Anthony John/Chapter 6
AN idea occurred to Anthony. The more he turned it over in his mind the more it promised. Young Tetteridge had entered upon his last term. The time would soon come for the carrying out of Anthony's suggestion that in some mean street of Millsborough he should set up a school for the sons of the ambitious poor.
Why should not one house do for them both? To Mr. Tetteridge for his classroom and study the ground floor; to his mother for her dressmaking and millinery the floor above; the three attics for bedrooms; in the basement the common dining-room and kitchen. There were whole streets of such houses, with steps up to the front door and a bow window. Mr. Tetteridge would want someone to look after him, to "do for" him. Whom more capable, more conscientious than Mrs. Strong'nth'arm? The gain would be mutual. His mother would be working for better-off customers. She could put up her prices. Mr. Tetteridge would save in rent and board.
Mr. Tetteridge was quite carried away by the brilliance and simplicity of the proposal.
"And there will be you and your dear mother always there," he concluded. "It is so long since I had a home."
To his mother the rise from Snelling's Row to Bridlington Street was a great event. It brought tears of happiness to her eyes. Also she approved of Mr. Tetteridge.
"It will be so good for you," she said to Anthony, "living with a gentleman."
There was the furnishing. Mr. Tetteridge's study, into which parents would have to be shown, must breathe culture, dignified scholasticism. Mr. Tetteridge's account at Her Majesty's savings bank was a little over twenty pounds. That must not be touched. Sickness, the unexpected, must be guarded against. Anthony went to see his aunt. That with the Lord's help she had laid by a fair-sized nest-egg she had in a rash moment of spiritual exaltation confided to him. Loans of half a sovereign, and even of a five-pound note, amply secured and bearing interest at the rate of a shilling in the pound per week, she was always prepared to entertain. Anthony wanted a hundred pounds at ten per cent. per annum, to be repaid on the honour of a gentleman.
The principal required frightened her almost into a fit. Besides she hadn't got it. The rate of interest, which according to complicated calculations of her own worked out at considerably less than halfpenny a pound per week, did not tempt her. About the proposed security there seemed to her a weakness.
In years to come the things without a chance that Anthony Strong'nth'arm pulled off, the impracticable schemes that with a wave of his hand became sound business propositions, the hopeless enterprises into which he threw himself and carried through to victory, grew to be the wonder and bewilderment of Millsborough. But never in all his career was he called upon again to face such an absolutely impossible stone waller as his aunt's determination on that Friday afternoon not to be bamboozled out of hard-won savings by any imp of Satan, even if for her sins he happened to be her own nephew.
How he did it Mrs. Newt was never able to explain. It was not what he said, though heaven knows there was no lack of that. Mrs. Newt's opinion was that by words alone he could have got it out of a stone. It was some strange magic he seemed to possess that made her—to use her own simile—as clay in the hands of the potter.
She gave him that one hundred pounds in twenty five-pound notes, thanking God from the bottom of her heart that he hadn't asked for two. In exchange he drew from his pocket, and pressed into her hand a piece of paper. What it was about and what she had done with it she never knew. She remembered there was a stamp on it.
She also remembered, when she came to her senses, that he had put his arms about her and had hugged her, and that she had kissed him good-bye and had given him a message to his mother. At the end of the first twelve months he brought her thirty pounds, explaining to her that that left eighty still owing. And what astonished her most was that she wasn't surprised. It was just as if she had expected it.
The pupils came in. Mrs. Strong'nth'arm, knowing many folk, was of much help.
Mrs. Strong'nth'arm's idea had been to call upon some half a dozen likely parents, to appeal to them for their support of a most deserving case: a young would-be schoolmaster of whose character and ability she could not speak too highly.
"And they'll tell you it's very kind of you to try and assist the poor young gentleman, but that as regards their own particular progeny they've decided to send him somewhere else," explained Anthony.
"How do you know?" argued his mother. "Why, Mrs. Glenny, the china shop woman, was telling me only a month ago how worried she was about her boy, not knowing where to send him."
"You drop in on Mrs. Glenny," counselled Anthony, "and talk about the weather and how the price of everything is going up. And as you're coming away just mention casually how everybody is talking about this new school that Mr. Tetteridge has just started; and how everybody is trying to get their boys into it; and how they won't be able to, seeing that young Tetteridge has told you that he can only receive a limited number; and how you've promised Mrs. Herring to use your influence with Tetteridge in favour of her boy Tom. Leave Mrs. Glenny to do the rest."
People had a habit of asking Anthony his age; and when he told them they would look at him very hard and say: "Are you quite sure?"
His uncle was taken ill late in the year. He had caught rheumatic fever getting himself wet through on the moors. He made a boast of never wearing an overcoat. Anthony found him sitting up in bed. A carpenter friend had fixed him up a pulley from the ceiling by which he could raise himself with his hands. Old Simon was sitting watching him, his chin upon the bed. Simon had been suffering himself from rheumatism during the last two winters and seemed to understand.
"Don't tell your aunt," he said. "She'll have them all praying round me and I'll get no peace. But I've got a feeling it's the end. I'm hoping to slip off on the quiet, like."
Anthony asked if he could do anything. He had always liked his uncle; they felt there was a secret bond between them.
"Look after the old chap," his uncle answered; "that is if I go first."
He stretched out a stiff arm and laid it on old Simon's head. "Ninety years old he'll be on the fourteenth," he said, "reckoning six years of a dog's life as equal to one of a man's. And I'm sixty-five. We haven't done so badly, either of us."
Anthony drew up a chair and sat down between the two.
"Nothing you want to talk about, is there?" he asked. The old man knew what he meant. He shook his head.
"Been talking about it or listening to it, on and off, pretty well all my life," he answered. "Never got any further."
He was silent a while, wrestling with his pain.
"Of course, I believe in a God," he said. "There must be Somebody bossing it all. It's the things they tell you about Him that I've never been able to swallow. Don't fit in with common sense to my thinking."
"You're not afraid?" Anthony asked him after a silence.
"Why should I be?" answered the old man. "He knows me. He ain't expecting anything wonderful. If I'm any good maybe He'll find me a job. If not"
Old Simon had crept closer. They were looking into each other's eyes.
"Wonder if there'll be any dogs?" he said. "Don't see why there shouldn't. If love and faithfulness and self-forgetfulness are going to be of any use to Him, what's wrong with you, old chap?"
He laughed. "Don't tell your aunt I said that," he cautioned Anthony. "She's worried enough about me, poor old girl, as it is."
His aunt had looked for a death-bed repentance, but the end came before she expected it, in the night.
"He wasn't really a bad man," she said, crying. "That's what made me hope, right to the end, that the Truth would be revealed to him."
Anthony sought to comfort her. "Perhaps it came to him when he was alone," he said.
She clung to that.
The burying of him was another trouble. She had secured the site she had always wished for herself beneath the willow. She would have liked him to be laid there beside her, but his views and opinions had been too well known to her people. They did not want him among them. There was a neglected corner of the big cemetery set apart for such as he; but to lay him there would be to abandon hope. The Lord would never venture there. Anthony suggested the Church. He undertook to interview the vicar, a kindly old gentleman, who possibly would ask no questions.
He found the vicar in the vestry. There had been a meeting of the churchwardens. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin was a chubby, blue-eyed gentleman. He had heard of Anthony's uncle. "A very hard nut to crack," so the vicar had been given to understand.
"But was always willing to listen, I gathered," added the vicar. "So perhaps the fault was ours. We didn't go about it the right way."
Something moved Anthony to tell the vicar what his uncle had once said to him when he was a child about the world being a very different place if people really did believe all that they say they believe.
He wished he hadn't said it, for the old gentleman sat silent for what seemed quite a long time.
"What did they answer him?" he asked at length. "Did he tell you?"
"He said they never did answer him that," replied Anthony.
The vicar looked at him across the green baize.
"There isn't any answer," he said. "Your uncle had us there."
"I dreamed of it once." The light was fading; maybe he forgot that young Anthony was sitting there over against him in the shadows. "Living for Christ, taking no thought of aught else. What ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. It's a big thing—Believing."
He seemed to have become aware again of the boy sitting there half hidden by the shadows.
"Most of us, Strong'nth'arm," he said, "think that all we've got to do is to sing about it, to repeat it in the proper places. It isn't enough. Take up thy cross and follow me. That's where the trouble begins. Easy enough to worship it with folded hands. It is taking it up, carrying it with bowed head and aching shoulders, that's the bother of it."
He rose, pushing back his chair with a grating sound upon the uncarpeted floor.
"You see," he said, "it isn't only oneself. One might do it if one were alone. The Roman Church is right on that point. And yet it doesn't work, even with them. The world gets hold of them. What's the date?" he said suddenly.
"December the fifth," Anthony told him.
"Just three weeks to Christmas." He was walking up and down the bare cold room. He halted a few steps in front of the lad. "Do you know what Christmas means to me? You will later on. Bills. Butcher's bills, baker's bills, bootmaker's bills—there's something uncanny about the number of boots that children seem to want. And then there's their school bills and their doctor's bills and the Christmas boxes and the presents. It's funny when you come to think of it. Christ's birthday. And I've come to dread it. What were we all talking about this afternoon here in the vestry? How to help Christ? How to spread His gospel? No, pew rates, tithes, clergy relief funds, curates' salaries, gas bills, fund for central heating and general repairs!
"How can I preach Christ, the Outcast, the Beggar, the Wanderer in the Wilderness, the Servant of the poor, the Carrier of the Cross? That's what I started out to preach. They'd only laugh at me. 'He lives in a big house,' they would say; 'keeps four servants'—when one can get them—'and his sons go to college.' God knows it's struggle enough to do it. But I oughtn't to be struggling to do it. I ought to be down among the people, teaching Christ not only by my words but my life."
It had grown dark. The vicar, stumbling against a small side table, brought it down with a clatter. Anthony found the matches and lit the gas. The vicar held out a plump hand.
"It'll be all right about your uncle," he said. "See Mr. Grant and arrange things with him."
Anthony thanked him and was leaving. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin drew him back. "Don't judge me too hardly," he said with a smile. "Leastways, not till you've lived a bit longer. Something made me talk without thinking. If anything I've said comes back to you at any time, listen to it. It may have been a better sermon than I usually preach."
His aunt was much comforted when he told her.
"I shouldn't be surprised," she said, "if he got through after all. Anyhow, we've done our best for him."
Old Simon had returned to the railway carriage. He seemed to know that all was over. He lingered for a little while, but there was no heart in him. And one morning they found him dead.
A friendship had grown up between Anthony and young Mowbray. It had been chiefly of Edward Mowbray's seeking, but Anthony had been attracted by Edward's gentleness and kindness. Mowbray's father had also taken a liking to him and he came to be a frequent visitor at The Priory.
Mr. Mowbray was a fine, handsome gentleman of about fifty, fonder of pleasure than of business it was said. He rode to hounds and prided himself on being one of the best shots in the county. He was a widower. Gossip whispered of an unhappy marriage, for the lady—of neglect and infidelities. But this may not have been true, for Mr. Mowbray always spoke of his wife with enthusiasm, and often tears would come into his eyes. Her portrait by Orchardson hung in the dining-room facing Mr. Mowbray's chair: an arresting face, though hardly beautiful, the forehead being too high and narrow. It was in the eyes that the attraction lay. They seemed almost to speak. Mr. Mowbray, during a lull in the conversation, would sometimes raise his glass and drink to her in silence. He was fond of his fine old port, and so were most of his many friends. There were only two children, Edward and his sister Elizabeth. She was the elder by a couple of years. She had her mother's haunting eyes, but the face as a whole was less striking. Anthony had been rather afraid of her at first, and she had not taken much notice of him. She was considered eccentric by reason of her not taking any interest in games and amusements. In this both children were a strange contrast to their father. She would have been dubbed a "high brow" in later years; "blue stocking" was the name then.
It was by Edward and his sister that Anthony was introduced to politics. They were ardent reformers. They dreamed of a world in which there would be no more poor. They thought it might be brought about in their time, at least so far as England was concerned. Edward was the more impatient of the two. He thought it would have to come by revolution. Elizabeth (or Betty as she was generally called for short) had once been of the same opinion. But she was changing. She pointed out the futility of the French Revolution. And even had there been excuse for it the need no longer existed. All could be done now through the ballot box. Leaders must arise, men wise and noble. The people would vote for them. Laws must be passed. The evil and the selfish compelled to amend their ways. The rotten houses must be pulled down; pleasant, well-planned habitations take their place, so that the poor might live decently and learn the meaning of "home." Work must be found for all; the haunting terror of unemployment be lifted from their lives. It easily could be done. There was work waiting, more than enough, if only the world were properly ordered. Fair wages must be paid, carrying with them a margin for small comforts, recreation. The children must be educated so that in time the poor would be lifted up and the wall between the classes levelled down. Leaders were the one thing needful: if rich and powerful so much the better: men who would fight for the right and never sheathe the sword till they had won justice for the people.
They were tramping the moors. The wind had compelled her to take off her hat and carry it and had put colour into her cheeks. Anthony thought she looked very handsome with her fine eyes flashing beneath their level brows.
In their talk they had lost their tracks and were making a bee line for the descent. A stream barred their way. It babbled over stones and round the roots of trees. Edward picked her up to carry her across, but at the margin hesitated, doubting his muscles.
"You'll be safer with Anthony," he said, putting her down.
"It's all right," she said. "I don't mind getting my feet wet." But Anthony had already lifted her in his arms.
"You're sure I'm not too heavy?" she asked.
He laughed and stepped down with her into the stream.
He carried her some distance beyond the bank, explaining that the ground was still marshy. He liked the pressure of her weight upon his breast.