There had been a period of prosperity following the strange visit of Wandering Peter. John Strong’nth’arm came back to his workshop another man, or so it seemed to little Anthony. A brisk, self-confident person who often would whistle while he worked. The job on which he had been engaged when taken ill had been well finished and further orders had resulted. There were times when the temporary assistance of an old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son was needful. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, discussing things in general with a neighbour, would casually refer to “Our workpeople.” That uncle in Australia, or elsewhere, who had been fading year by year almost to disappearing point, reappeared out of the shadows. With the gambler’s belief that when once the luck changes every venture is bound to come home, she regarded his sudden demise as merely a question of time. She wondered how much he would leave them. She hoped it would be sufficient to enable them to become gentlefolks.
“What is a gentlefolk?” asked Anthony, to whom she had been talking.
It was explained to him that gentlefolk were people who did not have to work for their living. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had served them and knew.
There were others, who sat in offices and gave orders. To this lesser rank it was possible to climb by industry and virtue. But first of all you must go to school and learn.
His mother caught him up in her thin arms and pressed him passionately to her narrow bosom.
“You will be a gentleman,” she prophesied. “I feel it. I’ve prayed God every night since you were born.” She smothered him with kisses and then put him down.
“Don’t say anything to your father,” she added. “He doesn’t understand.”
He rather hoped his uncle in Australia wouldn’t leave them too much money. He liked work: fighting with things, conquering them; tidying the workshop; combing the fleas out of his uncle’s dogs. Lighting the kitchen fire was fun even when it was so cold that he wasn’t quite sure he’d a nose on his face and could only tell what his hands were doing by looking at them. You lit the paper and then coaxed and blew and watched the little flame grow bigger, feeding it and guiding it. And when you had won, you warmed your hands.
His father had taught him to read during the many hours when there had been nothing else to do. They had sat side by side upon the bench, their legs dangling, holding the open book between them. And writing of a sort he had learnt for himself, having heard his mother regret that she had not studied it herself when young. His mother felt he was predestined to be a great scholar. She wanted to send him to a certain “select preparatory school” kept by two elderly maiden sisters of undoubted gentility. Their prospectus informed the gentry of the neighbourhood that special attention was given by the Misses Warmington to manners and the cultivation of correct behaviour.
His father had no use for the Misses Warmington—had done business with them in connection with a boiler. He mimicked the elder Miss Warmington’s high-pitched voice. They would teach the boy monkey-tricks, give him ideas above his station. What was wrong with the parish school, only two streets away, where he would mix with his own class and not be looked down upon?
His mother did not agree that he would be with his own class among the children of the neighbourhood. The Strong’nth’arms had once been almost gentry. He would learn coarse ways, rude speech, acquire a vulgar accent. She carried her way, as she always did in the end. Dressed in her best clothes, and accompanied by Anthony in a new turn-out from head to foot, she knocked at the door of the Misses Warmington’s “select preparatory school.”
It was one of a square of small, old-fashioned houses that had once been on the outskirts of Millsborough, but which now formed a connecting link between the old town and the maze of new mean streets that had crept towards it from the west. They were shown into the drawing-room. The portrait of a military gentleman with a wooden face and stars upon his breast hung above the marble mantelpiece. On the opposite wall, above the green rep sofa, hung a frightened-looking lady with ringlets and fingers that tapered almost to a point.
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat on the extreme edge of a horsehair-covered chair and had difficulty in not sliding off it on to the floor. Anthony John, perched on another precisely similar chair, had mastered the problem by sitting well back and tucking one leg underneath him.
After a few minutes there entered the elder Miss Warmington. She was a tall gaunt lady with a prominent arched nose. She apologized to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm for having kept them waiting, but apparently did not see Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s outstretched hand. For a time his mother didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
She explained her errand, becoming almost voluble on the importance both she and his father attached to manners and a knowledge of the ways of gentlefolks.
Miss Warmington was sympathetic; but, alas! the Miss Warmingtons’ select preparatory school for gentlefolks had already its full complement of pupils. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, not understanding the hint, referred to rumours that tended to refute this argument. It seemed needful there should be plain speaking. The Misses Warmington themselves were very sorry, but there were parents who had to be considered. Particularly was it a preparatory school for young ladies and gentlemen. A pupil from the neighbourhood of Platt Lane—the child of a mechanic—no doubt a most excellent——
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm interrupted. An engineer, employing workmen of his own.
The elder Miss Warmington was pleased to hear it. But there was no getting over the neighbourhood of Platt Lane. And Mrs. Strong’nth’arm herself, the child’s mother. Miss Warmington had not the slightest intention of being offensive. Domestic service Miss Warmington had always held to be a calling worthy of all esteem. It was the parents.
Miss Warmington rose to end the interview. And then by chance her eyes fell upon Anthony John as he sat with one small leg tucked underneath the other.
The tears were in Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s eyes, and she did not notice. But Anthony saw quite plainly the expression that came over the tired, lined face of the elder Miss Warmington. He had seen it before on faces that had suddenly caught sight of him.
“You say your husband employs work-people?” she said in a changed tone, turning to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm.
“A man and a boy,” declared Mrs. Strong’nth’arm in a broken voice. She dared not look up because of the tears in her eyes.
“Would you like to be one of our little pupils?” asked the elder Miss Warmington of Anthony John.
“No, thank you,” he answered. He did not move, but he was still looking at her, and he saw the flush upon her face and the quiver of her tall gaunt frame.
“Good afternoon,” said Miss Warmington as she rang the bell. “I hope you’ll find a school to suit you.”
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would much have liked to make a cutting answer and have swept out of the room. But correct behaviour once acquired becomes a second nature. So, instead, Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied and apologised for her intrusion, and taking Anthony John by the hand, departed with bowed head.
In the street primeval instinct reasserted itself. She denounced the Misses Warmington as snobs. Not that it mattered. Anthony John should be a gentleman in spite of them. And when he had got on and was rich they would pass the Miss Warmingtons in the street and take no notice of them, just as though they were dirt. She hoped they would live long enough. And then suddenly her anger turned against Anthony John.
“What did you mean by saying ‘No, thank you’ when she asked you if you’d like to come?” she demanded. “I believe she’d have taken you if you’d said yes.”
“I didn’t want her to,” explained Anthony. “She isn’t clever. I’d rather learn from someone clever.”
With improved financial outlook the Strong’nth’arms had entered the Church of England. When you were poor it didn’t matter; nobody minded what religion you belonged to; church or chapel, you crept into the free seats at the back and no one turned their eyes to look. But employers of labour who might even one day be gentlefolks! The question had to be considered from more points of view than one.
Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s people had always been chapel folk; and as his wife had often bitterly remarked, much good it had done him. Her own inclination was towards the established church as being more respectable; and arguing that the rent of a side pew was now within their means, she had gained her point. For himself Mr. Strong’nth’arm was indifferent. Hope had revived within him. He was busy on a new invention and Sunday was the only day now on which he had leisure and the workshop to himself. Anthony would have loved to have been there helping, but his mother explained to him that one had to think of the future. A little boy, spotlessly clean and neatly dressed, always to be seen at church with his mother, was the sort of little boy that people liked and, when the time came, were willing to help.
A case in point, proving the usefulness of the church, occurred over this very problem of Anthony’s education. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm called on the vicar and explained to him her trouble. The vicar saw a way out. One of the senior pupils at the grammar school was seeking evening employment. His mother, a widow, possessed of nothing but a small pension, had lately died. Unless he could earn sufficient to keep him he would have to discontinue his studies. A clever lad; the vicar could recommend him. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was gratitude personified. The vicar was only too pleased. It was helping two birds with one stone. It sounded wrong to the vicar even as he said it. But then so many things the vicar said sounded wrong to him afterwards.
The business was concluded that same evening. Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge became engaged for two hours a day to teach Anthony the rudiments of learning, and by Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was generally referred to as “our little Anthony’s tutor.” He was a nervous, silent youth. The walls of his bed-sitting-room, to which when the din of hammers in the workshop proved disturbing he would bear little Anthony away, was papered with texts and mottoes, prominent among which one read: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The preparatory education of Anthony proceeded by leaps and bounds. The child was eager to learn.
Between the two an odd friendship grew up founded upon a mutual respect and admiration. Young Tetteridge was clever. The vicar had spoken more truly than he knew. He had a clever way of putting things that made them at once plain and easy to be remembered. He could make up poetry—quite clever poetry that sometimes made you laugh and at other times stirred something within you which you didn’t understand but which made you feel grand and all aglow. He drew pictures—clever pictures of fascinating never-to-be-seen things that almost frightened you, of funny faces, and things that made you cry. He made music out of a thing that looked like a fiddle, but was better than a fiddle, that he kept in a little black box; and when he played you wanted to dance and sing and shout.
But it was not the cleverness that Anthony envied. That would have been fatal to their friendship. He never could answer satisfactorily when Anthony would question him as to what he was going to be—what he was going to do with all his cleverness. He hadn’t made up his mind, he wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes he thought he would be a poet, at other times a musician or an artist, or go in for politics and be a statesman.
“Which are you going to begin with when you leave school?” demanded Anthony. They had been studying in young Tetteridge’s bed-sitting-room and the lesson was over. Anthony’s eyes were fixed upon a motto over the washstand:
“One thing at a time, and that done well,
Is a very good rule, as many can tell.”
Young Tetteridge admitted that the time was approaching when the point would have to be considered.
Anthony was sitting on his hands, swinging his legs. Young Tetteridge was walking up and down; owing to the size of the room being ten by twelve it was a walk with many turns.
“You see,” explained Anthony, “you’re not a gentlefolk.”
Mr. Tetteridge claimed that he was, though personally attaching no importance to the fact. His father had been an Indian official. His mother, had she wished, could have claimed descent from one of the most renowned of Irish kings.
“What I mean,” explained Anthony, “is that you’ve got to work for your living.”
Mr. Tetteridge argued that he could live on very little. He was living just then on twelve shillings a week, picked up one way and another.
“But when you’re married and have children?” suggested Anthony.
Mr. Tetteridge flushed, and his eyes instinctively turned to a small photograph on the mantelpiece. It featured a pretty dolly-faced girl, the daughter of one of the masters at the grammar school.
“You haven’t got any friends, have you?” asked Anthony.
Mr. Tetteridge shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he answered.
“Couldn’t you keep a school?” suggested Anthony, “for little boys and girls whose mothers don’t like them going to the parish school and who ain’t good enough for the Miss Warmingtons? There’s heaps of new people always coming here. And you’re so clever at teaching.”
Mr. Tetteridge, halting suddenly, stretched out his hand; and Anthony, taking his from underneath him, they shook.
“Thanks awfully,” said Mr. Tetteridge. “Do you know I’d never thought of that.”
“I shouldn’t say anything about it if I was you,” counselled Anthony, “or somebody else might slip in and do it before you were ready.”
“We say, ‘if I were you’; not ‘if I was you,’” Mr. Tetteridge corrected him. “We’ll take the subjunctive mood tomorrow. It’s quite easy to remember.”
Again he stretched out his hand. “It’s awfully good of you,” he said.
“I’d like you not to go away from Millsborough,” answered Anthony.
The period of prosperity following the visit of Wandering Peter had lasted all but two years. It came to an end with the death of his father. It was while working on his new invention that the accident had happened.
He was alone in the workshop one evening after supper; and while hoisting a heavy iron bar the rope had broken and the bar had fallen upon him and crushed his skull. He lingered for a day or two, mostly unconscious. It was a few hours before the end that Anthony, who had been sent upstairs by his mother to see if anything had happened, found his father with his eyes wide open. The man made a sign to him to close the door. The boy did so and then came and stood beside the bed.
“There won’t be anything left, sonny,” his father whispered. “I’ve been a fool. Everything I could get or borrow I put into it. It would have been all right, of course, if I had lived and could have finished it. Your mother doesn’t know, as yet. Break it to her after I’m gone, d’you mind. I haven’t the pluck.”
Anthony promised. There seemed to be more that his father wanted to say. He lay staring at the child with a foolish smile about his loose, weak mouth. Anthony sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He put his hand on the boy’s thigh.
“I wish I could say something to you,” he whispered. “You know what I mean: something that you could treasure up and that would be of help to you. I’ve always wanted to. When you used to ask questions and I was short with you, it was because I couldn’t answer them. I used to lie awake at night and try to think them out. And then I thought that when I came to die something might happen, that perhaps I’d have a vision or something of that sort—they say that people do, you know—that would make it all plain to me and that I’d be able to tell you. But it hasn’t come. I suppose I ain’t the right sort. It all seems dark to me.”
His mind wandered, and after a few incoherent words he closed his eyes again. He did not regain consciousness.
Anthony broke it to his mother—about everything having been sacrificed to the latest new invention.
“Lord love the man!” she answered. “Did he think I didn’t know? We were just a pair of us. I persuaded myself it was going to pan out all right this time.”
They were standing by the bedside. His mother had been up to the great house and had brought back with her a fine wreath of white flowers. They lay upon the sheet just over his breast. Anthony hardly knew his father; the weak, twitching lips were closed and formed a firm, strong line. Apart from the mouth his face had always been beautiful; though, lined with fret and worry and the fair hair grimy and uncombed, few had ever noticed it. His mother stooped and kissed the high pale brow.
“He is like what I remember him at the beginning,” she said. “You can see that he was a gentleman, every inch of him.”
His mother looked younger standing there beside her dead man. A softness had come into her face.
“You did your best, my dear,” she said, “and I guess I wasn’t much help to you.”
Everybody spoke well of the white, handsome man who lay with closed eyes and folded hands as if saying his prayers. Anthony had no idea that his father had been so universally liked and respected.
“Was father any relation to Mr. Selwyn?” he asked his mother the evening of the funeral.
“Relation!” answered his mother. “Not that I ever heard of. Why, what makes you ask?”
“He called him ‘brother,’” explained Anthony.
“Oh, that,” answered his mother. “Oh, that doesn’t mean that he really was his brother. It’s just a way of speaking of the dead.”