Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Third Series», sayfa 15

JELLICO’S PACK

I

The shop was not at all in a good part of Evesham. The street was narrow and dirty, the shop the same. Over the door might be seen written “Tobias Jellico, Linen-draper and Huckster.” One Monday—which is market-day at Evesham, as the world knows—in going past it with Tod and little Hugh, the child trod on his bootlace and broke it, and we turned in to get another. It was a stuffy shop, filled with bundles as well as wares, and behind the counter stood Mr. Jellico himself, a good-looking, dark man of forty, with deep-set blue eyes, that seemed to meet at the nose, so close were they together.

The lace was a penny, he said, and Tod laid down sixpence. Jellico handed the sixpence to a younger man who was serving lower down, and began showing us all kinds of articles—neckties, handkerchiefs, fishing-lines, cigar-lights, for he seemed to deal in varieties. Hugh had put in his bootlace, but we could not get away.

“I tell you we don’t want anything of this,” said Tod, in his haughty way, for the persistent fellow had tired him out. “Give me my change.”

The other man brought the change wrapped up in paper, and we went on to the inn. Tod had ordered the pony to be put in the chaise, and it stood ready in the yard. Just then a white-haired, feeble old man came into the yard, and begged. Tod opened the paper of half-pence.

“The miserable cheat,” he called out. “If you’ll believe me, Johnny, that fellow has only given me fourpence in change. If I had time I’d go back to him. Sam, do you know anything of one Jellico, who keeps a fancy shop?” asked he of the ostler.

“A fancy shop, sir?” echoed Sam, considering.

“Sells calico and lucifer-matches.”

“Oh, I know Mr. Jellico!” broke forth Sam, his recollection coming to him. “He has got a cousin with him, sir.”

“No doubt. It was the cousin that cheated me. Mistakes are mistakes, and the best of us are liable to them; but if that was a mistake, I’ll eat the lot.”

“It’s as much of a leaving-shop as a draper’s, sir. Leastways, it’s said that women can take things in and borrow money on them.”

“Oh!” said Tod. “Borrow a shilling on a Dutch oven to-day, and pay two shillings to-morrow to get it out.”

“Anyway, Mr. Jellico does a fine trade, for he gives credit,” concluded Sam.

But the wrong change might have been a mistake.

In driving home, Tod pulled up at George Reed’s cottage. Every one must remember hearing where that was, and of Reed’s being put into prison by Major Parrifer. “Get down, Johnny,” said he, “and see if Reed’s there. He must have left work.”

I went up the path where Reed’s children were playing, and opened the cottage door. Mrs. Reed and two neighbours stood holding out something that looked like a gown-piece. With a start and a grab, Mrs. Reed caught the stuff, and hid it under her apron, and the two others looked round at me with scared faces.

“Reed here? No, sir,” she answered, in a sort of flurry. “He had to go over to Alcester after work. I don’t expect him home much afore ten to-night.”

I shut the door, thinking nothing. Reed was a handy man at many things, and Tod wanted him to help with some alteration in the pheasantry at the Manor. It was Tod who had set it up—a long, narrow place enclosed with green trellised work, and some gold and silver pheasants running about in it. The Squire had been against it at first, and told Tod he wouldn’t have workmen bothering about the place. So Tod got Reed to come in of an evening after his day’s work, and in a fortnight the thing was up. Now he wanted him again to alter it: he had found out it was too narrow. That was one of Tod’s failings. If he took a thing into his head it must be done off-hand. The Squire railed at him for his hot-headed impatience: but in point of fact he was of just the same impatient turn himself. Tod had been over to Bill Whitney’s and found their pheasantry was twice as wide as his.

“Confound Alcester,” cried Tod in his vexation, as he drove on home. “If Reed could have come up now and seen what it is I want done, he might have begun upon it to-morrow evening.”

“The pater says it is quite wide enough as it is, Tod.”

“You shut up, Johnny. If I pay Reed out of my own pocket, it’s nothing to anybody.”

On Tuesday he sent me to Reed’s again. It was a nice spring afternoon, but I’m not sure that I thanked him for giving me that walk. Especially when upon lifting the latch of the cottage door, I found it fastened. Down I sat on the low bench outside the open window to wait—where Cathy had sat many a time in the days gone by, making believe to nurse the children, and that foolish young Parrifer would be leaning against the pear-tree on the other side the path. I had to leave my message with Mrs. Reed; I supposed she had only stepped into a neighbour’s, and might be back directly, for the two little girls were playing at “shop” in the garden.

Buzz, buzz: hum, hum. Why, those voices were in the kitchen! The lower part of the casement was level with the top of my head; I turned round and raised my eyes to look.

Well! surprises, it is said, are the lot of man. It was his face, unless my sight deceived itself. The same blue eyes that were in the shop at Evesham the day before, were inside Mrs. Reed’s kitchen now: Mr. Tobias Jellico’s. The place seemed to be crowded with women. He was smiling and talking to them in the most persuasive manner imaginable, his hands waving an accompaniment, on one of which glittered a ring with a yellow stone in it, a persuasive look on his rather well-featured face.

They were a great deal too agreeably engrossed to see me, and I looked on at leisure. A sort of pack, open, rested on the floor; the table was covered with all kinds of things for women’s dress; silks, cottons, ribbons, mantles; which Mrs. Reed and the others were leaning over and fingering.

“Silks ain’t for the like of us; I’d never have the cheek to put one on,” cried a voice that I knew at once for shrill Peggy Dickon’s. Next to her stood Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife; who was very pretty, and vain accordingly.

“What kind o’ stuff d’ye call this, master?” Ann Dovey asked.

“That’s called laine,” answered Jellico. “It’s all pure wool.”

“It’s a’most as shiny as silk. I say, Mrs. Reed, d’ye think this ’ud wear?”

“It would wear for ever,” put in Jellico. “Ten yards of it would make as good a gown as ever went on a lady’s back; and the cost is but two shillings a yard.”

“Two shillings! Let’s see—what ’ud that come to? Why, twenty, wouldn’t it? My patience, I shouldn’t never dare to run up that score for one gownd.”

Jellico laughed pleasantly. “You take it, Mrs. Dovey. It just suits your bright cheeks. Pay me when you can, and how you can: sixpence a-week, or a shilling a-week, or two shillings, as you can make it easy. It’s like getting a gown for nothing.”

“So it is,” cried Ann Dovey, in a glow of delight. And by the tone, Mr. Jellico no doubt knew that she had as good as yielded to the temptation. He got out his yard measure.

“Ten yards?” said he.

“I’m a’most afeard. Will you promise, sir, not to bother me for the money faster than I can pay it?”

“You needn’t fear no bothering from me; only just keep up the trifle you’ve got to pay off weekly.”

He measured off the necessary length. “You’ll want some ribbon to trim it with, won’t you?” said he.

“Ribbin—well, I dun know. Dovey might say ribbin were too smart for me.”

“Not a bit on’t, Ann Dovey,” spoke up another woman—and she was our carter’s wife, Susan Potter. “It wouldn’t look nothing without some ribbin. That there narrer grass-green satin ’ud be nice upon’t.”

“And that grass-green ribbon’s dirt cheap,” said Jellico. “You’d get four or five yards of it for a shilling or two. Won’t you be tempted now?” he added to Susan Potter. She laughed.

“Not with them things. I shouldn’t never hear the last on’t if Potter found out I went on tick for finery. He’s rough, sir, and might beat me. I’d like a check apron, and a yard o’ calico.”

“Perhaps I might take a apron or two, sir, if you made it easy,” said Mrs. Dickon.

“Of course I’ll make it easy; and a gown too if you’ll have it. Let me cut you off the fellow to this of Mrs. Dovey’s.”

Peggy Dickon shook her head. “It ain’t o’ no good asking me, Mr. Jellico. Ann Dovey can buy gownds; she haven’t got no children; I’ve a bushel on ’em. No; I don’t dare. I wish I might! Last year, up at Cookhill Wake, I see a sweet gownd, not unlike this, what had got green ribbins upon it,” added the woman longingly.

Being (I suppose) a kind of Mephistopheles in his line, Mr. Tobias Jellico accomplished his wish and cut off a gown against her judgment. He sold other gowns, and “ribbins,” and trumpery; the yard measure had nearly as little rest as the women’s tongues. Mrs. Reed’s turn to be served seemed to come last; after the manner of her betters, she yielded precedence to her guests.

“Now for me, sir,” she said. “You’ve done a good stroke o’ business here to-day, Mr. Jellico, and I hope you won’t objec’ to change that there gownd piece as I bought last Monday for some’at a trifle stronger. Me and some others have been a-looking at it, and we don’t think it’ll wear.”

“Oh, I’ll change it,” readily answered Jellico. “You should put a few more shillings on, Mrs. Reed: better have a good thing when you’re about it. It’s always cheaper in the end.”

“Well, I suppose it is,” she said. “But I’m a’most frightened at the score that’ll be running up.”

“It’s easily wiped off,” answered the man, pleasantly. “Just a shilling or two weekly.”

There was more chaffering and talking; and after that came the chink of money. The women had each a book, and Jellico had his book, and they were compared with his, and made straight. As he came out with the pack on his back, he saw me sitting on the bench, and looked hard at me: whether he knew me again, I can’t say.

Just then Frank Stirling ran by, turning down Piefinch Lane. I went after him: the women’s tongues inside were working like so many steam-engines, and it was as well to let them run down before speaking to Mrs. Reed.

Half-way down Piefinch Lane on the left, there was a turning, called Piefinch Cut. It had grown into a street. All kinds of shops had been opened, dealing in small wares: and two public-houses. A pawnbroker from Alcester had opened a branch establishment here—which had set the world gaping more than they would at a wild-beast show. It was managed by a Mr. Figg. The three gilt balls stood out in the middle of the Cut; and the blacksmith’s forge, to which Stirling was bound, was next door. He wanted something done to a piece of iron. While we were standing amidst the sparks, who should go into the house the other side the way but Jellico and his pack!

“Yes, he should come into mine, he should, that fellow,” ironically observed John Dovey: who was a good-natured, dark-eyed little man, with a tolerable share of sense. “I’d be after trundling him out again, feet foremost.”

“Is he a travelling hawker?” asked Stirling.

“He’s a sight worse, sir,” answered Dovey. “If you buy wares off a hawker you must pay for ’em at the time: no money, no goods. But this fellow seduces the women to buy his things on tick, he does: Tuesday arter Tuesday he comes prowling into this here Cut, and does a roaring trade. His pack’ll walk out o’ that house a bit lighter nor it goes in. Stubbs’s wife lives over there; Tanken’s wife, she lives there; and there be others. If I hadn’t learnt that nobody gets no good by interfering atween men and their wives, I’d ha’ telled Stubbs and Tanken long ago what was going on.”

It had been on the tip of my tongue to say where I had just seen Jellico, and the trade he was doing. Remembering in time that Mrs. Dovey had been one of the larger purchasers, I kept the news in.

“His name’s Jellico,” continued Dovey, as he hammered away at Stirling’s iron. “He have got a fine shop somewhere over at Evesham. It’s twelve or fifteen months now, Master Johnny, since he took to come here. When first I see him I wondered where the deuce the hawker’s round could be, appearing in the Cut so quick and reg’lar; but I soon found he was no reg’lar hawker. Says I to my wife, ‘Don’t you go and have no dealings with that there pest, for I’ll not stand it, and I might be tempted to stop it summary.’ ‘All right, Jack,’ says she; ‘when I want things I’ll deal at the old shop at Alcester.’ But there’s other wives round about us doing strokes and strokes o’ trade with him; ’tain’t all of ’em, Master Ludlow, as is so sensible as our Ann.”

Considering the stroke of trade I had just seen done by Ann Dovey, it was as well not to hear this.

“If he’s not a hawker, what is he?” asked Stirling, swaying himself on a beam in the roof; and I’m sure I did not know either.

“It’s a cursed system,” hotly returned John Dovey; “and I say that afore your faces, young gents. It may do for the towns, if they chooses to have it—that’s their business; but it don’t do for us. What do our women here want o’ fine shawls and gay gownds?—decking theirselves out as if they was so many Jezebels? But ’tain’t that. Let ’em deck, if they’ve got no sense to see how ill it looks on their sun-freckled faces and hands hard wi’ work; it’s the ruin it brings. Just you move on t’other side, Master Ludlow, sir; you be right in the way o’ the sparks. There’s a iron pot over there as does for sitting on.”

“I’m all right, Dovey. Tell us about Jellico.”

Jellico’s system, to give Dovey’s explanation in brief, was this: He brought over a huge pack of goods every Tuesday afternoon in a pony-gig from his shop at Evesham. He put up the pony, and carried the pack on his round, tempting the women right and left to buy. Husbands away at work, and children at school, the field was open. He asked for no ready money down. The purchases were entered in a book, to be paid off by weekly instalments. The payments had to be kept up; Jellico saw to that. However short the household had to run of the weekly necessaries, Jellico’s money had to be ready for him. It was an awful tax, just as Dovey described it, and drifted into at first by the women without thought of ill. The debt in itself was bad enough; but the fear lest it should come to their husbands’ ears was almost worse. As Dovey described all this in his homely, but rather flowery language, it put me in mind of those pleasure-seekers that sail too far over a sunny sea in thoughtlessness, and suspect no danger till their vessel is right upon the breakers.

“There haven’t been no blow-ups yet to speak of,” said the blacksmith. “But they be coming. I could just put my finger upon half-a-dozen women at this blessed minute what’s wearing theirselves to shadders with the trouble. They come here to Figg’s in the dusk o’ evening wi’ things hid under their aprons. The longer Jellico lets it go on, the worse it gets, for they will be tempted, the she-creatures, buying made flowers for their best bonnets to-day, and ribbuns for their Sunday caps to-morrow. If Jellico lets ’em, that is. He knows pretty sure where he may trust and where he mayn’t. ’Tain’t he as will let his pocket suffer in the long run. He knows another thing—that the further he staves off any big noise the profitabler it’ll be for him. Once let that come, and Master Jellico might get hunted out o’ the Cut, and his pack and its finery kicked to shreds.”

“But why are the women such simpletons, Dovey?” asked Frank Stirling.

“You might as well ask why folks eats and drinks, sir,” retorted Dovey, his begrimed eyes lighted with the flame. “A love o’ their faces is just born with the women, and it goes with ’em to the grave. Set a parcel o’ finery before ’em and the best’ll find their eyes a-longing, and their mouths a-watering. It’s said Eve used to do up her hair looking into a clear pool.”

“Putting it in that light, Dovey, I wonder all the women here don’t go in for Mr. Jellico’s temptations.”

“Some on ’em has better sense; and some has husbands what’s up to the thing, and keeps the reins tight in their own hands,” complacently answered the unconscious Dovey.

“Up to the thing!” repeated Stirling; “I should think all the men are up to it, if Jellico is here so constantly.”

“No, sir, they’re not. Most of ’em are at work when he comes. They may know some’at about him, but the women contrives to deceive ’em, and they suspects nothing. The fellow with the pack don’t concern them or their folk at home, as they supposes, an’ so they never bothers theirselves about him or his doings. I’d like to drop a hint to some of ’em to go home unexpected some Tuesday afternoon; but maybe it’s best let alone.”

“I suppose your wife is one of the sensible ones, Dovey?” And I kept my countenance as I said it.

“She daredn’t be nothing else, Master Johnny. I be a trifle loud if I’m put out. Not she,” emphatically added Dovey, his strong, bared arm dealing a heavy blow on the anvil, and sending up a whole cloud of sparks. “I’d never get put in jail for her, as she knows; I’d shave her hair off first. Run up a score with that there Jellico? No, she’d not be such a idiot as that. You should hear how she goes on again her neighbours that does run it, and the names she calls ’em.”

Poor John Dovey! Where ignorance is bliss–

“Why, if I thought my wife could hoodwink me as some of ’em does their men, I’d never hold up my head of one while, for shame; no, not in my own forge,” continued Dovey. “Ann’s temper’s a bit trying sometimes, and wants keeping in order; but she’d be above deceit o’ that paltry sort. She don’t need to act it, neither; I give her a whole ten shillings t’other day, and she went and laid it out at Alcester.”

No doubt. Any amount of shillings would soon be sacrificed to Ann’s vanity.

“How much longer is that thing going to take, Dovey?” interposed Stirling.

“Just about two minutes, sir. ’Twere a cranky– There he goes.”

The break in Dovey’s answer was caused by the appearance of Jellico. He came out, shouldering his pack. The blacksmith looked after him down the Cut, and saw him turn in elsewhere.

“I thought ’twas where he was going,” said he; “’tain’t often he passes that there dwelling. Other houses seem to have their days, turn and turn about; but that ’un gets him constant.”

“It’s where Bird’s wife lives, is it not, Dovey?”

“It’s where she lives, fast enough, sir. And Bird, he be safe at his over-looking work, five miles off, without fear of his popping in home to hinder the dealing and chaffering. But she’d better mind—though Bird do get a’most three pound a-week, he have got means for every sixpence of it, with his peck o’ childern, six young ’uns of her’n, and six of his first wife’s, and no more’n one on ’em yet able to earn a penny-piece. If Bird thought she was running up a score with Jellico, he’d give her two black eyes as soon as look at her.”

“Bird’s wife never seems to have any good clothes at all; she looks as if she hadn’t a decent gown to her back,” said Frank.

“What she buys is mostly things for the little ’uns: shimmys and pinafores, and that,” replied Dovey. “Letty Bird’s one o’ them that’s more improvidenter than a body of any sense ’ud believe, Master Stirling; she never has a coin by the Wednesday night, she hasn’t. The little ’uns ’ud be a-rolling naked in the gutter, but for what she gets on tick off Jellico; and Bird, seeing ’em naked, might beat her for that. That don’t mend the system; the score’s a-being run up, and it’ll bring trouble sometime as sure as a gun. Beside that, if there was no Jellico to serve her with his poison, she’d have to save enough for decent clothes. Don’t you see how the thing works, sir?”

“Oh, I see,” carelessly answered Stirling. “D’ye call the pack’s wares poison, Dovey?”

“Yes, I do,” said Dovey, stoutly, as he handed Frank his iron. “They’ll poison the peace o’ many a household in this here Cut. You two young gents just look out else, and see.”

We came away with the iron. At the end of Piefinch Lane, Frank Stirling took the road to the Court, and I turned into Reed’s. The wife was by herself then, giving the children their early tea.

“Reed shall come up to the Manor as soon as he gets home, sir,” she said, in answer to Tod’s message.

“I was here before this afternoon, Mrs. Reed, and couldn’t get in. You were too busy to hear me at the door.”

The knife halted in the bread she was cutting, and she glanced up for a moment; but seemed to think nothing, and finished the slice.

“I’ve been very busy, Master Ludlow. I’m sorry you’ve had to come twice, sir.”

“Busy enough, I should say, with Jellico’s pack emptied on the table, and you and the rest buying up at steam pace.”

The words were out of my lips before I saw her startled gesture of caution, pointing to the children: it was plain they were not to know anything about Jellico. She had an honest face, but it turned scarlet.

“Do you think it is a good plan, Mrs. Reed, to get things upon trust, and have to make up money for them weekly?” I could not help saying to her as she came to the door.

“I’m beginning to doubt whether it is, sir.”

“If Reed thought he had a debt hanging over him, that might fall at any moment–”

“For the love of mercy, sir, don’t say nothing to Reed!” came the startled interruption. “You won’t, will you, Master Johnny?”

“Not I. Don’t fear. But if I were you, Mrs. Reed, for my own sake I should cut all connection with Jellico. Better deal at a fair shop.”

She nodded her head as I went through the gate; but her face had now turned to a sickly whiteness that spoke of terror. Was the woman so deep in the dangerous books already?

Reed came up in the evening, and Tod showed him what he wanted done. As the man was measuring the trellis-work, Hannah happened to pass. She asked him how he was getting on.

“Amongst the middlings,” answered Reed, shortly. “I was a bit put out just now.”

“What by?” asked Hannah, who said anything she chose before me without the smallest ceremony: and Tod had gone away.

“As I was coming up here, Ingram stops me, and asks if I couldn’t let him have the bit of money I owed him. I stared at the man: what money was I likely to owe him–”

“Ingram the cow-keeper?” interrupted Hannah.

“Ingram the cow-keeper. So, talking a bit, I found there was a matter of six shillings due to him for the children’s milk: it was ever so long since my wife had paid. Back I went to her at once to know the reason why—and it was that made me late in coming up here, Master Johnny.”

“I suppose he had sold her skim milk for new, and she thought she’d make him wait for his money,” returned Hannah.

“All she said to me was that she didn’t think it had been running so long; Ingram had said to me that she always told him she was short of money and couldn’t pay,” answered Reed. “Anyway, I don’t think she’ll let it run on again. It put me out, though. I’d rather go off into the workhouse, or die of starvation, than I’d let it be said in the place my wife didn’t pay as she went on.”

I saw through the difficulty, and should have liked to give Reed a hint touching Jellico.

Now it was rather strange that, all in two days, Jellico and the mischief he was working should be thus brought before me in three or four ways, considering that I had never in my life before heard of the man. But it chanced to be so. I don’t want to say anything about the man personally, good or bad; the mischief lay in the system. That Jellico sold his goods at a nice rate for dearness, and used persuasion with the women to buy them, was as plain as the sun at noonday; but in these respects he was no worse than are many other people in trade. He went to the houses in turn, and the women met him; it might be several weeks before the meeting was held at Mrs. Reed’s again. Ann Dovey could not enjoy the hospitality of receiving him at hers, as her husband’s work lay at home. But she was a constant visitor to the other places.

And the time went on; and Mr. Jellico’s trade flourished. But we heard nothing more about it at Dyke Manor, and I naturally forgot it.