The fingers on Mr. Wriford's shoulder bit into his flesh as though there was returned to them all the vigour that had been theirs when first that voice bawled along a deck. So sharp, so fierce the pinch that he looked up startled. Startled also the other faces along the table, and startled the Matron, frightened and running forward. They saw what he saw—saw the blood well out horribly upon the oldest sea-captain's mouth, felt the grip relax, and saw him crash horribly upon the tea-cups.
Lift him away. Call the doctor. Call the doctor. Lift him, lay him here. Send away those gibbering, frightened old men huddling about him. Lay him here. Wipe those poor old lips. "There, Father, there!" What does he want? What is it he wants? What is he trying to say? Listen, bend close. "Matey, Matey!" Mr. Wriford jumps up from kneeling beside him and runs to the table; snatches up a grimy newspaper-cutting lying there and brings it to the oldest sea-captain living; puts it in his fingers and sees the fingers close upon it and sees the glazing eyes light up with great happiness. "Matey!" Very faintly, scarcely to be heard. "Matey!" He is thanking him. "Matey! Gor bless yer, Matey!" There is a bursting feeling in Mr. Wriford's heart. Words come choking out of it. "Captain! Captain! You've got your photograph. Take you out for a ride to-morrow, Captain! Better now? Captain!" Captain's lips are moving. He is thanking him. Ay, with his soundless lips thanking, with his spirit answering his call from the main-top....
"Poor old Father!" says Matron, rising from her knees.
Captain has answered.
Attendants carry the body to an adjoining room. Mr. Wriford follows it and stays by it. He is permitted to stay and stays while darkness gathers. What now? for now a change again. To push the wheeled-chair had been a habit, not a pleasure. Was that sure? Why is it pain to think to-morrow will not bring that lighting of those eyes, that chatter of those lips? Why in his heart that bursting swell a while ago? Why swells it now as darkness shrouds that poor old form? Had he without knowing it been happy in that task? without knowing it, come near then to something in life that he had missed? What now? Well, now he would go away. What here? Ah, in the dusk that masses all about the room, bend close and peer and ask again. What here? Look, those stiff fingers clutch that portograph. Look, those stained lips are smiling, smiling. He is happy. He was always happy when Matey came. Has he taken happiness with him? Was it within grasp and not recognised and now missed again—gone?
Mr. Wriford takes his discharge. Guardians, holding to their word, take him his railway ticket. The Master is genuinely sorry. When at last, on the night of the oldest sea-captain's death, he finds Mr. Wriford determined, "Well, the Guardians will be sitting to-morrow," he says. "I'll tell 'em. They'll take your ticket for you. Where to?"
He has to repeat the question. Fresh from the death-bed and its new turn to the old thoughts, Mr. Wriford is even more than commonly absent and bemused. "Where to?" repeats Mr. Master. "Where's your friends you want to go to?"
Mr. Wriford takes the first place that comes into his head. Very naturally it is the name that has edged a place in his mind by repeated reiteration during perambulation of the wheeled-chair.
"Ipswich," says Mr. Wriford.
Guardians think it a devil of a big fare to pay and grumble a bit. On the one hand, however, this inmate has saved a boy-"clurk's" wages now for some considerable period: on the other, Ipswich will take him hundreds of miles beyond danger of starving and falling back on their hands and making a general nuisance of himself.
"Very well, Ipswich," says Mr. Chairman. "Agreed, gentlemen?" Agreed. "Take the ticket yourself, Mr. Master," says Mr. Chairman, "and see him into the train. None of his larks, you know!"
So it is done. On the day previous to his departure Mr. Wriford has a holiday from Mr. Master and walks over to Port Rannock, to the churchyard. He has identified while in the Infirmary the list of clothes and pathetic oddments—bundle of thirty-five coppers among them, paid in towards expenses of burial—found on the body of Mr. Puddlebox and has been told the grave lies just in the corner as you enter. It is just a grass-grown mound, nameless, that he finds. An old man who seems to be the sexton confirms his question. Yes, that was a stranger found drowned back in November. The last burial here. Long-lived place, Port Rannock.
Mr. Wriford stands a long while beside it—thinking. How go you now, Puddlebox? If you stood here—"O all ye graves, bless ye the Lord, praise Him—" That would be your way. How go you now? Puddlebox—that wasn't your real name, was it?—Puddlebox, why did you do it? Puddlebox, how did you do it? Puddlebox, I'm going off again. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm just going. I wish to God—I'd give anything, anything, to have you with me again. You can't. Well, how go you now? Can you think of me? Have you found what I can't find—what I've missed? Ah, it was always yours. You were always happy. How? Why? Down you went, down and drowned for me, for me! Down without even good-bye. Why? How? ...
The sexton, locking up his churchyard, turned Mr. Wriford out. "Well, good-bye," said Mr. Wriford to the nameless mound and carried his thoughts and his questions back along the road to the Workhouse. Ah, carried them further and very long. With him, now centring about Mr. Puddlebox and now about the perplexity of the something touched and something lost again in the oldest sea-captain living, during the long journey to London; with him again towards Ipswich.
He crossed London by the Underground Railway. He did not want to see London. The second part of his journey, in the Ipswich train, was made in a crowded carriage, amid much staring and much chatter. A long wait was made at a station. Why Ipswich? And what then? Well, what did that matter? But why stay stifled up in here? He got up and left the compartment and passing out of the station among a crowd of passengers gave up his ticket without being questioned on it. Evening was falling. He neither asked nor cared where he was. Only those thoughts, those questions that had come with him in the train, concerned him, and pursuing them, he followed a road that took him through the considerable town in which he found himself and into the country beyond it. The month was May, the night, as presently it drew about him, warm and gentle. A hedgeside invited him, and he sat down and after a little while lay back. He did not trouble to make himself comfortable. There was nothing he wanted. There was only one thought into which all the other thoughts shaped: was there some secret of happiness he had missed?
Sandwiches, supplied in liberal manner by Mr. Master and not touched on the railway journey, sufficed Mr. Wriford's needs through the following day. He tramped aimlessly the greater part of the time. Evening again provided him with a bed by the roadside. It was the next morning, to which he awoke feeling cold and feeling ill, that aroused him to his first thoughts of his present situation. He clearly must do something; but he had only negative ideas as to what it should be. Negative, as that, in passing a farm, it crossed his mind to apply for work as had been the practice with Mr. Puddlebox. But he recalled the nature of that work and was at once informed that he was now completely unfitted for it. He had been very strong then. He felt very weak now. He had then been extraordinarily vigorous and violent in spirit, and his spirit's violence had led him to delight in exercising his body at manual labour. Now he felt very weary and submissive in mind; and that feeling of submission was reflected in extreme lassitude of his limbs. It came back to this—and at once he was returned again to his mental searching—that then there seemed object and relief in taxing himself arduously: now he had proved that trial and knew that no object lay beyond it, that no relief would ever now be contained in it. And in any event he was not capable of it: he was weak, weak; he felt very ill.
But something must be done. Let him determine how he stood; and with this thought he began for the thousandth time to rehearse his life as he had lived it. One of the lucky ones: he had been that: it had driven him into the river. One of the free: that also he now had been. Those months with Puddlebox he had cared for nothing and for nobody: recked nothing whether he lived or died. He had worked with his hands as in the London days he had imagined happiness lay in working. He had attained in brimming fulness all that in the London days he had madly desired. It had brought him where now he was—to knowledge that there was something in life he had missed, and to baffled, to bewildered ignorance what it might be or in what manner of living it might be found. Well, let him drag on. Just to drag on was now the best that he could do. Let life take him and do with him just whatsoever it pleased. Let him be lost, be lost, to all who knew him and to all and everything he knew. Let him a second time start life afresh, and this time not attack it as in the wild Puddlebox days he had attacked it, but be washed by it any whither it pleased, stranded somewhere and permitted to die perhaps, perhaps have disclosed to him, and be allowed to seize, whatever it might be that somehow, somehow, somewhere, somewhere, he had missed.
Thus, as aimlessly he wandered, his thoughts took the form of plans or resolutions, yet were not resolutions in any binding sense. They drifted formlessly through his mind as snatches of conversation, carried on in a crowded apartment, will drift through a mind pre-occupied with some idea; or they drifted through him as snow at its first fall will for long drift over and seem to leave untouched any stone that rises above the surface of the ground. He was preoccupied with his own ceaseless questioning. He was preoccupied with helpless and hopeless sense of helplessness and hopelessness. There was something that others found that gave them peace and gave them happiness, that he had missed, that he knew not where he had missed or where to begin to find.
All of plan or resolution that in any way settled upon this deeper brooding was that somehow he must find something to do. In the midst of his brooding he would jolt against realisation of that necessity, think aimlessly upon it for a little, then lose it again. Slowly it permeated his mind. Evening brought him to the outskirts of a small town; and at a house in a by-street where "Beds for Single Men" were offered, and where he listlessly turned in, the matter of being called upon for the price of a lodging shook him to greater concentration upon his resources. He found that, by Mr. Master's carelessness or kindness, he had been left with a trifle of change over the money given him to make his way across town when he broke his journey in London—elevenpence. He paid ninepence for his bed. In the morning there remained to him two coppers for food, and he knew himself faint with protracted fasting. In a street of dingy shops he turned into a coffee-house. "Shave?" said a man in soiled white overalls, and he realised that he had mistaken the door and stepped into a barber's adjoining the refreshment shop. He was unshaven, and any work that he could do would demand a reasonably decent appearance. "Attend to you in a moment," said the soiled overalls, and Mr. Wriford dropped into a chair to await his pleasure. The ragged fragment of a local newspaper lay on a table beside him, and he took it up with some vague idea of discovering employment among the advertisements. That portion of the paper was missing. His eye was attracted by an odd surname, "Pennyquick," and when the barber called him and was operating on him he found himself listlessly reflecting upon what he had read of an inquest following the sudden death of the assistant-master at Tower House School, chief evidence given by Mr. Pennyquick, headmaster.
A penny was the price of his shave. He took his penny that remained into the adjoining coffee-shop and obtained with it a large mug of cocoa. "Three ha'pence with a slice of bread and butter," said the woman at the counter, pushing the cocoa towards him. "Don't you want nothing to eat?"
Her tone and the look she gave him were kindly. "I want it," said Mr. Wriford significantly.
"You look like it," said the woman. "There!" and slid him a hunk of dry bread.
He tried to thank her. He felt strangely overcome by her kindness. Tears of weakness sprang to his eyes; but no words to his mouth. "That's all right," she said. "You're fair starved by the look of you."
He puzzled as he finished his meal, and as he wandered out and up the street again, to know why he had been so touched by the woman's action. He found himself feeling towards her that same swelling in his heart as when the oldest sea-captain living with stained lips had whispered: "Matey! Matey!"
Was there something in life that he had missed? What in the name of God had that to do with being given a piece of bread?
He found himself late in the afternoon reaching the end of a deserted road of widely detached villas. The last house carried on its gate a very dingy brass plate.
TOWER HOUSE SCHOOLJAMES PENNYQUICK, B.A.
Pennyquick? Pennyquick? It was the name that had caught his attention in the paper at the barber's. What had he read about it? He trailed on a few steps and remembered the inquest on the assistant-master, and stopped, and stared.
A rough field lay beyond the house. It was separated from the road by barbed-wire fencing which trailed between dejected-looking poles that at one time had supported it but now bowed towards the ground in various angles of collapse. Within the field were pitched at intervals decayed cricket stumps set in a wide circle, and there stood about dejectedly in this circle dejected-looking boys to the number of eighteen or twenty. At intervals, as Mr. Wriford stood and watched, the boys stirred into a dejected activity which gave them the appearance of being engaged in a game of rounders. A gentleman, wearing on his head a dejected-looking mortar-board without a tassel, and beneath it untidy black garments of semi-clerical appearance, imparted these intervals of activity to the boys. He paced the field in a series of short turns near the house, hands behind his back, head bent, and, as Mr. Wriford could see, sucking in the cheeks of a coarse-looking face surrounded by scrubby whiskers of red hair. Every now and then he would throw up his head towards the dejected-looking boys and bawl "PLAY UP!" whereupon the dejected-looking boys would give momentary attention to their game.
Mr. Wriford stepped over the trailing wire and approached the maker of this invigorating call. "Excuse me," said Mr. Wriford, come within speaking distance. "Are you Mr. Pennyquick?"
Halted in his pacing at sight of Mr. Wriford, the gentleman thus addressed awaited him with lowered head and lowering gaze much as a bull might regard the first movements of an intruder. He sucked more rapidly at his cheeks as Mr. Wriford came near, and for a space sucked and fiercely stared after receiving the question.
"Well, what if I am?" he then returned. His voice was extraordinarily harsh, and he came forward a step that brought his face close to Mr. Wriford's and stared more threateningly than before. His eyes were dull and heavily bloodshot, and there went with the sucking at his cheeks a nervous agitation that seemed to possess his neck and all his joints. "What if I am?" he demanded again, and his words discharged a reek communicative of the fact that, whoever he was, abstinence from alcohol was not among his moral principles.
"By any chance," said Mr. Wriford, "do you happen to want an assistant-master?"
"I don't want you."
"I thought you might want temporary assistance."
He was stared at a moment from the clouded eyes. Then, in another volume of the fierce breath, "Well, you thought wrong!" he was told. "Now!"
"Very well," said Mr. Wriford and turned away.
He went a dozen paces towards the road. There seized him as he turned and as he walked away a sudden realisation of his case, a sudden panic at his plight, a sudden desperation to cling on to what he believed offered here. He must find something to do. There could be no concealment, no peace for him while he wandered outcast and penniless. That way lay what most he feared. He would be found wandering or found collapsed, and questions would be asked him and explanations demanded of him. That terrified him. He could not face that. Whatever else happened he must be left alone. He must find something to do that would hide him—give him occupation enough to earn him food and shelter and leave him to himself to think.
He turned and went back desperately. The man he believed to be Mr. Pennyquick was standing staring after him and waited staring as he came on.
"Look here," said Mr. Wriford desperately. "Look here, Mr. Pennyquick. I know you think it strange my coming to you like this. But I heard, I heard in the town, that you wanted an assistant-master. If you don't—"
"I've told you," said Mr. Pennyquick, admitting the personality by not denying it, "I've told you I don't want you. Now!"
"If you don't," said Mr. Wriford, unheeding the rebuff, more desperate by reason of it, "if you don't, there's an end of it. But if you want temporary help—temporary, a day, or a week—I can do it for you."
"Do what?" demanded Mr. Penny quick.
"I can teach," said Mr. Wriford. There was sign of relenting in Mr. Pennyquick's question, and Mr. Wriford took it up eagerly. "I can teach," he repeated.
"What can you teach?"
"I can teach all the ordinary subjects."
"I'm getting a University man," said Mr. Pennyquick.
"Temporarily," Mr. Wriford urged. As every passage of their conversation brought him nearer this sudden chance or threw him further from it, his panic at its failure, and what must happen, then increased desperately. "Temporarily," he urged. "I've had a public-school education."
"Yes, you look it!" said Mr. Pennyquick, and laughed.
"English subjects," cried Mr. Wriford. "Latin, mathematics. I can do it if you want it."
Mr. Pennyquick glanced over his shoulder at his dejected-looking boys, then stared back again at Mr. Wriford and began to speak with more consideration and less fierceness. "I'm not saying," said Mr. Pennyquick, "that I don't want temmo—temmer—PLAY UP! Tem-po-rary assistance. I do. I'm very ill. I'm shaken all to bits. I ought to be in bed. What I'm saying is I don't want you. I don't know anything about you. I've got the reputation of my school to consider. That's what I'm saying to you."
Dizziness began to overtake Mr. Wriford—the field to rock in long swells, Mr. Pennyquick by turns to recede and advance, swell and diminish. He felt himself upon the verge of breaking down, wringing his hands in his extremity and staggering away. But where? Where? "Temporarily," he pleaded. "Temporarily."
"You might drink for all I know," said Mr. Pennyquick, pronouncing this possibility as if consumed with an unnatural horror of it.
"I don't drink."
"How do I know that?"
Mr. Wriford cried frantically: "It's only temporarily! If I drink, if I'm not suitable, you can stop it in a moment."
"No notice?" said Mr. Pennyquick.
"No—no notice. Temporarily—it's only temporarily. That'll be understood."
"Well, if no notice is understood I'll take the risk—for a week, while I'm getting a man. I'll give you fifteen shillings. No, I won't. I'll give you twelve. I'll give you twelve shillings, and if I have to sack you before the week's out—well, you just go. That's understood?"
"Thank you," Mr. Wriford said. The field was spinning now. He could think of nothing else to say. "Thank you."
"Be here at nine to-morrow," said Mr. Pennyquick. "Just before nine," and he turned away and shouted to his boys: "Stop now! Come in now!"
"But—" said Mr. Wriford. "But—but—" He was trying for words to frame his difficulty. "But—do I live in?"
"Live in!" cried Mr. Pennyquick. "I'm taking risks enough having you at all! Live in! Stop now. Come in now!" and he walked away towards the house.
Lights in all the windows and in the street lamps as Mr. Wriford regained the town. Night approaching—and he terrified of its approach. Little chill was in the air, yet as he walked he trembled and his teeth chattered. He was shaken and acutely distressed by revulsion of the effort to cling on and achieve his purpose against Mr. Pennyquick's domineering savagery. He was worse shaken and worse distressed by mounting continuance of the panic at his plight that had driven him to the interview. That plight and to what it might lead had suddenly been revealed to him as he walked away after the first rebuff. Now it utterly consumed him. He shrunk from the gaze of passers-by. He avoided with more than the fear of an evil-doer the police constables who here and there were to be seen. His urgent desire was concealment, to be left alone, to be quiet. His fear was to be apprehended, found destitute, questioned, interfered with. Questioning: that was his terror; solitude: that was his want. He wanted to hide. He wanted to hide from every sort of connection with what in two different phases he had lived through, and in each come only to misery. He told himself that if, in obedience to his bodily desires—his hunger, his extreme physical wretchedness—he were somehow to get in communication with London and enjoy the money and the place that waited him there—that would be the very quick of intolerable meeting with his old self again. Unthinkable that! If his bodily desires—his faintness, his extreme exhaustion—overcame him, there would be meeting the old life in guise of explanations, of dependence again in infirmary or workhouse. No, he must somehow be alone; he must somehow live where none should interfere with him and where he might on the one hand be occupied and on the other be able to sit aside from all who knew him or might bother him, and thus pursue his quest: was there some secret of happiness in life that he had missed? These bodily miseries would somehow, somewhere, be accommodated or would kill him: this mental searching—ever?
There was upon him accumulation of wretchedness such as in all his wretchedness of his accursed life he never had endured. At its worst in the old days, the days of being one of the lucky ones, there had shone like a lamp to one lost in darkness the belief that if he could get out of it all he would end it all. Ah, God, God, he had escaped it and was in worse condition for his escape! The belief had been tested—the belief was gone. In the wild Puddlebox days he had beaten off wretchedness with violence of his hands and of his body, believing that it ever could thus be beaten. God, it had beaten him, never again in that deluded spirit could be faced. In the infirmary he had begun his wondering after something in life that he had missed. Lo, here was he come out to find it, and Christ! it was not, and Christ! he might not now so much as sit and rest and ponder it.
He felt himself hunted. He felt every eye turned upon him within whose range he came; every hand tingling suddenly to clutch him and stop him; every voice about to cry: "Here, you! You, I say! What are you doing? Where do you live? Who are you?"
He felt himself staggering from his dreadful faintness and thereby conspicuous. Thrice as he stumbled round any corners that he met he found himself passing a constable who each time more closely stared. He took another turning. It showed him again that same policeman at the end of the street. He dared not turn back. That would be flight, his disordered mind told him, and he be followed. He dared not go on. There was a little shop against where he stood. Its lighted window displayed an array of gas-brackets, a variety of glass chimneys and globes for lamps and gas, some coils of lead piping, and in either corner a wash-basin fitted with taps. There was inscribed over this shop
HY. BICKERS, CERT. PLUMBER
and attached to a pendent gas bracket within the window was a card with the announcement:
LODGER TAKEN
Mr. Wriford made a great effort to steady himself; steadied his shaking hand to press down the latch; and to the very loud jangle of an overhead bell entered the tiny shop that the door disclosed.
There was sound of conversation and the clatter of plates from a brightly-lit inner parlour. Mr. Wriford heard a voice say: "I'll go, Essie, dear," and there came out to him a nice-looking little old woman, white-haired and silvery-hued, rather lined and worn, yet radiating from her face a noticeable happiness, as though there was some secret joy she had, who smiled at him in pleasant inquiry.
"I'm looking for a lodging," said Mr. Wriford.
At her entry she had left the parlour door open behind her, and at Mr. Wriford's words there came to him through it a bright girlish voice which said: "There, now! Jus' what I was saying! Isn't that funny, though! Let's have a laugh!" and with it, as though Mr. Wriford's statement had conveyed the jolliest joke in the world, the merriest possible ring of laughter.
The woman smiled at Mr. Wriford; and there was in the laugh something so infectious as to make him, despite his wretchedness, smile in response. She went back to the door and closed it. "That's our Essie," she said, speaking as though Mr. Wriford in common with everybody else must know who Essie was. "She's such a bright one, our Essie!" The secret happiness that seemed to lie behind her years and behind the lines of her face shone strongly as she spoke. One might guess that "Our Essie" was it. Then she answered Mr. Wriford's statement. "Well, we've got a very nice bedroom," she told him. "Would you like to see it?"
"I'm sure it's nice," said Mr. Wriford. His voice, that he had tried to strengthen for this interview, for some ridiculous reason trembled as he spoke. The reason lay somewhere in the woman's motherly face and in her happy gleaming. He felt himself stupidly affected just as he had been affected—recurrence of the sensation brought the scenes before his eyes—by the last appeal to him of the oldest sea-captain living, and by the kindly action of the woman in the coffee-shop who had given him a piece of bread early that morning. "I'm sure it's nice," he said again, repeating the words to correct the stupid break in his voice. "Would you tell me the price?"
"Won't you sit down?" said the woman. "You do look that tired!"
He murmured some kind of thanks and dropped into a chair that stood by the counter.
She looked at him very compassionately before she answered his question. "Tiring work looking for lodgings," she said.
He nodded—very faint, very wretched, very vexed with himself at that stupid swelling from his heart to his throat that forbade him speech.
"Would you be living in?" he was asked.
"I think I should be out all day."
"Jus' breakfast and supper? That's the usual, of course, isn't it? And full Sundays. That would be twelve shillings."
Twelve shillings was to be his wage from Mr. Pennyquick. He could not spend it all.
"I couldn't pay it," said Mr. Wriford and caught at the counter to assist himself to rise.
"Well, I am sorry, I'm sure," said the woman, and she added: "Hadn't you better rest a little?"
His difficulty in rising warned him that if he did get up he might be unable to stand. "I will, just a moment," he told her, "if you don't mind. It's very kind of you. I've had rather a long day."
She had said she was sorry, and she stood looking at him as though she were genuinely grieved and more than a little disturbed in mind. "How much could you pay?" she asked.
"I could pay ten."
"And when might you want to begin?"
"Now."
"Would it be for long?"
"I can't say. I don't think it would."
She said briskly, as though her obvious disturbance of mind had dictated a sudden course, "Look here, jus' wait a minute, will you?" and went into the parlour, closing the door behind her.
Murmur of voices.
"You know," she said, coming back to him, "if it was likely to be regular perhaps we could arrange ten shillings. But not knowing, you see, that's awkward. We like our lodger more to be one of us like. We don't want the jus' come and go sort. That's how it stands, you see. You couldn't say, I suppose?"
"It's very kind of you," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm afraid I can't. I'll tell you. I'm engaged with Mr. Pennyquick at Tower House School—"
"Oh, Mr. Pennyquick!"
"You know him, I expect?"
"Oh, I know Mr. Pennyquick," said the woman, and seemed to have some meaning in her tone.
"Well, it's only for a week, or by the week. I can't say how long."
He was given no reply to this. It was as if mention of Mr. Pennyquick's name placed him as very likely to be among the "come and go sort." "I had better be going, I think," he said, and this time got to his feet.
"Well, I am sorry," the woman said again. "I'm sure I'm very sorry, and you know I can't say straight off where you'll get what you want for ten shillings. There's places, of course. But you know you don't look fit to go trudging round after them this time of night. Hadn't you better go just for the night somewhere? There's Mrs. Winter I think would take you for the night. She's at—"
Mr. Wriford went to the door. "You needn't trouble," he said weakly. "It can't be by the night. I can only pay at the end of the week."
The woman gave a little sound of dismay. "But—do you mean no money till then?"
He nodded. That was what he meant—and must face.
"But, dearie me, you won't find any will take you without deposit. They're very suspicious here, you know."
"Well," said Mr. Wriford. "Well—" and with fingers as helpless as his voice began to fumble at the latch.
"But where are you going?"
"This handle," he said. "It's rather stiff." He took his hand from it as she came round the counter to him, then immediately caught at it again and supported himself against it.
She saw the action and cried out in consternation. "Oh," she cried. "Why, you can't hardly stand, and going off nowhere! Why, you jus' can't. You'll have to stop."
He asked wearily: "Stop! How can I stop?"
"Why, ten shillings. That'll be all right. Our Essie, you know—"
He could say no more than "Thank you. Thank you."
"You'll come right along. We're just sitting down to supper. No, I'll just tell them first."
He effected speech again as, with her last words, she went to the parlour door. "But deposit," he said, and recalled the phrase she had used. "Aren't you suspicious?"
"Why, that can't be helped," she smiled back at him. "Our Essie, you know, she'd never forgive me if I sent you off like you are. Jus' sit down."
He had scarcely taken a seat when she was back again and calling him from the threshold of the open parlour door. "That's all right. Come right along. You didn't give your name, did you?"
"Wriford," and he reached her where she stood smiling.
She turned within and announced him: "Well, here's our lodger. That's Mr. Bickers."
A man of stature and of strength, once, this Hy. Bickers, Cert. Plumber. Bent now and stooping, but with something very strong, very confident in his face: lined and worn as his wife's, silvery as hers. Slightly whiskered, of white, otherwise clean shaven. A smoking-cap on his head. Little enough hair beneath it. In his face that same suggestion of a very happy secret happiness. "Expect you're tired," said Mr. Bickers and gave a warm hand-clasp.
"And that's our Essie."
A very cool, vigorous young hand, this time, that grasped Mr. Wriford's and shook it strongly. A slim, brown little thing, our Essie, eighteen perhaps, very pretty, with extraordinarily bright eyes; wearing a blue cotton dress with white spots.
"Pleased to meet you," said Essie.
Such a cheerful, jolly room, the parlour. Here was a round table set out for supper, and Essie bustling in and out of what appeared to be the kitchen, giving final touches and laying a fourth place. A great number of framed texts all round the walls, with two or three religious pictures, a highly coloured portrait of Queen Victoria and another of General Booth. A bright little fire burning, with an armchair of shining American cloth on each side of it, and a sofa and chairs, similarly covered, all with antimacassars, set around the room. A bookcase near the window, and near one armchair a little table carrying an immense Bible with other Bibles and prayer-books placed upon it. Some shells on the mantelpiece in front of an immense, gilt-framed mirror, and with them a great number of cups and saucers and vases all inscribed as "A present from" the place whence they were purchased.
Mr. Wriford sat on the sofa, silent, better already from the warmth and the fragrant savour from the kitchen; not less wretched though: somehow more wretched, somehow overcome and utterly consumed with that swelling feeling from his heart to his throat. Mr. Bickers sat in one of the armchairs, silent. Mrs. Bickers in the kitchen.
Mrs. Bickers appears. "Now Essie, dear, I'll dish up. You jus' look after the lodger, dear. I expect the lodger will like to wash his hands. Hot water, dear, and there's his bundle."
Essie comes out of the kitchen with a steaming jug in one hand and a candle in the other, puts down the candle to tuck Mr. Wriford's parcel under her arm, and then takes it up again. "This way," says Essie and leads the way through another door and up a flight of very steep and very narrow stairs. "Aren't they steep, though?" says Essie over her shoulder. "We don't half want a lift!"
The stairs give onto a passage with doors leading off from the right, and the passage terminates in a door which Essie butts open with her knee, and here is a bedroom. "This is the lodger's room," says Essie, setting down the candle and then removing the jug from the basin and pouring out the water. "Course it don't look much jus' at present, not expecting you, you see. But I'll pop up after supper an' put it to rights. Find your way down, can't you? I'll get you a bit of soap out of my room to go on with." There is a second door to the bedroom, and Essie goes through it and returns with soap. "That's my room," says Essie. "I call this my dressing-room when we haven't got a lodger, jus' like as if I was a duchess," and she gives the bright laugh that Mr. Wriford had heard in the shop. "That's all right then. Bring the candle. That mark on the wall there's where a lodger left his candle burning all night. Oh, they're cautions, some of our lodgers! Don't be long."
Most savoury and most welcome soup opens the supper. After it a shoulder of mutton, Essie doing all the helping and the carving and the running about. She sits opposite Mr. Wriford. Her eyes—there is something quite extraordinarily bright about her eyes as he watches them. They are never still. They are for ever sparkling from this object to that; and wherever momentarily they rest he sees them sparkle anew and sees her soft lips twitch as though from where her eyes alight a hundred merry fancies run sparkling to her mind. Her eyes flicker over the dish of potatoes and rest there a moment, and there they are sparkling, and her mouth twitching, as though she is recalling comic passages in buying them or in cooking them, or perhaps it is their very appearance, grotesquely fat and helpless, heaped one upon the other, in which she sees something odd that tickles her. Most extraordinarily bright eyes, and with them always most funny little compressions of her lips, as if she is for ever tickled onto the very brink of breaking into laughter.
This at last, indeed, she does. Presence of the new lodger seems to throw a constraint about the table, and the meal is eaten almost to the end of the mutton course in complete silence. Very startling, therefore, when Essie suddenly drops her knife and fork with a clatter and leans back in her chair, eyes all agleam. "Oh, dear me!" cries Essie, as Mr. and Mrs. Bickers stare at her. "Oh, dear me! I'm very sorry, but just munching like this, you know, all of us, without speaking a word! Oh, dear!" and she uses the expression that Mr. Wriford had heard when he first spoke to Mrs. Bickers. "Oh, dear, let's have a laugh!"
Mrs. Bickers glances at Mr. Wriford and says reprovingly: "Oh, Essie!" But there is no help for it and no avoiding its infection. Essie puts back her head and goes into a ring of the brightest possible laughter, and Mrs. Bickers laughs at her, and Mr. Bickers laughs at her, and even Mr. Wriford smiles; and thereafter Essie chatters without ceasing to her parents on an extraordinary variety of topics connected with what she has done or seen during the day, in every one of which she finds subject for amusement and many times declares of whatever it may be: "Oh, aren't they funny, though! Let's have a laugh!"
Mr. Wriford smiles when she laughs—impossible to avoid it. Otherwise he contributes nothing to the chatter. This strange, this kind and happy and generous ending to his day, acts upon him only in increasing sensation of that upward swelling from his heart to his throat that forbids him speech. He has the feeling that if he talks his voice will break in tears—of weakness, of wretchedness: nay, of worse than these—of their very apotheosis. There is happiness here. There is here, among these three, that which he is seeking, seeking and cannot find. They have found it: what is it then? It is all about them—shining in their faces, singing in their words. He is not of it. He is outside it. They are on the heights; he in the depths, the depths! Let him not speak, let him not speak! If he speaks he must sob and cry, get to his feet, while wondering they look at him, and stare at them, and break from them and go. If he so betrays himself he must cry at them: "What have you found? Why are you happy? This kills me, kills me, to sit here and watch you. Don't touch me. None of you touch me. Let me go. Just let me go."
They seem to see his plight. They smile encouragingly at him to draw him into their talk; Mr. Bickers, when the women are clearing away, offers him a new clay pipe and the tobacco jar. But they seem to understand. They accept without comment or offence the negation of these advances which he gives only by shaking his head as they are made.
"Well, that's done!" says Essie, coming down from the lodger's room after the supper has been cleared away. "Bed made and everything nice and ready. One of the castors of the bed is shaky, Dad. You'll have to see to it in the morning. I can't think how I never noticed it till now. Oh, those lodgers! They're fair cautions!"
Mrs. Bickers smiles at Mr. Wriford. "Well, I expect you'd like to go straight to bed, wouldn't you now?"
Painful this distrust of his voice. He rises and manages: "Yes, I would."
"You'll be ever so much better in the morning after a good sleep. What about—" and Mrs. Bickers looks at her husband.
"It's our custom," says Mr. Bickers in his deep voice, "all to read a piece from the Bible before we go to bed—all that sleep under this roof. We'll do it now so you can get along. Essie, dear."
Essie puts chairs to the table, and then Bibles. The immense Bible for Mr. Bickers, one but a little smaller for Mrs. Bickers, and one for herself. "There's my Church-service for you," says Essie to Mr. Wriford. All the Bibles have a ribbon depending from them whereat they are opened, and Essie finds the place for Mr. Wriford. "Twenty-fourth Psalm," says Essie. "My fav'rit. Isn't it a short one, though!"
"We read in turn," says Mr. Bickers. He has one hand on the great Bible and stretches the other to Mrs. Bickers, who takes it and holds it. Mr. Wriford sits opposite them, then Essie, next her father on his other side and snuggling against him, and they begin.
Mr. Bickers, very deep and slow and reverent:
"The earth is the Lord's and all that therein is: the compass of the world and they that dwell therein."
Mrs. Bickers, very gently:
"For he hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods."
Mr. Wriford. He is trembling, trembling, trembling. They are waiting for him. They are looking at him. Round swings the room, around and around. Who is waiting? Who is looking? Others are here. He hears the oldest sea-captain living, plainly as if he stood before him in the room: "Matey! Matey!" He sees Mr. Puddlebox, plainly as if he were here beside him. "Wedge in, boy; wedge in!" They are surely here. They are surely calling him. He is on the rock with the sea about him. He is in the little room with the figure on the bed. Darkness, darkness. Is this Puddlebox? Is this Captain? Is he by the sea? Is he by the bed? Round swings the darkness, around and around. He is not! He is here! He is here where happiness is. They are waiting for him. They are watching him. Wriford! Wriford! He tries to read the words that swim before his eyes. He must. They are very few. They are a question. He must! Trembling he gives voice:
"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord: or who shall rise up in his holy place?"
Essie, strong and clear and eager, emphasising the first word as though strongly and directly she answered him:
"Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart: and that hath not lift up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour."
Mr. Bickers, as one that feels the words he reads, and is sure of them:
"He shall receive the blessing from the Lord: and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
Mrs. Bickers in gentle confirmation:
"This is the generation of them that seek him: even of them that seek thy face, O Jacob."
His turn again. He cannot! Let him get out of this! Let him away! This is not to be borne. Unendurable this. What are they reading? Why have they chosen these words. "Who shall ascend?" They know his misery, then! They know the depths that he is in! Hateful that they should know it, hateful, insufferable, horrible. They see his state and have chosen words that mean his state. He is exposed before them. Let him away! Let him get out of this! They shall not know! His turn. He cannot, cannot. They are watching. They are waiting. Do they see how his face is working? Do they see how he twists and twists his hands? His turn. Ah, ah, he is in the depths, the depths! He is physically, actually down, down—struggling, gasping, suffocating. All this room and these about him stand as it were above him—watching him, waiting for him, knowing his misery. He is sinking, sinking. He is in black and whirling darkness. There is shouting in his ears. Let him away! Let him go!
Some one says: "Essie, dear."
Essie—strong and loud and clear, with tremendous emphasis upon the first word as though her strong young voice performed its meaning:
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in."
He gets to his feet, overturning his chair. He stumbles away, with blind eyes, with groping hands.
"Not that door!" cries Essie and runs to him. "Here's the door. Here's the stairs. Look, here's your candle."
He blunders up. He blunders to his room. He extinguishes the candle. Let him have the dark, the dark! He throws off his clothes, tearing them from him as though they were his agonies. God, if he could but tear these tortures so! He flings himself upon the bed and trembles there and clutches there and thrusts the sheet between his teeth to stay him crying aloud. Inchoate thoughts that rend him, rend him! Unmeaning cries that with the sheet he stifles. What, what consumes him now? He cannot name it. What tortures him? He does not know. Writhe, writhe in the bed; and now it is the sea, and now the Infirmary ward, and now the coffee-shop, and now the parlour. Ah, beat down, beat down these torments! Ah, sit up and stare into the darkness and rid the spirit, rid the mind, of all these shapes and scenes that press about the pillow. Has he slept? Is he sleeping? Why suffers he? What racks him? In God's name what? In pity, in pity what?
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in."
Ah, ah!
He had determined, writhing in those tortures of that night, at daybreak to get out of it. He had promised himself, striving to subdue his mental torments, that early morning, the house not yet astir, should see him up and begone. Sleep betrayed him his promises and his resolves. While he writhed and while he cried aloud to sleep to come and rest his fevered writhings, she would not be won. Towards morning she came to him. He awoke to find daylight, sounds about the house, escape impossible.
His reception at breakfast in the little parlour changed his intention. His reception made the desertion that now he intended immediately he could leave the house as impossible as, now he saw, escape at daybreak had been most base. He found in Mr. and Mrs. Bickers and in Essie not the smallest trace of recognition that his conduct upon the previous evening had been in the smallest degree remiss. He found them proving in innumerable little ways that, as Mrs. Bickers had told him, they liked their lodgers to be "one of us like." Mr. Bickers proposes to walk with him towards Tower House School in order to show him short cuts that will lessen the way by five minutes. Mrs. Bickers inquires if she may go through his bundle to see if any buttons or any darnings are required. Overnight he had been made to put on a pair of Mr. Bickers' slippers. Essie has put a new lace in one of his boots because one, when she was polishing the boots, was "worn out a fair treat." How can he run away from them without paying them in face of such kindness and confidence as all this? "Glad you like bacon," says Essie, helping him generously from the steaming dish she brings from the kitchen; and says to her mother: "Haven't some of our lodgers bin fanciful, though? Oh, we haven't half had some cautions!" and her eyes sparkle and her lips twitch as though her merry mind is running over the entertainment that some of the cautions have given.
No, there can be no desertion of his duties here after this. They trust him. They accept him as "one of us like." Already he is indebted to them. Until the week is out he is penniless and unable to repay them. When his week is up he can thank them and pay them and go. Till then, at whatever cost—and he will stiffen himself for the future; he was ill and overwrought last night—he must stay and earn and settle for the week for which he is committed.
"Ready?" says Mr. Bickers. "Time we was moving now."
Yes, he is quite ready. Essie runs to the shop door to open it for them. Mrs. Bickers comes with them to see them off. Some cows are being driven down the street. Essie stops with hand on the door to watch them. "Now, Essie," says Mr. Bickers. Two cows lumber onto the pavement. Mr. Wriford sees Essie's eyes sparkling and her lips twitching as she watches.
Mr. Bickers again: "Now, Essie dear—Essie!"
But Essie still watches. "Oh, jus' look at them!" says Essie with a little squirm of her shoulders and then turns round: "Aren't cows funny, though? Let's have a laugh!"
There is nothing at all to laugh at that any of the waiting three can see—except at Essie. Essie laughs as though cows were indeed the very funniest things in the world, and her laugh is impossible of resistance. Mr. Bickers is smiling as they start down the street, and Mr. Wriford is smiling also.
"She's such a bright one, our Essie," says Mr. Bickers.
"You must be very fond of her," says Mr. Wriford—"You and Mrs. Bickers;" and Mr. Bickers replies simply: "Why, I reckon our Essie is all the world to us."
Mr. Wriford suits Mr. Pennyquick. Mr. Pennyquick, indeed, as Mr. Wriford finds, is suited by anybody and anything that permits him leisure in which to nurse his ailment. His ailment requires rest which he takes all day long on the sofa in his study; and his ailment requires divers cordials which he keeps handily within reach in long bottles under the sofa. He is an outdoor man, as he tells Mr. Wriford when Mr. Wriford comes into the study on some inquiry. He is all for the open air and for sports; he only missed a double Blue at Cambridge—Rugby football and cross-country running—through rank favouritism, and he can't bear to be seen taking physic. To look around his room, says he, you'd never think he was a regular drug-shop inside owing to these rotten doctors, would you? Not a bottle of the muck to be seen anywhere. That's because, says he, his breath exuding the muck in pungent volumes, he hides the bottles through sheer sensitiveness. He's feeling a wee bit brighter this afternoon, thank goodness, and if Wriford, like a good chap, would just start the First Form in their Caesar he'll be in in about two ticks and take them over.
Poor fellow, he never does manage to get in in two ticks or in any more considerable circumference of the clock. Mr. Wriford, as he closes the study door, hears the chink of bottle and glass and knows that the open-air man will breathe no other air than that of his room until he is able to grip his malady sufficiently to stagger up to bed.
The trial week, indeed, is not many days old before Mr. Wriford obtains a pretty clear comprehension of the state of affairs at the Tower House and the reputation of its Headmaster. "Pennyquick! Whiskyquick, I call him," says Essie; and though her mother reproves this levity, and though ill-natured gossip has no exercise in the Bickers' establishment, even the cert. plumber and his wife admit that the school is not what it was, and speak of a time when there were forty or fifty boys and several resident masters. There are only twenty-four boys now—all boarders. There are no day-boarders. The town knows its Mr. Pennyquick; and the time cannot be far distant when the tradesmen in different parts of the county, now attracted by the past reputation of this "School for the Sons of Gentlemen," also will know him for what he is. Six boys left the Tower House at the end of the previous term; five are leaving at the end of this. They are sorry to go, Mr. Wriford finds, and at first rather wonders at the fact. But the reason is clear before even the trial week is out. The reason is that these twenty-four young Sons of Gentlemen, dejected-looking as he had seen them at play when he accosted Mr. Pennyquick, are dejected also in spirit—morally abased, that is to say, partly as coming from homes too snobbish to commit them to the rough and tumble of local elementary or grammar schools, and partly as being received into the atmosphere emanated by their Headmaster at the Tower House. They like the school. It suits them, and therefore, wiser than they should be, they carry no tales to their parents. They like the school. They like the utter slackness and slovenliness of the place. There is no discipline. There is scarcely a pretence of education. They wash in the mornings not till after they are dressed, Mr. Wriford finds, and they do not appear to wash again all day. They are thoroughly afraid of Mr. Pennyquick, but he scarcely ever visits them, leaving them now entirely to Mr. Wriford as formerly he left them to Mr. Wriford's predecessors who seemed to have been much of a habit of mind and character with themselves. Domestic arrangements are looked after by Mr. Pennyquick's mother who is a little, frightened grey wisp of a woman with hands that shake like her son's, but shake for him and because of him, Mr. Wriford discovers, not as a result of similar ailment and remedy. She adores her son. She is terrified of him. She is terrified for him. She sees his livelihood and his manhood crumbling away, simultaneously and disastrously swift, and what she can do, by befoolment of parents in correspondence relative to her son's ill-health and their own son's happiness and success, by pathetic would-be befoolment of Mr. Wriford on the same counts, and by lenient treatment of the pupils, that does she daily and hourly to avert the doom she sees.
Within the first days of the trial week Mr. Wriford's duties fall into a regular routine. This is his trial week, his temporary week, a week in which he comes to his duties overwrought, shaken, uncertain and, thus conditioned, is wretched in his performance of them. Shortly before nine he presents himself at Tower House. The boys are wandering dejectedly about the playground. He passes nervously through them—they do not raise their caps—and hides from them in the schoolroom till the hour strikes on a neighbouring church clock. Then Mr. Wriford rings a large hand-bell, and the boys drift in at their leisure and take their places on the benches. Sometimes, before Mr. Wriford has finished ringing, Mr. Pennyquick, in gown and untasselled mortar-board, comes charging across the playground from the house, and there is then an alarmed stampede on the part of the boys to get in before him or to crowd in immediately upon his heels. Sometimes there is a very long wait before the appearance of the Headmaster; and Mr. Wriford, nervously irresolute as to whether to ring again or to begin school without him, stands wretched and self-conscious at his raised desk while the boys titter and whisper, or throw paper pellets, or look at him and—he knows—titter and whisper at his expense. This is his trial week, his temporary week. He is much overwrought in body and in mind. He does not know what authority he should show or how to show it. He hesitates till too late to interfere with one outburst of horse-play or of giggling. At the next he hesitates in doubt as to whether, having overlooked the former, he can attempt to subdue this. While he hesitates, and while the noise increases, and while the humiliation and wretchedness it causes him increase—in the midst of all this Mr. Pennyquick charges in. Mr. Pennyquick is either unshaved and looking the worse for it; or he has shaved and has cut himself and dabs angrily at little tufts of cotton wool that decorate his chin.
"Anderson!" barks Mr. Pennyquick, seizing the roll-call book and a pencil but not looking at the one or using the other. "Adsum," responds Anderson; and Mr. Pennyquick barks through the roll, which he knows by heart, much as if he were a sheep-dog with each boy a sheep and each name a bark or a bite in pursuit of it. He does not wait for responses. He barks along in a jumble of explosions, interspersed with a jumble of squeaked replies; punctuated at intervals, as if it were part of the roll, by a very much louder bark in the form of a fierce "SPEAK UP!" and concluded by a rush without pause into prayers—Mr. Pennyquick plumping suddenly upon his knees, much as if the sheepdog had suddenly hurled itself upon the flock, and the first portion of the devotions being lost in the din of his pupils extricating themselves from their desks in order to follow his example, much as if the flock had responded by a panic stampede in every direction.
"Samuel Major," barks Mr. Pennyquick, as if he were biting that young gentleman. "'Sum!" squeaks Samuel Major, as if he were bitten. "Minorsum - Smithsum - Stoopersum - Taylorsum—SPEAK UP!—Tooveysum - Westsum - Whitesum—SPEAK UP!—Williamssum - Wintersum - Woodsum - Ourfatherchartinheavenhallo'edbeth'name ... Amen—SPEAK UP!—mightyanmosmercifulfatherwethynunworthyservants ... Amen—SPEAK UP!"
The schoolroom is divided by a red baize curtain into two parts. The scholars are divided into three forms of which Form One is the highest. Mr. Pennyquick, who knows the time-table of lessons by heart just as he knows the roll-call, follows the last Amen with a last "SPEAK UP!" and is himself followed in haste and trepidation by the members of Form One as he jumps from his knees and charges through the curtain barking "Form One. Thursday. Euclid. Blackboard. Come round the blackboard. Last night's prep?"
"Twelfth proposition, sir," squeaks the boy whose eye he has caught.
This—or the same point in whatever else the subject may be—invariably marks the end of Mr. Pennyquick's early morning energy. He begins to draw on the blackboard or to find the place in a text-book. The energy goes, or the recollection of his medicine begins, and he changes his mind and barks: "Revise last night's prep!" There is a stampede to the desks and a burying in books. The Headmaster paces the room between the wall and the curtain, barking a "WORK UP!" at intervals and hesitating a little longer each time he turns at the curtain. "WORK UP!" and he comes charging through towards Mr. Wriford and the door. "Keep an eye on Form One, Wriford. Draw the curtain. I'm not quite the thing this morning. Take them on for me if I'm not back in ten minutes, will you? I ought to be in bed, you know. I shan't be long. WORK UP!"
He is gone. He rarely appears again. If he appears it is when clearly he is not quite the thing and is only to skirmish a few times up and down the schoolroom to the tune of "WORK UP! WORK UP!" or to show himself on the playing-field, bellow "PLAY UP!" and betake himself again to the treatment of his complaint.
He is gone. Mr. Wriford is left with all the three forms in his charge. It is his trial week. He does not know what authority he should show or how to show it. He does not know what has been learnt or what is being learnt, and he is cunningly or cheekily frustrated at every attempt to discover it. In whatever way he attempts to set work afoot an excuse is found to stop him. By one boy he is told that "please, sir," they do not do this, and by another that "please, sir," they have never done the other. He has neither sufficient strength of himself nor sufficient certainty of his position to insist. Without advice, without support, he is left very much at the mercy of the three forms, and they show him none. While he tries to settle one form it is under the distractions and the interruptions of the other two. When he turns to one of these the first joins the third in idleness and disorder. At eleven o'clock he is informed "Please, sir, we have our break now," and there is a stampede for the door without awaiting his assent. Similarly at half-past twelve, when morning school ends, and similarly again at four and at half-past seven, which are the terminations of afternoon school and of evening preparation. There is no asking his permission. His position is exactly summarised by this—that the boys know the rules and customs, he does not; and further by this—that while he remains miserably uncertain of the extent of his authority and of how he should assert it, they, by that very uncertainty, well estimate its limits and hourly, with each advantage gained, more narrowly confine it, more openly defy him.
At one o'clock there is lunch. Sometimes Mr. Pennyquick is present as the boys assemble, and then they assemble in timid silence and eat with due regard to manners. Sometimes he does not appear till midway through the meal, till when there is greedy and noisy and slovenly behaviour, which frightened-looking Mrs. Pennyquick attempts occasionally to check with a timid: "Hush, boys," or upon which she looks with nervously indulgent smiles. There is painfully evident in all her dealings with the boys a dread amounting to a lively terror that anything shall be done to displease them. Mr. Wriford soon realises that her hourly fear is of a boy writing home anything that may lead to parental inquiry and thence to the disclosure of her son's affliction. In out-of-school hours she frequently visits the schoolroom and looks anxiously at any boy who may be engaged in writing. Mr. Wriford at first wonders why. He understands when one day, passing behind a boy thus occupied, she stops and says: "Writing home, Charlie? That's a good boy. Do tell your father that Mr. Pennyquick only this morning was telling me what a good boy you are at your lessons and how well you are getting on. Write a nice letter, dear. Would you like to come with me a minute and see if I can find some sweeties in my cupboard? Come along, then."
With like purpose it is in fearful apprehension that she watches her son's face and his every movement when he is at the luncheon table. Mr. Wriford sees her look up with face in agony of misgiving when the Headmaster comes in late, sees her eyes ever upon him in constant dread as he sits opposite her at the head of the table. There does not appear great cause for nervousness. As a rule the Headmaster sits glowering and glum and fires off no more than, his own plate being empty, an occasional "EAT UP!" Sometimes he is boisterously cheerful. Whatever his mood he never omits one very satisfactory tribute to his own principles in which his mother joins very happily and impressively. It takes this form. Immediately Mr. Pennyquick sits down he calls in a very loud voice for the water to be passed to him. He then fills his glass from such a great height as to make all the boys laugh, then drinks, then sets down the tumbler with a sharp rap, and then says to Mr. Wriford: "I don't know if you're a beer-drinker, Wriford, but I'm afraid we can't indulge you here. I never touch anything but water myself. I attribute every misery, every failure in life, to drink, and I will allow it in no shape or form beneath my roof. I can give no man a better motto than my own motto: Stick to Water!"
Mr. Pennyquick then drinks again with great impressiveness, and Mrs. Pennyquick at once cries: "Boys, listen to that! Always remember what Mr. Pennyquick says and always say it was Mr. Pennyquick who told you. Stick to Water is Mr. Pennyquick's motto, and he never, never allows drink in any shape or form beneath his roof. Why, do you know—I must tell them this, dear—a doctor once ordered Mr. Pennyquick just a small glass of wine once a day, and Mr. Pennyquick said to him: 'Doctor, I know I'm very ill; but if wine is the only thing to save me, then, doctor, I must die, for wine I do not and will not touch.'"
All eyes in great admiration on this unflinching champion of hydropathy, who modestly concludes the scene with a loud: "EAT UP!"
Afternoon school, in its idleness, inattention, and indiscipline, is a repetition of the morning. Preparation from six to half-past seven again discovers irresolution, uncertainty and wretchedness set in the midst of those who by every device increase it and advantage themselves from it. At four o'clock it is Mr. Wriford's duty to keep an eye on the boys while they disport themselves in the field where he had first seen them; at half-past five is tea; at shortly before eight Mr. Wriford is making his way to where supper awaits in the cheerful parlour behind the little shop of the cert. plumber.
Thither he goes through the darkness; and, as one in darkness that gropes for light, can see no light, and dreads the sudden leap of some assault, so trembles he among the dark oppressions of his mind.
These are evenings of early summer, and they have early summer's dusky veils draped down from starry skies. Her pleasant scents they have, her gentle airs, her after-hush of all her daylight choirs. They but enfever Mr. Wriford. Her young nights, these, that not arrest her days but softly steal about her, finger on lip attend her while she sleeps, then snatch their filmy coverlets while eastward she rubs her smiling eyes, springs from her slumber, breaks into music all her morning hymns, and up and all about in sudden radiance rides, rides in maiden loveliness. Ah, not for him!
These are young nights that greet him as he leaves the school. In much affliction he cries out upon their stilly peace. Look, here that new year in summer is, her peace, her happiness attained, that from the windows of the ward at Pendra he had watched blown here and there, mocked, trampled on, caught by the throat and thrust beneath the iron ground in variance with winter's jealousy. In her he had envisaged his own stress. Look, here she reigns in happy peace, in ordered quiet: he?
He moans a little as he walks. There is something in life that he has missed, and to its discovery he can bring no more than this—that it rests not in violent disregard of what happens to him or what he does, for that he has proved empty; nor rests in the ease that, by communication with London, might be his, for that inflicts return to the old self, hatred and fear of whom had driven him away. Where then? And then it is he moans. His mind presents him none but these alternatives; his mind, when miserably he rejects them, threateningly turns them upon him in forms of fear. "Well, you have got to live," his mind threatens him. "To-morrow you shall perhaps be turned out from this post at the school. You will have to face anew some means of life; you will have to suffer what has to be suffered in that part; face men and submit to their treatment of such as you, or face them and find fierceness sufficient to defy them."
"No, no!" he cries. "No, no!" He fears his powers of endurance, fears that beneath those trials he will be driven back to where is turned upon him the other threat. "Well, you must go back," his thoughts threaten him. "Money and comfort await you in London for your asking. You must go back to what you were. Live at ease in seclusion, if you will; ah, with your old way of life to tell you hourly that now it has you chained—that now you have tried escape, proved it impossible, and never again can escape it!"
He cries aloud: "No, no!" He moans for his abject hopelessness. He trembles for his fears at these his threats. Under his misery he wanders away from the direction of the little plumber's shop, hating to enter it and to its brightness expose his suffering; under his fears he hastens to it, clinging to this present occupation lest, losing it, one of the threats that threaten him unsheaths its sword upon him.
When, by these vacillations, he is late for the supper hour, Essie will be at the shop door watching for him.
"Well, aren't you half late, though!" cries Essie. "I was jus' goin' to dish up. Oh, you lodgers, you know, you're fair cautions!"
"I was kept late," he says.
"Well, you weren't half walking slow when you come round the corner, though." She sees his face more clearly in the light of the shop and she says: "Oh, dear, you don't look half tired! My steak-and-kidney pudding, that's what you want! Here he is, Dad! Get his slippers, Mother? That old Whiskyquick's been fair tiring him out!"
She runs to the kitchen and in a minute calls out: "All ready? Oh, it's cooked a fair treat!" She bears in the steaming steak-and-kidney pudding, sets it on the table, but stops while above the bubbling crust she poises her knife and watches it with her little twitches of her lips and with her sparkling eyes.
"Come, Essie," says Mrs. Bickers.
"Oh, isn't it funny, though," says Essie, "all bubbling and squeaking! Let's have a laugh!"