Fairy Tales & Fantasy: George MacDonald Collection (With Complete Original Illustrations)
Nor will my readers understand what a heavy loss this was to him until I have informed them that he had been getting poorer and poorer for some time. He was not so successful in his speculations as he had been, for he speculated a great deal more than was right, and it was time he should be pulled up. It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag. So North Wind had to look after Mr. Coleman, and try to make an honest man of him. So she sank the ship which was his last venture, and he was what himself and his wife and the world called ruined.
Nor was this all yet. For on board that vessel Miss Coleman's lover was a passenger; and when the news came that the vessel had gone down, and that all on board had perished, we may be sure she did not think the loss of their fine house and garden and furniture the greatest misfortune in the world.
Of course, the trouble did not end with Mr. Coleman and his family. Nobody can suffer alone. When the cause of suffering is most deeply hidden in the heart, and nobody knows anything about it but the man himself, he must be a great and a good man indeed, such as few of us have known, if the pain inside him does not make him behave so as to cause all about him to be more or less uncomfortable. But when a man brings money-troubles on himself by making haste to be rich, then most of the people he has to do with must suffer in the same way with himself. The elm-tree which North Wind blew down that very night, as if small and great trials were to be gathered in one heap, crushed Miss Coleman's pretty summer-house: just so the fall of Mr. Coleman crushed the little family that lived over his coach-house and stable. Before Diamond was well enough to be taken home, there was no home for him to go to. Mr. Coleman—or his creditors, for I do not know the particulars—had sold house, carriage, horses, furniture, and everything. He and his wife and daughter and Mrs. Crump had gone to live in a small house in Hoxton, where he would be unknown, and whence he could walk to his place of business in the City. For he was not an old man, and hoped yet to retrieve his fortunes. Let us hope that he lived to retrieve his honesty, the tail of which had slipped through his fingers to the very last joint, if not beyond it.
Of course, Diamond's father had nothing to do for a time, but it was not so hard for him to have nothing to do as it was for Miss Coleman. He wrote to his wife that, if her sister would keep her there till he got a place, it would be better for them, and he would be greatly obliged to her. Meantime, the gentleman who had bought the house had allowed his furniture to remain where it was for a little while.
Diamond's aunt was quite willing to keep them as long as she could. And indeed Diamond was not yet well enough to be moved with safety.
When he had recovered so far as to be able to go out, one day his mother got her sister's husband, who had a little pony-cart, to carry them down to the sea-shore, and leave them there for a few hours. He had some business to do further on at Ramsgate, and would pick them up as he returned. A whiff of the sea-air would do them both good, she said, and she thought besides she could best tell Diamond what had happened if she had him quite to herself.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEASIDE
DIAMOND and his mother sat down upon the edge of the rough grass that bordered the sand. The sun was just far enough past its highest not to shine in their eyes when they looked eastward. A sweet little wind blew on their left side, and comforted the mother without letting her know what it was that comforted her. Away before them stretched the sparkling waters of the ocean, every wave of which flashed out its own delight back in the face of the great sun, which looked down from the stillness of its blue house with glorious silent face upon its flashing children. On each hand the shore rounded outwards, forming a little bay. There were no white cliffs here, as further north and south, and the place was rather dreary, but the sky got at them so much the better. Not a house, not a creature was within sight. Dry sand was about their feet, and under them thin wiry grass, that just managed to grow out of the poverty-stricken shore.
"Oh dear!" said Diamond's mother, with a deep sigh, "it's a sad world!"
"Is it?" said Diamond. "I didn't know."
"How should you know, child? You've been too well taken care of, I trust."
"Oh yes, I have," returned Diamond. "I'm sorry! I thought you were taken care of too. I thought my father took care of you. I will ask him about it. I think he must have forgotten."
"Dear boy!" said his mother, "your father's the best man in the world."
"So I thought!" returned Diamond with triumph. "I was sure of it!—Well, doesn't he take very good care of you?"
"Yes, yes, he does," answered his mother, bursting into tears. "But who's to take care of him? And how is he to take care of us if he's got nothing to eat himself?"
"Oh dear!" said Diamond with a gasp; "hasn't he got anything to eat? Oh! I must go home to him."
"No, no, child. He's not come to that yet. But what's to become of us, I don't know."
"Are you very hungry, mother? There's the basket. I thought you put something to eat in it."
"O you darling stupid! I didn't say I was hungry," returned his mother, smiling through her tears.
"Then I don't understand you at all," said Diamond. "Do tell me what's the matter."
"There are people in the world who have nothing to eat, Diamond."
"Then I suppose they don't stop in it any longer. They—they—what you call—die—don't they?"
"Yes, they do. How would you like that?"
"I don't know. I never tried. But I suppose they go where they get something to eat."
"Like enough they don't want it," said his mother, petulantly.
"That's all right then," said Diamond, thinking I daresay more than he chose to put in words.
"Is it though? Poor boy! how little you know about things! Mr. Coleman's lost all his money, and your father has nothing to do, and we shall have nothing to eat by and by."
"Are you sure, mother?"
"Sure of what?"
"Sure that we shall have nothing to eat."
"No, thank Heaven! I'm not sure of it. I hope not."
"Then I can't understand it, mother. There's a piece of gingerbread in the basket, I know."
"O you little bird! You have no more sense than a sparrow that picks what it wants, and never thinks of the winter and the frost and, the snow."
"Ah—yes—I see. But the birds get through the winter, don't they?"
"Some of them fall dead on the ground."
"They must die some time. They wouldn't like to be birds always. Would you, mother?"
"What a child it is!" thought his mother, but she said nothing.
"Oh! now I remember," Diamond went on. "Father told me that day I went to Epping Forest with him, that the rose-bushes, and the may-bushes, and the holly-bushes were the bird's barns, for there were the hips, and the haws, and the holly-berries, all ready for the winter."
"Yes; that's all very true. So you see the birds are provided for. But there are no such barns for you and me, Diamond."
"Ain't there?"
"No. We've got to work for our bread."
"Then let's go and work," said Diamond, getting