Captain Bayley's Heir Part 4

One of the children--there were eight in all in the room--fetched Harry's fiddle from the wall. It was a cheap, common instrument, but even far better judges of music than the Holls would have been able to discern, in spite of its cracked and harsh tone, that the lad who was playing it had a genius for music. It is true that the airs which he was playing, those which the street boys of the day whistled as they walked by, were not of a nature to display his powers. Harry could play other and very different kinds of music; for whenever Evan earned a sixpence by holding a horse, or doing any other odd job, a penny or twopence were sure to go in the purchase of a sheet of music for Harry at the cheap bookstalls. Harry had learned the notes from a secondhand book of instructions which John Holl had bought for him one Sat.u.r.day night, when the weather had been particularly hot, and people in their desire to get their dust-bins emptied were more liberal than usual. But of an evening, when John was at home, Harry always played popular airs, as his father and family were unable to appreciate the deeper and better music.

This he reserved for the time when the children were at school, and mother was either charring or was at the wash-tub.

Sarah used to wonder silently at the sounds which seemed to her to have no particular air, such as she could beat time to with her foot as she worked; but in her heart she appreciated them; they made her feel as if she was in church, and sometimes she would draw her ap.r.o.n across her eyes, wondering all the time what there was in the tones of the fiddle which should make her cry.

Three or four days later, when Harry, as usual, was playing on his violin, and Mrs. Holl was washing, there was a knock at the door.

"Drat it!" Mrs. Holl muttered, "who's a-coming bothering now, just when I am busy?"

"If no one is to come except when you are not busy," Harry laughed, as Mrs. Holl moved towards the door, wiping the lather from her arms and hands, "we shan't have many visitors, for as far as I can see you are always busy."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, as Mrs. Holl opened the door, and he saw who was standing without, "it's the gentleman who got Evan out of the water."

"Mrs. Holl?" Frank asked interrogatively, and then, catching sight of Harry, he at once walked across to him and shook him by the hand.

"I hope I am not intruding, Mrs. Holl, but I promised your son to look in and see how he was; and as I had to come down to the School to-day for a book I wanted for my holiday task, I thought it would be a good opportunity to fulfil my promise."

"It is no intrusion, sir, and I am sure I am heartily glad to see yer, and thank ye for coming," Mrs. Holl said, as she dusted an already spotless chair and placed it for her visitor. "My John does nothing every evening but talk of how he wishes he could see you, to tell you how beholden he and me feels to you for having brought our Evan to land just as he was being drowned."

"No thanks are required indeed, Mrs. Holl," Frank said cheerfully, "it was a sort of partnership affair. You see I was going in after the dog, only Evan, who was a sort of friend of the family, had first claim; so we agreed that he should try first and do all the hard work of breaking the ice, and then, if the cold was too much for him, I was to go out and fetch him in and finish the job myself. So you see it was a mutual arrangement, and no particular thanks due to any one. But your son is a plucky young fellow, Mrs. Holl, and he behaved most gallantly. I find too, from what your son here tells me, that I owe him one for having fetched help up from the School when we were getting the worst of it just opposite your house here. Well, in the first place, how is he? None the worse, I hope, for the cold."

"Not at all, sir. He is out to-day with a friend of ours as 'as got a barrow, and lives in the next street, but who is that hoa.r.s.e with the cold that he can't speak out of a whisper; so he offered Evan sixpence to go along with him to do the shouting, and a nice shouting he will make; his voice goes through and through my head when he is only a-talking with his brothers and sisters here, and if anything can bring them to the windows it will be his voice. He offered to come round here with the barrow afore they started off this morning, but says I, 'No, Evan; I have a good name in the street, I hope, and don't wish to be dighted as a nuisance to the neighbourhood, nor to have my neighbours accusing me of a-being the cause of fits in their children.'"

"I don't suppose that it would be as bad as that, Mrs. Holl," Frank said, laughing. "However, if his voice is as loud and clear as that, it is evident that he is not much the worse for his cold bath. I came round partly to see him, partly to know if I could do anything for him; he seems a sharp lad, and I am sure he is as honest as he is plucky. As a beginning, my uncle says he could come into the house as a sort of errand-boy, and to help the footman, until he can hear of some better position for him among his friends."

"I am sure you are very good, sir," Mrs. Holl said gratefully; "I will mention it to his father, and he---- But I doubt whether Evan's steady enough for a place yet, he is allus getting into mischief; there never was such a boy for sc.r.a.pes; if all my eight were like him I should go clean mad afore the week was out. When he is in the house, as long as he is talking or singing I can go on with my work, but the moment that he is quiet I have to drop what I am a-doing on and look arter him, for he is sure to be up to some mischief or other."

"No, no, mother," Harry put in, laughing; "you are giving Evan a worse character than he deserves. He is up to fun, as is only natural with one who has got the free use of his limbs, but he never does any real harm."

"No, I don't say that he does real harm, 'Arry," Mrs. Holl replied, "but I do say as at present he is too full of boyish tricks to be of any good in a place, and we should be a-having him back here a week arter he went, and that would be a nice show of grat.i.tude to this gentleman for his kindness."

"I don't suppose he is as bad as you make out, Mrs. Holl; and no doubt he would tame down after a time, just as other boys do. Perhaps a place in a warehouse would be more suitable for him at first.

"And it was you who were playing as I came in," he went on, noticing the violin; "I was wondering who was playing so well. How jolly it must be to play! I wish I could, but I should never have patience to learn. Who taught you?"

"I picked it up myself, sir," Harry replied, "from a book father bought me. You see I have plenty of time on my hands; I don't get out much, except just along the street, for I can't very well get across crossings by myself. The wheels go well enough on a level, but I cannot push them up a curb-stone. But what with reading and fiddling the days pa.s.s quickly enough, especially when mother is at home; she is out two or three days a week, and then the time seems rather long."

"I should think so," Frank said; "I should go mad if I were laid up entirely. I am awfully sorry for you. If you are fond of books I shall be glad to let you have some; I have got no end of them, and there they stand on my shelf unopened from year's end to year's end. What sort of books do you like best? Sea stories, or Indians, or what?"

"I should like any story-books, sir," Harry replied, his eyes brightening up with pleasure; "I have read a few which father has picked up for me at the bookstalls, and I have gone through and through them until I could almost say them by heart. And then tales of travel and history,--oh, I love history! to read what people did hundreds of years ago, and how nations grew up step by step, just like children, it is splendid!"

"I am afraid," Frank said, with a laugh, "that I don't care so much for history as you do. Names are hard enough to remember, but dates are awful; I would rather do the toughest bit of construing than have a page of Greek history to get up. Well, I will certainly look you up some books on history and some travels, and will send you some of Marryat's stories. I suppose you do not care for schoolbooks; I have got a barrow-load that I shall never want again."

"Oh yes, sir," Harry said eagerly, "I think I should like those best of all. Have you a Virgil, sir? I do like Virgil, and all that story about the siege of Troy. I only had it for a fortnight. Father bought it for me, and then one of the little ones managed somehow to take it out and lose it; she ran out with it for a bit of fun, and we suppose sat down on a doorstep and forgot it."

"But, bless me," Frank exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that you read Virgil in Latin! You are a rum fellow. How on earth did you learn it?"

"I have taught myself, sir," Harry said. "Father is awfully good, and often picks up books for me at old bookstalls. Of course sometimes he gets things I can't make out. But he got twelve once for a shilling, and there was a Latin Grammar and Dictionary among them; and when I had learned the Grammar, it was very easy with the Dictionary to make out the sense of some of the Latin books. But of course I often come across things that I don't understand. I think sometimes if some one would explain them to me once or twice, so that I could really understand how the rules in the Grammar are applied, I could get on faster."

"Well, you are a rum fellow!" Frank exclaimed again. "I wish I liked learning as you do, for though I am in the Sixth at Westminster, I own that I look upon the cla.s.sics as a nuisance. Well, now, look here; I have got an hour at present with nothing special to do, so if you like we will have a go at it together. What have you got here?" and he walked across to a shelf on which were a number of books. "Oh! here is a Caesar; suppose we take that; it's easy enough generally, but there are some stiffish bits now and then. Let's start off from the beginning, and perhaps I may be able to make things clear for you a bit."

In spite of Mrs. Holl's protestations that Harry ought not to trouble the gentleman, the two lads were soon deep in their Caesar. Frank found, to his surprise, that the cripple boy had a wonderful knack of grasping the sense of pa.s.sages, but that never having been regularly taught to construe, he was unable to apply the rules of grammar which he had learned. Frank taught him how to do this, how to take a sentence to pieces, how to pa.r.s.e it word by word, and to see how each word depended upon the others, so that even if absolutely in ignorance of the meaning of any one word in a sentence, he could nevertheless pa.r.s.e them unerringly in the order in which they would be rendered in English--could determine the value of each, and their bearing upon one another.

This was quite a revelation to Harry; his face flushed with eagerness and excitement, and so interested were both lads in their work, that the hour was far exceeded before the lesson came to an end by Mrs. Holl interfering bodily in the matter by carrying off the Dictionary, and declaring that it was a shame that Harry should give so much trouble.

"It is no trouble at all, Mrs. Holl," Frank said, laughing. "You see one is accustomed a little to teaching, as one often gives one's f.a.g, or any other little chap who asks, a construe, or explains his lesson to him.

But I can tell you that there are precious few of them who take it all in as quickly as your son does. Now that I have made myself at home, I will come in sometimes when school begins again, if you will let me, for half an hour and read with Harry. But I don't think he will want any help long. Still, it may help to show him the regular way of getting at things. And now I must hurry off. You will ask Evan to think over what I have said. Here is my address. I wrote it down in case I should find no one in. If he makes up his mind about it before I come again, he had better call on me there; the best time would be between nine and eleven in the morning; I have always finished breakfast by nine, and I have put off my holiday task so long, that I must stick at it regularly two hours a day till school begins again, so he will be pretty sure to find me between nine and eleven. Will you tell your husband not to worry himself about seeing me? I don't want to be thanked, for it was, as I told you, a sort of partnership business between your boy and me."

"Now I call that a downright nice sort of young chap," Mrs. Holl said, as their visitor departed, "good-hearted and good-natured, without no sort of nonsense. He just sits himself down and makes himself at home as if he was one of the family, and I was able to go on with my washing just as if he hadn't been here."

For a time Harry did not answer.

"So, that's a gentleman," he said at last, in a low voice, as if thinking aloud; "I have never spoken to a gentleman before."

"Well, lad," Sarah Holl said, "there ain't much difference between the gentry and other sorts. I don't see very much of them myself in the houses I goes to, but I hears plenty about them from the servants' talk; and, judging from that, a great many of them 'as just as nasty and unpleasant ways as other people."

"I suppose," Harry said thoughtfully, "there can't be much difference in real nature between them and us; there must, of course, be good and bad among them; but there is more difference in their way of talking than I expected."

"Well, of course, Harry; they have had education, that accounts for it; just the same as you, who have educated yourself wonderful, talks different to John and me and the rest of us."

"Yes," Harry said; "but I am not talking about mistakes in grammar; it's the tone of voice, and the way of speaking that's so different. Now why should that be, mother?"

"I suppose a good deal of it," Mrs. Holl answered, "is because they are brought up in nusseries, and they can't run about the house, or holloa or shout to each other in the streets. D' ye see they are taught to speak quiet, and they hear their fathers and mothers, and people round them, speaking quiet. You dun't know, Harry, how still it is in some of them big houses, you seem half afraid to speak above a whisper."

"Yes, but I don't think he spoke lower than I do, mother, or than the rest of us. O mother!" he went on, after a while, "isn't he good? Just to think of his spending an hour and a half sitting here, showing me how to construe. Why, I see the whole thing in a different way now; he has made clear all sorts of things that I could not understand; and he said he would come again too, and I am quite sure that when he says a thing he means to do it. I don't believe he could tell a lie if he tried. And is he not good-looking too?"

"He is a pleasant-looking young chap," Mrs. Holl replied, "but I should not call him anything out of the way. Now I should call you a better-looking chap than he is, Harry."

"O mother, what an idea!" Harry exclaimed, quite shocked at what seemed to him a most disrespectful comparison to his hero.

"It ain't no idea at all," Mrs. Holl rejoined stoutly; "any one with eyes in his head could see that if you was dressed the same as he is you would be a sight the best-looking chap of the two."

"Ah mother!" Harry said, laughing, "you remind me of an old saying I saw in a book the other day, 'A mother's geese are all swans.'"

"I am sure," Mrs. Holl said, in an aggrieved voice, "you ain't no goose, Harry, and if any one else said so I should give them a bit of my mind sharp enough."

Harry did not attempt to argue with her, but with a little laugh turned to his books again, and was soon deep in the mysteries of Caesar.

The next day a carrier's cart stopped before Mrs. Holl's house, to the great amazement of the neighbourhood--for such an occurrence had not been known in the memory of the oldest inhabitant in the street, and quite a crowd of children collected to witness the delivery of a square heavy box of considerable weight at the door.

Harry was almost beside himself with delight as he took out the treasures it contained; and as fully half were story-books, his delight was shared by the rest of the young Holls. It was evening when the cart arrived, and John was just enjoying his first pipe, and he once more uttered the sentiment he had expressed so often during the last four days, "I should like to shake that young chap by the hand."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

AN ADOPTED CHILD.