Chapter 41
"Yes."
"Am I in time to post a letter for Bristol?"
"No, sir. The bags for the Bristol mail are made up. It will be through the town directly."
William heard this with consternation. If it was too late for this gentleman's letter, it was too late for Mr. Ashley's.
He said nothing to any one that night; but he lay awake thinking over what might be the consequences of his forgetfulness. The letter might be one of importance; Mr. Ashley might discharge him for his neglect--and the weekly four s.h.i.+llings had grown into an absolute necessity. William possessed a large share of conscientiousness, and the fault disturbed him much.
When he came down at six, he found his mother up and at work. He gave her the history of what had happened. "What can be done?" he asked.
"Nay, William, put that question to yourself. What ought you to do?
Reflect a moment."
"I suppose I ought to tell Mr. Ashley."
"Do not say 'I suppose,' my dear. You must tell him."
"Yes, I know I must," he acknowledged. "I have been thinking about it all night. But I don't like to."
"Ah, child! we have many things to do that we 'don't like.' But the first trouble is always the worst. Look it fully in the face, and it will melt away. There is no help for it in this matter, William; your duty is plain. There's Mr. Lynn looking out for you."
William went out, heavy with the thought of the task he should have to accomplish after breakfast. He knew that he must do it. It was a duty, as his mother had said; and she had fully impressed upon them all, from their infancy, the necessity of looking out for their duty and doing it, whether in great things or in small.
Mr. Ashley entered the manufactory that morning at his usual hour, half-past nine. He opened and read his letters, and then was engaged for some time with Samuel Lynn. By ten o'clock the counting-house was clear.
Mr. Ashley was alone in it, and William knew that his time was come. He went in, and approached Mr. Ashley's desk.
Mr. Ashley, who was writing, looked up. "What is it?"
William's face grew red and white by turns. He was of a remarkably sensitive nature; and these sensitive natures cannot help betraying their inward emotion. Try as he would, he could not get a word out. Mr.
Ashley was surprised. "What is the matter?" he wonderingly asked.
"If you please, sir--I am very sorry--it is about the letter," he stammered, and was unable to get any further.
"The letter!" repeated Mr. Ashley. "What letter? Not the letter I gave you to post?"
"I forgot it, sir,"--and William's own voice sounded to his ear painfully clear.
"Forgot to post it! That was unpardonably careless. Where is the letter?"
"I forgot it, sir, until night, and then I ran to the post-office and put it in. Afterwards I heard the clerk say that the Bristol bags were made up, so of course it would not go. I am very sorry, sir," he repeated, after a pause.
"How came
"So I did go, sir. That is I was going, but----"
"But what?" returned Mr. Ashley, for William had made a dead standstill.
"The college boys set on me, sir. They were ill-using my brother, and I interfered; and then they turned upon me. It made me forget the letter."
"It was you who got into an affray with the college boys, was it?" cried Mr. Ashley. He had heard his son's version of the affair, without suspecting that it related to William.
William waited by the desk. "If you please, sir, was it of great consequence?"
"It might have been. Do not be guilty of such carelessness again."
"I will try not, sir."
Mr. Ashley looked down at his writing. William waited. He did not suppose it was over, and he wanted to know the worst. "Why do you stay?"
asked Mr. Ashley.
"I hope you will not turn me away for it, sir," he said, his colour changing again.
"Well--not this time," replied Mr. Ashley, smiling to himself. "But I'll tell you what I should have felt inclined to turn you away for," he added--"concealing the fact from me. Whatever fault, omission, or accident you may commit, always acknowledge it at once; it is the best plan, and the easiest. You may go back to your work now."
William left the room with a lighter step. Mr. Ashley looked after him.
"That's an honest lad," thought he. "He might just as well have kept it from me; calculating on the chances of its not coming out: many boys would have done so. He has been brought up in a good school."
Before the day was over, William came again into contact with Mr.
Ashley. That gentleman sometimes made his appearance in the manufactory in an evening--not always. He did not on this one. When Samuel Lynn and William entered it on their return from tea, a gentleman was waiting in the counting-house on business. Samuel Lynn, who was, on such occasions, Mr. Ashley's _alter ego_, came out of the counting-house presently, with a note in his hand.
"Thee put on thy cap, and take this to the master's house. Ask to see him, and say that I wait for an answer."
William ran off with the note: no fear of his forgetting this time. It was addressed in the plain form used by the Quakers, "Thomas Ashley;"
and could William have looked inside, he would have seen, instead of the complimentary "Sir," that the commencement was, "Respected Friend." He observed his mother sitting close at her window, to catch what remained of the declining light, and nodded to her as he pa.s.sed.
"Can I see Mr. Ashley?" he inquired, when he reached the house.
The servant replied that he could. He left William in the hall, and opened the door of the dining-room; a handsome room, of lofty proportions. Mr. Ashley was slowly pacing it to and fro, whilst Henry sat at a table, preparing his Latin exercise for his tutor. It was Mr.
Ashley's custom to help Henry with his Latin, easing difficulties to him by explanation. Henry was very backward with his cla.s.sics; he had not yet begun Greek: his own private hope was, that he never should begin it. His sufferings rendered learning always irksome, sometimes unbearable. The same cause frequently made him irritable--an irritation that could not be checked, as it would have been in a more healthy boy.
The servant told his master he was wanted, and Mr. Ashley looked into the hall.
"Oh, is it you, William?" he said. "Come in."
William advanced. "Mr. Lynn said I was to see yourself, sir, and to say that he waited for an answer."
Mr. Ashley opened the note, and read it by the lamp on Henry's table. It was not dark outside, and the chandelier was not lighted, but Henry's lamp was. "Sit down," said Mr. Ashley to William, and left the room, note in hand.
William felt it was something, Mr. Ashley's recognizing a difference between him and those black boys in the manufactory: they would scarcely have been told to sit in the hall. William sat down on the first chair at hand. Henry Ashley looked at him, and he recognized him as the boy who had been maltreated by the college boys on the previous day; but Henry was in no mood to be sociable, or even condescending--he never was, when over his lessons. His hip was giving him pain, and his exercise was making him fractious.
"There! it's always the case! Another five minutes, and I should have finished this horrid exercise. Papa is sure to go away, or be called away, when he's helping me! It's a shame."
Mrs. Ashley opened the door at this juncture, and looked into the room.
"I thought your papa was here, Henry."
"No, he is not here. He has gone to his study, and I am stuck fast. Some blessed note has come, which he has to attend to: and I don't know whether this word should be put in the ablative or the dative! I'll run the pen through it!"