Jabez Nutyard, Workman and Dreamer: a novel

Front matter

Uniform with "Jabbz Nutyard," Crown Svo, Art Linen, Gilt Top, price 6/- each. THE POWER OF THE DOG. By Rowland Grey, Author of "By Virtue of His Office," etc. (Second Edition.) BLACK DIAMONDS (Authorized Edition. ) By Maurus Jokai, Author of "'Midst the Wild Carpathians," "Pretty Michal" etc. (Fourth Edition.-, JUDY A JILT. By Mrs. Conney, Author of '" Peggs Perversity," " Gold for Dross," etc. (Second Edition.) LAD Y JEAN'S SON. By Sarah Tytlbr, Author of " Lady Jean's Vagaries" etc. (Second Edition.) COLOUR SERGEANT No. i COMPANY. By Mrs. Leith Adams, Author of "Bonnie Kate" etc. (Second Edition. ) THE INN BY THE SHORE. By Florence Warden, Author of " The House (Fourth Edition.) on the Marsh" etc. THE GREEN BOOK. (Authorized Edition. ) (Sixth Edition.) By Maurus Jokai. MY BONNIE LADY. By Leslie Keith, " The Chilcotes" "In (Second Edition.)

Author of " 'Lisbeth,' Spite of Herself" etc. THE WINDS OF MARCH. By George Knight, Author of "Dust in the Balance," " The Circle of tlie Earth'' etc. (Second Edition) A STRONG NECESSITY. By Isabel Don, Author of " Only Clare/ten," " Zohrak" " The Story of Holland" etc. FORBIDDEN BY LAW. By Major Arthur Griffiths, Author of "Secrets of the Prison House," etc. (Third Edition.) PRETTY MICHAL. (Authorized Edition. ) By Maurus Jokai, Author of "Black Diamonds" etc. (Fourth Edition.) MISS PROVIDENCE. By Dorothea Gerard, Author of "Lady Baby" etc. (Fourth Edition ) VALENTINE: A Story of Ideals. By Curtis Yorke, Author of" Hush" etc. (Third Edition. . THE LION OF JANINA; or, The Last of The Janissaries. By Maurus J<5kai. (Fourth Edition*) London : Jarrold & Sons and ii Warwick LfrNE E.C. And of aU BooksdJ^ST^StX J WORKMAN AND DREAMER A NOVEL BY Mrs. Edmonds author of "Fair Athens," "Greek Lays," "Amygdala," "The Church Mouse," "Kolokotrones," etc.

SANS PEIIR. ET SANS REPROCHE London . Jarrold & Sons IO AND II WARWICK LANE E.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS. CHAPTER FAGE I. JABEZ nutyard is in one of his moods JABEZ NUTYARD'S GREAT TRIAL 7 n. 21 26 III. OAKFIELD CHACE AND CLARE DOWNTON IV. MR. NOEL DOWNTON RECEIVES A LETTER, AND CLARE DOWNTON LOSES ONE 34 46 V. A POOR WAIF COMES TO OAFIELD CHACE VI. CLARE DOWNTON INVITES JABEZ NUTYARD AND HIS DAUGHTER TO OAKFIELD CHACE - 56 VII. A DAY IN THE WOODS AND WHAT CAME OF IT - 64 VIII. CLARE DOWNTON MAKES A COMMUNICATION TO HER UNCLE - 86 IX. THE FIRM OF MR. NOEL DOWNTON AND ITS HISTORY IOI 1 12 X. WRITTEN IN COLD BLOOD PAUL DOWNTON TELLS HIS SISTER CLARE XI. OF HIS DESIRE TO MARRY MISS Il8 MASTERMAN mr. downton does not agree with his nephew paul's ideas in business - XII. 124 THE IRON-WORKS ON THE BANK OF THE XIII, THAMES AND THE HONOURABLE ANGUS 128 MACILVAINE CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Jabez Nutyard Is In One Of His Moods

" HlLLO, Jabez, so yer thinkin' o' takin' a turn wi' me down the river, are yer, old man ? " A ruddy-faced waterman who, a few minutes before, had deposited a freight of workmen on the causeway shelving into the mud and shingles of the Thames bank at Blackwall, shouted this not unfriendly greeting to a man on the shore to which he was returning. This man was standing upon the extreme edge of the peninsula, as it might be called, and was apparently looking into vacancy, or rather had the face of one who had not made up his mind whither he meant to go. " Git out o' the way, yer little varmints, and let the gen'lman pass." This objurgation was addressed to a crowd of youthful tatterdemalions, who, flocking hitherwards daily from many a darksome alley in worse than poverty-stricken Deptford, scattered themselves over the shore to gather up small bits of iron, old nails, and other refuse from the factories near ; a hopeless brood in appearance, and strangely belying the efficacy of existing methods of enforc ing education.

" I'm not intending to go down the river, Ned," answered the man whom the boatman had addressed as " Jabez." That is not my usual way of spending the Saturday afternoon, and, besides, I expect that my dinner is waiting for me at home." " Yer don't seem to be hurryin' up for that either, Nutyard. If I'd the chance of a dinner waitin' for me, I'd not be in this boat jest now, I can tell yer." The waterman's broad and ruddy visage gave no token of his being habitually underfed, but he was a bit ruffled. He was disappointed of a fare, and the disappointment was all the more annoying because of the deception that had been played upon him. It was a shaft aimed indirectly at Jabez Nutyard by one of his fellow-workmen that had caused the ferryman to ply his oars so vigor ously back to the bank he had lately left, at the words, " Git back as fast as yer can, mate. ' Old Jabez ' has a mind to run down stream this arternoon, so ketch him afore he begins to think o' summat else."

" Another time," growled the waterman, unsus pecting the trick played upon himself, "another time," and an angry flush deepened his red cheeks, as he looked after Jabez Nutyard's retreating figure, " yer'll hev to make up yer mind pretty firm afore yer gets me across, I can tell yer that, Mister Jabez " — dashing his oars savagely into the water as he turned the prow of his boat once more towards Blackwall — " but he's not all there — he's not all there — that's about it." As he uttered these words in a sententious way, he seemed to derive some comfort from them, for his oars fell at once into their usually leisurely stroke. " Poor old Jabez — no, he's not all there, that's the long and short of it " — a shade of rough pity dispelled the momentary anger of the honest fellow as he thus soliloquised.

" Howsumever," he added, " he's only a hole-driller, and it don't want much gumption to poke holes in bits of iron — it ain't like managing a boat." Nothing smooths out any man's ruffled temper sooner than a favourable estimate of him self. " Why the work in them there fact'ries and ingineering shops is all plain sailing ; there ain't no call for allus keepin' a good look-out, as we hev ; they've got no big steamers a-blowing them confounded 'orns as they turn the Pint, and a yelling ' Git out o' my way, all on yer ; git out o' my way, or I'll run yer down — and they do it too." The waterman looked all around him with a half-defiant, half-suspicious air, as though it were possible that a big steamer might be close athwart his boat, without having given the accus tomed warning. " A waterman must hev a head on his shoulders — that's about it — an' more nor that, he b'longs to the Constitooshun.

In them good old times when they know'd how to do things, the Parlamint gev 'im priwilidges, and them priwilidges e' 'as now, tho' there be sum as hev tried hard to take 'em away. But takin' away the priwilidges of us Thames watermen means a-pullin' down o' the Constitooshun — nothin' less — nothin' less than the pullin' down of the British Constitooshun ! " Old Ned Scrivener dropped his voice, and let his hands rest upon his oars. " But wot I heerd t'other night banged all. I heerd 'em a-conwersing about it at ' The Three Jolly Boat men' that they'd actially got a Hact o' Parlamint to bore a 'ole right agin the Pint, under the river from side to side, for men and women to go a-burrowing like rabbits, 'stead of crossing in boats like decent people. Here's as sine a river as the 'ole world can boast on — and here's wessels an' men as is priwilidged, an' as a Hact of Parlamint to back 'em, an' then they goes and sets up a Hact of Parlamint to make a tun'el.

It's unconstitoo shunal, and a-flyin' in the face of Providence. The Thames was made for boats and boatmen as is priwilidged, and oughtn't to be turned into a burrow as if we was warmint. They says it'll take some years to do ; but 'twill be finished for sartin in eightin hunderd and ninety-sev'n — all told — but I'll stand to it that it's unconstitooshunal, and it's her Majesty's dooty to purtect priwilidges as was sworn to by oath afore she was born — and we'll hev to see that she do ! " Old Ned Scrivener paused from lack of breath, and then, grasping his oars anew, slowly and sullenly rowed his boat ashore. n Meanwhile, Jabez Nutyard, the hole-driller, as the ferryman had designated him, who had to traverse the two miles of low-lying district between the river and his home near Old Charlton, often turned back a lingering gaze upon the familiar streak of curving water, with its dulled outline of vapour and smoke, and its -many chimneys, that made the tall masts of the docks' shipping look almost insignificant.

There are some faces that have neither beauty nor youth, but yet they arrest the attention, and here was a face that hinted at possibilities other than what its mere ruggedness of outline could betoken. At least such would have been the verdict of those who can look through the mask of the habitual, and see behind it the character which it so often conceals. Jabez Nutyard was a hole-driller, nothing more, not even a skilled engineer, as his fellow-workmen at the large engineering firm that abutted on the Thames bank were not slow to remind him. The practical engineer is for the most part a shrewd man, in whom common-sense predominates ; yet he has seldom any imagination, and scarcely tolerates those who have ; but this man's face had at this moment so far-away a look that it might have been that of a seer or visionary, rather than of a driller of iron plates.

This expression was, however, evanescent ; and in the workshop — where a dogged perseverance in the monotonous drudgery of unskilled labour had helped, during fifty years or so of life, to shape the furrows of his face — it was wholly absent. This attribute of doggedness, to call it by no better name, had its outward and visible signs clearly displayed in the mouth. In any conflict between Will and Feeling there could be no doubt which would gain the mastery. The firm mouth betokened that ; though what depths of anguish must not the owner of those question asking eyes, with their fitful gleams of spirituality, sound, before a victory became final. Was the hole-driller at this moment engaged in one of these conflicts ? or was he merely recalling the changes that had passed over that murky river since the days of his childhood, when he gathered upon its banks armfuls of the regal yellow iris and purple starwort, and drank in a love of Nature, and perceptions of the Beautiful, that were never to fade away, but were to compensate him for all the meanness and dreariness of his surroundings ?

Possibly ; but, if it were so, some painful memory suddenly brought back all that was harsh and repellent in his visage, and caused him to turn aside from the most direct path to his home, and to take another that led in quite an opposite direction. Whilst Jabez Nutyard is following the impulse of this changeful mood — we must give a retro spective glance at his life up to this moment. He was born of parents who belonged to a sect so strait and narrow in its conceptions of religion as to lead to an inference that unloveliness in all things was to it a type of godliness. Nothing could well be more ugly than the mean and wretched building, the name of which was almost a profanation. If Bethel — the House of God — was ugly, and full of unsavoury suggestions and evil smells from bad ventilation, so all who came to worship within its four walls were, by a singular coincidence, ill-favoured ; from the plain-faced minister, with his discordant voice and harsh doc trine, to the door-keeper and lamp-cleaner com bined, who was dignified by the name of "church officer."

Singularly depressing as these conditions would be to some people, the chapel and its service were sufficient for the mental and spiritual needs of those who assembled there. The teaching did suffice to keep them free from gross vices, if it were not all-sufficient to preserve them from petty meannesses. In this tangled little knot of uncom prehended Christianity, Nutyard the elder, and his wife, found themselves looked up to as competent to unravel the most complicated threads of doctrine without the aid of their minister. With a tendency common to some narrow sectarians, their Biblical quotations, which were as frequent as they were irrelevant, were mostly taken from the Hebrew Scriptures, with a strong bias towards Old Testa ment names. When their first child was born, therefore, instead of giving him the patronymic " John " at the registry office, baptism not being approved by them, they named him "Jabez."

This name, which, in the Hebrew, signifies trouble or sorrow, literally brought such to the poor child, for it always attracted to it a certain measure of ridicule, and thoughtless boys, and more thought less men, seemed to find in it a happy vehicle for conveying a jeer. Before he was in his teens, this name had already become hateful to the child, because it lent itself as a handle to his tormentors, and the prefix of "Old" was not one added in later years by his fellow-workmen, for the cogno men of " Old Jabez " alone had been his from his school days, when, shouted after him malignantly, it had often brought tears into his eyes. It was strange whence the boy could have derived his sensitiveness, for there was no trace of it in his parents ; neither was it from them that he inherited the intelligence, the power of observation, and the kinship with Nature, that separated him very soon from the worshippers at Bethel.

The most despised fragment on the hem of Nature was a mine of wealth to little Jabez. A stray golden backed beetle, a maimed butterfly, whose gorgeous wings were frayed and torn in some bitter experience of its short life, or a bough of shining berries from Kentish hedgerows, could bring the boy a delight and a solace that were abiding joys. These tendencies kept his mind clear, notwithstanding the gloom of Bethel's teachings ; these kept his heart reverent, notwithstanding the gradual slip ping away of Bethel doctrines. It is in the composition of man, however, to make to himself gods, and by his gods he may be known. Jabez Nutyard had some elements of spirituality within him, which had been starved at Bethel, and were therefore stunted in their growth. But when once free, and launched into a way of earning his own livelihood, he emancipated himself quickly from the shackles imposed by duty to his parents, and sought out his own salvation, not in any of the orthodox ways, but evolved from a web of fancies and dreams which had wound its network silently round him.

When the growth of spirituality in a healthy human soul has been checked by adverse circumstance, as in the early youth of Nutyard, and starved into a state of apathy or indifference, too often such a forlorn soul is ready to attach itself to the latest craze. The repressed use of the higher faculties in young Nutyard had made him reticent and mistrustful of teachers. He shunned all gatherings of whatsoever kind. " I have had too much of talk," he was wont to say to himself ; " the voices that I care to listen to won't be from any platform." So it was, that Nutyard in his long walks in the country after his daily labours, or on Sundays, to the great grief of his parents, and scandal of the pastor of Bethel, listened wistfully to the ever speaking voices of Nature, seeking, if may be, they had a special message for himself.

Making himself his own interpreter, his interpretations were coloured by his own longings. He began to regard his night dreams, the product of over fatigue, as among the voices ; recalling unwittingly the creations of old Homer several thousand years before, when the dream sent by the gods sat by the pillow of the sleeper. Fortunately for him, a practical common-sense dominated most of his waking hours. Fortunately, too, he had married a woman who, if she had not a spark of imagination herself— what woman in that sphere of life ever has ? — was sensible enough not to banter her husband for fancies she could not comprehend ; a mode of procedure which is able to quench confidence without extinguishing belief. Jabez went on working year after year with the same tools in his hands, but with many a rainbow-coloured dream in his heart ; and he had never got beyond hole-drilling, simply because he had, strange to say, no apparent ambitions, and was quite content to go on doggedly doing one thing until the end of his days.

He had, however, a secret ambition, that, though born not wholly of his fancies, was nourished and fed by his dreams. This sole ambition was entirely centred, and had both its beginning and end in the small individual that entered the world within a year after his marriage. Around the cradle of this as yet undefined personality, Nutyard wove his dreams, until they became, for him, strong realities. His boy was not weighted from his birth with the sorrow-compelling patronymic of " Jabez," but was duly registered " Felix." What ever-widening hopes were clustered round that name ? As he held the soft, chubby hand of his infant in his own broad palm, and felt the tiny fingers close round one of his, brown and furrowed by toil, he made an oath to himself that they should not be toughened and hardened by hole-drilling.

His son should become an engineer of course, for the father was proud of the calling that had in the abstract achieved so much for humanity. Yes, his son should be an engineer, but he should be educated so as not to be hampered all his life through by insufficient knowledge, as his father had been. Jabez Nutyard found all his recreation in his country walks and observations on Nature, and the greater part of his happiness in the tangled weaving of his dreams ; yet he never prayed that his boy should become either a naturalist or a mystic. If his hopes or fancies ever took the form of prayer it was that his Felix might become a notable engineer, and that his own name of Nutyard — without the Jabez — might be that of a great inventor. This was the material end which the voices whispered ; this was the achieved result brought to his pillow by the dream-messenger.

Thus the years passed in monotonous work, and too-strained thrift ; dreary years, but for the hope behind them, and the dreams that went with them all the way. The birth of a girl three years after the son was an immaterial event. The child was welcomed as a very necessary companion and help to the mother in the future ; but she could not be a " great engineer" nor an "inventor," so she did not enter into the father's calculations nor mingle in his dreams. All day he drilled his holes, thinking the while whether Felix would soon develop the latent engineer in some childish freak, as other great men had done. The most wonderful machines that were destined to change the whole B aspect of Nature in its relations to man were revealed to him nightly as the work of his son, and it was nothing to Nutyard that they were merely the dreams begotten by the in-dwelling fancies and ambition of his waking hours — to him they were precursors of realities ; they came as messengers, and their messages always brought him gladness.

But neither by night nor by day came to him that one possible dream that so often darkens the outlook into the future ; had it ever come to him, he would at once have cast it from him as a lying nightmare, but it came not. His trust and his beliefs were undisturbed, when suddenly un announced — and unheralded — the angel of death swooped down upon his home, and before the bewildered parents could realize what the diagnosis of the medical man might mean, the boy whose existence had conjured up all the above phantas magoria, lay dead of diphtheria. It is too poor a word to describe the father as stunned — he was almost maddened. The man usually so self-possessed, lost all control. He absented himself from his work for many days, walking for miles, with no object, except, as it seemed, to get away from himself; and sought the most unfrequented spots alone, regardless of his desolate wife and home.

He, who had hitherto loved the wild woods so much, that he would tramp miles to seek in them his solace, now went to them only to complain in unreasoning fashion. There was one especially loved spot, some ten miles distant, where, on the week's end general holiday, he would trudge, and sitting beneath a favourite beech— to eat the wayfarer's meal — sketch out the future of his boy. Now, he sought the same place, and asked in bewildered unrest why such grief had come to him, and Nature that he had loved so long, cared not Had the lightning rent those grand trees, and tearing off their limbs, left the scathed trunks bare, he would have sorrowed ; but now these boughs, in the full leafage of June, were rustling in happy content ment, and the birds were singing lustily in their ample shade. It was nightfall when he reached his home.

His wife, holding his little girl by the hand, stood at the open door. "Jabez," she cried excitedly, " we must get out of this at once. The doctor thought something must be wrong with the drains, and so he sent the Sanitary Inspector, who says we've been living over a cesspool, and must not sleep here another night." " What's the good of moving out now — when the boy is dead ? " answered her husband roughly. " Will our going bring him back I wonder ? " The wife compressed her lips, and tightly clutched the little girl to her side. "No, Nutyard, the boy can't be brought back, and it's just 'cause he can't be brought back, that our one child mustn't be let to follow him if it can be helped, and so I am going with her to mother's. The doctor's been here to-day these many times, and th' inspector says he can't understand at all as you, a ' engineer ' — and ' a scientific man,' them's his words, could go on living in such a house, and not seem to know nothing of the dreadful state the drains was in — he says it's no wonder " " No wonder — what, woman — no wonder what ,i " No wonder that Felix died," said the mother unflinchingly, with hard tearless eyes, for the absence of her husband from the house of sorrow had eaten into her soul.

" Mary — Mary — then it was me who killed him?" " Don't say that, Jabez — don't say that — I oughtn't to ha' spoken out as I did just now. I suppose — I suppose God knows — what's best," and the eyes that looked so set and hard a moment before, burst out into passionate weeping. " What's best — God knows what's best," repeated Nutyard, in a dazed way; then, taking the child's hand from that of the mother, he followed his wife in silence. But his unspoken words repeated in gloomy bewilderment, " God knows — God knows — what's best ; and is this God's best — is this God's best ? "

Chapter II. Jabez Nutyard's Great Trial

Several years had elapsed between the death of his son and that day when we first saw Nutyard on the Thames bank. All ambitions and fond hopes of building up a scientific name through his son lay buried in that son's grave. He thought that he had listened weakly to the creations of his own brain, that he himself had been responsible for that son's death, and stern were his self judgments when he stood by the grassy mound that was all that was left to him of his darling ; but the woods saw him no more ; Nature had been foolishly worshipped — it was hard and cruel like all existence. No dreams came to him now — they were all lying phantasies. There was no response when, stirred by the words that long haunted him night and day, he asked in passionate entreaty, " If Thou knowest, tell me, O God, why it was best," but no answer came.

Dulled by constantly gnawing grief, his imagina tion gave birth to no more pictures of the unseen, viewed through the beauty of the visible. A dreary time of waiting in cloud-land, but Nutyard's mind was saved from being altogether unhinged, not by any heaven-born aspirations, but by his daily labour of hole-drilling, that, like many seemingly soulless and monotonous handicrafts, sometimes show divine results. Light came at last — not from dream or phantasy, but from contact with a healthy human soul. In his frequent visits to the grave of his lost Felix, the hole-driller had occasionally met an elderly man who apparently came to deposit flowers, which were always of the choicest kinds. At first it was almost with a feeling of resentment that Nutyard beheld those wreaths, which were an evidence of wealth ; but when upon one day, the stranger's kindly eyes rested upon his own, a barrier seemed at once broken down, speech followed, and a mutual attraction ensued.

The stranger proved to be a man of cultivated habits, with a larger experi ence and broader sympathies than Nutyard had ever known ; a man whose best years of life had been devoted to commerce, and who had become wealthy, without incurring the slightest imputation from the less fortunate as to his high integrity. He, too, nursed in a corner of his heart one saddened memory, at which point these two men, so widely sundered by social position and advan tages, met on equal ground. The elder man listened to Nutyard's tale, a tale that had been told to no one heretofore, but which was elicited without a question. At the conclusion, drawing Nutyard's arm within his own, he said gently, " There has been no wrong done to you, other JABEZ NUTYARD'S GREAT TRIAL. 23 than what you have yourself done, and are still doing.

You expected results that you had no right to expect. Go to Nature again — but as a learner always — as a questioner, never ; but take your daughter with you. ' Let the dead bury the dead.' " There was silence for a few minutes. " By-the-bye, I have rather a nice place among the Surrey hills," and dropping Nutyard's arm he took out his card-case. " Come down some day, and bring your daughter with you. I have a niece living with me whom it will delight you to know. I fancy that every living creature in the woods around knows her and loves her. Anyhow she loves them, and therefore knows all about them. Love is the greatest teacher, Mr. Nutyard." They shook hands at parting, and the hole-driller looked after his new friend, as he drove away in the trap waiting for him, without any pang of jealousy at the rare flowers rich men were able to lay upon the graves of their beloved dead.

" Mr. Noel Downton, Oakfield Chace." As Nutyard read the card, something almost like a smile lighted up his rugged face. Miriam Nutyard was just at the age when a community of pursuits such as that suggested to her father by his friend was most valuable, and Nutyard discovered to his great joy that kindred tastes, whose existence was altogether unsuspected by him, were shared by his daughter. In the pleasure of that discovery, in the re-awakening of his spirit, he put aside his first intention of profiting at an early date by Mr. Downton's invitation, and as time went on, although he did not forget it, he had come to the conclusion that it was better that he should not avail himself of it. The old pride of the man reasserted itself in the belief that true fellowship between a rich man and a workman, if not impossible, was always inex pedient.

So two years had passed before Jabez Nutyard again saw Mr. Downton, when, quickening his steps as he turned towards the cemetery to which he was bound, he met him at the entrance as he was on the point of mounting a bay mare, that was being held by one of the men employed on the grounds. Mr. Downton, recognising him immediately, stopped as he was about to put his foot in the stirrup, and turned to him with extended hands. " My faithless friend, whom we have waited for so long ! How goes it with you ? Has all been well ? " " I took your advice, Mr. Downton ; and I thank you now for giving it me. I have found my daughter a good companion, and she has brought me great comfort." "But you could not bring yourself into the mind to come and see us. Did I impress you so formidably ? " Nutyard felt somewhat sheepish, as he did not care to say exactly what he thought about the inequality of their stations in life unfitting them for any close intimacy.