Charlie Chittywick

Chapter I. Forty Years Ago

In the sixties, the High Street of Ridingdale was much more picturesque than it is to-day. To begin with, there were fewer shops, and just one solitary window of plate glass — the extravagant idea of a draper who tried to live up to it and failed, in more senses than one. Now, I think, there is but one establishment that does not display its wares behind panes that are insured against the flying stone or the kicking horse.

Personally I think them much less interesting than the old bow-windows, and not nearly so artistic as the bull’s-eye panes that provoked curiosity and gave to certain wares a fictitious value. At night-time the old glass lit up quite bewitchingly, and if you were a boy with the smallest gift of imagination you could see more things in those fantastically-shaped knobs than modern young ladies (of both sexes) see by crystal-gazing and other fooleries.

The beautiful is always the useful; of its own nature it must be so. But the converse does not hold. The useful, i.e., the merely useful, if often very ugly, though its utility may justify its existence. Some of the old Ridingdale shops soon showed a tendency to become crowded. On market day it was no uncommon thing to see people waiting on the pavement outside until the surging throng of three or four people at the counter had brought their business, plus a little gossip, to an end. When you come “ into town ” only once a week you wish to enjoy yourself, and hurry is not conducive to enjoyment — or gossip. Moreover, at the grocer’s a good deal of exchange went on, and involved arithmetical puzzles that sometimes taxed the shopman’s ability. For farmers’ wives brought butter and eggs, to say nothing of cheese and poultry, and old Harwood’s temper was sometimes sorely tried over bargains that these ladies tried to drive. “ Butter was making an old man of him,” he was once heard to say, and when he died, I think about a year afterwards, little Freddy Armstrong thought how sad it was that such a good man should be killed by so necessary an article. No mention of butter was made upon his tomb-stone and Freddy thought it a pity. But at that time the boy was very young.

There was the same difficulty at Miss Rippell’s. The little shop itself — being at once a stationer’s and bookseller’s, and emporium for fancy goods, a Berlin-wool warehouse and a circulating library — yielded but the minimum of space to its customers. There were two chairs at the counter, and once these were occupied by two ladies in the costume of the period, the establishment shrank to rather small dimensions; so small indeed that Freddy, to whom some parts of Miss Rippell’s were as a fairy palace, greatly resented the presence of spreading crinolines and those who wore them. For the big counter was a literary Eldorado, and the picture papers alone were a small boy’s feast.

Once, however, the stress of market day was over, there were times when even Miss Rippell’s and the grocer’s were empty by the hour together. Such periods were the loafer’s opportunity.

There were several loafers in Ridingdale, chiefly of the retired tradesmen and “ independent gentlemen ” order. They had no club and (happily for them) they could not spend all their time in the bar-room of the Ridingdale Arms. I said there were no clubs: there were several of an informal and casual sort. One met every morning of the week, except Sundays, at Colpington’s. Colpington was the chemist, and the coterie that assembled at his counter was small and exclusive. It generally consisted of Colonel Ruggerson, Dr. Nuttlebig, and old lawyer Hipkins. If their number was added to, it was by accident. They discussed the news of the day, both local and general, and buyers of penn’orths of syrups and ounces of essences and oils were often entertained by heated political arguments. The Illustrated London News and Punch always lay on a side counter to afford entertainment to waiting customers.

But the person who might aptly be called the Loafer of Loafers belonged to no club, however informal. He gave one the impression of belonging to nothing and nobody — albeit he was at the service of everybody. His taste seemed to be for shops ; it is certain that particular shops were very much to his taste. The baker, the confectioner, and the grocer were more honoured, or exasperated, by the attentions of Master Charles Chittywick than either Miss Rippell or Mr. Colpington ; yet there were times when both the bookseller and the chemist gave him shelter and conversation, if not hospitality. Charlie had his uses, of course. He did not belong to the class from which errand boys are usually taken, but he was always ready to run here and there with parcel or letter or message. Nay, there were days when he was actually in demand as a kind of supplementary-deputy-sub-assistant errand-lad. These were good days for Charlie.

When Freddy Armstrong, the maltster’s son, was six and a half, Charlie seemed to be a big lad — though he was rather small for his age. In some vague childish way Freddy was sorry for him. More than once indeed Freddy had reason to be grateful to him. The distance to his dame school was so short that the little chap was sometimes allowed to go alone but between his home and Miss Pitchett’s there lived a terrible ogre of a boy whose very name frightened him. The ogre was called Skinny Bobington. He never really assaulted Freddy, but he had a habit of dancing across the road with outspread arms and hideous cries and grimaces that terrified the little chap exceedingly. A nurse who ought to have known better told him that Bobington was called “ Skinny ” because he had once skinned a small boy alive and eaten him for supper. He certainly looked quite capable of cannibalism.

ii

One day Charlie Chittywick came up just in the nick of time and Skinny Bobington went down with great rapidity — was rolled over in the dust and retired howling. Freddy was too frightened, or too shy, to thank Charlie at the time, but the child’s interest in his rescuer was deepened by this incident.

At this period Charlie always looked pale and ill and very hungry. He rarely seemed to have anything to do. Often too he looked cross and discontented, and generally unhappy ; but for this he would have been rather handsome, for his features were small and regular, and he had the curliest hair of any lad in Ridingdale. His clothes were always shabby, yet somehow he always looked neat and clean, and not all like the down-at-heel loafer he really was. His sad face used to haunt Freddy — particularly on summer evenings when seven o’clock bed meant lying awake for a good hour or more, and when the tales he told himself took on a melancholy tinge and ended in a distressing waking dream. Often in these stories Charlie was his hero. The shadow of sorrow seemed to be thick upon him, and try as Freddy would he could not make his hero’s history end happily.

Now and then Freddy saw him in the highest possible spirits, and the sight did him good. When they met they always nodded and smiled, and Freddy never dreamt of saying his prayers without mentioning Charlie’s name. But when Freddy pleaded that his benefactor might be asked — at any rate to the orchard and garden, for playing purposes, his mother told him kindly but firmly that that could never be. Freddy little guessed that Charlie was known to most people as the biggest liar and thief in Ridingdale.

The loafer had won his heart. If he could have done so Freddy would have shared with him everything he had. He was shy of stopping to speak to him, and as often as not would put the apple or orange or biscuits into Charlie’s hands without saying a word. “ Are you sure you don’t want them ? ” the big boy would ask. He always hesitated to take what was offered him. Sometimes indeed he looked troubled and perplexed, and held the thing in his outstretched hand that Freddy might take it back if he chose to do so; unlike Skinny Bobington who once, propitiated with six pear-drops, had immediately put them in his mouth and asked for more.

“ But, I say — isn’t it your lunch or something? ” Charlie asked one day when, on his way to school, Freddy gave him a big hunch of plum-cake neatly wrapped in tissue paper. The child shook his head and said nothing — hoping that he was not acting a lie. It was his eleven o’clock snack, this hunch of cake, and Charlie knew it.

“ You oughtn’t to give me this,” he said, trying to slip it back into Freddy’s small pocket. “ It’s jolly good of you, of course. You’re an awfully decent kid and I like you ever so much. And, look here,” he continued as he began to cram the little package into the child’s pocket —

“ if Skinny Bobington frightens you again, just tell me and I’ll punch his head for him.”

He was stooping down to force the wedge of cake into a pocket that was much too small for it when Freddy suddenly flung his arms about Charlie’s neck and kissed him.

“ What’s that for? ” the loafer demanded with a puzzled and amused smile. “ What an affectionate little beggar you are ! ” he exclaimed with a laugh. “ It’s a jolly long time since anybody kissed me, I can tell you. Why did you do it? ”

In another moment the big boy was out of sight.

Freddy must have caught the spirit of pity, and therefore of love, from his mother. Her sympathy was affective and effective, and but for her husband, who had his own reasons for disliking Charlie Chittywick, she would have done much for the loafer. As it was, she dared not suffer him to come near the house. A little Protestant child of six has no very clear idea as to what a Papist may be; Freddy gathered that it was something very dreadful — much worse than thief and liar — and that Charlie Chittywick was a Papist.

In the early sixties, the Catholic congregation of Ridingdale was a tiny one, and nearly half its members lived several miles from the little chapel built by Colonel Ruggerson’s grandfather at the end of the eighteenth century. Happily, a Ruggerson had always lived in Ridingdale, and though there had been times when Mass was said only once a month, the chapel had never been abandoned. It was in these same sixties that a good old Irish priest, one Father

Connelly, rode sixteen miles every Sunday — at intervals he came on Sunday afternoon — to give this small scattered flock the benefits of their religion. One third of the congregation was Irish, most of them farm labourer's who had come over to England for harvesting and, for pne reason or other, had not returned to their own country.

But Colonel Ruggerson was a power in Ridingdale; no one could afford to quarrel with him. For years the Hall had been shut up, and there was no one in the neighbourhood to dispute the Colonel’s right to be regarded as the leading inhabitant and the representatively wealthy man. If he had cared to do so he might have called himself Squire of Ridingdale : his military title, perhaps, saved him from being so addressed in every-day conversation with the townsfolk. At that time it seemed exceedingly unlikely that the Hall would ever receive another tenant; as a matter of fact, some years later than the period I am writing of, it was taken possession of by the newly-married and very poor grandson of old Lord Dalesworth — Jack Ridingdale. My readers must clearly understand that I am introducing them to a period long anterior to the birth of Lancelot Ridingdale and his brothers. .

Mr. Frederick Armstrong, farmer as well as maltster, was a moneyed man. Little Freddy was his youngest child and his only son — though there were three daughters. Armstrong was a Baptist and everybody knew it. The Baptist minister of Ridingdale was painfully aware of it. Dissent was strong in this country town, but the strongest i5 of the sects was that of the Calvinistic Baptists, and quite the strongest of the Baptists was Freddy’s father. Armstrong had a freehold farm: his finger was in every local pie. He was a guardian of the poor, chairman of the Local Board, the biggest shareholder in the local Gas Company, and greatest distinction of all, a director of a great Railway Company. “ Armstrong is a warm man,” was a remark often made in the bar-room of the Ridingdale Arms — a remark always assented to.

Only once had he been taken in by a fellow-townsman, but the take-in was a serious one. And the man who had effected it and who was daily denounced by the warmtempered, as well as warm-pocketed, maltster, was Charlie Chittywick’s father — “ the greatest scoundrel that ever darkened my doors,” Mr. Armstrong said.

Chapter II. The Loafer Of Loafers

The Chittywick family had always been a shiftless one. Its head was a man of many pretensions and of the shadiest reputation. In days when it was easy for a person who had failed in everything else to offer himself as an instructor of youth, he had kept a school : a sorry affair that was labelled “ Seminary for Young Gentlemen.” And for a few years it actually succeeded. As many as fourteen boarders and nearly twenty day-boys were for a short time found in Mr. Chittywick’s school. What and how he taught, need not be told. He was the son of a factory-hand at Hardlow and had begun life as a pupil-teacher in the elementary school there.

When the Seminary broke up, as it did after two or three fitful years, Mr. Chittywick began to travel on commission. He had married a woman quite as shiftless and irresponsible as himself and, if anything, more pretentious. She was a Catholic, and had been — some said a lady’s-maid, some said a nursery-governess. They had two daughters and a son.

If William Lethers had had the time and the inclination, he could have told many amusing, and some very sad,

stories of the Chittywicks. Rents in Ridingdale were not i ;

high, and the Chittywicks, as became their pretentions to gentility, lived in one of several big old houses that had stood in the High Street from the beginning of the century — houses that seemed to have no right to be found among so many shops. The Chittywick mansion was detached and had a fair garden lying behind it, but (we are speaking of the days when he was in business) William’s clog-shop was, practically, next door.

It is superfluous to say that the two families were not on visiting terms, yet there were times when the Chittywicks found the Lethers very useful. When Mrs. Chittywick, during the absence of Mr. Chittywick whose travelling naturally kept him away from home a great deal, discovered herself to be without “ change,” it was natural that she should look to Mrs. Lethers for a loan. There were times when the loan was repaid ; but it is certain that Mrs. Chittywick thought Mrs. Lethers somewhat honoured by being permitted to lend money to so distinguished a family.

The two Miss Chittywicks completely ignored both William and his wife, but to their disgust their brother Charlie was very friendly with the Lethers. Scarcely a day passed but he would stroll into the shop for a chat, and he would now and then drop into the little back-parlour, and sometimes of an evening play a game of draughts with one of William’s lads. Nor would Master Charlie refuse an invitation to tea or supper. Mrs. Lethers declared the lad was “ half clammed,” and sometimes he certainly looked it. It was in vain that his sisters protested against this lowering of the family dignity. Charlie declared that William was a very good sort and so was his wife.

At this period of Charlie’s life he was struggling, struggling daily, with a monster most dreaded by the natural man, or boy — Hunger. Consequently, any person, any house, that gave promise of food was cultivated by the loafer. What a long time it seemed since his father’s bankruptcy and the giving up of the school! Yet it was only two years since he had sat down to four good meals a day ; for whatever may have been the quality of the mental food imparted to his pupils, Mr. Chittywick did not starve their bodies.

What a time it had been, Charlie often thought — these two years of loafing and starving! If only he could stop growing! If only he could get something to do that would suffice to bring him regular meals! If only one or two people would forgive and forget the delinquencies of those two years ! If only the circle of his friends would not narrow so pitifully.

Friends! Did he possess a single one? William Lethers and his wife were still tolerant of him; but how long would it last? On a certain December day just before Christmas, Charlie had to face the hard fact that only three shops in Ridingdale were open to him — Colpington’s, the chemist’s, Miss Rippell’s, and William Lethers.’ And of these three only one — the dogger’s — was of much advantage. Colpington was a man of uncertain temper, and though it was not Charlie’s fault that the chemist’s offer to work had been refused, the boy was now very shy of entering the shop.

Miss Rippell was kind, but then her shop was nearly always haunted by ladies. His sisters too, he reflected, gave the Berlin-wool warehouse as much of their company as it could reasonably stand, and both of them strongly objected to his presence.

Shabby! of course he was shabby. Approaching fourteen, he was still wearing the clothes of a twelve-year-old boy. Not a single new article of dress, saving one pair of shoes, had he been able to get since the break-up. “ Not fit to be seen,” his sisters told him daily and unnecessarily. “ Anyhow, I keep myself clean,” was his retort, and this he did.

When he could possibly avoid it, he would keep clear of the very gates of the Armstrong house. It was one thing to meet little Freddy by accident, and quite another thing to hang about in the hope of getting a stray cake or a slice of bread-and-butter. Of late the little chap had changed his tactics. If on his way to school he met the loafer, he would no longer offer him his nuncheon, as he called it ; but at twelve o’clock he would pray that he might meet Charlie on his way home. It was in vain that Charlie reasoned and remonstrated and finally took care to keep out of the child’s way. Freddy regularly saved his morning snack, and if it did not reach Charlie’s hands sooner or later the donor was not at fault. He was a resourceful and a masterly child. For some time past small parcels had turned up in unexpected places or reached Charlie through strange and sometimes unwashed hands.

“ I don’t want it, Charlie, I really don’t,” Freddy said stoutly when Charlie remonstrated. “ Faver says I’m getting too fat, and muvver stuffs me too much.”

Charlie laughed. The plump and rosy youngster certainly did not look hungry. It was a sturdy, well-fed, warmly-clad little figure that stood in the December slush and looked up into the loafer’s face. Everything about the child spoke of comfort and plenty. Half-enviously, and yet with a certain affection, Charlie scanned the child — from the tuft of his Glengarry cap to the inch-thick soles of his hobnailed highlows. Through Charlie’s thin and broken shoes the muddy snow found way at every step.

“ But you’ll be found out, Freddy, and then — ”

“ I don’t care. Muvver gives it to me for my very own and I can’t — I don’t eat it.”

“ But your father would be in an awful wax — and you’d get whacks — if he knew.”

“ I don’t care. But he won’t know.”

“ I shan’t tell him,” laughed Charlie beginning to demolish the mince-pie Freddy had just handed to him. The little boy was delighted to see his hero enjoying “a happy month ” — as the dainty was called in Ridingdale.

“ We break up the day after to-morrow,” Freddy said gleefully.

"Jolly! ” responded Charlie, but his face fell a little.

“ But you’ve got to have twelve happy months, Charlie

I shall beg 'em of mother. Not all at once, but one now and then. And if I don’t meet you down town I’ll put ’em in that little place behind your gate — I mean the yard gate. You know. Where I put that little pork-pie yesterday.”

“ Don’t, Freddy! You’ll be getting into a row. I don’t want you to be licked through me. I should be miserable if I thought you were being whipped. It’s awfully good of you; but don’t.”

“ O, it’s all right,” said the youngster sturdily. “ I don’t care. Are you going home to dinner now, Charlie? ”

“ Yes,” replied Charlie with some hesitation. There would be bread and tea at one o’clock, he knew, and not nearly enough bread. What his mother called a remittance had not been received from Mr. Chittywick for several weeks. Charlie doubted if there was fire enough to-day to boil the kettle. He had left his mother wrapped in a blanket and reading a novel.

“ Why don’t you put your big coat on ? ” Freddy asked,, for Charlie was shivering.

“ Won’t go on. Split right up the back first time I tried it this winter. I’m all right though. Ta-ta, Freddy! Thanks muchly for the pie. It’s mighty good!”

To Charlie, the mere thought of Christmas was an agony. Last year he had helped at the grocer’s, had enjoyed the bustle of the week preceding the great feast, had earned a little money and much tuck. This year, Harwood’s was closed to him; he scarcely dared to stop and examine the holly-decked, raisin-spread window. It was the same at the confectioner’s — perhaps worse, for the shopman actually kept a handy cane for the chastisement of undesirable boyloafers about the window, and the proprietor himself — well, Charlie knew something of the strength of the confectioner’s arm. There were two bakers in High Street, and even when Charlie approached them, money in hand, for the loaf that barely kept his mother and sisters from starvation — once he was served these sellers of bread showed an unblushing anxiety to see him off the premises.

Last Christmas Day, he and his mother and sisters had dined at Miss Rippell’s : he wondered much if she would ask them again this year. Certainly, he was not fit to go where there was company. His boots would have been refused by a tramp. If only he could get a pair of boots, he told himself, he would run away. There must be something for a boy to do somewhere in the world — in some place where he was not known. But in his present condition every step out of doors was painful, and running away impossible.

A few days before Christmas he caught a violent cold. He was glad of the^ excuse for staying in bed : between the blankets he could at least keep warm. The very sight of High Street, of the shops, of the errand-boys, of the cheery bustle of approaching Christmas, had become maddening. He had been too hungry, to$ weak, too spiritless, to return the chaff of those stout burly lads who were carrying about the baskets of good things to decent householders. He would gladly have changed places with any one of these velveteen-coated, clog-shod fellows. How warm and jolly they looked ! Snow and slush could not penetrate the solid wood and thick leather that protected their feet; winter winds were defied by overcoats of frieze and comforters of scarlet wool.

Poor Charlie! He was a prodigal indeed, for no man would hire him. A prodigal, though, through being the son of a prodigal. Want had come to him through no fault of his own. Only one thing had he himself squandered — his own reputation. This precious commodity he had recklessly flung away. “ Liar and thief ” were the words that now sprang readily to the lips of men with whom he had once been a favourite. He was of course handicapped by being a son of his father — a man known throughout the Dale as a swindler and a “ dead-nab ; ” yet there were God-fearing men, even in the High Street, who did not readily blame the son for his father’s sins. Charlie himself had sinned and had been found out. Sometimes in his misery and his loneliness he told himself that if the school had succeeded, if his father had gone on giving much good custom to the local shops, he, Charlie Chittywick, would still have been the favourite of Ridingdale tradesmen. In this he did some of them an injustice. When his father’s bankruptcy came about, most of the creditors remained friendly with the debtor’s son. The one exception was Mr. Armstrong.

Up to the age of twelve there had been no more popular boy in Ridingdale than Charlie Chittywick. It was not merely that he was good-looking, well-mannered, and well-dressed ; he was pleasant to deal with — respectful and intelligent — good-humoured and affable — the kind of boy that makes friends and keeps them.

But then — up to that time he had never known what it was to be hungry. His life had been a pleasant one. The boys of his father’s school were devoted to him. Younger than some of them, none could excel him either in class or play-ground.

Not quite two years had brought about this appalling difference. As he lay in bed on Christmas Eve he reflected that he had only two friends left in the whole world — the dogger next door and a little child of seven and a half! And the latter was the son of his father’s — of his own — deadliest enemy!

Chapter III. A Determined Resolve

On a certain January night when snow lay on the ground, William was just about to shut up shop and retire to his easy-chair when Charlie Chittywick suddenly appeared in the doorway. Something in the lad’s face startled Billy Lethers.

“ Whatever is the matter, Master Charlie ? ”

The boy sauntered to the counter and sat down.

“ Look here, Mr. Lethers, I want you to do me a favour. You are about the only friend I’ve got in the world, and I’ll never forget your kindness to me — I might say to us. You are always doing us favours and I’m ashamed to ask you for anything for myself, but I’ll pay you back in a week or two — I will indeed. I want you to let me have a pair of clogs on trust.

“ What, for yourself, Master Charlie?” asked the amazed William.

“ Yes, for myself. I’m sick and tired of this kind of sham life we are leading at home and I simply can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to Hardlow to-morrow morning to try and get on at the factory there.”

“ You’ll niver do no sich thing — surely!” William exclaimed.

“ But I will !” the lad declared fiercely. “I must. We’re pretty nearly starving, and my sisters won’t do anything. Father has come home with next to nothing and we’re in debt all over the place. I can tell you what I wouldn’t tell anybody else. Somebody must do something. Somebody’s got to make a move. My mother can't do anything. I’m fourteen now, and I’m quite able to work. If I can only keep myself it will be one less at home.”

“ But you’ll niver go t’ factory, my lad,” argued William.

“ It’s the only thing I can do. I’ve got no education. I’m far more ignorant than your sons, Mr. Lethers, yet they don’t pretend to be educated. I couldn’t write a decent letter in English, let alone any other language, to save my life. In an office I should be a mere dummy even if anybody would take me on. I tried Lawyer South the other day, but he put me off — simply because he saw that my handwriting was vile. No, Mr. Lethers, I’m determined to go to the factory, and if you’ll let me have a pair of clogs I’ll be awfully grateful. What is more, I’ll pay you for them as soon as ever I can.”

“ But you’ve niver wore sich things i’ your life,” said William.

“ No, and more’s the pity. My grandfather never wore anything else, and my father wore them when he was a lad. Why shouldn’t I? We’re not gentle-folk, Mr. Lethers: you know that very well. And if we were, I don’t see why we should not work — why we should live on others.”

William’s mind was divided between amazement and admiration. He had always liked Charley, and Jane had always said he was “ the best o’ the bunch ; ” but this sudden resolution, this determined revolt against the family pride, was to be met with caution.