Works of Ellen Wood, page 1003
“Sir, I’d not seem ungrateful, but I’d like to stay here with the wife and boy to the last. It can’t be for long now.”
“Drink this; it will do you good,” said Mr. Carden, holding the cup to his lips.
“This close place is a change from the tent,” I said to the woman, who was stooping over the bit of fire.
Such a look of regret came upon her countenance as she lifted it: just as if the tent had been a palace. “When we got here, master, it was after that two days’ rain, and the ground was sopping. It didn’t do for him” — glancing round at the straw. “He was getting mighty bad then, and we just put our heads into this place — bad luck to us!”
The Squire gave her some silver, and told her to get anything in she thought best. It was too late to do more that night. The church clocks were striking ten as we went out.
“Won’t it do to move him to the Infirmary?” were the Pater’s first words to Mr. Carden.
“Certainly not. The man’s hours are numbered.”
“There is no hope, I suppose?”
“Not the least. He may be said to be dying now.”
No time was lost in the morning. When Squire Todhetley took a will to heart he carried it out, and speedily. A decent room with an airy window was found in the same block of buildings. A bed and other things were put in it; some clothes were redeemed; and by twelve o’clock in the day Jake was comfortably lying there. The Pater seemed to think that this was not enough: he wanted to do more.
“His humanity to my child kept him from seeing the last moments of his,” said he. “The little help we can give him now is no return for that.”
Food and clothes, and a dry, comfortable room, and wine and proper things for Jake — of which he could not swallow much. The woman was not to go out to work again while he lasted, but to stay at home and attend to him.
“I shall be at liberty by the hop-picking time,” she said, with a sigh. Ah, poor creature! long before that.
When Tod and I went in later in the afternoon, she had just given Jake some physic, ordered by Mr. Carden. She and the boy sat by the fire, tea and bread-and-butter on the deal table between them. Jake lay in bed, his head raised on account of his breathing, I thought he was better; but his thin white face, with the dark, earnest, glistening eyes, was almost painful to look upon.
“The reading-gentleman have been in,” cried the woman suddenly. “He’s coming again, he says, the night or the morning.”
Tod looked puzzled, and Jake explained. A good young clergyman, who had found him out a day or two before, had been in each day since with his Bible, to read and pray. “God bless him!” said Jake.
“Why did you go away so suddenly?” Tod asked, alluding to the hasty departure from Cookhill. “My father was intending to do something for you.”
“I didn’t know that, sir. Many thanks all the same. I’d like to thank you too, sir,” he went on, after a fit of coughing. “I’ve wanted to thank you ever since. When you gave me your arm up the lane, and said them pleasant things to me about having a little child in heaven, you knew she was gone.”
“Yes.”
“It broke the trouble to me, sir. My wife heard me coughing afar off, and came out o’ the tent. She didn’t say at first what there was in the tent, but began telling how you had been there. It made me know what had happened; and when she set on a-grieving, I told her not to: Carry was gone up to be an angel in heaven.”
Tod touched the hand he put out, not speaking.
“She’s waiting for me, sir,” he continued, in a fainter voice. “I’m as sure of it as if I saw her. The little girl I found and carried to the great house has rich friends and a fine home to shelter her; mine had none, and so it was for the best that she should go. God has been very good to me. Instead of letting me fret after her, or murmur at lying helpless like this, He only gives me peace.”
“That man must have had a good mother,” cried out Tod, as we went away down the entry. And I looked up at him, he spoke so queerly.
“Do you think he will get better, Tod? He does not seem as bad as he did last night.”
“Get better!” retorted Tod. “You’ll always be a muff, Johnny. Why, every breath he takes threatens to be his last. He is miles worse than he was when we found him. This is Thursday: I don’t believe he can last out longer than the week; and I think Mr. Carden knows it.”
He did not last so long. On the Saturday morning, just as we were going to start for home, the wife came to the Star with the news. Jake had died at ten the previous night.
“He went off quiet,” said she to the Squire. “I asked if he’d not like a dhrink; but he wouldn’t have it: the good gentleman had been there giving him the bread and wine, and he said he’d take nothing, he thought, after that. ‘I’m going, Mary,’ he suddenly says to me about ten o’clock, and he called Dor up and shook hands with him, and bade him be good to me, and then he shook hands with me. ‘God bless ye both,’ says he, ‘for Christ’s sake; and God bless the friends who have been kind to us!’ And with that he died.”
That’s all, for now. And I hope no one will think I invented this account of Jake’s death, for I should not like to do it. The wife related it to us in the exact words written.
“And I able to do so little for him,” broke forth the Squire, suddenly, when we were about half-way home; and he lashed up Bob and Blister regardless of their tempers. Which the animals did not relish.
And so that assize week ended the matter. Bringing imprisonment to the kidnapping woman, and to Jake death.
III.
WOLFE BARRINGTON’S TAMING.
This is an incident of our school life; one that I never care to look back upon. All of us have sad remembrances of some kind living in the mind; and we are apt in our painful regret to say, “If I had but done this, or had but done the other, things might have turned out differently.”
The school was a large square house, built of rough stone, gardens and playgrounds and fields extending around it. It was called Worcester House: a title of the fancy, I suppose, since it was some miles away from Worcester. The master was Dr. Frost, a tall, stout man, in white frilled shirt, knee-breeches and buckles; stern on occasion, but a gentleman to the back-bone. He had several under-masters. Forty boys were received; we wore the college cap and Eton jacket. Mrs. Frost was delicate: and Hall, a sour old woman of fifty, was manager of the eatables.
Tod and I must have been in the school two years, I think, when Archie Hearn entered. He was eleven years old. We had seen him at the house sometimes before, and liked him. A regular good little fellow was Archie.
Hearn’s father was dead. His mother had been a Miss Stockhausen, sister to Mrs. Frost. The Stockhausens had a name in Worcestershire: chiefly, I think, for dying off. There had been six sisters; and the only two now left were Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Hearn: the other four quietly faded away one after another, not living to see thirty. Mr. Hearn died, from an accident, when Archie was only a year old. He left no will, and there ensued a sharp dispute about his property. The Stockhausens said it all belonged to the little son; the Hearn family considered that a portion of it ought to go back to them. The poor widow was the only quiet spirit amongst them, willing to be led either way. What the disputants did was to put it into Chancery: and I don’t much think it ever came out again.
It was the worst move they could have made for Mrs. Hearn. For it reduced her to a very slender income indeed, and the world wondered how she got on at all. She lived in a cottage about three miles from the Frosts, with one servant and the little child Archibald. In the course of years people seemed to forget all about the property in Chancery, and to ignore her as quite a poor woman.
Well, we — I and Tod — had been at Dr. Frost’s two years or so, when Archibald Hearn entered the school. He was a slender little lad with bright brown eyes, a delicate face and pink cheeks, very sweet-tempered and pleasant in manner. At first he used to go home at night, but when the winter weather set in he caught a cough, and then came into the house altogether. Some of the big ones felt sure that old Frost took him for nothing: but as little Hearn was Mrs. Frost’s nephew and we liked her, no talk was made about it. The lad did not much like coming into the house: we could see that. He seemed always to be hankering after his mother and old Betty the servant. Not in words: but he’d stand with his arms on the play-yard gate, his eyes gazing out towards the quarter where the cottage was; as if he would like his sight to penetrate the wood and the two or three miles beyond, and take a look at it. When any of us said to him as a bit of chaff, “You are staring after old Betty,” he would say Yes, he wished he could see her and his mother; and then tell no end of tales about what Betty had done for him in his illnesses. Any way, Hearn was a straightforward little chap, and a favourite in the school.
He had been with us about a year when Wolfe Barrington came. Quite another sort of pupil. A big, strong fellow who had never had a mother: rich and overbearing, and cruel. He was in mourning for his father, who had just died: a rich Irishman, given to company and fast living. Wolfe came in for all the money; so that he had a fine career before him and might be expected to set the world on fire. Little Hearn’s stories had been of home; of his mother and old Betty. Wolfe’s were different. He had had the run of his father’s stables and knew more about horses and dogs than the animals knew about themselves. Curious things, too, he’d tell of men and women, who had stayed at old Barrington’s place: and what he said of the public school he had been at might have made old Frost’s hair stand on end. Why he left the public school we did not find out: some said he had run away from it, and that his father, who’d indulged him awfully, would not send him back to be punished; others said the head-master would not receive him back again. In the nick of time the father died; and Wolfe’s guardians put him to Dr. Frost’s.
“I shall make you my fag,” said Barrington, the day he entered, catching hold of little Hearn in the playground, and twisting him round by the arm.
“What’s that?” asked Hearn, rubbing his arm — for Wolfe’s grasp had not been a light one.
“What’s that!” repeated Barrington, scornfully. “What a precious young fool you must be, not to know. Who’s your mother?”
“She lives over there,” answered Hearn, taking the question literally, and nodding beyond the wood.
“Oh!” said Barrington, screwing up his mouth. “What’s her name? And what’s yours?”
“Mrs. Hearn. Mine’s Archibald.”
“Good, Mr. Archibald. You shall be my fag. That is, my servant. And you’ll do every earthly thing that I order you to do. And mind you do it smartly, or may be that girl’s face of yours will show out rather blue sometimes.”
“I shall not be anybody’s servant,” returned Archie, in his mild, inoffensive way.
“Won’t you! You’ll tell me another tale before this time to-morrow. Did you ever get licked into next week?”
The child made no answer. He began to think the new fellow might be in earnest, and gazed up at him in doubt.
“When you can’t see out of your two eyes for the swelling round them, and your back’s stiff with smarting and aching — that’s the kind of licking I mean,” went on Barrington. “Did you ever taste it?”
“No, sir.”
“Good again. It will be all the sweeter when you do. Now look you here, Mr. Archibald Hearn. I appoint you my fag in ordinary. You’ll fetch and carry for me: you’ll black my boots and brush my clothes; you’ll sit up to wait on me when I go to bed, and read me to sleep; you’ll be dressed before I am in the morning, and be ready with my clothes and hot water. Never mind whether the rules of the house are against hot water, you’ll have to provide it, though you boil it in the bedroom grate, or out in the nearest field. You’ll attend me at my lessons; look out words for me; copy my exercises in a fair hand — and if you were old enough to do them, you’d have to. That’s a few of the items; but there are a hundred other things, that I’ve not time to detail. If I can get a horse for my use, you’ll have to groom him. And if you don’t put out your mettle to serve me in all these ways, and don’t hold yourself in readiness to fly and obey me at any minute or hour of the day, you’ll get daily one of the lickings I’ve told you of, until you are licked into shape.”
Barrington meant what he said. Voice and countenance alike wore a determined look, as if his words were law. Lots of the fellows, attracted by the talking, had gathered round. Hearn, honest and straightforward himself, did not altogether understand what evil might be in store for him, and grew seriously frightened.
The captain of the school walked up — John Whitney. “What is that you say Hearn has to do?” he asked.
“He knows now,” answered Barrington. “That’s enough. They don’t allow servants here: I must have a fag in place of one.”
In turning his fascinated eyes from Barrington, Hearn saw Blair standing by, our mathematical master — of whom you will hear more later. Blair must have caught what passed: and little Hearn appealed to him.
“Am I obliged to be his fag, sir?”
Mr. Blair put us leisurely aside with his hands, and confronted the new fellow. “Your name is Barrington, I think,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” said Barrington, staring at him defiantly.
“Allow me to tell you that ‘fags’ are not permitted here. The system would not be tolerated by Dr. Frost for a moment. Each boy must wait on himself, and be responsible for himself: seniors and juniors alike. You are not at a public-school now, Barrington. In a day or two, when you shall have learnt the customs and rules here, I dare say you will find yourself quite sufficiently comfortable, and see that a fag would be an unnecessary appendage.”
“Who is that man?” cried Barrington, as Blair turned away.
“Mathematical master. Sees to us out of hours,” answered Bill Whitney.
“And what the devil did you mean by making a sneaking appeal to him?” continued Barrington, seizing Hearn roughly.
“I did not mean it for sneaking; but I could not do what you wanted,” said Hearn. “He had been listening to us.”
“I wish to goodness that confounded fool, Taptal, had been sunk in his horse-pond before he put me to such a place as this,” cried Barrington, passionately. “As to you, you sneaking little devil, it seems I can’t make you do what I wanted, fags being forbidden fruit here, but it shan’t serve you much. There’s to begin with.”
Hearn got a shake and a kick that sent him flying. Blair was back on the instant.
“Are you a coward, Mr. Barrington?”
“A coward!” retorted Barrington, his eyes flashing. “You had better try whether I am or not.”
“It seems to me that you act like one, in attacking a lad so much younger and weaker than yourself. Don’t let me have to report you to Dr. Frost the first day of your arrival. Another thing — I must request you to be a little more careful in your language. You have come amidst gentlemen here, not blackguards.”
The matter ended here; but Barrington looked in a frightful rage. It was unfortunate that it should have occurred the day he entered; but it did so, word for word, as I have written it. It set some of us rather against Barrington, and it set him against Hearn. He didn’t “lick him into next week,” but he gave him many a blow that the boy did nothing to deserve.
Barrington won his way, though, as the time went on. He had a liberal supply of money, and was open-handed with it; and he would often do a generous turn for one and another. The worst of him was his roughness. At play he was always rough; and, when put out, savage as well. His strength and activity were something remarkable; he would not have minded hard blows himself, and he showered them out on others with no more care than if we had been made of pumice-stone.
It was Barrington who introduced the new system at football. We had played it before in a rather mild way, speaking comparatively, but he soon changed that. Dr. Frost got to know of it in time, and he appeared amongst us one day when we were in the thick of it, and stopped the game with a sweep of his hand. They play it at Rugby now very much as Barrington made us play it then. The Doctor — standing with his face unusually red, and his shirt and necktie unusually white, and his knee-buckles gleaming — asked whether we were a pack of cannibals, that we should kick at one another in that dangerous manner. If we ever attempted it again, he said, football should be stopped.
So we went back to the old way. But we had tried the new, you see: and the consequence was that a great deal of rough play would creep into it now and again. Barrington led it on. No cannibal (as old Frost put it) could have been more carelessly furious at it than he. To see him with his sallow face in a heat, his keen black eyes flashing, his hat off, and his straight hair flung back, was not the pleasantest sight to my mind. Snepp said one day that he looked just like the devil at these times. Wolfe Barrington overheard him, and kicked him right over the hillock. I don’t think he was ill-intentioned; but his strong frame had been untamed; it required a vent for its superfluous strength: his animal spirits led him away, and he had never been taught to put a curb on himself or his inclinations. One thing was certain — that the name, Wolfe, for such a nature as his, was singularly appropriate. Some of us told him so. He laughed in answer; never saying that it was only shortened from Wolfrey, his real name, as we learnt later. He could be as good a fellow and comrade as any of them when he chose, and on the whole we liked him a great deal better than we had thought we should at first.
As to his animosity against little Hearn, it was wearing off. The lad was too young to retaliate, and Barrington grew tired of knocking him about: perhaps a little ashamed of it when there was no return. In a twelvemonth’s time it had quite subsided, and, to the surprise of many of us, Barrington, coming back from a visit to old Taptal, his guardian, brought Hearn a handsome knife with three blades as a present.
