Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (196 page)

One day the Badger was returning from a foray, and beside him, on an old gaunt pony, secured by a stirrup-leather to the Badger’s saddle-girth, rode a little lad. A trooper had found the boy wandering among the blackened ruins, and the Badger, attracted by the lad’s beauty, had taken him to be his page.

The Badger rode, singing, pleased with his day’s work; and there crept up a white mist from the sea. He did not notice for a time that he and the lad were riding alone. Then, drawing rein, he blew a long, loud blast upon his horn. But there came no answer.

The lad was looking at him with strange eyes; and Red Aldys, seized he knew not why by a sudden frenzy of hate, drew his sword and struck at the little lad with all his strength.

And the sword broke in his hand; and those strange, gentle eyes still looked upon Red Aldys. And around the little lad there shone a great light.

And fear fell upon Red Aldys of the yellow beard, and flinging himself upon the ground, he cried in a loud voice: “Christ have mercy upon me a sinner.”

And the child Christ laid His hands upon Red Aldys and spoke words of comfort to him and commanded him that he should follow Him and serve Him.

And on the spot where Christ had laid His hands upon him Aldys made for himself a dwelling-place among the rocks beside the winding Wyndbeck. And there for many years he laboured to bring peace and healing to the poor folk of the valley, learning their needs that he might help them. And the fame of him spread far and wide, and many came to him to ask his blessing, repenting of their evil lives. And he went about among the people teaching the love of the Lord Jesus.

Little Anthony had often passed the great church of St. Aldys just beyond the market square, an imposing building of grey stone with a spire one hundred and eighty feet high. They say that, forming part of its foundations, are the very rocks among which once Saint Aldys dwelt, on the spot where Christ had appeared to him and had forgiven him his sins.

Having heard the story, Anthony felt a longing to see the inside of it, and one afternoon, instead of going to his uncle’s, he wandered there. It was surrounded by iron railings and the great iron gates were padlocked. But in a corner, behind a massive buttress, he found a little door that opened. It led into a stone passage and down some steps into a vaulted room, where he fell over a chair, and a bat flew out and fluttered silently until it disappeared into the shadows. But he found the church at last. It was vast and high and very, very cold, and only a faint chill light came in through the screened windows. The silence frightened him. He had forgotten to make a note of the way by which he had entered, and all the doors that he tried were securely fastened. A terror seized him that he would never be able to get out. It seemed to him that he was in a grave.

By luck he blundered back into the little vaulted chamber, and from there groped his way out. He closed the door behind him with a bang. He had a feeling that something was following him and might drag him back. He ran all the way home.

CHAPTER IV

THERE had been a period of prosperity following the strange visit of Wandering Peter. John Strong’nth’arm came back to his workshop another man, or so it seemed to little Anthony. A brisk, self-confident person who often would whistle while he worked. The job on which he had been engaged when taken ill had been well finished and further orders had resulted. There were times when the temporary assistance of an old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son was needful. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, discussing things in general with a neighbour, would casually refer to “Our workpeople.” That uncle in Australia, or elsewhere, who had been fading year by year almost to disappearing point, reappeared out of the shadows. With the gambler’s belief that when once the luck changes every venture is bound to come home, she regarded his sudden demise as merely a question of time. She wondered how much he would leave them. She hoped it would be sufficient to enable them to become gentlefolks.

“What is a gentlefolk?” asked Anthony, to whom she had been talking.

It was explained to him that gentlefolks were people who did not have to work for their living. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had served them and knew.

There were others, who sat in offices and gave orders. To this lesser rank it was possible to climb by industry and virtue. But first of all you must go to school and learn.

H is mother caught him up in her thin arms and pressed him passionately to her narrow bosom.

“You will be a gentleman,” she prophesied. “I feel it. I’ve prayed God every night since you were born.” She smothered him with kisses and then put him down.

“Don’t say anything to your father,” she added. “He doesn’t understand.”

He rather hoped his uncle in Australia wouldn’t leave them too much money. He liked work: fighting with things, conquering them; tidying the workshop; combing the fleas out of his uncle’s dogs. Lighting the kitchen fire was fun even when it was so cold that he wasn’t quite sure he’d a nose on his face and could only tell what his hands were doing by looking at them. He lit the paper and then coaxed and blew and watched the little flame grow bigger, feeding it and guiding it. And when you had won, you warmed your hands.

His father had taught him to read during the many hours when there had been nothing else to do. They had sat side by side upon the bench, their legs dangling, holding the open book between them. And writing of a sort he had learnt for himself, having heard his mother regret that she had not studied it herself when young. His mother felt he was predestined to be a great scholar. She wanted to send him to a certain “select preparatory school” kept by two elderly maiden sisters of undoubted gentility. Their prospectus informed the gentry of the neighbourhood that special attention was given by the Misses Warmington to manners and the cultivation of correct behaviour.

His father had no use for the Misses Warmington — had done business with them in connexion with a boiler. He mimicked the elder Miss Warmington’s high-pitched voice. They would teach the boy monkey-tricks, give him ideas above his station. What was wrong with the parish school, only two streets away, where he would mix with his own class and not be looked down upon?

His mother did not agree that he would be with his own class among the children of the neighbourhood. The Strong’nth’arms had once been almost gentry. He would learn coarse ways, rude speech, acquire a vulgar accent. She carried her way, as she always did in the end. Dressed in her best clothes, and accompanied by Anthony in a new turn-out from head to foot, she knocked at the door of the Misses Warmington’s “select preparatory school.”

It was one of a square of small, old-fashioned houses that had once been on the outskirts of Millsborough, but which now formed a connecting link between the old town and the maze of new mean streets that had crept towards it from the west. They were shown into the drawing-room. The portrait of a military gentleman with a wooden face and stars upon his breast hung above the marble mantelpiece. On the opposite wall, above the green rep sofa, hung a frightened-looking lady with ringlets and fingers that tapered almost to a point.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat on the extreme edge of a horsehair-covered chair and had difficulty in not sliding off it on to the floor. Anthony John, perched on another precisely similar chair, had mastered the problem by sitting well back and tucking one leg underneath him.

After a few minutes there entered the elder Miss Warmington. She was a tall gaunt lady with a prominent arched nose. She apologized to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm for having kept them waiting, but apparently did not see Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s outstretched hand. For a time his mother didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

She explained her errand, becoming almost voluble on the importance both she and his father attached to manners and a knowledge of the ways of gentlefolks.

Miss Warmington was sympathetic; but, alas! the Misses Warmington’s select preparatory school for gentlefolks had already its full complement of pupils. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, not understanding the hint, referred to rumours that tended to refute this argument. It seemed needful there should be plain speaking. The Misses Warmington themselves were very sorry, but there were parents who had to be considered. Particularly was it a preparatory school for young ladies and gentlemen. A pupil from the neighbourhood of Platt Lane — the child of a mechanic — no doubt a most excellent —

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm interrupted. An engineer, employing workmen of his own.

The elder Miss Warmington was pleased to hear it. But there was no getting over the neighbourhood of Platt Lane. And Mrs. Strong’nth’arm herself, the child’s mother. Miss Warmington had not the slightest intention of being offensive. Domestic service Miss Warmington had always held to be a calling worthy of all esteem. It was the parents.

Miss Warmington rose to end the interview’ And then by chance her eyes fell upon Anthony John as he sat with one small leg tucked underneath the other.

The tears were in Mrs. Strong’nth’urm’s eyes, and she did not notice. But Anthony saw quite plainly the expression that came over the tired, lined face of the elder Miss Warmington. He had seen it before on faces that had suddenly caught sight of him.

“You say your husband employs workpeople?” she said in a changed tone, turning to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm.

“A man and a boy,” declared Mrs. Strong’nth’arm in a broken voice. She dared not look up because of the tears in her eyes.

“Would you like to be one of our little pupils?” asked the elder Miss Warmington of Anthony John.

“No, thank you,” he answered. He did not move, but he was still looking at her, and he saw the flush upon her face and the quiver of her tall gaunt frame.

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Warmington as she rang the bell. “I hope you’ll find a school to suit you.”

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would much have liked to make a cutting answer and have swept out of the room. But correct behaviour once acquired becomes a second nature. So, instead, Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied and apologized for her intrusion, and taking Anthony John by the hand, departed with bowed head.

In the street primeval instinct reasserted itself. She denounced the Misses Warmington as snobs. Not that it mattered. Anthony John should be a gentleman in spite of them. And when he had got on and was rich they would pass the Misses Warmington in the street and take no notice of them, just as though they were dirt. She hoped they would live long enough. And then suddenly her anger turned against Anthony John.

“What did you mean by saying ‘No, thank you,’ when she asked you if you’d like to come?” she demanded. “I believe she’d have taken you if you’d said
‘
yes.’”

“I didn’t want her to,” explained Anthony. “She isn’t clever. I’d rather learn from someone clever.”

With improved financial outlook the Strong’nth’arms had entered the Church of England. When you were poor it didn’t matter; nobody minded what religion you belonged to; church or chapel, you crept into the free seats at the back and no one turned their eyes to look. But employers of labour who might even one day be gentlefolks! The question had to be considered from more points of view than one.

Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s people had always been chapel folk; and as his wife had often bitterly remarked, much good it had done him. Her own inclination was towards the Established Church as being more respectable; and arguing that the rent of a side pew was now within their means, she had gained her point. For himself Mr. Strong’nth’arm was indifferent. Hope had revived within him. He was busy on a new invention and Sunday was the only day now on which he had leisure and the workshop to himself. Anthony would have loved to have been there helping, but his mother explained to him that one had to think of the future. A little boy, spotlessly clean and neatly dressed, always to be seen at church with his mother, was the sort of little boy that people liked and, when the time came, were willing to help.

A case in point, proving the usefulness of the church, occurred over this very problem of Anthony’s education. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm called on the vicar and explained to him her trouble. The vicar saw a way out. One of the senior pupils at the grammar school was seeking evening employment. His mother, a widow, possessed of nothing but a small pension, had lately died. Unless he could earn sufficient to keep him he would have to discontinue his studies. A clever lad; the vicar could recommend him. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was gratitude personified. The vicar was only too pleased. It was helping two birds with one stone. It sounded wrong to the vicar even as he said it. But then so many things the vicar said sounded wrong to him afterwards.

The business was concluded that same evening. Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge became engaged for two hours a day to teach Anthony the rudiments of learning, and by Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was generally referred to as “our little Anthony’s tutor.” He was a nervous, silent youth. The walls of his bed-sitting-room, to which when the din of hammers in the workshop proved disturbing he would bear little Anthony away, was papered with texts and mottoes, prominent among which one read: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The preparatory education of Anthony proceeded by leaps and bounds. The child was eager to learn.

Between the two an odd friendship grew up founded upon a mutual respect and admiration. Young Tetteridge was clever. The vicar had spoken more truly than he knew. He had a clever way of putting things that made them at once plain and easy to be remembered. He could make up poetry — quite clever poetry that sometimes made you laugh and at other times stirred something within you which you didn’t understand but which made you feel grand and all aglow. He drew pictures — clever pictures of fascinating never-to-be-seen things that almost frightened you, of funny faces, and things that made you cry. He made music out of a thing that looked like a fiddle, but was better than a fiddle, that he kept in a little black box; and when he played you wanted to dance and sing and shout.