Richard Dare

Front matter

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Chapter I The Blacksmith And His Son

‘Dinna curse him, sir; I have heard a good man say that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and maist like to return on his head that sent it.—Scorr.

It was a drowsy afternoon in August. The clock in the Market Place of Dormington had just informed as many of the inhabitants as were awake to listen to its remarks that the time was half-past three, an unprofitable hour for man and beast, when the spirit of slumber descends upon all alike impartially. A flourwageon rumbled slowly along the road in the direction of the bridge, the driver so fast asleep on his perch that he was borne nodding fy VOL. I. B past his favourite public-house without being aware of the fact, and the pot-boy on the lookout for him had his eyes shut at the moment, and was so deaf with yawning that he did not hear the heavy wheels approaching.

At the upper end of the Market Place, opposite the Town Hall, aman and a boy were slowly unpacking a crate of earthenware in front of a crockery shop, frequently pausing to rub their elbows and to gossip with the passers-by. They had littered the road and obstructed what little traffic there was since early in the forenoon, which combined exertions necessitated frequent visits to the public-house, whence they came back, refreshed, to resume what they were pleased to call their work.

In front of a comfortable-looking red-brick house below the church, a painter on a ladder was feebly smearing the venetian shutters of a second-floor window with green paint, taking a holiday between each dip of the brush into the paint-pot to gaze up and down the Market

Place from his high point of vantage. Whether the man was a native of Dormington or not, he had caught the prevailing spirit of the place, and had spent a week up a ladder very contentedly without making any visible progress with his work. It was obvious that in Dormington labour was paid for by time and not by piece. Little hard work was done there except by the women, and as they toiled chiefly in the capacity of wives and mothers, their ceaseless service was taken— like other good things—too much as a matter of course, though, had they gone on strike, their families would have raised a bitter outcry.

Yet, even in sleepy Dormington, the spirit of competition had made its appearance, and a number of tradesfolk, by no means blood-thirsty in other respects, were busy cutting each other’s throats as fast as they could. Where formerly two drapers had sufficed for the little town and made a livelihood for themselves, there

BQ were now four, boasting much _ plate-glass among them and tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. Shoemakers’ shops, too, had sprung up in advance of all possible wants of Dormington for years to come, even had the inhabitants been quadrupeds and required two pairs of shoes apiece. Only the publichouses seemed to multiply without detriment to themselves, and in the main street two glaring new ones did a brisk business on market days. But the houses in which the hardest drinking was done, irrespective of times and seasons, lay discreetly hidden in the back streets, where the chill glance of respectability might be most easily avoided.

In one of these, the Barley Mow in Dog Lane—a dark and dingy house favourably known to seasoned topers—Samuel Atherley, the blacksmith, was sitting with his pipe and pot according to his invariable afternoon practice. Said the landlord of the Barley Mow, with pardonable professional pride, ‘I ’aven’t a more reg’lar, respectable, ‘ard drinkin’

customer than what Sam Atherley is! He’s that punctual, you might set the parish clock by ‘im. ’Alf-past two of an afternoon ’e comes in, and upo’ the stroke o’ five ’e’s out again, and it’s a credit to see ‘im when ’e’s blind drunk go for the swing door, as straight as a arrer and as ’armless as a’ infant! Sometimes o’ nights, I don’t deny as e’s a bit quarrelsome and free with ‘is fisses, but in general ’e does that kind o’ thing at ’ome, like a gentleman, and keeps ’is company manners for the Barley Mow.’

It was the blacksmith’s custom, while he spent the afternoon at the public-house, to leave the smithy in charge of his son Richard, _with strict injunctions not to send for him unless it was for work that the boy could not manage to do single-handed. It was not five minutes’ walk from the Barley Mow to Atherley’s forge, that stood back from the High Street in a small enclosure flanked on one side by his own house and on the other by a baker’s shop.

The blacksmith was not often disturbed in his afternoon’s carouse, for the bulk of his work was done by dinner-time. From six o'clock in the morning till eleven, however drunk Atherley might have been overnight, the forge resounded to the cheery ring of the hammer on the anvil, and children on their wandering way to school clustered round the door, to watch the rush of fiery sparks up the wide chimney and listen to the hoarse roar of the big bellows, thrilled with a sense of adventure as they peeped into the deep shade of the smithy. And the delight of seeing Richard blow the bellows while his father shaped a glowing horse-shoe with ringing strokes of the hammer, was heightened by | attendant peril. For as soon as the irate blacksmith could throw down his work, he rushed out of the smithy brandishing his hammer, and scattered the little crowd to right and left.

Samuel Atherley had bitter complaints to make of his son that afternoon to his boon companions at the Barley Mow, and his dull, pompous face was heavy with disapproval as well as purple with drink.

‘That lad sober don’t frame to work as well as me drunk! His nails isn’t tempered proper, and ‘is shoes ‘ud lame any beast as was shod with ’em, and it takes ’im twice as long again to make a set as it took me afore I was ‘is age, for all ’e’s so strong and well growed. Would any sane man, knowin’ ’is trade, credit as ’e’s more interested in the ’orse’s foot than what ’e is in the ’orse’s shoe ?’ and he looked fiercely round after the statement to see if his hearers were duly impressed by his son’s lack of intelligence.

‘Aye, but I tell you ’e is! He’s allays took up wi things as don’t concern ’im. Why, only t’other day if ’e ’adn’t the imperence to tell me what ’ad lamed one o’ Mr. Featherstone’s hunters as was brought me to shoe cause it was a ticklish job, and I could do it better’n any man this side o’ the country. So Master Richard ’e ups and examines the ’orse’s foot same as if he was a VET. paid to give his opinion professional, and, says ’e, ‘ Father,” ’e says, “ this isn’t a case for shoeing, but for the lancet,” and if he didn’t take and cut open a habscess ‘idden away right under the frog, where no sharp fellow was likely to ha’ looked for such a thing! Now me and the groom ’ad settled as it was somethin’ quite different, and it was most onpleasant. So I says, “ Things is come to a pretty pass when my own son sets up ateaching of me; it’s time as I ripped the blow ballies, and douted the fire, and took and set up in a trade as | may be allowed to know somethin’ about!” You never see a lad more daunted by that than ’e was; why, he didn’t open is mouth again that day!’

‘ Well, to be sure, ‘is imperence !’ said the sycophant of the moment, whose glass Atherley had just refilled from his own jug, ‘ ’is imperence !’

‘You may say that!’ replied the injured father. ‘Why, one arternoon when I was asettin’ ’ere peaceful, like a honest workman as ‘ad slaved best part of a morning through, ow do you think ’e was a-wasting of ‘is time? You give it up? I should think so? Why, if ’e didn’t make a wooden leg and lash it on to a old hen as ’ad got hers broken accidental under the wheel o’ Ben Stott’s waggon, and there it was a-peckin’ about the road on its peg leg like a reg’lar old timber-toes, and if it ‘ad been chewin’ a quid as well I couldn't ha’ been more surprised than what I was. There was a crowd o’ gaping boobies following the old ’en about, and praisin’ our Richard, and some on’em said, ** Who but ’im could ha’ thought o’ such a thing!” Who but ‘im indeed!’ and in the roar of laughter that followed Atherley felt some consolation for his disappointment in his son. He was listened to and applauded at the Barley Mow if Richard disregarded him at home.

On this particular afternoon, while Sam Atherley was relating his son’s misdoings to a congenial audience, the boy was happily busied with his own affairs, anxious to finish his work before his father returned at five o’clock. He had shut and bolted the lower half of the smithy door, that no one might come in upon him unawares, and, thus protected, was standing behind the big bellows carefully tending a mysterious something simmering in a pot over a charcoal fire in a tall, three-legged brazier.

The lad’s dark, curly head was bent over the open vessel, and the glow of the fire illumined the eager young face, that wore an expression of vivid, concentrated interest. To-day’s work was only the continuation of yesterday’s enthralling pursuit, when, in a spirit of scientific curiosity, he had made a post-mortem examination of the remains of a small drowned puppy. But he was not content with his researches in its tiny interior. He was bent on making acquaintance with the young retriever’s bones also, and when he had counted their number and endeavoured to find out their use, he intended to fasten them together with wire, and set up a beautiful skeleton of a dog. But to get the bones perfectly clean, it was necessary to detach the flesh from them by careful boiling, and, without going through the formality of asking permission, Richard had borrowed one of his mother’s pans wherein to do his unhallowed cookery and prosecute his researches with all the curiosity of his sex. For, in spite of the popular fallacy to the contrary, it is man and not woman who is the inquisitive being. Man and not woman is the discoverer and inventor. He it is that, impelled by the prompting of an insatiable curiosity, has explored the heavens and the earth, counted the stars and weighed the planets, and wrested from Nature her most hidden secrets. If a woman instead of a man had seen the historic apple fall from the tree, would she have been led by the contemplation of so commonplace an event to enter upon vast and far-reaching scientific speculations ? Even had the apple forcibly attracted her a RICHARD DARE attention by falling on her head instead of on the ground, it would have roused no penetrating curiosity in her to discover in obedience to what law the fruit dropped to the earth when the stalk broke, instead of soaring, birdlike, away through the air. No; a woman would have smoothed her hair and straightened her bonnet, and drawn this practical lesson from the circumstance, that it is unsafe to walk under an apple tree when the fruit is ripe and heavy, and there the matter would have ended.

The boy smiled to himself, then, as he bent with keenest masculine curiosity over the pan in which boiled and bubbled broth of abominable things. Suddenly, he heard himself called, ‘ Richard !’ and, looking up with a frown in anticipation of being disturbed in his congenial work, he saw his mother standing at the door, his baby sister on her arm and his little four-year-old brother tugging at her skirts. She was about to draw the bolt and enter, but Richard hastened to prevent her, and, leaning his arms on the top of the half door, said, ‘I don’t want Reuben in here, mother, the little chap’s sure to get into . mischief or hurt himself.’

Mrs. Atherley smiled at her son with as sweet a pair of grey eyes as ever lent grace and charm to a plain face.

‘That’s not the real reason, my lad, why you don’t want ‘im to come in! Yowr’e after somethin’ 0’ your own that me and Reuben should ’inder, that’s what it is. I hope it’s nothing as your father’ll find out and be angry with you over, for ’e says you mind a many things more than your own proper trade.’

An angry light kindled in the boy’s eyes.

‘He’s right there if he thinks that! I hate the blacksmith’s trade and everything to do with it!’ and he pushed his cap back on his brow with an impatient gesture.

‘T’m sure I don’t know what you want different, Richard,’ said his mother in a gentle, fretful voice. ‘It’s a respectable trade is the blacksmith’s, and if your father didn’t drink so heavy he’d make a good living out of it. But I’m onlucky, that’s where it is, wi’ a husband as can’t keep from the drink and a son as thinks hisself above an honest trade,’ and she sighed as she dandled the fractious baby on her arm.

Sighing came naturally to Mrs. Atherley. For days together when things were very bad at home she drew her breath in sighs, an involuntary relief to her oppressed spirit. Her life, for seventeen years as Sam Atherley’s wife, had been a slow martyrdom. She had been so long the slave of a man unfit to be trusted even with a dog, that, between fear of his temper when he was sober and of his violence when he was drunk, what little spirit she had possessed in her youth was crushed out of her. But a plaintive pliancy in bending before the storm she was powerless to avert had stood her in good stead. She never replied to her husband’s upbraiding, always allowed him the privilege of the last word and silently accepted a curse as the end of a tipsy harangue. The only sign, besides her prematurely grey hair and_ worn face of suffering, which she regarded as inseparable from married life, was a mild sourness of temper, as of some fluid, originally weak and sweet, that had been exposed to circumstances unfavourable to its preservation.

And now Mrs. Atherley repeated her plaint, ‘It’s along o’ my bad luck, as my son turns up ‘is nose at an honest trade!’

Now, this was not the case, and it vexed the boy to find how completely he was mis understood.

‘It’s nothing of the kind, mother! A blacksmith’s trade’s as good as any other, but I hate it for all that. Whether it’s because I’ve been beat and bullied over it till P’'ve had enough of it, or because I hate the trade itself, I can’t justly tell, but no one’ll make a blacksmith o’ me when I can see my way to being anything else!’

‘And whatever else can you want to be?

Be quiet, Reuben, will you, and don’t bother I do think as my children is more tiresome than other folkses, this last spoken to the fidgety little fellow who had pulled his mother’s dress out at the gathers, and was lashing her with a toy whip to make her move on.

‘Whatever else do you wish to be, Richard ?’ repeated his mother.

The boy lifted his arms from the half door on which he was leaning and stood upright, almost a man in height and size. He was sixteen years old, his dark eyes shone with enthusiasm, and though his features were unformed and immature, his face expressed more strength and resolution than is common at his age.

‘Well, mother, I like everything about a horse better than making his shoes and putting ‘em on. Td rather drench and blister him, and all that, than I’d do blacksmith’s work !’

‘Why, Richard, you never mean as you

THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS SON i 86 want to be a beast leech!’ said his mother, puckering her brow and giving an adroit backward slap at little Reuben.

‘Td a deal rather be that than what I am now, mother. But I’m thinking o’ something beyond horse doctoring. I should like to be a proper doctor—a surgeon with operations to do, cutting off folks’ arms and legs, and curing complaints as had puzzled all the other doctors. And I’m fond o’ bones, very,’ he added, casting a loving glance over his shoulder in the direction of the steaming pan on the tall brazier, ‘and of getting to know what’s in our insides.’

‘For shame of yourself, Richard!’ broke forth Mrs. Atherley with unwonted energy ; ‘for shame of yourself! prying into things as Providence ’as thought best to keep ‘id! If the Lord ’ad meant us to know what our insides was like, he’d ha’ made no secret of em, but hung ’em up outside where we could ha’ seen ’em plain!’ and she was so wrought up that she would have delivered a rambling

VOL. I. C and incoherent scolding to her son. if a timely interruption had not diverted her from her purpose.

The afternoon silence was broken by a sound of hoofs, and there rode into the enclosure in front of the smithy, from the High Street, a gentleman mounted on a stout grey cob, accompanied by a pretty and very young lady on achestnut pony. Mrs. Atherley cast a scared glance over her shoulder, pulled little Reuben down from the mounting-block on which he had managed to scramble, and dragged him away protesting along the alley that led to the garden. From thence she hurried, baby on arm and child swinging from her skirts, to talk over Richard’s strange tastes with Mrs. Windybank, her nearest and most intimate gossip.

The elderly gentleman riding the grey cob was Mr. Featherstone, a wealthy landowner in the neighbourhood, and a well-known figure in the streets of Dormington.

He was a good-humoured, talkative man, rendered popular by his love of local gossip and curiosity in small matters, that left every one with whom he spoke under the impression that he took a special interest in him and his affairs. For the rest, he had frank blue eyes and a laugh so merry and light-hearted, it sounded more like a boy’s than that of an elderly man. |

The very young lady accompanying Mr. Featherstone was his motherless daughter and only child Margaret, a girl of fourteen, already possessing more dignity of manner than her father, to whom she bore little or no resemblance. She was tall and slender, with an exquisite complexion of red and white, and a quantity of reddish-brown hair, of the same colour as her eyes, hanging about her shoulders, and a smile that came and went with tremulous rapidity. As yet she was very shy, speaking quickly with much change of colour, ways that in a cottage child wearing a sun-bonnet would have been called by their proper name, but that in Miss

Featherstone were supposed to be indications of pride.

Richard Atherley had never seen Mr. Featherstone’s daughter before, and it marked an era in his life. At the sight of her he forgot to move the pan that was now boiling briskly and filling the smithy with savoury fumes, such as might greet the delighted senses of a Chinaman at a dinner party in his native land.

Mr. Featherstone roused the lad from his day-dream. ‘Here, young fellow! Fasten up the cob will you, and hold the pony while I help my daughter to alight. He’s cast a shoe, and I want him shod as quickly as possible. Where’s your father, young fellow ; where’s your father ?’

Richard grew crimson as he felt the beautiful red-brown eyes fixed upon him. He became suddenly conscious of his grimy face, of his dirty leather apron, of every hair on his bare, muscular arms. He made an irresolute snatch at his sleeve as though he would pull it down, and then remembered that he must work bare-armed.

‘T'll send for my father, sir; he'll be here almost as soon as the pony is ready for him.’

‘ Father at the public-house, young fellow ? Hey? Spends too much time there. Deuced bad habit, too, in the day. He should wait till night ; wait till night.’

‘Here, Jack!’ shouted Richard to a small boy standing a wrapt spectator at the entrance of the blacksmith’s yard; ‘cut along to the Barley Mow, will you, and tell my father he’s wanted to shoe Miss Featherstone’s pony.’

The idle boy received Richard’s imperious order with open mouth, as though that were the organ of hearing, but neither stirred nor spoke. Then the idea slowly filtered into his mind, and the dawn of intelligence was visible on his chaotic countenance. He tightened up his loose lips, took his hands out of his pockets, and disappeared round the corner like a flash.

Margaret laughed, and Richard, blushing like a girl, and for the first time in his life regretting that his face wanted washing, stood at the pony’s head while she sprang lightly down.

‘Step in, my dear,’ said her father cheerfully,‘ and take a look round ; I don’t suppose you were ever in a blacksmith’s forge before,’ and, gathering up her habit about her slender form, the young girl passed into the smithy like a ray of sunshine, and gazed wondering, but without interest, on the dingy objects about her. As Richard fastened the pony’s bridle to the ring in the wall, he noticed that Miss Featherstone’s bright hair was of the same colour as its chestnut mane, and he did not know till that day that human hair could be of such a beautiful shade.

While the young girl stood regretting the interruption in her pleasant ride, and wondering how long the blacksmith would keep them waiting, her father walked restlessly to and fro, lashing the side of his leg with his whip, and peering into every hole and corner. As he penetrated into the back of the smithy an unmistakably appetising smell was perceptible, and, led by the nose, he promptly followed it up to its source in the pan over the charcoal fire with an eager sniff and short laugh.

‘What the deuce have you got boiling away here, young fellow? Hey? ’Pon my word I never smelt anything so savoury in my life! Does your mother do her cooking here with a charcoal fire, like a regular cordon bleu?’ and Mr. Featherstone bent over the open pan sniffing audibly.

Quick as lightning, fearful lest his father should drop in upon him before he had removed all traces of his work, or Mr. Featherstone’s curiosity probe the mystery, Richard lifted the pan from the brazier and looked round distractedly for a place of concealment.

‘It’s not cookery, sir, it’s something nicer —I mean more interesting than anything to eat. But I’ve no business with it in here, and I don’t want my father to see it,’ and the boy stood a picture of distress holding the pan from which curled upwards the tell-tale steam.

‘Hey? What? Have you been poaching, young fellow ; been poaching ? It’s a smell to draw a hungry man by the nose, but you'll find poaching’s a dangerous game; a dangerous game!’

‘Indeed, sir, it’s nothing to eat ; it’s only an experiment I’m trying with a few bones

‘Now, young fellow, yow’re fibbing! You’re not bound to tell me what’s in the pan unless you like, but don’t go out of your way to tell lies! A few bones never made a smell like that since cooking first was known.’

‘Don’t tease the poor boy, papa,’ said Margaret, laymg her hand on Mr. Featherstone’s arm. ‘It’s something he wishes to hide from his father. See, he wants to carry it away, for Richard was making for the door to hide the guilty vessel in the garden at the back of the smithy. He shot a grateful glance at the young girl, and as he did so rushed straight into his father’s arms, pan in hand, upsetting enough of the scalding contents on his feet to make him start with pain, in spite of his thick boots.

‘What devilry is this you’re up to now? I can’t leave you a couple of hours to mind the place but you’re up to some mischief or other! [ll pay you out for this, you young dog!’ he shouted, unwittingly naming the contents of the unlucky pan, when he merely thought he was abusing his son, and he raised’ his arm to strike him, but the boy wrenched himself free from his grasp.

‘Do what you like afterwards, but you shall not strike me before the young lady!’ and Richard’s face was white and set as he stooped to pick up what looked like a boiled rabbit that had been shaken out of the pan in the collision with his father. But before he could touch it, Sam Atherley, with a curse, stamped on it with his heavy boot, and broke all the delicate bones, and there was an end of the boy’s hope of possessing a puppy’s skeleton of his own preparing.

‘Oh, my bones! my dog’s beautiful bones!’ cried the boy, scarcely able to keep back his tears.

For a moment Mr. Featherstone’s sense of humour got the better of his good-nature, and he laughed aloud.

‘So that’s what you were so secret about, young fellow! Nobody would have known anything about it if it hadn’t smelt so good. Cleaning the bones, were you, to set up a dog’s skeleton of your own? But that’s a confounded nasty trick of yours, Atherley, to serve the lad in that way! MHe’s more of a medical student than a blacksmith. How comes a son of yours to have such a turn? Kh?’

‘Medical student you call him, sir! I call ‘im a good-for-nothing wastral, that’s what he is!’ growled the blacksmith, rolling up his sleeves and glaring vengefully at his boot, still smoking from the scalding brew that had fallen upon it. ‘But Tl teach ’im to know hisself, and take the nonsense out of

THE BLACKSMITH AND HIS SON Path

‘im with a strap till ’e’s black and blue, afore ‘e goes to bed this night! There, blow the bellows and be damned to you, can’t you!’ and Richard, burning with shame and rage to be spoken to so before Miss Featherstone, sullenly did as he was bid, and soon the fire roared up the wide chimney and the strokes of the blacksmith’s hammer rang out loud and clear.

‘I sha’n’t stay in this place, papa,’ whispered Margaret under cover of the noise. ‘I hate that man, he’s cruel to his son and uses horrid words,’ and the young girl slipped out of the smithy to walk to and fro in the enclosure in front. She patted the nose of the grey cob, and then, going to the entrance of the courtyard, stood looking up and down the quiet High Street.

Richard watched her go regretfully. He knew what she said to her father as well as though he had overheard her words. ‘She thinks we’re no better than brutes, and no wonder if she does!’

Atherley’s ringing blows fell thick and fast on the glowing iron, and the shoe was nearly shaped.

‘I hope I’ve not got you into trouble, young fellow!’ said Mr. Featherstone to Richard with kindly anxiety. ‘ Your father won't thrash you? Hey?’

‘Likely as not he will, sir; but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters!’ for the boy was reckless with shame and sullen resentment.

‘That’s all nonsense, my lad, you can’t play philosopher at your age!’ and he shouted against the noise of the bellows, ‘Is your father drunk, young fellow ?’

‘ Nothing to speak of, sir, replied Richard, looking up with a critical and experienced eye. ‘You've nothing to fear for the pony ; he works as well drunk as sober, he added with a joyless pride in his father’s skill.

The blacksmith worked on with knitted brows and compressed lips, that boded ill for the lad when he should be left alone with him. Mr. Featherstone felt thunder in the air and said good-humouredly, ‘ Atherley, don’t be hard on that boy of yours for his harmless experiment! Remember, you’ve been young yourself! ’

The blacksmith paused as he was nailing on the pony’s shoe, to look up with a scowl.

‘I don’t remember feeling no different from what I do now, no, nor acting different neither. I never set to a-boiling o’ dog’s bones! Id more sense, I ’ad, young or old, and if it don’t come nateral to ‘im I’ve got to thrash it into ‘im. I'l teach ‘im to know as e’s got a father!’

‘A doubtful blessing, a very doubtful blessing!’ said Mr. Featherstone to himself as the pony was led out of the smithy.

While Richard was unfastening the cob’s bridle from the ring in the wall, Mr. Featherstone said in a low voice, ‘I’m afraid you'll catch it to-night, young fellow; take this as a salve for a sore back!’ and he tried to slip half a sovereign into his hand. But Richard, burning with blushes as he felt Margaret