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diff --git a/18077.txt b/18077.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b49bf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/18077.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5350 @@ +Project Gutenberg's We and the World, Part I, by Juliana Horatia Ewing + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: We and the World, Part I + A Book for Boys + +Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing + +Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18077] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WE AND THE WORLD, PART I *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Erik Bent, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + WE AND THE WORLD: + + A BOOK FOR BOYS. + + + PART I. + + + BY + JULIANA HORATIA EWING. + + + + SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, + LONDON: NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. + BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET. + NEW YORK: E. & J.B. YOUNG & CO. + + + +[Published under the direction of the General Literature Committee.] + + + + + DEDICATED + TO MY TWELVE NEPHEWS, + WILLIAM, FRANCIS, STEPHEN, PHILIP, LEONARD, + GODFREY, AND DAVID SMITH; + REGINALD, NICHOLAS, AND IVOR GATTY; + ALEXANDER, AND CHARLES SCOTT GATTY. + + J.H.E. + + + + +WE AND THE WORLD. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + "All these common features of English landscape evince a calm and + settled security, and hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues + and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the + moral character of the nation."--WASHINGTON IRVING'S _Sketch Book_. + + +It was a great saying of my poor mother's, especially if my father had +been out of spirits about the crops, or the rise in wages, or our +prospects, and had thought better of it again, and showed her the bright +side of things, "Well, my dear, I'm sure we've much to be thankful for." + +Which they had, and especially, I often think, for the fact that I was +not the eldest son. I gave them more trouble than I can think of with a +comfortable conscience as it was; but they had Jem to tread in my +father's shoes, and he was a good son to them--GOD bless him for it! + +I can remember hearing my father say--"It's bad enough to have Jack +with his nose in a book, and his head in the clouds, on a fine June +day, with the hay all out, and the glass falling: but if Jem had been a +lad of whims and fancies, I think it would have broken my poor old +heart." + +I often wonder what made me bother my head with books, and where the +perverse spirit came from that possessed me, and tore me, and drove me +forth into the world. It did not come from my parents. My mother's +family were far from being literary or even enterprising, and my +father's people were a race of small yeomen squires, whose talk was of +dogs and horses and cattle, and the price of hay. We were +north-of-England people, but not of a commercial or adventurous class, +though we were within easy reach of some of the great manufacturing +centres. Quiet country folk we were; old-fashioned, and boastful of our +old-fashionedness, albeit it meant little more than that our manners and +customs were a generation behindhand of the more cultivated folk, who +live nearer to London. We were proud of our name too, which is written +in the earliest registers and records of the parish, honourably +connected with the land we lived on; but which may be searched for in +vain in the lists of great or even learned Englishmen. + +It never troubled dear old Jem that there had not been a man of mark +among all the men who had handed on our name from generation to +generation. He had no feverish ambitions, and as to books, I doubt if +he ever opened a volume, if he could avoid it, after he wore out three +horn-books and our mother's patience in learning his letters--not even +the mottle-backed prayer-books which were handed round for family +prayers, and out of which we said the psalms for the day, verse about +with my father. I generally found the place, and Jem put his arm over my +shoulder and read with me. + +He was a yeoman born. I can just remember--when I was not three years +old and he was barely four--the fright our mother got from his fearless +familiarity with the beasts about the homestead. He and I were playing +on the grass-plat before the house when Dolly, an ill-tempered dun cow +we knew well by sight and name, got into the garden and drew near us. As +I sat on the grass--my head at no higher level than the buttercups in +the field beyond--Dolly loomed so large above me that I felt frightened +and began to cry. But Jem, only conscious that she had no business +there, picked up a stick nearly as big as himself, and trotted +indignantly to drive her out. Our mother caught sight of him from an +upper window, and knowing that the temper of the cow was not to be +trusted, she called wildly to Jem, "Come in, dear, quick! Come in! +Dolly's loose!" + +"I drive her out!" was Master Jem's reply; and with his little straw +hat well on the back of his head, he waddled bravely up to the cow, +flourishing his stick. The process interested me, and I dried my tears +and encouraged my brother; but Dolly looked sourly at him, and began to +lower her horns. + +"Shoo! shoo!" shouted Jem, waving his arms in farming-man fashion, and +belabouring Dolly's neck with the stick. "Shoo! shoo!" + +Dolly planted her forefeet, and dipped her head for a push, but catching +another small whack on her face, and more authoritative "Shoos!" she +changed her mind, and swinging heavily round, trotted off towards the +field, followed by Jem, waving, shouting, and victorious. My mother got +out in time to help him to fasten the gate, which he was much too small +to do by himself, though, with true squirely instincts, he was trying to +secure it. + +But from our earliest days we both lived on intimate terms with all the +live stock. "Laddie," an old black cart-horse, was one of our chief +friends. Jem and I used to sit, one behind the other, on his broad back, +when our little legs could barely straddle across, and to "grip" with +our knees in orthodox fashion was a matter of principle, but impossible +in practice. Laddie's pace was always discreet, however, and I do not +think we should have found a saddle any improvement, even as to safety, +upon his warm, satin-smooth back. We steered him more by shouts and +smacks than by the one short end of a dirty rope which was our apology +for reins; that is, if we had any hand in guiding his course. I am now +disposed to think that Laddie guided himself. + +But our beast friends were many. The yellow yard-dog always slobbered +joyfully at our approach; partly moved, I fancy, by love for us, and +partly by the exciting hope of being let off his chain. When we went +into the farmyard the fowls came running to our feet for corn, the +pigeons fluttered down over our heads for peas, and the pigs humped +themselves against the wall of the sty as tightly as they could lean, in +hopes of having their backs scratched. The long sweet faces of the +plough horses, as they turned in the furrows, were as familiar to us as +the faces of any other labourers in our father's fields, and we got fond +of the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killed +and eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like other +farm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the adaptability +of human nature. + +So far so good, on my part as well as Jem's. That I should like the +animals "on the place"--the domesticated animals, the workable animals, +the eatable animals--this was right and natural, and befitting my +father's son. But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless, +mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble. +Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wandered +farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my +friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in my +trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own +waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at +the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head +on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well, +and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations of +unoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear. + +I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I was +so fond of Buffon's _Natural History_, of which there was an English +abridgment on the dining-room bookshelves. + +But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent came +round, and teased my father into taking in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_; and +those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were +the numbers for me! + +I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the only +way in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, I +don't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame. + +My father "pish"ed and "pshaw"ed when he caught me "poking over" books, +but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius, whose learning +might bring renown of a new kind into the family. In a quiet way of her +own, as she went gently about household matters, or knitted my father's +stockings, she was a great day-dreamer--one of the most unselfish kind, +however; a builder of air-castles, for those she loved to dwell in; +planned, fitted, and furnished according to the measure of her +affections. + +It was perhaps because my father always began by disparaging her +suggestions that (by the balancing action of some instinctive sense of +justice) he almost always ended by adopting them, whether they were wise +or foolish. He came at last to listen very tolerantly when she dilated +on my future greatness. + +"And if he isn't quite so good a farmer as Jem, it's not as if he were +the eldest, you know, my dear. I'm sure we've much to be thankful for +that dear Jem takes after you as he does. But if Jack turns out a +genius, which please God we may live to see and be proud of, he'll make +plenty of money, and he must live with Jem when we're gone, and let Jem +manage it for him, for clever people are never any good at taking care +of what they get. And when their families get too big for the old house, +love, Jack must build, as he'll be well able to afford to do, and Jem +must let him have the land. The Ladycroft would be as good as anywhere, +and a pretty name for the house. It would be a good thing to have some +one at that end of the property too, and then the boys would always be +together." + +Poor dear mother! The kernel of her speech lay in the end of it--"The +boys would always be together." I am sure in her tender heart she +blessed my bookish genius, which was to make wealth as well as fame, and +so keep me "about the place," and the home birds for ever in the nest. + +I knew nothing of it then, of course; but at this time she used to turn +my father's footsteps towards the Ladycroft every Sunday, between the +services, and never wearied of planning my house. + +She was standing one day, her smooth brow knitted in perplexity, before +the big pink thorn, and had stood so long absorbed in this brown study, +that my father said, with a sly smile, + +"Well, love, and where are you now?" + +"In the dairy, my dear," she answered quite gravely. "The window is to +the north of course, and I'm afraid the thorn must come down." + +My father laughed heartily. He had some sense of humour, but my mother +had none. She was one of the sweetest-tempered women that ever lived, +and never dreamed that any one was laughing at her. I have heard my +father say she lay awake that night, and when he asked her why she could +not sleep he found she was fretting about the pink thorn. + +"It looked so pretty to-day, my dear; and thorns are so bad to move!" + +My father knew her too well to hope to console her by joking about it. +He said gravely: "There's plenty of time yet, love. The boys are only +just in trousers; and we may think of some way to spare it before we +come to bricks and mortar." + +"I've thought of it every way, my dear, I'm afraid," said my mother with +a sigh. But she had full confidence in my father--a trouble shared with +him was half cured, and she soon fell asleep. + +She certainly had a vivid imagination, though it never was cultivated to +literary ends. Perhaps, after all, I inherited that idle fancy, those +unsatisfied yearnings of my restless heart, from her! Mental +peculiarities are said to come from one's mother. + +It was Jem who inherited her sweet temper. + +Dear old Jem! He and I were the best of good friends always, and that +sweet temper of his had no doubt much to do with it. He was very much +led by me, though I was the younger, and whatever mischief we got into +it was always my fault. + +It was I who persuaded him to run away from school, under the, as it +proved, insufficient disguise of walnut-juice on our faces and hands. +It was I who began to dig the hole which was to take us through from the +kitchen-garden to the other side of the world. (Jem helped me to fill it +up again, when the gardener made a fuss about our having chosen the +asparagus-bed as the point of departure, which we did because the earth +was soft there.) In desert islands or castles, balloons or boats, my +hand was first and foremost, and mischief or amusement of every kind, by +earth, air, or water, was planned for us by me. + +Now and then, however, Jem could crow over me. How he did deride me when +I asked our mother the foolish question--"Have bees whiskers?" + +The bee who betrayed me into this folly was a bumble of the utmost +beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the +tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's +black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat on +the window-frame. I had seen him brushing first one side and then the +other side of his head, with an action so exactly that of my father +brushing his whiskers on Sunday morning, that I thought the bee might be +trimming his; not knowing that he was sweeping the flower-dust off his +antennae with his legs, and putting it into his waistcoat pocket to make +bee bread of. + +It was the liberty I took in kissing him that made him not sit still +any more, and hindered me from examining his cheeks for myself. He began +to dance all over the window, humming his own tune, and before he got +tired of dancing he found a chink open at the top sash, and sailed away +like a spot of plush upon the air. + +I had thus no opportunity of becoming intimate with him, but he was the +cause of a more lasting friendship--my friendship with Isaac Irvine, the +bee-keeper. For when I asked that silly question, my mother said, "Not +that I ever saw, love;" and my father said, "If he wants to know about +bees, he should go to old Isaac. He'll tell him plenty of queer stories +about them." + +The first time I saw the bee-keeper was in church, on Catechism Sunday, +in circumstances which led to my disgracing myself in a manner that must +have been very annoying to my mother, who had taken infinite pains in +teaching us. + +The provoking part of it was that I had not had a fear of breaking down. +With poor Jem it was very different. He took twice as much pains as I +did, but he could not get things into his head, and even if they did +stick there he found it almost harder to say them properly. We began to +learn the Catechism when we were three years old, and we went on till +long after we were in trousers; and I am sure Jem never got the three +words "and an inheritor" tidily off the tip of his tongue within my +remembrance. And I have seen both him and my mother crying over them on +a hot Sunday afternoon. He was always in a fright when we had to say the +Catechism in church, and that day, I remember, he shook so that I could +hardly stand straight myself, and Bob Furniss, the blacksmith's son, who +stood on the other side of him, whispered quite loud, "Eh! see thee, how +Master Jem _dodders_!" for which Jem gave him an eye as black as his +father's shop afterwards, for Jem could use his fists if he could not +learn by heart. + +But at the time he could not even compose himself enough to count down +the line of boys and calculate what question would come to him. I did, +and when he found he had only got the First Commandment, he was more at +ease, and though the second, which fell to me, is much longer, I was not +in the least afraid of forgetting it, for I could have done the whole of +my duty to my neighbour if it had been necessary. + +Jem got through very well, and I could hear my mother blessing him over +the top of the pew behind our backs; but just as he finished, no less +than three bees, who had been hovering over the heads of the workhouse +boys opposite, all settled down together on Isaac Irvine's bare hand. + +At the public catechising, which came once a year, and after the second +lesson at evening prayer, the grown-up members of the congregation used +to draw near to the end of their pews to see and hear how we acquitted +ourselves, and, as it happened on this particular occasion, Master Isaac +was standing exactly opposite to me. As he leaned forward, his hands +crossed on the pew-top before him, I had been a good deal fascinated by +his face, which was a very noble one in its rugged way, with snow-white +hair and intense, keenly observing eyes, and when I saw the three bees +settle on him without his seeming to notice it, I cried, "They'll sting +you!" before I thought of what I was doing; for I had been severely +stung that week myself, and knew what it felt like, and how little good +powder-blue does. + +With attending to the bees I had not heard the parson say, "Second +Commandment?" and as he was rather deaf he did not hear what I said. But +of course he knew it was not long enough for the right answer, and he +said, "Speak up, my boy," and Jem tried to start me by whispering, "Thou +shalt not make to thyself"--but the three bees went on sitting on Master +Isaac's hand, and though I began the Second Commandment, I could not +take my eyes off them, and when Master Isaac saw this he smiled and +nodded his white head, and said, "Never you mind me, sir. They won't +sting the old bee-keeper." This assertion so completely turned my head +that every other idea went out of it, and after saying "or in the earth +beneath" three times, and getting no further, the parson called out, +"Third Commandment?" and I was passed over--"out of respect to the +family," as I was reminded for a twelvemonth afterwards--and Jem pinched +my leg to comfort me, and my mother sank down on the seat, and did not +take her face out of her pocket-handkerchief till the workhouse boys +were saying "the sacraments." + +My mother was our only teacher till Jem was nine and I was eight years +old. We had a thin, soft-backed reading book, bound in black cloth, on +the cover of which in gold letters was its name, _Chick-seed without +Chick-weed_; and in this book she wrote our names, and the date at the +end of each lesson we conned fairly through. I had got into Part II., +which was "in words of four letters," and had the chapter about the Ship +in it, before Jem's name figured at the end of the chapter about the Dog +in Part I. + +My mother was very glad that this chapter seemed to please Jem, and that +he learned to read it quickly, for, good-natured as he was, Jem was too +fond of fighting and laying about him: and though it was only "in words +of three letters," this brief chapter contained a terrible story, and an +excellent moral, which I remember well even now. + +It was called "The Dog." + +"Why do you cry? The Dog has bit my leg. Why did he do so? I had my bat +and I hit him as he lay on the mat, so he ran at me and bit my leg. Ah, +you may not use the bat if you hit the Dog. It is a hot day, and the Dog +may go mad. One day a Dog bit a boy in the arm, and the boy had his arm +cut off, for the Dog was mad. And did the boy die? Yes, he did die in a +day or two. It is not fit to hit a Dog if he lie on the mat and is not a +bad Dog. Do not hit a Dog, or a cat, or a boy." + +Jem not only got through this lesson much better than usual, but he +lingered at my mother's knees, to point with his own little stumpy +forefinger to each recurrence of the words "hit a Dog," and read them +all by himself. + +"_Very_ good boy," said Mother, who was much pleased. "And now read this +last sentence once more, and very nicely." + +"Do--not--hit--a--dog--or--a--cat--or--a--boy," read Jem in a high +sing-song, and with a face of blank indifference, and then with a hasty +dog's-ear he turned back to the previous page, and spelled out, "I had +my bat and I hit him as he lay on the mat" so well, that my mother +caught him to her bosom and covered him with kisses. + +"He'll be as good a scholar as Jack yet!" she exclaimed. "But don't +forget, my darling, that my Jem must never 'hit a dog, or a cat, or a +boy.' Now, love, you may put the book away." + +Jem stuck out his lips and looked down, and hesitated. He seemed almost +disposed to go on with his lessons. But he changed his mind, and +shutting the book with a bang, he scampered off. As he passed the +ottoman near the door, he saw Kitty, our old tortoise-shell puss, lying +on it, and (moved perhaps by the occurrence of the word _cat_ in the +last sentence of the lesson) he gave her such a whack with the flat side +of _Chick-seed_ that she bounced up into the air like a sky-rocket, Jem +crying out as he did so, "I had my bat, and I hit him as he lay on the +mat." + +It was seldom enough that Jem got anything by heart, but he had +certainly learned this; for when an hour later I went to look for him in +the garden, I found him panting with the exertion of having laid my +nice, thick, fresh green crop of mustard and cress flat with the back of +the coal-shovel, which he could barely lift, but with which he was still +battering my salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, "I had my +bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat." He was quite out of breath, +and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved. + +Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that "you never know +what to do for the best in bringing up boys." + +Just about the time that we outgrew _Chick-seed_, and that it was +allowed on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learned +notions it was high time we were sent to school, our parents were spared +the trouble of looking out for a school for us by the fact that a school +came to us instead, and nothing less than an "Academy" was opened within +three-quarters of a mile of my father's gate. + +Walnut-tree Farm was an old house that stood some little way from the +road in our favourite lane--a lane full of wild roses and speedwell, +with a tiny footpath of disjointed flags like an old pack-horse track. +Grass and milfoil grew thickly between the stones, and the turf +stretched half-way over the road from each side, for there was little +traffic in the lane, beyond the yearly rumble of the harvesting waggons; +and few foot-passengers, except a labourer now and then, a pair or two +of rustic lovers at sundown, a few knots of children in the blackberry +season, and the cows coming home to milking. + +Jem and I played there a good deal, but then we lived close by. + +We were very fond of the old place and there were two good reasons for +the charm it had in our eyes. In the first place, the old man who lived +alone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm) +was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemed +to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it. What +manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation, +much as it needs excuse. + +In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from the +house which was our home, that everything about it was attractive from +mere unaccustomedness. + +Our house had been rebuilt from the foundations by my father. It was +square-built and very ugly, but it was in such excellent repair that one +could never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or cranny +about it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar. + +Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not a +bit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built a +pretty one, whilst my father built an ugly one, is one of the many +things I do not know, and wish I did. + +From the old sketches of it which my grandfather painted on the parlour +handscreens, I think it must have been like a larger edition of the +farm; that is, with long mullioned windows, a broad and gracefully +proportioned doorway with several shallow steps and quaintly-ornamented +lintel; bits of fine work and ornamentation about the woodwork here and +there, put in as if they had been done, not for the look of the thing, +but for the love of it, and whitewash over the house-front, and over the +apple-trees in the orchard. + +That was what our ancestor's home was like; and it was the sort of house +that became Walnut-tree Academy, where Jem and I went to school. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + _Sable_:--"Ha, you! A little more upon the dismal (_forming their + countenances_); this fellow has a good mortal look, place him near + the corpse; that wainscoat face must be o' top of the stairs; that + fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some + strange misery) at the end of the hall. So--but I'll fix you all + myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation."--_The + Funeral_, STEELE. + + +At one time I really hoped to make the acquaintance of the old miser of +Walnut-tree Farm. It was when we saved the life of his cat. + +He was very fond of that cat, I think, and it was, to say the least of +it, as eccentric-looking as its master. One eye was yellow and the other +was blue, which gave it a strange, uncanny expression, and its +rust-coloured fur was not common either as to tint or markings. + +How dear old Jem did belabour the boy we found torturing it! He was much +older and bigger than we were, but we were two to one, which we reckoned +fair enough, considering his size, and that the cat had to be saved +somehow. The poor thing's forepaws were so much hurt that it could not +walk, so we carried it to the farm, and I stood on the shallow +doorsteps, and under the dial, on which was written-- + + "Tempora mutantur!"-- + +and the old miser came out, and we told him about the cat, and he took +it and said we were good boys, and I hoped he would have asked us to go +in, but he did not, though we lingered a little; he only put his hand +into his pocket, and very slowly brought out sixpence. + +"No, thank you," said I, rather indignantly. "We don't want anything for +saving the poor cat." + +"I am very fond of it," he said apologetically, and putting the sixpence +carefully back; but I believe he alluded to the cat. + +I felt more and more strongly that he ought to invite us into the +parlour--if there was a parlour--and I took advantage of a backward +movement on his part to move one shallow step nearer, and said, in an +easy conversational tone, "Your cat has very curious eyes." + +He came out again, and his own eyes glared in the evening light as he +touched me with one of his fingers in a way that made me shiver, and +said, "If I had been an old woman, and that cat had lived with me in the +days when this house was built, I should have been hanged, or burned as +a witch. Twelve men would have done it--twelve reasonable and +respectable men!" He paused, looking over my head at the sky, and then +added, "But in all good conscience--mind, in all good conscience!" + +And after another pause he touched me again (this time my teeth +chattered), and whispered loudly in my ear, "Never serve on a jury." +After which he banged the door in our faces, and Jem caught hold of my +jacket and cried, "Oh! he's quite mad, he'll murder us!" and we took +each other by the hand and ran home as fast as our feet would carry us. + +We never saw the old miser again, for he died some months afterwards, +and, strange to relate, Jem and I were invited to the funeral. + +It was a funeral not to be forgotten. The old man had left the money for +it, and a memorandum, with the minutest directions, in the hands of his +lawyer. If he had wished to be more popular after his death than he had +been in his lifetime, he could not have hit upon any better plan to +conciliate in a lump the approbation of his neighbours than that of +providing for what undertakers call "a first-class funeral." The good +custom of honouring the departed, and committing their bodies to the +earth with care and respect, was carried, in our old-fashioned +neighbourhood, to a point at which what began in reverence ended in +what was barely decent, and what was meant to be most melancholy became +absolutely comical. But a sense of the congruous and the incongruous was +not cultivated amongst us, whereas solid value (in size, quantity and +expense) was perhaps over-estimated. So our furniture, our festivities, +and our funerals bore witness. + +No one had ever seen the old miser's furniture, and he gave no +festivities; but he made up for it in his funeral. + +Children, like other uneducated classes, enjoy domestic details, and +going over the ins and outs of other people's affairs behind their +backs; especially when the interest is heightened by a touch of gloom, +or perfected by the addition of some personal importance in the matter. +Jem and I were always fond of funerals, but this funeral, and the fuss +that it made in the parish, we were never likely to forget. + +Even our own household was so demoralized by the grim gossip of the +occasion that Jem and I were accused of being unable to amuse ourselves, +and of listening to our elders. It was perhaps fortunate for us that a +favourite puppy died the day before the funeral, and gave us the +opportunity of burying him. + + "As if our whole vocation + Were endless imitation----" + +Jem and I had already laid our gardens waste, and built a rude wall of +broken bricks round them to make a churchyard; and I can clearly +remember that we had so far profited by what we had overheard among our +elders, that I had caught up some phrases which I was rather proud of +displaying, and that I quite overawed Jem by the air with which I spoke +of "the melancholy occasion"--the "wishes of deceased"--and the +"feelings of survivors" when we buried the puppy. + +It was understood that I could not attend the puppy's funeral in my +proper person, because I wished to be the undertaker; but the happy +thought struck me of putting my wheelbarrow alongside of the brick wall +with a note inside it to the effect that I had "sent my carriage as a +mark of respect." + +In one point we could not emulate the real funeral: that was carried out +"regardless of expense." The old miser had left a long list of the names +of the people who were to be invited to it and to its attendant feast, +in which was not only my father's name, but Jem's and mine. Three yards +was the correct length of the black silk scarves which it was the custom +in the neighbourhood to send to dead people's friends; but the old +miser's funeral-scarves were a whole yard longer, and of such stiffly +ribbed silk that Mr. Soot, the mourning draper, assured my mother that +"it would stand of itself." The black gloves cost six shillings a pair, +and the sponge-cakes, which used to be sent with the gloves and scarves, +were on this occasion ornamented with weeping willows in white sugar. + +Jem and I enjoyed the cake, but the pride we felt in our scarves and +gloves was simply boundless. What pleased us particularly was that our +funeral finery was not enclosed with my father's. Mr. Soot's man +delivered three separate envelopes at the door, and they looked like +letters from some bereaved giant. The envelopes were twenty inches by +fourteen, and made of cartridge-paper; the black border was two inches +deep, and the black seals must have consumed a stick of sealing-wax +among them. They contained the gloves and the scarves, which were +lightly gathered together in the middle with knots of black gauze +ribbon. + +How exquisitely absurd Jem and I must have looked with four yards of +stiff black silk attached to our little hats I can imagine, if I cannot +clearly remember. My dear mother dressed us and saw us off (for, with +some curious relic of pre-civilized notions, women were not allowed to +appear at funerals), and I do not think she perceived anything odd in +our appearance. She was very gentle, and approved of everything that was +considered right by the people she was used to, and she had only two +anxieties about our scarves: first, that they should show the full four +yards of respect to the memory of the deceased; and secondly, that we +should keep them out of the dust, so that they might "come in useful +afterwards." + +She fretted a little because she had not thought of changing our gloves for +smaller sizes (they were eight and a quarter); but my father "pish"ed and +"pshaw"ed, and said it was better than if they had been too small, and that +we should be sure to be late if my mother went on fidgeting. So we pulled +them on--with ease--and picked up the tails of our hatbands--with +difficulty--and followed my father, our hearts beating with pride, and my +mother and the maids watching us from the door. We arrived quite +half-an-hour earlier than we need have done, but the lane was already +crowded with complimentary carriages, and curious bystanders, before whom +we held our heads and hatbands up; and the scent of the wild roses was lost +for that day in an all-pervading atmosphere of black dye. We were very +tired, I remember, by the time that our turn came to be put into a carriage +by Mr. Soot, who murmured--"Pocket-handkerchiefs, gentlemen"--and, +following the example of a very pale-faced stranger who was with us, we +drew out the clean handkerchiefs with which our mother had supplied us, and +covered our faces with them. + +At least Jem says he shut _his_ eyes tight, and kept his face covered +the whole way, but he always _was_ so conscientious! I held my +handkerchief as well as I could with my gloves; but I contrived to peep +from behind it, and to see the crowd that lined the road to watch us as +we wound slowly on. + +If these outsiders, who only saw the procession and the funeral, were +moved almost to enthusiasm by the miser's post-mortem liberality, it may +be believed that the guests who were bidden to the feast did not fail to +obey the ancient precept, and speak well of the dead. The tables (they +were rickety) literally groaned under the weight of eatables and +drinkables, and the dinner was so prolonged that Jem and I got terribly +tired, in spite of the fun of watching the faces of the men we did not +know, to see which got the reddest. + +My father wanted us to go home before the reading of the will, which +took place in the front parlour; but the lawyer said, "I think the young +gentlemen should remain," for which we were very much obliged to him; +though the pale-faced man said quite crossly--"Is there any special +reason for crowding the room with children, who are not even relatives +of the deceased?" which made us feel so much ashamed that I think we +should have slipped out by ourselves; but the lawyer, who made no +answer, pushed us gently before him to the top of the room, which was +soon far too full to get out of by the door. + +It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in great +strips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every article +of furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered with +sheets of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of a +sofa, where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebody +twenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it went +on behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the +time and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his +head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names were +read out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat man +drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem's +ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having saved +the life of his cat. + +I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of +the old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and +the lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over +that we really had been invited to the funeral. After our legacies were +known about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through the +window, and wandered round the garden. As we sat under the trees we +could hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out and +talked in angry groups about the will. For when all was said and done, +it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of the +funeral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm to a +certain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything. + +"The wording is so peculiar," the fat man said to the pale-faced man and +a third who had come out with them; "'left to her as a sign of sympathy, +if not an act of reparation.' He must have known whether he owed her any +reparation or not, if he were in his senses." + +"Exactly. If he were in his senses," said the third man. + +"Where's the money?--that's what I say," said the pale-faced man. + +"Exactly, sir. That's what _I_ say, too," said the fat man. + +"There are only two fields, besides the house," said the third. "He must +have had money, and the lawyer knows of no investments of any kind, he +says." + +"Perhaps he has left it to his cat," he added, looking very nastily at +Jem and me. + +"It's oddly put, too," murmured the pale-faced relation. "The two +fields, the house and furniture, and everything of every sort therein +contained." And the lawyer coming up at that moment, he went slowly back +into the house, looking about him as he went, as if he had lost +something. + +As the lawyer approached, the fat man got very red in the face. + +"He was as mad as a hatter, sir," he said, "and we shall dispute the +will." + +"I think you will be wrong," said the lawyer, blandly. "He was +eccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is not +insanity, and you will find that the will will stand." + +Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talked +without paying any attention to us. At this moment Jem, who had left me +a minute or two before, came running back and said: "Jack! Do come and +look in at the parlour window. That man with the white face is peeping +everywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he's made himself so +dusty! It's such fun!" + +Too happy at the prospect of anything in the shape of fun, I followed +Jem on tiptoe, and when we stood by the open window with our hands over +our mouths to keep us from laughing, the pale-faced man was just +struggling with the inside lids of an old japanned tea-caddy. + +He did not see us, he was too busy, and he did not hear us, for he was +talking to himself, and we heard him say, "Everything of every sort +therein contained." + +I suppose the lawyer was right, and that the fat man was convinced of +it, for neither he nor any one else disputed the old miser's will. Jem +and I each opened an account in the Savings Bank, and Mrs. Wood came +into possession of the place. + +Public opinion went up and down a good deal about the old miser still. When +it leaked out that he had worded the invitation to his funeral to the +effect that, being quite unable to tolerate the follies of his +fellow-creatures, and the antics and absurdities which were necessary to +entertain them, he had much pleasure in welcoming his neighbours to a +feast, at which he could not reasonably be expected to preside--everybody +who heard it agreed that he must have been mad. + +But it was a long sentence to remember, and not a very easy one to +understand, and those who saw the plumes and the procession, and those +who had a talk with the undertaker, and those who got a yard more than +usual of such very good black silk, and those who were able to remember +what they had had for dinner, were all charitably inclined to believe +that the old man's heart had not been far from being in the right +place, at whatever angle his head had been set on. + +And then by degrees curiosity moved to Mrs. Wood. Who was she? What was +she like? What was she to the miser? Would she live at the farm? + +To some of these questions the carrier, who was the first to see her, +replied. She was "a quiet, genteel-looking sort of a grey-haired widow +lady, who looked as if she'd seen a deal of trouble, and was badly off." + +The neighbourhood was not unkindly, and many folk were ready to be civil +to the widow if she came to live there. + +"But she never will," everybody said. "She must let it. Perhaps the new +doctor might think of it at a low rent, he'd be glad of the field for +his horse. What could she do with an old place like that, and not a +penny to keep it up with?" + +What she did do was to have a school there, and that was how Walnut-tree +Farm became Walnut-tree Academy. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + "What are little boys made of, made of? + What are little boys made of?" + _Nursery Rhyme_. + + +When the school was opened, Jem and I were sent there at once. Everybody +said it was "time we were sent somewhere," and that "we were getting too +wild for home." + +I got so tired of hearing this at last, that one day I was goaded to +reply that "home was getting too tame for me." And Jem, who always +backed me up, said, "And me too." For which piece of swagger we +forfeited our suppers; but when we went to bed we found pieces of cake +under our pillows, for my mother could not bear us to be short of food, +however badly we behaved. + +I do not know whether the trousers had anything to do with it, but about +the time that Jem and I were put into trousers we lived in a chronic +state of behaving badly. What makes me feel particularly ashamed in +thinking of it is, that I know it was not that we came under the +pressure of any overwhelming temptations to misbehave and yielded +through weakness, but that, according to an expressive nursery formula, +we were "seeing how naughty we could be." I think we were genuinely +anxious to see this undesirable climax; in some measure as a matter of +experiment, to which all boys are prone, and in which dangerous +experiments, and experiments likely to be followed by explosion, are +naturally preferred. Partly, too, from an irresistible impulse to "raise +a row," and take one's luck of the results. This craving to disturb the +calm current of events, and the good conduct and composure of one's +neighbours as a matter of diversion, must be incomprehensible by +phlegmatic people, who never feel it, whilst some Irishmen, I fancy, +never quite conquer it, perhaps because they never quite cease to be +boys. In any degree I do not for an instant excuse it, and in excess it +must be simply intolerable by better-regulated minds. + +But really, boys who are pickles should be put into jars with sound +stoppers, like other pickles, and I wonder that mothers and cooks do not +get pots like those that held the forty thieves, and do it. + +I fancy it was because we happened to be in this rough, defiant, +mischievous mood, just about the time that Mrs. Wood opened her school, +that we did not particularly like our school-mistress. If I had been +fifteen years older, I should soon have got beyond the first impression +created by her severe dress, close widow's cap and straight grey hair, +and have discovered that the outline of her face was absolutely +beautiful, and I might possibly have detected, what most people failed +to detect, that an odd unpleasing effect, caused by the contrast between +her general style, and an occasional lightness and rapidity and grace of +movement in her slender figure, came from the fact that she was much +younger than she looked and affected to be. The impression I did receive +of her appearance I communicated to my mother in far from respectful +pantomime. + +"Well, love, and what do you think of Mrs. Wood?" said she. + +"I think," chanted I, in that high brassy pitch of voice which Jem and I +had adopted for this bravado period of our existence--"I think she's +like our old white hen that turned up its eyes and died of the pip. +Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!" + +And I twisted my body about, and strolled up and down the room with a +supposed travesty of Mrs. Wood's movements. + +"So she is," said faithful Jem. "Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!" +and he wriggled about after me, and knocked over the Berlin +wool-basket. + +"Oh dear, oh dear!" said our poor mother. + +Jem righted the basket, and I took a run and a flying leap over it, and +having cleared it successfully, took another, and yet another, each one +soothing my feelings to the extent by which it shocked my mother's. At +the third bound, Jem, not to be behindhand, uttered a piercing yell from +behind the sofa. + +"Good gracious, what's the matter?" cried my mother. + +"It's the war-whoop of the Objibeway Indians," I promptly explained, and +having emitted another, to which I flattered myself Jem's had been as +nothing for hideousness, we departed in file to raise a row in the +kitchen. + +Summer passed into autumn. Jem and I really liked going to school, but +it was against our principles at that time to allow that we liked +anything that we ought to like. + +Some sincere but mistaken efforts to improve our principles were made, I +remember, by a middle-aged single lady, who had known my mother in her +girlhood, and who was visiting her at this unlucky stage of our career. +Having failed to cope with us directly, she adopted the plan of talking +improvingly to our mother and at us, and very severe some of her +remarks were, and I don't believe that Mother liked them any better +than we did. + +The severest she ever made were I think heightened in their severity by +the idea that we were paying unusual attention, as we sat on the floor a +little behind her one day. We were paying a great deal of attention, but +it was not so much to Miss Martin as to a stock of wood-lice which I had +collected, and which I was arranging on the carpet that Jem might see +how they roll themselves into smooth tight balls when you tease them. +But at last she talked so that we could not help attending. I dared not +say anything to her, but her own tactics were available. I put the +wood-lice back in my pocket, and stretching my arms yawningly above my +head, I said to Jem, "How dull it is! I wish I were a bandit." + +Jem generally outdid me if possible, from sheer willingness and loyalty +of spirit. + +"_I_ should like to be a burglar," said he. + +And then we both left the room very quietly and politely. But when we +got outside I said, "I hate that woman." + +"So do I," said Jem; "she regularly hectors over mother--I hate her +worst for that." + +"So do I. Jem, doesn't she take pills?" + +"I don't know--why?" + +"I believe she does; I'm certain I saw a box on her dressing-table. +Jem, run like a good chap and see, and if there is one, empty out the +pills and bring me the pill-box." + +Jem obeyed, and I sat down on the stairs and began to get the wood-lice +out again. There were twelve nice little black balls in my hand when Jem +came back with the pill-box. + +"Hooray!" I cried; "but knock out all the powder, it might smother them. +Now, give it to me." + +Jem danced with delight when I put the wood-lice in and put on the lid. + +"I hope she'll shake the box before she opens it," I said, as we +replaced it on the dressing-table. + +"I hope she will, or they won't be tight. Oh, Jack! Jack! _How many do +you suppose she takes at a time?_" + +We never knew, and what is more, we never knew what became of the +wood-lice, for, for some reason, she kept our counsel as well as her own +about the pill-box. + +One thing that helped to reconcile us to spending a good share of our +summer days in Walnut-tree Academy was that the school-mistress made us +very comfortable. Boys at our age are not very sensitive about matters +of taste and colour and so forth, but even we discovered that Mrs. Wood +had that knack of adapting rooms to their inhabitants, and making them +pleasant to the eye, which seems to be a trick at the end of some +people's fingers, and quite unlearnable by others. When she had made the +old miser's rooms to her mind, we might have understood, if we had +speculated about it, how it was that she had not profited by my mother's +sound advice to send all his "rubbishy odds and ends" (the irregularity +and ricketiness and dustiness of which made my mother shudder) to be +"sold at the nearest auction-rooms, and buy some good solid furniture of +the cabinet-maker who furnished for everybody in the neighbourhood, +which would be the cheapest in the long-run, besides making the rooms +look like other people's at last." That she evaded similar +recommendations of paperhangers and upholsterers, and of wall-papers and +carpets, and curtains with patterns that would "stand," and wear best, +and show dirt least, was a trifle in the eyes of all good housekeepers, +when our farming-man's daughter brought the amazing news with her to +Sunday tea, that "the missus" had had in old Sally, and had torn the +paper off the parlour, and had made Sally "lime-wash the walls, for all +the world as if it was a cellar." Moreover, she had "gone over" the +lower part herself, and was now painting on the top of that. There was +nothing for it, after this news, but to sigh and conclude that there +was something about the old place which made everybody a little queer +who came to live in it. + +But when Jem and I saw the parlour (which was now the school-room), we +decided that it "looked very nice," and was "uncommonly comfortable." +The change was certainly amazing, and made the funeral day seem longer +ago than it really was. The walls were not literally lime-washed; but +(which is the same thing, except for a little glue!) they were +distempered, a soft pale pea-green. About a yard deep above the wainscot +this was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edge +of this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painted +a trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted with the +same materials as the walls, and with very rapid touches. The white +flowers were skilfully relieved by the dark ground, and the varied tints +of the leaves, from the deep evergreen of the old ones to the pale +yellow of the young shoots, had demanded no new colours, and were +wonderfully life-like and pretty. There was another border, right round +the top of the room; but that was painted on paper and fastened on. It +was a Bible text--"Keep Innocency, and take heed to the thing that is +right, for that shall bring a man Peace at the last." And Mrs. Wood had +done the text also. + +There were no curtains to the broad, mullioned window, which was kept +wide open at every lattice; and one long shoot of ivy that had pushed in +farther than the rest had been seized, and pinned to the wall inside, +where its growth was a subject of study and calculation, during the many +moments when we were "trying to see" how little we could learn of our +lessons. The black-board stood on a polished easel; but the low seats +and desks were of plain pine like the floor, and they were scrupulously +scrubbed. The cool tint of the walls was somewhat cheered by coloured +maps and prints, and the school-mistress's chair (an old carved oak one +that had been much revived by bees-wax and turpentine since the miser's +days) stood on the left-hand side of the window--under "Keep Innocency," +and looking towards "Peace at the last." I know, for when we were all +writing or something of that sort, so that she could sit still, she used +to sit with her hands folded and look up at it, which was what made Jem +and me think of the old white hen that turned up its eyes; and made +Horace Simpson say that he believed she had done one of the letters +wrong, and could not help looking at it to see if it showed. And by the +school-mistress's chair was the lame boy's sofa. It was the very old +sofa covered with newspapers on which I had read about the murder, when +the lawyer was reading the will. But she had taken off the paper, and +covered it with turkey red, and red cushions, and a quilt of brown +holland and red bordering, to hide his crumpled legs, so that he looked +quite comfortable. + +I remember so well the first day that he came. His father was a parson +on the moors, and this boy had always wanted to go to school in spite of +his infirmity, and at last his father brought him in a light cart down +from the moors, to look at it; and when he got him out of the cart, he +carried him in. He was a big man, I remember, with grey hair and bent +shoulders, and a very old coat, for it split a little at one of the +seams as he was carrying him in, and we laughed. + +When they got into the room, he put the boy down, keeping his arm round +him, and wiped his face and said--"How deliciously cool!"--and the boy +stared all round with his great eyes, and then he lifted them to his +father's face and said--"I'll come here. I do like it. But not to-day, +my back is so bad." + +And what makes me know that Horace was wrong, and that Mrs. Wood had +made no mistake about the letters of the text, is that "Cripple +Charlie"--as we called him--could see it so well with lying down. And he +told me one day that when his back was very bad, and he got the fidgets +and could not keep still, he used to fix his eyes on "Peace," which had +gold round the letters, and shone, and that if he could keep steadily to +it, for a good bit, he always fell asleep at the last. But he was very +fanciful, poor chap! + +I do not think it was because Jem and I had any real wish to become +burglars that we made a raid on the walnuts that autumn. I do not even +think that we cared very much about the walnuts themselves. + +But when it is understood that the raid was to be a raid by night, or +rather in those very early hours of the morning which real burglars are +said almost to prefer; that it was necessary to provide ourselves with +thick sticks; that we should have to force the hedge and climb the +trees; that the said trees grew directly under the owner's bedroom +window, which made the chances of detection hazardously great; and that +walnut juice (as I have mentioned before) is of a peculiarly +unaccommodating nature, since it will neither disguise you at the time +nor wash off afterwards--it will be obvious that the dangers and +delights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, our +sense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving. + +"Shall we wear black masks?" said Jem. + +On the whole I said "No," for I did not know where we should get them, +nor, if we did, how we should keep them on. + +"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your +head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run." + +"Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think?" asked Jem. "Mother says +the one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday. But she says +we're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure about +things of that sort going off. Do you think Mrs. Wood's will be loaded?" + +"It may be," said I, "and of course she might load it if she thought she +heard robbers." + +"I heard father say that if you shoot a burglar outside it's murder," +said Jem, who seemed rather troubled by the thought of the blunderbuss; +"but if you shoot him inside it's self-defence." + +"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway," said I; "and if hers +makes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind, +if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad." + +Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out +of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold +after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms, +and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to +the knees before we began to force the hedge. I did not think that grass +and wild-flowers could have held so much wet. By the time that we had +crossed the orchard, and I was preparing to grip the grandly scored +trunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling, +the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was as +little pleasurable a notion as I had in my brain. + +All the same, I said (as firmly as my chattering teeth would allow) that +I was very glad we had come when we did, for that there certainly were +fewer walnuts on the tree than there had been the day before. + +"She's been at them," said I, almost indignantly. + +"Pickling," responded Jem with gloomy conciseness; and spurred by this +discovery to fresh enthusiasm for our exploit, we promptly planned +operations. + +"I'll go up the tree," said I, "and beat, and you can pick them as they +fall." + +Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the first +place in our joint undertakings, and after giving me "a leg up" to an +available bit of foothold, and handing up my stick, he waited patiently +below to gather what I beat down. + +The walnuts were few and far between, to say nothing of leaves between, +which in walnut-trees are large. The morning twilight was dim, my hands +were cold and feebler than my resolution. I had battered down a lot of +leaves and twigs, and two or three walnuts; the sun had got up at last, +but rather slowly, as if he found the morning chillier than he expected, +and a few rays were darting here and there across the lane, when Jem +gave a warning "Hush!" and I left off rustling in time to hear Mrs. +Wood's bedroom lattice opened, and to catch sight of something pushed +out into the morning mists. + +"Who's there?" said the school-mistress. + +Neither Jem nor I took upon us to inform her, and we were both seized +with anxiety to know what was at the window. He was too low down and I +too much buried in foliage to see clearly. Was it the rattle? I took a +hasty step downwards at the thought. Or was it the blunderbuss? In my +sudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten one +with my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, and +sent a walnut--pop! on to Jem's hat, who had already ducked to avoid the +fire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullest +conviction that he had been shot. + +"Who's there?" said the school-mistress, and (my tumble having brought +me into a more exposed position) she added, "Is that you, Jack and Jem?" + +"It's me," said I, ungrammatically but stoutly, hoping that Jem at any +rate would slip off. + +But he had recovered himself and his loyalty, and unhesitatingly +announced, "No, it's me," and was picking the bits of grass off his +cheeks and knees when I got down beside him. + +"I'm sorry you came to take my walnuts like this," said the voice from +above. She had a particularly clear one, and we could hear it quite +well. "I got a basketful on purpose for you yesterday afternoon. If I +let it down by a string, do you think you can take it?" + +Happily she did not wait for a reply, as we could not have got a word +out between us; but by and by the basketful of walnuts was pushed +through the lattice and began to descend. It came slowly and unsteadily, +and we had abundant leisure to watch it, and also, as we looked up, to +discover what it was that had so puzzled me in Mrs. Wood's +appearance--that when I first discovered that it was a head and not a +blunderbuss at the window I had not recognized it for hers. + +She was without her widow's cap, which revealed the fact that her hair, +though the two narrow, smooth bands of it which appeared every day +beyond her cap were unmistakably grey, was different in some essential +respects from (say) Mrs. Jones's, our grey-haired washer-woman. The more +you saw of Mrs. Jones's head, the less hair you perceived her to have, +and the whiter that little appeared. Indeed, the knob into which it was +twisted at the back was much of the colour as well as of the size of a +tangled reel of dirty white cotton. But Mrs. Wood's hair was far more +abundant than our mother's, and it was darker underneath than on the +top--a fact which was more obvious when the knot into which it was +gathered in her neck was no longer hidden. Deep brown streaks were +mingled with the grey in the twists of this, and I could see them quite +well, for the outline of her head was dark against the white-washed +mullion of the window, and framed by ivy-leaves. As she leaned out to +lower the basket we could see her better and better, and, as it touched +the ground, the jerk pulled her forward, and the knot of her hair +uncoiled and rolled heavily over the window-sill. + +By this time the rays of the sun were level with the windows, and shone +full upon Mrs. Wood's face. I was very much absorbed in looking at her, +but I could not forget our peculiar position, and I had an important +question to put, which I did without more ado. + +"Please, madam, shall you tell Father?" + +"We only want to know," added Jem. + +She hesitated a minute, and then smiled. "No; I don't think you'll do it +again;" after which she disappeared. + +"She's certainly no sneak," said I, with an effort to be magnanimous, +for I would much rather she had sprung the rattle or fired the +blunderbuss. + +"And I say," said Jem, "isn't she pretty without her cap?" + +We looked ruefully at the walnuts. We had lost all appetite for them, +and they seemed disgustingly damp, with their green coats reeking with +black bruises. But we could not have left the basket behind, so we put +our sticks through the handles, and carried it like the Sunday picture +of the spies carrying the grapes of Eshcol. + +And Jem and I have often since agreed that we never in all our lives +felt so mean as on that occasion, and we sincerely hope that we never +may. + +Indeed, it is only in some books and some sermons that people are +divided into "the wicked" and "the good," and that "the wicked" have no +consciences at all. Jem and I had wilfully gone thieving, but we were +far from being utterly hardened, and the school-mistress's generosity +weighed heavily upon ours. Repentance and the desire to make atonement +seem to go pretty naturally together, and in my case they led to the +following dialogue with Jem, on the subject of two exquisite little +bantam hens and a cock, which were our joint property, and which were +known in the farmyard as "the Major and his wives." + +These titles (which vexed my dear mother from the first) had suggested +themselves to us on this wise. There was a certain little gentleman who +came to our church, a brewer by profession, and a major in the militia +by choice, who was so small and strutted so much that to the insolent +observation of boyhood he was "exactly like" our new bantam cock. Young +people are very apt to overhear what is not intended for their +knowledge, and somehow or other we learned that he was "courting" (as +his third wife) a lady of our parish. His former wives are buried in our +churchyard. Over the first he had raised an obelisk of marble, so costly +and affectionate that it had won the hearts of his neighbours in +general, and of his second wife in particular. When she died the gossips +wondered whether the Major would add her name to that of her +predecessor, or "go to the expense" of a new monument. He erected a +second obelisk, and it was taller than the first (height had a curious +fascination for him), and the inscription was more touching than the +other. This time the material was Aberdeen granite, and as that is most +difficult to cut, hard to polish, and heavy to transport, the expense +was enormous. These two monstrosities of mortuary pomp were the pride of +the parish, and they were familiarly known to us children (and to many +other people) as "the Major's wives." + +When we called the cock "the Major," we naturally called the hens "the +Major's wives." + +"My dears, I don't like that name at all," said my mother. "I never like +jokes about people who are dead. And for that matter, it really sounds +as if they were both alive, which is worse." + +It was during our naughty period, and I strutted on my heels till I must +have looked very like the little brewer himself, and said, "And why +shouldn't they both be alive? Fancy the Major with two wives, one on +each arm, and both as tall as the monuments! What fun!" + +As I said the words "one on each arm," I put up first one and then the +other of my own, and having got a satisfactory impetus during the rest +of my sentence, I crossed the parlour as a catherine-wheel under my +mother's nose. It was a new accomplishment, of which I was very proud, +and poor Jem somewhat envious. He was clumsy and could not manage it. + +"Oh!" ejaculated my mother, "Jack, I must speak to your father about +those dangerous tricks of yours. And it quite shocks me to hear you talk +in that light way about wicked things." + +Jem was to my rescue in a moment, driving his hands into the pockets of +his blouse, and turning them up to see how soon he might hope that his +fingers would burst through the lining. + +"Jacob had two wives," he said; and he chanted on, quoting imperfectly +from Dr. Watts's _Scripture Catechism_, "And Jacob was a good man, +therefore his brother hated him." + +"No, no, Jem," said I, "that was Abel. Jacob was Isaac's younger son, +and----" + +"Hush! Hush! Hush!" said my mother. "You're not to do Sunday lessons on +week-days. What terrible boys you are!" And, avoiding to fight about +Jacob's wives with Jem, who was pertinacious and said very odd things, +my mother did what women often do and are often wise in doing--she laid +down her weapons and began to beseech. + +"My darlings, call your nice little hens some other names. Poor old +mother doesn't like those." + +I was melted in an instant, and began to cast about in my head for new +titles. But Jem was softly obstinate, and he had inherited some of my +mother's wheedling ways. He took his hands from his pockets, flung his +arms recklessly round her clean collar, and began stroking (or +_pooring_, as we called it) her head with his grubby paws. And as he +_poored_ he coaxed--"Dear nice old mammy! It's only us. What can it +matter? Do let us call our bantams what we like." + +And my mother gave in before I had time to. + +The dialogue I held with Jem about the bantams after the walnut raid was +as follows: + +"Jem, you're awfully fond of the 'Major and his wives,' I suppose?" + +"Ye-es," said Jem, "_I am_. But I don't mind, Jack, if you want them for +your very own. I'll give up my share,"--and he sighed. + +"I never saw such a good chap as you are, Jem. But it's not that. I +thought we might give them to Mrs. Wood. It was so beastly about those +disgusting walnuts." + +"I can't touch walnut pickle now," said Jem, feelingly. + +"It'd be a very handsome present," said I. + +"They took a prize at the Agricultural," said Jem. + +"I know she likes eggs. She beats 'em into a froth and feeds Charlie +with 'em," said I. + +"I think I could eat walnut pickle again if I knew she had the bantams," +sighed Jem, who was really devoted to the little cock-major and the +auburn-feathered hens. + +"We'll take 'em this afternoon," I said. + +We did so--in a basket, Eshcol-grape wise, like the walnuts. When we +told Mother, she made no objection. She would have given her own head +off her shoulders if, by ill-luck, any passer-by had thought of asking +for it. Besides, it solved the difficulty of the objectionable names. + +Mrs. Wood was very loth to take our bantams, but of course Jem and I +were not going to recall a gift, so she took them at last, and I think +she was very much pleased with them. + +She had got her cap on again, tied under her chin, and nothing to be +seen of her hair but the very grey piece in front. It made her look so +different that I could not keep my eyes off her whilst she was talking, +though I knew quite well how rude it is to stare. And my head got so +full of it that I said at last, in spite of myself, "Please, madam, why +is it that part of your hair is grey and part of it dark?" + +Her face got rather red, she did not answer for a minute; and Jem, to my +great relief, changed the subject, by saying, "We were very much obliged +to you for not telling Father about the walnuts." + +Mrs. Wood leaned back against the high carving of her old chair and +smiled, and said very slowly, "Would he have been very angry?" + +"He'd have flogged us, I expect," said I. + +"And I expect," continued Jem, "that he'd have said to us what he said +to Bob Furniss when he took the filberts: 'If you begin by stealing +nuts, you'll end by being transported.' Do you think Jack and I shall +end by being transported?" added Jem, who had a merciless talent for +applying general principles to individual cases. + +Mrs. Wood made no reply, neither did she move, but her eyelids fell, +and then her eyes looked far worse than if they had been shut, for there +was a little bit open, with nothing but white to be seen. She was still +rather red, and she did not visibly breathe. I have no idea for how many +seconds I had gazed stupidly at her, when Jem gasped, "Is she dead?" + +Then I became terror-struck, and crying, "Let's find Mary Anne!" fled +into the kitchen, closely followed by Jem. + +"She's took with them fits occasional," said Mary Anne, and depositing a +dripping tin she ran to the parlour. We followed in time to see her +stooping over the chair and speaking very loudly in the +school-mistress's ear, + +"I'll lay ye down, ma'am, shall I?" + +But still the widow was silent, on which Mary Anne took her up in her +brawny arms, and laid her on "Cripple Charlie's" sofa, and covered her +with the quilt. + +We settled the Major and his wives into their new abode, and then +hurried home to my mother, who put on her bonnet, and took a bottle of +something, and went off to the farm. + +She did not come back till tea-time, and then she was full of poor Mrs. +Wood. "Most curious attacks," she explained to my father; "she can +neither move nor speak, and yet she hears everything, though she +doesn't always remember afterwards. She said she thought it was +'trouble,' poor soul!" + +"What brought this one on?" said my father. + +"I can't make out," said my mother. "I hope you boys did nothing to +frighten her, eh? Are you sure you didn't do one of those dreadful +wheels, Jack?" + +This I indignantly denied, and Jem supported me. + +My mother's sympathy had been so deeply enlisted, and her report was so +detailed, that Jem and I became bored at last, besides resenting the +notion that we had been to blame. I gave one look into the strawberry +jam pot, and finding it empty, said my grace and added, "Women are a +poor lot, always turning up their eyes and having fits about nothing. I +know one thing, nobody 'll ever catch _me_ being bothered with a wife." + +"Nor me neither," said Jem. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + "The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man." + W.C. BRYANT. + + "Some silent laws our hearts will make, + Which they shall long obey; + We for the year to come may take + Our temper from to-day."--WORDSWORTH. + + +"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac, of course?" + +I was sitting in the bee-master's cottage, opposite to him, in an +arm-chair, which was the counterpart of his own, both of them having +circular backs, diamond-shaped seats, and chintz cushions with frills. +It was the summer following that in which Jem and I had tried to see how +badly we could behave; this uncivilized phase had abated: Jem used to +ride about a great deal with my father, and I had become intimate with +Isaac Irvine. + +"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac?" said I. + +"A what, sir?" + +"An A-P-I-A-R-Y." + +"To be sure, sir, to be sure," said Isaac. "An _appyary_" (so he was +pleased to pronounce it), "I should be familiar with the name, sir, from +my bee-book, but I never calls my own stock anything but the beehives. +_Beehives_ is a good, straightforward sort of a name, sir, and it serves +my turn." + +"Ah, but you see we haven't come to the B's yet," said I, alluding to +what I was thinking of. + +"Does your father think of keeping 'em, sir?" said Isaac, alluding to +what he was thinking of. + +"Oh, he means to have them bound, I believe," was my reply. + +The bee-master now betrayed his bewilderment, and we had a hearty laugh +when we discovered that he had been talking about bees whilst I had been +talking about the weekly numbers of the _Penny Cyclopaedia_, which had +not as yet reached the letter B, but in which I had found an article on +Master Isaac's craft, under the word Apiary, which had greatly +interested me, and ought, I thought, to be interesting to the +bee-keeper. Still thinking of this I said, + +"Do you ever take your bees away from home, Isaac?" + +"They're on the moors now, sir," said Isaac. + +"_Are_ they?" I exclaimed. "Then you're like the Egyptians, and like the +French, and the Piedmontese; only you didn't take them in a barge." + +"Why, no, sir. The canal don't go nigh-hand of the moors at all." + +"The Egyptians," said I, leaning back into the capacious arms of my +chair, and epitomizing what I had read, "who live in Lower Egypt put all +their beehives into boats and take them on the river to Upper Egypt. +Right up at that end of the Nile the flowers come out earliest, and the +bees get all the good out of them there, and then the boats are moved +lower down to where the same kind of flowers are only just beginning to +blossom, and the bees get all the good out of them there, and so on, and +on, and on, till they've travelled right through Egypt, with all the +hives piled up, and come back in the boats to where they started from." + +"And every hive a mighty different weight to what it was when they did +start, I'll warrant," said Master Isaac enthusiastically. "Did you find +all that in those penny numbers, Master Jack?" + +"Yes, and oh, lots more, Isaac! About lots of things and lots of +countries." + +"Scholarship's a fine thing," said the bee-master, "and seeing foreign +parts is a fine thing, and many's the time I've wished for both. I +suppose that's the same Egypt that's in the Bible, sir?" + +"Yes," said I, "and the same river Nile that Moses was put on in the ark +of bulrushes." + +"There's no countries I'd like to see better than them Bible +countries," said Master Isaac, "and I've wished it more ever since that +gentleman was here that gave that lecture in the school, with the Holy +Land magic-lantern. He'd been there himself, and he explained all the +slides. They were grand, some of 'em, when you got 'em straight and +steady for a bit. They're an awkward thing to manage, is slides, sir, +and the school-master he wasn't much good at 'em, he said, and that +young scoundrel Bob Furniss and another lad got in a hole below the +platform and pulled the sheet. But when you did get 'em, right side up, +and the light as it should be, they _were_ grand! There was one they +called the Wailing Place of the Jews, with every stone standing out as +fair as the flags on this floor. John Binder, the mason, was at my elbow +when that came on, and he clapped his hands, and says he, 'Well, yon +beats all!' But the one for my choice, sir, was the Garden of Gethsemane +by moonlight. I'd only gone to the penny places, for I'm a good size and +can look over most folks' heads, but I thought I must see that a bit +nearer, cost what it might. So I found a shilling, and I says to the +young fellow at the door (it was the pupil-teacher), 'I must go a bit +nearer to yon.' And he says, 'You're not going into the reserved seats, +Isaac?' So I says, 'Don't put yourself about, my lad, I shan't interfere +with the quality; but if half a day's wage 'll bring me nearer to the +Garden of Gethsemane, I'm bound to go.' And I went. I didn't intrude +myself on nobody, though one gentleman was for making room for me at +once, and twice over he offered me a seat beside him. But I knew my +manners, and I said, 'Thank you, sir, I can see as I stand.' And I did +see right well, and kicked Bob Furniss too, which was good for all +parties. But I'd like to see the very places themselves, Master Jack." + +"So should I," said I; "but I should like to go farther, all round the +world, I think. Do you know, Isaac, you wouldn't believe what curious +beasts there are in other countries, and what wonderful people and +places! Why, we've only got to ATH--No. 135--now; it leaves off at +_Athanagilde_, a captain of the Spanish Goths--he's nobody, but there +are _such_ apes in that number! The Mono--there's a picture of him, just +like a man with a tail and horrid feet, who used to sit with the negro +women when they were at work, and play with bits of paper; and a Quata, +who used to be sent to the tavern for wine, and when the children pelted +him he put down the wine and threw stones at them. And there are +pictures in all the numbers, of birds and ant-eaters and antelopes, and +I don't know what. The Mono and the Quata live in the West Indies, I +think. You see, I think the A's are rather good numbers; very likely, +for there's America, and Asia, and Africa, and Arabia, and Abyssinia, +and there'll be Australia before we come to the B's. Oh, Isaac! I do +wish I could go round the world!" + +I sighed, and the bee-master sighed also, with a profundity that made +his chair creak, well-seasoned as it was. Then he said, "But I'll say +this, Master Jack, next to going to such places the reading about 'em +must come. A penny a week's a penny a week to a poor man, but I reckon I +shall have to make shift to take in those numbers myself." + +Isaac did not take them in, however, for I used to take ours down to his +cottage, and read them aloud to him instead. He liked this much better +than if he had had to read to himself--he said he could understand +reading better when he heard it than when he saw it. For my own part I +enjoyed it very much, and I fancy I read rather well, it being a point +on which Mrs. Wood expended much trouble with us. + +"Listen, Isaac," said I on my next visit; "this is what I meant about +the barge"--and resting the Penny Number on the arm of my chair, I read +aloud to the attentive bee-master--"'Goldsmith describes from his own +observation a kind of floating apiary in some parts of France and +Piedmont. They have on board of one barge, he says, threescore or a +hundred beehives----'" + +"That's an appy-ary if ye like, sir!" ejaculated Master Isaac, +interrupting his pipe and me to make way for the observation. + +"Somebody saw 'a convoy of _four thousand_ hives----' on the Nile," said +I. + +The bee-master gave a resigned sigh. "Go on, Master Jack," said he. + +"'--well defended from the inclemency of an accidental storm,'" I +proceeded; "'and with these the owners float quietly down the stream; +one beehive yields the proprietor a considerable income. Why, he adds, a +method similar to this has never been adopted in England, where we have +more gentle rivers and more flowery banks than in any other part of the +world, I know not; certainly it might be turned to advantage, and yield +the possessor a secure, though perhaps a moderate, income.'" + +I was very fond of the canal which ran near us (and was, for that +matter, a parish boundary): and the barges, with their cargoes, were +always interesting to me; but a bargeful of bees seemed something quite +out of the common. I thought I should rather like to float down a gentle +river between flowery banks, surrounded by beehives on which I could +rely to furnish me with a secure though moderate income; and I said so. + +"So should I, sir," said the bee-master. "And I should uncommon like to +ha' seen the one beehive that brought in a considerable income. Honey +must have been very dear in those parts, Master Jack. However, it's in +the book, so I suppose it's right enough." + +I made no defence of the veracity of the _Cyclopaedia_, for I was +thinking of something else, of which, after a few moments, I spoke. + +"Isaac, you don't stay with your bees on the moors. Do you ever go to +see them?" + +"To be sure I do, Master Jack, nigh every Sunday through the season. I +start after I get back from morning church, and I come home in the dark, +or by moonlight. My missus goes to church in the afternoons, and for +that bit she locks up the house." + +"Oh, I wish you'd take me the next time!" said I. + +"To be sure I will, and too glad sir, if you're allowed to go." + +That _was_ the difficulty, and I knew it. No one who has not lived in a +household of old-fashioned middle-class country folk of our type has any +notion how difficult it is for anybody to do anything unusual therein. +In such a well-fitted but unelastic establishment the dinner-hour, the +carriage horses, hot water, bedtime, candles, the post, the wash-day, +and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one's comfort, become +the stern arbiters of one's fate. Spring cleaning--which is something +like what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to "do +it at home"--takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates; but +if you want the front door kept open after the usual hour for drawing +the bolts and hanging the robbers' bell, it's odds if the master of the +house has not an apoplectic fit, and if servants of twelve and fourteen +years' standing do not give warning. + +And what is difficult on week-days is on Sundays next door to +impossible, for obvious reasons. + +But one's parents, though they have their little ways like other +people, are, as a rule--oh, my heart! made sadder and wiser by the +world's rough experiences, bear witness!--very indulgent; and after a +good many ups and downs, and some compromising and coaxing, I got my +way. + +On one point my mother was firm, and I feared this would be an +insuperable difficulty. I must go twice to church, as our Sunday custom +was--a custom which she saw no good reason for me to break. It is easy +to smile at her punctiliousness on this score; but after all these +years, and on the whole, I think she was right. An unexpected compromise +came to my rescue, however: Isaac Irvine's bees were in the parish of +Cripple Charlie's father, within a stone's throw (by the bee-master's +strong arm) of the church itself, which was a small minster among the +moors. Here I promised faithfully to attend Evening Prayer, for which we +should be in time; and I started, by Isaac Irvine's side, on my first +real "expedition" on the first Sunday in August, with my mother's +blessing and a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, "in case of a +collection." + +We dined before we started, I with the rest, and Isaac in our kitchen; +but I had no great appetite--I was too much excited--and I willingly +accepted some large sandwiches made with thick slices of home-made bread +and liberal layers of home-made potted meat, "in case I should feel +hungry" before I got there. + +It pains me to think how distressed my mother was because I insisted on +carrying the sandwiches in a red and orange spotted handkerchief, which +I had purchased with my own pocket-money, and to which I was deeply +attached, partly from the bombastic nature of the pattern, and partly +because it was big enough for any grown-up man. "It made me look like a +tramping sailor," she said. I did not tell her that this was precisely +the effect at which I aimed, though it was the case; but I coaxed her +into permitting it, and I abstained from passing a certain knowing +little ash stick through the knot, and hoisting the bundle over my left +shoulder, till I was well out of the grounds. + +My efforts to spare her feelings on this point, however, proved vain. +She ran to the landing-window to watch me out of sight, and had a full +view of my figure as I swaggered with a business-like gait by Isaac's +side up the first long hill, having set my hat on the back of my head +with an affectation of profuse heat, my right hand in the bee-master's +coat-pocket for support, and my left holding the stick and bundle at an +angle as showy and sailor-like as I could assume. + +"And they'll just meet the Ebenezer folk coming out of chapel, ma'am!" +said our housemaid over my mother's shoulder, by way of consolation. + +Our journey was up-hill, for which I was quite prepared. The blue and +purple outline of the moors formed the horizon line visible from our +gardens, whose mistiness or clearness was prophetic of the coming +weather, and over which the wind was supposed to blow with uncommon +"healthfulness." I had been there once to blow away the whooping-cough, +and I could remember that the sandy road wound up and up, but I did not +appreciate till that Sunday how tiring a steady ascent of nearly five +miles may be. + +We were within sight of the church and within hearing of the bells, when +we reached a wayside trough, whose brimming measure was for ever +overflowed by as bright a rill as ever trickled down a hill-side. + +"It's only the first peal," said Master Isaac, seating himself on the +sandy bank, and wiping his brows. + +My well-accustomed ears confirmed his statement. The bells moved too +slowly for either the second or the third peal, and we had twenty +minutes at our disposal. + +It was then that I knew (for the first but not the last time) what +refreshment for the weary a spotted handkerchief may hold. The +bee-master and I divided the sandwiches, and washed them down with +handfuls of the running rill, so fresh, so cold, so limpid, that (like +the saints and martyrs of a faith) it would convert any one to +water-drinking who did not reflect on the commoner and less shining +streams which come to us through lead pipes and in evil communication +with sewers. + +We were cool and tidy by the time that the little "Tom Tinkler" bell +began to "hurry up." + +"You're coming, aren't you?" said I, checked at the churchyard gate by +an instinct of some hesitation on Isaac's part. + +"Well, I suppose I am, sir," said the bee-master, and in he came. + +The thick walls, the stained windows, and the stone floor, which was +below the level of the churchyard, made the church very cool. Master +Isaac and I seated ourselves so that we had a good view within, and +could also catch a peep through the open porch of the sunlit country +outside. Charlie's father was in his place when we got in; his +threadbare coat was covered by the white linen of his office, and I do +not think it would have been possible even to my levity to have felt +anything but a respectful awe of him in church. + +The cares of this life are not as a rule improving to the countenance. +No one who watches faces can have failed to observe that more beauty is +marred and youth curtailed by vulgar worry than by almost any other +disfigurement. In the less educated classes, where self-control is not +very habitual, and where interests beyond petty and personal ones are +rare, the soft brows and tender lips of girlhood are too often puckered +and hardened by mean anxieties, even where these do not affect the girls +personally, but only imitatively, and as the daily interests of their +station in life. In such cases the discontented, careworn look is by no +means a certain indication of corresponding suffering, but there are too +many others in which tempers that should have been generous, and faces +that should have been noble, and aims that should have been high, are +blurred and blunted by the real weight of real everyday care. + +There are yet others; in which the spirit is too strong for mortal +accidents to pull it down--minds that the narrowest career cannot +vulgarize--faces to which care but adds a look of pathos--souls which +keep their aims and faiths apart from the fluctuations of "the things +that are seen." The personal influence of natures of this type is +generally very large, and it was very large in the case of Cripple +Charlie's father, and made him a sort of Prophet, Priest, and King over +a rough and scattered population, with whom the shy, scholarly poor +gentleman had not otherwise much in common. + +It was his personal influence, I am sure, which made the congregation so +devout! There is one rule which, I believe, applies to all +congregations, of every denomination, and any kind of ritual, and that +is, that the enthusiasm of the congregation is in direct proportion to +the enthusiasm of the minister; not merely to his personal worth, nor +even to his popularity, for people who rather dislike a clergyman, and +disapprove of his service, will say a louder Amen at his giving of +thanks if his own feelings have a touch of fire, than they would to that +of a more perfunctory parson whom they liked better. As is the +heartiness of the priest, so is the heartiness of the people--with such +strictness that one is disposed almost to credit some of it to actual +magnetism. _Response_ is no empty word in public worship. + +It was no empty word on this occasion. From the ancient clerk (who kept +a life-interest in what were now the duties of a choir) to some gaping +farm-lads at my back, everybody said and sang to the utmost of his +ability. I may add that Isaac and I involuntarily displayed a zeal which +was in excess of our Sunday customs; and if my tongue moved glibly +enough with the choir, the bee-master found many an elderly parishioner +besides himself and the clerk who "took" both prayer and praise at such +independent paces as suited their individual scholarship, spectacles, +and notions of reverence. + +It crowned my satisfaction when I found that there was to be a +collection. The hymn to which the churchwardens moved about, gathering +the pence, whose numbers and noisiness seemed in keeping with the rest +of the service, was a well-known one to us all. It was the favourite +evening hymn of the district. I knew every syllable of it, for Jem and I +always sang hymns (and invariably this one) with my dear mother, on +Sunday evening after supper. When we were good, we liked it, and, +picking one favourite after another, we often sang nearly through the +hymn-book. When we were naughty, we displayed a good deal of skill in +making derisive faces behind my mother's back, as she sat at the piano, +without betraying ourselves, and in getting our tongues out and in again +during the natural pauses and convolutions of the tune. But these +occasional fits of boyish profanity did not hinder me from having an +equally boyish fund of reverence and enthusiasm at the bottom of my +heart, and it was with proud and pleasurable emotions that I heard the +old clerk give forth the familiar first lines, + + "Soon shall the evening star with silver ray + Shed its mild lustre o'er this sacred day," + +and got my threepenny-bit ready between my finger and thumb. + +Away went the organ, which was played by the vicar's eldest +daughter--away went the vicar's second daughter, who "led the singing" +from the vicarage pew with a voice like a bird--away went the choir, +which, in spite of surplices, could not be cured of waiting half a beat +for her--and away went the congregation--young men and maidens, old men +and children--in one broad tide of somewhat irregular harmony. Isaac did +not know the words as well as I did, so I lent him my hymn-book; one +result of which was, that the print being small, and the sense of a hymn +being in his view a far more important matter than the sound of it, he +preached rather than sang--in an unequal cadence which was perturbing to +my more musical ear--the familiar lines, + + "Still let each awful truth our thoughts engage, + That shines revealed on inspiration's page; + Nor those blest hours in vain amusement waste + Which all who lavish shall lament at last." + +During the next verse my devotions were a little distracted by the +gradual approach of a churchwarden for my threepenny-bit, which was hot +with three verses of expectant fingering. Then, to my relief, he took +it, and the bee-master's contribution, and I felt calmer, and listened +to the little prelude which it was always the custom for the organist to +play before the final verse of a hymn. It was also the custom to sing +the last verse as loudly as possible, though this is by no means +invariably appropriate. It fitted the present occasion fairly enough. +From where I stood I could see the bellows-blower (the magnetic current +of enthusiasm flowed even to the back of the organ) nerve himself to +prodigious pumping--Charlie's sister drew out all the stops--the vicar +passed from the prayer-desk to the pulpit with the rapt look of a man +who walks in a prophetic dream--we pulled ourselves together, Master +Isaac brought the hymn book close to his glasses, and when the +tantalizing prelude was past we burst forth with a volume which merged +all discrepancies. As far as I am able to judge of my own performance, +I fear I _bawled_ (I'm sure the boy behind me did), + + "Father of Heaven, in Whom our hopes confide, + Whose power defends us, and Whose precepts guide, + In life our Guardian, and in death our Friend, + Glory supreme be Thine till time shall end!" + +The sermon was short, and when the service was over Master Isaac and I +spent a delightful afternoon with his bees among the heather. The +"evening star" had come out when we had some tea in the village inn, and +we walked home by moonlight. There was neither wind nor sun, but the air +was almost oppressively pure. The moonshine had taken the colour out of +the sandy road and the heather, and had painted black shadows by every +boulder, and most things looked asleep except the rill that went on +running. Only we and the rabbits, and the night moths and the beetles, +seemed to be stirring. An occasional bat appeared and vanished like a +spectral illusion, and I saw one owl flap across the moor with level +wings against the moon. + +"Oh, I _have_ enjoyed it!" was all I could say when I parted from the +bee-master. + +"And so have I, Master Jack," was his reply, and he hesitated as if he +had something more to say, and then he said it. "I never enjoyed it as +much, and you can thank your mother, sir, with old Isaac's duty, for +sending us to church. I'm sure I don't know why I never went before when +I was up yonder, for I always took notice of the bells. I reckon I +thought I hadn't time, but you can say, with my respects, sir, that +please GOD I shan't miss again." + +I believe he never did; and Cripple Charlie's father came to look on him +as half a parishioner. + +I was glad I had not shirked Evening Prayer myself, though (my sex and +age considered) it was not to be expected that I should comfort my +mother's heart by confessing as much. Let me confess it now, and confess +also that if it was the first time, it was not the last that I have had +cause to realize--oh women, for our sakes remember it!--into what light +and gentle hands GOD lays the reins that guide men's better selves. + + * * * * * + +The most remarkable event of the day happened at the end of it. Whilst +Isaac was feeling the weight of one of his hives, and just after I lost +chase of a very peculiar-looking beetle, from his squeezing himself away +from me under a boulder, I had caught sight of a bit of white heather, +and then bethought me of gathering a nosegay (to include this rarity) of +moor flowers and grasses for Mrs. Wood. So when we reached the lane on +our way home, I bade Isaac good-night, and said I would just run in by +the back way into the farm (we never called it the Academy) and leave +the flowers, that the school-mistress might put them in water. Mary Anne +was in the kitchen. + +"Where's Mrs. Wood?" said I, when she had got over that silly squeak +women always give when you come suddenly on them. + +"Dear, dear, Master Jack! what a turn you did give me! I thought it was +the tramp." + +"What tramp?" said I. + +"Why, a great lanky man that came skulking here a bit since, and asked +for the missus. She was down the garden, and I've half a notion he went +after her. I wish you'd go and look for her, Master Jack, and fetch her +in. It's as damp as dear knows what, and she takes no more care of +herself than a baby. And I'd be glad to know that man was off the place. +There's wall-fruit and lots of things about, a low fellow like that +might pick up." + +My ears felt a little hot at this allusion to low fellows and garden +thieving, and I hurried off to do Mary Anne's bidding without further +parley. There was a cloud over the moon as I ran down the back garden, +but when I was nearly at the end the moon burst forth again, so that I +could see. And this is what I saw:-- + +First, a white thing lying on the ground, and it was the widow's cap, +and then Mrs. Wood herself, with a gaunt lanky-looking man, such as Mary +Anne had described. Her head came nearly to his shoulder, as I was well +able to judge, for he was holding it in his hands and had laid his own +upon it, as if it were a natural resting-place. And his hair coming +against the darker part of hers, I could see that his was grey all over. +Up to this point I had been too much stupefied to move, and I had just +become conscious that I ought to go, when the white cap lying in the +moonlight seemed to catch his eye as it had caught mine; and he set his +heel on it with a vehemence that made me anxious to be off. I could not +resist one look back as I left the garden, if only to make sure that I +had not been dreaming. No, they were there still, and he was lifting the +coil of her hair, which I suppose had come down when the cap was pulled +off, and it took the full stretch of his arm to do so, before it fell +heavily from his fingers. + +When I presented myself to my mother with the bunch of flowers still in +my hand, she said, "Did my Jack get these for Mother?" + +I shook my head. "No, Mother. For Mrs. Wood." + +"You might have called at the farm as you passed," said she. + +"I did!" said I. + +"Couldn't you see Mrs. Wood, love?" + +"Yes, I saw her, but she'd got the tramp with her." + +"What tramp?" asked my mother in a horror-struck voice, which seemed +quite natural to me, for I had been brought up to rank tramps in the +same "dangerous class" with mad dogs, stray bulls, drunken men, and +other things which it is undesirable to meet. + +"The great lanky one," I explained, quoting from Mary Anne. + +"What was he doing with Mrs. Wood?" asked my mother anxiously. + +I had not yet recovered from my own bewilderment, and was reckless of +the shock inflicted by my reply. + +"_Pooring_ her head, and kissing it." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "To each his sufferings; all are men + Condemned alike to groan. + The tender for another's pain--" + GRAY. + + +Not even the miser's funeral had produced in the neighbourhood anything +like the excitement which followed that Sunday evening. At first my +mother--her mind filled by the simplest form of the problem, namely, +that Mrs. Wood was in the hands of a tramp--wished my father to take the +blunderbuss in his hand and step down to the farm. He had "pish"ed and +"pshaw"ed about the blunderbuss, and was beginning to say more, when I +was dismissed to bed, where I wandered back over the moors in uneasy +dreams, and woke with the horror of a tramp's hand upon my shoulder. +After suffering the terrors of night for some time, and finding myself +no braver with my head under the bedclothes than above them, I began +conscientiously to try my mother's family recipe for "bad dreams and +being afraid in the dark." This was to "say over" the Benedicite +correctly, which (if by a rare chance one were still awake at the end) +was to be followed by a succession of the hymns one knew by heart. It +required an effort to _begin_, and to _really try_, but the children of +such mothers as ours are taught to make efforts, and once fairly +started, and holding on as a duty, it certainly did tend to divert the +mind from burglars and ghosts, to get the beasts, creeping things, and +fowls of the air into their right places in the chorus of benedictions. +That Jem never could discriminate between the "Dews and Frosts" and +"Frost and Cold" verses needs no telling. I have often finished and +still been frightened and had to fall back upon the hymns, but this +night I began to dream pleasanter dreams of Charlie's father and the +bee-master before I got to the holy and humble men of heart. + +I slept long then, and Mother would not let me be awakened. When I did +open my eyes Jem was sitting at the end of the bed, dying to tell me the +news. + +"Jack! you have waked, haven't you? I see your eyes. Don't shut 'em +again. What _do_ you think? _Mrs. Wood's husband has come home!_" + +I never knew the ins and outs of the story very exactly. At the time +that what did become generally known was fresh in people's minds Jem and +I were not by way of being admitted to "grown-up" conversations; and +though Mrs. Wood's husband and I became intimate friends, I neither +wished nor dared to ask him more about his past than he chose to tell, +for I knew enough to know that it must be a most intolerable pain to +recall it. + +What we had all heard of the story was this. Mr. Wood had been a head +clerk in a house of business. A great forgery was committed against his +employers, and he was accused. He was tried, condemned, and sentenced to +fourteen years' penal servitude, which, in those days, meant +transportation abroad. For some little time the jury had not been +unanimous. One man doubted the prisoner's guilt--the man we afterwards +knew as the old miser of Walnut-tree Farm. But he was over-persuaded at +last, and Mr. Wood was convicted and sentenced. He had spent ten years +of his penal servitude in Bermuda when a man lying in Maidstone Jail +under sentence of death for murder, confessed (amongst other crimes of +which he disburdened his conscience) that it was he, and not the man who +had been condemned, who had committed the forgery. Investigation +confirmed the truth of this statement, and Mr. Wood was "pardoned" and +brought home. + +He had just come. He was the tramp. + +In this life the old miser never knew that his first judgment had been +the just one, but the doubt which seems always to have haunted +him--whether he had not helped to condemn the innocent--was the reason +of his bequest to the convict's wife, and explained much of the +mysterious wording of the will. + +It was a tragic tale, and gave a terrible interest to the gaunt, +white-haired, shattered-looking man who was the hero of it. It had one +point of special awe for me, and I used to watch him in church and think +of it, till I am ashamed to say that I forgot even when to stand up and +sit down. He had served ten years of his sentence. Ten years! Ten times +three hundred and sixty-five days! All the days of the years of my life. +The weight of that undeserved punishment had fallen on him the year that +I was born, and all that long, long time of home with Mother and Father +and Jem--all the haymaking summers and snowballing winters--whilst Jem +and I had never been away from home, and had had so much fun, and +nothing very horrid that I could call to mind except the mumps--he had +been an exile working in chains. I remember rousing up with a start from +the realization of this one Sunday to find myself still standing in the +middle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find me +out, and though Jem was giggling he dared not move, because he was +kneeling next my father, whose back was turned to me. I knelt down, and +started to hear the parson say--"show Thy pity upon all prisoners and +captives!" And then I knew what it is to wish when it is too late. For I +did so wish I had really prayed for prisoners and captives every Sunday, +because then I should have prayed for that poor man nearly all the long +time he had been so miserable; for we began to go to church very early, +and one learns to pray easier and sooner than one learns anything else. + +All this had happened in the holidays, but when they were over school +opened as before, and with additional scholars; for sympathy was wide +and warm with the school-mistress. Strangely enough, both partners in +the firm which had prosecuted Mr. Wood were dead. Their successors +offered him employment, but he could not face the old associations. I +believe he found it so hard to face any one, that this was the reason of +his staying at home for a time and helping in the school. I don't think +we boys made him uncomfortable as grown-up strangers seemed to do, and +he was particularly fond of Cripple Charlie. + +This brought me into contact with him, for Charlie and I were great +friends. He was as well pleased to be read to out of the Penny Numbers +as the bee-master, and he was interested in things of which Isaac +Irvine was completely ignorant. + +Our school was a day-school, but Charlie had been received by Mrs. Wood +as a boarder. His poor back could not have borne to be jolted to and +from the moors every day. So he lived at Walnut-tree Farm, and now and +then his father would come down in a light cart, lent by one of the +parishioners, and take Charlie home from Saturday to Monday, and then +bring him back again. + +The sisters came to see him too, by turns, sometimes walking and +sometimes riding a rough-coated pony, who was well content to be tied to +a gate, and eat some of the grass that overgrew the lane. And often +Charlie came to _us_, especially in haytime, for haycocks seem very +comfortable (for people whose backs hurt) to lean against; and we could +cover his legs with hay too, as he liked them to be hidden. There is no +need to say how tender my mother was to him, and my father used to look +at him half puzzledly and half pitifully, and always spoke to him in +quite a different tone of voice to the one he used with other boys. + +Jem gave Charlie the best puppy out of the curly brown spaniel lot; but +he didn't really like being with him, though he was sorry for him, and +he could not bear seeing his poor legs. + +"They make me feel horrid," Jem said. "And even when they're covered +up, I know they're there." + +"You're a chip of the old block, Jem," said my father, "I'd give a +guinea to a hospital any day sooner than see a patient. I'm as sorry as +can be for the poor lad, but he turns me queer, though I feel ashamed of +it. I like things _sound_. Your mother's different; she likes 'em better +for being sick and sorry, and I suppose Jack takes after her." + +My father was wrong about me. Pity for Charlie was not half of the tie +between us. When he was talking, or listening to the penny numbers, I +never thought about his legs or his back, and I don't now understand how +anybody could. + +He read and remembered far more than I did, and he was even wilder about +strange countries. He had as adventurous a spirit as any lad in the +school, cramped up as it was in that misshapen body. I knew he'd have +liked to go round the world as well as I, and he often laughed and +said--"What's more, Jack, if I'd the money I would. People are very kind +to poor wretches like me all over the world. I should never want a +helping hand, and the only difference between us would be, that I should +be carried on board ship by some kind-hearted blue-jacket, and you'd +have to scramble for yourself." + +He was very anxious to know Isaac Irvine, and when I brought the +bee-master to see him, they seemed to hold friendly converse with their +looks even before either of them spoke. It was a bad day with Charlie, +but he set his lips against the pain, and raised himself on one arm to +stare out of his big brown eyes at the old man, who met them with as +steady a gaze out of his. Then Charlie lowered himself again, and said +in a tone of voice by which I knew he was pleased, "I'm so glad you've +come to see me, old Isaac. It's very kind of you. Jack says you know a +lot about live things, and that you like the numbers we like in the +_Penny Cyclopaedia_. I wanted to see you, for I think you and I are much +in the same boat; you're old, and I'm crippled, and we're both too poor +to travel. But Jack's to go, and when he's gone, you and I'll follow him +on the map." + +"GOD willing, sir," said the bee-master; and when he said that, I knew +how sorry he felt for poor Charlie, for when he was moved he always said +very short things, and generally something religious. + +And for all Charlie's whims and fancies, and in all his pain and +fretfulness, and through fits of silence and sensitiveness, he had never +a better friend than Isaac Irvine. Indeed the bee-master was one of +those men (to be found in all ranks) whose delicate tenderness might not +be guessed from the size and roughness of the outer man. + +Our neighbours were all very kind to Mr. Wood, in their own way, but +they were a little impatient of his slowness to be sociable, and had, I +think, a sort of feeling that the ex-convict ought not only to enjoy +evening parties more than other people, but to be just a little more +grateful for being invited. + +However, one must have a strong and sensitive imagination to cultivate +wide sympathies when one lives a quiet, methodical life in the place +where one's father and grandfather lived out quiet methodical lives +before one; and I do not think we were an imaginative race. + +The school-master (as we used to call him) had seen and suffered so much +more of life than we, that I do not think he resented the clumsiness of +our sympathy; but now I look back I fancy that he must have felt as if +he wanted years of peace and quiet in which to try and forget the years +of suffering. Old Isaac said one day, "I reckon the master feels as if +he wanted to sit down and say to hisself over and over again, 'I'm a +free man, I'm a free man, I'm a free man,' till he can fair trust +himself to believe it." + +Isaac was probably right, and perhaps evening parties, though they are +meant for treats, are not the best places to sit down and feel free in, +particularly when there are a lot of strange people who have heard a +dreadful story about you, and want to see what you look like after it. + +During the summer holidays Jem and I were out the whole day long. When +we came in I was ready for the Penny Numbers, but Jem always fell +asleep, even if he did not go to bed at once. My father did just the +same. I think their feeling about houses was of a perfectly primitive +kind. They looked upon them as comfortable shelter for sleeping and +eating, but not at all as places in which to pursue any occupation. +Life, for them, was lived out-of-doors. + +I know now how dull this must have made the evenings for my mother, and +that it was very selfish of me to wait till my father was asleep (for +fear he should say "no"), and then to ask her leave to take the Penny +Numbers down to the farm and sit with Cripple Charlie. + +Now and then she would go too, and chat with Mrs. Wood, whilst the +school-master and I were turning the terrestrial globe by Charlie's +sofa; but as a rule Charlie and I were alone, and the Woods went round +the homestead together, and came home hand in hand, through the garden, +and we laughed to think how we had taken him for a tramp. + +And sometimes on a summer's evening, when we talked and read aloud to +each other across a quaint oak table that had been the miser's, of +far-away lands and strange birds of gorgeous plumage, the school-master +sat silent in the arm-chair by the open lattice, resting his white head +against the mullion that the ivy was creeping up, and listened to the +blackbirds and thrushes as their songs dropped by odd notes into +silence, and gazed at the near fields and trees, and the little +homestead with its hayricks on the hill, when the grass was apple-green +in the gold mist of sunset: and went on gazing when that had faded into +fog, and the hedgerow elms were black against the sky, as if the eye +could not be filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing! + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, + Turns his necessity to glorious gain." + WORDSWORTH. + + +"Jack," said Charlie, "listen!" + +He was reading bits out of the numbers to me, whilst I was rigging a +miniature yacht to sail on the dam; and Mrs. Wood's husband was making a +plan of something at another table, and occasionally giving me advice +about my masts and sails. "It's about the South American forests," said +Charlie. "'There every tree has a character of its own; each has its +peculiar foliage, and probably also a tint unlike that of the trees +which surround it. Gigantic vegetables of the most different families +intermix their branches; five-leaved bignonias grow by the side of +bonduc-trees; cassias shed their yellow blossoms upon the rich fronds of +arborescent ferns; myrtles and eugenias, with their thousand arms, +contrast with the elegant simplicity of palms; and among the airy +foliage of the mimosa the ceropia elevates its giant leaves and heavy +candelabra-shaped branches. Of some trees the trunk is perfectly smooth, +of others it is defended by enormous spines, and the whole are often +apparently sustained by the slanting stems of a huge wild fig-tree. With +us, the oak, the chestnut, and the beech seem as if they bore no +flowers, so small are they and so little distinguishable except by +naturalists; but in the forests of South America it is often the most +gigantic trees that produce the most brilliant flowers; cassias hang +down their pendants of golden blossoms, vochisias unfold their singular +bunches; corollas, longer than those of our foxglove, sometimes yellow +or sometimes purple, load the arborescent bignonias; while the chorisias +are covered, as it were, with lilies, only their colours are richer and +more varied; grasses also appear in form of bamboos, as the most +graceful of trees; bauhinias, bignonias, and aroideous plants cling +round the trees like enormous cables; orchideous plants and bromelias +overrun their limbs, or fasten themselves to them when prostrated by the +storm, and make even their dead remains become verdant with leaves and +flowers not their own.'" + +Though he could read very well, Charlie had, so far, rather stumbled +through the long names in this description, but he finished off with +fluency, not to say enthusiasm. "'Such are the ancient forests, +flourishing in a damp and fertile soil, and clothed with perpetual +green.'" + +I was half-way through a profound sigh when I caught the school-master's +eye, who had paused in his plan-making and was listening with his head +upon his hand. + +"What a groan!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter?" + +"It sounds so splendid!" I answered, "and I'm so afraid I shall never +see it. I told Father last night I should like to be a sailor, but he +only said 'Stuff and nonsense,' and that there was a better berth +waiting for me in Uncle Henry's office than any of the Queen's ships +would provide for me; and Mother begged me never to talk of it any more, +if I didn't want to break her heart"--and I sighed again. + +The school-master had a long smooth face, which looked longer from +melancholy, and he turned it and his arms over the back of the chair, +and looked at me with the watchful listening look his eyes always had; +but I am not sure if he was really paying much attention to me, for he +talked (as he often did) as if he were talking to himself. + +"I wanted to be a soldier," he said, "and my father wouldn't let me. I +often used to wish I had run away and enlisted, when I was with +Quarter-master McCulloch, of the Engineers (he'd risen from the ranks +and was younger than me), in Bermuda." + +"Bermuda! That's not very far from South America, is it?" said I, +looking across to the big map of the world. "Is it very beautiful, too?" + +The school-master's eyes contracted as if he were short-sighted, or +looking at something inside his own head. But he smiled as he answered-- + +"The poet says, + + 'A pleasing land of drowsy-head it is, + Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; + And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, + For ever flushing round a summer sky.'" + +"But are there any curious beasts and plants and that sort of thing?" I +asked. + +"I believe there were no native animals originally," said the +school-master. "I mean inland ones. But the fowls of the air and the +fishes of the sea are of all lovely forms and colours. And such corals +and sponges, and sea-anemones, blooming like flowers in the transparent +pools of the warm blue water that washes the coral reefs and fills the +little creeks and bays!" + +I gasped--and he went on. "The commonest trees, I think, are palms and +cedars. Lots of the old houses were built of cedar, and I've heard of +old cedar furniture to be picked up here and there, as some people buy +old oak out of English farm-houses. It is very durable and deliriously +scented. People used to make cedar bonfires when the small-pox was +about, to keep away infection. The gardens will grow anything, and plots +of land are divided by oleander hedges of many colours." + +"Oh--h!" ejaculated I, in long-drawn notes of admiration. The +school-master's eyes twinkled. + +"Not only," continued he, "do very gaudy lobsters and quaint cray-fish +and crabs with lanky legs dispute your attention on the shore with the +shell-fish of the loveliest hues; there is no lack of remarkable +creatures indoors. Monstrous spiders, whose bite is very unpleasant, +drop from the roof; tarantulas and scorpions get into your boots, and +cockroaches, hideous to behold and disgusting to smell, invade every +place from your bed to your store-cupboard. If you possess anything, +from food and clothing to books and boxes, the ants will find it and +devour it, and if you possess a garden the mosquitoes will find you and +devour you." + +"Oh--h!" I exclaimed once more, but this time in a different tone. + +Mr. Wood laughed heartily. "Tropical loveliness has its drawbacks, Jack. +Perhaps some day when your clothes are moulded, and your brain feels +mouldy too with damp heat, and you can neither work in the sun nor be +at peace in the shade, you may wish you were sitting on a stool in your +uncle's office, undisturbed by venomous insects, and cool in a November +fog." + +I laughed too, but I shook my head. + +"No. I shan't mind the insects if I can get there. Charlie, were those +wonderful ants old Isaac said you'd been reading about, Bermuda ants?" + +I did not catch Charlie's muttered reply, and when I looked round I saw +that his face was buried in the red cushions, and that he was (what Jem +used to call) "in one of his tempers." + +I don't exactly know how it was. I don't think Charlie was jealous or +really cross, but he used to take fits of fancying he was in the way, +and out of it all (from being a cripple), if we seemed to be very busy +without him, especially about such things as planning adventures. I knew +what was the matter directly, but I'm afraid my consolation was rather +clumsy. + +"Don't be cross, Charlie," I said; "I thought you were listening too, +and if it's because you think you won't be able to go, I don't believe +there's really a bit more chance of my going, though my legs _are_ all +right." + +"Don't bother about me," said Charlie; "but I wish you'd put these +numbers down, they're in my way." And he turned pettishly over. + +Before I could move, the school-master had taken the papers, and was +standing over Charlie's couch, with his right hand against the wall, at +the level of his head, and his left arm hanging by his side; and I +suppose it was his attitude which made me notice, before he began to +speak, what a splendid figure he had, and how strong he looked. He spoke +in an odd, abrupt sort of voice, very different from the way he had been +talking to me, but he looked down at Charlie so intensely, that I think +he felt it through the cushions, and lifted his head. + +"When your father has been bringing you down here, or at any time when +you have been out amongst other people, have you ever overheard them +saying, 'Poor chap! it's a sad thing,' and things of that kind, as if +they were sorry for you?" + +Cripple Charlie's face flushed scarlet, and my own cheeks burned, as I +looked daggers at the school-master, for what seemed a brutal +insensibility to the lame boy's feelings. He did not condescend, +however, to meet my eyes. His own were still fixed steadily on +Charlie's, and he went on. + +"_I've heard it._ My ears are quick, and for many a Sunday after I came +I caught the whispers behind me as I went up the aisle, 'Poor man!' +'Poor gentleman!' 'He looks bad, too!' One morning an old woman, in a +big black bonnet, said, 'Poor soul!' so close to me, that I looked +down, and met her withered eyes, full of tears--for me!--and I said, +'Thank you, mother,' and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with her +trembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said, +'I've knowed trouble myself, my dear. The Lord bless yours to you!'" + +"It must have been Betty Johnson," I interpolated; but the school-master +did not even look at me. + +"You and I," he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, "have had our +share of this life's pain so dealt out to us that any one can see and +pity us. My boy, take a fellow-sufferer's word for it, it is wise and +good not to shrink from the seeing and pitying. The weight of the cross +spreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with others +as well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it. And as one learns +to be pained with the pains of others, one learns to be happy in their +happiness and comforted by their sympathy, and then no man's life can be +quite empty of pleasure. I don't know if my troubles have been lighter +or heavier ones than yours----" + +The school-master stopped short, and turned his head so that his face +was almost hidden against his hand upon the wall. Charlie's big eyes +were full of tears, and I am sure I distinctly felt my ears poke +forwards on my head with anxious curiosity to catch what Mr. Wood would +tell us about that dreadful time of which he had never spoken. + +"When I was your age," he said bluntly, "I was unusually lithe and +active and strong for mine. When I was half as old again, I was stronger +than any man I knew, and had many a boyish triumph out of my strength, +because I was slender and graceful, and this concealed my powers. I had +all the energies and ambitions natural to unusual vigour and manly +skill. I wanted to be a soldier, but it was not to be, and I spent my +youth at a desk in a house of business. I adapted myself, but none the +less I chafed whenever I heard of manly exploits, and of the delights +and dangers that came of seeing the world. I used to think I could bear +anything to cross the seas and see foreign climes. I did cross the +Atlantic at last--a convict in a convict ship (GOD help any man who +knows what that is!), and I spent the ten best years of my manhood at +the hulks working in chains. You've never lost freedom, my lad, so you +have never felt what it is not to be able to believe you've got it back. +You don't know what it is to turn nervous at the responsibility of being +your own master for a whole day, or to wake in a dainty room, with the +birds singing at the open window, and to shut your eyes quickly and pray +to go on dreaming a bit, because you feel sure you're really in your +hammock in the hulks." + +The school-master lifted his other hand above his head, and pressed both +on it, as if he were in pain. What Charlie was doing I don't know, but I +felt so miserable I could not help crying, and had to hunt for my +pocket-handkerchief under the table. It was full of acorns, and by the +time I had emptied it and dried my eyes, Mr. Wood was lifting Charlie in +his arms, and arranging his cushions. + +"Oh, thank you!" Charlie said, as he leant back; "how comfortable you +have made me!" + +"I have been sick-nurse, amongst other trades. For some months I was a +hospital warder." + +"Was that when----" Charlie began, and then he stopped short, and said, +"Oh, I beg your pardon!" + +"Yes; it was when I was a convict," said the school-master. "No offence, +my boy. If I preach I must try to practise. Jack's eyes are dropping out +of his head to hear more of Bermuda, and you and I will put our whims +and moods on one side, and we'll all tell travellers' tales together." + +Cripple Charlie kept on saying "Thank you," and I know he was very sorry +not to be able to think of anything more to say, for he told me so. He +wanted to have thanked him better, because he knew that Mr. Wood had +talked about his having been a convict, when he did not like to talk +about it, just to show Charlie that he knew what pain, and not being +able to do what you want, feel like, and that Charlie ought not to fancy +he was neglected. + +And that was the beginning of all the stories the school-master used to +tell us, and of the natural history lessons he gave us, and of his +teaching me to stuff birds, and do all kinds of things. + +We used to say to him, "You're better than the Penny Numbers, for you're +quite as interesting, and we're sure you're true." And the odd thing was +that he made Charlie much more contented, because he started him with so +many collections, whilst he made me only more and more anxious to see +the world. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + "Much would have more, and lost all."--_English Proverb_. + + "Learn you to an ill habit, and ye'll ca't custom." + _Scotch Proverb_. + + +The lane was full of colour that autumn, the first autumn of the +convict's return. The leaves turned early, and fell late, and made the +hedges gayer than when the dog-roses were out; for not only were the +leaves of all kinds brighter than many flowers, but the berries (from +the holly and mountain-ash to the hips and haws) were so thick-set, and +so red and shining, that, as my dear mother said, "they looked almost +artificial." + +I remember it well, because of two things. First, that Jem got five of +the largest hips we had ever seen off a leafless dog-rose branch which +stuck far out of the hedge, and picked the little green coronets off, so +that they were smooth and glossy, and egg-shaped, and crimson on one +side and yellow on the other; and then he got an empty chaffinch's nest +close by and put the five hips into it, and took it home, and persuaded +Alice our new parlourmaid that it was a robin redbreast's nest with eggs +in it. And she believed it, for she came from London and knew no better. + +The second thing I remember that autumn by, is that everybody expected a +hard winter because of the berries being so fine, and the hard winter +never came, and the birds ate worms and grubs and left most of the hedge +fruits where they were. + +November was bright and mild, and the morning frosts only made the +berries all the glossier when the sun came out. We had one or two +snow-storms in December, and then we all said, "Now it's coming!" but +the snow melted away and left no bones behind. In January the snow lay +longer, and left big bones on the moors, and Jem and I made a slide to +school on the pack track, and towards the end of the month the mill-dam +froze hard, and we had slides fifteen yards long, and skating; and +Winter seemed to have come back in good earnest to fetch his bones away. + +Jem was great fun in frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die of +laughing at him. I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed always +ready for a row, and was constantly in one. The January frost came in +our Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spent +almost all of it out of doors, and he devoted a good deal of it to +fighting with the rough lads of the village. There was a standing +subject of quarrel, which is a great thing for either tribes or +individuals who have a turn that way. A pond at the corner of the lower +paddock was fed by a stream which also fed the mill-dam; and the +mill-dam was close by, though, as it happened, not on my father's +property. Old custom made the mill-dam the winter resort of all the +village sliders and skaters, and my father displayed a good deal of +toleration when those who could not find room for a new slide, or wished +to practise their "outer edge" in a quiet spot, came climbing over the +wall (there was no real thoroughfare) and invaded our pond. + +Perhaps it is because gratitude is a fatiguing virtue, or perhaps it is +because self-esteem has no practical limits, that favours are seldom +regarded as such for long. They are either depreciated, or claimed as +rights; very often both. And what is common in all classes is almost +universal amongst the uneducated. You have only to make a system of +giving your cast-off clothes to some shivering family, and you will not +have to wait long for an eloquent essay on their shabbiness, or for an +outburst of sincere indignation if you venture to reserve a warm jacket +for a needy relative. Prescriptive rights, in short, grow faster than +pumpkins, which is amongst the many warnings life affords us to be just +as well as generous. Thence it had come about that the young roughs of +the village regarded our pond to all winter intents and purposes as +theirs, and my father as only so far and so objectionably concerned in +the matter that he gave John Binder a yearly job in patching up the wall +which it took them three months' trouble to kick a breach in. + +Our neighbours were what is called "very independent" folk. In the +grown-up people this was modified by the fact that no one who has to +earn his own livelihood can be quite independent of other people; if he +would live he must let live, and throw a little civility into the +bargain. But boys of an age when their parents found meals and hobnailed +boots for them whether they behaved well or ill, were able to display +independence in its roughest form. And when the boys of our +neighbourhood were rough, they were very rough indeed. + +The village boys had their Christmas holidays about the same time that +we had ours, which left them as much spare time for sliding and skating +as we had, but they had their dinner at twelve o'clock, whilst we had +ours at one, so that any young roughs who wished to damage our pond were +just comfortably beginning their mischief as Jem and I were saying grace +before meat, and the thought of it took away our appetites again and +again. + +That winter they were particularly aggravating. The December frost was +a very imperfect one, and the mill-dam never bore properly, so the boys +swarmed over our pond, which was shallow and safe. Very few of them +could even hobble on skates, and those few carried the art no farther +than by cutting up the slides. But thaw came on, so that there was no +sliding, and then the young roughs amused themselves with stamping holes +in the soft ice with their hobnailed heels. When word came to us that +they were taking the stones off our wall and pitching them down on to +the soft ice below, to act as skaters' stumbling-blocks for the rest of +that hard winter which we expected, Jem's indignation was not greater +than mine. My father was not at home, and indeed, when we had complained +before, he rather snubbed us, and said that we could not want the whole +of the pond to ourselves, and that he had always lived quietly with his +neighbours and we must learn to do the same, and so forth. No action at +all calculated to assuage our thirst for revenge was likely to be taken +by him, so Jem and I held a council by Charlie's sofa, and it was a +council of war. At the end we all three solemnly shook hands, and +Charlie was left to write and despatch brief notes of summons to our +more distant school-mates, whilst Jem and I tucked up our trousers, +wound our comforters sternly round our throats, and went forth in +different directions to gather the rest. + +(Having lately been reading about the Highlanders, who used to send +round a fiery cross when the clans were called to battle, I should have +liked to do so in this instance; but as some of the Academy boys were no +greater readers than Jem, they might not have known what it meant, so we +abandoned the notion.) + +There was not an Academy boy worth speaking of who was in time for +dinner the following day; and several of them brought brothers or +cousins to the fray. By half-past twelve we had crept down the field +that was on the other side of our wall, and had hidden ourselves in +various corners of a cattle-shed, where a big cart and some sail-cloth +and a turnip heap provided us with ambush. By and by certain familiar +whoops and hullohs announced that the enemy was coming. One or two +bigger boys made for the dam (which I confess was a relief to us), but +our own particular foes advanced with a rush upon the wall. + +"They hevn't coomed yet, hev they?" we heard the sexton's son say, as he +peeped over at our pond. + +"Noa," was the reply. "It's not gone one yet." + +"It's gone one by t' church. I yeard it as we was coming up t' lane." + +"T' church clock's always hafe-an-hour fasst, thee knows." + +"It isn't!" + +"It is." + +"T' church clock's t' one to go by, anyhow," the sexton's son +maintained. + +His friend guffawed aloud. + +"And it's a reight 'un to go by too, my sakes! when thee feyther shifts +t' time back'ards and for'ards every Sunday morning to suit hissen." + +"To suit hissen! To suit t' ringers, ye mean!" said the sexton's son. + +"What's thou to do wi' t' ringers?" was the reply, enforced apparently +by a punch in the back, and the two lads came cuffing and struggling up +the field, much to my alarm, but fortunately they were too busy to +notice us. + +Meanwhile, the rest had not been idle at the wall. Jem had climbed on +the cart, and peeping through a brick hole he could see that they had +with some difficulty disengaged a very heavy stone. As we were turning +our heads to watch the two lads fighting near our hiding-place, we heard +the stone strike with a heavy thud upon the rotten ice below, and it was +echoed by a groan of satisfaction from above. + +("Ready!" I whispered.) + +"You'll break somebody's nose when it's frosted in," cried Bob Furniss, +in a tone of sincere gratification. + +"Eh, Tim Binder! there'll be a rare job for thee feyther next spring, +fettling up this wall, by t' time we've done wi' it." + +"Let me come," we heard Tim say. "Thou can't handle a stone. Let me +come. Th' ice is as soft as loppered milk, and i' ten minutes, I'll fill +yon bit they're so chuff of skating on, as thick wi' stones as a +quarry." + +("Now!" I said.) + +Our foes considerably outnumbered us, but I think they were at a +disadvantage. They had worked off a good deal of their steam, and ours +was at explosion point. We took them by surprise and in the rear. They +had had some hard exercise, and we were panting to begin. As a matter of +fact those who could get away ran away. We caught all we could, and +punched and pummelled and rolled them in the snow to our hearts' +content. + +Jem never was much of a talker, and I never knew him speak when he was +fighting; but three several times on this occasion, I heard him say very +stiffly and distinctly (he was on the top of Tim Binder), "I'll fettle +thee! I'll fettle thee! I'll fettle thee!" + +The battle was over, the victory was ours, but the campaign was not +ended, and thenceforward the disadvantages would be for us. Even real +warfare is complicated when men fight with men less civilized than +themselves; and we had learnt before now that when we snowballed each +other or snowballed the rougher "lot" of village boys, we did so under +different conditions. _We_ had our own code of honour and fairness, but +Bob Furniss was not above putting a stone into a snowball if he owed a +grudge. + +So when we heard a rumour that the bigger "roughs" were going to join +the younger ones, and lie in wait to "pay us off" the first day we came +down to the ice, I cannot say we felt comfortable, though we resolved to +be courageous. Meanwhile, the thaw continued, which suspended +operations, and gave time, which is good for healing; and Christmas +came, and we and our foes met and mingled in the mummeries of the +season, and wished each other Happy New Years, and said nothing about +the pond. + +How my father came to hear of the matter we did not know at the time, +but one morning he summoned Jem and me, and bade us tell him all about +it. I was always rather afraid of my father, and I should have made out +a very stammering story, but Jem flushed up like a turkey-cock, and gave +our version of the business very straightforwardly. The other side of +the tale my father had evidently heard, and we fancied he must have +heard also of the intended attack on us, for it never took place, and +we knew of interviews which he had with John Binder and others of our +neighbours; and when the frost came in January, we found that the stones +had been taken out of the pond, and my father gave us a sharp lecture +against being quarrelsome and giving ourselves airs, and it ended +with--"The pond is mine. I wish you to remember it, because it makes it +your duty to be hospitable and civil to the boys I allow to go on it. +And I have very decidedly warned them and their parents to remember it, +because if my permission for fair amusement is abused to damage and +trespass, I shall withdraw the favour and prosecute intruders. But the +day I shut up my pond from my neighbours, I shall forbid you and Jack to +go on it again unless the fault is more entirely on one side than it's +likely to be when boys squabble." + +My father waved our dismissal, but I hesitated. + +"The boys won't think we told tales to you to get out of another fight?" +I gasped. + +"Everybody knows perfectly well how I heard. It came to the sexton's +ears, and he very properly informed me." + +I felt relieved, and the first day we had on the ice went off very +fairly. The boys were sheepish at first and slow to come on, and when +they had assembled in force they were inclined to be bullying. But Jem +and I kept our tempers, and by and by my father came down to see us, +and headed a long slide in which we and our foes were combined. As he +left he pinched Jem's frosty ear, and said, "Let me hear if there's any +real malice, but don't double your fists at every trifle. Slide and let +slide! slide and let slide!" And he took a pinch of snuff and departed. + +And Jem was wonderfully peaceable for the rest of the day. A word from +my father went a long way with him. They were very fond of each other. + +I had no love of fighting for fighting's sake, and I had other interests +besides sliding and skating; so I was well satisfied that we got through +the January frost without further breaches of the peace. Towards the end +of the month we all went a good deal upon the mill-dam, and Mr. Wood +(assisted by me as far as watching, handing tools and asking questions +went) made a rough sledge, in which he pushed Charlie before him as he +skated; and I believe the village boys, as well as his own +school-fellows, were glad that Cripple Charlie had a share in the winter +fun, for wherever Mr. Wood drove him, both sliders and skaters made way. + +And even on the pond there were no more real battles that winter. Only +now and then some mischievous urchin tripped up our brand-new skates, +and begged our pardon as he left us on our backs. And more than once, +when "the island" in the middle of the pond was a very fairyland of +hoar-frosted twigs and snow-plumed larches, I have seen its white +loveliness rudely shaken, and skating round to discover the cause, have +beheld Jem, with cheeks redder than his scarlet comforter, return an +"accidental" shove with interest; or posed like a ruffled robin +redbreast, to defend a newly-made slide against intruders. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + "He it was who sent the snowflakes + Sifting, hissing through the forest; + Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, + * * * * * + Shinbegis, the diver, feared not." + _The Song of Hiawatha_. + + +The first day of February was mild, and foggy, and cloudy, and in the +night I woke feeling very hot, and threw off my quilt, and heard the +dripping of soft rain in the dark outside, and thought, "There goes our +skating." Towards morning, however, I woke again, and had to pull the +quilt back into its place, and when I started after breakfast to see +what the dam looked like, there was a sharpish frost, which, coming +after a day of thaw, had given the ice such a fine smooth surface as we +had not had for long. + +I felt quite sorry for Jem, because he was going in the dog-cart with my +father to see a horse, and as I hadn't got him to skate with, I went +down to the farm after breakfast, to see what Charlie and the Woods were +going to do. Charlie was not well, but Mr. Wood said he would come to +the dam with me after dinner, as he had to go to the next village on +business, and the dam lay in his way. + +"Keep to the pond this morning, Jack," he added, to my astonishment. +"Remember it thawed all yesterday; and if the wheel was freed and has +been turning, it has run water off from under the ice, and all may not +be sound that's smooth." + +The pond was softer than it looked, but the mill-dam was most tempting. +A sheet of "glare ice," as Americans say, smooth and clear as a +newly-washed window-pane. I did not go on it, but I brought Mr. Wood to +it early in the afternoon, in the full hope that he would give me leave. + +We found several young men on the bank, some fastening their skates and +some trying the ice with their heels, and as we stood there the numbers +increased, and most of them went on without hesitation; and when they +rushed in groups together, I noticed that the ice slightly swayed. + +"The ice bends a good deal," said Mr. Wood to a man standing next to us. + +"They say it's not so like to break when it bends," was the reply; and +the man moved on. + +A good many of the elder men from the village had come up, and a group, +including John Binder, now stood alongside of us. + +"There's a good sup of water atop of it," said the mason; and I noticed +then that the ice seemed to look wetter, like newly-washed glass still, +but like glass that wants wiping dry. + +"I'm afraid the ice is not safe," said the school-master. + +"It's a tidy thickness, sir," said John Binder, and a heavy man, with +his hands in his pockets and his back turned to us, stepped down and +gave two or three jumps, and then got up again, and, with his back still +turned towards us, said, + +"It's reight enough." + +"It's right enough for one man, but not for a crowd, I'm afraid. Was the +water-wheel freed last night, do you know?" + +"It was loosed last night, but it's froz again," said a bystander. + +"It's not freezing now," said the school-master, "and you may see how +much larger that weak place where the stream is has got since yesterday. +However," he added, good-humouredly, "I suppose you think you know your +own mill-dam and its ways better than I can?" + +"Well," said the heavy man, still with his back to us, "I reckon we've +slid on this dam a many winters afore _you_ come. No offence, I hope?" + +"By no means," said the school-master; "but if you old hands do begin +to feel doubtful as the afternoon goes on, call off those lads at the +other end in good time. And if you could warn them not to go in rushes +together--but perhaps they would not listen to you," he added with a +spice of malice. + +"I don't suppose they would, sir," said John Binder, candidly. "They're +very venturesome, is lads." + +"I reckon they'll suit themselves," said the heavy man, and he jumped on +to the ice, and went off, still with his back to us. + +"If I hadn't lived so many years out of England and out of the world," +said the school-master, turning to me with a half-vexed laugh, "I don't +suppose I should discredit myself to no purpose by telling fools they +are in danger. Jack! will you promise me not to go on the dam this +afternoon?" + +"It is dangerous, is it?" I asked reluctantly; for I wanted sorely to +join the rest. + +"That's a matter of opinion, it seems. But I have a wish that you should +not go on till I come back. I'll be as quick as I can. Promise me." + +"I promise," said I. + +"Will you walk with me?" he asked. But I refused. I thought I would +rather watch the others; and accordingly, after I had followed the +school-master with my eyes as he strode off at a pace that promised +soon to bring him back, I put my hands into my pockets and joined the +groups of watchers on the bank. I suppose if I had thought about it, I +might have observed that though I was dawdling about, my nose and ears +and fingers were not nipped. Mr. Wood was right,--it had not been +freezing for hours past. + +The first thing I looked for was the heavy man. He was so clumsy-looking +that I quite expected him to fall when he walked off on to ice only fit +for skaters. But as I looked closer I saw that the wet on the top was +beginning to have a curdled look, and that the glassiness of the +mill-dam was much diminished. The heavy man's heavy boots got good +foothold, and several of his friends, seeing this, went after him. And +my promise weighed sorely on me. + +The next thing that drew my attention was a lad of about seventeen, who +was skating really well. Indeed, everybody was looking at him, for he +was the only one of the villagers who could perform in any but the +clumsiest fashion, and, with an active interest that hovered between +jeering and applause, his neighbours followed him up and down the dam. +As I might not go on, I wandered up and down the bank too, and +occasionally joined in a murmured cheer when he deftly evaded some +intentional blunderer, or cut a figure at the request of his particular +friends. I got tired at last, and went down to the pond, where I +ploughed about for a time on my skates in solitude, for the pond was +empty. Then I ran up to the house to see if Jem had come back, but he +had not, and I returned to the dam to wait for the school-master. + +The crowd was larger than before, for everybody's work-hours were over; +and the skater was still displaying himself. He was doing very difficult +figures now, and I ran round to where the bank was covered with people +watching him. In the minute that followed I remember three things with +curious distinctness. First, that I saw Mr. Wood coming back, only one +field off, and beckoned to him to be quick, because the lad was +beginning to cut a double three backwards, and I wanted the +school-master to see it. Secondly, that the sight of him seemed suddenly +to bring to my mind that we were all on the far side of the dam, the +side he thought dangerous. And thirdly, that, quickly as my eyes passed +from Mr. Wood to the skater, I caught sight of a bloated-looking young +man, whom we all knew as a sort of typical "bad lot," standing with +another man who was a great better, and from a movement between them, it +just flashed through my head that they were betting as to whether the +lad would cut the double three backwards or not. + +He cut one--two--and then he turned too quickly and his skate caught in +the softening ice, and when he came headlong, his head struck, and +where it struck it went through. It looked so horrible that it was a +relief to see him begin to struggle; but the weakened ice broke around +him with every effort, and he went down. + +For many a year afterwards I used to dream of his face as he sank, and +of the way the ice heaved like the breast of some living thing, and fell +back, and of the heavy waves that rippled over it out of that awful +hole. But great as was the shock, it was small to the storm of shame and +agony that came over me when I realized that every comrade who had been +around the lad had saved himself by a rush to the bank, where we huddled +together, a gaping crowd of foolhardy cowards, without skill to do +anything or heart to dare anything to save him. + +At that time it maddened me so, that I felt that if I could not help the +lad I would rather be drowned in the hole with him, and I began to +scramble in a foolish way down the bank, but John Binder caught me by +the arm and pulled me back, and said (I suppose to soothe me), + +"Yon's the school-master, sir;" and then I saw Mr. Wood fling himself +over the hedge by the alder thicket (he was rather good at high jumps), +and come flying along the bank towards us, when he said, + +"What's the matter?" + +I threw my arms round him and sobbed, "He was cutting a double three +backwards, and he went in." + +Mr. Wood unclasped my arms and turned to the rest. + +"What have you done with him?" he said. "Did he hurt himself?" + +If the crowd was cowardly and helpless, it was not indifferent; and I +shall never forget the haggard faces that turned by one impulse, where a +dozen grimy hands pointed--to the hole. + +"He's drowned dead." "He's under t' ice." "He went right down," several +men hastened to reply, but most of them only enforced the mute +explanation of their pointed finger with, "He's yonder." + +For yet an instant I don't think Mr. Wood believed it, and then he +seized the man next to him (without looking, for he was blind with rage) +and said, + +"He's yonder, _and you're here_?" + +As it happened, it was the man who had talked with his back to us. He +was very big and very heavy, but he reeled when Mr. Wood shook him, like +a feather caught by a storm. + +"You were foolhardy enough an hour ago," said the school-master. "Won't +one of you venture on to your own dam to help a drowning man?" + +"There's none on us can swim, sir," said John Binder. "It's a bad +job"--and he gave a sob that made me begin to cry again, and several +other people too--"but where'd be t' use of drowning five or six more +atop of him?" + +"Can any of you run if you can't swim?" said the school-master. "Get a +stout rope--as fast as you can, and send somebody for the doctor and a +bottle of brandy, and a blanket or two to carry him home in. Jack! Hold +these." + +I took his watch and his purse, and he went down the bank and walked on +to the ice; but after a time his feet went through as the skater's head +had gone. + +"It ain't a bit of use. There's nought to be done," said the bystanders: +for, except those who had run to do Mr. Wood's bidding, we were all +watching and all huddled closer to the edge than ever. The school-master +went down on his hands and knees, on which a big lad, with his hands in +his trouser-pockets, guffawed. + +"What's he up to now?" he asked. + +"Thee may haud thee tongue if thee can do nought," said a mill-girl who +had come up. "I reckon he knows what he's efter better nor thee." She +had pushed to the front, and was crouched upon the edge, and seemed very +much excited. "GOD bless him for trying to save t' best lad in t' +village i' any fashion, say I! There's them that's nearer kin to him and +not so kind." + +Perhaps the strict justice of this taunt prevented a reply (for there +lurks some fairness in the roughest of us), or perhaps the crowd, being +chiefly men knew from experience that there are occasions when it is +best to let a woman say her say. + +"Ye see he's trying to spread hisself out," John Binder explained in +pacific tones. "I reckon he thinks it'll bear him if he shifts half of +his weight on to his hands." + +The girl got nearer to the mason, and looked up at him with her eyes +full of tears. + +"Thank ye, John," she said. "D'ye think he'll get him out?" + +"Maybe he will, my lass. He's a man that knows what he's doing. I'll say +so much for him." + +"Nay!" added the mason sorrowfully. "Th' ice 'll never hold him--his +hand's in--and there goes his knee. Maester! maester!" he shouted, "come +off! come off!" and many a voice besides mine echoed him, "Come off! +come off!" + +The girl got John Binder by the arm, and said hoarsely, "Fetch him off! +He's a reight good 'un--over good to be drownded, if--if it's of no +use." And she sat down on the bank, and pulled her mill-shawl over her +head, and cried as I had never seen any one cry before. + +I was so busy watching her that I did not see that Mr. Wood had got back +to the bank. Several hands were held out to help him, but he shook his +head and said--"Got a knife?" + +Two or three jack-knives were out in an instant. He pointed to the alder +thicket. "I want two poles," he said, "sixteen feet long, if you can, +and as thick as my wrist at the bottom." + +"All right, sir." + +He sat down on the bank, and I rushed up and took one of his cold wet +hands in both mine, and said, "Please, please, don't go on any more." + +"He must be dead ever so long ago," I added, repeating what I had heard. + +"He hasn't been in the water ten minutes," said the school-master, +laughing, "Jack! Jack! you're not half ready for travelling yet. You +must learn not to lose your head and your heart and your wits and your +sense of time in this fashion, if you mean to be any good at a pinch to +yourself or your neighbours. Has the rope come?" + +"No, sir." + +"Those poles?" said the school-master, getting up. + +"They're here!" I shouted, as a young forest of poles came towards us, +so willing had been the owners of the jack-knives. The thickest had +been cut by the heavy man, and Mr. Wood took it first. + +"Thank you, friend," he said. The man didn't speak, and he turned his +back as usual, but he gave a sideways surly nod before he turned. The +school-master chose a second pole, and then pushed both before him right +out on to the ice, in such a way that with the points touching each +other they formed a sort of huge A, the thicker ends being the nearer to +the bank. + +"Now, Jack," said he, "pay attention; and no more blubbering. There's +always plenty of time for giving way _afterwards_." + +As he spoke he scrambled on to the poles, and began to work himself and +them over the ice, wriggling in a kind of snake fashion in the direction +of the hole. We watched him breathlessly, but within ten yards of the +hole he stopped. He evidently dared not go on; and the same thought +seized all of us--"Can he get back?" Spreading his legs and arms he now +lay flat upon the poles, peering towards the hole as if to try if he +could see anything of the drowning man. It was only for an instant, then +he rolled over on to the rotten ice, smashed through, and sank more +suddenly than the skater had done. + +The mill-girl jumped up with a wild cry and rushed to the water, but +John Binder pulled her back as he had pulled me. Martha, our housemaid, +said afterwards (and was ready to take oath on the gilt-edged Church +service my mother gave her) that the girl was so violent that it took +fourteen men to hold her; but Martha wasn't there, and I only saw two, +one at each arm, and when she fainted they laid her down and left her, +and hurried back to see what was going on. For tenderness is an acquired +grace in men, and it was not common in our neighbourhood. + +What was going on was that John Binder had torn his hat from his head +and was saying, "I don't know if there's aught we _can_ do, but I can't +go home myself and leave him yonder. I'm a married man with a family, +but I don't vally _my_ life if----" + +But the rest of this speech was drowned in noise more eloquent than +words, and then it broke into cries of "See thee!--It is--it's t' +maester! and he has--no!--yea!--he _has_--he's gotten him. Polly, lass! +he's fetched up thy Arthur by t' hair of his heead." + +It was strictly true. The school-master told me afterwards how it was. +When he found that the ice would bear no longer, he rolled into the +water on purpose, but, to his horror, he felt himself seized by the +drowning man, which pulled him suddenly down. The lad had risen once, it +seems, though we had not seen him, and had got a breath of air at the +hole, but the edge broke in his numbed fingers, and he sank again and +drifted under the ice. When he rose the second time, by an odd chance it +was just where Mr. Wood broke in, and his clutch of the school-master +nearly cost both their lives. + +"If ever," said Mr. Wood, when he was talking about it afterwards, "if +ever, Jack, when you're out in the world you get under water, and +somebody tries to save you, when he grips _you_, don't seize _him_, if +you can muster self-control to avoid it. If you cling to him, you'll +either drown both, or you'll force him to do as I did--throttle you, to +keep you quiet." + +"Did you?" I gasped. + +"Of course I did. I got him by the throat and dived with him--the only +real risk I ran, as I did not know how deep the dam was." + +"It's an old quarry," said I. + +"I know now. We went down well, and I squeezed his throat as we went. As +soon as he was still we naturally rose, and I turned on my back and got +him by the head. I looked about for the hole, and saw it glimmering +above me like a moon in a fog, and then up we came." + +When they did come up, our joy was so great that for the moment we felt +as if all was accomplished; but far the hardest part really was to come. +When the school-master clutched the poles once more, and drove one under +the lad's arms and under his own left arm, and so kept his burden +afloat whilst he broke a swimming path for himself with the other, our +admiration of his cleverness gave place to the blessed thought that it +might now be possible to help him. The sight of the poles seemed +suddenly to suggest it, and in a moment every spare pole had been +seized, and, headed by our heavy friend, eight or ten men plunged in, +and, smashing the ice before them, waded out to meet the school-master. +On the bank we were dead silent; in the water they neither stopped nor +spoke till it was breast high round their leader. + +I have often thought, and have always felt quite sure, that if the heavy +man had gone on till the little grey waves and the bits of ice closed +over him, not a soul of those who followed him would--nay, _could_--have +turned back. Heroism, like cowardice, is contagious, and I do not think +there was one of us by that time who would have feared to dare or +grudged to die. + +As it was, the heavy man stood still and shouted for the rope. It had +come, and perhaps it was not the smallest effect of the day's teaching, +that those on the bank paid it out at once to those in the water till it +reached the leader, without waiting to ask why he wanted it. The grace +of obedience is slow to be learnt by disputatious northmen, but we had +had some hard teaching that afternoon. + +When the heavy man got the rope he tied the middle part of it round +himself, and, coiling the shorter end, he sent it, as if it had been a +quoit, skimming over the ice towards the school-master. As it unwound +itself it slid along, and after a struggle Mr. Wood grasped it. I fancy +he fastened it round the lad's body; and got his own hands freer to +break the ice before them. Then the heavy man turned, and the long end +of the line, passing from hand to hand in the water, was seized upon the +bank by every one who could get hold of it. I never was more squeezed +and buffeted in my life; but we fairly fought for the privilege of +touching if it were but a strand of the rope that dragged them in. + +And a flock of wild birds, resting on their journey at the other end of +the mill-dam, rose in terror and pursued their seaward way; so wild and +so prolonged were the echoes of that strange, speechless cry in which +collective man gives vent to overpowering emotion. + +It is odd, when one comes to think of it, but I know it is true, for two +sensible words would have stuck in my own throat and choked me, but I +cheered till I could cheer no longer. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + "In doubtful matters Courage may do much:--In desperate + --Patience."--_Old Proverb_. + + +The young skater duly recovered, and thenceforward Mr. Wood's popularity +in the village was established, and the following summer he started a +swimming-class, to which the young men flocked with more readiness than +they commonly showed for efforts made to improve them. + +For my own part I had so realized, to my shame, that one may feel very +adventurous and yet not know how to venture or what to venture in the +time of need, that my whole heart was set upon getting the school-master +to teach me to swim and to dive, with any other lessons in preparedness +of body and mind which I was old enough to profit by. And if the true +tales of his own experiences were more interesting than the Penny +Numbers, it was better still to feel that one was qualifying in one's +own proper person for a life of adventure. + +During the winter Mr. Wood built a boat, which was christened the +_Adela_, after his wife. It was an interesting process to us all. I hung +about and did my best to be helpful, and both Jem and I spoiled our +everyday trousers, and rubbed the boat's sides, the day she was painted. +It was from the _Adela_ that Jem and I had our first swimming-lessons, +Mr. Wood lowering us with a rope under our arms, by which he gave us as +much support as was needed, whilst he taught us how to strike out. + +We had swimming-races on the canal, and having learned to swim and dive +without our clothes, we learnt to do so in them, and found it much more +difficult for swimming and easier for diving. It was then that the +trousers we had damaged when the _Adela_ was built came in most +usefully, and saved us from having to attempt the at least equally +difficult task of persuading my mother to let us spoil good ones in an +amusement which had the unpardonable quality of being "very odd." + +Dear old Charlie had as much fun out of the boat as we had, though he +could not learn to dive. He used to look as if every minute of a pull up +the canal on a sunny evening gave him pleasure; and the brown Irish +spaniel Jem gave him used to swim after the boat and look up in +Charlie's face as if it knew how he enjoyed it. And later on, Mr. Wood +taught Bob Furniss to row and Charlie to steer; so that Charlie could +sometimes go out and feel quite free to stop the boat when and where he +liked. That was after he started so many collections of insects and +water-weeds, and shells, and things you can only see under a microscope. +Bob and he used to take all kinds of pots and pans and nets and dippers +with them, so that Charlie could fish up what he wanted, and keep things +separate. He was obliged to keep the live things he got for his +fresh-water aquarium in different jam-pots, because he could never be +sure which would eat up which till he knew them better, and the +water-scorpions and the dragon-fly larvae ate everything. Bob Furniss did +not mind pulling in among the reeds and waiting as long as you wanted. +Mr. Wood sometimes wanted to get back to his work, but Bob never wanted +to get back to his. And he was very good-natured about getting into the +water and wading and grubbing for things; indeed, I think he got to like +it. + +At first Mr. Wood had been rather afraid of trusting Charlie with him. +He thought Bob might play tricks with the boat, even though he knew how +to manage her, when there was only one helpless boy with him. But Mrs. +Furniss said, "Nay! Our Bob's a bad 'un, but he's not one of that sort, +he'll not plague them that's afflicted." And she was quite right; for +though his father said he could be trusted with nothing else, we found +he could be trusted with Cripple Charlie. + +It was two days before the summer holidays came to an end that Charlie +asked me to come down to the farm and help him to put away his fern +collection and a lot of other things into the places that he had +arranged for them in his room; for now that the school-room was wanted +again, he could not leave his papers and boxes about there. Charlie +lived at the farm altogether now. He was better there than on the moors, +so he boarded there and went home for visits. The room Mrs. Wood had +given him was the one where the old miser had slept. In a memorandum +left with his will it appeared that he had expressed a wish that the +furniture of that room should not be altered, which was how they knew it +was his. So Mrs. Wood had kept the curious old oak bed (the back of +which was fastened into the wall), and an old oak press, with a great +number of drawers with brass handles to them, and all the queer +furniture that she found there, just as it was. Even the brass +warming-pan was only rubbed and put back in its place, and the big +bellows were duly hung up by the small fire-place. But everything was so +polished up and cleaned, the walls re-papered with a soft grey-green +paper spangled with dog-daisies, and the room so brightened up with +fresh blinds and bedclothes, and a bit of bright carpet, that it did +not look in the least dismal, and Charlie was very proud and very fond +of it. It had two windows, one where the beehive was, and one very sunny +one, where he had a balm of Gilead that Isaac's wife gave him, and his +old medicine-bottles full of cuttings on the upper ledge. The old women +used to send him "slippings" off their fairy roses and myrtles and +fuchsias, and they rooted very well in that window, there was so much +sun. + +Charlie had only just begun a fern collection, and I had saved my +pocket-money (I did not want it for anything else) and had bought him +several quires of cartridge-paper; and Dr. Brown had given him a packet +of medicine-labels to cut up into strips to fasten his specimens in +with, and the collection looked very well and very scientific; and all +that remained was to find a good place to put it away in. The drawers of +the press were of all shapes and sizes, but there were two longish very +shallow ones that just matched each other, and when I pulled one of them +out, and put the fern-papers in, they fitted exactly, and the drawer +just held half the collection. I called Charlie to look, and he hobbled +up on his crutches and was delighted, but he said he should like to put +the others in himself, so I got him into a chair, and shut up the full +drawer and pulled out the empty one, and went down-stairs for the two +moleskins we were curing, and the glue-pot, and the toffy-tin, and some +other things that had to be cleared out of the school-room now the +holidays were over. + +When I came back the fern-papers were still outside, and Charlie was +looking flushed and cross. + +"I don't know how you managed," he said, "but I can't get them in. This +drawer must be shorter than the other; it doesn't go nearly so far +back." + +"Oh yes, it does, Charlie!" I insisted, for I felt as certain as people +always do feel about little details of that kind. "The drawers are +exactly alike; you can't have got the fern-sheets quite flush with each +other," and I began to arrange the trayful of things I had brought +up-stairs in the bottom of the cupboard. + +"I _know_ it's the drawer," I heard Charlie say. ("He's as obstinate as +possible," thought I.) + +Then I heard him banging at the wood with his fists and his crutch. ("He +_is_ in a temper!" was my mental comment.) After this my attention was +distracted for a second or two by seeing what I thought was a bit of +toffy left in the tin, and biting it and finding it was a piece of +sheet-glue. I had not spit out all the disgust of it, when Charlie +called me in low, awe-struck tones: "Jack! come here. Quick!" + +I ran to him. The drawer was open, but it seemed to have another drawer +inside it, a long, narrow, shallow one. + +"I hit the back, and this sprang out," said Charlie. "It's a secret +drawer--and look!" + +I did look. The secret drawer was closely packed with rolls of thin +leaflets, which we were old enough to recognize as bank-notes, and with +little bags of wash-leather; and when Charlie opened the little bags +they were filled with gold. + +There was a paper with the money, written by the old miser, to say that +it was a codicil to his will, and that the money was all for Mrs. Wood. +Why he had not left it to her in the will itself seemed very puzzling, +but his lawyer (whom the Woods consulted about it) said that he always +did things in a very eccentric way, but generally for some sort of +reason, even if it were rather a freaky one, and that perhaps he thought +that the relations would be less spiteful at first if they did not know +about the money, and that Mrs. Wood would soon find it, if she used and +valued his old press. + +I don't quite know whether there was any fuss with the relations about +this part of the bequest, but I suppose the lawyer managed it all right, +for the Woods got the money and gave up the school. But they kept the +old house, and bought some more land, and Walnut-tree Academy became +Walnut-tree Farm once more. And Cripple Charlie lived on with them, and +he was so happy, it really seemed as if my dear mother was right when +she said to my father, "I am so pleased, my dear, for that poor boy's +sake, I can hardly help crying. He's got two homes and two fathers and +mothers, where many a young man has none, as if to make good his +affliction to him." + +It puzzles me, even now, to think how my father could have sent Jem and +me to Crayshaw's school. (Nobody ever called him Mr. Crayshaw except the +parents of pupils who lived at a distance. In the neighbourhood he and +his whole establishment were lumped under the one word _Crayshaw's_, and +as a farmer hard by once said to me, "Crayshaw's is universally +disrespected.") + +I do not think it was merely because "Crayshaw's" was cheap that we were +sent there, though my father had so few reasons to give for his choice +that he quoted that among them. A man with whom he had had business +dealings (which gave him much satisfaction for some years, and more +dissatisfaction afterwards) did really, I think, persuade my father to +send us to this school, one evening when they were dining together. + +Few things are harder to guess at than the grounds on which an +Englishman of my father's type "makes up his mind"; and yet the +question is an important one, for an idea once lodged in his head, a +conviction once as much his own as the family acres, and you will as +soon part him from the one as from the other. I have known little +matters of domestic improvements, in which my mother's comfort was +concerned and her experience conclusive, for which he grudged a few +shillings, and was absolutely impenetrable by her persuasions and +representations. And I have known him waste pounds on things of the most +curious variety, foisted on him by advertising agents without knowledge, +trial, or rational ground of confidence. I suppose that persistency, a +glibber tongue than he himself possessed, a mass of printed rubbish +which always looks imposing to the unliterary, that primitive +combination of authoritativeness and hospitality which makes some men as +ready to say Yes to a stranger as they are to say No at home, and +perhaps some lack of moral courage, may account for it. I can clearly +remember how quaintly sheepish my father used to look after committing +some such folly, and how, after the first irrepressible fall of +countenance, my mother would have defended him against anybody else's +opinion, let alone her own. Young as I was I could feel that, and had a +pretty accurate estimate of the value of the moral lecture on faith in +one's fellow-creatures, which was an unfailing outward sign of my +father's inward conviction that he had been taken in by a rogue. I knew +too, well enough, that my mother's hasty and earnest Amen to this +discourse was an equally reliable token of her knowledge that my father +sorely needed defending, and some instinct made me aware also that my +father knew that this was so. That he knew that it was that tender +generosity towards one's beloved, in which so many of her sex so far +exceeds ours, and not an intellectual conviction of his wisdom, which +made her support what he had done, and that feeling this he felt +dissatisfied, and snapped at her accordingly. + +The dislike my dear mother took to the notion of our going to Crayshaw's +only set seals to our fate, and the manner of her protests was not more +fortunate than the matter. She was timid and vacillating from wifely +habit, whilst motherly anxiety goaded her to be persistent and almost +irritable on the subject. Habitually regarding her own wishes and views +as worthless, she quoted the Woods at every turn of her arguments, which +was a mistake, for my father was sufficiently like the rest of his +neighbours not to cotton very warmly to people whose tastes, +experiences, and lines of thought were so much out of the common as +those of the ex-convict and his wife. Moreover, he had made up his mind, +and when one has done that, he is proof against seventy men who can +render a reason. + +To rumours which accused "Crayshaw's" of undue severity, of discomfort, +of bad teaching and worse manners, my father opposed arguments which he +allowed were "old-fashioned" and which were far-fetched from the days of +our great-grandfather. + +A strict school-master was a good school-master, and if more parents +were as wise as Solomon on the subject of the rod, Old England would not +be discredited by such a namby-pamby race as young men of the present +day seemed by all accounts to be. It was high time the boys did rough it +a bit; would my mother have them always tied to her apron-strings? Great +Britain would soon be Little Britain if boys were to be brought up like +young ladies. As to teaching, it was the fashion to make a fuss about +it, and a pretty pass learning brought some folks to, to judge by the +papers and all one heard. His own grandfather lived to ninety-seven, and +died sitting in his chair, in a bottle-green coat and buff breeches. He +wore a pig-tail to the day of his death, and never would be contradicted +by anybody. He had often told my father that at the school _he_ went to, +the master signed the receipts for his money with a cross, but the usher +was a bit of a scholar, and the boys had cream to their porridge on +Sundays. And the old gentleman managed his own affairs to ninety-seven, +and threw the doctor's medicine-bottles out of the window then. He died +without a doubt on his mind or a debt on his books, and my father +(taking a pinch out of Great-Grandfather's snuff-box) hoped Jem and I +might do as well. + +In short, we were sent to "Crayshaw's." + +It was not a happy period of my life. It was not a good or wholesome +period; and I am not fond of recalling it. The time came when I shrank +from telling Charlie everything, almost as if he had been a girl. His +life was lived in such a different atmosphere, under such different +conditions. I could not trouble him, and I did not believe he could make +allowances for me. But on our first arrival I wrote him a long letter +(Jem never wrote letters), and the other day he showed it to me. It was +a first impression, but a sufficiently vivid and truthful one, so I give +it here. + + +"CRAYSHAW'S (for that's what they call it here, and a beastly hole it is). + "_Monday_. + +"MY DEAR OLD CHARLIE,--We came earlier than was settled, for Father got +impatient and there was nothing to stop us, but I don't think old +Crayshaw liked our coming so soon. You never saw such a place, it's so +dreary. A boy showed us straight into the school-room. There are three +rows of double desks running down the room and disgustingly dirty, I +don't know what Mrs. Wood would say, and old Crayshaw's desk is in front +of the fire, so that he can see all the boys sideways, and it just stops +any heat coming to them. And there he was, and I don't think Father +liked the look of him particularly, you never saw an uglier. Such a +flaming face and red eyes like Bob Furniss's ferret and great big +whiskers; but I'll make you a picture of him, at least I'll make two +pictures, for Lewis Lorraine says he's got no beard on Sundays, and +rather a good one on Saturdays. Lorraine is a very rum fellow, but I +like him. It was he showed us in, and he did catch it afterwards, but he +only makes fun of it. Old Crayshaw's desk had got a lot of canes on one +side of it and a most beastly dirty snuffy red and green handkerchief on +the other, and an ink-pot in the middle. He made up to Father like +anything and told such thumpers. He said there were six boys in one +room, but really there's twelve. Jem and I sleep together. There's +nothing to wash in and no prayers. If you say them you get boots at your +head, and one hit Jem behind the ear, so I pulled his sleeve and said, +'Get up, you can say them in bed,' But you know Jem, and he said, 'Wait +till I've done, _God bless Father and Mother_,' and when he had, he went +in and fought, and I backed him up, and them old Crayshaw found us, and +oh, how he did beat us! + +"----_Wednesday_. Old Snuffy is a regular brute, and I don't care if he +finds this and sees what I say. But he won't, for the milkman is taking +it. He always does if you can pay him. But I've put most of my money +into the bank. Three of the top boys have a bank, and we all have to +deposit, only I kept fourpence in one of my boots. They give us +bank-notes for a penny and a halfpenny; they make them themselves. The +sweet-shop takes them. They only give you eleven penny notes for a +shilling in the bank, or else it would burst. At dinner we have a lot of +pudding to begin with, and it's very heavy. You can hardly eat anything +afterwards. The first day Lorraine said quite out loud and very polite, +'Did you say _duff before meat_, young gentlemen?' and I couldn't help +laughing, and old Snuffy beat his head horridly with his dirty fists. +But Lorraine minds nothing; he says he knows old Snuffy will kill him +some day, but he says he doesn't want to live, for his father and mother +are dead; he only wants to catch old Snuffy in three more booby-traps +before he dies. He's caught him in four already. You see, when old +Snuffy is cat-walking he wears goloshes that he may sneak about better, +and the way Lorraine makes booby-traps is by balancing cans of water on +the door when it's ajar, so that he gets doused, and the can falls on +his head, and strings across the bottom of the door, not far from the +ground, so that he catches his goloshes and comes down. The other +fellows say that old Crayshaw had a lot of money given him in trust for +Lorraine, and he's spent it all, and Lorraine has no one to stick up for +him, and that's why Crayshaw hates him. + +"----_Saturday_. I could not catch the milkman, and now I've got your +letter, though Snuffy read it first. Jem and I cry dreadful in bed. +That's the comfort of being together. I'll try and be as good as I can, +but you don't know what this place is. It's very different to the farm. +Do you remember the row about that book Horace Simpson got? I wish you +could see the books the boys have here. At least I don't wish it, for I +wish I didn't look at them, the milkman brings them; he always will if +you can pay him. When I saw old Snuffy find one in Smith's desk, I +expected he would half kill him, but he didn't do much to him, he only +took the book away; and Lorraine says he never does beat them much for +that, because he doesn't want them to leave off buying them, because he +wants them himself. Don't tell the Woods this. Don't tell Mother Jem and +I cry, or else she'll be miserable. I don't so much mind the beatings +(Lorraine says you get hard in time), nor the washing at the sink--nor +the duff puddings--but it is such a beastly hole, and he is such an old +brute, and I feel so dreadful I can't tell you. Give my love to Mrs. +Wood and to Mr. Wood, and to Carlo and to Mary Anne, and to your dear +dear self, and to Isaac when you see him. + "And I am your affectionate friend, + "JACK. + +"P.S. Jem sends his best love, and he's got two black eyes. + +"P.S. No. 2. You would be sorry for Lorraine if you knew him. Sometimes +I'm afraid he'll kill himself, for he says there's really nothing in the +Bible about suicide. So I said--killing yourself is as bad as killing +anybody else. So he said--is stealing from yourself as bad as stealing +from anybody else? And we had a regular _argue_. Some of the boys +argle-bargle on Sundays, he says, but most of them fight. When they +differ, they put tin-tacks with the heads downwards on each other's +places on the forms in school, and if they run into you and you scream, +old Snuffy beats you. The milkman brings them, by the half-ounce, with +very sharp points, if you can pay him. Most of the boys are a horrid +lot, and so dirty. Lorraine is as dirty as the rest, and I asked him +why, and he said it was because he'd thrown up the sponge; but he got +rather red, and he's washed himself cleaner this morning. He says he has +an uncle in India, and some time ago he wrote to him, and told him about +Crayshaw's, and gave the milkman a diamond pin, that had been his +father's, and Snuffy didn't know about, to post it with plenty of +stamps, but he thinks he can't have put plenty on, for no answer ever +came. I've told him I'll post another one for him in the holidays. Don't +say anything about this back in your letters. He reads 'em all. + +"----_Monday_. I've caught the milkman at last, he'll take it this +evening. The lessons here are regular rubbish. I'm so glad I've a good +knife, for if you have you can dig holes in your desk to put collections +in. The boy next to me has earwigs, but you have to keep a look-out, or +he puts them in your ears. I turned up a stone near the sink this +morning, and got five wood-lice for mine. It's considered a very good +collection." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + "But none inquired how Peter used the rope, + Or what the bruise that made the stripling stoop; + None could the ridges on his back behold, + None sought him shiv'ring in the winter's cold. + * * * * * + The pitying women raised a clamour round." + CRABBE, _The Borough_. + + +A great many people say that all suffering is good for one, and I am +sure pain does improve one very often, and in many ways. It teaches one +sympathy, it softens and it strengthens. But I cannot help thinking that +there are some evil experiences which only harden and stain. The best I +can say for what we endured at Crayshaw's is that it _was_ experience, +and so I suppose could not fail to teach one something, which, as Jem +says, was "more than Snuffy did." + +The affection with which I have heard men speak of their school-days and +school-masters makes me know that Mr. Crayshaw was not a common type of +pedagogue. He was not a common type of man, happily; but I have met +other specimens in other parts of the world in which his leading quality +was as fully developed, though their lives had nothing in common with +his except the opportunities of irresponsible power. + +The old wounds are scars now, it is long past and over, and I am grown +up, and have roughed it in the world; but I say quite deliberately that +I believe that Mr. Crayshaw was not merely a harsh man, uncultured and +inconsiderate, having need and greed of money, taking pupils cheap, +teaching them little or nothing, and keeping a kind of rough order with +too much flogging,--but that the mischief of him was that he was +possessed by a passion (not the less fierce because it was unnatural) +which grew with indulgence and opportunity, as other passions grow, and +that this was a passion for cruelty. + +One does not rough it long in this wicked world without seeing more +cruelty both towards human beings and towards animals than one cares to +think about; but a large proportion of common cruelty comes of +ignorance, bad tradition and uncultured sympathies. Some painful +outbreaks of inhumanity, where one would least expect it, are no doubt +strictly to be accounted for by disease. But over and above these common +and these exceptional instances, one cannot escape the conviction that +irresponsible power is opportunity in all hands and a direct temptation +in some to cruelty, and that it affords horrible development to those +morbid cases in which cruelty becomes a passion. + +That there should ever come a thirst for blood in men as well as tigers, +is bad enough but conceivable when linked with deadly struggle, or at +the wild dictates of revenge. But a lust for cruelty growing fiercer by +secret and unchecked indulgence, a hideous pleasure in seeing and +inflicting pain, seems so inhuman a passion that we shrink from +acknowledging that this is ever so. + +And if it belonged to the past alone, to barbarous despotisms or to +savage life, one might wisely forget it; for the dark pages of human +history are unwholesome as well as unpleasant reading, unless the mind +be very sane in a body very sound. But those in whose hands lie the +destinies of the young and of the beasts who serve and love us, of the +weak, the friendless, the sick and the insane, have not, alas! this +excuse for ignoring the black records of man's abuse of power! + +The records of its abuse in the savage who loads women's slender +shoulders with his burdens, leaves his sick to the wayside jackal, and +knocks his aged father on the head when he is past work; the brutality +of slave-drivers, the iniquities of vice-maddened Eastern +despots;--such things those who never have to deal with them may afford +to forget. + +But men who act for those who have no natural protectors, or have lost +the power of protecting themselves, who legislate for those who have no +voice in the making of laws, and for the brute creation, which we win to +our love and domesticate for our convenience; who apprentice pauper boys +and girls, who meddle with the matters of weak women, sick persons, and +young children, are bound to face a far sadder issue. That even in these +days, when human love again and again proves itself not only stronger +than death, but stronger than all the selfish hopes of life; when the +everyday manners of everyday men are concessions of courtesy to those +who have not the strength to claim it; when children and pet animals are +spoiled to grotesqueness; when the good deeds of priest and physician, +nurse and teacher, surpass all earthly record of them--man, as man, is +no more to be trusted with unchecked power than hitherto. + +The secret histories of households, where power should be safest in the +hands of love; of hospitals, of schools, of orphanages, of poorhouses, +of lunatic-asylums, of religious communities founded for GOD'S worship +and man's pity, of institutions which assume the sacred title as well as +the responsibilities of Home--from the single guardian of some rural +idiot to the great society which bears the blessed Name of Jesus--have +not each and all their dark stories, their hushed-up scandals, to prove +how dire is the need of public opinion without, and of righteous care +within, that what is well begun should be well continued? + +If any one doubts this, let him pause on each instance, one by one, and +think of what he has seen, and heard, and read, and known of; and he +will surely come to the conviction that human nature cannot, even in the +very service of charity, be safely trusted with the secret exercise of +irresponsible power, and that no light can be too fierce to beat upon +and purify every spot where the weak are committed to the tender mercies +of the consciences of the strong. + +Mr. Crayshaw's conscience was not a tender one, and very little light +came into his out-of-the-way establishment, and no check whatever upon +his cruelty. It had various effects on the different boys. It killed one +in my day, and the doctor (who had been "in a difficulty" some years +back, over a matter through which Mr. Crayshaw helped him with bail and +testimony) certified to heart disease, and we all had our +pocket-handkerchiefs washed, and went to the funeral. And Snuffy had +cards printed with a black edge, and several angels and a broken lily, +and the hymn-- + + "Death has been here and borne away + A brother from our side; + Just in the morning of his day, + As young as we he died." + +--and sent them to all the parents. But the pupils had to pay for the +stamps. And my dear mother cried dreadfully, first because she was so +sorry for the boy, and secondly because she ever had felt uncharitably +towards Mr. Crayshaw. + +Crayshaw's cruelty crushed others, it made liars and sneaks of boys +naturally honest, and it produced in Lorraine an unchildlike despair +that was almost grand, so far was the spirit above the flesh in him. But +I think its commonest and strangest result was to make the boys bully +each other. + +One of the least cruel of the tyrannies the big boys put upon the little +ones, sometimes bore very hardly on those who were not strong. They used +to ride races on our backs and have desperate mounted battles and +tournaments. In many a playground and home since then I have seen boys +tilt and race, and steeplechase, with smaller boys upon their backs, and +plenty of wholesome rough-and-tumble in the game; and it has given me a +twinge of heartache to think how, even when we were at play, Crayshaw's +baneful spirit cursed us with its example, so that the big and strong +could not be happy except at the expense of the little and weak. + +For it was the big ones who rode the little ones, with neatly-cut +ash-sticks and clumsy spurs. I can see them now, with the thin legs of +the small boys tottering under them, like a young donkey overridden by a +coal-heaver. + +I was a favourite horse, for I was active and nimble, and (which was +more to the point) well made. It was the shambling, ill-proportioned +lads who suffered most. The biggest boy in school rode me, as a rule, +but he was not at all a bad bully, so I was lucky. He never spurred me, +and he boasted of my willingness and good paces. I am sure he did not +know, I don't suppose he ever stopped to think, how bad it was for me, +or what an aching lump of prostration I felt when it was over. The day I +fainted after winning a steeplechase, he turned a bucket of cold water +over me, and as this roused me into a tingling vitality of pain, he was +quite proud of his treatment, and told me nothing brought a really good +horse round after a hard day like a bucket of clean water. And (so much +are we the creatures of our conditions!) I remember feeling something +approaching to satisfaction at the reflection that I had "gone till I +dropped," and had been brought round after the manner of the +best-conducted stables. + +It was not that that made Jem and me run away. (For we did run away.) +Overstrain and collapse, ill-usage short of torture, hard living and +short commons, one got a certain accustomedness to, according to the +merciful law which within certain limits makes a second nature for us +out of use and wont. The one pain that knew no pause, and allowed of no +revival, the evil that overbore us, mind and body, was the evil of +constant dread. Upon us little boys fear lay always, and the terror of +it was that it was uncertain. What would come next, and from whom, we +never knew. + +It was I who settled we should run away. I did it the night that Jem +gave in, and would do nothing but cry noiselessly into his sleeve and +wish he was dead. So I settled it and told Lorraine. I wanted him to +come too, but he would not. He pretended that he did not care, and he +said he had nowhere to go to. But he got into Snuffy's very own room at +daybreak whilst we stood outside and heard him snoring; and very loud he +must have snored too, for I could hear my heart thumping so I should not +have thought I could have heard anything else. And Lorraine took the +back-door key off the drawers, and let us out, and took it back again. +He feared nothing. There was a walnut-tree by the gate, and Jem said, +"Suppose we do our faces like gipsies, so that nobody may know us." (For +Jem was terribly frightened of being taken back.) So we found some old +bits of peel and rubbed our cheeks, but we dared not linger long over +it, and I said, "We'd better get further on, and we can hide if we hear +steps or wheels." So we took each other's hands, and for nearly a mile +we ran as hard as we could go, looking back now and then over our +shoulders, like the picture of Christian and Hopeful running away from +the Castle of Giant Despair. + +We were particularly afraid of the milkman, for milkmen drive about +early, and he had taken a runaway boy back to Crayshaw's years before, +and Snuffy gave him five shillings. They said he once helped another boy +to get away, but it was a big one, who gave him his gold watch. He would +do anything if you paid him. Jem and I had each a little bundle in a +handkerchief, but nothing in them that the milkman would have cared for. +We managed very well, for we got behind a wall when he went by, and I +felt so much cheered up I thought we should get home that day, far as it +was. But when we got back into the road, I found that Jem was limping, +for Snuffy had stamped on his foot when Jem had had it stuck out beyond +the desk, when he was writing; and the running had made it worse, and at +last he sat down by the roadside, and said I was to go on home and send +back for him. It was not very likely I would leave him to the chance of +being pursued by Mr. Crayshaw; but there he sat, and I thought I never +should have persuaded him to get on my back, for good-natured as he is, +Jem is as obstinate as a pig. But I said, "What's the use of my having +been first horse with the heaviest weight in school, if I can't carry +you?" So he got up and I carried him a long way, and then a cart +overtook us, and we got a lift home. And they knew us quite well, which +shows how little use walnut-juice is, and it is disgusting to get off. + +I think, as it happened, it was very unfortunate that we had discoloured +our faces; for though my mother was horrified at our being so thin and +pinched-looking, my father said that of course we looked frights with +brown daubs all over our cheeks and necks. But then he never did notice +people looking ill. He was very angry indeed, at first, about our +running away, and would not listen to what we said. He was angry too +with my dear mother, because she believed us, and called Snuffy a bad +man and a brute. And he ordered the dog-cart to be brought round, and +said that Martha was to give us some breakfast, and that we might be +thankful to get that instead of a flogging, for that when _he_ ran away +from school to escape a thrashing, his father gave him one thrashing +while the dog-cart was being brought round, and drove him straight back +to school, where the school-master gave him another. + +"And a very good thing for me," said my father, buttoning his coat, +whilst my mother and Martha went about crying, and Jem and I stood +silent. If we were to go back, the more we told, the worse would be +Snuffy's revenge. An unpleasant hardness was beginning to creep over me. +"The next time I run away," was my thought, "I shall not run home." But +with this came a rush of regret for Jem's sake. I knew that Crayshaw's, +did more harm to him than to me, and almost involuntarily I put my arms +round him, thinking that if they would only let him stay, I could go +back and bear anything, like Lewis Lorraine. Jem had been crying, and +when he hid his face on my shoulder, and leaned against me, I thought it +was for comfort, but he got heavier and heavier, till I called out, and +he rolled from my arms and was caught in my father's. He had been +standing about on the bad foot, and pain and weariness and hunger and +fright overpowered him, and he had fainted. + +The dog-cart was counter-ordered, and Jem was put to bed, and Martha +served me a breakfast that would have served six full-grown men. I ate +far more than satisfied me, but far less than satisfied Martha, who +seemed to hope that cold fowl and boiled eggs, fried bacon and pickled +beef, plain cakes and currant cakes, jam and marmalade, buttered toast, +strong tea and unlimited sugar and yellow cream, would atone for the +past in proportion to the amount I ate, if it did not fatten me under +her eyes. I really think I spent the rest of the day in stupor. I am +sure it was not till the following morning that I learned the decision +to which my father had come about us. + +Jem was too obviously ill to be anywhere at present but at home; and my +father decided that he would not send him back to Crayshaw's at all, but +to a much more expensive school in the south of England, to which the +parson of our parish was sending one of his sons. I was to return to +Crayshaw's at once; he could not afford the expensive school for us +both, and Jem was the eldest. Besides which, he was not going to +countenance rebellion in any school to which he sent his sons, or to +insult a man so highly recommended to him as Mr. Crayshaw had been. +There certainly seemed to have been some severity, and the boys seemed +to be a very rough lot; but Jem would fight, and if he gave he must +take. His great-grandfather was just the same, and _he_ fought the +Putney Pet when he was five-and-twenty, and his parents thought he was +sitting quietly at his desk in Fetter Lane. + +I loved Jem too well to be jealous of him, but I was not the less +conscious of the tender tone in which my father always spoke even of +his faults, and of the way it stiffened and cooled when he added that I +was not so ready with my fists, but that I was as fond of my own way as +Jem was of a fight; but that setting up for being unlike other people +didn't do for school life, and that the Woods had done me no kindness by +making a fool of me. He added, however, that he should request Mr. +Crayshaw, as a personal favour, that I should receive no punishment for +running away, as I had suffered sufficiently already. + +We had told very little of the true history of Crayshaw's before Jem +fainted, and I felt no disposition to further confidences. I took as +cheerful a farewell of my mother as I could, for her sake; and put on a +good deal of swagger and "don't care" to console Jem. He said, "You're +as plucky as Lorraine," and then his eyes shut again. He was too ill to +think much, and I kissed his head and left him. After which I got +stoutly into the dog-cart, and we drove back up the dreary hills down +which Jem and I had run away. + +That Snuffy was bland to cringing before my father did not give me hope +that I should escape his direst revenge; and the expression of +Lorraine's face showed me, by its sympathy, what _he_ expected. But we +were both wrong, and for reasons which we then knew nothing about. + +Cruelty was, as I have said, Mr. Crayshaw's ruling passion, but it was +not his only vice. There was a whispered tradition that he had once been +in jail for a misuse of his acquirements in the art of penmanship; and +if you heard his name cropping up in the confidential conversation of +such neighbours as small farmers, the postman, the parish overseer, and +the like, it was sure to be linked with unpleasingly suggestive +expressions, such as--"a dirty bit of business," "a nasty job that," "an +awkward affair," "very near got into trouble," "a bit of bother about +it, but Driver and Quills pulled him through; theirs isn't a nice +business, and they're men of t' same feather as Crayshaw, so I reckon +they're friends." Many such hints have I heard, for the 'White Lion' was +next door to the sweet-shop, and in summer, refreshment of a sober kind, +with conversation to match, was apt to be enjoyed on the benches +outside. The good wives of the neighbourhood used no such euphuisms as +their more prudent husbands, when they spoke of Crayshaw's. Indeed one +of the whispered anecdotes of Snuffy's past was of a hushed-up story +that was just saved from becoming a scandal, but in reference to which +Mr. Crayshaw was even more narrowly saved from a crowd of women who had +taken the too-tardy law into their own hands. I remember myself the +retreat of an unpaid washer-woman from the back premises of Crayshaw's +on one occasion, and the unmistakable terms in which she expressed her +opinions. + +"Don't tell me! I know Crayshaw's well enough; such folks is a curse to +a country-side, but judgment overtakes 'em at last." + +"Judgment," as the good woman worded it, kept threatening Mr. Crayshaw +long before it overtook him, as it is apt to disturb scoundrels who keep +a hypocritical good name above their hidden misdeeds. As it happened, at +the very time Jem and I ran away from him, Mr. Crayshaw himself was +living in terror of one or two revelations, and to be deserted by two of +his most respectably connected boys was an ill-timed misfortune. The +countenance my father had been so mistaken as to afford to his +establishment was very important to him, for we were the only pupils +from within fifty miles, and our parents' good word constituted an +"unexceptionable reference." + +Thus it was that Snuffy pleaded humbly (but in vain) for the return of +Jem, and that he not only promised that I should not suffer, but to my +amazement kept his word. + +Judgment lingered over the head of Crayshaw's for two years longer, and +I really think my being there had something to do with maintaining its +tottering reputation. I was almost the only lad in the school whose +parents were alive and at hand and in a good position, and my father's +name stifled scandal. Most of the others were orphans, being cheaply +educated by distant relatives or guardians, or else the sons of poor +widows who were easily bamboozled by Snuffy's fluent letters, and the +religious leaflets which it was his custom to enclose. (In several of +these cases, he was "managing" the poor women's "affairs" for them.) One +or two boys belonged to people living abroad. Indeed, the worst bully in +the school was a half-caste, whose smile, when he showed his gleaming +teeth, boded worse than any other boy's frown. He was a wonderful +acrobat, and could do extraordinary tricks of all sorts. My being nimble +and ready made me very useful to him as a confederate in the exhibitions +which his intense vanity delighted to give on half-holidays, and kept me +in his good graces till I was old enough to take care of myself. Oh, how +every boy who dreaded him applauded at these entertainments! And what +dangerous feats I performed, every other fear being lost in the fear of +him! I owe him no grudge for what he forced me to do (though I have had +to bear real fire without flinching when he failed in a conjuring trick, +which should only have simulated the real thing); what I learned from +him has come in so useful since, that I forgive him all. + +I was there for two years longer. Snuffy bullied me less, and hated me +the more. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. It was a hateful life, +but I am sure the influence of a good home holds one up in very evil +paths. Every time we went back to our respective schools my father gave +us ten shillings, and told us to mind our books, and my mother kissed us +and made us promise we would say our prayers every day. I could not bear +to break my promise, though I used to say them in bed (the old form we +learnt from her), and often in such a very unfit frame of mind, that +they were what it is very easy to call "a mockery." + +GOD knows (Who alone knows the conditions under which each soul blunders +and spells on through life's hard lessons) if they were a mockery. _I_ +know they were unworthy to be offered to Him, but that the habit helped +to keep me straight I am equally sure. Then I had a good home to go to +during the holidays. That was everything, and it is in all humbleness +that I say that I do not think the ill experiences of those years +degraded me much. I managed to keep some truth and tenderness about me; +and I am thankful to remember that I no more cringed to Crayshaw than +Lorraine did, and that though I stayed there till I was a big boy, I +never maltreated a little one. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "Whose powers shed round him in the common strife + Or mild concerns of ordinary life, + A constant influence, a peculiar grace; + * * * * * * + Or if an unexpected call succeed, + Come when it will, is equal to the need." + WORDSWORTH'S _Happy Warrior._ + + +Judgement came at last. During my first holidays I had posted a letter +from Lewis Lorraine to the uncle in India to whom he had before +endeavoured to appeal. The envelope did not lack stamps, but the address +was very imperfect, and it was many months in reaching him. He wrote a +letter, which Lewis never received, Mr. Crayshaw probably knew why. But +twelve months after that Colonel Jervois came to England, and he lost no +time in betaking himself to Crayshaw's. From Crayshaw's he came to my +father, the only "unexceptionable reference" left to Snuffy to put +forward. + +The Colonel came with a soldier's promptness, and, with the utmost +courtesy of manner, went straight to the point. His life had not +accustomed him to our neighbourly unwillingness to interfere with +anything that did not personally concern us, nor to the prudent patience +with which country folk will wink long at local evils. In the upshot +what he asked was what my mother had asked three years before. Had my +father personal knowledge or good authority for believing the school to +be a well-conducted one, and Mr. Crayshaw a fit man for his responsible +post? Had he ever heard rumours to the man's discredit? + +Replies that must do for a wife will not always answer a man who puts +the same questions. My great-grandfather's memory was not evoked on this +occasion, and my father frankly confessed that his personal knowledge of +Crayshaw's was very small, and that the man on whose recommendation he +had sent us to school there had just proved to be a rascal and a +swindler. Our mother had certainly heard rumours of severity, but he had +regarded her maternal anxiety as excessive, etc., etc. In short, my dear +father saw that he had been wrong, and confessed it, and was now as +ready as the Colonel to expose Snuffy's misdeeds. + +No elaborate investigation was needed. An attack once made on Mr. +Crayshaw's hollow reputation, it cracked on every side; first hints +crept out, then scandals flew. The Colonel gave no quarter, and he did +not limit his interest to his own nephew. + +"A widow's son, ma'am," so he said to my mother, bowing over her hand as +he led her in to dinner, in a style to which we were quite unaccustomed; +"a widow's son, ma'am, should find a father in every honest man who can +assist him." + +The tide having turned against Snuffy, his friends (of the Driver and +Quills type) turned with it. But they gained nothing, for one morning he +got up as early as we had done, and ran away, and I never heard of him +again. And before nightfall the neighbours, who had so long tolerated +his wickedness, broke every pane of glass in his windows. + +During all this, Lewis Lorraine and his uncle stayed at our house. The +Colonel spent his time between holding indignant investigations, writing +indignant letters (which he allowed us to seal with his huge signet), +and walking backwards and forwards to the town to buy presents for the +little boys. + +When Snuffy ran away, and the school was left to itself, Colonel Jervois +strode off to the nearest farm, requisitioned a waggon, and having +packed the boys into it, bought loaves and milk enough to breakfast +them all, and transported the whole twenty-eight to our door. He left +four with my mother, and marched off with the rest. The Woods took in a +large batch, and in the course of the afternoon he had for love or money +quartered them all. He betrayed no nervousness in dealing with numbers, +in foraging for supplies, or in asking for what he wanted. Whilst other +people had been doubting whether it might not "create unpleasantness" to +interfere in this case and that, the Colonel had fought each boy's +battle, and seen most of them off on their homeward journeys. He was +used to dealing with men, and with emergencies, and it puzzled him when +my Uncle Henry consulted his law-books and advised caution, and my +father saw his agent on farm business, whilst the fate of one of +Crayshaw's victims yet hung in the balance. + +When all was over the Colonel left us, and took Lewis with him, and his +departure raised curiously mixed feelings of regret and relief. + +He had quite won my mother's heart, chiefly by his energy and tenderness +for the poor boys, and partly by his kindly courtesy and deference +towards her. Indeed all ladies liked him--all, that is, who knew him. +Before they came under the influence of his pleasantness and politeness, +he shared the half-hostile reception to which any person or anything +that was foreign to our daily experience was subjected in our +neighbourhood. So that the first time Colonel Jervois appeared in our +pew, Mrs. Simpson (the wife of a well-to-do man of business who lived +near us) said to my mother after church, "I see you've got one of the +military with you," and her tone was more critical than congratulatory. +But when my mother, with unconscious diplomacy, had kept her to +luncheon, and the Colonel had handed her to her seat, and had stroked +his moustache, and asked in his best manner if she meant to devote her +son to the service of his country, Mrs. Simpson undid her +bonnet-strings, fairly turned her back on my father, and was quite +unconscious when Martha handed the potatoes; and she left us wreathed in +smiles, and resolved that Mr. Simpson should buy their son Horace a +commission instead of taking him into the business. Mr. Simpson did not +share her views, and I believe he said some rather nasty things about +swaggering, and not having one sixpence to rub against another. And Mrs. +Simpson (who was really devoted to Horace and could hardly bear him out +of her sight) reflected that it was possible to get shot as well as to +grow a moustache if you went into the army; but she still maintained +that she should always remember the Colonel as a thorough gentleman, and +a wonderful judge of the character of boys. + +The Colonel made great friends with the Woods, and he was deeply +admired by our rector, who, like many parsons, had a very military +heart, and delighted in exciting tales of the wide world which he could +never explore. It was perhaps natural that my father should hardly be +devoted to a stranger who had practically reproached his negligence, but +the one thing that did draw him towards the old Indian officer was his +habit of early rising. My father was always up before any of us, but he +generally found the Colonel out before him, enjoying the early hours of +the day as men who have lived in hot climates are accustomed to do. They +used to come in together in very pleasant moods to breakfast; but with +the post-bag Lorraine's uncle was sure to be moved to voluble +indignation, or pity, or to Utopian plans to which my father listened +with puzzled impatience. He did not understand the Colonel, which was +perhaps not to be wondered at. + +His moral courage had taken away our breath, and physical courage was +stamped upon his outward man. If he was anything he was manly. It was +because he was in some respects very womanly too, that he puzzled my +father's purely masculine brain. The mixture, and the vehemence of the +mixture, were not in his line. He would have turned "Crayshaw's" +matters over in his own mind as often as hay in a wet season before +grappling with the whole bad business as the Colonel had done. And on +the other hand, it made him feel uncomfortable and almost ashamed to see +tears standing in the old soldier's eyes as he passionately blamed +himself for what had been suffered by "my sister's son." + +The servants one and all adored Colonel Jervois. They are rather acute +judges of good breeding, and men and maids were at one on the fact that +he was a visitor who conferred social distinction on the establishment. +They had decided that we should "dine late so long as The Gentleman" was +with us, whilst my mother was thinking how to break so weighty an +innovation to such valuable servants. They served him with alacrity, and +approved of his brief orders and gracious thanks. The Colonel did +unheard-of things with impunity--threw open his bedroom shutters at +night, and more than once unbarred and unbolted the front door to go +outside for a late cigar. Nothing puzzled Martha more than the nattiness +with which he put all the bolts and bars back into their places, as if +he had been used to the door as long as she had. + +Indeed he had all that power of making himself at home, which is most +fully acquired by having had to provide for yourself in strange places, +but he carried it too far. + +One day he penetrated into the kitchen (having previously been rummaging +the kitchen-garden) and insisted upon teaching our cook how to make +curry. The lesson was much needed, and it was equally well intended, but +it was a mistake. Everything cannot be carried by storm, whatever the +military may think. Jane said, "Yes, sir," at every point that +approached to a pause in the Colonel's ample instructions, but she never +moved her eyes from the magnificent moustache which drooped above the +stew-pan, nor her thoughts from the one idea produced by the +occasion--that The Gentleman had caught her without her cap. In short +our curries were no worse, and no better, in consequence of the shock to +kitchen etiquette (for that was all) which she received. + +And yet we modified our household ways for him, as they were never +modified for any one else. On Martha's weekly festival for cleaning the +bedrooms (and if a room was occupied for a night, she scrubbed after the +intruder as if he had brought the plague in his portmanteau) the +smartest visitor we ever entertained had to pick his or her way through +the upper regions of the house, where soap and soda were wafted on high +and unexpected breezes along passages filled with washstands and +clothes-baskets, cane-seated chairs and baths, mops, pails and brooms. +But the Colonel had "given such a jump" on meeting a towel-horse at +large round a sharp corner, and had seemed so uncomfortable on finding +everything that he thought was inside his room turned outside, that for +that week Martha left the lower part of the house uncleaned, and did not +turn either the dining or drawing rooms into the hall on their appointed +days. She had her revenge when he was gone. + +On the day of his departure, my lamentations had met with the warmest +sympathy as I stirred toffy over Jane's kitchen fire, whilst Martha +lingered with the breakfast things, after a fashion very unusual with +her, and gazed at the toast-rack and said, "the Colonel had eaten +nothing of a breakfast to travel on." But next morning, I met her in +another mood. It was a mood to which we were not strangers, though it +did not often occur. In brief, Martha (like many another invaluable +domestic) "had a temper of her own"; but to do her justice her ill +feelings generally expended themselves in a rage for work, and in taking +as little ease herself as she allowed to other people. I knew what it +meant when I found her cleaning the best silver when she ought to have +been eating her breakfast; but my head was so full of the Colonel, that +I could not help talking about him, even if the temptation to tease +Martha had not been overwhelming. No reply could I extract; only once, +as she passed swiftly to the china cupboard, with the whole Crown Derby +tea and coffee service on one big tray (the Colonel had praised her +coffee), I heard her mutter--"Soldiers is very upsetting." Certainly, +considering what she did in the way of scolding, scouring, blackleading, +polishing and sand-papering that week, it was not Martha's fault if we +did not "get straight again," furniture and feelings. I've heard her say +that Calais sand would "fetch anything off," and I think it had fetched +the Colonel off her heart by the time that the cleaning was done. + +It had no such effect on mine. Lewis Lorraine himself did not worship +his uncle more devoutly than I. Colonel Jervois had given me a new +ideal. It was possible, then, to be enthusiastic without being unmanly; +to live years out of England, and come back more patriotic than many +people who stayed comfortably at home; to go forth into the world and be +the simpler as well as the wiser, the softer as well as the stronger for +the experience? So it seemed. And yet Lewis had told me, with such tears +as Snuffy never made him shed, how tender his uncle was to his +unworthiness, what allowances he made for the worst that Lewis could say +of himself, and what hope he gave him of a good and happy future. + +"He cried as bad as I did," Lewis said, "and begged me to forgive him +for having trusted so much to my other guardian. Do you know, Jack, +Snuffy regularly forged a letter like my handwriting, to answer that one +Uncle Eustace wrote, which he kept back? He might well do such good +copies, and write the year of Our Lord with a swan at the end of the +last flourish! And you remember what we heard about his having been in +prison--but, oh, dear! I don't want to remember. He says I am to forget, +and he forbade me to talk about Crayshaw's, and said I was not to +trouble my head about anything that had happened there. He kept saying, +'Forget, my boy, forget! Say GOD help me, and look forward. While +there's life there's always the chance of a better life for every one. +Forget! forget!'" + +Lewis departed with his uncle. Charlie went for two nights to the moors. +Jem's holidays had not begun, and in our house we were "cleaning down" +after the Colonel as if he had been the sweeps. + +I went to old Isaac for sympathy. He had become very rheumatic the last +two years, but he was as intelligent as ever, and into his willing ear I +poured all that I could tell of my hero, and much that I only imagined. + +His sympathy met me more than half-way. The villagers as a body were +unbounded in their approval of the Colonel, and Mrs. Irvine was even +greedier than old Isaac for every particular I could impart respecting +him. + +"He's a _handsome_ gentleman," said the bee-master's wife, "and he +passed us (my neighbour, Mrs. Mettam, and me) as near, sir, as I am to +you, with a gold-headed stick in his hand, and them lads following after +him, for all the world like the Good Shepherd and his flock." + +I managed not to laugh, and old Isaac added, "There's a many in this +village, sir, would have been glad to have taken the liberty of +expressing themselves to the Colonel, and a _depitation_ did get as far +as your father's gates one night, but they turned bashful and come home +again. And I know, for one, Master Jack, that if me and my missus had +had a room fit to offer one of them poor young gentlemen, I'd have given +a week's wage to do it, and the old woman would have been happy to her +dying day." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "GOD help me! save I take my part + Of danger on the roaring sea, + A devil rises in my heart, + Far worse than any death to me." + TENNYSON'S _Sailor-boy_. + + +The fact that my father had sent me back against my will to a school +where I had suffered so much and learnt so little, ought perhaps to have +drawn us together when he discovered his mistake. Unfortunately it did +not. He was deeply annoyed with himself for having been taken in by +Snuffy, but he transferred some of this annoyance to me, on grounds +which cut me to the soul, and which I fear I resented so much that I was +not in a mood that was favourable to producing a better understanding +between us. The injustice which I felt so keenly was, that my father +reproached me with having what he called "kept him in the dark" about +the life at Crayshaw's. At my age I must have seen how wicked the man +and his system were. + +I reminded him that I had run away from them once, and had told all +that I dared, but that he would not hear me then. He would not hear me +now. + +"I don't wish to discuss the subject. It is a very painful one," he said +(and I believe it was as physically distressing to him as the thought of +Cripple Charlie's malformation). "I have no wish to force your +confidence when it is too late," he added (and it was this which I felt +to be so hard). "I don't blame you; you have other friends who suit you +better, but you have never been fully open with me. All I can say is, if +Mr. Wood was better informed than I have been, and did not acquaint me, +he has behaved in a manner which---- There--don't speak! we'll dismiss the +subject. You have suffered enough, if you have not acted as I should +have expected you to act. I blame myself unutterably, and I hope I see +my way to such a comfortable and respectable start in life for you that +these three years in that vile place may not be to your permanent +disadvantage." + +I was just opening my lips to thank him, when he got up and went to his +tall desk, where he took a pinch of snuff, and then added as he turned +away, "Thank GOD I have _one_ son who is frank with his father!" + +My lips were sealed in an instant. This, then, was my reward for that +hard journey of escape, with Jem on my back, which had only saved him; +for having stifled envy in gladness for his sake, when (in those bits +of our different holidays which overlapped each other) I saw and felt +the contrast between our opportunities; for having suffered my harder +lot in silence that my mother might not fret, when I felt certain that +my father would not interfere! My heart beat as if it would have pumped +the tears into my eyes by main force, but I kept them back, and said +steadily enough, "Is that all, sir?" + +My father did not look up, but he nodded his head and said, "Yes; you +may go." + +As I went he called me back. + +"Are you going to the farm this afternoon?" + +To my own infinite annoyance I blushed as I answered, "I was going to +sit with Charlie a bit, unless you have any objection." + +"Not at all. I only asked for information. I have no wish to interfere +with any respectable friends you may be disposed to give your confidence +to. But I should like it to be understood that either your mother or I +must have some knowledge of your movements." + +"Mother knew quite well I was going!" I exclaimed "Why, I've got a +parcel to take to Mrs. Wood from her." + +"Very good. There's no occasion to display temper. Shut the door after +you." + +I shut it very gently. (If three years at Crayshaw's had taught me +nothing else, it had taught me much self-control.) Then I got away to +the first hiding-place I could find, and buried my head upon my arms. +Would not a beating from Snuffy have been less hard to bear? Surely sore +bones from those one despises are not so painful as a sore heart from +those one loves. + +Our household affections were too sound at the core for the mere fact of +displeasing my father not to weigh heavily on my soul. But I could not +help defending myself in my own mind against what I knew to be +injustice. + +Jem "frank with his father"? Well he might be, when our father's +partiality met him half-way at every turn. _That_ was no fancy of mine. +I had the clearest of childish remembrances of an occasion when I wanted +to do something which our farming-man thought my father would not +approve, and how when I urged the fact that Jem had already done it with +impunity, he shook his head wiseacrely, and said, "Aye, aye, Master +Jack. But ye know they say some folks may steal a horse, when other +folks mayn't look over the hedge." + +The vagueness of "some folks" and "other folks" had left the proverb +dark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till I +understood it. + +I never was really jealous of Jem. He was far too good-natured and +unspoilt, and I was too fond of him. Besides which, if the mental tone +of our country lives was at rather a dull level, it was also wholesomely +unfavourable to the cultivation of morbid grievances, or the dissection +of one's own hurt feelings. If I had told anybody about me, from my dear +mother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wanted +sympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my age +was homeless and wanted boots. As a matter of reasoning the reply would +have been defective, but for practical purposes it would have been much +to the point. And it is fair to this rough-and-ready sort of philosophy +to defend it from a common charge of selfishness. It was not that I +should have been the happier because another lad was miserable, but that +an awakened sympathy with his harder fate would tend to dwarf egotistic +absorption in my own. Such considerations, in short, are no +justification of those who are responsible for needless evil or +neglected good, but they are handy helps to those who suffer from them, +and who feel sadly sorry for themselves. + +I am sure the early-begun and oft-reiterated teaching of daily +thankfulness for daily blessing was very useful to me at Crayshaw's and +has been useful to me ever since. With my dear mother herself it was +merely part of that pure and constant piety which ran through her daily +life, like a stream that is never frozen and never runs dry. In me it +had no such grace, but it was an early-taught good habit (as instinctive +as any bodily habit) to feel--"Well, I'm thankful things are not so with +me;" as quickly as "Ah, it might have been thus!" Looking at the fates +and fortunes and dispositions of other boys, I had, even at Snuffy's +"much to be thankful for" as well as much to endure, and it was a good +thing for me that I could balance the two. For if the grace of +thankfulness does not solve the riddles of life, it lends a willing +shoulder to its common burdens. + +I certainly had needed all my philosophy at home as well as at school. +It was hard to come back, one holiday-time after another, ignorant +except for books that I devoured in the holidays, and for my own +independent studies of maps, and an old geography book at Snuffy's from +which I was allowed to give lessons to the lowest form; rough in looks, +and dress, and manners (I knew it, but it requires some self-respect +even to use a nail-brush, and self-respect was next door to impossible +at Crayshaw's); and with my north-country accent deepened, and my +conversation disfigured by slang which, not being fashionable slang, was +as inadmissible as thieves' lingo; it was hard, I say, to come back +thus, and meet dear old Jem, and generally one at least of his +school-fellows whom he had asked to be allowed to invite--both of them +well dressed, well cared for, and well mannered, full of games that were +not in fashion at Crayshaw's, and slang as "correct" as it was +unintelligible. + +Jem's heart was as true to me as ever, but he was not so thin-skinned as +I am. He was never a fellow who worried himself much about anything, and +I don't think it struck him I could feel hurt or lonely. He would say, +"I say, Jack, what a beastly way your hair is cut. I wish Father would +let you come to our school:" or, "Don't say it was a dirty trick--say it +was a beastly chouse, or something of that sort. We're awfully +particular about talking at ----'s, and I don't want Cholmondley to hear +you." + +Jem was wonderfully polished-up himself, and as pugnacious on behalf of +all the institutions of his school as he had once been about our pond. I +got my hair as near right as one cutting and the town hair-cutter could +bring it, and mended my manners and held my own with good temper. When +it came to feats of skill or endurance, I more than held my own. Indeed, +I so amazed one very "swell" little friend of Jem's whose mother (a +titled lady) had allowed him to spend part of the summer holidays with +Jem for change of air, that he vowed I must go and stay with him in the +winter, and do juggler and acrobat at their Christmas theatricals. But +he may have reported me as being rough as well as ready, for her +ladyship never ratified the invitation. Not that I would have left home +at Christmas, and not that I lacked pleasure in the holidays. But other +fashions of games and speech and boyish etiquette lay between me and +Jem; hospitality, if not choice, kept him closely with his +school-fellows, and neither they nor he had part in the day-dreams of my +soul. + +For the spell of the Penny Numbers had not grown weaker as I grew older. +In the holidays I came back to them as to friends. At school they made +the faded maps on Snuffy's dirty walls alive with visions, and many a +night as I lay awake with pain and over-weariness in the stifling +dormitory, my thoughts took refuge not in dreams of home nor in castles +of the air, but in phantom ships that sailed for ever round the world. + +The day of the interview with my father I roused myself from my +grievances to consider a more practical question. Why should I not go to +sea? No matter whose fault it was, there was no doubt that I was +ill-educated, and that I did not please my father as Jem did. On the +other hand I was strong and hardy, nimble and willing to obey; and I had +roughed it enough, in all conscience. I must have ill luck indeed, if I +lit upon a captain more cruel than Mr. Crayshaw. I did not know exactly +how it was to be accomplished, but I knew enough to know that I could +not aim at the Royal Navy. Of course I should have preferred it. I had +never seen naval officers, but if they were like officers in the army, +like Colonel Jervois, for instance, it was with such a port and bearing +that I would fain have carried myself when I grew up to be a man. I +guessed, however, that money and many other considerations might make it +impossible for me to be a midshipman; but I had heard of boys being +apprenticed to merchant-vessels, and I resolved to ask my father if he +would so apprentice me. + +He refused, and he accompanied his refusal with an unfavourable +commentary on my character and conduct, which was not the less bitter +because the accusations were chiefly general. + +This sudden fancy for the sea--well, if it were not a sudden fancy, but +a dream of my life, what a painful instance it afforded of my habitual +want of frankness!--This long-concealed project which I had suddenly +brought to the surface--I had talked about it to my mother years ago, +had I, but it had distressed her, and even to my father, but he had +snubbed me?--then I had been deliberately fostering aims and plans to +which I had always known that my parents would be opposed. My father +didn't believe a word of it. It was the old story. I must be peculiar +at any price. I must have something new to amuse me, and be unlike the +rest of the family. It was always the same. For years I had found more +satisfaction from the conversation of a man who had spent ten years of +his life in the hulks than from that of my own father. Then this Indian +Colonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see the +womanish--he could call it no better, the _weak-womanish_--way in which +I worshipped him. If I were a daughter instead of a son, my caprices +would distress and astonish him less. He could have sent me to my +mother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle. In a son, from +whom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was +painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of +candour--(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of the +indictment)--these were my besetting sins, and would lead me into +serious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made most +favourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office as +the first step in a prosperous career. I didn't know; didn't I? Perhaps +not. Perhaps I had been at the Woods' when he and my mother were +speaking of it. But now I did know. The matter was decided, and he hoped +I should profit by my opportunities. I might go, and I was to shut the +door after me. + +I omit what my father said of the matter from a religious point of +view, though he accused me of flying in the face of Providence as well +as the Fifth Commandment. The piety which kept a pure and GOD-fearing +atmosphere about my home, and to which I owe all the strength I have +found against evil since I left it, was far too sincere in both my +parents for me to speak of any phase of it with disrespect. Though I may +say here that I think it is to be wished that more good people exercised +judgment as well as faith in tracing the will of Heaven in their own. +Practically I did not even then believe that I was more "called" to that +station of life which was to be found in Uncle Henry's office, than to +that station of life which I should find on board a vessel in the +Merchant Service, and it only discredited truth in my inmost soul when +my father put his plans for my career in that light. Just as I could not +help feeling it unfair that a commandment which might have been fairly +appealed to if I had disobeyed him, should be used against me in +argument because I disagreed with him. + +I did disagree with him utterly. Uncle Henry's office was a gloomy +place, where I had had to endure long periods of waiting as a child when +my mother took us in to the dentist, and had shopping and visiting of +uncertain length to do. Uncle Henry himself was no favourite with me. He +was harder than my father if you vexed him, and less genial when you +didn't. And I wanted to go to sea. But it did not seem a light matter to +me to oppose my parents, and they were both against me. My dear mother +was thrown into the profoundest distress by the bare notion. In her view +to be at sea was merely to run an imminent and ceaseless risk of +shipwreck; and even this jeopardy of life and limb was secondary to the +dangers that going ashore in foreign places would bring upon my mind and +morals. + +So when my father spoke kindly to me at supper, and said that he had +arranged with Mr. Wood that I should read with him for two hours every +evening, in preparation for my future life as an articled clerk, my +heart was softened. I thanked him gratefully, and resolved for my own +part to follow what seemed to be the plain path of duty, though it led +to Uncle Henry's office, and not out into the world. + +The capacity in which I began life in Uncle Henry's office was that of +office boy, and the situation was attended in my case with many +favourable conditions. Uncle Henry wished me to sleep on the premises, +as my predecessor had done, but an accidental circumstance led to my +coming home daily, which I infinitely preferred. This was nothing less +than an outbreak of boils all over me, upon which, every domestic +application having failed, and gallons of herb tea only making me +worse, Dr. Brown was called in, and pronounced my health in sore need of +restoration. The regimen of Crayshaw's was not to be recovered from in a +day, and the old doctor would not hear of my living altogether in the +town. If I went to the office at all, he said, I must ride in early, and +ride out in the evening. So much fresh air and exercise were imperative, +and I must eat two solid meals a day under no less careful an eye than +that of my mother. + +She was delighted. She thought (even more than usual) that Doctor Brown +was a very Solomon in spectacles, and I quite agreed with her. The few +words that followed gave a slight shock to her favourable opinion of his +wisdom, but I need hardly say that it confirmed mine. + +He had given me a kindly slap on the shoulder, which happened at that +moment to be the sorest point in my body, and I was in no small pain +from head to foot. I only tightened my lips, but I suppose he bethought +himself of what he had done, and he looked keenly at me and said, "You +can bear pain, Master Jack?" + +"Oh, Jack's a very brave boy," said my dear mother. "Indeed, he's only +too brave. He upset his father and me terribly last week by wanting to +go to sea instead of to the office." + +"And much better for him, ma'am," said the old doctor, promptly; "he'll +make a first-rate sailor, and if Crayshaw's is all the schooling he's +had, a very indifferent clerk." + +"That's just what I think!" I began, but my mother coloured crimson with +distress, and I stopped, and went after her worsted ball which she had +dropped, whilst she appealed to Doctor Brown. + +"Pray don't say so, Doctor Brown. Jack is _very_ good, and it's all +_quite_ decided. I couldn't part with him, and his father would be _so_ +annoyed if the subject----" + +"Tut, tut, ma'am!" said the doctor, pocketing his spectacles; "I never +interfere with family affairs, and I never repeat what I hear. The first +rules of the profession, young gentleman, and very good general rules +for anybody." + +I got quite well again, and my new life began. I rode in and out of the +town every day on Rob Roy, our red-haired pony. After tea I went to the +farm to be taught by Mr. Wood, and at every opportunity I devoured such +books as I could lay my hands on. I fear I had very little excuse for +not being contented now. And yet I was not content. + +It seems absurd to say that the drains had anything to do with it, but +the horrible smell which pervaded the office added to the +distastefulness of the place, and made us all feel ill and fretful, +except my uncle, and Moses Benson, the Jew clerk. He was never ill, and +he said he smelt nothing; which shows that one may have a very big nose +to very little purpose. + +My uncle pooh-poohed the unwholesome state of the office, for two +reasons which certainly had some weight. The first was that he himself +had been there for five-and-twenty years without suffering by it; and +the second was, that the defects of drainage were so radical that (the +place belonging to that period of house-building when the system of +drainage was often worse than none at all) half the premises, if not +half the street, would have to be pulled down for any effectual remedy. +So it was left as it was, and when Mr. Burton, the head clerk, had worse +headaches than usual, he used to give me sixpence for chloride of lime, +which I distributed at my discretion, and on those days Moses Benson +used generally to say that he "fancied he smelt something." + +Moses Benson was an articled clerk to my uncle, but he had no +pretensions to be considered a gentleman. His father kept a small shop +where second-hand watches were the most obvious goods; but the old man +was said to have money, though the watches did not seem to sell very +fast, and his son had duly qualified for his post, and had paid a good +premium. Moses was only two or three years older than I, not that I +could have told anything about his age from his looks. He was sallow, +and had a big nose; his hands were fat, his feet were small, and I think +his head was large, but perhaps his hair made it look larger than it +was, for it was thick and very black, and though it was curly, it was +not like Jem's; the curls were more like short ringlets, and if he bent +over his desk they hid his forehead, and when he put his head back to +think, they lay on his coat-collar. And I suppose it was partly because +he could not smell with his nose, that he used such very strong +hair-oil, and so much of it. It used to make his coat-collar in a horrid +state, but he always kept a little bottle of "scouring drops" on the +ledge of his desk, and when it got very bad, I knelt behind him on the +corner of his stool and scoured his coat-collar with a little bit of +flannel. Not that I did it half so well as he could. He wore very +odd-looking clothes, but he took great care of them, and was always +touching them up, and "reviving" his hat with one of Mrs. O'Flannagan's +irons. He used to sell bottles of the scouring drops to the other +clerks, and once he got me to get my mother to buy some. He gave me a +good many little odd jobs to do for him, but he always thanked me, and +from the beginning to the end of our acquaintance he was invariably +kind. + +I remember a very odd scene that happened at the beginning of it. + +Mr. Burton (the other clerk, whose time was to expire the following +year, which was to make a vacancy for me) was a very different man from +Moses Benson. He was respectably connected, and looked down on "the +Jew-boy," but he was hot-tempered, and rather slow-witted, and I think +Moses could manage him; and I think it was he who kept their constant +"tiffs" from coming to real quarrels. + +One day, very soon after I began office-life, Benson sent me out to get +him some fancy notepaper, and when I came back I saw the red-haired Mr. +Burton standing by the desk and looking rather more sickly and cross +than usual. I laid down the paper and the change, and asked if Benson +wanted anything else. He thanked me exceedingly kindly, and said, "No," +and I went out of the enclosure and back to the corner where I had been +cutting out some newspaper extracts for my uncle. At the same time I +drew from under my overcoat which was lying there, an old railway volume +of one of Cooper's novels which Charlie had lent me. I ought not to have +been reading novels in office-hours, but I had had to stop short last +night because my candle went out just at the most exciting point, and I +had had no time to see what became of everybody before I started for +town in the morning. I could bear suspense no longer, and plunged into +my book. + +How it was in these circumstances that I heard what the two clerks were +saying, I don't know. They talked constantly in these open enclosures, +when they knew I was within hearing. On this occasion I suppose they +thought I had gone out, and it was some minutes before I discovered that +they were talking of me. Burton spoke first, and in an irritated tone. + +"You treat this young shaver precious different to the last one." + +The Jew spoke very softly, and with an occasional softening of the +consonants in his words. "How obsherving you are!" said he. + +Burton snorted. "It don't take much observation to see that. But I +suppose you have your reasons. You Jews are always so sly. That's how +you get on so, I suppose." + +"You Gentiles," replied Moses (and the Jew's voice had tones which gave +him an infinite advantage in retaliating scorn), "you Gentiles would do +as well as we do if you were able to foresee and knew how to wait. You +have all the selfishness for success, my dear, but the gifts of prophecy +and patience are wanting to you." + +"That's nothing to do with your little game about the boy," said +Burton; "however, I suppose you can keep your own secrets." + +"I have no secrets," said Moses gently. "And if you take my advice, you +never will have. If you have no secrets, my dear, they will never be +found out. If you tell your little designs, your best friends will be +satisfied, and will not invent less creditable ones for you." + +"If they did, you'd talk 'em down," said Burton roughly. "Short of a +woman I never met such a hand at jaw. You'll be in Parliament yet----" +("It is possible!" said the Jew hastily,) "with that long tongue of +yours. But you haven't told us about the boy, for all you've said." + +"About this boy," said Moses, "a proverb will be shorter than my jaw. +'The son of the house is not a servant for ever.' As to the other--he +was taken for charity and dismissed for theft, is it not so? He came +from the dirt, and he went back to the dirt. They often do. Why should I +be civil to him?" + +What reply Mr. Burton would have made to this question I had no +opportunity of judging. My uncle called him, and he ran hastily +up-stairs. And when he had gone, the Jew came slowly out, and crossed +the office as if he were going into the street. By this time my +conscience was pricking hard, and I shoved my book under my coat and +called to him: "Mr. Benson." + +"You?" he said. + +"I am very sorry," I stammered, blushing, "but I heard what you were +saying. I did not mean to listen. I thought you knew that I was there." + +"It is of no importance," he said, turning away; "I have no secrets." + +But I detained him. + +"Mr. Benson! Tell me, please. You _were_ talking about me, weren't you? +What did you mean about the son of the house not being a servant for +ever?" + +He hesitated for an instant, and then turned round and came nearer to +me. + +"It is true, is it not?" he said. "Next year you may be clerk. In time +you may be your uncle's confidential clerk, which I should like to be +myself. You may eventually be partner, as I should like to be; and in +the long run you may succeed him, as I should like to do. It is a good +business, my dear, a sound business, a business of which much, very +much, more might be made. You might die rich, very rich. You might be +mayor, you might be Member, you might--but what is the use? _You will +not._ You do not see it, though I am telling you. You will not wait for +it, though it would come. What is that book you hid when I came in?" + +"It is about North American Indians," said I, dragging it forth. "I am +very sorry, but I left off last night at such an exciting bit." + +The Jew was thumbing the pages, with his black ringlets close above +them. + +"Novels in office-hours!" said he; but he was very good-natured about +it, and added, "I've one or two books at home, if you're fond of this +kind of reading, and will promise me not to forget your duties." + +"Oh, I promise!" said I. + +"I'll put them under my desk in the corner," he said; "indeed, I would +part with some of them for a trifle." + +I thanked him warmly, but what he had said was still hanging in my mind, +and I added, "Are there real prophets among the Jews now-a-days, Mr. +Benson?" + +"They will make nothing by it, if there are," said he; and there was a +tone of mysteriousness in his manner of speaking which roused my +romantic curiosity. "A few of ush (very few, my dear!) mould our own +fates, and the lives of the rest are moulded by what men have within +them rather than by what they find without. If there were a true prophet +in every market-place to tell each man of his future, it would not alter +the destinies of seven men in thish wide world." + +As Moses spoke the swing door was pushed open, and one of my uncle's +clients entered. He was an influential man, and a very tall one. The Jew +bent his ringlets before him, almost beneath his elbow, and slipped out +as he came in. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "Then, hey for boot and horse, lad, + And round the world away! + Young blood must have its course, lad, + And every dog his day."--C. KINGSLEY. + + +Moses Benson was as good as his word in the matter of books of +adventure. Dirty books, some without backs, and some with very greasy +ones (for which, if I bought them, I seldom paid more than half-price), +but full of dangers and discoveries, the mightiness of manhood, and the +wonders of the world. I read them at odd moments of my working hours, +and dreamed of them when I went home to bed. And it was more fascinating +still to look out, with Charlie's help, in the Penny Numbers, for the +foreign places, and people, and creatures mentioned in the tales, and to +find that the truth was often stranger than the fiction. + +To live a fancy-life of adventure in my own head, was not merely an +amusement to me at this time--it was a refuge. Matters did not really +improve between me and my father, though I had obeyed his wishes. It +was by his arrangement that I spent so much of my time at home with the +Woods, and yet it remained a grievance that I liked to do so. Whether my +dear mother had given up all hopes of my becoming a genius I do not +know, but my father's contempt for my absorption in a book was unabated. +I felt this if he came suddenly upon me with my head in my hands and my +nose in a tattered volume; and if I went on with my reading it was with +a sense of being in the wrong, whilst if I shut up the book and tried to +throw myself into outside interests, my father's manner showed me that +my efforts had only discredited my candour. + +As is commonly the case, it was chiefly little things that pulled the +wrong way of the stuff of life between us, but they pulled it very much +askew. I was selfishly absorbed in my own dreams, and I think my dear +father made a mistake which is a too common bit of tyranny between +people who love each other and live together. He was not satisfied with +my _doing_ what he liked, he expected me to _be_ what he liked, that is, +to be another person instead of myself. Wives and daughters seem now and +then to respond to this expectation as to the call of duty, and to +become inconsistent echoes, odd mixtures of severity and hesitancy, +hypocrites on the highest grounds; but sons are not often so +self-effacing, and it was not the case with me. It was so much the case +with my dear mother, that she never was of the slightest use (which she +might have been) when my father and I misunderstood each other. By my +father's views of the moment she always hastily set her own, whether +they were fair or unfair to me; and she made up for it by indulging me +at every point that did not cross an expressed wish of my father's, or +that could not annoy him because he was not there. She never held the +scales between us. + +And yet it was the thought of her which kept me from taking my fate into +my own hands again and again. To have obeyed my father seemed to have +done so little towards making him satisfied with me, that I found no +consolation at home for the distastefulness of the office; and more than +once I resolved to run away, and either enlist or go to Liverpool (which +was at no great distance from us) and get on board some vessel that was +about to sail for other lands. But when I thought of my mother's +distress, I could not face it, and I let my half-formed projects slide +again. + +Oddly enough, it was Uncle Henry who brought matters to a crisis. I +think my father was disappointed (though he did not blame me) that I +secured no warmer a place in Uncle Henry's affections than I did. Uncle +Henry had no children, and if he took a fancy to me and I pleased him, +such a career as the Jew-clerk had sketched for me would probably be +mine. This dawned on me by degrees through chance remarks from my father +and the more open comments of friends. For good manners with us were not +of a sensitively refined order, and to be clapped on the back +with--"Well, Jack, you've got into a good berth, I hear. I suppose you +look to succeed your uncle some day?" was reckoned a friendly +familiarity rather than an offensive impertinence. + +I learned that my parents had hoped that, as I was his nephew, Uncle +Henry would take me as clerk without the usual premium. Indeed, when my +uncle first urged my going to him, he had more than hinted that he +should not expect a premium with his brother's son. But he was fond of +his money (of which he had plenty), and when people are that, they are +apt to begin to grudge, if there is time, between promise and +performance. Uncle Henry had a whole year in which to think about +foregoing two or three hundred pounds, and as it drew to a close, it +seemed to worry him to such a degree, that he proposed to take me for +half the usual premium instead of completely remitting it; and he said +something about my being a stupid sort of boy, and of very little use to +him for some time to come. He said it to justify himself for drawing +back, I am quite sure, but it did me no good at home. + +My father had plenty of honourable pride, and he would hear of no +compromise. He said that he should pay the full premium for me that +Uncle Henry's other clerks had had to pay, and from this no revulsion of +feeling on my uncle's part would move him. He was quite bland with Uncle +Henry, and he was not quite bland towards me. + +When I fairly grasped the situation (and I contrived to get a pretty +clear account of it from my mother), there rushed upon me the conviction +that a new phase had come over my prospects. When I put aside my own +longings for my father's will; and every time that office life seemed +intolerable to me, and I was tempted to break my bonds, and thought +better of it and settled down again, this thought had always remained +behind: "I will try; and if the worst comes to the worst, and I really +cannot settle down into a clerk, I can but run away then." But +circumstances had altered my case, I felt that now I must make up my +mind for good and all. My father would have to make some little +sacrifices to find the money, and when it was once paid, I could not let +it be in vain. Come what might, I must stick to the office then, and for +life. + +Some weeks passed whilst I was turning this over and over in my mind. I +was constantly forgetting things in the office, but Moses Benson helped +me out of every scrape. He was kinder and kinder, so that I often felt +sorry that I could not feel fonder of him, and that his notions of fun +and amusement only disgusted me instead of making us friends. They +convinced me of one thing. My dear mother's chief dread about my going +out of my own country was for the wicked ways I might learn in strange +lands. A town with an unpronounceable name suggested foreign iniquities +to her tender fears, but our own town, where she and everybody we knew +bought everything we daily used, did not frighten her at all. I did not +tell her, but I was quite convinced myself that I might get pretty deep +into mischief in my idle hours, even if I lived within five miles of +home, and had only my uncle's clerks for my comrades. + +During these weeks Jem came home for the holidays. He was at a public +school now, which many of our friends regarded as an extravagant folly +on my father's part. We had a very happy time together, and this would +have gone far to keep me at home, if it had not, at the same time, +deepened my disgust with our town, and my companions in the office. In +plain English, the training of two good schools, and the society of boys +superior to himself, had made a gentleman of Jem, and the contrast +between his looks and ways, and manners, and those of my uncle's clerks +were not favourable to the latter. How proud my father was of him! With +me he was in a most irritable mood; and one grumble to which I heard him +give utterance, that it was very inconvenient to have to pay this money +just at the most expensive period of Jem's education, went heavily into +the scale for running away. And that night, as it happened, Jem and I +sat up late, and had a long and loving chat. He abused the office to my +heart's content, and was very sympathetic when I told him that I had +wished to go to sea, and how my father had refused to allow me. + +"I think he made a great mistake," said Jem; and he told me of "a +fellow's brother" that he knew about, who was in the Merchant Service, +and how well he was doing. "It's not even as if Uncle Henry were coming +out generously," he added. + +Dear, dear! How pleasant it was to hear somebody else talk on my side of +the question. And who was I that I should rebuke Jem for calling our +worthy uncle a curmudgeon, and stigmatising the Jew-clerk as a dirty +beast? I really dared not tell him that Moses grew more familiar as my +time to be articled drew near; that he called me Jack Sprat, and his +dearest friend, and offered to procure me the "silver-top" (or +champagne)--which he said I must "stand" on the day I took my place at +the fellow desk to his--of the first quality and at less than cost +price; and that he had provided me gratis with a choice of "excuses" +(they were unblushing lies) to give to our good mother for spending that +evening in town, and "having a spree." + +From my affairs we came to talk of Jem's, and I found that even he, poor +chap! was not without his troubles. He confided to me, with many +expressions of shame and vexation, that he had got into debt, but having +brought home good reports and even a prize on this occasion, he hoped to +persuade my father to pay what he owed. + +"You see, Jack, he's awfully good to me, but he will do things his own +way, and what's worse, the way they were done in his young days. You +remember the row we had about his giving me an allowance? He didn't want +to, because he never had one, only tips from his governor when the old +gentleman was pleased with him. And he said it was quite enough to send +me to such a good and expensive school, and I ought to think of that, +and not want more because I had got much. We'd an awful row, for I +thought it was so unfair his making out I was greedy and ungrateful, and +I told him so, and I said I was quite game to go to a cheap school if he +liked, only wherever I was I did want to be 'like the other fellows.' I +begged him to take me away and to let me go somewhere cheap with you; +and I said, if the fellows there had no allowances, we could do without. +As I told him, it's not the beastly things that you buy that you care +about, only of course you don't like to be the only fellow who can't buy +'em. So then he came round, and said I should have an allowance, but I +must do with a very small one. So I said, Very well, then I mustn't go +in for the games. Then he wouldn't have that; so then I made out a list +of what the subscriptions are to cricket, and so on, and then your +flannels and shoes, and it came to double what he offered me. He said it +was simply disgraceful that boys shouldn't be able to be properly +educated, and have an honest game at cricket for the huge price he paid, +without the parents being fleeced for all sorts of extravagances at +exorbitant prices. And I know well enough it's disgraceful, what we have +to pay for school books and for things of all sorts you have to get in +the town; but, as I said to the governor, why don't you kick up a dust +with the head master, or write to the papers--what's the good of rowing +us? One must have what other fellows have, and get 'em where other +fellows get 'em. But he never did--I wish he would. I should enjoy +fighting old Pompous if I were in his place. But they're as civil as +butter to each other, and then old Pompous goes on feathering his nest, +and backing up the tradespeople, and the governor pitches into the +young men of the present day." + +"He did give you the bigger allowance, didn't he?" said I, at this pause +in Jem's rhetoric. + +"Yes, he did. He's awfully good to me. But you know, Jack, he never paid +it quite all, and he never paid it quite in time. I found out from my +mother he did it on purpose to make me value it more, and be more +careful. Doesn't it seem odd he shouldn't see that I can't pay the +subscriptions a few shillings short or a few days late? One must find +the money somehow, and then one has to pay for that, and then you're +short, and go on tick, and it runs up, and then they dun you, and you're +cleaned out, and there you are!" + +At which climax old Jem laid his curly head on his arms, and I began to +think very seriously. + +"How much do you owe?" + +Jem couldn't say. He thought he could reckon up, so I got a pencil and +made a list from his dictation, and from his memory, which was rather +vague. When it was done (and there seemed to be a misty margin beyond), +I was horrified. "Why, my dear fellow!" I exclaimed, "if you'd had your +allowance ever so regularly, it wouldn't have covered this sort of +thing." + +"I know, I know," said poor Jem, clutching remorsefully at his curls. +"I've been a regular fool! Jack! whatever you do--never tick. It's the +very mischief. You never know what you owe, and so you feel vague and +order more. And you never know what you don't owe, which is worse, for +sometimes you're in such despair, it would be quite a relief to catch +some complaint and die. It's like going about with a stone round your +neck, and nobody kind enough to drown you. I can't stand any more of it. +I shall make a clean breast to Father, and if he can't set me straight, +I won't go back; I'll work on the farm sooner, and let him pay my bills +instead of my schooling--and serve old Pompous right." + +Poor Jem! long after he had cheered up and gone to bed, I sat up and +thought. When my premium was paid where was the money for Jem's debts to +come from? And would my father be in the humour to pay them? If he did +not, Jem would not go back to school. Of that I was quite certain. Jem +had thought over his affairs, which was an effort for him, but he always +thought in one direction. His thoughts never went backwards and forwards +as mine did. If he had made up his mind, there was no more prospect of +his changing it than if he had been my father. And if the happy terms +between them were broken, and Jem's career checked when he was doing so +well!--the scales that weighed my own future were becoming very uneven +now. + +I clasped my hands and thought. If I ran away, the money would be there +for Jem's debts, and his errors would look pale in the light of my +audacity, and he would be dearer than ever at home, whilst for me were +freedom, independence (for I had not a doubt of earning +bread-and-cheese, if only as a working man): perhaps a better +understanding with my father when I had been able to prove my courage +and industry, or even when he got the temperate and dutiful letter I +meant to post to him when I was fairly off; and beyond all, the desire +of my eyes, the sight of the world. + +Should I stay now? And for what? To see old Jem at logger-heads with my +father, and perhaps demoralized by an inferior school? To turn my own +back and shut my eyes for ever on all that the wide seas embrace; my +highest goal to be to grow as rich as Uncle Henry or richer, and perhaps +as mean or meaner? Should I choose for life a life I hated, and set +seals to my choice by drinking silver-top with the Jew-clerk?--No, +Moses, no! + + * * * * * + +I got up soon after dawn and was in the garden at sunrise the morning +that I ran away. I had made my plans carefully, and carried them out, so +far with success. + +Including the old miser's bequest which his lawyer had paid, there were +thirteen pounds to my name in the town savings-bank, and this sum I had +drawn out to begin life with. I wrapped a five-pound note in a loving +letter to Jem, and put both into the hymn-book on his shelf--I knew it +would not be opened till Sunday. Very few runaways have as much as eight +pounds to make a start with: and as one could not be quite certain how +my father would receive Jem's confession, I thought he might be glad of +a few pounds of his own, and I knew he had spent his share of the +miser's money long ago. + +I meant to walk to a station about seven miles distant, and there take +train for Liverpool. I should be clumsy indeed, I thought, if I could +not stow away on board some vessel, as hundreds of lads had done before +me, and make myself sufficiently useful to pay my passage when I was +found out. + +When I got into the garden I kicked my foot against something in the +grass. It was my mother's little gardening-fork. She had been tidying +her pet perennial border, and my father had called her hastily, and she +had left it half finished, and had forgotten the fork. A few minutes +more or less were of no great importance to me, for it was very early, +so I finished the border quite neatly, and took the fork indoors. + +I put it in a corner of the hall where the light was growing stronger +and making familiar objects clear. In a house like ours and amongst +people like us, furniture was not chopped and changed and decorated as +it is now. The place had looked like this ever since I could remember, +and it would look like this tomorrow morning, though my eyes would not +see it. I stood stupidly by the hall table where my father's gloves lay +neatly one upon the other beside his hat. I took them up, almost +mechanically, and separated them, and laid them together again finger to +finger, and thumb to thumb, and held them with a stupid sort of feeling, +as if I could never put them down and go away. + +What would my father's face be like when he took them up this very +morning to go out and look for me? and when--oh when!--should I see his +face again? + +I began to feel what one is apt to learn too late, that in childhood one +takes the happiness of home for granted, and kicks against the pricks of +its grievances, not having felt the far harder buffetings of the world. +Moreover (which one does not think of then), that parental blunders and +injustices are the mistakes and tyrannies of a special love that one may +go many a mile on one's own wilful way and not meet a second time. +Who--in the wide world--would care to be bothered with my confidence, +and blame me for withholding it? Should I meet many people to whom it +would matter if we misunderstood each other? Would anybody hereafter +love me well enough to be disappointed in me? Would other men care so +much for my fate as to insist on guiding it by lines of their own +ruling? + +I pressed the gloves passionately against my eyes to keep in the tears. +If my day-dreams had been the only question, I should have changed my +mind now. If the home grievances had been all, I should have waited for +time and patience to mend them. I could not have broken all these +heart-strings. I should never have run away. But there was much more, +and my convictions were not changed, though I felt as if I might have +managed better as regards my father. + +Would he forgive me? I hoped and believed so. Would my mother forgive +me? I knew she would--as GOD forgives. + +And with the thought of her, I knelt down, and put my head on the hall +table and prayed from my soul--not for fair winds, and prosperous +voyages, and good luck, and great adventures; but that it might please +GOD to let me see Home again, and the faces that I loved, ah, so dearly, +after all! + +And then I got up, and crossed the threshold, and went out into the +world. + + + END OF PART I. + + + + + RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, + LONDON & BUNGAY. + + + + +_The present Series of Mrs. Ewing's Works is the only authorized, +complete, and uniform Edition published._ + +_It will consist of 18 volumes, Small Crown 8vo, at 2s. 6d. per vol., +issued, as far as possible, in chronological order, and these will +appear at the rate of two volumes every two months, so that the Series +will be completed within 18 months. The device of the cover was +specially designed by a Friend of Mrs. Ewing._ + +_The following is a list of the books included in the Series--_ + +1. MELCHIOR'S DREAM, AND OTHER TALES. + +2. MRS. OVERTHEWAY'S REMEMBRANCES. + +3. OLD-FASHIONED FAIRY TALES. + +4. A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING. + +5. THE BROWNIES, AND OTHER TALES. + +6. SIX TO SIXTEEN. + +7. LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE, AND OTHER TALES. + +8. JAN OF THE WINDMILL. + +9. VERSES FOR CHILDREN, AND SONGS. + +10. THE PEACE EGG--A CHRISTMAS MUMMING PLAY--HINTS FOR PRIVATE +THEATRICALS, &c. + +11. A GREAT EMERGENCY, AND OTHER TALES. + +12. BROTHERS OF PITY, AND OTHER TALES OF BEASTS AND MEN. + +13. WE AND THE WORLD, Part I. + +14. WE AND THE WORLD, Part II. + +15. JACKANAPES--DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOTE--THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. + +16. MARY'S MEADOW, AND OTHER TALES OF FIELDS AND FLOWERS. + +17. MISCELLANEA, including The Mystery of the Bloody Hand--Wonder +Stories--Tales of the Khoja, and other translations. + +18. JULIANA HORATIA EWING AND HER BOOKS, with a selection from Mrs. +Ewing's Letters. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's We and the World, Part I, by Juliana Horatia Ewing + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WE AND THE WORLD, PART I *** + +***** This file should be named 18077.txt or 18077.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/0/7/18077/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Erik Bent, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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