'Buttons,' the narrative of the trials and travels of a young gentleman

Preface

. I HONESTLY confess at the outset that this book has a purpose beyond that of raising a^ laugh over the peculiar mishaps of the hero. Nay more, my purpose is one which may be con sidered as worn somewhat threadbare in fiction. Here follows a story of a good old-fashioned kind, yet adapted to certain conditions of the present day ; and though I trust that my cha racters will prove more amusing than Master Tommy Merton or Master Henry Milner, I know of some young masters and misses who would be none the worse of giving serious consideration to a fault which we moralizing authors have had to find from time immemorial. It is to be hoped that few readers of these pages will require to be told from what author I have borrowed all their head lines : " A poor humour of mine, sir." A. R. H.

Chapter I

" They will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices " Twelfth Night. James Geoffrey Barnard Shaw was undoubtedly a nice-looking and clever young gentleman, who, as his fond mother fully believed and frequently reminded him, should by no means be counted among the general mass of human beings. His father was the Honourable Frederick Shaw, second son of the late Lord Foulis, and Judge of the W County Court. Master Geoffrey, as he was usually called at home, was, moreover, the Benjamin ofthe family ; his brothers were considerably older than him- B self and had gone out into the world ; thus he, his mother's favourite, ran great chance of being spoiled, and it is not surprising that he thought a good deal of himself. So you might have understood, if you had seen him one Wednesday afternoon, going to play football with his school-fellows of the town.

Smartly dressed in the School Club uniform, purple jersey and stockings and white flannel knickerbockers, only half concealed un der his great coat, it was but natural that the nursery-maids and children should turn round to stare at him, as Geoffrey, not unconscious of this becoming admiration, took his way leisurely along the road, stepping carefully over the puddles and holding his head erect as beseemed a person of such consideration, till he arrived at the gate of the field where the game was to be played. But here a slight obstacle to his entrance presented itself, or himself rather ; for the obstacle was a boy stolidly perched up on the top of the gate, and all eyes for the assembled players who dotted the field in their gay dresses. This was a boy of a very different order from Geoffrey Shaw : a coarse, heavy-looking boy with "Now, Sir, what make you here?

" 3 rough hair cropped short and patched boots, but, as to the rest of his clothes, dressed in the brand-new livery of a page. Sitting with his back to the road, and intent on the preparations for the game, this inferior person did not notice Geoffrey till that young gentleman, annoyed at being delayed, especially as he feared his com panions were waiting for him, cried out roughly, and, if he had not been a young gentleman, I should have said rudely — " Get off that gate ! " The other boy looked round, and when he saw who addressed him in this style, was by no means slow to comply. Far be it from him to stand in the way of one of these finely-dressed players whose proceedings he was watching with such interest and admiration ! He was willing to help rather than hinder the game. So he at once got off his perch, and let himself down into the field, that Geoffrey might have free passage.

But to Geoffrey, in his impatience, it seemed that the fellow was purposely slow and obstinate ; besides, he thought that when a vulgar youth had the impudence to trespass on their gate, the least he could do was to be deferential enough to open it for one of his superiors. Instead of offering to do anything of the kind, the boy stood stupidly within a foot or two of the gate, and actually ventured to stare at the gorgeous array of the new comer, who had now unbuttoned his overcoat and revealed himself in all his magnificence. There was plenty of room for Geoffrey to open the gate and slip in without meddling with the poor lad, who, after all, meant well and was doing no great harm where he was ; but moved by contempt for this awkward lout and just indignation at such an invasion of the sacred football field by an unauthorized and ungenteel person, Geoffrey swung the gate forward so violently that it struck the other boy on the arm and nearly knocked him over.

This was a plain hint to get well out of the way of such important individuals as Geoffrey Shaw ; but the recipient scarcely took it in good part. Though he was only a " boy in buttons," he had "the passions of his kind"; and his kind, in all classes of life, are not remarkable for cheerfully turning the left cheek to the smiter. " What did you do that for ?" he cried angrily, just as if he hadn't been speaking to one of his betters. " On what compulsion, must I, tell me that 1 " 5 " What are you doing in our field t" asked Geoffrey. " I was only wanting to see the game," growled the page. " You have no business here. Walk out, and look sharp about it." "Who'll make me?" " I will, if you don't get off at once." "Try it!" The page moved a step forward ; Geoffrey stood still. The two boys were close to each other, and standing face to face with that ex pression of the eye which in bears and lions and other vertebrate animals commonly means fight ing.

Both were about the same size, and if they had only been two or three years younger, they would perhaps have come to blows on the spot. But restraining influences were at work. Geoffrey, in chivalric disdain, scarcely cared to begin a combat in which he felt sure of coming off best, and did not much value the cheap glory of beating a clumsy cad ; besides, it would delay the game ; so he stood calm and haughty with his hanc$5 in his pockets, and only his eye on the watch for the adversary's move ments. The page had clenched his rough fist ; but he was heavily weighted by a sense of his pro fessional character, so to speak. He had not yet been able to feel at ease under the consciousness of wearing, for the first time in his life, a high hat with a cockade in it. In his natural wrath he still bethought himself that he had just become a boy in buttons, who was to enter upon his first place at three o'clock that after noon ; and though he was as yet sadly ignorant of the manners and customs prevalent in his new sphere of life, he had wisdom enough to guess that his employers would hardly approve of his presenting himself in their service with a black eye and a swollen lip.

So he lowered his hands and shuffled off, keeping his face to the enemy, however, and backed out of the gate just as Geoffrey's schoolfellows began shouting to him to make haste. " If you were not such a stupid cad, you would have the politeness to shut the gate, at least," said Geoffrey, feeling it proper that he should have the last word. The page boy did shut the gate, for he was not unwilling to be serviceable to any reason able extent. But he consoled himself by re marking audibly, — " I can hardly forbear hurling things at him A 7 " I'll punch your 'ead for you, some day, though you think yourself such a swell ! " " And I'll kick you out in about half a second the next time I find you in our field, you young flunkey," cried Geoffrey, a little nettled out of his dignified air of contempt.

But there was no more time to be lost on such a fellow ; he turned round and ran off to the other end of the field, where the players were waiting for him. The other boy had almost picked up a lump of mud to throw after his reviler, but he thought better of it. To enter upon the work of life, even though it be only as a boy in buttons, is a serious step, and brings a certain sense of re sponsibility, so that young " cads," as Geoffrey would call them, are often found to have more practical wisdom and more true manliness than public-school boys of the same age, with all their Latin and Greek, which, indeed, is little enough in some cases. Circumstances had already drilled into our page the useful lesson, that in this world we cannot always safely indulge the passions we have a mind to, but, in vulgar phrase, must manage to lump a great deal that we don't like.

So he tried to stomach his resentment as best he could, and with one more look at the game which he would like to have joined in, but was not allowed to be so much as a spectator of, took his way slowly towards the house where he was to enter upon his new duties, hanging his head in a clownish fashion that showed he would require a good deal of training before he did credit to his place, and perhaps pondering in a dim and confused way upon the order of things, the unequal conditions of existence, and other problems which have engaged the attention of philosophers of all ages. But possibly he found consolation in thinking that the nurserymaids and children now took admiring notice of his livery, of the newness and elegance of which he was quite as conscious as Geoffrey of his purple and white flannel ; indeed, when our Buttons reached the streets, he began to hold his head a little higher and to look down with some complacency on the National-school boys in their patched trousers and ill-fitting jackets, from which chrysalis state he himself had emerged that day at dinner time.

He was no mere schoolboy now, but a page in one of the most respectable families of the How apt the poor are to be proua i 9 town, where, as his mother told him, if he be haved well, he could rise in time to be a foot man, then a butler, and at last — but this was almost too much to be more than a dream — might even attain to the dizzy grandeur of verger at the Minster, with a gown and a white necktie and a long stick to overawe the naughty children. With so splendid a career before him, had he not a right to be proud and to push the dirty little boys out of his way as rudely as he himself had just been treated by Geoffrey Shaw ? Alas ! such is life.

Chapter II

"Ungracious wretch, Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves Where manners ne'er were preached, out of my sight !" Twelfth Night. GEOFFREY Shaw's side won the match, a result which he was not the least in bringing about, though one of the youngest of the players. Like a high-bred animal that he was, he had plenty of courage and activity ; and that afternoon he played splendidly, kicking a goal for his side, getting half a dozen falls, from each of which he seemed to rise a young Antæus, only re freshed by contact with his mother earth, and working harder for play than most men would care to do for bread. This is one of the strange inequalities of life : that what is toil to some of us, is amusement to others ; I wonder if boys ever think of it. But I must not suggest thinking to them, or they will perceive that there is a moral in my tale and fly from it as from the plague or the Greek grammar.

" What? my young master!" 11 The game was over, and the boys who had taken part in it, agreeably tired and honourably dirtied, strolled homewards by little groups in the gathering dusk. On the Green, in the centre of the town, Geoffrey took leave of his companions, and turned aside to one of the most spacious and handsome of the old houses surrounding it. This was his home. Geoffrey rang the bell, and the door was almost immediately opened by a page-boy looking very stiff and awkward in a new suit of livery. Who was it but the very boy he had had an alterca tion with two hours before, at the foot-ball field! Their surprise at this unexpected meeting was mutual. Geoffrey left off scraping the mud from his boots ; and the page, when he had opened the door half-way, stopped open-mouthed, and stood blocking up the passage.

The former was the first to recover his self-possession. " So you are our new boy in buttons, are you ? " The boy in buttons, not knowing what to say, said nothing ; he was divided between a feeling of natural resentment at the young gentleman's insolence and the respect which, as had been carefully drilled into him by his mother, he was bound to show towards the family of his master. A good-natured word from Geoffrey would at this point have set everything right ; but it was not forthcoming. " Now then, John, won't you let me in, even to my father's house ? Open the door wide, for I can't walk through you, you know." " My name's not John," growled the page, as he threw back the door, and let his young master pass. " No matter ; we always call our boys John. We have had so many that nobody can be expected to remember all their names.

They are nearly always obliged to go after they have been here a month, and you'll have to go too, if you don't learn to behave yourself and keep a civil tongue in your head. Do you hear me ? " " Yes," mumbled John, if we, like his employers, are henceforth to call him out of his name, which was in reality Jacob. " Don't forget, then. Just pull off my boots," said Master Geoffrey, sitting down on one of the hall chairs, and stretching out his legs with a lordly air. " Look sharp, will you ? " The page hesitated, as if he felt not sure whether it was part of his duties to pull off his " Thou pale and common drudge !" 13 young master's dirty boots. But he obeyed, not with a very good grace. " How slow and clumsy you are," complained Geoffrey. " You will take these boots down to the fire, and when they are dry, the mud must be scraped off them ; and remember I am very particular about my boots being well cleaned.

Now, run up stairs, and fetch me my houseT shoes." " I don't know where they are," said John doggedly. " What's the good of you, if you don't know where my bed-room is ? " quoth Geoffrey. " Never mind this time ; I'll get them myself," and thinking that it was rather good-natured of him to have saved the new boy this trouble, he presently turned into the drawing-room, where his father was reading the newspaper and his mother killing time by making ornamental pin cushions for a bazaar. To them enter Geoffrey, in all the glory of his football costume. " Well, Jeff, you look as if you had been having a good game," said his father. " Who won, eh ? " " Our side, sir, of course." " My dear boy, what a mess you have made of yourself ! " cried Mrs. Shaw, surveying his stained stockings and bespattered flannels through her eye-glass.

" Can't help it, mother," replied the young hopeful in the free-and-easy way affected by the youth of the present day, as he strolled up to the fire, and took up an attitude more striking than graceful in front of it, with his hands plunged in his pockets, and his head cocked know ingly to one side. "You would make a fine mess of a football match, if you didn't go in for making a mess of yourself. I say, we have had a rattling game. Shan't I just be stiff to morrow ! Can I have some beer ? " " In my drawing-room ! " protested his lady mother. " Eh ! What ! " exclaimed Mr. Shaw behind his newspaper. " In my day, boys didn't use to drink beer of an afternoon." " Didn't they take things more easy, sir, when you were young ? A fellow must have some thing to keep him up to the mark, now-a-days.

After working like a horse at football all the afternoon, one feels as if one wants a glass of beer." " Well, ring the bell, will you, and order it to "I see what you are: you are too proud." 15 be taken into the dining-room," said Mrs. Shaw ; and her husband made no further remark, for though he was a very great man sitting as Judge in his court, he knew by experience that he was not always able to have his own way at home. " Now, Geoffrey," she continued, as her son, having taken the trouble of ringing the bell, was about to loll on the sofa, " I insist on your not sitting down till you have changed your clothes. I don't know how often I have told you that I wish you wouldn't play at this dread ful game. I am sure it is more fit for plough boys than gentlemen's sons." " All young fellows play it, mother.

If you sent me to a decent public school, instead of keeping me at home in this pokey place, I should have to play at football twice as much." "Oh, don't set Geoffrey against football!" quoth the Judge from behind his newspaper. " It is the last link that binds some of our fine young gentlemen to common earth." " What pleasure can they have in such a rough and dirty amusement !" " One has to go through a good deal of rough ness, and mud too, before one has done with the world." . 16 " My dear, you do say such ridiculous things!" replied Mrs. Shaw, with ever so slight a shrug of her shoulders. Outside of his own family, it was sometimes said that Judge Shaw was a little eccentric. And if he had not been the son of a lord, — a very poor one, by the way, — his wife would often have been tempted to call him vulgar in his opinions.

She herself, not having been " born in the purple," so to speak, was always painfully anxious that there should be no mistake about her gentility. " Well, you may like your son to be knocked about by all sorts of butchers' and bakers' boys, but I don't approve of it," she said. And then the page, arriving to answer the bell, put an end to the discussion. The new page was evidently a beginner. In stead of coming at once into the room, he stood timidly outside and knocked two or three times; and only when Geoffrey had roared out " Come in !" at least twice, did John venture to open the door and cautiously to make his appearance, first inserting his head, then his shoulders, then by degrees, as he gained confidence, the rest of his awkward limbs ; till at last he stood before " I am come to know your pleasure." 17 his employers, the picture of inexperience, fidgeting with his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on the carpet, and not having the slightest idea what to do with his hands.

"John, get me some beer," said the young master of the house. The unhappy " Buttons " made as if he was about to pull his forelock, in the orthodox style of the National school, but did not ; then opened his mouth, looked round, and lingered near the door in a state of evident uncertainty. "What is the fellow waiting for?" said Geoffrey. "What public am I to go to?" asked John at last, in a voice between a gasp and a whisper. " Public ! " exclaimed Geoffrey, smiling scorn fully. " Get it from the cellar, of course. Do you hear me ? Ask the cook to show you." " All right," replied John, catching hopefully at the suggestion that he might refer to the cook ; for though he already knew by experience that this official had no mild temper, he yet felt able to look on her as a creature of his own flesh and blood.

But his embarrassment returned in double force when Mr. Shaw looked up from the newspaper and spoke to him. John C had been accustomed to regard the Judge as somebody very terrible. He had heard of people being sent to prison by him, and was by no means clear as to whether he had not the power of hanging ; so the boy had not got over the awe of being in the very house of such a powerful personage, and, since he came into the room, had been all the time taking sly peeps at him, to see if he were like ordinary human beings without his wig and gown. And now he started and actually trembled at finding himself ad dressed by the great man ; it was almost as bad as if he were in the dock. But he could scarcely believe his ears when he heard himself now ad dressed in a more kindly style than anybody in the house had yet used to him.

" Listen to me, my boy. I am not finding fault with you, because I know that we have all to learn our duties when we go into a new place, and we can't learn everything at once. But you will try to remember, will you, that when a gentleman is speaking to you, it does not look well for you to stare at him and open your mouth." " As if you were trying to catch flies," put in Geoffrey. " Answer your master; be not afraid." 19 " Geoffrey, hold your tongue !" said the Judge. " Then, John, while he is telling you what he wants, you should stand still and listen quietly ; and when he has finished, don't say, ' All right,' but 'Yes, sir,' to show that you understand him. It isn't of much consequence ; but that is the usual way of speaking. Do you understand me?" "All right; I mean, Yes, sir," replied John, brightening up for a moment, but losing con fidence again when he saw Mrs. Shaw and her son smiling to each other over some fresh blunder he must have made.

" That's right. Now, go to the cellar and draw Master Geoffrey a glass of beer, and put it on a tray and leave it on the hall table." " All Yes, sir." " When you have done that, go up to the bath-room and turn on the warm water. Leave it running, you know," said Geoffrey, stretching his limbs. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir." "And then you may as well bring us can dies," said Mrs. Shaw. " Yes, sir," replied John promptly to the lady ; but when she and Geoffrey both began to titter outright, he turned very red and fled from the room in confusion, with these various orders all of a jumble in his mind. " What a lout that fellow is ! " remarked Geoffrey, as the new page closed the door behind him with a bang, and Mrs. Shaw put her fingers to her ears with a little shriek. " I dare say he will do well enough in time," said his father.

" We must make allowances." " Don't talk of it ! " cried the mistress. " He seems to me to be worse than all the rest. No body knows the trouble I have had with these boys. All servants are the plague of my life, but boys are the worst. I sometimes wonder they don't make me ill. I'm sure I don't know what things are coming to now-a-days ! Ser vants are not what they used to be." "H'm, h'm," growled the Judge behind his newspaper. " Well, my dear, what are you saying ? " I wasn't saying anything. I was thinking that perhaps masters and mistresses aren't what they used to be." " As if you men knew anything about it ! " " I know my mother used to take a great deal of interest in her servants, and treat them more like fellow-creatures and less like machines than " The constant service of the antique world." 21 some of you ladies will take the trouble to do.

The consequence was, that our servants often stayed with us all their life-time. My nurse is living at Foulis Castle to this day. She is quite helpless and doting, but she has her own room just like any other member of the family, and would think the world was coming to an end if there were any question of her leaving it except in her coffin. You ladies don't seem to have the knack of getting servants like that." "Ah ! that was in the good old days. The present race of servants aren't capable of such friendship and devotion towards their masters." " H'm ! It takes two to make friendship and devotion," says the Judge. " I tell you, Frederick, they are quite a different race now. Whether it's newspapers, or railways, or telegraphs, or dissenting chapels, or high wages, I don't know ; but I am sure the common people have degenerated since I was young.

Look at the absurd fashion in which servants dress themselves ! " " It is very absurd. So is the fashion in which their mistresses dress, sometimes, to my thinking. I suppose the poor girls only imitate their betters." "I'm sure that's not what the Church Catechism teaches them to do," said Mrs. Shaw warmly. "At all events, sir, the lower classes are much less respectful and obliging than they used to be, aren't they ? " said Geoffrey, who had studied Markham's History of England, and was already a laudator temporis acti. " Something of the same sort might be said about all classes, I fancy," replied his father. " I think servants should know their places, and stick to their work," pronounced Geoffrey. " In that station of life to which it has pleased Heaven to call them," added his mother very seriously, bringing the sanction of religion to bear upon this sentiment.

" I quite agree with you," said Mr. Shaw. "We ought all to know what we are fit for, and to stick to our work, whatever it may be. Do you know, Geoffrey, when I was a boy at one of these great public schools which you are always wanting us to send you to, I was for some years a fag to the older fellows, and had to work for them in a style that would very much disgust you. I believe, even at the present day, I could black boots against any page in the town. My first master, the son of a rich distiller, used to "Lowliness is young ambition' s ladder." 23 threaten to thrash me if I didn't polish his till he could see his face in them. How would you like that, eh ? " " All that sort of thing is done away with now," declared Geoffrey. " But these were the good old days, you know. And if you had lived still further back, you would have been even more certain to have been made useful.

Long ago, pages were young gentlemen, who were sent to serve in great families, as the best means of keeping them out of the way and teaching them how to be respectful and well behaved. They weren't allowed in these days to lounge about on sofas and lecture to their elders. No ; they had to work, to stand and wait at table, to be seen and not heard, to speak when they were spoken to— in fact, to perform much the same part in the household as we expect servants to do now-a days. What do you think of that, Master Geoffrey ? " " People were little better than barbarians in those days," said Mrs. Shaw, horrified at the very idea of such a life for her accomplished son. " Well, my dear, that's very true, but I am not so sure that we are as wise as our ancestors in everything." Here the debate was again interrupted by John, who suddenly presented himself carrying into the drawing-room a lighted tallow dip in a japanned flat candlestick.

" What is this ? " exclaimed Mrs. Shaw in horror. " Take away that thing instantly." " Please, mum, this is the only candle I could find in the pantry," said John, standing in the doorway, the picture of dismay. And now, not only Geoffrey, but his father couldn't help laughing. Then all of a sudden a great uproar was heard below, and the cook's voice, screaming, " John ! John ! " in the distance ; and the un fortunate page rushed off without any further ceremony, leaving the door wide open. " Go, Geoffrey, and see what is the matter," said his father ; and the boy leisurely walked out into the hall. Here he heard sounds of violent quarrelling below, so he swung himself down the banisters of the kitchen staircase, and descended into the lower regions, just in time to witness the following scene.