The trail of the serpent
the skin, and thank Heaven that they are not as other men: like good
Christians, punctual rate-payers, and unflinching church-goers as they
are.
Thus it was with Mr. Jabez North, assistant and usher at the academy of
Dr. Tappenden. He was not in anywise affected by fog, rain, or wind.
There was a fire at one end of the schoolroom, and Allecompain Major
had been fined sixpence, and condemned to a page of Latin grammar, for
surreptitiously warming his worst chilblain at the bars thereof. But
Jabez North did not want to go near the fire, though in his official
capacity he might have done so; ay, even might have warmed his hands
in moderation. He was not cold, or if he was cold, he didn’t mind
being cold. He was sitting at his desk, mending pens and hearing six
red-nosed boys conjugate the verb _Amare_, “to love”--while the
aforesaid boys were giving practical illustrations of the active
verb “to shiver,”--and the passive ditto, “to be puzzled.” He was
not only a good young man, this Jabez North (and he must have been a
very good young man, for his goodness was in almost every mouth in
Slopperton--indeed, he was looked upon by many excellent old ladies as
an incarnation of the adjective “pious”)--but he was rather a handsome
young man also. He had delicate features, a pale fair complexion, and,
as young women said, very beautiful blue eyes; only it was unfortunate
that these eyes, being, according to report, such a very beautiful
colour, had a shifting way with them, and never looked at you long
enough for you to find out their exact hue, or their exact expression
either. He had also what was called a very fine head of fair curly
hair, and what some people considered a very fine head--though it was
a pity it shelved off on either side in the locality where prejudiced
people place the organ of conscientiousness. A professor of phrenology,
lecturing at Slopperton, had declared Jabez North to be singularly
wanting in that small virtue; and had even gone so far as to hint that
he had never met with a parallel case of deficiency in the entire moral
region, except in the skull of a very distinguished criminal, who
invited a friend to dinner and murdered him on the kitchen stairs while
the first course was being dished. But of course the Sloppertonians
pronounced this professor to be an impostor, and his art a piece of
charlatanism, as they were only too happy to pronounce any professor or
any art that came in their way.
Slopperton believed in Jabez North. Partly because Slopperton had in a
manner created, clothed, and fed him, set him on his feet, patted him
on his head, and reared him under the shadow of Sloppertonian wings, to
be the good and worthy individual he was.
The story was in this wise. Nineteen years before this bad November
day, a little baby had been dragged, to all appearance drowned, out
of the muddy waters of the Sloshy. Fortunately or unfortunately, as
the case may be, he turned out to be less drowned than dirty, and
after being subjected to very sharp treatment--such as being held head
downwards, and scrubbed raw with a jack-towel, by the Sloppertonian
Humane Society, founded by a very excellent gentleman, somewhat
renowned for maltreating his wife and turning his eldest son out of
doors--this helpless infant set up a feeble squall, and evinced, other
signs of a return to life. He was found in a Slopperton river by a
Slopperton bargeman, resuscitated by a Slopperton society, and taken
by the Slopperton beadle to the Slopperton workhouse; he therefore
belonged to Slopperton. Slopperton found him a species of barnacle
rather difficult to shake off. The wisest thing, therefore, for
Slopperton to do, was to put the best face on a bad matter, and, out
of its abundance, rear this _un_-welcome little stranger. And
truly virtue has its reward; for, from the workhouse brat to the
Sunday-school teacher; from the Sunday-school teacher to the scrub at
Dr. Tappenden’s academy; from scrub to usher of the fourth form; and
from fourth form usher to first assistant, pet toady, and factotum,
were so many steps in the ladder of fortune which Jabez mounted, as in
seven-leagued boots.
As to his name, Jabez North, it is not to be supposed that when some
wretched drab (mad with what madness, or wretched to what intensity
of wretchedness, who shall guess?) throws her hapless and sickly
offspring into the river--it is not, I say, to be supposed that she
puts his card-case in his pocket, with his name and address inscribed
in neat copper-plate upon enamelled cards therein. No, the foundling
of Slopperton was called by the board of the workhouse Jabez; first,
because Jabez was a scriptural name; secondly, perhaps, because it
was an ugly one, and agreed better with the cut of his clothes and
the fashion of his appointments than Reginald, Conrad, or Augustus
might have done. The gentlemen of the board further bestowed upon him
the surname of North because he was found on the north bank of the
Sloshy, and because North was an unobtrusive and commonplace cognomen,
appropriate to a pauper; like whose impudence it would indeed be to
write himself down Montmorency or Fitz-Hardinge.
Now there are many natures (God-created though they be) of so black and
vile a tendency as to be soured and embittered by workhouse treatment;
by constant keeping down; by days and days which grow into years and
years, in which to hear a kind word is to hear a strange language--a
language so strange as to bring a choking sensation into the throat,
and not unbidden tears into the eyes. Natures there are, so innately
wicked, as not to be improved by tyranny; by the dominion, the mockery,
and the insult of little boys, who are wise enough to despise poverty,
but not charitable enough to respect misfortune. And fourth-form ushers
in a second-rate academy have to endure this sort of thing now and
then. Some natures too may be so weak and sentimental as to sicken at
a life without one human tie; a boyhood without father or mother; a
youth without sister or brother. Not such the excellent nature of Jabez
North. Tyranny found him meek, it is true, but it left him much meeker.
Insult found him mild, but it left him lamb-like. Scornful speeches
glanced away from him; cruel words seemed drops of water on marble, so
powerless were they to strike or wound. He would take an insult from
a boy whom with his powerful right hand he could have strangled: he
would smile at the insolence of a brat whom he could have thrown from
the window with one uplifting of his strong arm almost as easily as
he threw away a bad pen. But he was a good young man; a benevolent
young man; giving in secret, and generally getting his reward openly.
His left hand scarcely knew what his right hand did; but Slopperton
always knew it before long. So every citizen of the borough raised and
applauded this model young man, and many were the prophecies of the day
when the pauper boy should be one of the greatest men in that greatest
of all towns, the town of Slopperton.
The bad November day merged into a bad November night. Dark
night at five o’clock, when candles, few and far between, flickering
in Dr. Tappenden’s schoolroom, and long rows of half-pint
mugs--splendid institutions for little boys to warm their hands
at, being full of a boiling and semi-opaque liquid, _par excellence_
milk-and-water--ornamented the schoolroom table. Darker night still,
when the half-pint mugs have been collected by a red maid-servant, with
nose, elbows, and knuckles picked out in purple; when all traces of the
evening meal are removed; when the six red-nosed first-form boys have
sat down to Virgil--for whom they entertain a deadly hatred, feeling
convinced that he wrote with a special view to their being flogged from
inability to construe him. Of course, if he hadn’t been a spiteful
beast he would have written in English, and then he wouldn’t have had
to be construed. Darker night still at eight o’clock, when the boys
have gone to bed, and perhaps would have gone to sleep, if Allecompain
Major had not a supper-party in his room, with Banbury cakes, pigs
trotters, periwinkles, acid rock, and ginger-beer powders, laid out
upon the bolster. Not so dark by the head assistant’s desk, at which
Jabez sits, his face ineffably calm, examining a pile of exercises.
Look at his face by that one candle; look at the eyes, which are steady
now, for he does not dream that any one is watching him--steady and
luminous with a subdued fire, which might blaze out some day into a
deadly flame. Look at the face, the determined mouth, the thin lips,
which form almost an arch--and say, is that the face of a man to
be content with a life of dreary and obscure monotony? A somewhat
intellectual face; but not the face of a man with an intellect seeking
no better employment than the correcting of French and Latin exercises.
If we could look into his heart, we might find the answers to these
questions. He raises the lid of his desk; a deep desk that holds many
things--paper, pens, letters; and what?--a thick coil of rope. A
strange object in the assistant’s desk, this coil of rope! He looks at
it as if to assure himself that it is safe; shuts his desk quickly,
locks it, puts the key in his waistcoat-pocket; and when at half-past
nine he goes up into his little bedroom at the top of the house, he
will carry the desk under his arm.
CHAPTER II.
GOOD FOR NOTHING.
THE November night is darkest, foggiest, wettest, and windiest out on
the open road that leads into Slopperton. A dreary road at the best of
times, this Slopperton road, and dreariest of all in one spot about
a mile and a half out of the town. Upon this spot stands a solitary
house, known as the Black Mill. It was once the cottage of a miller,
and the mill still stands, though in disuse.
The cottage had been altered and improved within the last few years,
and made into a tolerable-sized house; a dreary, rambling, tumble-down
place, it is true, but still with some pretension about it. It was
occupied at this time by a widow lady, a Mrs. Marwood, once the owner
of a large fortune, which had nearly all been squandered by the
dissipation of her only son. This son had long left Slopperton. His
mother had not heard of him for years. Some said he had gone abroad.
She tried to hope this, but sometimes she mourned him as dead. She
lived in modest style, with one old female servant, who had been with
her since her marriage, and had been faithful through every change
of fortune--as these common and unlearned creatures, strange to say,
sometimes are. It happened that at this very time Mrs. Marwood had
just received the visit of a brother, who had returned from the East
Indies with a large fortune. This brother, Mr. Montague Harding, had on
his landing in England hastened to seek out his only sister, and the
arrival of the wealthy nabob at the solitary house on the Slopperton
road had been a nine-days’ wonder for the good citizens of Slopperton.
He brought with him only one servant, a half-caste; his visit was to be
a short one, as he was about buying an estate in the south of England,
on which he intended to reside with his widowed sister.
Slopperton had a great deal to say about Mr. Harding. Slopperton gave
him credit for the possession of uncounted and uncountable lakhs of
rupees; but Slopperton wouldn’t give him credit for the possession of
the hundredth part of an ounce of liver. Slopperton left cards at the
Black Mill, and had serious thoughts of getting up a deputation to
invite the rich East Indian to represent its inhabitants at the great
congress of Westminster. But both Mr. Harding and Mrs. Marwood kept
aloof from Slopperton, and were set down accordingly as mysterious, not