Chapter Four.
Michaelmas-Day over.
Mrs Shaw ordered dinner presently; and while it was being served, she desired Phil to brush his brother’s clothes, as they were dusty from his ride. All the while he was brushing (which, he did very roughly), and all the first part of dinner-time, Phil continued to tease Hugh about what he had said on the top of the coach. Mrs Shaw spoke of the imprudence of talking freely before strangers; and Hugh could have told her that he did not need such a lecture at the very time that he found the same thing by his experience. He did wish Phil would stop. If anybody should ask him a question, he could not answer without crying. Then he remembered how his mother expected him to bear things; and he almost wished he was at home with her now, after all his longing to be away. This thought nearly made him cry again; so he tried to dwell on how his mother would expect him to bear things: but neither of them had thought that morning, beside his box, that the first trial would come from Phil. This again made him so nearly cry that his uncle observed his twitching face, and, without noticing him, said that he, for his part, did not want to see little boys wise before they had time to learn; and that the most silent companion he had ever been shut up with in a coach was certainly the least agreeable: and he went on to relate an adventure which has happened to more persons than one. He had found the gentleman in the corner, with the shaggy coat, to be a bear—a tame bear, which had to take the quickest mode of conveyance, in order to be at a distant fair in good time. Mr Shaw spun out his story, so that Hugh quite recovered himself, and laughed as much as anybody at his uncle having formed a bad opinion of Bruin in the early twilight, for his incivility in not bowing to the passenger who left the coach.
After dinner, Phil thought it time to be off to Crofton. He had missed something by coming away at all to-day; and he was not going to run the chance of losing the top of the class by not having time to do his Sallust properly. Mrs Shaw said they must have some of her plums before they went, and a glass of wine; and Mr Shaw ordered the gig, saying he would drive them, and thus no time would be lost, though he hoped Phil would not mind being at the bottom of every class for once to help his brother, seeing how soon a diligent boy might work his way up again. Phil replied that that was not so easy as people might think, when there was one like Joe Cape determined to keep him down, if he could once get him down.
“I hope you will find time to help Hugh up from the bottom, in a class or two,” said Mr Shaw. “You will not be too busy about your own affairs to look to his, I suppose.”
“Where is the use of my meddling?” said Phil. “He can’t rise for years to come. Besides—”
“Why can’t I rise?” exclaimed Hugh, with glowing cheeks.
“That is right, Hugh,” said his uncle. “Let nobody prophesy for you till you show what you can do.”
“Why, uncle, he is nearly two years younger than any boy in the school; and—”
“And there is little Page above you in algebra. He is about two years younger than you, Phil, if I remember right.”
Hugh could not help clapping his hands at the prospect this held out to him. Phil took the act for triumphing over him, and went on to say, very insultingly, that a little fellow who had been brought up among the girls all his life, and had learned of nobody but Miss Harold, could not be expected to cut any figure among boys. Hugh looked so grieved for a moment, and then suddenly so relieved, that his kind uncle wondered what was in his mind. He took the boy between his knees and asked him.
Hugh loved his uncle already, as if he had always known him. He put his arms round his neck, and whispered in his ear what he was thinking of;—his mother’s saying that God could and would, if He was sought, put the spirit of a man into the feeblest child.
“True!—quite true! I am very glad you know that, my boy. That will help you to learn at Crofton, though it is better than anything they can teach you in their school-room.”
Mrs Shaw and Phil looked curious; but Mr Shaw did not repeat a word of what Hugh had said. He put the boy away from his knees, because he heard the gig coming round.
Mrs Shaw told Hugh that she hoped he would spend some of his Sundays with his uncle and her; and his uncle added that he must come on holidays as well as Sundays,—there was so much to see about the mill.
Phil was amused, and somewhat pleased, to find how exactly Hugh remembered his description of the place and neighbourhood. He recognised the duck-pond under the hedge by the road-side, with the very finest blackberries growing above it, just out of reach. The church he knew, of course, and the row of chestnuts, whose leaves were just beginning to fall; and the high wall dividing the orchard from the playground. That must have been the wall on which Mr Tooke’s little boy used to be placed to frighten him. It did not look so very high as Hugh had fancied it. One thing which he had never seen or heard of was the bell, under its little roof on the ridge of Mr Tooke’s great house. Was it to call in the boys to school, or for an alarm? His uncle told him it might serve the one purpose in the day, and the other by night; and that almost every large farm thereabouts had such a bell on the top of the house.
The sun was near its setting when they came in sight of the Crofton house. A long range of windows glittered in the yellow light, and Phil said that the lower row all belonged to the school-room;—that whole row.
In the midst of his explanations Phil stopped, and his manner grew more rough than ever—with a sort of shyness in it too. It was because some of the boys were within hearing, leaning over the pales which separated the playground from the road.
“I say; hollo there!” cried one. “Is that Prater you have got with you?”
“Prater the second,” cried another. “He could not have had his name if there had not been Prater the first.”
“There! There’s a scrape you have got me into already!” muttered Phil.
“Be a man, Phil, and bear your own share,” said Mr Shaw; “and no spite, because your words come back to you!”
The talk at the palings still went on, as the gig rolled quietly in the sandy by-road.
“Prater!” poor Hugh exclaimed. “What a name!”
“Yes; that is you,” said his uncle. “You know now what your nick-name will be. Every boy has one or another: and yours might have been worse, because you might have done many a worse thing to earn it.”
“But the usher, uncle?”
“What of him?”
“He should not have told about me.”
“Don’t call him ‘Prater the third,’ however. Bear your own share, as I said to Phil, and don’t meddle with another’s.”
Perhaps Mr Shaw hoped that through one of the boys the usher would get a new nick-name for his ill-nature in telling tales of a little boy, before he was so much as seen by his companions. He certainly put it into their heads, whether they would make use of it or not.
Mr Tooke was out, taking his evening ride; but Mr Shaw would not drive off till he had seen Mrs Watson, and introduced his younger nephew to her, observing to her that he was but a little fellow to come among such a number of rough boys. Mrs Watson smiled kindly at Hugh, and said she was glad he had a brother in the school, to prevent his feeling lonely at first. It would not take many days, she hoped, to make him feel quite at home. Mr Shaw slipped half-a-crown into Hugh’s hand, and whispered to him to try to keep it safe in his inner pocket Hugh ran after him to the door, to tell him he had five shillings already—safe in his box: but his uncle would not take back the half-crown. He thought that, in course of time, Hugh would want all the money he had.
Mrs Watson desired Phil to show his brother where he was to sleep, and to help him to put by his clothes. Phil was in a hurry to get to his Sallust; so that he was not sorry when Mrs Watson herself came up to see that the boy’s clothes were laid properly in the deep drawer in which Hugh was to keep his things. Phil then slipped away.
“Dear me!” said Mrs Watson, turning over one of Hugh’s new collars, “we must have something different from this. These collars tied with a black ribbon are never tidy. They are always over one shoulder or the other.”
“My sisters made them; and they worked so hard to get them done!” said Hugh.
“Very well—very right: only it is a pity they are not of a better make. Every Sunday at church, I shall see your collar awry—and every time you go to your aunt’s, she will think we do not make you neat. I must see about that. Here are good stockings, however—properly stout. My dear, are these all the shoes you have got?”
“I have a pair on.”
“Of course; I don’t doubt that. We must have you measured to-morrow for some boots fitter for the country than these. We have no London pavement here.”
And so Mrs Watson went on, sometimes approving and sometimes criticising, till Hugh did not know whether to cry or to be angry. After all the pains his mother and sisters had taken about his things, they were to be found fault with in this way!
When his box was emptied, and his drawer filled, Mrs Watson took him into the school-room, where the boys were at supper. Outside the door the buzz seemed prodigious, and Hugh hoped that, in such a bustle, nobody would notice him. Here he was quite mistaken. The moment he entered there was a hush, and all eyes were turned upon him, except his brother’s. Phil hardly looked up from his book; but he made room for Hugh between himself and another boy, and drew the great plate of bread within reach. Mrs Watson saw that Hugh had his basin of milk; and he found it a good thing to have something to do while so many eyes were upon him. He felt that he might have cried if he had not had his supper to eat.
The usher sat at the top of the table, reading. Mrs Watson called his attention to Hugh; and Hugh stood up and made his bow. His face was red, as much with anger as timidity, when he recognised in him the passenger who had sat beside the coachman.
“Perhaps, Mr Carnaby,” said Mrs Watson, “you will find something for this young gentleman to do, when he has had his supper, while the rest are learning their lessons. To-morrow he will have his own lessons; but to-night—”
“There is always the multiplication-table,” replied Mr Carnaby. “The young gentleman is partial to that, I fancy.”
Hugh reddened, and applied himself to his bread and milk.
“Never mind a joke,” whispered Mrs Watson. “We won’t plague you with the multiplication-table the first evening. I will find you a book or something. Meantime, there is a companion for you—I forgot that.”
The good lady went down the room, and brought back a boy who seemed to be doing all he could to stop crying. He dashed his hand over his eyes every minute, and could not look anybody in the face. He had finished his supper, and was at a loss what to do next, as he had only arrived that morning, and did not know anybody at Crofton. His name was Tom Holt, and he was ten years old.
When they had told their names and ages, and where they came from, the boys did not know what to say next; and Hugh wished Phil would stop murmuring over his Sallust and looking in the dictionary every minute; but Mrs Watson did not forget the strangers. She brought them Cook’s Voyages out of the library, to amuse themselves with, on condition of their delivering the book to Mr Carnaby at bedtime.
The rest of the evening passed away very pleasantly. Hugh told Holt a great deal about Broadstairs and the South Sea Islands, and confided to him his own hopes of being a sailor, and going round the world; and, if possible, making his way straight through China,—the most difficult country left to travel in, he believed, except some parts of Africa. He did not want to cross the Great Desert, on account of the heat. He knew something of what that was by the leads at home, when the sun was on them. What was the greatest heat Holt had ever felt? Then came the surprise. Holt had last come from his uncle’s farm; but he was born in India, and had lived there till eighteen months ago. So, while Hugh had chattered away about the sea at Broadstairs, and the heat on the leads at home, his companion had come fourteen thousand miles over the ocean, and had felt a heat nearly as extreme as that of the Great Desert! Holt was very unassuming too. He talked of the heat of gleaning in his uncle’s harvest-fields, and of the kitchen when the harvest-supper was cooking; owning that he remembered he had felt hotter in India. Hugh heaped questions upon him about his native country and the voyage; and Holt liked to be asked: so that the boys were not at all like strangers just met for the first time. They raised their voices in the eagerness of their talk, from a whisper so as to be heard quite across the table, above the hum and buzz of above thirty others, who were learning their lessons half-aloud. At last Hugh was startled by hearing the words “Prater,” “Prater the second.” He was silent instantly, to Holt’s great wonder.
Without raising his eyes from his book, Phil said, so as to be heard as far as the usher,—
“Who prated, of Prater the second? Who is Prater the third?”
There was a laugh which provoked the usher to come and see whereabouts in Sallust such a passage as this was to be found. Not finding any such, he knuckled Phil’s head, and pulled his hair, till Hugh cried out—
“O, don’t, sir! Don’t hurt him so!”
“Do you call that hurting? You will soon find what hurting is, when you become acquainted with our birch. You shall have four times seven with our birch— Let us see,—that is your favourite number, I think.”
The usher looked round, and almost everybody laughed.
“You see I have your secret;—four times seven,” continued Mr Carnaby. “What do you shake your head for?”
“Because you have not my secret about four times seven.”
“Did not I hear your father? Eh?”
“What did you hear my father say? Nobody here knows what he meant? And nobody need know, unless I choose to tell—which I don’t.—Please don’t teaze Phil about it, sir: for he knows no more about it than you do.”
Mr Carnaby said something about the impertinence of little boys, as if they could have secrets, and then declared it high time that the youngsters should go to bed. Hugh delivered Cook’s Voyages into his hands, and then bade Phil good-night. He was just going to put his face up to be kissed, but recollected in time that he was to leave off kissing when he went to school. He held out his hand, but Phil seemed not to see it, and only told him to be sure to lie enough on one side, so as to leave him room; and that he was to take the side of the bed next the window. Hugh nodded and went off, with Holt and two more, who slept in the same room.
The two who were not new boys were in bed in a minute; and when they saw Hugh wash his face and hands, they sat up in bed to stare. One of them told him that he had better not do that, as the maid would be coming for the light, and would leave him in the dark, and report of him if he was not in bed. So Hugh made a great splutter, and did not half dry his face, and left the water in the basin;—a thing which they told him was not allowed. He saw that the others had not kneeled down to say their prayers,—a practice which he had never omitted since he could say a prayer, except when he had the measles. He knew the boys were watching him; but he thought of his mother, and how she had taught him to pray at her knee. He hid himself as well as he could with the scanty bed-curtains, and kneeled. He could not attend to the words he said, while feeling that eyes were upon him; and before he had done, the maid came in for the candle. She waited; but when he got into bed, she told him that he must be quicker to-morrow night, as she had no time to spare waiting for the candle.
Hugh was more tired than he had ever been in his life. This had been the longest day he had ever known. It seemed more like a week than a day. Yet he could not go to sleep. He had forgotten to ask Phil to be sure and wake him in time in the morning: and now he must keep awake till Phil came, to say this. Then, he could not but ask himself whether he liked, and should like, being at school as much as he expected; and when he felt how very unlike home it was, and how rough everybody seemed, and how Phil appeared almost as if he was ashamed of him, instead of helping him, he was so miserable he did not know what to do. He cried bitterly,—cried till his pillow was quite wet, and he was almost choked with his grief; for he tried hard not to let his sobs be heard. After awhile, he felt what he might do. Though he had kneeled he had not really prayed: and if he had, God is never weary of prayers. It was a happy thought to Hugh that his very best friend was with him still, and that he might speak to Him at any time. He spoke now in his heart; and a great comfort it was. He said—
“O God, I am all alone here, where nobody knows me; and everything is very strange and uncomfortable. Please, make people kind to me till I am used to them; and keep up a brave heart in me, if they are not. Help me not to mind little things; but to do my lessons well, that I may get to like being a Crofton boy, as I thought I should. I love them all at home very much,—better than I ever did before. Make them love me, and think of me every day,—particularly Agnes,—that they may be as glad as I shall be when I go home at Christmas.”
This was the most of what he had to say; and he dropped asleep with the feeling that God was listening to him.
After a long while, as it seemed to him, though it was only an hour, there was a light and some bustle in the room. It was Phil and two others coming to bed.
“O Phil!” cried Hugh, starting bolt upright and winking with sleep,—“I meant to keep awake, to ask you to be sure and call me in the morning, time enough,—quite time enough, please.”
The others laughed; and Phil asked whether he had not seen the bell, as he came; and what it should be for but to ring everybody up in the morning.
“But I might not hear it,” pleaded Hugh.
“Not hear it? You’ll soon see that.”
“Well, but you will see that I really do wake, won’t you?”
“The bell will take care of that, I tell you,” was all he could get from Phil.