A Very Strange Family

Front matter

BY F. W. ROBINSON, AUTHOR OF "GRANnMITHER's MONEY," " LAZARUS IM LONDON,'1 " THE COURTING OF MARV SMITH," "THE YOUNGEST MISS GREEN," " NO CHURCH," &C. &C. LONDON : WILLIAM HEINE MANN. 1S90 [All rights reserved.] CONTENTS. CH4P- PAGE I. LEFT IN CHARGE ■ . . I II. "MAD DARRELL" 8 III. SITTING UP FOR MR. BARNETT . . . . iS IV. MORE CHANGES 29 V. TAKEN AWAY 3S VI. THE NEW HOME 46 VII. THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL . . -56 VIII. A SUDDEN STORM 66 IX. OUT OF THE WAY 74 X. "WHAT'S TO BECOME OF HIM?" ... Si XI. CHECKMATE S7 XII. THE FINDING OF THE FRIEND 102 XIII. CLOSE TO THE PAST ...... 107 XIV. THE PAST IS WITH US 1 1 7 XV. A LITTLE LOAN . 1 29 XVI. THE MAN FROM FRANCE 1 34 XVII. A FENCING MATCH I42 CONTENTS. VI CHAP. PAGE XVIII. HARD WORDS FROM BOTH OF US . . -154 XIX. THE LAST OF HIM l6o XX. THE LATE MESSENGER l66 XXI. BRIBERY 171 XXII. WAITING 178 XXIII. "LIFE IS MADE UP OF MISTAKES" . . 1S5

Chapter I. Left In Charge

It is not very, very long ago since I was a boy at Barnett':?. At least I do not think it is myself. Looking back across the moorland over which I havr; journeyed to this — whatever this may be — it seems but yesterday. I make a backward step or two, I turn round one sharp corner, and there I am ! — with all the old faces round about me, and before me all the old trials and temptations, the struggles, and the victories — I thank God for the victories — that were part and parcel of ray life. That it was a strange life in those early days, and brought about some strange results, is the reason why I face it all pgain. One reason perhaps; sol the second — a reason for that reason — is that it may teach its lesson in its little way, and after an odd fashion of its own. At least I think so — hope so Some one at my elbow, whom I love very much.

A smooths my grey hairs and laughs, and says there is no moral in it, and that I am a great big stupid. So I am. So I always have been, my enemies say of me, but they are not quite right. Nobody is quite right in his opinions, or his actions, or even in his head. " It is a mad world, my masters," Shakespeare said a few centuries ago, and " It will be madder still when I am out of it" he might have added very truthfully. In old days, then, I was a boarder at Barnett's, and Barnett's was a school in the Waterloo Road — a good, old, crusted academy that had no particular right to exist, and did business after a style that no School Board authorities would allow in these superior times. It was a private school, and a big school, and a poor school, as might he imagined from a locality where small shopkeepers were numerous and the streets were full of people fighting hard to live.

Mr. Barnett fought hard to live on his " Establishment for Young Gentlemen," and succeeded but indif ferently well. I was his only boarder. The force of circumstances had thrust me upon him — by good luck as it were, and as he thought at one time — Mr. Barnett not "laying himself out," as he phrased it, for boarders, or for anything but a day school, where the parents of the pupils paid one shilling a week when they could afford to pay, which wa?, unfortunately for Mr. Barnett, not invariably the case. The credit accounts of Mr. Barnett were nu- LEFT LN CHARGE. 3 merous, and he kept them registered in little red covered memorandum books — seven for sixpence at the stationer's at the corner of Gibson Street, where I used to be sent for them very frequently — each book labelled with the name and address of the creditor, and full of items of deficit.

Mr. Barnett's schoolroom had once been a broker's shop, but the broker had come to grief, and had had another broker to distrain on him, like an irony of fate, and Mr. Barnett had taken the house after the forcible dislodgement of broker No. 1, put up the shutters, and had glass peep-holes made in every one of them to admit light into the premises, abolished the back parlour as his school increased in numbers, presently abolished the back wall of the back parlour, aud ran out into the yard a few feet of brickwork with a skylight roof, which always would let in the rain, aud, finally, had tolerably " roomy " accommodation for sixty or seventy boys, to all of whom I, Edward Wilton, was a mystery. For the matter of that I was a mystery to Mr. Barnett — was more completely still a mystery to myself.

Mr. Barnett did not believe this, and thought I was sly; but I knew very little more than he did, and that little was, I had been told — for my own sake, for my mother's sake — not to say anything about. That was my duty, and my honour to her, but I was not liked by Mr. Barnett, or by anybody else at school, for keeping always silent, very silent, about the home I had once known. For the present, aud for the proper relation of this story, let me be also silent here, and leave the thread of it to unravel in due course and in its place. Let me begin with life at Barnett's, with the memorable day — a wet, sloppy, windy, October day it was, when I, a small pale-faced lad of twelve years of age, was taken by my mother — a woman in widow's weeds, and as pale and thin as I was — to Mr. Barnett's side-entrance, and introduced to Mr. Barnett's study, a little room up one flight of rickety stairs, which began from the street door-mat to avoid the superfluous luxury of a passage.

"This is the young gentleman of whom you were speaking yesteiday ? " said Mr. Barnett, when we were all three seated, and I was staring dismally at him — a lank, rough-haired being in a long blue flannel dressing-gown which seemed to have bad, at some remote period of its history, more than one shower-bath of ink upon it. " Yes ; this is he," was said, with the faintest of smiles I had ever seen even upon my mother's face ; " and you will find him a very tractable and quiet youth. You will like him very much; he will be, I hope, in time, a little son to you." " So long as he learns his lessons and does what he is told, I shall be satisfied, ma'am. I shall not expect, or want, anything more than that," was the cold reply to this introduction of me to his notice. "I should have liked to see Mrs. Barnett " "She is busy, ma'am.

Very busy." " I will write to her a few instructions, if you will allow me, to-morrow ? " " Just as you please," was the short answer back, significant, perhaps, that the " instructions " were LEFT IN CHARGE. 5 not likely to be attended to, write she never so often. " Here is the money then," said my mother, taking out a pocket-book and slowly unfastening it ; " and every quarter, whilst my dear boy re mains with you, that amount shall be faithfully forwarded." " Yes ; I hope so," said Mr. Barnett bluntly. " And I will write to you when I am at my journey's end," she added. " Thank you." ft And you," turning to me suddenly, " will always write regularly to me, Teddie, will you not ? " a I will," I promised. " And answer every letter of mine, punctually, very punctually, so that I may know for certain you are well and happy, when I am in India and can't come to you — when you are " And then she broke down, and I broke down too, and Mr. Barnett, with hungry expectant eyes upon the purse still in her hand, sat with his back to the empty fireplace, totally unmoved by this display of emotion on our parts.

She extended to him at last a five-pound note, wdiich he most critically examined before giving her back a sovereign change. " That is right, I believe," she said. " It is quite correct, ma'am. I have your receipt already written out," he said, rising and taking a paper from the base of a stone china stag with it's antlers and three legs gone; " and in three months time I shall receive a second remittance, of course ?" "You shall. On the very day it is due." " For this is risky for a man like me." he said straightforwardly, " and I am very much in the dark." " Yes ; naturally so." " And after three months the boy will certainly be sent to the parish, if you don't pay for him. That you understand ? " " I understand," she repeated ; " but, sir, you need not fear." " I don't. It is your look-out, madam, not mine."

He was very harsh and abrupt ; I was afraid of him, and what life would be with him already. My little heart went down into the new boots for which I had been fitted in the Lower Marsh coming along — the old ones, after re-soling, to be forwarded to the school next Saturday. It was hard to think that this place would be " home " after my mother had said good-bye to me, and that only this ogre in blue flannel would be left in her stead. It was not long before the good-bye came with tears and sobs again, and with a choking, gasping effort to be self-composed, which was worse to encounter than the tears and sobs. " God bless you, little Ted, and keep you good," she said ; " keep you strong, too, as I am strong — don't you see that, darling — knowing as — as you know now, it must be for the best.

God bless you again. Good-bye ! " I could have shrieked out, " Don't leave me with this man/' in the sheer madness of despair, but boy LEFT IN CHARGE. 7 as I was. I knew this would add to her trouble, send her away with a greater lump of lead at her heart, aud I wanted her to think that I bore the parting just as well as she did. So we said good-bye, and never saw each other again. As I was sure we should not when she went away down the wet street, and I, by express permis sion of Mr. Barnett, stood at the open door to sec the last ot her.

Chapter II

°MAD D All RE LL." Thinking all this over years afterwards, and taking into account the trials and tribulations of the Bar retts, I am not so sure, as I was in my boyhood, that Thomas Barnett, schoolmaster, was a brute, a hardened wretch devoid of any human feeling, an unjust, tyrannical taskmaster, cumbering the earth of South London, and harassing the souls out of innumerable little boys. Mr. Barnett had a wife to support, had rent and taxes to pay, had an unruly mob of juveniles to teach and control, had a small income, a bad temper, and an exceedingly limited intelligence. Certainly he was no more fitted for a schoolmaster than for an admiral of the fleet; he was rough and rude, and even ignorant, but he was an admirable penman, a good arithmetician, and with a knack of teaching arithmetic, or of knocking arithmetic into us by sheer force of fist, that was very creditable to him.

To be able to write "like copper-plate" himself and to teach his pupils to write like him, and to understand addition of money was enough for most of the fathers and mothers. Many of the parents in those days used crosses for their names, and had had but little to do with addition of money in any shape, and they hoped bright things from their sons, who could do such wonders with their pens before they were thirteen years of age, when they went out to business, quick and sharp. Mr. Barnett was industrious and worked hard. When the school business was over, he went in for fancy ticket-writing for shop windows, and had a small connection of shopkeepers in the New Cut and London Road whom he supplied. When he was short of orders he would put on a rusty black surtout and a pair of cotton mittens, and thus " dressed to the nines," as we boys termed it, he would take his tickets round from door to door in distant neigh bourhoods where his lank form was not likely to be recognized.

This was in the hard times, the hard winter times when coals and gas were terrible extras to the house keeping expenses, and the fathers and mothers of his pupils went further and further back in their little accounts, sometimes gracefully fading away altogether into the mists, taking with them their sons, who had been taught to write like copper-plate and do compound arithmetic at Mr. Barnett's sole ex pense. I was not treated well at Barnett's, the remem brance of the first year of my life there is terrible to look back upon ; if I had not hardened or grown used to it I must have died. Not, as I have already said, that Barnett was so bad — unjust at times as he might be, and irritable as he was always — but that, in my boyish estimation of him and ignorance of his struggles, I thought the worst of him, and was encouraged by the other boys to think the worst.

I was a poor drudge, but that was to be expected. Mrs. Barnett, a gauut untidy woman, kept no ser vant, and I was handy to run on errands for her after school hours, and to take letters of appeal for outstanding accounts to the various parents who were not able to pay so punctually as the schoolmaster desired. For sixteen pounds per annum it was understood, perhaps, that I should make myself tolerably useful, and when I had swallowed a little boyish pride, of which I had had a fair amount — mother being a lady-born surely — I used to be glad of the busy streets and the gas-lit shops, and of the late hours generally when I was prowling about on my various missions, taking my time over them if there was anything to be seen in the streets — a fiddler, a conjurer, a cheap jack, a big fight, a woman on a stretcher being carried to Tower Street station house.

What though I was thrashed by the heavy hand of the principal for coming home late and with the feeblest excuses for delay, that was all taken into account, and I was used to it. There was one gentleman who invariably de clined to pay his school-bill without excessive dun ning, and to whom Mr. Barnett would appeal personally at last, and beg so hard for a settlement that some instalment of money would be eventually forthcoming. This was the father of our head boy, the most tiresome boy, the most extraordinary bov in Barnett's school, and yet one whom Mr Barnett was not anxious to part with, though he raged aud stormed and lashed vigorously about him, and threatened summary expulsion. Darrell was a hoy whom a few liked, aud a great many hated with all their hearts. Whom Mr. Barnett hated in his heart too; I knew that from little scraps of con versation which came to my ears after school hours aud when the master did not think I was listening.

" Upon my soul, Sarah," I heard him say once, as he banged his big fist upon the table, " I could kill that Darrell. I could be hanged for him. I shouldn't be surprised if I'm not hanged for him presently, mind you." "Why do you put up with the wretch?" said his wife. "Why do I put up with all of them?" he rejoined snappishly. " Because I can't help it. Because I must live. Because I can't afford to starve." And with each reason proffered Mr. Barnett banged away at the table, until told by his better half " not to make himself a fool." This was the commencement of an altercation which would last for an hour or two — which I could hear going on in stormy mutterings in the bedroom separated by a thin petition from a kind of cupboard wherein I slept — which might be even renewed in the early morning over breakfast.

For Mr. and Mrs. Barnett were not a happy pair, and were prone to vigorous discussions in which Mrs. Barnett got the best of it, my master not being able to rule his helpmate so effectually as he ruled the school in general. He tried very often, but was invariably worsted. I did not know why I, a meek and quiet boy, should have taken so much to Arthur Darrell ; why Darrell, four years my senior and a tall boy for his age, with an incipient black moustache too, should have taken it into his head to care for me, though he was not demonstrative in his affection, but bore the reputation, for the matter of that, of caring sol nothing or for no one but himself. I hardly know what there was in him to admire, save that fearless ness which I possessed not, that defiance at times of all rules, to which, for the sake of peace and quietness, the majority of his contemporaries suc cumbed, that pugnacity of disposition, shown outside very often in the back streets with his coat off and his black eyes ablaze with fire, and in the face of an opponent twice his age and size, aud who, in some way or other, had interfered with him.

A bold boy, but a bad boy ; I was not keeping my promise to my mother when he became my com panion, my friend, and patron ; I was not "keeping good/' with his example ever before me, and with his ill advice ever before me, and with his advice to follow ; I was in bad hands when he constituted himself my champion, and allowed no one but him self and Mr. Barnett to pull my ears and knock me down. This he would do in one of his bad tempers, which were very frequent, and for which he had an odd kind of apology at times. " You shouldn't have been such an aggravating ass, Wilton," was his style of excuse, " though I didn't mean to hit you so hard, you know." I did not know, but I accepted his apology. Arthur Darrell's father was an actor. Not an actor of exceptional excellence even for the Victoria Theatre, close by, where he had been engaged, off and on, for a considerable number of years, and through endless managements and mismanagements, in myriads of minor parts — sub-villains, second jeune premiere, heavy old men, the devil in all the panto mimes, or anything that two melodramas and some thing light to follow might necessitate.

He was a painstaking actor, a man to be relied upon to know his part and not put out his superiors by any "gag," or nonsense of that sort, a quiet, grave, sickly looking being, who required much rouge to look healthy on the stage, and who, off it, was a fishy eyed, sallow, lantern-jawed individual, with a weak ness for neat gin, which he took in half-quarterns, and at various times of the day, at the private bar of the public-house opposite the theatre. He was a widower, and Arthur Darrell wras an only son, left to run wild about the streets after school hours and late into the night, whilst his father was raving his verbiage to a numerous but not particularly select audience. An uncared for boy was Arthur Darrell, and it was therefore no wonder that he grew up caring himself for no one, certainly not for his father, who was so quiet an individual in private life that one marvelled at his possessing an offspring so desperate and eccentric as " Mad Darrell " was considered to be.

It was rumoured, and not without truth in this instance, that Mr. Darrell had a small income of his own from a source which he did not communicate to his friends, and was thus enabled to keep up an appearance which his brother actors of the same degree of respectable mediocrity were not able to assume upon salaries which were small and never to be relied upon as dead cer tainties. Arthur Darrell had spoken of his father's mys terious income to me, however, in his slap-dash free-and-easy manner. " When I am hard-up, Ted," he explained ; " when I want to put the screw on the governor, I wait till a letter comes from the country. There's always money in the letter, and it puts him in a good temper for weeks and weeks together. Then, my little shrimp," he added, with a thwack on my shoulder to assist my comprehension, and to tumble me flat upon the pavement, " I land him !

" When I had gathered myself up, I resumed the conversation. " He gives you a great deal of pocket-money, then," I said, for I had known Arthur very munifi cent about quarter-day. " I get a fairish lot out of him," was the careless answer. " All the better, because he can't pour so much down his throat, the old fool ! " " Oh ! " " What are you oh-ing at? " " I wouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have liked to say that, Arthur," I replied. " Not if it's every bit true ? " " Not if I thought every bit of it was true." " Oh ! that shows you're not as straightforward as I am," remarked Master Darrell; "and that you don't know what I know — don't see that if it had not been for my father I should have been in a very different position — rich, with horses, servants, a gold watch, a diamond ring, and the Lord knows what besides.

My brother's rich — why am I left a beggar in a back street ? Is that fair ? " " Have you a brother ? " " Yes." " What's he like ? " " Like an idiot. I don't remember him — I don't want. I wish he was dead. I wish I was. I wish old Barnett was dead and buried. I wish everybody was dead," he raved. " What has put you out this afternoon ? " I in quired, after his ebullition had somewhat subsided, and he had blown off a little more of his steam iu an exchange of personalities with a butcher boy whom he had mortally hated for three months, and had had three fights with already in Joiner Street. " I'm not put out." " Hasn't a letter come from the country lately ? " I inquired, innocently, but he shook me up like a bottle of medicine for " asking questions," and finally pushed me into a corn chandler's shop ana on to the toes of the proprietor, who was burdened with corns, and who would have been glad to jump on me if I had waited to apologize, instead of running away and breaking a window with my elbow as I ran.

He was a man we all knew, was oki Dickenson, and a man who knew us. He called at Mr. Barnett's in ten minutes' time to lodge a complaint and to ask for the price of his glass, and to point Darrell and me out to the irascible pedagogue as the offenders against his peace. How well I remember that afternoon to be sure ! It is deeply graven on me. There must have been something in the air that day to render people extra irritable and extra spiteful. I was flogged unmercifully, and bore it without much whimpering. Darrell was flogged unmercifully too, and bore it worse than usual. He took his punishment even with vigorous resistance against the long man who held him in his clutch ; he struggled for the heavy cane, and kicked and shouted forth much bad language, and when released, he rushed to the fireplace, and threw poker, tongs, and scoop at the head of his preceptor, and then the largest coals he could find in the scuttle, and finally the scuttle itself, which caught Mr. Barnett under the chin — despite the adroit ducking of his head, a process which for the last fifty seconds he had been ignominicusly compelled to adopt — and maimed and floored him, a sorry spectacle, " weltering in his gore."

"You've killed him," I cried out; " run, Darrell, do!" " And a good job too — the old " Here Mr. Barnett scrambled to his feet and rushed once more at Darrell, and Darrell, after a moment's reflection, flung open the school door, and skipped into the street, our pedagogue following him, lost to all sense of dignity, with one hand to his cinn, and his long blue gaberdine fluttering in the breeze. Some of the boys ran to the door and looked after them, but master and pupil were quickly out of sight, and at the end of the street we could see a little crowd of people watching them iu the far distance, some of them starting off in the pursuit too. We went back to our seats and waited for the result, which was long iu coining to us. Every moment we expected to hear the handh click, and to see Mr. Barnett, hot and flushed, re enter, leading in Arthur Darrell by the left ear, but five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an lioui' passed — then half an hour — and still no sign of either pupil or master. The street without now was as quiet as usual. When another quarter of an hour had passed, we began to think that some thing must have hap^eunL

Chapter III. Sitting Up For Mr

BARNETT. No ; Mr. Barnett did not return — quarters, half hours, hours' delay seemed as nothing to him. For a considerable period we boys at Barnett's sat quietly on our forms and talked in whispers to each other. The sudden conflict between pupil aud pedagogue, followed by an escape from school, aud a sharp chase after the delinquent, had awed us for a while. We did not know what had happened ; we knew it must be something very much out of the common, and we made wild guesses at it. It was probable that Mr. Barnett had taken Master Darrell to the station-house ; it was en the cards that Master Darrell, after being caught had stabbed old Barnett, who was lying stiff and staik down some back street, whilst the myrmidons of the law were putting heavy irons on the limbs of the assassin; it seemed not unlikely that Arthur would presently be hanged, and that we should have a half-holiday on that occasion as well as on the day that would celebrate the funeral of old Bjrnett.

Many of the boys brightened up at this prospect; I remained altogether in a depressed condition. I was wondering what would become SITTING UP LOR MR. BARNETT 19 of me, if Barnett's school collapsed thus tragically, and I was sorry for Arthur, and was already plan ning subtle schemes, founded on various romances in penny numbers, to get him out of prison. Presently the boys became a trifle uproarious ; moral restraint and nervous apprehension, even the untimely end as it might be of old Barnett, became at last matters of no moment, beside the delirious fact that the master was away, and the school was uu watched and free as air. By half-past four t.m., a mad-house in full swing could have offered no comparison to Barnett's, the majority of whose pupils were boys with high spirits, rough-and-tumble lads with no fine feelings, aud with a steam-engine proclivity towards "larks. ' Books were flying about at last at each other's heads, slates were shivering, forms were over turned, twenty boys at once were rolling on the floor, kicking and scrambling furiously ; thirty more were playing leap-frog with the master's desk, not a few were running in aud out of the front door, and executing various gambols on the pavement aud in the middle of the road.

Suddenly Mrs. Barnett loomed in our midst, tall and rigid, surprised and inquisitive. " "Whatever is the matter, you young brutes," she exclaimed. "Where's Mr. Barnett?" " Please 'm, we don't know," one small boy volunteered to reply. " Has he gone out ? " It was a superfluous question, but we all answered it at once, at the top of our voices, till she walked A VER Y S TRA NGE FA MIL Y. 20 to a well-known corner with a firm expression of countenance, and took up her husband's cane. Then there was an impressive silence. " You explain, White," she said, pointing to one lad on whose statement she thought she might rely ; and Master White— a long-nosed boy in a dirty pinafore— entered into full particulars in a meek aud piping voice, varied by innumerable sniffs of so irritatiog a character that Mrs. Barnett suddenly boxed his ears.