“I’d be main pleased, Master Swift,” said Jan, earnestly.
“I’d none of your advantages, lad,” said the old man. “When I was your age, I knew more mischief than you need ever know, and uncommon little else. I’m a self-educated man,—I used to hope I should live to hear folk say a self-made Great Man. It’s a bitter thing to have the ambition without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great men shine by! However, it’s something to have just the saving sense to know that ye’ve not got it, though it’s taken a wasted lifetime to convince me, and I sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more scotched than killed yet. However, ye seem to me to be likelier to lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide. But there’s a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be free of, and that’s a mischosen vocation. I’m not a native of these parts, ye must know. I come from the north, and in those mining and manufacturing districts I’ve seen many a man that’s got an education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and his works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like the gentry. For mark ye, my lad. In such matters the experiences of the early part of an artisan’s life are all so much to the good for him, for they’re in the working of the trade, and the finest young gentleman has got it all to learn, if he wants to make money in that line. I got my education, and I was sober enough, but—Heaven help me—I must be a poet, and in that line a gentleman’s son knows almost from the nursery many a thing that I had to teach myself with hard labor as a man. It was just a madness. But I read all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote as well.”
“Did you write poetry, Master Swift?” said Jan.
“Ay, Jan, of a sort. At one time I worshipped Burns. And then I wrote verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know, I can speak with any man when I’ve a mind,” said Master Swift, unconscious that he spoke it always. “And then it was Wordsworth, for the love of nature is just a passion with me, and it’s that that made the poet Keats a new world to me. Well, well, now I’m telling you how I came here. It was after my wife. She was lady’s-maid to Squire Ammaby’s mother, and the old Squire got me the school. Ah, those were happy days! I was a godless, rough sort of a fellow when she married me, but I became a converted man. And let me tell ye, lad, when a man and wife love God and each other, and live in the country, a bit of ground like this becomes a very garden of Eden.”
“Did your wife like your poetry, sir?” said Jan, on whom the idea that the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.
“Ay, ay, Jan. She was a good scholar. I wrote a bit about that time called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth. It was as much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye understand? But it wasn’t dead. It had only shifted to another object.
“We had a child. I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at me with what I may call sense in ’em. He was in his cradle, and there was no one but me with him. I went on like a fool. ‘See thee, my son,’ I said, ‘thy father’s been a bad ’un, but he’ll keep thee as pure as thy mother. Thy father’s a poor scholar, but he’s not that dull but what he’ll make thee as learned as the parson. Thy father’s a needy man, a man in a small way, but he and thy mother’ll stick here in this dull bit of a village, content, ay, my lad, right happy, so thou’rt a rich man, and can see the world!’ I give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me as if he understood it all. You’re wondering, maybe, what made me hope he’d do different to what I’d done. But, ye see, his mother was just an angel, and I reckoned he’d be half like her. Then she’d lived with gentlefolks from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never learned. And for as little as I’d taught myself, he’d at any rate begin where his father left off. He was all we had. There seemed no fault in him. His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners were the same. Ah, we were happy! Then”—
“Well, Master Swift?” said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.
“Can’t ye see the place is empty?” he answered sharply. “Who takes bite or sup with me but Rufus? She died.
“I’d have gone mad but for the boy. All my thought was to make up her loss to him. A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan. I used to think, ‘God may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when He has so many children, so helpless without Him!’ I think He taught me how to do for that boy. I dressed him, I darned his socks: what work I couldn’t do I put out, but I had no one in. When I came in from school, I cleaned myself, and changed my boots, to give him his meals. Rufus and I eat off the table now, but I give ye my word when he was alive we’d three clean cloths a week, and he’d a pinny every day; and there’s a silver fork and spoon in yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on. I taught him too. He loved poetry as well as his father. He could say most of Milton’s ‘Lycidas.’ It was an unlucky thing to have learned him too! Eh, Jan! we’re poor fools. I lay awake night after night reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never dreaming of what was before me. I thought to myself, ‘John Swift, my lad, you’re making yourself a bed of thorns. As sure as you make your son a gentleman, so sure he’ll look down on his old father when he gets up. Can ye bear that, John Swift, and her dead, and him all that ye have?’ I didn’t ask myself twice, Jan. Of course I could bear it. Would any parent stop his child from being better than himself because he’d be looked down on? I never heard of one. ‘I want him to think me rough and ignorant,’ says I, ‘for I want him to know what’s better. And I shan’t expect him to think on how I’ve slaved for him, till he’s children of his own, and their mother a lady. But when I’m dead,’ I says, ‘and he stands by my grave, and I can’t shame him no more with my common ways, he’ll say, “The old man did his best for me,” for he has his mother’s feelings.’ I tell ye, Jan, I cried like a child to think of him standing at my burying in a good black coat and a silk scarf like a gentleman, and I no more thought of standing at his than if he was bound to live for ever. And, mind ye, I did all I could to improve myself. I learned while I was teaching, and read all I could lay my hands on. Books of travels made me wild. I was young still, and I’d have given a deal to see the world. But I was saving every penny for him. ‘He’ll see it all,’ says I, ‘and that’s enough,—Italy and Greece, and Egypt, and the Holy Land. And he’ll see the sea (which I never saw but once, and that was at Cleethorpes), and he’ll go to the tropics, and see flowers that ’ud just turn his old father’s head, and he’ll write and tell me of ’em, for he’s got his mother’s feelings.’ . . . My God! He never passed the parish bounds, and he’s lain alongside of her in yon churchyard for five and thirty years!”