Put Yourself in His Place

C >> Charles Reade >> Put Yourself in His Place



"SIR,--I find my sister-in-law wrote you, yesterday, a harsh letter,
which I do not approve; and have told her as much. Deceased's affairs
were irretrievable, and I blame no other man for his rash act, which may
God forgive! As to your kind and generous invitation, it deserves her
gratitude; but Mrs. Little and myself have mingled our tears together
over my poor brother's grave, and now we do not care to part. Before
your esteemed favor came to hand, it had been settled she should leave
this sad neighborhood and keep my house at Birmingham, where she will
meet with due respect. I am only a small tradesman; but I can pay my
debts, and keep the pot boiling. Will teach the boy some good trade, and
make him a useful member of society, if I am spared.

"I am, sir, yours respectfully,

"JOSEPH LITTLE."


"Sir,--I beg to acknowledge, with thanks, your respectable letter.

"As all direct communication between Mrs. James Little and myself is at
an end, oblige me with your address in Birmingham, that I may remit to
you, half-yearly, as her agent, the small sum that has escaped bricks
and mortar.

"When her son comes of age, she will probably forgive me for declining
to defraud him of his patrimony.

"But it will be too late; for I shall never forgive her, alive or dead.

"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

"GUY RABY."


When he had posted this letter he turned Edith's picture to the wall,
and wrote on the canvas--


"GONE INTO TRADE."


He sent for his attorney, made a new will, and bequeathed his land,
houses, goods, and chattels, to Dissolute Dick and his heirs forever.




CHAPTER III.


The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty
of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of
her sight. Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and
self-indulgent. She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought
home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.
Nor was she unqualified. If she had less learning than school-masters,
she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.
She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she
coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and
arithmetic. She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on
a button. He was a quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was
fourteen, his true genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed
a heaven-born gift for--carving in wood. This pleased Joseph Little
hugely, and he fostered it judiciously.

The boy worked, and thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies of
execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then current.
"Then learn to make your own, boy," cried Joseph Little, joyfully; and
so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening, forging, grinding,
handle-making, and cutlery: and Henry, young and enthusiastic, took his
turn at them all in right down earnest.

At twenty, he had sold many a piece of delicate carving, and could make
graving-tools incomparably superior to any he could buy; and, for his
age, was an accomplished mechanic.

Joseph Little went the way of all flesh.

They mourned and missed him; and, at Henry's earnest request, his mother
disposed of the plant, and went with him to London.

Then the battle of life began. He was a long time out of employment, and
they both lived on his mother's little fortune.

But Henry was never idle. He set up a little forge hard by, and worked
at it by day, and at night he would often sit carving, while his mother
read to him, and said he, "Mother, I'll never rest till I can carve the
bloom upon a plum."

Not to dwell on the process, the final result was this. He rose at last
to eminence as a carver: but as an inventor and forger of carving tools
he had no rival in England.

Having with great labor, patience, and skill, completed a masterpiece of
carving (there were plums with the bloom on, and other incredibles),
and also a set of carving-tools equally exquisite in their way, he got a
popular tradesman to exhibit both the work and the tools in his window,
on a huge silver salver.

The thing made a good deal of noise in the trade, and drew many
spectators to the shop window.

One day Mr. Cheetham, a master-cutler, stood in admiration before the
tools, and saw his way to coin the workman.

This Cheetham was an able man, and said to himself, "I'll nail him for
Hillsborough, directly. London mustn't have a hand that can beat us at
anything in our line."

He found Henry out, and offered him constant employment, as a forger and
cutler of carving-tools, at L4 per week.

Henry's black eyes sparkled, but he restrained himself. "That's to be
thought of. I must speak to my old lady. She is not at home just now."

He did speak to her, and she put her two hands together and said,
"Hillsborough! Oh Henry!" and the tears stood in her eyes directly.

"Well, don't fret," said he: "it is only saying no."

So when Mr. Cheetham called again for the reply, Henry declined, with
thanks. On this, Mr. Cheetham never moved, but smiled, and offered him
L6 per week, and his journey free.

Henry went into another room, and argued the matter. "Come, mother, he
is up to L6 a week now; and that is every shilling I'm worth; and, when
I get an apprentice, it will be L9 clear to us."

"The sight of the place!" objected Mrs. Little, hiding her face in her
hands instinctively.

He kissed her, and talked good manly sense to her, and begged her to
have more courage.

She was little able to deny him, and she consented; but cried, out of
his sight, a good many times about it.

As for Henry, strong in the consciousness of power and skill, he felt
glad he was going to Hillsborough. "Many a workman has risen to the
top of the tree in that place," said he. "Why, this very Cheetham was
grinding saws in a water-wheel ten years ago, I've heard uncle Joe say.
Come, mother, don't you be a baby! I'll settle you in a cottage outside
the smoke; you shall make a palace of it; and we'll rise in the very
town where we fell, and friends and foes shall see us."

Mr. Cheetham purchased both the carving and the tools to exhibit in
Hillsborough; and the purchase-money, less a heavy commission, was paid
to Henry. He showed Mrs. Little thirty pounds, and helped her pack up;
and next day they reached Hillsborough by train.

Henry took a close cab, and carried his mother off to the suburbs in
search of a lodging. She wore a thick veil, and laid her head on her
son's shoulder, and held his brown though elegant hand with her white
fingers, that quivered a little as she passed through the well-known
streets.

As for Henry, he felt quite triumphant and grand, and consoled her in an
off-hand, hearty way. "Come, cheer up, and face the music. They have all
forgotten you by this time, and, when they do see you again, you shall
be as good as the best of them. I don't drink, and I've got a trade all
to myself here, and I'd rather make my fortune in this town than any
other; and, mother, you have been a good friend to me; I won't ever
marry till I have done you justice, and made you the queen of this very
town."

And so he rattled on, in such high spirits, that the great soft thing
began to smile with motherly love and pride through her tears, ere they
found a lodging.

Next day to the works, and there the foreman showed him a small forge on
the ground floor, and a vacant room above to make his handles in and put
the tools together; the blades were to be ground, whetted, and finished
by cheaper hands.

A quick-eared grinder soon came up to them, and said roughly, "Ain't we
to wet new forge?"

"They want their drink out of you," said the foreman; and whispered, in
great anxiety, "Don't say no, or you might as well work in a wasp's nest
as here."

"All right," said Henry, cheerfully. "I'm no drinker myself, but I'll
stand what is customary."

"That is right," said Foreman Bayne. "'Twill cost you fifteen shillings.
But Peace is cheap at as many guineas."

The word was given, and every man who worked on the same floor with
Henry turned out to drink at his expense, and left off work for a good
hour. With some exceptions they were a rough lot, and showed little
friendliness or good-humor over it. One even threw out a hint that no
cockney forges were wanted in Hillsborough. But another took him up, and
said, "Maybe not; but you are not much of a man to drink his liquor and
grudge him his bread."

After this waste of time and money, Henry went back to the works, and a
workman told him rather sulkily, he was wanted in the foreman's office.

He went in, and there was a lovely girl of eighteen, who looked at him
with undisguised curiosity, and addressed him thus: "Sir, is it you that
carve wood so beautifully?"

Henry blushed, and hesitated; and that made the young lady blush herself
a very little, and she said, "I wished to take lessons in carving."
Then, as he did not reply, she turned to Mr. Bayne. "But perhaps he
objects to teach other people?"

"WE should object to his teaching other workmen," said the foreman;
"but," turning to Henry, "there is no harm in your giving her a lesson
or two, after hours. You will want a set of the tools, miss?"

"Of course I shall. Please put them into the carriage; and--when will he
come and teach me, I wonder? for I am wild to begin."

Henry said he could come Saturday afternoon, or Monday morning early.

"Whichever you please," said the lady, and put down her card on the
desk; then tripped away to her carriage, leaving Henry charmed with her
beauty and ease.

He went home to his mother, and told her he was to give lessons to the
handsomest young lady he had ever seen. "She has bought the specimen
tools too; so I must forge some more, and lose no time about it."

"Who is she, I wonder?"

"Here is her card. 'Miss Carden, Woodbine Villa, Heath Hill.'"

"Carden!" said the widow. Then, after a moment's thought, "Oh, Henry,
don't go near them. Ah, I knew how it would be. Hillsborough is not like
London. You can't be long hid in it."

"Why, what is the matter? Do you know the lady?"

"Oh, yes. Her papa is director of an insurance company in London. I
remember her being born very well. The very day she was christened--her
name is Grace--you were six years old, and I took you to her
christening; and oh, Harry, my brother is her godfather. Don't you
go near that Grace Carden; don't visit any one that knew us in better
days."

"Why, what have we to be ashamed of?" said Henry. "'Tisn't as if we
sat twiddling our thumbs and howling, 'We have seen better days.' And
'tisn't as if we asked favors of anybody. For my part I don't care who
knows I am here, and can make three hundred a year with my own hands
and wrong no man. I'd rather be a good workman in wood and steel than an
arrogant old fool like your b--. No, I won't own him for yours or mine
either--call him Raby. Well, I wouldn't change places with him, nor any
of his sort: I'm a British workman, and worth a dozen Rabys--useless
scum!"

"That you are, dear; so don't demean yourself to give any of them
lessons. Her godfather would be sure to hear of it."

"Well, I won't, to please you. But you have no more pluck than a
chicken--begging your pardon, mother."

"No, dear," said Mrs. Little, humbly, quite content to gain her point
and lose her reputation for pluck; if any.

Henry worked regularly, and fast, and well, and in less than a fortnight
a new set of his carving-tools were on view in Hillsborough, and another
in London; for it was part of Mr. Cheetham's strategy to get all
the London orders, and even make London believe that these superior
instruments had originated in Hillsborough.

One day Miss Carden called and saw Bayne in the office. Her vivid
features wore an expression of vexation, and she complained to him that
the wood-carver had never been near her.

Bayne was surprised at that; but he was a man who always allayed
irritation on the spot. "Rely on it, there's some reason," said he.
"Perhaps he has not got settled. I'll go for him directly."

"Thank you," said the young lady. Then in the same breath, "No, take me
to him, and perhaps we may catch him carving--cross thing!"

Bayne assented cheerfully, and led the way across a yard, and up a
dirty stone stair, which, solid as it was, vibrated with the powerful
machinery that steam was driving on every side of it. He opened a door
suddenly, and Henry looked up from his work, and saw the invaders.

He stared a little at first, and then got up and looked embarrassed and
confused.

"You did not keep your word, sir," said Grace, quietly.

"No," he muttered, and hung his head.

He seemed so confused and ashamed, that Bayne came to his assistance.
"The fact is, no workman likes to do a hand's-turn on Saturday
afternoon. I think they would rather break Sunday than Saturday."

"It is not that," said Henry, in a low voice.

Grace heard him, but answered Mr. Bayne: "Oh dear, I wish I had known. I
fear I have made an unreasonable request: for, of course, after working
so hard all the week--but then why did you let me purchase the tools to
carve with? Papa says they are very dear, Mr. Bayne. But that is what
gentlemen always say if one buys anything that is really good. But of
course they WILL be dear, if I am not to be taught how to use them."
She then looked in Mr. Bayne's face with an air of infantine simplicity:
"Would Mr. Cheetham take them back, I wonder, under the circumstances?"

At this sly thrust, Bayne began to look anxious; but Henry relieved him
the next moment by saying, in a sort of dogged way, "There, there; I'll
come." He added, after a pause, "I will give you six lessons, if you
like."

"I shall be so much obliged. When will you come, sir?"

"Next Saturday, at three o'clock."

"I shall be sure to be at home, sir."

She then said something polite about not disturbing him further, and
vanished with an arch smile of pleasure and victory, that disclosed a
row of exquisite white teeth, and haunted Henry Little for many a day
after.

He told his mother what had happened, and showed so much mortified pride
that she no longer dissuaded him from keeping his word. "Only pray don't
tell her your name," said she.

"Well, but what am I to do if she asks it?"

"Say Thompson, or Johnson, or anything you like, except Little."

This request roused Henry's bile. "What, am I a criminal to deny my
name? And how shall I look, if I go and give her a false name, and then
she comes to Bayne and learns my right one? No, I'll keep my name back,
if I can; but I'll never disown it. I'm not ashamed of it, if you are."

This reduced poor Mrs. Little to silence; followed, in due course, by a
few meek, clandestine tears.

Henry put on his new tweed suit and hat, and went up to the villa. He
announced himself as the workman from Cheetham's; and the footman, who
had probably his orders, ushered him into the drawing-room at once.
There he found Grace Carden seated, reading, and a young woman sewing at
a respectful distance. This pair were types; Grace, of a young English
gentlewoman, and Jael Dence of a villager by unbroken descent. Grace was
tall, supple, and serpentine, yet not thin; Jael was robust and ample,
without being fat; she was of the same height, though Grace looked the
taller. Grace had dark brown eyes and light brown hair; and her blooming
cheek and bewitching mouth shone with expression so varied, yet vivid,
and always appropriate to the occasion, grave or gay, playful or
dignified, that her countenance made artificial faces, and giggling
in-the-wrong-place faces, painfully ridiculous. As for such faces as
Jael's, it killed them on the spot, but that was all. Jael's hair was
reddish, and her full eyes were gray; she was freckled a little under
the eyes, but the rest of her cheek full of rich pure color, healthy,
but not the least coarse: and her neck an alabaster column. Hers was a
meek, monotonous countenance; but with a certain look of concentration.
Altogether, a humble beauty of the old rural type; healthy, cleanly,
simple, candid, yet demure.

Henry came in, and the young lady received him with a manner very
different from that she had worn down at the works. She was polite, but
rather stiff and dignified.

He sat down at her request, and, wondering at himself, entered on the
office of preceptor. He took up the carving-tools, and explained the use
of several; then offered, by way of illustration, to work on something.

"That will be the best way, much," said Grace quietly, but her eye
sparkled.

"I dare say there's some lumber to be found in a great house like this?"

"Lumber? why, there's a large garret devoted to it. Jael, please take
him to the lumber-room."

Jael fixed her needle in her work, and laid it down gently on a table
near her, then rose and led the way to the lumber-room.

In that invaluable repository Henry soon found two old knobs lying on
the ground (a four-poster had been wrecked hard by) and a piece of deal
plank jutting out of a mass of things. He pulled hard at the plank; but
it was long, and so jammed in by miscellaneous articles, that he could
not get it clear.

Jael looked on demurely at his efforts for some time; then she suddenly
seized the plank a little higher up. "Now, pull," said she, and gave
a tug like a young elephant: out came the plank directly, with a great
rattle of dislocated lumber.

"Well, you are a strong one," said Henry.

"Oh, one and one makes two, sir," replied the vigorous damsel, modestly.

"That is true, but you threw your weight into it like a workman. Now
hand me that rusty old saw, and I'll cut off as much as we want."

While he was sawing off a piece of the plank, Jael stood and eyed him
silently a while. But presently her curiosity oozed out. "If you please,
sir, be you really a working man?"

"Why, what else should I be?" was the answer, given rather brusquely.

"A great many gentlefolks comes here as is no better dressed nor you
be."

"Dress is no rule. Don't you go and take me for a gentleman, or we
sha'n't agree. Wait till I'm as arrogant, and empty, and lazy as they
are. I am a workman, and proud of it."

"It's naught to be ashamed on, that's certain," said Jael. "I've carried
many a sack of grain up into our granary, and made a few hundred-weight
of cheese and butter, besides house-work and farm-work. Bless your
heart, I bayn't idle when I be at home."

"And pray where is your home?" asked Henry, looking up a moment, not
that he cared one straw.

"If you please, sir, I do come from Cairnhope village. I'm old Nat
Dence's daughter. There's two of us, and I'm the youngest. Squire sent
me in here, because miss said Hillsborough girls wasn't altogether
honest. She is a dear kind young lady; but I do pine for home and the
farm at times; and frets about the young calves: they want so much
looking after. And sister, she's a-courting, and can't give her mind to
'em as should be. I'll carry the board for you, sir."

"All right," said Henry carelessly; but, as they went along, he thought
to himself, "So a skilled workman passes for a gentleman with rustics:
fancy that!"

On their return to the drawing-room, Henry asked for a high wooden
stool, or chair, and said it would be as well to pin some newspapers
over the carpet. A high stool was soon got from the kitchen, and
Jael went promptly down on her knees, and crawled about, pinning the
newspapers in a large square.

Henry stood apart, superior, and thought to himself, "So much for
domestic servitude. What a position for a handsome girl--creeping about
on all fours!"

When all was ready, he drew some arabesque forms with his pencil on the
board. He then took an exquisite little saw he had invented for this
work, and fell upon the board with a rapidity that, contrasted with
his previous nonchalance, looked like fury. But he was one of your fast
workmen. The lithe saw seemed to twist in his hand like a serpent,
and in a very short time he had turned four feet of the board into
open-work. He finished the edges off with his cutting tools, and there
was a transformation as complete as of linen cloth turned lace.

Grace was delighted. "Shall I ever be able to do that?"

"In half a day. That's not carving; that's trickery. The tool does it
all. Before I invented this saw, a good workman would have been a day
over that; but now YOU can do it in half an hour, when you are master of
the instrument. And now I'll show you honest work." He took one of the
knobs and examined it; then sawed off a piece, and worked on the rest
so cunningly with his various cutters, that it grew into a human face
toward their very eyes. He even indicated Jael Dence's little flat cap
by a means at once simple and ingenious. All the time he was working the
women's eyes literally absorbed him; only those of Grace flashed vivid
curiosity, Jael's open orbs were fixed with admiration and awe upon his
supernatural cleverness.

He now drew some more arabesques on the remaining part of the board,
and told Miss Carden she must follow those outlines with the saw, and he
would examine her work on Monday morning. He then went off with a quick,
independent air, as one whose every minute was gold.

"If you please, miss," said Jael, "is he a real working man, or only a
gentleman as makes it his pastime?"

"A gentleman! What an idea! Of course he is a working man. But a very
superior person."

"To be sure," continued Jael, not quite convinced, "he don't come up to
Squire Raby; but, dear heart, he have a grander way with him than most
of the Hillsborough gentlefolks as calls here."

"Nonsense!" said Grace, authoritatively. "Look at his nails."

Henry came twice a week, and his pupil made remarkable progress. She was
deferential, attentive, enthusiastic.

By degrees the work led to a little conversation; and that, in due
course, expanded into a variety of subjects; and the young lady, to
her surprise, found her carver well-read in History and Sciences, and
severely accurate in his information, whereas her own, though abundant,
was rather loose.

One day she expressed her surprise that he could have found time to be
so clever with his fingers and yet cultivate his mind.

"Well," said he, "I was lucky enough to have a good mother. She taught
me all she knew, and she gave me a taste for reading; and that has been
the making of me; kept me out of the public-house, for one thing."

"Ah! you WERE fortunate. I lost my mother, sir, when I was but eight
years old."

"Oh dear, that was a bad job," said Henry brusquely but kindly.

"A very bad job," said Grace, smiling; but the next moment she suddenly
turned her fair head away and tears stole down her cheeks.

Henry looked very sorry, and Jael, without moving, looked at Grace, and
opened those sluices, her eyes, and two big drops of sympathy rolled
down her comely face in a moment.

That day, when young Little shut the street-door of "Woodbine Villa" and
stepped into the road, a sort of dull pain seemed to traverse his chest.
It made his heart ache a little, this contrast of the sweet society
he had left and the smoky town toward which he now turned his face. He
seemed to be ejected from Paradise for the next five days. It was Monday
yet he wished the next day was Saturday, and the intervening period
could be swept away, so that he might be entering that soft Paradise
instead of leaving it.

And this sentiment, once rooted, grew rapidly in an aspiring nature, and
a heart that had never yet entertained a serious passion. Now the fair
head that bowed over the work so near him, the lovely hand he had so
often to direct, and almost to guide, and all the other perfections of
mind and body this enchanting girl possessed, crept in at his admiring
eyes, and began to steal into his very veins, and fill him with soft
complacency. His brusque manner dissolved away, and his voice became low
and soft, whenever he was in her delicious presence. He spoke softly to
Jael even, if Grace was there. The sturdy workman was enthralled.

Often he wondered at himself. Sometimes he felt alarmed at the strength
of his passion and the direction it had taken.

"What," said he, "have I flirted with so many girls in my own way
of life, and come away heart-whole, and now to fall in love with a
gentlewoman, who would bid her footman show me the door if she knew of
my presumption!"

But these misgivings could neither cure him nor cow him. Let him only
make money, and become a master instead of a workman, and then he would
say to her, "I don't value birth myself, but if you do, why, I am not
come of workpeople."

He traced a plan with workmanlike precision:--Profound discretion
and self-restraint at "Woodbine Villa:" restless industry and stern
self-denial in Hillsborough.

After his day's work he used to go straight to his mother. She gave him
a cup of tea, and then they had their chat; and after that the sexes
were inverted, so to speak: the man carved fruit, and flowers, and dead
woodcocks, the woman read the news and polities of the day, and the
essays on labor and capital, and any other articles not too flimsy
to bear reading aloud to a man whose time was coin. (There was a free
library in Hillsborough, and a mechanic could take out standard books
and reviews.) Thus they passed the evening hours agreeably, and usefully
too, for Henry sucked in knowledge like a leech, and at the same time
carved things that sold well in London. He had a strong inclination to
open his heart about Miss Carden. Accordingly, one evening he said, "She
lost her mother when she was a child."