Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  The quarrel was interrupted by a commotion outside, and Mrs. Cross darted out to look — glad, perhaps, to escape from her husband’s anger. An official from the workhouse had come down with an order for the admission of Susan Fisher instanter. Timothy Carter, in his meek and humane spirit, had so enlarged upon the state of affairs in general, touching Mrs. Fisher, that the workhouse bestirred itself. An officer was despatched to marshal them into it at once. The uproar was caused by her resistance: she was still sitting in the road.

  “I won’t go into the work’us,” she screamed; “I won’t go there to be parted from my children and my husband. If I’m to die, I’ll die out here.”

  “Just get up and march, and don’t let’s have no row,” said the officer. “Else I’ll fetch a wheel-barrer, and wheel ye to it.”

  She resisted, shrieking and flinging her arms and her wild hair about her, as only a foolish woman would do; the children, alarmed, clung to her and cried, and all Honey Fair came out to look. Mr. Joe Fisher also staggered up, in a state not to be described. He had been invited by some friend, more sympathizing than judicious, to solace his troubles with strong waters; and down he fell in the mud, helpless.

  “Well, here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” cried the perplexed workhouse man. “A nice pair, they are! How I am to get ’em both there, is beyond me! She can walk, if she’s forced to it; but he can’t! They spend their money in sotting, and when they have no more to spend they come to us to keep ‘em! I must get an open cart.”

  The cart was procured somewhere and brought to the scene, a policeman in attendance; and the children were lifted into it one by one. Next the man was thrown in, like a clod; and then came the woman’s turn. With much struggling and kicking, with shrieks that might have been heard a mile off, she was at length hoisted into it. But she tumbled out again: raving that “no work’us shouldn’t hold her.” The official raved in turn; and Honey Fair hugged itself. It had not had the gratification of so exciting a scene for many a day; to say nothing of the satisfaction it derived from hearing the workhouse set at defiance.

  The official and the policeman at length conquered. She was secured, and the cart started at a snail’s pace with its load — Mrs. Fisher setting up a prolonged and dismal lamentation not unlike an Irish howl: and Honey Fair, in its curiosity, following the cart as its train.

  CHAPTER X.

  A STRAY SHILLING.

  “Whose shilling is this on my desk?” inquired Mr. Ashley of Samuel Lynn, one morning towards the close of the summer.

  “I cannot tell thee,” was the reply of the Quaker. “I know nothing of it.”

  “It is none of mine, to my knowledge,” remarked Mr. Ashley.

  “What shilling is that on the master’s desk?” repeated Samuel Lynn to William when he returned into his own room, where William was.

  “I put a shilling on the desk this morning,” replied William. “I found it in the waste-paper basket.”

  “Thee go in, then, and tell the master.”

  William did so. “The shilling rolled out of the waste-paper basket, sir,” said he, entering the counting-house and approaching Mr. Ashley.

  Mr. Ashley was remarkably exact in his accounts. He had missed no shilling, and he did not think it was his. “What should bring a shilling in the waste-paper basket?” he asked. “It may have rolled out of your own pocket.”

  William could have smiled at the remark. A shilling out of his pocket! “Oh, no, sir, it did not.”

  Mr. Ashley sat looking earnestly at William — as the latter fancied. In reality he was buried deep in his own thoughts. But William felt uncomfortable under the survey, and his face flushed to a glow. Why should he feel uncomfortable? What should cause the flush?

  This. Since Janey’s death, some months ago now, their circumstances had been more straitened than ever; of course, there had been expenses attending it, and Mrs. Halliburton was paying them off weekly. Bread and potatoes, and a little milk, would often be their food. On the previous night Jane had a sick headache. Some tea would have been acceptable, but she had neither tea nor money in the house; and she was firm in her resolution not to purchase on trust. On this morning early, when William rose, he found his mother down before him, at her work as usual. Her head felt better, she said; it might get quite well if she had only some tea; but she had not, and — there was an end of it. William went out, ardently wishing (in the vague profitless manner that he might have wished for Aladdin’s lamp) that he had only a shilling to procure some for her. When, half an hour after, this shilling rolled out of the waste-paper basket, as he was shaking it in Mr. Ashley’s counting-house, a strong temptation — not to take it, but to wish that he might take it, that it was not wrong to take it — rushed over him. He put it down on the desk and turned from it — turned from the temptation, for the shilling seemed to scorch his fingers. The remembrance of this wish — it sounded to him like a dishonest one — had brought the vivid colour to his face, under what he thought was Mr. Ashley’s scrutiny. That gentleman observed it.

  “What are you turning red for?”

  This crowned all. William’s face changed to scarlet.

  Mr. Ashley was surprised. He came to the conclusion that some mystery must be connected with the shilling — something wrong. He determined to fathom it. “Why do you look confused?” he resumed.

  “It was only at my own thoughts, sir.”

  “What are they? Let me hear them.”

  William hesitated. “I would rather not tell them, sir.”

  “But I would rather you did.” Mr. Ashley spoke quietly, as usual; but there lay command in the quietest tone of Mr. Ashley’s.

  Implicit obedience had been enjoined upon the Halliburtons from their earliest childhood. In that manufactory Mr. Ashley was William’s master, and he believed he had no resource but to comply with his desire. William was of a remarkably ingenuous nature; and if he had to impart a thing, he did not do it by halves, although it might tell against himself.

  “When I found that shilling this morning, sir, the thought came over me to wish it was mine — to wish that I might take it without doing ill. The thought did not come over me to take it,” he added, raising his truthful eyes to Mr. Ashley’s, “only to wish that it was not wrong to do so. When you looked at me so earnestly, sir, I fancied you could see what my thoughts had been. And they were not honourable thoughts.”

  “Did you ever take money that was not yours?” asked Mr. Ashley, after a pause.

  William looked surprised. “No, sir, never.”

  Mr. Ashley paused again. “I have known children help themselves to halfpence and pence, and think it little crime.”

  The boy shook his head. “We have been taught better than that, sir. And, besides the crime, money taken in that way would bring us no good, only trouble. It could not prosper.”

  “Tell me why you think that.”

  “My mother has always taught us that a bad action can never prosper in the end.”

  “I suppose you coveted the shilling for marbles; or for sweetmeats?”

  “Oh no, sir. It was not for myself that I wished it.”

  “Then for whom? For what?”

  This caused William’s face to flush again. Mr. Ashley questioned till he drew from him the particulars — how that he had wished to buy some tea, and why he had wished it.

  “I have heard,” remarked Mr. Ashley, after listening, “that you have many privations to put up with.”

  “It is true, sir. But we don’t so much care for them if we only can put up with them. My mother says she knows better days will be in store for us, if we only bear on patiently. I am sure we boys ought to do so, if she can. It is worse for her than for us.”

  There ensued another searching question from Mr. Ashley. “Have you ever, when alone in the egg-house, amidst its thousands of eggs, been tempted to pocket a few to carry home?”

  For one moment William suffered a flash of resentment to cross his countenance. The next his eyes fil
led with tears. He felt deeply hurt.

  “No, sir, I have not. I hope you do not fear that I am capable of it?”

  “No, I do not,” said Mr. Ashley. “Your father was a clergyman, I think I have heard?”

  “He was intended for a clergyman, sir, but he did not get to the University. His father was a clergyman — a rector in Devonshire, and my mother’s father was a clergyman in London. My uncle Francis is also a clergyman, but only a curate. We are gentlepeople, though we are poor. We would not take eggs or anything else.”

  Mr. Ashley suppressed a smile. “I conclude that you and your brothers live in hope some time of regaining your position in life?”

  “Yes, sir. I think it is that hope that makes us put up with hard things so well.”

  “What do you think of being?”

  William’s countenance fell. “There is not so much chance of my getting on, sir, as there is for my brothers. Frank and Gar are hopeful enough; but I don’t look forward to anything good for me. My mother says if I only help her I shall be doing my duty.”

  “Your sister died in a decline,” remarked Mr. Ashley. “These home privations must have told upon her.”

  William’s face brightened. “She had everything she wanted, sir; everything, even to port wine. Mrs. Reece and Dobbs took a liking to her when they first came, and they never let her want for anything. Mamma says that Jane’s wants having been supplied in so extraordinary a manner, ought to teach us how certainly God is looking over us and taking care of us — that all things, when they come to be absolutely needed, will no doubt be supplied to us, as they were to her.”

  “What a perfect trust in God that boy seems to have!” mused Mr. Ashley, when he dismissed William. “Mrs. Halliburton must be a mother in a thousand. And he will make a man in a thousand, unless I am mistaken. Truthful, open, candid — I don’t know a boy like him!”

  About five minutes before the great bell was rung at one o’clock, William was called into the counting-house. “I have been casting up my cash and find I am a shilling short,” observed Mr. Ashley, “therefore the shilling that you found is no doubt the missing one. I shall give it to you,” he continued: “a reward for telling me the straightforward truth when I questioned you.”

  William took the shilling — as he supposed. “Here are two!” he exclaimed, in his surprise.

  “You cannot buy much tea with one; and that is what you were thinking of. Would you like to be apprenticed to me?” Mr. Ashley resumed, drowning the boy’s thanks.

  The question took William by storm: he was at a loss what to answer. He would have been equally at a loss had he been accorded a whole week to deliberate upon it. He looked foolish, and said he could not tell.

  “Would you like the business?” pursued Mr. Ashley.

  “I like the business very well, sir, now I’m used to it. But I could not hope ever to get on to be a master.”

  “There’s no knowing what you may get on to be, if you are steady and persevering. Masters don’t begin at the top of the tree; they begin at the bottom and work up to it. At least, that is the case with a great many. In becoming an apprentice you would occupy a better position in the manufactory than you do now.”

  “Joe Stubbs is an apprentice, is he not, sir?”

  “I will explain it to you, if you do not understand,” said Mr. Ashley. “Joe Stubbs is apprenticed to one branch of the business, the cutting; John Braithwait is an apprentice to the staining, and so on. These lads expect to remain workmen all their lives, working at their own peculiar branch. You would not be apprenticed to any one branch, but to the whole, with a view to becoming hereafter a manager or a master; in the same manner that I might apprentice my son, were he intended for the business.”

  William thought he should like this. Suddenly his countenance fell.

  “What now?” asked Mr. Ashley.

  “I have heard, sir, that the apprentices do not earn wages at first. I — I am afraid we could not well do at home without mine.”

  “You need not concern yourself with what you hear, or with what others earn or don’t earn. I should give you eight shillings a-week, instead of four, and you would retain your evenings for study, as you do now. I do not see any different or better opening for you,” continued Mr. Ashley; “but should any arise hereafter, through your mother’s relatives, or from any other channel, I would not stand in the way of your advancement, but would consent to cancel your indentures. Do you understand what I have been saying?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. Thank you very much.”

  “You can speak to Mrs. Halliburton about it, and hear what her wishes may be,” concluded Mr. Ashley.

  The result was, that William was apprenticed to Mr. Ashley. “I can tell thee, thee hast found favour with the master,” remarked Samuel Lynn to William. “He has made thee his apprentice, and has admitted thee, I hear, to the companionship of his son. They are proofs that he judges well of thee. Pay thee attention to deserve it.”

  It was quite true that William was admitted to the occasional companionship of Henry Ashley. Henry had taken a fancy to him, and would get him there to help him stumble through his Latin.

  The next to be apprenticed to Mr. Ashley, and almost at the same time, was Cyril Dare. But when he found that he was to be the fellow-apprentice of William Halliburton, the two on a level in every respect, wages excepted — and of wages Master Cyril was at first to earn none — he was most indignant, and complained explosively to his father. “Can’t you speak to Mr. Ashley, sir?”

  “Where would be the use?” asked Mr. Dare. “There’s not a man in Helstonleigh would brook interference in his affairs less than Thomas Ashley. If one of the two apprentices must leave, because they are too much for each other’s company, it would be you, Cyril, rely upon it.”

  Cyril growled; but, as Mr. Dare said, there was no help for it. And he and William had to get on together in the best way they could. Cyril had thought that he should be the only gentleman-apprentice at Mr. Ashley’s. There was a marked distinction observed in a manufactory between the common apprentices, who did the rough work, and what were called the gentleman-apprentices. It did not please Cyril that William should have been made one of the latter.

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE SCHOOLBOYS’ NOTES.

  As the time went on, Jane’s brain grew very busy. Its care was the education of her boys — a perplexing theme. So far as the classics went, they were progressing. Frank and Gar certainly were not pushed on as they might have been, for Helstonleigh collegiate school was not at that time renowned for its pushing qualities; but the boys had a spur in themselves. Jane never ceased to urge them to attention, to strive after progress; not by the harsh reproaches some children have to hear, but by loving encouragement and gentle persuasion. She would call up pleasant pictures of the future, when they should have surmounted the difficulties of toil, and be reaping their reward. It had ever been her custom to treat her children as friends; as friends and companions, more than as children. I am not sure that it is not a good plan in all cases, but it undoubtedly is so where children are naturally well disposed and intelligent. Even when they were little, she would converse and reason with them, so far as their understandings would permit. The primary thing she inculcated was the habit of unquestioning obedience. This secured in their earliest childhood, she could afford to reason with them as they grew older; to appeal to their own sense of intelligence; to show them how to form and exercise a right judgment. Had the children been wilful, deceitful, or opposed to her, her plan must have been different; compulsion must have taken the place of reasoning. When they did anything wrong — all children will, or they are not children — she would take the offender to her alone. There would be no scolding; but in a grave, calm, loving voice she would say, “Was this right? Did you forget that you were doing wrong and would grieve me? Did you forget that you were offending God?” And so she would talk; and teach them to do right in all things, for the sake of right, for the sake of doing their
duty to Heaven and to man. These lessons from a mother loved as Jane was, could not fail to take root and bear seed. The young Halliburtons were in fair training to make not only good, but admirable men.

  Jane inculcated another valuable lesson. In all perplexity, trouble, or untoward misfortune, she taught them to look it full in the face; not to fly from it, as is the too-common custom, but to meet it and do the best with it. She knew that in trouble, as in terror, looking it in the face takes away half its sting: and so she was teaching them to look, not only by precept, but by example. With such minds, such training to work upon, there was little need to urge them to apply closely to their studies; they saw its necessity themselves, and acted upon it. “It is your only chance, my darlings, of getting on in life,” she would say. “You wish to be good and great men; and I think perhaps you may be, if you persevere. It is a tempting thing, I know, to leave wearying tasks for play or idleness; but do not yield to it. Look to the future. When you feel tired, out of sorts, as if Latin were the greatest grievance upon earth, say to yourselves, ‘It is my duty to keep on, and my duty I must do. If I turn idle now, my past application will be lost; but, if I persevere, I may go bravely on to the end.’ Be brave, darlings, for my sake.”

  And the boys were so. Thus it would happen that when the rest of the school were talking, or idling, or being caned, the Halliburtons were at work. The head master could not fail to observe their steady application; and he more than once held them up as an example to the school.

  So far so good. But though the classics are essential parts of a good education, they do not include all its requisites. And nothing else was taught in the college school. There certainly was a writing master, and something like an initiation into the first rules of arithmetic was attempted; but not a boy in the charity school, hard by, that could not have shamed the college boys in adding up a column of figures or in writing a page. As to their English —— You should have seen them attempt to write a letter. In short, the college school ignored everything except Latin and Greek.