Books: My Young Alcides
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides
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The evening it came into his possession he went down, and, standing
at the door, tried to explain why he had closed it, and why he could
not bear to see its frequenters spending their wages on degrading
themselves and making their homes miserable. In no mood for a
temperance harangue, the men drowned, or would have drowned aught but
his short incisive sentences, in clamours for their beer, and one big
bully pushed forward to attack him. His left hand was still in the
sling, but with the other he caught hold of the fellow by the collar,
and swung him over the side of the stone steps as helpless as a puppy
dog, shaking him till his teeth chattered ere setting him on his
feet. "If you wish for any more," he said, "we'll have it out as
soon as this hand is well."
That made them cheer him, and the fellow slunk away; while Harold,
having gained a hearing, told them that he meant to make the former
"Dragon's Head" a place where they might smoke, read the papers, play
games, and have any refreshment such as coffee, tea, or ginger-beer,
at which they hissed, and only one or two observed, "I am sure you
wishes us well, sir."
It was a good-sized house, and he meant to put in a steady couple to
keep it, giving up two upper rooms to make a laboratory for Mr.
Yolland, whose soul was much set on experiments for which his
lodgings gave him no space; but the very day when Harold opened his
coffee-rooms, as he went down the street, an "Original Dragon's Head"
and a "Genuine Dragon's Head" grinned defiance at him, in the full
glory of teeth, fiery breath, and gilded scales, on the other side of
the way. I believe they had been beershops before; but, be that as
it may, they devoured quite as many as their predecessor, and though
newspapers and draught-boards lay all about the place, they attracted
only two clients!
And the intended closing of all the beer-houses on the Arghouse
property, except the time-honoured "Blue Boar" on the village green,
seemed likely to have the same effect; for the notices to their
holders, grimly resisted by Bullock, seemed only to cause dozens of
householders to represent the absolute need of such houses whenever
they did not belong to us.
"To destroy one is to produce two," sighed Harold.
"There's nothing to be done but to strike at the root," I said.
"What's that?" said Harold.
"Man's evil propensities," I said.
"Humph," said Harold. "If I could manage the works now! They say
the shares are to be had for an old song."
"Oh, Harry, don't have anything to do with them," I entreated. "They
have ruined every creature who has meddled with them, and done
unmitigated mischief."
Harold made no answer, but the next day he was greatly stimulated by
a letter from Prometesky, part of which he read to me, in its perfect
English, yet foreign idiom.
"I long to hear of the field of combat we had to quit, because one
party was too stolid, the other too ardent. I see it all before me
with the two new champions freshly girded for the strife, but a
peaceful strife, my friend. Let our experience be at least
profitable to you, and let it be a peaceful contention of emulation
such as is alone suited to that insular nation which finds its
strongest stimulus in domestic comfort and wealth. Apropos, has some
one pursued a small discovery of mine, that, had I not been a
stranger of a proscribed nation, and had not your English earl and
the esquires been hostile to all save the hereditary plough, might
have found employment for thousands and prevented the history of your
fathers and of myself? That bed of argillaceous deposit around the
course of your Lerne, which I found to be of the same quality as the
porcelain clay of Meissen, does it still merely bear a few scanty
blades of corn, or is its value appreciated, and is it occupying
hundreds of those who starved and were discontented, to the great
surprise of their respectable landlords? I wonder whether a few
little figures that I modelled in the clay for specimens, and baked
in my hostess's oven, are still in existence. The forms of clay were
there. Alas! I asked in vain of your English magnates for the fire
from heaven to animate the earth, or rather I would have brought it,
and I suffered."
It was amusing to see how much delighted honest Harold was with this
letter, and how much honoured he seemed by his dear old Prometesky
having spent so much time and thought upon writing to him. It fired
him with doubled ardour to investigate the Hydriot Company, and he
could hardly wait till a reasonable hour the next day. Then he took
Eustace down with him and returned quite talkative (for him) with the
discoveries he had made, from one of the oldest workmen who had
become disabled from the damp of working in the clay.
The Company had been set up by a clever speculating young attorney,
but the old man remembered that "that there foreign gentleman, the
same as was sent to foreign parts with the poor young squires," was
"always a-puddling about in it; and they did say as how he tried to
get my lord, and Squire Horsman, and Squire Stympson to see to
setting up summut there; but they wasn't never for 'speriments, and
there was no more talk of it not till that there young Crabbe got
hold, they say, of some little images as he had made, and never
rested till he had got up the Company, and begun the works, having
drawn in by his enthusiasm half the tradesmen and a few of the
gentlemen of the place."
Three years of success; then came a bad manager; young Crabbe
struggled in vain to set things right, broke down, and died of the
struggle; and ever since the unhappy affair had lingered on, starving
its workmen, and just keeping alive by making common garden pots and
pans and drain-tiles. Most people who could had sold out of it,
thanking the Limited Liabilities for its doing them no further harm;
and the small remnant only hung on because no one could be found to
give them even the absurdly small amount that was still said to be
the value of their shares.
That they would find now Harold had fallen in with young Yolland, who
had been singing the old song, first of Prometesky, then of Crabbe,
and had made him listen to it. Five pounds would now buy a share
that used to be worth a hundred, and that with thanks from the seller
that he got anything from what had long ceased to pay the ghost of a
dividend. And loose cash was not scarce with Harold; he was able to
buy up an amount which perfectly terrified me, and made me augur that
the Hydriot would swallow all Boola Boola, and more too; and as to
Mr. Yolland's promises of improvements, no one, after past
experience, could believe in them.
"Now, Harold, you know nothing of all this intricate business; and as
to these chemical agencies, I am sure you know nothing about them."
"I shall learn."
"You will only be taken in," I went on in my character as good aunt,
"and utterly ruined."
"No matter if I am."
"Only please, at least, don't drag in Eustace and Arghouse."
"Eustace will only have five shares standing in his name to enable
him to be chairman."
"Five too many! Harold! I cannot see why you involve yourself in
all this. You are well off! You don't care for these foolish hopes
of gain."
"I can't see things go so stupidly to wrack."
The truth was that he saw in it a continuation of Prometesky's work
and his father's, so expostulations were vain. He had been
thoroughly bitten, and was the more excited at finding that Dermot
and Viola Tracy were both shareholders. Their father had been a
believer in Crabbe, and had taken a good many shares, and these had
been divided between them at his death. They could not be sold till
they were of age, and by the time Dermot was twenty-one, no one would
buy them; and now, when they were recalled to his mind, he would
gladly have made Harold a present of them, but Harold would not even
buy them; he declared that he wanted Dermot's vote, as a shareholder,
to help in the majority; and, in fact, the effective male
shareholders on the spot were only just sufficient to furnish
directors. Mr. Yolland bought two shares that he might have a voice;
Eustace was voted into the chair, and the minority was left to
consist of the greatly-soured representative of the original Crabbe,
and one other tradesman, who held on for the sake, as it seemed, of
maintaining adherence to the red pots and pans, as, at any rate,
risking nothing.
Of course I hated and dreaded it all, and it was only by that power
which made it so hard to say nay to Harold, that he got me down to
look at the very lair of the Hydriot Company. It was a melancholy
place; the buildings were so much larger, and the apparatus so much
more elaborate than there was any use for; and there were so few
workmen, and those so unhealthy and sinister-looking.
I remember the great red central chimney with underground furnaces
all round, which opened like the fiery graves where Dante placed the
bad Popes; and how dreadfully afraid I was that Dora would tumble
into one of them, so that I was glad to see her held fast by the
fascination of the never-superseded potter and his wheel fashioning
the clay, while Mr. Yolland discoursed and Harold muttered assents to
some wonderful scheme that was to economise fuel--the rock on which
this furnace had split.
It has been explained to me over and over again, and I never did more
than understand it for one moment, and if I did recollect all about
it, like a scientific dialogue, nobody would thank me for putting it
in here, so it will be enough to say that it sounded to me very
bewildering and horribly dangerous, not so much to the body as to the
pocket, and I thought the Hydriot bade fair to devour Boola Boola and
Harold, if not Arghouse and Eustace into the bargain.
They meant to have a Staffordshire man down to act as foreman and put
things on a better footing.
"I'll write to my brother to send one," said Mr. Yolland. "He's a
curate in the potteries; has a wonderful turn for this sort of
thing."
"Have you a brother a clergyman?" I said, rather surprised, and to
fill up Harold's silence.
"Yes, my brother Ben. It's his first curacy, and his two years are
all but up. I don't know if he will stay on. He's a right down
jolly good fellow is Ben, and I wish he would come down here."
Neither of us echoed the wish. Harold had no turn for clergymen
after the specimen of Mr. Smith; and Mr. Yolland, though I could
specify nothing against him but that he was rough and easy, had
offended me by joining us, when I wanted Harold all to myself.
Besides, was he not deluding my nephews into this horrid Hydriot
Company, of which they would be the certain victims?
The Staffordshire man came, and the former workmen looked very bitter
on him. After a meeting, in which the minority made many vehement
objections, Eustace addressed the workmen in the yards--that is to
say, he thought he did; but Harold and Mr. Yolland made his meaning
more apparent. A venture in finer workmanship, imitating Etruscan
ware, was to be made, and, if successful, would much increase trade
and profits, and a rise in wages was offered to such as could
undertake the workmanship. Moreover, it was held out to them that
they might become the purchasers of shares or half shares at the
market price, and thus have an interest in the concern, whereat they
sneered as at some new dodge of the Company for taking them in. It
did not seem to me that much was done, save making Harry pore over
books and accounts, and run his hands through his hair, till his
thick curls stood up in all directions.
And Miss Woolmer herself was sorry. She remembered the old story--
nay, she had one of Prometesky's own figures modelled in terra cotta,
defective, of course, as a work of art, but with that fire that
genius can breathe into the imperfect. She believed it had been
meant for the Hope of Poland. Alas! the very name reminded one of
the old word for despair, "Wanhope." But Harold admired it greatly,
and both he and George Yolland seemed to find inspiration in it.
But one summer evening, when the young men were walking up and down
the garden, smoking, we heard something that caused us to look round
for a thunder-cloud, though none could be seen in the clear sky, and
some quarter of an hour after, Richardson hurried out to us with the
tidings, "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a person come up to
say there has been an explosion at the Hydriot works."
"Impossible!" said Harold. "There's nothing to explode!"
"I beg your pardon, sir, but it is Mr. Yolland they say has blowed
himself up with his experiments, and all the old 'Dragon's Head' in
Lerne Street, and he is buried under the ruins. It is all one mass
of ruin, sir, and he under it."
Harold rushed off, without further word or query, and Eustace after
him, and I had almost to fight to hold back Dora, and should hardly
have succeeded if the two had not disappeared so swiftly that she
could not hope to come up with them.
I let her put on her things and come down with me to the lodge-gate
to watch. I was afraid to go any farther, and there we waited,
without even the relief of a report, till we had heard the great
clock strike quarter after quarter, and were expecting it to strike
eleven, when steps came near at last, and Eustace opened the gate.
We threw ourselves upon him, and he cried out with surprise, then
said, "He is alive!"
"Who! Harold?"
"Harold! Nonsense. What should be the matter with Harold? But he
is going to stay with him--Yolland I mean--for the night! It was all
his confounded experiments. It was very well that I went down--
nothing was being done without a head to direct, but they always know
what to be at when _I_ come among them."
No one there knew the cause of the accident, except that it had taken
place in Mr. Yolland's laboratory, where he had been trying
experiments. The house itself had been violently shattered, and
those nearest had suffered considerably. Happily, it stood in a yard
of its own, so that none adjoined it, and though the fronts of the
two opposite "Dragon's Heads" had broken windows and torn doors, no
person within them had been more than stunned and bruised. But the
former "Dragon's Head" itself had become a mere pile of stones,
bricks, and timbers. The old couple in charge had happily been out,
and stood in dismay over the heap, which Harold and a few of the men
were trying to remove, in the dismal search for Mr. Yolland and the
boy he employed to assist him. The boy was found first, fearfully
burnt about the face and hands, but protected from being crushed by
the boards which had fallen slantwise over him. And under another
beam, which guarded his head, but rested on his leg, lay young
Yolland.
Harold's strength had raised the beam, and he was drawn out. He
revived as the night air blew on his face, looked up as Harold lifted
him, said, "I have it," and fainted the next moment. They had taken
him to his lodgings, where Dr. Kingston had set the broken leg and
bound the damaged rib, but could not yet pronounce on the other
injuries, and Harold had taken on himself the watch for the night.
The explanation that we all held by was, that the damage was caused
by an officious act of the assistant, who, perceiving that it was
growing dark, fired a match, and began to light the gas at the
critical moment of the experiment, by which the means of obtaining
the utmost heat at the smallest expense of fuel was to be attained.
It was one of those senseless acts that no one would have thought of
forbidding; and though the boy, on recovering his senses, owned that
the last thing he remembered was getting the matches and Mr. Yolland
shouting to stop him, there were many who never would believe
anything but that it was blundering of his, and that he was a
dangerous and mischievous person to have in the town.
Harold came home for a little while just as we were having breakfast,
to bring a report that his patient had had a much quieter night than
he expected, and to say that he had telegraphed for the brother and
wanted Eustace to meet him at the station. The landlady was sitting
with the patient now, and Harold had come home for ice, strawberries,
and, above all, to ask for help in nursing, for the landlady could
not, and would not, do much. I mentioned a motherly woman as,
perhaps, likely to be useful, but Harold said, "I could do best with
Dora."
He had so far learnt that it was not the Bush as not to expect me to
offer, and was quite unprepared for the fire that Eustace and I
opened on him as to the impossibility of his request. "Miss Alison,
_my_ sister," as Eustace said, "going down to a little, common,
general practitioner to wait on him;" while I confined myself to "It
won't do at all, Harold," and promised to hunt up the woman and to
send her to his aid. But when I had seen her, arranged my
housekeeping affairs, and called Dora to lessons, she was nowhere to
be found.
"Then she has gone after Harold!" indignantly exclaimed Eustace. "It
is too bad! I declare I will put a stop to it! To have _my_ sister
demeaning herself to put herself in such a situation for a little
Union doctor!"
I laughed, and observed that no great harm was done with so small a
person, only I could not think what use Harold could make of her; at
which Eustace was no less surprised, for a girl of eight or nine was
of no small value in the Bush, and he said Dora had been most helpful
in the care of her father. But his dignity was so much outraged that
he talked big of going to bring her home--only he did not go. I was
a little wounded at Harold having taken her in the face of my
opposition, but I found that that had not been the case, for Eustace
had walked to the lodge with him, and she had rushed after and joined
him after he was in the town. And at luncheon Eustace fell on me
with entreaties that I would come with him and help him meet "this
parson," whom he seemed to dread unreasonably, as, in fact, he always
did shrink from doing anything alone when he could get a helper. I
thought this would be, at least, as queer as Dora's nursing of the
other brother; but it seemed so hard for the poor man, coming down in
his anxiety, to be met by Eustace either in his vague or his
supercilious mood, that I consented at last, so that he might have
someone of common sense, and walked down with him.
We could not doubt which was the right passenger, when a young
clergyman, almost as rough-looking as his brother, and as much
bearded, but black where he was yellow, sprang out of a second-class
with anxious looks. It was I who said at one breath, "There he is!
Speak to him, Eustace! Mr. Yolland--he is better--he will do well--"
"Thank--thank you--" And the hat was pushed back, with a long breath;
then, as he only had a little black bag to look after, we all walked
together to the lodgings, while the poor man looked bewildered and
unrealising under Eustace's incoherent history of the accident--a far
more conjectural and confused story than it became afterwards.
I waited till Harold came down with Dora; and to my "How could you?"
and Eustace's more severe and angry blame, she replied, "He wanted
me; so of course I went."
Harold said not a word in defence of her or of himself; but when I
asked whether she had been of any use, he said, smiling
affectionately at her, "Wasn't she?"
Then we went and looked at the shattered houses, and Harold showed us
where he had drawn out his poor friend, answering the aggrieved
owners opposite that there would be an inquiry, and means would be
found for compensation.
And when I said, "It is a bad beginning for the Hydriot plans!" he
answered, "I don't know that," and stood looking at the ruins of his
"Dragon's Head" in a sort of brown study, till we grew impatient, and
dragged him home.
CHAPTER IV. THE WRATH OF DIANA.
Harold did not like clergymen. "Smith was a clergyman," he said,
with an expressive look; and while George Yolland had his brother and
the nurse I had sent, he merely made daily inquiries, and sometimes
sat an hour with his friend.
Mr. Crosse's curate had kindred in Staffordshire, and offered to
exchange a couple of Sundays with Mr. Benjamin Yolland, and this
resulted in the visitor being discovered to have a fine voice and a
great power of preaching, and as he was just leaving his present
parish, this ended in Mr. Crosse begging him to remain permanently,
not much to Harold's gratification; but the two brothers were all
left of their family, and, different as their opinions were, they
were all in all to each other.
The agreement with Mr. Crosse would hardly have been made, had the
brothers known all that was coming. George Yolland was in a strange
stupefied state for the first day or two, owing, it was thought, to
the effects of the gas; but he revived into the irritable state of
crankiness which could not submit in prudent patience to Dr.
Kingston's dicta, but argued, and insisted on his own treatment of
himself, and his own theory of the accident, till he as good as told
the doctor that he was an old woman. Whether it were in consequence
or not, I don't know, but as soon as Dr. Kingston could persuade
himself that a shock would do no harm, he wrote a polite letter
explaining that the unfortunate occurrence from which Mr. Yolland was
suffering had so destroyed the confidence of his patients, that he
felt it due to them to take steps to dissolve the partnership.
Perhaps it was no wonder. Such things were told and believed, that
those who had never yet been attended by George Yolland believed him
a wild and destructive theorist. Miss Avice Stympson asked Miss
Woolmer how she could sleep in her bed when she knew he was in the
town, and the most astonishing stories of his practice were current,
of which I think the mildest was, that he had pulled out all a poor
girl's teeth for the sake of selling them to a London dentist, and
that, when in a state of intoxication, he had cut off a man's hand,
because he had a splinter in his finger.
However, the effect was, that Harold summoned a special meeting of
the shareholders, the same being nearly identical with the Directors
of the Hydriot Company, and these contrived to get George Yolland,
Esquire, appointed chemist and manager of the works, with a salary of
70 pounds per annum, to be increased by a percentage on the sales!
Crabbe objected vehemently, but was in the minority. The greater
number were thoroughly believers in the discovery made on that
unlucky night, or else were led away by that force of Harold's, which
was almost as irresistible by mind, as by matter. But the tidings were
received with horror by the town. Three nervous old ladies who lived
near the Lerne gave notice to quit, and many declared that it was an
indictable offence.
Small as the salary was, it was more than young Yolland was clearing
by his connection with Dr. Kingston; and as he would have to spare
himself during the next few months, and could not without danger
undertake the exertions of a wide field of Union practice, the offer
was quite worth his acceptance. Moreover, he had the enthusiasm of a
practical chemist, and would willingly have starved to see his
invention carried out, so he received the appointment with the gruff
gratitude that best suited Harold; and he and his brother were to
have rooms in the late "Dragon's Head," so soon as it should have
been rebuilt on improved principles, with a workman's hall below, and
a great court for the children to play in by day and the lads in the
evening.
Of the clerical Yolland we saw and heard very little. Harold was
much relieved to find that even before his brother could move beyond
the sofa, he was always out all day, for though he had never spoken a
word that sounded official, Harold had an irrational antipathy to his
black attire. Nor did I hear him preach, except by accident, for
Arghouse chapelry was in the beat of the other curate, and in the
afternoon, when I went to Mycening old church, he had persuaded Mr.
Crosse to let him begin what was then a great innovation--a
children's service, with open doors, in the National School-room.
Miss Woolmer advised me to try the effect of this upon Dora, whose
Sundays were a constant perplexity and reproach to me, since she
always ran away into the plantations or went with Harold to see the
horses; and if we did succeed in dragging her to church, there
behaved in the most unedifying manner.
"I don't like the principle of cutting religion down for children,"
said my old friend. "They ought to be taught to think it a favour to
be admitted to grown-up people's services, and learn to follow them,
instead of having everything made to please them. It is the sugar-
plum system, and so I told Mr. Ben, but he says you must catch wild
heathens with sugar; and as I am afraid your poor child is not much
better, you had better try the experiment."
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