JACK BALLISTER
JACK BALLISTER at this time was a little over sixteen years old, and
had now been living with his uncle Tipton something over two years.
Jack’s father at the time of his death had been vicar of Stalbridge for
nearly nineteen years, so that Jack, until he had come to Southampton,
had never known anything but that part of Wiltshire which immediately
surrounded Stalbridge and Stalbridge vicarage. The only other inmates
of the vicarage were old Janet, the housekeeper, and a farmer’s
daughter who helped about the house, and old Giles Cobb, who came up
now and then to work in the garden.
There was, by the way, always a singular charm to Jack in the memories
of this garden. Some of his earliest recollections were of playing
out in the tangled sunny reaches while old Giles bent, with stooping
shoulders and rounded back, over his work, digging and planting and
picking about at the weeds in the brown, loamy beds. There was a yew
hedge, and two bee hives that stood under a cherry tree, and a row of
two or three cucumber frames that lay bright and shining, reflecting
in their glassy surface the clouds and the warm sky above. There was
always an association of flowers, of birds, and of warm yellow sunlight
about the tangled, flowery space, and in the years afterwards, when
Jack visited the old vicarage, one of the first places he went to was
the garden. It looked strangely familiar yet strangely unfamiliar. It
seemed more unkempt and uncared for. The birds were singing in the
trees over beyond the hedge, but the two straw-thatched bee hives
were gone. Nevertheless he could almost fancy that old Giles with his
hunched shoulders and his smock frock might at any moment come in
through the gate, trundling his squealing wheel-barrow before him.
Jack was not quite four years old when his mother had died. It seemed
to him that he could remember her, yet the image he held in his mind
might not have been an actual memory, but only some strong association
connected with things that Janet had told him about her. Yet it
seemed to him that he really did hold a mental impression of her in
his memory of early things, an impression of a large, tender, shadowy
figure, dressed in black, and with a white kerchief or shawl around
her shoulders. He could almost fancy that he could remember a peculiar
fragrance that lingered about the folds of her dress—a fragrance like
that of the old lavender chest where Janet kept the house linen. This
recollection of his mother might have been only an image conjured
up out of what had been told him concerning her, but, as was said,
it always seemed as though it were a real and living memory. It is
sometimes difficult to tell where fancy ends and memory begins in those
broken fragments of recollections of early childhood.
It seemed to him that the same figure was present in the memory of a
certain time when he, as a little, little boy, had fallen down the
steps and cut his chin. It seemed to him that it was she who had
comforted him, singing to him while she scraped a crisp half-apple and
fed him with the pulp from the point of a knife. Janet had said that
that fall had not happened until the year after his mother’s death,
but it seemed to Jack that it was his mother’s presence that had filled
the memory of the accident, and he always felt that maybe it was Janet
who was mistaken, and not his own recollections of the trivial event.
He often thought of his mother, as a motherless boy is apt to think of
that missing presence, and it seemed to him that if she had only lived
he would have loved her very much, and that his life would have been
much sweeter to him.
Janet often talked to him about her. His grandmother, Janet told him,
had adopted her as a little girl, and had brought her up with her own
daughter, who was now Lady Arabella Sutton. She had been, Janet said,
more of a companion than a waiting-maid. Of these stories of by-gone
times, that children so delight to have told to them, Jack would
make Janet tell him most often of the great family quarrel that had
happened when his father had told the others that he and Anne Tipton
were going to be married. Janet always made the most out of the story,
embellishing it more and more as the years passed by, and as her
imagination suggested new details. “Indeed,” she would maybe say, “you
should ha’ seen him stand up before your grandmother, as grand as you
please, with his arms folded so. ‘A Ballister, madam,’ says he, ‘can
marry where he chooses.’”
Jack could not imagine his father as the hero of any such scene, still
less could he image him as riding post-haste to Southampton when his
mother had been sent away home from Grampton Hall.
He often heard people say that his father was a great scholar. The
vicar was always silent and preoccupied, sometimes deep in his books,
sometimes scribbling away with a busy pen, a litter of papers scattered
all over the floor about him, and his wig pushed back awry from his
smooth, round forehead; sometimes walking up and down the garden paths
with his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent forward, and his
eyes fixed on the ground. He used especially to walk thus while he was
formulating in his mind the outlines of one of the pamphlets he used to
write. Jack could not imagine that any one so absorbed in his books and
his studies could ever have been the hero of such romance. And then he
always seemed so very, very old to Jack. It was hard to imagine that
such a dry and sapless life could ever have had the ichor of romance
flowing through it.
Before Janet had come to Stalbridge she had been one of the dependents
of the other Ballisters. “They be grand, grand folks,” she would
sometimes say, “and hold their heads as high as ever the Duke of
Newcastle himself.” She sometimes told Jack that if his father had not
set his family all against him, he might have been a bishop as like as
not. “I’d never come to Stalbridge only for your mother, poor soul,”
said she. “But she was fond of me, and I was fond of her, and so I
came.”
It seemed to Jack that he could hardly remember the time when
his father did not teach him Latin and Greek. One of his first
recollections as a little, little boy was of his father teaching him
the Greek alphabet. He learned little or nothing else than the two
languages, and it is not likely that his father thought anything else
was worth learning. Jack once overheard the vicar say to old Sir Thomas
Harding, “Sir, I will make the boy the best scholar in England.” The
words remained fixed in Jack’s memory as such fragmentary speeches
do sometimes fix themselves, for no especial reason, in the mind of
boyhood. The promise of great scholarship was, however, never to be
fulfilled, for Jack was only fourteen years old when the vicar died,
and in the neglected two years at Southampton he never went to school
a day, or studied six words of a lesson, or read a page of Greek or
Latin, except one or two times when Mr. Stetson made him read a passage
or two of Greek as a matter of curiosity.
Jack’s father never said anything to him about his mother or his
relations. His uncle Tipton had come up from Southampton just before
his father’s death, but that was the only time that Jack had ever
really seen one of his own kindred.
During the fall of the year in which Jack’s father had died, a
messenger on horseback, with great jackboots and a suit of green livery
turned up with scarlet, rode up to the vicarage and delivered a packet
to Janet, who presently brought it in to the vicar, where he sat in
the sagging wainscoted study, writing in the midst of a litter of
papers scattered on the floor. The vicar set his pen in his mouth and
took the letter, and Jack watched him as he broke the great red seal
and began reading the packet, now and then frowning, either in the
effort of reading the written words or else at the purport of the words
themselves. When he had finished the letter he laid it to one side and
resumed his writing where it had been interrupted. The messenger who
had brought the letter did not immediately go away. Jack could hear
now and then the jingle of his bridle or spurs, and now and then the
sound of his whistling, as he lounged in the warm sunlight outside.
Then there was the noise of voices talking together—the voices of
Janet and the messenger—and presently the housekeeper came into the
study to say that the man wanted to know when he could have his answer.
The vicar looked up with the bewildered air he always wore when he was
interrupted. “Eh!” he said, “eh! what d’ye say? Answer? Who wants an
answer?” Then remembering, “oh, aye, there’s no answer to send. You may
tell him, there’s no answer.” And then presently the messenger rode
clattering away whence he had come.
The letter lay where the vicar had left it until the next afternoon,
and Jack, impelled by curiosity, managed to read a part of it. It was
from his grand-aunt Lady Dinah Welbeck. She said that she was very ill,
and she asked the vicar to come and see her before her end, and that
all should be forgiven. The vicar did not go, either because he did
not think of the message again, or else because he did not choose to
resume his correspondence with his family. The letter lay about until
the vicar tore a great strip off from it with which to light a candle
in the next room, and the next day the written sheet was gone.
Some time after Lady Dinah Welbeck’s death another communication, long
and bulky, was brought to the vicarage. The vicar read it but paid no
attention to it. Then another letter came and another. The last letter
the vicar did not even open for several days. He was very busy at work
upon a pamphlet, and the letter lay neglected upon the writing table
until one morning Janet brought it and thrust it into his hand. “Eh!”
said he, as though suddenly awakening to things about him, “what is
this! what is this?” He took the letter and looked at it. “Why, this
letter should have been given me three days ago,” he said.
“So ’twas, master,” said Janet, “but you did not read it.”
“Did I not so?” said Jack’s father, and then he broke the seal and read
it. But still he paid no attention to it.
No doubt the vicar’s family would long since have received him back
among them if he had cared to have them do so. He and they had drifted
far apart in the nineteen years that had passed. During that time all
ill feeling—at least on the part of the family—had faded away and
died. There was no intimacy, hardly any acquaintance, between the
vicar and his brother, Sir Henry, neither was there any longer rancor
between them.
Some of the letters written at this time had been written by Sir Henry,
and after a number had been sent without eliciting any reply, the
baronet sent the Grampton lawyer down to Stalbridge. The attorney and
the vicar were closeted together for a long time, and when they at last
came out of the study the vicar was very angry. It was the only time
that Jack had ever seen him so. “They may keep it all!” he was saying
in a great loud voice. “They may keep it all! I want none of it, I say.
All that I want of them is to let me alone as I let them alone. I want,
I say, none of their money or nothing that belongs to them. They may
keep all for themselves.”
Jack was leaning out of an upper window in the sunlight, looking down
upon their heads, as they stood just below. Their voices came up to him
through the warm air very distinctly.
“But, sir,” said the lawyer, “do you not then consider the welfare of
your own son?”
“Sir,” said the vicar in the same loud voice, “that, I believe, is not
your affair. I will look after my son’s welfare mine own self. I tell
you, sirrah, that those who sent you may e’en keep all of the money for
themselves. I want nothing of them, and neither shall my son take aught
from them.”
“But, sir,” said the lawyer, “you forget that the money hath been left
to you individually. In taking it you do not take anything from them.
It was not left to your brother, it is not a gift from him or, indeed,
from any one, and it does not belong to any one but you. Your family
cannot even receive it from you without process of law, and you cannot
help taking it.”
“Aye, but I can help taking it,” cried out the vicar.
“Sir, sir!” said the lawyer, “pray be calm, sir. Pray look at this
matter reasonably. Here is this money—”
“I will not hear anything more,” cried out the vicar, “only I tell you
I shall not touch a farthing of it.”
Then the lawyer lost his temper. “Sir,” said he, “I must needs tell you
that you are the most unreasonable man that ever I met in all of my
life.”
The vicar drew himself up to his full height. “Sir,” said he, “sure you
forget yourself and to whom you speak. You forget who I am, sir. You
are welcome to think as you choose about me, but you are not welcome
to tell me your opinion of me. Who are you, sirrah, to speak so to
James Ballister?” And then he turned upon his heel back into the house,
shutting the door behind him.
Jack, as he still leaned out into the sunlight, looking down from
above, saw the stranger stand irresolutely for a while, then turn and
go slowly out of the gate and mount his horse and ride away.
That winter the vicar died, and Jack went to Southampton to live.
* * * * *
Perhaps one of the bitterest days in Jack Ballister’s boyhood life
was the first evening after his arrival at his new home. His uncle
had had the parlor opened, as though to do some honor to his coming.
Jack sat for nearly an hour on the stiff uncomfortable chair, saying
almost nothing, but just sitting there by the dim light of a candle.
Old Hezekiah had tried to talk, but the conversation had lapsed and
dwindled away into silence. Now he sat winking and blinking in the
light of the candle, looking as though he were trying to think of
something more to say, but yet saying nothing, and Jack, too miserable
and depressed to talk, ventured nothing upon his own part. He was very
glad when at last he was permitted to creep away miserably to bed
and to yield himself fully to the luxury of hot tears and of utter
loneliness and homesickness.
It seemed to him that night as though he never would be happy again,
but even by the next morning he found himself awakened to a new and
fresh hold upon his life. Things appeared bright and cheerful again in
the fresh sunlight of a new day, and after he had finished his frugal
breakfast he went out into the streets and down to the harbor, full
of interest in the new surroundings in which he found himself placed.
The harbor and the ships at anchor there seemed very wonderful to
the boy fresh from the inland country. There was a great high-pooped
battle-ship lying at anchor in the harbor that morning, and its sloping
decks, whence came the distant rattle of a drum, seemed to teem with
bustling life, lit every now and then by a spark of sunlight glinting
on the slant of a musket-barrel. As Jack stood and gazed, he forgot how
lonely he had been the night before.
In a little while—in a few weeks—his life had drifted into all these
new circumstances, and had become one with them, and he presently found
himself looking back to that old life at Stalbridge as a thing gone by
and done with forever. All that remained was the memory of those things
as episodes ended and done.
It is wonderful with what ductility life fits itself into new
circumstances, becoming so accustomed to them, even in a few days, that
they no longer seem to be new.
After that first formal reception in the musty, stuffy parlor, old
Hezekiah seemed to consider his duty to his nephew as ended. Thereafter
Jack was allowed to go where he pleased and to do as he chose. The old
man hardly ever spoke to the lad excepting now and then in some dry and
constrained fashion. Old Deborah, the housekeeper, used to send him on
errands occasionally, but excepting for such little demands upon him,
he had no ties to bind him to his new home except as it was a place
wherein to eat his meals and to sleep at night.
He spent nearly all his time lounging about the harbor front, for there
was a never-ending delight to him in the presence of the great ships
and the rough sailors, who would talk of strange foreign countries—of
having been to Calcutta, or to Shanghai, or to Jamaica, or to the
Americas or the Brazils, as Jack might have talked of having been to
the Isle of Wight. They spoke of the Caribbean Sea, or of the Indian
Ocean, as he might speak of the Solent.
He often used to strike up an acquaintance with these sailors an
acquaintance that would become, maybe, almost intimate for the two or
three days that they were in the harbor.
It was an idle, aimless, useless life that he lived at this time.
Sometimes—maybe when he was running on some petty, trivial errand
for old Deborah—a sudden feeling of almost nauseating shame for his
useless existence would come upon him and weigh him down with a leaden
weight. It seemed almost as though an inner voice, as of conscience,
would say: “Fie upon you! A great, big, hulking fellow like you to
go carrying a little crock of yeast through the streets like this!”
Generally when such an inner voice as of conscience would speak, he
would satisfy himself by replying as with an inner voice of his own:
“Oh, well, ’tis Uncle Hezekiah’s fault. If he’d only set me work to do,
why, I’d do the work, and be glad enough of the chance.”
Mr. Stetson, the rector, used sometimes to talk to him almost like an
echo of that inner accusing voice. “’Tis a vast pity, Jack,” he would
sometimes say, “that such a great, stout fellow as thou art should
live so in useless idleness. If nothing else better, why do you not
study your books?” And Jack would be very uncomfortable with the heavy
feeling that he had left some part of duty undone.
He used often to go to supper at the rectory. He felt more at ease
there—less big-jointed and clumsy than almost anywhere else. And
besides, he very heartily enjoyed the good things he had to eat at such
times, for Deborah set a very poor and skimpy table at his uncle’s
house. They generally had preserved ginger and thin sweet cakes at
these suppers at the rectory, and Jack used sometimes to contrive to
slip a couple of cakes into his pocket to nibble after he got home.
Sometimes, especially if there were visitors present, the good old
rector would insist upon talking to Jack about his uncle the baronet,
or about Lady Dinah Welbeck, or about his aunt Lady Arabella Sutton.
“Indeed,” he would maybe say, “Jack’s poor father was a very learned
man, a _very_ learned man. His pamphlet on the apostolic succession was
the best that was writ at the time of the controversy. ’Tis, methinks,
impossible for a man to be so perfectly ripe a scholar unless he hath
good blood in his veins such as that of the Ballisters or haply of mine
own. Why should it not be so? To be sure, you cannot make as good wine
out of gooseberries as you can out of currants. Mine own father used
often to say to me: ‘Andrew, never forget that you have the blood of
Roger Stetson in your veins.’”
Jack always felt a certain awkward constraint when the rector would
talk in this way. It made him somehow feel ashamed, and he did not know
just where to look or what to answer.
Sometimes Mr. Stetson would make him read aloud in Greek. “You should
hear him read ‘The Frogs,’” he would maybe say, and he would almost
thrust a copy of Aristophanes into Jack’s not very willing hand. Jack
would read a page or two in a perfunctory sort of a way, while the
rector would sit smiling and tapping his finger-tips on the table
beside which he sat. “Thou hast the making of a fine scholar in thee,
Jack,” he would perhaps say, “and ’tis a vast pity thy uncle Tipton
does not send thee to school. I will have a talk with him about it when
the time comes.”
Several times the rector spoke to old Hezekiah about his nephew. Once
he walked all the way back from church with the old merchant, and
almost into the parlor. But nothing ever came of such talks. “Hey!”
said the old man; “go to school? What does he want to go to school for?
Well, well! I’ll see to it, and think it over by and by,” and there the
matter would rest.
Another friend whom Jack made was the attorney Burton. One day, as Jack
was walking whistling along the street, the little lawyer came running
out of his office and called after him to stop. “Master Jack! Master
Jack! stop a little bit,” he cried out. “Master Jack Ballister!—I have
a word or two to say to you.” He had run out bareheaded, and he was
half breathless with his haste and his calling. He held an open letter
in his hand. “Who d’ye think, young gentleman,” said he, still panting
a little, “I have heard from? Why, from your uncle Sir Henry Ballister,
to be sure. He hath writ to me asking about you—how you are, what you
are doing, and how Master Tipton is treating you. What shall I tell
him?”
“Why, you may tell him,” said Jack, “that I do very well.”
This was the beginning of Jack’s acquaintance with the attorney Burton.
Several times afterward the little lawyer told him that Sir Henry had
written about him. “He hath a mind, methinks,” said the attorney, “to
be more particular as to what your uncle Tipton is doing for you.
Indeed, he hath asked me very especially about what he does for you. I
know what I shall tell him, for I have talked to Master Stetson about
you, and he tells me what a famous scholard you are. But harkee, Master
Jack, if ever you have need of advice, you come to me, for so Sir Henry
advised me to say to you.”
Jack stood listening to the little man with a feeling of pleased and
fatuous gratification. It was very pleasant to be so remembered by his
grand relation. “Why, then, I take it very kind of Sir Henry, Master
Burton, and of you, too, for the matter of that,” said he. “And if ever
I do have need of your advice, why, I will come to you just as freely
as you give me leave to do.”
As he walked away down the street, thinking over what the attorney had
said, he almost wished that he had some definite cause of complaint
against his uncle Hezekiah, so that he might call upon the aid of Sir
Henry and the attorney. How fine it would be to have Sir Henry take
his part! He fancied to himself a talk with his uncle Hezekiah, in
which he made himself perhaps say, “Sir, you shall not treat me so,
for I tell you plain that there are those now to take my part against
you, and that it is not just a poor orphaned boy with whom you have to
deal.” Boys love to build up in their imagination such foolish scenes
and fortunate conversations that never happen. Sometimes such fancyings
seem so like the real thing that, like Jack, one almost forgets that
they are not really likely to happen. But by and by the time came when
Jack really did appeal to the lawyer and when he really did come to an
understanding with his uncle.
That spring a young cooper named Dan Williamson had a boat that he
wanted to sell. It had belonged partly to his brother, who had died
during the fall before, and Dan, who was one of that sort who always
had need of money, was very anxious to sell it. Jack’s great desire was
to possess a boat of his own. It seemed to him that Dan’s boat was
exactly the one that would best suit him. He used to think with a keen
and vivid delight of how glorious it would be to own Dan’s boat. And
then she was so very cheap. If the boat were his he would give her a
fresh coat of paint, and name her the _Sea-gull_. If he could only get
twenty pounds from his uncle Hezekiah, he could not only buy the boat,
but add a new suit of sails.
He talked so often to Dan about the boat that at last the cooper
began to believe that he might be able to sell it to Jack. “She’s
the cheapest boat,” said Dan, “that was ever offered for sale in
Southampton.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Jack; “but I do believe that she’s a
good boat.”
“Good!” said Dan. “She’s the best boat in Southampton to-day, and, what
is more, she’s as cheap as the dirt under your feet. You’d better buy
her, for you’ll never get such another chance as long as you live.”
Jack shook his head. “I do believe she is a good boat, Dan,” he said;
“but how shall I buy a boat without money to buy it with? I have no
money in hand, and am not like to have any.”
“Well, well,” said Dan, “to be sure, that’s too bad”; and then, after
a little space, he continued: “But I’ll tell you what,—you come down
with me, and I’ll take you out in her; then you may see for yourself
what a fine boat she is.”
“I’ll go out with you,” said Jack; “but I can’t buy her, though. I wish
I could.”
Then they went off together down to the cooper-shops where Dan kept the
boat.
Jack helped Dan step the mast. Then they pushed the boat off beyond the
end of the shed. As the sail filled, Dan put down the helm, and brought
the boat out under the stern of a bark lying at anchor a little
distance from the shore. The watch on deck, a tipsy-looking sailor with
his throat wrapped around with a woolen stocking, stood looking over
the stern of the bark and down at them as they sailed by. Jack looked
up at the towering hulk above him. The name of the bark—the _Prophet
Elijah_—was painted in great, fat letters across the stern. At one
side there was a picture of the prophet’s head, with his long beard.
There was a rushing sound of water under the stern of the vessel. Then
they were out in the wide, shining harbor, the warm air blowing mildly
and softly about them.
“Look, how she lies up to the wind,” said Dan Williamson; “why, I do
believe I could sail her straight into the wind’s eye if I chose to. I
tell ‘ee what ’tis, Jack, you’ll never find such another chance as this
to get what you want.”
“Maybe I won’t and maybe I will,” said Jack; “all the same, I sha’n’t
buy her, for why, I have no money to buy her with.”
“No money!” said Dan Williamson; “why, if I had as much money as
belongs to you, I’d give up coopering and live a gentleman all my life,
I would. Why don’t ye go and ask your uncle Tipton for eighteen pound
straight and fair? Sure, the money’s your own, and not his. Why don’t
ye ask him for it?”
“Ask him for it?” said Jack. “And what good would that do? Asking won’t
do any good. The money’s mine, sure enough, yet I can’t touch a penny
of it till I am of age.”
“‘T won’t do any harm to ask him, anyway,” said Dan Williamson. “Here,
you come and take the tiller, and see for yourself how close up she
sails.”
Jack took the tiller, and then they sailed along for a while in
silence. By and by Dan spoke again. “I’ll tell you what ’tis, Jack, if
I was you I’d go straight to Master Burton, I would, and I’d ask him
about it. What did you say t’ other evening down at the Golden Fish?
Didn’t you say that he told you to come to him if ever you wanted
anything that your uncle Tipton wouldn’t give you, and that he said
your t’ other uncle that’s a lord would get it for you? Well, then, why
don’t you go to him and ask for eighteen or twenty pound? What you said
was true, wasn’t it?”
“Why, yes, ’twas true enough, as far as that goes,” said Jack.
“Well, then,” said Dan Williamson, “there you are.”
Jack sat for a little while in silence, then he spoke.
“I tell you what it is, Dan, maybe you don’t believe what I told you,
but it is true enough. I tell you what—I’m going to go to Master
Burton this very day, and ask him about what you say.” He did not
really entertain any hope, however, that he could get twenty pounds
from his uncle Hezekiah.
As soon as he came ashore again, he went straight up to the little
lawyer’s house.
The little man was in his office—a musty, stuffy little den of a
place, smelling of stale tobacco smoke, and set around with dusty cases
of worn and yellow-backed books and tin boxes.
The attorney sat in the midst of the litter surrounding him like a
little gray mouse. He had black, beady eyes, a long nose, and a thin,
leathery face.
He sat looking with his little twinkling black eyes at Jack as he
stated his case. “Why, as for your fortune, Master Jack, I must needs
tell you plain that it might as well be locked up in the church belfry
for all the good it may do you now. For so it is locked up in your
father’s will, tight and fast as if it were in a box, and your uncle
hath the keeping of it for you.”
“And can I get none of my money of him, then?” said Jack.
“Why, as for that, I don’t say that, neither,” said the little lawyer.
“It may be a hard matter to get it, and yet, after all, I may be able
to get it for you. I’ll tell you what to do, Master Jack. Go you to
your uncle and ask him plain and straight for what money you need. How
much was it you wanted?”
“Well, say twenty pounds,” said Jack.
“Well, then, you ask him for twenty pounds, plain and straight, and if
he says you nay, then come back to me, and I’ll see what I can do for
you. Sir Henry hath asked me to look after you a trifle, and so I will
do.”