Читать книгу The Baker's Tale - Thomas Hauser - Страница 13

CHAPTER 2

I was born in London in 1801. King George III sat upon the throne. The French still owned a portion of America as vast as the original colonies. Lord Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish fleets was in the future. A practical steamship had yet to be built.

My father was a British seaman who married a beautiful Italian woman and brought her back to England. Unfortunately, I inherited my father’s looks. When I was five years old, my mother fled England with an Italian nobleman. I never saw her again. If she had been the wife of a king, war would have followed. But since she was only my father’s wife, the affairs of state went on uninterrupted.

The schools in England are for people of means, which I was not. It was expected that I would live my life as a labourer, unable to read or write. Then, in my eighteenth year, I met a man named Octavius Joy.

Mr. Joy made a great deal of money in honest finance. He was a brilliant man of scrupulous veracity with regard to numbers. Once he had earned his fortune, he set out to spend it.

“People are anxious to be employed and fairly paid for their labour,” Mr. Joy said. “Those who work hard and are able to provide for their families through fairly paid labour are likely to be content. I have seen men whose lives were lived under the worst privation and suffering become happy and at peace when they were given work to do and were fairly compensated.”

In keeping with this belief, Mr. Joy put common men and women in situations where they learned the skills necessary to run a business. When their skills were sufficient, he placed them in a business of their own. “I seek to leave them,” he explained, “not with resources that can be easily spent but with skills that place them beyond the reach of poverty forever.”

It was also important to Mr. Joy that people learn to read and write. He expressed this view with the declaration, “Reading is a passageway to knowledge. All men and women should be able to read, write, and perform simple arithmetic. They should be able to keep accounts. That is, they should be able to put down in words and figures the cost of what they need to live and how much money they have to spend. I hope for a day when all children in England regardless of their class are taught to read and write. Reading and writing, knowledge of the world, the spread of ideas. That is the key to everything.”

In keeping with this philosophy, Mr. Joy established a learning center in London. Common men and women and their children were welcome to attend free classes in reading that were taught six days a week from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night.

I was a labourer in Covent Garden market when Mr. Joy took me off the streets. At his direction, I apprenticed in a bakery. I learned the trade and, at his insistence, I also learned to read and write. Then Mr. Joy placed me in a bakery of my own.

“You are to follow four principles in the operation of your business,” he instructed. “One: good quality food is to be prepared and sold. Two: each person you employ is to be fairly paid. Three: all bills for purchases by the bakery are to be paid weekly. Four: every person who walks through the bakery door is to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Remarkably, Mr. Joy refused any profit from the businesses that he helped establish.

“I am rich,” he said. “I take no pleasure in hoarding and have more than enough to ensure comfort for the rest of my life. I would be ashamed to touch what has been earned through the hard labour of another man.”

“What is your motive in this?” he was once asked.

“Always fishing for motives when they are right on the surface,” Mr. Joy responded. “The motive is plain. To make people useful and happy. It brings me great pleasure to see people who are achieving the most that they can out of their natural abilities. I do not believe in the Bible as the absolute word of God, and I am particularly suspicious of those who seek to impose their own interpretation of the Bible upon us. But I do believe that we should do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us were we in their shoes.”

Christopher and Ruby returned to the bakery at ten o’clock on the day after we met.

“Good morning, little one,” I addressed the child. “You look fresher today than a spring flower.”

She smiled. No view in England was as enticing.

I gave them bread, coffee, and milk, as I had done the day before.

At eleven o’clock, Octavius Joy arrived. He was a man of sixty, portly with a round, good-humoured, benevolent face that was full of life and radiated an almost innocent happiness that would have been delightful in a child and was particularly appealing in a man his age. His cheeks were rosy, a colour occasioned in part by the cold. His hair was a silvered grey. Looking at him, one might have forgotten for a moment that there was such a thing as a sour mind or a crabbed countenance in the world.

We sat at the table in back. Mr. Joy looked at Ruby through gold-rimmed spectacles and patted her on the head.

“What is your name, my dear?”

“Ruby.”

“A very pretty name.” Then he turned in my direction. “Perhaps Ruby would like another piece of bread and some strawberry jam.”

I excused myself from the table and returned with the offering. Ruby’s eyes took on a questioning look.

“When one is starving, jam is a luxury beyond reach,” Christopher said. “She has never seen jam before.”

“Eat,” he told Ruby. “You will like it.”

Ruby cautiously took a bite . . . Tasted the jam on her tongue . . . And her face lit up.

This was a child who, for her entire life, had eaten only to survive. Mother’s milk in her first year. Then bread, gruel, and an occasional potato, green leaf, or piece of cheese. Now, for the first time, she was experiencing food as pleasure rather than just for sustenance.

“Good!” she cried out. “Good! Good!”

Octavius Joy laughed. Then he turned to Christopher.

“Antonio visited me last night and told me of your circumstances. Tell me your history in your own words.”

There was something so earnest in the way this was said and with such disregard of the class differences between them that Christopher felt at ease. He spoke. Mr. Joy listened attentively and, when the narrative was done, put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder.

“Let me make an offer to you, something that may change your life for the better. I have made it my concern to place men and women who come from hard origins in situations where they can live decently as a consequence of their own honest labour. One of the people I assisted in this manner is a woman named Marie Wells. Marie and her husband were the proprietors of a bakery in a nearby part of London. Mr. Wells died suddenly four weeks ago. Marie is a good woman and in need of help. There is a job for you at the bakery. You and Ruby would live there. You would have food to eat, a small salary, and a home.”

Christopher seemed at a loss for words.

“I would like that very much,” he said at last.

“And there is another condition of your employment. You and Ruby must learn to read.”

“It is my dream that Ruby learn to read and write. But for me, it is beyond my comprehension.”

“At the moment, it is also beyond Ruby’s comprehension. That will change for both of you. Reading will come more easily to her because she is young and will be without the fear that you bring to the adventure. But what a child can learn, you can learn too.”

“And if I cannot?”

“When the opportunity presents itself, learning to read is a responsibility that you have to yourself. Learning to read is like entering a dark room and lighting a candle. It will light the fire of your imagination. You need not learn to read well, only as well as honest effort on your part allows.”

“I will try.”

“Then it is settled. Marie must first approve of you, but I think she will. She needs a man’s help in the bakery, and she has long wanted a child in her life. I spoke with her this morning. She is expecting our visit now.”

The most common form of public transportation in London is the omnibus. The public gets on and off as the vehicle is drawn along its route by horses. Hackney coach stands offer licensed public cabs for those who prefer their own coach and driver.

Mr. Joy summoned a hackney coach. Christopher, Ruby, and I joined him inside.

“We are going to meet a very nice woman named Marie,” Mr. Joy told Ruby. “Last night, Antonio told Marie that you are very nice, and she would like to meet you.”

The cold of the previous day had lifted a bit. Mr. Joy and Ruby got along exceedingly well as the carriage clattered through the streets of London. Of course, Mr. Joy got along exceedingly well with everyone. Fifteen minutes after our ride began, we arrived at Marie’s bakery.

I have known Marie for many years. She is two years younger than I am and one of the kindest people I know. Anyone who casts even a casual glance upon her can discern that she has a loving heart. Her serene blue eyes and gentle face bespeak her nature. She has the good opinion and respect of all who know her.

Mr. Joy introduced Christopher to Marie, and she explained the operation of the bakery to him in simple terms. Then she and Ruby played together.

“You and the child are to be here tomorrow morning with all of your belongings,” Mr. Joy told Christopher at day’s end.

Marie added a promise to that instruction.

“If you live in my home, Ruby will have the best of care and the most love that I can give her.”

The following morning, Christopher and Ruby arrived at Marie’s bakery with a small cloth bag. The whole of their worldly belongings—the discarded clothes of others and a tiny doll not much more than a rag—were inside.

Octavius Joy had given money to Marie to buy Ruby some better clothes. Christopher would wear the clothes that had belonged to Marie’s husband.

“It would make you sad to see me in them,” Christopher protested.

“It would give me pleasure to know that they are well used.”

Marie led Christopher and Ruby to the floor above the bakery and showed them the living quarters. There were two rooms, each with a simple wood bed that consisted of a platform and mattress filled with straw. Like the beds, the other furniture was of little worth but sufficient and neatly kept. Christopher and Ruby would sleep in one room. Marie would sleep in the other.

Ruby had never seen a bed before.

Marie washed Ruby’s face, combed her hair, and made the rest of her as fresh and clean as a child can be. At day’s end, she prepared dinner.

There is a soft place in my heart for Marie. She is like family to me. I had been invited to share this occasion with her and her new family.

The fire burned clear. The kettle boiled. The table was set.

Ruby did not know what it was like to sit down for a meal at an appointed hour. In the past, she had eaten whenever there was food.

“This is where we eat our meals,” Marie explained.

“Every day?”

“Every day.”

If a child of three can be said to contemplate, Ruby contemplated the meaning of those words.

After dinner, Christopher moved his chair closer to the fire and sat with a look of contentment on his face. The room was warm. One of the logs broke in two and blazed up as it fell. Another log was thrown on.

“I am grateful beyond anything that I can express,” Christopher said as he pondered the change that had come upon his life. “If ever I can prove to you the truth of those words, I will.”

Seen with the fire behind her, Ruby looked as though she had a glory shining round her head.

Then it was time for her to sleep. One night earlier, Ruby had shivered in the cold on rags placed on a hard dirt floor. Now she would slumber in the warmth of her bed, as humble as it was.

Marie lay Ruby down on the bed and wrapped a blanket round her. Warmth, shelter, and peace were there.

Then a look that I am unable to describe stole across Ruby’s face.

“Ruby and uncle stay,” she said.

The words were spoken as both a question and a plea.

“Ruby and uncle stay,” she said again with anxiety rising in her voice.

“Ruby and uncle stay,” Marie pledged.

Ruby smiled a smile of relief.

There are moments of unmixed happiness in our lives that cheer our transitory existence on earth. This was one of them. Marie had the child that she had longed for but thought would never come. And Ruby Spriggs had a home.

I made a silent promise to myself that, whatever happened in my life, I would help care for this child.

“Good night, little one,” I said. “Pleasant slumber. Happy dreams. May angels guard your bed.”

Ruby fell asleep with a smile on her face. I fancied that she was dreaming.