The Story of Antony Grace

“Nonsense, man. You told me only yesterday that you had done all your part, and that you meant to take a rest. I should like a run in the country.”

“At Miss Carr’s expense,” I said spitefully, “and charge it in her bill of costs as out of pocket.”

“Oh, that settles it,” he cried, jumping up and stamping about the room, roaring with laughter. “You must go for a run. Why, my dear boy, your liver’s out of order, or you, Antony Grace, the amiable, would never have made a speech like that. Look here, Tony, you have overdone it, and nothing will do you good but a week’s walking-tour.”

“Nonsense! Impossible!” I cried.

“Then you’ll break down like the governor did once. Ever since, he says that a man must oil his wheels and slacken his bands. Now you’ve got to oil your wheels and slacken your bands for a week. When shall we start?”

“I tell you it’s impossible,” I said testily.

“I tell you that, so far from its being impossible, if you don’t give in with a good grace – that isn’t meant for a pun – I’ll go and frighten Miss Carr, and see the governor, and tell him how bad you are.”

“Rubbish, Tom,” I cried. “Why, you couldn’t go and leave Linny Hallett for a week,” I added.

“Sneering, too,” he said, with a mock assumption of concern. “My dear Tony, this is getting serious. You are worse, far worse, than I thought for.”

“Don’t talk stuff,” I cried petulantly.

The result of it all was, that as he was pulling the string in the direction that pleased me, I began to yield, and a proposition he made carried the day.

“Look here, Tony,” he cried, as if in a fit of inspiration. “A walking-tour is the thing! you told me all about your tramp up when you ran away from Blakeford’s. Let’s go and tramp it all down again, over the very road.”

His words seemed to strike an electric chord, and I grasped eagerly at the plan. The result was, that after arranging with Hallett to keep an eye on the preparations, and after winning from him a declaration that he would not think I was forsaking him at a critical time, and also after receiving endorsement and persuasion from Miss Carr, I found myself one bright summer morning at Paddington, lightly equipped for the start, and together Tom Girtley and I strode along by the side of the dirty canal.

How familiar it all seemed again, as we walked on! There was the public-house where I had obtained the pot of beer for Jack’s father, when I had to part, from them at the end of my journey up; and there, too, directly after, was just such a boy in charge of a couple of bony horses, one of which had a shallow tin bucket hanging from the collar-hames, as they tugged at a long rope which kept splashing the water, and drew on Londonward one of the narrow red and yellow-painted canal-boats, covered in with just such a tarpaulin as that under which Jack and I had slept.

Resting on the tiller was just such another heavy, red-faced, dreamy man, staring straight before him as he sucked at a short black pipe, while forming herself into a living kit-cat picture was the woman who appeared to be his wife, her lower portions being down the square hatch that led into the cabin where the fire burned, whose smoke escaped through a little funnel.

I seemed to have dropped back into the boy again, and half wondered that I was not tired and footsore, and longing for a ride on one of the bony horses.

And so it was all through our journey down.

Every lock seemed familiar, and at more than one lock-house there were the same green apples and cakes and glasses of sticky sweets, side by side with two or three string-tied bottles of ginger-beer.

Two or three times over I found myself getting low-spirited as I dwelt upon my journey up, and thought of what a poor, miserable little fellow I was; but Tom was always in the highest of spirits, and they proved at last to be infectious.

We had pretty well reached the spot at last where I had first struck the river, when we stopped to see a canal-boat pass through the lock, the one where I had stared with wonder to see the great boat sink down some eight or nine feet to a lower level.

The boat, which was a very showily painted one, evidently quite new, was deeply laden, and in one place a part of a glistening black tarpaulin trailed in the water. As the boat’s progress was checked, and the lock-keeper came out, the short, thick-set man who had been at the tiller shouted something, and a round-faced girl of about twenty, with a bright-coloured cotton handkerchief pinned over her shoulders, came up the hatch, and took the man’s place, while he douched forward to alter the tarpaulin where it trailed.

He was quite a young man, and I noticed that his hair was fair, short, and crisp about his full neck, as he bent down, pipe in mouth, while a something in the way in which he shouted to the boy in charge of the horses settled my doubts.

“Jack!” I shouted.

He rose up very slowly, took the pipe out of his mouth, and spat in the water; then, gradually turning himself in my direction, he stared hard at me and said:

“Hello!”

“Don’t you know me again, Jack?”

He stared hard at me for some moments, took his pipe out of his mouth again, spat once more in the water, said surlily, “No!” and bent down slowly to his work.

“Don’t you remember my going up to London with you nine years ago this summer?”

He assumed the perpendicular at once, stared, scowled, took his pipe out of his mouth with his left hand, and then, as a great smile gradually dawned all over his brown face, he gave one leg a smart slap with a great palm, and seemed to shake himself from his shoulders to his heels, which I found was his way of having a hearty laugh.

“Why, so it is!” he cried, in a sort of good-humoured growl. “Missus, lash that there tiller and come ashore. Here’s that there young chap.”

To Tom’s great amusement, Jack came ashore at the lock, and was followed by his round-faced partner, for whom he showed his affection by giving her a tremendous slap on the shoulder, to which she responded by driving her elbow into his side, and saying, “Adone, Jack. Don’t be a fool!” and ending by staring at us hard.

“I didn’t know yer agen,” growled Jack. “Lor’ ain’t you growed!”

“Why, so have you, Jack,” I exclaimed, shaking hands with him; and then with the lady, for he joined our hands together, taking up hers and placing it in mine, as if he were performing a marriage ceremony.

“Well, I s’pose I have,” he said in his slow, cumbersome way. “This here’s my missus. We was only married larst week. This here’s our boat. She was born aboard one on ’em.”

“I’m glad to see you again, Jack,” I said, as the recollection of our journey up recurred to me, strengthened by our meeting.

“So am I,” he growled. “Lor’! I do wish my old man was here, too: he often talked about you.”

“About me, Jack?”

“Ah! ’member that pot o’ beer you stood for him when you was going away – uppards – you know?”

“Yes; I remember.”

“So do he. He says it was the sweetest drop he ever had in his life; and he never goes by that ’ere house without drinking your health.”

“Jack often talks about you,” said “my missus.”

“I should think I do!” growled Jack. “I say, missus, what’s in the pot?”

“Biled rabbit, inguns, and bit o’ bacon,” was the prompt reply.

“Stop an’ have a bit o’ dinner with us, then. I’ve got plenty o’ beer.”

I was about to say no, as I glanced at Tom; but his eyes were full of glee, and he kept nodding his head, so I said yes.

The result was that the barge was taken through the lock, and half-a-mile lower down drawn close in beneath some shady trees, where we partook of Jack’s hospitality – his merry-hearted, girlish wife, when she was not staring at us, striving hard to make the dinner prepared for two enough for four.

I dare say it was very plebeian taste, but Tom and I declared honestly that we thoroughly enjoyed the dinner partaken of under the trees upon the grass; and I said I never knew how good Dutch cheese and new crusty country loaf, washed down by beer from a stone bottle, were before.

We parted soon after, Jack and I exchanging rings; for when I gave him a plain gold gipsy ring for his handkerchief, he insisted upon my taking the home-made silver one he wore; while his wife was made happy with a gaily coloured silk handkerchief which I used to wear at night.

The last I saw of them was Jack standing up waving his red cap over his head, and “my missus” the gaily coloured handkerchief. After that they passed on down stream, and Tom and I went our way.

I could not have been a very good walker in my early days, for my companion and I soon got over the ground between the river and Rowford, even though I stopped again and again – to show where I had had my fight; where I had hidden from Blakeford when the pony-chaise went by; and, as if it had never been moved, there by the road was a heap of stones where I had slept and had my bundle stolen.