Views and vagabonds

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CHAP. PACE

I THE PEDLARS i

II THE BUNTERS 22

Chapter I

Benjamin Bunter hammered a red-hot shoe, gloriously enveloped in a shower of sparks, bathed in ruddy light, a stalwart person of twenty- two in a leather apron and rolled up shirt-sleeves. His apprentice, who was thirteen, knelt before the fire and puffed the bellows ; and both dripped, because of their energy and because the forge was hot, and the evening warm for June. Benjamin Bunter was a very energetic young man ; and he really liked making horse-shoes ; it was so interesting. His forge was just outside the village of Wattles, on the London road, opposite the milestone which said London LVII, Cambridge V. Londonwards the road ran between broad grassy borders — a beautiful riding-road. And on either side of the road, beyond the white may hedges, the green fields swelled, golden with buttercups, and sweet with clover. The little wind that got up with the twilight carried the smell of the fields straight to the open forge door. But Benjamin Bunter was too busy to notice it much.

i

E

The shoe was finished and laid by to cool. Benjamin Bunter straightened himself, threw back his square shoulders, and stood to let the evening coolness fan his hot face. Silhouetted thus against the red glow within, he seemed a sturdy person, squarebuilt, square-chinned, square-browed, black-haired, with something of the grave child about him, and if he was two-and- twenty it was all he would be.

“ Tim,” he said, in his soft, deepish boy’s voice, " you can go home now.”

The apprentice imp shuffled himself into a coat. Home wasn’t where one would go, of course, an evening like this — but no matter. As he slipped out at the door, he was arrested by a sound ; his master too was arrested, and both stood listening.

There was a patter of feet on the London road — a light, foot-pace clapping, and with each clap a slip-shod chink.

“ A little moke,” said the imp, " what’s losing a shoe.”

His master nodded, and they listened again.

“ Two little mokes,” the imp amended. He was a bright child.

“ Quite so,” said Benjamin Bunter ; and they went on listening.

They couldn’t see anything but the glimmer of the white road winding through the dusk, with the pink glow of the long-set sun over the dim fields to the west, and the half of a golden moon swinging up -in the green east. " Tumbling on ’er face,” said the imp. " It’ll rain to-morrer. Besides, the ants were a-crossin’ the road this afternoon ; a-crossin' to and fro they was, like mad 'uns.” That proved it ; ants always know.

Two little red lights came into sight, jogging along the road ; it seemed that the two little mokes were dragging a highish sort of cart. “ You needn’t stay, Tim,” the smith told his apprentice, and the apprentice vanished into the night. He wasn’t going to stay and help shoe a little moke unless he had to.

The smith watched the red lights jog. When they had jogged to within two hundred yards of the forge, he could hear voices talking. One said, “ L-look, there’s a forge,” and another (it must have been another, because it was a key lower, but it had the same melancholy softness, and the same stammer) said, “ Of course. I’ve been s-seeing it for miles,” which was no doubt untrue, and sounded as if they had been quarrelling a little.

Benjamin saw now that it was a sort of small gipsy van, such as pedlars travel in, hung round with brooms, basket chairs, tin pails, carpet slippers, and other useful objects, and drawn, as he had known long since, by two little donkeys, one of which was dropping a shoe. On the driver’s ledge, with the little door open behind them, showing an incredibly crowded interior, sat a young man and a girl. Benjamin could see their faces, how they were as like as their voices. Brother and sister, then.

They drew up at the forge, and said together, " Our smaller donkey is losing a shoe,” and climbed down on to the road.

Benjamin lifted the smaller donkey’s near forefoot, and made his examination. He was by nature a young man of few words. Herein he differed from his customers, who were not like that. They said (and they really only stammered a little, after all, except when they were getting excited), “ We’re on our way to London. How far now ? Oh, there’s a milestone. Fifty-seven ; that will take us five days. We don’t go fast, you see ; the donkeys aren't very strong ; and we make long stops in the villages and towns, to sell things. Will you buy a pair of carpet slippers, with pink geraniums on them ? Or perhaps a clothes-brush ; you must get so much dust from the motors here. Or a bucket — or a little chair. Have you a little chair to sit in already ? No, you haven’t, apparently. It costs three and sixpence. But if you’d rather have the slippers . . . We want to stay just outside Cambridge to-night ; that isn’t far, is it ? Is it a nice place, Cambridge ? We don’t know it much.”

Benjamin Bunter, busy with a little shoe, selected this to answer.

“ Nice ? That’s according to what you want out of it, I suppose.” But his own feeling about it looked for a moment out of his candid, heavybrowed deep blue eyes. He, it seemed, had at one time or another got something he wanted out of Cambridge.

The pedlar people didn’t altogether understand.

" We just want a nice place ... a place we can play about in for a little . . . oh, not too respectable, you know. We’ve just been at Ely, and that wasn’t very comfortable. The people were rather t-tidy — and we aren’t.”

Benjamin looked at them and perceived that they were not. They were not even as tidy as he was. He, with his bare grimed arms and open shirt and leather apron, and far-set, very honest, grave blue eyes, was the self-respecting artisan, the noblest work ofheaven. (That was what he believed the self-respecting artisan to be ; I quote his sentiments, not his words, which were few and to the point, and not of that sort.) These pedlar people were probably not self-respecting ; and their shoes were broken. Not that Benjamin Bunter thought less of them on that account ; that was perhaps one of the things he had got out of Cambridge — indifference to broken shoes. Another was the unsurprised acceptance of incongruities. Broken shoes, brooms to sell, gentle speech — these went, in Benjamin Bunter’s eyes, quite naturally together.

He finished the little shoe, and straightened himself.

“ That’s done ... You were offering me things to buy, weren’t you. The only thing I want is a kettle. Have you a kettle ? ” There was this about Benjamin Bunter : he invariably knew what he wanted, and, more, what he didn’t want. Another difference from the pedlars, who wanted everything they saw. The more things the better ; that is what makes life full and interesting ; perhaps that was why the inside of the cart was so very full. So they couldn’t understand the blacksmith saying “ the only thing I want.” Why not slippers with pink geraniums ? Why not a little chair ? Why, in the name of cleanliness, not a tin basin, since smiths must get black ?

However, since this smith was such an eclectie young man, and only wanted a kettle, a kettle he should have. So the search for the kettle began, outside and inside the crowded cart. Benjamin helped.

“You see,” the pedlars explained, rummaging among layers of things that were not kettles, “ we don’t exactly know for certain whether there is a kettle. The fact is, it isn’t our stock ; we’re peddling for a friend, who is in hospital. Of course there should be a kettle — l-lots of kettles — ” (they stammered increasingly as they searched, because they were feeling anxious), “ but one n-never knows what other people will have thought of putting in. If it was our stock, it would have been rather different. Fewer brooms, and more amusing things — and any n-number of kettles. They are so useful, aren’t they? You can use them all the time, if you’ve a fire. That’s why they’re really better than brooms. . . . Tommy, there is no kettle.”

That was the final ultimatum, given by the sister to the brother ; and both gazed at Benjamin with melancholy eyes — great sad blue-grey eyes they had, beneath funnily expressive black brows.

“ Thank you,” said the blacksmith. “ I am sorry to have given you the trouble.”

“ Nothing else will do, I suppose ? ” ventured the sister, but with uncertain hope now, because they were getting to understand the sort of determined, know-his-own-mind young man they had to do with. “ Nothing in enamel plates ... or knives . . . N-no thing in . . . that’s what they say in shops, you know. It’s nicer than ‘ will plates do instead? ’ ”

“ Betty,” the brother plunged (aside) into desperate renunciation, “ he must have our kettle. We have one kettle,” he explained to the smith. “You can have it.”

The sister nodded agreement. “I’m afraid we mustn't say it costs very much,” she added, a little sadly, “ because it has a hole. A very little hole, and high up, above where the water comes, unless you fill it very full. It’s a good kettle, but rather old. Have you found it, Tommy ? ”

Tommy had found it ; he displayed it to Benjamin with some diffidence. “ I think,” he said, “ it shouldn’t be more than sixpence, because of the hole. Quite a little hole, you see.”

Benjamin said, “ Thanks, very much. But I won’t take your . . . your private kettle ; I’ll wait, and get one in the village later.”

They pressed him. They seemed engagingly to attribute his refusal entirely to consideration for them.

“ Oh, but do. We don't want it, really. We can get one in Cambridge to-morrow. Cambridge must have lots of kettles. And you want one to use to-night. You must keep it.”

“ I don’t want a kettle with a hole,” Benjamin didn’t (for some reason) say. Instead, with the beginnings of his slow smile, he produced sixpence and took the kettle from the young man’s hands.

" But don’t you want to use it to-night ? ” he questioned, taking the ground they had assumed for him.

They reassured him. " Not a bit. Oh no.”

Then it occurred to Benjamin that they really must have a use for this kettle ; otherwise why should they think that he had ? He put it down.

“ I think,” he said, “ I won’t take it. Why should I have it, rather than you ? ”

This was an impasse. The blacksmith was determined, the pedlars were eager. Then suddenly one of them had an idea.

“ Oh, why shouldn’t we have slipper together ? Because of course we both want it for supper, don’t we ? -Where do you have supper ? Sometimes we go to an inn, and sometimes we have it by the roadside, if it’s fine and we’ve got food. We’ve got some food to-night, and we were going to have it on the road. The kettle boils water for our cocoa — that’s what we drink, most evenings. Oh, let’s have it together, and then it won’t matter about the kettle.”

“But perhaps you were going somewhere else for supper — home or somewhere ? ” suggested the other pedlar.

“ I was going to my cottage,” said the blacksmith. " That little place there in the field — you see ? I live alone there. Will you come and have supper with me ? ’’

They said they would love to. So Benjamin locked up his forge, and the pedlars dragged their donkey-cart up the little rutty lane between deep may hedges to the gap which let one in to Benjamin's squat little white cottage.

“ You cook and everything yourself ? " said the girl pedlar, as Benjamin put the kettle on a cooking stove and sliced ham into a frying-pan, with the same careful dexterity with which he fitted a shoe.

He answered casually “Yes," and added, perhaps defending himself from the touch of commiseration (as for fellow-sufferers) that he divined, “ I like it." He did not add “ Everyone should cook and everything for himself," though that was what he meant, because he had been learning during the last six months that there is a time to preach and a time to keep silence. But he was still a preacher at heart ; he knew, though he might (at times) refrain from saying, what was the better way.

“ It means so much to do," said his guests, or one of them. (He soon came to perceive that it mattered very little which spoke ; each voiced the sentiments of both.)

“Not more than one can get through," said Benjamin.

“ N-no. But it leaves so little time, somehow. We’re always glad when we can afford not to do it. Time is so important, isn’t it ? I mean, there are so many nice things to get into it that it seems such waste to fill it up with the other things. So we try always to do the nice things first, and then see how much time is left for the others. Except of course when we’re so hard up that ...” The speaker broke off, thinking herself tactless. Probably this young man was always so hard up that . . . What a shame to rub it in.

" I expect,” said the blacksmith, sizzling the ham, " that we look at things rather differently.” That was obvious. Even a kettle with a little hole above where the water comes unless you fill it very full, they looked at quite differently. That is often a test.

But anyhow they all wanted their supper, and all enjoyed it when it was ready. There was one disappointment, however, even about the supper. The pedlars refused the ham, recollecting suddenly that it was Friday. They were apologetic. “ We have to. We’re Catholics, you see. Besides, we really don’t want it ; we often just have bread and cheese in the evenings, or minestra or something.” Benjamin took up the Italian word. “ You’re not Italian ? ”

“ Well, no. But we’ve lived there mostly. It’s our home. Just now we’re travelling in England. It’s a funny country ; we rather like it. We used to think we hated it. But that was because we were educated there. If you just play, it’s nice. Except for the weather, and having colds.”

Benjamin, eating his ham, pondered silently over the reason why his guests could not share it. Being ii a person who liked to understand things, he investigated the subject further, in his slow, impersonal, deliberate way.

Is it possible to be a — a Catholic, and not bother about Fridays ? ”

The pedlars supposed it might be. “ But we don’t bother. It’s what we’re used to. And we’re not very fond of meat. In Italy, you know, you eat much less meat always . . . But you keep the fasts too, in your church — some of you.”

“Do we? ” Benjamin knew nothing of that. “ I don’t belong to any church, you see.”

His guests looked rather relieved. Those who belonged to no church or chapel were apt to look more tolerantly on Papists than were the ardent chapel-going Protestants who were unfortunately numerous in East Anglia, and who sometimes seemed to have a curious, vexed feeling about keepers of fasts.

The conversation turned on business.

“ Can you,” said Tommy (slowly Benjamin was beginning to discriminate between him and Betty, though any differences beneath the surface that there might be had not yet transpired), “ can you give us the names of anyone in Cambridge who would be likely to buy things from us ? We are very anxious to sell our stock, because our friend wants money rather badly. You saw the things we had ...”

Benjamin nodded gravely. He gave the subject, as all subjects, his serious attention. Honestly he could not, among his acquaintances in Cambridge, think at the moment of anyone particularly likely to be in want of carpet slippers or tin pails.

“ But any of them might, of course/’ he said. “You can never tell. It just depends on what they happen to be out of at the moment.”

“ People just married,” suggested Betty. “ They always want things. Pictures, you know. Oh, you didn’t see our pictures. Tommy does them ; he’s rather good.”

“ I do drawings,” Tommy explained. “ They’re not much good. I get some of them into illustrated papers, and sell some on the road.”

That, of course, was a different matter from carpet slippers.

“ May I see some ? ” said Benjamin. So after supper Tommy fetched a portfolio out of the donkey-cart.

The drawings were clever, with the neat, practised cleverness of the professional. Also they were not without humour and charm. They were roadside sketches, mostly — village groups and portraits. A tendency to farce was sometimes indulged, sometimes repressed.

“ Thank you,” said Benjamin, after some time. “ May I buy these three ? ” He had selected them with deliberation.

The artist was delighted, and named an absurdly small price. Benjamin advised him to ask more, in Cambridge.

“ Cambridge can afford more. Yes, I can give you the names of some possible people.” He wrote them down, with addresses, and ended the list with his own name.

"You may like to mention me, because all those people are friends of mine ; and before they see the drawings that may help. Benjamin Bunter, the Wattles blacksmith. You’ll probably find St. Martin’s the best college for the better drawings. The people there are more appreciative, on the whole, than in most of the other colleges. But for the — the more comic drawings, some of the other colleges would be as good — Norfolk, or St. Faith’s, for instance. Don’t, of course, mention my name except to the people on the list. It might be a pity, because some of the people in Cambridge who know me think I’m such an ass that nothing I admired could be good.”

The pedlars nodded sympathetically. “ Thank you, very much,” they said. “ Our name is Crevequer. We ...” Music swung suddenly out of the night — the melody of the merry-go-round, raucous and romantic. The Crevequers became abstracted. Tommy leant out of the window to listen.

“ A fair ? ” he enquired.

Benjamin nodded.

“ It’s feast week in Wattles. That’ll go on till midnight.” He looked resigned. But the Crevequers appeared to be thrilled.

“ Thank you so much,” said Betty, rising, " for our n-nice supper. It’s been a splendid plan. And now, asjit’s a fair, we must go at once.”

As Benjamin looked as if he didn’t quite make the connection, they added, “ Aren’t you coming yourself ? ”

" I don’t,” said the young man, “ usually go to it.”

“ How funny. Why not ? Isn’t it a good fair ? ”

Benjamin looked a little dubious as he replied, “Oh, I expect so. But ... it makes rather a noise . . . and a crowd . . . and swing-boats make me giddy, rather.” Those were good normal reasons for not liking a fair, so he gave them.

Since the Crevequers loved a noise and a crowd, and considered that giddiness was a cheap price to pay for a ride in a swing boat, it was obvious that sympathies were here imperfect. The Crevequers accepted the explanation with an air of intelligent comprehension ; but Benjamin felt moved to clarify his position in their eyes ; he was so sincere a young man that he didn’t like really to take his stand on any ground, however normal, that wasn’t actually his. So, to the objections he might have felt to the fair, he added the one he did feel.

“ People get tipsy, and racket about so late that it spoils their next day’s work. That’s stupid.”

“ I suppose it is.” Politely they supposed so, but without enthusiasm.

The missionary in Benjamin leapt out.

“ It’s idiotic. It isn’t worth it.” He was very firm, not being sure that they agreed with him.

They didn’t seem sure as to that, either.

“ I suppose, though,” ventured one of them, “ it must be worth it really — or they w-wouldn’t do it.” “ And they have so many days’ work,” added the other, " that I suppose they feel they can spare one or two now and then, for the fair. I expect they enjoy their work all the more because of having a good time in between. Tommy and I do.”

“You know,” Tommy explained, when you’re so hard up for a bit that you have to do rather a lot of work, it gets soon so that you can't bear it any more without a change or a rest. Then you go to a fair, and go in a swing-boat or something, and throw rings at alarm clocks (only you never get them) — well, or get tipsy, if that’s the way you like — and you feel so much better afterwards.”

“ As long,” said Benjamin, who had a fetich, “ as one doesn’t let things get in the way of one’s work — that’s all that matters.”

This surprising statement touched the brother’s and sister’s rather mournful regard with bewilderment. A remarkable young man, this seemed, who saw everything an odd way round. As long, held the Crevequers, as you don’t let your work get in the way of more things than need be — that was all that mattered. Since it was too large an issue to dispute, they wisely left it there, and parted with friendliness, Benjamin keeping the kettle at his guests’ request.

" A fair, you know,” they added, “ is good business for us. People get excited, and buy s-slippers and things. Come along, Betty. Good-night, and thankyou most awfully. We shall try Cambridge to-morrow for the drawings.”

i6

So they went off to the fair and threw rings at clocks, but failed to secure anything but a saltcellar, and spent a lot of money.

Benjamin washed up — an operation that rather interested him. He was an easily interested person. So were the Crevequers. Benjamin liked them, but thought them wrong about most things. He gathered that (so far as they worked at all, which perhaps wasn’t saying much) they did but work because they must and toiled but as the linnets do. Well, as most people do, Benjamin would have admitted. But then most people, of course, are quite wrong. Benjamin, having a fetich, divided people into those who did work and liked it (Class I), those who did work and didn't like it (Class II), those who didn’t do work though they needed the money (Class III), and those who didn’t do work because they didn’t need the money (no class at all). The Crevequers probably oscillated (according to how impecunious they were at the moment) between Classes II and III. The only class that really annoyed Benjamin was the last, and they manifestly didn’t belong to that.

The chief object of Benjamin Bunter’s ambition at this time was to put everybody into Class I. It was so sad that there should be any other classes at all. At present he had only succeeded in putting himself there ; but he was occupied with a scheme for putting one other person there, out of Class II. It was proving rather a distracting business, involving a good deal of correspondence. For Benjamin always tried to be considerate ; that is, to explain to the people who remonstrated with him why his way was the one good way. This was what he was preparing to do now, when, having washed up the leadless-glaze supper things and removed the cloth, he sat down at the table with letter-paper and a Waterman fountain-pen, and wrote, in his square, firm hand,

“ My dear Mother,

“ Thank you for your last. Perhaps, as you suggest, it would be a good thing that we should meet, in order to talk things over. If you would as soon come down here as that I should come home for the day, that would suit me best, on the whole. Only let me know when you will come. It would be very nice if you came to tea, say, on Monday.” A pause here, during which Benjamin bit the end of the Waterman pen and frowned. When he frowned his thick black eyebrows met over his deep blue eyes and gave him the look of a worried infant scowling at an imbecile world. He added abruptly, “ I have, I may as well say, quite made up my mind about this step, and I do not think we shall gain anything by discussing it. But, of course, I will explain anything in my position that is not clear to you, as I should naturally like you to agree with me. Your affectionate son, “ Benjamin Bunter.”

Pathetic, that last remark. For Benjamin Bunter’s mother never had agreed with him about c i8 anything, since the days when the baby Benjamin had taken off his baby shoes in his perambulator and surreptitiously dropped them overboard, on the grounds that shoes were not a necessity of existence, and that one should limit oneself to such things as were. His mother possibly agreed with the Crevequers — the more things the better, and especially unnecessary things, which are so pleasant.

When he had finished and directed his letter, Benjamin, settling himself in a wooden-seated chair with a sigh of relief, read somebody’s “ Theory of the Integral Calculus.” He didn’t smoke, because he didn’t approve of expensive tobacco and didn’t like cheap tobacco. Besides, why should one smoke ? Benjamin thought it an unnecessary habit. And when one had a book so interesting (although fallacious in some points, which Benjamin carefully noted on the margin) as the “Theory of the Integral Calculus” one didn’t miss smoking.

But Benjamin was really a sociable person, so he laid down his book, after finishing a marginal note, with a pleasant smile, when a young man knocked and entered, and said, “ What price the fair, Ben? ”

He said it without joviality. He didn’t, in fact, look a jovial person. He was a very pale, thin young man, with narrow shoulders and bitter-looking lips, and an unhappy smile. When he said, “ What price the fair ? ” he seemed to be, in a manner, sneering at the fair.

Benjamin said “ Sit down, Harry,” and pushed a chair towards him, and shut the " Theory of the

Integral Calculus,” because Harry Robinson demanded one’s exclusive attention, and when he didn’t get it, said, “ Oh, of course, I’m not an interestin’ feller,” and went away and took quite a long time to get over it. Harry, in fact, was touchy ; and Benjamin, who was not, had learnt to be careful of him.

“ Fair,” repeated Mr. Robinson with a fresh access of contempt for it. “ Fair”

That seemed to be about all he had to say about it. He broodingly lit a cigarette, and sat in silence. Benjamin, to change the subject, said it had been a good meeting last night. Mr. Robinson, a little grudgingly, acknowledged it.

“ But arterwards,” he added, “ things come to me as I might have said and didn’t. Ways of puttin’ the matter, as it were, that would have fair knocked ’em over. When Poulter was jumpin’ on me about the factory laws, thinkin’ ’imself so clever, why didn't I think of what come to me arterwards to reply ? ”

Benjamin didn’t ask what that was, having learnt that Harry, touched with jealousy, believed that the only way to reserve his good things for his personal use was to hide them secretly in his own soul. For the reply that had come to him too late for last night’s Minority Report meeting would do for the next. They had them quite often in Wattles, now that Benjamin Bunter had settled there and had organised the Socialist Club.

Harry Robinson, changing the subject quickly, lest Benjamin should pick his brains, left politics for the home, and said, “ We ’alf looked for you to come and see us to-night. Louie ’alf looked for you."

“ I’m sorry," said Benjamin. " I had some people in to supper, then a letter to write."

“ Did you ? What people might they be ? " Harry Robinson took a pessimistic interest in his neighbours’ concerns.

Benjamin told him they were people out of a pedlar’s cart ; and Mr. Robinson said, with his weary scorn, " Oh, them. I saw them. They was sellin’ their trumpery articles at the feast, as I come through. Ought to be ’ad up, I say, for loafin’ and vagrancy. Call that an honest liveli’ood. They were talkin’ away — no better than they should be, I should say, if you ask me. A disgrace to the country, these pedlars and tramps — they’re all one. An’ better folks slavin’ an’ grindin’ an’ sweatin’, an’ killin’ themselves to earn an honest penny. They don’t know nothin’ about work, people like that don’t. . . . Oh, Lord, Ben, I'm fair sick of the whole show ! ’’