John Brent/Chapter XII

A Ghoul at the Feast

Mr. Clitheroe’s thoughts loved to recur to his native Lancashire, smoky though its air might be, and clean-shaved the grass of its lawns. I could not help believing that all the enthusiasm of this weak, gentle nature for the bleak plains and his pioneer life was a delusion. It would have been pretty talk for an after-dinner rhapsody at the old mansion he had spoken of in England. There, as he paced with me, a guest, after pointing out the gables, wings, oriels, porches, that had clustered about the old building age after age, he might have waved it away into a vision, and spoken with disdain of civilization, and with delight of the tent and the caravan. It had the flavor of Arcady, and the Golden Age, and the simple childhood of the world, when an enthusiastic Rousseauist Marquis talked in ’89 of the rights of man and universal fraternity; it would seem a crazy mockery if the same enthusiast had held the same strain a few years later, in the tumbril, as he rolled slowly along through cruel crowds to the guillotine.

Speaking of Lancashire, we fell upon the subject of coal-mining. I was surprised to find that Mr. Clitheroe had a practical knowledge of that business. He talked for the first time without any of his dreamy, vague manner. His information was full and clear. He let daylight into those darksome pits.

“I am a miner, too,” said I, “but only of gold, a baser and less honorable substance than coal. Your account has a professional interest to me. You talk like an expert.”

“I ought to be. If I once saw half my fortune fly up a factory chimney, I saw another half bury itself in a coal-pit. I have been buried myself in one. I am not ashamed to say it; I have made daily bread for myself and my daughter with pick, shovel, and barrow, in a dark coal-mine, in the same county where I was once the head of the ancient gentry, and where I saw the noblest in the land proud to break my bread and drink my wine. I am not ashamed of it. No, I glory that in that black cavern, where daylight never looked, the brightness of the new faith found me, and showed the better paths where I now walk, and shall walk upward and onward until I reach the earthly Sion first, and then the heavenly.”

Again the old gentleman’s eye kindled, and his chest expanded. What a tragic life he was hinting! My heart yearned toward him. I had never known what it was to have the guidance and protection of a father. Mine died when I was a child. I longed to find a compensation for my own want, — and a bitter one it had sometimes been, — in being myself the guardian of this errant wayfarer, launched upon lethal currents.

“Your faith is as bright as ever. Brother Hugh,” said a rasping voice behind me, as Mr. Clitheroe was silent. “You are an example to us all. The Church is highly blessed in such an earnest disciple.”

Elder Sizzum was the speaker. He smiled in a wolfish fashion over the group, and took his seat beside the lady, like a privileged guest.

“Ah, Brother Sizzum!” said Mr. Clitheroe, with a cheerless attempt at welcome, very different from the frank courtesy he had showed to ward us, “we have been expecting you. Ellen dear, a cup of tea for our friend.”

Miss Clitheroe rose to pour out tea for him. Sheep’s clothing instantly covered the apostle’s rather wolfish demeanor. He assumed a manner of gamesome, sheepish devotion. When he called her Sister Ellen, with a familiar, tender air, I saw painful blushes redden the lady’s cheeks.

Brent noticed the pain and the blush. He looked away from the group toward the blue sierra far away to the south; a hard expression came into his face, such as I had not seen there since the old days of his battling with Swerger. Trouble ahead!

Sizzum’s presence quenched the party. And, indeed, our late cheerfulness was untimely, at the best. It was mockery, — as if the Marquis should have sung merry chansons in the tumbril.