Chapter Six.
Galloway House.
My business-like readers have, I dare say, found fault with me for representing a business conference on which so much depended as having taken place on the front doorstep of Galloway House, and without occupying much more than five minutes in the transaction. How did Jeffreys know what sort of person Mrs Trimble was? She might have been a Fury or a Harpy. Her house might have been badly drained. Mr Fison might have left her because he couldn’t get his wages. And what did Mrs Trimble know about the Bolsover cad? She never even asked for a testimonial. He might be a burglar in disguise, or a murderer, or a child-eater. And yet these two foolish people struck a bargain with one another five minutes after their first introduction, and before even the potatoes which Mrs Trimble had left on her plate when she went to the door had had time to get cold.
I am just as much surprised as the reader at their rashness, which I can only account for by supposing that they were both what the reader would call “hard up.” Jeffreys, as we know, was very hard up; and as for Mrs Trimble, the amount of worry she had endured since Mr Fison had left was beyond all words. She had had to teach as well as manage, the thing she never liked. And her son and assistant, without a second usher to keep him steady, had been turning her hair grey. For three weeks she had waited in vain. Several promising-looking young men had come and looked at the place and then gone away. She had not been able to enjoy an afternoon’s nap for a month. In short, she was getting worn-out. When, therefore, Jeffreys came and asked for the post, she had to put a check on herself to prevent herself from “jumping down his throat.” Hence the rapid conference at the hall door, and the ease with which Jeffreys got his footing in Galloway House.
“Come and have a bite of mutton,” said Mrs Trimble, leading the way into the parlour. “Jonah and I are just having dinner.”
Jonah, who, if truth must be told, had been neglecting his inner man during the last five minutes in order to peep through the crack of the door, and overhear the conference in the hall between his mother and the stranger, was a vulgar-looking youth of about Jeffrey’s age, with a slight cast in his eye, but otherwise not bad-looking. He eyed the new usher as he entered with a mingled expression of suspicion and contempt; and Jeffreys, slow of apprehension though he usually was, knew at a glance that he had not fallen on a bed of roses at Galloway House.
“Jonah, this is Mr Jeffreys; I’ve taken him on in Fison’s place. My son, Mr Jeffreys.”
Jonah made a face at his mother, as much as to say, “I don’t admire your choice,” and then, with a half-nod at Jeffreys, said,—
“Ah, how are you?”
“Jonah and I always dine at twelve, Mr Jeffreys,” said Mrs Trimble, over whom the prospect of the afternoon’s nap was beginning to cast a balmy sense of ease. “You two young men will be good friends, I hope, and look well after the boys.”
“More than you do,” said the undutiful Jonah; “they’ve been doing just as they please the last month.”
“It’s a pity, Jonah, you never found fault with that before.”
“What’s the use of finding fault? No end to it when you once begin.”
“Well,” observed the easy-going matron, “you two will have to see I don’t have occasion to find fault with you.”
Jonah laughed, and asked Jeffreys to cut him a slice of bread.
Presently Mrs Trimble quitted the festive board, and the two ushers were left together.
“Lucky for you,” said young Trimble, “you got hold of ma and pinned her down to taking you on on the spot. What’s she going to pay you?”
The question did not altogether please the new assistant, but he was anxious not to come across his colleague too early in their acquaintanceship.
“She pays me nothing the first month. After that, if I suit, I’m to have a pound a month.”
“If you suit? I suppose you know that depends on whether I like you or not?”
“I hope not,” blurted out Jeffreys—“that is,” added he, seeing his mistake, “I hope we shall get on well together.”
“Depends,” said Trimble. “I may as well tell you at once I hate stuck-uppedness (this was a compound word worthy of a young schoolmaster). If you’re that sort you’d better cry off at once. If you can do your work without giving yourself airs, I shall let you alone.”
Jeffreys was strongly tempted after this candid avowal to take the youthful snob’s advice and cry off. But the memory of yesterday’s miserable experiences restrained him. He therefore replied, with as little contempt as he was able to put into the words,—
“Thanks.”
Trimble’s quick ear detected the ill-disguised scorn of the reply. “You needn’t try on that sort of talk,” said he; “I can tell you plump, it won’t do. You needn’t think because ma took you on for the asking, you’re going to turn up your nose at the place!”
“I don’t think so,” said Jeffreys, struggling hard with himself. “How many boys are there here?”
“Forty-four. Are you anything of a teacher? Can you keep order?”
“I don’t know; I haven’t tried yet.”
“Well, just mind what you’re about. Keep your hands off the boys; we don’t want manslaughter or anything of that sort here.”
Jeffreys started. Was it possible that this was a random shot, or did Trimble know about Bolsover and young Forrester? The next remark somewhat reassured him.
“They’re looking sharp after private schools now; so mind, hands off. There’s one o’clock striking. All in! Come along. You’d better take the second class and see what you can make of them. Precious little ma will put her nose in, now you’re here to do the work.”
He led the way down the passage and across a yard into an outhouse which formed the schoolroom. Here were assembled, as the two ushers entered, some forty boys ranging in age from seven to twelve, mostly, to judge from their dress and manners, of the small shopkeeper and farmer class.
The sound of Trimble’s voice produced a dead silence in the room, followed immediately by a movement of wonder as the big, ungainly form of the new assistant appeared. Jeffreys’ looks, as he himself knew, were not prepossessing, and the juvenile population of Galloway House took no pains to conceal the fact that they agreed with him.
“Gordon,” said Trimble, addressing a small boy who had been standing up when they entered, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“You’ve no business to be doing nothing! Stand upon that form for an hour!”
The boy obeyed, and Trimble looked round at Jeffreys with a glance of patronising complacency.
“That’s the proper way to do with them,” said he. “Plenty of ways of taking it out of them without knocking them about.”
Jeffreys made no reply; he felt rather sorry for the weak-kneed little youngster perched up on that form, and wondered if Mr Trimble would expect him (Jeffreys) to adopt his method of “taking it out” of his new pupils.
Just then he caught sight of the familiar face of Master Freddy, one of his friends of the morning, who was standing devouring him with his eyes as if he had been a ghost. Jeffreys walked across the room and shook hands with him.
“Well, Freddy, how are you? How’s Teddy?”
“I say,” said Trimble, in by no means an amiable voice, as he returned from this little excursion, “what on earth are you up to? What did you go and do that for?”
“I know Freddy.”
“Oh, do you? Freddy Rosher, you’re talking. What do you mean by it?”
“Please, sir, I didn’t mean—”
“Then stay in an hour after school, and write four pages of your copy-book.”
It took all Jeffreys’ resolution to stand by and listen to this vindictive sentence without a protest. But he restrained himself, and resolved that Freddy should find before long that all his masters were not against him.
“That’s your fault,” said Trimble, noticing the dissatisfied look of his colleague. “How are we to keep order if you go and make the boys break rules? Now you’d better get to work. Take the second class over there and give them their English history. James the Second they’re at. Now, you boys, first class, come up to me with your sums. Second class, take your history up to Mr Jeffreys. Come along; look alive!”
Jeffreys thereupon found himself mobbed by a troop of twenty of the youngest of the boys, and haled away to a desk at the far end of the room, round which they congregated book in hand, and waited for him to commence operations.
It was an embarrassing situation for the new usher. He had never been so fixed before. He had often had a crowd of small boys round him, tormenting him and provoking him to anger; but to be perched up here at a desk, with twenty tender youths hanging on the first word which should fall from his lips, was to say the least, a novel experience. He glanced up towards the far end of the room, in the hopes of being able to catch a hint from the practised Jonah as to how to proceed. But he found Jonah was looking at him suspiciously over the top of his book, and that was no assistance whatever. The boys evidently enjoyed his perplexity; and, emboldened by his recent act of friendliness to the unlucky Freddy, regarded him benevolently.
“Will some one lend me a book?” at last said Jeffreys, half desperate.
A friendly titter followed this request.
“Don’t you know it without the book?” asked one innocent, handing up a book.
“I hope you do,” said Jeffreys, blushing very much as he took it. “Now,” added he, turning to the reign of James II, “can any one tell we what year King James II came to the throne?”
“Please, sir, that’s not the way,” interposed another irreverent youngster, with a giggle. “You’ve got to read it first, and then ask us.”
Jeffreys blushed again.
“Is that the way?” said he. “Very well. James II succeeded his brother Charles in 1685. One of his first acts on coming—”
“Oh, we’re long past that,” said two or three of his delighted audience at a breath; “we’ve done to where Monmouth’s head was cut off.”
This was very uncomfortable for the new master. He coloured up, as if he had been guilty of a scandalous misdemeanour, and fumbled nervously with the book, positively dreading to make a fresh attempt. At last, however, he summoned up courage.
“The death of this ill-fated nobleman was followed by a still more terrible measure of retribution against those who had—”
“Please, sir, we can’t do such long words; we don’t know what that means. You’ve got to say it in easy words, not what’s put in the book.”
Jeffreys felt that all the sins of his youth were rising up against him that moment. Nothing that he had ever done seemed just then as bad as this latest delinquency.
“After Monmouth’s death they made it very—(hot, he was going to say, but he pulled himself up in time), they made it very (whatever was the word?)—very awkward for those who had helped him. A cruel judge named Jeffreys—”
That was a finishing stroke! The reader could have sunk through the floor as he saw the sensation which this denunciation of himself caused among his audience. There was not a shadow of doubt in the face of any one of them as to his identity with the ferocious judge in question. What followed he felt was being listened to as a chapter or autobiography, and nothing he could say could now clear his character of the awful stain that rested upon it.
“A cruel judge condemned more than three hundred persons—”
“You forgot to say his name, please, sir,” they put in.
“Never mind his name; that is, I told you once, you should remember,” stammered the hapless usher.
“I remember it. Jeffreys, wasn’t it, Mr Jeffreys?” said one boy triumphantly.
“He condemned more than—”
“Who, Jeffreys?”
What was the use of keeping it up?
“Yes; this wicked judge, Jeffreys, condemned more than three hundred people to death, just because they had helped Monmouth.”
There was a low whistle of horror, as every eye transfixed the speaker.
“Did he repent?” asked one.
“It doesn’t say so,” said the wretched Jeffreys, turning over to the next page in a miserable attempt to appear as if he was not involved in the inquiry.
“How dreadful!” said another.
“Besides this, 849 people were transported.”
“By Jeffreys, sir?”
“Yes,” replied the owner of the name, finally throwing off all disguise and giving himself up to his fate, “by this wicked Jeffreys.”
“Yes, sir; and what else did he do?”
Trimble, as he looked every now and then down the room, was astonished to notice the quiet which prevailed in the lower class, and the interest with which every boy was listening to the new master.
He did not like it. He couldn’t manage to interest his class, and it didn’t please him at all that this casual newcomer should come and cut him out before his face.
After a while he walked down the room and approached the assistant’s desk.
He was convinced this, unwonted order could not result from any legitimate cause.
“You don’t seem to be doing much work here, I must say,” said he. “Give me the book, Mr Jeffreys: I want to see what they know of the lesson. Where’s the place?”
Jeffreys handed the book, putting his finger on the place.
Trimble glanced through a paragraph or two, and then pointing to a boy, one of the least sharp in the class, said,—
“Now, Walker, what happened after Monmouth’s death?”
“Oh, if you please, sir, a cruel judge, called Jeffreys, condemned—”
“That will do. You, Rosher, how many people did he condemn to death?”
“More than three hundred, sir,” answered Freddy promptly.
“What for, Bacon?”
“Because they helped Monmouth.”
Trimble felt perplexed. He never had a class that answered like this. He tried once more.
“Pridger, what else did he do?”
“He had 849 transported, sir.”
Trimble shut the book. It was beyond him. If Pridger had said 848 or 850, he could have made something of it. But it floored him completely to find the second class knowing the exact number of convicts in one given year of English history.
“Don’t let me catch any of you wasting your time,” he said. “Farrar, what do you mean by looking about you, sir? Stand on the form for half an hour.”
“Farrar has been very quiet and attentive all the afternoon,” said Jeffreys.
“Stand on the form an hour, Farrar,” said Trimble, with a scowl.
Jeffreys’ brow darkened as he watched the little tyrant strut off to his class. How long would he be able to keep hands off him?
The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. An unconscious bond of sympathy had arisen between the new master and his pupils. His historical importance invested him with a glamour which was nearly heroic; and his kind word on Farrar’s behalf had won him an amount of confidence which was quick in showing itself. “We like you better than Fison, though he was nice,” said Bacon, as the class was about to separate.
“I hope Trimble won’t send you away,” said another.
“I wish you’d condemn young Trimble to death, or transport him, Mr Jeffreys,” said a third confidentially.
“Good-bye, Mr Jeffreys,” said Freddy, with all the confidence of an old friend. “Did you like that parliament cake?”
“Awfully,” said Jeffreys. “Good-bye.”
Every one insisted on shaking hands with him, greatly to his embarrassment; and a few minutes later the school was scattered, and Jeffreys was left to go over in his mind his first day’s experience.
On the whole he was cheerful. His heart warmed to these simple little fellows, who thought none the worse of him for being ugly and clumsy. With Mrs Trimble, too, he anticipated not much difficulty. Young Trimble was a rock ahead undoubtedly, but Jeffreys would stand him as long as he could, and not anticipate the day, which he felt to be inevitable, when he would be able to stand him no longer.
“Well, Mr Jeffreys,” said Mrs Trimble, as the dame and her two assistants sat down to tea, “how do you manage?”
“Pretty well, thank you, ma’am,” replied Jeffreys; “they are a nice lot of little boys, and I found them very good and quiet.”
“Of course you would, if you let them do as they like,” said Jonah. “You’ll have to keep them in, I can tell you, if you expect to keep order.”
It did occur to Jeffreys that if they were good without being kept in, Jonah ought to be satisfied, but he was too wise to embark on a discussion with his colleague, and confined his attentions to Mrs Trimble.
The meal being ended, he said—
“Will you excuse me, ma’am, if I go into the city for about an hour? I have to call at the post-office for letters.”
“Look here,” said Jonah, “we don’t let our assistants out any time they like. It’s not usual. They ought to stay here. There’s plenty of work to do here.”
“It’s very important for me to get the letters, Mrs Trimble,” said Jeffreys.
“Well, of course, this once,” said the matron, glancing uneasily at her son; “but, as Jonah says, we like our young men to stay in, especially at night. We parted with Mr Fison because he was not steady.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Jeffreys; “if the letters have come to-day I shall not have to trouble you again. Can I do anything for you in town?”
“That chap won’t do,” said Jonah to his mother when at last Jeffreys started on his expedition.
“I think he will; he means well. It wouldn’t do, Jonah,” said the good lady, “to have all the trouble again of finding a young man. I think Mr Jeffreys will do.”
“I don’t,” said Jonah sulkily, taking up a newspaper.
Jeffreys meanwhile, in a strange frame of mind, hurried down to the post-office. The day’s adventures seemed like a dream to him as he walked along, and poor Forrester seemed the only reality of his life.
Would there be a letter? And what news would it bring him? During the last twelve hours a new hope and object in life had opened before him. But what was it worth, if, after all, at this very moment Forrester should be lying lifeless at Bolsover?
“Have you any letter for John Jeffreys?” he asked; but his heart beat so loud that he scarcely heard his own voice.
The man, humming cheerily to himself, took a batch of letters out of a pigeon-hole and began to turn them over. Jeffreys watched him feverishly, and marvelled at his indifference.
“What name did you say—Jones?”
“No, Jeffreys—John Jeffreys.”
Again he turned over the bundle, almost carelessly. At length he extracted a letter, which he tossed onto the counter.
“There you are, my beauty,” said he.
Jeffreys, heeding nothing except that it was addressed in Mr Frampton’s hand, seized the missive and hastened from the office.
At the first shop window he stood and tore it open.
“My dear Jeffreys,—I was glad to hear from you, although your letter gave me great pain. It would have been wiser in you to return here, whatever your circumstances might be; wiser still would it have been had you never run away. But I do not write now to reproach you. You have suffered enough, I know. I write to tell you of Forrester.”
Jeffreys gave a gasp for breath before he dare read on.
“The poor fellow has made a temporary rally, but the doctors by no means consider him out of danger. Should he recover, which I fear is hardly probable, I grieve to say the injuries he has received would leave him a cripple for life. There is an injury to the spine and partial paralysis, which, at the best, would necessitate his lying constantly on his back, and thus being dependent entirely on others. If he can bear it, he is to be removed to his home in a day or two. He has asked about you, and on my telling him that I was writing to you, said, ‘Tell him I know it was only an accident.’ I am sure that this letter will grieve you; I wish I could say anything which will help you. May God in His mercy bring good to us all out of this sorrow! As for yourself, I hope that your guardian’s resentment will be short-lived, and that you will let me hear of your welfare. Count on me as a friend, in spite of all.
“Yours always,—
“T. Frampton.”
“In spite of all!” groaned poor Jeffreys, as he crushed the letter into his pocket. “Will no one have pity on me?”