Sturdy and Strong Part 1

St.u.r.dy and Strong.

by G. A. Henty.

PREFACE.

Whatever may be said as to distinction of cla.s.ses in England, it is certain that in no country in the world is the upward path more open to those who brace themselves to climb it than in our own. The proportion of those who remain absolutely stationary is comparatively small. We are all living on a hillside, and we must either go up or down. It is easier to descend than to ascend; but he who fixes his eyes upwards, nerves himself for the climb, and determines with all his might and power to win his way towards the top, is sure to find himself at the end of his day at a far higher level than when he started upon his journey. It may be said, and sometimes foolishly is said, that luck is everything; but in nineteen cases out of twenty what is called luck is simply a combination of opportunity, and of the readiness and quickness to turn that opportunity to advantage. The voyager must take every advantage of wind, tide, and current, if he would make a favorable journey; and for success in life it is necessary not only to be earnest, steadfast, and true, but to have the faculty of turning every opportunity to the best advantage; just as a climber utilizes every tuft of gra.s.s, every little shrub, every projecting rock, as a hold for his hands or feet. George Andrews had what may be called luck--that is, he had opportunities and took advantage of them, and his rise in life was consequently far more rapid than if he had let them pa.s.s without grasping them; but in any case his steadiness, perseverance, and determination to get on would a.s.suredly have made their way in the long run. If similar qualities and similar determinations are yours, you need not despair of similar success in life.

G. A. HENTY.

CHAPTER I.

ALONE.

"You heard what he said, George?"

"Oh, mother, mother!"

"Don't sob so, my boy; he is right. I have seen it coming a long time, and, hard as it seems, it will be better. There is no disgrace in it.

I have tried my best, and if my health had not broken down we might have managed, but you see it was not to be. I shall not mind it, dear; it is really only for your sake that I care about it at all."

The boy had ceased sobbing, and sat now with a white set face.

"Mother, it will break my heart to think that I cannot keep you from this. If we could only have managed for a year or two I could have earned more then; but to think of you--you in the workhouse!"

"In a workhouse infirmary, my boy," his mother said gently. "You see it is not as if it were from any fault of ours. We have done our best. You and I have managed for two years; but what with my health and my eyes breaking down we can do so no longer. I hope it will not be for long, dear. You see I shall have rest and quiet, and I hope I shall soon be able to be out again."

"Not soon, mother. The doctor said you ought not to use your eyes for months."

"Even months pa.s.s quickly, George, when one has hope. I have felt this coming so long that I shall be easier and happier now it has come. After all, what is a workhouse infirmary but a hospital, and it would not seem so very dreadful to you my going into a hospital; the difference is only in name; both are, after all, charities, but the one is kept up out of subscriptions, the other from the rates."

His mother's words conveyed but little comfort to George Andrews. He had just come in from his work, and had heard what the parish doctor had told his mother.

"I can do nothing for you here, Mrs. Andrews. You must have rest and quiet for your eyes, and not only that, but you must have strengthening food. It is no use my blinking the truth. It is painful for you, I know.

I can well understand that; but I see no other way. If you refuse to go I won't answer for your life."

"I will go, doctor," she had answered quietly. "I know that it will be best. It will be a blow to my boy, but I see no other way."

"If you don't want your boy to be alone in the world, ma'am, you will do as I advise you. I will go round in the morning and get you the order of admission, and as I shall be driving out that way I will, if you like, take you myself."

"Thank you, doctor; you are very good. Yes, I will be ready in the morning, and I thank you for your offer."

"Very well, then, that's settled," the doctor said briskly. "At ten o'clock I will be here."

Although a little rough in manner, Dr. Jeffries was a kind-hearted and humane man.

"Poor woman," he said to himself as he went downstairs, "it is hard for her. It is easy to see that she is a lady, and a thorough lady too; but what can I do for her! I might get her a little temporary help, but that would be of no use--she is completely broken down with anxiety and insufficient food, and unless her eyes have a long holiday she will lose her sight. No, there's nothing else for it, but it is hard."

It was hard. Mrs. Andrews was, as the doctor said, a lady. She had lost both her parents while she was at school. She had no near relations, and as she was sixteen when her mother died she had remained at school finishing her education and teaching the younger children. Then she had obtained a situation as governess in a gentleman's family, and two years afterwards had married a young barrister who was a frequent visitor at the house.

Mr. Andrews was looked upon as a rising man, and for the first seven or eight years of her marriage his wife's life had been a very happy one.

Then her husband was prostrated by a fever which he caught in one of the midland towns while on circuit, and although he partially recovered he was never himself again. His power of work seemed to be lost; a languor which he could not overcome took possession of him. A troublesome cough ere long attacked him, and two years later Mrs. Andrews was a widow, and her boy, then nine years old, an orphan.

During the last two years of his life Mr. Andrews had earned but little in his profession. The comfortable house which he occupied had been given up, and they had removed to one much smaller. But in spite of this, debts mounted up, and when, after his death, the remaining furniture was sold and everything settled, there remained only about two hundred pounds. Mrs. Andrews tried to get some pupils among her late husband's friends, but during the last two years she had lost sight of many of these, and now met with but poor success among the others. She was a quiet and retiring woman, and shrank from continuous solicitations, and at the end of three years she found her little store exhausted.

Hitherto she had kept George at school, but could no longer do so, and, giving up her lodging in Brompton, went down to Croydon, where someone had told her that they thought she would have a better chance of obtaining pupils, but the cards which some of the tradesmen allowed her to put in the window led to no result, and finding this to be the case she applied at one of the milliner's for work. This she obtained, and for a year supported herself and her boy by needlework.

From the time when George left school she had gone on teaching him his lessons; but on the day when he was thirteen years old he declared that he would no longer submit to his mother working for both of them, and, setting out, called at shop after shop inquiring if they wanted an errand-boy. He succeeded at last in getting a place at a grocer's where he was to receive three shillings a week and his meals, going home to sleep at night in the closet-like little attic adjoining the one room which his mother could now afford.

For a while they were more comfortable than they had been for some time; now that his mother had no longer George to feed, her earnings and the three shillings he brought home every Sat.u.r.day night enabled them to live in comparative ease, and on Sunday something like a feast was always prepared. But six months later Mrs. Andrews felt her eyesight failing, the lids became inflamed, and a dull aching pain settled in the eyeb.a.l.l.s. Soon she could only work for a short time together, her earnings became smaller and smaller, and her employers presently told her that she kept the work so long in hand that they could no longer employ her. There was now only George's three shillings a week to rely upon, and this was swallowed up by the rent.

In despair she had applied to the parish doctor about her eyes. For a fortnight he attended her, and at the end of that time had peremptorily given the order of which she had told her son.

To her it was a relief; she had seen that it must come. Piece by piece every article of clothing she possessed, save those she wore, had been p.a.w.ned for food, and every resource was now exhausted. She was worn out with the struggle, and the certainty of rest and food overcame her repugnance to the house. For George's sake too, much as she knew he would feel her having to accept such a refuge, she was glad that the struggle was at an end. The lad had for the last six months suffered greatly for her sake. Every meal to which he sat down at his employer's seemed to choke him as he contrasted it with the fare to which she was reduced, although, as far as possible, she had concealed from him how sore was her strait.

George cried himself to sleep that night, and he could scarce speak when he said good-by to his mother in the morning, for he could not tell when he should see her again.

"You will stop where you are, my boy, will you not?"

"I cannot promise, mother. I don't know yet what I shall do; but please don't ask me to promise anything. You must let me do what I think best. I have got to make a home for you when you are cured. I am fourteen now, and am as strong as most boys of my age. I ought to be able to earn a shilling a day somehow, and with seven shillings a week, mother, and you just working a little, you know, so as not to hurt your eyes, we ought to be able to do. Don't you bother about me, mother. I want to try anyhow what I can do till you come out. When you do, then I will do whatever you tell me; that's fair, isn't it?"

Mrs. Andrews would have remonstrated, but he said:

"Well, mother, you see at the worst I can get a year's character from Dutton, so that if I can't get anything else to do I can get the same sort of place again, and as I am a year older than I was when he took me, and can tie up parcels neatly now, I ought to get a little more anyhow. You see I shall be safe enough, and though I have never grumbled, you know, mother--have I?--I think I would rather do anything than be a grocer's boy. I would rather, when I grow up, be a bricklayer's laborer, or a plowman, or do any what I call man's work, than be pottering about behind a counter, with a white ap.r.o.n on, weighing out sugar and currants."

"I can't blame you, George," Mrs. Andrews said with a sigh. "It's natural, my boy. If I get my eyesight and my health again, when you grow up to be a man we will lay by a little money, and you and I will go out together to one of the colonies. It will be easier to rise again there than here, and with hard work both of us might surely hope to get on. There must be plenty of villages in Australia and Canada where I could do well with teaching, and you could get work in whatever way you may be inclined to. So, my boy, let us set that before us. It will be something to hope for and work for, and will cheer us to go through whatever may betide us up to that time."

"Yes, mother," George said. "It will be comfort indeed to have something to look forward to. Nothing can comfort me much to-day; but if anything could it would be some such plan as that."

The last words he said to his mother as, blinded with tears, he kissed her before starting to work, were:

"I shall think of our plan every day, and look forward to that more than anything else in the world--next to your coming to me again."

At ten o'clock Dr. Jeffries drove up to Mrs. Andrews' humble lodging in a brougham instead of his ordinary gig, having borrowed the carriage from one of the few of his patients who kept such a vehicle, on purpose to take Mrs. Andrews, for she was so weak and worn that he was sure she would not be able to sit upright in a gig for the three miles that had to be traversed. He managed in the course of his rounds to pa.s.s the workhouse again in the afternoon, and brought George, before he left work, a line written in pencil on a leaf torn from his pocketbook:

"My darling, I am very comfortable. Everything is clean and nice, and the doctor and people kind. Do not fret about me.--Your loving mother."

Although George's expressed resolution of leaving his present situation, and seeking to earn his living in some other way, caused Mrs. Andrews much anxiety, she had not sought strongly to dissuade him from it. No doubt it would be wiser for him to stay in his present situation, where he was well treated and well fed, and it certainly seemed improbable to her that he would be able to get a better living elsewhere. Still she could not blame him for wishing at least to try.

She herself shared to some extent his prejudice against the work in which he was employed. There is no disgrace in honest work; but she felt that she would rather see him engaged in hard manual labor than as a shop boy. At any rate, as he said, if he failed he could come back again to Croydon, and, with a year's character from his present employer, would probably be able to obtain a situation similar to that which he now held. She was somewhat comforted, too, by a few words the doctor had said to her during their drive.

"I think you are fortunate in your son, Mrs. Andrews. He seems to me a fine steady boy. If I can, in any way, do him a good turn while you are away from him, I will."

George remained for another month in his situation, for he knew that it would never do to start on his undertaking penniless. At the end of that time, having saved up ten shillings, and having given notice to his employer, he left the shop for the last time, and started to walk to London. It was not until he began to enter the crowded streets that he felt the full magnitude of his undertaking. To be alone in London, a solitary atom in the busy ma.s.s of humanity, is a trying situation even for a man; to a boy of fourteen it is terrible. Buying a penny roll, George sat down to eat it in one of the niches of a bridge over the river, and then kneeling up watched the barges and steamers pa.s.sing below him.