An idea occurred to Anthony. The more he turned it over in his mind the
more it promised. Young Tetteridge had entered upon his last term. The
time would soon come for the carrying out of Anthony’s suggestion that
in some mean street of Millsborough he should set up a school for the
sons of the ambitious poor.
Why should not one house do for them both? To Mr. Tetteridge for his
classroom and study the ground floor; to his mother for her dressmaking
and millinery the floor above; the three attics for bedrooms; in the
basement the common dining-room and kitchen. There were whole streets
of such houses, with steps up to the front door and a bow window. Mr.
Tetteridge would want someone to look after him, to “do for” him. Whom
more capable, more conscientious than Mrs. Strong’nth’arm? The gain
would be mutual. His mother would be working for better-off customers.
She could put up her prices. Mr. Tetteridge would save in rent and
board.
Mr. Tetteridge was quite carried away by the brilliance and simplicity
of the proposal.
“And there will be you and your dear mother always there,” he
concluded. “It is so long since I had a home.”
To his mother the rise from Snelling’s Row to Bridlington Street was
a great event. It brought tears of happiness to her eyes. Also she
approved of Mr. Tetteridge.
“It will be so good for you,” she said to Anthony, “living with a
gentleman.”
There was the furnishing. Mr. Tetteridge’s study, into which parents
would have to be shown, must breathe culture, dignified scholasticism.
Mr. Tetteridge’s account at Her Majesty’s savings bank was a little
over twenty pounds. That must not be touched. Sickness, the unexpected,
must be guarded against. Anthony went to see his aunt. That with
the Lord’s help she had laid by a fair-sized nest-egg she had in a
rash moment of spiritual exaltation confided to him. Loans of half a
sovereign, and even of a five-pound note, amply secured and bearing
interest at the rate of a shilling in the pound per week, she was
always prepared to entertain. Anthony wanted a hundred pounds at ten
per cent. per annum, to be repaid on the honour of a gentleman.
The principal required frightened her almost into a fit. Besides she
hadn’t got it. The rate of interest, which according to complicated
calculations of her own worked out at considerably less than halfpenny
a pound per week, did not tempt her. About the proposed security there
seemed to her a weakness.
In years to come the things without a chance that Anthony
Strong’nth’arm pulled off, the impracticable schemes that with a
wave of his hand became sound business propositions, the hopeless
enterprises into which he threw himself and carried through to victory,
grew to be the wonder and bewilderment of Millsborough. But never in
all his career was he called upon again to face such an absolutely
impossible stone waller as his aunt’s determination on that Friday
afternoon not to be bamboozled out of hard-won savings by any imp of
Satan, even if for her sins he happened to be her own nephew.
How he did it Mrs. Newt was never able to explain. It was not what
he said, though heaven knows there was no lack of that. Mrs. Newt’s
opinion was that by words alone he could have got it out of a stone. It
was some strange magic he seemed to possess that made her--to use her
own simile--as clay in the hands of the potter.
She gave him that one hundred pounds in twenty five-pound notes,
thanking God from the bottom of her heart that he hadn’t asked for
two. In exchange he drew from his pocket, and pressed into her hand a
piece of paper. What it was about and what she had done with it she
never knew. She remembered there was a stamp on it.
She also remembered, when she came to her senses, that he had put his
arms about her and had hugged her, and that she had kissed him good-bye
and had given him a message to his mother. At the end of the first
twelve months he brought her thirty pounds, explaining to her that that
left eighty still owing. And what astonished her most was that she
wasn’t surprised. It was just as if she had expected it.
The pupils came in. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, knowing many folk, was of much
help.
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s idea had been to call upon some half a dozen
likely parents, to appeal to them for their support of a most deserving
case: a young would-be schoolmaster of whose character and ability she
could not speak too highly.
“And they’ll tell you it’s very kind of you to try and assist the poor
young gentleman, but that as regards their own particular progeny
they’ve decided to send him somewhere else,” explained Anthony.
“How do you know?” argued his mother. “Why, Mrs. Glenny, the china
shop woman, was telling me only a month ago how worried she was about
her boy, not knowing where to send him.”
“You drop in on Mrs. Glenny,” counselled Anthony, “and talk about the
weather and how the price of everything is going up. And as you’re
coming away just mention casually how everybody is talking about this
new school that Mr. Tetteridge has just started; and how everybody is
trying to get their boys into it; and how they won’t be able to, seeing
that young Tetteridge has told you that he can only receive a limited
number; and how you’ve promised Mrs. Herring to use your influence with
Tetteridge in favour of her boy Tom. Leave Mrs. Glenny to do the rest.”
People had a habit of asking Anthony his age; and when he told them
they would look at him very hard and say: “Are you quite sure?”
His uncle was taken ill late in the year. He had caught rheumatic fever
getting himself wet through on the moors. He made a boast of never
wearing an overcoat. Anthony found him sitting up in bed. A carpenter
friend had fixed him up a pulley from the ceiling by which he could
raise himself with his hands. Old Simon was sitting watching him, his
chin upon the bed. Simon had been suffering himself from rheumatism
during the last two winters and seemed to understand.
“Don’t tell your aunt,” he said. “She’ll have them all praying round me
and I’ll get no peace. But I’ve got a feeling it’s the end. I’m hoping
to slip off on the quiet, like.”
Anthony asked if he could do anything. He had always liked his uncle;
they felt there was a secret bond between them.
“Look after the old chap,” his uncle answered; “that is if I go first.”
He stretched out a stiff arm and laid it on old Simon’s head. “Ninety
years old he’ll be on the fourteenth,” he said, “reckoning six years of
a dog’s life as equal to one of a man’s. And I’m sixty-five. We haven’t
done so badly, either of us.”
Anthony drew up a chair and sat down between the two.
“Nothing you want to talk about, is there?” he asked. The old man knew
what he meant. He shook his head.
“Been talking about it or listening to it, on and off, pretty well all
my life,” he answered. “Never got any further.”
He was silent a while, wrestling with his pain.
“Of course, I believe in a God,” he said. “There must be Somebody
bossing it all. It’s the things they tell you about Him that I’ve never
been able to swallow. Don’t fit in with common sense to my thinking.”
“You’re not afraid?” Anthony asked him after a silence.
“Why should I be?” answered the old man. “He knows me. He ain’t
expecting anything wonderful. If I’m any good maybe He’ll find me a
job. If not----”
Old Simon had crept closer. They were looking into each other’s eyes.
“Wonder if there’ll be any dogs?” he said. “Don’t see why there
shouldn’t. If love and faithfulness and self-forgetfulness are going to
be of any use to Him, what’s wrong with you, old chap?”
He laughed. “Don’t tell your aunt I said that,” he cautioned Anthony.
“She’s worried enough about me, poor old girl, as it is.”
His aunt had looked for a death-bed repentance, but the end came before
she expected it, in the night.
“He wasn’t really a bad man,” she said, crying. “That’s what made me
hope, right to the end, that the Truth would be revealed to him.”
Anthony sought to comfort her. “Perhaps it came to him when he was
alone,” he said.
She clung to that.
The burying of him was another trouble. She had secured the site she
had always wished for herself beneath the willow. She would have liked
him to be laid there beside her, but his views and opinions had been
too well known to her people. They did not want him among them. There
was a neglected corner of the big cemetery set apart for such as he;
but to lay him there would be to abandon hope. The Lord would never
venture there. Anthony suggested the Church. He undertook to interview
the vicar, a kindly old gentleman, who possibly would ask no questions.
He found the vicar in the vestry. There had been a meeting of the
churchwardens. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin was a chubby, blue-eyed
gentleman. He had heard of Anthony’s uncle. “A very hard nut to crack,”
so the vicar had been given to understand.
“But was always willing to listen, I gathered,” added the vicar. “So
perhaps the fault was ours. We didn’t go about it the right way.”
Something moved Anthony to tell the vicar what his uncle had once said
to him when he was a child about the world being a very different place
if people really did believe all that they say they believe.
He wished he hadn’t said it, for the old gentleman sat silent for what
seemed quite a long time.
“What did they answer him?” he asked at length. “Did he tell you?”
“He said they never did answer him that,” replied Anthony.
The vicar looked at him across the green baize.
“There isn’t any answer,” he said. “Your uncle had us there.”
“I dreamed of it once.” The light was fading; maybe he forgot that
young Anthony was sitting there over against him in the shadows.
“Living for Christ, taking no thought of aught else. What ye shall eat,
or what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. It’s a big
thing--Believing.”
He seemed to have become aware again of the boy sitting there half
hidden by the shadows.
“Most of us, Strong’nth’arm,” he said, “think that all we’ve got to
do is to sing about it, to repeat it in the proper places. It isn’t
enough. Take up thy cross and follow me. That’s where the trouble
begins. Easy enough to worship it with folded hands. It is taking it
up, carrying it with bowed head and aching shoulders, that’s the bother
of it.”
He rose, pushing back his chair with a grating sound upon the
uncarpeted floor.
“You see,” he said, “it isn’t only oneself. One might do it if one were
alone. The Roman Church is right on that point. And yet it doesn’t
work, even with them. The world gets hold of them. What’s the date?” he
said suddenly.
“December the fifth,” Anthony told him.
“Just three weeks to Christmas.” He was walking up and down the bare
cold room. He halted a few steps in front of the lad. “Do you know
what Christmas means to me? You will later on. Bills. Butcher’s bills,
baker’s bills, bootmaker’s bills--there’s something uncanny about the
number of boots that children seem to want. And then there’s their
school bills and their doctor’s bills and the Christmas boxes and the
presents. It’s funny when you come to think of it. Christ’s birthday.
And I’ve come to dread it. What were we all talking about this
afternoon here in the vestry? How to help Christ? How to spread His
gospel? No, pew rates, tithes, clergy relief funds, curates’ salaries,
gas bills, fund for central heating and general repairs!
“How can I preach Christ, the Outcast, the Beggar, the Wanderer in the
Wilderness, the Servant of the poor, the Carrier of the Cross? That’s
what I started out to preach. They’d only laugh at me. ‘He lives in a
big house,’ they would say; ‘keeps four servants’--when one can get
them--‘and his sons go to college.’ God knows it’s struggle enough to
do it. But I oughtn’t to be struggling to do it. I ought to be down
among the people, teaching Christ not only by my words but my life.”
It had grown dark. The vicar, stumbling against a small side table,
brought it down with a clatter. Anthony found the matches and lit the
gas. The vicar held out a plump hand.
“It’ll be all right about your uncle,” he said. “See Mr. Grant and
arrange things with him.”
Anthony thanked him and was leaving. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin
drew him back. “Don’t judge me too hardly,” he said with a smile.
“Leastways, not till you’ve lived a bit longer. Something made me talk
without thinking. If anything I’ve said comes back to you at any time,
listen to it. It may have been a better sermon than I usually preach.”
His aunt was much comforted when he told her.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, “if he got through after all.
Anyhow, we’ve done our best for him.”
Old Simon had returned to the railway carriage. He seemed to know that
all was over. He lingered for a little while, but there was no heart in
him. And one morning they found him dead.
A friendship had grown up between Anthony and young Mowbray. It
had been chiefly of Edward Mowbray’s seeking, but Anthony had been
attracted by Edward’s gentleness and kindness. Mowbray’s father had
also taken a liking to him and he came to be a frequent visitor at The
Priory.
Mr. Mowbray was a fine, handsome gentleman of about fifty, fonder of
pleasure than of business it was said. He rode to hounds and prided
himself on being one of the best shots in the county. He was a widower.
Gossip whispered of an unhappy marriage, for the lady--of neglect and
infidelities. But this may not have been true, for Mr. Mowbray always
spoke of his wife with enthusiasm, and often tears would come into
his eyes. Her portrait by Orchardson hung in the dining-room facing
Mr. Mowbray’s chair: an arresting face, though hardly beautiful,
the forehead being too high and narrow. It was in the eyes that the
attraction lay. They seemed almost to speak. Mr. Mowbray, during a
lull in the conversation, would sometimes raise his glass and drink to
her in silence. He was fond of his fine old port, and so were most of
his many friends. There were only two children, Edward and his sister
Elizabeth. She was the elder by a couple of years. She had her mother’s
haunting eyes, but the face as a whole was less striking. Anthony had
been rather afraid of her at first, and she had not taken much notice
of him. She was considered eccentric by reason of her not taking any
interest in games and amusements. In this both children were a strange
contrast to their father. She would have been dubbed a “high brow” in
later years; “blue stocking” was the name then.
It was by Edward and his sister that Anthony was introduced to
politics. They were ardent reformers. They dreamed of a world in which
there would be no more poor. They thought it might be brought about
in their time, at least so far as England was concerned. Edward was
the more impatient of the two. He thought it would have to come by
revolution. Elizabeth (or Betty as she was generally called for short)
had once been of the same opinion. But she was changing. She pointed
out the futility of the French Revolution. And even had there been
excuse for it the need no longer existed. All could be done now through
the ballot box. Leaders must arise, men wise and noble. The people
would vote for them. Laws must be passed. The evil and the selfish
compelled to amend their ways. The rotten houses must be pulled down;
pleasant, well-planned habitations take their place, so that the
poor might live decently and learn the meaning of “home.” Work must
be found for all; the haunting terror of unemployment be lifted from
their lives. It easily could be done. There was work waiting, more
than enough, if only the world were properly ordered. Fair wages must
be paid, carrying with them a margin for small comforts, recreation.
The children must be educated so that in time the poor would be lifted
up and the wall between the classes levelled down. Leaders were the
one thing needful: if rich and powerful so much the better: men who
would fight for the right and never sheathe the sword till they had won
justice for the people.
They were tramping the moors. The wind had compelled her to take off
her hat and carry it and had put colour into her cheeks. Anthony
thought she looked very handsome with her fine eyes flashing beneath
their level brows.
In their talk they had lost their tracks and were making a bee line
for the descent. A stream barred their way. It babbled over stones and
round the roots of trees. Edward picked her up to carry her across, but
at the margin hesitated, doubting his muscles.
“You’ll be safer with Anthony,” he said, putting her down.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind getting my feet wet.” But
Anthony had already lifted her in his arms.
“You’re sure I’m not too heavy?” she asked.
He laughed and stepped down with her into the stream.
He carried her some distance beyond the bank, explaining that the
ground was still marshy. He liked the pressure of her weight upon his
breast.