Facing Death; Or, The Hero of the Vaughan Pit: A Tale of the Coal Mines

by G. A. Henty

  CHAPTER XVI.

  A NEW LIFE.

  Jack Simpson did not forget the advice Mr. Merton had given him aboutclothes, and a fortnight after his master had gone to Birmingham Jackwent over on Saturday afternoon, and his kind friend accompanied him toone of the leading tailors there, and he was measured for two suits ofclothes. He went to other shops and bought such articles as Mr. Mertonrecommended--hats, gloves, boots, &c. Mr. Merton smiled to himself atthe grave attention which Jack paid to all he said upon the subject; butJack was always earnest in all he undertook, and he had quiteappreciated what his friend had told him as to the advantage of beingdressed so as to excite no attention upon the part of those whom hewould meet at Mr. Merton's.

  The following Saturday he went over again, and went again to thetailor's to try his things on.

  "Do you want a dress suit, sir?" the foreman asked with suppressedmerriment.

  "What is a dress suit?" Jack said simply. "I am ignorant about thesematters."

  "A dress suit," the foreman said, struck with the young fellow's freedomfrom all sort of pretence or assumption, "is the dress gentlemen wear ofan evening at dinner parties or other gatherings. This is it," and heshowed Jack an engraving.

  Jack looked at it--he had never seen anyone so attired.

  "He looks very affected," he said.

  "Oh, that is the fault of the artist," the foreman answered. "Gentlemenlook just as natural in these clothes as in any other. They are quitesimple, you see--all black, with open vest, white shirt, white tie andgloves, and patent leather boots."

  A quiet smile stole over Jack's face. Humour was by no means a strongpoint in his character, but he was not altogether deficient in it.

  "I had better have them," he said; "it would look strange, I suppose,not to be dressed so when others are?"

  "It would be a little marked in the event of a dinner or evening party,"the foreman answered, and so Jack gave the order.

  It was two weeks later before he paid his first visit to Mr. Merton; forthe pretty little house which the latter had taken a mile out of thetown had been in the hands of the workmen and furnishers, Mr. Mertonhaving drawn on his little capital to decorate and fit up the house, soas to be a pretty home for his daughter.

  It was, indeed, a larger house than, from the mere salary attached tohis post, he could be able to afford, but he reckoned upon considerablyincreasing this by preparing young men for the university, and he waswise enough to know that a good establishment and a liberal table govery far in establishing and widening a connection, and in renderingpeople sensible to a man's merits, either in business or otherwise.

  As Mr. Merton, M.A., late of St. John's, Cambridge, and third wranglerof his year, he had already been received with great cordiality by hiscolleagues, and at their houses had made the acquaintance of many of thebest, if not the wealthiest men in Birmingham, for at Birmingham theterms were by no means more synonymous than they are elsewhere.

  Jack had ordered his clothes to be sent to a small hotel near therailway station, and had arranged with the landlord that his portmanteaushould be kept there, and a room be placed at his service on Saturdayafternoon and Monday morning once a month for him to change his things.He had walked with Mr. Merton and seen the house, and had determinedthat he would always change before going there on a Saturday, in orderto avoid comments by servants and others who might be visiting them.

  In thus acting Jack had no personal thoughts in the matter; much as healways shrank from being put forward as being in any way different fromothers, he had otherwise no self-consciousness whatever. No lad on thepits thought less of his personal appearance or attire, and his friendNelly had many times taken him to task for his indifference in thisrespect. Mr. Merton perceived advantages in Jack's position in life notbeing generally known, and Jack at once fell into the arrangement, andcarried it out, as described, to the best of his ability. But even hecould not help seeing, when he had attired himself for his first visitto Mr. Merton's house, how complete had been the change in hisappearance.

  "Who would have thought that just a little difference in the make of acoat would have made such an alteration in one's look?" he said tohimself. "I feel different altogether; but that is nonsense, except thatthese boots are so much lighter than mine, that it seems as if I were inmy stockings. Well, I suppose I shall soon be accustomed to it."

  Packing a black coat and a few other articles in a hand-bag, and lockingup the clothes he had taken off in his portmanteau, Jack started for Mr.Merton's. He was dressed in a well-fitting suit of dark tweed, with aclaret-coloured neckerchief with plain gold scarf-ring. Jack's life ofexercise had given him the free use of his limbs--he walked erect, andhis head was well set back on his shoulders; altogether, with his crispshort waving hair, his good-humoured but resolute face, and hissteadfast look, he was, although not handsome, yet a verypleasant-looking young fellow.

  He soon forgot the fact of his new clothes, except that he was consciousof walking with a lightness and elasticity strange to him, and in halfan hour rang at the visitors' bell of Mr. Merton's villa.

  "A visitor, papa," said Alice, who was sitting near the window of thedrawing-room. "How tiresome, just as we were expecting Jack Simpson. Itis a gentleman. Why, papa!" and she clapped her hands, "it is Jackhimself. I did not know him at first, he looks like a gentleman."

  "He is a gentleman," Mr. Merton said; "a true gentleman in thought,feeling, and speech, and will soon adapt himself to the society he willmeet here. Do not remark upon his dress unless he says something aboutit himself."

  "Oh, papa, I should not think of such a thing. I am not so thoughtlessas that."

  The door was opened and Jack was shown in.

  "How are you, Jack? I am glad to see you."

  "Thank you, sir, I am always well," Jack said. Then turning to MissMerton he asked her how she liked Birmingham. He had seen her oftensince the time when he first met her at the commencement of the strike,as he had helped them in their preparations for removing fromStokebridge, and had entirely got over the embarrassment which he hadfelt on the first evening spent there.

  After talking for a few minutes, Jack said gravely to Mr. Merton, "Ihope that these clothes will do, Mr. Merton?"

  "Excellently well, Jack," he answered smiling; "they have made just thedifference I expected; my daughter hardly knew you when you rang at thebell."

  "I hardly knew myself when I saw myself in a glass," Jack said. "Now, onwhat principle do you explain the fact that a slight alteration in thecutting and sewing together of pieces of cloth should make such adifference?"

  "I do not know that I ever gave the philosophy of the question amoment's thought, Jack," said Mr. Merton smiling. "I can only explain itby the remark that the better cut clothes set off the natural curve ofthe neck, shoulders, and figure generally, and in the second place,being associated in our minds with the peculiar garb worn by gentlemen,they give what, for want of a better word, I may call style. A highblack hat is the ugliest, most shapeless, and most unnatural articleever invented, but still a high hat, good and of the shape in vogue,certainly has a more gentlemanly effect, to use a word I hate, than anyother. And now, my boy, you I know dined early, so did we. We shall havetea at seven, so we have three hours for work, and there are nearly sixweeks' arrears, so do not let us waste any more time."

  After this first visit Jack went out regularly once every four weeks. Hefell very naturally into the ways of the house, and although his manneroften amused Alice Merton greatly, and caused even her father to smile,he was never awkward or boorish.

  As Alice came to know him more thoroughly, and their conversationsceased to be of a formal character, she surprised and sometimes quitepuzzled him. The girl was full of fun and had a keen sense of humour,and her playful attacks upon his earnestness, her light way of parryingthe problems which Jack, ever on the alert for information, wasconstantly putting, and the cheerful tone which her talk imparted to thegeneral conversation when she was present, were all wholly new to the
lad. Often he did not know whether she was in earnest or not, and wassometimes so overwhelmed by her light attacks as to be unable to answer.

  Mr. Merton looked on, amused at their wordy conflicts; he knew thatnothing does a boy so much good and so softens his manner as friendlyintercourse with a well-read girl of about his own age, and undoubtedlyAlice did almost as much towards preparing Jack's manner for his futurecareer as her father had done towards preparing his mind.

  As time went on Jack often met Mr. Merton's colleagues, and othergentlemen who came in in the evening. He was always introduced as "myyoung friend Simpson," with the aside, "a remarkably clever youngfellow," and most of those who met him supposed him to be a pupil of theprofessor's.

  Mr. Merton had, within a few months of his arrival at Birmingham, fiveor six young men to prepare for Cambridge. None of them resided in thehouse, but after Jack had become thoroughly accustomed to the position,Mr. Merton invited them, as well as a party of ladies and gentlemen, tothe house on one of Jack's Saturday evenings.

  Jack, upon hearing that a number of friends were coming in the evening,made an excuse to go into the town, and took his black bag with him.

  Alice had already wondered over the matter.

  "They will all be in dress, papa. Jack will feel awkward among them."

  "He is only eighteen, my dear, and it will not matter his not being inevening dress. Jack will not feel awkward."

  Alice, was, however, very pleased as well as surprised when, upon comingdown dressed into the drawing-room, she found him in full evening dresschatting quietly with her father and two newly arrived guests. Jackwould not have been awkward, but he would certainly have beenuncomfortable had he not been dressed as were the others, for of allthings he hated being different to other people.

  He looked at Alice in a pretty pink muslin dress of fashionable makewith a surprise as great as that with which she had glanced at him, forhe had never before seen a lady in full evening dress.

  Presently he said to her quietly, "I know I never say the right thing,Miss Merton, and I daresay it is quite wrong for me to express anypersonal opinions, but you do look--"

  "No, Jack; that is quite the wrong thing to say. You may say, MissMerton, your dress is a most becoming one, although even that you couldnot be allowed to say except to some one with whom you are veryintimate. There are as many various shades of compliment as there are ofintimacy. A brother may say to a sister, You look stunningto-night--that is a very slang word, Jack--and she will like it. Astranger or a new acquaintance may not say a word which would show thathe observes a lady is not attired in a black walking dress."

  "And what is the exact degree of intimacy in which one may say as youdenoted, 'Miss Merton, your dress is a most becoming one?'"

  "I should say," the girl said gravely, "it might be used by a cousin orby an old gentleman, a friend of the family."

  Then with a laugh she went off to receive the guests, now beginning toarrive in earnest.

  After this Mr. Merton made a point of having an "at home" every fourthSaturday, and these soon became known as among the most pleasant andsociable gatherings in the literary and scientific world of Birmingham.

  So young Jack Simpson led a dual life, spending twenty-six days of eachmonth as a pit lad, speaking a dialect nearly as broad as that of hisfellows, and two as a quiet and unobtrusive young student in thepleasant home of Mr. Merton.

  Before a year had passed the one life seemed as natural to him as theother. Even with his friends he kept them separate, seldom speaking ofStokebridge when at Birmingham, save to answer Mr. Merton's questions asto old pupils; and giving accounts, which to Nelly Hardy appearedridiculously meagre, of his Birmingham experience to his friends athome.

  This was not from any desire to be reticent, but simply because thedetails appeared to him to be altogether uninteresting to his friends.

  "You need not trouble to tell me any more, Jack," Nelly Hardy saidindignantly. "I know it all by heart. You worked three hours with Mr.Merton; dinner at six; some people came at eight, no one in particular;they talked, and there was some playing on the piano; they went away attwelve. Next morning after breakfast you went to church, had dinner attwo, took a walk afterwards, had tea at half-past six, supper at nine,then to bed. I won't ask you any more questions, Jack; if anything outof the way takes place you will tell me, no doubt."