Again Mr. Hayhoe heard the same footsteps; they were coming nearer. He thought he knew the sound of the steps, and tried to recollect when he had heard them.
He soon remembered, for the hour during which he had last listened to them was not one that he was likely to forget. Not many weeks had passed since that unhappy time.
Dr. Jacob had shaken his head over Tommy, and had spoken rudely to every one. Whenever a child died, Dr. Jacob believed the mother was to blame—or else the father, and he always told them so. He liked children, but hated fathers and mothers, all of whom he believed to be murderers.
Dr. Jacob had just left, after informing Mr. Hayhoe that he had only himself to blame for allowing Tommy to catch measles, and Priscilla was gone to lie down for a few moments, for—worn out with constant nursing—she had hardly closed her eyes for five nights and days.
Mr. Hayhoe waited beside the child’s cot. The moments passed slowly. He thought the child slept.
Soon he saw a change come over the boy’s face. It was become expressionless; a pallor was there instead of a flush. The breathing was hardly noticeable. Mr. Hayhoe took up his hand. The eyes saw nothing. Tommy’s week of sickness was nearly at an end.
When a man dies, Nature rages in anger: when a child’s life ends, she broods silently. Perhaps she is afraid of Dr. Jacob. Anyhow, the night when Tommy died was an unusually mild and quiet night for February. The window of the little room in Shelton was wide open, and the air came in, sweet and kindly.
All the other village children were recovered of the complaint, and at that time of the night were all sound asleep. It was hard for Mr. Hayhoe to believe that his alone was the one to be taken. Was it all his fault? Dr. Jacob had told him that it was, and, anyhow, he would have to bear the loss.
In the morning, just before nine, he would hear all the noise and clatter of the children going to school. His child would remain in bed, lying very still.
“Every parent who lets a child die should be hanged,” Dr. Jacob had observed. But who was it who had sent this trouble so suddenly upon them? What had they done to be so punished?
Mr. Hayhoe bent down over the hand that he held, and kissed it.
The hand was cold.
He heard steps in the lane. Not hurried steps, nor the gay going of a midnight reveller, nor were they the heavy slumbering steps of a labourer, returning late home. These steps were not like that: they were the sure and certain steps of one who has something important to do.
The footsteps came up the village street; they neither paused nor loitered, they came on. When they arrived at the cottage where the Hayhoes lodged, they stopped. Some one opened the garden gate and came to the door.
Mr. Hayhoe looked at the child. He gave a low groan, a gasp. He was dead.…
The footfalls that Mr. Hayhoe heard in the lane were the same as the ones he had heard when his son died.
It was not an ordinary field-labourer who had visited that Shelton cottage, “but perhaps,” thought Mr. Hayhoe, “it might have been a gentleman’s gardener, who had called with a gift of seed potatoes for his landlord, Mr. Thomas.”
Whoever it was, Mr. Hayhoe could not be mistaken in the footsteps, that were now coming very near.
Mr. Hayhoe leant back in the hedge: the stranger turned the corner of the lane, and came into sight. He walked very slowly, keeping his eyes upon the ground, as though searching for something that he had lost.
The man was so busy searching that he did not notice Mr. Hayhoe. He stopped in the lane, and stood for a while considering deeply. Evidently he was trying to recollect whether it was really in that place, or elsewhere, that he had lost what he now sought. The stranger seemed to Mr. Hayhoe to be no one in particular—just an ordinary man.
Perhaps a tradesman? His clothes, though they did not fit him very well, were quite new, and the man’s general appearance was tidy and respectable. He was certainly no idler; he had a busy look that indicated that, only a little while ago, he had had work to do.
The new-comer now turned and looked down the lane, the way he had come. He rubbed his forehead slowly with three fingers, and remained thoughtful.
Mr. Hayhoe never met a man but he looked well at him—and that for a reason—because in every human creature that he beheld he saw two goings—a falling to Hell or a rising to Salvation. Whenever he saw a new face, the thought always came to him, “’Tis a soul to be saved or damned.”
And a human soul, Mr. Hayhoe would remind himself, should be kindly led to Heaven.
Mr. Hayhoe hoped that the new-comer, if he mentioned religion to him, would take his words in a friendly way—some of them didn’t. Once or twice, when he had spoken of damnation to a farmer—Mr. Mere—he had been recommended to go to Hell himself. Upon another occasion, Mr. Hayhoe had happened to name the Holy Ghost—a person of the Trinity that is hardly noticed now-a-days—to John Card of Dodder, and received as a reply that his wife “had never yet tried to make a cake out of that self-riser.” Mr. Hayhoe hoped to do good to all whom he met. He watched the man, who was beginning to pry about in the hedge on the other side of the way, and to peer under the brambles.
“He may have lost his tobacco pouch,” thought Mr. Hayhoe, who remembered having once walked ten miles to regain his pipe, having left it, one summer day, upon the seashore.
Mr. Hayhoe examined the appearance of the stranger, who had not yet noticed him.
The man was of medium height; he wore a small beard and moustache, already turned grey. Mr. Hayhoe could not be sure of the colour of his eyes, though when they looked his way, they shone and sparkled, then turned to darkness. He supposed them to be blue.
Although his eyes were interesting, there was nothing otherwise strange about him; he was a mere common appearance—a man neither old nor young, and certainly not one who would attract any attention from others.
It is always a pleasant diversion of an idle moment, to wonder what a person, whom one meets out a-walking in the country, does. Sometimes the profession of a man can be known at once by his gait. There is no mistaking the squire. His lordly manner of walking is a proof of the fine quality of his blood. Others are not so easy to know, and, though a country labourer is likely to show what he is, yet there are other traders, about whose business there may well be a doubt. Mr. Weston, the wine merchant, has been taken for a colporteur, and Jove for a swan.
Mr. Hayhoe considered the stranger. He might, he fancied, have come thereabouts to sell something, or else to measure a piece of land, or discover in a church register the date of a funeral. Was he a journeyman stone-mason, or an insurance agent, or was he collecting orders for a new patent medicine, a certain cure for all the ills of mankind?
The man had by no means the look of a person who travels for pleasure. Evidently he had some duty to perform, some occupation that brought him into close contact with his fellow men.
He appeared to have, too, besides other qualities—as far as Mr. Hayhoe could judge—a social side to his character. He looked as though he would not be ill at ease in any company, and as if he might enter the palace of a king without being ashamed.
The two were alone in the lane: the hunt was gone far away. The hounds had followed the first fox, never expecting that much good would come of that journey into an earth under a great rock, and then had been called off, and all the following was gone to Madder Hill, where they hoped to find again.
The curious feeling of cold dread that Mr. Hayhoe had experienced so lately, almost as if he himself might have been at his last gasp, now completely left him. Indeed, his spirits were happier now—he had never been one to sorrow unduly—than they had been since the time of his boy’s illness.
The day brightened; the dark cloud that had lowered upon the earth moved softly away in a thin mist; the sun shone warmly, and the stranger turned and saw Mr. Hayhoe.
The clergyman was the first to speak.
“If you have lost anything, my friend,” he said to the man, who was now come quite close to him, “perhaps you will allow me to help you to find it?”
The man looked down anxiously at the ground; he did not reply, but said hurriedly, as though speaking to himself, “Such an unlucky accident as this has never happened in the memory of man, no, not since that foolish girl ate of the apple. Never before have I lost an order. Every command that has been committed to me to do, that command have I done until now.”
“Tell me your name,” asked Mr. Hayhoe, who began to think that the poor man must have escaped from a madhouse, “so that, if I have the good fortune to discover your property, I may be able to restore to you what you have lost.”
“My name is Death,” answered the man.
“Suffolk family?” rejoined Mr. Hayhoe, “for I know a village in that county where your name is common, and I have seen it too written upon a tombstone in this neighbourhood. But I trust you will not think me rude if I ask you to tell me your Christian name too?”
“I have never had one,” replied Death simply, “though in coming here this morning I met a little girl who made fun of my beard and called me ‘John.’”
“Oh, that must have been Winnie Huddy,” cried Mr. Hayhoe, “who only likes to be happy. But, alas! good sir, have you then never been baptized? Tell me, what is your faith, your belief, your religion?”
“I belong to God,” replied Death.
Mr. Hayhoe bowed his head reverently. He then looked up gladly.
It was indeed a rare thing for him to hear The Name spoken, unless in jest by the simple peasant, and, as a minister of the Gospel, he could not but commend one who spoke so truthfully.
“And, taking the matter in another way, a man,” thought Mr. Hayhoe, “who has read his Bible and acknowledges to whom he belongs, might have read other books too, and have heard of Mr. Collins.”
“You say well, friend,” said Mr. Hayhoe, joyfully, “and, in a little while, I am sure we shall have you in our fold.”
“Or you in mine,” answered Death, amiably.
Mr. Hayhoe was glad to talk to some one. Besides seeing this man’s name upon a Shelton tombstone, he also recollected noticing the same name in the local directory as belonging to a rag and bone merchant.
Mr. Hayhoe invited his new acquaintance to sit beside him upon the grassy bank.