Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 11

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I HAD a presentiment that our proposed Sunday expedition to Stanlake would lead to something; and I was anxious. I noticed that my mother had cried at the mention of the place. I saw the look that my father and mother interchanged when Reuben came in; and I had overheard my father's confidential growl about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children, and so on. Therefore I felt very much as if I was doing wrong in yielding to Joe's desire to go there, without telling my father. But I simply acquiesced, and never mentioned my scruples (after my first feeble protest in bed) even to Joe. And I will confess why. I had a great curiosity to see the place. I was only a poor stupid blacksmith-lad; but my crippled brother had given me a taste for beautiful things, and, from my father's description, this was the most beautiful place in the world. Then there was the charm of secrecy and romance about this expedition,--but why analyze the motives of a boy? To put it shortly, we deceived our good father and mother for the first time when we went there; and we reaped the consequences.

The consequences! But had the consequences been shown to me in a glass, on that bright Sunday morn when we started to Stanlake, should I have paused? I have asked myself that question more than once, and I have answered it thus. If I had seen all the consequences which were to follow on that expedition then, I would have thrown myself off Battersea Bridge sooner than have gone. But I was only a blind, ignorant boy at that time. Now, as a man, I begin, dimly and afar off, to understand why we were let go. I don't see it all yet, but I begin to see it.

I think that, if I had been the same man that morning as I am now, I would have said a prayer--and gone.

Now, what seems almost like accident, were there such a thing, favored us that Sunday morning. An affair which had been growing to a head for some time came to its crisis that morning. Mr. and Mrs. William Avery had taken our first floor, and Bill himself was not going on at all well. Mrs. Bill had a nasty tongue, and he was much too "handy with his hands." So it came about that Bill was more and more at the "Black Lion," and that my father, who had contrived to sawder up every man-and-wife quarrel in the buildings, was fairly puzzled here. This very Saturday evening the crash came. We had heard him and his wife "at it" all the evening; and heavy things, such as chairs, had been falling overhead, whereat my mother had said, "There! Did you ever?" But at eight o'clock, Emma, taking Fred up the broad old stairs to bed, in his night-gown, leading him with one hand, holding a lighted candle in the other, and slowly crooning out "The Babes in the Wood" in her own sweet way, was alarmed by the Averys' door being burst open, and by the awful spectacle of Mr. and Mrs. Avery fighting on the landing. Instantly after, whether on purpose or by accident I cannot say, the poor woman was thrown headlong down stairs, on to the top of Emma and Fred. The candle behaved like a magnificent French firework; but Mrs. Bill, Emma, and Fred, came down in a heap on the mat, the dear child, with his usual luck, underneath.

After this, William Avery, holding the landing, and audibly, nay, loudly, expressing his desire to see the master-blacksmith who would come up stairs and offer to interfere between a man and his wife, it became necessary for Mrs. Avery to be accommodated below for the night. The next morning, after the liquor had died out of him, William Avery was brought to task by my father; and during the imbroglio of recriminations which ensued, which ended in an appeal to the magistrate, we boys dared to do what we had never dared to do before,--to escape church, take the steamer to London Bridge, and get on to Croydon by the atmospheric railway, reaching that place at half-past twelve.

It was September, but it was summer still. Those who live in the country, they tell me, can see the difference between a summer-day in September and a summer-day in June; but we town-folks cannot. The country-folks have got tired of their flowers, and have begun to think of early fires, and shortening days, and turnips, and deep cover, and hollies standing brave and green under showering oak-leaves, which fall on the swift wings of flitting woodcocks; but to town-folks September is even as June. The same deep shadows on the grass, the same tossing plumage on the elms, the same dull silver on the willows. More silence in the brooks perhaps, and more stillness in the woods; but the town-bred eye does not recognize the happy doze before the winter's sleep. The country is the country to them, and September is as June.

On a bright September day, Joe and I came, well directed, to some park--palings, and after a short consultation we--in for a penny in for a pound, demoralized by the domestic differences of Mr. and Mrs. Bill Avery--climbed over them, and stood, trespassing flagrantly in the park which they enclosed. We had no business there. We knew we were doing wrong. We knew that we ought to have gone to church that morning. We were guilty beings for, I really think, the first time in our lives. William Avery's having thrown his wife down stairs on to the top of Emma and Fred had been such a wonderful disturbance of old order and law, that we were in a revolutionary frame of mind. We knew that order would be once more restored, some time or another, but, meanwhile, the barricades were up, and the jails were burning; so we were determined to taste the full pleasure derivable from a violent disturbance of the political balance.

First of all we came on a bright broad stream, in which we could see brown spotted fish, scudding about on the shallows, which Joe said must be trout. And, after an unsuccessful attempt to increase the measure of our sins by adding poaching to trespass, we passed on towards a dark wood, from which the stream issued.

It was a deep dark wood of lofty elms, and, as we passed on into it, the gloom grew deeper. Far aloft the sun gleamed on the highest boughs; but, beneath, the stream swept on through the shadows, with scarcely a gleam of light upon the surface. At last we came on a waterfall, and, on our climbing the high bank on one side of it, the lake opened on our view. It was about a quarter of a mile long, hemmed in by wood on all sides, with a boat-house, built like a Swiss chalet, half-way along it.

The silence and solitude were profound; nothing seemed moving but the great dragon-flies; it was the most beautiful place we had ever seen; nothing would have stopped us now short of a policeman.

We determined to wait, and go further before we gathered the water--lilies; then, suddenly, up rose a great red-and-black butterfly, and Joe cried out to me for heaven's sake to get it for him. Away went the butterfly, and I after it, headlong, not seeing where I went, only intent on the chase. At one time I clambered over a sunk fence, and found myself out of the wood; then I vaulted over an iron hurdle, then barely saved myself from falling into a basin of crystal water, with a fountain in the middle; then I was on a gravel walk, and at last got my prize under my cap, in the middle of a bed of scarlet geranium and blue lobelia.

"Hang it, I thought, I must be out of this pretty quick. This won't do. We shan't get through this Sunday without a blessed row, I know."

A voice behind me said, with every kind of sarcastic emphasis:--

"Upon my veracity, young gentleman. Upon my word and honor. Now do let me beg and pray of you, my dear creature, to make yourself entirely at home. Trample, and crush, and utterly destroy, three or four more of my flower-beds, and then come in and have some lunch. Upon my word and honor!"

I turned, and saw behind me a very handsome gentleman, of about fifty--five or so, in a blue coat, a white waistcoat, and drab trousers, exquisitely neat, who stood and looked at me, with his hands spread abroad interrogatively, and his delicate eyebrows arched into an expression of sarcastic inquiry. "He won't hit me," was my first thought; and so I brought my elbows down from above my ears, rolled up my cap with the butterfly inside it, and began to think about flight.

I could n't take my eyes off him. He was a strange figure to me. So very much like a perfect piece of waxwork. His coat was so blue, his waistcoat so white, his buttons so golden, his face so smoothly shaven, and his close--cropped gray hair so wonderfully sleek. His hands too, such a delicate mixture of brown and white, with one blazing diamond on the right one. I saw a grand gentleman for the first time, and this, combined with a slightly guilty conscience, took the edge off my London prentice audacity, and made me just the least bit in the world afraid.

I had refinement enough (thanks to my association with Joe, a gentleman born,) not to be impudent. I said,--"I am very, very sorry, sir. The truth is, sir. I wanted this butterfly, and I followed it into your grounds. I meant no harm, indeed, sir. (As I said it, in those old times, it ran something like this,--"I wanted that ere butterfly, sir, and I follered of it into your little place, which I did n't mean no harm, I do assure you".)

"Well! well! well!" said Sir George Hillyar, "I don't say you did. When I was at Eton, I have bee-hunted into all sorts of strange places. To the very feet of royalty, on one occasion. Indeed, you are forgiven. See here, Erne: here is a contrast to your lazy style of life; here is a--"

"Blacksmith," I said.

"Blacksmith," said Sir George, "I beg your pardon; who will--will--do all kinds of things (he said this with steady severity) in pursuit of a butterfly. An example, my child."

Taking my eyes from Sir George Hillyar, for the first time, I saw that a boy, about my own age apparently, (I was nearly sixteen,) had come up and was standing beside him, looking at me, with his arm passed through his father's, and his head leaning against his shoulder.

Such a glorious lad. As graceful as a deer. Dark brown hair, that wandered about his forehead like the wild boughs of a neglected vine; features regular and beautiful; a complexion well-toned, but glazed over with rich sun-brown; a most beautiful youth, yet whose beauty was extinguished and lost in the blaze of two great blue-black eyes, which forced you to look at them, and which made you smile as you looked.

So I saw him first. How well I remember his first words, "Who is this?"

I answered promptly for myself. I wanted Joe to see him, for we had never seen anything like him before, and Joe was now visible in the dim distance, uncertain what to do. I said, "I hunted this butterfly, sir, from the corner of the lake into this garden; and, if you will come to my brother Joe, he will confirm me. May I go, sir?"

"You may go, my boy," said Sir George; "and, Erne, you may show him off the place, if you please. This seems an honest lad, Erne. You may walk with him if you will."

So he turned and went towards the house, which I now had time to look at. A bald, bare, white place, after all; with a great expanse of shadeless flower-garden round it. What you would call a very great place, but a very melancholy one, which looked as though it must be very damp in winter. The lake in the wood was the part of that estate which pleased me best.

Erne and I walked away together, towards the dark, inscrutable future, and never said a word till we joined Joe. Then we three walked on through the wood, Joe very much puzzled by what had happened; and at last Erne said to me,--

"What is your name?"

"Jim."

"I say, Jim, what did you come here for, old fellow?"

"We came after the water-lilies," I said. "We were told there were yellow ones here."

"So there were," he said; "but we have rooted them all up. If you will come here next Sunday, I will get you some."

"I am afraid we can't, sir," I said. "If it had n't been for Bill Avery hitting his missis down stairs, we could n't have come here to-day. And we shall catch it now."

"Do you go to school?" said Erne.

"No, sir; I am apprenticed to father. Joe here does."

"Do the fellows like you, Joe? Have you got any friends?"

Joe stopped, and looked at him. He said,--

"Yes, sir. Many dear friends, God be praised! though I am only a poor hunchback. Have you many, sir?"

"Not one single one, God help me, Joe. Not one single one."

It came on to rain, but he would not leave us. We walked to the station together; and, as we walked, Joe, the poet, told us tales, so that the way seemed short. Tales of sudden friendships made in summer gardens, which outlive death. Of long-sought love; of lands far off; lands of peace and wealth, where there was no sorrow, no care; only an eternal, dull, aching regret for home, never satisfied; and of the great heaving ocean, which thundered and burst everlastingly on the pitiless coast, and sent its echoes booming up the long-drawn corridors of the dark, storm-shaken forest capes.

Did Joe tell us all these stories, or has my memory become confused? I forget, good reader, I forget; it is so long ago.

We had to wait, and Erne would sit and wait with us in the crowded waiting-room, and he sat between Joe and me. He asked me where I lived, and I told him, "Church Place, Church Street, Chelsea." Somehow we were so crowded that his arm got upon my shoulder, just as if he were a school--fellow and an equal. The last words he said were,--

"Come back and see me, Jim. I have not got a friend in the world."

Joe, in the crush before the train started, heard the station-master say to a friend,--"It's a queer thing: it runs in families. There's young Erne Hillyar is going the same way as his brother. I seen him, with my own eyes, sitting in the second-class waiting-room, with his arm on the shoulder of a common young cad. He has took to low company, you see; and he will go to the devil, like his brother."

If the station-master had known what I thought of him after I heard this, he would not have slept the better, I fancy. Low company, forsooth. Could the Honorable James Burton, of the Supreme Council of Cooksland, Colonial Commissioner for the Exhibition of 1862, ever have been justly described as "low company?" Certainly not. I was very angry then. I am furious now. Intolerable!

This Sunday's expedition, so important as it was, was never inquired into by my father. When we got home we found that our guilty looks were not noticed. The affair between William Avery and his wife had complicated itself, and got to be very serious, and sad indeed. When we got home we found my father sitting and smoking opposite my mother; and, on inquiry, we heard that Emma had been sent up to bed with the children at seven o'clock.

I thought at first that we were going to "catch it." I, who knew every attitude of theirs so well, could see that they were sitting in judgment; and I thought it was on us. This was the first time we had ever done any great wrong to them; and I felt that, if we could have it out, there and then, we should be happier. And so I went to my father's side, put my arm on his shoulder, and said,--

"Father, I will tell you all about it."

"My old Jim," he answered, "what can you tell, any more than we have heard this miserable day? We know all as you may have heard, my boy. Little Polly Martin, too. Who would have thought it?"

My mother began to cry bitterly. I began to guess that William Avery had quarrelled with his wife on the grounds of jealousy, and, also, that my father and mother had sifted the evidence and pronounced her guilty. I knew all about it at once from those few words, though I was but a lad of sixteen.

I knew now, and I had suspected before, that young Mrs. Avery was no longer such a one as my father and mother would allow to sit down in the same room with Emma.

She had been, before her marriage, a dark-eyed, pretty little body, apparently quite blameless in every way, and a great favorite of my mother's. But she married William Avery, a smart young waterman, rather to much given to "potting," and she learnt the accursed trick of drinking from him. And then everything went wrong. She could sing, worse luck; and one Saturday night she went marketing, and did not come home. And he went after her, and found her singing in front of the Six Bells in the King's Road, having spent all his money. And then he beat her for the first time; and then things went on from bad to worse, till the last and worst crash came, on the very week when Joe and I ran away to Stanlake.

William was fined by Mr. Paynter for beating his wife; and soon after his end came. He took seriously to drinking. One dark night he and his mate were bringing the barge down on the tide,--his mate, Sam Agar, with the sweeps, and poor Avery steering,--and she (the barge) wouldn't behave. Sam knew that poor Avery was drunk, and rectified his bad steering with the sweeps as well as he was able. But, approaching Battersea Bridge, good Sam saw that she was broadside to the tide, and cried out,--"Starboard, Bill! Starboard, old boy, for God's sake!" but there was no answer. She struck the Middlesex pier of the main arch heavily, and nearly heaved over and went down, but righted and swung through. When Sam Agar found himself in clear water, he ran aft to see after Bill Avery. But the poor fellow had tumbled over long before, and the barge had been steering herself for a mile. His body came ashore opposite Smith's distillery, and Mr. Wakley delivered himself of a philippic against drunkenness to the jury who sat upon him.

And his wife went utterly to the bad. I thought we had heard the last of her, but it was not so. My mother's face, when she turned up again, after so many years, ought to have been photographed and published. "Well, now, you know, this really is," was what she said. It was the expression of her face, the look of blank, staring wonder that amused Joe and me so much.