DICK BROWN got up very early next morning, with the same sense of exhilaration and light-heartedness which had moved him on the previous night. To be sure he had no particular reason for it, but what of that? People are seldom so truly happy as when they are happy without any cause. He was early in his habits, and his heart was too gay to be anything but restless. He got up though it was not much past five o’clock, and took his turn at the pump in the yard, which formed the entire toilet arrangements of the tramps’ lodging-house, and then strolled down with his hands in his pockets and his ruddy countenance shining fresh from these ablutions to where the river shone blue in the morning sunshine at the foot of Coffin Lane. Dick had passed through Windsor more than once in the course of his checkered existence. He had been here with his tribe—those curious unenjoying slaves of pleasure who are to be found wherever there is merrymaking, little as their share may be in the mirth—on the 4th of June, the great fête day of Eton, and on the occasion of reviews in the great Park, and royal visits; so the place was moderately familiar to him, as so many places were all over the country. He strolled along the raised path by the water-side, with a friendly feeling for the still river, sparkling in the still sunshine, without boat or voice to break its quiet, which he thought to himself had “brought him luck,” a new friend, and perhaps a long succession of odd jobs. Dick and his mother did very fairly on the whole in their wandering life. The shillings and sixpences which they picked up in one way or another kept them going, and it was very rare when they felt want. But the boy’s mind was different from his fate; he was no adventurer—and though habit had made the road and his nomadic outdoor life familiar to him, yet he had never taken to them quite kindly. The thing of all others that filled him with envy was one of those little tidy houses or pretty cottages which abound in every English village, or even on the skirts of a small town, with a little flower-garden full of flowers, and pictures on the walls inside. The lad had said to himself times without number, that there indeed was something to make life sweet—a settled home, a certain place where he should rest every night and wake every morning. There was no way in his power by which he could attain to such a glorious conclusion; but he thus secured what is the next best thing to success in this world, a distinct conception of what he wanted, an ideal which was possible and might be carried out.
Dick sat down upon the bank, swinging his feet over the mass of gravel which the workmen, beginning their morning work, were fishing up out of the river, and contemplated the scene before him, which, but for them, would have been noiseless as midnight. The irregular wooden buildings which flanked the rafts opposite looked picturesque in the morning light, and the soft water rippled up to the edge of the planks, reflecting everything,—pointed roof and lattice window, and the wonderful assembly of boats. It was not hot so early in the morning; and even had it been hot, the very sight of that placid river, sweeping in subdued silvery tints, cooled down from all the pictorial warmth and purple glory of the evening, must have cooled and refreshed the landscape. The clump of elm-trees on the Brocas extended all their twinkling leaflets to the light; lower down, a line of white houses, with knots of shrubs and stunted trees before each attracted Dick’s attention. Already lines of white clothes put up to dry betrayed at once the occupation and the industry of the inhabitants. If only his mother was of that profession, or could adopt it, Dick thought to himself,—how sweet it would be to live there, with the river at hand and the green meadow-grass between—to live there for ever and ever, instead of wandering and tramping about the dusty roads!
There was no dust anywhere on that clear fresh morning. The boy made no comment to himself upon the still beauty of the scene. He knew nothing of the charm of reflection and shadow, the soft tones of the morning brightness, the cool green of the grass; he could not have told why they were beautiful, but he felt it somehow, and all the sweetness of the early calm. The great cart-horse standing meditative on the water’s edge, with its head and limbs relieved against the light sky; the rustling of the gravel as it was shovelled up, all wet and shining upon the bank; the sound of the workmen’s operations in the heavy boat from which they were working,—gave a welcome sense of “company” and fellowship to the friendly boy; and for the rest, his soul was bathed in the sweetness of the morning. After a while he went higher up the stream and bathed more than his soul—his body too, which was much the better for the bath; and then came back again along the Brocas, having crossed in the punt by which some early workmen went to their occupation, pondering many things in his mind. If a fellow could get settled work now here—a fellow who was not so fortunate as to have a mother who could take in washing! Dick extended his arms as he walked, and stretched himself, and felt able for a man’s work, though he was only sixteen—hard work, not light—a good long day, from six in the morning till six at night; what did he care how hard the work was, so long as he was off the road, and had some little nook or corner of his own—he did not even mind how tiny—to creep into, and identify as his, absolutely his, and not another’s? The cottages facing to the Brocas were too fine and too grand for his aspirations. Short of the ambitious way of taking in washing, he saw no royal road to such comfort and splendour; but homelier places no doubt might be had. What schemes were buzzing in his young head as he walked back towards Coffin Lane! He had brought out a hunch of bread with him, which his mother had put aside last night, and which served for breakfast, and satisfied him fully. He wanted no delicacies of a spread table, and dreams of hot coffee did not enter his mind. On winter mornings, doubtless, it was tempting when it was to be had in the street, and pennies were forthcoming; but it would have been sheer extravagance on such a day. The bread was quite enough for all Dick’s need; but his mind was busy with projects ambitious and fanciful. He went back to the lodging-house to find his mother taking the cup of weak tea without milk which was her breakfast; and, as it was still too early to go to his appointment with Val, begged her to come out with him that he might talk to her; there was no accommodation for private talk in the tramps’ lodging-house, although most of the inmates by this time were gone upon their vagrant course. Dick took his mother out by the river-side again, and led her to a grassy bank above the gravel-heap and the workmen, where the white houses on the Brocas, and the waving lines of clean linen put out to dry, were full in sight. He began the conversation cunningly with this practical illustration of his discourse before his eyes.
“Mother,” said Dick, “did you never think as you’d like to try staying still in one place and getting a little bit of a home?”
“No, Dick,” said the woman, hastily; “don’t ask me—I couldn’t do it. It would kill me if I were made to try.”
“No one ain’t agoing to make you,” said Dick, soothingly; “but look here, mother—now tell me, didn’t you ever try?”
“Oh yes, I’ve tried—tried hard enough—till I was nigh dead of it——”
“I can’t remember, mother.”
“It was before your time,” she said, with a sigh and uneasy movement—“before you were born.”
Dick did not put any further questions. He had never asked anything about his father. A tramp’s life has its lessons as well as a lord’s, and Dick was aware that it was not always expedient to inquire into the life, either public or private, of your predecessors. He had not the least notion that there had been anything particular about his father, but took it for granted that he must have been such a one as Joe or Jack, in rough coat and knotted handkerchief, a wanderer like the rest. He accepted the facts of existence as they stood without making any difficulties, and therefore he did not attempt to “worrit” his mother by further reference to the past, which evidently did “worrit” her. “Well, never mind that,” he said; “you shan’t never be forced to anything if I can help it. But if so be as I got work, and it was for my good to stay in a place—supposing it might be here?”
“Here’s different,” said his mother, dreamily.
“That’s just what I think,” cried Dick, too wise to ask why; “it’s a kind of a place where a body feels free like, where you can be gone to-morrow if you please—the forest handy and Ascot handy, and barges as will give you a lift the moment as you feel it the right thing to go. That’s just what I wanted to ask you, mother. If I got a spell of work along of that young swell as I’m going to see, or anything steady, mightn’t we try? If you felt on the go any day, you might just take the road again and no harm done; or if you felt as you could sit still and make yourself comfortable in the house——”
“I could never sit still and make myself comfortable,” she said; “I can’t be happy out of the air, Dick—I can’t breathe; and sitting still was never my way—nor you couldn’t do it neither,” she added, looking in his face.
“Oh, couldn’t I though?” said Dick, with a laugh. “Mother, you don’t know much about me. I am not one to grumble, I hope—but if you’ll believe me, the thing I’d be proudest of would be to be bound ’prentis and learn a trade.”
“Dick!”
“I thought you’d be surprised. I know I’m too old now, and I know it’s no good wishing,” said the boy. “Many and many’s the time I’ve lain awake of nights thinking of it; but I saw as it wasn’t to be done nohow, and never spoke. I’ve give up that free and full, mother, and never bothered you about what couldn’t be; so you won’t mind if I bother a bit now. If I could get a long spell of work, mother dear! There’s them men at the gravel, and there’s a deal of lads like me employed about the rafts; and down at Eton they’re wanted in every corner, for the fives-courts and the rackets, and all them things. Now supposing as this young swell has took a fancy to me, like I have to him—and supposing as I get work—let’s say supposing, for it may never come to nothing,—wouldn’t you stay with me a bit, mother, and try and make a home?”
“I’d like to see the gentleman, Dick,” said his mother, ignoring his appeal.
“The gentleman!” said the boy, a little disappointed. And then he added, cheerily—“Well, mother dear, you shall see the gentleman, partickler if you’ll stay here a bit, and I have regular work, and we get a bit of an ’ome.”
“He would never come to your home, lad—not the likes of him.”
“You think a deal of him, mother. He mightn’t come to Coffin Lane; I daresay as the gentlemen in college don’t let young swells go a-visiting there. But you take my word, you’ll see him; for he’s taken a fancy to me, I tell you. There’s the quarter afore ten chiming. I must be off now, mother; and if anything comes in the way you’ll not go against me? not when I’ve set my heart on it, like this?”
“I’ll stay—a bit—to please you, Dick,” said the woman. And the lad sprang up and hastened away with a light heart. This was so much gained. He went quickly down, walking on through the narrow High Street of Eton to the great red house in which his new friend was. Grinder’s was an institution in the place, the most important of all the Eton boarding-houses, though only a dame’s, not a master’s house. The elegant young Grinder, who was Val’s tutor, was but a younger branch of this exalted family, and had no immediate share in the grandeurs of the establishment, which was managed by a dominie or dame, a lay member of the Eton community, who taught nothing, but only superintended the meals and morals of his great houseful of boys. Such personages have no place in Eton proper—the Eton of the Reformation period, so to speak—but they were very important in Val’s time. Young Brown went to a side door, and asked for Mr Ross with a little timidity. He was deeply conscious of the fact that he was nothing but “a cad”—not a kind of visitor whom either dame or tutor would permit “one of the gentlemen” to receive; and, indeed, I think Dick would have been sent ignominiously away but for his frank and open countenance, and the careful washing, both in the river and out of it, which he had that morning given himself. He was told to wait; and he waited, noting, with curious eyes, the work of the great house which went on under his eyes, and asking himself how he would like to be in the place of the young curly-headed footman who was flying about through the passages, up-stairs and down, on a hundred errands; or the other aproned functionary who was visible in a dark closet at a distance, cleaning knives with serious persistence, as if life depended on it. Dick decided that he would not like this mode of making his livelihood. He shrank even from the thought—I cannot tell why, for he had no sense of pride, and knew no reason why he should not have taken service in Grinder’s, where the servants, as well as the other inmates, lived on the fat of the land, and wanted for nothing; but somehow his fancy was not attracted by such a prospect. He watched the cleaner of knives, and the curly-headed footman in his livery, with interest; but not as he watched the lads on the river, whose life was spent in launching boats and withdrawing them from the water in continual succession. He had no pride; and the livery and the living were infinitely more comfortable than anything he had ever known. “His mind did not go with it,” he said to himself; and that was all it was necessary to say.
While he was thus meditating, Valentine Boss, in correct Eton costume—black coat, high hat, and white necktie—fresh from his tutor, with books under his arm, came in, and spied him where he stood waiting. Val’s face lightened up into pleased recognition,—more readily than Dick’s did, who was slow to recognise in this solemn garb the figure which he had seen in undress dripping from the water. “Hollo, Brown!” said Val; “I am glad you have kept your time. Come up-stairs and I’ll give you what I promised you.” Dick followed his patron up-stairs, and through a long passage to Val’s room. “Come in,” said Val, rummaging in a drawer of his bureau for the half-crown with which he meant to present his assistant of last night. Dick entered timidly, withdrawing his cap from his head. The room was quite small, the bed folded up, as is usual at Eton. The bureau, or writing-desk with drawers adorned by a red-velvet shelf on the top, stood in one corner, and a set of book-shelves similarly decorated in another; a heterogeneous collection of pictures, hung as closely as possible, the accumulation of two years, covered the wall; some little carved brackets of stained wood held little plaster figures, not badly modelled, in which an Italian image-seller drove a brisk trade among the boys. A blue-and-black coat, in bright stripes (need I add that Val—august distinction—was in the Twenty-Two), topped by a cap of utterly different but equally bright hues—the colours of the house—hung on the door; a fine piece of colour, if perhaps somewhat violent in contrast. The window was full of bright geraniums, which grew in a box outside, and garlanded with the yellow canariensis and wreaths of sweet-peas. Dick looked round upon all these treasures, his heart throbbing with admiration, and something that would have been envy had it been possible to hope or wish for anything so beautiful and delightful for himself; but as this was not possible, the boy’s heart swelled with pleasure that his young patron should possess it, which was next best.
“Wait a moment,” cried Val, finding, as he pursued his search, a note laid upon his bureau, which had been brought in in his absence; and Dick stood breathless, gazing round him, glad of the delay, which gave him time to take in every detail of this schoolboy palace into his mind. The note was about some momentous piece of business,—the domestic economy of that one of “the boats” in which Val rowed number seven, with hopes of being stroke when Jones left next Election. He bent his brows over it, and seizing paper and pen, wrote a hasty answer, for such important business cannot wait. Dick, watching his movements, felt with genuine gratification that here was another commission for him. But his patron’s next step made his countenance fall, and filled his soul with wonder. Val opened his door, and with stentorian voice shouted “Lower boy!” into the long passage. There was a momentary pause, and then steps were heard in all directions up and down, rattling over the bare boards, and about half-a-dozen young gentlemen in a lump came tumbling into the room. Val inspected them with lofty calm, and held out his note to the last comer, over the heads of the others. “Take this to Benton at Guerre’s,” he said, with admirable brevity; and immediately the messenger departed, the little crowd melted away, and the two boys were again alone.
“I say, I mustn’t keep you here,” said Val; “my dame mightn’t like it. Here’s your half-crown. Have you got anything to do yet? I think you’re a handy fellow, and I shouldn’t mind saying a word for you if I had the chance. What kind of place do you want?”
“I don’t mind what it is,” said Dick. “I’d like a place at the rafts awful, if I was good enough; or anything, sir. I don’t mind, as long as I can make enough to keep me—and mother; that’s all I care.”
“Was that your mother?” said Val. “Do you work for her too?”
“Well, sir, you see she can make a deal in our old way. She is a great one with the cards when she likes, but she won’t never do it except when we’re hard up and she’s forced; for she says she has to tell the things she sees, and they always comes true: but what I want is to stay in one place, and get a bit of an ’ome together—and she ain’t good for gentlemen’s washing or that sort, worse luck,” said Dick, regretfully. “So you see, sir, if she stays still to please me, I’ll have to work for her, and good reason. She’s been a good mother to me, never going on the loose, nor that, like other women do. I don’t grudge my work.”
Val did not understand the curious tingling that ran through his veins. He was not consciously thinking of his own mother, but yet it was something like sympathy that penetrated his sensitive mind. “I wish I could help you,” he said, doubtfully. “I’d speak to the people at the rafts, but I don’t know if they’d mind me. I’ll tell you what, though,” he added, with sudden excitement. “I can do better than that—I’ll get Lichen to speak to them! They might not care for me—but they’ll mind what Lichen says.”
Dick received reverentially and gratefully, but without understanding the full grandeur of the idea, this splendid promise—for how should the young tramp have known, what I am sure the reader must divine, that Lichen was that Olympian demigod and king among men, the Captain of the Boats? If Lichen had asked the Queen for anything, I wonder if her Majesty would have had the courage to refuse him? but at all events nobody about the river dared to say him nay. To be spoken to by Lichen was, to an ordinary mortal, distinction enough to last him half his (Eton) days. Dick did not see the magnificence of the prospect thus opened to him, but Val knew all that was implied in it, and his countenance brightened all over. “I don’t think they can refuse Lichen anything,” he said. “Look here, Brown; meet us at the rafts after six, and I’ll tell you what is done. I wish your mother would tell me my fortune. Lots of fellows would go to her if they knew; but then the masters wouldn’t like it, and there might be a row.”
“Bless you, sir, mother wouldn’t—not for the Bank of England,” cried Dick. “She might tell you yours, if I was to ask her. Thank you kindly, sir; I’ll be there as sure as life. It’s what I should like most.”
“If Lichen speaks for you, you’ll get it,” said Val; “and I know Harry wants boys. You’re a good boy, ain’t you?” he added, looking at him closely—“you look it. And mind, if we recommend you, and you’re found out to be rowdy or bad after, and disgrace us, Lichen will give you such a licking! Or for that matter, I’ll do it myself.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Dick. “I ain’t rowdy; and if I get a fixed place and a chance of making a home, you just try me, and see if I’ll lose my work for the sake of pleasure. I ain’t that sort.”
“I don’t believe you are,” said Val; “only it’s right I should warn you; for Lichen ain’t a fellow to stand any nonsense, and no more am I. Do you think that’s pretty? I’m doing it, but I haven’t the time.”
This was said in respect to a piece of wood-carving, which Valentine had begun in the beginning of the year, and which lay there, like many another enterprise commenced, gathering dust, but approaching no nearer to completion. Dick surveyed it with glowing eyes.
“I saw some like it in a shop as I came down. Oh, how I should like to try! I’ve cut things myself out of a bit of wood with an old knife, and sold them at the fair.”
“And you think you could do this without any lessons?” said Val, laughing; “just take and try it. I wonder what old Fullady would say? there are the saws and things. But look here, you’ll have to go, for it’s time for eleven o’clock school. Take the whole concern with you, quick, and I’ll give you five bob if you can finish it. Remember after six, at the rafts to-night.”
Thus saying, the young patron pushed his protégé before him out of the room, laden with the wood-carving, and rushed off himself with a pile of books under his arm. All the boys in the house seemed flooding out, and all the boys in Eton to be pouring in different directions, one stream intersecting another, as Dick issued forth filled with delight and hope. He had not a corner to which he could take the precious bit of work he had been intrusted with—nothing but the common room of the tramps’ lodging-house. Oh for a “home,” not so grand as Val’s little palace, but anything that would afford protection and quiet—a place to decorate and pet like a child! This feeling grew tenfold stronger in Dick’s heart as he sat wistfully on the river’s bank, and looked across at the rafts, in which were sublime possibilities of work and wages. How he longed for the evening! How he counted the moments as the day glowed through its mid hours, and the sun descended the western sky, and the hour known in these regions as “after six” began to come down softly on Eton and the world!