EVENTS occurred with a rapidity that, in view of their importance, seemed
to Bobbie frankly indecorous. No sooner had he been placed between
parallel iron bars in a police court than he was whisked from the iron
bars, on the direction of a magistrate, who had a kindly manner with
children; after a brief week at the workhouse, looked after by a burly
inmate (known to colleagues by the satirical name of the Slogger), Bobbie
found himself again carried off swiftly to the court, where, when a
number of cases had been heard in which foreign gentlemen and foreign
ladies told everything but the truth, Bobbie was hurried in and directed
to stand by the side of the dock, an order that annoyed him because this
was clearly an attempt to treat him as though he were not a grown up and
a perfect criminal. In the rooms adjoining the court he had seen Bat
Miller, and Bat Miller had had opportunity of mentioning that he was the
only one who would get put away, and that when he came out it would be
his pleasurable duty to see that Mrs. Bat Miller found herself repaid for
all her trouble.
Scarce had the boy taken up an attitude of “don’t care” at the side of
the dock, and scarce had he commenced to prepare a short remark of
defiance for the benefit of Master Ted Sullivan, the shooting youth (whom
he saw at the back of the court), when he found himself hustled out of
the court by the public door; on kicking the gaoler protestingly in
leaving, the gaoler boxed his ears, telling him that he would find
somebody outside to teach him manners. Outside, indeed, was an official
from the workhouse, who re-conducted him to the huge building that threw
out its wings in various directions at the back of Ely Place, and there
they had no sooner arrived than Bobbie, being now the charge and ward of
the guardians, found himself added to a party of children made up of six
boys and seven girls (nearly all of them younger than himself), who were
carried away in charge of the Slogger and a grim, silent comrade of the
Slogger, to a London station that Bobbie knew, there to take train for
the parish schools which Wisdom, looking in some years before at a
meeting of the Guardians, had suggested. All this rapidity of action
made the boy extremely sulky; when the Slogger, in workhouse uniform,
offered him a few choice flowers of advice culled from the spacious
gardens of experience, in the shape of hints on the way of living in the
world at the minimum of labour to yourself and the maximum of expense to
other people, Bobbie growled at the Slogger’s well-meant counsel, and
would have found the journey away into Essex tedious but for the fact
that he heard a woman in the next compartment remark that he possessed a
bright little face. The compliment saved him from depression, and made
him put his cap straight.
Arrived at a country station, the small band of thin-faced children
marched out into the roadway in charge of the two men. One of the
youngest baby girls had just decided the moment to be opportune for
wailing, when they happened on a scene that changed the attitude of
everybody from the Slogger down to the smallest boy in petticoats. The
sight being new to Bobbie, his interest and delight increased
accordingly. The Slogger seemed to have exercised enough energy at some
period of his life to have obtained certain information, and was in
consequence able to give the scene a title.
“A cirkiss!” said the Slogger authoritatively.
A circus it was! Not one of your cheap affairs, mind, of amateur monkeys
and two dogs and a goat, but a real, complete, elaborate, efficient
circus, with just now its best artistes out to give to the town bold
advertisement of its coming performance that afternoon. Four huge
lumbering elephants strode along deliberately, men on their backs
directing them with the touch of a stick; when an elephant lifted its
trunk as though about to play something, the girls in the crowd that
lined the village street shouted, “Oh—ah!” affrightedly, and stepped back
on the toes of people behind them. Came, too, dainty white miniature
horses, decorated with trappings and bells, and led by pages in such
admirable costumes that it seemed almost a pity the wearers had not
bethought themselves of shaving; handsome, proud, capering black horses
ridden by sedate matrons in riding habits, who, being applauded by the
lookers on, bowed graciously and touched their hats with their whips, but
who, on the suggestion being loudly offered by Bobbie (now scarlet with
excitement) that they should turn a somersault, frowned and looked at the
crowd with the air of offended empresses. Piebald ponies, brown ponies,
chestnut ponies and grey ponies, and, when you were tired of ponies, a
gorgeous car with uniformed footmen walking soberly at its side, and high
up in this car a lady with a trident and golden helmet and white robes,
who gazed straight before her and sniffed a little, and once
unfortunately gave a sneeze that sent the golden helmet a little awry,
but who, despite these drawbacks (which, of course, were no reflection on
her moral worth), looked a very fine and dignified figure of a woman.
“Who’s she supposed to be?” asked Bobbie.
“Britannier,” said the Slogger.
“I know what you mean,” said Bobbie.
The small girl who had attempted to cry, and now beamed, asked if the
lady was related to the Britannia, Camden Town, and found herself for her
ignorance derided by the rest of the party.
“Course not, you silly young silly,” replied Bobbie. “Britannia
represents the country, and she’s the kind of mother of us all. Ain’t
she, Slogger?”
“But s’pose you ain’t got a muvver?” said the small girl, thinking she
had detected a flaw in the argument.
“Why, that’s jest where she comes in useful,” declared Bobbie. “Ain’t
it, Slogger?”
“In a manner of speaking,” acknowledged the Slogger, cautiously, “yes.”
The two camels went by awkwardly, and Bobbie told the other children an
amazing anecdote concerning them, invented on the spur of the moment; the
performing dogs passed with ridiculous frills round their necks and an
appealing look in their eyes that begged people not to laugh at them;
more horses, with more haughty ladies; at the end of all the crowd fell
in and followed the procession to the large canvas tent away on a
triangle of spare land. As the party from Hoxton continued their march
along the road to their destination, they seemed altogether different
from those children who had come down. Bobbie sang. When they were
clear of the town, two long pieces of string were seen far away in the
broad dusty road. Coming near, the first piece of string proved to be a
long procession of scarlet Tam o’ Shanter capped girls; the second was
found to be made up of bright round-faced expectant boys in serviceable
suits, chosen in order to evade any appearance of a uniform.
“Stop,” said the Slogger once more, “and watch.”
“Where are they going?” asked Bobbie.
“Why, to the cirkiss,” answered the Slogger. “These are only the best of
’em, though. The others ’ave to stay behind.”
“They’d no business,” said the boy darkly, “to make no distinction.”
“Take off your cap to the ladies in charge.”
“Not me,” said Bobbie.
“Take it off, when I keep telling you,” ordered the Slogger anxiously.
“You’ll only get me and yourself into a row.”
“Only this once, then,” said the boy.
The Tam o’ Shanter capped little women, as they marched by the new
arrivals, seemed much amused at the odd appearance of certain of the new
recruits.
“For two pins,” said Bobbie threateningly, as he noted this attitude,
“I’d punch all their bloomin’ ’eads.”
When the string of boys came the interest appeared more pronounced, and
Bobbie, too, looked anxiously to see the kind of men with whom he would
in future live. He felt bound to confess that they were rather a smart
set of youngsters marching along with a swing; good temper (for which the
afternoon’s treat was partly responsible) written large on everyone’s
face. One boy of the marching detachment, being distant from the two or
three teachers who were in charge, asked the Slogger satirically whether
he would take a bit of slate pencil for the whole fourteen, and the
Slogger having no reply, Bobbie threw a stone that hit the satirical boy
on the leg, causing him to cry “Wah!” The boys having passed, the small
detachment from Hoxton marched on again, and presently they saw away at
the side of the road a long row of red-tiled houses going into fields and
nursery gardens, and giving to the flat country a look of bright
importance. The Slogger spoke.
“There you are,” said the Slogger, pointing. “There’s ’ome sweet ’ome
for all you kiddies.”
The Slogger pulled a bell at the closed gateway, and on the gate opening
obediently, the Slogger, with his silent colleague, entered the covered
passage at the head of the fourteen youngsters. Near the end of the
covered passage, a genial uniformed man met them, and saying, “Hullo!
hullo! hullo!” took from the Slogger a blue form, which appeared to be a
kind of bill of lading, and checked the goods carefully; then a stout
motherly woman bustled out of the house, which was the first, it seemed,
of the many red-tiled houses that strolled away into the meadows, and
asked, “Have you wiped your boots, me dears?” and when they answered in a
shy chorus, “Yus!” bade them wipe them again, a precaution justified in
view of the spotless floors and well-swept passages which they presently
found inside. The Slogger and his colleague had a glass of beer and some
bread and cheese, and then the Slogger said “Good-bye and good luck!” his
silent companion whispered with a mysterious air to Bobbie, “Long live
Enarchy!” and they went.
“And now,” said the uniformed gate-keeper, taking off his jacket, “now to
bath one or two of you biggest boys. S’phia, pick out yours.”
The wife of the uniformed man selected the girls and three of the tiniest
boys, and led them away to a separate bath-room.
“’Alf a sec.,” said Bobbie, protestingly. “I’ve had a good wash once
this week.”
“Once isn’t often,” remarked the uniformed man, opening the door of the
bath-room. “You’ll find that you’ll not only have to wash regular, but
you’ll get a proper bath twice a week, besides learning to swim.”
“It’s carrying a ’obby to an excess,” growled Bobby.
“Go in!” ordered the man. “We’ll see to you first.”
“That be ’anged for a tale,” remarked the boy, doggedly.
For answer, Bobby found himself shot swiftly into the bath-room.
“You begin to argue,” said the man, not unkindly, “and you’ll get into
trouble: you do what you’re told, and you’ll find yourself as right as
rain.”
This was the lesson that Bobbie at first obstinately declined to learn.
The cottage was the probationary cottage where all new comers stayed in
quarantine for fourteen days, with every day a visit from the doctor; the
restraint and the regularity and the cleanliness and the general order of
the place were foes against which Bobbie warred fiercely. He would have
been more antagonistic at this stage, only that the doorkeeper’s wife was
a good, burly soul, with a heart as large as her hand (both were easily
moved), and when one day of the fortnight she saw Bobbie comforting the
small crying girl who had arrived with the detachment, by standing on his
head and clapping his heels to a martial rhythm, in order that the child
might be induced to change tears for laughter, and when on charging
Bobbie with being a good boy to thus divert the weeping young lady, he
furiously denied the imputation, then the good woman determined that
there was good in Bobbie, and rewarded him with a special meat pasty that
the boy could not, in justice to his appetite, refuse. Furtively, too,
he made admirable dolls from young turnips which had been brought in with
others from the large gardens at the back, and had been cast aside; one
of these—a staring damsel, with two peas for eyes, and a broad bean for a
nose—so much endeared itself to the heart of the lachrymose little girl
that, one evening, in an excess of emotion, she ate it, afterwards crying
her little heart out with remorse.
“And now, young Lancaster,” said the doorkeeper, looking in the bathroom
at the end of a fortnight that seemed about two years, “now you’ll on
with your clothes and come along o’ me to Collingwood Cottage.”
“Very near time, too,” said Bobbie, rubbing himself with the towel.
“I’ve had enough of this blooming bath nonsense.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t, my lad.”
“I feel,” grumbled the boy, “as though I never want to wash again.
Where’s my weskit, boss?”
“Where’s your manners?” demanded the doorkeeper sharply.
“I don’t trouble about manners,” said Bobbie; “people ’ave to take me as
they find me. If they don’t like it, they can jolly well lump it.”
“They’ll lump you if you are not careful,” warned the doorkeeper. “Rub
your head again with the towel, and look sharp about it.”
“They’ll look silly if they come interferin’ ’long o’ me,” said Bobbie,
with the towel over his head. “I ain’t like a kid.”
“Yes, you are,” said the man sagely. “Not only have you got a great deal
to learn, but, moreover, you’ve got a great deal to forget. And touching
this bath business, that you seem to kick against so, p’raps you’ll be
interested to hear that in Collingwood you’ll have to wash just as
regular as you’ve washed here, and you’ll get your two baths a week
without fail.”
“Go on!” said the boy, uneasily.
“I’m telling you the truth, my lad. Your foster-parents ’ll see to that.
Your new father works in the carpenter’s shop, and he’s what you may call
a hard man.”
“If he comes the hard business with me,” muttered the boy, truculently,
“I’ll dam well show him.”
He was presently, after a kiss from the wife, which he received
shamefacedly, conducted out into the broad, gravelled roadway dividing
the two rows of red-roofed cottages; stop made at a clematis-covered
house which bore its title over the doorway. There his new foster-mother
appeared and eyed him critically, looked with great care at his head and
eyes, and the hour being in school-time and the cottage therefore without
family, she took him over the rooms, showing him with pride the prints
from Christmas numbers on the walls, the white-floored, white-tabled
dining-room, the comfortable sitting-room with its illustrated weekly
papers, and the kitchen and scullery, where everything shone so that
mirrors would have been a superfluity; afterwards up the broad staircase
to the dormitories, each with seven red-counterpaned beds, and a floor
that gave promise of some day disappearing entirely under the attacks of
scrubbing from two long boys on their knees.
“And some day,” said the foster-mother, generously, “if you grow up a
good boy and become a half-timer, you shall be one of the two lads to
stay at home and help me with the ’ouse work.”
“No great catch,” remarked Bobbie, grimly.
“Ah!” said the foster-mother, “you think so now; but you wait.”
“It’s gels’ work, not men’s.”
“We don’t ’ave girls in Collingwood,” said his foster-mother.
“Good job too.”
“And so I expect my boys to give me all the help about the house that
they can, you see. They’ll be back from school and the workshops
presently, and then you’ll meet ’em all.”
“That’ll be a treat,” said the boy, satirically. “What’s your name?”
“You’ll call me ‘mother,’ and you’ll call my ’usband ’father.’”
“Got some brawsted silly notions down ’ere,” he said.
“Use a word like that again, my boy,” said his foster-mother, with
severity, “and you’ll ’ave rice instead of meat for dinner.”
“Like what?” asked the boy, astonished. The foster-mother spelt the
word. “Not say brawsted,” echoed Bobbie, amazedly. “Why, what can you
say?”
Limitations of speech afflicted Bobbie sorely when the thirty boys
trooped into Collingwood from school and from work, jostling him as they
took their places at the dinner-table. He had become so accustomed to
the use of expressive words, here tabooed, that it was not easy for him
to find effective substitutes. The boys aggravated him, too, by the
excellence of their spirits; to look at them and to hear them talk, one
would imagine this to be the brightest and cheeriest spot on earth;
Bobbie made up his mind to correct this want of balance by surly and
(when opportunity should offer) aggressive behaviour. He sat at the
table gloomily, and when the foster-father, who brought to the
dining-room a scent of shavings, rallied him, making a mild joke upon his
Christian name (affecting to mistake Bobbie for a City policeman), the
boy declined to join in the laugh, and scowled persistently.
Later, at the large school-house over the way, he found himself exposed
to another ordeal, one that he decided in his small brain to be nothing
more nor less than a studied insult, and this was an examination in
spelling, reading, and arithmetic, from which he emerged with a
self-abasement equalled by indignation against the young assistant
teacher who had had to put questions to him. Thanks to the care that he
had always taken to evade education offered by the State, he found
himself placed in a class at the end of the large school-room amongst
boys who were all some years his junior; found himself, too, failing to
jump difficulties which they cleared with comparative ease, and becoming
in consequence the recipient of much satire. After a few weeks of
consideration, he decided one morning, as he put his head under the
shower-tap in the washing-room at Collingwood—he had begun to conquer his
disinclination for cleanliness—that he would show everybody he was not of
the stuff that butts were made; that he would apply himself seriously to
the acquirement of knowledge. This fact being made apparent, the young
assistant found another target for his shafts of satire, and when one
afternoon the question of 7 times 7 minus 9 was put to Bobbie, and the
class prepared to be exceedingly diverted at Bobbie’s answer and was so
diverted, not recognizing the fact that his answer proved absolutely
correct, then the class had to be admonished for inappropriate hilarity,
in terms that made Bobbie’s little head swell with content. Being
advanced to the next of the three classes in the large school-room, he
had maps to wrestle with, and felt for a time a grievance against his
country because it had possessions in so many quarters of the globe.
Late afternoon brought relief in the shape of drill on the large square
space at the end of all the cottages and near to meadows; drill conducted
by an upright ex-army man in braided uniform, who doubled the parts of a
stern disciplinarian of a drill-master, and a genial distributor of goods
as a storekeeper. On parade the drill-master was like a
commander-in-chief (but less hampered than that official by Secretaries
of State for War and people); there came exercise with Indian clubs to
the music of a band of boys in uniform of blue with scarlet facings, so
that at a distance you might think they belonged to the service, and who
were sometimes so proud of their ability that they could scarcely play
the brass instruments; real military drill with small wooden rifles, and
once the awkwardness of the first few drillings passed, and once you
became used to the drillmaster’s voice, it was capital sport, because you
had only to give imagination rein and you were a grown-up lifeguardsman
with an admirable chest, chin well up, six feet two inches in your boots,
and all the ladies who lived downstairs in West End houses hard at work
worshipping you. Later, at five o’clock (the time being late autumn),
you met the drill-sergeant again in the gymnasium, which was the swimming
bath boarded over, and there you had the rarest games with parallel bars
and the vaulting horse and horizontal bars, and goodness alone knew what.
When all this had gone on for a few months Bobbie found to his great
satisfaction that in stretching out his right arm and then bringing his
fist back towards the shoulder there appeared above the elbow a distinct,
palpable, unmistakable, not to be denied, sign of thick muscle. Saying
his prayers that night on the reminder of the monitor of his room, he
omitted the formula that he had been obliged to learn, and substituted
special thanks for this development, asking that he might become a strong
man, so that he could knock anybody down whenever that act should appear
appropriate and desirable.
Thus Robert Lancaster grew.