The Call of the Town.

by John Alexander Hammerton.

CHAPTER I

"THE PROUD PARENT"

IF you happen to be riding a bicycle you arrive somewhat unexpectedly in the little Ardenshire village of Hampton Bagot, and are through it in a flash, before you quite realise its existence. But in the unlikely event of your having business or pleasure there, you approach the place more leisurely in the carrier's cart from the little station which absurdly bears the name of the village, though two miles distant.

The ancient Parish Church, with its curious old chained library and bits of Saxon masonry, "perfectly unique," as Mr. G.o.dfrey Needham, the vicar, used to say, and the one wide street of quaint old houses, with their half-timbered fronts, remain to this day much as they were, no doubt, when good Queen Bess ruled England. But the thirsty cyclist, whose throat may happen to be parched at this particular stage of his journey, is a poor subst.i.tute for the old-time stage-coach which made Hampton Bagot a place of change. Somehow, the village continues to exist, though its few hundred people sc.r.a.pe their livings in ways that are not obvious to the casual visitor. The surrounding district is richly pastoral, plentifully sprinkled with cosy farm-houses, and here, perhaps, we have the reason why Hampton continues under the sun.

If you wandered along the few hundred yards of street, and noted the various subst.i.tutes for shops, in which oranges and sweets and babies'

clothing mingle familiarly with hams and shoe-laces, you would be struck by the more pretentious exterior of one which bears in crudely-painted letters the legend, EDWARD JOHN CHARLES, and underneath, in smaller characters, the words POST OFFICE. The building, a two-storied one, with the familiar blackened timbers supporting high-pitched gables, and a bay-window of lozenged gla.s.s, was, at the time of which I write, the place of next importance in the village to the "Wings and Spur." Behind this window, and by peering closely, one could see dusty packets of writing-paper and fly-blown envelopes, a few cheap books, clay and briar pipes, tobacco, and some withered-looking cigars. Below the window, after diligent search, a slit for the admission of letters might be found.

But while the place itself would easily have been pa.s.sed over, not so the figure at the door; for there, most days of the week and most hours of the day, stood the portly form of Edward John Charles himself.

It was as though the legend overhead referred to the man beneath, and the smile usually on his face spoke of contentment with himself and the world at large. His face was ruddy and clean-shaven, as he chose to coax his whisker underneath his chin, where it sprouted so amply that the need to wear a collar or a tie did not exist; certainly, was not recognised.

Somewhat under medium height, and of more than medium girth, Edward John Charles was by no means an unpleasant figure to the eye, and if the commonplace caste of face and prominent ears did not suggest any marked intellectual gifts, the net result of a casual survey was "a good-natured sort." He had a habit of concealing his hands mysteriously underneath his coat-tails as he stood at the door beneath the staring sign, and his coat had absorbed something of its owner's nature, for by the perch of the tails one could guess his mood. They were flapped nervously when the wearer was displeased; they opened into a wide and settled =V= inverted when he was in the full flavour of his satisfaction; and happily that was their most common condition. Indeed, the coat-tails of Edward John Charles were as eloquent as the stumpy appendage of the Irish terrier usually to be seen at the door with him.

Edward John stood in his familiar place this morning, and surveyed placidly the one and only street of Hampton Bagot.

The street does not belong to Hampton at all, but is only so many yards of a great highway to London. If you asked a Hampton man where it led to, he would say to Stratford, as that is the end of his world. That he is spending his life on a main-travelled road that goes on and on until it is lost in the mult.i.tudinous streets of modern Babylon has never occurred to him. Stratford is his _ultima thule_, the objective of his longest travels.

But Edward John was no ordinary man, despite his common exterior, and it was in the list of his distinctions that he had in his early manhood spent two days in London. To him, the road on which he looked out for so many hours each day was one of the tentacles thrown out by the mighty City to drag the sons of Nature into its gluttonous maw.

"It ain't got me, 'owever," he reflected, as he contentedly wagged his tails; "but as for 'Enry, why, 'oo knows?"

And really, what London would have done with Edward John we cannot guess, nor have we at present any idea of what it will do with 'Enry.

At this particular moment you would scarcely have credited the postmaster-bookseller-tobacconist with such philosophic reflections; for he seemed to be chiefly interested in watching with a critical eye a dawdling creature by the name of Miffin, the inefficient tailor across the way.

Edward John pursed his lips and flapped his coat-tails in stern disapproval of that sluggard's method of removing the single shutter which covered his window as a protection from the sun's rays, rather than a barrier to thieves, the latter being unknown in Hampton. Miffin made the mere act of withdrawing a bolt a function of five or ten minutes' duration, exchanging courtesies with every possible creature in the neighbourhood, from schoolboys to cats, while engaged in the operation. He would even call across to Edward John on the state of the day, and secretly wonder when the postmaster ever did a stroke of work, while in the mind of the latter certain wise maxims about ants and sluggards from the Book of Proverbs were suggesting themselves as peculiarly applicable to Mr. Miffin.

Presently, as Edward John turned his glance along the village street towards the Parish Church, which sat on a leafy knoll to the west, with a reproving eye on all Hampton, he saw the Rev. G.o.dfrey Needham hastening eastward at a brisk pace.

The sight was no unusual one. Mr. Needham never moved unless in a whirl, the looseness of his clerical garb helping him to create quite a little gust of energy as he hurried by with his good-hearted greetings to his admiring parishioners. Such haste in a man of sixty was unaccountable, especially when one was fully alive to his appearance. He looked as if he had suddenly awakened after going to sleep a century before, and was in a hurry to make up lost time. Thin-faced, with prominent nose, and eyes red at the rims, blinking behind spectacles; he wore a rusty clerical hat and clothes of ancient cut and material, his trousers terminating a good three inches above his low shoes and disclosing socks, formerly white. The fact that his legs remotely suggested a pair of calipers added to the quaintness of the figure he presented while in full stride down the village street.

The moment Mr. Needham swung into view, the coat-tails of the postmaster were violently agitated, and his face broadened into a smile as he turned quickly into the doorway and called:

"'Enry, 'ere quick. 'Ere's the pa.s.son!"

Back in the shade and coolness of the shop the person thus addressed had been eagerly engaged in dipping into several volumes just brought that morning by the carrier from Birmingham, for it was Mr. Edward John Charles's great privilege to be the medium of obtaining books for several of the county gentry in the neighbourhood of Hampton, and these were always feverishly fingered by his son Henry before being despatched to their purchasers.

This same Henry was esteemed by his fond parent a perfect marvel of learning, and nothing delighted more the postmaster than to present him on all available occasions for the vicar's admiration.

In response to the summons, Henry issued into the sunlight of the open door, and craning his neck beyond the projecting window, beheld the advancing figure of the vicar. But the vicar, rusty and time-soiled though he seemed, was still well-oiled mentally, and had taken in at a glance the manoeuvres at the Post Office door. Knowing that he would have to fight his way past, he slowed down and approached with a pleasant "Good-morning" to Edward John and a bright smile for Henry, who was his favourite among the lads of the village.

"Well, Henry," he said, as if opening fire, "how do the studies progress?"

"'Enry," returned the postmaster, before the lad had time to answer, "is making wonnerful progress, simply wonnerful. I reckon all the prizes at the school this term are as good as 'is," and the coat-tails opened into a particularly expanded =V=. "And as for Latin, vicar," he continued, "I shouldn't be surprised if 'e was soon upsides with yourself! 'E's at it every night. Oh, 'e do study, I can tell you."

Mr. Needham smiled at this parental puffery, and answered somewhat timidly:

"Ah, my dear Mr. Charles, I am afraid I have credit for more Latin than I possess. Nothing is so hard for a scholar as to live up to his reputation."

He even glanced furtively down the street, debating whether he should clap on full sail forthwith, and resume his voyage before the postmaster's prodigy could gratify Edward John by giving him a Latin poser. Only for a moment did he hesitate, however, and recovering his self-confidence, Mr. Needham continued brazenly:

"But, after all, one does not master Latin so soon as that. Henry, I am afraid, will still have much to learn of the cla.s.sic tongue."

"But won't you try me, sir?" blurted out the youthful subject of discussion. "I should really like to be tested."

"Come now, do, Mr. Needham," urged the postmaster teasingly, his face shining with pleasure in delighted antic.i.p.ation of the coming battle of wits. "Tackle 'im on Virgil; tackle 'im on Virgil. Put 'im through 'is paces, do, and let's see what's in the led."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Mr. Charles; but I am pressed this morning, and must not delay further. Some other day, perhaps, I shall see how he stands in the cla.s.sics, but really I must be off. Good morning, Mr. Charles; good morning, Henry!"

So saying, the vicar beat a retreat, and as Edward John watched the breeze-blown frock-coat and the twinkling calipers disappear eastward, he cherished the suspicion that the Rev. G.o.dfrey Needham really did not know so much of Latin after all. Nor did the shrewd Mr. Charles arrive at a wrong conclusion. The dear old vicar's reputation as a Latinist rested almost entirely on the fact that it was his custom when showing a visitor through the Parish Church of Hampton Bagot to point to several memorials in the chancel, and after asking if the visitor knew Latin, to glibly recite the inscriptions in that tongue, and follow this up by condescending to give their English equivalents. It was a harmless vanity, and was typical of many little corners in the quaint character of this good man.

Miffin had now accomplished the elaborate ceremony of opening his inefficient shop, and sniffing contemptuously as he retired indoors at the presumptuous Mr. Charles, whose encounter with the vicar he had carefully overheard, he had the satisfaction of seeing the portly form of Edward John disappear inside the Post Office, presumably for the purpose of doing a little business.

"And now, 'Enry," said the proud parent, still chuckling at the obvious retreat of the vicar, "it is time for school, my boy. Remember, _tempus fugits_. Yes, my word, _tempus_ do _fugit_."

Thus admonished, the rising hope of the postmaster shouldered his satchel and set out schoolward.

Henry Charles was in almost every sense a direct contrast to his father.

Taller than the latter already, although not yet sixteen years of age, he was lean and sallow of appearance, with long, narrow, ungainly features, redeemed from plainness only by the intensity of his glowing brown eyes. By several years the oldest lad at the church school, where Mr. Arnold Page retailed his somewhat limited store of learning to some forty scholars, Henry was the scandal of the village. To the good folk of Hampton it seemed almost a temptation of Providence to keep a lad at school after he was twelve years of age, and to them Henry was a byword for laziness and the possibilities of a shameful end. Often would the postmaster's cronies a.s.sure him that he could hope for no good to come of such conduct. At the "Wings and Spur" almost any evening "that long, lanky, lumbering lout of a good-for-nothing, 'Enry Charles," was quoted in conversation as an example of the follies a man could commit who had once gone so far out of his natural station as to visit London and admire "book-larnin'."

"It's downright sinful, I calls it, to keep a led at school arter twelve years of age, when 'e moite be earnin' three shillin' a week a-doin' of some honest werk."

This was the opinion enunciated more than once by Mr. Miffin in the taproom of the inn, and always a.s.sented to with acclamation by the company.

But Henry was sublimely unconscious of the interest he created, and his father was stoutly determined in the course he would pursue. So the youth continued to read all the books that came his way, to dream dreams of lands that lay beyond eye-scope of Hampton Bagot. If the main road through the village went to Stratford-on-Avon, it did not stay there for Henry, and when it did go there it carried his thoughts to the home of his favourite author.

It was, perhaps, the very fact of Hampton's nearness to the shrine of Shakespeare that set the postmaster's boy thinking of books and the life of letters. Already he dwelt in an enchanted land whither none else in Hampton had ever wandered, and from the printed page he had built up for himself a city of his own--a city with the familiar name of London.

There, as his father had told him--for had not Edward John trod its streets for two whole days?--lived the great men of letters, their busy pens plying on countless sheets of paper, and, like the touch of magic wands, conjuring up for their holders fame and fortune.

Edward John Charles was truly a phenomenon--a bookseller in the tiniest way, who had become imbued with some idea of the dignity of literature, and esteemed its exponents in inverse ratio to his own unlettered condition; thought of his scanty schooling being the one shadow which ever darkened his brow.

To this fairy London, this home of learning, this emporium of all the graces, Henry Charles looked forward in his day-dreams, while his neighbours lamented his father's folly in not setting him to hoe potatoes, or at least to sell ounces of s.h.a.g.

"The led is struck on books; it's books with 'im mornin', noon, an'

night, and I ain't the man to stand in 'is way," quoth Edward John, in expostulation with a friendly neighbour who advised him to put Henry to work. "I don't know what 'e's going to be, or what's in 'im; but whatever it is, the led shall 'ave his chance."

And when Edward John Charles said a thing he meant it.