“Why don’t you be quiet, Bill?” I said.
“Quiet, when you get out on larks?”
“You won’t let me speak.”
“Let you speak! No, I won’t. Here have I been worried to death about you, thinking all the chaps had got on, and that the van was upset, and all the time it was your games.”
“We went strolling about the forest, Bill,” I said, as I removed my stockings and bathed my sore feet, “and had to walk ever so much of the way home, and that’s what made me so late.”
He snatched up my boots from where I had set them, and found that they were covered with dust.
“But you said you’d been sleeping in the hay,” he said stubbornly.
“Yes; on the top of a hay-cart, coming up to Whitechapel, and I went to sleep.”
Revitts began rubbing his ear in a puzzled way; and then, as if seized by a bright idea, he took out his notebook and pencil.
“Now look here,” he said, making believe to take down my words and shaking his pencil at me in a magisterial way. “Why should you have to walk nearly all the way home, because you went for a stroll in the woods with that there Hallett?”
This last with a contemptuous emphasis on the name of my companion.
“Why, I told you, Bill. When we got back to the inn the last van had gone.”
“There; now, you’re shuffling,” he said. “You never said a word about the van being gone.”
“Didn’t I, Bill? Well, I meant to say so. Mr Hallett thought it would be much nicer to go for a walk in the woods than to sit in that hot room where the men were drinking and smoking, so we did, only we stopped too long.”
Revitts shut his pocket-book with a snap, scratched his head with the end of his pencil, wetted the point between his lips, and had another scratch; then pushed the pencil into the loop at the side, replaced the book in his breast, and buttoned it up tight, as he stood staring hard at me. Then he coughed behind his hand, rubbed his ear again, unbuttoned his coat, buttoned it up tightly, cleared his throat again, and then said:
“Well, it was circumstantial evidence, cert’nly.”
“It’s too bad, Bill,” I said, in an injured tone; “you had no business to doubt me.”
“More I hadn’t, old lad,” he replied in a deprecating way. “But you know, Ant’ny, I had been a-sitting here wait-wait-waiting and thinking all sorts o’ things.”
“Why didn’t you go to bed?”
“I’d been thinking, old lad, that being a holiday, you might be hungry, and look here.”
He opened the little cupboard and took out a raised pork pie and a bottle of pale ale.
“I’d got the cloth laid and the knives and forks out ready, but I got in such a wax about one o’clock that I snatched ’em all off and cleared ’em away.”
“And why did you get in a wax, Bill?” I said. “You ought to have known me better.”
“So I ought, old lad,” he said penitently; “but I got thinking you’d chucked me over, and was out on larks with that there Hallett; and it ain’t nice to be chucked over for a chap like that, specially when you seem to belong to me. You’ll shake hands, won’t you, Tony?”
“Of course I will.”
“And I won’t doubt you another time; let’s have the pie, after all.”
We did; and in a dozen ways the good fellow strove to show me his sorrow for his past doubts, picking me out the best bits of the pie, foaming up my glass with the ale, and when I expressed my fears of not being awake in time for the office, he promised to call me; and though he never owned to it, I have good reason for believing that he sat up writing out corrections in an old dictation lesson, calling me in excellent time, and having the breakfast all ready upon the table.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Mr Hallett at Home
Punctual to the appointed time, I rang the topmost of four bells on the doorpost of one of the old-fashioned red-brick houses in Great Ormond Street, and a few minutes after it was opened by Mr Hallett, whose face lit up as he offered me his hand.
“That’s right, Antony!” he exclaimed; “now we’ll go upstairs and see the ladies, and then you and I will have a walk till dinner-time.”
I followed him up the well-worn, uncarpeted stairs to the second floor, where he introduced me to his mother, a stern, pale, careworn-looking woman in a widow’s cap, half sitting, half reclining in a large easy-chair.
“How do you do?” she said, wearily, as she gazed at me through her half-closed eyes. “You are Stephen’s friend. I am glad to see you; but you are very young,” she added in an ill-used tone.
“Not a very serious failing, mother dear,” said Mr Hallett cheerfully.
“No,” said Mrs Hallett, “no. I am sorry we have not a better place to receive him in.”
“Tut – tut, dear,” said Mr Hallett. “Antony Grace comes to see us, not our rooms or our furniture.”
I had already glanced round the large, old-fashioned room, which was shabbily furnished, but scrupulously clean, while everything was in good taste, and I hastened to say something about how glad I was to come.
“Yes,” said Mrs Hallett wearily; “it is very polite and nice of you to say so, but it is not the home I expected for my old age.”
“My mother is – ”
“You always used to call me mamma, Stephen,” said Mrs Hallett, with the tears in her eyes.
“Did I love you any more tenderly then, dear?” he said, bending over her and kissing her wrinkled forehead with reverent affection, and then placing his lips upon her hand.
“No, Stephen, no,” she cried, bursting into a fit of sobbing; “but – but we might cling to some of our old respectability, even if you will persist in being a workman and lowering our family by wearing aprons like a common man.”
“There, there, dear, don’t fret,” he said cheerfully. “You are in pain this morning. I am going for a walk with Antony Grace, and we’ll bring you back a bunch of flowers.”
“No, no, don’t – pray don’t, Stephen,” said Mrs Hallett querulously; “you cannot afford it, and it only puts me in mind of happier days, when we had our own garden, and I was so fond of my conservatory. You remember the camellias?”
“Yes, yes, dear,” he said, passing his arm round her; “and some day you shall have your conservatory again.”
“Never, Stephen – never, while you are so obstinate.”
“Come, come, dear,” he said, kissing her again; “let me put your pillow a little more easy, and we won’t talk of the past; it cannot interest Antony Grace. Where has Linny hidden herself?”
“I suppose she is seeing after the cooking,” said Mrs Hallett querulously. “We have no servants now, Mr Grace.”
“No, Antony,” said Mr Hallett, laughing; and I could not help contrasting the man I saw before me – so bright, airy, and tender in his ways – with the stern, rather grim-looking workman of the office. “No servants; I clean my own boots and help with the cooking, too. It is inconvenient, for my dear mother here is a great invalid.”
“Helpless for seventeen years, Mr Grace,” said the poor woman, looking at me piteously. “We used to have a carriage, but we have none now. Stephen is very kind to me, only he will be so thoughtless; and he is so wanting in ambition, clever as he is.”
“There, dear, we won’t talk about that now,” said Mr Hallett. “Come Antony; my sister will not show herself, so we’ll find her blooming in flour, or carving potato rings, or handling a truncheon bigger than that of your friend Mr Revitts as she makes the paste. Oh, here she is!”
A door opened as he spoke, and I quite started as a bright, pretty girl entered, and came forward smiling pleasantly to shake hands. She seemed to bring sunshine into the room, and, damped as I was by Mrs Hallett’s reception and the prospect of a dull, cheerless day, the coming of Miss Hallett seemed quite to change the state of affairs.
“I am very glad to see you,” she said, showing her little white teeth. “Stephen has so often talked about you, and said he would bring you home.”
“Ah, me, yes, home!” sighed Mrs Hallett, glancing round the shabby apartment.
Not that it seemed shabby any longer to me, for Linny, in her tight, well-fitting, plain holland dress, white collar and cuffs, and with her long golden-brown, naturally curling hair, seemed to me to radiate brightness all around. For she certainly was very pretty, and her large, well-shaded eyes seemed to flash with animation as she spoke.
“Antony Grace and I are going for a walk, Linny, and we shall come back hungry as hunters. Don’t make any mistake in the cooking.”
She nodded and laughed, and her fair curls glistened in the light, while Mrs Hallett sighed again; and it struck me that she was about to say something in disparagement of the dinner, but she did not speak.
“Come along then, Antony,” said Mr Hallett; and, after kissing the invalid, he led the way down stairs, and we strolled off towards Regent’s Park.
As we left the house, the shadow seemed to come down again over Mr Hallett’s face, and from that time I noticed that he seemed to lead a double life – one in which he was bright and merry, almost playful, before his mother and sister; the other, a life of stern, fixed purpose, in which his soul was bent upon some pursuit.
He shook off his gloom, though, directly, and we had a good walk, during which he strove hard to make himself a pleasant companion, chatted to me of myself, hoped that I made use of my spare time, and read or studied in some way, promising to help me with my Latin if I would go on.
“It wants an effort, Antony,” he said; “especially after a hard day’s work at the office.”
“Yes,” I said, with a sigh; “I do feel tired of reading when I get back.”
“Never mind,” he said; “make an effort and do something. It is only the first start. You’ll soon grow interested in what you are doing; and recollect this, my boy, learning is a treasure that no one can take away.”
“Yes, my father used to say so, Mr Hallett,” I said thoughtfully, as I glanced sidewise at my companion’s face as we lay on the turf close by the water.
“What an imitation of the country this is, Antony!” he said, with a sigh. “I love the country. I could live there always.”
“Yes, I don’t like London, Mr Hallett,” I said; “but – but do you study anything in your spare hours?”
He turned round upon me sharply, and his eyes seemed to look me through and through.
“Did my mother say anything to you?” he exclaimed. “Oh no! of course not – you were not alone. Yes, Antony, I do study something – a great deal – in my spare hours.”
“Oh yes, of course. I know you do, Mr Hallett,” I cried. “I’ve seen you take out your pocket-book and draw and make calculations.”
He looked at me again in a curious, suspicious way that set me wondering, and then, jumping up:
“Come, Antony,” he cried, with a forced laugh, “it is time we were off. Linny will be wanting to go to church, and we shall be punished if we are late for dinner.”
He chatted merrily all the way back, and I had no opportunity of asking him what he studied. Dinner was waiting, and a very pleasant simple meal it was, only that Mrs Hallett would sprinkle everything with tears. I noticed that really, as well as metaphorically, she dropped a few into her glass of beer, a few more into the gravy, of which she had the best share, soaked her bread with others, and still had a few left to drop into her portion of red-currant and raspberry tart. Nothing was nice, poor woman – nothing was comfortable; and while Linny took her complaints with a pettish indifference, Mr Hallett left his place from time to time, to attend to her at her little table in front of her easy-chair, waiting upon her with the tenderness of a woman, smoothing back her hair, and more than once kissing her on the forehead before resuming his place.
“No, Stephen,” she said, several times; “I have no appetite – nothing tempts me now.”
He bent over and whispered to her, evidently in a tender, endearing way, but her tears only flowed the faster, and she shook her head despondently.
“Cheese, Stephen?” she said in her peevish way, towards the end of the repast. “You know my digestion is such that it will not bear cheese. At least,” she said, “you would have known it if you had had ambition enough to follow your father’s profession.”
“Ah! I ought to have known better, dear,” he said, smiling pleasantly; “but doctors starve in London, mother. There are too many as it is.”
“Yes, of course, of course,” said the poor woman tearfully; “my advice is worthless, I suppose.”
“No, no, dear, it is not,” said Mr Hallett, getting up and laying his hand upon that of the invalid. “Come, let me take your plate. We’ll have the things away directly, and I’ll read to you till tea-time, if Antony won’t mind.”
“Is Linny going out this afternoon?” said Mrs Hallett querulously.
“Yes, mamma, and I shall be late,” said Linny, colouring, apparently with vexation, as she glanced at me, making me feel guilty, and the cause of her disappointment.
“We won’t keep you, Linny,” exclaimed Hallett; “go and get ready. Antony, you will not mind, will you? My sister likes to go to church of an afternoon; it is nicer for her than the evening.”
“Oh no, I won’t mind,” I said eagerly.
“All right, then; be off, Linny. Antony and I will soon clear away the pie – eh, Antony?”
I laughed and coloured at this double entendre, which Mrs Hallett did not comprehend, for as Linny with a grateful look hurried out of the room, the invalid exclaimed fretfully:
“I wish you would say tart, Stephen, my son. If you will persist in working as a mechanic, and wasting your time in fruitless schemes – ”
“Hush, mother!” said Mr Hallett, with an uneasy glance at me.
“Yes, my son; but I cannot bear you to forget all our old genteel ways. We may be poor, but we can still be respectable.”
“Yes, yes; of course, dear,” said Mr Hallett nastily, as he saw that his mother was about to shed tears. “Come, Antony, let’s be waiters.”
I jumped up to assist him, just as Linny, looking very rosy and pretty in her bonnet and jacket, hurried out of a side room, and kissing her mother, and nodding to us, hastened downstairs.
“Ah?” said Mrs Hallett, with another sigh, “we ought not to be reduced to that.”
“To what, dear?” said Mr Hallett, as he busily removed the dinner things.
“Letting that young and innocent girl go about the streets alone without a protector, offering herself as a prey to every designing wretch who casts his eyes upon her fresh, fair face.”
“My dear mother,” said Mr Hallett, laughing, “London is not quite such a sink of iniquity as you suppose, and you have tutored Linny too well for there to be any occasion for fear. There, come, lean back and rest till we have done, and then I will read you one of your favourites.”
Mrs Hallett allowed herself to be gently pressed back in her seat, and lay there still complaining that a son of hers should have to stoop, and also ask his visitor to stoop, to such a degrading toil.
“Oh, Antony doesn’t mind, dear,” he said cheerfully. “We do worse things than this at the office – eh, Antony?”
“That we do, Mr Hallett,” I cried, laughing.
“Yes,” said Mrs Hallett, “at the office. Ah, well, I suppose it is of no use to complain.”
She complained all the same, at everything, while Mr Hallett bore it with a most patient manner that set me wondering. He was never once irritable, but took every murmur in a quiet, resigned way, evidently excusing it on the score of his mother’s sufferings.
Then he got out a book to read to her, but it would not do. Then another and another one, supposed to be her favourite authors; but nothing would do but Dodd’s “Thoughts in Prison,” and the reading of this cheerful volume went on till Linny came back, as I noticed, looking hot and flushed, as if she had been hurrying; and she glanced, as I thought, suspiciously at me, her brother not raising his eyes from his reading.
Then followed tea, and a walk with Mr Hallett, and after that supper, when he walked part of the way home with me.
“Good-night, Antony,” he said. “I hope you have not found your visit too gloomy an one to care to come again.”
“Will you ask me again?” I said eagerly.
“To be sure. My poor mother is a little fretful, as you saw; but she has been an invalid now these seventeen years, and she misses some of the comforts of the past. Good-night, my boy.”
“Good-night, Mr Hallett;” and we parted – he to walk slowly away, bent of head and serious, and I to begin thinking of his unwearying patience and devotion to his invalid mother: after which I recalled a great deal about Linny Hallett, and how pretty and petulant she seemed, wondering at the same time that neither mother nor brother took any notice of her flushed and excited look as she came in from church.
“Hullo! got back, then?” said Mr Revitts, rather grumpily, as I entered the room. “Had a pleasant day?”
“Oh yes, Bill, very!” I exclaimed.
“Oh yes! It’s all very fine, though, and it’ll be all Hallett soon. But you have got back in decent time. Well, I’m tired, and I’m off to bed.”
An example I followed directly after.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Linny’s Secret
My visit to Great Ormond Street was the first of many. In a short time the office labours with Mr Jabez Rowle were merely the mechanical rounds of the day; and, like Stephen Hallett, I seemed to live only for the evening, when I took my Latin exercises and translations to him, he coming down from the attic, where he worked at some project of his own, concerning which poor murmuring Mrs Hallett and her daughter were forbidden to speak, and then returning, after making the corrections.
I felt a good deal of curiosity about that attic, but Mr Hallett had told me to wait, and I waited patiently, having, young as I was, learned to school myself to some extent, and devoted myself to my studies, one thought being always before my mind, namely, that I had to pay Mr Blakeford all my father’s debt, for that I meant to do.
I had grown so much at home now at the Halletts’, that, finding the door open one evening, I walked straight in, knocked twice, and, receiving no answer, tried the door, which yielded to my touch, swung open, and I surprised Linny writing a letter, which, with a flaming face, she shuffled under the blotting-paper, and held up a warning finger, for Mrs Hallett was fast asleep.
“Where’s Mr Hallett?” I said.
“In Bluebeard’s chamber,” cried Linny playfully; “I’ll go and tell him you are here.”
I nodded, thinking how pretty she looked with her flushed cheeks, and she went softly to the door, but only to come back quickly.
“Antony, dear,” she whispered, laying her hand on my shoulder, “you like me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I replied.
“Did you see what I was doing?” she continued, busily readjusting my neckerchief, and then looking me full in the face.
“Yes; you were writing a letter.”
She nodded.
“Don’t tell Stephen,” she whispered.
“I was not going to.”
“He would want to know who I was writing to, and ask me such a lot of questions. You won’t tell him, will you?”
“No,” I said, “not unless he asks me, and then I must.”
“Oh, he won’t ask you,” she said merrily; “no fear. Now I’ll go and tell him.”
I sat down, wondering why she should want to keep things from her brother, and then watched Mrs Hallett, and lastly began thinking about the room upstairs – Old Bluebeard’s chamber, as Linny playfully called it – and tried to puzzle out what Stephen Hallett was making. That it was something to improve his position I was sure, and I had often thought of what hard work it must be, with so little time at his disposal, and Mrs Hallett so dead set against what she openly declared to be a folly, and miserable waste of money.
My musings were brought to an end by the reappearance of Linny, who came down holding her pretty little white hand to me.
“There, sir,” she said, “you may kiss my hand; and mind, you and I have a secret between us, and you are not to tell.”
I kissed her hand, and she nodded playfully.
“Now, sir, Bluebeard’s chamber is open to you, and you may go up.”
“Go? Upstairs?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, stroking her pretty curls; “the ogre said you were to go up.”
“Are you – sure?” I said.
“Sure? Of course. There, go along, or you’ll wake mamma.”
I went softly upstairs, with my heart beating with excitement, turning my head, though, as I closed the door, and seeing Linny drawing her letter hastily from under the blotting-paper.
It was before the shabby door of a sloping-roofed back attic that I paused for a moment to knock, Stephen Hallett’s clear, calm voice uttering a loud “Come in,” and I entered to find him seated before a large old deal kitchen table, upon which were strewed various tools, pieces of iron and brass, old clock-wheels, and spindles. At one end was fitted a vice, and at the other end what seemed to be the model of some machine – or rather, a long, flat set of clock-works, upon which Hallett was evidently engaged.
“Well, Antony,” he said, looking up at me in a weary, disappointed way; “glad to see you, my boy.”
“Why, you are busy,” I exclaimed, looking with all a boy’s curiosity at the model, or whatever it was before me.
“Yes,” he said, “I generally am. Well,” he added, after a pause, as he seemed to derive rest and amusement from my curiosity, “what do you think of my sweetheart?”
“Your sweetheart?”
“Yes, my sweetheart, of which poor mother is so jealous. There she is.”
“I – I don’t understand you,” I said.
“Well, the object of my worship – the thing on which I lavish so much time, thought, and money.”
“Is – is that it?” I said.
“That’s it,” he replied, enjoying my puzzled looks. “What do you think of it?”
I was silent for a few moments, gazing intently at the piece of mechanism before I said: “I don’t know.”
“Look here, Antony,” he said, rising and sweeping away some files and pieces of brass before seating himself upon the edge of the table: “do you know why we are friends?”
“No, but you have been very kind to me.”
“Have I?” he said. “Well, I have enjoyed it if I have. Antony, you are a gentleman’s son.” I nodded.
“And you know the meaning of the word honour?”
“I hope so.”
“You do, Antony; and it has given me great pleasure to find that, without assuming any fine airs, you have settled down steadily to your work amongst rough boys and ignorant prejudiced men without losing any of the teachings of your early life.” I looked at him, wondering what he was about to say. “Now look here, Antony, my boy,” he continued; “I am going to put implicit faith in your honour, merely warning you that if you talk about what you have seen here you may do me a very serious injury. You understand?”
“Oh yes, Mr Hallett,” I cried; “you may depend upon me.”
“I do, Antony,” he said; “so let’s have no more of that formal ‘Mr’ Let it be plain ‘yes’ and ‘no;’ and now, mind this, I am going to open out before you my secret. Henceforth it will be our secret. Is it to be so?”
“Yes – oh yes!” I exclaimed, flushing with pride that a man to whom I had looked up should have so much confidence in me.
“That’s settled, then,” he said, shaking hands with me. “And now, Antony, once more, what do you think of my model?”
I had a good look at the contrivance as it stood upon the table, while Hallett watched me curiously, and with no little interest. “It’s a puzzle,” I said at last. “Do you give it up?”
“No; not yet,” I said, leaning my elbows on the table. “Wheels, a brass table, a roller. Why, it looks something like a mangle.” I looked at him, and he nodded.
“But you wouldn’t try to make a mangle,” I said. “It might do to grind things in. May I move it?”
“No; it is out of gear. Well, do you give it up?” He rose as he spoke, and opened the attic window to let in the pleasant, cool night air, and then leaned against the sloping ceiling gazing back at me.
“I know what it would do for,” I said eagerly, as the idea came to me like a flash. “What?”
“Why, it is – it is,” I cried, clapping my hands, as he leaned towards me; “it’s a printing machine.”
“You’re right, Antony,” he said; “quite right. It is the model of a printing machine.”
“Yes,” I said, with all a boy’s excitement; “and it’s to do quickly what the men do now so slowly in the presses, sheet by sheet.”
“Yes, and in the present machines,” he said. “Have you noticed how the machines work?”
“Oh, yes!” I said; “often. The type runs backwards and forwards, and the paper is laid on by boys and is drawn round the big roller and comes out printed.”
