by Ellen Wood
“What? Who?” exclaimed the doctor, while the whole school, including the under masters, stood up in commotion.
“Master Richard has, sir. As I went out from here, Bailiff Thompson was a passing, and he stopped me. He says he see our Master Richard in Burchester last night, along with a recruiting troop, and he had got colours a flying from his hat. He has gone and ‘listed, for certain,” added the man, quite in an agony.
Dr Robertson paused; he did not much like the news. “Make the best of your way home to your master, and acquaint him,” he presently said. “Is Thompson sure that it was young Jenniker?” he resumed, almost unable to take in the unpleasant tidings.
“There can’t be no mistake, sir. Thompson says he spoke to him. I always said as it would end in something bad,” concluded the man, as he turned to depart. “Master Richard was so random and self-willed: he never cared for nobody. Master and mistress have crossed him, too, a good deal of late.”
The tidings were giving Dr Robertson very great concern. When the school broke up for breakfast, he proceeded to the Manor Farm. Mr Jenniker had returned home then, and was in possession of the news. “He must be seen after,” said Dr Robertson.
“Not by me.”
“Seen after, and bought off,” continued the doctor.
“Not by me, I say,” repeated Mr Jenniker. “He is a wicked, ungrateful boy. A little taste of the world’s hardships will do him good.”
“But there’s no knowing what trouble and mischief he may get into,” urged the doctor. “There’s no foreseeing where it may end.”
“It is his own look out,” replied Mr Jenniker. “As he has made his bed, so shall he lie upon it.”
And nothing was done for Richard Jenniker. Had Mr Jenniker possessed boys of his own, he had possibly been more lenient to his nephew’s faults. He was what is called a gentleman farmer, had plenty of money, and intended Richard to be a farmer after him. This, Richard had stoutly repudiated. He had “no liking that way,” he urged, and wished for a more stirring life. Jenniker possessed a trifling patrimony; not much. He was inclined to be wild, and was thoroughly idle. “A scamp of a boy,” Mr Jenniker had been in the habit of calling him; and he called it him more forcibly now. There had been frequent disputes between them, it turned out, touching Richard’s future occupation: he was to have left school at the midsummer, now close upon them.
There was no doubt that Richard Jenniker had felt the disgrace of the flogging keenly. It appeared that instead of going home to breakfast afterwards, he proceeded on foot to Burchester, a large city, some seven miles distant. Not, probably, with any ulterior aim: anywhere, anywhere out of Whittermead; anywhere to walk off his angry feelings, his bitter humiliation. Richard Jenniker was in that frame of mind when it seems a relief to run away from oneself; but that, as we are all aware, can never be done. He scarcely cared what became of himself; he was at enmity that day with the whole world: even the thoughtless taunt of one of the boys at his desk, “How did it taste, Jenniker?” bore its own sharp sting of pain. He was at enmity with Whittermead: he’d never go back to it, he vowed to himself in his rage. He would have gone back to it, there’s no doubt, that night or the following day, according to the time his anger took to cool, had not circumstances ordained it otherwise.
Miserable, unhappy, ill-fated circumstances! No sooner had he entered Burchester, than he fell in with a recruiting sergeant. The man accosted him with his wiles, and Jenniker, yielding to the fit of recklessness upon him, enlisted. The process over, some flying streamers were affixed to his hat; and he with the rest of the raw recruits, their streamers flying also, took a march through the town under convoy of the watchful sergeant, and were met, as you have heard, by Bailiff Thompson, who brought home the news.
Whittermead was divided in its opinion. Some laying the blame wholly on Richard Jenniker; others deeming that Mr and Mrs Jenniker deserved at least a share of it. Had less harshness and some kind persuasion been extended to him, they argued, Dick would have turned out better. But conflicting opinions amounted to nothing: what was done, was done.
Mr Jenniker would not buy him off. The most persistent of all his urgers, that he should do so, was Dr Robertson, who may have had a certain flogging pricking his conscience. Mr Jenniker totally refused, and at length declined to listen. “Dick had enlisted of his own accord, and Dick should abide by it,” was all he said. So poor Dick was left to his fate.
Short work is sometimes made of it, I would have you to know, young gentlemen, when a boy takes the extreme step that Jenniker had just taken. On the very morning that his loss was discovered, at the very hour that Harry Vane was relating to the doctor the fact of his not having gone home, Jenniker was in the guard’s box of a railway train, speeding to Portsmouth. The rest of the simple recruits were with him, all that the crafty sergeant, by any plausibility of wile and persuasion, had been able to enlist. The regiment to which they had sold themselves was collected at Portsmouth, under orders to embark for India. This news travelled to Whittermead and to the Manor Farm.
Others had done urging Mr Jenniker on the subject of his nephew: they had found it a hopeless task. Mildred pleaded still.
“Papa I papa!” she uttered, in much agitation, and the tears streamed down her gentle face; “pray buy Richard off! Do not let him go out in this way! He may never return. Buy him off! oh, buy him off!”
“It is no business of yours, Mildred, that you need concern yourself,” was the reply of Mr Jenniker, resolute in his obduracy.
“Think of his hard life!” she wailed. “I make no doubt it will be hard,” equably returned Mr Jenniker. “He should have thought of its hardships himself, before entering upon it. What people sow, that must they reap.”
Never was there a truer axiom. Take note of it, boys. Accordingly as you sow, so you will reap. Put good seed into the ground, and good fruit will come up, and bring a blessing with it. But, if you scatter the bad seed broadcast, it can but return upon you its own recompense. Kind brings forth kind.
CHAPTER VII.
MR GRUFF JONES NEXT.
JENNIKER’S escapade made great noise in the school. It left its impression behind it: and that gentleman was some way on his voyage to India with his regiment, before another syllable was heard from any one boy about “running away.” But the impressions stamped on the minds of schoolboys are effaceable as prints on the sea-side sand; and as the time wore on, old feelings began to resume their tendency. The next to rebel was Mr Gruff Jones.
Not to run away. Mr Gruff possessed too much innate conscientiousness to attempt that; and he was besides of a timid temperament. But he did what Jenniker had once advised him to do: he worried his father.
“Let me go to sea! I can’t stop on land. I shall never be happy unless I go to sea.” And this was the burden of his song night and day. Squire Jones grew weary. What was more, he grew provoked and angry. Constant dropping will wear away a stone; and young Mr Gruff’s everlasting refrain wore away the patience of Squire Jones.
“Very well, young gentleman,” said the squire, one evening when Gruff was pitching it rather strongly. “We’ll have an end to this. I know of a trading vessel that’s going to the Mauritius, three hundred and thirty tons burthen, and I’ll bind you apprentice to the captain.”
Gruff was in an ecstasy. Little cared he, in his blind wilfulness, how he got to sea, provided he did get there. Apprentice or not apprentice; a trading lugger or a fine frigate; before the mast, or a gentleman middy; it all seemed one to Gruff. His experience had to come.
“Is it true, papa?” gasped Gruff, in an agony of dread lest the squire was only joking. “Will you really let me go?”
“Don’t I tell you so?” returned Squire Jones. “The opportunity is offered me of placing an apprentice on board that ship, and I’ll place you. As you will go, you shall go.”
Gruff, scarcely knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels, tore off to find his friends, the boys of his own desk. They were at their even
ing work in the school, and Gruff astonished them by bursting into the room like a lunatic, and flinging his cap into the air.
“I am going at last!” he cried, when he could speak for want of breath and excitement. “The squire has come to his senses.”
“Going where?” they asked. “To sea?”
Gruff nodded, nodded fifty times; Gruff made pirouettes over the desks; Gruff executed a wild dance round the room on his legs and head. The school came to the conclusion, that if Squire Jones had come to his senses, his son had undoubtedly lost his. That day two months the unhappy Gruff would have performed unheard-of penance to be on land again; for he had then found out what a sea life was, to his miserable cost. But that is neither here nor there. At present, seeing it only in prospective, it was all couleur de rose to Gruff.
“I say, Gruff, tell us how you are going. In the navy?”
“Navy be hanged! I am too old. How can I go in that when I have never been entered? The squire knows of a trading vessel bound for the Mauritius, and he says he will put me apprentice to the captain.”
One of the boys gave a shrill whistle. It was Gripper, who was not infected with the sea mania. Gripper knew somewhat more of ships, and the work of those who had to man them, than most of the boys did. “Is she a big vessel, Gruff?” asked he.
“Three hundred and thirty tons.”
Gripper turned up his nose. “Oh! a dirty little trading sloop! I’ll tell you what, Gruff: if the squire’s not doing this to give you a sickener, call me a Dutchman.”
“You are an idiot, Gripper!” retorted Gruff, strongly resenting the insinuation.
“Thank you. You’ll see. He is, as sure as sure can be. He is putting you in her to give you a benefit — and bring you to your senses.”
“I think so too,” said Harry Vane. “Squire Jones has been so averse to the sea for Gruff all along.”
“It won’t do it, then!” cried Mr Gruff in a heat. “You are an idiot too, Vane. I’d as soon go in a trading sloop as I’d go in the biggest naval ship afloat.”
“Seven decks and no bottom,” put in Gripper.
“You are a jackass, Gripper!” returned Gruff, improving upon his compliments and chafing considerably. “What does it matter how you go to sea, provided you do go? The struggle is to get there at all, when all one’s folks are set dead against it.”
“Yes, that’s it,” acquiesced a voice hitherto silent. It was that of William Allair. He sat with his face eagerly raised, his cheeks hectic, his eyes bright. To hear that Gruff Jones was actually going, seemed to speak of hope for himself.
“Look here, Gruff,” resumed Gripper, who had seen a good deal of ships at sea and in harbour; the reason possibly why the sea fever had not infected him. “Joking apart, they are wretched, comfortless things, those trading vessels. All hands have to work, and work alike. Nine times out of ten they are imperfectly manned.”
“I don’t care how much I work.”
“You have never tried work yet.”
“And what do you mean by ‘imperfectly manned?’” pursued Gruff, resentfully.
“Why, suppose the complement of men necessary to work a vessel is, say, fifteen,” explained Gripper; “she’ll put to sea with only ten or so, boys included. A nice treat that, for the lot! They have to be at work pretty well night and day.”
“What fun!” cried Gruff. “I shall like it. Arms were made for work.”
“Gripper’s saying it out of envy, Gruff,” interposed William Allair. “Because he is not going himself.”
“It’s nothing else,” assented Gruff.
Gripper laughed good-humouredly. “I wouldn’t make the sea my profession if you paid me in gold to do it. Vane knows I would not. Nobody ever heard me speak up for the sea. If Gruff goes, he’ll wish himself back again. Speak the truth, Vane: won’t he have a sickener?”
“It’s awfully hard work on some of those trading ships,” acknowledged Harry Vane. “Sometimes, too, the treatment’s bad. It depends a good deal upon the mate you get.”
“The captain, you mean, Vane,” said Allair.
“I mean the mate. He has more to do with the apprentice boys than the captain has. You will be sure to have enough of it, Gruff, any way.”
“That’s first-rate, Vane! you talking of hard work at sea,” spoke up an incredulous boy: and vastly incredulous they all were, as to there being anything of consequence to do on board a ship. “You have said, hundreds of times, that you did not care what amount of work you should have to do at sea.”
“I don’t,” said Harry Vane. “Work does not come amiss to me, be it ever so laborious. Gruff’s made of different metal. So is Allair.”
“What’s that?” cried William, in a fiery tone.
“So you are,” said Gripper. “Vane’s right. You are no more fit to go to sea than a girl. As to Gruff, he is the eldest son, and drops into a fortune by inheritance. If ever some of us are to count enough fortune to get bread and cheese, we must work for it. But I’d not work at sea. Some of these days, when Gruff has to heave at the winch, and his arms are aching like mad, and the sweat’s pouring off him in bucketfuls, and he knows by experience that it’s nothing but work, work, work, from the vessel’s starting from one port till she puts into another — a species of Ixion’s wheel, you know, which he must be always turning — then he’ll say to himself, ‘What a fool I was to come here, when I might be at home enjoying myself, and doing nothing!’”
“That’s true,” nodded Harry Vane.
The boys stared in surprise, Gruff Jones in particular. “What has come to you, Vane?” he asked. “You are always preaching up for the sea. Why turn against it now? I’d never be a turncoat!”
“No fear of my turning against it,” replied Harry Vane. “It is a glorious life, better than any other in the world, and I hope it will be mine. But I am not such a daft as to hug myself with the idea that there’ll be nothing to do. You were talking about traders: well, I know that at sea the work’s never done in them. I shall like the life, even if I go in a trader. But some of you would not.”
“That’s all brag,” cried Gruff Jones. “We shall like it as well as you. Why shouldn’t we?”
Harry Vane bent over his exercise again. Where was the use of talking further?
“I say, Gripper, what’s the winch for?” resumed Gruff. “What do they want with a winch on board ship?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, if you go in a trader,” returned Gripper, with a laugh.
“If I go!” ironically retorted Gruff. “As if anything should stop me now!”
“Everybody’s not obliged to go in a trader,” said William Allair.
“Not obliged; true,” assented Gripper. “Jones has just told us he’s going in one; and all you fellows who intend running away can’t expect anything else. It’s only those nasty dirty traders who look at runaway chaps. But, go in any ship you will, you’ll find the work enough.”
“Keep your ridicule to yourself, Gripper,” advised Gruff Jones. “I shall go, in spite of the work.”
There is no one thing that boys, having had no experience of a sea life, are, as a rule, so incredulous about, as that there is much work to be done at sea. “What’s the work at sea?” said Gruff, scornfully and incredulously. “I shall go, in spite of the work.”
And accordingly young Mr Gruff, the squire in embryo, did go. Preliminaries were arranged, the outfit was provided, and the gentleman was conducted by his father on board the trading sloop, spoken of, and commenced his voyage to the Mauritius.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OFFICIAL LETTER.
ON the day that Squire Jones returned to Whittermead, from seeing his son on board, he encountered Mr Allair.
“So you are back, squire,” cried Mr Allair, as he shook hands. “And is Hugh actually off?”
“Actually and truly,” replied Squire Jones. “I’d have put him downright before the mast, but for the bad companionship of the sailors. As it is, I expect he will get too muc
h of that. But there’s no help for it. He must take his chance.”
“I suppose he must.”
“He’ll have to labour with the lowest of them. It is the only way to deal with a boy who gets the sea fever into him: let him go, and work it out. Hugh has no more genuine liking or adaptation for that sort of life than I have. And that he will find out before he is much older.”
“He will come back thankful enough to settle down into a quiet country life,” remarked Mr Allair.
“Just so; that’s why I have sent him. I can’t think what possesses the boys to suffer these wild notions to enter their heads,” exclaimed Squire Jones, in a tone of vexation. “There’s your son; lie’s another, I hear.”
“It arises partly from indolence, partly from a love of roving inherent in some boys, chiefly from a mistaken notion of a sea life. At least, I set it down to those causes,” continued Mr Allair. “They see a pretty little skiff gliding on the calm waters of a lake — bask in her themselves, possibly, in the pleasant inertness of a summer’s day; and they pick up their notion of life on board ship from that, assuming that the one must be as easy and delightful as the other. A more agreeable mode of spending their time, they think, than working with the hands or the brain, on land.”
“That is precisely it,” remarked the squire. “Any way, I expect Master Hugh will get enough of it before he is back.”
Nothing occurred after this for some little time, worthy of being recorded. The school had dispersed for the summer holidays, always held late at Dr Robertson’s, and the boys were enjoying them, while Master Gruff Jones was enjoying the benefit of his chosen voyage.
One morning Mr and Mrs Vane were seated at breakfast, Caroline and Harry with them. Frederick was not back yet: apparently he was finding a London life agreeable.
A servant came in with the letters. There were two: both of them for Mr Vane. One of them he opened in some hurry, glanced over its contents, and put it away in his pocket.