Silent Highways. A story of Barge Life

Front matter

"Che first time 3s reai an excellent boofc, it is to me just as if 3s &a1i satnei a nero ftieirti." Oliver Goldsmith. 5jjP HE provision of tales for girls and boys which, while "^ attractive and of a good order of workmanship, lack the vicious sensationalism of the novels of what would in some circles be termed ' the naughty but nice ' school, is an important part of the annual operations in the literary factory, and in no case is it performed with more complete success than by Messrs. John F. Shaw &r° Co. Publishers' Circular, „XJ\ URING a long succession of years, Messrs. John F. Ca^~ Shaw <S-° Co. have built up a valuable reputation. Their name on the title-page of any book is of itself a guarantee that it -will be jound to be of at least average literary merit, that it shall be pure in its tone, and scriptural in its teaching, and, consequently, that it shall be wholesome in its tendency.

To people who are busy this is an important matter. They have frequently to make birthday or other presents, and, lacking the time to make for themselves a personal examination of the countless books offered for their choice, it is a comfort to them to know that there is a firm whose publications they may purchase almost without looking at them, and yet know that they would be safe in doing so. Christian Age. LONDON : JOHN F. SHAW & CO., 48, PATERNOSTER ROW. ,J\^f, ESSRS. John F. Shaw &* Co. have issued volumes of -^■-"" decided merit. The external appearance is in itself prepossessing, and the good impression thus produced is strengthened by a perusal of their contents. Daily Review. ££?HE children's books published by John F. Shaw &* Co. '*-' are well printed, brightly bound, plentifully illustrated, cheap in price, and consequently very useful as school prizes, or for village libraries.

Aunt Judy's Magazine. who apply themselves to the preparation of "^ books for the young may well estimate highly the responsibility of a work which tends so greatly to influence for good or ill the future of the rising generation. Messrs. John F. Shaw &■» Co. have succeeded in rallying to their standard a staff of writers who appear to be deeply impressed with this conviction. English Independent. tMID the counties-; number of Stories written merely to amuse, it is cheering to find some written with a higher purpose, and we must do Messrs. Shaw the justice of saying that Ike tendency of the works they issue is excellent. Sunday School Chronicle. LONDON: JOHN F. SHAW & CO., 48, PATERNOSTER ROW. jlifenf ]|tr$|ui3tj8. A STORY OF BARGE LIFE. Every now and then she goes to the Cottage Door, and gazes down the sunny road." /. 187.

Chapter I. Barge Life

T was a sultry autumn evening. The sun had been fierce all day, and the heat had not yet gone out of the flagged footpaths or the paved streets of the manufacturing town of Birchester. Even in the best part of the town the people passed to and fro with listless steps, their faces pale and fagged. Every window stood open, the inhabitants of the houses vainly hoping to feel the breeze that was not, and trying to coax a draught through their heated rooms. Shopgirls and shopmen stood behind their respective counters looking utterly exhausted ; children tossed themselves about in their little B cribs unable to sleep, restless with the heat ; and ladies lay in cool summer dresses on couches in their drawing-rooms, with novels slipping from their languid grasp. The very dogs threw them selves about, hoping to find relief in new attitudes, and panting, with their red tongues hanging out.

But if the heat was felt so much in the good part of the town, and in airy, respectable houses, what was it like in the low part, where ran the sluggish canal, and where the miserable tenements were crowded with inmates ? Down by the wharfs the heat and the smell were intolerable. The water of the canal was almost black ; bubbles of impure gases rose from its surface ; and here and there the stiff forms of a drowned cat or dog were discernible amidst its slimy abominations. Along the wharfs lay about twenty barges in different stages of loading. Some were being filled with ironstone, some — and these were considered the most genteel cargoes— with corn and flour, but most of them contained coal, for the town lay in the Black Country. The bargees were a rough-looking set of men ; most of them had short, thick features, with a stolidly ignorant and brutal expression 'on their faces, such as is sometimes seen in the very lowest classes in England.

They were not unlike the type of the London costermonger, except that they BARGE LIFE. 11 were much more stupid-looking. Generation upon generation of dense ignorance and utter neglect had stamped out from most of these unfortunate people all look of intelligence or spirituality. Most of them knew nothing beyond the occupa tion in which they were engaged : loading their barges and taking their cargoes down south— a journey of fourteen or sixteen days — to return to the Black Country again for the same purpose. As for what was going on in other parts of their native land they neither knew nor cared. Busy from their childhood in this same work, few of them had ever been inside a church or school, and not two in every hundred could read or write. In the miserable cabins of their barges they were born, reared, and there most of them sickened and died.

Outcasts from the State, neglected by the Church and by their fellow-men, they were even too miserable and ignorant to understand their own wretched condition. Heathens in the midst of a Christian land, of them truly might it be said that they did not their Lord's will because they knew it not. For their heinous and many sins surely shall they be beaten with few stripes at the last and dreadful day of judgment; but woe unto those of whom the righteous Judge will ask, "Where is thy brother?" Hearts will then fail and lips will pale and fear to make the answer, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Murders far worse than that of Abel are daily perpetrated in these awful barges ; for men's and women's souls are being murdered and the divine spark is being stamped out, smothered in neglect and ignorance.

In each of these barges is a so-called " cabin ; " but they look, most of them, more like holes or dog kennels than dwelling places for human beings. Few of them are larger than four feet by six, or in other words larger than a good-sized bed, such as would be in a gentleman's house ; and in these cabins dwell whole families. Husband and wife, children and grown youths, huddled together as best they can, cleanliness and decency being rendered impossibilities. " Husband and wife," I say, but, alas ! not a third of these poor couples have been married or their children baptized. Nothing know most of them of the laws of God, little even of the laws of man ; their miserable lives are spent in following their animal instincts, and in trying to earn enough to keep body and soul together. Down on the towing path this evening are most of the women and children in their reddish non descript garments, busily turning over unsavoury heaps of rubbish and ashes— darting at all that BARGE LIFE. 13 can possibly be made use of, as though old crusts, pieces of iron, or empty bottles, were nuggets of gold.

Occasionally the women have disputes, two of them darting at the same time at the same object, and then their language is frightful, rivalling that of the men who are loading the boats. Sometimes the women strip like men, to fight like wild cats, scratching each other's faces, and often tearing one another's hair out by handfuls. Not that they are always brutal to each other by any means — in sickness or trouble they are often kind and even tender in their own rough fashion — but simply they have never been trained or taught to control any impulse, fierce or other wise, that sways them at the time. But perhaps the saddest sight of all to see is the behaviour of the children. Scarcely behind their parents in the matter of oaths and profane language, knowing nothing of the God who made them, never hearing His name except in curses, their condition is one to make the angels weep ; children of tender years acquainted with every sort of evil, many of them knowing neither shame nor inno cence !

A few families indeed there are of a better sort — those in which the fathers do not drink, the mothers are more cleanly, and endeavour as best they can, poor things, to bring their children up in some sort of decency. These try to keep their children off the towing-path when many barges are lying together ; contend with many difficulties in giving a weekly wash to their clothes and persons, and in keeping their wretched cabins as clean as it is possible. In one of these latter a tidy, middle-aged woman is now laying out an evening meal. The way she procures a table is peculiar. Close by the little stove there is a cupboard, a marvellous cupboard, which does the duties of larder as well as general store press. The door of this cupboard is let down on hinges, and in this way forms a table. At the end of the cabin there is a recess, and in it a mattress and bedclothes are rolled neatly up in a pile ; this is the only regular bed the cabin contains.

Opposite the stove is a sort of chest in the side about two feet high, and a little over one foot broad. The top serves as a seat in the day time, and is used as a bed at night. This chest is called a " bunk," and being about five feet long, is able to. contain rugs to sleep on at night, and most of the clothes of the family. At the other side of the stove, on a line with the cupboard, is a smaller bunk. On these bunks, or else on the floor, on the table, or even sometimes BARGE LIFE. 15 in the bottom of the cupboard, sleep the children of the boatmen, huddled together in the foul, close air, and often not taking off their clothes for days together. Round the walls of the cabin are hung pots and pans and all sorts of cooking utensils, and in the tidy cabin we are now speaking of they shine as bright as care and industry can make them.

Having laid out the supper on the table, which now monopolized almost the entire space in the cabin, and squeezed herself between it and the larger bunk, so as to be able to get out at the door, the woman appears on the deck of the Mayflower, and addresses her husband, who, tired out with loading, leans against the side of the boat smoking his short black pipe. " Have you seen Jim about ? " she asks, in an anxious voice. Her husband takes his pipe out of his mouth, gives a great puff of smoke, and replies shortly, " I have ; he 's about the same business he 's been this week past." " Gone down the tow path with Lizzie Dixon ?" "Aye!" The woman looks troubled and thoughtful, and then says, " When will you send the lad off to get his living, father ; he 'd be better away from the canal earnin' a decent livelihood, now that Joe and Nancy are big enough to help."

" Aye, would he ; he 's promised me to look for work in the mines soon. I don't like to see him go along with that girl ; the Dixons are a real bad lot." " You don't know anything against Liz, though, do you, father ?" " I don't say I do ; she 's too frightened of that brute of a father to call her soul her own ; but I 'd sooner Jim had nothin' to say to her; she's got bad blood in her." The mother sighed, put her hand up to shade her eyes, and gazed eagerly down the tow-path, but without seeing the object of her anxiety. " Don't say anything agen the girl," she said, after a pause ; " maybe he 'd just think the more on her. Say nothin' about her, but try to coax him to go to the mines 'fore we leave the wharf. When do we start ?" " 'Bout a week from this. Don't make yoursel' uneasy, wife ; I '11 get the lad to go to the mines afore we leave this.

Is the supper ready?" " It be." " Then call in the children ; we won't wait for Jim." And taking his pipe out of his mouth, drawing the cuff of his jacket along his face, Joe Clarke bent his head and entered the cabin.

Chapter II. Young Love

T was about a week after the conversation recorded in the last chapter that a couple of young people were strolling together along the tow-path, some few miles from the noisy, busy town. So far from Birchester as this the water in the canal was almost clear, the air pure and sweet, and the waving ears of corn and oats swayed in the faint breeze, and brushed their heads against the dress of the girl who walked on the inside of the tow-path. She was not more than sixteen ; but judging from her height, and the slightness of her figure, one would have guessed her to be even less. Her complexion was pale, though clear ; her hair a light flaxen, so light, indeed, as to be almost indistinguishable from her white forehead ; her eyes large, and of a light though brilliant hue. But what was most remarkable about the girl was the expression of her face ; it bore on it a continual look of fear and dread, a shrinking into herself which told a sad tale of ill-treatment and brutality.

Every sound made her start ; and now as a lark rose into the air a few feet from her, making a rustling as he did so, the girl shrank up to her companion with a low cry. " Dear heart, how timid you are !" said the young man fondly, as he drew her closer to him. " Don't be afraid while you 're with me ; I should like to see who dare hurt you while I am nigh." The girl sighed, but looked up in his face with a half smile. " I know you 'd stand up for me, Jim ; but I never seem to lose the fear of father, however far I am from him. Look here, Jim ; this was done last night " — and the girl drew up the sleeve of her dress, revealing dark bruises on her slight, thin arm. " By " cried the youth, in a tone of con centrated passion, " I wish I had the handling of him, I 'd teach him what blows was ; I 've a good mind to pitch into him this very night, Liz, an' I '11 warrant I '11 leave his arm blacker than that."

"Oh, no, no, Jim! you'll say nothin' to him. What is your strength agen his ? and besides, it 'ud be all the worse for me ; he'd nigh murder me then." , " Oh, Liz, Liz, it do make me feel bad that you should be treated so ! Oh, if I only had the money to hire a barge and take you away with me !" "Never mind, Jim, dear," said the girl patiently; "we must wait till you have. It do ease my mind to feel some one to trust to, and what says a kind word to me now and agen. I feel quite different since I knowed you ;" and the girl looked up at him with the love-light shining so in her eyes, that for the moment it nearly chased away the look of fear. The young man clasped her in a passionate embrace, and then said again : "You do trust me, Liz, an' love me too, girl, don't you ?" "Aye, do I, Jim," was the earnest answer.

"Well, then, hearken to me, and mind what I say. I 've promised my father to go to the mines to seek work to-morrow." " To-morrow, Jim ! Oh, Jim, so soon ? " " The sooner I go, the sooner I'll have the money to hire a barge or a cottage ; the sooner I go the sooner we '11 be together, Liz ; and look here, we '11 be married real respectable, in a church, same as father and mother was ; won't that be fine, girl ? " "Aye, Jim; but I dunno," she went on doubt fully, " I care for nought except to be with you ; I don't mind on bein' married; I don't rightly understand what it be ; I only know I love you, and want to be with you." At the beginning of her speech the young man drew back, slightly shocked, for he had been far better brought up than poor Lizzie, but at its conclusion a rush of colour came over his face.

" An' I love you, and want to be with you ; but I want to earn something an' keep you comfortable." " How long will you be earnin' it, Jim ?" asked the girl wistfully. "How long?" repeated the youth thoughtfully. " Oh, I think we might begin in a year !" " In a year ! Oh, Jim, that 's a long time ; shan't I see you afore that ? " asked the poor girl, her lip trembling. " Oh, Jim, now I know you, I don't seem able to live without you ! Couldn't I go with you to-morrow ?" " No, darlin'. I don't know even yet if I can get work. I couldn't let you starve afore my eyes. You must keep up your heart." " I don't seem to have any heart to keep up now," she said listlessly. " I 'd sooner go with you and starve than stop with father." "Aye, aye! but I wouldn't have you starve. I want my wife to live many a long year.

You 're only sixteen yet, Liz; I'm but eighteen; think what a long life we '11 have together if we only have a little patience now." The girl said nothing, and the two walked on silently. Every now and then Jim stole a glance at her, noting the trembling of her lip and the gathering tears in her blue eyes, and then his own heart grew heavy at the thought of leaving her. Her father he knew to be one of the most rough and brutal of the bargees ; his whole family loathed and dreaded him ; but none of them feared him so much as did his only daughter, Lizzie. Nor had the poor girl any comfort even in her mother. She was as savage as her " mate," Joe Dixon, and drank, swore, and knocked her children about quite as much as he did. The rest of the children were, fortunately for themselves, all strong and sturdy boys, differing entirely in their disposition as well as in their physique from their sister.

She had been frail and delicate from her birth ; always timid, and shrinking from hard words as though they had been blows, although of the latter she received plenty too. Utterly ignorant, unable either to read or write, she did not even know the difference between right or wrong. Of sin, as sin, she knew nothing ; she had never been inside either a church, meeting house, or school, nor had ever been spoken to by a clergyman. The first person who had addressed a kind word to her was Jim Clarke, and since first they had made acquaintance with each other on the tow-path they had walked together every evening. Although it was only a fortnight since they had met, already the girl had been thawed out of her dull state of fear and torpor into a real passion for the one being in her world who had ever cared for her, or spoken to her in other than harsh tones.

The last fortnight seemed indeed heaven to her ; not that she knew or had ever heard of heaven, but she felt now that all the world had suddenly changed to her, and somehow become different. Hope had entered her heart, and a dim con sciousness that there was something more in the world than blows and oaths. Hitherto she had been dull, hopeless, and torpid with misery, but these last few days had showed her that there was such a thing as escape for her, a thing she had not dreamed of before. And it was not wonderful that he who had brought this hope of escape to her heart should in her eyes be indeed a sort of god. When she was near him, a feeling of security and pleasure stole over her that she had never known before; the grass seemed fresher, the sky more blue, and a sense of possible happiness stole softly through her frame.

She had known from the beginning that Jim could not take her away from her hated home on the Wasp yet ; she had known of his intention to leave his father's barge and earn an independent livelihood for himself amongst the coal mines ; but she had put away the thought of his departure from her as something too dreadful to be thought of, and had lived only in the present. This evening, therefore, when he told her he must go from her on the morrow, her heart sank down like lead, and all the light — the glorious light — which had come of late into her wretched life seemed of a sudden to die out of it. Her lover watched her as they now walked homewards again, and his heart beat with mingled pain and pleasure at the sight of her grief. As they came to the last bend in the tow-path before entering the town, he suggested their sitting down on the bank to rest and say their " good bye " before they would be surrounded by others, and drew the weeping girl close to his side.

Although the big tears were coursing down her pale face, she made no sob or cry ; but the sorrow of her face seemed to eat into her lover's heart. " Don't cry so, Liz, my girl ; I can't bear to see you fret like that ;" and as he spoke he drew her head down on his breast. " 'Tain't no use tellin' me not to fret," said the girl, rousing herself up to unwonted passion. " Look there, Jim " — and she pointed with her thin hand to where the sun was going down in a cloud of crimson and red — " afore I knowed you I felt all dull and grey, like the canal looks when the sun ain't on it, and when you come I felt all warm an' glowin' like the world does, an' the sun shinin'; but now you 're goin' from me I '11 be all cold an' dead agen, like there, see, where the light 's all dyin' out," and she pointed here and there to where the streaks of crimson were leaving water, hedges, and grass around them.

A few seconds more and the world grew grey and dim as the sun went down below the horizon. As the girl watched his descent with parted lips, she cried, " You 're goin', goin' like that, Jim, an' I '11 be all dead without you," and in a passion of sobs she threw herself on his breast. As the young man felt her slight frame close to his, felt the sobs that shook her form, and gazed on the white, girlish face pressed close to his, flushes of passionate love came surging up from his heart and burnt themselves into his face. He loved this frail girl dearly, better than he loved his own life ; and now her grief— though he was glad she returned his love so fully — cut him to the heart. He felt almost as if it were impossible to refuse that pleading, sorrow -stricken face, and the mute but eloquent look of entreaty in the eyes. =<He felt for a moment as though he must throw prudence to the winds and take her with him.

But a moment's reflection showed him how foolish this would be, and he forced back the longing to do so, a great dry sob rising in his throat as he relinquished the temptation. He knew it was best for them both that he should now go forth alone and without encum brance. His very love for the girl hanging now on his breast prompted this course, as well as the ambition he had of beginning life "respectable." For how could he now provide a home for the girl, who had not even work for himself yet promised ? As they separated that night at the wharf, Jim to go on board the Mayflower, and Lizzie to her dreaded home on the Wasp, Jim found it hard to part with the timid, clinging girl. Love was to Lizzie such a new, rare treasure that it seemed as though she could never tear herself from the arms which sheltered her.

Their hope of meeting again also was distant and uncertain. All that Jim could arrange was that every few months he would try to get away from the mines and come down to Birchester Wharf to hear or see something of C Lizzie, should her father's barge happen to be at the wharf then. In any case he would leave a message for her at the "Red Lion Inn." As, how ever, the tnines lay twenty miles out of Birchester he expected to be able to make this journey but rarely. It could indeed only be performed in the interval between Saturday and Monday morning, for should he have the luck to get good employ ment in the mines, he dare not risk losing it. Thus their chance of seeing each other again for a long time was, as I have said, very dim and uncertain. All that was absolutely secure was, that when Jim had saved enough he would certainly find out Lizzie by hook or by crook, and that they would then live together.

As they were talking over their chances of meeting again, the door of the " Red Lion," which was quite close to the wharf, opened. In the shrieks of drunken laughter which came from it, Lizzie recognized the voices of her wretched parents ; so holding up her face to her lover's with a hasty exclamation of "Kiss me, Jim, they're comin'," and meeting his lips in a long, earnest embrace, she sprang out of his arms and fled away as light and swift as any deer.

Chapter III

"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART, GOOD-BYE." ARLY next morning, in the grey light of , dawn, Jim Clarke rose softly from the bunk on which he had passed the night, donned his plush waistcoat — the only garment he had taken off — gave his face and hands a rough wash over the side of the boat, and then, taking a bundle of clothes and a hunch of bread and cheese off the table where his mother had left them ready for him, started off on his journey. The shortest way to the highroad which led to the mines was one by the tow-path until the town was passed, and then through some fields by a footway. As he bounded over a stile which divided the two first fields, he nearly knocked over the crouching figure of a girl who was seated at the other side of it. She lifted up a white face to him, the eyes red and swollen with weeping ; and he found, to his consternation, that it was Lizzie.

"What be you doin' here at this hour, darlin'?" he asked, as he took her icy cold hands between his, though he knew very well she was sitting there on purpose to see him. "I've been here since two this mornin', Jim. Oh, Jim, have pity on me ! take me with you wherever you go. Look, Jim," she went on eagerly, " I '11 be no expense to you ; I can wash an' fend for you — you '11 want some one for that — an' I '11 search for work an' keep myself. Let me go, let me go with you," cried the girl passionately ; " I '11 serve you faithful, Jim." For a moment the young man hesitated, as he met her white pleading face; but for a moment only, for then came the remembrance that it might be days, aye weeks, before he could get work even for himself. And although her lot could hardly be worse than on board the Wasp, yet there at least she had sufficient food to eat, and a shelter of some sort over her head.

And besides this, Jim had an ambition, which if he took the girl with him could never be fulfilled. He had made up his mind to work hard, to live on next to nothing, and to save enough to hire either a little cottage or a barge, and thus begin life "respectable" as he called it. The cottage was the most attractive idea, but for that, as well as for the barge, he should want money to buy a few articles of second-hand furniture. Revolving these things rapidly in his mind, he felt, and from no selfish motive, that it would be unwise to burden himself with another to support at present, and in fact be bad for both of them. But how to get rid of the poor girl's importunity ? Soft persuasion, he felt, would never do ; he knew she would follow him like a faithful dog if he spoke tenderly to her now, so he put on a look as nearly severe as he could, and said : " Liz, it cannot be ; mind you, it cannot; an' I 'm vexed wi' you for comin' out after me like this."