Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family. Fenn George Manville

a cushion beneath his head.

      The motion seemed to revive the old man for a moment, and he opened his eyes, staring strangely at the Rector, who held one hand.

      Then his lips moved, and in a voice hardly above a whisper they heard him say —

      “Bless – thou! – Bless – thou! – those words would – have killed me.”

      There was a pause, and the Churchwarden was hastening forth to fetch help, when there arose in the now empty church a shrill “Amen.”

      It was the old clerk’s last.

      Part 1, Chapter IV.

      At Lawford School

      “Oh!” in a loud shrill voice; and then a general titter.

      “Silence! who was that?”

      “Please, Miss, Cissy Hudson, Miss. Please, Miss, it’s Mr Bone.”

      This last delivered in a chorus of shrill voices; and Sage Portlock turned sharply from the semi-circle of children, one and all standing with their toes accurately touching a thickly-chalked line, to see a head thrust into the schoolroom, but with the edge of the door held closely against the neck, pressing it upon the jamb, so that the entire body to which the head belonged was invisible.

      The head which had been thus suddenly thrust into the schoolroom was not attractive, the face being red and deeply lined with marks not made by age. The eyes were dull and watery, there was a greyish stubble of a couple of days’ growth upon the chin, and the hair that appeared above the low brow was rough, unkempt, and, if clean, did no justice to the cleansing hand.

      “How tiresome!” muttered Sage Portlock, moving towards the door, which then opened, and a tall man, in a very shabby thin greatcoat which reached almost to his heels, stumped into the room.

      Stumped or thumped – either word will do to express the heavy way in which Humphrey Bone, thirty years master of Lawford boys’ school, drew attention to the fact that he had one leg much shorter than the other, the difference in length being made up by a sole of some five inches’ thickness, which sole came down upon the red-brick floor like the modified blows of a pavior’s rammer.

      Such a clever man! Such a good teacher! the Lawford people said. There was nothing against him but a drop of drink, and this drop of drink had kept Humphrey Bone a poor man, dislocated his hip in a fall upon a dark night, when the former doctor of the place had not discovered the exact nature of the injury till it was too late, and the drop of drink in this instance had resulted in the partaker becoming a permanent cripple.

      Lawford was such a slow-moving place in those days, that it took its principal inhabitants close upon twenty years to decide that a master who very often went home helplessly intoxicated, and who had become a hopeless moral wreck, living in a state of squalor and debt, could not be a fitting person to train and set an example to the boys left in his charge. And at last, but in the face of great opposition from the old-fashioned party arrayed against the Rev. Eli Mallow and his friends – the party who reiterated the cry that Humphrey Bone was such a clever man, wrote such a copperplate-like hand, when his fingers were not palsied, and measured land so well – it was decided that Humphrey Bone should be called upon to resign at Christmas, and Luke Ross, the son of the Lawford tanner, then training at Saint Chrysostom’s College, London, should take his place.

      It was only natural that Sage Portlock, as she advanced to meet Humphrey Bone, should think of the coming days after the holidays, when Mr Ross, whom she had known so well from childhood, should be master of the adjoining school, and that very unpleasant personage now present should cease to trouble her with visits that were becoming more and more distasteful and annoying.

      “Mornin’! Ink!” said Mr Bone, shortly. “Ours like mud. How are you?”

      “Ink, Mr Bone?” said the young mistress, ignoring the husky inquiry after her health. “Yes; one of the girls shall bring some in.”

      This and the young mistress’s manner should have made Mr Humphrey Bone retire, but he stood still in the middle of the room, chuckling softly; and then, to the open-eyed delight of the whole school, drew a goose-quill from his breast, stripped off the plume from one side of the shaft, and, with a very keen knife, proceeded to cut, nick, and shape one of the pens for which he bore a great reputation, holding it out afterwards for the young mistress to see.

      “That beats training, eh? Didn’t teach you to make a pen like that at Westminster, did they, eh?”

      “No,” said Sage, quietly; “we always used steel pens.”

      “Hah – yes?” ejaculated the old schoolmaster, with a laugh of derision. “Steel pens – steel teaching – steel brains – they’ll have steel machine teachers soon, who can draw a goose like that on a black board with a bit of chalk. Faugh!”

      He pointed to one of a series of woodcuts mounted on millboard and hung against the whitewashed wall, stumped away three or four yards, and then returned.

      “New ways – new theories – new machines! Wear the old ones out and chuck ’em away – eh?”

      “I do not understand you, Mr Bone,” said the young mistress, longing for the interview to come to an end; but he went on, speaking angrily, and ignoring her words —

      “When old Widow Marley died, I said to Mallow and the rest of ’em, ‘Knock a hole through the brick wall,’ I said; ‘make one school of it; mix ’em all up together, boys and gals. Give me another ten a year, and I’ll teach the lot;’ but they wouldn’t do it. Said they must have a trained mistress; and here you are.”

      “Yes, I am here,” said Sage Portlock, rather feebly, for she had nothing else to say.

      “Only the other day you were a thin strip of a girl. Deny it if you can!”

      “I do not deny it, Mr Bone,” said Sage, determining to be firm, and speaking a little more boldly.

      “No,” he continued, in his husky tones, “you can’t deny it. Then you leave Miss Quittenton’s school, and your people send you to town for two years to be trained; and now here you are again.”

      Sage Portlock bowed, and looked longingly at the door, hoping for some interruption, but none came.

      “And now – ” began the old master.

      “Mary Smith, take the large ink-bottle into the boys’ school,” said the young mistress, quickly; and the girl went to the school cupboard, took out the great wicker-covered bottle, and was moving toward the door, when the old master caught her by the shoulder, and held her back.

      “Stop!” he said sharply. “Take it myself. Ha! ha!”

      Sage started and coloured, for the children were amused.

      “Ha, ha! – Ha – ha – ha – ha – ha!”

      The old man continued his hoarse cachinnation, ending by wiping his eyes on a washed-out ragged old print cotton handkerchief.

      “It makes me laugh,” he said. “Young Ross – him I taught to write – evening lessons up at his father’s house. Young Luke Ross! warmed him up like a viper in my breast to turn and sting me. Ha, ha, ha! Master here!”

      “For shame, Mr Bone,” exclaimed the young mistress, indignantly. “Mr Ross never sought for the engagement. It was only after Mr Mallow’s invitation that he accepted the post.”

      “Mr Mallow’s invitation, eh? The Rev. Eli Mallow, eh? Better look after his sons. Nice wild sons! Nice old prophet he is. Better look after his boys.”

      “And only the other day when he was down, young Mr Ross said that he was doubtful about taking the post, and thought of declining it after all.”

      “Told you so, eh? Ha – ha – ha! Not he. Sweet-hearting, eh? Ha – ha – ha! Very well, when he comes, knock a hole through the wall, and make one school of it, eh? Get married. Fine thing for the school. Faugh!” Sage Portlock’s face was now scarlet, and she was about to utter some indignant remonstrance against the old man’s words, when,