Chapter LXIII. The dome of the angels
When Clare awoke, he knew he had been asleep a long time. It was, notwithstanding, quite dark, and there was something wrong with him. His head ached: it had never ached before. He put out his hands: Pummy’s hairy body was nowhere near. He called Abdiel: no whimper answered; no cold nose was thrust into his hand. He had gone to sleep, surely between his two friends! Could he have only dreamed it?
Why was the darkness so thick? There must surely be light in the clouds by this time! He felt half awake and half dreaming.
What was the curious motion he grew aware of? Was something trying to keep him asleep, or was something trying to wake him? Had they put him in a big cradle? Were they heaving him about to rouse him? Or could it be a gentle earthquake that was rocking him to and fro? Would it wake up in earnest presently, and pull and push, and shake and rattle, until the dome of the angels came shivering down upon him?
Where was he? Not on the hard floor of Pummy’s cage, but on something much harder—like iron. Was he in the wagon in which they carried the things for setting up the show? Something had happened to him, and his mother was taking him with her! But in that case he would be lying softer! She would not have given him a bed so full of aches!
What would they think at the bank? What would little Ann think if he came to her no more?
He could not be in a caravan; the motion was much too smooth and pleasant for that!
He put his hand to his face: what was it wet on his cheek? It did not feel nice; it felt like blood! Had he had a blow on the head? Was that what gave him this headache? He felt his head all over, but could find no hurt.
Why was he lying like a log, wondering and wondering, instead of getting up and seeing what it all meant? It must be the darkness and the headache that kept him down! The place was very close! He must get out of it!
He tried to get on his feet, but as he rose, his head struck something, and he dropped back. He got again on his knees and groped about. On all sides he was closed in. But he was not shut in a dungeon of stone. He seemed to be in a great wooden box—small enough to be a box, much too large for a coffin. Could it be one of the oubliettes in the roof of the doge’s palace at Venice? He laughed at the idea, for the motion continued, the gentle earthquake that seemed trying to rock him to sleep: the doge’s palace could hardly be afloat on the grand canal!
What could it all mean? What would little Ann do without him? She would not cry: she never cried—at least, he had never seen her cry! but that would not make it easier for her!
What had become of Abdiel? Had Glum Gunn got him? Then the wet on his face was Abdiel’s blood—shed in his defence, perhaps, when his enemies were taking him away!
Fears and anxieties, such as he had never known before, began to crowd upon him—not for himself; he was not made to think of himself, either first or second. Something dreadful might be going on that he could not prevent! He had never been so miserable. It was high time to do something—to ask the great one somewhere, he did not know where, who could somehow, he did not know how, hear the thoughts that were not words, to do what ought to be done for little Ann, and Abdiel, and Pummy! He prayed in his heart, lay still, and fell fast asleep.
He came to himself again, in the act of drawing a deep breath of cool, delicious air. He was no longer shut in the dark, stifling box. He was coming alive! A comforting wind blew all about him. It was like a live thing putting its own life into him. But his eyelids were heavy; he was unable to open them.
All at once they opened of themselves.
The dome of the angels had come down and closed in round him, but bringing room for him, taking none away. It was blue, and filled with the loveliest white clouds, possessed by a blowing wind that never was able to blow them away. They were of strangely regular shapes; not the less were they alive—piled one above the other, up and up—up ever so high! They all kept their places, and some had the loveliest blue shadows upon them, which glided about a little. But the dome of the angels rose high, and ever higher still, above them. The dome of the angels was at home, and the clouds were at home in it. He gazed entranced at the sight. Then came a sudden strong heave and roll of the earthquake, and a light shone in his eyes that blinded him.
It was but the strong friendly sun. When Clare opened his eyes again, he knew that he was lying on the deck of one of the great ships he had so frequently looked at from the shore. Oh, how often had he not longed after this one and that one of them, as if in some one somewhere, perhaps in that one, lay something he could not do without, which yet he could never set his eyes, not to say his hands upon. He had his heart’s desire, and what was to come of it? He lay on the ship, and the ship lay on the sea, a little world afloat on the water, moving as a planet moves through the heavens, but carrying her own heaven with her, attended by her own clouds, bearing her whither she would. Up into those clouds he lay gazing, up into the dome of the angels, drawing deeper and deeper breaths of gladness, too happy to think—when a foot came with a kick in the ribs, and a voice ordered him to get up: was he going to lie there till the frigate was paid off?
Chapter LXIV. The panther
Clare scrambled to his feet, and surveyed the man who had thus roused him. He had a vague sense of having seen him before, but could not remember where. Feeling faint, and finding himself beside a gun, he leaned upon it.
The sailor regarded him with an insolent look.
“Wake up,” he said, “an’ come along to the cap’n. What’s the service a comin’ to, I should like to know, when a beggarly shaver like you has the cheek to stow hisself away on board one o’ his majesty’s frigates! Wouldn’ nothin’ less suit your highness than a berth on the Panther?”
“Is that the name of the ship?” asked Clare.
“Yes, that’s the name of the ship!” returned the man, mimicking him. “You’ll have the Panther, his mark, on the back o’ you presently! Come along, I say, to the cap’n! We ha’ got to ask him, what’s to be done wi’ rascals as rob their masters, an’ then stow theirselves away on board his majesty’s ships!”
“Take me to the captain,” said Clare.
The man seemed for a moment to doubt whether there might not be some mistake: he had expected to see him cringe. But he took him by the collar behind, and pushed him along to the quarter-deck, where an elderly officer was pacing up and down alone.
“Well, Tom,” said the captain, stopping in his walk, “what’s the matter? Who’s that you’ve got?”
“Please yer honour,” answered the boatswain, giving Clare a shove, “this here’s a stowaway in his majesty’s ship, Panther. I found him snug in the cable-tier.—Salute the captain, you beggar!”
Clare had no cap to lift, but he bowed like the gentleman he was. The captain stood looking at him. Clare returned his gaze, and smiled. A sort of tremble, much like that in the level air on a hot summer day, went over the captain’s face, and he looked harder at Clare.
A sound arose like the purring of an enormous cat, and, sure enough, it was nothing else: chained to the foot of the forward binnacle stood a panther, a dark yellow creature with black spots, bigger than Pummy, swinging his tail. Clare turned at the noise he made. The panther made a bound and a leap to the height and length of his chain, and uttered a cry like a musical yawn. Clare stretched out his arms, and staggered toward him. The next moment the animal had him. The captain darted to the rescue. But the beast was only licking him wherever there was a bare spot to lick; and Clare wondered to find how many such spots there were: he was in rags! The panther kept tossing him over and over as if he were a baby, licking as he tossed, and in his vibrating body and his whole behaviour manifested an exceeding joy. The captain stood staring “like one that hath been stunned.”
The boatswain was not astonished: he had seen Clare at home among wild animals, and thought the panther was taken with the wild-beast smell about him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Clare, rolling himself out of the panther’s reach, and rising to his feet, “but wild things like me, somehow! I slept with a puma last night. He and this panther, sir, would have a terrible fight if they met!”
The captain threw a look of disappointment at the panther.
“Go forward, Tom,” he said.
The man did not like the turn things had taken, and as he went wore something of the look of one doomed to make the acquaintance of another kind of cat.
“What made you come on board this ship, my lad?” asked the captain, in a voice so quiet that it sounded almost kind.
“I did not come on board, sir.”
“Don’t trifle with me,” returned the captain sternly.
Clare looked straight at him, and said—
“I have done nothing wrong, sir. I know you will help me. I fell asleep last night, as I told you, sir, in the cage of a puma. I knew him, of course! How I came awake on board your ship, I know no more than you do, sir.”
The smile of Clare’s childhood had scarcely altered, and it now shone full on the captain. He turned away, and made a tack or two on the quarter-deck. He was a tall, thin man, with a graceful carriage, and a little stoop in the shoulders. He had a handsome, sad face, growing old. His hair was more than half way to gray, and he seemed somewhere about fifty. He had the sternness of a man used to command, but under the sternness Clare saw the sadness.
The attention of the boy was now somewhat divided between the captain and his panther, which seemed possessed with a fierce desire to get at him, though plainly with no inimical intent. The attention of the captain seemed divided between the boy and the panther; his eyes now rested for a moment on the animal, now turned again to the boy. Two officers on the port side of the quarter-deck stole glances at the strange group—the stately, solemn, still man; the ragged creature before him, who looked in his face without fear or anxiety, and with just as little presumption; and the wildly excited panther, whose fierce bounding alternated with cringing abasement of his beautiful person, accompanied by loving sweeps of his most expressive tail.
The captain made a tack or two more on the quarter-deck, then turned sharp on the boy.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“I don’t quite know, sir,” answered Clare.
“Come with me,” said the captain.
To the surprise of the officers, he led the way to his state-room, and the boy followed. The panther gave a howl as Clare disappeared. The officers remarked that the captain looked strange. His lips were compressed as if with vengeance, but the muscles of his face were twitching.
Chapter LXV. At home
Clare followed, wondering, but nowise anxious. He saw nothing to make him anxious. The captain looked a good man, and a good man was a friend to Clare! But when he entered the state-room, and saw himself from head to foot in a mirror let into a bulkhead, he was both startled and ashamed: how could the captain take such a scarecrow into his room! he thought. He did not reflect that it was just the sort of thing he did himself. He had indeed felt dirty and disreputable, and been aware of the dry, rasping tongue of the panther on many patches of bare skin, but he had had no idea what a wretched creature he looked. Not one of the garments he saw in the mirror was his own, and they were disgracefully torn. His hair was sticking out every way, and his face smeared with blood. His feet were bare, and one trouser-leg rent to the knee. His enemies had done their best to ensure prejudice, and frustrate belief. They did not see in his look what no honest man could misread. Innocent as he knew himself, he could not help feeling for a moment disconcerted. But his faithfulness threw him on the mercy of the man before him.
The captain turned and sat down. The boy stood in the doorway, staring at his reflex self in the mirror. The captain understood his consternation.
“Come along, my poor boy,” he said. “How did you get into this mess?”
“I think I know,” answered Clare, “but I’m not sure.”
“You must have been drunk,” sighed the captain.
“Oh, no, sir!” returned Clare, with one of his radiant smiles. “I’ve had but one glass of beer in my life, and I didn’t like it.”
The captain smiled too, and gazed at him for several moments without speaking.
“It seems to me,” he said at last, but as if he were thinking of something quite different, “you must be in want of food.”
“Oh, no, sir!” answered Clare again, “I’m used to going without.”
Like a child the sport of an evil fairy, he was again the boy of the old wanderings, in the old, hungry times. But did he ever look so lost as in the mirror before him? he wondered.
“You haven’t told me–” said the captain, and stopped short, as if he dreaded going further.
“I will tell you anything you want to know, sir. Please ask me.”
“You say you did not come on board the frigate: what am I to understand by that?”
“That I was brought, sir, in my sleep. It wouldn’t be fair, would it, sir, to mention names, when I don’t know for certain who they were that brought me? I never knew anything till I opened my eyes, and thought I was in–”
He paused.
“Where did you think you were?” asked the captain eagerly.
“In the dome of the angels, sir,” answered Clare.
The captain’s face fell. He thought him an innocent, on whom rascals had been playing a practical joke. But that made no difference! If he were a simpleton, he might none the less be–! Was her boy left to–?
He shuddered visibly, and again was silent.
“Tell me,” he said at length, “what you remember.”
He meant—of the circumstances that immediately preceded his coming to himself on board the Panther; but Clare began with the first thing his memory presented him with. Perhaps he was yet a little dazed. He had not got through a single sentence, when he saw that something earlier wanted telling first; and the same thing happening again and again within the first five minutes of his narration, sir Harry saw he had before him a boy either of fertile imagination, or of “strange, eventful history.” But either supposition had its difficulty. If, on the one hand, he had had the tenth part of the experiences hinted at; if, for one thing, he had been but a single month on the tramp, how had he kept such an innocent face, such an angelic smile? If, on the other hand, he was making up these tales, why did he not look sharper? and whence the angelic smile? Did the seeming innocence indicate only such a lack of intellect as occasionally accompanies a remarkable individual gift? He must make him begin at the beginning, and tell everything he knew, or might pretend to know about himself!
“Stop,” he said. “You told me you did not quite know your name: what did they call you as far back as you can remember?”
“Clare Porson,” answered the boy.
At the first word the captain gave a little cry, but repressed his emotion, and went on. His face was very white, and his breath came and went quickly.
“Why did you say you did not quite know your name?”
“My father and mother called me by their name because there was nobody to tell them what my real name was.”
“Then they weren’t your own father and mother that gave you the name?”
“No, sir. I’m but using theirs till I get my own. I shall one day.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Don’t you think, sir, that everything will come right one day?”
“God grant it!” responded the captain with a groan, self-reproached for the little faith beside the strong desire.
“Do you think it wrong, sir, to use a name that is not quite my own?” said Clare. “People sometimes seem to think so.”
“Not at all, my boy! You must have a name. You did not steal it. They gave it you.”
The look of the boy when he thus answered him, completely restored sir Harry’s confidence in his mental soundness, while both the mode and the nature of his answer to every question he put to him, bore the strongest impress of truth.
“If the boy be a liar,” he said to himself, “I will never more trust my kind. I will turn to the wild-beasts, and believe in panthers and hyenas!”
“They did, sir,” answered Clare. “Mr. Porson gave me his own name, and he was a clergyman. So I thought afterwards, when I had to think about it, that it couldn’t be wrong to use it.”
But how could sir Harry palter so with himself? He might have got at the necessary facts so much quicker!
Sir Harry shrank from seeing his suddenly wakened hope, dead for many a year, crumble before his eyes. He dared not yet drive question close.
“Did Mr. Porson give you both your names?” he asked.
“No, sir. My mother said I brought the first with me. She said I told them—I don’t remember myself—that my name was Clare.”
The captain drove back the words that threatened to break from his lips in spite of him. His boy’s name was Clarence, but his mother, whose dearest friend was a Clara, called her child always Clare!
“I mean my second mother, sir,” explained Clare; “my own mother is in the dome of the angels.”
A flash lightened from the captain’s eyes, but he seemed to himself to have gone blind. Clare saw the flash, and wondered.
Again the dome of the angels! The words burst into meaning. Out of the depths of the world of life rose to his mind’s eye the terrible thing that had made him a lonely man. Again he stood with his head thrown back, looking up at the Assumption of the Virgin painted in that awful dome; again the earthquake seized the church, and shook the painted heaven down upon them. He knew no more. His little boy had been standing near him, holding his mother’s hand, but staring up like his father!
He had to force the next words from his throat.
“Where did the good people who gave you their name find you?”
“Sitting on my mother—my own mother. The angels fell down on her, and when they went up again, she had got mixed with them, and went up too.”
Some people thought my friend Skymer “a little queer, you know!” I leave my reader to his own thought: he will judge after his kind. Clare’s father no longer doubted his perfect faculty.
All through Clare’s life, as often as the old, vague, but ever ready vision brought back its old feelings, with them came the old thoughts, the old forms of them, and the old words their attendant shadows; and then Clare talked like a child.
The stern, sorrowful man hid his face In his hands.
“Grace,” he murmured—and Clare knew somehow that he spoke to his wife, “we have him again! We will never distrust him more!”
His frame heaved with the choking of his sobs.
Then Clare understood that the grand man was his father. The awe of a perfect gladness fell upon him. He knelt before him, and laid his hands together as in prayer.
“Why did you distrust me, father?” said the half-naked outcast.
“It was not my child, it was my father I distrusted. I am ashamed,” said sir Harry, and clasped him in his arms.
The boy laid his blood-stained face against his father’s bosom, and his soul was in a better home than a sky full of angels, a home better than the dome itself of all the angels, for his home was his father’s heart.
How long they remained thus I cannot tell. It seemed to both as if so it had been from eternity, and so to eternity it would be. When a thing is as it should be, then we know it is from eternity to eternity. The true is.
The father relaxed at length the arms that strained his child to his heart. Clare looked up with white, luminous face. He gazed at his father, cried like little Ann, “You’re come!” and slid to his feet. He clasped and kissed and clung to them—would hardly let them go.
All this time the officers on the quarter-deck were wondering what the captain could have to do with the beggarly stowaway. The panther stood on his feet, anxiously waiting, his ears starting at every sound. He was longing for the boy with whom he had played, panther cub with human infant, in the years long gone by. The sweet airs of his childhood were to the panther plainly recognizable through all the accretions that disfigured but could not defile him. The two were the same age. They had rolled on floor and deck together when neither could hurt—and now neither would. For the animal was perfectly harmless, and chained only because apt to be unseasonably frolicsome. When they let him loose, it was a season of high jinks and rare skylarking. Then the men had to look out! He had twice knocked a man overboard, and had once tumbled overboard himself. But he had never killed a creature, was always gentle with children, and might be trusted to look after any infant.
Sir Harry raised his son, kissed him, set him on his own chair, and retired into an inner cabin.
A knock came to the door. Clare said, “Come in.” The quartermaster entered. Instead of sir Harry, he saw the miserable stowaway, seated in the captain’s own chair. He swore at him, and ordered him out, prepared to give him a kick as he passed.
“Out with you!” he cried. “Go for’ard. Tell the bo’s’n to look out a rope’s end. I’ll be after you.”
“The captain told me to sit here,” answered Clare, and sat.
The officer looked closer at him, begged his pardon, saluted, and withdrew.
The father heard, and said to himself, “The boy is a gentleman: he knows where to take his orders.”
He called him into the inner cabin, and there washed him from head to foot, rejoicing to find under his rags a skin as clean as his own.
“Now what are we to do for clothes, Clare?” said sir Harry.
“Perhaps somebody would lend me some,” answered Clare. “Mayn’t I be your cabin-boy, father? You will let me be a sailor, won’t you, and sail always with you?”
“You shall be a sailor, my boy,” answered sir Harry, “and sail with me as long as God pleases. You know to obey orders!”
“I will obey the cook if you tell me, father.”
“You shall obey nobody but myself,” returned sir Harry; “—and the lord high admiral,” he added, with a glance upward, and a smile like his son’s.
For that day Clare kept to the captain’s state-room; the next, he went on deck in a midshipman’s uniform, which he wore like a gentleman that could obey orders.