Kitty Alone. Baring-Gould Sabine
on which tea and coffee, winkles and cockles were served. He named the prices he had paid, and gave the new-comer to understand that he was a man who had plenty of money at his disposal.
Then an idea occurred to Pasco. Perhaps this schoolmaster might help him with his accounts. He himself could not disentangle them and balance his books. He was shy of letting anyone else see them; but this Bramber was a complete stranger, a man whom he could reduce to dependence on himself; he had no private means, no friends in the place; he had given the man a dinner, and might make of him a very serviceable slave.
“Look here,” said Pepperill in a haughty tone, “Mr. Schoolmaster, I suppose you know something of accounts and book-keeping?”
“Certainly I do.”
“I shouldn’t mind now and then paying you a trifle, giving you a meal, and favouring you with my support--I am churchwarden, and consequently on the committee of the National School. Me and the bishop, and the archdeacon and rector, and Whiteaway as well. I mean, I’ll stand at your back, if you will oblige me now and then, and hold your tongue.”
“I will do anything I can to oblige you,” said Bramber. “And as to holding my tongue, what is it you desire of me?”
“Merely to help me with my accounts. My time is so occupied, and I do business in so many ways, that my books get somewhat puzzling--I mean to a man who is taken up with business.”
“I am entirely at your service.”
“But--you understand--I don’t want my affairs talked about. People say I have plenty of money, that I’m a man who picks it up everywhere; but I don’t desire that they should know how much I have, and what my speculations are, and what they bring in.”
“I can hold my tongue.”
“Would you look at my books now?”
“Certainly.”
Accordingly, Walter Bramber re-entered the house, and was given the books in a private sitting-room, and worked away at them for a couple of hours. The confusion was great: Pepperill might have had a genius for business, but this was not manifest in his books. Presently Pasco came in.
“Well,” said he, “make ’em out, eh?”
“You must excuse my saying it,” said Bramber; “but--if these are all--your affairs are in a very unsatisfactory condition.”
“Unsatisfactory? oh, pshaw! Of course, I have other resources; there’s the Brimpts forest of oaks. There’s--oh, lots; winkles and cockles, tea and coffee not entered.”
“Sixpence a head; over twenty, fourpence ha’penny,” said Walter Bramber drily.
“Oh, lots--lots of other things. I haven’t entered all.”
“I sincerely hope it is so.”
“It is so, on my word.”
“Because--you seem to me to be losing seriously on every count.”
“Losing? You don’t know creditor from debtor account. That comes of education; it is never of use. Nothing like business for teaching a man. I don’t believe in your book-learning.”
“I’ll come again to-morrow and go more carefully into the accounts.”
“Oh, thank you, not necessary. It is clear to me you do not understand my system--and mistake sides.” Pasco became red and angry. “Look here, Mr. Schoolmaster, let me give you a word. You don’t belong to the labourers--you won’t be able to make friends of them. You don’t belong to the gentry; there are none here--so you need not think of their society. You don’t belong to the middle class--you are not a farmer, or a tradesman, or a merchant; so they will have nothing to do with you. You make my accounts all right, and the balance on the right side; give up your foolish book-keeping as learned at college, and set my accounts right by common sense, and I’ll see what I can do to get you taken up by some respectable people. And, one thing more. Don’t go contradicting men of property, and saying that there was no cock-fighting at Waterloo, because there was; and people don’t like contradictions. When I broke open the belfry door that the ringers might give Mr. Puddicombe a peal, I let the world see I wasn’t going to be priest-ridden; and we are not going to be schoolmaster-ridden neither, and told our accounts are wrong, and that Waterloo, where the cock-fight was, is not in England.”
CHAPTER XI
DISCORDS
Walter Bramber left Coombe Cellars greatly discouraged. He had unintentionally ruffled the plumes of the churchwarden by disputing his knowledge of the situation of Waterloo, and mainly by discovering that his affairs were in something worse than confusion, that they wore a complexion which indicated the approach of bankruptcy. And Pasco Pepperill was one of the magnates of the village, and full of consciousness that he was a great man.
Bramber walked to the little village shop belonging to Whiteaway, the second churchwarden, who was also on the committee of management, and trustee for the school under the National Society.
Here also his reception was not cordial. It was intimated to him that his presence in the village and tenure of the mastership of the school would be tolerated only on condition that he supplied himself with groceries, draperies, boots, and lollipops from Whiteaway’s shop. He walked to his lodgings.
Such were the men with whom he was thrown. From two instances he generalised. They were to be gained through their interests. Unless he got one set of things at one store and another set at another, the two mighty men who ruled Coombe-in-Teignhead would turn their faces against him, and make his residence in the place intolerable.
As he walked slowly along the little street, he encountered a cluster of children, talking and romping together, composed of boys and girls of all ages. Directly they saw him, they became silent, and stood with eyes and mouths open contemplating him. Bramber heard one boy whisper to the next--
“That’s the new teacher--ain’t he a duffer?”
He nodded, and addressed a few kindly words to the children; expressed his hope that they would soon be well acquainted and become fast friends. To which no response was accorded. But no sooner was he past than the whole crew burst into a loud guffaw, which set the blood rushing into the young man’s face.
A moment later a stone was hurled, and hit him on the back. He turned in anger, and saw the whole pack disappear behind a cottage and down a side lane. He considered a moment whether to pursue and capture the offender, but believing that he would have great difficulty in discovering him, even if he caught the whole gang, he deemed it expedient to swallow the affront.
On reaching his lodgings, Bramber unpacked his few goods; and as he did this, his heart ached for his Hampshire home. Old associations were connected with the trifles he took out of his box, linked with the irrevocable past, some sad, others sunny. Then he seated himself at his window and sank into a brown study.
Young, generous, he had come to this nook of the West full of enthusiasm for his task, eager to advance education, to lift the children out of the slough of ignorance and prejudice in which their fathers and forefathers had been content to live. That his efforts would meet with ready and enthusiastic support, would be gratefully hailed by parents and children alike, by rich and by poor, he had not doubted.
“There is no darkness but ignorance,” said the fool in “Twelfth Night”; and who would not rejoice to be himself lifted out of shadows into light, and to see his children advanced to a higher and better walk than had been possible for himself?
But his hopes were suddenly and at once damped. He was a fish out of water. A youth with a certain amount of culture, and with a mind thirsting after knowledge, he was pitchforked into a village where culture was not valued, where the only books seen were, “The Norwood Gipsy’s Dream-Book” and “The Forty Thieves,” exposed