Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Third Series», sayfa 16

II

“Just six shillings on it, Mr. Figg! That’s all I want to-day, but I can’t do without that.”

That so well-conducted and tidy a woman as George Reed’s wife should be in what the Cut called familiarly the “pawnshop,” would have surprised every one not in the secret. But she it was. Mr. Figg, a little man with weak eyes and a few scattered locks of light hair, turned over the offered loan with his finger and thumb. A grey gown of some kind of woollen stuff.

“How many times have this here gownd been brought here, Mrs. Reed?” asked he.

“I haven’t counted ’em,” she sighed. “Why? What’s that got to do with it?”

“’Cause it’s a proof as it must be getting the worse for wear,” was the answer, given disparagingly.

“It’s just as good as it was the day I had it out o’ Jellico’s pack,” said Mrs. Reed, sadly subdued, as of late she had always seemed.

Mr. Figg held up the gown to the light, seeking for the parts in it most likely to be worn. “Look here,” said he. “What d’ye call that?”

There was a little fraying certainly in places. Mrs. Reed had eyes and could see it. She did not answer.

“It don’t stand to reason as a gownd will wear for ever and show no marks. You puts this here gownd in of a Wednesday morning, or so, and gets it out of a Saturday night to wear Sundays. Wear and tear is wear and tear.”

Mrs. Reed could not deny the accusation. All the available articles her home contained; that is, the few her husband was not likely to observe the absence of; together with as much of her own wardrobe as she could by any shift do without, were already on a visit to Mr. Figg; which visit, according to the present look-out, promised to be permanent. This gown was obliged to be taken out periodically. Had she not appeared decent on Sundays, her husband would have demanded the reason why.

“You’ve gave me six shillings on it before,” she argued.

“Can’t again. Don’t mind lending five; next week it’ll be but four. It wasn’t never worth more nor ten new,” added Mr. Figg loudly, to drown remonstrances.

“Why, I gave Jellico double that for it! Where’s the use of you running things down?”

As Jellico was in one sense a friend of Mr. Figg’s—for he was certainly the cause of three parts of his pledges being brought to him—the pawnbroker let the question pass. Mrs. Reed went home with her five shillings, her eyes taking quite a wild look of distress and glancing cornerwise on all sides, as if she feared an ambush.

It had not been a favourable year; weather had been bad, strikes were prevalent, money was dear, labour scarce. Men were ready to snatch the work out of each other’s hands; some were quite unemployed, others less than they used to be. Of course the homes in Piefinch Cut, and similar small homes not in the Cut, went on short-commons. And if the women had been scarcely able to get on before and stave off exposure, any one may see that that was a feat impracticable now. One of them, Hester Reed, thought the doubt and difficulty and remorse and dread would kill her.

Dread of her husband’s discovering the truth, and dread of his being called upon to answer for the debt. Unable to keep up her weekly interest and payments to Mr. Jellico for some time now, the main debt had only accumulated. She owed him two pounds nineteen shillings. And two pounds nineteen shillings to a labourer’s wife seems as a wide gulf that can never be bridged over while life shall last. Besides this, she had been obliged to go into debt at the general shop; that had added itself up now to eight-and-twenty shillings, and the shop was threatening procedure. There were other little odds and ends of liabilities less urgent, a few shillings in all. To those not acquainted with the simple living of a rural district, this may not sound so very overwhelming: those who are, know what it means, and how awful was the strait to which Mrs. Reed (with other wives) had reduced herself.

She had grown so thin as hardly to be able to keep her clothes upon her. Sleeping and waking, a dead wall crowded with figures, as a huge sum, seemed to be before her eyes. Lately she had taken to dreaming of hanging feet downwards over a precipice, held up only by the grasp of her hands on the edge. Nearly always she awoke with the horror: and it would seem to her that it was worse to wake up to life and its cares, than to fall down to death and be at rest from them. Her husband, perceiving that she appeared very ill, told her she had better speak to Dr. Duffham.

Carrying home the five shillings in her hand, Mrs. Reed sat down in her kitchen and wiped her face, damp with pallor. She had begun to ask—not so much what the ending would be, but how soon it would come. With the five shillings in her hand she must find food and necessaries until Saturday night; there was no more credit to be had. And this was only Wednesday morning. With credit stopped and supplies stopped, her husband would naturally make inquiries, and all must come out. Hester Reed wondered whether she should die of the shame—if she had to stay and face it. Three of the shillings must be paid that afternoon to Ingram the milkman; he would not be quiet any longer: and the woman cast her aching eyes round her room, and saw nothing that it was possible to take away and raise money on.

She had the potatoes on the fire when the children ran in, little toddling things, from school. Some rashers of bacon lay on the table ready to be toasted. Reed, earning pretty good wages, had been accustomed to live well: with careful management he knew they might do so still. Little did he suspect the state things had got into.

“Tatty dere, mov’er,” began the eldest, who was extremely backward in speaking.

“Tatty dere” meant “Cathy’s there;” and the mother looked up from the bacon. Cathy Parrifer (though nobody called her by her new name, but Cathy Reed still) stood at the outer gate, in tatters as usual, talking to some man who had a paper in his hand. Mrs. Reed’s heart leaped into her mouth: she lived in dread of everything. A stranger approaching the place turned her sick. And now the terror, whose shadow had been so long looming, was come in reality. Catherine came bounding up the garden to tell the tale: the man, standing at the gate, was waiting to see her father come home to dinner to serve him with a summons for the county court. Mrs. Reed knew at once what it was for: the eight-and-twenty shillings owing at the general shop. Her face grew white as she sank into a chair.

“Couldn’t you get him to leave the paper with me, Cathy?” she whispered, insane ideas of getting up the money somehow floating into her brain.

“He won’t,” answered Cathy. “He means to give that to father personally, he says, if he stays till night.”

Just as many another has felt, in some apparently insurmountable obstacle, that seemed to be turning their hair grey in the little space of time that you can peel an apple, felt Mrs. Reed. Light seemed to be closing, shame and misery and blackness to be opening. Her hands seemed powerless to put the bacon into the Dutch oven.

But there ensued a respite. A very short one, but still a respite. While the summons-server was loitering outside, Reed came in through the back-garden, having got over the stile in Piefinch Lane. It was not often he chose that way; accident caused him to do it to-day. Mrs. Reed, really not knowing what she did or said, told Cathy there’d be a morsel of dinner for her if she liked to stop and eat it. As Cathy was not in the luck of such offers every day, she remained: and in her good-nature talked and laughed to divert any suspicion.

But the man at the gate began to smell a rat; perhaps the bacon as well. Dinner-hour almost over, and no George Reed had come home! He suddenly thought of the back-entrance, and walked up the front-path to see. Paper in hand, he gave a thump at the house-door. Reed was about to leave then: and he went down the path by the man’s side, opening the paper. Mrs. Reed, more like a ghost than a woman, took a glance through the window.

“I can’t face it, Catherine. When I’m gone, you’d better come home here and do what you can for the children. Tell him all; it’s of no good trying to hide it any longer.”

She took her worn old shawl from a press and put her bonnet on; and then stooped to kiss her children, saying good-bye with a burst of grief.

“But where are you going?” cried the wondering Cathy.

“Anywhere. If I am tempted to do anything desperate, Cathy, tell father not to think too bad of me, as he might if I was living.”

She escaped by the back-door. Catherine let her go, uncertain what to be at for the best. Her father was striding back to the house up the garden-path, and the storm was coming. As a preliminary van-guard, Cathy snatched up the youngest girl and held her on her lap. The summons-server was calling after Reed, apparently giving some instructions, and that took up another minute or two; but he came in at last.

Cathy told as much of the truth as she dared; her father was too angry for her to venture on all. In his passion he said his wife might go and be hanged. Cathy answered that she had as good as said it was something of that she meant to go and do.

But talking and acting are two things; and when it came to be put to the test, Hester Reed found herself no more capable of entering upon any desperate course than the rest of us are. And, just as I had been brought in accidentally to see the beginning, so was I accidentally brought in at the ending.

We were at home again for the holidays, and I had been over for an afternoon to the Stirlings’. Events in this world happen very strangely. Upon setting out to walk back in the cool of the late summer’s evening, I took the way by Dyke Brook instead of either of the two ordinary roads. Why I chose it I did not know then; I do not now; I never shall know. When fairly launched into the fields, I asked myself why on earth I had come that way, for it was the loneliest to be found in the two counties.

Turning sharp round the dark clump of trees by Dyke Brook (which just there is wide enough for a pond and as deep as one), I came upon somebody in a shabby grey straw bonnet, standing on its brink and looking down into the water.

“Halloa, Mrs. Reed! Is that you?”

Before I forget the woe-stricken face she turned upon me, the start she gave, I must lose memory. Down she sat on the stump of a tree, and burst into sobs.

“What is it?” I asked, standing before her.

“Master Johnny, I’ve been for hours round it, round and round, wanting the courage to throw myself in; and I haven’t done it.”

“Just tell me all about the trouble,” I said, from the opposite stump, upon which I took my seat.

And she did tell me. Alone there for so many hours, battling with herself and Death (it’s not wrong to say so), my coming seemed to unlock all the gates of reticence, and she disclosed to me what I’ve written above.

“God knows I never thought to bring it to such a pass as this,” she sobbed. “I went into it without any sense of doing harm. One day, when I happened to be at Miles Dickon’s, Jellico came in with his pack, and I was tempted to buy some ribbon. I said he might come and show me his things the next week, and he did, and I bought a gownd and a shawl. I know now how wrong and blind I was: but it seemed so easy, just to pay a shilling or two a-week; like having the things for nothing. And from that time it went on; a’most every Tuesday I took some trifle of him, maybe a bit o’ print for the little ones, or holland for pinafores; and I gave Cathy a cotton gownd, for she hadn’t one to her back. I didn’t buy as some of ’em did, for the sake of show and bedeckings, but useful things, Master Johnny,” she added, sobbing bitterly. “And this has come of it! and I wish I was at rest in that there blessed water.”

“Now, Mrs. Reed! Do you suppose you would be at rest?”

“Heaven have mercy on me! It’s the thought o’ the sin, and of what might come after, that makes me hold back from it.”

Looking at her, shading her eyes with her hand, her elbow on her lap, and her face one of the saddest for despair I ever saw, I thought of the strange contrasts there are in the world. For the want of about five pounds this woman was seeking to end her life; some have done as much for five-and-twenty thousand.

“I’ve not a friend in the whole world that could help me,” she said. “But it’s not that, Master Johnny; it’s the shame on me for having brought things to such a pass. If the Lord would but be pleased to take me, and save me from the sin of lifting a hand against my own life!”

“Look here, Mrs. Reed. As to what you call the shame, I suppose we all have to go in for some sort or another of that kind of thing as we jog along. As you are not taken, and don’t seem likely to be taken, I should look on that as an intimation that you must live and make the best of things.”

“Live! how, sir? I can’t never show myself at home. Reed, he’ll have to go to jail; the law will put him there. I’d not face the world, sir, knowing it was all for my thoughtless debts.”

Could I help her? Ought I to help her? If I went to old Brandon and begged to have five pounds, why, old Brandon in the end would give it me, after he had gone on rather hotly for an hour. If I did not help her, and any harm came to her, what should I–

“You promise me never to think about pools again, Mrs. Reed, except in the way of eels, and I’ll promise to see you through this.”

She looked up, more helpless than before. “There ain’t nothing to be done for me, Master Johnny. There’s the shame, and the talkin’ o’ the neighbours–”

“Yes, you need mind that. Why, the neighbours are all in the same boat!”

“And there’s Reed, sir; he’d never forgive me. He’d–”

Of all cries, she interrupted herself with about the worst: something she saw behind me had frightened her. In another moment she had darted to the pond, and Reed was holding her back from it.

“Be thee a born fool?” roared Reed. “Dost think thee’st not done enough harm as it is, but thee must want to cap it by putting theeself in there? That would mend it, that would!”

She released herself from him, and slipped on the grass, Reed standing between her and the pond. But he seemed to think better of it, and stepped aside.

“Jump in, an’ thee likes to,” said he, continuing to speak in the familiar home manner. “I once see a woman ducked in the Severn for pocket-picking, at Worcester races, and she came out all the cooler and better for’t.”

“I never thought to bring trouble on you or anybody, George,” she sobbed. “It seems to have come on and on, like a great monster growing bigger and bigger as you look at him, till I couldn’t get away from it.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t, which d’ye mean?” retorted Reed. “Why you women were ever created to bother us, hangs me. I hope you’ll find you can keep the children when I and a dozen more of us are in jail. ’Twon’t be my first visit there.”

“Look here, Reed; I’ve promised to set it right for her. Don’t worry over it.”

“I’ll not accept help from anybody; not even from you, Master Johnny. What she has done she must abide by.”

“The bargain’s made, Reed; you can’t break it if you would. Perhaps a great trouble may come to me some time in my life that I may be glad to be helped out of. Mrs. Reed will get the money to-morrow, only she need not tell the parish where she found it.”

“Oh, George, let it be so!” she implored through her tears. “If Master Johnny’s good enough to do this, let him. I might save up by little and little to repay him in time. If you went to jail through me!—I’d rather die!”

“Will you let it be a lesson to you—and keep out of Jellico’s clutches in future?” he asked, sternly.

“It’s a lesson that’ll last me to the end of my days,” she said, with a shiver. “Please God, you let Master Johnny get me out o’ this trouble, I’ll not fall into another like it.”

“Then come along home to the children,” said he, his voice softening a little. “And leave that pond and your folly behind you.”

I was, of course, obliged to tell the whole to Mr. Brandon and the Squire, and they both pitched into me as fiercely as tongues could pitch. But neither of them was really angry; I saw that. As to the five pounds, I only wish as much relief could be oftener given with as little money.

CAROMEL’S FARM

I

You will be slow to believe what I am about to write, and say it savours of romance instead of reality. Every word of it is true. Here truth was stranger than fiction.

Lying midway between our house, Dyke Manor, and Church Dykely, was a substantial farm belonging to the Caromels. It stood well back from the road a quarter-of-a-mile or so, and was nearly hidden by the trees that surrounded it. An avenue led to the house; which was a rambling, spacious, very old-fashioned building, so full of queer angles inside, nooks and corners and passages, that you might lose your way in them and never find it again. The Caromels were gentlemen by descent; but their means had dwindled with years, so that they had little left besides this property. The last Caromel who died, generally distinguished as “Old Caromel” by all the parish, left two sons, Miles and Nash. The property was willed to the elder, Miles: but Nash continued to have his home with him. As to the house, it had no particular name, but was familiarly called “Caromel’s Farm.”

Squire Todhetley had been always intimate with them; more like a brother than anything else. Not but that he was considerably their senior. I think he liked Nash the best: Nash was so yielding and easy. Some said Nash was not very steady in private life, and that his brother, Miles, stern and moral, read him a lecture twice a-week. But whether it was so no one knew; people don’t go prying into their neighbours’ closets to look up their skeletons.

At the time I am beginning to tell of, old Caromel had been dead about ten years; Nash was now five-and-thirty, Miles forty. Miles had married a lady with a good fortune, which was settled upon herself and her children; the four of them were girls, and there was no son.

At the other end of Church Dykely, ever so far past Chavasse Grange, lived a widow lady named Tinkle. And when the world had quite done wondering whether Nash Caromel meant to marry (though, indeed, what had he to marry upon?), it was suddenly found out that he wanted Mrs. Tinkle’s daughter, Charlotte. The Tinkles were respectable people, but not equal to the Caromels. Mrs. Tinkle and her son farmed a little land, she had also a small private income. The son had married well. Just now he was away; having gone abroad with his wife, whose health was failing.

Charlotte Tinkle was getting on towards thirty. You would not have thought it, to look at her. She had a gentle face, a gentle voice, and a young, slender figure; her light brown hair was always neat; and she possessed one of those inoffensive natures that would like to be at peace with the whole world. It was natural that Mrs. Tinkle should wish her daughter to marry, if a suitable person presented himself—all mothers do, I suppose—but to find it was Nash Caromel took her aback.

“You think it will not do,” observed the Squire, when Mrs. Tinkle was enlarging on the grievance to him one day that they met in a two-acre field.

“How can it do?” returned poor Mrs. Tinkle, in a tone between wailing and crying. “Nash Caromel has nothing to keep her on, sir, and no prospects.”

“That’s true,” said the pater. “At present he has thoughts of taking a farm.”

“But he has no money to stock a farm. And look at that tale, sir, that was talked of—about that Jenny Lake. Other things have been said also.”

“Oh, one must not believe all one hears. For myself, I assure you, Mrs. Tinkle, I know no harm of Nash. As to the money to stock a farm, I expect his brother could help him to it, if he chose.”

“But, sir, you would surely not advise them to marry upon an uncertainty!”

“I don’t advise them to marry at all; understand that, my good lady; I think it would be the height of imprudence. But I can’t prevent it.”

“Mr. Todhetley,” she answered, a tear rolling down her thin cheeks, on which there was a chronic redness, “I am unable to describe to you how much my mind is set against the match: I seem to foresee, by some subtle instinct, that no good would ever come of it; nothing but misery for Charlotte. And she has had so peaceful a home all her life.”

“Tell Charlotte she can’t have him—if you think so strongly about it.”

“She won’t listen—at least to any purpose,” groaned Mrs. Tinkle. “When I talk to her she says, ‘Yes, dear mother; no, dear mother,’ in her dutiful way: and the same evening she’ll be listening to Nash Caromel’s courting words. Her uncle, Ralph Tinkle, rode over from Inkberrow to talk to her, for I wrote to him: but it seems to have made no permanent impression on her. What I am afraid of is that Nash Caromel will marry her in spite of us.”

“I should like to see my children marry in spite of me!” cried the Squire, giving way to one of his hot fits. “I’d ‘marry’ them! Nash can’t take her against her will, my dear friend: it takes two people, you know, to complete a bargain of that sort. Promise Charlotte to shake her unless she listens to reason. Why should she not listen! She is meek and tractable.”

“She always has been. But, once let a girl be enthralled by a sweetheart, there’s no answering for her. Duty to parents is often forgotten then.”

“If– Why, mercy upon us, there is Charlotte!” broke off the Squire, happening to lift his eyes to the stile. “And Nash too.”

Yes, there they were: standing on the other side the stile in the cross-way path. “Halloa!” called out Mr. Todhetley.

“I can’t stay a moment,” answered Nash Caromel, turning his good-looking face to speak: and it cannot be denied it was a good-looking face, or that he was an attractive man. “Miles has sent me to that cattle sale up yonder, and I am full late.”

With a smile and a nod, he stepped lightly onwards, his slender supple figure, of middle height, upright as a dart; his fair hair waving in the breeze. Charlotte Tinkle glanced shyly after him, her cheeks blushing like a peony.

“What’s this I hear, young lady?—that you and Mr. Nash yonder want to make a match of it, in spite of pastors and masters?” began the Squire. “Is it true?”

Charlotte stood like a goose, making marks on the dusty path with the end of her large grass-green parasol. Parasols were made for use then, not show.

“Nash has nothing, you know,” went on the Squire. “No money, no house, no anything. There wouldn’t be common sense in it, Charlotte.”

“I tell him so, sir,” answered Charlotte, lifting her shy brown eyes for a moment.

“To be sure; that’s right. Here’s your mother fretting herself into fiddlestrings for fear of—of—I hardly know what.”

“Lest you should be tempted to forget your duty to me, Lottie,” struck in the mother. “Ah, my dear! you young people little think what trouble and anxiety you bring upon us.”

Charlotte Tinkle suddenly burst into tears, to the surprise of her beholders. Drying them up as soon as she could, she spoke with a sigh.

“I hope I shall never bring trouble upon you, mother, never; I wouldn’t do it willingly for the world. But–”

“But what, child?” cried the mother, for Charlotte had come to a standstill.

“I—I am afraid that parents and children see with different eyes—just as though things were for each a totally opposite aspect,” she went on timidly. “The difficulty is how to reconcile that view and this.”

“And do you know what my father used to say to me in my young days?” put in the Squire. “‘Young folks think old folks fools, but old folks know the young ones to be so.’ There was never a truer saying than that, Miss Charlotte.”

Miss Charlotte only sighed in answer. The wind, high that day, was taking her muslin petticoats, and she had some trouble to keep them down. Mrs. Tinkle got over the stile, and the Squire turned back towards home.

A fortnight or so had passed by after this, when Church Dykely woke one morning to an electric shock; Nash Caromel and Charlotte had gone and got married. They did it without the consent of (as the Squire had put it) pastors and masters. Nash had none to consult, for he could not be expected to yield obedience to his brother; and Charlotte had asked Mrs. Tinkle, and Mrs. Tinkle had refused to countenance the ceremony, though she did not actually walk into the church to forbid it.

Taking a three weeks’ trip by way of honeymoon, the bride and bridegroom came back to Church Dykely. Caromel’s Farm refused to take them in; and Miles Caromel, indignant to a degree, told his brother that “as he had made his bed, so must he lie upon it,” which is a very convenient reproach, and often used.

“Nash is worse than a child,” grumbled Miles to the Squire, his tones harder than usual, and his manner colder. “He has gone and married this young woman—who is not his equal—and now he has no home to give her. Did he suppose that we should receive him back here?—and take her in as well? He has acted like an idiot.”

“Mrs. Tinkle will not have anything to do with them, I hear,” returned the Squire: “and Tinkle, of Inkberrow, is furious.”

“Tinkle of Inkberrow’s no fool. Being a man of substance, he thinks they may be falling back upon him.”

Which was the precise fear that lay upon Miles himself. Meanwhile Nash engaged sumptuous lodgings (if such a word could be justly applied to any rooms at Church Dykely), and drove his wife out daily in the pony-gig that was always looked upon as his at Caromel’s Farm.

Nash was flush of money now, for he had saved some; but he could not go on living upon it for ever. After sundry interviews with his brother, Miles agreed to hand him over a thousand pounds: not at all too large a sum, considering that Nash had given him his services, such as they were, for a number of years for just his keep as a gentleman and a bonus for pocket-money. A thousand pounds would not go far with such a farm as Nash had been used to and would like to take, and he resolved to emigrate to America.

Mrs. Tinkle (the Squire called her simple at times) was nearly wild when she heard of it. It brought her out of her temper with a leap. Condoning the rebellious marriage, she went off to remonstrate with Nash.

“But now, why need you put yourself into this unhappy state?” asked Nash, when he had heard what she had to say. “Dear Mrs. Tinkle, do admit some common sense into your mind. I am not taking Charlotte to the ‘other end of the world,’ as you put it, but to America. It is only a few days’ passage. Outlandish foreigners! Not a bit of it. The people are, so to speak, our own countrymen. Their language is ours; their laws are, I believe, much as ours are.”

“You may as well be millions of miles away, practically speaking,” bewailed Mrs. Tinkle. “Charlotte will be as much lost to me there as she would be at the North Pole. She is my only daughter, Nash Caromel, she has never been away from me: to part with her will be like parting with life.”

“I am very sorry,” said poor Nash, who was just a woman when any appeal was made to his feelings. “Live with you? No, that would not do: but, thank you all the same for offering it. Nothing would induce me to spunge upon you in that way: and, were I capable of it, your son Henry would speedily turn us out when he returned. I must get a home of my own, for Charlotte’s sake as well as for mine: and I know I can do that in America. Land, there, may be had for an old song; fortunes are made in no time. The probability is that before half-a-dozen years have gone over our heads, I shall bring you Charlotte home a rich woman, and we shall settle down here for life.”

There isn’t space to pursue the arguments—which lasted for a week or two. But they brought forth no result. Nash might have turned a post sooner than the opinions of Mrs. Tinkle, and she might as well have tried to turn the sun as to stop his emigrating. The parish looked upon it as not at all a bad scheme. Nash might get on well over there if he would put off his besetting sin, indolence, and not allow the Yankees to take him in.

So Nash Caromel and Charlotte his wife set sail for New York; Mrs. Tinkle bitterly resenting the step, and wholly refusing to be reconciled.