Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 9

Table of Contents

THAT same year also, Joe and I made a new acquaintance, in this manner:--

It had become evident to me, who had watched Joe so long, that his lameness was to some slight extent on the mend. I began to notice that, in the case of our getting into a fight in the street (no uncommon case among the Chelsea street-children, even in this improved age, as I am given to understand), and being driven to retreat, he began to make much better weather of it. I was pleased to find this, for nothing on earth could have prevented his following me at a certain distance to see how I was getting on. The first time I noticed a decided improvement was this. We (Church Street--Burtons, Chittles, Holmeses, Agers, &c.) were at hot feud with Danvers Street on the west side of us, and Lawrence Street on the east. Lawrence Street formed a junction with Danvers Street by Lombard Street; and so, when we went across the end of the space now called Panlton Square, we came suddenly on the enemy, three to one. The affair was short, but decisive. Everything that skill and valor could do was done, but it was useless. We fled silent and swift, and the enemy followed, howling. When round the first corner, to my astonishment, there was Joe, in the thick and press of the disordered ranks, with his crutch over his shoulder, getting along in a strange waddling way, but at a most respectable pace. The next moment my fellow-apprentice and I had him by his arms and hurried him along between us, until the pursuit ceased, the retreat stopped, and we were in safety.

I thought a great deal about this all the rest of the day. I began to see that, if it were possible to strengthen the poor lad's leg by gradual abandonment of the crutch, a much brighter future was before him. I determined to try.

"Joe, old fellow," I said, as soon as we were in bed, "have you got a story for us?"

"No," he said, "I have n't. I am thinking of something else, Jim."

"What about?"

"About the country. The country is here within three miles of us. I been asking Rube about it. He says he goes miles up the river into it in his lighter. Real country, you knows,--stiles, and foot-paths, and cows, and all of it. You and me has never seen it. Lets we go."

"But," I said, "what's the good? That there crutch of yourn (that's the way I used to talk in those old times) would prevent you getting there; and when you get there, old chap, you couldn't get about. And, if the cows was to run after you, you couldn't hook it over the gates and stiles, and such as you talks on. Therefore I ask you, What's the good?"

"But the cows," urged Joe, "don't allus come rampaging at you, end on, do 'em?" (That is the way our orator used to speak at twelve years old.)

"Most times they does, I reckon," I replied, and turned myself over to sleep, almost afraid that I had already said too much "about that there crutch of hisn." I had become aware of the fact that crutches grew, ready made, in Shepherd's nursery-ground, in rows, like gooseberry-trees, and was on the eve of some fresh discoveries in the same line, when Joe awoke me.

"Jim," he said, "Rube's barge goes up on the tide to-morrow morning; let us see whether or no we can get a holiday and go?"

I assented, though I thought it doubtful that my father would give us leave. A month or so before he would have refused our request point--blank. Indeed, I should not have taken the trouble to ask him, but I had noticed that he had softened considerably towards Reuben. Reuben was so gentle and affectionate, and so respectful to my father and mother, that it was impossible not to yield in some way; and so Reuben was more and more often asked into our great kitchen on the ground-floor, when he was heard passing at night up to his solitary chamber in the roof.

At this time I began first to notice his singular devotion to my sister Emma,--a devotion which surprised me, as coming from such a feather--headed being as Reuben, who was by no means addicted to the softer emotions. I saw my father look rather uneasily at them sometimes, but his face soon brightened up again. It was only the admiring devotion of a man to a beautiful child. Reuben used to consult her on every possible occasion, and implicitly follow her advice. He told me once that, if you came to that, Emma had more head-piece than the whole lot of us put together.

My father gave us his leave; and at seven o'clock, on the sweet May morning, we started on our first fairy voyage up the river, in a barge full of gravel, navigated by the drunken one-eyed old man who had been Rube's master. It was on the whole the most perfectly delightful voyage I ever took. There is no craft in the world so comfortable as a coal barge. It has absolutely no motion whatever about it; you glide on so imperceptibly that the banks seem moving, and you seem still. Objects grow slowly on the eye, and then slowly fade again; and they say, "We have passed so and so," when all the time it would seem more natural to say, "So and so has passed us."

This was the first voyage Joe and I ever took together. We have made many voyages and journeys since, and have never found the way long while we were together; we shall have to make the last journey of all separate, but we shall meet again at the end of it.

O, glorious and memorable May-day! New wonders and pleasures at every turn. The river swept on smoothly without a ripple, past the trim villa lawns, all ablaze with flowers; and sometimes under tall dark trees, which bent down into the water, and left no shore. Joe was in a frantic state of anxiety to know all the different kinds of trees by sight, as he did by name. Reuben, the good-natured, was nearly as pleased as ourselves, and at last "finished" Joe by pointing out to him a tulip-tree in full bloom. Joe was silent after this. He kept recurring to this tulip-tree all the rest of the day at intervals; and the last words I heard that night, on dropping to sleep, were, "But after all there was nothing like the tulip-tree."

In one long reach, I remember, we heard something coming towards us on the water, with a measured rushing noise, very swiftly; and before we could say, What was it? it was by us, and gone far away. We had a glimpse of a brown thin-faced man, seated in a tiny outrigger, which creaked beneath the pressure of each mighty stroke, skimming over the water like a swallow, with easy undulations, so fast that the few swift runners on the bank were running their hardest. "Robert Coombes training," said Reuben, with bated breath; and we looked after the flying figure with awe and admiration, long after it was gone round the bend, and the gleaming ripples which he had made upon the oily river had died into stillness once more.

I hardly remember, to tell the truth, how far we went up with that tide; I think, as far as Kew. When the kedge was dropped, we all got into a boat, and went ashore to a public house. I remember perfectly well that I modestly asked the one-eyed old man, lately Rube's master, whether he would be pleased to take anything. He was pleased to put a name to gin and cloves, which he drank in our presence, to Joe's intense interest, who leant on his crutch, and stared at him intently with his great prominent eyes. Joe had heard of the old man's extraordinary performances when in liquor, and he evidently expected this particular dram to produce immediate and visible effects. He was disappointed. The old man assaulted nobody (he probably missed his wife), ordered another dram, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, swore an ingenious oath perfectly new to the whole of his audience, lit his pipe, and sat down on a bench fronting the river.

Then, after a most affectionate farewell with Reuben, we turned to walk homewards,--Joe walking stoutly and bravely with his crutch over his shoulder. We enjoyed ourselves more on shore than on the river, for Joe said that there were wild tulips on Kew Green, and wanted to find some.* So we hunted for them, but without success. The tulip-tree at Fulham had given me incorrect ideas, and I steadily looked up into the limes and horse--chestnuts for them. Then we pushed on again, and at the turnpike on Barnes Common we took our first refreshment that day. We had some bread and treacle in a cotton pocket-handkerchief, and we bought two bottles of ginger-beer; and, for the first time in our lives, we "pic-nic'd." We sat on the short turf together, and ate our bread and treacle, and drank our ginger-beer.

Last year, when Joe and I came over to the Exhibition as Commissioners, we, as part of our duty, were invited to dine with one of the very greatest men in England. I sat between Mrs. Oxton and a Marchioness. And during dinner, in a low tone of voice, I told Mrs. Oxton this story about the bread and treacle, and the ginger-beer. And, to my surprise, and rather to my horror, as I must confess, Mrs. Oxton, speaking across me, told the whole story over again to the Marchioness, of whom I was in mortal terror. But, after this, nothing could be more genial and kind to me than was that terrible Marchioness; and in the drawing-room, I saw her, with my own eyes, go and tell the whole horrid truth to her husband, the Marquis. Whereupon he came over at once, and made much of me, in a corner. Their names, as I got them from Mrs. Oxton, were Lord and Lady Hainault.

Then we (on Putney Common twenty years ago) lay back and looked at the floating clouds, and Joe said, "Reuben is going to marry our Emma, and I am glad of it."

"But he mus'n't," I said; "it won't do."

"Why not"?

"Father won't hear on it, I tell you. Rube ain't going on well."

"Yes, he is now," said Joe, "since he's been seeing so much of Emma. Don't you notice, Jim? He hasn't sworn a oath to-day. He has cut all that Cheyne Walk gang. I tell you she will make a man of him."

"I tell you," I said, "father won't hear tell on it. Besides, she's only fourteen. And, also, who is fit to marry Emma? Go along with you."

And so we went along with us. And our first happy holiday came to an end by my falling asleep dog-tired at supper, with my head in my father's lap; while Joe, broad-awake, and highly excited, was telling them all about the tulip-tree. I was awakened by the screams incident to Fred having fallen triumphantly into the fire, off his chair, and having to be put out,--which being done, we went to bed.

After this first effort of ours, you might as well have tried to keep two stormy petrels at home in a gale of wind, as to keep Joe and me from rambling. My father "declined"--I can hardly use such a strong word as "refuse" about him--any more holidays; but he compromised the matter by allowing us to go an expedition into the country on Sunday afternoon,--providing always that we went to church in the morning with the rest of the family,--to which we submitted, though it cost us a deal in omnibuses.

And now I find that, before I can tell you the story of our new acquaintance in an artistic manner, I shall have to tell you what became of that old acquaintance of ours,--Joe's crutch; because, if we had not got rid of the one, we never should have made acquaintance with the other.

On every expedition we made into the country, Joe used his crutch less and less. I mean, used it less in a legitimate manner; though, indeed, we missed it in the end, as one does miss things one has got used to. He used it certainly to the last. I have known him dig out a mole with it; I have known him successfully defend himself against a dog with it in a farmyard at Roehampton; I have seen it flying up, time after time, into a horse--chestnut-tree, (we tried them roasted and boiled, with salt and without, but it would n't do,) until it lodged, and we wasted the whole Sabbath afternoon in pelting it down again. Latterly, I saw Joe do every sort and kind of thing with that crutch, except one. He never used it to walk with. Once he broke it short in two getting over a stile; and my father sent it to the umbrella-mender's and had it put together at a vast expense with a ferrule, and kept Joe from school till it was done. I saw that the thing was useless long before the rest of the family. But, at last, the end of it came, and the old familiar sound of it was heard no more.

One Sunday afternoon we got away as far as Penge Wood, where the Crystal Palace now stands; and in a field, between that and Norwood, we found mushrooms, and filled a handkerchief with them. When we were coming home through Battersea, we sat down on a bank to see if any of them were broken; after which we got up and walked home again. And then and there Joe forgot his crutch, and left it behind him on the bank, and we never saw it any more, but walked home very fast for fear we should be late for supper. That was the last of the crutch, unless the one Joe saw in the marine storekeeper's in Battersea was the same one, which you may believe or not as you like. All I know is, that he never got a new one, and has not done so to this day.

We burst in with our mushrooms. Father and mother had waited for us, and were gone to bed; Emma was sitting up for us, with Harry (of whom you will know more) on her knee; and, as Joe came towards her, she turned her sweet face on me, and said, "Why, where is Joe's crutch?"

"It's two miles off, sweetheart," I said. "He has come home without it. He'll never want to crutch this side of the grave."

I saw her great soul rush into her eyes as she turned them on me; and then, with that strange way she had, when anything happened, of looking out for some one to praise, instead of, as many women do, looking out for some one to blame and fall foul of, she said to me,--

"This is your doing, my own brother. May God bless you for it."

She came up to bed with Harry, after us. As soon as she had put him to bed in the next room, I heard him awake Frank, his bedfellow, and tell him that Jesus had cured our Joe of his lameness.

Now, having got rid of Joe's crutch, we began to go further afield. Our country rambles were a great and acknowledged success. Joe, though terribly deformed in the body, was growing handsome and strong. What is more, Joe developed a quality, which even I should hardly have expected him to possess. Joe was got into a corner one day by a Danvers Street bully, and he there and then thrashed that bully. Reuben saw it, and would have interfered, had he not seen that Joe, with his gigantically long arms, had it all his own way; and so he left well alone.

We began to further afield,--sometimes going out on an omnibus, and walking home; sometimes walking all the way; Joe bringing his book--learning on natural objects to bear, and recognizing things which he had never seen before. Something new was discovered in this manner every day; and one day, in a lonely pond beyond Clapham, we saw three or four white flowers floating on the surface.

"Those," said Joe, "must be white water-lilies. I would give anything for one of them."

In those days, before the river had got into its present filthy condition,--in the times when you could catch a punt full of roach at Battersea Bridge, in the turn of a tide,--nearly every Chelsea boy could swim.

I very soon had my clothes off, and the lilies were carried home in triumph.

"Ah, mother!" said my father, "do you remember the lilies at Stanlake?"

"Ah, father!" said my mother.

"Acres on 'em," said my father, looking round radiantly; "hundreds on 'em. Yallah ones as well. Waterfalls, and chaney boys being poorly into cockle-shells, and marvel figures dancing as naked as they was born, and blowing tunes on whilk-shells, and winkles, and such like. Eh, mother!"

Mother began to cry.

"There, God bless me!" said my father; "I am a stupid brute if ever there were one. Mother, old girl, it were so many years agone. Come, now; it's all past and gone, dear."

Fred, at this moment, seeing his mother in tears, broke out in a stentorian, but perfectly tearless, roar, and cast his bread and butter to the four winds. Emma had to take him and walk up and down with him, patting him on the back, and singing to him in her soft cooing voice.

There was a knock at the room-door just when she was opposite it,--she opened it, and there was Reuben; and I saw my father and mother look suddenly at one another.

"May I come in, cousin?" he said to my mother, in his pleasant voice. "Come, let's have a game with the kids before I go up and sleep with the ghost."

"You're welcome, Rube, my boy," said my father; "and you're welcomer every day. We miss you, Rube, when you don't come; consequently, you're welcome when you do, which is in reason. Therefore," said my father, pursuing his argument, "There's the place by the fire, and there's your backer, and there's the kids. So, if mother's eyes is red, it's with naught you've done, old boy. Leave alone," I heard my father growl to himself (for I, as usual, was sitting next him); "is the sins of the fathers to be visited on the tables of kindred and affinity? No. In consequence, leave alone, I tell you. He didn't, any how. And there was worse than his father,--now then."

In a very short time we were all comfortable and merry, Reuben making the most atrocious riot with the "kids," my younger brothers. But I saw that Joe was distraught; and, with that profound sagacity which has raised me to my present eminence, I guessed that he was planning to go to Stanlake the very next Sunday.

The moment we were in bed, I saw how profoundly wise I was. Joe broke out. He must see the "yallah" water-lilies; the chaney boys and the marvel figures were nothing; it was the yallah lilies. I, who had noticed more closely than he my mother's behavior when the place was mentioned, and the look she gave my father when Rube came in, had a sort of fear of going there, but Joe pleaded and pleaded until I was beaten; at last, I happily remembered that we did not know in which of the fifty-two counties of England Stanlake was sitnated. I mentioned this little fact to Joe. He suggested that I should ask my father. I declined doing anything of the sort; and so the matter ended for the night.

But Joe was not to be beaten. He came home later than usual from afternoon school next day. The moment we were alone together, he told me that he had been to see Mr. Fanlkner. That he had asked him where Stanlake was; and that the old gentleman,--who knew every house and its history, within twenty miles of London,--had told him that it was three miles from Croydon, and was the seat of Sir George Hillyar. * Joe was, to a certain extent, right. The common Fritillaria did grow there--fifty years before Joe was born. He had seen the locality quoted in some old botany-book.