Facing Death Part 17

"Do you want a dress suit, sir?" the foreman asked with suppressed merriment.

"What is a dress suit?" Jack said simply. "I am ignorant about these matters."

"A dress suit," the foreman said, struck with the young fellow's freedom from all sort of pretence or a.s.sumption, "is the dress gentlemen wear of an evening at dinner parties or other gatherings. This is it," and he showed Jack an engraving.

Jack looked at it--he had never seen anyone so attired.

"He looks very affected," he said.

"Oh, that is the fault of the artist," the foreman answered. "Gentlemen look just as natural in these clothes as in any other. They are quite simple, you see--all black, with open vest, white s.h.i.+rt, white tie and gloves, and patent leather boots."

A quiet smile stole over Jack's face. Humour was by no means a strong point in his character, but he was not altogether deficient in it.

"I had better have them," he said; "it would look strange, I suppose, not to be dressed so when others are?"

"It would be a little marked in the event of a dinner or evening party,"

the foreman answered, and so Jack gave the order.

It was two weeks later before he paid his first visit to Mr. Merton; for the pretty little house which the latter had taken a mile out of the town had been in the hands of the workmen and furnishers, Mr. Merton having drawn on his little capital to decorate and fit up the house, so as to be a pretty home for his daughter.

It was, indeed, a larger house than, from the mere salary attached to his post, he could be able to afford, but he reckoned upon considerably increasing this by preparing young men for the university, and he was wise enough to know that a good establishment and a liberal table go very far in establis.h.i.+ng and widening a connection, and in rendering people sensible to a man's merits, either in business or otherwise.

As Mr. Merton, M.A., late of St. John's, Cambridge, and third wrangler of his year, he had already been received with great cordiality by his colleagues, and at their houses had made the acquaintance of many of the best, if not the wealthiest men in Birmingham, for at Birmingham the terms were by no means more synonymous than they are elsewhere.

Jack had ordered his clothes to be sent to a small hotel near the railway station, and had arranged with the landlord that his portmanteau should be kept there, and a room be placed at his service on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and Monday morning once a month for him to change his things.

He had walked with Mr. Merton and seen the house, and had determined that he would always change before going there on a Sat.u.r.day, in order to avoid comments by servants and others who might be visiting them.

In thus acting Jack had no personal thoughts in the matter; much as he always shrank from being put forward as being in any way different from others, he had otherwise no self-consciousness whatever. No lad on the pits thought less of his personal appearance or attire, and his friend Nelly had many times taken him to task for his indifference in this respect. Mr. Merton perceived advantages in Jack's position in life not being generally known, and Jack at once fell into the arrangement, and carried it out, as described, to the best of his ability. But even he could not help seeing, when he had attired himself for his first visit to Mr. Merton's house, how complete had been the change in his appearance.

"Who would have thought that just a little difference in the make of a coat would have made such an alteration in one's look?" he said to himself. "I feel different altogether; but that is nonsense, except that these boots are so much lighter than mine, that it seems as if I were in my stockings. Well, I suppose I shall soon be accustomed to it."

Packing a black coat and a few other articles in a hand-bag, and locking up the clothes he had taken off in his portmanteau, Jack started for Mr.

Merton's. He was dressed in a well-fitting suit of dark tweed, with a claret-coloured neckerchief with plain gold scarf-ring. Jack's life of exercise had given him the free use of his limbs--he walked erect, and his head was well set back on his shoulders; altogether, with his crisp short waving hair, his good-humoured but resolute face, and his steadfast look, he was, although not handsome, yet a very pleasant-looking young fellow.

He soon forgot the fact of his new clothes, except that he was conscious of walking with a lightness and elasticity strange to him, and in half an hour rang at the visitors' bell of Mr. Merton's villa.

"A visitor, papa," said Alice, who was sitting near the window of the drawing-room. "How tiresome, just as we were expecting Jack Simpson. It is a gentleman. Why, papa!" and she clapped her hands, "it is Jack himself. I did not know him at first, he looks like a gentleman."

"He is a gentleman," Mr. Merton said; "a true gentleman in thought, feeling, and speech, and will soon adapt himself to the society he will meet here. Do not remark upon his dress unless he says something about it himself."

"Oh, papa, I should not think of such a thing. I am not so thoughtless as that."

The door was opened and Jack was shown in.

"How are you, Jack? I am glad to see you."

"Thank you, sir, I am always well," Jack said. Then turning to Miss Merton he asked her how she liked Birmingham. He had seen her often since the time when he first met her at the commencement of the strike, as he had helped them in their preparations for removing from Stokebridge, and had entirely got over the embarra.s.sment which he had felt on the first evening spent there.

After talking for a few minutes, Jack said gravely to Mr. Merton, "I hope that these clothes will do, Mr. Merton?"

"Excellently well, Jack," he answered smiling; "they have made just the difference I expected; my daughter hardly knew you when you rang at the bell."

"I hardly knew myself when I saw myself in a gla.s.s," Jack said. "Now, on what principle do you explain the fact that a slight alteration in the cutting and sewing together of pieces of cloth should make such a difference?"

"I do not know that I ever gave the philosophy of the question a moment's thought, Jack," said Mr. Merton smiling. "I can only explain it by the remark that the better cut clothes set off the natural curve of the neck, shoulders, and figure generally, and in the second place, being a.s.sociated in our minds with the peculiar garb worn by gentlemen, they give what, for want of a better word, I may call style. A high black hat is the ugliest, most shapeless, and most unnatural article ever invented, but still a high hat, good and of the shape in vogue, certainly has a more gentlemanly effect, to use a word I hate, than any other. And now, my boy, you I know dined early, so did we. We shall have tea at seven, so we have three hours for work, and there are nearly six weeks' arrears, so do not let us waste any more time."

After this first visit Jack went out regularly once every four weeks. He fell very naturally into the ways of the house, and although his manner often amused Alice Merton greatly, and caused even her father to smile, he was never awkward or boorish.

As Alice came to know him more thoroughly, and their conversations ceased to be of a formal character, she surprised and sometimes quite puzzled him. The girl was full of fun and had a keen sense of humour, and her playful attacks upon his earnestness, her light way of parrying the problems which Jack, ever on the alert for information, was constantly putting, and the cheerful tone which her talk imparted to the general conversation when she was present, were all wholly new to the lad. Often he did not know whether she was in earnest or not, and was sometimes so overwhelmed by her light attacks as to be unable to answer.

Mr. Merton looked on, amused at their wordy conflicts; he knew that nothing does a boy so much good and so softens his manner as friendly intercourse with a well-read girl of about his own age, and undoubtedly Alice did almost as much towards preparing Jack's manner for his future career as her father had done towards preparing his mind.

As time went on Jack often met Mr. Merton's colleagues, and other gentlemen who came in in the evening. He was always introduced as "my young friend Simpson," with the aside, "a remarkably clever young fellow," and most of those who met him supposed him to be a pupil of the professor's.

Mr. Merton had, within a few months of his arrival at Birmingham, five or six young men to prepare for Cambridge. None of them resided in the house, but after Jack had become thoroughly accustomed to the position, Mr. Merton invited them, as well as a party of ladies and gentlemen, to the house on one of Jack's Sat.u.r.day evenings.

Jack, upon hearing that a number of friends were coming in the evening, made an excuse to go into the town, and took his black bag with him.

Alice had already wondered over the matter.

"They will all be in dress, papa. Jack will feel awkward among them."

"He is only eighteen, my dear, and it will not matter his not being in evening dress. Jack will not feel awkward."

Alice, was, however, very pleased as well as surprised when, upon coming down dressed into the drawing-room, she found him in full evening dress chatting quietly with her father and two newly arrived guests. Jack would not have been awkward, but he would certainly have been uncomfortable had he not been dressed as were the others, for of all things he hated being different to other people.

He looked at Alice in a pretty pink muslin dress of fas.h.i.+onable make with a surprise as great as that with which she had glanced at him, for he had never before seen a lady in full evening dress.

Presently he said to her quietly, "I know I never say the right thing, Miss Merton, and I daresay it is quite wrong for me to express any personal opinions, but you do look--"

"No, Jack; that is quite the wrong thing to say. You may say, Miss Merton, your dress is a most becoming one, although even that you could not be allowed to say except to some one with whom you are very intimate. There are as many various shades of compliment as there are of intimacy. A brother may say to a sister, You look stunning to-night--that is a very slang word, Jack--and she will like it. A stranger or a new acquaintance may not say a word which would show that he observes a lady is not attired in a black walking dress."

"And what is the exact degree of intimacy in which one may say as you denoted, 'Miss Merton, your dress is a most becoming one?'"

"I should say," the girl said gravely, "it might be used by a cousin or by an old gentleman, a friend of the family."

Then with a laugh she went off to receive the guests, now beginning to arrive in earnest.

After this Mr. Merton made a point of having an "at home" every fourth Sat.u.r.day, and these soon became known as among the most pleasant and sociable gatherings in the literary and scientific world of Birmingham.

So young Jack Simpson led a dual life, spending twenty-six days of each month as a pit lad, speaking a dialect nearly as broad as that of his fellows, and two as a quiet and un.o.btrusive young student in the pleasant home of Mr. Merton.

Before a year had pa.s.sed the one life seemed as natural to him as the other. Even with his friends he kept them separate, seldom speaking of Stokebridge when at Birmingham, save to answer Mr. Merton's questions as to old pupils; and giving accounts, which to Nelly Hardy appeared ridiculously meagre, of his Birmingham experience to his friends at home.

This was not from any desire to be reticent, but simply because the details appeared to him to be altogether uninteresting to his friends.

"You need not trouble to tell me any more, Jack," Nelly Hardy said indignantly. "I know it all by heart. You worked three hours with Mr.

Merton; dinner at six; some people came at eight, no one in particular; they talked, and there was some playing on the piano; they went away at twelve. Next morning after breakfast you went to church, had dinner at two, took a walk afterwards, had tea at half-past six, supper at nine, then to bed. I won't ask you any more questions, Jack; if anything out of the way takes place you will tell me, no doubt."