Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (198 page)

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 char-woman. 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 to-day, 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 a 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 beggar. 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 manoeuvring, 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 coalmasters 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 diningroom 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, “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 a 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 more. 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.”