The Trials of the Tredgolds. A novel ... Second edition

Chapter I. No Holidays

The Thames, hurrying into the country, ser pentining and doubling on its way, as though to elude and hide froni a pursuing foe, had left our Modern Babylon some miles behind ; the smoke and fog and grime of the great City brooding like a swart colossal phantom on the distant horizon. Escaped from the terrible trou ble and pollution in its rear, the river found itself at last in pleasant places ; above a good many bridges ; (for " it is my humour," as Corporal Nym says, to override for this once the accepted theory, and to consider the stream as running upwards from the sea to its source;) a little worried, it may be, by tiresome locks here and there, yet able, upon the whole, to flow with VOL. I. B much quiet and comfort between verdant banks of velvet softness, cool in the shadows of the rich boughs, that seemed stooping down to drink or bathe; now bearing pleasant little osier islands, like so many emerald brooches or buttons, upon its bosom — and now a splendid fleet of swans in full sail, arching their proud necks, in love, Narcissus-like, with their own beauty mirrored in the waters — their plumage so daz zling white when full in the sunshine, that they seemed quite like fairy-tale birds, to emit light, to move in the midst of a halo of radiance.

The steamboats had been left behind some way — distressed, out of breath, and fast aground — waiting until the recruited vigour of the tide should enable them to proceed a little further up-stream, to their journey's end. Now and then a round shouldered barge, lightly laden, and drawing but little water, moved sluggishly along, dragged by a gaunt, unwilling horse, needing frequent refreshment of lashes and oaths to urge him to fulfil his task. One or two daintily attired gentlemen ghded past in the most delicate and dangerous of outriggers ; hut for the most part the river had ceased to be useful, had become purely ornamental, had retired from business, and quitted town to bask idly in the midsummer sun of the country, very picturesque indeed in its warm, dreamy seclusion and unoccupied ease.

The highroad on the Middlesex side, leading westward, stretched out branch paths occasionally, to maintain a sort of connection with the river. One of these, and one to which I now design to draw your attention, was a hot, dusty lane, lined with hedges so small, trim, and crop eared as effectually to preclude the traveller from obtaining from them the slightest shelter; and the mid-day sun was scorchingly hot, and shade very desirable, especially to those who objected to a certain sensation of grilling about the shoulder-blades and small of the back. But this was a merciless lane, very lone — for the river had taken a rapid curve, as though disinclined to meet it— and tortuous as well ; no one knew why — but, then, no one ever did know why English roadways are so invariably crooked, when, for all one can see to the contrary, they might just as wed have been straight.

But ultimately this lane met the river at one of its prettiest points; a block of buildings obscured the view tdl quite the right position was reached by the traveller, who then, with a charming suddenness, found the wavelets crinkling and smihng and breaking at his feet, the osiers opposite, the swans not far off, and the boughs overhead sheltering him very coolly and kindly. He was a few miles, measured along the margin of the river, beyond the last station to which the smallest of steamboats could venture to proceed. I have an object in not specifying the place more particularly. But I know that the reader's saga city may always be relied upon for making guesses sufficiently near as to places or persons who may be covertly alluded to in works of fiction. Well, in this lane, nearer the river than the highroad end, there stood, some few years back, and indeed there may be still standing, for aught I know — I own I haven't recently visited the neighbourhood — a massive house, built of dull, red brick, the crowd of windows in its front impart ing to it a staring look, just as large, wide open eyes do to the human face (indeed all houses, properly considered, may be said to have counte nances and expressions).

"Burchell HaU" — for so the building was named — stood back from the road just enough to permit of a semicircular carriage drive passing in front of it — in at one of the large iron gates — greatly crusted and entan gled, and flourished with ornamentation, and flanked by pillars with bald globular heads, and out at the other. In front, but outside the gates, there stood a rank of sentinel poplars, very tall, very thin, very dusty, which writhed about and trembled, turned pale, and swayed and bowed their heads uncomfortably at the slightest puff of wind, just as the schoolboys inside the house did when they were being caned, or even previous to that operation, at the mere upraising of the simple instrument of scholastic torture. For Burchell Hall is a school. Pass up those ghastly white doorsteps, snowy as the pleats of a clean shirt; don't leave traces of your boots behind you, or it will furnish an excuse for punishing you — at least it would havo done so in the days I am speaking of, if you had been a pupil at Bur ched Hall ; pass up, I say, and read the beautiful writing upon that glittering door-plate of bur nished brass : what says it ?

" Dr. Rawson's Academy for Young Gentlemen." A large house ; very white as to its sills and sashes, and built evidently some time before it had occurred to an Enghsh statesman as rather an ingenious idea to raise money by mortgage on the hght from heaven, and hmit the number of windows by taxation. (Happily in our time we are permitted to have free trade in sunshine.) A large house; with room for almost as many boarders as could pay some forty pounds a-year, and provide themselves each with a silver fork and half a dozen towels. And Dr. Rawson, no doubt, a most exemplary Christian gentleman; well worthy to be trustee of the religious and moral welfare, the tuition and culture, of any number of British boys. He had made two or three false starts in life, of course, and had met with reverses ; had even on some occasions been bankrupt, I believe ; certainly he had been engaged in commerce, brewing, horse-dealing, the coal-trade — some such things.

Then he had devoted himself to what was formerly one of the last resources of the enterprising, the instruction of youth. Of old, the only qualification expected from a schoolmaster was, that he should know how to cane ; an accomplishment not difficult of acquirement — -study anatomy, so as to know for certain where the tenderer portions of the human body are to be found ; allow, hke a rifleman, for " windage," — for the victim is apt to twist and wince, and sometimes even to go down altogether to avoid punishment, as pugilists phrase it — and hit hard. That's all ; it's very simple. Thc master of Burchell Hall purchased from some continental institution, for a smad consideration the right to dignify his name by a doctorial prefix. The honour was sent to him by the post ; it was not necessary, it seemed, for him even to encounter the perils of a Channel voyage to receive it.

And then he opened the doors of his academy ; for so he called it. It was rather an establishment for the boarding and caning of boys, so far as their bodies were concerned ; whde for their minds there were just such few scraps and broken victuals of learning as they could manage to pick up for themselves. It was a lottery, in which you might draw education, but were certain of a beating. Yet the plan succeeded ; for the Doctor had a good manner. A tad, corpulent man, whom weak people imagined to possess a high and intellectual forehead simply because his narrow, slanting-off cranium was as bald and shining as the most prized " alley-taw" of his pupils; fiery-red whiskers, projecting teeth, small fierce eyes, under heavy, tawny brows, and large, white, hard hands. They felt like deal battledores when they struck smartly upon youthful ears — an accident which only happened when the cane was out of reach, or no Latin dictionary or other handy heavy book was conveniently near for hurling at the offender.

Fathers intrusted with confidence their refractory boys to the charge of the Doctor. They had faith in his power and his will to subdue. Mothers said little, but shivered and sobbed after their manner, and slipped half-crowns into small palms as they said good-bye to the loved off spring under sentence of transportation to Bur chell Hall. Fortunately, however, it should be added, for the education of the young gentlemen, the Doctor had secured the services of two or three under-strappers — or perhaps under-caners, they should rather be called — who really possessed the information they were paid, at a pitiful low rate, to impart to the pupils. But if any position could be more sad than that of the boys, it was surely that of the under-masters, placed between two fires, ignorance and disrespect on both sides.

The head of the academy hated his assistants because they knew more than he did, and because he knew they could not but know that fact. AVhile the boys hated the ushers — well, because youth is always in violent opposition to its instructors ; is not very much inchned to take the part of the oppressed ; but is too often cruel and cowardly. The young gen tlemen, as a rule, greeted the Doctor's jokes when he condescended to be facetious — and his fun was even more hateful and shameful than his fury — with most toady-like sniggering and applause. And they despised where he despised, and insulted'where he insulted, with most syco phantic ardour and enthusiasm. The man of culture who had invested a large capital in a superior education, and drew from it so small an annual return as was represented by the miserable stipend paid to him by the principal of Burchell Hall, was in a very unenviable situation.

Dr. Rawson dearly loved to see "M.A. of Cam bridge," or " of Oxford," added to the name of his assistant masters in the prospectus of his academy ; but he found it convenient to forget the fact in his treatment and in his payment of his ushers. He had faith in, and respect for, only one system of education ; and that was — severe caning. The rod was with him the be-all and the end-all of tuition. If a boy didn't know his lesson, he was caned ; and if he did know it, he was caned to prevent his forgetting it ; and, generally, it may be said that Dr. Rawson regarded education as a thing to be driven into the student, like a nail, by hard hammering. There is stillness in Burchell Hall. The playground is empty. The boys are all in school, you think, perhaps. No ; there is not even the sup pressed murmur and bee-like hum of scholars conning their studies.

The school is tenantless. It is the summer vacation. The boys are away at their homes. The ushers are absent, and happy, let us hope, for at least a month or so. The whitewashers are in possession of the Hall and the schoolroom ; the painters are at work picking out the broad sashes of the windows with whiter paint than ever. And Dr. Rawson ? He wanders about the lanes in the neighbourhood, slashing at stinging-nettles with his walking-stick, in default of having boys to lash. His occupation is sus pended. He is at a loss to know what to do with himself. He is said to have been seen amusing himself in an un-principal-like manner. He had been to a whist party. He has even been seen smoking a cigar. (How he laid into Jeffs Primus when he was found regaling himself with tobacco ! AVas it justice to cane him so severely ?

Surely the crime carried the punishment with it. How ill Jeffs was after his smoke ! How he thrashed little Tucker for bringing back to school a pack of cards in his box!) And the Doctor is fre quently absent — visiting London; calling upon the parents of boys ; busy inquiring after, and securing, new pupils. He travels townwards by what the old-world people in the neighbourhood persist in calling " the stage," though the vehicle is indeed an omnibus drawn by three horses. Yet every now and then there is to be seen a small figure haunting the large bare rooms : the ugly, gravelled, gritty playground, like an area of shingles which a capricious sea had left dry and deserted for ever : wandering in and out of the doors, up and down the staircases of Bur chell Had. One of Dr. Rawson' s pupils has no home; has no holidays ; never quits the academic roof.

You can see him now, as he saunters listlessly out of the schoolroom into the playground. He is not very clean ; his shirt-collar is particularly soiled and crumpled ; his clothes well-worn, too small for him, unbrushed, ill put on, with buttons missing in places, and here a patch, there a rent. He is httle in stature, very spare, with thick, un combed, dusty-looking hair falling in a great plume over his forehead ; a swarthy complexion, with dark grey eyes, very bright and intelligent, and very large — or they strike one so, perhaps because his face is so thin and his features so small. He is not a handsome boy. It would be difficult, perhaps, to decide as to his age ; he is probably a very short boy of fourteen ; for though boys of eleven are often quite as tad, or even taller, he has nothing childish about the expression of his face, which is, indeed, rather old and wise-looking, earnest, almost sad sometimes, quiet beyond his years.

Not that he is at all repining at his fate — it never occurs to him to regard it as particularly melancholy, however it may so strike a bystander. Perhaps it was rather a miserable moment when all his schoolfellows, turbulently happy, song singing, laughing, shouting aloud, now and then unreasonably, involuntarily, as though from mere abundance of life, and spirits, and health — when these turned their backs upon Burchell Hall, and left liim quite alone. It was all so sdent, that at first he used to think himself deaf, but he had soon got over that. He was possessed with quite a boy's contentment with the state in which he found himself. Indeed I think it would be hard to find any • situation in life in which a boy would be unable to make himself happy. It is some thing to have that great building all to himself.

Ordinary bans and restrictions are removed ; rules are suspended ; he may wander where he wdls — into the kitchen, the poultry-yard, the garden ; into Mrs. Rawson's spruce flower-garden ; he is allowed to busy himself in horticulture — plies the spade and the rake tdl he blisters his small brown hands, and makes his back ache ; he is permitted to watch the grooming of the Doctor's horse, and to have prolonged conversations with Tom the stable-boy; and he partakes of the de lightful labour of feeding the pig ; above all, he has a pocket-knife, containing two blades and a half — and a pocket-knife to a schoolboy is as a magic baton to a harlequin. So the poor little man makes himself happy. He has a few lessons set to him every day ; but he cannot always find anybody who will hear him repeat them.

The Doctor seems very often to have forgotten him altogether ; and sometimes whole days pass without the boy ever even beholding the principal or his cane. He takes his frugal meals wherever and whenever it may be most conve nient to give them to him. Just now the house is in some confusion, owing to the painters and the whitewashers. There are discolourations on the boy's coat, which are circumstantial evidence of his having furtively tampered with the imple ments of the workpeople. Perhaps he is even now looking gleefully forward to the proud moment when he may be able to say to Jeffs Primus, " I painted that door-post, I did, earnest ;" or, " I helped to whitewash that ceiling, honour bright;" and it may be that he is already enjoying, by an ticipation, the envy of Jeffs, who, intended for the Church by his parents, is, meanwhile, a great amateur carpenter, bricklayer, and builder, with pronounced tastes in favour also of plumbing and glazing.

But he has been deprived of one great source of comfort. That kindly housemaid, who was always pampering him and coddling him and in clined to injure his constitution by a surfeit of kitchen delicacies, has now gone away from Bur ched Had. She had given warning some time previous ; the work was too much for her, she alleged ; and moreover, a loving shoemaker had persuaded her to share his fate. I think, how ever, had it been possible, she would have given him up and remained in Dr. Rawson's service. She was in quite an agony of terror when she parted from her little boy-friend. She gave him an old pair of scissors as a parting tribute of her ceaseless regard ; while he bestowed upon her a drawing of a crusader — a treasure of tinsel, and vermdion, and Prussian blue. How delighted she was with it ! what a wondrous work of art she deemed it ! and shut it up in her Prayer- Book, vowing never, never, never, to part with it — no, not for all the gold in the world.

For the boy has another resource, from which he seldom fails to derive amusement. Those dingy, supple fingers of his are really skilful. He is the artist of the school. Nearly every pupil took home, amidst other treasures, in his "play-box," a specimen ofthe art-talent of "the boy who stopped the holidays." Many of the school-books were arabesqued with his designs. AVhat severe canings he had earned by reason of those misplaced evidences of his skill ! He is for ever drawing all sorts of things, but chiefly chivalresque and historical subjects, upon every scrap of paper he can procure, or carving with his knife, or moulding a lump of putty, purloined from the glazier, into a strange variety of figures — a favourite one being a caricature of the Doctor, only he does not permit the material to harden, retaining that form ; it would be too dangerous ; it would too surely secure to him a flogging ; so he crushes up again the effigy into a shapeless mass, and then begins with it to fashion a semblance of the French usher.

In the playground he has thrown a stone at a favourite mark, and hit it. He has commenced yet once again to carve his initials (N.R.) upon a deal door, opening on the meadow at the back of the house ; he has wound up a small peg top (a " boxer"), produced from his pocket, and spun it very adroitly, supporting it, as it revolves, now on the back, now on the palm of his hand ; he has given one or two dehcate carvings with the smad blade of his knife, specially sharpened for the purpose, to a little model of a ship's hull, also contained as a constant companion in his pocket. Then he has sauntered in-doors again, and is soon busy with a new portrait — about the thousandth — of his dear friend Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in a splendid suit of Milan armour, drawn upon the title-page of a thumbed school-copy of the " Anabasis" of Xenophon.

Presently he is disturbed in his labour of love ; just as he is niggling-in the details of the hero's chain-mail, a hght step is heard, and a woman enters, rather timidly, looking round her curiously. She starts back, however, when she sees the boy, with a little cry of surprise. She had probably expected to find the room empty. " Oh, I beg yer pardin," she says, with a spasmodic curtsey, as she prepares to retreat pre cipitately. " Hi ! hullo ! Come here !" says the boy, with quite a boy's composure and self-possession. The woman is reassured ; certainly there is nothing very alarming about the appearance of the httle man. " You're the new housemaid ? Come instead of Mary, haven't you !" " Yes, please, I have." She was a short, stout, round-edged young woman, with a healthy russet complexion, and eyes so black that there was in them no very per ceptible difference between the iris and the pupil.

" AVish you joy ! You've got into a good thing ! Mary was nearly killed with the work — she was ; told me so herself often ; and" (lower ing his voice) " perhaps the Doctor isn't a Turk. Oh, dear, no, not at all." "I know I shan't like it," said the young woman, with doleful acquiescence ; " why the scouring alone, in such a house as this — and I haven't half been over it yet — is one person's work. I stumbled as I came up the doorstep ; that's unlucky, and set me against the place at once. And my nose has been itching frightful all the morning, and that signifies a secret enemy somewhere, according to my fortune-telling book. I'm sure I sha'n't hke it ; and I wish I'd never come." She spoke with a midland-county accent, not possible to be rendered in writing by any amount of strange or uncouth spelling.

Friendly and confidential relations were thus established between the new housemaid and the schoolboy. vol. i. C "May I look?" she asked. "Oh, what a lovely drawing !" " I'll give you one like it, some day," says the boy loftily. " What's your name ?" "Susan Mann; but I'm called Sue mostly. May I ask yours, please ?" " AVeU, yes, Susan Mann. You'd be sure to know my name sooner or later, so I may as well tell you now. My name is Reeve — Noel Reeve." " I suppose, Master Reeve, you made a mis take coming away from home too soon — before the holidays were over !" " Home ! This is my home. I haven't got any other. I spent one Christmas at little Par ker's house in the country. He was a good httle fellow, was little Parker. You'll see his name cut on the shutter in the junior schoolroom Didn't the Doctor lick me for it, just !

Oh, not at all ! But little Parker died of scarlet fever — was so sorry — and of course they didn't have me at his house any more. So I always stop the holidays," " AA'hat ! Haven't you got no father, Master Reeve ?" "No." " Nor no mother, nor no brothers nor sisters ?" The boy shook his head; and then, perhaps a httle annoyed at Susan Mann's questions, turned away to add a pair of mustachios to AA'ilfred of Ivanhoe. "Lor', poor dear!" said Susan. "AVhy, you're worse off nor me. I come out of the coal-i country, you know. Perhaps you could guess as much from my talk, which isn't hke people's near London. This is only my third place since I left Sunday-school. Father was a collier. Perhaps you never heard of Grimstone' s pit ? Dare say not ; though it's well enough known down in my part of the country.

Father worked in Grimstone's colliery. He died along of the fire-damp, with nine other men. There was a explosion. I was only two years old at the time. He was awful shattered ; broken to bits, poor man. They had to pick him up — what they could find of him — and carry him home in a bag. Mother was knocked aU foolish when she saw him, and never got over it. And just then brother Jim was born, and he's been but a poor creature all his life — rather queer and crazy hke. Can't do much more nor laugh and twitter with his fingers, and chevy sparrows; and it's hard to get a living out of that. Folks subscribed for mother. Poor soul ! she never was the same woman again, I'm told, and went out at last like a snuff of candle. And the parish helped; and I send all my wages I can to keep Jim decent, and they do what they can for him about the pit, and try to em ploy him; but he's a poor creature is Jim, worse luck."

Sincere interest and sympathy sparkled in the boy's big grey eyes as he listened to his new friend's recital ; and then he fell to considering whether a fire-damp explosion, and nine colliers " blown to . bits," would not make rather an effective subject for art illustration. " How long have you been here, may I be so bold as to ask, Master Reeve ?" " Eight years, counting this next half. I was at a preparatory school before." " And no holidays ! Don't you get very moped and miserable ?" "AVell, I do at times. It's better when the boys come back. They're very kind at first, and very glad to see me, and give me lots of cake, and gingerbread, and jam, and that. But after wards " " Yes, afterwards ?" " WeU, afterwards," said the boy, the colour rising in his cheeks, " they take to calling names sometimes — id names — because I've no father and mother, and don't remember anythino-, and can't tell anything about them.

That's hard to bear, if you like." And he turned away. " Poor dear !" murmured the young woman from the coal country, tenderly; and I think, if she had dared — but there was something so grave, so calm, so dignified almost, about the boy's manner, that she was awed and restrained in spite of herself — she would have taken him in her robust arms and kissed him ; — " a love-child, I suppose. And yet he's a gentleman. One can see that at once. Though he might be cleaner, certainly, specially about the hands. Yet how clever he is with them ! To think that he should draw like that — and such a mere child to look at, poor dear !" "And haven't you no guardian, nor nothing?" she inquired, after a pause. " Well, yes, I have a sort of guardian, I suppose ; but he don't come here often. I haven't seen him for more than a year."

" And his name ?" " I don't know his name." And with crimson cheeks he turned again to his art labours. " Which do you like best ?" Susan asked, softly, after a pause ; " sugared bread-and-butter or buttered toast ?" But a heavy tread was heard in the passage. " Hush ! Gave !" said the boy, with an alarmed look. " The Doctor's come out of his study." So Susan made her escape.

Chapter II. Clare

Presently all danger had subsided. The Doctor had withdrawn again into the retirement of his study — an apartment principally useful to him, inasmuch as he there stored his books and his canes, and, for his greater comfort, it was mali ciously whispered, a stock of cigars also, and a snug case of liquors ; the large globes in the embrasures of the windows, the enormous maps upon the walls, and the shelves upon shelves of books on each side of the fireplace, being rather so many "properties" aiding in the general deco ration of the scene, than sources of knowledge and stores of information to whicb he was wont to have recourse with any particular frequency. Once more secure, therefore, in his solitary liberty, and having completed his portrait of the Disinherited Knight — with a determination upon some future occasion to produce a companion work containing a representation of that rival warrior, the Templar, Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert — Noel Reeve stroUed once more out of the school room and surveyed the haU.

Ladders leant against the walls, pails and brushes and paint pots were about the floor, and there was an arrangement of scaffolding-poles and planks, affording the means of reaching the ceiling ; but the workmen were absent — one of those periods of the day having arrived which the labouring .classes of the community are accustomed to dedi cate especially to the purposes of refreshment, -and therefore to reverence by abstaining altogether from toil with a scrupulosity almost superstitious. To have a ladder before him and not to mount it, to stand over a pail of whitewash and not to stir up the mixture and mess about with it generally, were more than could be ex pected from the nature of boyhood; and forth with Noel Reeve had climbed to the ceiling, and was to be seen wielding a formidable " double lie" brush, splashing above him, and spattering himself and his clothes in a dreadful way.