a man of him."

"Mother," said Ishmael, as they sat together on their door-sill in the long, light June evening, listening to the cuckoo and the thrushes singing in the woods, "I told teacher I'm going to service on Monday; and she says I may take little Elsie into the woods to-morrow; and she'll give us dinner to eat there; for me as well as her, mother; because she says I've always been a good boy at school, and she's sorry to lose me."

"I'm glad she's sorry to lose thee," said Ruth; "and if thee weren't to sleep at home every night, I hardly know what I could do without thee, Ishmael. I almost wish thee were a tiny little lad once again."

"When I'm a man," he answered eagerly, "you shan't ever go out working in the fields, or tire yourself, mother. We'll never, never leave here, because there's no place like it; but get the master to let me build a better house that 'll keep you warm and dry, and we'll live together till we die: won't we, mother?"

"Please God!" she said softly, with a smile on her brown face, as she thought how much earlier she must die than the young lad, little more than a child, who sat beside her.

"I should think it would please God," answered Ishmael, in a quiet voice. "He doesn't want us to be always very poor, poorer than other folks, mother?"

"Nay, I don't know," she replied; "His own Son was born in a stable, and died upon the cross, with folks mocking at Him. I don't know what thee and me have to go through, Ishmael. We can only say 'Please God!'"

It was late before Ishmael mounted the ladder to the close loft overhead, and crept into his bed on the floor under the low thatch. But it was after midnight when Ruth, with her wrinkled yet sinewy arms, helped her drunken husband from one rung to another, fearful every night lest her strength should fail her, and that he might fall, crippled or lifeless, on the floor below.

"Thank God!" she always cried in the depth of her soul, when his sluggish and leaden feet were safely planted on the floor above.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE WOODS.

THE village schoolmistress, Mrs. Cliff, knew Ruth well, for she had employed her as her laundress from the time she had taken charge of the school; and no linen could be sweeter and whiter than that which Ruth washed, and dried in the sun on the gorse-bushes growing about the old lime-kiln. Ishmael had been one of the most constant and least troublesome of her scholars; and she was willing to mark her approbation of him by entrusting her little girl to his care for a long day in the Lime-kiln Woods.

The spring had come slowly on during May, and though it was already June the trees were not yet in full leaf. The delicate network of boughs overhead still kept many an open space for the sunshine to stream through; and the half-transparent leaves glistened with a green light. There was no thick tangle of burdock and thistle at present to catch their feet and hinder them as they strolled along under the hazel bushes. Here and there patches of bluebells covered the dusky earth; and in a few rare spots, known to Ishmael, white lilies of the valley were growing amid their broad green leaves. No very tall or massive forest trees grew in the thin soil; but now and then an elm or an oak, somewhat stunted, spread out its crooked branches; and there were clumps of larches, tall and thin, growing in close companionship, with their pointed tops piercing the sky.

And what a sky it was! A deeper blue than the bluebells under the hazels, with little clouds scattered over it whiter than the lilies, some of gleaming brightness, and others of a pearly grey, floating lazily along before the soft fresh westerly wind. Ishmael felt a pride in it all, as if the woods, and the flowers, and the sky belonged to himself.

"Sit down and listen, Elsie," he said, throwing himself under an elm tree, and holding his breath for very pleasure, as he strained his ear to catch the different notes of the birds, singing in these early hours of the sunny day.

There was the merry whistle of the starling—did Elsie hear that?—and the deep, soft cooing of the wood-pigeons from their great clumsy nests in the fir trees; and the harsh cry of the jay, as he flitted across the open space between some trees, displaying his bright blue wing-feathers. Oftener than any other note, except the chirp of the sparrows, came the deep, grave caw of the rooks, as they sailed by high in the air. Or was not the clear merry song of the thrushes and blackbirds in the bushes all about them the most frequent sound of them all?

But Ishmael knew also the note of the kingfisher and the woodpecker, and the plaintive cry of the lapwing, and the call of the little moor-lion in the swampy ground, overgrown with water weeds and tall bulrushes. Every sound, loud and low, of the busy woodlands was known to him; but they had never been so sweet to him as now, when, for the first time, he had a companion gazing admiringly into his face as he displayed his knowledge. Elsie was far before him in school; but here she sat with wide-open wondering eyes, drinking in every word he spoke.

"Oh, Ishmael!" she exclaimed, with a sigh of happiness and admiration, "I should think nobody in the world knows as much as you!"

Never before had Ishmael had such words spoken to him, and he felt almost dizzy. He began to think what other wonders he could show or tell to her. Yes, there were more wonderful things to disclose to her admiring eyes. The woods were beautiful; but he knew what was hidden underground as well as what lay open to the eye of day. For underneath their feet the earth was honeycombed with long, deserted galleries, and roadways, and tunnels, where ages ago the limestone had been dug, and brought to the surface by level shafts opening on the hill slopes. Far away from the light of the sun, these subterranean paths ran in many windings and twistings. Even on the surface there were indications of them in basin-like hollows of varying depths and sizes, where the treacherous ground had sunk in.

Some of these hollows were filled with water, forming little pools, which glistened up to the sun, while others were dry basins green with turf and coltsfoot, amongst which wild strawberries grew. Ishmael and Elsie had busily gathered the small red fruit, and strung it upon long bents of grass, to keep it as a dessert to the dinner they were going to eat in the woods. Ishmael hastily formed a surprise for Elsie. When the right minute came, when she was tired and hungry, and the sun beat hotly upon them, he would take her to the cool shelter of a cave near at hand, where he could show to her the entrance into the old limestone quarry.

They came at length to a broad open glade, stretching far away between two rows of trees, which was the famous spot for shooting-bouts in the autumn, when the squire's visitors spent whole days in sport. Here in the long, untrodden grass lay the old cartridge-cases thrown hastily away last year. Ishmael told Elsie how the cracking of the guns rang all day long, and how the smell of the gunpowder and its thick smoke tainted the sweet air; and how, at night, when all was over, there seemed a sorrowful silence in the wood, as if its timorous inhabitants had been scared into utter terror.

"And the rabbits keep in their burrows," said Ishmael, "and don't come out to play after sunset, like they do other nights, ay, by hundreds and thousands, running after one another, and tumbling about like us on the green, when we've a holiday; and you can see their little white pads tossing about in the dusk. If you sit very still they'll come a'most to your feet. And the bats fly about, and the cockchafers, and big white owls, that make no noise when they fly. I'll show you our big owl at home before you go home to-night."

They were sauntering along the glade slowly, when suddenly, from under their very feet, as it seemed to Elsie, there sprang up, with a loud whirr and a great fluttering of wings, a pheasant which had been sitting close on her nest among the long grass, till their feet nearly touched her. Elsie uttered a little scream of fright; but Ishmael went down on his knees in a moment, parting the tangled grass which hid the nest. There lay a cluster of brown eggs, ten of them, packed closely together, and warm with the brooding-heat of the mother-hen.

"Oh!" cried Elsie, eagerly. "Can't we have some of them for dinner? Only we can't cook them, you know, without a fire and a saucepan."

"Ay, but we can!" answered Ishmael, proud of doing what seemed impossible to his companion. "We can make a fire, and roast 'em in the ashes. We won't take more than four, two apiece; and I can tell which are the newest laid. See, I've got a match in my pocket, and we'll pick some sticks, and light a fire in a place I know of, where nobody can ever find us."

Gathering up the sticks as they went along, he led Elsie to his cave. It was situated about half-way down a steep slope which was overgrown with hazel bushes and brambles. The low archway of the entrance was little more than a yard high, and was quite concealed by the brushwood. Within, the roof rose to a good height, and the floor of limestone was dry, forming altogether a pleasant retreat, large enough to hold from twenty to thirty persons. A green twilight reached them through the closely-interwoven network of underwood; and a delicious coolness made it the pleasantest place possible now the sun was so high in the blue sky.