ROSES at Collingwood upon his return; and thorns. Thorns supplied, not
by the foster-father or the foster-mother, but by the boys, who, once
they had extracted full particulars of Bobbie’s adventure, made from
these facts ammunition for gay badinage that, well aimed, gave them great
content. In school, the game was played furtively. A slip of paper
would be passed along the forms of the fourth standard class bearing the
inquiry of a seeker after knowledge, “Who pinched the cornet?” this would
be varied by rough sketches executed by Master Nutler of a lad running,
with the words underneath, “Hold him!” When Bobbie strolled out of
school at dinner time there would come an affected cry of alarm, “He’s
off again!” Robert Lancaster took all of this with stolidity and in a
manner differing from that which he would have exhibited a month
previously. It seemed that the failure of his expedition had tamed him;
certainly his stay in the hospital and at the convalescent home had given
him reticence. He applied himself to his lessons. After a few weeks the
other boys declined to be led any longer by Master Nutler, because there
seemed little sport in rallying a man who showed no signs of annoyance,
and Bobbie Lancaster presently found—excepting for an occasional
reminder—that the Brenchley escapade had gone out of memory. Miss Nutler
on one of the rare occasions when they met, expressed her regret at the
consequences of their disagreement, hinting that, so far as she was
concerned, the past could be shut out from memory.
“It was my eldest brother put me up to it,” said Miss Nutler
apologetically. “You know what a one he is.”
“I do,” remarked Master Lancaster.
“I should never ’ave thought of it if it hadn’t been for him,” declared
Miss Nutler. “A better hearted girl than me you wouldn’t find in a day’s
march.”
“Dessay!”
“In fact,” went on the young person, waxing enthusiastic, “I’m too
good-hearted for this world. I’m a fool to meself. And that’s why I
gave way when he told me to pretend you’d hurt me. See?”
“I see.”
“And so long as you say there’s no ill-will and so long as you agree to
forgive and forget, so to speak, why there’s no reason, as you remarked
just now, why we shouldn’t be capital friends.”
“I never said no such thing,” said the boy.
“Didn’t you?” said Miss Nutler wonderingly. “Words to that effect,
then.”
“No! Not words to that effect, neither.”
“You’re back in the band, aren’t you?”
“I am back in the band.”
“All the girls in our cottage rave about your cornet playing.”
“Straight?” He could not help smiling at this generous compliment.
“As if I should tell a lie,” said Miss Nutler. “Why, they’re always
talking about you. How you’ve growed and how you’ve improved in your
manner and—there! I tell you. I get quite jealous sometimes.”
“What call have you to be jealous?”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said the young woman self-reproachfully. “Now I’ve
been and let the cat out of the bag. That’s me all the world over. I
never meant you to see that I was—hem—fond of you.”
“Put all ideas of that out of your red young crumpet,” he advised
steadily, “as soon as ever you like.”
“Is there somebody else?” asked Miss Nutler, flushing.
“Since you ask the question—yes.”
“Does she live ’ere at the Homes?”
“She does not live ’ere at the Homes.”
“If she did,” said Miss Nutler fiercely, “I’d pay her out, the cat. And
you’re a double-faced boy, you are. I wouldn’t be seen talking to you
for fifty thousand pounds.”
“I guessed that was the amount.”
Miss Nutler walked off aflame with annoyance, turning as she reached the
gate and making a face not pretty, in order that Bobbie might understand
the true state of her feelings. That evening one of the Nutler family
handed Bobbie a note on which was written, “Dear sir, referring to our
meeting, I beg to inform you that all is over between us. Yours
obed’tly, Louisa Nutler.—P.S. A reply by bearer will oblige.” Bobbie
tore the note into many pieces, threw them over the messenger, and going
indoors penned a careful note to Mrs. Bell, of Pimlico Walk. This
contained an account of his progress; contained also five words, “Give my
love to Trixie,” which note, reaching the Walk the next morning, made so
much sunshine for the industrious young lady that she proceeded to scrub
the stairs from top to basement in order to prevent herself from becoming
light-headed.
There was indeed progress to report. The Fourth Standard being carried
by assault, his brain had now to wrestle in the large schoolroom with
dogged enemies of youth.
By the help of an assistant master, whose stock of enthusiasm had not
been quite exhausted by lads of the Nutler brand, Bobbie showed excellent
fight, and if it sometimes happened that he was worsted, the defeats were
but temporary. Winter came, and with it football matches. An eminent
three-quarter (who was also a trombone) having retired from the team
during the off season in order to take up duties at Kneller Hall, Bobbie,
in games with private schools, found himself selected for the position.
The drill-sergeant took interest in the lad, and on the boarded-over
swimming-bath, instructed him carefully at five o’clock each evening in
the art of vaulting. All this helped to make a solid youth of Robert
Lancaster, and he found himself wishful for manhood.
The Sister at the infirmary beyond the western gates, having to take a
month’s holiday, a friend of hers came to act as substitute, and this
friend proving to be Sister Margaret, Bobbie found an additional
incentive for correct behaviour because Sister Margaret, when going down
at any time the broad gravelled road between the cottages, always
selected him for one of her cheerful bows, causing Bobbie’s cap to fly
off in acknowledgment and making him flush with gratification. Sister
Margaret told him that Myddleton West had gone to Ireland for one of the
daily journals, and together they read his letters in that journal. It
seemed clear that Sister Margaret continued to have no objection to
talking about Myddleton West, for she made the boy describe several times
over the morning when he had called at his rooms in Fetter Lane; at each
repetition Bobbie managed to find (or to invent) some additional incident
that made the young woman’s bright eyes become brighter with interest.
When the regular Sister returned, Sister Margaret had to leave, and
Bobbie walked with her to the station to carry her portmanteau, giving
much good advice on the way with view of doing a good turn for his
friend. Apparently his arguments made some impression on Sister
Margaret, for when, as the train went off, he shouted, “Give my kind
respects to him, Miss, when you write. And tell him he ain’t forgotten,”
it looked as though the young woman’s bright eyes became suddenly wet.
The seasons passed. The fourteenth birthday came so near that it was
quite possible to reckon the interval by number of days. For some months
Robert Lancaster had been a half-timer; he desired now to say good-bye
definitely to school, and to go into the workshops, because this would be
a conspicuous milestone marking his journey. The Coastguard and the
Coastguard’s daughter, and the long Customs’ officer came to see him on
one of the later days, and he showed them with pride the tailor’s shop,
the bootmaker’s shop, the carpenter’s shop, and the engineer’s shop, and
Coastguard and himself (whilst the tall daughter went with the
representative of her Majesty’s Customs to take tea at the hotel opposite
the gates) talked over questions of trades, and their various advantages.
They weighed them separately; when the young couple returned, Coastguard
with a look of wisdom that judges of Appeal try to assume and cannot,
delivered his decision. Bobbie, interested in this, saw the long
Customs’ officer snatch a kiss from Coastguard’s daughter with no feeling
of jealousy, and, indeed, with diversion.
“Nothing like helping yourself,” remarked Bobbie, amused.
“Do give over, John,” said Coastguard’s daughter reprovingly. “You never
know when to stop.”
“These youngsters,” said Bobbie to Coastguard paternally, “they will
carry on, won’t they? Same now as it was in our young day.”
“Dang the boy’s eyes,” said Coastguard, “if he don’t notice everything.”
“It makes anyone,” said Bobbie, “when you see a couple young enough to
know better a kissin’ each other.”
“You’re supposed not to notice such things at your age,” said the angel
reprovingly.
“Ah,” said the boy, acutely, “supposed not.”
“Reckon you’ll be the next one we shall hear of getting engaged.”
“Many a true word spoke in jest,” said the boy. “And you think,” turning
with seriousness to the Coastguard, “you think I can’t do better than go
in for learning that?”
“Sure of it, my boy.”
Therefore to the engineer’s shop went Bobbie, because the Coastguard had
pointed out to him that some of the knowledge to be gained there could
not fail some day to be valuable. Not that he intended to become an
engineer. Decision as to his first occupation on leaving the Home had
already been taken, being preserved as a secret which he proposed not to
disclose until the appropriate moment came. At the tables in the
engineer’s shop he worked, and learned under direction, after some
failures, how to use a lathe without pinching his fingers. The lads
worked in extra garments of aprons and paper caps; their task made them
so grimy that they felt sure no one could tell them from adults; the wash
that came after a day in the workshop seemed to put them back ten years.
An increased feeling of maturity came to Bobbie when, on being selected
to play “The Lost Chord,” as a cornet solo at a concert in the
neighbourhood which the Home’s band attended, a local paper called him by
a fascinating misprint Mister Robert Lancaster, intending to say Master,
but allowing the i’s to have it. He walked rigidly upright for several
weeks after this and spoke to no boy under the age of thirteen.
“You fancy yourself,” remarked sarcastically the boys whom he ignored.
“I do,” he replied, frankly.
It became his keen endeavour at this period to reach at least four feet
six in height. He had special reasons for this ambition, and days
occurred when, in his impatience, he measured himself three times during
the twenty-four hours. The last inch seemed as though it would never
arrive; other lads in the engineer’s shop, to encourage him, expressed
the cheerful opinion that he had stopped growing. Finding in a newspaper
an advertisement specially addressed “To the Short,” he wrote privately
to Trixie Bell to obtain for him the golden remedy that the advertisers
promised to send on receipt of two shillings and ninepence, and when
Trixie, glad of an opportunity for being useful, obeyed, sending him the
result as a birthday present, “With kind regards,” Bobbie found that the
remedy was but a pair of thick list soles to be worn inside the boots; he
perceived hopelessly that nothing could be done to encourage Nature. The
last pencil mark on the wall of his dormitory denoting his height
remained as a record for months; depression enveloped him when he gazed
at it. But there came a spring season when he found to his intense
delight that he had, within a brief period, not only shot up to the
necessary inches, but just beyond them, and the mother of Collingwood
Cottage had to lengthen the arms of his jackets and the legs of his
trousers. On being measured anew in the tailor’s shop, he laughed with
sheer delight.
The day of all days came.
“Father wants to see you, Lancaster,” announced one of the other lads.
“What’s up?”
“Committee day,” said the other lad.
Robert Lancaster ran off to find the Collingwood father, and came up to
him breathless. The Collingwood father was a serious man, made more
serious by his family of other people’s children; his face took now an
aspect of importance, and he laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder.
“Time’s come,” he said.
“Three cheers,” said Bobbie.
“Keep cool, my lad.”
“I am cool,” said Bobbie, trembling with eagerness.
“Don’t forget that the gentlemen, what you are going now to have an
interview with, represent so to speak your benefactors what have looked
after you and clothed you and fed you and generally speaking kept you
flourishing.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You’ll go before the Committee,” said the father of Collingwood Cottage,
solemnly, “and what I want to impress upon you, my boy, is the necessity
of putting on your very best manners. A little bad behaviour on your
part will go a long way.”
“I’ll watch out, father.”
“You can’t be too civil,” urged the father of Collingwood, anxiously. “I
tell you that, Bobbie, because, naturally, you ain’t what I call the
humblest chap going, and if you want these nobs to agree to what you
want, you must show ’em any amount of what I may venture to call
deference.”
“I’ll lick all the bloomin’ blackin’ off their bloomin’ boots,” promised
Bobbie.
“Give your ’ands another wash,” recommended the father, “and then go up.”
The Superintendent stood at the side of the table; seated there were
half-a-dozen men who looked like, and indeed were, retired tradesmen. In
one of them the lad recognized the carpenter (now in white waistcoat and
with other signs of prosperity) who had been on the jury which had
investigated, years ago, the death of his mother. A cheery red-faced man
sat in the large arm-chair.
“Robert Lancaster, gentlemen, fourteen years of age and a good lad with a
fairly good record, has passed the Fourth Standard, and is one of the
best of our bandsmen.”
“Now, my lad!” The jovial-looking chairman pointed the ruler at him.
“What would you like to be? We’ve fed you and educated you and brought
you up, and we don’t want to see all the trouble wasted.”
“Moreover,” said the carpenter, as Bobbie prepared to speak, “it’s a
question on which, by rights, you ought to take our advice. We’re men of
the world, and as such we know what’s good for you a jolly sight better
than you do. My argument has always been that pauper children—”
The chairman coughed.
“Or whatever you like to call ’em ought not to be allowed to pick and
choose. It pampers ’em,” said the carpenter, gloomily, sending his
penholder, nib downwards, into the table, “I don’t care what you say; it
pampers ’em.”
“I should like, sir, please,” said Bobbie, “to—”
“Choose a honest trade,” suggested the carpenter.
“Let the boy speak,” urged one of the other members.
“I should like to be a sailor,” said the lad.
“Ah!” said the carpenter, triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”
“Our band boys don’t often go into the navy,” said the Superintendent.
“Most of them go in for the other branch of the service.”
“Jolly good thing,” said the gloomy carpenter, with his fingers in the
pockets of his white waistcoat, “if all your armies and all your navies
was done away with and abolished.”
“Talk sense!” advised his neighbour.
“What are they,” asked the carpenter, “but a tax on the respectable
tradesmen of this country? What good are they? What do they do? That’s
what I want to know.” He looked round at his colleagues with the
confident air of one propounding a riddle of which none knew the answer.
“Will someone kindly tell me what good the navy does? What benefit does
it do me or any of us seated at this table? If all our ships was to
disappear this very morning before twelve o’clock struck, should I be any
the worse off?”
“Why, you silly old silly,” broke in the lad on the other side of the
table, impetuously, “if that was to ’appen some foreign power would be
down on us before you could wink, and you’d find yourself—”
“Silence!” ordered the Superintendent.
“Find yourself,” persisted Bobbie, “turned into a bloomin’ Russian very
like, and sent to Siberia.”
“You have your answer,” remarked the chairman, jovially.
“Kids’ talk,” growled the carpenter.
“Why,” declared Bobbie, “it’s the only protection you’ve got to enable
you to carry on your business peaceably and successfully, and without
interference.”
“I never felt the want of no navy in carryin’ on my business in
Shoreditch.”
“Course you didn’t,” said Bobbie. “But if there hadn’t been a navy you
would.”
It was all very irregular; the Superintendent felt this, but the members
of the committee showed so much gratification in seeing their colleague
routed that it scarce seemed right for him to interfere. The chairman
rapped gently on the table as a mild reminder that order appeared to be
temporarily absent.
“Fact of it is,” said the carpenter, resentfully, “you youngsters get so
pampered—”
“Come, come!” said the chairman, “let us get along. You think you’ll
like the navy, my lad?”
“Sure of it, sir.”
“It’s a hard life, mind you. Especially at first.”
“Shan’t mind that, sir.”
“You’ll undergo pretty severe preparation; we shall have to find out from
the doctor whether you can stand it or not. Her Majesty doesn’t want
half and half sort of lads in her navy.”
“I think I shall be all right, sir. I’ve improved wonderful in the years
I’ve been here.”
“Made a man of you, have we?”
“You have that, sir,” said Bobbie.
“Well, then—”
“Something was said,” interrupted the carpenter, still smarting, “about
this lad having a fairly good record. I should like to be kindly
informed what his record actually is. If there’s anything against him
it’s only right and fair and honest and just that we should know about it
now.”
The Superintendent explained, and Robert Lancaster went white at the lips
as he heard the account—by no means a harsh account—of his escape from
the Homes.
“Since which time,” added the Superintendent, “his conduct has been most
exemplary.”
“Thank you, sir,” burst out the lad.
“And this is the lad,” argued the carpenter, “that you’re going to spend
more of the ratepayers’ money on. This is the lad that’s cost us a
matter of thirty pound a year for the last four years, and now we’re
going to send him off to a training ship, where he’ll cost us a matter of
thirty-two pound a year. Is that so, or is it not so?”
“It is so,” said the chairman.
“It’s enough,” declared the retired carpenter, gloomily, “to make a man
give up public life altogether. What was he when we begun to have to do
with him? Answer me, somebody.”
The Superintendent asked if the information was really necessary.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Robert Lancaster, from the other side of the
table. “I can give the information what’s required. I was left without
parents, I was, and I become the ’sociate of bad characters. My coming
down ’ere put me on the straight, and I tell you I ain’t particular
anxious to get off of it.”
“My lad!” said the jovial chairman, “we’ll see that you don’t. You’ll
have a couple of years on the training ship, and when you leave there I
hope you’ll make up your mind to be a credit to your parish, to your
country, and your Queen.”
“Hooray!” said Robert Lancaster, softly.
“And we shall look to you to see that all this money which has been spent
on you is not wasted. We shall expect you to become a good citizen, one
who will help in some small way to improve the estimate in which his
great country is held.”
“Bah!” said the carpenter. But the other members of the committee said,
“Hear, hear.”
“Come back and see the Homes when you get an opportunity,” said the
jovial chairman, a little moved by his own eloquence; “remember that we
shall watch your career with interest and—God bless you!”
The chairman leaned across the table and shook hands with Robert. The
lad bowed awkwardly to the other members of the committee, and would have
spoken, but something in his throat prevented him. He punched at his
cap, and on a signal from the Superintendent went out at the doorway.
“Pampering of ’em,” said the retired carpenter, darkly, “pampering of ’em
as fast as ever you can.”