"Gander, they want a lad to sweep the leaves in the drive at the great
house. The squire's coachman told me, and I mentioned you. You'll have
to do it on Saturday, and be paid sixpence."
Joe's face brightened. He went home and told his stepmother.
"For once you are going to be useful," said Mrs. Lambole. "Very well,
you shall sweep the drive; then fivepence will come to us, and you shall
have a penny every week to spend in sweetstuff at the post office."
Joe tried to reckon how long it would be before he could purchase the
fiddle, but the calculation was beyond his powers; so he asked the
postman, who assured him it would take him forty weeks--that is, about
ten months.
Little Joe was not cast down. What was time with such an end in view?
Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and this was only forty weeks
for a fiddle!
Joe was diligent every Saturday sweeping the drive. He was ordered
whenever a carriage entered to dive behind the rhododendrons and laurels
and disappear. He was of a too ragged and idiotic appearance to show in
a gentleman's grounds.
Once or twice he encountered the squire and stood quaking, with his
fingers spread out, his mouth and eyes open, and the broom at his feet.
The squire spoke kindly to him, but Joe Gander was too frightened to
reply.
"Poor fellow," said the squire to the gardener. "I suppose it is a
charity to employ him, but I must say I should have preferred someone
else with his wits about him. I will see to having him sent to an asylum
for idiots in which I have some interest. There's no knowing," said the
squire, "no knowing but that with wholesome food, cleanliness, and
kindness his feeble mind may be got to understand that two and two make
four, which I learn he has not yet mastered."
Every Saturday evening Joe Gander brought his sixpence home to his
stepmother. The woman was not so regular in allowing him his penny out.
"Your edication costs such a lot of money," she said.
"Steppy, need I go to school any more?" He never could frame his mouth
to call her mother.
"Of course you must. You haven't passed your standard."
"But I don't think that I ever shall."
"Then," said Mrs. Lambole, "what masses of good food you do eat. You're
perfectly insatiable. You cost us more than it would to keep a cow."
"Oh, steppy, I won't eat so much if I may have my penny!"
"Very well. Eating such a lot does no one good. If you will be content
with one slice of bread for breakfast instead of two, and the same for
supper, you shall have your penny. If you are so very hungry you can
always get a swede or a mangold out of Farmer Eggins's field. Swedes and
mangolds are cooling to the blood and sit light on the stomick," said
Mrs. Lambole.
So the compact was made; but it nearly killed Joe. His cheeks and chest
fell in deeper and deeper, and his stomach protruded more than ever. His
legs seemed hardly able to support him, and his great pale blue
wandering eyes appeared ready to start out of his head like the horns of
a snail. As for his voice, it was thin and toneless, like the notes on
his improvised fiddle, on which he played incessantly.
"The child will always be a discredit to us," said Lambole. "He don't
look like a human child. He don't think and feel like a Christian. The
shovelfuls of dung he might have brought to cover our garden if he had
only given his heart to it!"
"I've heard of changelings," said Mrs. Lambole; "and with this creetur
on our hands I mainly believe the tale. They do say that the pixies
steal away the babies of Christian folk, and put their own bantlings in
their stead. The only way to find out is to heat a poker red-hot and ram
it down the throat of the child; and when you do that the door opens,
and in comes the pixy mother and runs off with her own child, and leaves
your proper babe behind. That's what we ought to ha' done wi' Joe."
"I doubt, wife, the law wouldn't have upheld us," said Lambole,
thrusting hot coals back on to the hearth with his foot.
"I don't suppose it would," said Mrs. Lambole. "And yet we call this a
land of liberty! Law ain't made for the poor, but for the rich."
"It is wickedness," argued the father. "It is just the same with
colts--all wickedness. You must drive it out with the stick."
And now a great temptation fell on little Gander Joe. The squire and his
family were at home, and the daughter of the house, Miss Amory, was
musical. Her mother played on the piano and the young lady on the
violin. The fashion for ladies to play on this instrument had come in,
and Miss Amory had taken lessons from the best masters in town. She
played vastly better than poor Roger Gale, and she played to an
accompaniment.
Sometimes whilst Joe was sweeping he heard the music; then he stole
nearer and nearer to the house, hiding behind rhododendron bushes, and
listening with eyes and mouth and nostrils and ears. The music exercised
on him an irresistible attraction. He forgot his obligation to work; he
forgot the strict orders he had received not to approach the
garden-front of the house. The music acted on him like a spell.
Occasionally he was roused from his dream by the gardener, who boxed his
ears, knocked him over, and bade him get back to his sweeping. Once a
servant came out from Miss Amory to tell the ragged little boy not to
stand in front of the drawing-room window staring in. On another
occasion he was found by Miss Amory crouched behind a rose bush outside
her boudoir, listening whilst she practised.
No one supposed that the music drew him. They thought him a fool, and
that he had the inquisitiveness of the half-witted to peer in at windows
and see the pretty sights within.
He was reprimanded, and threatened with dismissal. The gardener
complained to the lad's father and advised a good hiding, such as Joe
should not forget.
"These sort of chaps," said the gardener, "have no senses like rational
beings, except only the feeling, and you must teach them as you feed the
Polar bears--with the end of a stick."
One day Miss Amory, seeing how thin and hollow-eyed the child was, and
hearing him cough, brought him out a cup of hot coffee and some bread.
He took it without a word, only pulling off his torn straw hat and
throwing it at his feet, exposing the full shock of tow-like hair; then
he stared at her out of his great eyes, speechless.
"Joe," she said, "poor little man, how old are you?"
"Dun'now," he answered.
"Can you read and write?"
"No."
"Nor do sums?"
"No."
"What can you do?"
"Fiddle."
"Have you got a fiddle?"
"Yes."
"I should like to see it, and hear you play."
Next day was Sunday. Little Joe forgot about the day, and forgot that
Miss Amory would probably be in church in the morning. She had asked to
see his fiddle, so in the morning he took it and went down with it to
the park. The church was within the grounds, and he had to pass it. As
he went by he heard the roll of the organ and the strains of the choir.
He stopped to hearken, then went up the steps of the churchyard,
listening. A desire came on him to catch the air on his improvised
violin, and he put it to his shoulder and drew his bow across the
slender cords. The sound was very faint, so faint as to be drowned by
the greater volume of the organ and the choir. Nevertheless he could
hear the feeble tones close to his ear, and his heart danced at the
pleasure of playing to an accompaniment, like Miss Amory. The choir, the
congregation, were singing the Advent hymn to Luther's tune--
"Great God, what do I see and hear?
The end of things created."
Little Joe, playing his inaudible instrument, came creeping up the
avenue, treading on the fallen yellow lime leaves, passing between the
tombstones, drawn on by the solemn, beautiful music. Presently he stood
in the porch, then he went on; he was unconscious of everything but the
music and the joy of playing with it; he walked on softly into the
church without even removing his ragged straw cap, though the squire and
the squire's wife, and the rector and the reverend the Mrs. Rector, and
the parish churchwarden and the rector's churchwarden, and the overseer
and the waywarden, and all the farmers and their wives were present. He
had forgotten about his broken cap in the delight that made the tears
fill his eyes and trickle over his pale cheeks.
Then when with a shock the parson and the churchwardens saw the ragged
urchin coming up the nave fiddling, with his hat on, regardless of the
sacredness of the place, and above all of the sacredness of the presence
of the squire, J.P. and D.L., the rector coughed very loud and looked
hard at his churchwarden, Farmer Eggins, who turned red as the sun in a
November fog, and rose. At the same instant the people's churchwarden
rose, and both advanced upon Joe Gander from opposite sides of the
church.
At the moment that they touched him the organ and the singing ceased;
and it was to Joe a sudden wakening from a golden dream to a black and
raw reality. He looked up with dazed face first at one man, then at the
other: both their faces blazed with equal indignation; both were
equally speechless with wrath. They conducted him, each holding an arm,
out of the porch and down the avenue. Joe heard indistinctly behind him
the droning of the rector's voice continuing the prayers. He looked back
over his shoulder and saw the faces of the school-children straining
after him through the open door from their places near it. On reaching
the steps--there was a flight of five leading to the road--the people's
churchwarden uttered a loud and disgusted "Ugh!" then with his heavy
hand slapped the head of the child towards the parson's churchwarden,
who with his still heavier hand boxed it back again; then the people's
churchwarden gave him a blow which sent him staggering forward, and this
was supplemented by a kick from the parson's churchwarden, which sent
Joe Gander spinning down the five steps at once and cast him prostrate
into the road, where he fell and crushed his extemporised violin.
Then the churchwardens turned, blew their noses, and re-entered the
church, where they sat out the rest of the service, grateful in their
hearts that they had been enabled that day to show that their office was
no sinecure.
The churchwardens were unaware that in banging and kicking the little
boy out of the churchyard and into the road they had flung him so that
he fell with his head upon the curbstone of the footpath, which stone
was of slate, and sharp. They did not find this out through the prayers,
nor through the sermon. But when the whole congregation left the church
they were startled to find little Joe Gander insensible, with his head
cut, and a pool of blood on the footway. The squire was shocked, as were
his wife and daughter, and the churchwardens were in consternation.
Fortunately the squire's stables were near the church, and there was a
running fountain there, so that water was procured, and the child
revived.
Mrs. Amory had in the meantime hastened home and returned with a roll of
diachylon plaster and a pair of small scissors. Strips of the adhesive
plaster were applied to the wound, and the boy was soon sufficiently
recovered to stand on his feet, when the churchwardens very
considerately undertook to march him home. On reaching his cottage the
churchwardens described what had taken place, painting the insult
offered to the worshippers in the most hideous colours, and representing
the accident of the cut as due to the violent resistance offered by the
culprit to their ejectment of him. Then each pressed a half-crown into
the hand of Mr. Lambole and departed to his dinner.
"Now then, young shaver," exclaimed the father, "at your pranks again!
How often have I told you not to go intruding into a place of worship?
Church ain't for such as you. If you had'nt been punished a bit already,
wouldn't I larrup you neither? Oh, no!"
Little Joe's head was bad for some days. His cheeks were flushed and his
eyes bright, and he talked strangely--he who was usually so silent. What
troubled him was the loss of his fiddle; he did not know what had become
of it, whether it had been stolen or confiscated. He asked after it, and
when at last it was produced, smashed to chips, with the strings torn
and hanging loose about it like the cordage of a broken vessel, he cried
bitterly. Miss Amory came to the cottage to see him, and finding father
and stepmother out, went in and pressed five shillings into his hand.
Then he laughed with delight, and clapped his hands, and hid the money
away in his pocket, but he said nothing, and Miss Amory went away
convinced that the child was half a fool. But little Joe had sense in
his head, though his head was different from those of others; he knew
that now he had the money wherewith to buy the beautiful fiddle he had
seen in the shop window many months before, and to get which he had
worked and denied himself food.
When Miss Amory was gone, and his stepmother had not returned, he opened
the door of the cottage and stole out. He was afraid of being seen, so
he crept along in the hedge, and when he thought anyone was coming he
got through a gate or lay down in a ditch, till he was some way on his
road to the town. Then he ran till he was tired. He had a bandage round
his head, and, as his head was hot, he took the rag off, dipped it in
water, and tied it round his head again. Never in his life had his mind
been clearer than it was now, for now he had a distinct purpose, and an
object easily attainable, before him. He held the money in his hand, and
looked at it, and kissed it; then pressed it to his beating heart, then
ran on. He lost breath. He could run no more. He sat down in the hedge
and gasped. The perspiration was streaming off his face. Then he thought
he heard steps coming fast along the road he had run, and as he feared
pursuit, he got up and ran on.
He went through the village four miles from home just as the children
were leaving school, and when they saw him some of the elder cried out
that here was "Gander Joe! quack! quack! Joe the Gander! quack! quack!
quack!" and the little ones joined in the banter. The boy ran on, though
hot and exhausted, and with his head swimming, to escape their
merriment.
He got some way beyond the village when he came to a turnpike. There he
felt dizzy, and he timidly asked if he might have a piece of bread. He
would pay for it if they would change a shilling. The woman at the 'pike
pitied the pale, hollow-eyed child, and questioned him; but her
questions bewildered him, and he feared she would send him home, so that
he either answered nothing, or in a way which made her think him
distraught. She gave him some bread and water, and watched him going on
towards the town till he was out of sight. The day was already
declining; it would be dark by the time he reached the town. But he did
not think of that. He did not consider where he would sleep, whether he
would have strength to return ten miles to his home. He thought only of
the beautiful red violin with the yellow bridge hung in the shop window,
and offered for three shillings and sixpence. Three-and-sixpence! Why,
he had five shillings. He had money to spend on other things beside the
fiddle. He had been sadly disappointed about his savings from the weekly
sixpence. He had asked for them; he had earned them, not by his work
only, but by his abstention from two pieces of bread per diem. When he
asked for the money, his stepmother answered that she had put it away in
the savings bank. If he had it he would waste it on sweetstuff; if it
were hoarded up it would help him on in life when left to shift for
himself; and if he died, why it would go towards his burying.
So the child had been disappointed in his calculations, and had worked
and starved for nothing. Then came Miss Amory with her present, and he
had run away with that, lest his mother should take it from him to put
in the savings bank for setting him up in life or for his burying. What
cared he for either? All his ambition was to have a fiddle, and a fiddle
was to be had for three-and-sixpence.
Joe Gander was tired. He was fain to sit down at intervals on the heaps
of stones by the roadside to rest. His shoes were very poor, with soles
worn through, so that the stones hurt his feet. At this time of the year
the highways were fresh metalled, and as he stumbled over the newly
broken stones they cut his soles and his ankles turned. He was footsore
and weary in body, but his heart never failed him. Before him shone the
red violin with the yellow bridge, and the beautiful bow strung with
shining white hair. When he had that all his weariness would pass as a
dream; he would hunger no more, cry no more, feel no more sickness or
faintness. He would draw the bow over the strings and play with his
fingers on the catgut, and the waves of music would thrill and flow,
and away on those melodious waves his soul would float far from
trouble, far from want, far from tears, into a shining, sunny world of
music.
So he picked himself up when he fell, and staggered to his feet from the
stones on which he rested, and pressed on.
The sun was setting as he entered the town. He went straight to the shop
he so well remembered, and to his inexpressible delight saw still in the
window the coveted violin, price three shillings and sixpence.
Then he timidly entered the shop, and with trembling hand held out the
money.
"What do you want?"
"It," said the boy. It. To him the shop held but one article. The dolls,
the wooden horses, the tin steam-engines, the bats, the kites, were
unconsidered. He had seen and remembered only one thing--the red violin.
"It," said the boy, and pointed.
When little Joe had got the violin he pressed it to his shoulder, and
his heart bounded as though it would have burst the pigeon breast. His
dull eyes lightened, and into his white sunken cheeks shot a hectic
flame. He went forth with his head erect and with firm foot, holding his
fiddle to the shoulder and the bow in hand.
He turned his face homeward. Now he would return to father and
stepmother, to his little bed at the head of the stairs, to his scanty
meals, to the school, to the sweeping of the park drive, and to his
stepmother's scoldings and his father's beatings. He had his fiddle, and
he cared for nothing else.
He waited till he was out of the town before he tried it. Then, when he
was on a lonely part of the road, he seated himself in the hedge, under
a holly tree covered with scarlet berries, and tried his instrument.
Alas! it had hung many years in the shop window, and the catgut was old
and the glue had lost its tenacity. One string started; then when he
tried to screw up a second, it sprang as well, and then the bridge
collapsed and fell. Moreover, the hairs on the bow came out. They were
unresined.
Then little Joe's spirits gave way. He laid the bow and the violin on
his knees and began to cry.
As he cried he heard the sound of approaching wheels and the clatter of
a horse's hoofs.
He heard, but he was immersed in sorrow and did not heed and raise his
head to see who was coming. Had he done so he would have seen nothing,
as his eyes were swimming with tears. Looking out of them he saw only as
one sees who opens his eyes when diving.
"Halloa, young shaver! Dang you! What do you mean giving me such a
cursed hunt after you as this--you as ain't worth the trouble, eh?"
The voice was that of his father, who drew up before him. Mr. Lambole
had made inquiries when it was discovered that Joe was lost, first at
the school, where it was most unlikely he would be found, then at the
public-house, at the gardener's and the gamekeeper's; then he had looked
down the well and then up the chimney. After that he went to the cottage
in the quarry. Roger Gale knew nothing of him. Presently someone coming
from the nearest village mentioned that he had been seen there;
whereupon Lambole borrowed Farmer Eggins's trap and went after him,
peering right and left of the road with his one eye.
Sure enough he had been through the village. He had passed the turnpike.
The woman there described him accurately as "a sort of a tottle" (fool).
Mr. Lambole was not a pleasant-looking man; he was as solidly built as a
navvy. The backs of his hands were hairy, and his fist was so hard, and
his blows so weighty, that for sport he was wont to knock down and kill
at a blow the oxen sent to Butcher Robbins for slaughter, and that he
did with his fist alone, hitting the animal on the head between the
horns, a little forward of the horns. That was a great feat of
strength, and Lambole was proud of it. He had a long back and short
legs. The back was not pliable or bending; it was hard, braced with
sinews tough as hawsers, and supported a pair of shoulders that could
sustain the weight of an ox.
His face was of a coppery colour, caused by exposure to the air and
drinking. His hair was light: that was almost the only feature his son
had derived from him. It was very light, too light for his dark red
face. It grew about his neck and under his chin as a Newgate collar;
there was a great deal of it, and his face, encircled by the pale hair,
looked like an angry moon surrounded by a fog bow.
Mr. Lambole had a queer temper. He bottled up his anger, but when it
blew the cork out it spurted over and splashed all his home; it flew in
the faces and soused everyone who came near him.
Mr. Lambole took his son roughly by the arm and lifted him into the tax
cart. The boy offered no resistance. His spirit was broken, his hopes
extinguished. For months he had yearned for the red fiddle, price
three-and-six, and now that, after great pains and privations, he had
acquired it, the fiddle would not sound.
"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, giving your dear dada such trouble, eh,
Viper?"
Mr. Lambole turned the horse's head homeward. He had his black patch
towards the little Gander, seated in the bottom of the cart, hugging his
wrecked violin. When Mr. Lambole spoke he turned his face round to bring
the active eye to bear on the shrinking, crouching little figure below.
The Viper made no answer, but looked up. Mr. Lambole turned his face
away, and the seeing eye watched the horse's ears, and the black patch
was towards a frightened, piteous, pleading little face, looking up,
with the light of the evening sky irradiating it, showing how wan it
was, how hollow were the cheeks, how sunken the eyes, how sharp the
little pinched nose. The boy put up his arm, that held the bow, and
wiped his eyes with his sleeve. In so doing he poked his father in the
ribs with the end of the bow.
"Now, then!" exclaimed Mr. Lambole with an oath, "what darn'd insolence
be you up to now, Gorilla?"
If he had not held the whip in one hand and the reins in the other he
would have taken the bow from the child and flung it into the road. He
contented himself with rapping Joe's head with the end of the whip.
"What's that you've got there, eh?" he asked.