TINTACKS IN BRIGHAM
On a wet and gusty afternoon in the month of March, 1882, Bram Fuller,
now a stripling of sixteen, sat in one of the dingiest rooms of that
great gloomy house his grandfather had begun to build forty years
before. It looked less stark, now that the evergreen trees had grown
large enough to hide some of its grey rectangularity; but it did not
look any more cheerful in consequence. In some ways it had seemed less
ugly at first, when it stood on top of the mean little hill and was
swept clean by the Cheshire winds. Now its stucco was stained with
great green fronds and arabesques of damp caused by the drip of the
trees and the too close shrubberies of lanky privet and laurel that
sheltered its base. Old Mr. Fuller and his son were both under the
mistaken impression that the trees planted round Lebanon House—thus
had the house been named—were cedars. Whereas there was not even so
much as a deodar among the crowd of starveling pines and swollen
cryptomerias. Noah’s original ark perched on the summit of Ararat amid
the surrounding waters probably looked a holier abode than Lebanon
House above the sea of Brigham roofs.
The town had grown considerably during half a century, and old Mr.
Fuller had long ago leased the derelict pastures, in which his cows
had tried to eke out a wretched sustenance on chickweed and sour dock,
to accommodate the enterprising builder of rows of little two-storied
houses, the colour of underdone steak. The slopes of the hill on
which the house stood had once been covered with fruit-trees, but the
poisoning of the air by the various chemical factories, which had
increased in number every year, had long made them barren. Joshua had
strongly advised his father to present the useless slopes to Brigham as
a public recreation ground. It was to have been a good advertisement
both for the fireworks and for the civic spirit that was being fostered
by the Peculiar Children of God. As a matter of fact, Joshua himself
had some time ago made up his mind to join the Church of England as
soon as his father died. He was beginning to think that the Bethesda
Tabernacle was not sufficiently up-to-date as a spiritual centre for
Fuller’s Fireworks, and he was more concerned for the civic impression
than the religious importance of the gift. On this March afternoon,
however, the slopes of Lebanon were still a private domain, for old Mr.
Fuller could never bring himself to give away nine or ten acres of land
for nothing. He was much too old to represent Brigham in Parliament
himself, and it never struck him that Joshua might like to do so.
So, Bram Fuller was able to gaze out of the schoolroom window, to
where, beyond the drenched evergreens hustling one another in the
wind, the drive ran down into Brigham between moribund or skeleton
apple-trees fenced in on either side by those raspberry-tipped
iron railings that his grandfather had bought so cheaply when the
chock-a-block parish churchyard was abolished and an invitingly empty
cemetery was set apart on the other side of the town for the coming
generations of Brigham dead. Bram was still a day-boy at the grammar
school, and as this afternoon was the first half-holiday of the month
he was being allowed to have a friend to tea. Jack Fleming was late,
though. There was no sign of him yet coming up the slope through the
wind and wet. Bram hoped that nothing had happened to keep him at home.
He was so seldom allowed to entertain friends that Jack’s failure
to appear would have been an overwhelming disappointment. He looked
round the schoolroom dejectedly. Never had it seemed so dingy and
comfortless. Never had that outline portrait of Queen Victoria, filled
in not with the substance of her regal form, but with an account
of her life printed in minute type, seemed such a futile piece of
ingenuity; never had the oilcloth seemed infested with so many crumbs,
nor the table-cloth such a kaleidoscope of jammy stains.
Old Mrs. Fuller had been right when she recognised in the baby Bram her
own race. She and he had their way, and Abraham was never heard now
except in the mouth of the grandfather. Yes, he was almost a perfect
Oriano, having inherited nothing from his father, and from his mother
only her pleasant voice. He was slim, with a clear-cut profile and fine
dark hair; had one observed him idling gracefully on a sun-splashed
_piazza_, he would have appeared more appropriate to the setting
than to any setting that Brigham could provide. He was a popular and
attractive youth with a talent for mimicry, and a gay and fluent wit.
His young brother, who fortunately for the enjoyment of Bram and his
friend had been invited forth himself this afternoon, was a perfect
Fuller save that he had inherited from his mother a fresh complexion
which at present only accentuated his plumpness. All the Fuller
characteristics were there—the greedy grey eyes, the podgy white hands,
the fat rump and spindle legs, the full wet lips and slimy manner.
To all this young Caleb could add his own smile of innocent candour
when it suited his purpose to produce it. At school he was notorious
as a toady and a sneak, but he earned a tribute of respect from the
sons of a commercial community by his capacity for swopping to his own
advantage and by his never failing stock of small change, which he was
always willing to lend at exorbitant interest on good security. Bram
was badly in debt to his young brother at the present moment, and this
added something to the depression of the black March afternoon, though
that was lightened at last by the tardy arrival of his expected friend
with the news that Blundell’s Diorama had arrived in Brigham and would
exhibit itself at seven o’clock.
“We must jolly well go, Bramble,” Jack declared.
Bram shook his head despondently.
“No chink!”
“Can’t you borrow some from young Caleb?”
“I owe him two and threepence halfpenny already, and he’s got my best
whalebone-splice bat as a security till I pay him back.”
“Good Lord, and I’ve only got sixpence,” Jack Fleming groaned.
“Anyway, it’s no use,” Bram went on. “The governor wouldn’t let me go
into Brigham on a Saturday night.”
“Can’t you find some excuse?”
Bram pondered for a few seconds.
“I might get my grandmater to help.”
“Well, buck up, Bramble. It’s a spiffing show, I hear. They’ve got two
girls with Italian names who play the guitar or something. We don’t
often get a chance of a decent evening in Brigham.”
“You’re right, Jack. All serene! Then I’ll have a try with the
grandmater. She’s such an old fizzer that she might manage it.”
Bram went up cautiously to old Mrs. Fuller’s room. She was seventy now,
but still able to hate fiercely her octogenarian husband who was for
ever browsing among dusty commentaries on the Old Testament nowadays,
and extracting from the tortuous fretwork of bookworms such indications
of the Divine purpose as the exact date and hour of the Day of
Judgment. He was usually clad in a moth-eaten velveteen dressing-gown
and a smoking cap of quilted black silk with a draggled crimson tassel.
The latter must have been worn as a protection to his bald and scaly
head, because not a puff of tobacco smoke had ever been allowed to
contend with the odour of stale food that permeated Lebanon House from
cellar to garret.
The old lady was sitting by the fire in her rococo parlour, reading
Alphonse Daudet’s new book. Her hawk’s face seemed to be not so much
wrinkled as finely cracked like old ivory. Over her shoulders she wore
a wrap of rose and silver brocade.
“Why, Bram, I thought you were entertaining visitors this afternoon.”
“I am. He’s downstairs in the schoolroom. Jack Fleming, I mean.”
“Is that a son of that foxy-faced solicitor in High Street?”
Bram nodded.
“But Jack’s rather decent. I think you’d like him, grandmamma.”
“Ah, I’m too old to begin liking new people.”
Bram kicked his legs together, trying to make up his mind what line to
adopt for enlisting the old lady’s sympathy.
“Blundell’s Diorama is here,” he announced at last.
“What’s that? A new disease?”
The boy laughed.
“It does sound rather like a disease, doesn’t it? No, it’s the same
sort of thing as Poole’s Myriorama.”
“I’m no wiser.”
“Well, it’s a set of large coloured pictures of places in foreign
parts. And there are some singers with guitars. Italian perhaps.” Ah,
cunning Bram!
“Italian, eh? And you want to gaze into their liquid and passionate
orbs, eh?”
“I would rather like to—only as a matter of fact I haven’t got any
chink. Caleb lent me some, but he won’t lend me any more till I pay him
back. I’ve had to give him my best bat till I do.”
“How much do you owe the little alligator?”
“Two and threepence halfpenny, and sixpence interest up to date, and
twopence for the linseed oil for oiling the bat, because he said
he’d have to keep it in good condition during the winter. Two and
elevenpence halfpenny altogether.”
Mrs. Fuller grunted.
“And anyway papa won’t let me go down into Brigham unless I can get a
good excuse.”
“And so you want an excuse from me? _Ho capito._ Well, Bram, it’s a
strange thing, but my rheumatism has suddenly become very bad and I’d
be much obliged if you’d go down into Brigham and buy me a bottle
of embrocation. Here’s five shillings. I don’t want the change. St.
Jumbo’s Oil is the name of the embrocation. It’ll probably take you all
the evening to find it, and if you don’t find it I shan’t really mind,
because my rheumatism is bound to be much better by the time you come
back.”
“I say, grandmamma, you are ... you are....”
But Bram could not find any word to describe her suitably without
blushing too deeply to attempt it.
Blundell’s Diorama which filled the Brigham Corn Exchange (not much
corn was sold there by this date) was an entertainment at which the
least sophisticated would scoff in these cinematographic days. It
consisted of a series of crude and highly coloured views of the world’s
beauty spots treated in the panoramic manner of the drop-curtain. The
lighting was achieved by gas footlights and floats with occasional
assistance from amber, green, and crimson limes. Mr. Blundell himself,
a gentleman with a moustache like an Aintree hurdle, and dressed in a
costume that was something between a toreador’s, a cowboy’s, and an
operatic brigand’s, stood in front to point out with a stock-rider’s
whip the chief objects of interest in each picture that was unrolled
for an absorbed audience.
“This scene to which I now have the pleasure of inviting your earnest
attention represents the world-famous Bay of Naples. ‘Veedy Napowly
ee poy morry,’ as Dante said. Dante, I may remind you was the Italian
equivalent of our own William Shakespeare, the world-famous dramatic
genius at whose house in Stratford-on-Avon we have already taken a
little peep this evening. Yes, ‘See Naples and die,’ said the Italian
poet. In other words, ‘Don’t waste your time over sprats when there’s
whales to be caught.’ The world-famous fir-tree, on the extreme right
of the picture as I stand, is reputed to be two thousand years old,
and under its hoary branches it is said that the Emperor Nero held
many of his most degraded orgies, which I shall not sully your eyes by
exhibiting at an entertainment to which I flatter myself the youngest
infant in Brigham can come without a blush. The waters of the Bay of
Naples as you will note are always blue, and the inhabitants of the gay
city are renowned for macaroni and musical abilities. With your kind
permission the Sisters Garibaldi will now give you a slight impression
of the atmosphere of Beller Napowly as it is affectionately called.”
Two young women dressed in ribbons and sequins immediately pranced on
to sing _Santa Lucia_, while the lecturer beat time with his stockwhip,
rolling occasionally a sentimental eye at the audience. When the music
was over, he invited their attention to various architectural features
in the landscape, and then, assuming a tragic profundity of tone, he
continued:
“Hitherto all has been fair, but the words ‘See Naples and die’ have
sometimes been fraught with a much deeper significance. On the extreme
left as I stand you will observe towering above the unconscious city
the mighty peak of Vesuvius, the world-famous volcano which from time
to time commits the most horrible eruptions and threatens to overwhelm
with boiling lava the gay city at its base. With your kind permission I
shall now have the pleasure of giving you a realistic representation of
the city of pleasure when threatened by one of the burning mountain’s
all too frequent outbursts.”
He signalled with his whip to the limelight man at the back of the
hall. Whereupon after a loud preliminary fizzing a crimson glow
suffused the whole picture, while the orchestra, consisting of a piano,
a flageolet, and a double-bass, played the “Dead March” from _Saul_.
“Our next picture shows you the world-famous Alhambra of Granada by
moonlight....”
No tragedy here, but a transparency moon and a _pas de deux_ by the
Sisters Garibaldi accompanied by castanets, which on the authority
of Mr. Blundell was a lifelike rendering of the world-famous Spanish
fandango....
When the performance was over, Bram emerged from his circumgyration
of the illustrated world feeling that something must be done about
Brigham. After the sequins and ribbons and cobalt seas, after
bullfights and earthquakes, juggernauts, pagodas, and palms, Brigham
in the wind and wet of a Saturday night in March was not to be
endured without some kind of protest. To go meekly back to Lebanon
House and a long jobation from his father on the sin of attending
a public performance in which female dancers actively participated
was unimaginable in this elated mood. If there had to be a row, why
couldn’t there be a row over something that really deserved it?
“My gosh, Jack, I’m just itching to do something,” he confided to his
chum. “Don’t you wish we had wings and could fly right away to the
other end of the world now?”
“What’s the use of wishing for wings?” objected young Fleming, who
had enjoyed the entertainment, but was not prepared to be mentally
extravagant in its honour.
“Well, of course I don’t mean real wings,” Bram explained. “Only, I
simply can’t stick Brigham much longer. I couldn’t stick it even if I
left school.”
They were passing Bethesda as Bram was speaking, and the sight of its
hideousness looming up in the empty wet gaslit street revolted the boy.
“I wish I could burn that down,” he exclaimed savagely.
“Well, you can’t do that either,” said his friend. “So what’s the good
of wishing?”
“I say, Jack, there’s a window open! I believe I could climb in,”
declared Bram in sudden excitement.
Jack Fleming was not one of the Peculiar Children of God, nor had he
any clear notion how severe a penalty was entailed by sacrilege; but
the idea of climbing into any place of worship by night—church, chapel,
or meeting-house—filled him with superstitious dread, besides alarming
him in its legal aspect.
“Don’t be a mad ass,” he adjured his friend. “What would you do if you
did climb in?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just mess it up,” said Bram.
“But supposing you were caught?”
“Well, it would be worth a row. You don’t know my governor, Jack. If
you knew him, you’d do anything that was worth while getting pi-jaws
for. I get pi-jaws now for nothing. If you funk it, don’t stay with me.
But I’m going to climb into that rotten old tabernacle, and if I can
burn it up, I jolly well will burn it up.”
Jack Fleming was seized with panic. Bram was always a mad sort of chap,
but this project was far madder than anything of which he had fancied
him capable.
“Look here, I’ve got to be in soon,” he protested. “And you’ve farther
to go than I have. Don’t play the giddy goat.”
But Bram’s mind was dancing with the brightness of Blundell’s Diorama.
He had no patience with the dull brain of his friend.
“I tell you I’m going to climb in,” he insisted.
“Well, I tell you I’m going home,” said Jack.
“All right then, go!” Bram could not forbear shooting a poisoned shaft.
“Only if there’s a row, don’t peach, that’s all I ask.”
“You needn’t sneer at a fellow just because he doesn’t happen to be
quite such a giddy goat as yourself,” said Jack.
But Bram was riding over the deserts of Arabia: he was away on the
prairies farther than Fenimore Cooper or Mayne Reid had ever taken him;
Chimborazo towered above his horizon, not the chimney-pots of Brigham.
“See you on Monday as usual,” he called back cheerfully to his friend
as he leapt up and caught hold of the sill. A moment later his lithe
shape had vanished in the darkness of Bethesda. Jack Fleming hesitated
a moment: but after all he was not one of the Peculiar Children of God,
and if it became a case for the magistrates, they might take a more
serious view of his behaviour as the son of a church-going solicitor
than of Bram’s, who was the grandson of a chief apostle. Jack turned
his face homeward.
Meanwhile, inside the tabernacle Bram was wondering what he should
do with the beastly place. He struck a match, but the shadows it
conjured all over the great gaunt building made him nervous, and he
soon abandoned the project of burning the whole place to the ground. He
thought and thought how to celebrate his adventure at the expense of
the worshippers when they gathered together to-morrow morning to groan
loudly over their own sins and louder still over the sins of other
people. He could think of nothing. Inspiration was utterly lacking.
Had he known beforehand that he was going to break into Bethesda like
this, what a multitude of tricks he would have been ready to play. As
it was, he would just have to climb out again and be content with the
barren triumph of having climbed in. He had struck another match to
light his path out among the benches without barking his shins as he
had barked them feeling his way in from the window, and it illuminated
a cardboard packet of tintacks evidently left there by the caretaker,
who must have been renovating something or other in honour of the
approaching Sabbath. Bram did not hesitate, but forthwith arranged four
tintacks on each of the pitch-pine chairs of the eleven apostles and
actually half-a-dozen, and these carefully chosen for their length and
sharpness, on the marble chair of the chief apostle himself. For once
in a way he should look forward to Sunday morning; for the first time
in his life he should be able to encounter with relish the smell of
veils and varnish in Bethesda. Of course, it would be too much to hope
that all the fifty tintacks would strike home, but the chances were
good for a generous proportion of successes, because it was the custom
of the twelve apostles to march in from the apostolic snuggery and
simultaneously take their seats with the precision of the parade-ground.
While Bram was having to stand up and listen to a long pi-jaw that
night on his return, he nearly laughed aloud in thinking that to-morrow
morning in Bethesda his father who occupied at present the chair of
James the Less would wish that he was standing too. Before going to bed
Bram went to wish good night to his grandmother and thank her for the
way she had helped him.
“I wish I could travel round the world, grandmamma.”
“Ah, child, be glad that you can still have wishes. It’s when all your
wishes turn to regrets that you can begin sobbing. Here am I, with only
one wish left.”
“What’s that?”
“The grave,” said the old lady.
Bram was startled when his grandmother said this with such simple
earnestness. Death presented itself to his young mind as something so
fantastically remote that thus to speak of it as within the scope of a
practical wish seemed to demand some kind of distraction to cure such
excitability.
“You never go to Bethesda, do you, grandmamma?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“I wish you’d come to-morrow morning.”
“What, at seventy become a Peculiar Child of God? No, Bram, I may be
in my second childhood, but it’s not going to be a peculiar second
childhood.”
“All the same, I wish you would come. I think you’ll laugh.”
Bram’s dark eyes were twinkling so brightly in anticipation of the
scene to-morrow morning that his grandmother’s curiosity was roused.
However, he would not tell her why he advised her to sample the
meeting-house for the first time in her life to-morrow. He still
retained enough of the child’s suspicion of the grown-up’s theory of
what is and what is not a good joke to make him cautious even with her,
though he was extremely anxious to give the old lady the benefit of the
diversion he had prepared. He was so urgent indeed that in the end she
actually promised to come if she felt able to stand the prospect in the
morning.
Before going to bed Bram went into his brother’s room and paid him back
the loan with interest.
“And I’ll have my bat to-night, thank you very much,” he said.
Caleb did not play cricket himself, but he was much disgusted at losing
the bat, because he had planned to sell it for at least five shillings
at the beginning of the summer term.
“Look here, I’ll give you three shillings for it, if you don’t want to
pay me back the money, Bram.”
“No, thanks.”
Caleb tried his last resource. Sleep was heavy on his eyelids, yet
he managed to suffuse his pink podgy countenance with that bland,
persuasive smile.
“It isn’t really worth more than two shillings, Bram, but as you’re my
brother I don’t mind giving you three for it.”
Bram had one tintack left in his pocket. This he dug into Caleb’s fat
leg.
“Ouch! You cad,” Caleb squealed. “You cad! You cad! What is it?”
“A tintack,” said Bram coolly. “Want it in again? No? All serene. Then
hand over the bat.”
He retired with his rescued treasure to his own room, and for five
minutes in the joy of repossession he practised playing forward and
back to the most devilishly tricky bowling until at last he caught the
leg of the bedstead a whack which clanged through the nocturnal quiet
of Lebanon House like an alarm bell. Whereupon Bram hurriedly put out
the gas and jumped into bed. People were right when they said he was
very young for his age and wondered how Joshua Fuller ever produced
such a flipperty-gibbet of a son.
The next morning was fine, and old Mrs. Fuller’s announcement that she
was going to visit Bethesda threw the household into consternation.
“Mamma!” the eldest daughter gasped. “Why, you’ve never....”
Mrs. Fuller quelled poor Achsah instantly.
“Thank you, my dear, I am not yet in my dotage. I know precisely what I
have done and what I have not done in my life.”
“You don’t think you’ll catch cold?” suggested Thyrza.
“Not if your father preaches about Hell,” said the old lady.
“If you’re coming to mock, mamma,” her son interposed, “I can’t help
feeling it would be better if you stopped away.”
“Hoity-toity, Master Joshua,” the old lady chuckled.
What the chief apostle thought about his wife’s intention did not
transpire, for he was so deaf nowadays that his family considered it
wiser not to apprise him of the sensational news. He would probably
never understand what they were trying to tell him, but if he should,
the nervous shock might easily render him as mute as he was deaf, to
the detriment of his weekly discourse, which was the delight of the
older Peculiars, flavoured as it was with the brimstone and sulphur of
the sect’s early days. The chief apostle, no doubt partly on account of
his pyrotechnical knowledge, could conjure hellish visions against any
preacher in the land.
There was some discussion about who should drive to chapel in the
Fuller brougham, a dreadful old conveyance looking like a large
bootblack’s box, which had been picked up cheap at the sale of a
deceased widow’s effects. Either Achsah or Thyrza usually accompanied
their father. There was no room for a third person when Mr. Fuller and
his beard were inside.
“Don’t disturb yourselves,” said Mrs. Fuller. “I’ve sent the boy to
fetch a fly from the hotel. Bram can be my beau.”
When she and her grandson were driving off together, she turned to him
and said:
“Now what is the reason for having dragged me out in this musty fly on
a Sunday morning?”
Her regard was so humorous and candid that the boy surrendered his
suspicion and confided to her what he had prepared for the apostles.
“I’ll give you sixpence for every tintack that goes hard home,” the old
lady vowed. “I’d give you a sovereign apiece, if I had the money.”
The congregation of Bethesda seemed to be composed of candle-faced
men and fiery-nosed women. The atmosphere literally did stink of
respectability, for even scented soap was considered a diabolic weapon.
However, in spite of the discouragement that the male Peculiars
accorded to the vanity of female dress, the female Peculiars were as
well equipped with panniers and bustles as the fashionable females of
other sects. In view of what was waiting for them, it was unfortunate
for the men that they too did not wear bustles. Bram cast an eye on the
apostles’ chairs and whispered to his grandmother that the tintacks
were undisturbed. She emitted a low chuckle of approbation such as that
with which a parrot welcomes some special effort of ventriloquism by a
human being.
The door of the apostolic snuggery opened. Shambling along with an
exaggeration of the way he used to shamble as a young man, followed
by a trail of dismal men, most of whom had mutton-chop whiskers,
came Caleb Fuller making for the chair of Simon Peter—oblivious
presumably of the Popish claims thereby implied. The sons of Zebedee
were represented by two grocers in partnership—Messrs. Giddy and
Dopping. Andrew suitably had an expatriated Scotsman in the person of
Maclozen the chemist. Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas were
earthily represented by Mr. Hunnybum, Mr. Rabjohn, Mr. Campkin, and
Mr. Balmey. The seat of James the Less was Joshua Fuller’s. Simon and
Jude found their types of apostolic virtue in Mr. Pavitt and Mr. Pead,
and finally Mr. Fricker, a sandy-haired young man who walked the shop
of Mr. Rabjohn the draper, followed humbly in the rear as the coopted
Matthias, hoping no doubt one day to lead the lot as patriarchally as
Mr. Fuller was leading them this morning.
“Brethren,” the chief apostle groaned. “I am four score years and two
in the sight of the Lord, and my sins are as scarlet.”
“Made with chlorate of potash,” muttered Mrs. Fuller, “so bright a
scarlet are they.”
“Brethren, groan with me.”
The Peculiar Children of God groaned lustily.
“Brethren, we will now be seated until one of us shall be moved by the
Spirit of the Lord to testify.”
The congregation rustled down into their seats. The apostles sat down
firmly and austerely as became leaders of religion. The congregation
remained seated. The apostles rose with a unanimous howl, moved not by
the Spirit, but by the fifty tintacks, every one of which, by old Mrs.
Fuller’s reckoning when she paid over twenty-five shillings to Bram,
must have struck hard home.
Of course, there was an investigation into the lamentable affair by
the apostolic body of the Peculiar Children of God. The caretaker
was invited to explain the presence of all these tintacks on the
apostolic chairs. It was idle for the caretaker to deny all knowledge
of tintacks, because in the chapel accounts there was an item against
her, proving that she had only this week purchased for use in Bethesda
a large packet of tintacks. This purchase of tintacks she made no
attempt to deny, but she maintained, without her evidence being in the
least shaken, that when she last saw the tintacks the bulk of them
remained in the cardboard box from which she had taken only two or
three to nail down the strips of carpet on the benches where they had
come loose. It seemed equally idle for the apostles to accuse such
a ramshackle old woman of having deliberately arranged the tintacks
as weapons of offence, nor could it seriously be argued that mere
carelessness was responsible for leaving them about point upward in
groups of four. Some of the older apostles were inclined to blame the
Devil for the assault; but the younger members of the apostolic body,
reacting to the spirit of intellectual progress that was abroad, could
not accept the theory of so literally diabolic a practical joke. Mr.
Fricker, the junior apostle, put forward an opinion that the outrage
had been committed by members of the Salvation Army, a body which was
making considerable and most unwelcome progress in Brigham. The result
of the investigation, however, was to leave the horrid business wrapt
in mystery, in which costume it would doubtless have remained for ever
if that afternoon young Caleb Fuller had not said to his father with a
smile of radiant innocence:
“Papa, how funny it should have been tintacks on your chair.”
“What do you mean by ‘funny,’ my boy?” demanded Joshua angrily. “What
are you grinning at?”
“I didn’t mean to grin, papa,” said Caleb, turning out his smile as
swiftly as if it were a flaring gas-jet. “What I meant was ‘funny’ was
that last night Bram had a tintack in his pocket, because he ran it
into my leg.”
“Bram had a tintack?” repeated the father.
“Yes, and he was out late last night, and Mrs. Pead was saying outside
Bethesda that she’d noticed one of the windows in the chapel was left
open all last night.”
Joshua Fuller’s pasty face pulsed and sweated like a boiling beefsteak
pudding.
“Where’s Bram now?”
“He’s upstairs in grandmamma’s room, and they were laughing, papa.
I thought it funny they should be laughing like that on a Sunday
afternoon.”
“You thought it funny, did you?” Joshua growled. “If you don’t look out
for yourself, my boy, I’ll thrash you soundly when I’ve finished with
your brother.”
“What have _I_ done, papa?” Caleb began to blubber. “I thought you
wanted to find out who put the tintacks on the apostles’ chairs.”
But his father did not stop to listen. His only idea was to
punish Bram. The threat to Caleb was really nothing more than
the effervescence of his rage. In the hall he picked out from the
umbrella-stand a blackthorn stick, armed with which he entered his
mother’s parlour, where he found her feeding Bram with crumpets.
“So it was you, was it?” he chattered. “Go up to your bedroom and wait
for me.”
“What are you going to do to the boy?” old Mrs. Fuller demanded.
“What am I going to do to him? I’m going to teach him a lesson with
this.” He banged the floor with the blackthorn.
“You’ll never use that on him, Joshua,” said his mother.
“Won’t I?”
“Never! Bram, don’t let your father touch you with that stick. If he
strikes you, strike him. You’re as good a man as he is in a fight.
Strike him hard, hard, d’ye hear?”
“Are you mad, mamma, to encourage the young ruffian in this way?”
“He’ll be mad if he lets you strike him.”
While the other two were talking, a very white Bram was settling his
future as rapidly as a drowning man is supposed to review his past.
Fifty tintacks at sixpence apiece? Twenty-five shillings in his pocket.
The only time he had ever been rich in the whole of his life! This
would mean leaving the grammar school. He would have to work in the
factory. “The bottom of the ladder, my boy; that’s the way to begin.”
No pocket money. Sticking at accounts, Brigham, eternally, hopelessly.
Always Brigham. And Lebanon House. And the flogging. The pain wouldn’t
matter. But the disgrace of it at his age! And begging grandpapa’s
pardon. Shouting his apologies in those hairy ears. Coming always a
little closer and trying to make himself understood, closer still. So
close that he would be sick with the smell of stale food on that filthy
old white beard. Apologising to the rest of them. To Giddy and Dopping
and Hunnybum and Pead. Apologising to that horrible brute Fricker? No!
Prayed for publicly by the Peculiars as last Sunday they prayed for
that girl who had a baby? No!
“How did you find out, papa?” Bram heard himself saying from an
infinitely remote distance. He was shivering lest he should hear that
Jack Fleming had betrayed him.
“Because, thank the dear Lord, I have one son who knows his duty as a
Christian,” his father was saying.
Of course! Caleb had had a taste of tintack last night. No! No! No!
He could not give that little sneak the pleasure of gloating over his
punishment. No! The pictures of Blundell’s Diorama rolled across his
memory. Cobalt seas and marble halls, pagodas, palms ... twenty-five
shillings in his pocket and the world before him if he could only make
up his mind.
“Did you hear me tell you to go up to your bedroom, my boy?”
“Grandmamma, grandmamma, let me kiss you good-bye,” Bram cried by the
door.
The old lady drew near.
“Grandmamma,” he whispered as she folded him to her withered breast,
“I’m going to run away. Can you keep him in?”
Bram heard the key turn in the lock and a loud chuckle beyond the
closed door. Then he heard the sound of his father’s voice raised
in anger. Bram paused. Surely he would not strike grandmamma. He
listened a moment at the keyhole, smiled at what he heard his father
being called, and, blowing back a kiss to reach through the closed
door the old lady’s heart, hurried up to his room. But not to wait
there for his father to come with the blackthorn. No, just to throw
a few clothes into an old carpet-bag and a minute or two later to go
swinging out of Lebanon House for ever. On his way down the drive he
remembered that he had not licked Caleb for peaching. It was a pity to
let the little brute escape like that. He hesitated, decided that it
was not worth while to run the risk of being caught merely in order
to lick Caleb, and swung on down the drive. He had no plans, but he
had twenty-five shillings in his pocket, and there was a train to
Liverpool in half-an-hour. As a dissipation he had sometimes watched
its departure on the Sunday afternoons when he managed to escape from
Lebanon House and Bible readings, which was not often. Of course, there
would be plenty of people to tell his father where he had gone. But
Liverpool was a larger place than Brigham, and, if he could not get
taken on by the captain of an outward-bounder, he would be a stowaway.
Something would turn up. Bram hurried on. It was a good mile from
Lebanon House to the railway station. The booking-clerk stared through
his pigeon-hole when Bram asked for a single to Liverpool. The idlers
on the platform stared when they saw Bram Fuller, the grandson of the
great Caleb, shoulder his carpet-bag and enter the Liverpool train.
But Bram himself stared hardest of all when he found himself in a
compartment with Mr. Blundell of Blundell’s Diorama and the Sisters
Garibaldi.