Chapter VIII

A TALK WITH MR. LAURENCE. MILES' STORY.

MOTHER seems to have come to a stop in her writing. She says she's too busy, and I don't see why I shouldn't take it up instead, till she gets the inclination again. I should like to tell how Mr. Laurence came to think of having me in his house.

Though it's years and years ago, I can remember so well the very first day I ever saw him. Most likely I'd passed him in Ermespoint before that, and hadn't noticed. It wasn't a large place, and he was always going about. But anyhow, I hadn't remarked him particularly.

It was one day, when I was working in the garden under Nichols. I had been watering some beds, and I saw Mr. Bertram coming along the path with an old gentleman. Not that he was old, really, only he had grey hair, and a great many wrinkles; and even middle-aged people seem old to a boy of fifteen. They came close to where I was, and Mr. Bertram said, "This is the boy, Mr. Laurence."

Mr. Laurence repeated the words,—"This is the boy!"—slowly. Then he said again, "This is the boy that saved your life."

I always do say too much was made of that. I hadn't a moment to think, one way or the other, and to pull somebody else out of danger was the natural thing for anybody who wasn't a downright coward. I don't think I ever was a coward. But in my eyes it wasn't so brave a deed as if I'd had time to consider, and to know that I was putting my own life in danger. Not that I suppose I didn't know after a fashion, one thinks so quickly; but still, as I say, it was the natural thing to do for any lad of courage.

However, I suppose it's natural too that Mr. Bertram's friends should think more of it than I did, and I know they've never forgotten that moment. As for paying back, it's been paid back in kindness a hundred times to me and mine.

Well, when Mr. Laurence spoke so, Mr. Bertram said, "Didn't you, Miles?"

"It was a biggish piece of rock, sir," said I, for I didn't know what else to say.

"Thundering big," said he, in his quick way.

I don't know what there always was about Mr. Bertram that made everybody love him, but I know everybody did. When he was near, I couldn't keep my eyes off him.

Then Mr. Laurence came close, and he fixed on me a pair of bright eyes from underneath such shaggy eyebrows, and he said, "Why didn't you run away and save yourself, my boy? You might have been killed, trying to help my godson."

I'm not sure that I didn't laugh,—it seemed such a question to ask,— and I made an uncommonly stupid answer. "Mother wouldn't have liked it," I said.

"Ah!" said Mr. Laurence, with a curious look. "That's a wonderful check, isn't it? Quite right always to think of what your mother would like. And I'll tell you what, Somebody else wouldn't have liked it either. God wouldn't. We ought to be always ready to put ourselves in danger, if it's for the saving of somebody else."

Well, I saw Mr. Laurence any number of times after that. When Mr. Bertram was at home, he was often coming in; and even when Mr. Bertram was at school he never let a week pass without a call. Now and then, if he was walking through the garden, he would stop where I was, and would ask me a lot of questions, and sometimes he would get me to ask him questions, and he would answer them.

I never saw anybody who seemed to know such an amount about everything as Mr. Laurence. You couldn't ask him a question that took him by surprise. If he didn't know exactly what you wanted to hear, he would say so; but he always knew something about it. He had been reading hard, and studying hard, all his life, and this was the outcome. Not reading books only, but studying the things around him, and looking into Nature for himself, till it was wonderful the lot of knowledge that he had got together.

All my life I had been fond of books and of learning. I think I had that from my mother, and she often said she'd like to make a "scholar" of me. But it was seeing and hearing Mr. Laurence that first made me feel how little people in general know, and how much there is to be known, if only we would take the trouble to learn.

For the world around us is full of beautiful and extraordinary things, and the more we examine into them the more we see how beautiful and extraordinary they are; and yet ninety-nine men in a hundred walk through life blind and deaf to all they might see and hear.

One day, Mr. Laurence bade me look at the clouds,—white fleecy clouds,—scurrying over the sky, driven by a sharp breeze; with little firm white clouds between, not seeming to move at all. I had not been noticing them, but when I began to look I saw all at once how beautiful they were, with the blue sky beyond.

"What are those clouds made of?" Mr. Laurence asked.

Of course I didn't know; how should I? Nobody had ever told me. I had never even heard the question put before.

"Those lower clouds, moving so quickly, are made of fine mist," said he; "mist like a thick fog, or like the thick white mist which cools out of the hot steam leaving the funnel of a steam-engine."

I had always thought that was smoke, and I said so.

Mr. Laurence shook his head, smiling. "People often make that mistake," he said. "It is not smoke, but mist, or cooled steam. It is made of fine floating particles or specks of water. Smoke is made of little floating particles of charcoal. Quite a different matter, you see."

He had a short clear sort of way of saying such things, which stuck firm in one's mind; and I used to think over his words afterward, and not forget them.

"But all those clouds may not be made of mist," he went on. "Those little white streaks, far beyond and not seeming to move, are most likely made of snow. Yes, even in summer," said he, as I couldn't help showing how astonished I was. "So high up in the air as that is always intensely cold. There can scarcely be a doubt that those little clouds are frozen."

Another day he came into the garden with a little stone in his hand, hard as rock, but marked like a shell. He showed it me, and said it really was a shell, only very very old, and turned into stone. He called it a "fossil," which was a new word to me then.

"Where do you think I found this, Miles?" asked he.

"I don't know, sir," I said.

"Not on the sea-shore, but on the top of the cliff, buried deep. How do you think it came there?"

I couldn't tell, of course.

"Once upon a time, ages ago," said he, "those cliff-tops were under the waves. Not that the sea was higher, but that the land was lower. Once upon a time all England was deep under the sea, and the ground rose up very slowly to its present height. So you see how easily sea-shells can have become embedded in the highest rocks."

I had been doing a good deal of cloud-gazing for many days, picturing to myself how strange it was that all those wonderful shapes should be made of mist or snow. The next thing I did was to spend my spare time wandering about the cliffs, hunting for fossils above, or looking up from below and trying to fancy how all those heights had been once under the sea.

One day Mr. Laurence found me on the beach, busy in this way; and when he learnt what I was after he did seem pleased. "That's the way to get on," he said, "to study Nature for yourself, my boy." Then he pointed out to me the lines of old old sea-beaches, high up on the front of the cliff; where, as the land slowly rose, one part after another had been level with the sea. And he showed me how the cliffs were actually built up of tiny sand grains, once dropped upon the ocean's floor, and gradually pressed into hard rock, ready to be heaved up into the big cliffs I could now see.

You may fancy how wonderful all this was to a boy who really loved to be taught, but who had never been in the way of any such learning before.

I used to go home, and tell it all to my mother, whenever she had time to attend to me; and of course she told Mrs. Kingscote what a lot I thought of all Mr. Laurence said, though I didn't know it at the time; and Mrs. Kingscote told Mr. Laurence. So he knew his words were not quite thrown away.

The next thing he did was to lend me little books on such subjects, which I could read to myself, and I got so full of them, that it was hard never to neglect my work. Old Nichols had a sharp eye on me, however, and my mother kept me up to the mark; so I wasn't allowed to fall into careless habits.

One other day, I can remember, about the same time, something had brought to my mind what Mr. Bertram had said about the tides, the very afternoon of the cliff-accident. I hadn't thought of it again since, and Mr. Bertram was gone back to school, so I could not speak to him; but next time Mr. Laurence offered to lend me a book, I scraped up courage to ask if it might be "something about the tides."

"What do you know about the tides?" he asked; and I told him what Mr. Bertram had said.

"If it isn't giving you trouble, sir," I said.

"No; no trouble," said he; "only it's a difficult subject for anyone to understand, without knowing a few other matters first. But I'll try to find something readable for you." Then he asked: "What is it keeps the ocean in its bed? Why doesn't the sea pour all over the land?"

I had never thought of putting that question before; and I had to think. "Doesn't water always run downhill, sir?" said I; "and isn't it downhill into the ocean?"

"Good!" said he; "I like to see that you can think. And what makes water run downhill?"

"Isn't it—because it's heavy?" said I. "And what makes it heavy?" said he. There I was posed, and had no more to say. Mr. Laurence picked up an apple and let it drop.

"What makes that apple fall downward? Being heavy, you will say. But what makes it heavy? I will tell you. Because the earth attracts or draws it downward. The earth attracts everything to itself. The force of that attraction holds the ocean in its bed."

I asked him a lot of questions, and he told me a good deal more to make this clear.

"But the moon has power to attract as well as the earth," he said. "The moon cannot attract so strongly as to draw the ocean out of the bed; but it attracts strongly enough to draw up a great wave of sea-water which travels round and round the earth. Also, by drawing the body of the earth away from the other side, it makes another great wave there. Where these waves are it is high tide, and between them it is low tide."

All this comes back to me, the more clearly, I suppose, because of what followed. For before I could ask any more questions, Mr. Laurence said suddenly, "You would like to spend your life studying these questions."

"I can't, sir; I've got to work," I said.

"My boy, there is no harder work than headwork," said he. "But you mean that you have to work so as to earn money for your parents, and you are right." Then he stood and thought. "I don't see why not," he said; "it's what I have been looking for."

"I don't understand, sir, please."

He laughed and said, "No, I dare say not;" and he didn't tell me any more that day. But a few days later, it came out what he'd been thinking about. He talked things over with Mr. Kingscote first, and Mr. Kingscote spoke to my mother, and then it was put before me.

Mr. Laurence wanted to find a boy to help him in his studies and researches; a quick and thoughtful boy, he said, really interested in such things as interested him. He wanted a boy whom he could trust to help clean his microscopes and telescopes, and other instruments; and to dust and arrange his books; and to keep in order his museum of curiosities; and to do all sorts of things that he wanted done. But also he meant such a boy to have time for study, and he meant to teach him; and he said that if he could find the right sort of boy, he might even some day train him into a sort of "secretary" to himself. That would all depend on what the boy was, of course.

"I had pretty nearly given up the hope of finding him," he said; "but if Miles is willing, I think Miles would do."

To make matters easy, he offered to give me for the first year exactly the same wages as I was receiving from Mr. Kingscote, and at the year's end, if I was growing useful to him, he would give me more.

Mother didn't seem to know what to think of the matter at first. She said I mightn't like it when I was there; and she didn't see that I was going to be trained for anything. But Mr. Kingscote told her she needn't be afraid, for Mr. Laurence knew what he was about, and he would not let me be a loser. He had helped forward many young fellows, Mr. Kingscote said, though without taking them into his house, which was what he wanted to do with me.

Mother thought a lot of what Mr. Kingscote said, and my father seemed to be willing, and I had set my heart on going: so it was soon arranged. I only had to wait till a boy had been found to do my work at the Rectory.