Nelly Hardy had been unfortunate in her parents, for both drank, and she had grown up without care or supervision. She had neither brother nor sister. At school she was always either at the top or bottom of her class according as a fit of diligence or idleness seized her. She was a wild passionate child, feeling bitterly the neglect with which she was treated, her ragged clothes, her unkempt appearance. She was feared and yet liked by the girls of her own age, for she was generous, always ready to do a service, and good-tempered except when excited to passion. She was fonder of joining with the boys, when they would let her, in their games, and, when angered, was ready to hold her own against them with tooth and nail.
So wild were her bursts of passion that they were sources of amusement to some of the boys, until Jack upon one occasion took her part, and fought and conquered the boy who had excited her. This was on the Saturday before the accident had taken place.
For some days after the presentation no one saw her; she kept herself shut up in the house or wandered far away.
Then she appeared suddenly before Jack Simpson and Harry Shepherd as they were out together.
"I hate you, Jack Simpson," she said, "I hate you, I hate you;" and then dashed through the gap in the hedge by which she had come.
"Well," Harry exclaimed in astonishment, "only to think!"
"It be nat'ral enough," Jack said, "and I bain't surprised one bit. I orter ha' known better. I had only to ha' joodged her by myself and I should ha' seen it. I hated being dragged forward and talked at; it was bad enough though I had been made decent and clean scrubbed all over, and got my Soonday clothes on, but of course it would be worse for a lass anyway, and she was all anyhow, not expecting it. I ought to ha' known better; I thawt only o' my own feelings and not o' hers, and I'd beg her pardon a hundred times, but 'taint likely she'd forgive me. What is she a doing now?"
The lads peered through the hedge. Far across the field, on the bank, the other side, lay what looked like a bundle of clothes.
"She be a crying, I expect," Jack said remorsefully. "I do wish some big chap would a come along and give I a hiding; I wouldn't fight, or kick, or do nowt, I would just take it, it would serve me roight. Iwonder whether it would do her any good to let her thrash me. If it would she'd be welcome. Look here, Harry, she bain't angry wi' you. Do thou go across to her and tell her how main sorry I be, and that I know I am a selfish brute and thought o' myself and not o' her, and say that if she likes I will cut her a stick any size she likes and let her welt me just as long as she likes wi'out saying a word."
Harry was rather loath to go on such an errand, but being imperatively ordered by Jack he, as usual, did as his comrade wished. When he approached Nelly Hardy he saw that the girl was crying bitterly, her sobs shaking her whole body.
"I be coom wi' a message," he began in a tone of apprehension, for he regarded Nelly as resembling a wild cat in her dangerous and unexpected attacks.
The girl leapt to her feet and turned her flushed tear-stained cheeks and eyes, flashing with anger through the tears, upon him.
"What dost want, Harry Shepherd? Get thee gone, or I'll tear the eyes from thy head."
"I doan't coom o' my own accord," Harry said steadily, though he recoiled a little before her fierce outburst. "I came on the part o' Jack Simpson, and I've got to gi' you his message even if you do fly at me. I've got to tell you that he be main sorry, and that he feels he were a selfish brute in a thinking o' his own feelings instead o' thine. He says he be so sorry that if 'ee like he'll cut a stick o' any size you chooseand ull let you welt him as long as you like wi'out saying a word. And when Jack says a thing he means it, so if you wants to wop him, come on."
To Harry's intense surprise the girl's mood changed. She dropped on the ground again, and again began to cry.
After standing still for some time and seeing no abatement in her sobs, or any sign of her carrying out the invitation of which he had been the bearer, Jack's emissary returned to him.
"I guv her your message, Jack, and she said nowt, but there she be a crying still."
"Perhaps she didn't believe you," Jack said; "I'd best go myself."
First, with great deliberation, Jack chose a hazel stick from the hedge and tried it critically. When fully assured that it was at once lissom and tough, and admirably adapted for his purpose, he told Harry to go on home.
"Maybe," Jack said, "she mayn't loike to use it and you a looking on. Doan't 'ee say a word to no un. If she likes to boast as she ha' welted me she ha' a roight to do so, but doan't you say nowt."
Jack walked slowly across the field till he was close to the figure on the ground. Then he quietly removed his jacket and waistcoat and laid them down. Then he said:
"Now, Nelly, I be ready for a welting, I ha' deserved it if ever a chap did, and I'll take it. Here'sthe stick, and he's a good un and will sting rare, I warrant."
The girl sat up and looked at him through her tears.
"Oh, Jack, and didst really think I wanted to welt thee?"
"I didn't know whether thou didst or no, Nelly, but thou said thou hate'st me, and wi' good reason, so if thou likest to welt me here's the stick."
The girl laughed through her tears. "Ah! Jack, thou must think that I am a wild cat, as John Dobson called me t'other day. Throw away that stick, Jack. I would rather a thousand times that thou laidst it on my shoulders than I on thine."
Jack threw away the stick, put on his coat and waistcoat, and sat down on the bank.
"What is it then, lass? I know I were cruel to have thee called forward, but I didn't think o't; but I had rather that thou beat me as I orter be beaten, than that thou should go on hating me."
"I doan't hate thee, Jack, though I said so; I hate myself; but I like thee better nor all, thou art so brave and good."
"No braver than thou, Nelly," Jack said earnestly; "I doan't understand why thou should first say thou hates me and then that thou doan't; but if thou are in earnest, that thou likest me, we'll be friends. I don't mean that we go for walks together, and such like, as some boys and girls do, for I ha' no time for such things, and I shouldn't like it even if I had; but I'lltake thy part if anyone says owt to thee, and thou shalt tell me when thou art very bad at hoam"—for the failings of Nelly's parents were public property. "Thou shalt be a friend to me, not as a lass would be, but as Harry is, and thou woan't mind if I blow thee up, and tells 'ee of things. Thou stook to me by the side o' the shaft, and I'll stick to thee."
"I'll do that," the girl said, laying her hand in his. "I'll be thy friend if thou'lt let me, not as lasses are, but as lads."
And so the friendship was ratified, and they walked back together to the village. When he came to think it over, Jack was inclined to repent his bargain, for he feared that she would attach herself to him, and that he would have much laughter to endure, and many battles to fight. To his surprise Nelly did nothing of the sort. She would be at her door every morning as he went by to the pit and give him a nod, and again as he returned. Whenever other girls and boys were playing or sitting together, Nelly would make one of the group. If he said, as he often did say, "You, Nell Hardy come and sit by me," she came gladly, but she never claimed the place. She was ready to come or to go, to run messages and to do him good in any way.
Jack had promised she should be his friend as Harry was, and as he got to like her more he would ask her or tell her to accompany them in their walks, or to sit on a low wall in some quiet corner and talk.Harry, stirred by his friend's example, had begun to spend half an hour a day over his old school-books.
"Why dost like larning so much, Jack?" Nelly asked, as Jack was severely reproaching his friend with not having looked at a book for some days; "what good do it do?"
"It raises folk in the world, Nell, helps 'em make their way up."
"And dost thou mean to get oop i' the world?"
"Ay, lass," Jack said, "if hard work can do it, I will; but it does more nor that. If a man knows things and loves reading it makes him different like, he's got summat to think about and talk about and care for beside public-houses and dorgs. Canst read, Nell?"
"No, Jack," she said, colouring. "It bain't my fault; mother never had the pence to spare for schooling, and I was kept at hoam to help."
Jack sat thoughtful for some time.
"Wouldst like to learn?"
"Ay."
"Well, I'll teach thee."
"Oh, Jack!" and she leapt up with flashing eyes; "how good thou be'est!"
"Doan't," Jack said crossly; "what be there good in teaching a lass to spell? There's twopence, run down to the corner shop and buy a spelling-book; we'll begin at once."
And so Nelly had her first lesson.
NELLY'S FIRST LESSON.NELLY'S FIRST LESSON.
After that, every afternoon, as Jack came home from work, the girl would meet him in a quiet corner off the general line, and for five minutes he would teach her, not hearing her say what she had learned, but telling her fresh sounds and combinations of letters. Five or six times he would go over them, and expected—for Jack was tyrannical in his ways—that she would carry them away with her and learn them by heart, and go through them again and again, so that when he questioned her during their longer talks she would be perfect.
Then, the five minutes over, Jack would run on to make up for lost time, and be in as soon as Bill Haden.
But however accurately Jack expected his pupil to learn, his expectations were surpassed. The girl beyond clearing up the room had nothing to do, and she devoted herself with enthusiasm to this work. Once she had mastered simple words and felt her own progress, her shyness as to her ignorance left her. She always carried her book in her pocket, and took to asking girls the pronunciation of larger words, and begging them to read a few lines to her; and sitting on the door-step poring over her book, she would salute any passer-by with: "Please tell us what is that word." When she could read easily, which she learned to do in two or three months, she borrowed left-off school-books from the girls, and worked slowly on, and two years later had made up for all her earlydeficiencies, and knew as much as any of those who had passed through the school.
From the day of her compact of friendship with Jack her appearance and demeanour had been gradually changing. From the first her wild unkempt hair had been smoothly combed and braided, though none but herself knew what hours of pain and trouble it took her with a bit of a comb with three teeth alone remaining, to reduce the tangled mass of hair to order.
Her companions stared indeed with wonder on the first afternoon, when, thus transformed and with clean face, she came among them, with a new feeling of shyness.
"Why, it be Nelly Hardy!" "Why, Nell, what ha' done to t'yself? I shouldn't ha' known ye." "Well, ye be cleaned up surely."
The girl was half inclined to flame out at their greetings, but she knew that the surprise was natural, and laughed good-humouredly. She was rewarded for her pains when Jack and some other boys, passing on their way to play, Jack stopped a moment and said to her quietly, "Well done, lass, thou lookst rarely, who'd ha' thought thou wert so comely!"
As time went on Nelly Hardy grew altogether out of her old self. Sometimes, indeed, bursts of temper, such as those which had gained her the name of the "Wild Cat," would flare out, but these were very rare now. She was still very poorly dressed, for her housewas as wretched as of old, but there was an attempt at tidiness. Her manner, too, was softer, and it became more and more quiet as things went on, and her playmates wondered again and again what had come over Nell Hardy; she had got to be as quiet as a mouse.
The boys at first were disposed to joke Jack upon this strange friendship, but Jack soon let it be understood that upon that subject joking was unacceptable.
"She stood by me," he said, "and I'm a-going to stand by her. She ain't got no friends, and I'm going to be her friend. She's quiet enough and doan't bother, no more nor if she were a dorg. She doan't get in no one's way, she doan't want to play, and sits quiet and looks on, so if any of you doan't like her near ye, you can go away to t' other side o' field. I wish she'd been a boy, 'twould ha' been fitter all ways, but she can't help that. She's got the sense o' one. and the pluck, and I like her. There!"
"Bless me, lad, another poond o' candles! I never did hear o' sich waste," Mrs. Haden exclaimed as Jack entered the cottage on a winter's afternoon, two years and a half after he had gone into the pit. "Another poond o' candles, and it was only last Monday as you bought the last—nigh two candles a night. Thou wilt kill thyself sitting up reading o' nights, and thy eyes will sink i' thy head, and thou'lt be as blind as a bat afore thou'rt forty."
"I only read up to eleven, mother, that gives me six hours abed, and as thou know, six for a man, seven for a woman, is all that is needful; and as to the expense, as dad lets me keep all my earnings save five bob a week—and very good o' him it is; I doan't know no man in the pit as does as much—why, I ha' plenty o' money for my candles and books, and to lay by summat for a rainy day."
"Aye, aye, lad, I know thou be'st not wasteful save in candles; it's thy health I thinks o'."
"Health!" Jack laughed; "why, there ain't a lad in the pit as strong as I am of my age, and I ha' never ailed a day yet, and doan't mean to."
"What ha' ye been doing all the arternoon, Jack?"
"I ha' been sliding in the big pond wi' Harry Shepherd and a lot o' others. Then Dick Somers, he knocked down Harry's little sister Fan, as she came running across th' ice, and larfed out when she cried—a great brute—so I licked he till he couldn't see out o' his eyes."
"He's bigger nor thee, too," Mrs. Haden said admiringly.
"Aye, he's bigger," Jack said carelessly, "but he ain't game, Dick ain't; loses his temper, he does, and a chap as does that when he's fighting ain't o' no account. But I must not stand a clappeting here; it's past six, and six is my time."
"Have your tea first, Jack, it's a' ready; but I do believe thou'dst go wi'out eating wi'out noticing it, when thou'st got thy books in thy head."
Jack sat down and drank the tea his mother poured out for him, and devoured bread and butter with a zest that showed that his appetite was unimpaired by study. As soon as he had finished he caught up his candle, and with a nod to Mrs. Haden ran upstairs to his room.
Jack Simpson's craze for learning, as it was regarded by the other lads of Stokebridge, was the subject of much joking and chaff among them. Had he been ashy and retiring boy, holding himself aloof from the sports of his mates, ridicule would have taken the place of joking, and persecution of chaff. But Jack was so much one of themselves, a leader in their games, a good fellow all round, equally ready to play or to fight, that the fact that after six o'clock he shut himself up in his room and studied, was regarded as something in the nature of a humorous joke.
When he had first begun, his comrades all predicted that the fit would not last, and that a few weeks would see the end of it; but weeks and months and years had gone by, and Jack kept on steadily at the work he had set himself to do. Amusement had long died away, and there grew up an unspoken respect for their comrade.
"He be a rum 'un, be Jack," they would say; "he looves games, and can lick any chap his age anywhere round, and yet he shoots himself oop and reads and reads hours and hours every day, and he knows a heap, Bull-dog does." Not that Jack was in the habit of parading his acquirements; indeed he took the greatest pains to conceal them and to show that in no respect did he differ from his playfellows.
The two hours which he now spent twice a week with Mr. Merton, and his extensive reading, had modified his rough Staffordshire dialect, and when with his master he spoke correct English almost free of provincialisms, although with his comrades of the pit he spoke as they spoke, and never introduced any allusion to hisstudies. All questions as to his object in spending his evenings with his books were turned aside with joking answers, but his comrades had accidentally discovered that he possessed extraordinary powers of calculation. One of the lads had vaguely said that he wondered how many buckets of water there were in the canal between Stokebridge and Birmingham, a distance of eighteen miles, and Jack, without seeming to think of what he was doing, almost instantaneously gave the answer to the question. For a moment all were silent with surprise.
"I suppose that be a guess, Jack, eh?" Fred Orme asked.
"Noa," Jack said, "that's aboot roight, though I be sorry I said it; I joost reckoned it in my head."
"But how didst do that, Jack?" his questioner asked, astonished, while the boys standing round stared in silent wonder.
"Oh! in my head," Jack said carelessly; "it be easy enough to reckon in your head if you practise a little."
"And canst do any sum in thy head, Jack, as quick as that?"
"Not any sum, but anything easy, say up to the multiplication or division by eight figures."
"Let's try him," one boy said.
"All right, try away," Jack said. "Do it first on a bit of paper, and then ask me."
The boys drew off in a body, and a sum was fixed upon and worked out with a great deal of discussion.
At last, after a quarter of an hour's work, when all had gone through it and agreed that it was correct, they returned and said to him, "Multiply 324,683 by 459,852." Jack thought for a few seconds and then taking the pencil and paper wrote down the answer: 149,306,126,916.
"Why, Jack, thou be'est a conjurer," one exclaimed, while the others broke out into a shout of astonishment.
From that time it became an acknowledged fact that Jack Simpson was a wonder, and that there was some use in studying after all; and after their games were over they would sit round and ask him questions which they had laboriously prepared, and the speed and accuracy of his answers were a never-failing source of wonder to them.
As to his other studies they never inquired; it was enough for them that he could do this, and the fact that he could do it made them proud of him in a way, and when put upon by the pitmen it became a common retort among them, "Don't thou talk, there's Jack Simpson, he knows as much as thee and thy mates put together. Why, he can do a soom as long as a slaate as quick as thou'd ask it."
Jack himself laughed at his calculating powers, and told the boys that they could do the same if they would practise, believing what he said; but in point of fact this was not so, for the lad had an extraordinary natural faculty for calculation, and his schoolmasterwas often astonished by the rapidity with which he could prepare in his brain long and complex calculations, and that in a space of time little beyond that which it would take to write the question upon paper.
So abnormal altogether was his power in this respect that Mr. Merton begged him to discontinue the practice of difficult calculation when at work.
"It is a bad thing, Jack, to give undue prominence to one description of mental labour, and I fear that you will injure your brain if you are always exercising it in one direction. Therefore when in the pit think over other subjects, history, geography, what you will, but leave calculations alone except when you have your books before you."
It was Saturday afternoon, a time at which Stokebridge was generally lively. The men, (dinner over, and the great weekly wash done,) usually crowded the public-houses, or played bowls and quoits on a piece of waste land known as "the common," or set off upon a spree to Birmingham or Wolverhampton, or sat on low walls or other handy seats, and smoked and talked. But upon this special Saturday afternoon no one settled down to his ordinary pursuits, for the men stood talking in groups in the street, until, as the hour of four approached, there was a general move towards the common. Hither, too, came numbers of men from the colliery villages round, until some four or five thousand were gathered in front of an old "waste tip" at one corner of the common. Presently a group of some five or six men came up together, made their way through the throng, and took their stand on the edge of the tip, some twenty feet above the crowd. These were the delegates, the men sent by the unionto persuade the colliers of Stokebridge and its neighbourhood to join in a general strike for a rise of wages.
The women of the village stand at their doors, and watch the men go off to the meeting, and then comment to each other concerning it.
"I ain't no patience wi' 'em, Mrs. Haden," said one of a group of neighbours who had gathered in front of her house; "I don't hold by strikes. I have gone through three of 'em, bad un's, besides a score of small un's, and I never knowed good come on 'em. I lost my little Peg in the last—low fever, the doctor called it, but it was starvation and nothing more."
"If I had my way," said Mrs. Haden, "I'd just wring the heads off they delegates. They come here and 'suades our men to go out and clem rather than take a shilling a week less, just a glass o' beer a day, and they gets their pay and lives in comfort, and dunna care nowt if us and th' childer all dies off together."
"Talk o' woman's rights, as one hears about, and woman's having a vote; we ought to have a vote as to strikes. It's us as bears the worse o't, and we ought to have a say on't; if we did there wouldn't be another strike in the country."
"It's a burning shame," another chimed in; "here us and the childer will have to starve for weeks, months may be, and all the homes will be broke up, and the furniture, which has took so long to get together, putaway, just because the men won't do with one glass of beer less a day."
"The union's the curse of us a'," Mrs. Haden said. "I know what it'll be—fifteen bob a week for the first fortnight, and then twelve for a week, and then ten, and then eight, and then six, and then after we've clemmed on that for a month or two, the union'll say as the funds is dry, and the men had best go to work on the reduction. I knows their ways, and they're a cuss to us women."
"Here be'st thy Jack. He grows a proper lad that."
"Ay," Jane Haden agreed, "he's a good lad, none better; and as for learning, the books that boy knows is awesome; there's shelves upon shelves on 'em upstairs, and I do believe he's read 'em all a dozen times. Well, Jack, have ee cum from meeting?"
"Ay, mother; I heard them talk nonsense till I was nigh sick, and then I comed away."
"And will they go for the strike, Jack?"
"Ay, they'll go, like sheep through a gate. There's half a dozen or so would go t'other way, but the rest won't listen to them. So for the sake of a shilling a week we're going to lose thirty shillings a week for perhaps twenty weeks; so if we win we sha'n't get the money we've throw'd away for twenty times thirty weeks, mother, and that makes eleven years and twenty-eight weeks."
Jack Simpson was now sixteen years old, not verytall for his age, but square and set. His face was a pleasant one, in spite of his closely cropped hair. He had a bright fearless eye and a pleasant smile; but the square chin, and the firm determined lines of the mouth when in rest, showed that his old appellation of Bull-dog still suited him well. After working for four years as a gate-boy and two years with the waggons, he had just gone in to work with his adopted father in the stall, filling the coal in the waggon as it was got down, helping to drive the wedges, and at times to use the pick. As the getters—as the colliers working at bringing down the coal are called—are paid by the ton, many of the men have a strong lad working with them as assistant.
"Is t' dad like to be at home soon, Jack?" Mrs. Haden asked, as she followed him into the house.
"Not he, mother. They pretty well all will be getting themselves in order for earning nothing by getting drunk to-night, and dad's not slack at that. Have you got tea ready, mother?"
"Ay, lad."
"I've made up my mind, mother," the boy said, as he ate his slice of bacon and bread, "that I shall go over to Birmingham to-morrow, and try to get work there. JohnRatcliffe, the engineman, is going to write a letter for me to some mates of his there. The last two years, when I've been on the night-shift, I have gone in and helped him a bit pretty often in the day, so as to get to know something about an engine, andto be able to do a job of smith's work; anyhow, he thinks I can get a berth as a striker or something of that sort. I'd rather go at once, for there will be plenty of hands looking out for a job before long, when the pinch begins, and I don't want to be idle here at home."
"They've promised to give some sort o' allowance to non-unionists, Jack."
"Yes, mother, but I'd rather earn it honestly. I'm too young to join the union yet, but I have made up my mind long ago never to do it. I mean to be my own master, and I ain't going to be told by a pack of fellows at Stafford or Birmingham whether I am to work or not, and how much I am to do, and how many tubs I am to fill. No, mother, I wasn't born a slave that I know of, and certainly don't mean to become one voluntarily."
"Lor, how thou dost talk, Jack! Who'd take 'ee to be a pitman?"
"I don't want to be taken for anything that I am not, mother. What with reading and with going two hours twice a week of an evening for six years, to talk and work with Mr. Merton, I hope I can express myself properly when I choose. As you know, when I'm away from you I talk as others do, for I hate any one to make remarks. If the time ever comes when I am to take a step up, it will be time enough for them to talk; at present, all that the other lads think of me is, that I am fond of reading, and that I canlick any fellow of my own age in the mine," and he laughed lightly. "And now, mother, I shall go in and tell Mr. Merton what I have made up my mind to do."
Mr. Merton listened to Jack's report of his plans in silence, and then after a long pause said:
"I have been for some time intending to talk seriously to you, Jack, about your future, and the present is a good time for broaching the subject. You see, my boy, you have worked very hard, and have thrown your whole strength into it for six years. You have given no time to the classics or modern languages, but have put your whole heart into mathematics; you have a natural talent for it, and you have had the advantage of a good teacher. I may say so," he said, "for I was third wrangler at Cambridge."
"You, sir!" Jack exclaimed in astonishment.
"Yes, lad, you may well be surprised at seeing a third wrangler a village schoolmaster, but you might find, if you searched, many men who took as high a degree, in even more humble positions. I took a fellowship, and lived for many years quietly upon it; then I married, and forfeited my fellowship. I thought, like many other men, that because I had taken a good degree I could earn my living. There is no greater mistake. I had absolutely no knowledge that was useful that way. I tried to write; I tried to get pupils: I failed all round. Thirteen years ago, after two years of marriage, my wife died; and in despair of otherwise earning my bread, and sick of the struggleI had gone through, I applied for this little mastership, obtained it, and came down with Alice, then a baby of a year old. I chafed at first, but I am contented now, and no one knows that Mr. Merton is an ex-fellow of St. John's. I had still a little property remaining, just enough to have kept Alice always at a good school. I do not think I shall stay here much longer. I shall try to get a larger school, in some town where I may find a few young men to teach of an evening. I am content for myself; but Alice is growing up, and I should wish, for her sake, to get a step up in the world again. I need not say, my lad, that I don't want this mentioned. Alice and you alone know my story. So you see," he went on more lightly, "I may say you have had a good teacher. Now, Jack, you are very high up in mathematics. Far higher than I was at your age; and I have not the slightest doubt that you will in a couple of years be able to take the best open scholarship of the year at Cambridge, if you try for it. That would keep you at college, and you might hope confidently to come out at least as high as I did, and to secure a fellowship, which means three or four hundred a year, till you marry. But to go through the university you must have a certain amount of Latin and Greek. You have a good two years, before you have to go up, and if you devote yourself as steadily to classics as you have to mathematics, you could get up enough to scrape through with. Don't give me any answer now, Jack. Theidea is, of course, new to you. Think it very quietly over, and we can talk about it next time you come over from Birmingham."
"Yes, sir, thank you very much," Jack said, quietly; "only, please tell me, do you yourself recommend it?"
The schoolmaster was silent for a while.
"I do not recommend one way or the other, Jack. I would rather leave it entirely to you. You would be certain to do well in one way there. You are, I believe, equally certain to do well here, but your advance may be very much slower. And now, Jack, let us lay it aside for to-night. I am just going to have tea, I hope you will take a cup with us."
Jack coloured with pleasure. It was the first time that such an invitation had been given to him, and he felt it as the first recognition yet made that he was something more than an ordinary pit-boy; but for all that he felt, when he followed his master into the next room, that he would have rather been anywhere else.
It was a tiny room, but daintily furnished—a room such as Jack had never seen before; and by the fire sat a girl reading. She put down her book as her father entered with a bright smile; but her eyes opened a little wider in surprise as Jack followed him in.
"My dear Alice, this is my pupil, Jack Simpson, who is going to do me great credit, and make a figure in the world some day. Jack, this is my daughter, Miss Merton."
Alice held out her hand.
"I have heard papa speak of you so often," she said, "and of course I have seen you come in and out sometimes when I have been home for the holidays."
"I have seen you in church," Jack said, making a tremendous effort to shake off his awkwardness.
Jack Simpson will to the end of his life look back upon that hour as the most uncomfortable he ever spent. Then for the first time he discovered that his boots were very heavy and thick; then for the first time did his hands and feet seem to get in his way, and to require thought as to what was to be done with them; and at the time he concluded that white lace curtains, and a pretty carpet, and tea poured out by a chatty and decidedly pretty young lady, were by no means such comfortable institutions as might have been expected.
It was two months from the commencement of the strike before Jack Simpson returned from Birmingham, coming home to stay from Saturday till Monday. Nothing can be more discouraging than the appearance of a colliery village where the hands are on strike. For the first week or two there is much bravado, and anticipation of early victory; and as money is still plentiful, the public-houses do a great trade. But as the stern reality of the struggle becomes felt, a gloom falls over the place. The men hang about listlessly, and from time to time straggle down to the committee-room, to hear the last news from the other places towhich the strike extends, and to try to gather a little confidence therefrom. At first things always look well. Meetings are held in other centres, and promises of support flow in. For a time money arrives freely, and the union committee make an allowance to each member, which, far below his regular pay as it is, is still amply sufficient for his absolute wants. But by the end of two months the enthusiasm which the strike excited elsewhere dies out, the levies fall off, and the weekly money scarce enables life to be kept together.
It is distinctive of almost all strikes, that the women, beforehand averse to the movement, when it has once begun, throw themselves heartily into the struggle. From the time it is fairly entered upon until its termination it is rare indeed to hear a collier's wife speak a word against it. When the hardest pinch comes, and the children's faces grow thin and white, and the rooms are stripped of furniture, much as the women may long for an end of it, they never grumble, never pray their husbands to give in. This patient submission to their husbands' wills—this silent bearing of the greatest of suffering, namely, to see children suffer and to be unable to relieve them—is one of the most marked features of all great strikes in the coal districts.
"Well, mother, and how goes it?" Jack asked cheerfully after the first greetings.
"We be all right, Jack; if we ain't we ought to be,when we've got no children to keep, and get nigh as much as them as has."
"Eight shillings a week now, ain't it?"
Mrs. Haden nodded. Jack looked round.
"Holloa!" he said, "the clock's gone, and the new carpet!"
"Well, you see, my boy," Mrs. Haden said, hesitatingly, "Bill is down-hearted sometimes, and he wants a drop of comfort."
"I understand," Jack said significantly.
"Jack,"—and she again spoke hesitatingly—"I wish ee'd carry off all they books out o' thy little room. There's scores of 'em, and the smallest would fetch a glass o' beer. I've kept the door locked, but it might tempt him, my boy—not when he's in his right senses, you know, he'd scorn to do such a thing; but when he gets half on, and has no more money, and credit stopped, the craving's too much for him, and he'd sell the bed from under him—anything he's got, I do believe, except his pups;" and she pointed to some of Juno's great grandchildren, which were, as usual, lying before the fire, a mere handful of coal now, in comparison with past times.
"I'll pick out a parcel of them that will be useful to me," Jack said, "and take them away. The rest may go. And now look here, mother. After paying you for my board, I have had for a long time now some eight shillings a week over. I have spent some in books, but second-hand books are very cheap—as dadwill find when he tries to sell them. So I've got some money put by. It don't matter how much, but plenty to keep the wolf away while the strike lasts. But I don't mean, mother, to have my savings drunk away. I'm getting sixteen bob a week, and I can live on ten or eleven, so I'll send you five shillings a week. But dad mustn't know it. I'll be home in a month again, and I'll leave you a pound, so that you can get food in. If he thinks about it at all, which ain't likely, you can make out you get it on tick. Well, dad, how are you?" he asked, as Bill Haden entered the cottage.
"Ah, Jack, lad, how be it with 'ee?"
"All right, dad; getting on well. And how are things here?"
"Bad, Jack. Those scoundrels, the masters, they won't give in; but we're bound to beat 'em—bound to. If they don't come to our terms we mean to call the engine-men, and the hands they've got to keep the ways clear, out of the pits. That'll bring 'em to their senses quick enough. I've been for it all along."
"Call off the engine-hands!" Jack said, in tones of alarm; "you ain't going to do such a mad thing as that! Why, if the water gains, and the mines get flooded, it'll be weeks, and maybe months, before the mines can be cleared and put in working order; and what will you all be doing while that's being done?"
"It'll bring 'em to their senses, lad," Bill Haden said, bringing his hand down on the table with a thump. "They mean to starve us; we'll ruin them.There, let's have the price of a quart, Jack; I'm dry."
Jack saw that argument against this mad scheme would be of no use, for his foster-father was already half-drunk, so he handed him a shilling, and with a shrug of his shoulders walked off to Mr. Merton's.
He had long since written to his master, saying that he preferred working his way up slowly in mining, to entering upon a new life, in which, however successful he might be at college, the after course was not clear to him; and his teacher had answered in a tone of approval of his choice.
On his way he stopped at the houses of many of his boy friends, and was shocked at the misery which already prevailed in some of them. Harry Shepherd's home was no better than the others.
"Why, Harry, I should scarce have known you," he said, as the lad came to the door when he opened it and called him. "You look bad, surely."
"We're a big family, Jack; and the extra children's allowance was dropped last week. There's eight of us, and food's scarce. Little Annie's going fast, I think. The doctor came this morning, and said she wanted strengthening food. He might as well ha' ordered her a coach-and-four. Baby died last week, and mother's ailing. You were right, Jack; what fools we were to strike! I've been miles round looking for a job, but it's no use; there's fifty asking for every place open."
The tears came into Jack's eyes as he looked at the pinched face of his friend.
"Why did you not write to me?" he asked, almost angrily. "I told you where a letter would find me; and here are you all clemming, and me know nought of it. It's too bad. Now look here, Harry, I must lend you some money—you know I've got some put by, and you and your father can pay me when good times come again. Your dad gets his eight shillings from the union, I suppose?"
"Yes," the lad answered.
"Well, with fifteen shillings a week you could make a shift to get on. So I'll send you ten shillings a week for a bit; that'll be seven shillings to add to the eight, and the other three will get meat to make broth for Annie. The strike can't last much over another month, and that won't hurt me one way or the other. Here's the first ten shillings; put it in your pocket, and then come round with me to the butcher and I'll get a few pounds of meat just to start you all. There, don't cry, and don't say anything, else I'll lick you."
But when Jack himself entered the schoolmaster's house, and was alone with Mr. Merton, he threw himself in a chair and burst into tears.
"It is awful, sir, awful. To see those little children, who were so noisy and bright when I went away, so pale, and thin, and quiet now. Poor little things! poor little things! As to the men, they are starving because they don't choose to work, and if they like it, let them;even the women I don't pity so much, for if they did right they would take broomsticks and drive the men to work; but the children, it's dreadful!"
"It is dreadful, Jack, and it makes me feel sick and ill when I go into the infant-school. The clergyman's wife has opened a sort of soup-kitchen, and a hundred children get a bowl of soup and a piece of bread at dinner-time every day, and they sell soup under cost price to the women. Mr. Brook has given fifty pounds towards it."
"Look here, sir," Jack said; "you know I've over fifty pounds laid by—and money can't be better spent than for the children. The strike can't last over a month, or six weeks at the outside, and maybe not that. I'll give you three pounds a week, if you will kindly hand it over to Mrs. Street, and say it's been sent you. But it's to go to feeding children. Let me see; the soup don't cost above a penny a bowl, and say a halfpenny for a hunch of bread. So that will give a good many of 'em a dinner every day. Will you do that for me, sir?"
"I will, my boy," Mr. Merton said heartily. "You may save many a young life."
"Well, sir, and what do you think of things?"
"I fear we shall have trouble, Jack. Last night there was rioting over at Crawfurd; a manager's house was burnt down, and some policemen badly hurt. There is angry talk all over the district, and I fear we shall have it here."
When Jack started on Sunday evening for Birmingham, his last words to his mother were:
"Mind, mother, the very first word you hear about violence or assault, you post this envelope I have directed, to me. I will come straight back. I'll keep father out of it somehow; and I'll do all I can to save Mr. Brook's property. He's a good master, and he's been specially kind to me, and I won't have him or his property injured."
"Why, lauk a' mercy, Jack, you ain't going to fight the whole place all by yourself, are you?"
"I don't know what I am going to do yet," Jack said; "but you may be quite sure I shall do something."
And as his mother looked at the set bull-dog expression of his mouth and jaw, she felt that Jack was thoroughly in earnest.