Grey, who had never given up hopes of bringing Tom round to his own
views, had not neglected the opportunities which his residence in town
offered, and had enlisted Tom’s services on more than one occasion. He
had found him specially useful in instructing the big boys, whom he
was trying to bring together and civilize in a “Young Men’s Club,” in
the rudiments of cricket on Saturday evenings. But on the morning in
question an altogether different work was on hand.
A lady living some eight or nine miles to the northwest of London,
who took great interest in Grey’s doings, had asked him to bring the
children of his night-school down to spend a day in her grounds, and
this was the happy occasion. It was before the days of cheap excursions
by rail, so that vans had to be found for the party; and Grey had
discovered a benevolent remover of furniture in Paddington, who was
ready to take them at a reasonable figure. The two vans, with awnings
and curtains in the height of the fashion, and horses with tasselled
ear-caps, and everything handsome about them, were already drawn up in
the midst of a group of excited children, and scarcely less excited
mothers, when Tom arrived. Grey was arranging his forces, and laboring
to reduce the Irish children, who formed almost half of his ragged
little flock, into something like order before starting. By degrees
this was managed, and Tom was placed in command of the rear van, while
Grey reserved the leading one to himself. The children were divided,
and warned not to lean over the sides and tumble out—a somewhat
superfluous caution, as most of them, though unused to riding in any
legitimate manner, were pretty well used to balancing themselves behind
any vehicle which offered as much as a spike to sit on, out of sight
of the driver. Then came the rush into the vans. Grey and Tom took up
their places next the doors as conductors, and the procession lumbered
off with great success, and much shouting from treble voices.
Tom soon found that he had plenty of work on his hands to keep the
peace amongst his flock. The Irish element was in a state of wild
effervescence, and he had to draft them down to his own end, leaving
the foremost part of the van to the sober English children. He was
much struck by the contrast of the whole set to the Englebourn school
children, whom he had lately seen under somewhat similar circumstances.
The difficulty with them had been to draw them out, and put anything
like life into them; here, all he had to do was to repress the
superabundant life. However, the vans held on their way, and got
safely into the suburbs, and so at last to an occasional hedge, and a
suspicion of trees, and green fields beyond.
It became more and more difficult now to keep the boys in; and when
they came to a hill, where the horses had to walk, he yielded to their
entreaties, and, opening the door, let them out, insisting only that
the girls should remain seated. They scattered over the sides of the
roads, and up the banks; now chasing pigs and fowls up to the very
doors of their owners; now gathering the commonest road-side weeds,
and running up to show them to him, and ask their names, as if they
were rare treasures. The ignorance of most of the children as to the
commonest country matters astonished him. One small boy particularly
came back time after time to ask him, with solemn face, “Please,
sir, is this the country?” and when at last he allowed that it was,
rejoined, “Then, please, where are the nuts?”
The clothing of most of the Irish boys began to tumble to pieces in
an alarming manner. Grey had insisted on their being made tidy for
the occasion, but the tidiness was of a superficial kind. The hasty
stitching soon began to give way, and they were rushing about with
wild locks; the strips of what might have once been nether garments
hanging about their legs; their feet and heads bare, the shoes which
their mothers had borrowed for the state occasion having been deposited
under the seat of the van, so when the procession arrived at the trim
lodge-gates of their hostess, and his charge descended and fell in on
the beautifully clipped turf at the side of the drive, Tom felt some
of the sensations of Falstaff when he had to lead his ragged regiment
through Coventry streets.
He was soon at his ease again, and enjoyed the day thoroughly, and the
drive home; but, as they drew near town again, a sense of discomfort
and shyness came over him, and he wished the journey to Westminster
well over, and hoped that the carman would have the sense to go
through the quiet parts of the town.
He was much disconcerted, consequently, when the vans came to a sudden
stop, opposite one of the Park entrances, in the Bayswater road. “What
in the world is Grey about?” he thought, as he saw him get out, and all
the children after him. So he got out himself, and went forward to get
an explanation.
“Oh, I have told the man that he need not drive us round to
Westminster. He is close at home here, and his horses have had a hard
day; so we can just get out and walk home.”
“What, across the Park?” asked Tom.
“Yes, it will amuse the children, you know.”
“But they’re tired,” persisted Tom; “come now, it’s all nonsense
letting the fellow off; he’s bound to take us back.”
“I’m afraid I have promised him,” said Grey; “besides, the children all
think it a treat. Don’t you all want to walk across the Park?” he went
on, turning to them, and a general affirmative chorus was the answer.
So Tom had nothing for it but to shrug his shoulders, empty his own
van, and follow into the Park with his convoy, not in the best humor
with Grey for having arranged this ending to their excursion.
They might have got over a third of the distance between the Bayswater
Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware of a small thin voice
addressing him.
“Oh, please won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired,” said the voice.
He turned in some trepidation to look for the speaker, and found her
to be a sickly undergrown little girl, of ten or thereabouts, with
large pleading gray eyes, very shabbily dressed, and a little lame.
He had remarked her several times in the course of the day, not for
any beauty or grace about her, for the poor child had none, but for
her transparent confidence and trustfulness. After dinner, as they had
been all sitting on the grass under the shade of a great elm to hear
Grey read a story, and Tom had been sitting a little apart from the
rest with his back against the trunk, she had come up and sat quietly
down by him, leaning on his knee. Then he had seen her go up and take
the hand of the lady who had entertained them, and walk along by her,
talking without the least shyness. Soon afterwards she had squeezed
into the swing by the side of the beautifully-dressed little daughter
of the same lady, who, after looking for a minute at her shabby little
sister with large round eyes, had jumped out and run off to her mother,
evidently in a state of childish bewilderment as to whether it was not
wicked for a child to wear such dirty old clothes.
Tom had chuckled to himself as he saw Cinderella settling herself
comfortably in the swing in the place of the ousted princess, and had
taken a fancy to the child, speculating to himself as to how she could
have been brought up, to be so utterly unconscious of differences of
rank and dress. “She seems really to treat her fellow-creatures as if
she had been studying the _Sartor Resartus_,” he thought. “She has cut
down through all clothes-philosophy without knowing it. I wonder, if
she had a chance, whether she would go and sit down in the Queen’s lap?”
He did not at that time anticipate that she would put his own
clothes-philosophy to so severe a test before the day was over. The
child had been as merry and active as any of the rest during the
earlier part of day; but now, as he looked down in answer to her
reiterated plea, “Won’t you carry me a bit? I’m so tired!” he saw that
she could scarcely drag one foot after another.
What was to be done? He was already keenly alive to the discomfort
of walking across Hyde Park in a procession of ragged children, with
such a figure of fun as Grey at their head, looking, in his long
rusty, straight-cut black coat, as if he had come fresh out of Noah’s
ark. He didn’t care about it so much while they were on the turf
in the out-of-the-way parts, and would meet nobody but guards, and
nurse-maids, and trades-people, and mechanics out for an evening’s
stroll. But the Drive and Rotten-row lay before them, and must be
crossed. It was just the most crowded time of the day. He had almost
made up his mind once or twice to stop Grey and the procession, and
propose to sit down for half an hour or so and let the children play,
by which time the world would be going home to dinner. But there was
no play left in the children; and he had resisted the temptation,
meaning, when they came to the most crowded part, to look unconscious,
as if it were by chance that he got into such company, and had in fact
nothing to do with them. But now, if he listened to the child’s plea,
and carried her, all hope of concealment was over. If he did not, he
felt that there would be no greater flunkey in the Park that evening
than Thomas Brown, the enlightened radical and philosopher, amongst the
young gentlemen riders in Rotten-row, or the powdered footmen lounging
behind the great glaring carriages in the drive.
So he looked down at the child once or twice in a state of puzzle. A
third time she looked up with her great eyes, and said, “Oh, please
carry me a bit!” and her piteous, tired face turned the scale. “If she
were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche,” thought he, “I should pick her up at
once, and be proud of the burden. Here goes!” And he took her up in his
arms, and walked on, desperate and reckless.
Notwithstanding all his philosophy, he felt his ears tingling and his
face getting red, as they approached the Drive. It was crowded. They
were kept standing a minute or two at the crossing. He made a desperate
effort to abstract himself wholly from the visible world, and retire
into a state of serene contemplation. But it would not do, and he was
painfully conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well-dressed
men leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies,
lounging in open carriages, and surveying him and Grey and their ragged
rout through glasses.
At last they scrambled across, and he breathed freely for a minute, as
they struggled along the comparatively quiet path leading to Albert
Gate, and stopped to drink at the fountain. Then came Rotten-row, and
another pause amongst the loungers, and a plunge into the Ride, where
he was nearly run down by two men whom he had known at Oxford. They
shouted to him to get out of the way; and he felt the hot defiant blood
rushing through his veins as he strode across without heeding. They
passed on, one of them having to pull his horse out of his stride to
avoid him. Did they recognize him? He felt a strange mixture of utter
indifference, and longing to strangle them.
The worst was now over; besides, he was getting used to the situation,
and his good sense was beginning to rally. So he marched through Albert
Gate, carrying his ragged little charge, who prattled away to him
without a pause, and surrounded by the rest of the children, scarcely
caring who might see him.
They went safely through the omnibuses and carriages on the Kensington
Road, and so into Belgravia. At last he was quite at his ease again,
and began listening to what the child was saying to him, and was
strolling carelessly along, when once more, at one of the crossings, he
was startled by a shout from some riders. There was straw laid down in
the street, so that he had not heard them as they cantered round the
corner, hurrying home to dress for dinner; and they were all but upon
him, and had to rein up their horses sharply.
The party consisted of a lady and two gentlemen, one old, the other
young; the latter dressed in the height of fashion, and with the
supercilious air which Tom hated from his soul. The shout came from the
young man, and drew Tom’s attention to him first. All the devil rushed
up as he recognized St. Cloud. The lady’s horse swerved against his,
and began to rear. He put his hand on its bridle, as if he had a right
to protect her. Another glance told Tom that the lady was Mary, and the
old gentleman, fussing up on his stout cob on the other side of her,
Mr. Porter.
They all knew him in another moment. He stared from one to the other,
was conscious that she turned her horse’s head sharply, so as to
disengage the bridle from St. Cloud’s hand, and of his insolent stare,
and of the embarrassment of Mr. Porter; and then, setting his face
straight before him, he passed on in a bewildered dream, never looking
back till they were out of sight. The dream gave way to bitter and
wild thoughts, upon which it will do none of us any good to dwell. He
put down the little girl outside the school, turning abruptly from the
mother, a poor widow in scant, well-preserved black clothes, who was
waiting for the child, and began thanking him for his care of her;
refused Grey’s pressing invitation to tea, and set his face eastward.
Bitterer and more wild and more scornful grew his thoughts as he strode
along past the Abbey, and up Whitehall, and away down the Strand,
holding on over the crossings without paying the slightest heed to
vehicle, or horse, or man. Incensed coachmen had to pull up with a jerk
to avoid running over him, and more than one sturdy walker turned round
in indignation at a collision which they felt had been intended, or at
least which there had been no effort to avoid.
As he passed under the window of the Banqueting Hall, and by the place
in Charing-cross where the pillory used to stand, he growled to himself
what a pity it was that the times for cutting off heads and cropping
ears had gone by. The whole of the dense population from either side
of the Strand seemed to have crowded out into that thoroughfare to
impede his march and aggravate him. The further eastward he got the
thicker got the crowd; and the vans, the omnibuses, the cabs, seemed
to multiply and get noisier. Not an altogether pleasant sight to a man
in the most Christian frame of mind is the crowd that a fine summer
evening fetches out into the roaring Strand, as the sun fetches out
flies on the window of a village grocery. To him just then it was at
once depressing and provoking, and he went shouldering his way towards
Temple Bar as thoroughly out of tune as he had been for many a long day.
As he passed from the narrowest part of the Strand into the space
round St. Clement Danes’ church, he was startled, in a momentary lull
of the uproar, by the sound of chiming bells. He slackened his pace to
listen; but a huge van lumbered by, shaking the houses on both sides,
and drowning all sounds but its own rattle; and then he found himself
suddenly immersed in a crowd, vociferating and gesticulating round a
policeman, who was conveying a woman towards the station-house. He
shouldered through it—another lull came, and with it the same slow,
gentle, calm cadence of chiming bells. Again and again he caught it as
he passed on to Temple Bar; whenever the roar subsided the notes of the
old hymn-tune came dropping down on him like balm from the air. If the
ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St. Clement Danes’ church to
be arranged to play that chime so many times a day is allowed to hover
round the steeple at such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction
on posterity, he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom
passed under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man, softened
again, and in his right mind.
“There’s always a voice saying the right thing to you somewhere, if
you’ll only listen for it,” he thought.