John Halifax [20]
The accent of shame, despondency, even despair, went to my very heart.
"Don't mind," I said, laying my feeble, useless hand upon that which guided me on so steady and so strong; "how could you have had time, working as hard as you do?"
"But I ought to learn; I must learn."
"You shall. It's little I can teach; but, if you like, I'll teach you all I know."
"O Phineas!" One flash of those bright, moist eyes, and he walked hastily across the road. Thence he came back, in a minute or two, armed with the tallest, straightest of briar-rose shoots.
"You like a rose-switch, don't you? I do. Nay, stop till I've cut off the thorns." And he walked on beside me, working at it with his knife, in silence.
I was silent, too, but I stole a glance at his mouth, as seen in profile. I could almost always guess at his thoughts by that mouth, so flexible, sensitive, and, at times, so infinitely sweet. It wore that expression now. I was satisfied, for I knew the lad was happy.
We reached the Mythe. "David," I said (I had got into a habit of calling him "David;" and now he had read a certain history in that Book I supposed he had guessed why, for he liked the name), "I don't think I can go any further up the hill."
"Oh! but you shall! I'll push behind; and when we come to the stile I'll carry you. It's lovely on the top of the Mythe--look at the sunset. You cannot have seen a sunset for ever so long."
No--that was true. I let John do as he would with me--he who brought into my pale life the only brightness it had ever known.
Ere long we stood on the top of the steep mound. I know not if it be a natural hill, or one of those old Roman or British remains, plentiful enough hereabouts, but it was always called the Mythe. Close below it, at the foot of a precipitous slope, ran the Severn, there broad and deep enough, gradually growing broader and deeper as it flowed on, through a wide plain of level country, towards the line of hills that bounded the horizon. Severn looked beautiful here; neither grand nor striking, but certainly beautiful; a calm, gracious, generous river, bearing strength in its tide and plenty in its bosom, rolling on through the land slowly and surely, like a good man's life, and fertilising wherever it flows.
"Do you like Severn still, John?"
"I love it."
I wondered if his thoughts had been anything like mine.
"What is that?" he cried, suddenly, pointing to a new sight, which even I had not often seen on our river. It was a mass of water, three or four feet high, which came surging along the midstream, upright as a wall.
"It is the eger; I've often seen it on Severn, where the swift seaward current meets the spring-tide. Look what a crest of foam it has, like a wild boar's mane. We often call it the river-boar."
"But it is only a big wave."
"Big enough to swamp a boat, though."
And while I spoke I saw, to my horror, that there actually was a boat, with two men in it, trying to get out of the way of the eger.
"They never can! they'll assuredly be drowned! O John!"
But he had already slipped from my side and swung himself by furze-bushes and grass down the steep slope to the water's edge.
It was a breathless moment. The eger travelled slowly in its passage, changing the smooth, sparkling river to a whirl of conflicting currents, in which no boat could live--least of all that light pleasure-boat, with its toppling sail. In it was a youth I knew by sight, Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, and another gentleman.
They both pulled hard--they got out of the mid-stream, but not close enough to land; and already there was but two oars' length between them and the "boar."
"Swim for it!" I heard one cry to the other: but swimming would not have saved them.
"Hold there!" shouted John at the top of his voice; "throw that rope out and I will pull you in!"
It was a hard tug: I shuddered to see him wade knee-deep in the stream--but he succeeded. Both gentlemen leaped safe on shore. The younger tried desperately to save his boat, but it was too