She raised her finger and looked toward the partition as she spoke, and he heard a booming of an organ through the wall.
“Tony blows the organ for him.”
Tony was a little boy from the workhouse, who cleaned knives, forks, shoes, and made himself generally useful, being the second servant, the only male one in their modest establishment.
“I wish I was better, I’m so out of breath talking. We’ll be very happy now. That’s tuning the pipes—that one’s wolving. I used to blow the bellows for him, but the doctor says I must not, and indeed I couldn’t now. You must eat something and drink more tea, and we’ll be great friends, shan’t we?”
So they talked a great deal, she being obliged to stop often for breath, and he could see that she was very weak, and also that she stood in indescribable awe of her father. But she said, “He’s a very good man, and he works very hard to earn his money, but he does not talk, and that makes people afraid of him. He won’t be back here until he comes here to read the Bible and prayers at a quarter to nine.”
So she talked on, but all the time in an undertone, and listening every now and then for the boom of the pipes, and the little boy opened his heart to her and wept bitterly, and she cried too, silently, as he went on, and they became very near friends. She looked as if she understood his griefs. Perhaps her own resembled them.
The old woman came in and took away the tea things, and shortly after the Sergeant entered and read the chapter and the prayers.
LXIII
A Silent Farewell
At Noulton Farm each day was like its brother. Inflexible hours, inflexible duties, all proceeded with a regimental punctuality. At meals not a word was spoken, and while the master of the house was in it, all conversation was carried on, even in remote rooms, in an undertone.
Our little friend used to see the workhouse boy at prayers, morning and evening, and occasionally to pass his pale disquieted face on the stairs or lobbies when his duties brought him there. They eyed one another wistfully, but dared not speak. Mr. Archdale had so ordained it.
That workhouse boy—perhaps he was inefficient, perhaps too much was expected from him—but he had the misfortune perpetually to incur—I can hardly say his master’s displeasure, for the word implies something emotional, whereas nothing could be at all times more tranquil and cold than that master—but his correction.
These awful proceedings occurred almost daily, and were conducted with the absolute uniformity which characterised the system of Noulton Farm. At eleven o’clock the cold voice of the Sergeant-Major called “Tony!” and Tony appeared, writhing and whimpering by anticipation.
“My cane,” said the master, stepping into the room which he called the workshop, where the organ, half finished, stood, stop-diapason, dulciana, and the rest in deal rows, with white chips, chisels, lead, saws, and glue-pots, in industrious disorder, round. Then Tony’s pale, miserable face was seen in the “parlour,” and Miss Mary would look down on the floor in pale silence, and our little friend’s heart would flutter over his lesson-book as he saw the lank boy steal over to the chimneypiece, and take down the cane, and lingeringly disappear.
Then was heard the door of the workshop close, and then very faint the cold clear voice of the master. Then faint and slow the measured cut of the cane, and the whine of the boy rising to a long hideous yell, and, “Oh, sir, dear—oh, sir, dear; oh, Mr. Archdale, oh, master, dear, oh, master, dear!” And this sometimes so protracted that Mary used to get up and walk round the room in a kind of agony whispering—“Oh, poor boy. Oh, poor Tony. Oh mercy—oh goodness. Oh! my good Lord, when will it be over!” And, sitting apart, the little boy’s eyes as they followed her would fill with tears of horror.
The little fellow said lessons to Mr. Archdale. There was nothing unreasonable in their length, and his friend Mary helped him. It was well for him, however, that he was a bright little fellow, with a good memory, for the Sergeant was not a teacher to discriminate between idleness and dullness.
No one ever heard Mr. Archdale use a violent expression, or utter a curse. He was a silent, cold, orderly person, and I think the most cruel man I ever saw in my life.
He had a small active horse, and a gig, in which he drove upon his outdoor business. He had fixed days and hours for everything, except where he meditated a surprise.
One day the Sergeant-Major entered the room where the boy was reading at his lessons, and, tapping him on the shoulder, put the county newspaper into his hand; and, pointing to a paragraph, desired him to read it, and left the room.
It was a report of the proceedings against Tom Orange, and gave a rather disreputable character of that amusing person. There was a great pain at the boy’s affectionate heart as he read the hard words dealt to his old friend, and worse still, the sentence. He was crying silently when the Sergeant returned. That stern man took the paper, and said in his cold, terrible tones—
“You’ve read that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And understand it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I find you speaking to Thomas Orange, I’ll tie you up in the workshop, and give you five dozen.” And with this promise he serenely left him.
Children are unsuspicious of death, and our little friend, who every night used to cry in his bed silently, with a bursting heart, thinking of his mammy and old happy times, till he fell asleep in the dark, never dreamed that his poor friend Mary was dying—she, perhaps, herself did not think so any
