The Adventures of Harry Revel

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  CHAPTER III.

  I AM BOUND APPRENTICE.

  Although holidays were a thing unknown at the Genevan Hospital,yet discipline grew sensibly lighter during Mr. Scougall's honeymoon,being left to Miss Plinlimmon on the understanding that in emergencyshe might call in the strong and secular arm of Mr. George.But we all loved Miss Plinlimmon, and never drove her beyondappealing to what she called our better instincts.

  Her dearest aspiration (believe it if you can) was to make gentlemenof us--of us, doomed to start in life as parish apprentices!And to this her curriculum recurred whether it had been divagatinginto history, geography, astronomy, English composition, or religiousknowledge. "The author of the book before me, a B.A.--otherwise aBachelor of Arts, but not on that account necessarily unmarried--observes that to believe the sun goes round the earth is a vulgarerror. For my part I should hardly go so far: but it warns us howseverely those may be judged who obtrusively urge in society opinionswhich the wise in their closets have condemned." "The refulgentorb--another way, my dears, of saying the sun--is in the vicinity ofPersia an object of religious adoration. The Christian nations,better instructed, content themselves with esteeming it warmly, andas they follow its course in the heavens, draw from it the usefullesson to look always on the bright side of things." Humblebeneficent soul! I never met another who had learned that lessonso thoroughly. Once she pointed out to me at the end of herdictation-book a publisher's colophon of a sundial with the word_Finis_ above it, and, underneath, the words "Every Hour ShortensLife." "Now, I prefer to think that every hour lengthens it," saidshe, with one of her few smiles; for her cheerfulness was alwaysserious.

  Best of all were the hours when she read to us extracts fromher album. "At least," she explained, "I _call_ it an album.I ever longed to possess one, adorned with remarks--moral orsprightly, as the case might be--by the Choicest Spirits of our Age,and signed in their own illustrious handwriting. But in my sphere oflife these were hard--nay, impossible--to come by; so in my dilemma Ihad recourse to subterfuge, and having studied the career of this orthat eminent man, I chose a subject and composed what (as it seemedto me) he would _most likely_ have written upon it, signing his namebelow--but in print, that the signatures may not pass hereafter forreal ones, should the book fall into the hands of strangers.You must not think, therefore, that the lines on Statesmanship whichI am about to read you, beginning 'But why Statesmans _ship_?Because, my lords and gentlemen, the State is indeed a ship, anddemands a skilful helmsman'--you must not think that they wereactually penned by the Right Honourable William Pitt. But I feelsure the sentiments are such as he would have approved, and perhapsmight have uttered had the occasion arisen."

  This puzzled us, and I am not sure that we took any trouble todiscriminate Miss Plinlimmon's share in these compositions from thatof their signatories. Indeed, the first time I set eyes on LordWellington (as he rode by us to inspect the breaches in CiudadRodrigo) my memory saluted him as the Honourable Arthur Wellesley,author of the passage, "Though educated at Eton, I have often caughtmyself envying the quaintly expressed motto of the more ancientseminary amid the Hampshire chalk-hills, i.e. _Manners makyth man_";and to this day I associate General Paoli with an apostrophe"O Corsica! O my country, bleeding and inanimate!" etc., and withMiss Plinlimmon's foot-note: "N.B.--The author of these affectinglines, himself a blameless patriot, actually stood godfather tothe babe who has since become the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte.Oh, irony! What had been the feelings of the good Paoli, could hehave foreseen this eventuality, as he promised and vowed beside thefont! (if they have such things in Corsica: a point on which I amuncertain)."

  I dwell on these halcyon days with Miss Plinlimmon because, as theywere the last I spent at the Genevan Hospital, so they soften all myrecollections of it with their own gentle prismatic haze. In fact,a bare fortnight had gone by since my adventure on the spire when Iwas summoned to Mr. Scougall's parlour and there found MissPlinlimmon in conversation with a tall and very stout man: and if hereyelids were pink, I paid more attention to the stout man's, whichwere rimmed with black--a more unusual sight. His neck, too, wasblack up to a well-defined line; the rest of it, and his cheeks, redwith the red of prize beef.

  "This is the boy--hem--Revel, of whom we were speaking." MissPlinlimmon smiled at me and blushed faintly as she uttered the name."Harry, shake hands with Mr. Trapp. He has come expressly to makeyour acquaintance."

  Somehow I gathered that this politeness took Mr. Trapp aback; but heheld out his hand. It was astonishingly black.

  "Pray be seated, Mr. Trapp."

  "The furniture, ma'am!"

  "Ah, to be sure!" Mr. Scougall's freshly upholstered chairs had allbeen wrapped in holland coverings pending his return. "Mr. Trapp,Harry, is a--a chimney-sweep."

  "Oh!" said I, somewhat ruefully.

  "And if I can answer for your character (as I believe I can)," shewent on with a wan, almost wistful smile, "he is ready to make youhis apprentice."

  "But I had rather be a soldier, Miss Plinlimmon!"

  She still kept her smile, but I could read in it that my pleading wasuseless; that the decision really lay beyond her.

  "Boys will be boys, Mr. Trapp." She turned to him with her air ofgentility. "You will forgive Harry for preferring a red coat to--toyour calling." (I thought this treacherous of Miss Plinlimmon.As if she did not prefer it herself!) "No doubt he will learn intime that all duty is alike noble, whether it bids a man mount thedeadly breach or climb a--or do the sort of climbing required in yourprofession."

  "I climbed up that spire in my sleep," said I, sullenly.

  "That's just it," Mr. Trapp agreed. "That's what put me on the trackof ye. 'Here's a tacker,' I said, 'can climb up to the top ofEmmanuel's in his sleep, and I've been wasting money and temper onthem that won't go up an ord'nary chimbley when they're wideawake,'ithout I lights a furze-bush underneath to hurry them.'"

  "I trust," put in Miss Plinlimmon, aghast, "you are jesting, Mr.Trapp?"

  "Jesting, ma'am?"

  "You do not really employ that barbarous method of acceleration?"

  "Meaning furze-bushes? Why, no, ma'am; not often. Look ye here,young sir," he continued, dismissing (as of no account) this subject,so interesting to me; "you was wide awake, anyway, when you camedown, and that you can't deny."

  "Harry," persisted Miss Plinlimmon, "has not been used to harshtreatment. You will like his manners: he is a very gentlemanly boy."

  Mr. Trapp stared at her, then at me, then slowly around the room."Gentlemanly?" he echoed at length, in a wondering way, under hisbreath.

  "I have used my best endeavours. Yes, though I say it to his face,you will really--if careful to appeal to his better instincts--findhim one of Nature's gentlemen."

  Mr. Trapp broke into a grin of relief; almost you could say that heheaved a sigh.

  "Oh, that's all?" said he. "Why, Lord love ye, ma'am, I've beencalled that myself before now!"

  So to Mr. Trapp I was bound, early next week, before the magistratessitting in petty sessional division, to serve him and to receivefrom him proper sustenance and clothing until the age of twenty-one.And I (as nearly as could be guessed, for I had no birthday) hadbarely turned ten. Mr. Scougall arrived in time to pilot me throughthese formalities and hand me over to Mr. Trapp: but at a partinginterview, throughout which we both wept copiously, Miss Plinlimmongave me for souvenir a small Testament with this inscription on thefly-leaf:

  H. REVEL, _from his affectionate friend, A. Plinlimmon_.

  _O happy, happy days, when childhood's cares Were soon forgotten! But now, when dear ones all around are still the same, Where shall we be in ten years' time?_

  "They were my own composition," she explained. Mr. George bade me agloomier farewell. "You might come to some good," he saidcontemplatively; "and then again you mightn't. I ain't what theycall a _pessimist_, but I thinks poorly of most things. It's safer."

  Mr.
Trapp was exceedingly jocose as he conveyed me home to his housebeside the Barbican, Plymouth; stopping on the way before everybuilding of exceptional height and asking me quizzically how I wouldpropose to set about climbing it. At the time, in the soreness of myheart, I resented this heavy pleasantry, and to be sure, after thetenth repetition or so, the diversity of the buildings to which heapplied it but poorly concealed its sameness. But, in fact, he wasdoing his best to be kind, and succeeded in a sort; for it roused achildish scorn in me and so fetched back my heart, which at startinghad been somewhere in my boots.

  I took it for granted that a sweep must inhabit a dingy hovel, andcertainly the crowded filth of the Barbican promised nothing betteras we threaded our way among fishermen, fish-jowters, blowzy women,and children playing hop-scotch with the heads of decaying fish.At the seaward end of it, and close beside the bow-fronted CustomHouse, we turned aside into an alley which led uphill between highblank walls to the base of the Citadel: and here, stuck as if it werea marten's nest under the shadow of the ramparts, a freshlywhitewashed cottage overhung the slope, with a sweep's brush danglingover its doorway and the sign "S. Trapp, Chimney Sweep in Season."

  While I wondered what might be the season for chimney-sweeps, a smallbead-eyed woman emerged from the doorway and shook a dustervigorously: in the which act catching sight of us, she paused.

  "I've a-got en, my dear," said Mr. Trapp much as a man might announcethe capture of a fish: and though he did not actually lift me forinspection his hand seemed to waver over my collar.

  But it was Mrs. Trapp, who, after a fleeting glance at me, caught herhusband by the collar.

  "And you actilly went in that state, you nasty keerless hulks!O, you heart-breaker!"

  Mr. Trapp in custody managed to send me a sidelong, humorous grin.

  "My dear, I thought 'twould be a surprise for you--business taking methat way, and the magistrates being used to worse."

  "You heart-breaker!" repeated Mrs. Trapp. "And me slaving morn andnight to catch up with your messy ways! What did I tell you thefirst time you came back from the Hospital looking like a malkin, andwith a clean shift of clothes laid out for you and the water on theboil, that I couldn't have taken more trouble, no, not for a funeral?Didn't I tell you 'twas positively lowering?"

  "I ha'n't a doubt you did, my dear."

  "That's what you are. You're a lowering man. And there by your ownaccount you met a lady, with your neck streaked like a ham-rasher,and me not by--thank goodness!--to see what her feelings were; andnow 'tis magistrates. But nothing warns you. I suppose you thoughtthat as 'twas only fondlings without any father or mother it didn'tmatter how you dressed!"

  Mrs. Trapp, though she might seem to talk at random, had a wifelyknack of dropping a shaft home. Her husband protested.

  "Come, come, Maria--you know I'm not that sort of man!"

  "How do I know what sort of man you are, under all that dirt?For my part, if I'd been a magistrate, you shouldn't have walked offwith the boy till you'd washed yourself, not if you'd gone down onyour hands and knees for it; and him with his face shining all overlike a little Moses on the Mount, which does the lady credit if she'sthe one you saw; though how they can dress children up likepickle-herrings it beats me. Your bed's at the top of the house,child, and there you'll find a suit o' clothes that I've washed andaired after the last boy. I only hope you won't catch any of hisnasty tricks in 'em. Straight up the stairs and the little door tothe left at the top."

  "Unless"--Mr. Trapp picked up courage for one more pleasantry--"you'dlike to make a start at once and go up by way of the chimbley."

  He was rash. As a pugilist might eye a recovering opponent supposedto be stunned, so Mrs. Trapp eyed Mr. Trapp.

  "I thought I told you plain enough," she said, "that you're alowering man. What's worse, you're an unconverted one. Oh, younasty, fat, plain-featured fellow! Go indoors and wash yourself,this instant!"

  I spent close upon four years with this couple: and good parents theywere to me, as well as devoted to each other. Mrs. Trapp may havebeen "cracked," as she certainly suffered from a determination ofwords to the mouth: but, as a child will, I took her and the rest ofthe world as I found them. She began to mother me at once; and onthe very next morning took my clothes in hand, snipped the ridiculoustails off the jacket, and sent it, with the breeches, to the dyer's.The yellow waistcoat she cut into pin-cushions, two for upstairs andtwo for the parlour.

  Having no children to save for, Mr. Trapp could afford to feed andclothe an apprentice and take life easily to boot. Mrs. Trapp wouldnever allow him to climb a ladder; had even chained him to _terrafirma_ by a vow--since, as she explained to me once, "he's anunconverted man. There's no harm in 'en; but I couldn't bear to havehim cut off in his sins. Besides, with such a figure, he'd scatter."

  I recollect it as a foretaste of his kindness that on the first earlymorning, as he led me forth to my first experiment, we paused betweenthe blank walls of the alley that I might practise the sweep's callin comparative privacy. The sound of my own voice, reverberatedthere, covered me with shame, though it could scarcely have beenlouder than the cheeping of the birds on the Citadel ramparts above."Hark to that fellow, now!" said my master, as the notes of a buglesang out clear and brave in the dawn. "He's no bigger than you, Iwarrant, and has no more call to be proud of his business." In timeI grew bold enough and used to begin my "Sweep, Swee--eep!" at themouth of the alley to warn Mrs. Trapp of our return.

  My first chimney daunted me, though it was a wide one, belonging to acottage, well fitted with climbing brackets, and so straight thatfrom the flat hearth-stone you could see a patch of blue sky with thegulls sailing across it. Mr. Trapp instructed me well and Ilistened, setting my small jaws to choke down the terror: but, oncestarted, with his voice guiding me from below and growing hollower asI ascended, I found that all came easily enough. "Bravo!" he shoutedup from the far side of the street, whither he had run out to see mewave my brush from the summit. In a day or two he began to boast ofme, and I had to do my young best to live up to a reputation; for thefame of my feat on Emmanuel Church spire had spread all over theBarbican. Being reckoned a bold fellow, I had to justify myself infighting with the urchins of my age there; in which, and inwrestling, I contrived to hold my own. My shame was that I had neverlearnt to swim. All my rivals could swim, and even in the winterweather seemed to pass half their time in the filthy water of SuttonPool, or in running races, stark naked, along the quay's edge.

  Our trade, steady and leisurable until the last week of March, thenwent up with a rush and continued at high pressure through April andMay, so that, dog-tired in every limb, I had much ado to drag myselfto bed up the garret stairs after Mrs. Trapp had rubbed my ankleswith goose-fat where the climbing-irons galled them. While this wasdoing, Mr. Trapp would smoke his pipe and watch and assure me thatmine were the "growing-pains" natural to sweeps, and Mrs. Trapp(without meaning it in the least) lamented the fate which had tiedher for life to one. "It being well known that my birthday is the15th of the month and its rightful motto in Proverbs thirty-one,'She riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to herhousehold and a portion to her maidens'; and me never able to hire agel at eight pounds a year even!"

  "If you did," retorted Mr. Trapp, "I don't see you turning out atmidnight to feed her."

  Early in June this high-tide of business slackened, and by the closeof the second week we were moderately idle. On Midsummer morning Idescended to find, to my vast astonishment, Mr. Trapp seated at tablebefore a bowl of bread and milk and wearing a thick blue guernseytucked inside his trousers, the waist of which reached so high as toreduce his braces to mere shoulder-straps. I could not imagine whyhe, a man given to perspiration, should add to his garments at thisseason.

  Breakfast over, he beckoned me to the door and jerked his thumbtowards the lintel. The usual, sign had been replaced by a shorterone: "S. Trapp. Gone Driving."

  "If folks," said he, "ha'n't the foresight to get
swept aforeMidsummer, I don't humour 'em."

  "Are--are you really going for a drive, sir?" I stammered.

  "To be sure I am. I drive every day in the summer. What do yousuppose?"

  "It won't be a chaise and pair, sir?" I hazarded, though even thiswould not have surprised me.

  "Not to-day. Lord knows what we may come to, but to-day 'tismackerel and whiting; later on, pilchards."

  He took me down to the quay; and there, sure enough, we stepped onboard a boat lying ready, with two men in her, who fended off andbegan to hoist sails at once. Mr. Trapp took the helm. It turnedout that he owned a share in the vessel and worked her from Midsummerto Michaelmas with a crew of two men and a boy. The men were calledIsaac and Morgan (I cannot remember their other names), the oneextremely old and surly, the other cheerful, curly-haired and active,and both sparing of words. I was to be the boy.

  We baited our hooks and whiffed for mackerel as we tacked out of theSound. And by and by we came to what Isaac called the "grounds"(though I could see nothing to distinguish it from the rest of thesea) and cast anchor and weighted our lines differently and caught afew whiting while we ate our dinner. The wind had fallen to a flatcalm. After dinner Mr. Trapp looked up and said to Isaac:

  "Got a life-belt on board?"

  "What in thunder do 'ee want it for?" asked Isaac.

  "That's my business," said Mr. Trapp.

  So Isaac hunted up a belt made of pieces of cork and then was orderedto lash one of the sweeps so that it stuck well outboard. "Now, mylad," said Mr. Trapp, turning to me, "you've been a very good lad'pon the whole, and I see you fighting with the tackers down 'pon thequay and holding your own. But they can swim, and you can't, andit's wearing your spirit. So here's a chance to larn. I can't larn'ee myself, for the fashion's come up since I was a youngster.Can you swim, Morgan?"

  Morgan could not; and old Isaac said he couldn't see the use of it--if you capsized, it only lengthened out the trouble.

  "Well, then, you must larn yourself," said Mr. Trapp to me."I've heard that pigs and men are the only animals it don't come toby nature. And that's a scandal however you look at it."

  So strip I did, and was girt with the belt under my armpits, tied toa rope, and slipped over the side in fear and trembling. I swalloweda pint or two of salt water and wept (but they could not see this,though they watched me curiously), I dare say, half a pint of it backin tears of fright. I knew by observation how legs and arms shouldbe worked, but made disheartening efforts to put it into practice.At length, utterly ashamed, I was hauled out and congratulated: atwhich I stared.

  "As for the swimmin'," said Isaac, "I can't call to mind that I'veseen worse: but for pluck, considering the number of sharks at aboutthis season, I couldn't ask better of his age."

  I had not thought of sharks--supposed them, indeed, to inhabit thetropics only. We caught one towards sunset, after it had fouled allour lines, and smashed its head with the unshipped tiller as it cameto the surface. It measured five feet and a little over, and welashed it alongside the gunwale and carried it home in triumph nextmorning (having shot the nets at sundown and slept and hauled them upempty at sunrise--the pilchards being scarce as yet, though a few hadbeen caught off the Eddystone). I don't suppose the shark would haveinterfered with my bath, but I gave myself airs on the strength ofhim.