Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family. George Manville Fenn
Biggins, true to his word, called at the wheelwright’s next morning on his way to church, and on coming within sight of the house he took off his hat to indulge in a good scratch, for he was puzzled on seeing that the blinds were all drawn up.
Replacing his hat very carefully, he softly entered upon tip-toes, and walked up the little path, where he was met by Tom Morrison, looking pale and worn, but with a restful look in his face that had not been there for days.
They shook hands warmly, for Joe Biggins had resolved never to think about that coffin Tom Morrison had made again, and just then fresh steps were heard, and they saw old Mr. Vinnicombe coming up.
“I thought I’d call, Morrison,” he said, “and ask you to let me be the bearer of a message to the rectory. Let’s make a last appeal to the bigot.”
“Hush, sir!—don’t call him names,” said Tom. “He thought he was right, no doubt.”
“Then you’ve heard from him.”
“No, sir, no,” said Tom, sadly; “but I forgive him all the same, though I could never bear to go and hear him more.”
The doctor and Biggins looked at each other, and the latter shook his head till his white cravat crackled, for he was got up ready for his verger’s gown.
“Will you walk down the garden, doctor?” said the wheelwright, quietly.
They both followed him, wonderingly, till, nearing the willow, they heard a low, wailing sob; and, drawing nearer, found poor Budge crouching in a heap upon the ground, her face buried in her hands, sobbing as if her desolate young heart would break.
They approached her unheard; and, at the scene before them, they involuntarily took off their hats, and stood watching, as Tom bent over the weeping girl.
“I did, oh, I did love you so!” they heard her sob in broken accents. And then, as Tom touched her gently on the shoulder, she started up in a frightened way, staring at him wildly, and, but for his firm grasp, she would have fled.
By many a scene of sorrow had old Vinnicombe stood untouched, but his eyes were moistened now, and a choking sensation seemed to affect his throat, as Tom looked kindly down on the poor rough girl, and, bending over her, lightly pressed his lips upon her brow.
“Thank you, my little lass. Don’t cry no more,” he said. “Poor baby’s happy now, and quite at rest.”
There was silence for a moment or two in the little shady garden, for the tinkling streamlet seemed to be at rest as well. Then came the soft buzzing of a bee seeking a fresh flower; from the fields beyond, a lark shot up in the blue sky, lay-laden, and flashed a fount of sparkling notes upon the morning air; a creamy white butterfly flitted through the trees, poised itself for a moment, lit upon the bunch of daisies lying on the little grave, and then rose and rose till hidden from their sight, as they stood where the dark soil was dappled now with the morning sunbeams glancing through the willow boughs.
“Yes,” said Tom, with a smile, as the breeze brought a waft of flowery scent to mingle with the newly-turned earth, “perhaps Parson Mallow is quite right, but I feel as if my little one’s at rest.”
Part 1, Chapter XI.
The New Master for Lawford.
Oh, that bell! A clanging, jangling, minor-sounding bell that always sounded so harsh and melancholy at six o’clock, if the particular morning happened to be dark, wet and wintry in chill December, and he who heard it was rudely awakened from pleasant dreams of home and country and those he loved, to the fact that if he got up then he would have some time to wait, and that if he dropped asleep again he might sleep too long.
The warm bed was very tempting as Luke Ross lay gazing at the spot where he knew the window must be, but where there was no light of coming day, and listened to the hissing, fluttering noise made by the gas-jets just turned on to enable the students to dress and, such of them as had beards, to shave, for it was in that happy, blissful time when the natural growth of hair upon a man’s chin was spoken of as “filthy,” and, if the beard was at all full, said to look “like some old Jew.”
The warm bed, it is repeated, was very tempting; but after a few minutes’ hesitation, and just as that fatal drowsiness was coming on, Luke Ross rose, tried to repress a shiver, failed, and began to dress hastily by such light as came over the open partition from the corridor, where the four gas-jets sang and sputtered and sent a blue glare into the twenty-four dormitories—very prisonlike, with their sham stone walls, narrow barred windows, and iron bedsteads—that this corridor contained.
For some minutes the hissing of the gas was the only sound heard, till the trickle of water into Luke Ross’s basin, and sundry pantings, sighs, and splashings, seemed to arouse others to their fate, when there was a thud as of some one leaping out of bed, a loud yawn prolonged into a shivering shudder, and an exclamation of “Oh, that blessed bell!”
A more thorough scene of discomfort than Saint Chrysostom’s on a dark winters morning—one of those mornings that might be midnight—it would be impossible to conceive, and the students seemed to feel it, and try to vent their feelings upon their fellows.
“Here, I say!” said a voice, “I know these beds are damp. I’ve got my hands covered with chilblains.”
“Get out!” cried another—conversation being easy, from the fact that every dormitory opened for a space of a couple of feet above its door on to the passage. “Damp don’t give chilblains. Oh, I say, how miserable it is to have to shave with cold water in the dark!”
“Serve you right for having a beard!” cried another.
“Which you’d give your ears to own. Oh, hang it! now I’ve cut myself. Here, who’s got a silk hat? Pull us out a scrap of down, there’s a good fellow.”
“Wipe it dry, and stick a bit of writing-paper against it.”
“Will that stop it?”
“Yes.”
“Mind and get your hair parted right, lads. Examination day!”
“I’ll give any fellow a penny to clean my boots.”
“Why don’t you let Tycho clean ’em?”
“Hot water, gentlemen! hot water! Any gentleman who wants his boots cleaned please to set them outside the door.”
“There, get out. It won’t do, Tommy Smithers. I’d swear to that squeak of yours from a thousand.”
“If you come that trick again, Tommy, we’ll make you clean every pair of boots in the corridor,” shouted a fresh speaker, for by degrees the yawning, and creaking of iron beds and thuds of bare feet upon bare floors had grown frequent, with shuffling noises, and gurgling, and splashing, the chinking of ewers against basins, the swishing of tooth-brushes, and the stamping of chilblained feet being thrust into hard, stout boots, and all done in a hurried, bustling manner, as if those who dressed were striving by rapid movement to get some warmth into their chilly frames.
Luke Ross was one of the first dressed: a well-built, dark-eyed, keen-looking young man of five-and-twenty, with a good deal of decision about his well-shaped mouth.
The noise and bustle was on the increase. With numerous grumblings and unsatisfied longings floating about his ears, he stood gazing at the square patch of yellow light near his door, thinking of the trials of the day to come, till, apparently brought back to the present by the shudder of cold that ran through him, he turned and began to pace rapidly up and down his little room, from the dark window covered with soft pats of sooty snow to the dormitory door.
That brought no warmth, and, knowing from old experience that the fire in the theatre