Anthony John

+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber’s note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+

Anthony John

By

Jerome K. Jerome

Author of “Passing of the Third Floor Back,” “All Roads Lead to Calvary,” etc.

[Illustration: Logo]

New York Dodd, Mead And Company 1923

Copyright, 1923, By Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

Printed In U. S. A.

Vail-Ballou Company Binghamton And New York

Anthony John

Chapter I

Anthony John Strong’nth’arm--to distinguish him from his father, whose Christian names were John Anthony--was born in a mean street of Millsborough some forty-five years before the date when this story should of rights begin. For the first half-minute of his existence he lay upon the outstretched hand of Mrs. Plumberry and neither moved nor breathed. The very young doctor, nervous by reason of this being his first maternity case since his setting up in practice for himself, and divided between his duty to the child or to the mother, had unconsciously decided on the latter. Instinctively he knew that children in the poorer quarters of Millsborough were plentiful and generally not wanted. The mother, a high-cheeked, thin-lipped woman, lay with closed eyes, her long hands clawing convulsively at the bed-clothes. The doctor was bending over her, fumbling with his hypodermic syringe.

Suddenly from behind him he heard the sound of two resounding slaps, the second being followed by a howl that, feeble though it was, contained a decided note of indignation. The doctor turned his head. The child was kicking vigorously.

“Do you always do that?” asked the young doctor. He had been glad when he had been told that Mrs. Plumberry was to be the midwife, having heard good repute of her as a woman of experience.

“It starts them,” explained Mrs. Plumberry. “I suppose they don’t like it and want to say so; and before they can yell out they find they’ve got to draw some air into their lungs.”

She was a stout motherly soul, the wife of a small farmer on the outskirts of the town, and only took cases during the winter. At other times, as she would explain, there were the pigs and the poultry to occupy her mind. She was fond of animals of all kinds.

“It’s the fighting instinct,” suggested the young doctor. “Curious how quickly it shows itself.”

“When it’s there,” commented Mrs. Plumberry, proceeding with her work.

“Isn’t it always there?” demanded the young doctor.

“Not always,” answered Mrs. Plumberry. “Some of them will just lie down and let the others trample them to death. Four out of one litter of eleven I lost last March. There they were when I came in the morning. Seemed to have taken no interest in themselves. Had just let the others push them away.”

The child, now comfortable on Mrs. Plumberry’s ample arm, was playing with clenched fists, breathing peacefully. The doctor looked at him, relieved.

“Seems to have made a fair start, anyhow,” thought the doctor.

Mrs. Plumberry with thumb and forefinger raised an eyelid and let it fall again. The baby answered with a vicious kick.

“He’s come to stop all right,” was Mrs. Plumberry’s prophecy. “Hope he’ll like it. Will it be safe for me to put him to the mother, say in about half an hour?”

The woman with closed eyes upon the bed must have heard, for she tried to raise her arms. The doctor bent over her once more.

“I think so,” he answered. “Use your own discretion. I’ll look back in an hour or so.”

The doctor was struggling into his great coat. He glanced from the worn creature on the bed to the poverty-stricken room, and then through the window to the filthy street beyond.

“I wonder sometimes,” he growled, “why the women don’t strike--chuck the whole thing. What can be the good of it from their point of view?”

The idea had more than once occurred to Mrs. Plumberry herself, so that she was not as shocked as perhaps she should have been.

“Oh, some of them get on,” she answered philosophically. “Each woman thinks it will be her brat who will climb upon the backs of the others and that that’s all the others are wanted for.”

“Maybe,” agreed the young doctor. He closed the door softly behind him.

Mrs. Plumberry waited till the woman on the bed opened her large eyes, then she put the child into her arms.

“Get all you can in case it don’t last long,” was Mrs. Plumberry’s advice to him as she arranged the bed-clothes. The child gave a grunt of acquiescence and settled himself to his work.

“I prayed it might be a boy,” whispered the woman. “He’ll be able to help in the workshop.”

“It never does any harm,” agreed Mrs. Plumberry. “Sometimes you get answered. And if you don’t, there’s always the feeling that you’ve done your best. Don’t let him exhaust you. It don’t do to leave it to their conscience.”

The woman drew the child tighter to her pallid bosom.

“I want him to be strong,” she whispered. “It’s a hard world for the weak.”

Never a child in all Mrs. Plumberry’s experience had been more difficult to wean. Had he merely had his mother to contend with it is difficult to say how the matter might have ended. But Mrs. Plumberry took an interest in her cases that was more than mercenary, keeping an eye on them till she was satisfied that her help was no longer needed. He put up a good fight, as Mrs. Plumberry herself admitted; but having at last grasped the fact that he was up against something stronger than himself, it was characteristic of him, as the future was to show, that he gave way quite suddenly, and transferred without any further fuss his energy to the bottle. Also it was characteristic of him that, knowing himself defeated, he bore no ill-will to his conqueror.

“You’re a good loser,” commented Mrs. Plumberry, as the child, accepting without protest the India rubber teat she had just put into his mouth, looked up into her face and smiled. “Perhaps you’ll be a good winner. They generally go together.” She bent down and gave him a kiss, which for Mrs. Plumberry was an unusual display of emotion. He had a knack of making his way with people, especially people who could be useful to him.

It seemed a freak of Nature that, born of a narrow-chested father and a flat-breasted, small-hipped mother, he should be so strong and healthy. He never cried when he couldn’t get his own way--and he wanted his own way in all things and wanted it quickly--but would howl at the top of his voice. In the day-time it was possible to appease him swiftly; and then he would gurgle and laugh and put out his little hands to pat any cheek that might be near. But at night-time it was not so easy to keep pace with him. His father would mutter sleepy curses. How could he do his day’s work if he was to be kept awake night after night? The others had merely whimpered. A man could sleep through it.

“The others” had been two girls. The first one had died when three years old, and the second had lived only a few months.

“It’s because he’s strong,” explained the mother. “It does his lungs good.”

“And what about my weak heart?” the man grumbled. “You don’t think about me. It’s all him now.”

The woman did not answer. She knew it to be the truth.

He was a good man, hard-working, sober and kind in his fretful, complaining way. Her people and she herself, had thought she had done well when she had married him. She had been in service, looked down upon by her girl acquaintances who were earning their living in factories and shops; and he had been almost a gentleman, though it was difficult to remember that now. The Strong’nth’arms had once been prosperous yeomen and had hunted with the gentry. Rumour had it that scattered members of the family were even now doing well in the colonies, and both husband and wife still cherished the hope that some far-flung relation would providentially die and leave them a fortune. Otherwise the future promised little more than an everlasting struggle against starvation. He had started as a mechanical engineer in his own workshop. There were plenty of jobs for such in Millsborough, but John Strong’nth’arm seemed to be one of those born unfortunates doomed always to choose instinctively the wrong turning. An inventor of a kind. Some of his ideas had prospered--other people.

“If only I had my rights. If only I’d had justice done me. If only I hadn’t been cheated and robbed!”

Little Anthony John, as he grew to understanding, became familiar with such phrases, repeated in a shrill, weak voice that generally ended in a cough, with clenched hands raised in futile appeal to Somebody his father seemed to be seeing through the roof of the dark, untidy workshop, where the place for everything seemed to be on the floor, and where his father seemed always to be looking for things he couldn’t find.

A childish, kindly man! Assured of a satisfactory income, a woman might have found him lovable, have been indulgent to his helplessness. But the poor have no use for weakness. They cannot afford it. The child instinctively knew that his mother despised this dreamy-eyed, loose-lipped man always full of fear; but though it was to his mother that he looked to answer his questions and supply his wants, it was his father he first learnt to love. The littered workshop with its glowing furnace became his nursery. Judging from his eyes, it amused him when his father, having laid aside a tool, was quite unable the next minute to remember where he had put it. The child would watch him for a time while he cursed and spluttered, and then, jumping down from his perch, would quietly hand it to him. The man came to rely upon him for help.

“You didn’t notice, by any chance, where I put a little brass wheel yesterday--about so big?” would be the question. John, the man, would go on with his job; and a minute later Anthony, the child, would return with the lost wheel. Once the man had been out all the afternoon. On entering the workshop in the evening he stood and stared. The bench had been cleared and swept; and neatly arranged upon it were laid out all his tools. He was still staring at them when he heard the door softly opened and a little, grinning face was peering round the jar. The man burst into tears, and then, ashamed of himself, searched in vain for a handkerchief. The child slipped a piece of clean waste into his hand and laughed.

For years the child did not know that the world was not all sordid streets and reeking slums. There was a place called the Market Square where men shouted and swore and women scolded and haggled, and calves bellowed and pigs squealed. And farther still away a space of trampled grass and sooty shrubs surrounded by chimneys belching smoke. But sometimes, on days when in the morning his father had cursed fate more than usual, had raised clenched hands towards the roof of the workshop more often than wont, his mother would disappear for many hours, returning with good things tied up in a brown-paper parcel. And in the evening Somebody who dwelt far away would be praised and blessed.

The child was puzzled who this Somebody could be. He wondered if it might be the Party the other side of the workshop roof to whom his father made appeal for right and justice. But that could hardly be, for the Dweller beyond the workshop roof was apparently stone-deaf; while his mother never came back empty handed.

One evening there drew nearer the sound of singing and a tambourine. Little Anthony opened the workshop door and peered out. Some half a dozen men and women were gathered round the curb, and one was talking.

She spoke of a gentleman named God. He lived far off and very high up. And all good things came from Him. There was more of it: about the power and the glory of Him, and how everybody ought to be afraid of Him and love Him. But little Anthony remembered he had left the door of the workshop open and so hurried back. They moved on a little later. The child heard them singing as they passed.

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below.”

The rest of the verse was drowned by the tambourine.

So it was to God that his mother made these frequent excursions, returning always laden with good things. Had she not explained to him, as an excuse for not taking him with her, that it was a long way off and up ever so high? Next year, perhaps, when his legs were sturdier. He did not tell her of his discovery. Mrs. Plumberry divided children into two classes: the children who talked and never listened and the children who listened and kept their thoughts to themselves. But one day, when his mother took her only bonnet from its wrappings and was putting it on in front of the fly-blown glass, he plucked at her sleeve. She turned. He had rolled down his stockings, displaying a pair of sturdy legs. It was one of his characteristics, even as a child, that he never wasted words. “Feel ’em,” was all he said.

His mother remembered. It happened to be a fine day, so far as one could judge beneath the smoke of Millsborough. She sent him to change into his best clothes, while she finished her own preparations, and together they set forth. She wondered at his evident excitement. It was beyond what she had expected.

It was certainly a long way; but the child seemed not to notice it. They left the din and smoke of Millsborough behind them. They climbed by slow degrees to a wonderful country. The child longed to take it in his arms, it was so beautiful. The woman talked at intervals, but the child did not hear her. At the journey’s end the gate stood open and they passed in.

And suddenly they came across him, walking in the garden. His mother was greatly flustered. She was full of apologies, stammering and repeating herself. She snatched little Anthony’s cap off his head, and all the while she kept on curtseying, sinking almost to her knees. He was a very old gentleman dressed in gaiters and a Norfolk jacket. He wore side whiskers and a big moustache and walked with the aid of a stick. He patted Anthony on the head and gave him a shilling. He called Mrs. Strong’nth’arm “Nelly”; and hoped her husband would soon get work. And then remarking that she knew her way, he lifted his tweed cap and disappeared.

The child waited in a large clean room. Ladies in white caps fluttered in and out, and one brought him milk and wonderful things to eat; and later his mother returned with a larger parcel than usual and they left the place behind them. It was not until they were beyond the gates that the child broke his silence, and then he looked round carefully before speaking.

“He didn’t look so very glorious,” he said.

“Who didn’t?” demanded his mother.

“God.”

His mother dropped her bundle. Fortunately it was on a soft place.

“What maggot has the child got into his head?” she ejaculated. “What do you mean by ‘God’?”

“Him,” persisted Anthony. “Isn’t it from him that we get all these good things?” He pointed to the parcel.

His mother picked it up. “Who’s been talking to you?” she asked.

“I overheard her,” explained the child. “She said it was from God that we got all our good things. Ain’t it?”

His mother took him by the hand and they trudged on. She did not answer for a time.

“That wasn’t God,” she told him at last. “That was Sir William Coomber. I used to be in service there.”

She lapsed into silence again. The bundle seemed heavy.

“Of course it is God that gives it us in a manner of speaking,” she explained. “He puts it into Sir William’s heart to be kind and generous.”

The child thought a while.

“But they’re his things, ain’t they?” he asked. “The other one’s. Sir William’s?”

“Yes; but God gave them to him.”

It seemed a roundabout business.

“Why doesn’t God give us things?” he demanded. “Don’t He like us?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the woman. “Don’t ask so many questions.”

It was longer, the way home. He offered no protest at being sent to bed early. He dreamed he was wandering to and fro in a vast place, looking for God. Over and over again he thought he saw Him in the distance, but every time he got near to Him it turned out to be Sir William Coomber, who patted him on the head and gave him a shilling.

Chapter II

There was an aunt and uncle. Mr. Joseph Newt, of Moor End Lane, Millsborough, was Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s only surviving brother. He was married to a woman older than himself. She had been a barmaid, but after her marriage had “got religion,” as they say up North.

They were not much to boast of. Mr. Newt was a dog-fancier; and according to his own account an atheist, whether from conviction or mere love of sport his friends had never been able to decide. Earnest young ministers of all denominations generally commenced their career in Millsborough by attempting his conversion, much encouraged during the earlier stages of the contest by Mr. Newt’s predisposition in all matters towards what he called a “waiting game.” The “knock-out” blow had not yet been delivered. His wife had long since abandoned him to Satan. The only thing, as far as she could see, was to let him enjoy as much peace and comfort in this world as circumstances would permit. In Anthony John’s eyes the inevitable doom awaiting him gave to his uncle an interest and importance that Mr. Newt’s somewhat insignificant personality might otherwise have failed to inspire. The child had heard about hell. A most unpleasant place where wicked people went to when they died. But his uncle, with his twinkling eyes and his merry laugh, was not his idea of a bad man.

“Is uncle very, very wicked?” he once demanded of his aunt.

“No; he’s not wicked,” replied his aunt, assuming a judicial tone. “Better than nine men out of ten that I’ve ever come across.”

“Then why has he got to go to hell?”

“He needn’t, if he didn’t want to,” replied his aunt. “That’s the awful thing about it. If he’d only believe, he could be saved.”

“Believe what?” inquired Anthony John.

“Oh, I haven’t got time to go into all that now,” replied his aunt. She was having trouble with the kitchen stove. “Believe what he’s told.”

“Who told him?”

“Everybody,” explained his aunt. “I’ve told him myself till I’m sick and tired of it. Don’t ask so many questions. You’re getting as bad as he is.”

It worried him, the thought of his uncle going to hell. Why couldn’t he believe this thing, whatever it was, that everybody else believed?

It was an evening or two later. His aunt had gone to chapel. His uncle was smoking his pipe beside the kitchen fire, old Simon, the bob-tailed sheep-dog, looking up at him with adoring eyes. It seemed just the opportunity for a heart-to-heart talk.

He insinuated his hand into his uncle’s grimy paw.

“Why don’t you believe?” he asked.

His uncle turned on him his little twinkling eyes.

“Believe what?” he counter-questioned.

“What everybody believes,” the child answered.

The little man shook his head.

“Don’t you believe them,” he answered. “They don’t believe any more than I believe. They just say it because they think they’re going to get something out of it.”

The little man reached forward for the poker and gently stirred the fire.

“If they believed all they say that they believe,” he continued, “this world would be a very different place to what it is. That’s what I always tell them, and that’s what they’re never able to answer and never will be.”

He laid down the poker and turned again to the child.

“You’ll hear it all in good time, my lad,” he said. “‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.’ ‘Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor.’ That’s what their God tells them. Do you see them doing it?”

The little man laughed a merry, good-tempered laugh.

“Why, old Simon has got more sense than they have.” He stooped and patted the shaggy head resting upon his knee. “He knows it wouldn’t be any good, just looking at me as though he loved me, and then not doing what I told him.”

He refilled his pipe and lighted it.

“I’ll believe,” he added, “when I see them believing.”

Anthony John liked visiting the tumble-down cottage in Moor End Lane. His mother was nervous of the consequences. But Mrs. Plumberry’s view was that those who talked the loudest are not always the most dangerous.

“The little man’s got plenty of horse sense,” so Mrs. Plumberry argued, “and what Emma Newt don’t know about heaven and how to get there, isn’t worth trying to find out, so far as I can judge. Between the two of them he isn’t likely to get any harm even if he doesn’t get much good. Anyhow, he gets a square meal.”

The dogs were the chief attraction to Anthony John. He had never been let to play in the street with the other children of the neighbourhood. It was in the dismantled railway carriage at the bottom of his uncle’s garden that he first tasted play. His uncle had taken him in and introduced him. There was first and foremost old Simon, the bob-tailed sheep-dog. The others came and went, but old Simon was not for sale. The next oldest inhabitant of the railway carriage was a smooth-coated retriever bitch. She had constituted herself old Simon’s chief assistant, always prepared to help him on the many occasions when riot had to be suppressed. It was wonderful how both dogs knew the exact moment when fighting in play turned to fighting in anger. Then not a moment was to be lost. Bess would stand ready, but she never interfered unless Simon gave a peculiar low bark that meant he wanted her. He had been instructed not to call her in if he could possibly do without her.

“Never invite a woman to take part in a row you can manage by yourself,” his master had confided to him. “Once in, they never know when to stop.”

On the day of Anthony John’s first visit Bess was in a good mood to receive strangers. Her four puppies had just reached the fighting stage. She was absurdly proud of them and welcomed an audience. They fell upon Anthony John with one accord. His uncle was watching out of a corner of his eye. But the child only laughed and hit back at them. There were terriers of all sorts, bred rather for brain and muscle than for points: their purchasers being generally the tenants of lonely farms upon the moors who, wanting them as watchdogs and to keep down the rats, preferred smartness to pedigree. Mr. Newt’s pride was in his bull pups, for which he had a special _clientèle_ among neighbouring miners. He kept these apart in a railed off corner of the carriage, and once or twice a week, instead of feeding them separately, he would throw a big meaty bone into their midst, and then, leaning over the iron rail, watch the fight. The dog that most often secured the bone, leaving the others hungry, would be specially marked out for favour. His uncle, going in among them, would pat and praise him; and for him henceforward would be reserved the choicest food and the chiefest care.

The dogs soon got to know him and would welcome him with a joyous rush. The child would go down on all fours and would be one of them, and together they would roll and tumble in the straw. It was jolly to feel their soft paws pressing against his body, their cold damp noses pushed against his hands and face. There were mimic fights when they would tug his hair and bite his toes, and he would pull their silky ears and grab them by their hair. And, oh! the shouting and the barking and the growling and the laughing!

Life was fine in the long low railway carriage where one gave free play to one’s limbs and lungs and none were afraid.

And sometimes for no reason the glorious gambol would suddenly blaze up into anger. The bite would sting, and in the growl there would be menace. The child would spring up with a savage cry and go for his foe with clenched fists and snarling mouth, and the whole pack would be fighting one another senselessly and in real earnest. Then in an instant old Simon would be among them. He never talked. The shaggy head would move so swiftly that none knew where to expect it, and old Simon would be standing with a space around him faced by a circle of fierce eyes. But, generally speaking, none cared to break into that space. The child would hate old Simon for his interference and would punch at him viciously, trying to get across his huge body to the dog he wanted to tear and mangle. But feint and dodge as he might, it was always old Simon’s rump that was towards him, and at that he could punch as hard as he liked.

Five minutes later they would all be friends again, licking one another’s wounds. Old Simon would lie blinking his wistful, dreamy eyes.

It had been a slack year. Many of the mills had had to close down. Added to this there came a strike among the miners and distress grew daily. Mrs. Newt took the opportunity to buy a secondhand tombstone. It had been ordered by one of the pumpmen for his mother, but when the strike came the stonemason suggested payment on account, and as this was not forthcoming he had put the stone aside. Unfortunately for him he had already carved as far as “Sacred to the Memory of Mildred,” which was not a common name in Millsborough. It happened, however, to be Mrs. Newt’s, though on her conversion she had dropped it as savouring too much of worldliness, employing instead her second name, which was Emily. Hearing of the incident, Mrs. Newt called upon the stonemason and, taking full advantage of the man’s dilemma, had secured the stone for about one-third of its value. She had had the rest of the lettering completed, leaving to be filled in only the date of her death. It was an imposing-looking stone and Mrs. Newt was proud of it. She would often go and gaze at it where it stood in an out-of-the-way corner of the stonemason’s yard; and one day she took Anthony to see it. Her only anxiety now was about her grave. There was one particular site near to a willow tree that she much desired. It belonged to a baker who had secured it some years before on learning that he was suffering from an intermittent heart. The unemployment among the weavers, added to the strike of the miners, was making it difficult for him to collect his money, and Mrs. Newt was hopeful that an offer of ready cash at the right moment might induce him to sell.

“It’s a sad world,” she confided to Anthony John as she stood affectionately regarding the stone on which the verse of a hymn had been carved implying that Mildred Emily Newt had departed for realms of endless bliss. “Can’t say as I shall be sorry to leave it.”

It promised to be a hard winter for the poor of Millsborough. The coal strike had ended only to make way for trouble in the steel works. Somewhere the other side of the world the crops had failed. Bread rose in price each week; and there were pinched and savage faces in the streets.

His uncle had gone up to the moors to try and sell a terrier. His aunt sat knitting by the kitchen fire. Little Anthony had come in to warm himself before returning home. It was cold in the railway carriage. There were not enough of them there now to keep it warm. He was sitting with his knee clasped in his hands.

“Why doesn’t God stop it?” he demanded suddenly. His knowledge had advanced since the day he had thought Sir William Coomber was God.

“Stop what?” inquired his aunt continuing her knitting.

“The strike. Why doesn’t He put everything all right? Can’t He?”

“Of course He could,” explained his aunt. “If He wanted to.”

“Why don’t He want to? Doesn’t He want everybody to be happy?”

It appeared He did, but there were difficulties in the way. Men and women were wicked--were born wicked: that was the trouble.

“But why were we born wicked?” persisted the child. “Didn’t God make us?”

“Of course He made us. God made everything.”

“Why didn’t He make us good?”

It seemed He had made us good. Adam and Eve were both quite good, in the beginning. If only they had remained good--hadn’t disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit we might all of us have been good and happy to this day.

“He was the first man, wasn’t he--Adam?” demanded the child.

“Yes. God made him out of the earth. And saw that he was good.”

“How long ago would that be?” he asked.

His aunt was not sure of the exact date. Along time ago.

“A hundred years?”

Longer than that. Thousands and thousands of years ago.

“Why couldn’t Adam have said he was sorry and God have forgiven him?”

“It was too late,” explained his aunt. “You see, he’d done it.”

“What made him eat it? If he was a good man and God had told him not to?”

It was explained to him that the Devil had tempted Adam--or rather Eve. It seemed unimportant so far as their unfortunate descendants were concerned.

“But why did God let the Devil tempt him--or her, whichever it was. Can’t God do everything? Why didn’t He kill the Devil?”

Mrs. Newt regarded her knitting with dismay. While talking to Anthony John she had lost count of her stitches. Added to which it was time for Anthony John to go home. His mother would be getting anxious.

His aunt, though visiting was not much in her line, dropped in on his mother a day or two later. Mrs. Plumberry happened to have looked in for a gossip and a cup of tea the same afternoon. His aunt felt sure that Anthony John would be helpful to his father in the workshop.

In the evening his mother informed him that she and his father had decided to give to him the opportunity of learning whatever there was to be learnt about such things as God and sin and the everlasting soul of man. She didn’t put it in these words, but that was the impression she conveyed. On the very next Sunday that was he should go to chapel; and there kind ladies and gentlemen who understood these matters, perhaps even better than his aunt herself, would answer all his questions and make all things plain to him.

They were most kind and sympathetic to him at the Sunday school. His aunt had prepared them for him, and they welcomed him as promising material. There was one young man in particular with an æsthetic face and long black hair that he had a habit of combing with his hand; and a plain young woman with wonderfully kind eyes, who in the middle of a hymn suddenly caught him up and hugged him. But they didn’t really help him. They assured him that God loved us and wanted us all to be good and happy. But they didn’t explain to him why God had overlooked the devil. He had never said a word to Adam about the devil--had never so much as warned him. It seemed to Anthony John that the serpent had taken God as much by surprise as he had Adam and Eve. It seemed unfair to Anthony John that the whole consequences of the unforseen catastrophe should have been visited on Adam and Eve; and even more unfair that he himself, Anthony John, coming into the world thousands of years later, and who, as far as he could see, had had nothing whatever to do with the business, should be deemed, for all practical purposes, as an accomplice before the act. It was not that he argued it thus to himself. All he was conscious of was a vague resentful feeling that it wasn’t fair. When his mother had sent him out on his first errand she had warned him of bad boys who would try to take his money away from him, as a result of which he had kept a sharp look-out and, seeing a couple of boys who looked as though they might be bad, he had taken the precaution of walking close behind a policeman. It seemed to him that Adam hadn’t been given a dog’s chance.

They told him that, later on, God was sorry for us and had put things right by letting His only Son die for us. It was a beautiful story they told him about this Jesus, the Son of God. He wondered who had suggested the idea, and had decided that it must have been the little lad Jesus who had first thought of it and had persuaded God to let Him do it. Somehow he convinced himself that he would have done just the same. Looking down from heaven on the poor people below, and thinking of their all going to hell, he would have felt so sorry for them.

But the more he thought about it all the more he couldn’t understand why God instead of merely turning Satan out of heaven, hadn’t finished him off then and there. He might have known he would be up to mischief.

At first his teachers had encouraged him to ask them questions, but later on they changed their minds. They told him he would understand all these things better as he grew up. Meanwhile he mustn’t think, but listen and believe.

Chapter III

Mr. Strong’nth’arm lay ill. It was just his luck. For weeks he had been kicking his heels about the workshop, cursing Fate for not sending him a job. And Fate--the incorrigible joker that she is--had knocked at his door ten days ago with an order that he reckoned would keep him going for a month, and then a week later had struck him down with pleurisy. They told him that if he kept quiet and didn’t rave and fling his arms about, sending the bedclothes half a dozen times a day on to the floor, he would soon get well. But what was the good of everybody talking? What was to become of them? This job, satisfactorily completed and sent home, would have led to others--would have started him on his feet again. Now it would be taken away from him and sent elsewhere to be finished. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm made pilgrimages to the great house, returning with hot-house grapes. Mrs. Newt came with a basket. Both she and her husband would like to have done more; but times were bad. Even believers were in difficulty. Mrs. Newt suggested resignation.

It was the fourth morning after Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s seizure, Anthony, putting on for warmth his father’s overcoat, had crept down in the faint dawn to light the kitchen fire, his mother being busy in the bedroom. He had just succeeded, and a little blaze leapt up and threw fantastic shadows on the whitewashed walls. Looking round, he saw the shape of a squat hobgoblin with a tiny head. He moved his arms, and immediately the hobgoblin responded with a gigantic gesture of delight. From the fireplace, now behind him, there came a cheerful crackling sound; it was just the noise that a merry old witch would make when laughing. The child, holding high the skirts of his long coat, began to dance; and the hobgoblin’s legs were going like mad. Suddenly the door opened and there stood the oddest of figures. He was short and bowlegged and had a big beard. He wore a peaked cap, and over his shoulder he carried a bundle hooked on to a stick. Without a doubt ’twas the King of the Gnomes. He flung down his bundle and stretched out his hands. The child ran towards him. Lord how he danced! His little bow legs moved like lightning and his arms were so strong he could toss little Anthony up with one hand and catch him again with the other. The little bright flame stretched up higher and higher as if the better to see the fun. The merry old witch laughed louder. And the shadows on the wall got so excited that they tumbled down flat on the ceiling.

His mother called from above to know if the kettle was boiling; and at that the little flame turned pale and disappeared. The merry old witch was as quiet as a mouse. The shadows ran up the chimney and the light came in at the door.

Anthony didn’t answer his mother. He was rubbing his eyes. He thought he must still be in bed. It was the King of the Gnomes that called up the stairs to say that the kettle would be boiling in five minutes. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, hearing a strange voice, came down as she was. She found her son Anthony distraught and still rubbing his eyes. The King of the Gnomes was pushing carefully selected pieces of wood through the bars of the grate and blowing them with his mouth. He held one of his enormous hands in front of his golden beard to save it from being singed. He knew Mrs. Strong’nth’arm quite well and shook hands with her. She looked at him as if she had seen him before--somewhere, some time, or else had heard him described; she wasn’t sure which. She seemed to be glad to see him without knowing why. At first she was a bit afraid of him. But that was all gone before the tea was ready. Anthony watched his mother with astonishment. She was one of those bustling, restless women, constitutionally unable to keep still for a minute. Something had bewitched her. She stood with her hands folded and wasn’t even talking. She might have been a visitor. It was the King of the Gnomes that made the tea and cut the bread and butter. He seemed to know where everything was. The fire was burning brightly. As a rule it was the devil to get going. This morning it had met its master. He passed Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and went upstairs with the tray and still as if in a dream she followed him.

Anthony crept to the bottom of the stairs and listened. The King of the Gnomes was talking to his father. He had a tremendously deep voice. Just the voice one would expect from a gentleman who lived always underground. Anthony could feel the vibrations of it underneath his feet. Compared with it, the voices of his father and his mother sounded like the chorus of the little terriers when old Simon was giving tongue.

And suddenly there happened a great wonder. His mother laughed. Never before that he could remember had he heard his mother laugh. Feeling that strange things were in the wind, he crept out into the yard and washed himself under the pump.

Three weeks the King of the Gnomes dwelt with them. Every morning he and Anthony would go into the workshop. The furnace would be still aglow with the embers of the night before. Of course the King of the Gnomes would be at home with a forge and an anvil. But even so, Anthony would marvel at his dexterity and strength. The great sinewy hands, that to save time or to make a neater finish would often bend the metal to its shape without the help of other tools, could coax to their place the smallest screws, fix to a hair’s breadth the most delicate adjustments. Of course he never let on that he was the King of the Gnomes. Only the child knew that; and a warning hairy finger, or a wink of his laughing blue eye would caution Anthony not to give away the secret when third parties were around.

He never went out. When not in the workshop he was busy about the house. Of course, when you come to think of it, there are no lady gnomes, so that accounted for his being equally apt at woman’s work. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had little else to do but to nurse her husband; and even at that he would take his turn when she went marketing; and of evenings, while talking, he would help her with her darning. There seemed to be nothing those great hands could not do.

Nobody knew of his coming. His mother had taken Anthony aside on the first morning and had impressed upon him that he was not to say a word. But he would not, even if she had not told him; for if you did the King of the Gnomes at once vanished underground. It was not till days after he was gone that Mrs. Strong’nth’arm mentioned his visit, and then only to Mrs. Plumberry under oath of secrecy.

Mrs. Plumberry, being so often where there was sorrow, had met him once herself. Wandering Peter the country folk called him. Mrs. Plumberry marvelled at his having visited the Strong’nth’arms. It was rarely that he came into towns. He must have heard of their trouble. He had ways of his own of finding out where he was wanted. At lambing time, when the snow lay deep upon the hills, they had learnt to listen for his cheery whistling drawing nearer through the darkness. He might have been a shepherd all his life. He would take the writhing ewes in his two big hands, and at his touch they would cease their groaning. And when in some lonely cottage man or child lay sick, and there was none to help, the good wife would remember stories she had heard and, slipping out beyond the hedge, would peer with straining eyes into the night. And for sure and certain--so the legend ran--there would come to her the sound of footsteps through the heather and Wandering Peter would emerge out of the shadows and would greet her. There he would stay till there was no longer need of him, doctoring and nursing, or taking the good man’s place at the plough. He would take no wage beyond his food and lodging. At his departure he would ask for a day’s rations to put into his bundle, and from those who might have it to spare an old coat or a pair of boots not altogether past the mending.

Where he had his dwelling none knew, but lost folk upon the moors, when overtaken by the darkness, would call to him; and then, so it was said, he would suddenly appear and put them on their way. They told of an old curmudgeon who, but for a snarling cur as savage as himself, lived alone in a shanty among the rocks. A venomous, blasphemous old scoundrel. The country people feared and hated him. They said he had the evil eye, and when a cow died in the calfing or a sow ate her young, the curses would be deep and bitter against old Michael--old Nick, as they termed him--of the quarry.

One night, poaching, old Michael stumbled and fell to the bottom of a rocky chasm. He lay there with a broken leg and the blood flowing from a wound in his head. His cries came back to him from the rocks, and his only hope was in his dog. It had gone to seek help he knew, for they cared for one another in their snarling way, these two. But what could the brute do? His dog was known and hated as far as Mike himself. It would be stoned from every door. None would follow it to rescue him. He cursed it for a fool and his eyes closed.

When he opened them Wandering Peter was lifting him up in his strong arms. The dog had not wasted his voice upon the neighbours. No cottage or farm had been wakened by his barking. It was Wandering Peter he had sought.

There was a girl who had “got herself into trouble,” as the saying is, and had been turned out of her place. Not knowing where else to go she had returned home, though she guessed her greeting would be cruel, for her father was a hard, stern man and had always been proud of his good name. She had climbed slowly the long road across the wolds, and the short winter’s day was fading when she reached the farm. As she feared, he had slammed the door in her face, and creeping away, she had lain down in the woods thinking to die.

Her father had watched her from the house. Through the night he had struggled with himself, and towards morning had lighted the lantern and gone in search of her. But she had disappeared.

It was a strange story that she told when, weeks later, she reappeared with her child at her breast. She said that Christ had come to her. He had golden hair and a golden beard, but she knew him to be Christ because of his kind eyes. He had lifted her up as though she had been a child; and, warm against his breast, he had carried her through the night till they came to a dwelling place among rocks. There he had laid her down upon a bed of soft dry moss, and there the child had been born, Christ tending her with hands so gentle she had felt no pain. She did not know that she had been there for over a month. To her it had seemed but a little time. All she could tell was that she had been very happy and had wanted for nothing and that he had told her “beautiful things.” One day he told her that all was well now with her and the child and that her father longed for her. And that night he had carried her and the child in his arms; and in the morning they came to the edge of the wood from where she could see the farm. And there Christ had blessed her and the child and left her. And her father had come across the fields to meet her.

They explained to her it was not Christ who had found her. It must have been Wandering Peter. But she never believed them. Later, when Anthony had grown into boyhood, he met her one day on the moors. Her son had gone abroad and for many years he had not written. But she was sure that it was well with him. A white-haired, sweet-faced woman. Not quite “all there” in many ways, it was hinted, and yet with a gift for teaching. She had her daily round among the far-off cottages and scattered hamlets. The children looked forward to her coming. She told them wonderful stories, so they said.

She must have learnt the trick from Wandering Peter, Anthony thought. He remembered how, seated cross-legged upon the bench, he had listened while Peter, when not hammering or filing, had poured forth his endless stories of birds and beasts, of little creeping things and their strange ways, of the life of the deep waters, of far-off lands and other worlds, of the brave things and the sad things that happened long ago. It was from Peter that Anthony first heard the story of Saint Aldys.

Once upon a time, where Millsborough stands today were woods and pleasant pastures. The winding Wyndbeck, now flowing black and sluggish through long dark echoing tunnels past slimy walls and wharves, was then a silvery stream splashing and foaming among tree-crowned rocks and mossy boulders. Where now tall chimneys belch their smoke and the slag stands piled in endless heaps around the filthy pits, sheep browsed and cattle grazed and little piebald pigs nuzzled for truffles in the soft sweet-smelling earth. The valley of the Wyndbeck then would have been a fair place to dwell in but for evil greedy men who preyed upon the people, driving off their cattle and stealing their crops, making sport of their tears and prayers. And of all the wicked men who harassed and oppressed them none were so cruel and grasping as Aldys of the yellow beard--the Red Badger they called him.

One day the Badger was returning from a foray, and beside him, on an old gaunt pony, secured by a stirrup-leather to the Badger’s saddle-girth, rode a little lad. A trooper had found the boy wandering among the blackened ruins, and the Badger, attracted by the lad’s beauty, had taken him to be his page.

The Badger rode, singing, pleased with his day’s work; and there crept up a white mist from the sea. He did not notice for a time that he and the lad were riding alone. Then, drawing rein, he blew a long loud blast upon his horn. But there came no answer.

The lad was looking at him with strange eyes; and Red Aldys, seized he knew not why by a sudden frenzy of hate, drew his sword and struck at the little lad with all his strength.

And the sword broke in his hand; and those strange gentle eyes still looked upon Red Aldys. And around the little lad there shone a great light.

And fear fell upon Red Aldys of the yellow beard, and flinging himself upon the ground, he cried in a loud voice: “Christ have mercy upon me a sinner.”

And the child Christ laid His hands upon Red Aldys and spoke words of comfort to him and commanded him that he should follow Him and serve Him.

And on the spot where Christ had laid His hands upon him Aldys made for himself a dwelling-place among the rocks beside the winding Wyndbeck. And there for many years he laboured to bring peace and healing to the poor folk of the valley, learning their needs that he might help them. And the fame of him spread far and wide, and many came to him to ask his blessing, repenting of their evil lives. And he went about among the people teaching the love of the Lord Jesus.

Little Anthony had often passed the great church of St. Aldys just beyond the market square, an imposing building of grey stone with a spire one hundred and eighty feet high. They say that, forming part of its foundations, are the very rocks among which once Saint Aldys dwelt, on the spot where Christ had appeared to him and had forgiven him his sins.

Having heard the story, he felt a longing to see the inside of it, and one afternoon, instead of going to his uncle’s, he wandered there. It was surrounded by iron railings and the great iron gates were padlocked. But in a corner, behind a massive buttress, he found a little door that opened. It led into a stone passage and down some steps into a vaulted room where he fell over a chair, and a bat flew out and fluttered silently until it disappeared into the shadows. But he found the church at last. It was vast and high and very, very cold, and only a faint chill light came in through the screened windows. The silence frightened him. He had forgotten to make a note of the way by which he had entered, and all the doors that he tried were securely fastened. A terror seized him that he would never be able to get out. It seemed to him that he was in a grave.

By luck he blundered back into the little vaulted chamber, and from there groped his way out. He closed the door behind him with a bang. He had a feeling that something was following him and might drag him back. He ran all the way home.

Chapter IV

There had been a period of prosperity following the strange visit of Wandering Peter. John Strong’nth’arm came back to his workshop another man, or so it seemed to little Anthony. A brisk, self-confident person who often would whistle while he worked. The job on which he had been engaged when taken ill had been well finished and further orders had resulted. There were times when the temporary assistance of an old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son was needful. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, discussing things in general with a neighbour, would casually refer to “Our workpeople.” That uncle in Australia, or elsewhere, who had been fading year by year almost to disappearing point, reappeared out of the shadows. With the gambler’s belief that when once the luck changes every venture is bound to come home, she regarded his sudden demise as merely a question of time. She wondered how much he would leave them. She hoped it would be sufficient to enable them to become gentlefolks.

“What is a gentlefolk?” asked Anthony, to whom she had been talking.

It was explained to him that gentlefolk were people who did not have to work for their living. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had served them and knew.

There were others, who sat in offices and gave orders. To this lesser rank it was possible to climb by industry and virtue. But first of all you must go to school and learn.

His mother caught him up in her thin arms and pressed him passionately to her narrow bosom.

“You will be a gentleman,” she prophesied. “I feel it. I’ve prayed God every night since you were born.” She smothered him with kisses and then put him down.

“Don’t say anything to your father,” she added. “He doesn’t understand.”

He rather hoped his uncle in Australia wouldn’t leave them too much money. He liked work: fighting with things, conquering them; tidying the workshop; combing the fleas out of his uncle’s dogs. Lighting the kitchen fire was fun even when it was so cold that he wasn’t quite sure he’d a nose on his face and could only tell what his hands were doing by looking at them. You lit the paper and then coaxed and blew and watched the little flame grow bigger, feeding it and guiding it. And when you had won, you warmed your hands.

His father had taught him to read during the many hours when there had been nothing else to do. They had sat side by side upon the bench, their legs dangling, holding the open book between them. And writing of a sort he had learnt for himself, having heard his mother regret that she had not studied it herself when young. His mother felt he was predestined to be a great scholar. She wanted to send him to a certain “select preparatory school” kept by two elderly maiden sisters of undoubted gentility. Their prospectus informed the gentry of the neighbourhood that special attention was given by the Misses Warmington to manners and the cultivation of correct behaviour.

His father had no use for the Misses Warmington--had done business with them in connection with a boiler. He mimicked the elder Miss Warmington’s high-pitched voice. They would teach the boy monkey-tricks, give him ideas above his station. What was wrong with the parish school, only two streets away, where he would mix with his own class and not be looked down upon?

His mother did not agree that he would be with his own class among the children of the neighbourhood. The Strong’nth’arms had once been almost gentry. He would learn coarse ways, rude speech, acquire a vulgar accent. She carried her way, as she always did in the end. Dressed in her best clothes, and accompanied by Anthony in a new turn-out from head to foot, she knocked at the door of the Misses Warmington’s “select preparatory school.”

It was one of a square of small, old-fashioned houses that had once been on the outskirts of Millsborough, but which now formed a connecting link between the old town and the maze of new mean streets that had crept towards it from the west. They were shown into the drawing-room. The portrait of a military gentleman with a wooden face and stars upon his breast hung above the marble mantelpiece. On the opposite wall, above the green rep sofa, hung a frightened-looking lady with ringlets and fingers that tapered almost to a point.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat on the extreme edge of a horsehair-covered chair and had difficulty in not sliding off it on to the floor. Anthony John, perched on another precisely similar chair, had mastered the problem by sitting well back and tucking one leg underneath him.

After a few minutes there entered the elder Miss Warmington. She was a tall gaunt lady with a prominent arched nose. She apologized to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm for having kept them waiting, but apparently did not see Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s outstretched hand. For a time his mother didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

She explained her errand, becoming almost voluble on the importance both she and his father attached to manners and a knowledge of the ways of gentlefolks.

Miss Warmington was sympathetic; but, alas! the Miss Warmingtons’ select preparatory school for gentlefolks had already its full complement of pupils. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, not understanding the hint, referred to rumours that tended to refute this argument. It seemed needful there should be plain speaking. The Misses Warmington themselves were very sorry, but there were parents who had to be considered. Particularly was it a preparatory school for young ladies and gentlemen. A pupil from the neighbourhood of Platt Lane--the child of a mechanic--no doubt a most excellent----

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm interrupted. An engineer, employing workmen of his own.

The elder Miss Warmington was pleased to hear it. But there was no getting over the neighbourhood of Platt Lane. And Mrs. Strong’nth’arm herself, the child’s mother. Miss Warmington had not the slightest intention of being offensive. Domestic service Miss Warmington had always held to be a calling worthy of all esteem. It was the parents.

Miss Warmington rose to end the interview. And then by chance her eyes fell upon Anthony John as he sat with one small leg tucked underneath the other.

The tears were in Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s eyes, and she did not notice. But Anthony saw quite plainly the expression that came over the tired, lined face of the elder Miss Warmington. He had seen it before on faces that had suddenly caught sight of him.

“You say your husband employs work-people?” she said in a changed tone, turning to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm.

“A man and a boy,” declared Mrs. Strong’nth’arm in a broken voice. She dared not look up because of the tears in her eyes.

“Would you like to be one of our little pupils?” asked the elder Miss Warmington of Anthony John.

“No, thank you,” he answered. He did not move, but he was still looking at her, and he saw the flush upon her face and the quiver of her tall gaunt frame.

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Warmington as she rang the bell. “I hope you’ll find a school to suit you.”

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would much have liked to make a cutting answer and have swept out of the room. But correct behaviour once acquired becomes a second nature. So, instead, Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied and apologised for her intrusion, and taking Anthony John by the hand, departed with bowed head.

In the street primeval instinct reasserted itself. She denounced the Misses Warmington as snobs. Not that it mattered. Anthony John should be a gentleman in spite of them. And when he had got on and was rich they would pass the Miss Warmingtons in the street and take no notice of them, just as though they were dirt. She hoped they would live long enough. And then suddenly her anger turned against Anthony John.

“What did you mean by saying ‘No, thank you’ when she asked you if you’d like to come?” she demanded. “I believe she’d have taken you if you’d said yes.”

“I didn’t want her to,” explained Anthony. “She isn’t clever. I’d rather learn from someone clever.”

With improved financial outlook the Strong’nth’arms had entered the Church of England. When you were poor it didn’t matter; nobody minded what religion you belonged to; church or chapel, you crept into the free seats at the back and no one turned their eyes to look. But employers of labour who might even one day be gentlefolks! The question had to be considered from more points of view than one.

Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s people had always been chapel folk; and as his wife had often bitterly remarked, much good it had done him. Her own inclination was towards the established church as being more respectable; and arguing that the rent of a side pew was now within their means, she had gained her point. For himself Mr. Strong’nth’arm was indifferent. Hope had revived within him. He was busy on a new invention and Sunday was the only day now on which he had leisure and the workshop to himself. Anthony would have loved to have been there helping, but his mother explained to him that one had to think of the future. A little boy, spotlessly clean and neatly dressed, always to be seen at church with his mother, was the sort of little boy that people liked and, when the time came, were willing to help.

A case in point, proving the usefulness of the church, occurred over this very problem of Anthony’s education. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm called on the vicar and explained to him her trouble. The vicar saw a way out. One of the senior pupils at the grammar school was seeking evening employment. His mother, a widow, possessed of nothing but a small pension, had lately died. Unless he could earn sufficient to keep him he would have to discontinue his studies. A clever lad; the vicar could recommend him. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was gratitude personified. The vicar was only too pleased. It was helping two birds with one stone. It sounded wrong to the vicar even as he said it. But then so many things the vicar said sounded wrong to him afterwards.

The business was concluded that same evening. Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge became engaged for two hours a day to teach Anthony the rudiments of learning, and by Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was generally referred to as “our little Anthony’s tutor.” He was a nervous, silent youth. The walls of his bed-sitting-room, to which when the din of hammers in the workshop proved disturbing he would bear little Anthony away, was papered with texts and mottoes, prominent among which one read: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The preparatory education of Anthony proceeded by leaps and bounds. The child was eager to learn.

Between the two an odd friendship grew up founded upon a mutual respect and admiration. Young Tetteridge was clever. The vicar had spoken more truly than he knew. He had a clever way of putting things that made them at once plain and easy to be remembered. He could make up poetry--quite clever poetry that sometimes made you laugh and at other times stirred something within you which you didn’t understand but which made you feel grand and all aglow. He drew pictures--clever pictures of fascinating never-to-be-seen things that almost frightened you, of funny faces, and things that made you cry. He made music out of a thing that looked like a fiddle, but was better than a fiddle, that he kept in a little black box; and when he played you wanted to dance and sing and shout.

But it was not the cleverness that Anthony envied. That would have been fatal to their friendship. He never could answer satisfactorily when Anthony would question him as to what he was going to be--what he was going to do with all his cleverness. He hadn’t made up his mind, he wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes he thought he would be a poet, at other times a musician or an artist, or go in for politics and be a statesman.

“Which are you going to begin with when you leave school?” demanded Anthony. They had been studying in young Tetteridge’s bed-sitting-room and the lesson was over. Anthony’s eyes were fixed upon a motto over the washstand:

“One thing at a time, and that done well, Is a very good rule, as many can tell.”

Young Tetteridge admitted that the time was approaching when the point would have to be considered.

Anthony was sitting on his hands, swinging his legs. Young Tetteridge was walking up and down; owing to the size of the room being ten by twelve it was a walk with many turns.

“You see,” explained Anthony, “you’re not a gentlefolk.”

Mr. Tetteridge claimed that he was, though personally attaching no importance to the fact. His father had been an Indian official. His mother, had she wished, could have claimed descent from one of the most renowned of Irish kings.

“What I mean,” explained Anthony, “is that you’ve got to work for your living.”

Mr. Tetteridge argued that he could live on very little. He was living just then on twelve shillings a week, picked up one way and another.

“But when you’re married and have children?” suggested Anthony.

Mr. Tetteridge flushed, and his eyes instinctively turned to a small photograph on the mantelpiece. It featured a pretty dolly-faced girl, the daughter of one of the masters at the grammar school.

“You haven’t got any friends, have you?” asked Anthony.

Mr. Tetteridge shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he answered.

“Couldn’t you keep a school?” suggested Anthony, “for little boys and girls whose mothers don’t like them going to the parish school and who ain’t good enough for the Miss Warmingtons? There’s heaps of new people always coming here. And you’re so clever at teaching.”

Mr. Tetteridge, halting suddenly, stretched out his hand; and Anthony, taking his from underneath him, they shook.

“Thanks awfully,” said Mr. Tetteridge. “Do you know I’d never thought of that.”

“I shouldn’t say anything about it if I was you,” counselled Anthony, “or somebody else might slip in and do it before you were ready.”

“We say, ‘if I were you’; not ‘if I was you,’” Mr. Tetteridge corrected him. “We’ll take the subjunctive mood tomorrow. It’s quite easy to remember.”

Again he stretched out his hand. “It’s awfully good of you,” he said.

“I’d like you not to go away from Millsborough,” answered Anthony.

The period of prosperity following the visit of Wandering Peter had lasted all but two years. It came to an end with the death of his father. It was while working on his new invention that the accident had happened.

He was alone in the workshop one evening after supper; and while hoisting a heavy iron bar the rope had broken and the bar had fallen upon him and crushed his skull. He lingered for a day or two, mostly unconscious. It was a few hours before the end that Anthony, who had been sent upstairs by his mother to see if anything had happened, found his father with his eyes wide open. The man made a sign to him to close the door. The boy did so and then came and stood beside the bed.

“There won’t be anything left, sonny,” his father whispered. “I’ve been a fool. Everything I could get or borrow I put into it. It would have been all right, of course, if I had lived and could have finished it. Your mother doesn’t know, as yet. Break it to her after I’m gone, d’you mind. I haven’t the pluck.”

Anthony promised. There seemed to be more that his father wanted to say. He lay staring at the child with a foolish smile about his loose, weak mouth. Anthony sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He put his hand on the boy’s thigh.

“I wish I could say something to you,” he whispered. “You know what I mean: something that you could treasure up and that would be of help to you. I’ve always wanted to. When you used to ask questions and I was short with you, it was because I couldn’t answer them. I used to lie awake at night and try to think them out. And then I thought that when I came to die something might happen, that perhaps I’d have a vision or something of that sort--they say that people do, you know--that would make it all plain to me and that I’d be able to tell you. But it hasn’t come. I suppose I ain’t the right sort. It all seems dark to me.”

His mind wandered, and after a few incoherent words he closed his eyes again. He did not regain consciousness.

Anthony broke it to his mother--about everything having been sacrificed to the latest new invention.

“Lord love the man!” she answered. “Did he think I didn’t know? We were just a pair of us. I persuaded myself it was going to pan out all right this time.”

They were standing by the bedside. His mother had been up to the great house and had brought back with her a fine wreath of white flowers. They lay upon the sheet just over his breast. Anthony hardly knew his father; the weak, twitching lips were closed and formed a firm, strong line. Apart from the mouth his face had always been beautiful; though, lined with fret and worry and the fair hair grimy and uncombed, few had ever noticed it. His mother stooped and kissed the high pale brow.

“He is like what I remember him at the beginning,” she said. “You can see that he was a gentleman, every inch of him.”

His mother looked younger standing there beside her dead man. A softness had come into her face.

“You did your best, my dear,” she said, “and I guess I wasn’t much help to you.”

Everybody spoke well of the white, handsome man who lay with closed eyes and folded hands as if saying his prayers. Anthony had no idea that his father had been so universally liked and respected.

“Was father any relation to Mr. Selwyn?” he asked his mother the evening of the funeral.

“Relation!” answered his mother. “Not that I ever heard of. Why, what makes you ask?”

“He called him ‘brother,’” explained Anthony.

“Oh, that,” answered his mother. “Oh, that doesn’t mean that he really was his brother. It’s just a way of speaking of the dead.”

Chapter V

They moved into a yet smaller house in a yet meaner street. His mother had always been clever with her needle. A card in the front window gave notice that Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, dressmaker and milliner, was willing to make up ladies’ own materials and guaranteed both style and fit. Mill hands and miners’ wives and daughters supplied her clientèle. When things were going well orders were sufficient to keep Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s sewing machine buzzing and clacking from morn till night.

There were periods, of course, when work was slack and bills remained unpaid. But on the whole there was enough to just keep and clothe them. It was the problem of Anthony’s education that troubled them both.

And here again it was the Church that came to their rescue. The pious founder of St. Aldys’ Grammar School had decreed “Foundation Scholarships” enabling twelve poor boys belonging to the faith to be educated free, selection being in the hands of the governors. Sir William Coomber happened to be one, the Vicar another. Young Tetteridge, overcoming his shyness, canvassed the remainder, taking Anthony with him. There was anxiety, alternation of hope and fear. In the end victory. Anthony, subjected to preliminary examination, was deemed sufficiently advanced for the third form. Sir William Coomber wrote him a note, the handwriting somewhat shaky, telling him to serve God and honour the Queen and be a blessing to his mother. And if ever there was anything that Sir William could do for him to help him he was to let Sir William know. The Vicar shook hands with him and wished him godspeed, adding incidentally that heaven helps those that help themselves. The headmaster received him in his study and was sure they were going to be friends. Young Tetteridge gave a cold collation in his honour, to which the head of the third form, the captain of the second division of the football team and three gentlemen of the upper sixth were invited. The captain of the second division of the football team examined his legs and tested his wind and expressed satisfaction. Jarvis, of the upper sixth, made a speech in his honour, quite a kindly speech, though it did rather suggest God Almighty to a promising black beetle; and Anthony was called upon to reply.

Excess of diffidence had never been his failing. It never was to be. He said he was glad he was going to be in the third form, because he did like Billy Saunders very much indeed. And he was glad that Mr. Williamson thought he’d be all right in time for football, because he thought it a jolly game and wanted to play it awfully, if Mr. Williamson would help him and tell him what to do. And, he thought it awfully kind of Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Harrocks and Mr. Andrews to take notice of a little boy like he was; and he hoped that when he got into the upper sixth he’d be like them. And he was awfully bucked up at being one of the St. Aldys boys, because he thought it must be the finest school in all the world, and it was awfully ripping of Mr. Tetteridge to have got him into it. And then he sat down and everybody said “Bravo!” and banged the table, and Mr. Jarvis said it wasn’t half bad for a young ’un.

“Did I do all right?” he asked young Tetteridge after the others had gone.

“Splendiferous,” answered young Tetteridge, putting an affectionate arm around him. “You said something about all of them.”

“Yes; I thought they’d like that,” said Anthony.

He discovered that other sentiments than kindliness go to the making of a school. It leaked out that he was a “cropped head.” The founder--maybe for hygienic reasons--had stipulated that his twelve free scholars should wear their hair cut close. The custom had fallen into disuetude, but the name still clung to them. By the time they had reached the upper division they had come to be tolerated. But the early stages were made hard for them. Anthony was dubbed “Pauper,” “Charity boy.” On the bench the boys right and left of him would draw away so that they might not touch him. In the playground he was left severely to himself. That he was quick and clever at his lessons and that the masters liked him worked still further to his disadvantage. At first young Saunders stuck up for him, but finding this made him a sharer of Anthony’s unpopularity soon dropped him, throwing the blame upon Anthony.

“You see it isn’t only your having come in on the ‘Foundation,’” he explained one day to Anthony, having beckoned him aside to a quiet corner behind a water-butt. “You ought to have told me your mother was a dressmaker.”

“So is young Harringay’s mother,” argued Anthony.

“Yes; but she keeps a big shop and employs girls to do the sewing,” explained Saunders. “Your mother lives in Snelling’s Row and works with her own hands. You ought to have told me. It wasn’t fair.”

Ever since he could remember there had been cropping up things that Anthony could not understand. In his earlier days he had worried about these matters and had asked questions concerning them. But never had he succeeded in getting a helpful answer. As a consequence he had unconsciously become a philosopher. The wise traveller coming to an unknown country accepts what he finds there and makes the best of it.

“Sorry,” replied Anthony, and left it at that.

One day in the playground a boy pointed at him. He was standing with a little group watching the cricket.

“His mother goes out charing,” the boy shouted.

Anthony stole a glance at the boy without making any sign of resentment. As a matter of fact his mother did occasionally go out charing on days when there was no demand for her needle. He was a lithe, muscular-looking lad some three inches taller than Anthony.

“Ain’t you going to fight him?” suggested a small boy near by with a hopeful grin upon his face.

“Not yet,” answered Anthony, and resumed his interest in the game.

There was an old crony of his uncle’s, an ex-prize fighter. To this man Anthony made appeal. Mr. Dobb was in a quandary. Moved by Mrs. Newt’s warnings and exhortations, he had lately taken up religion and was now running a small public-house in one of the many mining villages adjoining Millsborough.

“It’s agin ‘the Book,’” he answered. “Fighting’s wrong. ‘Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also.’ Haven’t tried that, have you?”

“He hasn’t done it,” explained Anthony. “He called my mother a charwoman. They’re always on to me, shouting after me ‘pauper’ and ‘charity boy.’”

“Damn shame,” murmured Mr. Dobb forgetfully.

“There’s something inside me,” explained Anthony, “that makes me want to kill them and never mind what happens to me afterwards. It’s that that I’m afraid of. If I could just give one or two of them a good licking it would stop it.”

Mr. Dobb scratched his head. “Wish you’d come to me a year ago, my lad,” he said, “before your aunt got me to promise to read a chapter of the Bible every night before I went to sleep.” He looked down at Anthony with an approving professional eye. “You’ve got the shoulders, and your neck might have been made for it. Your reach couldn’t be better for your height. And all you need is another inch round your wind. In a couple of months I could have turned you out equal to anything up to six stun seven.”

“But the Bible tells us to fight,” argued Anthony. “Yes, it does,” he persisted in reply to Mr. Dobb’s stare of incredulity. “It was God who told Saul to slay all the Amalekites. It was God who taught David to fight, David says so himself. He helped him to fight Goliath.”

Mrs. Newt, having regard to Mr. Dobb’s age, had advised him to read the New Testament first. He had just completed the Acts.

“Are you quite sure?” demanded Mr. Dobb.

Anthony found chapter and verse and read them to him.

“Well, this beats me into a cocked hat,” was Mr. Dobb’s comment. “Seems to me to be a case of paying your money and taking your choice.”

Mr. Dobb’s scruples being thus laid at rest, he threw himself into the training of Anthony with the enthusiasm of an artist. Anthony promised not to fight till Mr. Dobb gave his consent, and for the rest of the term bore his purgatory in silence. On the last day of the vacation Mr. Dobb pronounced him fit; and on the next morning Anthony set off hopeful of an early opportunity to teach his persecutors forbearance. They were interfering with his work. He wanted to be done with them. To his disappointment no chance occurred that day. A few of the customary jibes were hurled at him; they came, unfortunately, from boys too small to be of any use as an example.

But on his way home the next afternoon he saw, to his delight, young Penlove and Mowbray, of the lower fourth, turn up a quiet road that led through a little copse to the bathing place. Penlove was the boy who had called his mother a charwoman. Young Mowbray belonged to the swells; his father was the leading solicitor of Millsborough. He was a quiet, amiable youth with soft eyes and a pink and white complexion.

Anthony followed them, and when they reached the edge of the copse he ran and overtook them. It was not a good day for bathing, there being a chill east wind, and nobody else was in sight.

They heard Anthony behind them and turned.

“Coming for a swim?” asked young Mowbray pleasantly.

“Not today, thank you,” answered Anthony. “It’s Penlove I wanted to speak to. It won’t take very long.”

Penlove was looking at him with a puzzled expression. Anthony was an inch taller than when Penlove had noticed him last.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“You called my mother a charwoman last term,” answered Anthony. “She does go out cleaning when she can’t get anything else to do. I think it fine of her. She wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for me. But you meant it as an insult, didn’t you?”

“Well,” answered young Penlove, “what if I did?” He guessed what was coming, and somehow felt doubtful of the result notwithstanding the two years difference between them.

“I want you to say that you’re sorry and promise never to do it again,” answered Anthony.

It had to be gone through. Young Penlove girded his loins--to be exact, shortened his belt by a couple of holes and determined to acquit himself like an English schoolboy. Young Mowbray stepped to the end of the copse for the purpose of keeping cave.

It was a short fight, for which young Mowbray, who always felt a little sick on these occasions, was glad. Penlove was outclassed from the beginning. After the third round he held up his hand and gave Anthony best. Anthony helped him to rise, and seeing he was still groggy, propped him up against a tree.

“Never mind saying you’re sorry,” he suggested. “Leave me and my mother alone for the future, that’s all I want.” He held out his hand.

Young Mowbray had returned.

“Shake hands with him,” he advised Penlove. “You were in the wrong. Show your pluck by acknowledging it.”

Penlove shook hands. “Sorry,” he said. “We have been beastly to you. Take my tip and don’t stand any more of it.”

The story of the fight got about. Penlove had to account for his changed appearance, and did so frankly. Genuine respect was the leading sentiment he now entertained towards Anthony.

It was shared by almost the entire third class, the only criticism directed against Anthony being for his selection of time and place. The fight ought to have been arranged for a Friday afternoon behind the pavilion, when all things might have been ordered according to ancient custom. That error could and must be rectified. Penlove’s account of Anthony’s prowess might have been exaggerated to excuse his own defeat. Norcop, a hefty youngster and the pride of the lower fourth, might have given a different account. Anthony, on his way home two days later, was overtaken in a quiet street by young Mowbray.

“You’ll have to fight Norcop next Friday week,” he told Anthony. “If you lick him there’s to be an end of it, and you’re to be left alone. I thought I’d let you know in time.”

Mowbray lived at the Priory, an old Georgian house with a big garden the other end of the town. He had come far out of his way.

“It’s awfully kind of you,” said Anthony.

“I hope you’ll win,” said Mowbray. “I’m a Socialist. I think it rubbish all this difference between the classes. I think we’re all equal, and so does my sister. She’s awfully well read.”

Anthony was not paying much attention. His mind was occupied with the ordeal before him.

“He’s rather good, isn’t he, Harry Norcop?” he asked.

“That’s why they’re putting him up,” answered Mowbray. “It’s a rotten silly idea. It’s the way that pack of wolves settle their differences. And the wolf that goes down all the others turn away from and try to make it worse for the poor begger. We’re just the same. If you get licked on Friday you’ll be persecuted worse than ever. There’s no sense in it.”

Anthony looked round at him. It was new sort of talk, this. Young Mowbray flushed.

“I wonder if you could get to like me,” he said. “I liked you so for what you said to Penlove about your thinking it fine of your mother to go out cleaning. I haven’t got any friends among the boys; not real ones. They think me a muff.”

“I don’t,” answered Anthony. “I think you talk awfully interestingly. I’d like tremendously to be friends.”

Mowbray flushed again, with pleasure this time. “Won’t keep you now,” he said. “I do hope you’ll win.”

Anthony never left more than he could help to chance. For the next week all his spare time was passed in the company of Mr. Dobb, who took upon himself the duties not only of instructor but of trainer.

On the following Friday afternoon Anthony stepped into the ring with feelings of pleasurable anticipation.

“Don’t you go in feeling angry or savage,” had been Mr. Dobb’s parting instruction. “Nothing interferes with a man’s wind more than getting mad. Just walk into him as if you loved him and were doing it for the glory of God.”

The chorus of opinion afterwards was that it had been a pretty fight. That Norcop had done his best and that no disgrace attached to him. And that Strong’nth’arm was quite the best man for his years and weight that St. Aldys had produced so far back as the oldest boy could remember. The monitors shook hands with him, and the smaller fry crowded round him and contended for his notice. From ostracism he passed in half an hour to the leadership of the third class. It seemed a curious way of gaining honour and affection. Anthony made a note of it.

This principle that if a thing had to be done no pains should be spared towards the doing of it well he applied with equal thoroughness to the playing of his games. For lessons in football and cricket he exchanged lessons in boxing. Cricket he did not care for. With practice at the nets it was easy enough to become a good batsman; but fielding was tiresome. There was too much hanging about, too much depending upon other people. Football appealed to him. It was swift and ceaseless. He loved the manœuvring, the subterfuge, the seeming yielding, till the moment came for the sudden rush. He loved the fierce scrimmage, when he could let himself go, putting out all his strength.

But it was not for the sake of the game that he played. Through sport lay the quickest road to popularity. Class distinctions did not count. You made friends that might be useful. One never knew.

His mother found it more and more difficult to make both ends meet. If she should fail before he was ready! Year by year Millsborough increased in numbers and in wealth. On the slopes above the town new, fine houses were being built. Her mill owners and her manufacturers, her coal-masters and her traders, with all their followers and their retainers, waxed richer and more prosperous. And along the low-lying land, beside the foul, black Wyndbeck, spread year by year new miles of mean, drab streets; and the life of her poor grew viler and more cursed.

St. Aldys’ Grammar School stood on the northern edge of the old town. Anthony’s way home led him through Hill Terrace. From the highest point one looks down on two worlds: old Millsborough, small and picturesque, with its pleasant ways and its green spaces, and beyond its fine new houses with their gardens and its tree-lined roads winding upward to the moor; on the other hand, new Millsborough, vast, hideous, deathlike in its awful monotony.

The boy would stop sometimes, and a wild terror would seize him lest all his efforts should prove futile and in that living grave he should be compelled to rot and die.

To escape from it, to “get on,” at any cost! Nothing else mattered.

Chapter VI

An idea occurred to Anthony. The more he turned it over in his mind the more it promised. Young Tetteridge had entered upon his last term. The time would soon come for the carrying out of Anthony’s suggestion that in some mean street of Millsborough he should set up a school for the sons of the ambitious poor.

Why should not one house do for them both? To Mr. Tetteridge for his classroom and study the ground floor; to his mother for her dressmaking and millinery the floor above; the three attics for bedrooms; in the basement the common dining-room and kitchen. There were whole streets of such houses, with steps up to the front door and a bow window. Mr. Tetteridge would want someone to look after him, to “do for” him. Whom more capable, more conscientious than Mrs. Strong’nth’arm? The gain would be mutual. His mother would be working for better-off customers. She could put up her prices. Mr. Tetteridge would save in rent and board.

Mr. Tetteridge was quite carried away by the brilliance and simplicity of the proposal.

“And there will be you and your dear mother always there,” he concluded. “It is so long since I had a home.”

To his mother the rise from Snelling’s Row to Bridlington Street was a great event. It brought tears of happiness to her eyes. Also she approved of Mr. Tetteridge.

“It will be so good for you,” she said to Anthony, “living with a gentleman.”

There was the furnishing. Mr. Tetteridge’s study, into which parents would have to be shown, must breathe culture, dignified scholasticism. Mr. Tetteridge’s account at Her Majesty’s savings bank was a little over twenty pounds. That must not be touched. Sickness, the unexpected, must be guarded against. Anthony went to see his aunt. That with the Lord’s help she had laid by a fair-sized nest-egg she had in a rash moment of spiritual exaltation confided to him. Loans of half a sovereign, and even of a five-pound note, amply secured and bearing interest at the rate of a shilling in the pound per week, she was always prepared to entertain. Anthony wanted a hundred pounds at ten per cent. per annum, to be repaid on the honour of a gentleman.

The principal required frightened her almost into a fit. Besides she hadn’t got it. The rate of interest, which according to complicated calculations of her own worked out at considerably less than halfpenny a pound per week, did not tempt her. About the proposed security there seemed to her a weakness.

In years to come the things without a chance that Anthony Strong’nth’arm pulled off, the impracticable schemes that with a wave of his hand became sound business propositions, the hopeless enterprises into which he threw himself and carried through to victory, grew to be the wonder and bewilderment of Millsborough. But never in all his career was he called upon again to face such an absolutely impossible stone waller as his aunt’s determination on that Friday afternoon not to be bamboozled out of hard-won savings by any imp of Satan, even if for her sins he happened to be her own nephew.

How he did it Mrs. Newt was never able to explain. It was not what he said, though heaven knows there was no lack of that. Mrs. Newt’s opinion was that by words alone he could have got it out of a stone. It was some strange magic he seemed to possess that made her--to use her own simile--as clay in the hands of the potter.

She gave him that one hundred pounds in twenty five-pound notes, thanking God from the bottom of her heart that he hadn’t asked for two. In exchange he drew from his pocket, and pressed into her hand a piece of paper. What it was about and what she had done with it she never knew. She remembered there was a stamp on it.

She also remembered, when she came to her senses, that he had put his arms about her and had hugged her, and that she had kissed him good-bye and had given him a message to his mother. At the end of the first twelve months he brought her thirty pounds, explaining to her that that left eighty still owing. And what astonished her most was that she wasn’t surprised. It was just as if she had expected it.

The pupils came in. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, knowing many folk, was of much help.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s idea had been to call upon some half a dozen likely parents, to appeal to them for their support of a most deserving case: a young would-be schoolmaster of whose character and ability she could not speak too highly.

“And they’ll tell you it’s very kind of you to try and assist the poor young gentleman, but that as regards their own particular progeny they’ve decided to send him somewhere else,” explained Anthony.

“How do you know?” argued his mother. “Why, Mrs. Glenny, the china shop woman, was telling me only a month ago how worried she was about her boy, not knowing where to send him.”

“You drop in on Mrs. Glenny,” counselled Anthony, “and talk about the weather and how the price of everything is going up. And as you’re coming away just mention casually how everybody is talking about this new school that Mr. Tetteridge has just started; and how everybody is trying to get their boys into it; and how they won’t be able to, seeing that young Tetteridge has told you that he can only receive a limited number; and how you’ve promised Mrs. Herring to use your influence with Tetteridge in favour of her boy Tom. Leave Mrs. Glenny to do the rest.”

People had a habit of asking Anthony his age; and when he told them they would look at him very hard and say: “Are you quite sure?”

His uncle was taken ill late in the year. He had caught rheumatic fever getting himself wet through on the moors. He made a boast of never wearing an overcoat. Anthony found him sitting up in bed. A carpenter friend had fixed him up a pulley from the ceiling by which he could raise himself with his hands. Old Simon was sitting watching him, his chin upon the bed. Simon had been suffering himself from rheumatism during the last two winters and seemed to understand.

“Don’t tell your aunt,” he said. “She’ll have them all praying round me and I’ll get no peace. But I’ve got a feeling it’s the end. I’m hoping to slip off on the quiet, like.”

Anthony asked if he could do anything. He had always liked his uncle; they felt there was a secret bond between them.

“Look after the old chap,” his uncle answered; “that is if I go first.”

He stretched out a stiff arm and laid it on old Simon’s head. “Ninety years old he’ll be on the fourteenth,” he said, “reckoning six years of a dog’s life as equal to one of a man’s. And I’m sixty-five. We haven’t done so badly, either of us.”

Anthony drew up a chair and sat down between the two.

“Nothing you want to talk about, is there?” he asked. The old man knew what he meant. He shook his head.

“Been talking about it or listening to it, on and off, pretty well all my life,” he answered. “Never got any further.”

He was silent a while, wrestling with his pain.

“Of course, I believe in a God,” he said. “There must be Somebody bossing it all. It’s the things they tell you about Him that I’ve never been able to swallow. Don’t fit in with common sense to my thinking.”

“You’re not afraid?” Anthony asked him after a silence.

“Why should I be?” answered the old man. “He knows me. He ain’t expecting anything wonderful. If I’m any good maybe He’ll find me a job. If not----”

Old Simon had crept closer. They were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Wonder if there’ll be any dogs?” he said. “Don’t see why there shouldn’t. If love and faithfulness and self-forgetfulness are going to be of any use to Him, what’s wrong with you, old chap?”

He laughed. “Don’t tell your aunt I said that,” he cautioned Anthony. “She’s worried enough about me, poor old girl, as it is.”

His aunt had looked for a death-bed repentance, but the end came before she expected it, in the night.

“He wasn’t really a bad man,” she said, crying. “That’s what made me hope, right to the end, that the Truth would be revealed to him.”

Anthony sought to comfort her. “Perhaps it came to him when he was alone,” he said.

She clung to that.

The burying of him was another trouble. She had secured the site she had always wished for herself beneath the willow. She would have liked him to be laid there beside her, but his views and opinions had been too well known to her people. They did not want him among them. There was a neglected corner of the big cemetery set apart for such as he; but to lay him there would be to abandon hope. The Lord would never venture there. Anthony suggested the Church. He undertook to interview the vicar, a kindly old gentleman, who possibly would ask no questions.

He found the vicar in the vestry. There had been a meeting of the churchwardens. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin was a chubby, blue-eyed gentleman. He had heard of Anthony’s uncle. “A very hard nut to crack,” so the vicar had been given to understand.

“But was always willing to listen, I gathered,” added the vicar. “So perhaps the fault was ours. We didn’t go about it the right way.”

Something moved Anthony to tell the vicar what his uncle had once said to him when he was a child about the world being a very different place if people really did believe all that they say they believe.

He wished he hadn’t said it, for the old gentleman sat silent for what seemed quite a long time.

“What did they answer him?” he asked at length. “Did he tell you?”

“He said they never did answer him that,” replied Anthony.

The vicar looked at him across the green baize.

“There isn’t any answer,” he said. “Your uncle had us there.”

“I dreamed of it once.” The light was fading; maybe he forgot that young Anthony was sitting there over against him in the shadows. “Living for Christ, taking no thought of aught else. What ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. It’s a big thing--Believing.”

He seemed to have become aware again of the boy sitting there half hidden by the shadows.

“Most of us, Strong’nth’arm,” he said, “think that all we’ve got to do is to sing about it, to repeat it in the proper places. It isn’t enough. Take up thy cross and follow me. That’s where the trouble begins. Easy enough to worship it with folded hands. It is taking it up, carrying it with bowed head and aching shoulders, that’s the bother of it.”

He rose, pushing back his chair with a grating sound upon the uncarpeted floor.

“You see,” he said, “it isn’t only oneself. One might do it if one were alone. The Roman Church is right on that point. And yet it doesn’t work, even with them. The world gets hold of them. What’s the date?” he said suddenly.

“December the fifth,” Anthony told him.

“Just three weeks to Christmas.” He was walking up and down the bare cold room. He halted a few steps in front of the lad. “Do you know what Christmas means to me? You will later on. Bills. Butcher’s bills, baker’s bills, bootmaker’s bills--there’s something uncanny about the number of boots that children seem to want. And then there’s their school bills and their doctor’s bills and the Christmas boxes and the presents. It’s funny when you come to think of it. Christ’s birthday. And I’ve come to dread it. What were we all talking about this afternoon here in the vestry? How to help Christ? How to spread His gospel? No, pew rates, tithes, clergy relief funds, curates’ salaries, gas bills, fund for central heating and general repairs!

“How can I preach Christ, the Outcast, the Beggar, the Wanderer in the Wilderness, the Servant of the poor, the Carrier of the Cross? That’s what I started out to preach. They’d only laugh at me. ‘He lives in a big house,’ they would say; ‘keeps four servants’--when one can get them--‘and his sons go to college.’ God knows it’s struggle enough to do it. But I oughtn’t to be struggling to do it. I ought to be down among the people, teaching Christ not only by my words but my life.”

It had grown dark. The vicar, stumbling against a small side table, brought it down with a clatter. Anthony found the matches and lit the gas. The vicar held out a plump hand.

“It’ll be all right about your uncle,” he said. “See Mr. Grant and arrange things with him.”

Anthony thanked him and was leaving. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin drew him back. “Don’t judge me too hardly,” he said with a smile. “Leastways, not till you’ve lived a bit longer. Something made me talk without thinking. If anything I’ve said comes back to you at any time, listen to it. It may have been a better sermon than I usually preach.”

His aunt was much comforted when he told her.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, “if he got through after all. Anyhow, we’ve done our best for him.”

Old Simon had returned to the railway carriage. He seemed to know that all was over. He lingered for a little while, but there was no heart in him. And one morning they found him dead.

A friendship had grown up between Anthony and young Mowbray. It had been chiefly of Edward Mowbray’s seeking, but Anthony had been attracted by Edward’s gentleness and kindness. Mowbray’s father had also taken a liking to him and he came to be a frequent visitor at The Priory.

Mr. Mowbray was a fine, handsome gentleman of about fifty, fonder of pleasure than of business it was said. He rode to hounds and prided himself on being one of the best shots in the county. He was a widower. Gossip whispered of an unhappy marriage, for the lady--of neglect and infidelities. But this may not have been true, for Mr. Mowbray always spoke of his wife with enthusiasm, and often tears would come into his eyes. Her portrait by Orchardson hung in the dining-room facing Mr. Mowbray’s chair: an arresting face, though hardly beautiful, the forehead being too high and narrow. It was in the eyes that the attraction lay. They seemed almost to speak. Mr. Mowbray, during a lull in the conversation, would sometimes raise his glass and drink to her in silence. He was fond of his fine old port, and so were most of his many friends. There were only two children, Edward and his sister Elizabeth. She was the elder by a couple of years. She had her mother’s haunting eyes, but the face as a whole was less striking. Anthony had been rather afraid of her at first, and she had not taken much notice of him. She was considered eccentric by reason of her not taking any interest in games and amusements. In this both children were a strange contrast to their father. She would have been dubbed a “high brow” in later years; “blue stocking” was the name then.

It was by Edward and his sister that Anthony was introduced to politics. They were ardent reformers. They dreamed of a world in which there would be no more poor. They thought it might be brought about in their time, at least so far as England was concerned. Edward was the more impatient of the two. He thought it would have to come by revolution. Elizabeth (or Betty as she was generally called for short) had once been of the same opinion. But she was changing. She pointed out the futility of the French Revolution. And even had there been excuse for it the need no longer existed. All could be done now through the ballot box. Leaders must arise, men wise and noble. The people would vote for them. Laws must be passed. The evil and the selfish compelled to amend their ways. The rotten houses must be pulled down; pleasant, well-planned habitations take their place, so that the poor might live decently and learn the meaning of “home.” Work must be found for all; the haunting terror of unemployment be lifted from their lives. It easily could be done. There was work waiting, more than enough, if only the world were properly ordered. Fair wages must be paid, carrying with them a margin for small comforts, recreation. The children must be educated so that in time the poor would be lifted up and the wall between the classes levelled down. Leaders were the one thing needful: if rich and powerful so much the better: men who would fight for the right and never sheathe the sword till they had won justice for the people.

They were tramping the moors. The wind had compelled her to take off her hat and carry it and had put colour into her cheeks. Anthony thought she looked very handsome with her fine eyes flashing beneath their level brows.

In their talk they had lost their tracks and were making a bee line for the descent. A stream barred their way. It babbled over stones and round the roots of trees. Edward picked her up to carry her across, but at the margin hesitated, doubting his muscles.

“You’ll be safer with Anthony,” he said, putting her down.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind getting my feet wet.” But Anthony had already lifted her in his arms.

“You’re sure I’m not too heavy?” she asked.

He laughed and stepped down with her into the stream.

He carried her some distance beyond the bank, explaining that the ground was still marshy. He liked the pressure of her weight upon his breast.

Chapter VII

It was the evening previous to young Mowbray’s departure for Oxford. Betty was going with him to help him furnish his rooms. They would have a few days together before term began, and she wanted to see Oxford. Anthony had come to say good-bye. Mr. Mowbray was at a dinner given by the mayor, and the three young people had been left to themselves. Betty had gone into the servants’ quarters to give some orders. The old housekeeper had died the year before and Betty had taken over the entire charge. They were sitting in the library. The great drawing-room was used only when there was company.

“Look in now and again when I am away,” said Edward. “Betty hasn’t many friends and she likes talking to you.”

“And I like talking to her tremendously,” answered Anthony. “But, I say, will it be proper?”

“Oh, what rot,” answered Edward. “You’re not that sort, either of you. Besides, things are different to what they used to be. Why shouldn’t there be just friendship between men and women?”

Betty entered as he finished speaking, and the case was put to her.

“Yes, I shall be sorry to miss our talks,” she said. She turned to Anthony with a smile. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” he answered.

She was surprised. “I thought you were older,” she said.

“Sixteen last birthday,” he persisted. “People have always taken me for older than I am. Mother used to have terrible fights with the tram conductors; they would have I was nearer five than three. She thought quite seriously of sewing a copy of my birth certificate inside my cap.” He laughed.

“You’re only a boy,” said Betty. “I’m nearly nineteen. Yes, come and see me sometimes.”

Edward expected to be at Oxford three years. After that he would return to Millsborough and enter his father’s office. Mowbray and Cousins was the name of the firm, but Cousins had long passed out of it, and eventually the whole business would belong to Edward.

“Why don’t you go in for the Remingham Scholarship?” he said suddenly, turning to Anthony, “and join me next year at Oxford. You could win it hands down; and as for funds to help you out, my father would see to that, I know, if I asked him. He thinks tremendously well of you. Do, for my sake.”

Anthony shook his head. “I have thought about it,” he said. “I’m afraid.”

Edward stared at him. “What on earth is there to be afraid of?” he demanded.

“I’m afraid of myself,” answered Anthony. “Nobody thinks it of me, I know; but I’d end by being a dreamer if I let myself go. My father had it in him. That’s why he never got on. If I went to Oxford and got wandering about all those old colleges and gardens I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d end by being a mere student. I’ve had to fight against it even here, as it is.”

Edward and Betty were both listening to him, suddenly interested. The girl was leaning forward with her chin upon her hand. Anthony rose and walked to the window. The curtains had not been drawn. He looked down upon the glare of Millsborough fading into darkness where the mean streets mingled with the sodden fields.

“You don’t understand what it means,” he said. “Poverty, fear--all your life one long struggle for bare existence.”

He turned and faced the softly-lighted room with its carved ceiling and fine Adams mantelpiece, its Chippendale furniture, its choice pictures and old Persian rugs.

“Everything about you mean and ugly,” he continued. “Everybody looking down upon you, patronizing you. I want to get out of it. Learning isn’t going to help me. At best, what would I be without money or influence to start me? A schoolmaster--a curate, perhaps, on eighty pounds a year. Business is my only chance. I’m good at that. I feel I could be. Planning, organizing, getting people to see things your way, making them do things. It’s just like fighting, only you use your brains instead of your hands. I’m always thinking about things that could be done that would be good for every one. I mean to do them one day. My father used to invent machines and other people stole them from him, and kept all the profit for themselves. They’re not going to do that with me. They shall have their share, but I----” He stopped and flushed scarlet.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve got into a way of talking to myself. I forgot I was here.”

Betty had risen. “I think you are quite right,” she said. “And when you’ve got on you’ll think of those who live always in poverty and fear. You’ll know all about them and the way to help them. You will help them, won’t you?”

She spoke gravely. She might have been presenting a petition to the Prime Minister.

“Of course I will,” he said. “I mean to.”

She rang the bell and ordered coffee and cakes.

While they were munching she sprung it upon them that she was going to buy a bicycle. A new design had just been invented with two low wheels of equal size. It could be made so that a lady could ride it.

Edward was just a little shocked. Betty had the reputation as it was of being a bit eccentric. She went long walks by herself in thick boots and rarely wore gloves. This would make her still more talked about. Betty thought she would be doing good. As the daughter of one of the leading men in Millsborough she could afford to defy the conventions and open the way for others. Girls employed in the mills, who now only saw their people twice a year, would be able to run home for weekends, would be able to enjoy rides into the country on half-holidays. Revolutions always came from the top. The girls would call after her at first, she fully expected. Later they would be heartened to follow her example.

Her difficulty was learning. She proposed to go up to the moors early in the morning where she could struggle with the thing unseen. But at first one wanted assistance and support. There was the gardener’s boy. But she feared he was weak about the knees.

“I wish you’d let me come,” said Anthony. “I like a walk in the early morning. It freshens my brain for the day.”

“Thank you,” she answered. “I was really thinking of you, but I didn’t like to ask in case it might interfere with your work.”

She promised to let him know when the bicycle arrived. He might like to come round and have a look at it.

It was with something of a pang that he said good-bye to Edward, though it would be less than three months before they would meet again. He had not made many friends at the school; he was too self-centered. Young Mowbray was the only boy for whom he felt any real affection.

Tetteridge’s “Preparatory and Commercial School” had prospered beyond expectation. In the language of the advertisement it supplied a long-felt want. “The gentry” of Millsborough--to be exact, its better-off shopkeepers, its higher-salaried clerks and minor professionals--were catered for to excess. But among its skilled workmen and mechanics, earning good wages, were many ambitious for their children. Education was in the air; feared by most of the upper classes as likely to be the beginning of red ruin and the breaking up of laws; regarded by the more thoughtful of the workers, with extravagant hopes, as being the sure road to the Promised Land. Tetteridge had a natural genius for teaching; he had a way of making the work interesting. The boys liked him and talked about him and the things he told them. It became clear that the house in Bridlington Street would soon be too small for his needs.

“It sounds nonsensical, I know,” said Mr. Tetteridge; “but there are times when I wish that I hadn’t been so sensible.”

“What have you been doing sensible?” laughed Anthony.

“When I followed your most excellent and youthful advice, Tony, and started this confounded school,” explained Mr. Tetteridge.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Anthony.

“Success,” replied Mr. Tetteridge. “It’s going to grow. I shall end in a big square house with boarders and assistant masters and prayers at eight o’clock. I shall dress in a black frock-coat and wear a chimney-pot hat. I shall have to. The parents will expect it.”

“There’ll be holidays,” suggested Anthony, “when you’ll be able to go walking tours in knickerbockers and a tweed cap.”

“No, I sha’n’t,” said Mr. Tetteridge. “I shall be a married man. There’ll be children, most likely. We shall go for a month to the seaside and listen to niggers. The children will clamour for it. I shall never escape from children all my life, and I’ll never get away from Millsborough. I shall die here, an honoured and respected citizen of Millsborough. Do you know what my plan was? I’d worked it all out? Wandering about the world like Oliver Goldsmith, with my fiddle. Earning my living while I tramped, sleeping under the stars or in some village inn, listening to the talk and stories; making sketches of odd characters, quaint scenes and places; sitting by the wayside making poetry. Do you know, Tony, I believe I could have been a poet--could have left a name behind me.”

“You’ll have your evenings,” argued Anthony. “They’ll all go at four o’clock. You can write your poetry between tea and supper.”

“‘To Irene of the Ringlets,’” suggested Tetteridge. “‘God and the Grasshopper,’ ‘Ode to Idleness.’ What do you think the parents would say? Besides, they don’t come between tea and supper. They come in the mental arithmetic hour. I kick ’em out and slam the door. They never come again.”

Anthony’s face expressed trouble. Something within him enabled him to understand. Tetteridge laughed.

“It’s all right,” he said. He took the photograph of the science master’s daughter from the mantelpiece and kissed it. “I’m going to marry the dearest little girl in all the world, and we’re going to get on and be very happy. Who knows? Perhaps we may keep our carriage.”

He replaced the latest photograph of Miss Seaton on the mantelpiece. She wasn’t as dolly-faced as she had been. The mouth had grown firmer, and the look of wonder in the eyes had gone. She suggested rather a capable young woman.

He had left to Anthony the search for new premises. Anthony was still undecided when something unexpected happened. The younger Miss Warmington, after a brief illness, died. Mrs. Plumberry had nursed her, and at Anthony’s request consented to call at 15 Bruton Square and find out how the land lay. It would be the very thing. It had two large class-rooms built out into the garden. Mrs. Plumberry was a born diplomatist. She reported that Miss Warmington, now absolutely alone in the world, had cried a little on Mrs. Plumberry’s motherly shoulder; had confided to Mrs. Plumberry that the school had been going down for some time past; that she had neither the heart nor the means to continue it. Mrs. Plumberry’s advice to her had been that she should get rid of the remainder of her lease, if possible, and thus avoid liability regarding covenants for reparation. Miss Warmington had expressed the thankfulness with which she would do this, that is if a purchaser could be found; and Mrs. Plumberry, though not holding out much hope, had promised to look about her.

Thus it came to pass that once again Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and Anthony were ushered into the drawing-room of 15 Bruton Square and rested on its horse-hair-covered chairs. But this time Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat well back; and it was Miss Warmington who, on entering, held out her hand. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, imagining beforehand, had intended not to see, but second nature again was too strong. Miss Warmington, though old and feeble, was still impressive, and Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied and apologized for intrusion.

Miss Warmington smiled as she shook hands with Anthony.

“You were a little boy when I saw you last,” she said, “and you sat with your leg tucked under you.”

“And he wouldn’t come to your school when you asked him to,” interposed Mrs. Strong’nth’arm. She had made up her mind to get that out.

Miss Warmington flushed. “I think he was very wise,” she said. “I hear quite wonderful accounts of him.” Anthony had closed the door and placed a chair for her. “And I see he has learned manners,” she added with another smile.

Anthony laughed. “I was very rude,” he admitted, “and you are a very kind lady to forgive me.”

The business, so far as Miss Warmington was concerned, was soon finished. She wondered afterwards why she had accepted Anthony’s offer without even putting up a fight. It was considerably less than the sum she had determined to stand out for. But on all points, save the main issue, he had yielded to her; and it had seemed to her at the time that she was getting her own way. They had kept up the fiction of the business being between Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and Miss Warmington, Anthony explaining always that it was his mother who was prepared to do so and so--his mother, alas! who was unable to do the other, Mrs. Strong’nth’arm confirming with a nod or a murmur.

Over a friendly cup of tea letters were exchanged then and there, thus enabling Mrs. Strong’nth’arm to dismiss all thought of other houses that had been offered her. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm undertook to pay Miss Warmington three hundred pounds and to take over Miss Warmington’s lease with all its covenants, together with all fixtures and such furniture as Miss Warmington would not require for her own small needs.

“And where the money’s to come from I suppose you know,” commented Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, as the door of 15 Bruton Square closed behind them. “Blessed if I do!”

Anthony laughed. “That’ll be all right, mother,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”

“To hear him!” murmured his mother, addressing the darkening sky above her. “Talking about three hundred pounds to be paid next Tuesday week and laughing about it! Ah! if your poor father had only had your head.”

He explained to his aunt that this time there would be good security and that in consequence she was going to get only five per cent. She tried to make him say seven, more from general principle than with any hope of success. But he only laughed. By degrees he had constituted himself her man of business; and under his guidance her savings had rapidly increased. To Mrs. Newt a successful speculation proved that God was behind you. She had come to regard her nephew with reverence, as being evidently in the Lord’s counsels.

He had a further proposition to put before her. The dogs had long ago been sold, and the old railway carriage had fallen into ruin. The tumble-down cottage, in which his aunt now lived alone, was threatening to follow its example; but the land on which it stood had grown in value. The price he felt sure he could get for it made her open her eyes. The cottage disposed of, she could come and live with them at Bruton Square, paying, of course, for her board and lodging. The sum he suggested per week made her open her eyes still wider. But he promised she should be comfortable and well looked after. Again she made a feeble effort to touch his heart, but he only kissed her and told her that he would see to everything and that she wasn’t to worry. Forty years--all but--she had dwelt in Prospect Cottage, Moor End Lane. She had been married from the Jolly Cricketers, and after a day’s honeymoon by the sea Joe had brought her there and never a night since then had she slept away from it. There had been fields about it in those days. She dratted the boy more than once or twice as she poked about the tiny rooms, selecting the few articles she intended to keep. But she was ready on the appointed day. She had purchased gloves and a new bonnet. One must needs be dressy for Bruton Square.

Anthony had two rooms at the top of the house, one for his bedroom and the other for his study. He had always been fond of reading. His favourite books were histories and memoirs. Emerson and Montaigne he had chosen for himself as prizes. His fiction was confined to “Gulliver’s Travels.” There were also Smiles’ “Self-Help,” “From Log-Cabin to White House,” Franklin’s “Autobiography,” and the “Life of Abraham Lincoln.”

His mother had given up the dressmaking business. Young Tetteridge had brought home his bride, and keeping house for five people, even with help, took up all her time. Often of an evening she would bring her sewing and sit with Anthony while he worked.

It was towards the end of the Michaelmas term; Anthony was in the lower sixth. He had determined to leave at Christmas. The upper sixth spent all its time on the classics which would be useless to him.

“What do you think of doing when you do leave?” asked his mother. “Have you made up your mind?”

“Go into old Mowbray’s office if he’ll have me,” answered Anthony.

“Edward will put in a word for you there, won’t he?” suggested his mother.

“Yes. I’m reckoning on that,” he answered.

Anthony turned again to his book, but his mother’s needle lay idle.

“The girl’s friendly too, isn’t she?” she asked. “They say she can’t express a wish that he doesn’t grant her.”

Anthony did not answer. He seemed not to have heard. His mother’s thimble rolled to the floor. Anthony recovered it and gave it to her.

“What’s she like?” his mother asked him.

“Oh, all right,” he answered, “a nice enough girl.”

“She’s older than you, isn’t she?” said his mother.

“Yes; I think she is,” said Anthony. “Not much.”

“Tom Cripps was up on the moor the other morning.” His mother had resumed her sewing. “Poaching, I expect. He saw you both there. He’s a rare one to gossip. Will it matter?”

Anthony laid down his book. “Was father in love with you when he married you?” he asked.

His mother looked up astonished. “What an odd question to ask,” she said. “Of course he was. Madly in love. Some said I was the prettiest girl in Millsborough--not counting, of course, the gentry. What makes you ask?”

Instead of answering he asked her another.

“What do you mean by madly in love?”

His mother was smiling to herself. The little grey head was at a higher angle than usual.

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Walked six miles there and back every evening just to get five minutes’ talk with me. Said he’d drown himself if I didn’t marry him. And was that jealous--why, I daren’t so much as speak to anything else in trousers. Wrote poetry to me. Only silly like, one day when I was mad with him, I burnt it.”

He did not answer. She stole a glance at him. And suddenly it came to her what was in his mind.

“It never lasts,” she said. “I’ve often thought as folks would be better without it.” She chatted on, keeping a corner of her eye upon him. “Young Tetteridge was in love up to his ears when he first came to us. That marriage isn’t going to turn out trumps. So was Ted Mowbray--the old man, I mean---- Worshipped the very ground she trod on. Everybody talked about it. Didn’t prevent his gallivanting off wherever his fancy took him before they’d been married three years. Guess she wished he’d been less hot at first. Might have kept warm a little longer.” She laughed. “Some one you like and feel you can get on with, and that you know is fond of you; that’s the thing that wears and makes for the most happiness. And if she’s got a bit of money or can help you in other ways--well, there ain’t no harm in that.” She stopped to thread a needle. “Ain’t ever had a fancy, have you?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “That’s what’s troubling me. I suppose I’m too young.”

His mother shook her head. “You’re too level-headed, lad,” she said. “You’ll never make a fool of yourself; for that’s what it means, generally speaking. You’ll marry with your eyes open; and she’ll be a lucky woman, because you ain’t the sort to blow hot and cold and repent of a thing after you’ve done it. That’s what breaks a woman’s heart.”

She gathered together her work and rose.

“Don’t get sitting up too late,” she said. “Don’t do to burn the candle at both ends.”

She was bending down over him. She paused a moment with his head between her hands.

“I suppose you know how handsome you are,” she said.

She kissed him and went out.

Chapter VIII

They were walking on the moor. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Betty was on the way to one of her numerous pensioners, a bed-ridden old labourer who lived in what had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge of a wood, with a granddaughter to keep house for him, a handsome, wild-looking girl of about sixteen.

“What are you going to do when you leave school?” Betty asked suddenly. Since the discovery that she was two years older than Anthony she had adopted towards him a motherly attitude. She had laid it aside while she was learning to ride the bicycle. Anthony’s early mechanical training had given him a general knowledge of adjustments and repairs. He had assumed the position of instructor, and had spoken in tones of authority. Feeling her safety dependent upon his strength and agility, compelled so often to call to him for help, to cling to him for support, she had been docile and apologetic. But the interlude ended, she had resumed her airs of superiority.

“Oughtn’t you to be thinking about it?” she added.

“I have been thinking about it,” he explained. “My difficulty is that I’ve no one to advise me, not now Sir William Coomber’s dead.”

“Why don’t you have a talk with father?” she suggested.

“I did think of that too,” he said with a laugh. “But it seems so cheeky.”

“How would you like to go into his office?” she asked after a silence.

“Do you think he would?” he answered eagerly.

“I’ll sound him about it,” she said.

They had reached the path leading to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Anthony had vaulted over the stile. He had turned and was facing her.

“You are a brick,” he said.

He was looking up at her; she was standing on the cross-bar of the stile. She smiled and held out her hand for him to help her. She had beautiful hands. They were cool and firm, though in consequence of her habit of not wearing gloves, less white and smooth than those of other girls in her position.

He took it, and bending over it kissed it. Neither spoke again till they reached the old man’s cottage.

It was a week later that he received a note from Mr. Mowbray asking him to come to dinner. He found Mr. Mowbray alone. Betty had gone to a party at one of the neighbours. Mr. Mowbray put him next to him on his right, and they talked during the meal. Mowbray asked him questions about his school career and then about his father.

“Funny,” he said, “we were turning out some old papers the other day. Came across your grandfather’s marriage settlement. I suppose you know that the Strong’nth’arms were quite important folk a hundred years ago.”

Anthony had heard about them chiefly from his mother. His father had had no use for them.

Mr. Mowbray was sipping his port.

“My grandfather was a tailor in Sheffield,” he volunteered. He could afford to remember his grandfather. His father had entertained George IV, and his mother had been a personal friend of Queen Caroline. He himself might have been an aristocrat of the first water if manners and appearances stood for lineage.

“I shouldn’t have suspected it, sir,” said Anthony. He was looking at Mr. Mowbray with genuine admiration. Their eyes met and Mr. Mowbray laughed, well pleased.

“Don’t you mention that to Betty,” he said. “She hates to be reminded of it. I tease her about it sometimes when she gets on her high horse and starts riding roughshod over all the social conventions. I tell her it’s her bourgeois blood coming out in her. He was an awful Radical. It always stops her.”

He lit a cigar and pushed back his chair. Anthony did not smoke.

“And now to come to business,” he said. “What are you going to do when you leave school?”

“I thought of trying to get into an office,” answered Anthony.

“Any particular sort of an office?” demanded Mr. Mowbray.

“Yes, sir,” answered Anthony. “Yours, if you’ll have me.”

Mr. Mowbray was regarding him through half-closed eyes.

“You want to be a business-man? You feel that’s your _métier_? So Betty tells me.”

Anthony flushed. “I hope she didn’t tell you all I said,” he laughed. “It was the night I came in to say good-bye to Edward. I got excited and talked without thinking. But I do think it’s my best chance,” he continued. “I like business. It seems to me like a fine game of skill that calls for all your wits, and there is enough danger in it to make it absorbing.”

Mr. Mowbray nodded. “You’ve got the right idea,” he said. “You’ve almost repeated word for word a speech I once heard my father make. It was he who first thought of coal in the valley and took the risk of getting all the land between Donniston and Copley into his own hands before a sod was turned. He’d have died a pauper if his instinct had proved wrong.

“We could do with a few more like him in Millsborough,” he went on. “Lord! The big things that are waiting to be done. I used to think about them. If it wasn’t for the croaking old fools that get in your way and haven’t eyes to see the sun at midday! It would take the patience of Job and the labours of Hercules to move them.” He poured himself out another glass of port and sipped it for a while in silence.

“What’s your idea of a salary?” he suddenly asked. “Supposing I did find an opening for you.”

Anthony looked at him. He was still sipping his port. Anthony had the conviction that Mr. Mowbray would, if the figure were left to him, suggest a hundred a year. He could not explain why. Maybe some forgotten talk with Edward had left this impression on his mind, or maybe it was pure guess work.

“Eighty pounds a year, sir, I was thinking of, to begin with,” he answered.

The firm of Mowbray and Cousins acted for most of the older inhabitants of Millsborough, and Mrs. Newt was amongst them. Mr. Mowbray had had one or two interviews with Anthony in connection with his aunt’s affairs and had formed a high opinion of his acumen and shrewdness. The price he had just got his aunt for her bit of land in Moor End Lane, and the way he had played one would-be purchaser against another had, in particular, suggested to Mr. Mowbray’s thinking a touch of genius.

“We’ll say a hundred,” said Mr. Mowbray, “to begin with. What happens afterwards will depend upon yourself.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said Anthony. “I won’t try to thank you--in words.”

He had been sure that Mr. Mowbray would insist upon his own figure. Mr. Mowbray liked doing fine, generous things that commanded admiration. But he was really grateful.

Mr. Mowbray had risen. He laid a kindly hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“I should like you to get on and be helpful to me,” he said. “Edward’s a dreamer, as you know. I should like to think there would be always someone capable and reliable to give him a hand.”

Edward had not returned home for the midsummer vacation. Betty had met him in London and they had made an extended tour on the Continent. Anthony had not seen him for over a year when they met a few days before Christmas. He looked ill. Oxford did not agree with him; he found it enervating, but he thought he would get acclimatized. He had been surprised at Anthony’s having been eager to enter his father’s office. From their talks he had gathered that Anthony was bent upon becoming a business man. He had expected him to try for a place in one of the great steel works or a manufacturer’s office.

“Your grandfather didn’t make his money out of being a solicitor,” explained Anthony. “Your father was telling me only the other day; it was he who set going all the new schemes; they were his idea. He got together the money for them and controlled them. You see, being the leading solicitor of Millsborough, he was in touch with the right people and knew all that was going on behind the scenes. Millsborough was only a little place then, compared to what it is now. If your father”--he checked himself and changed the words that had been upon his lips--“cared to take the trouble he could be a millionaire before he died.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t,” laughed Edward. “I hate millionaires.”

Betty was with them. They were returning home from a walk upon the moors. Edward had clamoured for wind. According to him you wouldn’t get it in Oxford. It was twilight, and they had reached the point where Millsborough lay stretched out before them.

“It depends upon what use you make of it,” Betty chimed in. “Money is a weapon. You can use it for conquering, winning more and more for yourself; or you can use it for freeing the chained, protecting the weak, fighting for the oppressed.”

“Oh, yes; I know the theory,” replied Edward. “Robin Hood. You take it from the rich and give it to the poor. But Robin Hood must first feast with his followers; that’s only fair. And must put by a bit for a rainy day; that’s only common prudence. And then Little John puts in his claims, and dear old Friar Tuck. Mustn’t forget Friar Tuck or the blessing of God won’t be with us next time. And Maid Marion must have a new kirtle and a ribbon or two to tie up her bonny brown hair. And one or two things Robin wants for himself. By the time it’s all over there’s nothing left for the poor.”

Anthony laughed. But Betty took it seriously.

“You dream of the future,” she said to her brother. “I want to help the people now. A rich man--especially if he were a good business man--could lay the foundations of a new world here in Millsborough tomorrow. He wouldn’t have to wait for other people. He could build healthy pleasant houses for the workers. I’m not thinking of charity. That’s why I want the business man who would go to work sensibly and economically; turn them out at rents that the people could afford. I know it can be done. I’ve gone into it. He could build them clubs to take the place of the public-houses where they could meet each other, read and talk, play games, have concerts and dances. Why shouldn’t there be a theatre? Look at the money they spend on drink. It’s just to get away from their wretched homes. Offer them something worth having--something they’d really like and enjoy, and they’d spend their money on that. I wouldn’t have anything started that couldn’t be made to pay its own way in the long run. If it can’t do that it isn’t real. It isn’t going to last. He could open shops, sell food and clothes to the people at fair prices; could start factories that would pay decent wages and where the hands would share in the profits. It’s no use kind, well-meaning people attempting these things that don’t understand business. They make a muddle of it; and then everybody points to it and says, ‘See what a failure it was!’ It isn’t the dreamers--the theorists--that will change the world. Life’s a business; it wants the business man to put it right. He hasn’t got to wait for revolutions, nor even for Parliaments. He can take the world as it is, shape it to fine ends with the tools that are already in his hands. One day one of them will rise up and show the way. It just wants a big man to set it going, that’s all.”

They had reached the outskirts of the town, where their ways parted. Anthony had promised his mother to be home to tea. The Tetteridges were away; and she was giving a party in the drawing-room to some poor folks who had been her neighbours in Snelling’s Row. Edward was a few steps ahead. Betty held out her hand. She was trembling and seemed as if she would fall. Anthony put an arm round her and held her up.

“How strong you are,” she said.

The office of Mowbray and Cousins occupied a high, square, red brick house in the centre of the town facing the church. Anthony was given a desk in the vestibule leading to Mr. Mowbray’s private room on the first floor, with its three high, dome-topped windows. It seemed that Mr. Mowbray intended to employ him rather as a private secretary than a clerk. He kept Mr. Mowbray’s papers in order, reminded him of his appointments, wrote such letters as Mr. Mowbray chose to answer himself. Mr. Mowbray had never taken kindly to dictating; he was too impatient. Anthony, with the help of the letter book, soon learned the trick of elaborating his brief instructions into proper form. It was always Anthony that Mr. Mowbray selected to accompany him on outside business; to see that the bag contained all necessary documents; to look up trains; arrange things generally. Mr. Mowbray himself had a distaste for detail. It was plain to Anthony, notwithstanding his inexperience, that his position was unique. He was prepared for jealousy; but for some reason that at first he did not grasp Mr. Mowbray’s favouritism was regarded throughout the office as in the natural order of things. Even old Abraham Johnson, the head clerk, who had the reputation of being somewhat of a tyrant, was friendly to him from the beginning. It was assumed as a matter of course that he was studying for the law and would later on take out his articles.

“I meant to do so when I first entered the office,” old Mr. Johnson said to him one day. They were walking home together. Mr. Johnson also resided in Bruton Square. He was a bachelor and lived with an unmarried sister. “Forty-three years ago that was, in the first Mr. Mowbray’s time. But office hours were longer then; and when I got home I was pretty tired. And what with one thing and another---- Besides, I hadn’t your incentive.”

He laughed, and seemed to expect Anthony to understand the joke.

“Come to me,” he added, “if you get tied up at any time. I expect I’ll be able to help you.”

They were all quite right. He was studying for the law. But it surprised him they should all assume it as a matter of course.

He had intended telling Edward himself and asking his help. But Edward anticipated him.

“I’m glad you’re with the Gov’nor,” he said. It was a day or two before his return to Oxford. He had come to the office with messages from his father, who was in bed with a headache. “I should have suggested it myself if I’d known you were looking at it that way. And Betty’s pleased,” he added. “She thinks it is good for the dad, that you will steady him.” He laughed. “And now that you have begun I want you to peg away and take out your articles. I’ll write out all you’ve got to do and leave it with Betty if I don’t see you again. And if there are any books you want that you can’t find in the office, let me know, and I’ll send them to you.”

“Right you are,” said Anthony. “I’ll go ahead. The only thing that worries me is that you’re all of you making it so easy for me. It’s spoiling my character.” He looked up with a smile. Edward was sitting on a corner of his father’s desk swinging his legs. “You’ve been a ripping friend to me ever since you first spoke to me in Bull Lane, the day I fought young Penlove.” He spoke with an emotion unusual to him.

Edward flushed. “There are only two people I really care for,” he said, “you and Betty. But it isn’t only of you I’m thinking. If I come into the business it’ll be jolly our being together. And if not----” He paused.

“What do you mean?” asked Anthony. “You’re not thinking of chucking it? Your father’s reckoning on you. That’s why he’s never taken a partner; he told me so.”

“Of course I shall come into it,” Edward answered, “bar accidents.”

He was looking out of the window. Anthony followed his gaze, but the cold grey square was empty save for a couple of cabs that stood there on the rank.

“But what could happen?” persisted Anthony.

“Oh, nothing,” Edward answered. “It’s only another way of saying ‘_Deo volente_.’ It used to be added to all public proclamations once upon a time. We’re not as pious as we were.” He took up his hat and stick and held out his hand. “Don’t forget about the books,” he said. “They’re expensive to buy, and I’ve done with most of them.”

Anthony thanked him and they shook hands. They never met again.

Chapter IX

It was just before Easter that Edward wrote his father and Betty that he had developed diabetes and was going for a few weeks to a nursing home at Malvern. The doctor hoped that with care he would soon be much better. In any case he should return to Oxford sometime during the summer term. He expected to be done with it by Christmas.

To Anthony he wrote a different letter. The doctor had, of course, talked cheerfully; it was the business of a doctor to hold out hope; but he had the feeling himself that his chance was a poor one. He should return to Oxford, if the doctor did not absolutely forbid it, for Betty’s sake. He did not want to alarm her. And, of course, he might pull through. If not, his idea was that Anthony should push on with his studies at high speed and become as soon as possible a junior partner in the firm. It was evident from his letter that he and Betty were in agreement on this matter and that she was preparing the way with her father. Mr. Mowbray’s appetite for old port was increasing. He was paying less and less attention to the business. It would soon need some one to pull it together again.

“Betty likes you, I know,” he wrote, “and thinks no end of you. I used to dream of you and she marrying; and when the doctor told me, my first idea was to write to you both and urge it; it seemed to me you were so fitted for one another. But then it came to me that we are strangers to one another, even to our nearest and dearest; we do not know what is in one another’s hearts. I feared you might think it your duty and might do it out of mere gratitude or even from some lesser motive. I know that in any case you would be true and good and kind; and a little while ago I should have deemed that sufficient. But now I am not sure. It may be that love is the only thing of importance, and that to think we can do without it is to imagine that we can do without God. You will be surprised at my writing in this strain, but ever since I began to think I seem to have been trying to discover a meaning in life; and it seems to me that without God it is all meaningless and stupid. But by feeling that we are part of God and knowing we shall always be with Him, working for Him, that then it all becomes interesting and quite exciting. And the thing we’ve got to keep on learning is to love, because that is the great secret. Forgive me for being prosy, but I have nothing else to do just now but walk about the hills and think. If you and Betty should get to care for one another, and I should come to hear of it, I shall be tremendously delighted. But in any case I know you will take my place and look after her. People think her the embodiment of capability and common sense. And so she is where others are concerned. But when it comes to managing for herself she’s a duffer.”

He added that he would write again and keep Anthony informed, so that before the end they could have some talk together.

Anthony read the letter again. His friendship with Edward meant more to him than he had thought. It was as if a part of himself were being torn away from him, and the pain that he felt surprised him. Evidently he was less self-centred, less independent of others than he had deemed himself. Outwardly his life would go on as before. He would scheme, manœuvre, fight and conquer. But there was that other Anthony, known only to himself, of whom even he himself had been aware only dimly and at intervals: Anthony the dreamer. It seemed that he too had been growing up, that he too had hopes, desires. He it was who had lost his friend and would not be comforted. And almost it seemed as if from his sorrow he had gained strength. For as time went by this Anthony, the dreamer, came more often, even interfering sometimes with business.

He would have liked to have gone over to Malvern and have seen Edward. Betty was there. But he was wanted in the office. So often Mr. Mowbray had one of his headaches and did not care to leave the house, and then it was always Anthony he would send for, and they would work in the library. And of late he had taken to absenting himself for days at a time, being called away, as he would explain, upon private affairs. And to Anthony alone he would confide his address, in case it was “absolutely necessary” for him to be recalled. Anthony had his suspicions where these journeys ended. He was worried. Betty had returned from Malvern, Edward having assured her that he was much better. Anthony, looking at the matter from all sides, came to the conclusion that he ought to tell her. It was bound to come out sooner or later.

Betty was not surprised.

“It’s what I’ve been fearing,” she said. “It was Ted that kept him straight. He’s always been a good father to both of us. He wanted Ted to succeed to a sound business; but now this blow has come he doesn’t seem to care.”

“But Ted is going to succeed to it,” replied Anthony without looking up.

“I wish you could persuade him of that,” she said. “I’ve tried; but I only make him excited. He says it’s God’s punishment on him for his sins and apparently argues from that that he may just as well go on sinning. If Ted could get well enough to come home, if only for a few days, it might make all the difference.”

“Don’t you think he could?” suggested Anthony.

“Not to Millsborough,” she answered. She glanced out of the window at the everlasting smoke that was rolling slowly up the valley towards the sea. “I wanted him to take The Abbey--Sir William Coomber’s old place up on the moor--it is still to let. But this woman seems to have got firmly hold of him at last. My fear is that she’ll marry him. Poor dad! He’s such a kid.”

“Has he known her long?” asked Anthony.

“She was our governess when Ted and I were children,” Betty answered. “She was a pretty woman, but I always hated her. It was instinct, I suppose. She married soon after she left us, and went back to France, but returned to London when her husband died about six years ago. I’d rather anything than that he should marry her. To see her sleeping in mother’s room! I couldn’t stand that. I should----”

She stopped abruptly. She was trembling.

“I don’t think there’s any fear of that,” said Anthony. “He still loves your mother. I’m not talking merely to please you. It’s the best thing about him. And he loves you. He’d think of all that.”

“He didn’t think of it when she lived,” Betty answered.

They were in the long dining-room and had just finished dinner. Mr. Mowbray had telegraphed that he was coming home that evening and would want to see Anthony. But he had not yet arrived. She was looking at the portrait of her mother over the great mantel-piece.

“If ever I marry,” she said, “I shall pray God to send me a man who will like me and think of me as a good friend and comrade.”

They neither spoke for a while.

“It was a love-match on both sides, between your father and your mother, wasn’t it?” asked Anthony.

“No woman ever had a more perfect lover, so my mother told me,” she answered with a curious laugh. “For the first five years. I remember waking in the night. My mother was kneeling by my bed with her head buried in her arms. I didn’t understand. I supposed it was something grown up people did. I went to sleep again; and when I opened my eyes again it was dawn. She was still there. I called to her, and she raised her head and looked at me. It was such a strange face. I didn’t know it was my mother.”

Anthony looked at the picture. Betty was growing more like her every day.

“I wonder if we would be better without it,” he said. “All the great love stories of the world: they’ve all been tragedies. Even the people round about us whom we know; it always seems to end in a muddle. Is every man bound to go through it?” he added with a laugh. “Or could a man keep out of it, do you think?”

“I think a strong man might,” she answered. “It’s weak men that make the best lovers.”

“There have been strong men who have loved,” suggested Anthony.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Those are the great love stories that end in tragedy.”

There came the sound of carriage wheels.

“I expect that’s dad,” she said.

She had risen. Passing, she lightly laid her hand on him.

“Don’t ever fall in love,” she said. “It would spoil you.”

Mr. Mowbray had aged of late, but with his white, waving hair and fine features was still a handsome man. Old-fashioned clients, shaking their heads, had gone elsewhere. But new business had come to the firm. Anthony had taken his employer for a walk one summer’s evening along the river’s bank, and had talked him into the idea of turning Millsborough into a seaport town. “It could be done, with money.” The river could be widened, deepened; locks could be built. The traffic from the valley that now went north or south could be retained for Millsborough. The marvel was that nobody had ever thought of it before.

“We’ve all been asleep here for the last quarter of a century,” Mr. Mowbray said, laying his arm affectionately on Anthony’s shoulder. “You’ll wake us up.”

Engineers had been consulted and had sent in their reports. The scheme was practicable; Mowbray and Cousins was still a name to conjure with in business circles. The enterprise had been launched, had forced its way by its sheer merit. Not only could a handsome dividend be safely reckoned on; it would be of enormous benefit to Millsborough as a whole.

“Mowbray’s coming back,” they said in Millsborough.

Anthony’s share was to be a junior partnership. It was Mr. Mowbray who was the more impatient. Anthony promised to be through before the long vacation.

“If dear Ted comes back,” said Mr. Mowbray, “he’ll be glad to find you here. If God is hard on me for my sins we must make our fortune for Betty’s sake.”

Edward had gone to Switzerland for the summer. Anthony had hoped to see him before he went, but examinations had interfered; and Edward himself had been more hopeful. He had written that in spite of all he felt he was going to live. His mind was getting lighter. He was forming plans for the future. And then suddenly there had come a three-word telegram:

“I want Betty.”

Mr. Mowbray was away when it came. He had gone, without saying a word to any one, the day before, and had not as usual left Anthony any address. He did not return until the end of the week, and then it was all over. Betty had wired that she was bringing the body back with her. Mr. Mowbray broke down completely when Anthony told him, throwing himself upon his knees and sobbing like a child.

“Betty will hate me,” he moaned through his tears, “and it will serve me right. I seem to do nothing but hurt those I love. I loved my wife and I broke her heart. There is no health in me.”

Edward was buried in St. Aldys’ Churchyard beside his mother. Anthony had seen the ex-governess and made all things clear to her. Mr. Mowbray seemed inclined to settle down to business a reformed character. Anthony had taken out his articles and had been admitted into partnership, though the firm would still remain Mowbray and Cousins.

It was an evening in late September. Mr. Mowbray and Betty had gone abroad. Anthony, leaving the office earlier than usual, climbed the hill to the moors. He took the road he had climbed with his mother when he was a child and had thought he was going to see God. He could see the vision of his own stout little legs pounding away in front of him and his mother’s stooping back and her short silk jacket, remnant of better days, that she had always worn on these occasions. If his aunt’s theories were correct, then surely the Lord must have approved of him and of all his ways from his youth upwards. At school, in the beginning, he had put himself out to make a friend of Edward Mowbray, foreseeing the possible advantages. So also with Betty. He had tried to make her like him. It had not been easy at first, but he had studied her. The love for Edward that had come to him had been an aftergrowth. It belonged to Anthony the dreamer rather than to the real Anthony.

With Betty also he had succeeded. She liked him, cared for him. That she did not love him he was glad. If she had loved him he would have hesitated, deeming it an unfair bargain. As it was, he could with a clear conscience ask her to be his wife. And she would consent; he had no doubt of that. Old Mr. Mowbray would welcome the match. He was reckoning on it as assuring Betty’s future. Anthony would succeed to the business, and behind him there would be the old man’s money to help forward the plans with which his brain was teeming for the benefit of Millsborough and himself. The memory of what Edward had written him about love came back to him. But Edward had always been a dreamer. Life was a business. One got on better by keeping love and religion out of it. He and Betty liked each other. They would get on together. Her political enthusiasms did not frighten him. All that would be in his own hands. When success had arrived--when his schemes had matured and had brought him wealth and power--then it would be time enough to venture on experiments. Prudently planned, they need not involve much risk. They would bring him fame, honour. To the successful business man all prizes were within reach.

His walk had brought him to The Abbey, now untenanted. The fancy that one day it might be his home had often come to him. His mother had been a parlourmaid there. He pictured the perfect joy that it would give her to sit in its yellow drawing-room and reach out her hand to ring the bell.

He passed through the rose garden. Betty would love the rose garden. Roses she had made her hobby. But the air of Millsborough did not suit them. Here they were still wonderful in spite of neglect. He made a mental note to speak about it to Hobbs, the gardener. He knew what the answer would be. Twice that summer Hobbs had walked down to Millsborough with a tale of despair; and twice Anthony had written to Sir Harry Coomber. But what was a penurious baronet to do? Would Mowbray and Cousins never succeed in finding him a tenant? And so on. Anthony determined to provided Hobbs with help on his own responsibility. The rose garden, even if everything else had to go, must be preserved.

He passed on to the flower garden. It had always been Hobbs’ special pride. It had been well cared for and was now a blaze of colour. It lay between two old grey walls that had once enclosed the cloisters; and bey